Northman's Fury

Never more true a blog name than with this post:

Oh, there is something you are now hearing over and over. The BIG ROVEAN TACTIC is this. Demand that their opponents choose a simple, one sentence strategy for Iraq.

"Well? What would YOU do?"

It is horrendous and a "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question. Because No one-sentence answer will sound mature or sage, given the horrific political, social, military, and moral quagmire that we are inheriting. Moreover, any attempt to avoid giving a one sentence answer sounds equivocating and mealy-mouthed.

Another brilliant Rovean gotcha ploy and dems are falling for it.

There has to be an answer that turns the tables. I suggest this one.

"Obviously, a new team will have to work with allies (once we have regained their trust) and others to come up with new plans. But YOU are twisting and evading the issue.

"The issue is who should be entrusted with the task of finding a way out of this mess?

"Although democrats led us through the most successful military campaign in US history, losing not a single US service pwerson while cheaply and swiftly bringing peace and law to Europe for the first time in 4,000 years, while strengthening alliances and even gaining popularity in the Muslim world... still, that does not absolutely prove we will do a great job with Iraq.

"What IS proved, though, is that the present gang of fools cannot be trusted with a burnt match.

"They are the same men who coddled Saddam for decades.

Who - when they had him in their hands - set him free to oppress Iraqis for twelve more years.

Who lied to us and to the world about pretexts for war.

Who have oppressed and meddled and half-destroyed the professionals of the military and intelligence communities.

Who have undermined American science at every turn and undermined out goal of energy independence.

Who ruined all accountability systems and contract rules, replacing them with half a trillion in crony deals.

Who have wrecked U.S. military readiness.

Who have spent our grandchildren into permanent debt.

Who have driven off our allies and friends, while encouraging millions to embrace our foes.

"So don't you DARE demand that I give you a one-sentence answer about what to do in Iraq.

"I can give you a clear answer about what I will do, once in office.

"I will fire the gang of boobs who gave us this mess, and invite in grownups from the professional intelligence and military and civil services, freeing them to give sage advice without fear of retribution. Advice that will be heeded.

"I will also invite in adults from both parties who were banished by a pack of cranky, nasty little boys, who base every national decision upon a context of "culture war."

"I will seek out those - from all philosophies - who were proved right by the passage of time, and hold accountable those who lied or proved unworthy of trust.

"Together - with restored goodwill from the rest of the world - and with iron determination to rebuild our strength - we will start wading out of this mess that we were dragged into, by liars and fools how have no business meddling in the affairs of nations.

As an update to my post on Tuesday about Fundamentalists, Richard Gere is under threat of arrest in India for kissing a Bollywood actress in public.

An Indian court has issued an arrest warrant for Hollywood actor Richard Gere after he kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in public.

Gere, 57, kissed Shetty, 31, several times on the cheek at an Aids awareness event in Delhi earlier this month.

The court in Jaipur in Rajasthan state called it "an obscene act", after a local lawyer filed a complaint.

Starting with the usual suspects in Iran:

Two thousand young men in Iran have protested against new clothing curbs, reports say, amid growing discontent about a crackdown on un-Islamic dress.

Shiraz university students were angry about new rules banning sleeveless T-shirts, even inside all-male dorms.

The protest came as the judiciary head warned police that an excessively ferocious campaign could backfire.

Police say they stopped more than 1,300 women for dressing immodestly on the first day of the campaign in Tehran.

I'm sure the folks pushing to start bombing the Iranians are already up in arms over this as a good reason we should be dropping the bombs. They're probably not quite as vocal about the Israelis, though.

The other day I was waiting for a bus in downtown Jerusalem. I was in the bustling orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Mea Sharim and the bus stop was extremely crowded.

When the Number 40 bus arrived, the most curious thing happened. Husbands left heavily pregnant wives or spouses struggling with prams and pushchairs to fend for themselves as they and all other male passengers got on at the front of the bus.

Women moved towards the rear door to get on at the back.

When on the bus, I tried to buck the system, moving my way towards the driver but was pushed back towards the other women.

These are what orthodox Jews call "modesty buses".

The separation system operates on 30 public bus routes across Israel.

The authorities here say the arrangement is voluntary, but in practice, as I found out, there is not much choice involved.

The flavour of the fundamentalist doesn't matter. The so-called "Religious Right" believes they have every right to legislate the morality for the rest of us just as much as the theocrats in Tehran and the ultra-Othordox in Jerusalem. The last time the Christian world was under the authority of the church, it was called the Dark Ages, and for a good reason.

A terrible crime, and my sympathies goes out to the friends and families of thse killed.

It would be nice if something like this could happen without some people immediately looking to push their political agendas regarding gun control, or its lack thereof, but its already too late for that.

Update:

What you should realize though, is that there will be all sorts of stupid “lessons” learned this week. Pro-gun activists will be thrilled to use this as an example that more guns are needed everywhere. Anti-gun activists will pretend that this could have been stopped with more gun control. Sane people will ignore all of them.

Couldn't say it better.

Greg Djerejian is back to blogging after a couple of months of silence, and man, is it fun to have him back.

for tonight, a little mind exercise, shall we? Imagine the 15 kidnapped Brits were U.S. Navy. And then imagine the eruption of incredible indignation, the 24/7 howls of outrage, the 'we gotta go into Teheran right now!' (it's an "act of war", after all, the hyperbolic goose-stepping gaggles would have gravely advised non-stop), the flood-the-zone jingo-banging of the war drums (as Francis Fukuyama quips about one of the more fevered, incorrigible neo-cons: "when has Krauthammer ever not cried “Munich!” in response to an act of diplomacy?").

