the defeatists!

When all you have is big fucking rock, everything looks like a small fucking rock

....Or a bigger rock. Despite the timing, this is more than replacing deck stewards on the Titanic. Rather, it signals a totally different approach, more in line with traditional counter-insurgency than what we've been doing there. Instead of a hold, bomb and artillery sort of war, the AXE suspects that the goal is to beat the Afghan insurgents at their own game. Special Operations forces using high tech commo, logistics and weaponry up close and personal have an inherent advantage, obviously but also face some real challenges. Getting the fuck out in that terrain by air is going to be tough. But, it's already tough. And, what we're  doing isn't working.

The change comes as President Obama's administration prepares to send thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, and amid pressure on international forces to reduce the numbers of civilians killed by coalition air strikes. With plans announced for a phased pullout of US troops from Iraq, Afghanistan was recently confirmed as the primary focus of US military operations. The US is sending 21,000 additional troops to the country, to join an existing force of 38,000.However, the new strategy is expected to pair non-military methods and reconstruction with a stronger armed force on the ground.

But relations with President Hamid Karzai's Afghan government have been strained by a recent air strike which some Afghan officials say killed as many as 150 people.

Well, General Petraeus may not appear in the light of this sorta-nova, but the fact is he signaled that something was changing when he said that tactical action should not undermine strategic goals. I'm guessing that this is the first time he's had civilian bosses besides Gates who understand that. McKiernan has been calling the war in Afghanistan a "stalemate" for a long time; this move, while tough on the guy, is probably for the best. He was brutally honest, and sometimes you pay for that. Doesn't mean you're a bad guy, or even wrong; just in the way. I'm hard pressed to feel too bad for a Four Star General -- he's got one helluva golden parachute.

Supposedly, McKiernan was found liable for the disaster surrounding the Pat Tillman fratricide cover-up. If the focus switches to special ops and small unit actions, then putting an Operator like McCrystal in charge makes sense. It'll get bloody, but will probably work. Depending, of course, on the patience of the American people, and what those illusive strategic goals.

Now, this I might go see...or wait...I'm a boy, I'm a real boy! Hasn't this been done before?

  I think Christian Bale is an incredible actor. I can't really place him as an actor although Bogart comes to mind, or perhaps a younger, less European sort of Liam Neeson. I guess my thought is more like Graham Greene...Bale is on the edge of some heart of darkness, and goes back and forth between hope, existential angst and dogged resolution. He doesn't expect to prevail except in his roles where he's a psychotic of some sort. In this case, I think he's perfect. Deep breath, shrug the shoulders and do it because you're here, now, and this is what you are supposed to do. Failure is definitely an option, but with failure comes annihilation. John Connor is not going to stand stoically by disaster. Rather, he's going to feel, shrug and continue to do what he thinks he's supposed to do. 

I skipped the last rendition of Terminator. Sorry Arnie, but you're now officially close to The Rolling Stones. Governor Schwarzenegger is not all that far from Sir Mick Jagger in terms of ludicrousness -- you have become your own Tribute Band. Arnie probably should head to supporting roles after he gets tossed out the Governator role. Still...bringing him back will make this a really look like a reunion tour.

 I'm not going to skip this one. I rarely go to films in theaters, but  I might make an exception for this one....

Looks like Barstow, without the charm or air conditioning...

"How long you were in Babylon , mon."
"Fourteen years, mon."
"Why were you in Babylon, mon?"
"For possession of a gun, mon."
      Jake and Elwood, Briefcase Full of Blues, 1978

Look, Mom. The Universal Tour Guides...

I'm almost always excited by the irony. If we had boogalooed on out of that fucking place immediately, Iraq would be a bloody mess, but it would be their bloody mess...and, the tacky --great Southern word, isn't it -- re-opening of Babylon and UR would be their bloody debacle. I guess we taught them well; Saddam's world was Xanadu. Not Kublai Khan's but the one with Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelly.

