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*** Learn "The Third Rule of War:"

It's an important story told from the perspective of the military doctors in Iraq. It's not the first time that I've posted about those who tend to the wounded - the story of Saving Specialist Gray is one of my favorites.

This story, however, is not about winning. Unfortunately, it's about "The Third Rule of War" ...

*** As excerpted in the Good news from Iraq, part 29:

Having spent the past two years in Iraq, first as an Army officer and now as the head of the Iraq office of the Washington-based US Institute of Peace, I am struck by the determination and steadiness of Iraqis as they struggle to build a stable, democratic country, and by the continuing, firm commitment of Iraqis to participate in - and manage - that process.

In spite of a constant threat from the various insurgencies over the past year, Iraqi government agencies, political parties, and civil society organizations have gradually expanded their capabilities and activities. They will tell you how much more they could have done had they not been constrained by security threats or - almost as important - the lack of reliable infrastructure, but what they have accomplished already is admirable, as is their unflagging determination in the face of these threats and constraints.

There is a phrase I hear in almost every conversation with Iraqis that captures the mood of this process: hutwa bi hutwa, or "step by step."

Chrenkoff's regular round-up of underreported positive stories keeps getting more and more comprehensive. Check it out.

Yet CNN continues to merely report the violence ...

*** Be sure to check out the "Carnival of the Liberated:"

Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. This week we've got Operation Lightning, forefingers, life under occupation, life under Saddam, more blogging from the Green Zone, and much more.

*** Christopher Hitchens continues to impress:

The position of the United States is different, because not only is it a signatory to the Geneva protocols, it is also the power that has pressed other nations to both sign and observe them. (It was also the United States that pressed all member states of the United Nations to sign Eleanor Roosevelt's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia at first declined to do.) Any wavering on the part of Washington thus has consequences far beyond itself.

The forces of al-Qaida and its surrogate organizations are not signatory to the conventions and naturally express contempt for them. They have no battle order or uniform and are represented by no authority with which terms can be negotiated. Nor can they claim, as actual guerrilla movements like the Algerian FLN have done in the past, to be the future representatives of their countries or peoples. In Afghanistan and Iraq, they sought to destroy the electoral process that alone can confer true legitimacy, and they are in many, if not most, cases not even citizens of the countries concerned. Their announced aim is the destruction of all nonbelievers, and their avowed method is indiscriminate and random murder. They are more like pirates, hijackers, or torturers—three categories of people who have in the past been declared outside the protection of any law.

The administration therefore deserves at least some sympathy in its confrontation with an enemy of a new type. I should very much like to know how a Gore administration would have dealt with the hundreds of foreign sadists taken in arms in Afghanistan. I should also like to know how other Western governments, which are privately relieved that the United States assumed responsibility for the last wave, expect to handle the next wave of fundamentalist violence in their own societies. No word on this as yet.

Read the rest for a specific takedown of Amnesty International's hyperbole.

Posted by Bill at June 15, 2005 12:12 AM | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Posted by: arrasmith at June 15, 2005 08:56 AM

Posted by: Bill from INDC at June 15, 2005 09:07 AM

Posted by: Dr. Glenn Reynolds at June 15, 2005 10:15 AM

Posted by: Bill from INDC at June 15, 2005 11:15 AM

Posted by: Dr. Glenn Reynolds at June 15, 2005 02:48 PM