No. 228-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2007
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
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DoD Identifies Marine Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lance Cpl. Anthony Aguirre, 20, of Channelview, Texas, died Feb. 26 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. Aguirre was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
For more information in regard to this release the media can contact the Hawaii public affairs office at (808) 257-8870.

New BloggingHeads out. Me vs. my main man Eli Lake. I'm particularly inarticulate in this go-round, which I'll chalk up to the fact that I had to take care of my taxes right beforehand. Let this be a lesson: don't diavlog after learning how much you owe the IRS.

More than one friend of mine, and one ex-girlfriend in particular, has been driven to agitation by the way I read things online. That is: I'm a compulsive highlighter. In order to puncture a text, I need to drag my touchpad mouse over to what I'm reading, click deeply and drag a gray bar of pure clarity over each grapheme as it reveals itself to me. Then, and only then, can I make sense of the world.

The New York Times is out to deny me my way of understanding. As you may have noticed, sometime over the last week, nytimes.com has equipped its text with an insidious function to pop open a dictionary window and define a word as a reader highlights it. All of a sudden I embrace, in blinding fury, the arguments against David Foster Wallace's aggressive digressioning.

Kriston Capps, valiantly, is coming to the defense of a tactile mode of reading. His Free Clicking campaign is that most important of crusades: the insistence on the dignities of civilization against the small erosions of vulgarity. Join him.

More Jamestown madness! From the latest Terrorism Focus, we learn that the awesome success story of the U.S.-backed Ethiopian war on Somalia's Islamic Courts Union is getting steadily less awesome:

Weeks after Ethiopia routed the ICU from Mogadishu and the rest of the country, violence is flaring in the capital and throughout Somalia. While some of this violence is being instigated by the Islamists who lost power, there is evidence that warlords who have returned to the country after being defeated by the Courts movement are also to blame (somaaljecel.com, February 22). Reports coming out of Mogadishu claim that some warlords are rearming their militias and planning attacks on Ethiopian and TFG troops. These warlords—such as Mohamed Dheere, Muhammad Qanyare Afrah and Abdi Nur Siyad, who have allegedly formed an alliance—are angry over their role in the TFG government that is now controlling Somalia; the three warlords were reportedly seen purchasing large supplies of arms at the Bakaara weapons market (Shabelle Media Network, February 22).

Goddamnit! Didn't anyone tell these people Somalia was a success story?

Since at least 2004, Iraq-style tactics -- suicide bombings, recorded kidnappings and executions, and in particular improvised explosive devices -- have been trickling into Afghanistan, to the point where some observers have feared the "Iraqification" of that country. It's not something to be sanguine about, as today's suicide bombing outside of Bagram demonstrates. But according to a new Jonestown Foundation analysis by Brian Glyn Williams and Cathy Young, there's something of a silver lining: suicide bombings are indeed up -- as of late February, there have already been 21 suicide bombings in 2007; that's nearly as many as in all of 2005 -- but they're ... not killing many people.

Astoundingly, of the 21 attacks carried out this year, in 16 cases the only fatality has been the suicide bomber himself. In the 17th case, the suicide bomber succeeded in killing himself and one policeman. In two other cases, the suicide bomber was arrested or shot. This translates to 19 Taliban suicide bombers for one Afghan policeman, hardly an inspiring kill ratio for would-be-suicide bombers. In most of these cases, the suicide bombers attacked foreign convoys on foot or in cars and were unable to inflict casualties on their targets. Typically, the suicide bombers' explosives went off prematurely or their bombs failed to kill coalition troops driving in heavily armored vehicles.

In only three of the 21 cases for 2007 were there notable fatalities. In the first successful case, a suicide bomber killed two Afghan policemen and eight civilians (Camp Salerno, Khost, January 23). In the second case, three policemen were killed (Zherai District, Khost, February 4). In the third case, the February 27 attack on Bagram Air Base while Cheney was visiting, the bomber succeeded in killing 15-23 people (including two to three coalition soldiers). Such numbers hardly compare to Iraq where suicide bombers often carry out synchronized attacks that regularly kill anywhere from 60 to 130 people. Such uninspiring statistics beg the question: what are Afghanistan's suicide bombers doing wrong?

