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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Monday, March 24, 2003
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Pro Deo et Patria A most worthy blog from Bill Cork today: .... And the naive among us thought we should give sanctions time to work, a dozen years ago. The naive among us said we should let inspections work over the past dozen years. The naive among us thought Saddam and his loyal followers to have the same values that we do. The naive among us thought that we could solve problems peacefully, if only we were patient, if only we waited longer, if only we tried harder, if only we persuaded more people to come along the journey with us.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 09:37:59 PM |
Battlefield Speech by Col. Collins Nobility flowers in the desert where it is least expected, and most needed. The address given by Lt. Col. Tim Collins to the 800 men of the First Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, Mar. 19. + + + + + The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his Nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of Hell for Saddam. As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity. But those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others, I expect you to rock their world. We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people, and the only flag that will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Don't treat them as refugees, for they are in their own country. I know men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. They live with the mark of Cain upon them. If someone surrenders to you, then remember they have that right in international law, and ensure that one day they go home to their family. The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please. If there are casualties of war, then remember, when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly, and mark their graves. You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest, for your deeds will follow you down history. Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood, and the birth of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis. You will be embarrassed by their hospitality, even though they have nothing... There may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow. Let's leave Iraq a better place for us having been there. Our business now, is north. + + + + + (Source.) Sarah Oliver reported from "Fort Blair Mayne on the Iraqi border" in The London Telegraph, Mar. 20: .... In an emotionally charged rallying address that reduced many of Britain's toughest infantry troops to tears, the CO told his men he would tolerate neither cowardice nor a killing spree but that they should show no mercy to forces who remained loyal to Saddam Hussein. He also declared that any Iraqi troops who declared a truce in the face of the advancing Allies would be embraced by the coalition and permitted to fight for regime change in their own nation.... Adam Nicolson penned a tribute to the colonel's words, in the same publication, Mar. 25: I didn't expect to be moved by anything an allied commander said to his troops on going into battle against the Iraqis. Nothing in the months and years of the build-up to this war has been remotely moving. The political arguments both for and against it have, thankfully, been cold enough. Would war be an effective thing to do? Are the costs, risks and benefits truly understood? Is American domestic policy driving a foreign adventure? Is this risk real? And does it have to be addressed now? Those questions, properly and prosaically, have confronted the current situation. Now, though, someone has stepped beyond that. The speech made last week by Lt Col Tim Collins to the 800 men of the 1st Bn Royal Irish Regiment, whom he leads in southern Iraq, spoke about this war in a way that addressed the pain, pity and purpose of war itself. And in that effortless universalising of one of the root human experiences, I found his speech extraordinarly moving, as if someone for the first time had managed to put into words the life-and-death realities of this moment.... Ben MacIntyre, too, has praised the speech, in the London Times, Mar. 22: .... The words of Colonel Collins will long survive this war, for in their raw clarity, they capture its essence, and a military sensibility that is peculiar to our time. In sharp contrast to the gusts of war rhetoric from politicians we have been hearing for the past month, Collins spoke of history, family, respect, dignity, and the individual moral choice between killing justly, and just killing. Saddam may merit the fires of Hell, but Collins’s men will also remember the ordinary man who got dressed this morning in tattered Iraqi uniform, with a culture older than ours.... And what, Faithful Reader, does the other side of the debate have to offer? When they can get past "Bush = Hitler", they usually wind up parroting Marxoid lingo like "hegemony" and "imperialism". Assuming, of course, that they can actually get beyond puke and poop. [Follow-up: A Colonel's Address.] Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 08:54:48 PM |
Dale Price Smacks Down Vatican Officials Over at Dyspeptic Mutterings today. .... If you can't understand the connection between the war in Iraq and the war on terror, I have precious little insight into how I can persuade you. I'm not talking about the connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, nor the connection between Iraq and terrorism in the U.S., though such evidence exists for those who have ears to hear. No, this connection is of a different sort. It is visceral. It is one that screams that men who put other men who oppose or offend them into industrial shredders are--like those who incinerate toddlers--terrorists, pure and simple. The sole difference between such terrorists and the Al Qaeda brand being that the shredders are terrorists fortunate enough to squat on resources sufficient to build palaces by the dozen and send official representatives to be courted by a hundred-plus nations around the globe. It is the similarities are far, far, far more important. The most obvious identity between the Baathist shredders and the bin Ladenist slashers is that neither group is fit to share the globe with civilized human beings, let alone possess or develop weapons that can butcher human beings by the thousands (or orders of magnitude worse). Imagine what evil Qusay or evil Uday could do with a nuke. If that possibility doesn't make you shudder--well, bluntly, you need a swift kick in the ass.... Bravo! Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 06:54:53 PM |
