Speedkill

Powell: U.S. Open to Eventually Restoring Ties with Iran

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell (news – web sites) signaled on Tuesday Washington was open to one day re-establishing diplomatic ties with Iran after the countries held their most sustained, high-level contact in years.

Powell, who spoke with his Iranian counterpart on Monday at an international conference dinner, said the United States could “in due course” hold direct talks and review relations if Tehran addressed concerns over its terrorism links and nuclear programs.

The remarks were sure to fuel speculation over the prospects for a thaw in relations as the administration of President Bush (news – web sites) debates whether to engage or confront a country it bracketed in “an axis of evil” with North Korea (news – web sites) and pre-war Iraq (news – web sites).

Says the guy who’s leaving in a couple months. Forgive me if I’m not convinced.

I still can’t get around this. With Iraq, I can avoid the idea of a justified war, because it completely fails to have any kind of honest justification. Afghanistan is another matter.

What are the justifications for that war? Al Qaeda was using it as a base and liberation of the Afghani people (which is really a tacked on justification in case anything goes wrong). In fact, can we count that humanitarian reason a justification? It’s extremely doubtful that entered the mind of anyone prosecuting the war. The idea was to remove al Qaeda and the Taliban regime harboring them and put in place a stable state isn’t a threat to us or a haven for terrorists. Democracy is a nice face for this, but it’s more or less irrelevent.

What about the first reason? It’s quite convincing. Removing al Qaeda from their central base of operations is strong step in curbing the threat of terrorism against the U.S. I tend to believe that if we hadn’t attacked Afghanistan we’d have been attacked again by now. It has arguably saved lives.

Now, to my problem (which is wholly unoriginal): civilian deaths. This is more or less the central argument of any pacifist: innocent people die in war. It seems that the main comeback to this is that the war is for a greater good. I find it sketchy and do not feel comfortable using it. Some 3,000 Afghanis (I think, last I read it hit 9/11 numbers) are estimated to have died in the war. I don’t believe we do this on purpose (unless it serves a tactical goal, then it gets closer to being acceptable for our leadership), but the casualties are inevitable, so in a way it is on purpose. It’s the moral quandary that, of all people, Bush has brought up (in reference to stem cells, where I don’t think it applies, but anyway): killing life to save life. I wandered through this topic a little bit earlier, regarding the Iraq war. What right do we have to sacrifice those people for a greater good? We get to make that decision? Who are we to decide the value that life has? We’re putting a price tag on someone’s life, without their consent. We kill this one person, it saves 4, 5, some number of other people, in essence. We decide this arbitrarily, theoretically, and without the consent of the innocents will die (yes, I realize this is impossible). I can’t think of a counter argument to this. The world may be better off, but we’re playing god, deciding what someone’s life is worth. How is this just?

My goodness, I’m disagreeing with Spinsanity! That’s pretty rare for me.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has been one of the Bush administration’s harshest critics, especially on economic issues. But in two recent columns on Iraq, the economist has stretched the facts and made arguments that presume to know things that, in reality, he can’t.

In his July 20 column, Krugman enagaged in a series of accusations that impugn the motives of President Bush and his advisors without presenting evidence to back them up. He accomplishes through a rhetorical sleight of hand that frames all his accusations as hypotheticals, playing off “The Manchurian Candidate,” a movie in which Communists send a brainwashed agent to take over the US government.

“This time the enemies would be Islamic fanatics, who install as their puppet president a demagogue who poses as the nation’s defender against terrorist evildoers,” the columnist writes. “The Arabian candidate wouldn’t openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.”

With this conceit in place, Krugman then impugns the motives of the Bush administration while still feigning to be talking about the hypothetical “Arabian candidate”:

…

Despite the setup, Krguman is clearly intending for readers to take these as serious accusations against the President. And by accusing Bush of outright indifference or sinister motives, he goes beyond any semblance of reasonable argument. Instead of arguing that the Bush administration’s planning for post-invasion Iraq was inadequate or incorrect, he claims it was non-existent. Similarly, he states that the President actively allowed the looting of Iraq, instead of failing to prevent it. And though he has no access to the evidence behind them, Krugman claims that terror warnings are “obviously timed to drown out unfavorable political news.”

