The Surge is Working?
The Surge is Working?
The Opinionator by Tobin Harshaw on the New York Times has a peculiar article suggesting that US Democrats are under attack due to the supposed success of “the surge”. The piece leads with a quote attributed to Karen Tumlty, which says, in part, “It’s the Democrats who are being put on the defensive over the war.”
The column goes on to quote a number of selected statements from obscure “moderates” closing with: “Where the strategy was first to argue that the military surge would not work, the Democrats seem to be ready to acknowledge — behind closed doors that is — that they were wrong,” from Michael van der Galien. If you have access to Times Select, you can read this compendium of preposterousness at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/spinning-the-surge/
There are a number of logical refutations submitted to the column. One, by ‘Rosemary Molloy’, reads,
Gee, all this “republicans did this,” “democrats said that” is confusing. Guess the only thing I quite understand is that we’re killing people. We. Are. Killing. People. These aren’t wild dogs we’re talking about–they’re PEOPLE! And we’re killing them.
My response follows:
The surge is working? The evidence would seem to suggest to the contrary. Consider the top headlines which come up upon searching, newest first, on the Times website on ‘Iraq’ today: ‘Times Topics: Iraq‘, ‘Black Hawk Fails and Crashes, Killing 14 U.S. Soldiers‘, ‘Cue the Film Awards Season and Strike a Somber Note‘, ‘Armored Trucks’ Delivery Delayed‘, ‘Army Officer, Others Indicted on Bribery‘, ‘25 Killed in Clash Northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi Police Say‘. You reported today that the capital, Baghdad, is receiving 2-6 hours of electricity per day as opposed to 24 hours per day before the war. The ‘surge’ is not sustainable; if this is success, what will the inevitable failure look like?
See: Democrats Refocus Message on Iraq After Military Gains
Militias Seizing Control of Iraqi Electricity Grid
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
Open Letter to the Ann Arbor Democratic Party
Open Letter to the Ann Arbor Democratic Party
Surely the right to enthusiastically applaud a political speech is Constitutionally protected speech; if not then there is no freedom of speech whatever left in this country.
We are a Democratic Party, and many of us would call ourselves Liberals; but where even the mildest and most socially unexceptionable forms of dissent such as applauding a political speech are suppressed then there is neither Liberty nor Democracy.
sincerely,
Henry Edward Hardy
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
An Open Letter to Rich Sheridan regarding the proposed insertion of spam by the Wireless Washtenaw Project
The following was written in response to the pricing plan for Wireless Washtenaw.
Rich Sheridan has served on the steering committee of the Wireless Washtenaw Project for some time. Rich is someone for whom I have done work in the past and I am surprised by his poor judgment and lack of knowledge of the issues in this particular instance.
An Open Letter to Rich Sheridan regarding the proposed insertion of spam by the Wireless Washtenaw Project:
Rich,
Thanks for the interesting conversation today regarding Wireless Washtenaw. You told me, “The Internet was built by business”. When I disagreed and asked you if you had ever heard of Prof. Jon Postel, you finally (after asking the third time) admitted you had not heard of him. Here’s a link to the wikipedia article on Prof. Jon Postel.
Here’s Jon Postel’s tribute page from the Information Sciences Institute at USC.
When Jon died, he received the some of the most moving tributes from around the world that I have seen for any person, recent or historical. Many of the founders of the Internet are among the eulogists recorded at the Internet Society pages about Jon.
The Internet did not come about through the profit motive. Not at all. The Net is possibly the single most complex and valuable piece of engineering ever accomplished by humans, and it came about through the efforts of selfless individuals working for the betterment of all mankind. People like JCR Licklider, Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts, Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf, and Dr. Postel are the people we should be seeking to emulate personally and professionally.
To take the surplus value in the Net created by all these selfless patriots and try to monetize it in the way that 20/20 is doing through the public face of the Wireless Washtenaw project, is not a good thing. Having third parties who just happen to own one of the dozen or so routers between sender and receiver insert into the datastream their own or third-party ads degrades the Net for both sender and receiver, and breaks the unwritten compact whereby anyone with an upstream router on the Net passes along third-party traffic in a manner similar to a common carrier, without intercepting or interfering by, for instance, adding spam advertising content to that communication. This principle is sometimes referred to as “Net Neutrality”.
