WOMEN IN COMBAT: Phil Carter writes:

Some have questioned the role of women in today’s military. Make no mistake about it — America’s military sends its women into harm’s way. Current DoD policy keeps women out of only the most direct of combat roles, such as the infantry. But in today’s style of warfare, those distinctions are basically meaningless. Army Lieutenant Carrie Bruhl flies Apache helicopters deep into enemy territory, further than any American infantryman save the Special Forces. Other women fly deep combat missions in the Navy and Air Force. Female MPs fight as infantry just behind the front lines, hunting down and killing Iraqi guerilla units. America’s daughters fight hard and they fight well. It’s disingenuous and wrong to say that women like SPC Johnson and PFC Lynch don’t belong at the front lines. They’ve earned the right to be there, and so far in our war, they’ve proven their ability to stay there.

Similarly, Virginia Postrel observes:

Reporters on Fox News Channel and MSNBC are displaying an exceedingly annoying habit of referring to Pfc. Jessica Lynch as just “Jessica” in news stories, the better to tug the viewers’ paternal/maternal heartstrings. But Jessica Lynch is not the little girl who fell down the well. She is a U.S. soldier serving in harm’s way. If you’re old enough to be a POW, you’re old enough to be referred to as “Private Lynch.” Even if you’re female.

I wonder if the presence of women in combat isn’t, in part, responsible for increased support for this war among women.

UPDATE: Reader Reed Snellenberger emails:

Thanks for the link to the Postrel article, but it’s already progressed beyond referring to Pvt. Lynch as “Jessica” — this morning, Katie couldn’t resist calling her “Jessie”. Also, ABC’s Diane Sawyer made a not-to-graceful seque from a comment about the rescue that was delivered in a Ma-and-Pa Kettle cornpone accent (roughly “There was some hootin’ and hollerin’ a-goin’ on”) *directly* to an interview with Ms. Lynch’s father.

I only hope that he couldn’t hear the audio feed that led up to the interview, but I suspect that he could — his first answer was quite monosyllabic.

Pathetic.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

I, too, got a little riled this morning at the talk about “Jessica” and “Jessie.” Isn’t the little girl-soldier cute? I don’t know if the same tone would be used were she from Manhattan. I just moved to Kentucky for the year to clerk on the 6th Circuit, and I’ve really had an education in the red state/blue state divide. My friends from D.C. think everyone here is a hick/hillbilly/cornpone. In fact, they’re some of the nicest, most educated, and free-thinking people I’ve met in a long while. Yes, we’re hootin’ and a-hollerin’ down here at the rescue of Private Lynch — but over email with *real* computers!

A not-uncommon sentiment.

JOSH CHAFETZ IS tweaking the BBC:

What is it about the British media that makes them thoroughly impervious to the wiles of fact-checking? A piece that mocks President Bush’s “verbal infelicities” ought not to contain a reference to “Paul Wolfivitz.”

Hmm. Last night, Aaron Brown was asking me how bloggers get by without editors, like the Big Media folks have. I guess my response should have been “You guys have editors?”

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON CNN WITH AARON BROWN, probably looking rather bleary-eyed, at just after midnight (EST) tonight. It’ll be about blogs, and the producer says that the Jeff Greenfield / Jeff Jarvis piece on blogs will be the lead-in.

UPDATE: Seemed like it went OK. More tomorrow. I’m going to bed now. Of course, Meryl Yourish has already blogged it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh blogged it too, and Emmanuelle Richard saved this screenshot for, um posterity. (For a behind-the-scenes look at the decidedly less glamorous reality, click here.)

She’s got a shot of Jeff Jarvis, too, and she thinks that Jeff and I are exaggerating the degree of anti-American sentiment in France. Um, I sure hope so. Follow the link to read her post, and decide for yourself.

The taped bit with Jeff Jarvis and Jeff Greenfield was great, by the way, and especially stressed the importance of the link to blogging. It also featured shots of Jeff J. wireless-blogging from the park outside his office, and a couple of brief clips from his vlogs.

IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN THERE LATELY, don’t miss Defense Tech. And Winds of Change has a bunch of cool stuff too, as usual.

