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Comments by YACCS

 

A step back

I couldn't resist taking a shot at Robert Fisk, but I should note that, as Centcom says, it isn't over yet. Saddam Hussein does seem to be alive, and regardless, there are still pockets of resistance, both in Baghdad and around Iraq generally. And it could be a while before that resistance is overcome, and before order is restored. And then, of course, comes the difficult but vital task of democratization. And while the worst of the danger is over, more American servicemen (and those of other coalition members, of course) will be hurt, and more will die, before we're ready to leave.

Still, it's hard not to be a little overenthusiastic, at least for a while, when I see cheering crowds in Baghdad, just as the "warmongers" predicted. Except for Jacques Chirac (and Saddam Hussein, of course), who could not feel a little joy at the sight of people roaming the streets, no longer afraid of a vicious dictator?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2003 06:15:00 AM |

 

A useful barometer

Earlier, I pondered how we'd know when we had won the war. Silly me; I forgot the obvious answer: look for Robert Fisk to proclaim that the U.S. success wasn't real:

While American fighter-bombers criss-crossed the sky, while the ground shook to the sound of exploding ordnance, while the American tanks now stood above the Tigris, vast areas of Baghdad – astonishing when you consider the American claim to be "in the heart" of the city – remain under Saddam Hussein's control.

(At least he finally explained, at the end of this column, why he never gets stories right: his journalistic sources walk on four legs.) So if Fisk thinks Saddam's in control, what's it really like?

Iraqis cheered arriving U.S. troops and then went on looting rampages as vestiges of President Saddam Hussein's authority collapsed.

As U.S. forces moved through one neighborhood after another, crowds of Baghdad residents seized the chance to plunder military installations and government buildings, making off with computers, bookshelves, tables, even Iraqi jeeps.

Among the buildings plundered were Iraq's Olympic headquarters and traffic police headquarters.

On Palestine Street, where the Baath party as recently as a few weeks back held rallies and shows of force, gangs of youths and even middle-aged men looted the warehouses of the Trade Ministry, coming out with air conditioners, ceiling fans, refrigerators and TV sets.

Hundreds of Iraqis cheered U.S. troops in Saddam City, a poor neighborhood in northeast Baghdad. "Thank you, thank you, Mr. Bush!" one shouted.

Remember all those people sneering at the idea that Americans would be greeted with flowers?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2003 06:02:00 AM |

 

Any volunteers?

A fairy tale, updated. (Who wrote this? Not I. Susanna Cornett.)
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2003 04:42:00 AM |

 

What next?

Is Saddam Hussein dead? Certainly it would be hard to get upset about that (though I confess that I harbor the secret desire to see him strung up from a gallows, rather than impersonally vaporized by some bunker-busters). But what are the implications if he is? It could be great; it's possible that the news of his death would lead to immediate surrender of the remaining Hussein loyalists, and/or to the cooperation of the Iraqi public in wiping out these regime supporters. That's the best case scenario. But what about the worst case? The U.S. has been systematically trying to eliminate what are euphemistically known as "leadership targets." What if there's nobody left who can order a surrender? (*) Is the U.S. going to be forced to kill every member of the so-called Saddam's Fedayeen in order to win the war? More to the point, how do we then decide when we've won?


(*) [Given the lack of coordinated military response by the Iraqi military since the war began, I've long had the sneaking suspicion that the only members of the Hussein regime who are alive are Iraqi "Information Minister" Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf and some high school intern at IraqiTV who dutifully airs archival footage of Saddam Hussein's cabinet meetings each day. And that between these two people, they're keeping up the illusion that there's still an Iraqi government.]
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2003 04:17:00 AM |

 

Study finds laptops smaller than desktops

The New York Times reports on a new study (warning: 15MB PDF file) that claims to show that charter schools are deficient in various ways, but that actually takes features and pretends that they're bugs. The primary complaint has to do with the qualifications of teachers:

The study found that 48 percent of teachers in the average charter school lack a teaching certificate, while 9 percent of teachers in the average public school lack one. The study also found that charter schools where more than half the enrollment is black rely more heavily on uncredentialed teachers.

In these schools 60 percent of the teachers are working with an emergency, provisional or probationary certificate, according to the study. The study also found that teachers in charter schools serving low-income and minority students are paid considerably less than their counterparts in public schools.

The study found that 55 percent of teachers in charter schools run by private companies are uncredentialed and not highly experienced; 45 percent of teachers in charters run by parents or educators are uncredentialed and inexperienced.

But what the study ignores is that bypassing the bureaucratic credentialling process is part of the point of charter schools. The study, and implicitly the Times, simply take for granted that "uncredentialed" = "bad," while charter schools do not assume that jumping through licensing hoops makes one a better teacher.

What's most interesting is that the focus of this study has nothing to do with the quality of education provided by charter schools. Instead, it measures teacher credentials, and eligibilty for federal subsidies, and principals' salaries, and minority enrollment. None of that addresses student performance, of course. Shouldn't it worry more about the results produced by charter schools, and less about whether the schools are spending a lot of money?



This is my favorite (completely irrelevant) argument, though:

Critics, which include the American Federation of Teachers, say that charter schools siphon money and resources from the public school system at a time when that system is underfinanced.

Critics, who are composed virtually entirely of teachers' unions, are being disingenuous. When you hear about money being "siphoned," it sounds as if money is being taken away from education and spent on something else, like highways or swimming pools or pharmaceuticals for the elderly. But of course that's not what's happening at all. The money is being spent on education; it's just not being funnelled through the public school bureaucracy first. The charter schools "siphon" students from the public school system, so that the public schools don't need as many resources.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/09/2003 03:48:00 AM |

 

Body counts

Remember all the pre-war predictions that thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of civilians would be killed in our attack on Iraq? According to the anti-war "researchers" behind the Iraq Body Count -- people who have been known to inflate their research for political effect -- there have been about 1000 Iraqi civilian casualties since the war began. About 1000 civilians were killed in one day in the Congo last week. There is no Congo Body Count website.

This is not to say that civilian casualties in Iraq are anything other than a tragedy, but it does put the numbers into perspective. And it does put the biases of those counting these Iraqi deaths into perspective (as if they weren't obvious already). It's not civilian lives they care about; it's only whether they can blame the United States for them. These totals are amazingly low, but do we hear that? No; we hear about an attack on a Baghdad market which the U.S. may or may not have been responsible for.

I anticipate one possible rebuttal: that numbers don't tell the story of the human tragedy. When someone dies it isn't a statistic; the people at that market had families, and those families suffer even if the U.S. is being careful. Yes, yes, yes, whatever. So if it isn't about statistics, why have the Iraq Body Count at all?
posted by David Nieporent at 4/08/2003 03:50:00 PM |

 

Another one bites the dust

I'm saving "Ding dong the witch is dead" for the corpse of Saddam Hussein, so I'll just utilize a nice, somber, "Good riddance" for this good news:

Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a 1988 poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.

Good riddance.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/07/2003 03:58:00 AM |

 

Intratiger battles

I don't think Virginia Postrel is a fan of Eliot Spitzer.

For what it's worth, I agree with her assessment, though since I was at Princeton a few years later, I didn't have any firsthand experiences with him. I dislike him because the same "resume-polishing student-council weenie" is now a resume-polishing Crusading Attorney General weenie, which means he skips the messy process of legislating and just uses the tort system as his personal stepping-stone towards the governor's office.
posted by David Nieporent at 4/06/2003 11:01:00 PM |