The accusations may be true, but it’s also possible that Bush planned for post-war Iraq but did so inadequately; wanted to stop looting in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s government fell; and has simply issued terror warnings when warranted by intelligence. Krugman doesn’t know what’s going on in Bush’s head or what the counter-terrorism intelligence is. His accusations are simply irresponsible speculation regardless of the hypothetical conceit.

First, Fritz seems to think that Krugman’s rhetorical device is misleading on it’s face, which is kind of silly. Next, I think they misread the points of Krugman’s article. A working article link is here. I won’t quote any of it; you have to read the whole thing. Here’s what I see Krugman’s points as:

1. That Bush’s performance has been so bad that it parallels the policy of an Islamic Jihadist agent as our president.
2. (the larger overall point of the two) That the conservative sentiment that bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to win (or wants Kerry to) is absurd.

Fritz sees the articles as a vehicle to impugn Bush’s motives. I see it as a vehicle to show that his policies, regardless of their underlying motives, are not that far off from some kind of Islamist double agent, debunking the notion that bin Laden would choose Kerry over Bush. His actual motives are irrelevent to the point being made.

O’Reilly, a target I’ve been ignoring lately, so let’s have at this, which I found on the Corner.

Increasingly, the bully America is being portrayed as the devil. And the far left in this country is gleefully piling on. Guys like Michael Moore [are] running around the world telling everybody what a bad place America is. Moore and his enablers should be very proud of themselves

I hope to get to the rest of these in a couple days, but here’s a couple for now.

The state of Israel would cease to exist if not for American protection, and about 5.5 million Jews would be in grave danger.

That may be so, but you could also argue that our support for Israel has continued the repression of millions of Palestinians, and that Israel’s policies in those areas have only increased the violence, putting Israelis more at risk than they already are.

The USA and Britain removed the Iraqi dictator Hussein, who was responsible for the murders of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East. And we have also removed the terrorist Taliban government in Afghanistan.

All true, but of course, he fails to mention the support for Hussein, in the weapons tech and ignoring the Shiite uprising after the Gulf War. That would put a black mark there. Oh, and the fact that Iraqis detest the occupation isn’t good either.

American action in Central America, Grenada (search), and Haiti (search) has kept millions of people out of totalitarian regimes. Of course, all of this has cost every American taxpayer big. And thousands of American servicepeople have lost their lives protecting people overseas.

Of course, in keeping them out of totalitarian regimes, we supported brutal regimes who frequently used the services of death squads. Some 37,000 noncombatants were killed or “disappeared” in El Salvador alone.

Of course, you can list many blackmarks in our history as well. There’s not really a point to listing them here. The U.S. is not evil, obviously, but to say Canadians are getting false information, then provide dubious assertions of your own? I don’t know, fighting fire with fire, I guess.

You’ve no doubt seen this:

According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.” Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations–according to a recently departed intelligence official, “no timetable[s]” were discussed in 2002 or 2003–but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, “The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections.” (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)

A third source, an official who works under ISI’s director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington.” Says McCormack: “I’m aware of no such comment.” But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Now, of course, this isn’t true. See, the Pakistanis are pro-Bush. They are planting false allegations against the Bush administration in the hopes that Kerry will latch on to them, then when the time is right, BAM! they produce something proving them to be false, making Kerry look stupid. We’ll just wait patiently for that something.

In other news, the Iraqi insurgency is apparently huge:

The Iraq insurgency is far larger than the 5,000 guerrillas previously thought to be at its core, U.S. military officials say, and it’s being led by well-armed Iraqi Sunnis angry at being pushed from power alongside Saddam Hussein.

Although U.S. military analysts disagree over the exact size, dozens of regional cells, often led by tribal sheiks and inspired by Sunni Muslim imams, can call upon part-time fighters to boost forces to as high as 20,000 — an estimate reflected in the insurgency’s continued strength after U.S. forces killed as many as 4,000 in April alone.

We kill 4,000, they get bigger. I suppose that means we’re winning or something.

Oh yeah, there’s a genocide going on in Sudan. Maybe someone besides Kristof should talk about this? Though, Powell did go and talk to them at least, in between dance numbers.

