Austin Bay Blog

Here are two articles covering the “Lit Chick” scandal– the alleged plagiarism by young author Kaavya Viswanathan in her novel How Opal Mehta got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life.

Am I sceptical of this young lady’s explanation, that is, she has a photographic memory and any similarity to other recent “chick” novels is unintended? You bet I am.

The London Times on-line article, however, discusses the hidden issue:

… the story has also shone a harsh light on one of the publishing world’s secrets — the factory-like creation of a babe-tastic author.

There is nothing wrong with “book packaging” — if an editor or publisher has a good idea for a book and can match it with an author, that’s common sense. There is nothing wrong with saying “write me a novel in this genre.” What is wrong– lifting parapgrahs, pages, dialog, etc.

Another point made by the Times:

Plagiarism has always been an issue in the literary world. But Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of The Bookseller, the trade magazine, said that copying had become both easier to do — and to detect — thanks to the rise of the internet and computers.

“It’s easy now to cut and paste chunks of other people’s work. When you are writing a novel, you could easily forget you have done it. But then it is also easier to detect,” he said.

Ann Marie McQueen in The Ottawa Sun takes a harder tone, with “Packaging first, content later”:

Hot on the heels of famous fabulist James Frey and his A Million Little Pieces Oprah smackdown, the young Viswanathan embodies much that is wrong with our society. Privileged and entitled, everything about her story seems unfair to those who could never dream of travelling in her circles.

Better yet, she provides a disturbing example of North American culture’s obsession with appearances, with “the package.”

In our image-obsessed society, content is often an afterthought.

How to sell it? That’s the first question, the bottom line, before anything else.

No one, no thing, alone is ever good enough. There have to be easy-to-digest labels attached, to serve it up to an attention-deficit media who will then tell the public what is worth reading or watching based on who wrote it.

UPDATE: I’ll add this link, too, from The Times of India, which defends the young author, albeit indirectly.

Key grafs:

leading the pack of alleged plagiarists down the ages is none other than William Shakespeare, who is said to have borrowed most of his historical plots from Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles.

Both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Oscar Wilde were accused of plagiarism too. Wilde, after hearing a witty remark from his friend James Whistler, apparently said: “I wish I’d said that .” The painter’s famous riposte: “Don’t worry, Oscar, you will.”

Plagiarism has long been a favourite pastime of students across the world, and occasionally of teachers as well. Civil rights activist Martin Luther King was accused of plagiarising many of his college papers, including his doctoral dissertation, as well as a number of speeches.

Via StrategyPage:

MEXICO

April 28, 2006: In the United States, immigration and border security are hot topics when it comes to Mexico. One might also include worries about narco-trafficantes and border town violence. In Mexico the biggest looming issue is the presidential race. Mexico matters to US security so it’s worth taking a quick and dirty look at the Mexican presidential race. There are the three major candidates in the Mexican race for president. Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador is the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He is a “leftist” populist but also an “anti-corruption” candidate. He is a former mayor of Mexico City and wants to revise the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) agreement. His opponents accuse him of being a friend of Venezuela’s rogue president Hugo Chavez. There is no indication that Lopez Obrador is as erratic as Chavez, or as anti-American. Until this week Lopez Obrador was considered the frontrunner in the race. New polls suggest that may be changing. Felipe Calderon may now be the frontrunner. Calderon is the candidate of the National Action Party (PAN). The PAN is a “right wing” party — the equivalent of pro-business moderate Republicans in the US. (The current president Fox, is a member of the PAN party.) Calderon is a free marketer who supports lower taxes and encourages private investment in Mexico. Roberto Madrazo is the third candidate. He belongs to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI held the Mexican presidency from 1929 to 2000. The PRI control of Mexico was called (by some) the “most successful dictatorship in the world.” When it comes to corruption — as in promoting corruption– the PRI has few peers. In a recent debate Calerdon (the PAN candidate) is quoted as telling Mr Madrazo that “The problem of drug trafficking is the fruit of the corruption that your party (the PRI) established in Mexico as an institution during 70 years.” PRI also established economic policies that led to a lower growth rate in Mexico, compared to the U.S., and created the labor shortage up north that drew the unemployed Mexicans to illegally cross the border by the millions.

The PRI is an interesting study in coalition-building, leftist rhetoric, corruption, savvy street politics, and corporatist economics. The PRI –as a coalition builder– did bring an end to the Mexican civil war.

The second week of Blog Week is up at Pajamasmedia.com. Check out the podcast and if you’ve the notion, fill out the survey.

I haven’t seen “Flight 93″ yet (it’s opening this weekened). However, I just read an interesting and very positive review in the Seattle Times on-line.

Here is movie critic Moira McDonald’s concluding paragraph:

It’s completely understandable that many may not wish to see “United 93″ — or might question why it even was made. But for all its shock value, it is never exploitative, and it has something important to say. When I walked out of the dark theater early this week and back into the ordinariness of my own life, blinking away tears in the bright sunshine, it felt like a gift. If “United 93″ helps us to honor what has gone and to appreciate what is still with us, then it’s done more than most movies ever will.

