Month: May 2003

We are aware of the difficulties readers have been experiencing in viewing this site. I don’t know what the problem is, though I suspect it’s not unrelated to Blogspot. We have a new site, almost ready to go, awaiting us on a more reliable hosting system. We will move as soon as I can figure out how to transfer our archives to the new blog. (Joe Katzman has been kind enough to make some helpful suggestions in this regard.) Thanks.

David Warren writes (1) that the Iranian regime is the new protector and landlord for al Qaeda (or its successor, currently nameless), and (2) that the Iranian Mullah’s turbanned heads sit lightly on their robed shoulders. Michael Ledeen has been arguing this for months now. (See this recent piece.) The Iranian “street”, or at least “campus” has been ready to throw these bastards out for some time. Warren also suggests that the US Government is hardening its stance toward Iran. Nonetheless, Warren notes that nobody, no matter how hawkish wants to “invade” Iran.

However, that may be answering the wrong question. After all the word “invade” is so old-fashioned, so “machine age”, so last century. Of course no one wants to do that. Anyway, it’s been done recently and well, and who wants to be passe?

No. This is the moment to turn the fearsome new weapons of the enemy back upon him. We keep hearing about how in this new world we are entering, tanks, planes and howitzers are irrelevant. (They looked pretty relevant rattling around Basra and Baghdad, but let’s put that to one side for the time being.) These units of power are supposedly now of no account because they can be circumvented by “Fourth Generation Warfare”, by “networked warriors” who will “swarm” around conventional forces and make “asymmetrical attacks” deep in the rear areas of their supposedly slow-moving enemies, disrupting and crippling whole societies, etc., etc.. We keep getting told that this is the threat faced by the civilized world. (See the excellent book Non-State Threats and Future Wars which I am halfway through reading.)

Fine. OK. Fat, dumb and happy America is, we are told, especially susceptible to asymmetrical sucker punches. The menacing but shadowy people who want to do us harm can infiltrate our society and work their way into the interstices and strike at the ill-defended but critical nodes and hinges and lynchpins, etc. Agreed, suicidal maniacs with box cutters, or terrorists with backpack nukes, are a menace. Let’s face that threat and be ready to defeat it.

But why can’t we dish it out, too? If the bastards can swarm us, why can’t we swarm them? Why can’t the United States do the same unto others? Why can’t we throw some bone-crunching, jaw-busting asymmetrical punches of our own? Why can’t we create a parallel capability to dish out this same nasty medicine? No reason I can think of. For example, we could certainly create a cadre of Iranian expats or Farsi speaking Americans, and send them into Iraq to undermine, disrupt, cripple and wreck the Iranian regime in exactly the same way. American “fourth generation warriors” could aid the locals in a non- or minimally violent overthrow of the Mullahs. Or, if that wasn’t working out, they could provide a sharp “special ops” edge to a locally generated but US-supported and armed revolution. These new challenges are not magic. Once the novel language is stripped away, it is apparent that most of these supposed new challenges are, at bottom, techniques. And the United States possesses the human and material resources to build the capacity to employ any techniques it chooses, including these, with maximum effectiveness, against anyone who decides to fuck with us.

Anyway, even if we don’t do any of this, the mullah regime in Iran is heading for the scrap heap.

Here’s a little springtime wish for our dear ChicagoBoyz readers — let us fervently hope and pray that before the leaves turn we will see Khomenei’s picture being flung on the bonfire like Saddam’s was. 2003 could end up being a very good year indeed.

Update. Sylvain comments that we ought to take it easy with Iran, since the overt involvement of the US is perceived as a bad thing in the region. I respect and understand this view, which a lot of people share, and I used to agree with it. I’m glad he raised this, since I should have addressed it in the first place.

As time goes on I care less and less what the “Arab Street” thinks, says or does — or for that matter what any of the governments over there (or in Old Europe) say, or think or do. The US/UK/Oz/Poles conquered Iraq. No revolutions happened in Cairo or Riyadh or anywhere else. No riots happened except in Baghdad. The “Arab Street” did what all inert mineral matter does. It sat there motionless. All that happened was that al Qaeda or somebody set off some bombs and killed a bunch of muslims in Saudi and Morocco. This is sad, but it is not a formula for rallying the mythical Arab Street against the Great Satan. The Iranians have given us plenty of provocation. The United States should make its case, then actively and openly support an Iranian revolution against the mullahs. What would happen? The revolution would succeed, Iran would be liberated, enormous crowds would celebrate in the streets of Teheran waving American flags, Iran’s nuclear weapons program would be shut down, its support for terrorism would be shut down, and a pro-Western regime would come to power there. All of these would be very good things. They are within our grasp, practically for the asking. Set off against these good things is a hypothetical bad thing: Some third parties won’t like it if the Americans openly help the Iranian people make these good things happen. But so what? None of these third parties are going to do anything about it. People in the region are finally, and at long last, once again, really and truly afraid of the United States. Good. It’s about time. That works wonders over there. So forget about the Arab Street. The French, Russians, Chinese, the State Department, North Korea et al. would be upset. They’d issue some memoranda, voice their disapproval, note the relevant provisions of the U.N. Charter. Fine. Whatever. They would not and cannot do anything substantive about it, either. Syria, Hamas, and who knows what other terrorist outfits would suddenly find themselves in a real pickle with their best buddy and bankroller crushed like a bug. Again, great. And the Iranian people want to be rid of the mullahs and are capable of understanding that the United States does not want to annex them, etc. and would likely be glad to have our assistance. And if some of them thought the revolution was “tainted” by US involvement, they’d still be glad to get rid of the mullahs and they’d then have the freedom to say any nasty things about the USA they want into the bargain. Who cares? It can’t be worse than what everybody else says about us already.