Williams and Young studied 158 suicide attacks since 2001 and found an answer. While Iraqi suicide bombers target civilians and soft targets in order to sow destabilization and provoke/respond to sectarian violence, nearly all Taliban suicide bombings -- and in Afghanistan, resistance to the presence of foreign forces and the Karzai government is overwhelmingly Taliban -- are focused on Afghan or U.S./NATO security forces. The two researchers assess that unlike the Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaeda or Shiite militias, the Taliban has to cleave the population away from the Karzai government, but in the process must "avoid losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people by needlessly killing civilians."

The trouble is that it works. Members of the International Security Assistance Force have in some cases balked at taking up operations in suicide-bomb-heavy territory. Worse still, Williams and Young find that freaked-out ISAF forces have responded by upping their tolerance for collateral damage. Little is more provocative in Afghanistan than civilian deaths at foreign hands; in that sense, the Taliban gambit does show some success.

Consider what you've got here: a localized insurgency that needs to deny Karzai and his allies control of Afghanistan and finds that even ineffective suicide bombing can have some utility as a deterrent force. Yet it remains a force with limited potential for growth among the civilian population and it's fearful of inflicting civilian casualties. Basically, this is about as favorable terrain for counterterrorism as ever there is (saying that while recognizing that no counterterrorism campaign is really favorable). Here's where you want to put Petraeus and his COIN wise men.

In light of the attack today on Bagram AFB during Dick Cheney's overnight visit, check out Matthew Cole's piece for Salon about braving the elevation of Afghanistan's lawless Nuristan province:

The Kamdesh base is the northernmost American outpost in Afghanistan, in an area of Nuristan so remote that local villagers asked American troops in August, when they arrived, if they were Russian. The base itself is not more than a quarter-mile wide, on a valley floor, next to a clear, trout-filled river. Three-thousand-foot mountains rise above the base on both sides of the river. The base is insecure, susceptible to rocket and small-arms fire from nearly every direction. A row of Humvees, all mounted with grenade-filled Mark-19 machine guns, face the closest mountain, which nearly hangs over the front of the base. When I was there the soldiers hadn't yet named the base, and had made up their own name, Warheight, for the imposing peak. From Kamdesh, a small outpost near the Pakistani border, to Naray, a larger base 25 miles south, to another border outpost called Camp Lybert, the 10th Mountain Division's 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry -- the so-called 3-71 -- was supposed to control a 220-square-mile triangle of territory.

The Provincial Reconstruction Team in the area has limited mobility, leaving reconstruction and civil affairs to the 10th Mountain Division (just recently replaced by the 82nd Airborne), who face hostility from the locals:

The Americans had been feeling good about their progress. But it was clear that all the collateral damage had further strained a relationship with the locals that was already tense. The shura, a collection of middle-aged men from all the nearby villages, arrived complaining of the deteriorating situation. Forty strong, in stained salwar kameez and flat hats, they sat in rows of white plastic chairs inside an uncompleted building on the base. One man after another stood up to direct his anger, through a translator, at Feagin and the CIA chief. "You told us when you came here that you would not hurt innocent and peaceful people," said a man with an ink-black beard stretching to the middle of his chest. "You have big guns and helicopters with good technology, surely you can tell the difference between those who are innocent and those who are not. You told us if we helped you, the Americans would not harm us. We are prisoners in our villages now!" Several of the men nodded their heads as the man sat back down.

Lt. Col. Feagin, whose chest seemed to point upward, sat still on an unfinished stone wall facing the shura. "There was no intent to target anyone but our enemy," he told them. "If the enemy continues to fight us, many more will die. I am certain." A few gunshots echoed in the valley. Feagin pointed to the direction of the noise and said, "This is part of the problem. The only thing the enemy can bring is fear, intimidation and death." Feagin informed the shura that the injured villagers had been flown to Bagram Air Base to get "the best medicine and treatment the Army has to offer." He then offered to hire more fighting-age men for the Afghan army unit that would soon be posted in the valley.

