Antiwar.com Blog

The ”Baghdad Blogger” is a window into the occupation of Iraq. His 7-12 entry discusses a new feature of his Baghdad camp:

brown and root is on the ground…this always boost soldiers spirits…when those guys show up things start getting nice quick…they start putting up buildings and chow halls so quickly…they hire out local nationals to cook and serve food…the chow is already a step up from A-rats…but that really isn’t that hard to do…

The presence of “brown and root” – a military organization that feeds and houses stationed troops – is an indication that the stay will be long:

brown and root can be a double edged sword…the quality of life does improve but they usually don’t come in unless an american presence is going to last for years…like kosovo…

The new “Week in Review” has been posted. Check it out!

Apparently, those at NRO have an explanation for everything, which in this case conveniently downplays the increasing casualty count in Iraq. Victor David Hanson of NRO writes:

We are winning this war. But we should never forget, because of our amazing success so far, that we are still in a war — a big one against Islamic fascism and the abettors of terror in the Middle East that started on September 11 but will follow certain historic rules that did not suddenly first appear in 2001, nor can be easily ignored by present experts. Our task — ordeal if you will — is that we must make war so godawfully terrible to our enemies, and the rewards of peace and reform so humanely sweet to our friends, that the vast middle in between will have no problem choosing sides.

Before making this statement, Hanson opines that those we are killing don’t understand the beauty of the West:

There really is no alternative to the allure of the West — even for a theocrat or suicide-murderer. Communism alone offered to the ignorant the only tempting romantic counter-proposition to Western capitalism and liberality: that Western bounty must be stolen at the point of a gun shared by all its citizens.

So, by Hanson’s logic: teach ’em to love our values by killing and frightening them into submission….

From the Financial Times, reprinted in The Weekly Standard. My two favorite parts:

“We need to create a colonial office–fast.

Of course, it cannot be called that. It needs an anodyne euphemism such as Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.”

Leo who? Nineteen eighty-what? Das Boot continues:

“But it should take its inspiration, if not its name, from the old British Colonial Office and India Office. Together, these two institutions ran large swaths of the world with a handful of bright, honest, industrious civil servants. They had an enormous impact, given the small numbers involved; there were seldom more than 1,000 members of the Indian civil service to administer hundreds of millions of Indians.”

Wow! What an extraordinary ratio of (white) chiefs to (literal) Indians! How did they ever manage?

Find the article here.

Nodding Or Shaking Your Head May Even Influence Your Own Thoughts, Study Finds

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When you nod your head to signal approval or shake your head to show disapproval, it’s not just sending a message to others – you may also be influencing yourself.

A new study showed that these simple movements influenced people’s agreement with an editorial they heard while nodding or shaking their head…

“We think of nodding or shaking our head as something that communicates to other people, but it turns out that it is also communicating to ourselves,” said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

In a sense, Petty said, nodding or shaking your head, as well as other body movements, serve as a kind of “self-validation” that confirms to us how we feel about our own thoughts.

www.sciencedaily.com

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The National Review ran a column against military intervention. Something must be in the water at NR headquarters.