Liberals keep asking this question. Some panicking conservatives are asking it, too.

Allow us to answer.

Is the war in Iraq winnable?

No. It is not winnable. It is no longer winnable, and has not been winnable for some time.

It was already won. It's not winnable in the same sense that a dead horse is not killable.

For there to be a "war" at all, the other side -- whoever that may be -- must have some chance of "winning."

The other side does not have any chance -- or, at least, no significant chance -- of "winning" anything much at all.

The Sunni rebels in Fallujah cannot win back the country. Even if America were to take the John Kerry route and just bug out, the Shi'a majority would not suddenly grant power back to the Ba'athists.

It would not happen. It could not happen. It is an impossibility.

It is simply not the case that the majority of Iraqis are sitting there hoping for the Fallujah jihadists to "win," meaning to prevail politically over America and the non-Sunni majority, and assume power. There may be many Iraqis who want the Fallujah jihadists to bleed America -- to kill the troops whose major crime was fighting and winning a war the Arabs were powerless to, or lacked the courage to, fight and win themselves, in order to make some claim of vindictated honor -- but the majority of Iraqis don't actually want the Falljuah Ba'athists/Al Qaedaists/criminals to take over the country.

And they would not permit them to, even if America fled with its tail between its legs.

Strike that -- they would not permit them to, especially if America fled with its tail between its legs.

One thing we're liking about the June 30 handover of power is that internal security will largely become a problem for Iraqis, with only support from Americans. At that point, Iraqis will be making most of the decisions and doing most of the dirty security work.

And the thing is, as much as Iraqis might complain about our ruthless/brutal tactics, they're just saying that because people who lack power like to complain. Complaining is the way people without power protest their lack of power.

The day that Iraqis are actually fighting the insurgents is the day Iraqis stop complaining about ruthlessness and brutality. Not that ruthlessness and brutality will cease; quite the opposite. There will be more ruthlessness and brutality than the American military would ever be allowed to inflict.

But Iraqis will be doing it themselves, and hence, will have no one really to complain about.

We've seen how Arabs and Muslims put down insurgencies in the past. It's not pretty. Although, in this case, such brutality will be richly justified. The UN might fuss, but who listens to them?

The analysis is similar when it comes to Moqtada al-Sadr. What, precisely, is he fighting for? What political outcome is he actually hoping to achieve?

He can't be fighting for actual control of Iraq. If he were actually so popular that he could ultimately assume power, he wouldn't need to be fighting now at all. We are turning over power on June 30; elections will be held by January. No one who has any real shot of running the country needs to engage in violence, because, once again, we're turning the damn country over shortly. al-Sadr is fighting not because there's a good chance he will be part of the Iraqi ruling class, but precisely because there isn't such a good chance.

He hopes that by killing Americans, he can increase his profile and his political popularity. Perhaps he can. But it is important to bear in mind that he can only come to power if the majority actually wants him to do so. And if the majority actually wants him to do so -- well, once again, we are turning over Iraq on June 30, and there will be elections by January. If he were to come to power, which we think unlikely, it would not be because he won a "war," but because he increased his political popularity. Whether he fights us or whether he doesn't fight us, he's not going to "win" through war; he's going to win through political popularity, the same way any politician wins power.

We've been chagrined lately at the panickiness seen throughout America, on both sides of the aisle. What do these shrieking ninnies think, precisely, is going to happen?

We don't know. In the worse case scenario, there would be a country-wide, broad-based political/populist uprising in Iraq demanding that we evacuate the country immediately. But we have to note once again: Our goal has always been, ultimately, to honor the legitimate, broad-based political wishes of the Iraqi populace.

If the Iraqis did suddenly say, as a whole, "Get out now," what is the big problem, exactly? We're planning to "get out" in some form or another over the next few months, retreating largely to our bases, to act only as a guarantor of the basic integrity of the poltical process, to protect Iraq from external threats, to occasionally provide assitance in maintaining internal security, and to, of course, project power throughout the region. If the Iraqis really did want us out -- and we mean the majority, of course -- why wouldn't we honor their wishes, assuming they were not becoming another terrorist state? We never had any plans to rule Iraq against the wishes of the majority of the public. So if the majority of Iraqis actually did ask us to depart, what, precisely, has been "lost"?

