Thanks to Rerum Novarum

Hearty thanks to Shawn McElhinney for his kind notice today:

Contrary to appearances in recent days (or weeks) I do have very strong views on the war. The problem perhaps is that I am not about to delude anyone - be it the readers or myself - that I can cover this subject as thoroughly as would do it justice. Therefore, I will send you the reader to where I go for quick and well-detailed/thought out war coverage

Lane Core Jr's BLOG from the Core

If you read everything since April 4th or so you will be well caught up. (Too much good information/commntary to pinpoint any one particular post or two.) ....

BTW, I plan to blog much less next week, Holy Week.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 10:37:31 PM
Categorized as Other.

Depth & Breadth & Perspective

That's what you get in the writings of Victor Davis Hanson, as in this column today at NRO:

.... Indeed, it is hard not to acknowledge that war seems endemic to the human species. Such old-style collisions of thousands of soldiers were supposed to be part of an ancient age, not to be revisited in a post-Enlightenment, post-heroic age of learned men and women. But until the nature of man changes, war tragically will always be with us, and it is valuable to note the ironies of the present conflict, which are as old as the very idea of yet another 19th-century-style advance of invasion, liberation, and occupation.

Great marches often entail enormous risks because, as columns slam deeply into enemy country, supply lines thin and the enormous convoys that bring up food, water, and fuel from an increasingly distant rear sometimes in transit nearly devour the very supplies they carry. Napoleon, the Panzers of 1941, and even George S. Patton all were plagued by the very rapidity and extent of their own advances. They all eventually ran out of supplies, even as their armies gradually shrunk in order to garrison captured ground to the rear. Sherman escaped the paradox — but only by feeding his army from the countryside, convinced that for a landed society like the Confederacy it would be almost sacrilegious for plantation owners to scorch their own earth before the path of Union armies. Alexander the Great cached his supplies in advance, but even he often found himself nearly destitute, and eventually ruined his army not far away in the Gedrosian desert.

Thus it is nearly impossible to recall a similar advance that has traveled so far, so fast, with so few losses, without major shortages of fuel, ammunition, and food — and without being parasitic on the surrounding countryside. What happened the last three weeks is unprecedented in military history....

(Thanks, G. Thomas.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 02:58:34 PM
Categorized as War.

Castro and America's Liberals

Go figure. They despise George W. Bush. Bush = Hitler, dontchaknow. (Okay. They don't all despise him. I'm talking the left-wing bigmouths.) But the real murderous brutal tyrant, Fidel Castro, they love. On the one hand, it defies all reason: they adore the man who has ruled the despotic, repressive dictatorship closest (geographically) to the USA. Yet, it makes perfect sense: he is a communist; he is a left-wing tyrant; he is a leftist. Like they are. So he can do no wrong. He's one of them.

Here's an article by Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, Tuesday:

.... In its report on Cuba, Human Rights Watch came right to the point: "Over the last 40 years, Cuba has developed a highly effective machinery of repression." What that means is almost no civil liberties and a penal system as medieval and barbaric as any in the world. That system was accurately portrayed in the 2001 movie "Before Night Falls," which was based on the memoir of the Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas. He had served time in Castro's jails for being a homosexual. Before killing himself, Arenas left a note: "There is only one person I hold responsible: Fidel Castro."

About the time that movie was released, I talked with someone who had just visited Castro as part of a Hollywood contingent. I had to listen once again to how erudite the Cuban dictator is and how, of course, he has established a first-class health system. No doubt Castro has read his Gabriel Garcia Marquez and no doubt he cares about medical treatment. But he also runs a regime a shade worse than China's, according to Freedom House.

If my Hollywood friend was some sort of aberration, I would not have given him a second thought. But he is fairly typical of many American liberals. They seem to think that any regime targeted by the United States is, ipso facto, an innocent victim. Some of that sentiment once attached to the Soviet Union -- remember how the Cold War was the fault of an insensitive America? -- and more recently to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. From some of what was said from the left, you would think that the current war is really about oil or imperialism or revenge -- and not for a moment about the sort of regime Hussein runs.

It's not that the left has no capacity for outrage. It's just that it's so inconsistent. It can vehemently protest the mistreatment of America's poor or its minorities and yet overlook the mistreatment of Iraqis or, as is now happening, Cubans. Conservatives, too, can be just as inconsistent, but they are not my crowd nor my concern at the moment.

So I would like to hear some moral outrage about Castro....

And here, an article by Andrew Breitbart at OpinionJournal today:

.... Why is this thug still the darling of the media elite? Why is it so unwilling to protest his dictatorial moves? As Marxist ideologue Groucho would say, a child of five would understand this; send someone to fetch a child of five.

Perhaps Castro represents a wish-fulfillment fantasy. A romantic, intellectual revolutionary achieves iconic status, absolute power, great wealth and a 40-year-plus reign--quite an appealing vision to ambitious people in industries with high career mortality rates. But who knows? The Faithful aren't talking.

(Thanks, Kathryn.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 02:21:49 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Freedom's Bell & Iraq's Smoking Guns"

Margaret calls my attention to this article by Mansoor Ijaz at NRO yesterday:

.... Though there was never any doubt about the ultimate outcome of the war to liberate Iraq, it is worth recounting what has been achieved thus far. The naysayers, including some of America's most decorated military commanders and political leaders, should understand once and for all why this war had to be fought, and how ridding the world of the most dangerous threat mankind has possibly ever faced was necessary to insure he couldn't distribute Iraq's weapons of mass terror through networks of Islamist lunatics willing to martyr themselves....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 01:59:23 PM
Categorized as War.

