More Good News From Iraq

Tom Ricks and Karen DeYoung report in the WaPo:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months. Among the indicators cited is a sharp drop in suicide bombings, the group's signature attack, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders over the summer had what a senior military intelligence official called a "cascade effect," leading to other killings and captures. The flow of foreign fighters through Syria into Iraq has also diminished, although officials are unsure of the reason and are concerned that the broader al-Qaeda network may be diverting new recruits to Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The deployment of more U.S. and Iraqi forces into AQI strongholds in Anbar province and the Baghdad area, as well as the recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters to combat AQI operatives in those locations, has helped to deprive the militants of a secure base of operations, U.S. military officials said. "They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

Read it here.

I blame Bush.

Of course the Democrats, rehearsing their lines on MSNBC right now, are saying -- "So what? Where's Bin Laden?"They claim that they were right all along, that we are caught in a civil war, not a war against al Qaeda, and that the administration is really in a bind because there is no longer any reason to stay in Iraq.

More Good News -- Cancer Deaths Decline

USA Today reports:

Deaths from cancer continue to drop, and the decline appears to be accelerating, federal health officials detail in a report out Monday.

The rate of cancer started falling in 1992 with improved treatment and Americans taking to heart the message that not smoking, eating better and seeking early detection would reduce their risks. But the new report shows cancer deaths declined on average 2.1% each year from 2002 to 2004, the most recent year for which detailed data are available. That rate was nearly twice the annual decrease from 1993 to 2002.

The decline was more pronounced in men, 2.6% a year, than women, 1.8% a year, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and others.

Read it here.

I blame Bush.

City Sights

It was a glorious day at the harbor. I took my camera and a good book [Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin] and wandered around for a while taking pictures.




I finally settled on Federal Hill where I had a great view of the harbor.



Don't ask!


Ol' Sam still stands guard.



I sat on a bench for a while, reading and enjoying the sun and a cool breeze, then wended my way back home along Montgomery Street.





And on the way I discovered that some of my neighbors are stranger than I thought.

A Remarkable Admission

The term "empire" is bandied about loosely, especially by leftist critics of the US, but does it really mean anything? Writing in the Times Literary Supplement Felipe Fernandez-Armesto makes a rather startling admission. Even the top experts on the subject don't know what they are talking about.

At a recent dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts, four of the world’s leading historians of empire agreed on only one thing: that none of them knew what an empire is. It is a loose-fitting name, applied to states or political agglomerations of such diverse kinds that we should probably admit that entities we call empires have no more in common than girls we call Jane or garments we call coats.

The best that these experts could come up with was that empires tend to be larger than other contemporary states, they consist of more than one historically distinct community, there is one central focus of allegiance, and scholars have "more or less agreed" to designate the United States as an "empire." That's it and that's all, which leads me to wonder if the concept is all that useful. Fernandez-Armesto claims that it is, but the question must be asked, especially since use of the term allows critics of the US to mindlessly plug into all sorts of Marxist and anti-colonialist analytic categories and rhetoric, whether or not such associations are appropriate.

Read his review here.

Interesting

In the latest Le Nouvel Observateur, Bernard-Henri Levy asks whether it is still possible to be on the political Left and confesses his loathing for what he calls the "chauvinist Left".

Of course the Left doesn't take this deviationism sitting down.

Read about the debate here.

News from Iraq

MSM coverage of the encouraging news out of Iraq has for many months been so blatantly biased against the administration and the war effort that even the WaPo has finally noticed.

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month -- whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq -- have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further.

And here's the key quote:

Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say -- so far, with stunningly little success.

Read it here.

And then there's this [complete with charts for the reading impaired]

And this.

And this.

And [lest we forget Afghanistan] this.

And on the subject of political reconciliation in Iraq there's this. Those ten-foot tall Mahdi's just don't seem to be what the MSM and the Democrats claimed they were.

And this.

And this.

Suddenly, and without warning, the MSM has decided that things are looking up in Iraq. Is it because they were shamed by Robin Wright's startling admission to Howard Kurtz that she and other leading journalists felt that good news on the war should be buried while negative news is routinely played up? [here]

Is it Gen. Sanchez' blistering condemnation of MSM bias, which they did not report, but could not have helped but notice? [here]

Is it that they just got tired of the old story-line?

Is it that Hillary has been moving away from an anti-war position?

What is notable is that, like a flock of birds or school of fish, they all turned on a dime to emphasize the new conventional wisdom.

