News Brief, Heinrich Maneuver Edition

Probably in a bad mood over at The Conjecturer.

Defense & The War

• Those silly experts and their “numbers,” always undermining the troops. To wit: there is no discernible drop in violence in Iraq, and what little there was occurred between December and February—before the surge. What’s more, the way numbers are compiled and reported by Petraeus and his underlings is more than suspect: basically, they do not include Sunni-Sunni violence, Shi’a-Shi’a violence, bombs, or getting shot in the front of the head. In other words, by any measure, the surge hasn’t accomplished that much in terms of making Iraq a safer place, though it has done a great job of arming the Sunni militias that were planting IEDs and decapitating people just a few short years ago. As Fabius has noted, similar to my own observations, the only indicators that things are going well are personal accounts—anecdotes of individual events, told through a translator, copied to the Internet for quite often narrowly-focused agendas (i.e. propping up support for the war). He sees it as sophisticated information warfare levied against the U.S. public, and I’m inclined to agree. If the surge is going well, if it is showing measurable progress and not just “impressions,” (or, in the worrisome words of Lt. Col. Mark Odom, “somehow hope”) that things are going to be better, then the fudging we see should not be necessary. All of which makes me seriously doubt whether General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will give a forthcoming report to Congress… but I will hold my breath anyway (there could, after all, be a reasonable explanation for all of it).
• Just don’t read Thomas Macubin Owens’ cheerleading in the Wall Street Journal, as he seems to be under the impression that security has somehow improved, an assessment I still have yet to see in any meaningful sense (i.e. not that this one house doesn’t happen to be violent with U.S. soldiers outside, but rather than violence is easing under the realization that it is no longer useful… that is the kind of mass movement that has yet to materialize in Iraq, and it is what we need to see before we can begin to think we’re succeeding).
• Oh yeah, and the Iraqi army is still in shambles, which is so totally not the fault of 100% shameless L. Paul Bremer III, on the off chance you were thinking of blaming their failure on their failure’s architect.
• Then again, maybe we’re all tools of the unpatriotic Democratic party, foolishly trying to undermine a report we haven’t read from a man 3/4 of the country doesn’t much like, half of whom don’t even think he’ll tell the truth. But remember: it’s all just a Democratic conspiracy to undermine the war.

Around the World

• Serbia is thinking of retaking Kosovo by force. Don’t tell Thomas Barnett, who still exalts the campaign as an example of how to do “gap shrinking” right. Or, I suppose, anyone who felt middle-fingering the UN and invading a country at civil war and “liberating” a territory from its government’s control was totally okay (like the fools who still read Strategy Page for anything resembling strategy). Or even, I suppose, anyone who felt the Kosovars were innocent victims of the nasty Serbs, and not as equally vicious and ethnically cleansing.
• Oh look, that chemical weapon everyone was freaking out about at the U.N. happened to be a harmless solvent.
• Burma has made it into the news a bunch lately, which is fortunate. Der Spiegel ran a depressing tale of the junta’s campaign against ethnic minorities (a topic my friend Doug Bandow has covered at length before). In fact, the human rights situation is so bad Laura Bush has gotten in on the act, though, as Kerry Howley (who used to live in Rangoon) finds it beyond silly. Meanwhile, I stumbled across a series of rather haunting, if beautifully composed, photographs of the country’s two primary cities—the former capital of Rangoon (called Yangon by the junta, which also calls the country Myanmar), and the brand new built-from-scratch capital Naypyidaw.
• Zimbabwe is still on the brink, and violence over food shortages would surprise no one.
• Don’t forget to read up on the incompetent advisers to the horrendously corrupt Nawaz Sharif begging us all not to count him out as Pakistan’s next glorious leader once Musharraf feels like holding elections and maybe not ruining the country anymore.

Back at Home

• I am normally all about protecting copyrights for limited times—which I guess is surprising, given my stance on information and file sharing—but I think the fashion industry is totally in the wrong, especially because the whole knock off phenomenon doesn’t violate any laws. Besides, when you get down to it, how many different ways can you patent the pin stripe, or a flattering cut of jacket? Or maybe I’m fashion-tarded.
• Someone brought snakes onto a plane in Atlanta. I need to rent that DVD or buy it or something.
• Also, LARRY CRAIG.
• I especially like the Instapundit pushing the line that the Bush Administration’s biggest crime isn’t the myriad crimes it has committed, but rather its overly zealous commitment to obeying the law. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has had to abandon a multi-million dollar data mining program because of privacy violations, and yet another part of the PATRIOT ACT was struck down as unconstitutional. I suppose asking “have you no shame” is a bit premature still, but really: do these people really have no shame?
• Speaking of shame, I guess Mearsheimer and Walt still don’t have any, though now they have The New Yorker publishing barely coherent defenses of their “serious scholarship” in assigning the disparate opinions of independent people who all happen to share a positive view of Israel as a “lobby” (since they’re all being so careful not to limit the discussion merely to AIPAC). Yes, it’s all a principled defense of democracy without lobbies, and not anti-Semitism in a clever guise, as he says… unless you actually read them complaining that Israel controls U.S. policy, an easily falsifiable assertion.
• Snarl. I’m under-slept and over-cranky today. Sorry y’all.