Chicago Boyz

Hello all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Andy Bizub, I am coming to you live from Chicago, where I met Jonathan several years ago. He had gone temporarily insane, and moved to Chicago rather than stay in cold dreary Florida. Since so many are exhausted with the war talk, let me throw out an interesting little local story. As you may or may not know, Chicago has, or rather, HAD a small lakefront landing strip named Meigs Field, mostly used by small commuter craft. Our Honorable mayor daley has wanted to shut this facility for years, and battled with various groups to do so, with no success. Well, seems as though he just got tired of working within the system, so last night, under cover of darkness, he sent in city crews to literally chop up the concrete runway, thereby destroying the facility, with airplanes still parked on the tarmac. (These planes are now stranded there, I don’t think this occurred to them.) For those of you not intimately familar with my fair city, this is how we do things up here, so WATCH IT!

I cleaned up the blogroll again — updated some links, recategorized others, deleted some that didn’t work or connected to dormant blogs. Let me know if I should change anything else.

Jed Babbin at NRO discusses how the Iraqi regime might exploit international and, especially, domestic U.S. opposition to the war to generate a cease fire. That’s all the regime needs, because it must only survive, whereas we have to win.

The U.S. may be in a position vis a vis Iraq similar to that faced chronically by Israel in responding to existential threats. Israel has typically (cf., 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2002) been forced to fight quickly enough to meet its military objectives before bigger countries intervened to stop the war. The United States faces relatively little effective international pressure (though there is some, particularly as we want to keep the UK on board and are sensitive to Tony Blair’s concerns). What should worry us more is the possibility of significant domestic political opposition should our military efforts appear to bog down. The “anti war” demonstrators are not very effective, and may even be generating support for the war, but it’s obvious that much of the press is hostile to the war effort and so are leading Democratic politicians. These latter groups will not hesitate to exploit military setbacks for political gain to the extent they can get away with doing so.

Things appear to be going well but anything can happen. The Iraqi regime may be more resourceful and tenacious than the Taliban was. I hope that our war planners understand that our efforts in Iraq face political as well as military danger, and that the political risk increases with time. We should keep moving militarily and not stop until we win.

Glenn Reynolds links to this article by Michael Leeden and quotes this passage:

The leaders insisted on a disciplined “no” vote because of pressure – some would call it blackmail – from France and Germany. The French and German governments informed the Turkish opposition parties that if they voted to help the Coalition war effort, Turkey would be locked out of Europe for a generation. As one Turkish leader put it, “there were no promises, only threats.” One can describe this behavior on the part of our erstwhile Old Europe allies only as a deliberate act of sabotage against America in time of war. I think that when the events of the past few months are sorted out, we will find that French actions constitute the diplomatic equivalent of chemical and biological warfare. Monsieur Chirac has stopped at nothing to try to prevent the defeat of Saddam Hussein, no matter how many American lives it cost. And, more often than not, the Germans tagged along for the ride.

Please note that Leeden doesn’t offer any evidence for these serious allegations. Such blatant dealings would also become public very quickly. If Leeden really knew about them, the Bush Administration would also have to know, by leaks or intelligence services. And if that were the case there already would have been an enormous public stink about it. The Turks also would never meekly submit to such pressure, as can be seen by past behavior and the way they presently refuse to give way before American pressure. Their intention to place troops in Northern Iraq also can’t be explained by French-German pressure; to the contrary, both countries have urged Turkey to stay out. In a nutshell, if Leeden can’t back his accusations up with evidence, this is nothing more than a conspiracy-theory. I can only wonder why Reynolds accepted it so uncritically.