Oh, and EuroPundits, which features InstaPundit’s Paris Correspondent, Nelson Ascher, among others, should be a regular stop.

UPDATE: Also, Aziz Poonawalla and Shi’aPundit have some observations and links on the special importance of Najaf and Karbala to Shia Muslims.

THERE’S A GOOD, CRITICAL POST ON “FRIENDLY FIRE” INCIDENTS over at Samizdata, suggesting that the British are beginning to get a bit peeved at what they see as American nonresponsiveness to their concerns.

It’s true, of course, that “shit happens” in combat, but the fact that so many of these incidents involve British troops suggests to me that there’s a systematic communications problem that needs to be addressed here. Either that, or American troops are experiencing even more of these incidents (as their proportionate numbers would suggest) and we’re just not hearing about that. I doubt that’s the case, but if it is, then there’s a really big systematic communications problem.

Either way, there’s a genuine management problem that needs to be resolved. And the concerns of the British need to be listened to very carefully, very respectfully, and very politely since they’re, you know, our best allies and everything.

UPDATE: A reader points out that one reason why “friendly fire” losses loom so large in this war is that they’re a major fraction of total losses — because the Iraqis, so far, have been unable to kill very many coalition people. If Iraq were downing allied aircraft by the dozens, and blowing up tanks by the scores, we’d barely notice these events.

That’s true, I suppose — it’s neck and neck between “enemy action” and “accidents” as a cause of death for our guys, and that’s a good thing. But nonetheless, the British have been superb allies in a trying time, and they’re doing a terrific job. We owe them every consideration.

AL GORE IS DEFENDING THE DIXIE CHICKS — yeah, that’ll help ’em with the country-music demographic. But who will defend Al Gore from Rachel Lucas?

FRANCE: On the other side.

We won’t forget. Neither, apparently, will the British.

UPDATE: And these guys aren’t very happy, either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more, with a picture. The French government realizes that it’s got a serious problem now. But it’s lost control of the hotheads that it set in motion. This is not uncommon with regimes that use xenophobia to distract their populations from hard times and internecine conflict.

I’VE MENTIONED IT BEFORE, but Phil Carter’s blog is well worth reading.

THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT CRACKS UP: So far, it’s been such a bust that — as Clayton Cramer notes — even “progressive papers” like the L.A. Weekly are declaring it a failure:

Maybe someone in the peace movement should figure out that not only Bush could stop this war. So could Saddam — by resigning his unelected post and saving his people any further sacrifice. Yet I’ve yet to see one anti-war placard allude to Saddam’s responsibilities in securing the peace.

But talk about quagmires. The peace movement, which promises so much in its scope and energy, itself remains bogged down in a minimalist program of simply and only opposing U.S. military action. That’s hardly enough. . . .

Blocking traffic when 74 percent of the American people support the war, or endlessly whining about CNN’s coverage, or grandstanding as Michael Moore did at the Oscars telling America that a president who currently enjoys (for all the sordid reasons we know) stratospheric popularity ratings is “fictitious,” has much more to do with personal therapy than with effective politics. Continue on that tack and you can pretty much count on another four years of Bush, no matter how ugly the war turns. . . .

Protecting the Iraqi people, as the peace movement rightfully desires, is one helluva lot more complicated than merely shielding them from the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombs. (That is, unless you really believe that America is the “greatest terrorist state in the world,” as is so often repeated on KPFK’s drive-time shows. If your world-view is that facile, then indeed we have little more to discuss.)

Those who chant “U.S. out of Iraq” ought to be prepared, then, to offer themselves as human shields to protect the Kurds against threatening Turkish troops (a task currently in the hands of U.S. special forces). Or as shields to protect the southern marsh Arabs against occupation by the theocratic armed forces of Iran.

That seems about right, as this Christian Science Monitor story on the Antiwar movement’s PR problems notes:

“I just wonder how much Saddam is paying them,” says Charlie Lore, a businessman and former Vietnam protester who got stuck in a crowd of demonstrators in Manhattan last Thursday.

Even those in the mainstream who oppose the war often argue that protests are inappropriate with the conflict under way.