Us leaving in Iraq in that fashion would not be "losing a war." It would complying with the legitimate majoritarian wishes of the Iraqi populace, which has always been our plan.

So we're not quite sure what all the shrieking and nervous tics are about. We have accomplished all of our main goals in this war. In fact, we accomplished most of these main goals some time ago. We are now attempting not to win an actual war, but to conduct a humanitarian nation-building operation, at considerable cost in terms of dollars and American lives. If the Iraqis decide that our generosity and courage are no longer wanted, what is the downside to that, exaxtly?

Our main goals at this point is not killing Fallujah rebels nor Sadrist criminals. We are killing them, of course, but that is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. We are killing them in order to lessen the threat to our own troops and contractors and engineers in Iraq and to help make Iraq a more stable place in the future, when it's governing itself, and when it's patrolling itself. Our assistance on the latter score is an act of generosity and big-heartedness; it is not, however, an actual primary war-aim in and of itself. We should not fear Iraqis rejecting that generosity any more than we "fear" our unemployed cousin Norton refusing to take yet another loan from us.

The only likely path to political power in Iraq is through, well, political power. Minorities cannot prevail over much greater majorities through force of arms, unless those minorities are much more well-funded and well-armed than the majorities, which is simply not the case in Iraq, nor is it likely to ever be. The carnage in Iraq is not a campaign to kill Americans in order to win the country for one minority group or another; it is a campaign simply to kill Americans, because that is all these people know how to do, or are capable of doing.

American soldiers may die, and that is a tragedy, but the men who kill them cannot win some greater battle or achieve some greater political goal. Whoever ultimately rules Iraq will do so because they have obtained enough political popularity to do so, which is what America has always envisioned for Iraq anyway, and Sadrists and Fallujah Ba'athists cannot change that fact.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (15)
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This story is sad and sick on a lot of levels.

There would seem to be a political point to be made here -- with a "missionary of sex" named Dr. Money performing sex-change operations on children in order to prove that sex is entirely conditioned by society -- but that would seem too easy, and too trivial for the horrors recounted here.

In the children's grimmest recollection - one they found almost impossible to talk about years later - Money allegedly made "Brenda assume a position on all fours on his office sofa and make Brian come up behind her on his knees and place his crotch against her buttocks", an element of Money's theory he referred to as "sexual rehearsal play". (The author John Heidenry, who wrote a recent review defending the sexologist, calls this charge "outrageous and offensive", and says Brian, the source of the claim, may have been suffering false memory syndrome.)

That would be Brian, the brother, putting his crotch against Brenda, the sister's, ass.

And Brenda would be the boy who was formerly David.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 PM | Comments (15)
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Our Patriotic Media decides to make an issue of something we all knew was going on, and all knew had to go on, in order to make political trouble for Bush. Get ready for a shock-- we roughly treated top Al Qaeda leaders and operatives in an effort to get information from them.

All right, jerkoffs-- you want to whine about torturning Al Qaeda suspects? You know Bush cannot not permit this; it is necessary. But you think it's worth it to inflame the quite-inflamable Arabs over it, if it can be used to damage Bush.

Well, you've succeeded in hurting America's national security. Congrats. But you won't succeed in damaging Bush.

Because the American people know that this is completely justified. It is -- what was the term used by the Washington Post ombudsmen a couple of days ago? Ah yes -- "necessary and patriotic."

You haven't made trouble for Bush; you've made trouble for Kerry, who will now be forced to admit he's against harming a hair on Khalid Sheik Muhammed's precious head.

We want Kerry on the record about this, no mushy-mouthed stradles, no equivocations. Is he against it or is he for it?

And let's run the fucking election on this one single issue.

We are absolutely furious. There is no limit the liberals and lefties will not go to -- there is no damage to America they will not inflict -- in order to get their precious political power back.

John Kerry Couldn't Stink More of Pathetic Opportunism if He Showed Up at a Dog-Kennel With Snausages Stuffed Up His Narrow Ass: Our brave and fearless war-hero (thanks for winning 'Nam for us, pallie! now wants to put off court-martialing the soldiers responsible in order to look further up the chain of command.