One thing officials agree on is blaming the Americans.  Mr. Rashid, in a conspiratorial and anti-Semitic vein, suggested that Jews stationed with the Polish troops might have deliberately singled out the site because of their captivity in Babylon. (AXE Snark: And, of course, the Jews. Everything bad that happens to a Muslim is the fault of a Jew. Just ask any Muslim; they'll lower their voices and tell you that it's all the Zionists. Of course, if I recall my old Testament, Abraham was the first Zionist, and he was from Ur. So, Zionism is really the Iraqis fault on some ontological level. I'm not aware of a lot of Zionist vandalism directed against the Germans 60 years after the Holocaust. However, these are people that blow each other up over who's to blame for the downfall of the Caliphate and the muder of Ali...) The director of the ruins, Maryam Musa, who has worked in Babylon for 30 years, said the damage could never be repaired or adequately compensated for.

Asked who did worse by Babylon, Mr. Hussein or the Americans, however, she became taciturn. “Is it necessary to ask such a question?” she said uncomfortably, and declined to answer.

Mohammed Taher, an archaeologist and former director of the ruins who opposes reopening Babylon, said what was being done now was little better than what had been done before. “I would like to rebuild Babylon again for scientific research, not like Saddam,” he said as he guided visitors through the remains of Ishtar Gate with bas reliefs of Babylon’s gods; the Temple of Ninmakh; the Processional Way, with brick paving stones mortared with bitumen; and a symbol of Iraq itself, the Lion of Babylon, a 2,600-year-old sculpture.

What was clear during his tour was that nothing had been done to prepare the place for its official opening, now scheduled for June 1. No gates or fences prevent rambunctious tourists from rambling over ruins that can crumble like sand. The site’s shops, cafe and museum remain abandoned, shuttered and dusty. (AXE Snark: Courtesy of Woodie Guthrie and really a commentary on humanity and our place in the overall scheme of things..."Everyplace in the world, us migrants have been/We come with the dust and we go with the wind." The Iraqi view of their past and their depiction of it is really about as real as the a Wild West setup in Dresden...not even close. One other point ought to be made here -- While it's not impossible that some Polish Jews decided to screw up the ruins of civilization's birthplace, I think it's unlikely. A  theory not unlike the one that when America wants to destroy a civilization and take over a place, we're going to kill their buffalo. We did it in the west and fucked over the Indians; we did it in Vietnam. The Iraqis are just lucky they didn't have water buffalo. That nonsense goes back to Vietnam war, by the way. I know, because I remember quoting it to my girlfriend...she stared at me like I'd lost my mind and then we both started to laugh. However, lots of idiots believed it, in the People's Imaginary Conclave of Massachusetts in 1969. The things that made Babylon a pretty good place for a city 4500 years ago or however old the place is are the things that it made it a pretty good place for a military base. And, military bases are kind of disruptive, particularly during a war.)

" Look, Abdullah...the hanging gardens! Aren't they cool?" "No, This is the hanging gardens...That's one of Saddam's palaces But, it is really cool. Hey, we can shack up there...how about it? Only $175 a night, with breakfast...we can sleep in one of his 240 bedrooms...'

A $700,000 project by the World Monuments Fund, financed by the State Department, was supposed to address both conservation and tourism at Babylon, but has not yet begun work at the site. (AXE observation: I don't know and don't care enough to look, but it it going to done by KBR? Or Bob Jones University's department of Bibical Studies? Or, maybe SMU? Be a nice touch to the Creationist Wing of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, don't you think?)

Security in Iraq has improved immensely, allowing the Iraqis to once again think about the past as part of the country’s future, even if Iraq is not yet ready for tourism as most of the world knows it. ( AXE bewilderment: Yeah, and security got better in Ulster when the neighborhoods were segragated and there were Paras on every corner in the Protestant Areas and the Provos were providing policing inside Derry and Catholic neighborhoods in Ulster. I can't imagine why Ulster didn't immediately become a major tourist attraction. And, has this reporter not been reading his own paper? The natives are restless, and are taking it out on each other. While the vision of 10000 Japanese and Chinese tourists getting off a tour bus and snapping lots of pictures of random piles of sand it entrancing, while bermuda shorted German tourists walk their poodles, shitting and pissing in the sand, thus desecrating Hammurabi's third wive's bidet, come the fuck on. Probably not going to get Michelin stars anytime soon. Yeah, Iraq -- not ready for prime time. )One visitor, Esma Ali, a university student from Hilla, said she had grown up in the shadow of Babylon, but had never visited it before, and she did so with a sense of awe...“I feel our history is coming back,” she said. (AXE Snark: Look Miryam...a postcard of Saddam with Nebachanazzar. Let's buy bunches of them for our friends...)