Others wonder if the demonstrators understand the issues driving US military action. Watching a Boston rally that drew an estimated 25,000 protesters last Saturday, Jim Cavan says he supports the war – and questions the critics’ motivations. “I feel like they’re doing it for fashion, and that it’s a throwback to the 60s and that no one understands what’s really going on,” he says. “If you’re going to protest, offer a solution. Don’t just protest for the sake of protesting.”

Meanwhile, speaking of, you know, solutions, Jackson Diehl pointed out last week — in a column that a lot of people, including me, missed at the time:

The Bush administration’s embrace of a democratization strategy for the postwar Middle East has triggered a torrent of scorn from the region’s traditional political and intellectual elites, not to mention regional experts at the State Department and CIA. Less noticed is the fact that it has also produced a flurry of political reforms, quasi-reforms and grass-roots initiatives in countries across the region.

Two days before the war began last week, the Palestinian legislative council dealt a major blow to the autocracy of Yasser Arafat, rejecting his attempt to limit the powers of a new prime minister. This happened by a democratic vote after a noisy democratic debate — which in turn came a few days after President Bush called for a strong prime minister in a Palestinian democracy.

The next day an Egyptian court finally ended the prosecution of the country’s leading pro-democracy activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who had twice been sentenced to prison on trumped-up charges — and whose last conviction prompted the Bush administration to freeze aid to Egypt. Two weeks earlier, Gamal Mubarak, would-be heir to his father, Hosni, as president, announced a plan to end trials of civilians in the security courts in which Ibrahim was sentenced, and proposed an independent national council to monitor human rights.

A week before Mubarak spoke, King Abdullah of Jordan, who has not allowed an election since taking office four years ago and who dissolved parliament in 2001, set a date for parliamentary elections. He chose June 17, thereby ensuring that as the postwar political discussion gets underway, Jordan will be able to point to its own democratic exercise.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has been urging Western journalists to take note of an “Arab Charter” floated by ruling Crown Prince Abdullah, which calls for “internal reform and enhanced political participation in the Arab states,” and a related petition by 104 intellectuals calling for the direct election in Saudi Arabia of a consultative council, an independent judiciary and freedom of speech and assembly. In January, on Abdullah’s order, a host of senior Saudi officials met with a visiting delegation from Human Rights Watch — the first time a Western human rights group had been allowed to visit the country.

These aren’t huge accomplishments, it’s true. But they’re more than the antiwar movement has managed. Meanwhile I agree with Bill Quick’s suggestion:

Wouldn’t it be nice if the first act of the new Iraqi government would be to invite Dr. Ibrahim to emigrate to a place where he could speak, write, and think freely?

You get more freedom with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.

I’M NOT FOLLOWING THE MICHIGAN AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION CASE: But The Power Line has a lot of information if you’re interested.

SADDAM’S MEDIA APPEARANCES are explained here. I’m convinced.

EUGENE VOLOKH NOTES that we’d be worse off with the U.N. on our side, since Kofi Annan would probably be pressing for a ceasefire — and Iraq would have a greater incentive to promote civilian casualties to encourage just that.

DAN GILLMOR relays more disturbing news about homeland security. Stay tuned.

SARS UPDATE: If you assume that the authorities always either overreact or underreact to these things, then we’d better hope they’re overreacting:

An American Airlines flight from Tokyo has been quarantined on the tarmac at San Jose’s airport after four people on board complained of symptoms like those reported from the mysterious new illness spreading through Asia, airline and city health officials said.

Two passengers and two crew members complained of symptoms similar to those found in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, according to city health officials.

Flight 128 from Tokyo to Mineta San Jose International Airport was stopped on the tarmac short of the gate, and ambulances lined up near the plane as the 125 passengers and 14 crew members waited on board.

That’s how I’m betting for now. Hope I’m right.

ARGUING BY ANALOGY: Clayton Cramer responds to the old “Fighting For Peace Is Like Fucking for Virginity” slogan.

Of course, until cloning is perfected, that’s the only way I know of to produce virgins. . . .

DANIEL DREZNER writes that diplomacy appears to be working pretty well with regard to North Korea.

