Waging War

Since Vietnam, insurgencies and terrorists have learned a valuable lesson. They know they cannot compete directly with national powers, not just the major power like the US but also mid powers like Europe and Israel. The tactical battle they wage on the ground is not their true front line. For example, lets look at Iraq. (HT Wretchard)

Q How is the state of the insurgency different today than when you arrived to start your mission?

COL. BROWN: There's a significant difference from when we got here last October. Last October, we faced a foreign fighter that was very well-trained. I remember watching attacks out -- we had an attack that involved about 60 foreign fighters in a pretty complex ambush. By complex I mean three or four forms of engagement. They'll hit you with an IED, small arms, mortars -- a very complex attack. We saw that regularly in November and December. We also defeated -- in one of those fights, we killed 40 terrorists, and we did not lose anybody, and we defeated them every time they tried to do that against us. We really worked hard and aggressively at getting out. I mean, we conducted some 2,100 cordon and searches, and thousands of aggressive offensive operations -- 18 attacks a day against the insurgents back in that time period. I remember watching an attack and seeing the insurgents move against us, and I had to look and say, gee, are those our guys or their guys because they're moving very well around buildings. Now, that was November and December. What we saw is that that's faded away very quickly, as we captured and killed. And we killed some 550 enemy and captured over 3,000.

And as we got to February and March, we saw a completely different foreign fighter. We've captured Libyans. We've captured Saudi, Yemenis, Algerians. And many of these -- one Libyan that we captured about a month and a half ago -- he was clearly brainwashed. And he was told that, you know, what was going on here and brainwashed to come and be a -- what he thought was -- he was going to be a foreign fighter against this crusade against the Muslim religion. He got here. He saw that was not correct. They told he was going to be a suicide martyr. He said he didn't want to do that. When we happened to capture him, several other foreign fighters and the cell leader that was orchestrating them, he was very happy to talk to us about what he had seen and what they had done.

And very interesting that younger foreign fighter that we're seeing now -- very poorly trained. We would call them more like RPGs for hire. And we believe it's the -- we know that the leadership is severely disrupted. Again, from -- about 25 percent of the attacks were very complex prior to elections, as I described. Now we're down to five percent are complex. And we're at the lowest number of attacks by far over the last three months. And that is -- clearly the foreign network is disrupted. The leadership is severely disrupted. We captured Abu Talha, the number-two al Qaeda leader in the north of Iraq. And right after that we got Abu Bara, Madhi Musa (sp), Abu Zab (sp), the next six leaders that would step up and take over. Nobody's taken over now. It's not a very popular position because if they step up, they get captured or killed. And so they're really disrupted, totally different.

The other thing -- the other huge change is the population. And in a counterinsurgency, of course, the terrorists don't have to -- the people don't have to love them; they just have to remain neutral and not turn them in. And when we got here, the people were intimidated, and they were neutral. Now they are turning them in. We'd like to call it, you know, the terrorists swim in a sea of anonymity, and that sea has been taken away from them.

And for example, when we got here, they could fire mortars, and they did that. Three hundred mortar attacks a month was the average for the six months prior to us getting here. As we got the population more and more on the side of their government and their security forces, as they saw how the terrorists offered no hope for the future and their government did, they started turning these guys in. And in the beginning, a guy would fire a mortar; in a city of 2 million, it's pretty hard to track him down. Well, we've captured over 142 mortar systems, and now the average is six attacks a month in the entire province, from 300 to six.

And just a couple of weeks ago, when they did fire a mortar, the people told what they looked like, what their license plate was. In one case, they knew one of the individuals. The Iraqi army went out, tracked them right down, arrested them, and there you have it -- much different from that prior to elections, when, you know, they wouldn't say anything. It was -- we didn't see anything, and it was very hard to stop this.

So it just shows -- and again, I talked about the number of call- ins, the number of tips on the street, the cooperation of the people. The people have -- are fed up with the terrorist acts. I mean, I -- you know, I was -- witnessed one suicide VBIED that killed innocent women and children, and I've never seen evil like that. And the people -- Iraqi people saw that, and they know -- it's very clear to them that their government wants a brighter future for them, the Iraqi security forces want a brighter future, and the terrorists offer nothing but fear and intimidation and a very poor future.

The war as waged in Iraq, what we take to be the frontline, is being won. But this is not where our enemy wages their war to win. The true frontline is right in front of us whenever we turn on the TV to watch the news, or open our newspaper to read it. The enemy has relied on reports of their continued activities as sign of their power, regardless of whether they are being defeated on the field. They rely on the absence of good news reporting. And when necessary, they will fabricate the news and present it to us. Behold the rise of Pallywood as reported by Solomonia:

Last Thursday evening I attended a presentation given by Boston University Professor Richard Landes. The subject concerned the ways in which the Palestinian Arabs manipulate the foreign media - often with the foreign media's cooperation. The focus of the presentation was, of course, on the Muhammed al Durra hoax, and included large quantities of the unedited video from that day.

I saw Professor Landes give this presentation once before, and reported on it at length last September here: Truth is Essential - "The Mideast Conflict Through the Eyes of the Media" Report. Since that time, the al Durra hoax has begun to become accepted as such in an increasing number of places, and France 2 - the French media outlet primarily responsible for the slander - is very much on the defensive. Landes now has a much-improved and far more professional DVD set-up of his video, and the event was taped for use by CAMERA. I won't bother going into detail here again, you can read my previous piece, as well as CAMERA's extensive al Durra (or al Dura) backgrounder here for a timeline and explanation of the scandal. All the same issues of mainstream media refusing to be critical of Arab claims, holding Israel to a different standard and not being particularly interested in objective truth remain the same.

Due to the instability of an insurgent penetrated area, it is deem unsafe for the MSM to send in their reporters independently, or at all. The solution adopted appears to be either contract with the insurgents (whether the MSM realize this or not) for escort duty, or as subcontractor as translators and camera men, or even as independent contractors for the whole footage. This arrangement makes it possible for whole fabrication of the news as the insurgents would like to protray. And Belmont's Club analysis:

Some may argue that 'the Israelis and the US military are also cooking up stories', but that is beside the point: because the point is that nothing on packaged television can be inherently trusted, and Pallywood demonstrates that. If the 60 Minutes host can dish out fantasy -- as he unambiguously does in this case -- then who else can you trust? The answer in my view, is no one. An earlier post noted the existence of enemy "combined media-arms" teams. Col HR McMaster described their role in the enemy order of battle at Tal-afar in this way: "In each of their cells that they have within the city has a direct action cell of about 100 or so fighters. They have a kidnapping and murder cell; they have a propaganda cell, a mortar cell, a sniper cell -- a very high degree of organization here." Pallywood shows one of those "propaganda cells" at work in front of an Israeli checkpoint, and their product on 60 Minutes. How many products of propaganda cells may you have viewed lately?

Do not trust the mainstream media. But then what to believe? I suggest we all return to the analysis of intent and motives of the parties involved. Then make a preliminary judgment based on principles of ethics and history. Then consider whether what is being reported is consistent with this backdrop. Certainly there will be lapses of reason and straying from the desired path, all sides are human and all sides will err. But history is not built on news cycle.

United Nation Security Council Reform

Four nations are seeking permanent seats on the UN Security Council. I do not believe these will come with veto power currently held by the US, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. The four aspirants are Japan, India, Brazil, and Germany.
US unveils criteria for aspiring UNSC members

The state department came out with its vision of UNSC reforms yesterday, saying "potential members must be supremely well qualified, based on factors such as commitment to democracy and human rights, economic size, population, military capacity, financial contributions to the UN, and record on counter-terrorism and non-proliferation".

The four are forming a coalition to obtain this change as a block. I believe this is a mistake as the group of four is less likely to garner support as a group rather than as a loose coalition or as individuals. From the Daily Yomiuri:

a proposal submitted by the so-called Group of Four countries--Japan, Brazil, Germany and India--to increase both the number of permanent and nonpermanent council members was scrapped without being put to a vote.

The group failed to secure support from African nations, which represent a large voting bloc, while permanent council members China and the United States attempted to kill the G-4 plan by any means.

I do not see the US wanting either Germany or Brazil as permanent members. The US will likely support Japan and India's aspiration, Japan more so than India.

‘‘Expansion of the (Security) Council will make it more effective, better than less effective,’’ US Assistant Secretary of State Kristen Silverberg told reporters.

She said for the eligibility of any country, the US considered its commitment to the organization, reflected by financial contributions and contribution to peacekeeping operations.

‘‘We also look at factors like regional diversity, size of the country’s population and size of economy,’’ Silverberg said.

‘‘Japan clearly meets those criteria,’’ she said.

Silverberg, however, said there may be ‘‘other countries’’ meeting the criteria and the US would be ‘‘interested’’ in working with other member countries in this regard.

On Monday, Indian hopes of support for its Security Council bid had risen with the US State Department unveiling its vision of UNSC reforms saying, “factors such as commitment to democracy and human rights, economic size, population, military capacity, financial contributions to the UN and record on counter-terrorism and non-proliferation” would count as qualifications.

China will likely oppose Japan's ascent, and will be tepid to India. It is unclear at this time where the rest of the veto-empowered members lean.

