News Brief, Work Is Crazy So This Is It for a Week Edition

(For those who wonder where I find the time for these daily news roundups, it’s usually during slow moments during the day. Because of my job, I have had none of those for a few weeks. And I’m sick of busting my ass to put these up every night and losing out on precious sleep or leisure reading time. While I do enjoy doing this—otherwise I wouldn’t do them every day for free, going on seven months at this point—I simply don’t have the time at the moment. I’ll revisit on Wednesday of next week and see if I can keep this kind of thing up while still, you know, having a life. This was cross-posted, in case you forgot, at The Conjecturer, where I’m in an interesting debate over whether we should desolate Iraq or not.)

• Talk about burying the lede: rather than crooning about how the invasion of Iraq wasn’t as barbaric in 2004 as some people thought it was, isn’t it significant that removing the mass murdering thug who ran the place didn’t result in a “statistically significant change in the risk of death?” I would certainly think so. One of the main arguments for continuing the occupation of Iraq is that, as bad as it may seem, it’s still better than Saddam. Even according to the people who still root for the war, the best they can throw—after years of complex statistical analyses—is that is isn’t any worse. A wash? We invaded a country, spent $800 billion dollars, and killed 3500 of our own soldiers for a wash? After four years?

  How disappointing. This is Michelle Malkin, remember, who, when not prancing about in cheerleading uniforms (remember, saying she uses her sexuality as a prop is out of bounds), is actively calling for the reopening of prison camps for the brown-skinned MOSLEMS in our midst.

  It’s worth noting, too, before another proud redneck blogger jumps on here complaining we’re not slaughtering enough Arabs in our quest to civilize them or whatever, that the reason this matters, the reason this is not “some defeatist liberal bashing America” (I am neither a liberal, nor do I dislike or bash this country), is because we are now the ones doing it. Shouldn’t that matter?

• Did you know al-Qaeda in Iraq attacked us on September 11 2001? I certainly didn’t. In fact, I thought al-Qaeda in AFGHANISTAN attacked us on September 11, 2001. Moreover, I thought Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn didn’t even exist until we invaded the country, which would certainly fuel the defeatists who say the war in Iraq has made our planet far worse off in terms of anti-terrorism. And yes, I know Bush simply said there were vast operational links between the two, but that’s totally beside the point: not only is there not, especially when Zarqawi was alive and chafing under bin Laden’s sponsorship (but not his pocketbook) but not even now, there never will be. This is because the two al-Qaedas are very different: one is a marriage of convenience that has, since Zarqawi’s death, been made into a franchise, while the other is the original network we wanted to target.

  We should go after bin Laden anyway, as we said we were going to until he ran away and Bush suddenly declared he didn’t care if he ever got caught. That is because bin Laden still carries hold, his network supports AQII, and his funding contacts are what keep it supplied (this is changing as time goes on, and this terrorist group—formed as a direct consequence of our actions—is growing increased autonomy). This is like attacking the legs of a spider, rather than its head—it’s satisfying to cut off a leg, but it will eventually grow back.

• Meanwhile, the crazies are doing an admirable enough job of undercutting their own support without us around to give them other incentives to unite. Meanwhile, sectarian violence—which showed promising movements at first—is back where it started, which to me indicates what I’ve thought all along: the surge (more particularly, Petraeus’ tactics) was a neat idea in 2004. But not 2007.
• I mentioned before that I was a bit baffled as to why Solzhenitsyn had suddenly become an apologist for Putin. Passport offers a very plausible reason: “It seems that even for Solzhenitsyn, who accepted a State Award from Putin in June, dictatorship is preferable to anarchy.” How understandably sad (Benjamin Franklin’s famous axiom comes to mind). But looking at who begrudgingly accepts Putin’s iron fist, and who chafes under it, is also very interesting. Passport again: “When did the freedom fighter become the apologist for dictatorship, while the spy became the dissident?” Indeed. Many things in Russia these days appears backward.