Chicago Boyz

Wall Street Journal front page story today: In a Shift, Schroder Says Germany Is Ready to Help U.S. Build Iraq. WSJ says:

While Mr. Schroder said Berlin wouldn’t provide any funding, he said that Germany was prepared to help train Iraqi police and Military Personnel and to work on varioius infrastructure projects.

Well, it will be good to have the Germans helping to train Iraqi cops and soldiers. They have made a good contribution in Afghanistan. As to not providing any funding, I’m not sure what that means. Are we going to pay the Germans to come in and do this? As to “infrastructure projects”, I guess the German construction industry wants a piece of the action that Brown, Root, et al. are getting and, best of all, apparently, at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

I’d say, have the Germans send their drill sergeants, but keep their bulldozers at home. But I’m sure we won’t do that. The U.S. will eagerly seize on any gesture of cooperation from the Germans. And, frankly, it will be good to have them in there.

Spare yourself the wrist strain of scrolling down — take the express lane.

1. Ralph Peters says keep the Turkish, Paki and Arab troops s out of Iraq.
2. Lex give you another chance to experience the greatness of cub.
3. Dig the new Baghdad Diary by Steve Mumford.
4. The facts are so good about the economy, funny how most people don’t hear about them …

I’m going to sleep now, so it will be a while, or never, before you will be blessed with my wisdom on Arnold and the California election, or an effusion about the totally excellent Muffs cassette (two live shows, 1997) I’ve been listening to in my super-cool new (to me) car, or about the remarkable book Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson or the good article by Mark Bowden in the current (paper) edition of the Atlantic on torture and interrogation, (there‘s an interview here which I haven‘t gotten to yet) to say nothing about the William Kristol article about Leo Strauss I haven‘t even read yet, or these two books about John Boyd (this one and this one), or the very nice, illustrated copy of Moby Dick my wife just got (a smaller version of the Arion Press edition) and how funny it it seems to be and how I wish I had time to read it, or my musings on various of my friends getting seriously sick lately, and on a lighter note this one interview with Johnny Ramone and another one with Ivy Rorschach which I‘ve been going to share with you people once I get a few minutes to stop, read, think, type … .

So much stuff to read and to write about, so little time … .

The always blunt Ralph Peters lays it out. First the good news: “After prosecuting a just and triumphant war, the administration miscalculated much of the conflict’s aftermath. Yet our soldiers pulled the situation together – as they continue to do with increasing success – and President Bush showed the backbone to do what needed doing.” But … “Now he’s on the verge of squandering all that our men and women in uniform have gained.” How? Bush’s “recent move to persuade regional Islamic states to augment our forces in Iraq“ which would be “an act of folly so grave that its repercussions will be far worse than our failure to march on Baghdad at the end of Desert Storm.” Whoa. “[B]ringing in Turkish, Pakistani or Arab troops virtually guarantees the failure of our efforts to give Iraqis a chance to build a reasonably democratic, rule-of-law state.” Harsh words. Peters make a good case for why we should keep these jamokes the Hell out of Iraq. “The Turks are our enemies, not our friends, when it comes to Iraq’s future. … Having worked with Pakistan’s military myself, I know too well that Islamist bigotry permeates its ranks. …Congenitally incompetent, Arab forces would …do all they could to undermine our efforts and those of progressive Iraqis.” Peters tells us he

…spent the past week in Germany, speaking with our soldiers, from generals to privates. Some were just returning from Iraq, while others were about to deploy. I did not hear a single complaint about the mission. Even I was surprised by the optimism and commitment of our troops and their leaders. Our soldiers love their work and do it well. But every soldier, no matter the rank, with whom I raised the subject of Turkish, Pakistani or Arab peacekeepers coming to Iraq agreed it was a crazy, fatal idea.

Peters concludes that we need to start what we have finished, and clever attempts to rebuild Iraq on the cheap will backfire and be a disaster. OK. I’m convinced. Peters doesn’t really suggest alternatives, but it seems to me the alternative is a well-funded, full-scale effort to create a large and well-trained Iraqi army and police forces. Then, with our help, the Iraqis make Iraq safe for Iraqis.

Long-time ChicagoBoyz readers know that Lex is a perhaps overly effusive fan of the various musical incarnations of Lisa Marr. (See this, and this, and this comment I left on Captain Mojo’s site.) So I will resist the urge to launch into yet another (potentially tiresome) verbal avalanche of enthusiasm. I’ll keep it simple. Many of you may not know about her wonderful first band, cub (always lower case for some reason.) I notice that there are several complete songs here, though the sound quality is quite poor. “My Assassin” is a particular favorite, as is their cover of Beat Happening’s “Cast A Shadow” (cub’s version is 1,000,000 times better) as well the pop perfection of “New York City”. If you find that you dig these, crappy audio and all, you will be very well-served to go back and buy the cds, (or here), which only get better on repeated listens. (I like them best in this order: Come Out, Come Out; Betti Cola; Mauler; Box of Hair. Box of Hair, the last one, actually has a flew weak songs, but also a few brilliant ones. The others are mix of songs which are brilliant ranging down to merely very good.)

Artist Steve Mumford is back with another installment of his Baghdad Journal. He discusses one conversation with an Iraqi friend, who described his meetings with a western activist:

“We disagreed about everything. She wants to have solidarity with the Iraqis against the American occupation. I said to her, ‘Do you realize that if we were talking this way last year about Saddam we could be executed for it?'”
“Then she tells me something that is really kind of ignorant and offensive. She says that the Iraqis on the governing council are traitors. I tell her, no, I think they are some kind of heroes. I did not get really angry at her; she had been shot in the leg by soldiers in Israel, where she was protesting — for some reason I felt I had to be gentle with her. But you know, at least Israel is a democracy. We could learn some things from it.
“Look, sure the Americans have their interests here,” Naseer said. Everyone has their own interests! We do not ask anyone to be noble. But right now the interests of the Americans coincide with the interests of the Iraqis and we are benefiting from it.

However, Mumford notes that his friend’s views are not universal:

I know that opinions on the streets of Baghdad are wildly divergent, and many resent or at least question the American presence here, particularly in the face of efforts by the army and the nascent Iraqi police force to provide security against the rising tide of crime and terrorism.
Trying to measure the success or failure of the occupation is like the proverbial group of blind men attempting to describe an elephant: each person tends to see the war and its aftermath differently, through the prism of their own ideology and experience. Some people talk about the children who died as a result of the sanctions, some talk about the thousands of Iraqis murdered by Saddam.
Watching the BBC here in Baghdad, I get the impression that the war has left a state of worsening chaos throughout the country. Walking through the streets I often have the opposite feeling. Then a bomb goes off somewhere and I brace myself for worse times ahead.

The whole essay is good, and the pictures are good too.