Politics aside, it seems clear that Japan should be a member as the number two economy in the world. Japan's lack of global force presence is by choice, not by lack of ability. This too is being reviewed. Japan would balance that of China in East Asia. India still has a way to go, but India is ascendant. Germany once could have made a claim, but its economic clout has descended to near zero growth. And there are enough Europeans on the council already (France, UK, Russia).














Brazil does not belong; Brazil is stuck in time. Geography and population count are not enough for Brazil. If so, we might as well include Indonesia. At least Indonesia would add Muslim to the mix. Interesting that there are no Middle Eastern power anywhere near any global threshold for consideration.

My thoughts. Japan should be included as a veto capable member of the UNSC.
India should have permanent seat in an expanded UNSC but without veto power.
Germany should not. Brazil should get one when Indonesia, Nigeria, or South Africa get one.

Update: Germany's weekend election will likely result in continued political and economic quagmire.

the Gulf

The Gulf coast spans from Texas to Florida, with Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama tucked between. One would think that New Orleans, being smack in the middle of this arc, as well as at the mouth of the Mississippi delta would be the reigning jewel. But it is not is it?

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville defined a long set of traits that made Americans "different," and that remain today just as valid: Americans are restless, inventive, pragmatic, entrepreneurial, socially mobile, and so future-oriented they are ready and eager sometimes to let go of the past. None of these things defined what once was New Orleans; in fact, that poor destroyed city played them in reverse: It was socially static, fairly caste-ridden, non-entrepreneurial (read hostile to business), and wholly immersed in its past, to the point where its main industry is marketing ambience and nostalgia. "New Orleans's dominant industry lies not in creating its future but selling its past," wrote Joel Kotkin in the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com. "Tourism defines contemporary New Orleans's economy more than its still-large port, or its remaining industry, or its energy production. Although there is nothing wrong, per se, in being a tourist town, it is not an industry that attracts high-wage jobs; and tends to create a highly bifurcated social structure. This can be seen in New Orleans's perennially high rates of underemployment, crime and poverty." New Orleans, in short, was the place you went to take a vacation, not to prosper in life and start a family, much less start a business. This lack of opportunity, or the upward ladder of social mobility, is perhaps one reason so many evacuees felt they were breathing fresh air when they landed in Houston, and are deciding to make it their home.

Let us look now at Houston, for it is the second city in this cosmic drama, and one in which Tocqueville would feel right at home. Like so many cities in the Sunbelt, it is expanding, entrepreneurial, based on the future, and the place where the "much celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people" comes roaring to life. "In l920, New Orleans's population was nearly three times that of Houston," says Kotkin. "During the '90s, the Miami and Houston areas grew almost six times as fast as greater New Orleans, and flourished as major destinations for immigrants . . . These newcomers have helped transform Miami and Houston into primary centers for trade, investment and services, from finance and accounting to medical care for the entire Caribbean basin. They have started businesses, staffed factories, and become players in civic life."

It is now no surprise that Houston is the place where in days they built a new city in and around the Astrodome, that has taken in 25,000 refugees from New Orleans, and is planning to feed, house, employ, and relocate most of them. Houston is the place where the heads of all the religious groups in the city--Baptists and Catholics, Muslims and Jews--came together to raise $4.4 million to feed the evacuees for 30 days, and to supply 720 volunteers a day to prepare and serve meals. If New Orleans was where the Third World broke through, Houston was where the First World began beating it back, and asserting its primacy. Are we surprised that the star of this show has been Texas, home of Karl Rove and both Bushes, widely despised by the glitterati as sub-literate, biased, oppressive, and retrograde?

There is much to be said for political policies and corruption influencing, or rather limiting, economic growth. And by economic growth I also mean wealth for the people.
Also interesting are the political leadership of Florida and Texas in the 90s. Care to name names?

Rebuilding the 3rd Coast

Just listened to President's W Bush speech on Katrina. I have a few thoughts.
1. The economic redevelopment plan for Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi could transform and propel three of the nation's poorest states into mainstream standings. I don't think anyone who has not lived in any of these three states can appreciate the significance of this second "reconstruction."
2. Looks like the federal government will assume a greater planning and interventional role for all national disasters. I have mixed feelings about this. I suppose the federal government could require a mandatory emergency plan for all major cities, one that meets a minimum standard in accordance with federal requirements. Once approved and a copy stored centrally, then the local and state governments can take the lead role in determining when the feds are called.
3. A very ambitious speech overall, I think it will be well received by Americans. And as reported by ABC News.

America's Allies

In addition:
Do you feel that ______ is a close ally of the U.S., is friendly but not a close ally, is not friendly but not an enemy, or is unfriendly and is an enemy of the U.S.?"
Rank Close Ally/Friendly---Rank in: 2003/Rank in: 2004
1 Great Britain 74%/18%---1/1
2 Canada 48/37---2/2
3 Australia 44/36---3/3
4 Israel 41/31---4/4
5 Japan 30/37---6/5
6 Mexico 27/47---5/6
7 Italy 26/43---6/7
8 South Korea 25/31---9/8
9 Germany 24/46---14/10
10 Sweden 23/44---12/12
Others of note
11 Spain 22/43---8/9
+12 Netherlands 21/41---10/10
+12 Taiwan 21/38---12/12
14 India 20/42---21/17
15 Norway 18/41---11/14
16 France 17/38---18/17
17 Greece 16/44---16/15
18 Brazil 14/38---14/17
+19 Russia 11/45---18/20
+19 South Africa 11/42---18/15
+19 Chile 11/35---22/22
+22 Colombia 10/33---22/24
+22 Argentina 10/38---17/20
24 Pakistan 9/24---22/22
25 China 5/36---25/25

Personal notes:
1. France was never that high
2. India has risen fairly fast
3. Where is Poland?

Looting and Liberty

Sure I have known about looting, but I never really gave it much thought. When Baghdad was liberated, it entered my mind and was assigned a seat in the waiting room. When I came to re-evaluate it, it was in the context of whether Iraqis are ready and capable of democracy. After all, at the first opportunity for free actions, they chose looting as self-expression of liberty. I know that the looting was over played in the media, but that it did occur was clearly demonstrable.
Now looting has re-entered my waiting room due to Katrina. At first I did not recognize it, for we were in a different country with a different people. And without a doubt it needed to be stopped. Even here civilization is a thin veneer. Which then made me realize that if we live that close to chaos here in the States, yet still are able to function as a democratic society, then certainly the Iraqi can as well. Funny enough, this made me feel a bit more certain that democratization of the Middle East can be successful.

As an aside, when the Kobe earthquake left many people homeless, order and respect appear natural to the Japanese. No looting was reported.
Speaking of Japan, congratulations to Koizumi and his reform platform electoral endorsement!

Katrina: State and the Feds

As witness by the response to Katrina, there needs to be a review not of blame but how things can be done better the next time. The state alone cannot be expected to handle such crisis and there is where the federal government should enter the picture. The question is how the feds enter the equation, at the call of the local/state government who best know the terrain devastated, or should the feds intervene as it sees fit. This last option seems rather presumptuous (having the available resources does not mean having the knowledge necessary to act) and smacks of big government and big brother.

A nice companion piece of the capability of the feds by Daniel Hanninger:

The popular impression left the past week-- that the government was wholly unprepared for Katrina--is not true. Significant U.S. military assistance was on alert throughout the week prior to Katrina's landfall. Why those highly trained and drilled assets did not move into New Orleans sooner is a question that should now sit at the center of a debate over who should have the authority--the states or the federal government--to be the "first mover."

According to accounts provided by several sources involved with preparations for Katrina, the Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La. As the storm approached, senior Pentagon officials told staff to conduct an inventory of resources available should it grow into a severe hurricane. Their template for these plans was the assistance DoD provided Florida last year for its four hurricanes.

And a week earlier than this, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an executive order delegating hurricane decision authority to the head of the Northern Command, Adm. Timothy J. Keating. Four days later, as the tropical storm soon to be named Katrina gathered force, Adm. Keating acted on that order.

Before the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, Adm. Keating approved the use of the bases in Meridien, Miss., and Barksdale, La., to position emergency meals and some medical equipment; eventually the number of emergency-use bases grew to six. And before landfall, Adm. Keating sent military officers to Mississippi and Louisiana to set up traditional coordination with their counterparts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As well, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered the movement of ships into the Gulf.

By the Pentagon's account, it carried out these preparations without any formal Katrina-related request from FEMA or other authorities. The personnel behind the massive military effort now on display in Louisiana--airlift evacuation, medical, supply, and the National Guard--was on alert a week before the hurricane. According to Assistant Secretary McHale, "The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country."

So where were they on the two days of globally televised horror? Why, for instance, didn't DoD fly all this help close to New Orleans as soon as it saw Katrina coming? The answer, in military argot, is that you don't deploy troops beneath a bombing run; Katrina predictably would have wiped out any help put in her uncertain path, just as she rolled over the Big Easy's wholly unprotected "first responders."

Then there's American history, tradition and law. Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call.