She also discusses director Paul Greengrass’ 2002 movie “Bloody Sunday,” which addresses the 1972 massacre of civil-rights demonstrators in Northern Ireland. Read the entire review.

Hat tip to powerline for a link to this essay by Dick Meyer of CBS.

Key graf:

“Self-interest, rightly understood” is a fancy-pants way of saying, “I know what is in your interest better than you do.” It is, in my view, a politically stupid and morally diseased position. Democrats, by temperament, are slightly more susceptible to it than Republicans…

And:

…in my view, thinking that you know what is in other people’s best interests is perhaps the worst political impulse that good people commonly have.

Explaining this, according to Meyer, is:

…an easy task because it has already been done for the ages and to perfection by the British historian and essayist Isaiah Berlin. In 1958, he delivered a talk he entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty.” It became one of the most influential essays in political philosophy written in English in the 20th century.
There are two kinds of liberty, negative and positive. Negative liberty is freedom “from” things; positive liberty is freedom “to do” certain things. Berlin describes how these notions of liberty have been put to very different uses in history and how each concept attracts a different kind of political soul.

Negative liberty means simply that one is free from interference by the state and others, that one has a zone of liberty and in that zone there can be no interference so long as another’s liberty isn’t constrained. What you do in the zone of negative liberty is your business.

Positive liberty takes a dim view of simple negative liberty, arguing that it is meaningless unless a person has a real, positive freedom - the power “to do” vital things. Being left alone, in the world view, is meaningless if you don’t have the power “to do” the important things, whatever they may be – get an education, earn a fair wage, live in an alienated society.

Negative liberty is the ethos of classic liberalism, not ‘liberalism’ in the partisan sense that the word is typically used in America today. Its essence is, “I know what’s best for me, leave me alone.”

Positive liberty, according to Berlin, is the ethos of idealism and great political dreams. Not content with “leave me alone liberalism,” the positive libertarian thinks people must have the power to do and be certain things in order to be free in “meaningful” ways.

Read the whole essay.

Fair bet Saddam’s “former regime elements” (ie, fascists) commited this murder.

A sister of Iraq’s new Sunni Arab vice president was killed Thursday in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, a day after the politician called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force.

The “Sunni insurgency” is led by former Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard officers. It’s paid for with Saddam’s hidden cash. These are the “insurgents” Michael Moore and George Galloway glorify.

Caludia Rosett reports at Fox News.

Key grafs:

One thing that investigators know for certain about the archive: In a discreet but historic auction carried out in a quiet suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, all of it — more than a metric ton of prized material, dating from as early as 1951 — was sold off to a single bidder on May 12, 2003. The collection included original artwork for U.N. stamps, unique so-called die proofs to test the faithfulness of design reproduction, printing proofs and other rarities, along with hundreds of thousands of other stamps, reflecting many of the most colorful aspects of U.N. history.

The auction itself was carried out in entirely legal fashion. The price it fetched — $3,068,000 — was hailed on a variety of stamp collecting Web sites as a world record price for a single lot sale at a stamp auction. Click here to view the U.N. Art and Archives, Reference Catalogue (pdf).

But for the U.N., it was no coup, even though, according to officials familiar with UNPA finances, the UNPA netted “some $2.5 million” from the Swiss auction deal. The reason: according to U.N. sources, the archive sale may well have taken place without the permissions required by the regulations of the U.N. Secretariat for the disposal of such important U.N. property.

Within months of the Geneva auction, the U.N. postal archive was resold, then resold again, in proper legal fashion — but in all likelihood for sums that underscore the historic loss to the United Nations. While the prices for the subsequent transactions were not disclosed, stamp collecting experts were quoted on the Web site of a philatelic publication, Stamp Magazine, as saying that the archive had “fabulous profit potential — perhaps three or four times what was paid for it, if it is broken up.”

And broken up the archive now undoubtedly is — though how far the collection was dispersed is also unknown.

Read the whole sad tale.

The column appears at StrategyPage.

The Reuters report quoted in the previous post (more terror bombins in Egypt) notes that the multinational peacekeeping force in Sinai was one of the targets in the latest series of terror attacks.

It’s the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO)– which was originally a US force in Sinai to monitor the Egyptian-Israeli ceasefire.

In his latest (alleged) tape, Osama mentions the potential UN-led peacekeeping force in Sudan’s western Darfur region. The UN-led force, in Osama’s estimation, would be a “crusader” force. He calls on holy warriors to attack the Darfur peacekeepers. In other words, Osama supports the genocide of the predominantly Muslim rebels in Darfur. Osama has declared war on the world and once again sanctions the massacre of Muslims. Read the column for further discussion and analysis.

The Big Pharaoh (BP) has two insgithful posts. He was vacationing in Sinai when the first bombs hit Dahab.

