A spectacular beginning

There’s very little to say after watching the opening of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In fact, the only relevant thing I can think to write is that it was the most impressive and well-regulated opening ceremony since the 1936 Games.

 

3:48 pm: The Fuhrer and the Reich Minister of the Interior arrived and inspected the Honour Battalion before the Bell Tower.

4:15 pm: At the command ‘Participants March!’, the nations entered the Stadium, the spacing between the different nations being regulated at the mouth of the tunnel.

A distance of 5 yards was maintained between the placard carrier and the flag bearer. The distance between the last row of a national group and the placard carrier of the following group was 20 yards. …

Some nations were cheered mildly, others enthusiastically, according to the popularity or unpopularity of a nation earned in previous Olympics. Austria, perhaps, received the greatest ovation and clappings. India, though insignificant in terms of the number of the participants, was conspicuous by her colourful headgear and was greeted by quite a multitude of the huge crowd.

The will is vital

A New York Times story says the Iraqi Army Is Willing, but Not Ready, to Fight:

… asked whether that army is ready as a national defense force, capable of protecting Iraq’s borders without American support, Lieutenant Mahmoud gestures toward his battalion’s parking lot. A fifth of the vehicles are rotting trucks and bomb-demolished Humvees that, for some complicated bureaucratic reason, are still considered operational.

“In your opinion,” Lieutenant Mahmoud says, “do you think I could fight an army with those trucks?”

Well, good. An army travels on its stomach, but in vehicles.

But I’m struck by the difference between Iraq 2008 and Vietnam 1970. The policies are roughly the same — US forces providing a decreasing amount of security as local troops and police take over. But the results are proving so very different, because the Iraqis do, indeed have the vital will to succeed.

The so-called Vietnamisation policy of President Richard Nixon was going fully into effect in 1970. US troops were on their way out by the division. (All US combat forces were gone by 1971, four years before the war ended with the 55-day communist offensive that took Saigon.) South Vietnamese troops were being touted as both ready (true) and willing (untrue) to keep back both the guerrillas and regular forces of the communist enemy.

There is still a lot of argument over whether Nixon and chief adviser Henry Kissinger actually believed the hype that Vietnamese forces were both ready and willing to replace the Americans who simply had to go home or see the country enveloped in a truly harmful conflict with the anti-war armies of the left in America.

History shows, whatever the belief at the time, that the Vietnamese were unwilling to fight. They had loads of trucks, tanks, helicopters and warplanes. They only lacked one thing.

When the communists launched their second-last major attacks, the Easter Offensive of 1972, the South Vietnamese armed forces did not just retreat; they ran. The entire division of men at the vital North-South Vietnam Demilitarised Zone border threw down their arms and hot-tailed it south, leaving the few willing units in the region exposed. The upper province of Quang Tri was overwhelmed.

At An Loc (photo) frantic, undisciplined troops were photographed even trying to hang on to helicopter skids, anything to flee the combat. And An Loc was 60 miles north of Saigon, a key defence post for the capital.

Here is a terrific sign (and from a news agency that has for years called for US defeat in the war) that Iraq is getting it together and is, indeed willing to fight for its future.

The McClatchy Group reports from Baghdad that the longing by defeatists for civil war did not, and likely will not come true. Iraqis not only get along, but are united. In a story from Baghdad, McClatchy correspondent Nancy A. Youssef reports:

For years, when she approached Iraqi Army checkpoints and produced an identification card for soldiers to study for clues about her sect, Nadia Hashim used a simple formula to signal the mostly Shiite Muslim force that she, too, is a Shiite.

“I am one of you,” she’d say.

The soldiers would harass Sunnis, but they’d simply wave Hashim through.

Now her pat line gets her an official reproach.

When a relative used it recently, a soldier admonished the driver and the passengers. “’We are Iraqis, and you shouldn’t say such a thing,’” recalled Hashim.

It is a thing of beauty, frankly, that Iraq and its security forces are willing to stand up for their country. It’s encouraging that the most anti-American sections of the US mainstream media are willing, even eager to report it.

As someone who watched and reported, then experienced the effects of the unwilling South Vietnamese to defend their country, I am optimistic that the desire to do the job is even more important than having the best and most modern means to do it. Good luck to Iraq.

Headline du jour

From the Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota:

The (formerly) most dangerous woman in the world

The FBI has announced the arrest of Aafia Siddiqui, one of the most educated and one of the most dangerous of all al-Qaeda terrorists. She has been on the run for some years, apparently living as a sleeper for the terrorist gang, in the United States and abroad.

Siddiqui was arrested in Afghanistan — an understatement right up there with the captain of the Titanic announcing his ship would be taking on some ice.

She is in the United States and going to be in court in New York on Tuesday (August 5). But her arrest in Afghanistan was anything but routine:

The Warrant Officer took a seat and placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor next to the curtain. Shortly after the meeting began, the Captain heard a woman yell from the curtain and, when he turned, saw Siddiqui holding the Warrant Officer’s rifle and pointing it directly at the Captain. Siddiqui said, “May the blood of [unintelligible] be directly on your [unintelligible, possibly head or hands].” The interpreter seated closest to Siddiqui lunged at her and pushed the rifle away as Siddiqui pulled the trigger. Siddiqui fired at least two shots but no one was hit. The Warrant Officer returned fire with a 9 mm service pistol and fired approximately two rounds at Siddiqui’s torso, hitting her at least once.

