Some have asked about the problem of North Korea amongst all the talk of war in Iraq. Here are a couple of observations that my father-in-law, a recently retired Air Force colonel, made about North Korea. He was the vice commander at Osan Air Force Base in South Korea and spent a lot of time dealing with the defense problems North Korea poses.

The first thing to remember is that North Korea could not win a war against South Korea and America. They COULD inflict a large number of casualties in the opening hours of a conflict with a massive show of force across the DMZ. However, ultimately, they’d be put down, but not until after Seoul is left in ashes.

Also, it should be noted that North Korea is less likely to USE nuclear weapons that it is to SELL them to third parties (read terrorists). The North Koreans need food and other resources, and they aren’t above selling bombs for bread.

An interesting observation is that because of the famine and starvation in North Korea, the military is simply less hardy and healthy than other forces. The chances of a sustained ground campaign that would involve “boots on the ground” are pretty slim, as few soldiers would be able to endure the campaign.

Another thing to keep in mind is that any attack on South Korea would be likely to come during the winter since it would have to involve rolling tanks across the border, which is harder to do in the summer time when the rice patties are being farmed. In the winter, they feeze over, making it easier to roll tanks around the main routes into South Korea.

Of course, the most interesting angle is the role of the Chinese in all this. They are smart enough to realize that keeping North Korea on a short leash is to everyone’s benefit:

For three straight days in recent weeks, something remarkable happened to the oil pipeline running through northeast China to North Korea - the oil stopped flowing, according to diplomatic sources, temporarily cutting off a vital lifeline for North Korea.

The pipeline shutdown, officially ascribed to a technical problem, followed an unusually blunt message delivered by China to its longtime ally in a high-level meeting in Beijing last month, the sources said. Stop your provocations about the possible development of nuclear weapons, China warned its neighbor, or face Chinese support for economic sanctions against the regime.

Such tough tactics show an unexpected resolve in Beijing’s policy toward Pyongyang, and hint at the nervousness of Chinese leaders about North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and North Korea’s tensions with the United States.

As we continue to peel the layers away, the truth about Iraq will emerge, and the only people still standing on the anti-war side will those too blind or ignorant to see the truth:

I had not realized it but began to realize that all foreigners in Iraq are subject to 24 hour surveillance by government `minders` who arrange all interviews, visits and contact with ordinary Iraqis. Through some fluke either by my invitation as a religious person and or my family connection I was not subject to any government `minders` at any time throughout my stay in Iraq.

As far as I can tell I was the only person including the media, Human Shields and others in Iraq without a Government `minder` there to guard.

What emerged was something so awful that it is difficult even now to write about it. Discussing with the head of our tribe what I should do as I wanted to stay in Baghdad with our people during their time of trial I was told that I could most help the Assyrian cause by going out and telling the story to the outside world.

Simply put, those living in Iraq, the common, regular people are in a living nightmare. From the terror that would come across the faces of my family at a unknown visitor, telephone call, knock at the door I began to realize the horror they lived with every day.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Another great example of the anti-war movement’s true dark side. Nicholas De Genova, assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University told the audience at Low Library Wednesday night:

“If we really believe that this war is criminal … then we have to believe in the victory of the Iraqi people and the defeat of the U.S. war machine … The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military … I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.”

He’s referring, of course, to the Somali city where American soldiers were ambushed, with 18 killed, in 1993. Which is kind of sick considering this story:

U.S. military-intelligence officials believe the Iraqi command circulated copies of the movie Black Hawk Down before the war, as a manual for defeating the Americans. The film tells the story of the 18 U.S. Army Rangers who were killed by Somalis while attempting to rescue comrades from two helicopters downed in Mogadishu in 1993. The casualties prompted the U.S. to wind up its military operation in Somalia. The Iraqis may hope that similar scenes of Americans being bloodied in the streets of Baghdad would bring the same result.

Did Pentagon officials think that the war was going to be a “cakewalk”?