First read his “Mirror, what mirror?” analysis of Egyptian reaction to Dahab. Then read “Breaking News: Sinai hit again.”

Here’s a recent Reuters report.

The Reuters lede:

Two men blew themselves up in Egypt’s north Sinai on Wednesday, one near an airport used by an international observer force, security sources said.

A spokesman for the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), Normand St. Pierre, said the first bomber appeared to target MFO vehicles but there were no MFO injuries. Egyptian security sources had earlier said two MFO members had been hurt.

The second man blew himself up next to a police car outside a police station in Sheikh Zuwayed, near the northern coast town of El Arish. The car was empty and there were no other casualties, the security sources said.

On Monday, three bombs in the resort of Dahab on the east coast of Sinai killed 18 people and injured scores.

The Dahab explosions resembled other attacks attributed to a Sinai-based group which has carried out bomb attacks in two other resorts on the east coast after the last two years.

Read this interview from The Daily Telegraph.

Key excerpts:

‘I never had a moment’s doubt about this. Because 9/11 for me was, ‘Right, now I get it. I absolutely get it.’ This has been building for a long time. It is like looking at a picture and knowing it was important to understand it, but not quite being able to make out all its contours. And suddenly a light was switched on and you saw the whole picture. It was a defining moment. We stood shoulder to shoulder with America because my belief then, and my belief now, is that America was attacked not because it was America - but because it was the repository of the values of the Western world, and it was the main power embodying them. It was an attack on all of us. And I don’t mean that in a sentimental way.”

More:

…My view was that we could no longer, post-September 11, just say, ‘Well, look, it doesn’t matter whether they [the Iraqis] are in breach of UN resolutions or not. There has got to be some enforcement.’ Now that is a long way off saying you agree to take military action. But certainly, for me, September 11 was part of the picture in relation to Iraq. But there was an agreement then that what was essential first off was to deal with the issue of Afghanistan.”

And:

…My view of this has probably evolved since September 11. My view is that the origins of these security problems - with their mixture of secular dictatorships, religious fanaticism, failed nation states, governed, in every sense, by oligarchies - are the Middle East. This is a struggle that will only be won when, across the whole of the Middle East, there is a place for greater democracy, human rights, religious toleration and so on…”

…”Yeah, but I think spreading democracy and human rights is very progressive. I can’t quite get this idea it is supposed to be neocon.”

…”I just go with my instinct. But I keep saying to people: one of the greatest failures of progressive politics in my lifetime has been that, in the anti-American parts of the progressive Left, we have ended up on the wrong side with someone as evil as Saddam. Even now, when we have been there with a UN resolution, we are on the wrong side of the battle between terrorism and democracy. I can’t understand how progressive people can be on the wrong side of that argument.

Read the entire interview.

I emceed the “first annual” MilBlog conference in Washington, DC last Saturday (April 22). The three panels featured a number of mil-web notables and friends. I will be writing more about the conference later in the week. Several people asked me to post my speech. About half of the speech was poa hed from an upcoming essay in New Criterion (the June issue). I’ll put the speech on line as the publication date approaches.

BBC Interactive has an article out this morning. Read the whole thing.

Salah Nasrawi reports for the Associated Press that bin Laden is urging jihadis to head for Sudan. Why? To prepare to wage holy war against…get ready… The United Nations.

The AP’s lede:

Osama bin Laden issued ominous new threats in an audiotape broadcast Sunday, saying the West was at war with Islam and calling on his followers to go to Sudan to fight a proposed U.N. force.

In his first new message in three months, bin Laden said the West’s decision to cut off funds to the Palestinians because their Hamas leaders refuse to recognize Israel proved that the United States and Europe were conducting “a Zionist crusader war on Islam.”

The AP report says the tape was broadcast on Al Jazeera and there is reason to believe the voice on the tape is bin Laden’s (though of course that is no certainty). An Israeli spokesman said that the bin Laden now wants to direct attacks toward Israel because Al Qaeda is increasingly unpopular in the Arab world.

The report adds:

Recent media reports in the Middle East have said al-Qaida is building cells in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Sudan.

As for Sudan:

A three-year conflict between Darfur’s rebels and the Arab-dominated central government has caused about 180,000 deaths _ most from disease and hunger _ and displaced 2 million people.

The United Nations has described the conflict as the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis. The United States has described it as genocide.

Negotiators are trying to broker a peace deal between warring factions by an April 30 deadline. Members of the African Union have agreed in principle to hand over peacekeeping duties to the United Nations beginning Sept. 30.

“I call on mujahedeen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan. Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people,” bin Laden purportedly said.

“I urge holy warriors to be acquainted with the land and the tribes in Darfur.”

Al-Qaida has targeted Western forces in Africa before _ including its attacks against U.S. troops trying to bring peace to Somalia in 1993.