 

Major Archeological Dig? Not Quite...Borax mine outside of Barstow...

Good time Charlie's reflections

The best part of Charlie Wilson's War is that the movie is kind of understated, but basically true. The oddities are that Wilson is a Democrat from an East Texas District, and fairly liberal for a Texas politician. They used to make some like that, and still do -- he was part of the Anne Richards faction, I suspect. Anyway, he hooked up with some real CIA characters, some crazier than the composite figure we see in the film with Phillip Seymour Hoffman and he was a lot crazier in some regards than Tom Hanks. There were rumors that he went wandering around in Afghanistan with the Muhajadeen. Rumours that may or may not be true. Certainly, he was dogged by the KGB and GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) whenever he was in Pakistan.

Anyway, the movie sums what happened very well -- we changed the world and then fucked up the end game. As a nation, we are unable to execute a geo-political strategy. Democracy and Republican government have the drawback of shifting priorities and shifting ideologies.The war ended during the first Bush administration, and we went off on other adventures in places where we hadn't been paying attention. There's only so much attention.

Texas Monthly, the National Magazine of Texas, has a vested interest in Texas Characters. Charlie is certainly one of them. This interview was probably even more interesting off the record and not edited for consumption. Trust me on this; a successful Democratic Congressman from the Oil Patch with his resume would be pretty damn interesting to listen to, and there'd be a lot of stories and such that I would love to hear. And, a few things we probably need to hear but won't. Like this:

We’re up against some smart, tough, recklessly brave people. They’re not afraid to die, and it’s hard to intimidate somebody who’s flatly not afraid to die. That’s their culture. They’ve got this history of never having been defeated. Nobody’s ever gone in there and been able to stay. I mean, the Red Army gave it one hell of a try. And it would have been really tough for the Afghans to have defeated them without those Stinger missiles we gave them, but you know, there’s between 20 and 25 million Afghanis, and the Russians would have had to kill all of them.

I tend to agree. These folks understand blood feud and retribution. This whole democracy, government, will of the people thing is not their thing. Afghanistan is never going to be Charlottesville, Virginia, and Jefferson's grave is not going to appear on the campus of the University of Khandahar. That realization is critical -- we're talking to people who think that a religious war against the stranger is a pretty cool idea. Well, we're not talking to them; we're talking part them, and until we have a firm, mutually understood reference point, anything and everything is impossible.

Win Hold Win? Really? In pre-emptive war?

The Pentagon is re-thinking what it's doing. Not a bad idea...anytime, but at the moment, priceless.

Among the refinements to the two-wars strategy the Pentagon has incorporated in recent years is one known as “win-hold-win” — an assumption that if two wars broke out simultaneously, the more threatening conflict would get the bulk of American forces while the military would have to defend along a second front until reinforcements could arrive to finish the job.

The AXE remembers watching a press conference from 1991, when Colin Powell and Dick Cheney made the case for keeping the Defense Department at strength for a Win-Win approach, equivalent to being able to fight and win two wars. For example, something drags us into, oh, I don't know, Afghanistan and then something drags us into, oh, say Iraq and we're cool. This replaced Flexible Response , or the ability to handle Afghanistan, and Iraq and  then say, oh, something awful drags us into Mexico. Or Korea. Or Somalia. Or the Balkans. Fight the main one first, fight and win the less dangerous but still critical one next, and then crush the third opponent. The advantage of Flexible Response over Two Wars is that, well, it's flexible. The advantage of Two Wars is that it's cheap. At the time that this was being pushed, everyone was excited about the Peace Dividend. It was formulated at about the same time and as a factor in the Powell Doctrine doctrine, but seems forgotten. I can't find it on-line, the link is to an abstract from Foreign Affairs.

In fairness to Powell and the pre-cyborg-Cheney, they were advocating something startlingly different than the cluster fuck we got as shown in this link from PBS and Frontline. The whole intent was to have a force that was flexible and able to respond to just about anything.

When a "fire" starts that might require committing armed forces, we need to evaluate the circumstances. Relevant questions include: Is the political objective we seek to achieve important, clearly defined and understood? Have all other nonviolent policy means failed? Will military force achieve the objective? At what cost? Have the gains and risks been analyzed? How might the situation that we seek to alter, once it is altered by force, develop further and what might be the consequences?