And the limitation of the local/state government by Adrienne McPhail:

Once home to 500,000 people, with more than one-fourth living in poverty, New Orleans the city and Louisiana the state, failed their people long before the rains and winds of Hurricane Katrina tore through their state.

The murder rate in New Orleans is 10 times the national average. To test the response of the poor living in their numerous projects, last year researchers had police fire 700 blank rounds in a city neighborhood one afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.

The city’s school system went broke this past year, as they were unable to pay their teachers. Meanwhile, dozens of school employees are under indictment for corruption.

Fifty-five of the state’s 78worst schools are in New Orleans. Mayor of New Orleans Ray Nagin was once the general manager for Cox Communications in southeast Louisiana. Prior to holding this position he had no experience in public office.

While there will be plenty of blame to go around in this tragedy, there can be no denying that the first line of defense in such disasters is the mayor, then the governor, then the federal agencies. The US Army Corps of Engineers have been building levees along the Mississippi River since the late 1800s and it was no secret in New Orleans that they were not built to withstand anything stronger than a Category 3 storm.

Battle for the Border

There is currently a combined US and Iraqi military offensive to clear the border of western Iraq with Syria. Not surprisingly there is little to no mention of it in the mainstream media. I guess in order to maintain the illusion that Iraq is Vietnam, the US military cannot be portrayed as taking any initiative for offense. Better maintain the charade that US soldiers are just hapless victims. But you can say no thanks to the MSM and reading the Fourth Rail.

Katrina

A week has passed since Katrina hit the gulf coast. Plenty has already been written on it. Some are simply ridiculous in assigning blame to W Bush and or global warming. These are pathetic and their refutations are readily available elsewhere. In addition, the contest for political control of rescue effort between local/state politicians and the federal government in Louisiana is also pathetic. Take this story about medical relief. This situation must be resolved as a similar crisis can be a result not of a natural disaster but from possible terrorism attack. Finally, with all the attention going toward human rescue, lets also remember others needs rescue as well.
General contacts can be found here including for Lousianna SPCA.
Best wishes for the victims all.

Soldier's Morality

From today's WSJ on an important but rarely discussed topic.

War Wounds
Breaking a Taboo, Army Confronts Guilt After Combat
West Point Professor Pushes Military to Talk to Troops About Battlefield Killing
A 'Blood Curdling' Sound
By GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 17, 2005; Page A1

Not long ago Maj. Peter Kilner posted on an Army-sponsored Web site a short essay he had written on the morality of killing in combat.

The topic had long fascinated the West Point philosophy and ethics professor. Outside of the pacifist movement, though, no one had shown much interest in his work on the subject. This time the response from his fellow officers surprised him.

One officer emailed him about his experience after opening fire on a car fleeing a U.S. Army roadblock in Iraq. "What I'll never forget about that engagement was listening to the family react when they saw the inside of the car and their loved one without a chest," the officer wrote. "I know what I did was right. But I'll never lose the sound of that grief-stricken family." The sound was "blood curdling," he added in a later email to a reporter.

Slowly, Maj. Kilner's writings -- which encourage officers to talk to their troops about the morality of killing in combat and the guilt that often comes with taking another's life -- have begun gathering a wide audience.

Instructors at a military-police school in Missouri have passed them around to spur discussions on the morality of killing. At the Army's school for newly minted chaplains in South Carolina, Maj. Kilner's writings are being incorporated into a new course to be offered later this year on how to counsel soldiers on the morality of war. Recently a battalion of troops from the 101st Airborne Division gathered to discuss his theories on killing prior to deploying to Iraq later this fall.

"Until recently I have never seen anyone address a group about their feelings on killing," says Maj. Kilner. "It is just impolite conversation...like asking someone have you had an abortion?"

Four years of heavy combat, however, are slowly altering the way the Army talks about this long-taboo subject. It's a shift that Maj. Kilner, along with other Army officers and military psychiatrists, say is long overdue.

Drawing from a wide body of philosophy, Maj. Kilner argues that killing is morally acceptable when the enemy poses a threat to values worth fighting for, such as life or liberty, and there are no nonlethal options to avoid the threat. Shades of the same argument have been used for centuries by rulers and soldiers to justify killing on the battlefield.

Maj. Kilner is pushing America's current crop of Army officers to help their soldiers confront the morality of killing on a personal level. Failure to address these issues in training, Maj. Kilner argues, can sometimes disable soldiers in combat, and leave them more prone to psychological traumas after the battle is finished.

"My goal is to break the taboo. Let's start talking and see what develops," Maj. Kilner says.

The U.S. military's views on how to equip soldiers to kill grew out of work by Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall during World War II. Gen. Marshall determined that fewer than 25% of U.S. riflemen in combat fired their weapons.

"Fear of killing rather than fear of being killed was the most common cause of battle failure," he wrote. Critics have since raised questions about the reliability of Gen. Marshall's data, but the premise of the report -- that many soldiers balked at pulling the trigger -- has been widely accepted.

To overcome this resistance the Army began training soldiers on lifelike pop-up targets that more closely resembled what they would see in actual combat. Soldiers repeat the same drills until their reactions become second nature.

The training has worked. By Vietnam 90% of soldiers fired their weapons. Maj. Kilner, who went to Iraq as part of a team writing the official Army history of the war, recalls interviewing a soldier in Kirkuk who had been walking a patrol when a sniper's shot grazed his uniform.

"The soldier heard the round, turned and fired two shots into the enemy sniper's chest and kept walking just like he would have on the range. His company commander was so proud," says Maj. Kilner.

Such reflexive training is good because it keeps soldiers alive, Maj. Kilner says. But it can also cause problems. "When military training has effectively undermined soldiers' moral autonomy they morally deliberate their actions only after the fact," he wrote in a 2002 article in Military Review, a U.S. Army military journal.

Soldiers who can't justify their actions will be more likely to suffer crippling guilt, nightmares and post-traumatic stress, he suggested.

To help soldiers, commanders must let soldiers who are carrying out lawful orders know that feelings of guilt after combat are natural and not "a sign of moral culpability or mental weakness," he says.

Maj. Kilner, 39 years old, became interested in killing and combat stress at a time when the Army was giving it little thought. He hasn't seen combat himself, but he served as an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. Afterward, the Army sent him to Virginia Tech in the mid-1990s to get a graduate degree in philosophy. Looking for an area of study that would be relevant when he returned to teach at West Point, he decided to explore the moral justification for killing in combat.

He immersed himself in the philosophical literature of war. "After a few months I was a good pacifist wondering if I could continue my army career," he says. Searching for answers, he decided to conduct some research and took out a small advertisement in a U.S. Army professional journal. "If you have killed in combat and you feel justified please send me your comments. I'd like to talk with you," he wrote. The responses ran the gamut. One World War II veteran sent him page after page of Biblical verses. Some veterans sent long, detailed accounts of their own experiences with killing. He also got some "absolute hate mail," he says. A retired colonel and Vietnam veteran wrote him a two-page letter, which he still has, asking: "Who are you to say that what I did was wrong?" The passionate and fevered responses convinced him he was onto something.

He finished his graduate degree in 1998 and went to West Point a few months later. Shortly after 9/11 he penned an essay for Military Review, a U.S. Army professional journal, arguing that "soldiers deserve to understand who they can kill morally and why those actions are moral." In the essay he argued that U.S. soldiers should function as "the last line of defense for the rights of life and liberty" and are "morally obliged" to use lethal force to defend the innocent. U.S. troops must also be willing to assume additional risk to themselves and their subordinates to minimize damage to civilians.

"We must remember our calling: to risk ourselves to protect the innocent," he wrote. The essay drew little attention until the Iraq war. Soldiers began returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder rates comparable to Vietnam. In July 2004 , the New England Journal of Medicine reported that some 17% of returning Iraq veterans suffered from depression, severe anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Hard evidence linking guilt from killing to post-traumatic stress is limited. One 1999 study concluded that Vietnam veterans who had killed suffered more acute post-traumatic stress symptoms than those who hadn't. The study by Rachel MacNair, a psychologist and pacifist, relied on data from the Congressionally funded National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study from the mid-1980s.

Many soldiers, though, say the connection between killing and combat stress is real. Lt. Jonathan Silk, who led a platoon of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, says that his soldiers were particularly shaken by their first and only big daylight battle. "You could see what weapons did to people. You could see bodies destroyed and torn apart," he says.

During the fight his men were cheering. Just a few hours afterward , Lt. Silk says his gunner was shaking. Another soldier "wouldn't stop talking....There was an emotional crack in his voice," he says.

He asked his commanders to send a team of mental-health counselors to talk to his troops. "My gunner was very focused on the fact that he killed a large number of enemy," Lt. Silk says. In the session with the counselors they talked through why he had to open fire.

Eighteen months later the images from the fight still linger. "I have a constant-playing video of [the battle] in my head," Lt. Silk says. The fight convinced the 36-year-old officer that he needed to talk more with his troops about killing prior to combat. Typically soldiers playing the enemy in training exercises will pop back to life immediately after they are "shot." In the future Lt. Silk says it may be useful to have the dead remain on the ground. Soldiers at the end of the battle would have to explain why they killed and why it was justified.