The reports ends with this clash of civilizations jab:

The Al-Jazeera news reader said bin Laden, in a portion of the tape not aired by the Qatar-based broadcaster, scoffed at Saudi King Abdullah for his calls for a “dialogue among civilizations” and blasted liberal-minded Arab writers for taking part in the “Western cultural invasion” of Muslim lands.

If the tape is authentic — and that is a big if– the call for an anti-UN jihad in Darfur is another self-inflicted information warfare wound by Al Qaeda.

Bin Laden is upset because the UN intends to take control of the Darfur peacekeeping mission. The African Union (AU) is in charge of the current peacekeeping operation, and it has failed to stop the slaughter.

That’s one reason this latest tape is an agitprop error: most of the world’s opinion leaders, including the liberal and left-wing “internationalistas” who spend a great deal of air time, ink, and electrons excusing Arab terrorists (particularly Hamas) have made the Darfur horror a cause celebre (ironically excusing one band of Islamic extremists while damning another). Here’s a second reason bin Laden’s made a political error: The peacekeeping mission is meant to protect Muslims, so once again Al Qaeda is promoting the murder of Muslims– what the US has been pointing out to the Muslims of the world since September 12, 2001. For three years StrategyPage has been reporting that the Sudanese war in Darfur is a Muslim against Muslim war. The Islamist Janjaweed militias (backed by the Sudan Islamists in Khartoum) have been attacking Muslim farmers –predominantly black African Muslims– in the Darfur region. Of course, the black African Muslims aren’t quite “Muslim enough” for the Sudanese Islamists. (There are, of course, complex ethnic, tribal, and political factors in play, but the Muslim on Muslim mass murder is a fact.)

In the 1990s Sudan served as a haven and a base for bin Laden and key Al Qaeda cadres. This latest bin Laden tape serves the current interests of the Sudanese Islamists who are trying to thwart the UN takeover of the peacekeeping effort. Bin Laden certainly owes the Sudanese Islamists a personal as well as a political debt, so we may be witnessing a bit of “pay off” in the statement.

An excellent piece from Victor Davis Hanson.

Excerpt:

Once the ancient Mediterranean was brought under Roman sway - mare nostrum (”our sea”) - in the first century B.C., a new homogeneous economy, from England to the Sahara, and from Spain to the Euphrates, replaced the old system of local barter. An improved standard of living among diverse peoples followed, a standard not seen again until the 18th century. Libya’s Leptis Magna, for example, was as wealthy as any city in Italy, and its local son, Septimius Severus, once sat as emperor in Rome.

A common language (or, rather, two languages - Latin in the west, Greek to the east), habeas corpus, sophisticated aqueducts and good roads ensured a certain uniformity to millions of people for nearly 500 years. This Roman culture was spread not just by the military. It endured because indigenous peoples believed such imported civilization had become their own and offered them more than any past alternatives.

We are currently witnessing a second globalization of sorts. International commerce, instant global communications and high technology have created a thin veneer of sameness that has spread among millions across the world. Yet, so far, the Middle East has been largely immune to the accompanying liberalization of politics and freedom that has slowly followed open trade and free markets elsewhere.

And:

And even as Americans tire of the costs of reconstructing Iraq, millions of Arabs, who may not like interlopers in the ancient caliphate, are nevertheless curious to see Iraq’s new politicians bicker and debate freely on television in a manner unseen in the past.

Look at what’s been happening in the Middle East. True, the megaphones of the Arab state-run press are, as always, attacking the United States. But the Lebanese people are in a fury against their former occupiers, the Syrians. Tens of thousands of Jordanians took to the street to protest against the terror of fundamentalist Islam. Revolutionary Hamas is already looking ridiculous, as it tries to beg or cajole enough petty cash to keep its garbage collectors on the job.

Read the whole thing.

Well, that’s a paraphrase of Saddam’s response to accusations about his role in the Dujail massacre.

I just heard a television report (with this quote mentioned). This South African story says Saddam’s quote comes from two earlier hearings.

In two earlier hearings, Saddam acknowledged that he had ordered the trial of Dujail villagers suspected of plotting to assassinate him, but stopped short of admitting he was responsible for their executions.

The Guardian and AP report that Saddam’s handwritten signature adorns the Dujail “death warrant.”

The lede:

Handwriting experts have authenticated Saddam Hussein’s signature on more documents related to a crackdown on Shia Muslims, the chief judge in his trial said today.
It has been reported that an order approving death sentences for 148 Shia Muslim men and boys from the town of Dujail in the 1980s was among the documents.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants were in the courtroom as the chief judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman, read a report by handwriting experts on two documents said to have been signed by the deposed Iraqi president.

The experts said they could confirm that the signature on the documents was Saddam’s, Mr Abdel-Rahman said.

Saddam’s lawyers disagree, of course.

The BBC also reports on the trial. Reuters has a useful trial “chronology of events.”

