Stardate 20040321.1252

(Captain's log): Facts and logic should never be permitted to stand in the way of a good internationalist or anti-American polemic. Medea Benjamin writes a guest column in the WaPo about yesterday's anti-something-or-other demonstrations on the first anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. Among other interesting things she claims:

We are marching for Yanar Mohammad, head of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, and others who are aghast at how the U.S. invasion has undermined women and strengthened the hand of conservative Islamists. Iraqi women were stunned when the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council recently tried to nullify Iraq's 1959 family code, considered among the most progressive in the Middle East, and place such vital issues as marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance under Muslim religious jurisdiction.

"Yes, we wanted to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but the U.S. has appointed people to power who would like to institutionalize and legalize the oppression of women," Mohammad said at a Baghdad protest on March 8, International Women's Day. "This is not liberation."

Benjamin doesn't bother to mention the fact that the attempt was prevented. She also doesn't seem to think it significant that the recently-signed Iraqi provisional constitution sets a goal of having 25% of the members of the National Assembly be women, or that it explicitly includes a declaration of equal rights for women.

We are marching to support the call from Iraqi women for significant representation in the new Iraqi government. ...

Finally, we are marching to say that come November, the American people must hold their leaders accountable for taking us into this illegal, unnecessary and disastrous war.

After all, Iraq's women were so much better off when Saddam was in power, right? And would be much better off today if he had not been deposed by said "illegal, unnecessary and disastrous war".

When I saw this headline, I was sure someone had penetrated the computers of one of the news services and planted it:

French Basques Raid U.S. Iraq Administrator's Home

In sympathy for their wrongly-accused Spanish cousins regarding the attack in Madrid, they took revenge on Bremer, I thought... It read like a tabloid headline: "Girl claims to be love-child of Elvis and Space Alien".

But their real reason for doing it made little more sense than the one I imagined. (And what in hell is Bremer doing with a vacation home in France, anyway? Ye Gods.)

France is a hot-bed of logic these days anyway. My old friend de Villepin has topped himself:

"Terrorism didn't exist in Iraq before," de Villepin said. "Today, it is one of the world's principal sources of world terrorism."

As an engineer working with electronics, I distinguish between sources and sinks. A source is a place from which something flows. A sink is a place where it is dissipated. Iraq is one of the world's principal sinks of terrorism; drawing in militants and jihadists to be destroyed.

But it used to be a source. de Villepin also ignores Saddam's open support for the Palestinians and his bounty on Israelis. (Of course, that's because the members of Hamas and similar groups who murder Israelis are freedom fighters, not terrorists, right?)

Carla del Ponte has demanded that Saddam should stand trial before an international court.

"It is difficult to conduct the trial if politics interfere. To avoid interference from outside, I think an international court could serve best," she said.

After all, if you turn the trial over to outsiders, then they wouldn't be interfering any more, would they?

del Ponte knows a great deal about international courts.

Now heading the prosecution of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, she was formerly chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda investigating the 1994 genocide.

Ah, yes, a couple of magnificent successes for international justice. The Milosevic trial was originally expected to be finished by last spring, but in fact the prosecution case only just recently ended. Even so, they still are arguing about what charges he should face.

The head judge hearing the case is quitting. That might lead to a declaration of mistrial, so that the entire circus can start over, but even without that, any new judge taking over will have to review tens of thousands of pages of evidence and transcripts in order to come up to speed before presiding over the presentation of Milosevic's defense. It's currently scheduled to begin in June, but don't bet on it happening that soon.

I don't suppose it's worth bothering to mention that the trial has been such a success in discrediting Milosevic as to make it possible for him to win election to a seat in the Serbian Parliament. If Ms. del Ponte were given responsibility for trying Saddam, he might even become President of Iraq again.

As part of their new efforts against terrorism (which do not involve any deployment of troops) it's been suggested that Europe create a shared database of information about terrorists operating in Europe. It makes me wonder how they'd square that idea with Europe's extremely strong rules about databases and privacy.

But they've had one solid success.

The European Union is set to get a new co-ordinator who will work under the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana to manage its actions against terrorism.

