Moonbat Logic

I don't particularly enjoy talking about the antiwar movement, because antiwar activists aren't seriously engaged in the debate over what's best for Iraq and the United States. Their childish tactics and ridiculous sloganeering don't deserve any attention. But Linda Milazzo at the Huffington Post has an article that gave me a moment to reflect on what it means to be a hero.

"Every American who opposes the immoral wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and fears an encore on Iran, owes a heart-felt thanks to Desiree Fairooz for placing herself in the cross hairs for peace."

Nearly everyone has seen the picture of Fairooz waving her hands at the Secretary of State. Antiwar activists celebrate her courage in a display that has become known as "speaking truth to power." These activists hold that dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and regard Fairooz as a patriot who "put herself in the cross hairs" to get her message out.

If going to a public hearing with a fleet of people who support you, and racking up a misdemeanor for waving makeup-stained hands at the administration's top diplomat counts as putting oneself in the crosshairs, then the acts of people like Paul Ray Smith and Michael P. Murphy are nothing short of walking through the gates of Hell.

Putting oneself in the crosshairs is not done at a house hearing by risking a possible felony assault charge, then going free. Which brings us to a fundamental truth about the antiwar movement: they do not understand the meaning of sacrifice. They don't know what it is, how to do it, or what qualifies as bravery.

No doubt they are acting on their convictions, and that's great, but their skewed view of heroism lends some understanding to their skewed view of reality. When you count risking an improbable criminal charge as a death-defying act of heroism, it stands to reason that the rest of your perceptions are off by a factor of ten as well. Let's test that theory. From Linda Milazzo:

"If only it were illegal to use the people's airwaves to purposely LIE TO THE PEOPLE!!

For the nation's peacemakers - the silenced heroes who defend the Constitution - there are no delusions of an honorable mainstream media."

Calling for the curtailment of the First Amendment in one breath and then pretending to be a defender of the Constitution in the next? The theory holds here. Another example might be if she accuses the Media of being in cahoots with the administration in one breath, and then lauds the work of a mainstream media outlet in another. Wouldn't that be something:

"A huge thank you to photographer Charles Dharapak and to the Associated Press for letting the truth be told..." "There are no corporate broadcasters openly sympathetic to protesters on the air. How can they be - if they are ONE with the government?! How can they be - if consolidating media means dismantling any challenge to power?"

If you read my last post on Karbala, you'll see that FOX, CNN, ABC, and CBS all got their stories on Karbala from the AP. Yet somehow AP is noble and righteous and yadda yadda, while these other four networks are chock full o' crap. Theory holds for a third time.

I'd love to see peace just as much as the next guy, I really would. But the world is not so simple as fake blood on a delusional protester's hands, and the AP photographer named in the story wasn't the only one to get a picture.
Pretty sure that's not what heroism looks like.

Iraqis Take Back Karbala, MSM Is Nowhere In Sight.

On Monday in Iraq, the province of Karbala was handed over to Iraqi security forces. This is the eighth of the eighteen Iraqi provinces. If you haven't heard about it, that isn't any surprise. For the four big media outlets (ABC, CNN, FOX, and CBS) this news is attached to a story about a suicide bomber who rode a bicycle into some ISF recruits, killing about 28 of them. This happened in Ba'qubah. Now, on to why this is ridiculous.

According to Google Earth, Ba'qubah is about 30 miles north of Baghdad, in Diyala province. The northern edge of Karbala province is, at an absolute minimum, 40 miles south of Baghdad. The provinces of Karbala and Diyala do not touch at any point; by the shortest straight line, they are separated by Babil and Baghdad.

What is that? That is over 70 miles of spin. That has to be some kind of record.

At CBS, the news about the Karbala handover is attached to the bottom of the Bicycle Bomber story in an "other developments" section. It receives a token quote from al-Maliki, and then this sentence:

"In southern Iraq, meanwhile, the U.S. military turned over security responsibilities to Iraqi authorities in the mainly Shiite province of Karbala, the eighth of the nation's 18 provinces to revert to Iraqi control."

At ABC, the handover story is given the exact same sentence on the second of three pages of Bicycle Bomber story, that has been mixed with the Captured Sheikhs story. It also features the exact same quote from al-Maliki.

At CNN, the coverage is still attached to the Islamic Lance Armstrong story, but relative to the previous two sources, the coverage is fantastic, even if it comes after a slew of minor stories about low-intensity violence. The story actually gets several sentences.