There are also legal issues revolving around this approach to funding Wireless Washtenaw regarding the Electronic Communications Privacy Act 18 USC § 2510.
Also pertinent is the General Prohibition Against Traces and Traps 18 USC § 3121.
I also think this deliberate insertion of spam into the network may fall afoul of the Michigan statue Fraudulent Access to Computers, Computer Systems, and Computer Networks, MCL 795.791 et passim.
What you all are talking about doing with this Wireless Washtenaw “free” service is filling the web browsers of people using the free, public service with third-party spam. Adding banner ads to a content provider’s web page without their consent or inserting interstitial ads between content provider and subscriber is leveraging the intellectual property of that content provider without their permission. This is analogous to sneaking into the Washtenaw News warehouse on S. Industrial and slipping additional advertising into the Sunday Times inserts without their permission. This Wireless Washtenaw “free” service with spam added is not a public service at all, but a fundamental attack on the integrity, security and utility of the Net itself.
sincerely,
Henry Edward Hardy
see also: Seven Questions on ‘Net Neutrality’ for Ann Arbor City Councilman Ron Suarez
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
My Reply to a Letter from US Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) on the Iraq War
My Reply to a Letter from US Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) on the Iraq War
I wrote back on February 3 in this space that I had called Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) regarding an anti-war resolution passed by the local Ann Arbor Democratic Party organization in January 2007. I got this letter in the mail from her today:
UNITED STATES SENATE
Washington, DC 20510-2204
March 12, 2007
Henry Hardy
[address elided]
Thank you…
…for contacting me about the war in Iraq. I share your deeply-held concerns and appreciate hearing your views on this important matter.
In 2002, I was one of only 23 Senators to vote against the Iraq War Resolution. The decision to go to war is one that should be made with great trepidation when out country is at risk and all other options have been exhausted. From day one, the reasoning for this war has been flawed and inconsistent. Our men and women in uniform deserve better.
I believe it is a serious mistake to increase the number of American troops in Iraq. We must do everything we can to support those serving out country. Sending more Americans into combat without a strategy for success will not improve the situation on the ground in Iraq, and it will not bring our armed forces home any sooner. I joined 56 of my colleagues in voting for a bipartisan resolution opposing the President’s escalation war plan, and I am extremely disappointed that it was filibustered by the minority in the Senate.
A free and stable Iraq can only be secured by the Iraqis. They must embrace responsibility for their collective future and decide that living and dying at the hands of sectarian violence is not the future that they want for their children or grandchildren. We cannot substitute American troops for Iraqi resolve.
I am supporting legislation, recently introduced by Senator Harry Reid, that will require the President to begin phased redeployment within 120 days, and a full redeployment of all American combat troops in Iraq by March 31, 2008. We can no longer follow the same failed strategy in Iraq. I remain committed to changing the course that has been set and bringing our service men and women home safely.
Thank you again for contacting me. I hope you will join me in keeping our soldiers and their families, as well as the people in Iraq, in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time. Please contact me again when I may be of assistance to you or your family
[signed] Debbie
Debbie Stabenow
United States Senator
Having met Senator Stabenow in October, 2006 in Ann Arbor and having briefly discussed with her, her support for the atrocious “Military Commissions Act,” I think it is fair to say that she does not share all of my concerns.
“Our men and women in uniform deserve better.” This is very odd and specious reasoning. In a democratic society, the nation doesn’t exist to serve the military, rather the reverse. If a violent gang was overrunning a neighborhood and destroying it, killing and torturing hundreds of people, we wouldn’t put up signs saying “support our Mafia” or “bring home our Crips”. We wouldn’t say, “our gang members deserve better”.
“A free and stable Iraq can only be secured by the Iraqis”. If this is true, it certainly cannot be accomplished while the country is under hostile foreign domination. No Iraqi government can be regarded as anything but a Quisling, puppet front for the US under the current occupation. The Iraqis didn’t smash their country to ruins, we did. And we then emplaced by force a factionalized and corrupt government and instituted a reign of terror perhaps even worse than Saddam’s, killing, raping, torturing and imprisoning without trial tens of thousands of people. The Iraqis, and the US occupation, even use some of the same prisons, torture facilities, “rape rooms” and execution chambers as the old Iraqi regime.
