Warblogging Archives
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May 29, 2003
Spinsanity turns on the fog lights here.
Posted at 01:12 PM
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February 05, 2003
The results of the "Wild Monk Personality Test" have been posted. I took this test shortly after it came out, and I got a 5 out of 10 on the rationality score. That's more a badge of honor than anything, as I think I'm the only one who actually read the questions and responded to what the questions actually stated rather than what apparently Wild Monk meant. "Say what you mean, etc. etc."
Those who write "tests" like these should perhaps learn the lessons to be taught by the article "36 Forms of Mathematical Proof." Or, more seriously but no less readable, this. Or, from general science, this.
Posted at 09:27 PM
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January 22, 2003
Remember how the U.S. ship The Maine blew up in Havana harbor in 1898? Remember how the Spanish were immediately blamed, causing us to fight the Spanish-American war? Remember how no one knows to this day exactly what happened, whether it was really the Spanish or perhaps it was an accident or faulty ship design. (Read more here or here.)
And, remember how in the early 60s, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, wanted to start a war with Cuba by staging fake terrorist attacks to be blamed on the Cubans?
Lemnitzer even - hold onto your seats - wanted to fake the Cubans shooting down a civilian airliner. He had it all planned out: a dummy, empty plane and a plane full of the supposed victims would take off at the same time; the dummy plane would fly over Cuban airspace and get shot down, while the plane containing the supposed victims would secretly and safely fly back home.
Interesting, no?
Now, God only knows what's in the congressional report on 9/11. Remember, it's sealed for, what, 20 years? Maybe it's 30, maybe it's 40. But, it will be a long time before all the facts concerning 9/11 come out.
This post is a roundabout way of response to the "Wild Monk," whose hawk/dove survey I took in the preceding entry to this blog. I scored a 5 out of 10 on the rationality score, because I agreed with the statement "It has not been proven that the World Trade Center / Pentagon attacks were committed by Muslims." I'm about 98% sure that they were, but it certainly hasn't been proved, and it would be difficult to prove it in a legal sense.
It's good to keep an open mind, and consider all actors involved and their motivations. In fact, I'd consider that the height of rationality.
Posted at 05:13 PM
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January 21, 2003
From DP, here's a test of how much of a hawk or dove you are.
I scored 48, with 5 on the rationality scale. I'll take the 5 as a badge of honor. Perhaps someone could tell me the "right" answers:
1. George Bush was validly and democratically elected president in 2000
Disagree
"While he may have been validly elected, he wasn't elected in what I would term a "democratic" fashion. I.e., he did not win the popular vote."
2. The Afghani people are in much better condition today than before the Afghan war.
Agree
3. The U.S. Military Operation in Afghanistan was largely successful in disrupting and damaging Al Queada.
Agree
4. It has not been proven that the World Trade Center / Pentagon attacks were committed by Muslims.
Agree
"While I think it was, it hasn't been proven."
5. The Bush administation's primary reason for invading Iraq is to take control of Iraqi oilfields.
Agree
6. Iraq and/or Saddam Hussein represents a threat to the United States
Agree
7. If Saddam Hussein succeeded in building a nuclear weapon, he will try to covertly provide it to terrorists for use against the West.
No Particular Opinion
"I'm supposed to speculate on what he's going to do? Maybe he'll be deterred, maybe not."
8. The U.S. must stop Hussein from acquiring weapons of mass destruction
Agree
9. War has never and will never achieve anything
Disagree
10. The United States is presently the greatest threat to world peace.
Disagree
Posted at 01:38 PM
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December 12, 2002
The article Terrorist Tactics for the War With the West discusses Fourth Generation Warfare:
As they saw it, this type of warfare has "a goal of collapsing the enemy internally rather than physically destroying him. Targets will include such things as the population's support for the war and the enemy's culture." The authors predicted that armies of the future would "be widely dispersed and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts."
The article includes a shot of peace protesters. That's a bit of a cheap shot; should wars not be protested for fear of giving the enemy an advantage? On the other hand, as has been pointed out many times, some groups have indirect links to communist and terrorist orgs, some anti-war protesters are simply reflexively anti-American, and some are just stupid publicity seekers. This is discussed here. Saddam shoots himself in the foot by admitting that he's counting on popular opinion to prevent a war; that statement can now be used against any anti-war protester you encounter.
Supporting the idea of fourth generation warfare is the fact that many AQ supporters have been proud of the fact that they used our own technology to destroy the WTC. The fact that most of the Muslim countries are mired several centuries back and can't even dream of producing a hang glider much less a Boeing-class aircraft is acknowledged or considered a bad thing by only a small number of those country's citizens.
Similar actions might be considered forms of 4G warfare, as I previously blogged. There are a ton of examples, such as the disrespect immigrants show for their new "country." Examples here and here.
There's also a teaser for a Vanity Fair article on the Iraq-AQ link here. Probably best to just go to the drug store and read the mag.
Posted at 04:18 PM
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Non-"liberal" coverage of immigration, Iraq, terrorism, multiculturalism, Los Angeles, California, privacy, and occasionally celebrities and wacky humor...