Lt. Dan Dillow, executive officer of the 3-71's Bravo Company, later told me the counterinsurgency model was the only way to fight the war in Afghanistan. "I don't like civil affairs" -- building roads and schools, offering jobs -- "but you need it out here," he said. You have to give them something. You can't defeat the Nuristanis. They know who is ambushing us and when it's going to happen, but they won't tell us. They have us by the balls and they know it."

No. 225-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2007
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
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DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Ethan J. Biggers, 22, of Beavercreek, Ohio, died Feb. 24 in Indianapolis, Ind., of wounds suffered while on combat patrol in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 5, 2006. Biggers was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

For more information in regard to this release the media can contact the Fort Campbell public affairs office at (270) 798-3025.

Ann adds her voice to the full-throated TAPPED denunciation of David Brooks's denunciation of hipster parents with a crucial point: these kids, force-fed into soi-disant leftism and hipsterism, are going to be the foot soldiers of a resurgent conservative movement when the grow up. Making the point in horrid, living color, she even links to a Cobrasnake shot of a kid in an... Anti-Flag t-shirt. I haven't seen one of those since Mio Alter wore one in high school.

While I can't speak for Mio, Ann is right that red diaper babies -- at least in the original sense of the term -- do have a tendency to move rightward as they age. Here I speak from personal experience, as my beloved, sainted mother is a socialist and I'm not. But to complicate the picture somewhat, it's also true that one can move sharply to the right -- say, in college, as I did -- and then slowly moor oneself back to the sensible harbors of liberalism. Controlling the irregular haircut of one's child is much simpler than controlling her politics, though no less obnoxious.

No. 221-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 26, 2007
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
Public/Industry(703) 428-0711

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. Jeremy D. Barnett,27, of Mineral City, Ohio, died Feb. 24 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany, of wounds sustained from a landmine detonation in Ad-Dujayl, Iraq, on Feb. 21. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

For more information on this Soldier, contact the Fort Hood public affairs office at (254) 287-9993.

My buddy and fellow Muckraker Paul Kiel points to an interesting squib in today's account of Dick Cheney's parley with Pervez Musharraf. Cheney raised the specter of the Democratic Congress cutting off aid to Pakistan unless Musharraf starts cracking down on al-Qaeda in Waziristan. What's up with that?

It's a smart play by Cheney. No foreign country's leadership straight-up fears and hates the Democrats like Pakistan. And from the perspective of the Pakistani military, it makes sense. There you are, in the 1980s, working out this kick-ass partnership with the Reagan administration to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan via the CIA station in Peshawar. Not only did you get a proxy regime in Afghanistan (after a while) and a whole bunch of western aid, but you also got some F-16s to deliver a nuclear payload to your Indian adversary if you so chose. (Bush the Elder actually stopped that sale, but whatever.)

Then the Democrats come to power, and all you hear about is nuclear proliferation and getting sanctioned. Steve Coll recounts in Ghost Wars how a State Department official basically ordered around then-President Benazir Bhutto. On top of all that, there's a drift toward India. Not without good reason, Richard Armitage once described Pakistan as being nervous about treated like "a dixie cup" by the U.S. -- in other words, used and then disposed of. Luckily, the GOP comes back to power, and after an early period of threatening you, you get a pass on the A.Q. Khan proliferation network, Major Non-NATO Ally status, and even those F-16s you've wanted forever. You'd see the Democrats as the root of all evil, too. Cheney's on solid ground to exploit this.

Few things induce as much vertigo as reading outdated Iraq talking points. Here's General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just before the December 15 Iraqi election:

...When there's 300 parties, that tells me that that many different voices are going to be heard in this campaign, and that the elected individuals will come from a diverse background with diverse goals that will be put into the cauldron of their parliament that will produce the rules and laws that they want to live under.

At least he didn't say "melting pot" of their parliament. But truly there are few things as embarrassing as the recent past.

