Chicago Boyz

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.

Sylvain’s post, immediately preceding this one, about a recent Don Luskin article, seems to reflect a growing consensus. The economy is in better shape than our little friends in the mainstream media want us to know about.

Jonathan sent me this article, The Bush Boom, by Brian S. Wesbury, which has all kinds of delightful news:

… the third and fourth quarters are on track for what could be 6.0% real GDP growth. Retail sales show a 12.1% annualized increase in the June-August period. Housing starts are at a 17-year high, new and existing home sales have set new records this year, and disposable personal income is up an annualized 9.4% in the past three months. Productivity growth in the non-farm business sector expanded at an astounding 6.8% in the second quarter, while spending on computers and peripheral equipment jumped 57.5% at an annualized rate.

The worm in the apple, at least for Bush’s political fortunes, is the permanent disappearance of manufacturing jobs. “What the economy is experiencing today is a significant structural shift, not just a cyclical one. While manufacturing output has held steady as a share of GDP, manufacturing employment has fallen from 25% of all jobs in 1970 to 11% today.” Count on the media to focus on these manufacturing jobs going away forever, forever, forever … .

Read more