He also says he will talk more with his troops after combat. "It is great to see the president telling us how just our cause is...But he is not doing the killing with us. Soldiers need to hear it from their immediate leaders, and those leaders need to understand why killing is right," he says today.

Haunted by the Incident

There is no established program or training for commanders who want to talk with their soldiers about killing and its aftermath, leaving soldiers and commanders to cobble together their own solutions. The captain who emailed Maj. Kilner about his reaction to the checkpoint shooting wrote he was so haunted by the incident when he got home that he couldn't fall asleep without downing a six pack of beer.

At the time of the shooting he was overseeing a checkpoint near Fallujah when a car approached and then abruptly tried to flee. He let loose a volley of 28 rounds, tearing off the passenger's chest. "The passenger I killed had a loaded AK-47 on his lap that I didn't see when I first shot," he writes in an email.

After he returned to the U.S. he saw a mental-health counselor, which helped. So did talking to friends. "But a part of it was going to confession and believing that I was placed in the situation by a higher power who knew I made the right decision. Whether I follow these beliefs out of comfort or convenience I guess I won't know the answer until the afterlife," he recently wrote in an email from Iraq, where he is in the midst of his second year-long deployment.

He asked not to be named because he hasn't told his family about his combat experiences. "I am not sure they accept the fact that I am a combat arms officer who doesn't see the sanitized side of war," he added.

A Family's Reaction

Other soldiers say they felt sadness only after they returned to the U.S. Sgt. Darrell Borst, a 22-year-old soldier who fought in Iraq with the 1st Armored Division, wasn't bothered by his combat experience until his aunt asked him at a homecoming party if he had killed anyone. When he answered yes the room fell silent. "My family's reaction really bothered me. There was sadness in their eyes. It still bothers me today," he says. "It is like they remember you in a certain way and now you are different."

Such reactions explain why some officers are trying to figure out how to prepare soldiers before they're ever put in a position to kill. Lt. Col. Eric Conrad, a commander from the 101st Airborne Division whose soldiers recently gathered to discuss Maj. Kilner's writings, worried how his 400-soldier battalion would react to the carnage they were likely to see. None of the soldiers in his unit are front-line combat troops. Instead the unit consists of military police, intelligence soldiers, engineers, truck-drivers and communications specialists.

In a conference room at the division's home in Ft. Campbell, Ky., Capt. Jerry Moon, one of Col. Conrad's unit commanders, passed out copies of Maj. Kilner's essays to all of the officers in the battalion. The next day he asked the group of officers why it was OK to kill.

"If you don't do it over there, they will come over here and do it to your family like the World Trade Center," said Lt. James Stewart. "It is our Constitution or their radical Islam." Other officers cited the brutality with which the insurgents have killed Iraqi and Western hostages, casting them as subhuman psychopaths.

As the officers talked Capt. Moon quietly pulled out a book entitled "Offerings at the Wall," a catalog of mementoes left at the Vietnam Veteran's memorial in Washington. He flipped to a page dominated by a worn photograph of a Vietnamese soldier and his young pigtailed daughter left at the memorial by a U.S. soldier. Then he read aloud the anonymous letter that accompanied it:

"Dear Sir , for 22 years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day we faced one another...Why you didn't take my life I'll never know. You stared at me so long, armed with your AK-47, and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life. So many times over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect. Each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt....Forgive me, Sir."

The room fell silent. Lt. Travis Thebeau, a 31-year-old intelligence officer spoke first. "We all go in with the idea that it is us or them. I don't think that will hold up for an 18- or 19-year-old kid. Maybe it holds up when he pulls the trigger. But it won't hold up 10 years down the road," he said.

Capt. Moon suggested that he and his fellow soldiers could find comfort in the knowledge that they "fight for a cause that is morally sound. We extend liberties to people," he said. But even Capt. Moon worried that was not enough. "What if public opinion swings against this war? If the American people don't see this as a just war does that making the killing harder?" he asked. The officers shrugged. Col. Conrad urged his officers to keep the discussion going with their soldiers.

"If you raise the subject here your soldiers are going to know they can come back to you later," he suggested.

Perhaps the importance of this topic is not the topic itself, but that the topic be discussed by those most intimate with it.

the fantastic four

No, not a movie review. From the Times UK:

A Sunday Times reporter spent two months as a recruit inside the Saviour Sect to reveal for the first time how the extremist group promotes hatred of “non-believers” and encourages its followers to commit acts of violence including suicide bombings.

The reporter witnessed one of the sect’s leading figures, Sheikh Omar Brooks, telling a young audience, including children, that it was the duty of Muslims to be terrorists and boasting, just days before the July 7 attacks, that he wanted to die as a suicide bomber.

After the attacks that claimed 52 lives, another key figure, Zachariah, justified them by saying that the victims were not “innocent” people because they did not abide by strict Islamic laws. In the immediate aftermath the sect’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said: “For the past 48 hours I’m very happy.” Two weeks later he referred to the bombers as the “fantastic four”.

. . .

Speaking to a group of teenagers and families, he declared it was imperative for Muslims to “instil terror into the hearts of the kuffar” and added: “I am a terrorist. As a Muslim of course I am a terrorist.”

Ofcourse Blair is correct that such people should be deported. It would be ridiculous to protect the rights of those who seek to destroy you. Read it all. (HT LGF)

Embers in the East and "no mas" from Africa

Two items of note of late.
Firstly the brewing tension between democratic Poland and authoritarian Belarus by Kamil Tchorek.

MINSK -- While western Europe focuses on terrorism in London, the terror state of Belarus, dominated by dictator Alexander Lukashenko, is treated in the tradition of Neville Chamberlain's "faraway country of which we know little."

This is a mistake. Aside from the close though little-known historical and cultural ties that the West has with Belarus -- Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a leading figure in the American Revolution and an early advocate of democracy and emancipation, was born and bred in these parts -- the Moscow-backed regime in Minsk poses a security risk to Europe.

Two years ago Saddam Hussein's closest aide, Abid Hamid Mahmud Tikriti, was captured carrying Belarus passports for himself and Saddam's notorious sons. After a recent state visit from Tehran, the flag of Iran has been left to decorate the main thoroughfare in Minsk. Mr. Lukashenko is arming himself with cutting-edge Sukoyev Su-30s.


Last week, in a chilling echo of the Balkan conflict, Belarus special forces stormed buildings used by the nearly 500,000 strong ethnic Polish community -- some of whom live in the village of Kosciuszko's birth. The woman who leads the Union of Poles, Andzelika Borys, yesterday was questioned by police; her deputy and four other Union activists are in prison. Minsk is trying to replace her with a quisling. In protest, Warsaw last week withdrew its ambassador from Minsk.

Poland, Belarus' western neighbor and the EU's largest new member, is taking a far tougher line with Mr. Lukashenko than much of Europe. Poland has provided refuge for Belarusian émigrés who support the democracy movement, and has allowed the Belarusian opposition to use Warsaw as a place to work with Western NGOs and diplomats, assemble and speak freely without fear of reprisal.

This policy is buoyed by American legislation. Washington's Belarus Democracy Act 2004 grants financial backing to promote human rights and democratic development in Belarus. But as evidenced by a letter from the Polish foreign ministry to European leaders last month, at the start of the crisis, Poland is having to work to get the EU to follow suit.

In private, some EU diplomats emphasize that it is important not to antagonize Russia, an ally of Belarus, and dismissively claim that Poland has an interest in raising its profile through conflict.

But Poland's Eastern policy is set to get tougher still. After elections next month, Poland's ruling ex-communists are likely to be replaced by the conservative opposition. When I recently interviewed a leading candidate for prime minister, Jan Rokita, he spoke of foreign policy in positively neoconservative terms. "This now ends the period of mild politics," he said of the crackdown on the Polish minority. "Ours will be a simple message: Lukashenko must go. I will do all I can to help the Belarus opposition and I will want the EU to engage rather than look the other way."

On Monday, Mr. Rokita's colleague and presidential candidate Donald Tusk crossed into Belarus to show the Polish community there that they aren't alone. Since then, Belarusian Poles who met with Mr. Tusk have been jailed, and one of the prisoners, Andrzej Pisalnik, who edits the Polish-language newspaper, has responded by going on hunger strike.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, an emerging opposition leader, Alexander Milinkevitch was in Poland. "This is not an ethnic minority problem," Mr. Milinkevitch told me. "This is a civil rights problem for all Belarusian people from whatever background. Lukashenko is destroying civic society and we've got to stop him."

Mr. Milinkevitch believes that there is a European tendency to consign the current crisis between Warsaw and Minsk to the realm of bilateral relations. To continue to believe this, he argues, would play into Mr. Lukashenko's hands. His immediate wish is for Europe to rally round Poland in support of democracy in Belarus.

The shared vision of Jan Rokita and Alexander Milinkevitch is rooted in history. From the sixteenth century, Belarus was united with Lithuania, Ukraine and Poland in a state known as the "Rzeczpospolita Polska," or Polish Commonwealth. Much like in the United Kingdom or the U.S., citizens could belong to any or several cultural groups but swear allegiance to one state.

