In what can only be described as a harsh blow to the natural selection process, the so-called "human shields" are packing it in, having figured out that war is, like, dangerous and stuff, y'know? Especially if they make you stand in front of an ammo dump instead of a hospital or orphanage.

What a shame; they were a shoo-in for a Darwin Award.

Chris Muir points out that we may also have lost a vital source of intelligence.

Michael Ledeen reports in NRO that the recent record-low turnout in municipal elections in Iran was in fact a protest (non-)vote, and a resounding rejection of both the mullahs and the faint-hearted "reformers". And as usual, the western press screws up the reportage:

The Iranian people rejected the regime in the most unmistakable way, yet the "story" you read in our newspapers is that the hard liners routed the reformers in something resembling a real election. As if the Iranian people, after years of mass demonstrations against the mullahcracy, after thousands of freedom fighters had sacrificed their lives in protest against Islamic oppression, had suddenly seen the darkness and decided they preferred tyranny to freedom. Or perhaps they had heard the shameful nonsense emanating from the mouth of Deputy Secretary of State Armitage ("Iran is a democracy") and decided that since the Supreme Leader was a confirmed democrat, the best path to liberty was to give the regime a huge vote of confidence.

No way. The elections were a protest non-vote, pure and simple.

The neglect and ignorance of the western press regarding events in Iran is scandalous. One day soon, Iran will free itself (possibly, but probably not overtly, with outside help), and the major news outlets will be taken completely by surprise.

We all have reason to worry as the Middle East remakes itself; such huge political change is never a tidy or painless process. But I remain optimistic; I feel that a thrilling potential is being unleashed, matched in my lifetime only by the fall of the Soviet Union. Millions of people are about to emerge from the darkness, and join us in the free world. No doubt the Middle East will have its share of Yugoslav-like chaos, its Ceausescu-like unrepentant tyrants who must be brought down hard, its islands of lingering Belarus-like tyranny. But it will have its Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels as well, and its people will prize their liberty all the more for its being hard-won.

We do live in "interesting times"; yet I for one do not consider it a curse.

There is great wailing and concern that if the UN Security Council votes against military action against Iraq, and the United States and UK invade anyway, then that august body will become irrelevant. But, asks Walter Russell Mead, was it ever relevant to begin with?

Since 1945, the United States has sent troops into other countries with the prospect of combat more than 50 times; in the great majority, no Security Council approval was either asked or given. Past U.S. interventions without U.N. authorization include Vietnam; Haiti and Kosovo during the Clinton administration; Panama under the first President Bush; Grenada under President Reagan; and the ill-fated attack on Iran when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In fact, from Harry Truman to the present, every U.S. president has intervened militarily abroad without the Security Council's blessing.

The United States may be a diplomatic cowboy, but we aren't riding the only horse on the range. Every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council has undertaken at least one war without the council's permission or endorsement. China attacked India in 1962 without a Security Council resolution, and again without a resolution attacked Vietnam in 1979. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary without going to the Security Council. Britain and France invaded Egypt in 1956 without informing, much less consulting with, the Security Council. More recently, both Britain and France have sent troops to Kosovo and various African destinations without council advice or consent.

The plain if slightly sad fact is that from the day the U.N. Security Council first met in 1946, no great power has ever stayed out of a war because the council voted against it, and no great military power ever got into a war because the Security Council ordered it to.

Is the prestige and importance of the UN Security Council is just an agreed-upon lie? If so, and if that lie no longer serves our purposes, we could very well be better off either overhauling it, or scrapping it altogether and starting over. The United States and the world would be better served by an international security accord made up of nations that truly prize freedom, and have the courage and principle to promote and defend that freedom.

Then put a sign outside the door fo the assembly hall: "You must be at least this free to go on this ride."

Jimmy Carter wrote a Washington Post editorial a few days ago, The Troubling New Face of America. "A few days ago" might as well be an eternity in the blogosphere; I am way too late to get my licks in on this one.

So I just have one thing to add (with apologies to Matt and Trey):

No, it's not Photoshop; do I look like I'm made of money? If I have a spare $600 on hand, I can think of lots of better things to spend it on. This was done using The GIMP.

As InstaPundit reminds us, Saturday, March 15th is International Eat an Animal for PETA Day.

Here in Houston, the best place I know of for getting in touch with your inner carnivore is Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian restaurant on Westheimer near Dunvale. Be warned, though, it's about $40 a plate, and they're always packed on weekends. (I understand they have restaurants in Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago as well.)

For myself though, I think I'll head out to a little barbecue place I know out in Fulshear, and bring back a couple of quarts of shredded beef to last me a while. It's been a long time since I've been to Dozier's, and I'm overdue.

Remember, the human race developed intelligence in order to become better hunters. As Larry Niven says, how smart do you have to be to sneak up on a leaf?

It's begun.

The initial attempt to decapitate the regime may or may not have succeeded, and as the fog of war descends, we may not know the answer to even the most basic question -- "Is Saddam still alive?" -- for some time to come. (Come to think of it, eighteen months out, we still don't know whether Osama is alive.)

Michele and Alan have set up a central news clearinghouse blog on BlogSpot, The Command Post, with an all-star contributor list. Other sites that are expected to update frequently as news breaks are Team Stryker, VodkaPundit (Stephen Green), and of course, the Blogfather.

I don't have a whole lot to add, myself. If I have some time after work, I'll post some thoughts on the likely aftermath.