Despite being shot, Siddiqui struggled with the officers when they tried to subdue her; she struck and kicked them while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans. After being subdued, Siddiqui temporarily lost consciousness.

This would be movie material even if it were fiction.

Four and a half years ago, the FBI put out a special arrest bulletin on Siddiqui, as well as her estranged husband, Dr Mohammed Khan, 33. It was the first time an FBI bulletin sought a woman in the war against terror. So far as officials were concerned, she was lost, completely off the radar.

They thought Siddiqui, who has a doctorate in neurological science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, might be in Pakistan. She lived in Boston while attending MIT, and travelled after 9/11 to the Maryland suburbs of Washington.

Officially, she was only wanted for questioning before she was detained, then shot, then arrested in Afghanistan. Now, she is looking at 20 years in a solitary cell in a maximum security (Supermax) prison for trying to kill the Americans.

This is good.

More to the point, Aafia Siddiqui, with her MIT doctorate and her excellent up-bringing and her opportunity to do just about literally anything she set her mind to gives the lie to the ridiculous theory that there are some set of “root causes” of terrorism we should all spend years looking for and studying.

So define ‘essential’

The films Schindler’s List, Titanic and Ed Wood share one vital characteristic on the Amazon.com list of “Essential Movies of the 1990s”.

They’re not on it.

Neither is Forrest Gump or Jurassic Park.

Maybe more importantly, the list doesn’t rank the movies it’s left with. That puts Toy Story at the very top and Goodfellas, which really is an essential movie in many ways, at the very bottom.

PAD calls for war with Cambodia

Unending, unceasing street protests in Bangkok encouraged the military coup in 2006 and have sought the undemocratic overthrow of the government since May 25. They are led, organised, financed (in an extremely non-transparent manner) by a group called the People’s Alliance for Democracy, known by its initials PAD.

The alliance has conducted some spectacular rallies, including a couple against ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra which probably had over half a million. But since the disaster of military government and democratic elections, the PAD has turned into a fringe and somewhat extremist group, although with enough support to get regular and front-page press coverage.

Because its protest surges are frequently large and attractive to TV cameramen and newspaper photographers, they get serious press coverage. The calls for the government to resign, the lawsuits (a couple of them successful) against government malfeasance, demands for more crackdowns on politicians — all of these get a lot of media face time.

This is a shame in many ways, because the group is at its core one of the most fascist to come out of post-dictator Thailand. Because its demands against authority are so extreme and so sexy for the headline writers and editors who are tragic victims of Attention Deficit Disorder, little attention focuses on its own policies.

Many of these are frightening, not to mention despicable. PAD actually lies in emphasising that it favours overthrowing the government. In fact it favours overthrowing the system. Example: Suriyasai Katasila, a key ideologue and self-styled, humble “core member” of PAD exposed a bit of a post-democracy Thailand last June, when he wrote in PAD-connected Manager newspaper (link is in Thai)

… we have declared a new war calling for nation-building under a new political discourse. We are calling to go beyond parliamentary politics, or 4-second democracy, or the cult of using elections to determine everything.

A challenging proposal by the leaders of the PAD is the 70:30 model, where 70 percent of political officeholders will be appointed while 30 percent will be elected. This is only the starting point to spark wider discussions and debates in society.

The details or model of the new politics needs knowledgeable people, academics, educational institutions, universities and different sectors to debate a structure to go beyond the cult of elections where capital rules and the country can be bought, while the people have only the right to vote obediently.

Along with Suriyasai, other core members include the flashy, fighting Buddhist right-winger retired Major-General Chamlong Srimuang — and the actual PAD founder Sondhi Limthongkul, usually known (especially to his many enemies) as Sondhi Lim.

Sondhi is a man of many talents, one of which is running a publishing enterprise of ill fame, which lately has including the Manager (Poodjatkarn) newspaper and website. The www.manager.co.th site hosts by far the most popular and politically contentious discussion forums in the Thai language — anywhere.

All of the above is prologue getting at what should be a huge outrage by Thais everywhere. Sondhi has laid out his vision of a Thai foreign policy for when the PAD overthrows the government and takes over without an election. He focuses especially on Cambodia, because he has whipped up his lemming-like protesters into a lather of ugly, nationalistic fury at the Cambodians over the Preah Vihear temple, lately at the centre of a renewed battle with historical and nationalist and, therefore, major political importance.

The current government has supported the effort to list the temple as a Unesco Heritage Site. Sondhi and PAD took the government to court for not submitting a supporting letter to parliament — but actually for totally political purposes. Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama was forced to resign (luckily Thailand has scads of highly qualified people for the post). There have been negotiations between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, and ugly threats by supernationalists on both sides.

