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POPSBradley Burstyn, Haaretz: What 1967 did to Judaism Bradley Burstyn writes in Haaretz last week that 1967, in convincing rabbis that they could be generals and putting them in a position of providing spiritual sustenance to an occupying army, effectively destroyed Orthodox Judaism. A provocative claim.
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POPSLearning from history: the British pullout from Iraq, 1932 Maj. Joel Rayburn, a historian and officer now posted to CENTCOM, writes about the dangers of a too-hasty exit from Iraq, drawing on the British experience post-WWI. I need to read this more carefully, but it seems his ideas present a pretty strong rebuke to both Republican and Democratic positions on the war right now. He says: a purely military approach, which is what the administration is pushing (though they claim not to be) will probably make things worse, but leaving now would probably be just as bad. From Foreign Affairs; a cached version.
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POPSJFK, 1963, on peace JFK's commencement address at American University in 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis. In it he remarks on Soviet propaganda claims that the U.S. is planning a "preventative war" -- which he describes as outlandish -- and declares, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war."
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POPSLong-term effects of Iraq war likely worse than Vietnam for U.S. The WaPo interviews a number of experts who suggest that given the current situation, the Iraq war will probably have disastrously long-term fallout for U.S. global standing that "makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk." Already the rest of the world sees the war as incompetently mismanaged, ethically and legally indefensible, strategically misguided, and resulting in a massive humanitiarian catastrophe.
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POPSOxford Research Group's assessment of GWOT The Telegraph reports on the recent study by the Oxford Research Group, which contends that the attempt to use military force to "contain" global attacks on the status quo will eventually backfire. Interesting, if tendentious.
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POPSIraq and the sunk-cost fallacy Asks the question: are we staying in Iraq because we've already invested so much in it, or because we think success is possible? Compares this to the economist's "sunk-cost fallacy", the well-known explanation for "throwing good money after bad."
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POPSRepublicans in Congress: don't mention the surge An internal strategy memo from Congressional Republicans lays it out with startling clarity: "Democrats want to force us to focus on defending the surge, making the case that it will work... If we let the Democrats force us into a debate on the surge, or the current situation in Iraq, we lose." As always, they advise, just keep repeating "9-11, 9-11, 9-11" until people agree with you.
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POPSUSAF Counterproliferation Center Links from the USAF Air War College to white papers and research documents on terrorism. Includes work by some very widely known and respected researchers, both inside and outside the military, e.g. psychologist Jerrold Post.
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POPSDepleted uranium and U.S. troops I think this is probably the best-known report on the health effects of depleted uranium munitions. No one knows for sure exactly how bad or how widespread the effects will be. DU projectiles and armor (which pulverize on impact and are then inhaled as dust) are widely used in the Iraq war.
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POPSBenjamin and Aslan on American Islam Exchange between Daniel Benjamin (author of The Next Attack) and Reza Aslan (author of No God but God) on the situation of American Muslims in the context of the GWOT. Focuses on the new book by Paul Barrett, American Islam. This is the fourth piece out of four; all are worth a read.
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POPSHow to control public opinion on the war MoJo interviews Rick Scavetta, an officer formerly working in Army media relations in Afghanistan, who talks about the ways the war is "marketed" to civilians (for example: no one's really looking for Osama any more).
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POPSReligion and war will die out, scientists predict Daniel Dennett (okay, not a scientist, but still) and others predict that as people's access to information becomes more democratic and widespread, the appeal of traditional religions and fundamentalisms will evaporate. These folks obviously know nothing about religions or how they work...
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POPSLatest from "Get Your War On" comix New postings from "Get Your War On" since Thanksgiving. If you don't know it, this is probably the bitterest, angriest, most obscene political cartoonist there is. I think he's great; YMMV.
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POPSKrugman: Respect for early war critics Latest column from Paul Krugman. It's an "honor roll" of people who publicly criticized the administration position on going to war in Iraq before it happened. As it turns out, most of their predictions have come true. Remarkably, the Weekly Standard piece that makes fun of "antiwar doomsayers" is still online here: http://snurl.com/14mcf
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POPSNewt Gingrich: we failed in Iraq Newt Gingrich, in a traditional New Hampshire campaign setting, labels the Bush administration's Iraq strategy "a failure" and calls for "contrition."
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POPSPost-Pearl Harbor audio archive of interviews Audio archives of "man-in-the-street" interviews around the US of reactions to Pearl Harbor. The Library of Congress has made available many hours of audio recordings in multiple formats (Real, .wav, and .mp3). For a great example, listen to the audio on this page: snurl.com/13pcw. It's an interview with several Indiana University students about their thoughts on Pearl Harbor three days after the bombing.
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POPSPro-US Iraqi blog on Iraq's collapse Iraq the Model is a good, solid, pro-US Iraqi blog. However, in this post, they basically admit that the US mission is doomed at this point without a solid Iraqi authority to hold the country together -- and that authority doesn't exist.
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POPSRevenge killings increase in Iraq The US military notes that increasingly "larger numbers of people are involved in killing". According to the US leaders' assessments, the situation is getting more and more out of control, rather than improving, as the civilian death toll and a general sense of desperation increase among ordinary Iraqis. Many families are either becoming radicalized or leaving the country as the violence spirals.
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POPSDescription of waterboarding, by a victim -- yes, it's real torture Pyewacket pointed to this link in a comment here . I thought it deserved a clip of its own. Anyone who thinks waterboarding is "not real torture" should read the whole thing. The victim, who was held by the Japanese army during WWII, endured constant torture for three years, including frequent near-lethal beatings. He says that waterboarding was the worst thing he ever experienced. Fifty years later, a witness "cannot stop shuddering."
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