Rumsfeld had been asked about the cakewalk description several times, rejecting it but still defending the premises for such a judgment. While its source was not technically a Pentagon official, it was a longtime Rumsfeld friend and lieutenant: Kenneth Adelman, appointed by the secretary to the Defense Policy Board (an outside advisory panel). In demanding military action against Saddam Hussein, Adelman has promised repeatedly there would be no military difficulty.

Maybe so. I think it’s clear that the opinion was mixed. Certainly based on the experiences in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, those military operations were cakewalk. It was reasonable to conclude that the war in Iraq would be a quick and easy operation.

It still could be relatively quick and easy. We’re only a week into this thing, and while it won’t be over in 100 hours, it still may be over in 4-6 weeks. It also could last well into the summer and fall, but even the worst case scenario has things finished by Christmas. That’s not too bad. A cakewalk, no, but still not too shabby.

As far as troop numbers go, there’s this faulty logic that a more prolonged war means we didn’t have enough troops in the field and should be adding more. That’s not entirely true. We’re not fighting WWII or the Civil War here, where the strategy was to throw as many men onto the field as posible and eventually you wear down the enemy. In this war, we have air superiority. Iraq has yet to put ONE plane in the air. We have NAVAL dominance. We are in the Gulf with ships and carriers. We have plenty of troops in the theater, but war takes time. Baghdad will fall, and it will fall whether or not we add 100,000 more troops or not.

Imagine the scrutiny WWII would be under with today’s media. That took years and a huge number of troops. The media would have been having fits.

I meant to post this about a month ago when I mentioned it my brother Nate. It’s an interesting article by Dave Farber detailing the thinking behind Bush / Cheney foreign policy. Agree or not, it’s fascinating:

With the possible exception of Bill Gates, Dick Cheney is the smartest man I¹ve ever met. If you get into a dispute with him, he will take you on a devastatingly brief tour all the weak points in your argument. But he is a careful listener and not at all the ideologue he appears at this distance. I believe he is personally indifferent to greed. In the final analysis, this may simply be about oil, but I doubt that Dick sees it that way. I am relatively certain that he is acting in the service of principles to which he has devoted megawatts of a kind of thought that is unimpeded by sentiment or other emotional overhead.

Here is the problem I think Dick Cheney is trying to address at the moment: How does one assure global stability in a world where there is only one strong power? This is a question that his opposition, myself included, has not asked out loud. It’s not an easy question to answer, but neither is it a question to ignore.

One of the benefits of this war in Iraq is going to be the gradual democratization of the Middle East. First Iraq, then Iran:

Despite a history of enmity dating back to the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, Iran’s official media are unabashedly anti-American and almost backing President Saddam Hussein — alienating many local viewers in the process …

Many viewers are tuning into Western radio and television instead. “Why should I watch Iranian television when it is trying to brainwash me with its one-sided coverage?” said Ali, a 33-year-old engineer.

Although Iran is no friend of Saddam since the Iran-Iraq war, in which more than a million people died, the clerical establishment fears encirclement by countries friendly to the United States after the installation of a pro-U.S. government in Afghanistan, to the east.

I love it. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, then how about Palestine?

It seems like there’s been a serious letdown after the week of the war. I guess after the media goes full-tilt for the first 72 or 96 hours, there has to be some deflation. You can’t keep up that kind of momentum. The letdown seems to have come in the form of cranky reporters and stupid pundits decrying the lack of progress being made. Lack of progress? What are they watching.

From the mailbag, good friend and expert blackjack player Billy Kelly took a break from repo’ing trucks to write this:

Was the bulk of our “shock and awe” campaing all about saying we were about to have a “shock and awe” campaign? Just feels like the campaign was more about making the Iraqi’s think about what is coming so they would give up, instead of actually blowing the crap out of the place.

The whole “shock and awe” thing was Pentagon spin. What else were they going to say? “Yes, this will be a slow, steady war without much to see or talk about.” Of course not. The media latched onto it and elevated it to a level above which it should have been. Besides, it’s likely that Bush and Rumsfeld adjusted the original plan and have taken a different route.