The person will feed information to Europe's justice and home affairs ministers and "will co-ordinate the work of the Council in combating terrorism", according to a draft declaration by the Irish EU Presidency.

Terrorists the world over are shivering in their shoes. Or laughing themselves silly, more likely.

An ad-hoc panel of 26 Europeans and Americans have released a report about the rift between the US and Europe. Among their other pious comments:

"America may be the indispensable nation, but its partners in Europe are its indispensable allies," it said. "Virtually every objective that Americans and Europeans seek will be easier to attain if they work together."

They seem to be speaking a different English language than I am accustomed to. If something is indispensable, then it is impossible to do without it. If a task is easier with something than without it, then it is useful but not indispensable. (And if a task is harder with something than without it, it is an impediment.)

This also is yet another case of someone concealing a false assumption. ...every objective that Americans and Europeans seek... ignores the most important political fact made clear in the last two years: European objectives have not been the same as American objectives.

Of course, that conceals an even deeper assumption which is that Europe collectively is united. Nonetheless, the most important political fact revealed last year was that many in Europe actively opposed critical American objectives.

In particular, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the paramount goal of French foreign policy last year was to keep Saddam in power in Iraq. Certainly that's what the people of Iraq have concluded.

Concluding that the United States and Europe have common interests and face common dangers, even more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the report urged the two sides to try to reach agreement on new "rules of the road" governing the use of force.

Also, the panelists concluded, the United States and its European allies should develop a common policy toward states that possess or seek to possess weapons of mass destruction or that support terrorism in any way.

"Rules of the road" and "policy" are strategies, and strategies are always formulated to achieve objectives. (Objectives and strategy join tactics, logistics and morale as the five fundamental elements of war.) But if there's no fundamental agreement on objectives, then there can be no common strategy. And when reading things like this and this, it's hard to see how any consensus could emerge unless one side capitulated.

But that, in fact, is exactly what a lot of Europeans think is needed: for America to capitulate. It's the same old refrain, endlessly repeated. So they're pinning their hopes on a Kerry Presidency.

Which is a problem, for them. Kerry has emerged from the primary process saddled with political burdens which will cost him. With emergence of a clear winner in the contest for the Democratic nomination, Bush gave him a call and congratulated him, and let him know Bush was thinking about him.

Translation: "INCOMING!". The Republicans have started campaigning against Kerry, and he's getting hurt.

A fair amount of that has been self-inflicted. He bragged about getting private endorsements from foreign leaders, got hammered, and then publicly picked up the endorsements of Malaysia's Mahathir and Spain's Zapatero, neither of which are particularly held in high regard in the US. Kerry's campaign then decided that foreign endorsements were not a good thing.

David Ignatius writes in the WaPo his advice for how Kerry can "pass the Iraq test":

Kerry must reject that logic. His line should be that he wants success in Iraq and will do everything he can, as candidate and as president, to make it happen. He needs to make clear that failure isn't an option for him any more than for Bush -- and that a Kerry presidency would never embrace a Spanish-style policy of cut and run.

In that sense, Kerry needs to take Iraq off the table as an issue. His advisers may say that's crazy -- to throw away their biggest weapon against Bush. But that understates the gravity of this election. Kerry's best shot is that he would be a stronger, smarter leader in wartime. On Iraq, he should tell the truth: Now that we've gotten in, we have to stay and support the Iraqi people in rebuilding their country. Period.

Ignatius ignores a serious problem with his advice: it would instantly alienate a major section of Kerry's voter powerbase. The entire reason Kerry ended up loaded with anti-war baggage was that it was necessary in order to gain support from key factions of the Democratic Party. If Kerry takes the kind of position Ignatius advocates, he won't necessarily alleviate the suspicions of those who still support the war, but he's guaranteed to anger a substantial number of voters who at the moment still are inclined to vote for him. That's why Kerry is stuck.

And that's why the Republicans scored such big points against him by pointing out that he voted against the $87 billion supplemental appropriation last year.

Kerry then defended himself by saying, I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.

My first reaction when I read that was utter disbelief: he did not actually say that, did he? And people accuse Bush of being stupid.