Max Power was privileged enough to attend a Christopher Hitchens discussion last night. The topic? Orwell, Hitch, and the Terror War.

The best bit Max quoted was this:

On Islamofascism: Hitchens noted that Taliban Afghanistan was viewed as a model government by the Islamic fundamentalist movement, and wasn’t that argument enough against it? “It’s not just a question of means, it’s a question of ends.” Hitchens pointed out that Orwell had noted the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Fascists of his day. (Paraphrasing:) “There’s something totalitarian about an all-powerful central figure who needs to be worshipped, who is always watching you, and whom you can never escape, even in death. Even in North Korea, you can get out from under the government with death. This is a sort of Celestial Korea.”

There’s more. Check it out.

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I’m usually a stickler about copyright, but it’s not like I’m making any money with this site. Read, please, I beg you, today’s Non Sequitur.

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The Cranky Professor digs up the dirt on Jimmy Carter, North Korea, and those silly concerned scientist people.

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After playing that Iraq War scenario again and again for days on end, it only now occurs to me that that methods used were much the same as predicted in this column from over three months ago.

Advantage? VodkaPundit? We’ll see about that.

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A Monty Python-themed fisking? Only at Mr. Misha’s, kids.

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Doug Turnbull has changed his mind on ballistic fingerprinting.

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Found at Blogatelle, some wicked satire from Andy Borowitz.

O.J. No Longer

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Arthur Silber on ideological blindness, both Left and Right.

NOTE: Congrats to Arthur for passing 10,000 visits this afternoon. Not bad for a young’un.

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You’ll find this next post of little interest, unless you’re a fan of computer wargaming — so feel free to skip it.

The Operational Art of War, in all it’s incarnations, is undoubtedly the best operational-level military simulator you can buy without a Pentagon clearance. Recently, I downloaded an Iraq War scenario, Operation Final Justice, and took it out for a few spins.

The scenario assumes that we won’t have Saudi bases, and that Jordan will be good only for Special Forces deployments — no heavy armor. Furthermore, while Turkey will allow the use of its territory, no Turkish troops take part unless Iraq invades — an unlikely event. Iran starts the game neutral, with a small chance of becoming involved. Sometimes it happens, mostly it doesn’t. There are no Allied forces of note, other than the UK. The Iraqi player can gain “points” by using SCUDs to kill Israeli civilians, which (I think) also increases the likelihood of Iranian intervention.

The game lasts two weeks, divided into 28 12-hour turns. Frankly, I think our optempo could support 6-hour turns, if only for the first few days.

The Allied Order of Battle is as follows:

82nd Airborne (Operating out of Turkey)
101st Air Assault (ditto)
75th Ranger Battalion (Jordan)
5th Special Operations Group (ditto)
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment (Kuwait)
3rd Mechanized Division (ditto)
1st Armored Division (ditto)
1st UK Armoured Division (ditto)
About a division’s worth of Marines (Qutar)
Damn near every artillery piece we’ve got
All the Air Force, Navy, RAF, support and engineering units you’d expect.

The Iraqi order of battle is based on the best public estimates available.

The scenario further assumes that the regular Iraqi Army will, if not actually fight, at least put up a small “speedbump”-type resistence. The Iraqis start off using chemical weapons, and may or may not have a nuke or two, to be used in a static defense role. Civililian refugees, especially in the south, clog roads. To make matters worse, the Iraqis will try to blow up every bridge between anywhere and Baghdad — and there are a lot of rivers to cross.

All of these factors serve to slow down the Allied advance.

The results? I played as the Allies, with the handicap feature turned up all the way — against me and for Iraq. I played as Iraq, with the handicap cranked in Saddam’s favor. Several times, I let the computer play against itself.

In every case, the same result: Baghdad can’t hold out for more than ten days, and Allied casualties are light. Twice, playing as the Allies and risking too many Special Forces casualties (using them to hold bridges behind enemy lines), Saddam fell in just eight turns — four days. And the risk turned out to be not too risky; those Special Forces guys could hold their own.

Oh, and the game doesn’t yet model JDAM or JSOW bombs, so it assumes less effective air support than is likely to be the case.

In every case, casualties were higher than in the Gulf War, but still under 1,000.

Again, OpArt isn’t a Pentagon-level simulator, but it is pretty damn good at recreating historical battles. As for its reliability at predicting future battles, only time will tell.

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I’ll take two.

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I’ve taken a lot of grief for linking to this Ralph Peters piece. And Peters has taken a lot of grief for writing it. In short, he argues that the Muslims of “the periphery,” notably Indonesia, have a lot more potential than the perpetual-loser Muslims of Araby.

I think he’s right — and I’ll use Iran to defend his position. Yes, Iran.

Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim are, believe it or not, a lot more. . . relaxed about their faith than your average Arab, or (obviously) Wahhabi. Iran’s version of Islam is tempered with old Zoroastrian beliefs and other old faiths from a very, very old region. Shi

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Funny item from StrategyPage:

The Afghan independent news agency Hindokosh in Dari reported on 14 October that on the night of 12 October, three British helicopters appeared in the Kabul sky and the locals interpreted this as an attempt to “steal” an Afghani tank. Oddly enough, the tank in question was a Renault FT-17 captured from the British Expeditionary Force in the Anglo-Afghan war of 1919. [Empasis added]

There’s more. Read it.

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Ralph Peters has an excellent article in the new edition of Parameters, the quartertly publication of the Army War College.

The article looks at how to “roll back” Radical Islam, but the key graf is more about co-option than coersion:

Just as every other major religion has adapted to the unique challenges and opportunities of American life, Islam will do so as well. To retain the devotion of the young, generation after generation, as the possibilities (and the temptations) of America wean them from old behaviors and antique prejudices, Islam will have to travel the humane route pioneered by American Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. There will be great complaints and concerns

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Nick Kristof says bringing democracy to Iraq is impossible, since we couldn

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Get Lucky Cr

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