The Colt 45s-Astros dug themselves a very deep pit– with losing seasons that marred my summers from age 11 on (1962). Of course the Astros have been a remarkably successful franchise since, oh, roughly 1979, with a dip in the early 1990s.

Last night, in a wild game against the Milwakee Brewers (a 13-12 victory, which I watched), the Astros reached the .500 mark as a franchise. This Houston Chronicle article (scroll to the bottom) has the facts.

Key quote (from the daily Astros summary by Brian McTaggart and Neil Hohlfeld):

By winning Tuesday, the Astros finished a climb that lasted just under 44 years. Their all-time franchise record is 3,507-3,507. This marks the first time the team has been even since April 26, 1962, when the Colt .45s were 6-6 in the franchise’s first season.

There are 13 teams at or above .500. The others are: New York Yankees, San Francisco, Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis, Boston, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago White Sox, Detroit and Arizona.

From Iraq the Model. Read it all.

An excerpt from the post:

Last week our little and peaceful family was struck by the tragic loss of one of its members in a savage criminal act of assassination. The member we lost was my sister’s husband who lived with their two little children in our house.
He was a brilliant young doctor with a whole future awaiting him, the couple were the top graduates in their branch of specialty. They had to travel abroad to get their degrees and the war started while they were there but months after Saddam fallen they decided to come back to help rebuild the country and serve their people.
We welcomed them with all love and care, we would sit and talk everyday about our hopes and dreams for a better future for the new generation and for their two little children. We realized that time is needed before they could have a secure and prosperous life and we were satisfied with the little we could make because we believed in the future.

He was not affiliated with any political party or movement and spent all his time working at the hospital or studying at home and he was dreaming of building a medical center for his specialty to serve the poor who cannot afford going to expensive private clinics.
We didn’t know or anticipate that cruel times were waiting for a chance to assassinate the dream and kill the future.

It was the day he was celebrating the opening of a foundation that was going to offer essential services to the poor but the criminals were waiting for him to end his life with their evil bullets and to stab our family deep in the heart…

I served in Iraq with the young man (a Marine reservist) who uses the nom-de-plume “The Marine” when he posts comments on this site. His tour in Iraq was his second deployment since 9/11. He epitomizes the “ready reservist.”

Here are his thoughts on the revolt of the generals, in particularly General Anthony Zinni , USMC retired. (this also appears as a comment on a recent post). This is Marine on Marine, and for my friend, a rather restrained statement. I am still waiting for a reporter to ask General Zinni what he means when he argues that “the sanctions were working.” Saddam had broken the UN Desert Storm sanctions regimen. Look at Oil For Food. We now have officials from Saddam’s regime admitting that Saddam intended to revive dormant special weapons programs once the sanctions were lifted. So how is it the sanctions were working? I suspect Zinni will make the argument that Saddam got rid of his WMD. That appears to be true. Forcing Saddam to stop his programs is (or was) an achievement. However, it was a narrow achievement, and a short-run achievement, which means “the sanctions were working” in a very technical sense regarding WMDs. In the strategic sense they were not. Saddam was still murdering ethnic and religious minorities (which UNSCR 687 also forbid, and was part of the sancitons regimen). Saddam had not given up the desire for WMD (the programs weren;t dead, but dormant). Saddam possessed missiles and delivery systems in violation of the sanctions regimen (so technically the sanctions weren’t working in the sphere of delivery systems). If Zinni argues that the sanctions had weakened Saddam’s military machine I’ll agree with that. But once again, that’s a “dormant, not dead” weakness. Anyway, here are The Marines thoughts :

I find it interesting that so few are critically examining why a handful of retired generals have decided to publicly call for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s head on the proverbial silver platter. Are these retired military men immune from probing public scrutiny, unlike those civilian men, they formerly served but currently challenge?

Take General Zinni, who astonishingly now asserts he was “never convinced” about Iraq’s WMD programs. Yet General Zinni while still serving as the Commanding General of CENTCOM testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of 2000 that “Iraq remains the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf…primarily due to its large conventional military force, pursuit of WMD [emphasis mine], oppressive treatment of Iraqi citizens, refusal to comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR)…” As if this was not enough Zinni’s testimony continued “despite claims that [Iraq’s] WMD efforts have ceased, Iraq probably is continuing clandestine nuclear research, retains stocks of chemical and biological munitions,…Even if Baghdad…surrendered all WMD capabilities, it retains the scientific, technical, and industrial infrastructure to agents and munitions within weeks or months.” That’s right folks General Zinni, who was now blithely states he was “never convinced” about the threat of Iraq’s WMD programs was in point of fact, not too long ago, sufficiently convinced to deliver a threat assessment to the U.S. Senate in which he concluded among other things that Iraq’s WMD programs and its ties to terrorism made it “the most significant near-term threat to U.S. interests.”