"The Uncertainty of War" A wise essay by Clifford Orwin in Friday's National Post: .... Only time uncovers truth, as the proverb runs, and it can take an awfully long time to do it. In fact it never really finishes doing it. The significance of any war depends primarily on how it turns out. Yet "how it turns out" is not an outcome but a process. A war therefore looks very different one, five, 10, 50, 100 years after the fact. Yes, this campaign represents an act of American self-assertion on a wide range of fronts, from maintaining global and regional balances of power to advancing the war against terror, conducting a humanitarian military intervention, attempting to remake a failed state, and transforming the other states in the region -- if not into democracies, then at least into more reliable allies in the aforesaid war against terror. But will this bold action inaugurate a new epoch? Is it "the first war of the 21st century," the harbinger of things to come? Well yes, it's bound to be, but the harbinger of what things? We simply can't know. It all depends on the costs and ripples of the enterprise, long term as well as short term, economic and political as well as human. It depends on whether America succeeds or fails, as well, of course, as on the reactions of others to those successes and failures. America will win the war, but no one can deny that it could lose the peace. To go to war is to roll the dice not least because the unintended consequences of victory can be as unpleasant as the anticipated ones of defeat or inaction. The American tendency to withdraw from the world always lurks besides its tendency to assert itself in it, and no one can say at this point which of these the outcome of this war will strengthen.... As a statesman in power you assess the risks and you make your decision, with which you will have to live forever. I entirely agree with Messrs. Bush and Blair that the risks of maintaining the status quo were greater than those of altering it. But precisely because they've resolved to alter it, we'll never know fully what risks they've averted. We'll only know what new ones they've incurred. Consider one of history's great what-if's: What if England and France had responded to Hitler's illegal remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 by deposing him, as they so easily could have done? The answer, of course, is that they would have averted many millions of deaths -- but we know that, to the world's great sorrow, only because they did nothing. Had they taken action historians today would debate the necessity of their doing so. No doubt many scholars would claim that Hitler had posed no real threat, while the consequences of ousting him had proved adverse in this, that, or the other respect. As no doubt there would have been such consequences.... (Thanks, Peter.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 03:44:29 PM |
"Eyes on the Prize: Iraq's Liberation Will be the Biggest Good Thing to Happen Since 9/11" Another beautiful essay, this one from Peggy Noonan at OpinionJournal today: This is what the American victory in Iraq is going to mean: It is going to mean, first, that something good happened. This sounds small but is huge. The West has been depressed since Sept. 11, 2001. It has been torn, riven. It has been a difficult time. The coming victory is going to be the biggest good thing that has happened in the world, the West and the United States since the twin towers fell. The deeper meaning there is that we are witnessing a triumph of activism over fatalism. Victory will remind the world that faith and effort trump ennui and despair. It will demonstrate to the civilized world that the good do not have to see themselves as at the inevitable mercy of barbarians. It will demonstrate that we are not part of a long and unstoppable slide, that we can move forward and win progress, that we don't have to cower in blue suits behind the Security Council desk. We can straighten up, join together and make things better. An American victory is going to remind the world, too, that while many have tended to see terror states and terror groups as talented, disciplined and competent, they are not, always. The reigning Iraqi claque has been revealed, or so it seems, to be what many of us hoped it was: a house of cards. It is not bad for the world to see it collapse. Another thing, and a crucially important one. The United States is showing to the world, to its friends and foes, that it will pay a high price to make the world better. We will put it all on the line. This country is, still, the place that will take responsibility when no one else will. In this our entire country is like the firemen of 9/11 who looked up, saw the burning towers and charged. In the past few days, weeks and months, America charged. It has a lot to be proud of. (Being America it will soon be beating itself up again, but it should take some time over the next few weeks to feel the healthy pride it's earned.) .... (Thanks, Ryan.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 01:57:52 PM |
"The Long Riders: How Do Our Soldiers Do It All?" A beatifully crafted paean to our soldiers in Iraq from Victor Davis Hanson at NRO today: .... How do such men and women do such things, against such material, cultural, military, and psychological odds? I don’t know. But in the last year all those who have bet against the Americans now riding into the desert — elite journalists, out-of-touch academics, and self-satisfied Europeans — have been consistently wrong in their shrill predictions that we were either incompetent or amoral or would fail. Why is this so? It is not merely that so many are so ignorant of history, or that most who are degreed and certified are glib and swarmy, but not educated. No, the better explanation is that they rarely work among, know, see or care about the type of Americans now barreling to Baghdad — who are still a different, and I think, a better sort of people. And now thousands of them ride on to Baghdad. (Thanks, Charles.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 01:43:45 PM |
Presidential Briefing of Congressional Leaders I hear that George W. Bush is going to be giving congressional leaders a briefing on the war sometime soon. It shouldn't take much time.......
Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 12:17:28 PM |
Rerum Novarum Replies to JunkYard Blog Shawn McElhinney has written a lengthy response to a blog of Bryan Preston last week, to which I have already referred. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 11:18:53 AM |
An Agent of a Fifth Column? And do we see a pattern emerging? Bill Cork has a round-up of information about Hasan Akbar a.k.a. Mark Fidel Kools. Gee. Hasan Akbar: Black American Muslim convert. John Allen Muhammed: Black American Muslim convert. Is a pattern emerging here? P.S. See also this. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 09:06:13 AM |
The Skinny from Ralph Peters He explains what's going on in the war effort so far in today's New York Post: In combat, the ideal leader is the man who remains calm and methodical under fire. Today's 24/7 broadcast news demands just the opposite: raised voices, an atmosphere of crisis and a rush to judgment. After declaring victory on Friday and Saturday, a number of media outlets all but announced our defeat yesterday, treating the routine events of warfare as if they were disasters. Nonsense. We're winning, the Iraqis are losing, and the American people have executive seats for what may prove to be the most successful military campaign in history. I do recognize that the majority of our journalists are doing their best to cover this war accurately and fairly. But, with a few admirable exceptions, even seasoned reporters lack the perspective needed to judge the war's progress. Few have read military history. Even fewer have served in the military. They simply don't understand what they are seeing. Every low-level firefight seems a great battle to them. Each pause in the advance is read as a worrisome delay. While they see friendly casualties up close, they rarely witness the devastation inflicted on our enemies. And when isolated groups of Iraqis do stand and fight, the journalists imply it means the Iraqi people are opposed to our intervention. Let's try to understand what's actually happening.... (Thanks, Alan.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 03/24/03 08:19:37 AM |
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