It all adds up to a big green light.

Baghdad in the Spring, Teheran in the Summer. Yeah, baby. We should go for it.

Update II:Rumsfeld Pushes for Regime Change in Iran. The Financial Times reports: “If regime change were to become official policy, then the US would cut off diplomatic contacts, lend support to opposition groups and intensify economic pressure. It would not necessarily involve military action.” Also this: “the view of hawks in the Pentagon is that the struggle in Iran is not between hardline clerics and elected reformists led by President Mohammed Khatami, but between the people and the system.” (via Drudge)

YES. Go get ’em. No time like NOW.

I had to fly to DC for work. I was given a packet of salted almonds on the airplane. As I ate them the thought came back to me of the little white, paper cups of salted nuts they would give you on the side, if you asked for them, with a hot fudge sundae at Friendly’s Ice Cream. They were good, and added a whole dimension of sweet/salty, to go with hot/cold and chocolate/vanilla — to say nothing of the cherry on top. I don’t know if the nuts are available anymore, but I somehow doubt it, at least in the paper cups. When you had poured the nuts on there, you opened up the paper cup so it was flattened out into a disk, and then you got the last few crumbs and grains of salt out of it. There was a Friendly’s in Brockton, Mass. There was another one, I think, at the Braintree mall. I’d go in these places with my mother when I was a kid, if we were out shopping for school clothes. That was our ritual. No particular episode stands out, it is a whole category of memories (tactile, visual, olfactory, auditory as well as the taste of things), all in one bin in my head. This is all a long time ago now. It was a time before the issue of whether or not to eat such a thing would have occurred to me — if it was available, I ate it. And now as in so many other details, the torch has passed. It is part of my job to be the parent taking the kids out for ice cream. The kids are not particularly grateful. The kids are not distracted by other concerns when the ice cream appears — it is a brief but all-consuming episode. And the parent sits there, with a cup of coffee, having bought a moment’s quiet, or time to worry about something else in peace for a minute, which is even better than a hot fudge sundae with nuts. Or at least almost as good.

Glenn Reynolds says it’s fair for ordinary people to take photos in places that have surveillance cams, even places that forbid photography.

Yeah, screw the rules: carry a camera everywhere. Even a video camera.

Here’s another market – a useful one – for discrete mounting fixtures for car cams and front-door cams and living-room cams. How credible are cops’ and prosecutors’ rationalizations for no-knock searches going to be after people start blogging videos (preferably with sound) of what actually happens during these official home-invasions?

In a classroom exercise tonight, the instructor in my community-college Spanish language class read to us, from a text, a couple of paragraphs in response to which we were supposed to ask questions.

The passage the instructor read was about immigration. It asserted that immigrants come to the U.S. because life is easy here due to material abundance, and because our relatively strong economy makes for more opportunity than exists in most immigrants’ countries of origin. It also asserted that many Americans oppose immigration because they don’t like or understand the foreign ways of immigrants (or words to that effect). It did not mention that some foreigners might be attracted to the U.S. because of its freedom. Nor did it suggest that some Americans might object to immigration for reasons having nothing to do with disliking them there furriners – e.g., because they object to transfer payments generally, and particularly to taxing U.S. citizens to subsidize indigent non citizens.

Is this kind of subtly anti-American multi-culti bullshit typical of language texts nowadays? I guess I know the answer. It doesn’t make me feel any better that the chapter from which the offending passage came is titled: “Los Estados Unidos: Un pais multicultural.” Of course it’s true that American culture is an amalgam. I just wish the multi enthusiasts would, for once, pay as much attention to such essential parts of that culture as personal liberty and representative government as they do to material wealth and the supposed provincialism of our native citizens.

UPDATE:I don’t think the students in my class, who are mainly mature adults, or the instructor, who is an immigrant, actually believe the snake oil or even pay attention to it. I’m just taken aback by the casual attempt at indoctrination on the part of the textbook author. Maybe, to get a more balanced idea about American culture, we should ask immigrants, as Joanne Jacobs did.