"Free at Last"

A fine column by Diana West today in The Washington Times:

The most evocative news photo to come out of the liberation of Baghdad may be one of a young Iraqi man, dressed in a denim jacket, holding a home made poster celebrating the "Hero of the Peace" — George W. Bush — and kissing the president's faintly smiling photo.

Something about this picture seems more significant than even the shot of Marines taking their ease in a presidential palace parlor. And something about it is almost more meaningful than the picture of the giant, deposed statue of Saddam Hussein heading, much to the obvious delight of the Baghdad throng, for history's ash heap. Maybe it's the kiss itself, reminiscent of all the fairytale kisses that break evil spells; or maybe it's the expressive face of Iraqi gratitude toward an American president who has awakened a nation from a nightmare of brutality and repression.

Or maybe it's something else entirely, another face, one not present in the photograph, but easily imagined: the contrasting face of chagrin and disappointment on the anti-war left (best personified by the professorial radical at the forefront of anti-war protests everywhere) twitching at the prospect of having to face up to a popular, American-led coalition victory. After all that has been said about Mr. Bush and the war — not to mention shrieked, spat and gnashed — this won't be easy. In fact, even as the president's unwavering commitment to disarm Saddam Hussein has put liberty within reality's grasp in Iraq, it seems unlikely to put reality within academia's grasp in America....

(Thanks, John.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 08:37:26 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

VDH @ LAT

From Victor Davis Hanson in yesterday's Los Angeles Times:

.... There is a paradox in democratic warfare. We are ill at ease with arms, yet we wield them effectively. We need firebrands like Gens. Sherman, George S. Patton and Curtis LeMay -- and then we often tire of them when the smoke clears.

But there can be no denying war's purpose or utility. Three million Afghan women are in school today and a vast Al Qaeda camp is removed because of the bravery of the U.S. Special Forces and because of the skill of our pilots -- not because of the petitions of our well-meaning pacifists. Iraq will be liberated and its 26 million people given a chance of freedom because of the courage of American teenagers in Abrams tanks, not because of "concerned" professors who chanted "no blood for oil" between lattes.

Since Sept. 11, we have heard an array of invective aimed at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and others who reminded us of these ancient, tragic truths and who told us that our democratic nation would have to use arms to restore its security and eliminate terrorists and rogue societies -- and that it would do so in an overwhelmingly successful fashion.

The events of the last two years have utterly vindicated these democratic warriors, but do not expect their critics to concede that democracies sometimes must resort to war to remove evil. You see, it is just not in their nature.

(Thanks, Peter.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 07:38:39 AM
Categorized as War.

Cakewalk? Cakewalk. Cakewalk!

The other day, I asked What Happened to the War?

A couple of weeks ago, the chattering classes started their caterwauling about a failed plan leading to disaster in the War Against Saddam Hussein; they cited the alleged prediction that it would be a "cakewalk". As I understand it, the term had been employed by a former government official. Once. It wasn't an official prediction, so to speak. Yet, the bad-plan-leading-to-disaster analysis was mostly predicated upon that one word, cakewalk.

Now, one need not have much in the way of military history to know that, in the long course of the history of the human race, a cakewalk among wars might take six or nine months. And one wouldn't be venturing too far out on a limb to assume that an editor's or reporter's idea of a cakewalk among wars is not likely to be based on trivialities like... oh... education and experience and reading and understanding.

But the war is turning out to be a cakewalk by most people's standards for warfare. Not that there hasn't been a lot of fighting; not that there haven't been a lot of deaths, some of them unintended; not that it's over and done with yet; not that a lot of work, and misery, will remain. But the end is in sight, surely, when the "Minister of Information" could deny to their own faces that American troops are taking over Baghdad, on a stroll down his front street....

Yesterday, I found the original "cakewalk" reference, along with a follow-up editorial published yesterday. (Sorry, I forget whom to thank.) The author is Ken Adelman, who indeed "was assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from 1975 to 1977, and arms control director under President Ronald Reagan".

Here is the original article, in The Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002:

.... I agree that taking down Hussein would differ from taking down the Taliban. And no one favors "a casual march to war." This is serious business, to be treated seriously.

In fact, we took it seriously the last time such fear-mongering was heard from military analysts -- when we considered war against Iraq 11 years ago. Edward N. Luttwak cautioned on the eve of Desert Storm: "All those precision weapons and gadgets and gizmos and stealth fighters . . . are not going to make it possible to re-conquer Kuwait without many thousands of casualties." As it happened, our gizmos worked wonders. Luttwak's estimate of casualties was off by "many thousands," just as the current estimates are likely to be.

I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they've become much weaker; (3) we've become much stronger; and (4) now we're playing for keeps....

Here is the follow-up article, in the same newspaper, Apr. 10, 2003:

.... On Feb. 13, 2002, I wrote a sleeper-cell op-ed for this page. It lay dormant, being virtually ignored, until springing to life more than a year later. Its title, "Cakewalk in Iraq," contained that "c" word (also found in the piece), which was scantly speakable one week ago.

Granted, that word carries a connotation that the piece itself explicitly dismissed: "No one favors a 'casual march to war.' This is serious business, to be treated seriously," I wrote then. Having served in the Pentagon and knowing full well that any loss of life is grave, I intended nothing but the most serious treatment of a serious matter.

Adelman later admits that even with his "cakewalk" scenario, he never dreamed that Baghdad could be taken in the short time it was:

Predicting that the next war in Iraq would be a "cw" -- for my sake, now think "crushing win" -- my early 2002 article established the baseline: "It was a cakewalk last time," during the first Gulf War. Granted, I'm an incurable optimist, but even I could never have envisioned the coalition controlling the enemy capital within three weeks -- less than half the time, with less than half the U.S. casualties, of the first Gulf War. And with none of the above disasters happening.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 04/11/03 07:18:06 AM
Categorized as War.