How about our right-wing-hate-machine friends at FOX? The story actually has its own headline, even if it's a head on a stick; three sentences about the handover before diving into pedal-powered jihad. That's what makes them right wing, those bastards. How dare they put the good news first. Even if they got their story from the AP, just like literally everyone else listed so far.

What about the BBC? They've mixed the story in so completely with the al-Qaeda Courier story that it's actually a chore to separate the two. My favorite, unbiased excerpt from this story? Right here:

"Violence levels falling

Police said the bomber had arrived at the scene of the Baquba attack on a bicycle dressed in civilian clothes concealing a suicide belt."

Falling violence subtitle, then right into our Iraqi X-Games contestant again. So where do they mention the falling violence? At the end of the damn article:

"But our correspondent says levels of violence have generally been falling since a US troop surge began in February."

So where does one go to get actual information? To paraphrase the creepy yet appropriate sentiment of Jim Jones, "come to me my babies, let me quell your pain."

According to icasualties.org, there have been 37 coalition deaths in Karbala province over the entire duration of the war. As far as violence goes, its in the top 3 of the most violent of the least violent (not a typo, read that twice). If there are three general tiers of violence in Iraq, Karbala is toward the top of the bottom rung.

According to globalsecurity.org, the population density is about average for an Iraqi province with a major city in it, so we also can't chalk up the lack of fatalities to a lack of people. According to 2002 numbers, the city of Karbala proper contains about 550,000 residents alone. Handing over half a million Iraqis into Iraqi care isn't a small deal, even if Karbala is a small province.

Karbala is being handed to the ISF from the 3rd Infantry Division under the command of Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch. More information on their presence in Iraq and Karbala province is, predictably, available at globalsecurity.org.

In an interview at defenselink.mil in July, Maj. Gen. Lynch had this to say about the ISF units that he would be handing Karbala to:

"We also need the best effort of the Iraqi security forces. By the way, I sense that they're getting better every day. In my battlespace, I deal with two Iraqi army divisions: the 6th Iraqi Army Division and the 8th Iraqi Army Division. And those division commanders are competent, capable military professionals who are Iraqis. They're not Shi'a; they're not Sunni. They're Iraqis, and their enemy is anybody that's against Iraq. And they've got competent subordinate commanders as well."

According to this older story from USA Today, a key quote from Lynch implies that he's also been embracing the idea of the awakening councils and the concerned citizens groups, which has been a major part of the security progress in Anbar and elsewhere:

"If you've got folks who say, 'Hey, this is my hometown, and I'm tired of the violence and if you simply train and equip me, I'll protect my hometown.' We ought to jump on that like a duck on a June bug."

Ultimately, I'd give the mainstream media a giant red "FAIL" on this one. Some idiot at AP got paid to print essentially no information at all, and tack it onto the end of a blood story. AP sold it to the big four American news outlets, who swallowed it without any evaluation whatsoever. Somebody is drinking Kool-Aid, and if it isn't obvious to you, I want you to wear a tinfoil hat so I know who you are.

The Turn

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige.'"
-- Cutter, "The Prestige"

The media has been awfully quiet on Iraq lately, with the exception of the diplomacy taking place between Iraq and Turkey over the PKK terrorists (they're not "rebels" just because they're Kurds, dammit). Talk of violence trends in the major media outlets is close to nonexistent. The Nation waxes nostalgic about the last time it had something right (2003) and how nobody appreciates depressing leftist books anymore. And as the blood that brings in the money for anti-war media outlets stops flowing, they turn their attention to the money that's been stopping the blood. Perhaps to phrase this more diplomatically, they're simply playing their strong suit. Which isn't death and mayhem anymore.

They need something to scare people into believing them. Declining casualties isn't scary, but 2.7 Trillion for two wars in progress is, even if the money provides the armor, weapons, aid, and operational tempo that are yielding the results. but they don't tell you that second part.

So is the coercive diplomacy being exercised against Iran, when one ignores how breathtakingly dumb a strike against Iran would be. But they don't mention that second part.

Another scary thing is a Turkish invasion of Iraq that is extremely unlikely to happen, as neither country has anything to gain from an escalation. But they don't mention that second part.

When and where things are going well for the American effort in Iraq, they are also going well for the Iraqis. When this happens, the press tries to make it disappear. They entertain you with something else until they can bring it back. That's what you're witnessing now: the turn. They're showing you something else, heavily modified, to distract you from the trick they're playing on you.

All things considered, the people who parrot these tricks don't remind me of any particular magician. But they do bring another interesting person to mind.

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter's definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority."
-- Stanley Milgram