But that's not the best part.

The best part is this: "They dismiss the Geneva Conventions, starting in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, so that the status of prisoners both legal and moral becomes ambiguous at best," the senator from Massachusetts told radio host Don Imus.

We want it on the record and unambiguous. We want a clear statement.

What Kerry is doing is attempting to criticize Bush for what Bush is doing, while refusing to announce what he would specifically do in Bush's place.

This is unnacceptable.

We want it clear and on the record and without any wiggle:

True or false, Senator: You would strictly apply the full panoply of Geneva Conventions protections to Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists, despite the fact they're not legal combatants nor are they soldiers in the army of a signatory of the Conventions, meaning absolutely no forceful/coercive/painful interrogations of terrorists and serious punishment for all of those who violate your policy.

We will not accept a "nuanced" answer on this one, Senator. True or false. Yes or no.

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 PM | Comments (15)
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On the other hand, there's this story, which features at least 20 deserving new inhabitants of Hell:

Fighting raged in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala yesterday, partly destroying a mosque and leaving bodies scattered around the market, as American soldiers killed at least 20 gunmen loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The battle emphasised the determination of the US military to end a five-week Shia uprising.

...

A building behind the mosque was fired on, detonating a substantial arms cache, and US soldiers stormed the shattered mosque, chasing the insurgents into a hotel and alley.

By daylight half the mosque - which is located a few hundred yards from two of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the shrines of the martyrs Hussein and Abbas - had been destroyed and several hotels were on fire.

Good. We're sick of their mosques being sanctuaries for murder and terror.

Previously American forces had kept out of Karbala and nearby Najaf, another holy city, after concerns that their presence could further inflame Iraqi fury, which is already outraged by the prisoner abuse photographs.

But it seems that in recent days negotiations with local tribal and religious leaders have convinced military leaders that many in the city would welcome efforts to evict Sadr's militiamen.

On Tuesday several hundred Iraqis marched in Najaf to demand Sadr's withdrawal and businessmen in both cities expressed frustration at the collapse of the local economy.

What a shock. Islamists maniacs with no skills whatsoever except chanting and seething cause collapse of local economy.

But then there's this:

... The coalition has made concessions.

On Tuesday, the American-appointed governor in Najaf suggested that US authorities were reconsidering their stated goal of "killing or capturing" Sadr. The US commander in the area said he was prepared to hand over security of the city to a locally raised security force that could include members of Sadr's Mahdi army.

We'd be angrier about this, except that we find ourselves caring less and less about which hateful racist maniacs in particular wind up running this shithole.

Sadr said yesterday: "The dissolution of the Mahdi army depends on the religious authorities. If they issue an edict to disband then we will disband."

Yeahp. We're on pins and needles waiting for all those moderate Muslim religious authorities to issue just such an edict.

June 30. We can't wait.

At this point, we're kinda hoping for civil war to break out on July 1.

Sure, it would destabilize the region and elect President John Forbes Kerry. But it would almost be worth it to see the looks on these people's faces.

By the Way... Why do these manaicas always assume that "72 virgins" means "72 female virgins"?

We're hoping it's actually 72 extremely-horny 14 year old boys with raging erections and a yen for hairy man-ass.

Posted by: Ace at 06:46 PM | Comments (35)
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Did you wonder why Nick Berg had been arrested by Iraqi police?

Or why the CIA offered to help ferry him out of country?

Seems strange, right?

Well, the mystery seems to be clearing up. Berg told his friends he had been suspected by Iraqi police of being a spy, due to his Jewish name and the Israeli stamp in his passport.

That would explain why the US consulate wanted to help get him out of the country. But he wanted to help the Iraqis, or to just see that part of the world, so he stayed, at great peril to himself.

We're awfully glad that the Iraqi police had to spend three fucking weeks detaining a suspected Israeli spy. It's not as if there are terrorists or criminals or insurgents in their country that need to be dealt with.

No, arrest the Jew. It's the Jew, you know, who's really the trouble-maker.

Presumably they feared the Israelis wanted to steal the top-secret Arab/Muslim formula for political dysfunction, cultural primativism, and social pathology.