Perhaps Zinni’s most incredulous indictment of Rumsfeld comes in his stunning claim that the Iraq Invasion Plan was “fatally flawed” and based on “erroneous intelligence.” Well, sheer seriousness of these bald assertions certainly begs the question - Who was responsible for collecting reliable intelligence and properly planning U.S. military operations in support of established U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives and threat assessments within the CENTCOM AOR? Ups…Has the cat finally got the general’s well used tongue? Just to clarify the record, Bill Clinton changed the official U.S. Foreign Policy regarding Iraq in 1998, establishing the new objective of “Regime Change.” At the time General Zinni was the theater commander overseeing a JTF responsible for enforcing the “Northern & Southern No-Fly Zones” in Iraq. As such he was already commanding U.S. Forces engaged in routine low level hostilities over the skies of Iraq. Furthermore, Zinni’s testimony in front of the U.S. Senate indicates he was at least aware of Saddam’s UNSCR transgressions, WMD proclivities, terrorist connections, and belligerent history. Additionally, he assessed Iraq as the “most significant near-term threat the U.S. interests.” All of which suggests at the very least that General Zinni in support of the new “Regime Change” policy and in light of his own threat assessment should have vigorously planned and prepared a wide range of “full spectrum” military operations for Iraq. He should have redoubled the intelligence collection effort in Iraq. He should have war gamed every possible “Regime Change” and invasion scenario. He should have developed contingency plans and post hostilities plans. Yet, inconceivably the seemingly omniscient General Zinni did precisely the opposite and apparently did nothing to improve intelligence collection or operational planning. These facts beg another question - Was General Zinni too ignorant to fully appreciate the potential likelihood of CENTCOM fighting a war in Iraq in the near future OR was General Zinni too incompetent to make the necessary preparations?

Although it is hard for me to imagine why on earth anyone would oppose such a dynamic, aggressive, substantive and consequential leader, it is nevertheless unnecessary to enthusiastically support Secretary Rumsfeld to detect the rant odor of hypocrisy and ulterior motives underpinning the all too convenient recent statements of General Zinni. In case there is anyone left who hasn’t heard, General Zinni “knew all along” invading Iraq was a “bad idea” but at the time nobody wanted to listen. But what’s new? After all General Zinni enjoys nothing more than another PR opportunity to say again “I told you so.” In an uncanny way I actually agree with General Zinni, it is indeed too bad more people didn’t pay closer attention to what he said and what he did on the eve of 9/11. Just for the record General Zinni – I told you SO!!

UPDATE: A reader sends a link to the Center for Defense Information site. GEN Zinni is now a Dinstinguished Military Fellow at CDI.
Make of this what you will. CDI has a political track record– definitely on “the left” side of the spectrum. I was not aware of this. Has he mentioned this professional connection on his book tour? Zinni’s bio is that of a distinguished military man, that’s for sure. The Somalia operation –both before and after the battle of Mogadishu– was a complex a military-politica operation, and Zinni served in a variety of jobs, each one of them demanding and critical.

NOTE: A reminder about the milblog conference in Washington, this coming Saturday (April 22). It’s all volunteer, with all expenses paid by the participants. I still need to raise some expense money. If you want to contribute, please hit the PayPal tip jar (the donation button at the top of this page). Thanks. If you are attending, I look forward to meeting you.

Via StrategyPage.

The column has been up for about thirty minutes and I’ve already received a couple of interesting emails via the Creators Syndicate email box.

Here’s one of them:

Excellent piece on “the Euston Manifesto”: I wish there were more
examples of “the principled Left.”

Yup.

NOTE: A reminder about the milblog conference in Washington, this coming Saturday (April 22). It’s all volunteer, with all expenses paid by the participants. I still need to raise some expense money. If you want to contribute, please hit the PayPal tip jar (the donation button at the top of this page). Thanks.

My upcoming Creators Sndicate column praises Norm Geras, Nick Cohen, and the Euston Manifesto Crowd for taking a necessary and articulate public stand, and doing so with deserved acknowledgement of the central values of democracy and human rights.

However, James Whicker at Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War (what a great name for a website) says the Euston Manifesto isn’t enough.

I agree– I think it’s a good starting point for honest Leftists. (Note: it’s too easy to call honest Leftist an oxymoron– as well as inaccurate.)

Whicker says:

The Left has always been full of people who like to make pronouncements that lack substance but help the one who makes them publicly spell out his virtue and goodness in contrast to various running-dogs, lackeys and traitors. Perhaps I should not be surprised at the tradition being carried on. But the Euston Manifesto will not make one new convert to the cause and it provides not one new idea for those of us who are already converted…

And much later:

…I want to see a definitive triumph of Western democratic values over the world-view of militant Islam. In that political contest it is foolish to start from the premise that the opponent secretly agrees with me, that actually he has access to the same rational and universal truths as I. This is the fantasy of the Guardian left. It is also the fantasy of the Euston Manifesto anti-relativist left. Until we realise the force with which the radical Islamist holds his views and his utter conviction of their universal rightness and applicability we cannot understand the nature and the scale of the political challenge we face. We have to understand why his views make sense to him and why they might make sense to those whose support he courts. And that does indeed mean understanding the cultural rather than natural basis of moral values….

