<warm-fuzzy-feeling>I just saw something really awesome on Fox news: footage of a US soldier in a recently liberated Iraqi town [update: it was Safwan].  People were gathered around him, all with giant smiles on their faces, shaking his hand, giving him hi-fives.</warm-fuzzy-feeling>

Also saw this headline: "Surrenders coming as fast as we can handle them."

I worry about Baghdad though.  During the weeks before the war, there were rumors about the Iraqi army digging trenches around the city and filling them with oil.  Who knows what’s true at this point, but I’d hate to see our troops walk into a trap when they enter the capital.

Rachel Corrie was recently killed when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was demolishing / about to demolish a house in the Gaza strip.  It was not an accident.  She was opposed to the demolition, and apparently in her mind, that made it a good idea to stand in front of an advancing bulldozer.  The news media is reporting her death as a murder by Israel, and even a murder by America.

This is one of the things about the news media that makes me extremely angry.  No one is willing to state the truth of the matter here.  The truth is that Rachel Corrie was killed for acting like an IDIOT.  She did something IDIOTIC, and got herself killed.  That is the only way that an honest person can explain this situation.

Was it wrong for the driver of that bulldozer to intentionally drive over her?  I believe that it was.  Does that make Rachel Corrie’s actions any less idiotic?  Absolutely not.  She made an exceedingly bad decision when she chose to stand in front of that bulldozer.

I understand that the idea was to make the driver stop the demolition.  However Rachel chose an asinine strategy for achieving that goal.  She forfeited her life, and there will be little if any benefit from it.

Some people incorrectly believe that man is "basically good" and tends to "do the right thing" most of the time.  Perhaps Rachel Corrie subscribed to that false concept.  Unless she had a death wish, it’s safe to say that at least in this situation, she expected the driver to do the right thing.

But that is not the real world.  In the real world, you can’t expect anyone to do the right thing.  You can hope for that, and you can believe that people should strive for that, but to expect it is either naive or, more likely, idiotic.

Don’t get me wrong; a person has been killed here, and that is a sad thing.  I’m not trying to minimize that fact.  But my point here is that it’s lamentable that the media will not say that what Rachel did was foolish.

A similarly ridiculous scenario that is all too common is when a girl gets raped while she is drunk, because she was unable to say / enforce "no" to the guy.  Is it wrong for her assailant to rape her?  Of course.  But she made the idiotic decision to get drunk, and that is what prevented her from saying no.  (I’m not talking about a situation where the guy overpowers the girl, but the situation where he takes advantage of her because she’s drunk.)  She deliberately put herself out of control of her own body.  That is a supremely stupid decision that she chose for herself.  She has every right to be upset and hurt and mad about being raped, but she has absolutely no right to be surprised about it.  Because to be surprised about it, she must believe that all people are basically good and therefore no one ever rapes anyone -- indeed, she must believe that we live in a perfect world.  Only in a perfect world would it be anything other than IDIOTIC to put yourself out of control of your own body by getting drunk.

Kofi Annan: "Perhaps if we had persevered a little longer, Iraq could yet have been disarmed peacefully..."  Yes.  And perhaps Iraq could have attempted genocide again, or launched a massive attack (with all those missles they don’t have, that they’re currently firing on allied troops) on another nation before troops were in place to protect them.  Thank God we’ll never have to face those "perhaps" scenarios because some nations have the brains to see that something needs to be done, and the balls to do it.

In other news from the mentally-challenged department, "peace protesters" around the country are protesting for peace by disrupting the peace in US cities.  Nuke Berkeley is all I have to say.

Allied forces have captured Umm Qasr, Iraq’s only major seaport.

Iraq has fired a few missles at allied forces; some were destroyed by our Patriot defense missles, and some simply landed / crashed without causing any damage.  The missles may have been of the shorter-range Al Samoud 2 (formerly known as Ababil 100) type, or longer-range scud missles.  Scuds are illegal for Iraq to possess because they greatly exceed range limits imposed on them after the first Gulf war -- scuds can range about 300 or 400 miles depending on the variant.  And UN inspectors recently determined that Iraq’s Al Samoud 2 missles also exceed the 150km (~92 mile) limit; Iraq subsequently destroyed some of these missles.

"Three or four" oil fields in southern Iraq have been set ablaze.