Amazing!

This raises the vital questions -- have things really changed that much in Iraq, or is this just a change in how the story is reported? It is clear that things were never as bad as the MSM reported, but are they now improving as much as the new stories seem to indicate? Time will tell.

News You Can Use

Several friends of ours have decided to vacation in New Zealand in recent years. In a few cases people have actually moved there. I wondered why and vaguely attributed it to the popularity and grandeur of the Lord of the Rings films. Now I realize how naive I was.

The Times of India reports:

LONDON: A new survey has shown that Kiwi women are the most promiscuous in the world, with an average of 20.4 sexual partners.

The survey, by condom-maker Durex, questioned 26 thousand people in 26 countries, and found that New Zealand women’s promiscuity average was way above the global average of 7.3.

The poll showed that Kiwi women are up there with Austrian men, who have 29.3 sexual partners. New Zealand emerged as the only country where women have more sexual partners than their men.

Read it here.

And here I thought it was the sheep.

Painting from the Dawn of Civilization

An 11,000 year old wall painting found in Syria.

So cool! It looks very modern, not representational. The archaeologist who found it says it looks like the work of Paul Klee. He's right. It's a remarkable find.

The culture that produced it was pre-agricultural, hunters and gatherers who were already building permanent dwelling places and artwork. More and more we are beginning to appreciate the sophistication of pre-agricultural peoples and the complex communities they created.

Read about it here.

VDH on the Tragedy of War

Victor Davis Hansen writes

Almost no one senses that the tragedy of war is always error and costly error at that, the side winning who makes the fewest and learns the most from them—and then doesn't give up.

Read it here.

Failure to come to terms with the reality of warfare has poisoned the political debate in this country. We have come to expect the impossible -- war without error -- and cynical politicians have tried to capitalize on those unrealistic expectations. As both Prof. Hansen and I have pointed out on a number of occasions the current conflict, in comparison with those of the past, has been remarkably well conducted. Yes, there have been errors and casualties, but they pale in comparison with those incurred in other major military conflicts. Yes, Iraq is a costly mess, but all wars are messy and costly and this one is a lot less so than most.

There is a reason that SNAFU, TARFU and FUBAR are all military acronyms.

UPDATE:

The Military Dad writes to note that I left out:

FUBB, SDDS, and IDMN.

OK, for you civilians out there, these stand for:

Situation Normal All F***ed Up
Things Are Really F***ed Up
F***ed Up Beyond All Recognition
F***ed Up Beyond Belief
Same Day, Different S**t [We used DDSS, Different Day, Same S**t]
It Don't Mean Nothing (pronounded "IDum") [In my unit we said "Max Nix" (from the German, "es macht nichts" -- literally, "it does not make anything"]

A Novel Approach to Government

Mark Steyn points to a refreshing approach to the problem of big and intrusive government.

Meet:

the Tigwe of Vwuip, a northern Nigerian tribal chief who [ate] the local tax collector. The Tigwe had apparently been so impressed by the man's ability to acquire money on demand that he had — understandably — decided to try to assimilate his powers.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Read it here.

Blowout

The mighty Quaker warriors defeated the multi-culti wimps of Columbia 59 to 28. Our congratulations to the Penn men. As for the Columbia lions, that's what you get when you invite homicidal madmen to speak at your campus.

Go Quakes!

Lessing Said the Better

Doris Lessing's reaction to being informed that she had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature.




Hat Tip "papercuts" at the NYT.

Fall Comes To the Mountain

Just a few pictures from before the rains came and drove me inside.

Frontrunners

Argentina and the United States are holding presidential elections soon. In both countries the front-runner is a woman, a former first lady. In the US, the Clinton dynasty is represented by Hillary, in Argentina the Kirchner dynasty features Cristina.

Can we swap?

Books: Garry Wills' Head and Heart

I always look forward to reading what Garry Wills has to say. He is a smart guy who has the makings of a fine historian. Some of his early work was quite good. Unfortunately, after years as a "public intellectual" he has accumulated a lot of axes to grind and has become little more than a shrill polemicist.

His latest book, Head and Heart: American Christianities [read a review here] is a major disappointment. It mixes shrewd observation [he is quite good, for instance, on Madison and Jefferson] with political cant. He develops a simplistic dichotomy -- an opposition between "enlightenment" and "evangelism" -- into which he tries to shoehorn the immensely complex development of America's religious culture. In so doing he grotesquely exaggerates the influence of both religious and secular extremists, obscures important differences among major figures, and simply ignores the religious experience and faith of the vast majority of American Christians.