I’m not sure Geras and Cohen think the Salafists secretly agree with Western liberals. I think Geras believes Salafists (Al Qaedaites) despise Western liberals.

Whicker ends with:

What we need from smart people like Norman Geras and Nick Cohen is not more self-regarding moral philosophy or popular newspaper opinion-mongering. We do not need self-righteous assertions over an irrelevant and backward adolescent left. What we need are serious proposals for how we shift the policy of the US and the UK in a direction that will enable it more successfully to crush those who live within the world-view of radical Islam. Polemical arguments against sections of the British left are a distraction. The real task is to shape strategies and policies for forwarding the democratisation project. Judged by that measure the Euston Manifesto is more than a little disappointing. I challenge its authors to do better.

I don’t dismiss the Eustonites efforts– though arguably self-righteous in places compared the posturing of their hard Left opponents, the Eustonites self-righteousness is quite temperate. Whicker asks the Eustonites to produce implementable policy from polemic– which is a fair request.

I have challenged — repatedly– critics of US policy to formulate an implementable and more effective alternative grand strategy to the forward, pre-emptive, and liberalizing strategy promulgated by the Bush Administration give the fundamental aims and beliefs of our enemies. I have yet to see a coherent alternative strategy formulated. The attempts I’ve seen are basically the current strategy covered by the assertion “we can do better.” I think the Bush Doctrine understands the “nature and scale” of the enemy we face. The Bush Administration is attempt to strike the enemy’s weakness: his authoritarianism, which in terms of day to day governance and effects on human beings varies little from that of the secular fascist dictators. The US gambles on the attractiveness of liberty — and has the guts to back that attractiveness by toppling one of the worst dictatorships in the Middle East. That brought the war into the heart of the politically dysfunctonal Arab Muslim Middle East, the seedbed of Salafism where this war of ideas, bullets, ballots, dollars and dinars must be fought.

But read Whicker’s entire post. It’s a good one.

Warning. Ed Luttwak got the 1991 Persian Gulf War wrong– but that doesn’t stop him from being an expert. Here are Luttwak’s thoughts on dealing with Iraq, from Commentary.

He does articulate the crucial question (yes, it has been said many times but that’s because it is so essential):

The greater question, however, is neither military nor diplomatic but rather political and strategic: what, in the end, do we wish to see emerge in Iran? It is in light of that long-term consideration that we need to weigh both our actions and their timing, lest we hinder rather than accelerate the emergence of the future we hope for. We must start by considering the special character of American relations with the country and people of Iran.

His review of the Khomeinists’ takeover is good. He describes the other factions in Iran (many secular) as a ” broad coalition of the deluded.” The fanatical clerics took control, then proceeded to enrich themselves.

Luttwak’s description of the regime’s corruption is dead-on:

Too many clerics have used their official government positions, or their control of confiscated property placed in Islamic trusts, to enrich themselves and their families. Too many have operated scams of all kinds, diverting oil revenues or overcharging the government not only to fund the hugely swollen theological schools whose hordes of pious idlers must be fed and clothed but also for their personal benefit. The most notorious of them all, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a low-ranking cleric by trade, twice president of the Islamic republic from 1989 to 1997, perennial candidate for another term, chairman of the unelected but powerful “Expediency Discernment Council,” and a top adviser to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, is widely believed to have become Iran’s richest man.

Under the Shah, corruption in government contracting notoriously added some 15 percent to the cost of everything that was bought, from fertilizers for the ministry of agriculture to helicopters. Now the graft is more like 30 percent; the family and cronies of the Shah, it turns out, were paragons of self-restraint as compared with the clerics. They now form an entire class of exploiters, with the result that a bitter anti-clericalism has become widespread in Iran as it never was before.

Having lost all its moral authority, the regime must survive on the power of coercion alone, derived from the brutish part-time Basij militia of poor illiterates and the full-time Pasdaran Inqilab, or “Revolutionary Guards,” whose forces are structured in ground, air, and naval combat units but whose men can still be sent into action as enforcers against protesting civilians. With the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the first non-cleric to win Iran’s presidency and himself a former engineering officer in their ranks, the Pasdaran have become an important political faction as well as a military force, a political gendarmerie, and a business conglomerate.

It is one more symptom of the regime’s degeneration that, although the Pasdaran are well paid by local standards, they complement their salaries by engaging in both legal and illegal business, from manufacturing to contraband across the Persian Gulf. The Pasdaran’s naval arm operates fast patrol boats from seven Iranian ports and the Halul oil platform. They are used to smuggle in products from foreign hulls or from the port of Dubai, not only embargoed items for national purposes but also perfumes and other luxury products for private money-making.