If that is what happened, the problem with it is that the markets climbed like crazy when the coalition forces were all about “shock and awe” because it felt like the war would be over in days. Then, when they didn’t really live up to the “shock” of it all, the markets plummeted and the President had to back track. Now everytime we lose a guy Bush’s popularity is going to go down and the market is going to hiccup. When we hit Baghdad more people are going to hit the streets of New York than hit the streets of Syria because the Anti-War sentiment is going to climb like crazy. I didn’t want go into this war in the first place (reasons below), but now that we are in it, I think it is in Bush’s best interest to say, “Look, this bad boy is going to be tough, we are going to lose tens of thousands of troops and you have to prepare for that.” People, including your brother, think, “Oh, well we are going to lose like 1,000 guys in Baghdad and then the war will be over.”

First, anytime someone tries to attribute the stock market behavior to the mindset of the world as it pertains to current events, it’s pure speculation. I think the market will rise and fall during this war; sometimes on good news it will fall and on bad news it will rise.

I don’t think the President is backpeddling in the least bit. No one in the administration EVER claimed that this war would be anything like the Persian Gulf War in 1991. It was the media who made those predictions and are now realizing how foolish they were.

As far as public opinion goes, look at the polls. NBC/WSJ has Bush’s approval rating up since the start of the war (now at about 67%) with the sentinment about the war close to the same. Similar data from CNN/USAToday/Gallup and CBS/NYTimes.

As long as the American people see a war being fought that has clear objectives with an honest leader like Bush at the helm, they will support it, even if that means 10,000 casualties (which it won’t).

Reasons I don’t like this war:

(1) Because if we are about liberation, let’s be about liberation.

That’s it. Plain and simple. If our country is going to take that stand
that, “No where in the world will we allow people to be oppressed and
massacred”, then let’s saddle up and go. Republicans though were against
going into Bosnia, they were against going into Iraq under Clinton, they
were against going into Africa. Now, it is about liberation? I believe
it, but I can sure see how people would see it as being hypocritical. And,
without UN support, I can see why the world would be mad at us for it.

As far as Bosnia, Somalia, and Iraq under Clinton go, the reason mose Republicans were against it was because Clinton wasn’t genuine in his efforts. He used all of those places as a smoke screen to cover up his personal problems. It’s the whole wag the dog scenario. If Clinton had a serious interest in foreign policy he would have dealt with bin Laden, Hussein, N. Korea, and a host of other places during his 8 years in office. Instead, he used them as a front to deflect attention from his other affairs. All Clinton cared about was getting re-elected and staying popular. Bush doesn’t care. If he did, he would never have fought this war, because 9 months ago (even 3 months ago) it was wildly unpopular. Now, he has support.

The war is about liberation, but not liberation for the sake of liberation. The U.S. has never been, nor should it be the great emancipator of oppressed people around the world. For one reason, it would be impossible. For another, it’s not our responsibility. The reason we are going into Iraq is because the region has become increasingly unstable in the last few years, with 9/11 and the problems in Israel, the U.S. is at an increased risk if we remained idle. The best way to stabilize the region was to take our Hussein and liberate the country. We are doing that. We did it in Afghanistan, and we’ll do it here.

Should we have done it in Bosnia? No, because nothing in that region posed a threat to us. It should have been France, Germany, and Russia’s problem. They decided not to get involved, so we had to step up. Same thing with Somalia. It’s not a fight for us to fight, unless it poses a threat to us, and it may. When it does, then we fight.

This has been true throughout American history — WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam. Is it selfish and ethno-centric? Sure, but that’s how you formulate foreign policy. You want to make things as stable as possible for your interests in a region. The world would be a better place if everyone worked on that assumption. Let the Arabs police themselves. Let the EU take care of Europe. Let China, S. Korea, and Japan take care of N. Korea.

From the good people over at STRATEGYPAGE. This is excellent … Just a sampling:

3-The United States made a big mistake by not overthrowing Saddam in 1991. We had promised our Arab allies in 1990 that we would expel the Iraqis from Kuwait and would not invade Iraq. The Arabs said they could handle Saddam. They couldn’t, but don’t want to admit it. The U.S. waited twelve years, and then stopped waiting.