Also, building off Seymour Hersh's latest piece, here's my feeble attempt to shoehorn as many Alan Partridge references into national-security writing as I can. A-Ha!

No. 219-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 25, 2007
Media Contact: (703) 697-5131/697-5132
Public/Industry(703) 428-0711

DoD Identifies Army Casualties


The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers who were supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. They died Feb. 23 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their HMMWV during combat operations in Ramadi, Iraq, on Feb. 22.

All three soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colo.

Killed were:

Staff Sgt. Joshua R. Hager, 29, of Broomfield, Colo.

Pfc. Travis W. Buford, 23, of Galveston, Texas, and

Pfc. Rowan D. Walter, 25, of Winnetka, Calif.

For further information related to this release, contact the Fort Carson Public Affairs Office at (719) 526-5500.

Mike Huckabee: genius or knave? In his account of a meeting of prominent Christian conservatives:

He said he emphasized education, among other issues, and talked about a continuing war “with a radical form of Islamic fascism,” which he called “a bastardization of religion.”

One reading of this would hold that Huckabee takes a restricted understanding of the war on terrorism -- that most "Islamic fascism" is acceptable to Mike Huckabee; only a "radical form" of it is unacceptable. I can get on board with that! Presuming that Huckabee is referring to al-Qaeda as his radical form of Islamic fascism, the man is making sense, certainly a lot more than the "Iran is more dangerous than al-Qaeda" and "there is an undifferentiated jihadist enemy out there" contentions put out by the Bush administration. (Now, chances are Huckabee didn't mean anything of the sort, and just doesn't know what words mean. But, as David Jo Hansen once sang, I gotta have some fun.)

Conservapedia: for when the distributed intelligence of the internet just reinforces the pernicious influence of liberals. Defying parody, Conservapedia explains how Wikipedia offends conservative sensibilities:

1. The entry for the Renaissance in Wikipedia refuses to give enough credit to Christianity.Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E. instead of B.C. and C.E. instead of A.D.The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise? Conservapedia is Christian-friendly and exposes the CE deception.

2. The entry for the Renaissance in Wikipedia refuses to give enough credit to Christianity.

The C.E. deception! If that doesn't convince you, there are 25 other examples. Perhaps most unexpected: Wikipedia's entry on feudalism focuses entirely on European feudalism and "does not mention the feudal systems that developed independently in Japan and India." As it happens, I have some experience with this. While I can't speak for the state of the debate over India, the question of whether Japan's pre-Tokugawa period represents an instance of feudalism is a matter of some dispute within the academic community. For the record, that shit was feudalism, I say.

What implication this has for the great culture war is unclear. Does maintaining a strict definition of feudalism imply a hostility to European culture? Does feudalism suggest a particular barbarism? What, in other words, hinges on describing India and Japan as having their own experiences with feudalism?

The Sarah Silverman Program isn't remotely funny, but it has a ton of Mr. Show people on it: Brian Posehn, Jay Johnston, Jill Talley, Becky Thyre and Scott Aukerman were all on the one we TiVo'd. Little known fact! Becky Thyre is married to the brilliant Tony Millionaire. (And apparently the new definition of "little known" includes "featured on IMDB.")

No. 218-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Someone has to remind Hossein Derakhshan, the father of Iranian blogging, that he's not supposed to hate freedom. Today in Comment Is Free, the man behind Hoder contends that the U.S. is predisposed to attack any Iranian regime:

Increasingly, a lot of secular Iranians, like myself, are figuring that even if Iran is turned into the most democratic, secular, fair and peaceful state on earth, there is no guarantee the US won't find another excuse to try to overtrow its goverment. It will start bullying Iran for its "devastating role" in climate change, or animal rights, or - who knows? - for obesity.

The interests of the Islamic Republic, with all its internal struggles, challenges and flaws, have never overlapped more closely the interests of Persia as a historic nation. And here lies the surprising support of most Iranians, despite their serious dissatisfaction and frustration, for the Islamic Republic and its resistence towards the US, symbolised by its nuclear programme.