FRENCH VANDALS have now desecrated a World War I memorial dedicated to British war dead:

The words “Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood” were painted in French over the base of the cemetery’s main monument – an obelisk topped by a cross.

On one side was a swastika and the words “death to the Yankees”.

Also daubed were the words “dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil,” and “Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)”.

Some 11,000 British dead are buried at Etaples, which lies on the Channel coast around 24 kilometres south of Boulogne.

French officialdom is rightly deploring this, but after the climate of hatred that Mr. Chirac’s government has created, it’s no great surprise. And these guys, too, aren’t “antiwar” — they’re just on the other side.

BRITISH TROOPS FREE KENYAN PRISONERS FROM IRAQI ARMY: The Kenyans, apparently, were claimed by the Iraqis to be American soldiers.

THERE’S LOTS OF GREAT STUFF over at The Volokh Conspiracy. Just keep scrolling.

TIM BLAIR AND DAMIAN PENNY are hanging out at Blogs of War pending a resolution of Blogger-related problems.

Don’t miss this followup on the Great Robert Fisk Bomb Story.

PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME how we can trust bloggers who say they’re blogging from the war zone. What if they’re not?

It’s a valid concern of course — but it doesn’t apply solely to bloggers:

LISTENERS to Swaziland’s state radio heard “live” reports from war correspondent Phesheya Dube, purportedly from Iraq, but then saw him walking around Mbabane.

Radio presenter Moses Mthetho Matsebula asked listeners to pray for Dube, the acting head of programs for the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services.

“Fellow countrymen, it looks like our correspondent in a Baghdad cave has been bombed and I have been trying to locate him to no avail and I am asking for your prayers so that you cannot lose such a good reporter,” Matsebula said.

On Thursday – a week after the Iraq war started – Dube went to parliament, where curious MPs asked him when he had returned from the Iraqi capital.

He reportedly admitted he had been monitoring television reports on the Iraq war, then interpreting them for Swazis without TV sets.

Heh.

THE PATRIOT ACT is being used against PayPal for transferring money to . . . . online casinos! This seems like an abuse of the Act’s provisions, even if it’s technically within them, and only supports the theory that “Homeland Security” is really about filling out bureaucrats’ wish lists.

I also strongly support the recommendation that John Ashcroft be replaced as Attorney General by Randy Barnett. As soon as can be!

L.T. SMASH REPORTS that he’s doing a phone interview with Peter Arnett. I don’t think it’s an April Fool. . . .

IS EUROPE DISAPPEARING?

If Europeans don’t watch out — actually, do more than just watch out — there will be a lot fewer of them by the end of this century.

A team of Vienna-based researchers reported in the journal Science last week that the continent reached a demographic watershed in 2000. After decades of delayed childbearing and smaller families, Europe is now in “negative population momentum.”

“Over the coming decades,” they added, the trend “will challenge social security and health systems, may hinder productivity gains, and could affect global competitiveness and economic growth.”

Is this the result of European social-welfare schemes? Take it away, Mickey Kaus!

THE WAR ON TERROR — er, distinct, that is, from the war on Iraqi terror — continues, with the arrest of terror suspect Aafia Siddiqui, whose biology background makes me suspicious. Meanwhile, there’s also this report, too:

Italian police have arrested an Egyptian, a Somali and two Iraqi Kurds on suspicion of having links with Islamic terrorist groups, anti-terrorism police said Tuesday.

The arrests were ordered by Milan prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso, who has been leading investigations into suspected Islamic cells in Italy.

Apparently, the Iraq war isn’t much of a distraction. I suspect, actually, that it’s producing a lot of useful intelligence — especially from the seized Ansar Al-Islam bases in the north.

UPDATE: Here’s more:

Britain has jailed two Algerians accused of supporting Osama bin Laden, making them the first people with suspected Al Qaeda links to be imprisoned in the country.

Baghdad Meziane, 38, and Brahim Benmerzouga, 31, were jailed for 11 years after being found guilty of raising cash for the purpose of terrorism at Leicester Crown Court, central England.

Algerians. Imagine that.