Swell people. We're more and more glad we liberated them from Saddam Hussein.

Here's the next shoe to drop, we're afraid:

The bastards in the Iraqi police tipped off their friends in Al Qaeda that Berg would make a good victim.

We hope the FBI is looking hard at those guys.

The Arab and Muslim world does not like the merciful way we've conducted this war.

They will like the way we conduct the next war even less.

Posted by: Ace at 06:01 PM | Comments (22)
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"What has happened [at Abu Ghraib] is not just something that a few, you know, privates and corporals or sergeants engaged in. This is something that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war. It's an attitude that comes out of how we went there in the first place, an attitude that comes out of America's overall arrogance as policy."--John Kerry, quoted in the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, May 12

Thanks to Best of the Web.

You know, just yesterday someone predicted in a comment that John Kerry would say something incredibly stupid about this affair that would cost him dearly.

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (25)
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"I have forsworn myself. I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right." -- Eliot Ness, in 1987's The Untouchables

Sorry we've been so lax about blogging today.

We're working out how to say something the right way. We know what we mean to say, basically; but it's tricky to say it correctly. We don't want to overstate our feelings; we don't want to come off like vengeance-minded yahoos.

Although, in all fairness, we are sort of vengeance-minded yahoos.

But there's a way to make that case without sounding gleeful or murderous about it. At least, we imagine there's such a way. There must be.

In the meantime, we'll just have to go all Josh Marshall on you and leave you with that enigmatic quotation from David Mamet's excellent Untouchables script. Discuss amongst yourselves as we promise, "More of our scary-important musings later."

And in the meantime, you can peruse My Pet Jawa, who is sort of on our wavelength when he says:

The Dale Gribble in me wants to bring peace to Iraq. To remake that society into one of tolerance. The Rusty Shackleford in me wants to kill them all, let God sort them out.

We'd like to avoid that kind of language. But let's be clear about this: That's pretty much what we mean.

We just think there must be a prettier, more socially-acceptable way to say it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (28)
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It's here.

The servers are overloaded at the moment.

We really were reluctant to post a link. We just didn't trust our own motives -- are we just linking this sick material to be link-whores? are we just promoting Faces of Death-style macabre pornography? -- but we decided we can't ridicule the "patriotic" media for refusing to run the material if we ourselves weren't willing to link it ourselves.

We haven't seen this atrocity yet ourselves. We are told it is just about the worst thing you've ever seen. Ever.

You don't have to watch it. A lot of the people who've seen it seem to be shaken by it, and maybe will carry these sick images around for a long, long time.

But there it is. There is an actual atrocity for you. An atrocity the media doesn't seem particularly interested in, because there's no juicy anti-Bush angle involved.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (31)
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We really hate having to link Andrew Sullivan approvingly -- it tastes like ash in our mouths -- but give the shrieking ninny his due. This was a great catch he made yesterday:

"The reality of war in all its aspects needs to be reported and photographed. That is the patriotic, and necessary, thing to do in a democracy." - Michael Getler, ombudsman of the Washington Post, May 9, 2004, explaining why it was absolutely necessary to publish the prisoner-mistreatment photos

Ah, yes. It's necessary -- necessary!; there is no need to take into account competing considerations -- to publish such inflamatory and possibly life-threatening photos.

Good. So now we know the "rule:" the rule is that pictures which capture events in all of their terrible viciousness must be published, no matter what the consequences, no matter what other considerations there may be. The American people must have the very "best evidence," as lawyers say, of what is actually going on in the world; written descriptions will not suffice. If you have photos, you must run them.

Mere words are to be deemed euphemistic and santized when you've got photos. That's just pure "patriotism" talking.

Great. We didn't know the rule, now we do.

So, let's turn to the front page of the Washington Post and check out the photos of Nick Berg's beheading.

This photo isn't even on the front-page of the website. It was yesterday night for a time; but now there are more important issues, like John McCain being in the "driver's seat" of something or other.

So wait-- we thought the "rule" was that it was necessary and patriotic to display inflamatory and horrid photos if you had them. And yet, the Washington Post is only showing a fairly santized scene of grief between family members, the same sort of photo one would expect to see after a plane crash.