Persian culture and the Islam promoted by clerical fanatics collide (which is another regime weakness):

The cultural dimension of their identity is especially significant for the Persians of the Iranian diaspora. This vast and growing group comprises a handful of political exiles and millions of ordinary people who could have prospered in Iran, and made Iran prosperous, but for their refusal to live under the rule of religious fanatics. Their cultural identity is what gives them a strong sense of cohesion quite independently of the Islam they were born into. While only a few have converted to Christianity, or are seriously engaged in the Zoroastrian revival that is promoted by some exiles, the majority have reacted to the extremism of Iran’s present rulers by becoming, in effect, post-Islamic—that is, essentially secular but for a sentimental attachment to certain prayers and rituals.

In this, the exiles are presaging the future of Iran itself.

Luttwak argues that most Iranians do not see themselves as enemies of the US (they are, he suggests, future allies). The flaiging, corrupt mullahs want to be bombed– believing it will solidify their fraying hold on power. Finally, Lutwak believes the Mullahs are years away from a bomb.

Readers of my columns and this website know that for several years I’ve been advocating US, European, and international action to aid Iranian dissidents. The mullahs fear their own people. The mullahs believe a US or Israeli strike will swell domestic Iranian support (the Galtieri government in Argentina thought taking the Falklands/Malvinas in 1982 would do the same for its domestic political support). The key issue is how long until the Iranians get an employable nuclear weapon. In January Jim Dunnigan and I concluded we have an 18-month to three year window (there’s an Instapundit podcast from February where Dunnigan and I discuss it– I do not have a link at the moment.) Luttwak says we are years away. Dunnigan and I gave a window for action based on the best open source evidence we can find. We could well be wrong, though the caveat is employable weapon (which means delivery systems as well as a nuke that will properly detonate). Iran does receive a political boost (and threat boost) by merely announcing it has a weapon (though that weapon may not be operational).

Amir Taheri in the NY Post has a different view from Luttwak. Taheri asks “Let us return to the central question in all this: Why does the Islamic Republic want a nuclear arsenal?”

His answer:

The Islamic Republic, as the embodiment of the Khomeinist revolution, had assumed a messianic mission to conquer the Middle East and, later, the whole Muslim world, in the name of its brand of Islam. By the mid ’80s, Khomeinist groups were active in 30-plus Muslim countries, while the Islamic Republic was engaged in a brutal war with Iraq.

The leadership in Tehran realized that there was one power that would not allow it to “export revolution” and dominate the Middle East. That power was, and remains, the United States…

…With the fall of the Taliban in Kabul and the Ba’ath in Iraq, the old balance of power in the region has been shattered. President Bush wants to create a new Middle East that is democratic and pro-West. In such a Middle East, there would be no place for a regime like the one now in place in Tehran. The Islamic Republic is determined to sabotage Bush’s plan and, instead, create a new Middle East that is anti-American, Islamist and controlled by Tehran. These conflicting ambitions make war a theoretical, if not an immediate, inevitability.

The Khomeinist leadership believes that it could hope to win in any prolonged conventional conflict if only because U.S. public opinion, as the Iraq experience has shown, lacks patience and is unprepared to accept even low casualty rates. That leaves tactical nuclear weapons as the only way for the United States to break the will of the Islamic Republic in any war. Thus the mullahs’ move to develop their own deterrent.

A United States that is unable to fight on the ground for any length of time and deterred from using nuclear weapons for fear of retaliation would, so the mullahs hope, do what it has often done: run away, leaving Iran to emerge as the regional superpower.

Taheri (former editor of the Iranian newspaper, Kayhan, sees three possible “futures”:

The Middle East is passing through the most decisive moment in is history since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. The options are clear. One is to let the Khomeinist regime dominate the region and use it as the nucleus of an Islamic superpower which would then seek global domination. The other is to go for regime change in Tehran as a strategic goal. (A third option - creating an Irano-American co-dominium in the region - might not be acceptable to the Arabs and Turkey, let alone Israel.)

Taheri doesn’t offer any guess on how long it will take the mullahs to obtain an operational nuclear device. He simply believes they will do so. I don’t think Luttwak disagrees with this.

As I see it, the question is, can Iranian dissidents and opposition parties topple or thwart the fanatical clerics in three years, if that is the date the mullahs will deploy an operational nuclear weapon? On the “nay side” of the ledger are Russia, China, and oil prices. The mullahs have a lot of cash to buy friends. Russia and China want to make trade and gas deals. Also on the nay said: the mullahs have the secret police, the mobs, and the guns inside Iraq.

On the “yea side”: The regime is brittle. It knows the majority of the Iranian population does not support it (80 percent in some estimations). Afghanistan and Iraq are evolving more open political and economic systems– and these nations are next door. Moreover, Tehran must consider the military capabilities of New Iraq. There’s a time line working there are well. A modernized Iraqi Army is an army capable of effective offensive action (especially if provided with US air support).

Oh yes. Read both Luttwak and Taheri’s articles.