In such traditions tolerance is born. It is no coincidence that European Jews, Armenians and Protestants thrived in the Rzeczpospolita when they were hounded elsewhere. The Rzeczpospolita also produced Europe's first written constitution, which was defended militarily by Kosciuszko, who was born in Belarus of Lithuanian stock, spoke Polish, and was awarded American citizenship.

It is also unsurprising that the Czarist and Soviet empires attempted to rub out this history. "Until perestroika I thought I was Russian, and a minor Russian at that," commented Mr. Milinkevitch. "All my life, like everyone in Belarus and Ukraine, I'd been told that Russian history was our history, and that we didn't have our own. Now that we have learnt about ourselves, we want change."

As a means of coercion, President Lukashenko is doing everything to russify the nation and make sure the historical links with Poland aren't restored. He has changed the national flag from the medieval red and white Belarusian banner it was in the 1990s to a near copy of the Soviet era symbol. He has closed Jewish, Polish and Belarusian schools and established Russian replacements. For years he has touted plans to reunify with Russia, though they've never gone far.

Europe can stand by and watch Belarus, a European country, plunge into a totalitarian abyss. Or it can recognize and support the immense effort of so many Belarusians to become a democracy.

Unfortunately, I am skeptical the EU will do much. I first noticed the item at Chrenkoff on July 30th.

Second item is regarding the futility of aide to corrupt government with the delusional hope that somehow their poor and destitute constituents would benefit. Interview at Spiegel

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!"

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

In addition, there are two must read items from Belmont Club.

Islamofascism: First they came for the Jews

By Victor David Hanson:

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

...

Read it all. Good parallel.

WoT: Complaints and Rebuttals

Nicely reviewed by victor Davis Hanson
The popular complaints:

Either we were unfairly tilting toward Israel, or had been unkind to Muslims. Perhaps, as Sen. Patty Murray intoned, we needed to match the good works of bin Laden to capture the hearts and minds of Muslim peoples.

The fable continues that the United States itself was united after the attack even during its preparations to retaliate in Afghanistan. But then George Bush took his eye off the ball. He let bin Laden escape, and worst of all, unilaterally and preemptively, went into secular Iraq — an unnecessary war for oil, hegemony, Israel, or Halliburton, something in Ted Kennedy's words "cooked up in Texas."

In any case, there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and thus terrorists only arrived in Iraq after we did.

That tale goes on. The Iraqi fiasco is now a hopeless quagmire. The terrorists are paying us back for it in places like London and Madrid.

Still worse, here at home we have lost many of our civil liberties to the Patriot Act and forsaken our values at Guantanamo Bay under the pretext of war. Nancy Pelosi could not understand the continued detentions in Guantanamo since the war in Afghanistan is in her eyes completely finished.

In this fable, we are not safer as a nation. George Bush's policies have increased the terror threat as we saw recently in the London bombing. We have now been at war longer than World War II. We still have no plan to defeat our enemies, and thus must set a timetable to withdraw from Iraq.

Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated militarily nor can democracy be "implanted by force." So it is time to return to seeing the terrorist killing as a criminal justice matter -- a tolerable nuisance addressed by writs and indictments, while we give more money to the Middle East and begin paying attention to the "root causes" of terror.

The factual responses:

Prior to 9/11, the United States had given an aggregate of over $50 billion to Egypt, and had allotted about the same amount of aid to Israel as to its frontline enemies. We had helped to save Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and received little if any thanks for bombing Christian Europeans to finish in a matter of weeks what all the crack-pot jihadists had not done by flocking to the Balkans in a decade.

Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, bin Laden declared war on America in 1998, citing the U.N. embargo of Iraq and troops in Saudi Arabia; when those were no longer issues, he did not cease, but continued his murdering. He harbored a deep-seated contempt for Western values, even though he was eaten within by uncontrolled envy and felt empowered by years of appeasement after a series of attacks on our embassies, bases, ships, and buildings, both here and abroad.

Iraqi intelligence was involved with the first World Trade Center bombing, and its operatives met on occasion with those who were involved in al Qaeda operations. Every terrorist from Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal to Abdul Yasin and Abu al-Zarqawi found Baghdad the most hospitable place in the Middle East, which explains why a plan to assassinate George Bush Sr. was hatched from such a miasma.

Neither bin Laden nor his lieutenants are poor, but like the Hamas suicide bombers, Mohammed Atta, or the murderer of Daniel Pearl they are usually middle class and educated -- and are more likely to hate the West, it seems, the more they wanted to be part of it. The profile of the London bombers, when known, will prove the same.

The poor in South America or Africa are not murdering civilians in North America or Europe. The jihadists are not bombing Chinese for either their godless secularism or suppression of Muslim minorities. Indeed, bin Laden harbored more hatred for an America that stopped the Balkan holocaust of Muslims than for Slobodan Milosevic who started it.

There was only unity in this country between September 11 and October 6, when a large minority of Americans felt our victim status gave us for a golden moment the high ground. We forget now the furor over hitting back in Afghanistan -- a quagmire in the words of New York Times columnists R. W. Apple and Maureen Dowd; a "terrorist campaign" against Muslims according to Representative Cynthia McKinney; "a silent genocide" in Noam Chomsky's ranting.

Two thirds of al Qaeda's command is now captured or dead; bases in Afghanistan are lost. Saddam's intelligence will not be lending expertise to anyone and the Baghdad government won't welcome in terrorist masterminds.

In fact, thousands of brave Iraqi Muslims are now in a shooting war with wahhabi jihadists who, despite their carnage, are dying in droves as they flock to the Iraq.

A constitution is in place in Iraq; reform is spreading to Lebanon, the Gulf, and Egypt; and autocracies in Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Pakistan are apprehensive over a strange new American democratic zeal. Petroleum was returned to control of the Iraqi people, and the price has skyrocketed to the chagrin of American corporations.

There has been no repeat of September 11 so far. Killing jihadists abroad while arresting their sympathizers here at home has made it hard to replicate another 9/11-like attack.

The Patriot Act was far less intrusive than what Abraham Lincoln (suspension of habeas corpus), Woodrow Wilson (cf. the Espionage and Sedition Acts), or Franklin Roosevelt (forced internment) resorted to during past wars. So far America has suffered in Iraq .006 percent of the combat dead it lost in World War II, while not facing a conventional enemy against which it might turn its traditional technological and logistical advantages.

Unlike Gulf War I and the decade-long Iraqi cold war of embargos, stand-off bombing, and no-fly-zones, the United States has a comprehensive strategy both in the war against terror and to end a decade and a half of Iraqi strife: Kill terrorists abroad, depose theocratic and autocratic regimes that have either warred with the United States or harbored terrorists, and promote democracy to take away grievances that can be manipulated and turned against us.

Do read it all.

Community vs Individuals

For a healthy and vibrant society to grow, individual rights must be safeguarded. This includes the right to anonymity. But an individual’s rights must not exceed that of the community good and cannot transcend the law.
With regard to the Plame flame games, a law may have been violated, and trust in the government is questioned. The reporters must yield their anonymous sources.

For a healthy and vibrant society to grow, individual rights must be safeguarded. This includes the right to property. The community cannot trample on this right in the name of common good. There can be no common good when individuals are not secure of their possession.
With regard to the recent Kelo ruling by the Supreme Court, it was a travesty. This ruling needs to be revised.

London

W in the Times

I've never thought Bush an eloquent speaker. In fact i frequently laugh during his speeches because it sounded funny for some reason. But then i read this interview published in the British Times (HT New Sisyphus).

THE TIMES: Mr President, last night you mentioned the link between Iraq and 9/11, but there's evidence of Iraq becoming a haven for jihadists, there's been a CIA report which says that Iraq is in danger of... are you at risk of creating kind of more of the problems that actually led directly to...?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Quite the contrary. Where you win the war on terror is go to the battlefield and you take them off. And that's what they've done. They've said, Look, let's go fight. This is the place. And that was my point. My point is that there is an ideology of hatred, an ideology that's got a vision of a world where the extremists dictate the lives, dictate to millions of Muslims. They do want to topple governments in the Middle East. They do want us to withdraw. They're interested in exporting violence. After all, look at what happened after September 11 (2001). One way for your readers to understand what their vision is is to think about what life was like under the Taleban in Afghanistan.

So we made a decision to protect ourselves and remove Saddam Hussein. The jihadists made a decision to come into Iraq to fight us. For a reason. They know that if we're successful in Iraq, like we were in Afghanistan, that it'll be a serious blow to their ideology. General (John) Abizaid (Commander of US forces in the Middle East) told me something very early in this campaign I thought was very interesting. Very capable man. He's a Arab-American who I find to be a man of great depth and understanding. When we win in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's a beginning of the end. Talking about the war on terror. If we don't win here, it's the beginning of the beginning. And that's how I view it.

We learnt first-hand the nature of the war on terror on September 11. And last time I went to Europe I said many in Europe viewed September 11 as a tragic moment, but a moment. I view September 11 as an attack as a result of a larger war that changed how I view the world and how many other Americans view the world. It was one of the moments in history that changed outlook. So as long as I'm sitting here in this Oval Office, I will never forget the lessons of September 11, and that is that we are in a global war against cold-blooded killers.