U.S. Amends Report to Show Rise in Terror

WASHINGTON – Significant acts of terror worldwide reached a 21-year high in 2003, the State Department announced Tuesday as it corrected a mistaken report that had been cited to boost President Bush (news – web sites)’s war on terror.

Incidents of terrorism increased slightly during the year, and the number of people wounded rose dramatically, the department said.

…

In all, the department recorded 208 incidents of terror last year, compared with 205 in 2002.

There were 175 “significant events” in 2003, which Black said was the highest number since 1982.

…

The department also reported a decline in the number of people killed, to 625 last year from 725 during 2002. The department reported in its April report that 307 people had been killed last year.

…

In all, 3,646 people were wounded worldwide in terror attacks last year, the report said. This represented a sharp increase from the 2,013 wounded in 2002.

Well, at least there weren’t as many people killed. But really, more attacks, they must be getting desperate, right? Right?

Following up on upyernoz’s post, B4B doesn’t seem to be aware of a statement made by an al Qaeda faction not long ago, noted at Orcinus, among others:

The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader “more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom.” In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:

“Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization.”

“Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected.”

That they’re telling the truth here is questionable (as is the importance of the faction), but do they really care enough to lie about it? And we also have a passage from Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, pg. 383:

Like bin Laden, al-Zawahiri believed that it was time for jihadists to carry the war to “the distant enemy” because, once provoked, the Americans would probably reply with revenge attacks and “personally wage the battle against the Muslims,” which would make them ripe for a “clear-cut jihad against infidels.”

So, who would do a better job of creating a “clear-cut jihad against infidels?” The Right would have to answer ‘Bush’ seeing as Kerry is weakling who won’t do what’s necessary to defend our country. Right?

Now, look at those two pieces of evidence, both in favor of terrorists wanting Bush to win. Have we seen that become a meme on the Left? Do we see this on Left-wing blogs? Not to my knowledge. I certainly don’t think it’s true or relevent. Yet, we get statements like this from places like B4B:

We have to make sure the American people understand that this is the case. Al Qaeda, the Ba’ath Party, Islamic jihad, the PLO and every other terror group is wearing a Kerry 04 lapel pin.

Combine that with the banning of several of our members and B4B is certainly doing their part to drag our political discourse through the mud.

Again, comments taking issue should be posted at Blogs for Bush Rebutted.

Ted Rall is an asshole. I’d say that some of the Tillman stuff is overdone, but it doesn’t warrant the smear that Rall just laid out.

Matthew Yglesias has a good post at Tapped on the State Deptartment’s report on terrorism:

So are we winning the war on terror? Not really. For one thing, these statistics exclude most attacks on US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq on the grounds that blowing up soldiers isn’t really terrorism. There’s a certain logic to that, though it’s at odds with the conventional understanding of the attack on the USS Cole and the Beirut barracks bombing as well as deeply at odds with the administration’s account of what we’re doing in Iraq. If you add those in, terrorism was up in 2003 from it’s 2002 status.

I’d quote more, but it’d be basically the whole post. So go read.

Anyway, one final down, three to go. All of which are on Thursday, sadly.

Ghost Wars by Steve Coll, pg. 383:

Like bin Laden, al-Zawahiri believed that it was time for jihadists to carry the war to “the distant enemy” because, once provoked, the Americans would probably reply with revenge attacks and “personally wage the battle against the Muslims,” which would make them ripe for a “clear-cut jihad against infidels.”

President Bush, Oct 17th, 2001:

Our campaign will be difficult, and it’s going to take time. But I can promise you this: It will be waged with determination, and it will be waged until we win. (Applause.) We will do whatever it takes to protect our country, protect the good American families. And we will do whatever it takes to punish those who have attacked us. (Applause.)

We’ll do whatever it takes to defeat terror abroad, wherever it grows or wherever it hides.

Appeasement?

Tape, Probably bin Laden’s, Offers ‘Truce’ to Europe

European governments were quick to reject the idea of a truce offer, and many issued statements saying negotiations under terrorist threats were out of the question.

Mr. bin Laden, he said, leads “a murderous organization which seeks impossible objectives by the most violent of means.”

And from another article:

French President Jacques Chirac, one of the firmest opponents of the Iraq war, was equally blunt: “No dealings are possible with terrorists.”

Damn those Euro-weenies! ‘kin appeasers.