We guess it turns out that wasn't such a firm rule as originally stated.

We've said this time and time again, but we're going to keep on saying it until someone in the media acknowledges it:

When a story or a tactic fits in to the media's general liberal agenda, they defend their actions by claiming some sort of firm, objective, near-absolute rule -- with no caveats or competing considerations -- as well-nigh dictating their actions.

When a similar situation pops up in which taking the same actions would run contrary to their liberal agenda, suddenly we find out that the rule previously announced -- here, announced a mere three days ago -- wasn't quite as iron-clad or absolute as it was urged at the time. Suddenly we find out there was an awful lot of "nuance" and "judgment calls" going into that decision.

The media announces near-absolute objective "rules" because it doesn't want to have to argue about "nuance" or "judgment calls" more than necessary, because those are obviously succeptible to pre-existing political bias, a topic the media always wants to avoid. So they are forever claiming that there's virtually no need for such ad hoc deliberations when it comes to actions they've taken; they were practically forced to do whatever it is they've done by long-standing, unbendable rules of journalism.

Announcing these "rules" chokes off any possible avenue of debate. When the media announces it was just "necessary" to run the prisoner-mistreatment photos, how does one argue? If it's "necessary" to always present the most vivid, possibly lurid, documentation of an event, how can one argue with necessity?

But, of course, it turns out it wasn't quite so necessary as was first reported. It wasn't necessary at all, it turns out, to run pictures of Nick Berg's beheading; in fact, it wasn't even necessary to show him in terrified captivity in the moments before his murder.

What's the nuance here? Let us guess: It is necessary to run photos which may undermine troop morale and inflame our enemies' passions against us, and no competing considerations will be tolerated in this case.

But it is not necessary to run photos which may stiffen the American resolve and inflame our own passions; in this case, competing considerations, such as taste, may be taken into account.

We suppose further that the Washington Post would not want to inflame angry white American yahoos to go out there and kill an innocent Muslim.

And yet they seem blithely unconcerned about the possibility that the mistreatement photos might inflame an angry Muslim yahoo to go out there and kill an innocent American.

From Cox & Forkum, who are just about the best editorial cartoonists we've ever seen. We have no idea why they aren't run in every paper in the country-- oh wait, that's right, we know exactly why they aren't run in every paper in the country.

They've got an even better cartoon on this deal yesterday, but you'll have to click on the link to see it.

We really dig that version of Uncle Sam. We never much liked the crazy-old-man Uncle Sam of WW2. But this guy looks like an All-American Action Hero.

Oh, and there's just one more thing... We also thought that it was bad to invoke "patriotism" as one's defense, to wrap oneself in the flag to justify one's political or, we guess, journopolitical actions.

Apparently that "rule" only applies to conservatives.

Liberals, who are, as a group, unpatriotic and even anti-patriotic in the sense that they tend to despise patriotism and what they consider a benighted and jingoistic allegiance to one's country, are apparently quite free to invoke "patriotism" whenever it damn well suits them.

Jonah Goldberg Update: He notes the consistently inconsistent treatment of the media as regards photos that inflame our enemies, and photos that inflame us.

It's our solemn patriotic duty to publish fake "gang-rape" photos: Apparently "taste" didn't stop the Boston Globe from publishing absolutely, 100% fake photos of American GI's "gang-raping" Iraqi women. The photos, by the way, were simply taken from porno movies.

This "taste and decorum" caveat to the "rule" that vivid and inflamatory photos must be published by necessity would seem to have a bunch of sub-caveats of its own.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (31)
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Main Entry: atro·city

Pronunciation: &-'trO-si-tee

Function: noun

Etymology: Latin atroc-, atrox gloomy, atrocious, from atr-, ater black + -oc-, -ox (akin to Greek Ops eye) -- more at EYE

1 : an act marked extreme wickedness, brutality, or cruelty : BARBARIC

2 : an action deemed APPALLING or HORRIFYING

3: an act or situation deemed utterly revolting : ABOMINATION

Usage: Distinct from "mistreatment" or "humiliation" or "psychological pressure."

See Also: Palestinian murders dancing around with the dismembered body-parts of slaughtered Jewish soldiers.

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (22)
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