Nice backhand, J.T. In today's WSJ Best of the Web, James Taranto writes:

In the videotaped speech, Saddam or whoever said the U.S. was "driven to" liberate Iraq "by the criminal Zionists and those who have agendas." If it really is Saddam, and if he survives the war, maybe he can go to work for The American Conservative.

AmCon is Pat Buchanan's relatively new paleoconservative screed-rag, where he makes the case that this whole Iraq mess is the fault of, you know, those people, wink wink.

David Frum has a nice overview and history of the paleoconservative movement here, at NRO.

"Tokyo Taro", in a comment on Stephen Green's site, makes an excellent point:

Another intended consequence of Bush's war that hasn't gotten much attention yet is that it will undermine financial incentives to sell arms to rogue nations by, er, downgrading the credit rating of rogue regimes.

The temptation to make sweetheart deals with unstable dictators is obviously too much for many in the world (including some Americans) to resist. But now, worldwide arms dealers must be doubting whether they will ever be able to collect on any deal they're considering with, say, Syria or Iran.

(BTW, when you read the title above, did you hear, in your head, Alan Hale singing those words to the tune of "The Toreador's Song"? Yeah, me too. Damn you Sherwood Schwartz! You ruined both Hamlet and Carmen for a whole generation of TV viewers!)

The AP (via Ananova) reports that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is unhappy about how post-war economic relations with the new Iraq are likely to shape up. It looks like about $5 billion worth of IOUs are about to become waste paper.

"We will have to defend our interests so that the contracts which were signed under Saddam Hussein are not annulled as lacking legal force and to make sure the Iraqi debt owed us is respected," he said.

...

"In this way, they are saying that everything before today was illegal, all contracts signed before are illegal, and legality begins with the arrival of a new administration, even a temporary one."

Yep.

Given Russia's to-the-bitter-end opposition to the second resolution, given the political cover they have granted to Saddam, what kind of post-war treatment did they expect? They could have offered to go along with the resolution, and leaned on France to do likewise, and then they'd be in a better position to collect their take be part of the post-war planning and reconstruction. But no. This is the pricetag attached to that veto.

As pointed out previously, lending money to tin-pot tyrants is not just an obnoxious thing to do, it's a bad investment. Iraq is the Enron of world politics (and the UN its Arthur Andersen). You do business with shady people, you get shafted.

And it's hardly unjust; it is, after all, blood money. That debt is for the Soviet-made weaponry used by Saddam, among other purposes, to terrorize the people of Iraq. The new government will be truly representative of those people, and it's ridiculous to expect them to pay for the means of their own repression.

Go pound sand, Igor. Come back and talk to us when you've got all of that Soviet-era affinity for totalitarianism out of your system.

Hat-tip to InstaPundit.

David Tabb (brother-in-law of Stacy "Blogatelle" Tabb, blog designer to the stars) has a tale to tell.

Link via VodkaPundit.

InstaPundit relays to us very interesting proposal about what to do with the Iraqi oil money after the liberation -- a proposal that does away with the "It's all about OIL!" criticism quite nicely, and may have a number of other salutary effects. Go read.

Here's how it works: Bill Whittle writes, we all read, and I despair of ever being able to write even half as well. I'm used to it by now.

This war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals. The enemy, -- a ragtag, badly-fed collection of hotheads and fanatics -- has failed to be shocked and awed by the most magnificent military machine ever fielded. Their dogged resistance has shown us the futility of the idea that a nation of millions could ever be subjugated and administered, no matter what obscene price we are willing to pay in blood and money.

The President of the United States is a buffoon, an idiot, a man barely able to speak the English language. His vice president is a little-seen, widely despised enigma and his chief military advisor a wild-eyed warmonger. Only his Secretary of State offers any hope of redemption, for he at least is a reasonable, well-educated man, a man most thought would have made a far, far better choice for Chief Executive.

We must face the fact that we had no business forcing this unjust war on a people who simply want to be left alone. It has damaged our international relationships beyond any measure, and has proven to be illegal, immoral and nothing less than a monumental mistake that will take generations to rectify. We can never hope to subdue and remake an entire nation of millions. All we will do is alienate them further. So we must bring this war to an immediate end, and make a solemn promise to history that we will never launch another war of aggression and preemption again, so help us God.

 

So spoke the American press. The time was the summer of 1864.

Some drone on NPR's Sunday morning program just reported that the war appeared to be bogging down because "it has already lasted longer than the ground portion of the Gulf War" (no mention, of course, of the weeks of bombing beforehand) "or the Israeli Six Day War".

The Six-Day War? So if the war lasts seven days or more, it's to be judged a failure?

Folks, we have a well-earned reputation in the Middle East for cutting our losses and running away when the going gets rough. It's not a failure of our troops; they've always been willing to stand and fight.

But our leaders have been fools and cowards, and have completely misjudged the consequences of their actions, from the decision not to defend the US Embassy in Tehran onwards. (Even Ronaldus Magnus has been found wanting: the Beirut mission was an even bigger disaster on the geopolitical level than on the military level.)

Time after time, we've made the same mistake: committing troops without committing ourselves. We go in talking a good game, but when something goes wrong, we cave, pack up, go home. Tehran, Beirut, Mogadishu -- these things add up, and give us a reputation as a paper tiger.

We are now engaged in, among other things, undoing the damage to our reputation for faint-hearted political leadership. The only way to do that is to face, and pass, a severe test of our will.

Declaring defeat if we haven't won in six days is the worst thing we could possibly do, the costliest thing we can do in terms of lives potentially lost. Because next time the test will be harsher still.

Bush was questioned about our forces being "bogged down", and his answer was exactly right: we will prevail, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes.

Now we just have to live up to that.