All the service men and women are not going to be brought home safely. Delaying the withdrawal for another year or more will condemn thousands more Americans, and tens of thousands more Iraqis, to mental trauma, crippling injury, and death. If we wait until the Green Zone collapses and is overrun, thousands of Americans may be held prisoner and be tortured in concentration camps as happened to the French after the surrender at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. As it stands, US forces will have to fight their way out under difficult circumstances even if they started withdrawing today. The sooner the US forces are withdrawn, the better for Iraq and the US both.
There is no mention here in Stabenow’s letter of negotiation. Like it or not, we must negotiate with our enemies. That’s with whom one has negotiations to end a war. Not only is this the best way to salvage something from a disaster, it also provides useful information about the resistance leadership, capabilities, and intentions.
The United States has suffered a stinging strategic defeat in Iraq. There were unforced, critical errors. There were no substantial stockpiles of weaponized NBC agents found, thus undermining the pretext for the war and undercutting any tenuous basis in international law expounded to the UN by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Disbanding the Iraqi army rather than continuing to pay them to remain in their barracks was an idiotic mistake. And the de-Baathification law, while laudable in purpose, served to marginalize, alienate, impoverish and radicalize the middle-class and intelligentsia, paving the way for very nasty, regressive and atavistic factions to take power.
The United States accomplished its stated war aims in Iraq some time ago. There were few illicit weapons found in Iraq. And Saddam is dead. Yet the US stays on. There is no further strategic objective there to “win”. The United States can either withdraw in as good order as possible now, or stay in Iraq and Afghanistan until it “loses”.
Stabenow once again presents a moral inversion in her closing paragraph where she encourages “thoughts and prayers,” for “our soldiers and their families, as well as the people of Iraq”. The people of Iraq didn’t do anything to the US to deserve 4 years of bombing, rape, and torture. Why do they deserve second billing in our prayers only after those who are oppressing, raping, and murdering them?
Stabenow and the other right-wing Democrats want the US public to believe they are moving to end the war even though, in fact, they are moving to fund it for at least another year, and laying the groundwork for a permanent US occupation “to fight terror”. Will they fight jealousy, envy, rage, grief and sorrow as well?
It is the US troops in Iraq and the men who sent them there who are the “evildoers” as far as initiating an illegal aggressive war on the basis of lies and propaganda. Do they really deserve our sympathy, or our support? Or should the responsible civilian and military leaders of the US forces be tried for war crimes such as “waging an aggressive war,” “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”?
Follow-up on Resolution calling for Ending the Iraq War by Ann Arbor Democratic Party
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
CNN: Family cites conspiracy in Tillman death inquiry
More is slowly trickling out about how the US Army, including four general officers, allegedly lied and covered up the death of US Army Ranger Cpl. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan three years ago. Here’s part of what CNN had to say today:
Family cites conspiracy in Tillman death inquiry
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The family of Cpl. Pat Tillman said Monday the Army investigation into the former NFL player’s death by friendly fire in Afghanistan suggests a “conspiracy” and vowed to pursue a congressional investigation into how the death was handled.
Military officials had said earlier that nine officers, including four generals, will face “corrective action” for making critical mistakes in the aftermath of Tillman’s death.
The NFL player was killed in Afghanistan in 2004 after giving up a professional football career to fight as an Army Ranger.
In their statement, the Tillman family said they were not satisfied with the Army report.
“In our opinion, this attempt to impose closure by slapping the wrists of a few officers and enlisted men is just another bureaucratic entrenchment,” the family statement said. “Once again, we are being used as props in a Pentagon public relations exercise.”
The family statement also charged that the decision to award Tillman the Silver Star “appears more than anything to be part of a cynical design to conceal the real events from the family and the public, while exploiting the death of our beloved Pat as a recruitment poster.”
Looking at how the Army allegedly lied and manipulated the press and public emotion regarding Cpl. Tillman and Pfc. Jessica Lynch, one suspects that these are not isolated incidents; lying and manipulation have become acceptable tactics under the rubric of “psyops”, or “psychological operations”. Speaking of lies, lies, propaganda, and more lies, I’ve called the offices of US Rep. John Dingell twice asking about the status of the hundreds of women and children taken prisoner at Kufa Farms after the Najaf Massacre, but have received no reply or response.
See also: After Pat’s Birthday
Articles on Scanlyze tagged ‘Najaf’
Articles on Scanlyze tagged ‘Dingell’
Copyright © 2007 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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