As an example of this logical process, we can examine the assertions of those who have asked why President Bush did not order our forces on to Baghdad after we had driven the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. We must assume that the political objective of such an order would have been capturing Saddam Hussein. Even if Hussein had waited for us to enter Baghdad, and even if we had been able to capture him, what purpose would it have served? And would serving that purpose have been worth the many more casualties that would have occurred? Would it have been worth the inevitable follow-up: major occupation forces in Iraq for years to come and a very expensive and complex American proconsulship in Baghdad? Fortunately for America, reasonable people at the time thought not. They still do. (AXE comment and snark...Yet, here we are, largely thanks to reasonable men.)

Instead, because we're the meanest motherfuckers around, over the next 11 years, we opted under the Contract on America for being able to fight 1.5 wars. Part of this was Clinton, of course;  a larger part of it was the Contract on America, and the desire to keep taxes low while balancing the budget. If you do that, great, but you can't adequately arm, train, prepare and fight for two major conflicts. Ships, planes, tanks, Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, Airmen are expensive propositions. So, the theory evolved into one small war and maybe on big war. Win-hold-then, win.

Then, of course, came 9/11. OK, accepting that the lead on the Global War on Terror should be the military -- which I do not necessarily do, by the way -- the US and our allies could probably have done something amazing in Afghanistan. Hell, we did do something amazing. I watched footage of the night drop of the Rangers into Afghanistan...we had targets, we knew where they were. The SF guys on Horseback riding down the Taliban and al Queida was incredible. However, we won the initial campaign and then went all "hold" on the battle and turned our attention to...Iraq. Which had damn all to do with anything and badly broke the services.

There was probably no alternative to invading Afghanistan and bitch slapping the Taliban and al Queida. However, we then invaded another country...that had nothing to do with the reason we were at war. The Twitshit de la Dweeb administration stumbled around making the case, but...the case was stupid from the beginning. Seriously stupid, and got us where we are. Fighting two wars that exhaust resources faster than we can replenish them, and with lots of other places we ought to be doing something other than what we are...piracy on the high seas, Somalian style law and order on the border with Mexico, and so on.

Despite his endorsement of Bush in 2004, I think Stormin' Norman's discussion of Saddam Hussein's military prowess really sums up Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Franks-Meyers-Tenet better than anyone else on this topic. Asked about Saddam in 1990, Schwartzkopf said "As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he's a great military man I want you to know that." Before he said it, he laughed and snorted. Maybe someday we'll be able to have that reaction to Twitshit and Cheney et al as opposed to another Sunday Tourette's moment...

It's almost spring, and therefore, time to slaughter...

Black 47 (Last One To Die)
Bloody, fucking Ulster . Fucking, bloody Baghdad. Where next? One isn't really our problem, yet; one is still our problem. But, there is a relation between violence, sectarian hatred and money.

Last night, the entrance to the Massereene army base in Antrim, 16 miles north of Belfast, was attacked by gunmen who had been lying in wait in a vehicle as a pizza delivery was being made at 9.40pm.The gunmen were obviously aware that soldiers followed a regular routine on Saturday nights, when as many as 20 separate orders were made for pizza to be delivered. They waited until the troops emerged through the gates to pick up the food.Reports said the gunmen raked the base with automatic fire then shot the soldiers as they lay injured on the ground. Two other members of the military were injured and two pizza delivery men, were also hurt, one of them, a 32-year-old Polish national, was in a critical condition...Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, said: "I was a member of the IRA, but that war is over now. The people responsible for last night's incident are clearly signalling that they want to resume or re-start that war. Well, I deny their right to do that."(AXE Comment and Snark: Martin, old boyo, the whole idea behind revolutionary violence is that you're asserting a right that no one says you have, whether it's the right to buy tea without tax or speak Gaelic. Or, shoot up Brit soldiers and pizza delivery men. Remember? What was good for the Provos and the "Real IRA" and the UDF is equally good for those with even less cause but more aggrievement...Ya know?)

Turning to what looks like an older religious war with more direct issues for us, Baghdad. NORAID hasn't been sending bullets to Ulster for a while, but this is existentialy and morally our problem.