Surely this is overheated. The U.S. never attacked the Shah, so c'mon, Hoder! Iranians have a broad array of political options to choose from, ranging from pliability to outright clientism.

To be serious, Derakhshan's piece is fascinating barometrically. Not even the most fervently secular opponents of the clerical regime have any desire to extend to the United States the benefit of the doubt when it comes to a confrontation with Iran. It shouldn't take a National Intelligence Estimate to understand that Iranians will identify with Ahmadinejad when the Carl Vinson unleashes its fighter pilots. By contrast, notes Abbas Milani, the prospect of a U.N.-enforced sanctions regime creates an actual, behavior-modifying fear within Tehran.

Britney Spears's new career beckons. Courtesy of the Crewcial boards.

No. 212-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 23, 2007
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DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Staff Sgt. David R. Berry, 37, of Wichita, Kan., died Feb. 22 in Qasim, Iraq, when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device.Berry was assigned to 1st Battalion, 161st Field Artillery, Kansas Army National Guard, Dodge City, Kansas.

For more information in regard to this release the media can contact the Kansas Army National Guard public affairs office at (785) 274-1192.

Peter's last TRB is one of the most honest, reflective, and insightful things I've read in a good long while.

We can't be the country those Iraqis wanted us to be. We lack the wisdom and the virtue to remake the world through preventive war. That's why a liberal international order, like a liberal domestic one, restrains the use of force--because it assumes that no nation is governed by angels, including our own. And it's why liberals must be anti-utopian, because the United States cannot be a benign power and a messianic one at the same time. That's not to say the United States can never intervene to stop aggression or genocide. It's not even to say that we can't, in favorable circumstances and with enormous effort, help build democracy once we're there. But it does mean that, when our fellow democracies largely oppose a war--as they did in Vietnam and Iraq--because they think we're deluding ourselves about either our capacities or our motives, they're probably right. Being a liberal, as opposed to a neoconservative, means recognizing that the United States has no monopoly on insight or righteousness. Some Iraqis might have been desperate enough to trust the United States with unconstrained power. But we shouldn't have trusted ourselves.

Peter explains his support for the war through his admiration for the Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya. Kanan, one of the most guileless and brave people I've ever been privileged to meet, is someone I hold in similar esteem. (It probably says something about the times we live in that Cruelty and Silence -- an overview of Iraqi desperation and its apologists -- appears more apt and poignant than Republic of Fear does.) If there's anything I'd add to Peter's column, it would be this: it wasn't Kanan's fault that anyone supported the Iraq war --wait, wait, hang on, let's make this more personal. It wasn't Kanan's fault that I supported the Iraq war. It was for wanting to believe so badly in the righteousness of America's terrible swift sword. I wanted to be worthy of the respect of such a brave man as Kanan that I ended up unworthy of it by abandoning rigor.

One final thing. Many of you out there really, really dislike Peter Beinart. I hope you'll read his column and see him as I see him: a scrupulous, honest writer who doesn't stop challenging himself. If he falls short, he acknowledges it and tries to learn from the mistake.

What Kay said.

It an obvious (but often forgotten) point that women have nothing to gain in lying about rape. Nothing. If anything, a woman subjects herself to a barrage of criticism, doubt, and peering into her sexual history. As the news continues to leak out about rapes and assaults perpetrated by U.S. soldiers and U.S.-trained Iraqi police, it's not surprising that women like al-Janabi face such ardent criticism. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

No. 208-07 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 22, 2007
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Public/Industry(703) 428-0711

DoD Identifies Army Casualty

The Department of Defense announced today the death of one soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Spc. Christopher K. Boone, 34, died Feb. 17 in Balad, Iraq, of a non-combat related injury.Boone was assigned to the 121st Infantry (Long Range Surveillance), Georgia Army National Guard, Fort Gillem, Ga.

The incident is under investigation.

For further information in regard to this release the media can contact the Georgia National Guard public affairs office at (678) 569-6064.