And you are seeing that now being played out in Iraq, and we're going to win in Iraq and we're going to win because, one, we're going to find (Osama bin Laden) and bring him to justice, and two, we're going to train Iraqis so they can do the fighting. Iraqis don't want foreign fighters in their country, stopping the progress toward freedom. And the notion that people want to be free was validated by the over eight million people who voted.

Frankly, I rejected the intellectual elitism of some around the world who say, "Well, maybe certain people can't be free". I don't believe that. Of course I was labelled a, you know, blatant idealist.

But I am. Because I do believe people want to be free, regardless of their religion or where they are from. I do believe women should be empowered in the Middle East. I don't believe we ought to accept forms of government that ultimately create a hopelessness that then can be translated into jihadist violence. And I believe strongly that the ultimate way you defeat an ideology is with a better ideology. And history has proven that. Anyway, you got me going. Starting to give the whole speech again.

What struck me, now that i think about it, is that he really does believe what he says. Unlike so many post-modernists (in the aftermath of WW2) who believes that human actions can only cause harm, thus it would be better to suffer (especially better if someone elses does the suffering). W still believes that human actions can do substantial good for humanity. In fact, i now wonder if the reason i find W speechs so goofy at times is because he is almost naive about his faith in humanity. Stark in a world so cynical and crass. Which makes me glad for smiling and laughing at his speech. It is a good thing. I like the W.

Independence Day

For those whose service have been rendered
Glad you have returned

within arms of wives and husbands
surrounded by family and friends
in restful eternal remembrances

For those still rendering service
We await your welcomed return

to safe harbors you have created
on the city you have made bright
in the brotherhood of men further forged

For those who await your time to serve
The opportunity awaits only your will

all will be received greater than given
as free individuals united in humanity
interdependent on Independent day.

Responsibility

and consequences being discussed at Neo-Neocon.

History Repeating

From Wikipedia:

Mamluks (also Mameluks, Mamelukes) (the Arabic word usually translates as "owned", singular: مملوك plural: مماليك) comprised slave soldiers used by the Muslim caliphs and the Ottoman Empire, and who on more than one occasion seized power for themselves.

The first Mamluks worked for Abbasid caliphs in 9th century Baghdad. The Abbasids recruited them from enslaved non-Muslim families captured in areas including modern Turkey, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Using non-Muslims as soldiers helped partially overcome Islamic prohibitions on Muslims fighting each other. The rulers also desired troops with no link to the established power structure. The local warriors were often more loyal to their tribal sheiks, their families or nobles other than the sultan or caliph. If some commander conspired against the ruler, it was often not possible to deal with him without causing unrest among the nobility. The slave-troops were strangers of the lowest possible status who could not conspire against the ruler and who could easily be punished if they caused trouble.

and from the latest news watching in the WSJ:

There are many ways to interpret the surprise victory of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad, who becomes the sixth president of the Islamic Republic. But one thing is certain: It marks a shift of power within the Khomeinist regime from the mullahs to the military. This is the first time that a mullah, in this case the most prominent of all political mullahs, has been defeated by a virtually unknown nonmullah in a high-profile election.

The defeat of the mullahs is illustrated by other facts as well. All the self-styled grand ayatollahs of Qom endorsed Mr. Rafsanjani, as did both rival wings of the Society of Combatant Clergy. This vast coalition, ranging from Mossadeqists to Tudeh Communists and so-called "religious nationalists" that had helped Khomeini to power in 1979, also campaigned for Mr. Rafsanjani.

Mr. Ahamadinejad exploited the antimullah feeling without any qualms. He spoke of "16 years of decline, despotism and theft." And no one needed reminding that in those 16 years Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been the "Supreme Guide" while two mullahs, Mr. Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, had held the presidency for eight years each.

Mr. Ahamadinejad's victory marks the ascendancy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the half-dozen paramilitary organizations related to it. A regime whose elite has been discredited as a result of years of misrule is forced to bring its military to the fore to meet the political challenges ahead.

What is happening in Iran today has numerous precedents in Islamic history. Many regimes based on religion ended up making a Faustian pact with their military for protection against the people. And in every case the military, once in power, eliminated its masters. Islamic history knows such military rulers as the "mamelukes" -- literally, "the owned ones," individuals who were supposed to serve the caliph but ended up chopping off his head and seizing power for themselves.

There is no doubt that Mr. Ahamadinejad, and beyond him the military elite of the regime, owe their victory to Ayatollah Khamenei, who broke with his fellow mullahs to help the military win the struggle within the regime. Theoretically, Ayatollah Khamenei now controls all the levers of power in the establishment. In reality, however, he is a lone mullah who will be increasingly opposed by the clergy for different reasons. At the same time, because he lacks a popular base of his own, he will in time become a hostage to the new "mamelukes" symbolized by Mr. Ahamadinejad.

The victory of the new mamelukes has not come out of the blue. They have been capturing positions of power at the expense of the mullahs for many years. Right now, 22 of the 30 governors of provinces are new mamelukes. In the Islamic Consultative Majlis, or parliament, the new mamelukes outnumber the mullahs 130 to 63, out of a total of 290 seats. The new mamelukes are also strongly represented in the Islamic Republic's diplomatic service, controlling more than half of Iran's embassies in key capitals such as Kabul, Baghdad and Beijing.

History Lessons

One is a failure to learn,

When Ronald Reagan delivered his 1989 farewell address to the nation, he noted there was "a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells," and he would make no exception. He told his audience that the "one that's been on my mind for some time" was that the country was failing to adequately teach our children the American story and what it represents in the history of the world. "We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important," he said. "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit."

The other is a failure to remember.

A partial replica of the Berlin Wall at the former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing must be torn down, along with 1,065 crosses commemorating people who were killed trying to escape former communist East Germany, a court ruled Friday.The head of a private group that put up the memorial at the former east-west crossing in downtown Berlin said she would appeal.

Spain's Reign

This is the most sad thing i've read in a long while from Spain.

Bono: Eliminate "war" from Spanish constitution
Defense minister Jose Bono yesterday backed the possibility of removing the three references to the word "war" from the Spanish constitution before Parliament's defense committee. The first reference, in article 15, says, "The death penalty is abolished except under military law during wartime." Bono said that this question is already dealt with in the military criminal code. The second reference is in article 63.3; it reads, "The King has power, under previous authorization from the Cortes (both houses of Parliament), to declare war and make peace." Bono's reply was that since Spain belongs to the United Nations, the King cannot declare war and the Cortes cannot authorize it. According to the UN, "resorting to war to resolve conflicts is prohibited." Bono emphasized that "this has more to do with literature than legality." He also mentioned the UN and the San Francisco charter when he referred to article 169, which states, "Constitutional reform cannot be initiated during wartime." Bono supported these modifications by declaring, "What is not useful and besides is against international law, it might be a good idea for us to modify. This is only my opinion, and it might be overruled." This particular proposal is not part of those suggested in the plan to modify the constitution sent by the Council of State to the administration.

HT to Barcepundit

Media Reports ... take 2

... but does not listen to its own words. From VDH

In a single day last week, in various media — the liberal International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post — the following information appeared.

A Syrian smuggler of jihadists to Iraq, one Abu Ibrahim, was interviewed. He made the following revealing statements:

(1) that the goal of the jihadists is the restoration of the ancient caliphate ("The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world")

(2) that September 11 was "a great day"

(3) that two weeks after the attack, a celebration was held in his rural Syrian community celebrating the mass murder, and thereafter continued twice-weekly

(4) that Syrian officials attended such festivities, funded by Saudi money with public slogans that read, "The People ...Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All"

(5) that despite denials, Syrian police aided the jihadists in their efforts to hound out Western influence: They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia, or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs."

(6) that the Syrian government does not hesitate to work with Islamists ("beards and epaulets were in one trench together")

(7) that collateral damage was not always so collateral: "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters."

(8) That once Syria felt U.S. pressure, there was some temporary cosmetic change of heart: "The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadists' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard."

(9) that supporters in Saudi Arabia always played a key role: "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis. The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals. There was celebration amongst his brothers there!"

Media Reports ...

That the media in the US is biased is evidence by as much as what is reported as what is not reported.
Selection bias as noted by Daniel Henninger

Precisely what conclusion is one expected to arrive at from any of this? If George Bush had never invaded Iraq, none of this would be happening? Or, if we removed our troops from Iraq, these bombings would stop? Or perhaps they will still be bombed, but we in the U.S. will not likely experience anything very bad?
If we removed our troops from Iraq, the terror would not stop. But the U.S. news of innocent civilians blown up in Iraq would move to the unread round-up columns. Then, in a way, the phenomenon of terror would indeed shrink--to this:

December 2004: A powerful explosion ripped through a market packed with Christmas shoppers in the southern Philippines yesterday, killing at least 15 people and injuring 58.

According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (established after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing), there have been about 8,300 terrorist bombings in the world the past 10 years. They have killed more than 10,000 human beings and injured--often appallingly, one assumes--some 43,000 people. (There are separate tallies for arson, kidnapping, hijacking, etc. September 11 is listed as an "unconventional attack.")