Sunday’s bombing came after a period of relative calm in the capital and a peaceful election at the end of January. However, many military officials, Iraqi and American, have predicted that the post-election period would see an increase in violence.This bombing took place at an intersection between the police academy and the oil ministry. “There was a demonstration of oil employees who were demanding their salaries, about 100 people,” said Amar Sami Abdul Hussain, a police lieutenant who was stopping vehicles, reporters and onlookers from approaching the site of the bombing.The bomber mingled with the crowd and about an hour into the demonstration, the bomb went off.The police believe that an accomplice exploded the bomber using a remote control device, said Lieutenant Hussain.(AXE Comment: The bastards have an 80Billion surplus in oil money, and they are stiffing employees their salaries? Who the hell is running the Iraqi Oil Industry? Haliburton?)

Ok, the problem with change is that THERE HAS TO BE FUCKING CHANGE or else the people who thought things were going to get better will be pissed off. And, some dire bastards will do somehting about their sense of grievance because they figured it was going to be free bubble up and rainbow stew tomorrow...and, they still are eating wish sandwiches. Yeah, I know that they're not being reasonable, and the behavior is reprehensible. However, in both cases, people who should have known were saying this was going to happen, and it happened.  Rather than vindicated, they're probably feeling sick...as am I. I'll get over it; the folks in the square in Baghdad and the soldiers waiting for their pizza won't. And, that's the shame of it all.

Vested interest? Sorry, waistcoats are stupid

So, Europe's warboiler is on again, and the liberals are eager to spill more blood in the hopes of transformative democracy or whatever...I hate liberals. I am one in a lot of respects, but I am not a Hobbit. Our first Bosnian adventure wasn't terrible, as in fact, our first Iraqi adventure wasn't terrible. This will be terrible.

It has been a long time since the United States paid serious high-level attention to Bosnia. After the 1995 Dayton Accords ended the genocidal horrors, Washington moved on to other priorities and largely left oversight of the peace agreement to Europe.(AXE comment--who should have been doing it in the first place and now, now, since we're pretty much out of Europe, really should be doing it but obviously can't find their balls with both hands and a map...) Now it’s time to seriously re-engage before the deal unravels. (AXE Comment -- No, it's not.)
.....

Bosnia’s people ultimately must take responsibility for what their country is to become. (AXE Comment: Yup. Same as Iraq and Afghanistan.) But the United States, which led the Dayton negotiations, has a vested interest in making sure the peace deal does not erode further. So does the European Union, which has 2,000 peacekeepers and a special representative in Bosnia.

Actually, no, the US doesn't. If we had no business in Northern Ireland, and we didn't, we have less of it here. There are more Americans of Irish descent in the greater NYC area than there are of "Bosnian" descent in the entire United States, Canada and our overseas possessions. Fuck 'em. Bailing somebody out once a generation is understandable, if not wise. Once every ten years, is just stupid.

A rose by any other name is still...a violation of the law and the constitution, you dickhead!!!!

Ok, as a general rule I do not think it's a great idea to send former presidents to the calaboose, unless their actions really rise to the level of high crimes. I think the old "unindicted, co-conspirator" dodge is fine for most stuff, because most stuff is probably driven by paranoia and expediency. However, after 7 plus years to think it through and failing to get it right, I have to say that the Bush administration needs to just march on over to the Atlanta Penitentiary and check in for the next 18 months or so. These guys figured that they were above the law...

The Journal has some interesting comments from Mukasey. It appears that Mukasey knew exactly what he was saying when he kept dodging the waterboarding issue -- he knew it was wrong, it knew it was torture, he knew it was illegal and he didn't want the president, the vice president and a whole bunch of other hacks down to Laura and Barney (note, I think Laura, Barney and the Twins are clean on this one...not sure about Ms Beazley.) tossed in the federal pen, even if we built a special edition Camp Cupcake ( Cupcake Ranch?) for the bastards.

Mukasey's logic is now staggering.

The 67-year-old former federal judge in New York, who took office 14 months ago, said in an interview that the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama faces a "clusterfuck" as it tries to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Word that Mr. Obama plans to issue an executive order to close the prison has caused worry among Justice Department lawyers who fear evidence backing the cases against many of the approximately 250 detainees wouldn't hold up in a conventional court proceeding.

Let's see. Despite the latest nonsense from the Supremes, I think we can safely say that the general tendency in our legal system is that evidence improperly obtained is not admissible in trial. It's called the fruit of a poisoned tree. So, these "armed combatants" should be treated as, oh, I don't know, "prisoners of war." No trials. Now, our guys have other problems...if they conspired to torture, allowed torture and conspired to mislead the nation in the world into thinking that they did not torture but used harsh interrogation techniques, well, that sounds like a conspiracy to violate US and international law. It sounds like war crimes, of the most cold-blooded sort. Which should be treated accordingly.