5-The United States is doing it for oil, as in seizing Iraq’s oil and assuring cheap oil for the United States. When Gulf nations nationalized American oil companies operating in their territory over the last half century, the U.S. did nothing. Assuming that after the U.S. liberates Iraq it is going to turn around and steal all the oil is pure conspiracy theory, with no basis in fact or history whatsoever.

6-The world opposes the U.S. invasion of Iraq, so the world must be right. The rest of the world is different. One difference is that the rest of the world is more risk averse. They would rather tolerate Saddam and the threat he represents than take risks to eliminate his murderous tyranny. Moreover, many people in the rest of the world consider it more important (and a lot safer) to feel right than to do right. That’s why everyone tolerates murderous situations in Congo, Sudan, Rwanda and North Korea. Saddam has killed over half a million Iraqis and driven 15 percent of the population into exile. The killing continues while the world preaches patience. Now the killers are getting killed, and soon the terror will be gone. Who is right?

Go read all ten …

I actually spent some time today thinking about how the U.S. is paying for its policy of backing the lesser of two evils during the 1970’s and 1980’s. First we backed the Taliban against the Soviets in Afghanistan and then we backed Iraq against Iran. We’ve paid for both moves. Hard to imagine Saddam as a philanthropist:

Saddam Hussein donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Detroit church and received a key to the city more than two decades ago, soon after he became president of Iraq.

The events contrast sharply with the attack Saddam’s regime is now facing from a U.S.-led coalition, reflecting his changed relationship with the United States since Washington helped Saddam covertly in his 1980-88 war with Iran.

Saddam’s bond with Detroit started in 1979, when the Rev. Jacob Yasso of Chaldean Sacred Heart congratulated Saddam on his presidency. In return, Yasso said, his church received $250,000.

Anyone who has read anything about Saddam Hussein knows what a tortured existence he’s lived. Reading
Brighter than the Baghdad Sun by Shyam Bhatia, Daniel McGrory, and Dan McGrory provided a lot of insight into Saddam’s youth and rise to power in Iraq.

This guy would make a great human shield. Scott Ritter was once a UN weapons inspector. Now he’s had all kinds of trouble and is an outspoken critic of the American policy towards Iraq. Basically, he’s an idiot looking for some attention. Here’s his take on the war:

“The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win,” he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here on Tuesday evening.

“We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable,” he said.

It’s been ONE week since we began this invasion. American and coalition forces are within 50 miles of Baghdad. We have thousands of POWs, and the Iraqi military has yet to put a single plane in the air. How can ANYONE make these kinds of pronouncements?

An amazing op-ed from Condi Rice in the Wall Street Journal:

Many times in the last century–and as recently as the last decade–the world failed to act in time to prevent a crisis or meet a threat. Some of the members of this current coalition had to live with the deadly and dreadful consequences of that failure for decades.

Some have only recently emerged from tyrannies imposed in no small part because of that failure. Months ago, the prime minister of Estonia told President Bush that he did not need an explanation of the need to confront Iraq. Because the great democracies failed to act in 1930s, his people lived in slavery for 50 years.

Add to Estonia the Czech Republic, Poland, and other former Soviet nations that understand the nature of dictators and regimes like Saddam Hussein’s.

File this one under how NOT to make friends and influence people:

Sixteen people protesting against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the U.S.-led war in Iraq lay down in a busy Manhattan intersection on Wednesday, halting traffic for blocks before being carried into police vans.

The protesters, chained together by handcuffs, doused themselves in mock blood and chanted the refrain, “Occupation is a Crime, Free Iraq and Palestine,” unfazed by the honking buses and jeering spectators crowded around the corner of Fifth Avenue and 47th Street.

Huh? So now we’re linking Iraq and Palestine together again, like they have ANYTHING to do with each other. The anti-Israel agenda continues to shine through.