May 3, 2002: A bomb attack on a church in western Colombia has left at least 60 civilians dead and about 100 others injured. Officials are blaming FARC guerrillas for the bombing.

Before September 11 happened in the United States, and ever since, factions with grievances have been blowing up unprotected people going about the act of daily life--shopping, praying, taking their children to school, laughing with friends, burying the dead--all over the world. Places where the sudden cloudbursts of blood don't always merit our front pages include Spain, Colombia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Russia, Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere.

July 7, 2004: At least five people were killed and 11 wounded when a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew herself up inside a police station in the Sri Lankan capital.

Living in the U.S., one could make the cold-blooded calculation that 21,000 dead and 55,000 injured from all terrorist acts over 10 years is a drop in the bucket and that the war in Iraq has mainly increased the rate of death. This may be true. But if as many suicide bombs went off in Manhattan as have gone off in Israel, Manhattanites would have demanded martial law and the summary execution of suspects on street corners. Their greatest goal in life would not be, as it is now, the closing of interrogation rooms on Guantanamo but instead the erasure of terrorists hiding across the East River.

Feb. 9, 2005: A car bomb exploded near Madrid's main convention center, injuring 43 people, hours before Spanish and Mexican leaders were due there and after a warning from the Basque separatist group ETA. It was the worst blast in the Spanish capital since last year's March 11 al Qaeda train bombings.

No matter how fat the diet of stories about Iraq suicide bombings or Gitmo shoved down our throats and no matter how many distraught opinion-poll results come back up, no serious person can allow post-9/11 American security to be reduced to that.

The death march of homicidal zombies in Iraq is trying to push us toward accepting the idea that acts of unrestrained violence against other human beings is now a normal part of politics. It is not normal. Any civilized person should want to resist the normalization of civilian killing as a political act--whether in Iraq, Spain, Indonesia or Kashmir.

That terrorism in Iraq makes the headline while terrorism elsewhere makes the footnotes. The agenda is that terrorism in Iraq is a direct consequence of our invasion and continued presence, and the implied solution is for withdrawal. Both are foolish and dangerous.
But elsewhere media reports can also do some good as evidenced by this report in the WSJ

For those in the West who watched the horrors of the Balkan wars in real time on TV, it might be hard to believe that it took 10 years to convince the Serbian public of the atrocities committed by some of their countrymen.

But until just a couple of weeks ago, many Serbs, who during the war had been fed a barrage of lies and propaganda, were in a state of denial. War criminals were often seen as patriots and defenders of Serbian civilians rather than as the killers of Bosnian or Croat civilians they were. As recently as May, an opinion poll showed that more than half of the population didn't believe that, in 1995, Serb forces committed in Srebrenica the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II, killing 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

But on June 1, the revisionist myth of a heroic and just war received a deadly blow. On this day, Serbian TV channels repeatedly broadcast a video of Serbian forces from the special "Scorpions" unit who answered directly to Belgrade murdering six Bosnian Muslim youths near Srebrenica. The footage was aired unedited, showing how the killers first taunted their victims, staging mock executions only to shoot them later anyway one by one.

The video has changed the terms of debate about the war in Serbia. Particularly heartening was the reaction of the political leaders. President Boris Tadic appeared on national television, visibly shaken, saying Serbia was stunned by "a monstrous crime." He told his countrymen that he was ready "to go to Srebrenica to pay tribute." Even the leader of the ultra-nationalist Serb Radical Party called for stiff punishment of those who "committed horrible crimes and killed in cold blood."

The speaker of the Serbian parliament, Predrag Markovic, announced that he would push for a "resolution on Srebrenica" to condemn the massacre ahead of its 10th anniversary July 11. He had previously rejected such calls. And last weekend an unprecedented conference took place in Belgrade, titled "Srebrenica: Beyond Reasonable Doubt," where relatives of the victims addressed the conference delegates.

I think of the pictures of abuses from Abu Graeb in comparison and the pathetic status of our media makes me sad.

Iran Vote ... or vote

I've never been a fan of election boycott because you relegate your faction into silence and invisibility. Most election process do not care whether enough have voted, just that there is a majority of the votes cast. Besides, when you participate, you are seen and heard, and even in defeat, presents papable opposition.
From EurasiaNet

Many observers in Tehran believe the odds-on favorite to win the election is Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose support, according to recent polling data, stands at just under 30 percent. His closest rival among the seven candidates still in the running is now Moin, a former education minister under outgoing president Mohammad Khatami. Moin’s support has experienced a dramatic rise over the past week, leaping from 10 percent to roughly 16 percent, according to some polls. At the same time, the candidacies of hardliners - including Tehran Mayor Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the former head of national police force – have remained steady.

Political analysts in Tehran say a run-off between the two top vote-getters on June 17 is likely. Iranian election law states that a presidential candidate must receive at least 50 percent of the vote in the first round in order to avoid a run-off. It had long been assumed by most Iranian political observers that Rafsanjani would face a conservative candidate in the second round, provided a run-off was necessary. However, several factors altered conventional wisdom as the campaign drew to a close. First, infighting within the conservative camp prevented the nomination of a single hardliner candidate. Thus, the conservative vote stands to be diluted among three candidates who are all considered the standard-bearers of the old order. Meanwhile, Moin has waged a campaign that has energized reform-minded citizens and has attracted support from ethnic and religious minorities, including Kurds, Arabs and Sunni Muslims.

Some analysts say a Rafsanjani-Qalibaf run-off remains a strong possibility. But Moin’s name is increasingly mentioned as a second-round contender against Rafsanjani. Though the front-runner at present, Rafsanjani might face a stronger challenge from Moin in a possible run-off, some experts believe. In recent elections, including municipal polls in 2003 and the parliamentary vote last year, reform-minded voters stayed away from the polls in large numbers. Voter apathy was generated by the inability of Khatami’s reformist administration to implement its agenda, experts say. Heavy reformist turn-out in the presidential vote could potentially enable Moin to pull off an upset. The reformist daily Etemad characterized the election as "one of the most unpredictable in the history of the Islamic republic."

According to some estimates roughly 30 percent of Iran’s 46.7 million eligible voters are undecided. A large majority of the undecided voters are believed to be reform sympathizers, many of whom would be inclined to cast ballots for Moin. The essential question is: how many undecideds will actually turn out to vote?

According to various media reports, conservative groups, alarmed by the flat support for the hardliner candidates, are taking steps to keep the reform vote low on election day. For example, the country’s conservative-leaning security establishment has stopped jamming opposition broadcasts into Iran from the United States and Europe, according to the web site of Moshen Rezai, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a current contender for president. Such foreign broadcasts have encouraged Iranians to boycott the election.

In addition, several published reports have also claimed that members of the hardliner-controlled Basij militia will be posted at selected polling stations across the country, a move that could possibly intimidate many voters. Meanwhile, the conservative-controlled Guardian Council, an unelected religious oversight body that is charged with vetting political candidates, has issued a statement asserting its right to disqualify a contender up to the moment official results are released.

Whatever the outcome, the presidential campaign appears to have changed the course of politics in Iran. Most candidates downplayed the country’s Islamic identity. Instead, the candidates, Rafsanjani and Moin in particular, focused their respective campaigns on addressing the socio-economic and cultural needs of voters. Instead of fighting for the endorsements of clergy members, all presidential candidates also seemed preoccupied with securing the support of Iranian young people. Roughly 70 percent of Iran’s population is under 30 years of age.

Moin and Rafsanjani were the only two who appeared to make inroads among young voters, Tehran experts said. Rafsanjani, for example, scored points for sponsoring a week-long music festival in Tehran, and for hiring young secular-looking women with scant veils as campaign workers.

Iran Vote ... or not.

There is more to a democracy than a vote.

'May God Be Our Guide!'
By AYATOLLAH MEHDI and HAERI KHORSHIDI
June 16, 2005

Muslims must understand that participation in Friday's presidential election in Iran is haram, that is, it is unclean according to religious principles and reasonable logic. Therefore it is forbidden to participate.

Whoever would participate in this process would be a full partner in the destruction of Iran by the current regime, a partner in its criminal behavior in the past, in the present and in the future. I am speaking not only on behalf of myself, but on behalf of the thousands of Muslim clerics who are imprisoned for defying the assertion that the state and religion should be under the control of a single Supreme Leader.

What I am saying is exactly what many other ayatollahs and grand ayatollahs are saying.

May God be our guide!

* * *

The coming election is nothing but a show for cheating the people of Iran, and for making propaganda with other Muslim nations. I am asking the people not to go out of their houses on election day, and to boycott the polls. In the U.S., any candidate is given the chance to go before the people and tell them what he proposes to do in office. But in Iran, such debate does not seem to be necessary, since, long before the election, the government already knows who would win.

The Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Khamanei and the Guardian Council -- composed of 12 of his cronies -- have already rejected most candidates that they don't consider acceptable, and have designated their favorites. If by chance someone not designated a favorite should win, the Guardians can set aside the election of the unfortunate winner.

There are three reasons why this process is contrary to Islamic principles.

The first is this: If the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council declare that the people are not capable of deciding which candidates are good for the country, why should the people be allowed to vote at all? If they are not capable of distinguishing between good and bad, they should not be allowed to put a ballot in the box. Voting itself is not important to the regime, since the result is predetermined, but the presence of large numbers of people in the voting places is important to convince the world that democracy is functioning.