I've already suggested what should happen to Gonzales, a job as a greeter for Donkey shows in Nuevo Laredo. For the others, right down the line, fines, loss of pensions, disbarrment and extradition to the Hague if indicted seems ok to me. But of course, I never confused my oath to "preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States" with some version of an oath of fealty to Adolph Hitler. Judge Mukasey, in his gyrations to protect Bush, Cheney, et. al is doing just that. 

Now, what I find even more interesting, "going forward," "looking ahead, not behind" is what does the Obama administration do? Punt? Then, what does Eric Holder do? He's called out the thugs, not what does he do? While Obama is too cold and analytical to do a public woodsheding like Colin Powell endured after the Korea thing eight years ago, if he tells Holder not to do the right thing, then Holder has a rough choice as do a bunch of other people.

It may be worse than that, of course. The House isn't burdened with the closure nonsense; Kennedy and Chris Dodd are lions in winter, and may decide to go out swinging in the Senate Judiciary. Imagine the Congress tirelessly pursuing the former Bush administration officials the way the House and Senate went after Bill Clinton. Easy to decide that this isn't all that important, but we're going to be wrong on that. Yeah, the economy is tits up too...do the same thing. Or, give up any pretensions that we are any better than any other Republic falling into oligarchy and eventual dictatorship.

Somebody needs to tell these people that it's over. Seriously. It's over. We won. Peace out...kaboom!

Battle of Algiers anyone? Let's see, this could be al Queida; it could be Baathists from the Ministry of Internal Affairs; it could be Shiites...or, it could be someone who left over fireworks from New Year's Eve...

Pass the Irony...

Well, the Journal headlined this "As if things weren't bad enough..."

But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. ( AXE emphasis and snark: I hate to agree with the Russian government about anything, but I gotta say they have a point.  I'm not sure I would say the US caused any of this stuff; but, we sure the fuck didn't help all that much In recent years...au contraire, as they say in Port Arasnsas, we supercharged the downward spiral...)  Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire."There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

This guy is talking about the disintegration of the US, not Iraq. The problem with disparity of wealth, ethnic tensions, religious conflict, government corruption, et al. are just too great and we're headed toward the compost heap of history. OK, I'm not sure I'd rate the chance at the even money level, but I really think the guy might be on to something. Certainly, getting kicked out of Afghanistan and being treated sooooo welllll by the Iraqis and the prospect of oil zipping back to the stratosphere over the Iraeli, oh, "adjustment" to Gaza would make things ugly. 

I've been particularly impressed with the Israeli attack on Gaza. I'm really convinced that the state of Israel is based on a cocktail of European Guilt and racism. They kind of forgot about the people who were already there. The great diaspora of the Jewish people went on for thousands of years -- the new Jewish state could have been as readily carved out of Russia based on occupation and roots. Anyway, that problem is just a festering away, becoming a new third rail of American politics. OK, the US government never caved into the IRA despite the Irish affection for the boyos; why in the hell do we tolerate this madness?

Israel has the right to exist; Hamas is a conglomeration of dreamers, thugs and fools financed by the Iranians. But, the Israeli war on Gaza, and that's what this is -- talk about Shock and Awe -- is unjust. Yes, there have been provocations. However, the number of casualties that the Israel has sustain and the amount of damage and the resilience of the society, it's ability to respond to attack compared to the Palestinians is totally disproportionate. It's like us nuking Kabul after 9/11...or, given the makeup of the bombers, Mecca.

Oh, the whole just war thing is on my mind this evening for a variety of reasons. Going to war is something that should occur only for reasons that make sense; going to war for ideology doesn't make sense.  I say this thinking about Afghanistan versus Iraq versus, oh, I don't know, the British Opium wars. Afghanistan had something to do with Osama bin Laden and as such you could make the argument that an invasion made sense, although it's not a slam dunk... Iraq was based on a doctrine of pre-emptive attack that is illegitamate in any philosophical sense. Finally, the British Opium wars were utterly unjustified, and no one made any attempt to pretend that they were about anything except wealth. I find it interesting to reflect that the only fully successful conflict was the one motivated by greed, the one that is totally undefensible.