H&I Fires* 27 April 2008
Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.
You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...
Time to add a new caveat, because from email it's not clear to some folks (mind you, if you don't read this it won't matter...) Being an open post, people (collectively, the Denizens) other than I post in the H&I. They sign their work (most of the time) - keep that in mind when you want to flame someone in email please - if it doesn't say "The Armorer" or "John" then I didn't write it! And honestly - if you don't like something said or posted... leave a comment, and hash it out (within the context of The Rulez which are clearly posted on the comment form, I would add).
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Some things over the weekend you might have missed...
Success, failure, tribalism, and the power of money: Taliban Bitten by a Snake in the Grass. It's got a great punchline--and note that word of happenings in Iraq is reaching Afghanistan. [h/t MM, who has more on improvements in Afghanistan].
Of all the good news we're hearing about Iraq and especially Basra, this one was a stunner, as I've not read a whisper of such things from anywhere else (maybe I wasn't paying attention). But once again, it's the foreign press--London Times in this case--that is reporting such things (maybe it has something to do with the fact that they're embedding with the Iraqi Security Forces rather than the terrorists!):
Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.Fascinating that the Iraqi and American governments referred to them as "criminal gangs," but they had such a strong religious component...All across Iraq’s second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military. The gunmen’s reign had enforced a strict set of religious codes.
...She also no longer has to wear a headscarf. Under the strict Islamic rules imposed by the militias, women had to cover their hair, could not wear jeans or bright clothes and were strictly forbidden from sitting next to male colleagues on pain of death.
“All these men in black [who imposed the laws] just vanished from the university after this operation,” said Ms Ahmed. “Things have completely changed over the past week.”
More good news from Iraq--this time on the political side. I'm still holding my breath, but the Sunni-Shiite coalition government is looking stronger and stronger, and Sadr continues to make a fool of himself [h/t Powerline]
And for one of those "Wow, this planet is amazing" moments, check out the pictures a random blogger took on a recent trip to Death Valley. - FbL
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Here's a soldier who has an attitude about stop-loss that you probably didn't hear in the major media. - FbL
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Michael Yon's book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, get's reviewed in the New York Sun:
One of the major problems for the war prior to 2007 was that the chaos, death, and refugees caused by Al Qaeda's cruelty were blamed on the Americans, because Al Qaeda came to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. "The correlation of media, counterinsurgency, cult and leadership seemed painfully obvious to me," Mr. Yon writes. "Al Qaeda was a cult that had skillfully used our mistakes to make itself great among the people, while placing on us the ignominy of its own brutality."
Hanson again on He-Man actors and movies.. I think that the main problem isn't that there are no "he man" actors, so much as "actors" no longer have to "act" like a Bogart or a Grant or a Wayne had to do. Props were not nearly as well made. Scenery was often a painted backdrop. Seriously, in these movies, men or women, you simply had to act more than an actor or actress does today.
Not just props either. Certainly, in certain movies actors and actresses have to pretend they are doing something or talking to someone, like a character or a computer generated creature, that actually isn't there. However, if they aren't that good an actor, the electronic gizmodetry covers it up. Not so back in the day. Can you imagine Jimmy Stewart and Harvey the Rabbit today?
But, if we're naming off all time favorite movies, again, I'll re-iterate a few: El Cid, Burt Lancaster; Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant - Katherine Hepburn, Fort Apache, She wore a Yellow Ribbon, John Wayne; Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O'Toole; A Lion in Winter, Peter O'tool - Katherine Hepburn; ...okay, you're turn. -Kat
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Bummer. The ACLU is extremely disappointed. Heh. Musta lost another court case. Yep. I have a love/hate relationship with the ACLU. They do good now and again, but then they fall all over themselves trying to annoy me. Sigh. Best quote (by Jammie Wearing Fool): Now if we can only get this enforced in the other 49 states, there’d be a lot of dead Democrats no longer voting. -the Armorer
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The Wright story is turning into a firestorm. The implications of what it is revealing about the media, racial politics, and the Democratic party are just scary. I don't know how to summarize, so I'll just link:
The Corner - making racism acceptable
Hot Air: Echoes of The Bell Curve
Ace of Spades: What the media shows us, and where Obama got his "change" mantra (lots of good links). - FbL
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Let's add the left side of the 'sphere to the Wright discussion.
But by now it's obvious Obama is deep in a sound-bite-fed, image-waged war. A man smart as Wright knows it doesn't really matter what he says. He's been reduced to an emotional image -- the Willie Horton of 2008 -- a boogeyman of black nationalism and aggression, used as a prop to make the professorial Obama look like a smooth talker hiding more radical inclinations.
Wright seems utterly sincere to me. He strikes me as having a true spiritual calling. When he says, "America's chickens have come home to roost," I can't fault his logic. Haven't we been squandering hard earned taxpayer money on overseas adventures while we starve poor children? Haven't we been supporting dictators while prating of democracy? Haven't we been enriching profiteers at the expense of health care and education? You betcha.
-the Armorer
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*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.
Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.
Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*
The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.
I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to that particular topic. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".
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