The second reason not to go to the polls is that the regime has no respect for the opinion of the people. What the regime is saying is that the more people in line to vote, the more successful the election will appear to be. They think that the public will interpret a big turnout as support for the regime, without reflecting on the years of intimidation and terror.

Third, the people are being treated like children. In the law of Islam, the actions of a minor, that is, a person under 18, are not recognized as valid until they are authorized by a father or guardian. But persons of voting age are treated the same way. When the public votes, it is true that they cast a ballot; but the results are of no significance unless they are validated by the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council after the election. If they see that someone has been elected who was not approved beforehand then their votes are not counted. Therefore, it is the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council that elects the members of the legislature, not the people.

If people go out and vote, they are ratifying a criminal process carried out by a so-called Islamic Republic, which does not follow the principles of Islam at all. There is nothing in the Quran that allows the clergy to be involved in government. By voting, the people would legitimize the slaughter of our youth, the destruction of our culture and economy, the murders of innocent citizens, and the tragedy of Iran today. This kind of election is a betrayal of Islam -- for Islam has to do with truth and honesty, not deceit. If the people accept the process which this regime has enacted, it is the same as saying that they are going along with a system that smells of the devil rather than of the will of God.

We human beings are made in the image of God, so we do know the difference between right and wrong without being guided by clerics who have usurped power. The right thing is not to become a participant in elections that are an insult to all the principles of the Quran and to all humanity.

Ayatollah Haeri is the son of Ayatollah Abdollah Ali Haeri and grandson of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Saleh. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he became a critic of the Khomeini regime. Arrested, beaten and tortured, he was jailed for three years, then sent into internal exile. He escaped to Germany, where he now lives. He is currently visiting the U.S.

WSJ
Readers may have noticed my link in support of "Real Democracy in Iran"

Metrosexual Stateman

From the UK Times comes this gem that left me in grins.

“A SINGLE VERSE by Rimbaud,” writes Dominique de Villepin, the new French Prime Minister, “shines like a powder trail on a day’s horizon. It sets it ablaze all at once, explodes all limits, draws the eyes to other heavens.” Here is a rather different observation, uttered by George Bush Sr in 1998, that might stand as a motto for his dynasty: “I can’t do poetry.”
In that gulf of sensibility lies the cultural faultline of our times. For George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld words are blunt instruments, used to convey meaning, not feeling. Actions speak louder. The President of France, by contrast, rocked by the rejection of the EU constitution, has attempted to shore up his Government by appointing a poet as his Prime Minister, a patrician intellectual in the French romantic mould, a true believer in the transcendental and redemptive power of words.
These are the polar extremes of poetry, Rimbaud in one corner and Rambo in the other: the French patron saint of sensitive, tortured adolescents alongside the monosyllabic American action man.

...

To the Anglo-Saxon mind there is something dodgy, even dangerous, in the man who rules the world by day and writes verses by night. As W.H. Auden wrote: “All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornados, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.” Indeed, the precedents are not happy ones, for there is a peculiar link between frustrated poetic ambition and tyranny: Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, Castro, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh all wrote poetry. Radovan Karadzic, fugitive former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, once won the Russian Writers’ Union Mikhail Sholokhov Prize for his poems. On the whole, you do not want a poet at the helm.
Yet in France, proof of a refined literary consciousness is a prerequisite of high office, and the virtue that eclipses sin. When François Mitterrand died, French commentators touched only briefly on such aspects of his career as wartime collaboration, cynical political opportunism and obsessive adultery, while devoting acres of print to his love of books and remarkable literary output. Every French politician is expected to produce a trophy bouquin. Before writing the ailing EU constitution, former President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing penned sensitive novels.

Memorial Day

A pause for those fallen to preserve the Nation.

Honoring the fallen.

I frequent political discussions on blogs and forums. A frequently asked questions, typically by Europeans, is "what is Patriotism?" My response:

Patriotism is a commitment to the nation-state of which you are a member of, to continue the works others have done to create and improve it. This sometimes means dying to preserve it. This sometime means criticizing it. There is an order of priority: firstly preservation, secondly improvement. As it entails both commitment and work toward a better state, it would be a wasted effort if you do not feel proud of your commitment and work. And as a corollary, be appreciative of the contribution by others toward the same goal.

Fair and Balanced

Roger L Simon of Pajama Media asks

So here I am blogging... in my pajamas, of course... at five-thirty on Friday morning before Memorial Day weekend when any sane person would be dead to the world. But Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, once wrote to take insomnia or sleep loss as opportunity to get more done, so I'm going to take a whack at it.

And since I am in my (now proverbial) pajamas, I am going to open up a can of worms on here... [Careful, bud.-ed.]... about Pajamas Media. A commenter the other day asked if we were going to be "fair and balanced." At first I took umbrage. We've barely announced our existence, haven't officially begun, haven't even had a chance to have a full-fledged meeting of our editorial board that is spread out all the way from Knoxville to Sydney and some bozo's asking if we're "fair and balanced"?!

But in truth it's a great question and we've been wrestling with it ever since we conceived the idea of starting the company. And with nearly 400 blogs already signed up and thousands more (we hope) to come, we ought to have some answers, at least tentative ones. Trouble is - it's not so simple. Many established media companies across the political spectrum have asserted they were "fair and balanced" or something similar only to get pie in the face, figuratively and literally. And is "fair and balanced" even possible from a human endeavor?

Of course, in practice, we have been reaching out in all directions - in terms of ideology and blog subject - with some success. The effort is continuing. And, yes, the advertising and the news side of PJ will have different requirements. Still, the question remains with all its complex ramifications. Fortunately, I am only one of three Pajamas Media founders and an even smaller percentage of the editorial board and therefore not solely responsible for coming up with answers. In fact, the scope of this search goes well beyond our immediate management because Pajamas Media has three other, perhaps more important, constituencies to be considered - the bloggers, the advertisers and you, our readers.

Normally, as new companies evolve, they reach conclusions about matters like this through private discussion or closely-guarded focus groups. But the blogosphere in all its magnificent inter-activity is clearly different and a company that emerges from it should be too.

Toward that end I would like to start a conversation on the subject on here spread over several days. And I thank those in advance who would be kind enough to participate. Let's start with the "Big Kahuna"... What does "fair and balanced" mean anyway?

My response is:
Fair: Only truths should be published. But not all truths are of value. And value is what can make the original better than before. It is not about criticism but constructive criticism.
Balanced: A diversity of constructive criticism. And valid constructive criticism must contain the deconstruction of true contributing antecedent factors and likely possible consequences. What should be kept in mind is the goal to be better than before.
Keep in mind that the enemy of good is perfect.

Bang Bang

Coming to theatres this fall: XM8

The XM8 Future Combat Rifle is intended to replace existing M4 Carbines and select 5.56mm x45 weapons in the US Army arsenal beginning as early as the fourth quarter of FY05.

In October 2002 ATK (Alliant Techsystems) was awarded a $5 million contract modification from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC), Picatinny, N.J., to develop the new XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifle. ATK Integrated Defense, Plymouth, Minn., and teammate Heckler and Koch, Oberndorf, Germany, will support the rapid development program, which will investigate the potential of the XM8 as the lightweight assault rifle for the Army's Objective Force.

The XM8 will be based on the kinetic energy weapon that is part of the XM29 next-generation infantry weapon system (formerly the Objective Individual Combat Weapon) currently under development by ATK Integrated Defense. The kinetic energy weapon, which fires 5.56mm ammunition, will provide maximum commonality in components and logistics with the XM29 system.

...

The XM8 is part of the Army's effort to perfect an over-and-under style weapon, known as the XM29, developed by Alliant Techsystems and H&K. It fires special air-bursting projectiles and standard 5.56mm ammunition. But the XM29 still is too heavy and unwieldy for Army requirements. Instead of scrapping the XM29, the Army decided to perfect each of XM29's components separately, so soldiers can take advantage of new technology sooner. The parts would be brought back together when lighter materials become available. The XM8 is one of those components.

Then there is this on the horizon the XM25

Advanced Airburst Weapon System is an entirely new class of weapon that takes the concept of a grenade launcher and adds some smarts, thereby increasing the probability of hit-to-kill performance by up to 500 percent over existing weapons. The advanced design allows the soldier to program the air bursting 25mm round so that it flies to the target and detonates at a precise point in the air. It does not require impact to detonate and is hence capable of defeating an enemy behind a wall, inside a building or in a foxhole.

What seems ideally suited for the urban battlefield is the Corner Shot

is a new weapon system designed for urban combat which enables the user to observe and engage a target from behind a corner without exposing any body parts. The highly technological system was officially unveiled in late December 2003 in Israel and is already being used by some of the world's elite Special Forces. Corner Shot attaches to most handguns currently used by Special Forces, for example the GLOCK, SIG SAUER, CZ or BERETTA. It includes a small, high-resolution camera and monitor, which can observe and view a target from various vantage points.

Nothing political but i thought these interesting, despite being a non-gun owner even.