And then there is Sondhi. His solution to the border dispute is simple: War. No joke, no kidding:

A commission must be set up to invite Cambodia to bilateral negotiations. If the dispute cannot be settled, Thailand would, temporarily adhering to the ICJ’s ruling, mobilize Thai troops, push Cambodians back from Thai territory, and formally inform Cambodia that, apart from the Preah Vihear temple, the surroundings belong to Thailand, and Thailand would pay any price to protect its sovereignty, even at the cost of war.

“We would close all 40 Thai-Cambodian border checkpoints, and ban all flights to Phnom Penh and Siam Reap from Bangkok; 70% of flights to the two destinations are from Bangkok.

And then we would order the Defense Ministry to build a naval base at Koh Kut, deploy two battleships there, together with patrol ships, build a runway for F-16 aircraft, abolish the committee which oversees demarcation of overlapping sea areas, and officially declare our own marine map.

Cambodia would be hopping mad, but we would not bother because Cambodia would not have the nerve to fight us….

Read it all. Please.

By explanation, the ICJ is the International Court of Justice, aka the World Court. In 1962, it ruled that the Preah Vihear temple is Cambodian, a ruling Thailand agreed to comply with. Grounds around the temple are disputed, according to a narrow Thai interpretation of the 1962 ruling, and this is what Sondhi would declare war for. Koh Kut is an island close to Cambodia.

This, too, is what Thailand will get if the PAD succeeds in its never-ending campaign.

Half right, perhaps?

Headline from the Thai News Agency, which is not entirely awful or craven even though the government often and repeatedly holds its feet to the fire: Investment sentiment likely to pick up in 2nd half-year.

BANGKOK, Aug 4 (TNA) – Investment sentiment is expected to pick up in the second half of this year following the government’s implementation of an economic stimulus package to boost the economy, according to a top securities analyst….

So, [Kongkiati Opaswongkarn, chairman of the Federation of Thai Capital Market Organisations] believes that concern in response to the political uncertainties will finally ease in the second half of the year if investors become more optimistic about political developments.

Um. Okay. But I wonder what half of the year Mr Kongkiati and the editors of Thai News Agency think is already one-third completed.

Why do people get fat?

Here’s a thought (or maybe a revelation to some):

In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week.

I wonder what the same statistics might show about Thailand. Too bad Thailand doesn’t do statistics.

404 du jour

A Beijing restaurant hoping to attract Olympics-goers ran its Chinese name through a web-based translation machine. It then confidently used the result as its name in English. That name is:

 

North Korea, Burma and Bush

US President George W. Bush had an interview last week with Asian journalists, including the editor-in-chief of the Bangkok Post, Pichai Chuensuksawadi. The Post story is here and here is the most readable transcript.

I have been waiting four days for someone to write the only international news that Mr Bush revealed, but I guess no one will. So here it is:

THE PRESIDENT: … multilateral diplomacy is the best way to peacefully solve an issue such as the nuclearization or the weaponization or the desire to have a nuclear weapon program by the North Koreans.

Now, I sort of let this slide for the moment. Mr Bush has a reputation for misstating things, mostly an earned rep. But then I read a second interview he gave for his Asian trip, with China Central Television and he not only did it again, but made it stronger:

THE PRESIDENT: … If North Korea were to end up with a nuclear weapon, it would be very destabilizing and very troubling for all of us.

The desire to have? If North Korea has a nuclear weapon?

The big story here is that Mr Bush is either glossing over or rewriting history. North Korea says it has nuclear weapons. The US State Department confirms North Korea brags of a “nuclear deterrent force”. In October, 2006, North Korea claimed 

it had conducted an underground test of a nuclear bomb and Russia confirmed it was “one hundred per cent certain” it was true.

What the heck is going on at the White House. Mr Bush says he is going to sprint to the January, 2009, finish line, but how can he act when he even denies reality? There is no “if” about North Korea.

Maybe he is concatenating the evil-axis problem, and transferring his opinion of Iran to the actions on North Korea. But that seems unlikely. He was speaking to Asia journalists about Asian problems, and in context all his comments about North Korea were about, well, North Korea.

Mr Bush, the North Koreans have nuclear weapons. They have the means to build more. And here is the really important, super-vital point you should be taking to Asia and especially to Bangkok: The North Koreans are getting in cahoots with the Burmese.

This should be an easy topic for the US president to raise on Wednesday and Thursday with Thai leaders. He is planning, after all, to emphasise his concern over the military dictatorship in Burma (his wife is going to Burma refugee camps in Thailand) and the uniting of world rogues, as the Bangkok Post editorial of last April 21 put it, is ugly to consider.

North Korea has the bomb and has the technology to proliferate. It was trying to build a bomb-capable reactor in Syria, which was destroyed by Israel last September.

There is evidence, and I want to stress that word evidence, that North Korea is approaching fellow rogue-state Burma to build a nuclear plant capable of producing bomb material including plutonium.

There is no if about it, Mr Bush. You cannot wish or change history about this: North Korea has the bomb and its has the capability and probably the will to help others get it. At least admit that, and work with others including Thailand to stop the North Korean plan for Burma. Because IF Burma gets involved in this nuclear weapons problem, it will be very bad news for Thailand and the entire Southeast Asian region.