Who would have had a freak-out and totally lost it first, one wonders: Bill O'Reilly? Glenn Beck? Lou Dobbs, off the Tom Tancredo-ish nativist brew for a second or two? Anderson Cooper, of course, would have started broadcasting live from a British frigate near the Shatt al-Arab waterway--explaining to us what it must have 'felt' like to get nabbed in disputed waters (though, in fairness to him, his reporting, if breathless, would have been more nuanced than any of the above personages). And, just a couple hours before, Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room would have been rife with buzzing electronic maps, on which frantic, 'John Madden Meets Sun Tzu' magic marker scribblings would have feverishly charted the possible invasion paths into Iran to mount the daring rescue.

And in the blogosphere? Well, Glenn Reynolds would have recycled some horse-dung along the lines that bayonets ain't for sittin', and it's time to roll ( 'more rubble, less trouble!'). Meantime, Charles Johnson would have passed out on his keyboard, after a series of post-cycling conniptions (coming on the heels of the "headscarf threat", it would all have been too much). Oh, and Michael Ledeen? Be afraid, be very afraid. Think frothing, at the mouth, rabidly. Here he is again, calling for attacks within Iran (despite his laughable denials that he's not in favor of military action there):

The fun part about this is that Greg is an old-line conservative who has grown tired, disillusioned, and generally pissed off with the Bush Administration's so-called conservatism and over the top incompetence. There's a saying that there is no truer believer than a convert. Conservative critics of Bush like Greg and John Cole bear that out.

A fair number of articles I've read about the recent capture and release of British sailors and marines have said that this was a test of British resolve, and that by not responding with force, the British now look weak. More than a few commentators have compared Blair unfavourably to Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands. Apparently, they figure Blair should have responded to the capture of fifteen military personnel like Maggie did to the conquest of some islands.

It's not a terribly good analogy. For one, the Argentinian invasion was a hell of a lot more provocative than the capture of a few troops in disputed territory. Two, if this was the kind of resolve ordinarily expected of countries when their people are captured, what would they advise Iran to do about the five Iranians captured by the US on diplomatic soil in Irbil a little over two months ago?

There's also the small matter that in the Falklands case, the end-game was easily recognizable; Argentina out of the Falklands. Kind of like the first Gulf War, when the end-game was Iraq out of Kuwait. If the end-game here was to secure the release of the sailors, how would military force have made that more likely? I have the sneaking suspicion that the commentators calling on Britain to be forceful in their response to Iran have a different goal in mind.

The biggest thing I find missing in all this, though, is the state of the British military, and what effect that had on the decisions made. Thatcher basically had the entire British military machine to work with. Her army wasn't stretched thin from being bogged down in two far-off wars. She could afford to gamble. Blair not only has an over-stretched army, but a good chunk of that army is sitting in hostile territory, surrounded by folks friendly to the regime who captured the sailors. Bush called the 15 hostages. They were just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of British soldiers (and Americans) who would rapidly be in dire straights should the situation spiral out of control.

So is the West weak? Yeah, I suppose they are, but the reason they're weak now is because of the brave, macho resolve they used in Iraq, tying up their own hands.

British Sailors Released

You have to hand it to the Iranians. They played this whole British capture and release quite masterfully. Not only did they make sure to treat the captured sailors well to contrast with US treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanemo, Bagram, and other bases, but they now appear magnanimous by releasing them without requiring the British Government to admit any guilt. It makes them look like the reasonable and level-headed party who's willing to be generous to avoid further confrontation and by default, makes the UK and particularly the US, look like the stubborn boneheads unwilling to compromise.

It would be interesting to know what the truth is, but I'm not holding my breath that we'll find that out anytime soon.

There's a reason that political correctness has become a slur, and this is as good an example as I've seen.

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Governmentbacked study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

snip

A third school found itself 'strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict-and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination'.

The report concluded: "In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship."

Keep it up, folks. Soon we can stop teaching evolution because it offends the creationists. Hell, just toss out all Science and History classes and replace them with Bible study. (or Torah, or Koran, or whatever Holy Book you prefer. Don't want to offend anyone.)

But Chris McGovern, history education adviser to the former Tory government, said: "History is not a vehicle for promoting political correctness. Children must have access to knowledge of these controversial subjects, whether palatable or unpalatable."

Agreed. Sometimes the truth is offensive. You can stick your head in the ground and deny reality for awhile, but sooner or later you're going to have to learn to deal with it. Better sooner than later.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has dissolved parliament and called a snap election, in an escalation of the country's political crisis.

The move comes amid a long-running power struggle between the pro-Western president and pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

I know very little about internal Ukrainian politics, but whenever I see a story about Yushchenko, I keep wondering, "Whatever happened to that investigation about him being poisoned?" I mean, when the whole "Orange Revolution" was happening, there were all kinds of stories about the vicious and ugly poisoning of Yushchenko and all sorts of rumors linking it to Yanukovych. After Yushchenko became President, the stories seem to have dried up. No mention of it anywhere in this story. What happened?

One other thing struck me while I was reading this.

Mr Yushchenko became president in January 2005, following the pro-democracy Orange Revolution which overturned a rigged victory for Mr Yanukovych

But Mr Yushchenko was forced to accept his rival as prime minister after his allies failed to win a majority in the March 2006 parliamentary election, and the two men have repeatedly clashed.

So the narrow win by Yanukovych for President was a rigged election that was overturned by the Orange Revolution, installing the pro-democracy, and pro-Western, Yushchenko as President. Then when they had parliamentary elections, and apparently democratic ones, Yanukovych and his supporters win a majority. Hmm.

Hopefully, this is just the Russians version of April Fool's, despite the fact that I've read it a couple other places as well. (Also, there was some collaborating evidence that the Russians do believe it.)

The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

I had expected far more political posturing on the US's part before bombing commenced, but it may be that Bush is just past caring.