There are more than 40 nations supporting the US in this "unilateral" war, more than those who supported us in the first Gulf war.  Because France has no practical strengths, it has been not only lying, but yelling its lies loudly, hoping that the world will buy into it if they just repeat the lie loud enough and long enough.  Sadly some people have bought into their propaganda.  The truth is that just because France, Russia, Germany, China, Iraq, and North Korea are against this war, that doesn’t change the fact that the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Czech Republic, Kuwait, Italy, Portugal, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Japan, New Zealand, and bunches of other countries are supporting the war.  The bottom line: don’t believe the hype.

Our innocents, that is.

It’s been mighty difficult to concentrate on this prelab for EE tomorrow... I’ve been watching the TV networks and checking some blogs since the first strike at ~9:30pm EST.  Thank goodness there’s Fox News so I don’t have to watch CNN.  On the net I’ll be checking Little Green Footballs, USS Clueless, and Debka most often.  Here’s a handy map of the middle east.

Some of the more interesting bits so far: US forces have taken over Iraqi radio and are broadcasting on it... in addition to these initial strikes in Iraq, our forces are attacking targets in Afghanistan... in a video aired on Iraqi TV, a spokesman invited any countries who wanted to help Iraq to do so... our cruise missles travel at 700mph and take ~45 minutes to reach Baghdad from the Persian Gulf, ~60 minutes from the Red Sea.

Wednesday on All Things Considered, there was an interview with Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, in which he spoke on the history of casualties of war.  Boot is the author of The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power.  Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

"In 1945 when we were attacking Japan with B-29 bombers, we did not flinch when inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties on Japanese civilians, and that’s even before the atomic bombs were dropped.  Whereas now, it creates a national scandal if a smart-bomb goes astray and hits a wedding in Afghanistan... In part, this is simply due to the fact that targeting technology is so much more presise and that in 1945 you couldn’t be sure that a bomb would hit within a mile of its target.  Whereas today, you have a very high degree of certainty that precision-guided munitions will hit within a few meters of their target.  So we are much less accepting of civilian casualties, but I think in some sense, we may have set the standard too high.  We have come to think of war as being a surgical business where we only hit the bad guys and leave all the innocent people alone, but it’s never going to be that way.  It’s always going to be a messy, ugly business with innocent people on both sides getting killed, and I think we have to accept that as being the inherent nature of war.  That’s not going to change, no matter how much technology may change."

Also during the show, they mentioned the numbers of US soldiers killed in some of our most recent wars/conflicts:

Korean conflict: 33,000
Viet Nam: 58,000
1991 Gulf War: 147
Panama: 23
Somalia: 43
Balkans: 30
Afghanistan: 47

And finally, since I don’t think I posted about it before... or even if I did... you should watch the video Protesting the Protesters.  It’s about 10 minutes and it’s quite enlightening.  There are a few versions for your viewing pleasure: high-bandwidth Real video or Windows media, or low-bandwidth Real video or Windows media.  And after you watch it, be sure to read the Q & A about the video too, because it has a lot of good information.  Here’s a quote:

1. What inspired you to produce this video?

While watching TV coverage of the peace protests this past January, I noticed a large contingent of signs bearing extreme language that attacked President Bush--insulting him personally, calling him a terrorist, and comparing him to Hitler. At the same time, I didn’t notice any signs criticizing Saddam Hussein. There were no signs asking him to abide by the Gulf War cease-fire agreement or the various U.N. resolutions he’s been violating for over a decade.

Despite the extremist language used by many of the protesters, despite the fact that they seemed to blame President Bush for a crisis caused by twelve years of Iraqi noncompliance, the media portrayed the protesters as mainstream. This must mean the media perceives as mainstream the notion that Bush and Hitler are similar. The media also apparently perceives as mainstream the notion that, to resolve this conflict, nothing should be asked of Saddam Hussein.

...

Frankly, I was angered that the media glossed over the obvious extremism within the protests. I was angered that the media would not challenge--or at least examine--the mentality of the people comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. And I was angered that the supposedly mainstream marchers seemed unwilling to acknowledge the extremism of their comrades.

So, I decided that, at the next protest, I would show a truth of the protesters that was going unreported by the traditional media.

2. What is your background in producing videos of this nature?

None. This was the first time I’d ever attempted it.

It’s good to see a balanced view of the protesters, as opposed to the one-sided presentation
that the media has been showing.

Tom Brokaw, speaking on the US’ support for Saddam Hussein against Iran before he invaded Kuwait: "And then it all turned around, 120°."  Right... maybe 180° is what you were looking for?  : )

My new messageboard / weblog / guestbook script is now available for download and use on your very own website.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming (homework, that is).