Why should a subtle and sophisticated thinker like Wills produce such a silly document? The answer is simple. He hates President Bush and he really, really hates Carl Rove, and he really, really, really loathes and despises the religious right and all those who would restrict a woman's right to choose death for her unborn children. His simplistic account of American religious history is little more than a prelude to his real concern, a sometimes hysterical screed against religious conservatives and their purported dominance in the current administration.

This is bad history and even worse political analysis. Wills has produced a grotesquely cartoonish vision of America, past and present, and in so doing illuminates the way in which the hyperbolic political disputation of our times has corrupted and distorted our intellectual enterprise in nearly all its aspects.

If you wish to learn about America's religious history, don't bother with Will's screed, but if you want to comprehend the disdain and alarm animating radical secularists today, this is a good example.

To purchase Wills' book click on the Amazon logos at the top of the page.

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Jesse Walker, managing editor at Reason magazine, takes a witty look at the roster of Nobel Prize winners and notes that very few of them had accomplishments that had much to do with "peace". The most important factor seems to be association with or serving as a front for a vast international agency [like the IPCC, with whom Al Gore shared this year's prize].

Read the whole thing here.

Steyn on Health Insurance

Mark Steyn gets it exactly right. He writes:

In most cases, "insurance" insures against unlikely events. Your house is highly unlikely to burn down, but, if it happens, it's life-changing, so you insure against it. Health care is all but certain, especially in a western world where longevity and falling birth rates are producing a society where a big chunk of the population will be nonagenarians requiring long-term Alzheimer's or other care for the last fifth of their life. I would prefer a system in which we distinguish between routine ailments and catastrophic medical needs. For the former, it would be cheaper (and healthier) to restore a direct doctor/patient financial relationship. For the latter, a more limited insurance system would be better.

Read it here.

This is precisely what President Bush tried to do with the prescription drug add-on to Medicare -- make the program voluntary and restrict it to compensation for catastrophic emergencies. Such a program would be far more affordable than blanket coverage and would provide citizens with some protection against the economic consequences of catastrophic illness.

It's an eminently sensible approach to the problem, but Washington's movers and shakers respond to reasonable and sensible ideas like vampires to crosses.

Lies of the Left -- Another Phony Whistleblower

The Democrats seem to have no trouble finding people who are willing to dish the dirt on Republican sins. The trouble is that a disturbing number of these are phonies. The political calculation behind it is obvious. These people come out, get headlines and lucrative book and speaking fees telling stories about how terrible the generals, the Bush administration, corporate leaders, etc. are. Then months later they are exposed as being liars. But by that time the damage has been done and nobody cares anymore.

The latest phony to get rich lying is Lynn Brewer who wrote Confessions of an Enron Executive. She's been piling up big loot in speaking fees ever since trotting the globe talking about the evils of corporate capitalism. She has even been hailed as a heroine of free speech by the Nobel Peace Prize Selection Committee -- the ones who just awarded Al Gore the prize for his pack of lies. The trouble is that she never was an "Enron executive." Rather she was a "back-office investigator" who has padded her resume.

She's a politically useful con artist funded by left-wing Bush haters and anti-capitalist ideologues.

Read about her here.

He Ain't Comin' Back Folks

Jonah Goldberg points out the obvious:

Ronald Reagan has left the building and he ain't comin' back. What is more, Reagan himself was not the Gipper of memory. He signed a liberal abortion bill, he raised taxes nearly as much as he cut them, he met with dictators, etc. His advice, quit chasing a mirage.

Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and the rest of the pack all want to claim the Gipper-slipper fits them best. But the trick to being the Reagan of today is to be the Reagan of today. Reagan was the needed solution to the problems of a generation ago. The Reagan of today will do the same for today. He will likely agree with the Gipper on a lot of issues, but that agreement shouldn’t stem from play-acting.

Amen.

Read the whole thing here.

Consoler In Chief

Bloomberg reports:

Bush, 61, has so far met with more than 1,500 relatives of the 4,255 American troops who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to White House officials. As he travels around the country, the president often makes the time to console them -- one family at a time, often including children -- in sessions that he calls ``one of the hardest things'' about his job.

In most of the meetings, the aides say, he hears support for his policies, hardening his resolve to stay the course in Afghanistan and Iraq. Little is otherwise known about the meetings, and the White House doesn't disclose the names of participants.

Read it here.