Iraq

Bush’s Speech (Links)

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Not the most soaring part of President Bush’s speech, this does seem the real point of difference from previous attempts:

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

For more soaring, we have:

From Afghanistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian Territories, millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence, and want a future of peace and opportunity for their children. And they are looking at Iraq. They want to know: Will America withdraw and yield the future of that country to the extremists, or will we stand with the Iraqis who have made the choice for freedom.

For less soaring, we have the thought of the boat people and the killing fields. Some of us have come to rethink the twentieth century and are not so comfortable with the positions we hear from the Democrats.

Instapundit has many links; one is to Jay Reding, who has many more.

Update: Michael Barone has the most positive spin on the Bush/Durbin performance. Durbin’s outlining of the good accomplished struck me at the time as a little better framing than that usually done by the Democrats, though apparently as a cover for leaving.
I am struck (as I was during Clinton’s time) by the myopic perspective that means every speech by a president is followed by the opposition.   If we have real enemies who want to do real harm, framing a war that will last long after Bush can no longer be president seems politicizing rather than informing.   Nor is a frame that implies if America loses, the other party will win very useful.   That doesn’t mean that the “loyal opposition” should not be listened to, given a forum, nor that they shouldn’t posit better plans, be given a megaphone.   Whenever the open marketplace is quota-driven, it becomes artificial and encourages false dichotomies.

Quote of the Day

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Part of the problem, one that is openly acknowledged by the Baker report, is that the “sources of disorder” are partly in Syria and Iran, beyond the reach of any deployment to Iraq. The “surge” John Keegan describes can do nothing to address these sources; and is part of its ultimate pointlessness. But more fundamentally, surging the troops represents a continued reliance on the one American weapon that works while neglecting to acquire the capabilities whose lack has handicapped American efforts so far. It means using one dimension of national power — kinetic warfare — while refusing to develop the other sources: political, informational and economic warfare — that are needed for victory in the war against terror. The one essential surge that matters is a surge in the will to win.

–Wretchard

Juxtapositions We Might Wish Didn’t Come to Mind

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Netflix’s infinite riches include a series of 4 dvds of the complete Beckett. Neither of us has ever been a big Beckett fan & I keep falling asleep (surprise surprise), so I suspect we will stop with the first; sometimes I wonder how people decided to keep going during those years. (Scotus wondered why we were doing this during the holidays – it seems more a mortification appropriate to Lent.) To wake up, I trawled the humor sites & brought some links back.

The fifties were also a time when conventions were all male & a chance to get to the big city. Iowahawk shows us Chicago before most Chicagoboyz were born, but when people knew how to party. 606 makes an appearance, if 666 does not.

On a more contemporary note, Zucker offers a short comparison often made here as well. But dropping an allusion doesn’t make us laugh (if sadly).

Iowahawk also reruns What Happens in Davos Stays in Davos to welcome Eason Jordan back to Iraq.

Anarchy Boomtime

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In Newsweek, Silvia Spring marvels that the Iraqi economy appears to be booming even while the country remains mired in violence.

People are often surprised that economies can thrive without a high degree of politically enforced social order, but history tends to show that too much government is more likely to cause economic stagnation than too little. Most 3rd-world business people face the worst of both worlds. The government does a very poor job of providing physical security and a fair judiciary (important to enforce contracts), yet it imposes strangling taxes, jealously guards its prerogatives to decide who can and cannot engage in any particular economic activity, and individual government agents usually extort vast sums. As a result, the descent of a country into mild anarchy usually improves the situation. The actual security situation may not be that much worse, but all the parasitic government activity disappears. The situation turns into a net gain. It is quite common to read reports from 3rd-world countries during a civil war that shops and other businesses seem more full and busy than they did in time of “peace.”

The legendary economy of Hong Kong from 1945 to 1999 arose in large part due to the laissez-faire approach that the British government blundered into as a result of geopolitical concerns. The British needed to keep Hong Kong as a full colony to protect it, but that meant they could not allow a full fledged local democracy with the moral authority to impose a welfare and regulatory state. So they ended up with just a bare-bones government appointed by Britain that never tried to lay its hand too strongly on the people of Hong Kong.

Business people in Iraq find themselves in something of the same environment. The occupation government did not wish to get involved in potentially contentious economic policy, and the same lack of experience and consensus that keeps the newly elected Iraqi government from wiping out the insurgency also prevents it from implementing destructive economic policies. Left to their own devices and with huge pent up demand the Iraqi people are driving their economy strongly forward.

Discuss this post at the Chicago Boyz Forum.