Flypaper Strategy II

Leftist “antiwar” commenters replying to the Cold Fury posting noted in an update to Impearls' earlier piece on this subject, deserve a more extensive response in my view than the fisking they got from that blog's regulars (good though that was), so we'll consider the matter more fully here.

“tubino” writes:
Hi, you don't address the CIA report that says the terrorists are beginning to move back to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco…  IOW, the flypaper theory is working about as well as in Afghanistan, terrorist training ground.

Cold Fury's commenter in his turn doesn't address David Warren's point that “they [the terrorists] sooner or later get themselves killed.”  How much experience will the Madrid train bombing suspect who, as the BBC article I linked to reported, recently blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Iraq, carry back to use elsewhere?  And that's now typical for the terrorists (aka “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” as they themselves call themselves).  Half a year ago the insurgents could attack the Iraqi Police in places like Mosul, and the police would flee in disorder.  Now the IP stand their ground, while those trying to attack them are captured and massacred in large numbers.  Attacking Coalition troops is even worse for the jihadists' overall longevity.  Terrorists are reduced to basically launching suicide bombing attacks on helpless civilians.  Coalition troops, on the other hand, are learning and will return with vast experience in coping with them.

“juaniflaco” writes:
This post is wishful thinking, unfortunately.  The US military is playing whack-a-mole in Iraq, and for every one they kill there are 3 more to take their place.  Newsflash: We're losing.

I suggest you go to Iraq so you can recieve your grateful allotment of flower petals.  I here there's direct route from the airport with very little traffic.

The canard that there was no Iraqi gratitude as a result of their liberation following the Saddam Hussein regime's overthrow is latter-day leftist mythologizing, as Christopher Hitchens recently emphasized from his own direct personal experience in Iraq.  Moreover, as Iraqi physician and blogger Ali Fadhil states in the very masthead of his blog Free Iraqi:  “I was not living before the 9th of April and now I am, so let me speak!”  Yep, no gratitude to be found there!

“juaniflaco” would also have us believe that terrorists keep cropping up like the chopped-off heads of Hercules' Hydra — parroting the leftist line that there's no point in killing terrorists in wholesale numbers as the Iraqi and Coalition forces are doing (i.e., we might as well just give up), 'cause “for every one they kill there are 3 more to take their place.”  Nonsense!  There is an end to how many jihadists can flock to Iraq, and the Coalition and free Iraqis can simply keep killing them as long as they do.  Meanwhile, as David Warren perceptively pointed out, the terrorists are not attacking America at home while they're inspired to take the fight to Iraq.

Beyond that, as tubino separately commented:

What are the conditions that give rise to suicide bombers?  Is it religious fanaticism?

Answer: yes.  But he continues, asserting without evidence:

One thing over all: occupation by a foreign power.  Iraq has no history of suicide bombers — till now.

tubino carefully tries to obfuscate the fact that Iraq and Iraqis still have no history of suicide bombing — as essentially all the suicide bombers, according to reports I've seen, are not Iraqis at all, but foreign jihadists who've come into the country to fight the “Great Satan” over there.  But tubino goes on to ask (as if he thinks he knows the answer):

Anyone seen any polling data on how IRAQIS feel about the US being there?

Yes, there is polling data on how Iraqis feel about the Coalition's presence, and guess what: they want us (the Coalition) to stay.  As Omar Fadhil at Iraqi blog Iraq the Model reported here back in May, 2005, “Al-Sabah [newspaper] is conducting a new opinion poll and till no[w] 1590 people have said their opinion about this question:  What is the task Jafari's government has to handle first?”  Selected findings: 

1 — providing security 55.16% (877 votes) […]
3 — [5th in proportionate response –Ed] getting the foreign troops out 4.97% (79 votes) […]

Thus, Iraqis overwhelmingly oppose the Coalition's presence in their country… not!  On the contrary, the conclusion is inescapable that while the presence of Coalition forces is certainly exciting to foreign jihadists, it's not particularly upsetting to the Iraqis themselves.

Beyond that, the idea that Iraq's “occupation by a foreign power,” as tubino puts it, is the primary motivator for the foreign jihadists I believe is wrong (some leftists even like to pretend that the prison camp at Guantanamo is the major draw for terrorists, which is utterly insane).

For those who tend toward this opinion, let me posit this question: what do you suppose is likelier to inspire and draw out terrorists from their hidey-holes throughout the Middle East and world, a huge spectacular victory for their side (the “stronger horse,” as Bin Laden put it) such as thousands of Americans (little demonic representatives of the Great Satan) getting immolated alive on world television, as occurred on September 11, 2001 — or the symbol of terrorist defeat, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, such as Guantanamo and the Coalition's presence in those countries represent?

I submit that the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsing in flames, while tiny figures hurl themselves in despair and horror off into space, was and is the greatest recruiting tool for jihadists imaginable.  The future potentiality of that, and worse, is what fighting the terrorists in Iraq and beyond is intended to foreclose.
 

UPDATE:  2005-06-30 03:15 UT:  Omar at Iraq the Model blog also reports on perhaps a more significant Iraqi poll:

[I]n the National Assembly there are 83 members who signed a declaration where they accused the government of treason because it asked the multinational troops to remain for another year in Iraq and they said that the government ought to demand a timetable for withdrawal and they're also planning to organize protests and rallies to put more pressure on the government.

However, on the streets, such demands are not popular among everyday Iraqis who are more concerned about finding solutions for their daily life problems whether the solutions came form the government, the Americans or from Martians.  As for the other 192 members of the Assembly, they find such demands irrational and inconvenient at least for the time being.

Those 83 Sadrists and Fadhela party members as well as some other Islamists want to embarrass the government and use slogans that sound great and patriotac to undermine the public support the current government enjoys.  This reminds me of the communists and the pan-nationalists back in the 1st half of the 20th century when they demanded the ousting of British troops and the result was a disaster; all they wanted was power and the deterioration didn't end since then.

Omar goes on:

What I want to say here is that it is our fate to fight terrorism on our own land and we (the majority) have accepted to challenge this fate the day we abandoned Saddam and welcomed our freedom but that's not the case for you in America.  Actually we've got no other choice but to fight and keep fighting until we win over the terrorists because otherwise we'll have to submit to their will and the damage would be irreversible.

Fighting terrorism for us in Iraq is a matter of life or death so we have no choice but to keep fighting until we kill or lock in jail every one of them and we're doing this whether the world supported us or not but in case we failed, the consequences will not be confined by Iraq's borders.  You (the west) can step back and wait for the terrorists to knock on your doors at any minute or you can put your s*** together and fight them while they're thousands of miles away.

This is war, it's not a picnic and don't think that we're enjoying it and we're not expecting you to enjoy it either.  By quitting now some might think that needless losses are going to be avoided but that's — in my opinion — is a very shortsighted way of thinking because quitting now will only expose America and the rest of the world to a much greater threat.

BBC World confirms the Flypaper Strategy

It was Canadian essayist David Warren who in 2003 originated the concept of the so-called “Flypaper” strategy with regard to the war in Iraq.  As Warren wrote in his first essay on the subject:

While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq — the first democracy should it succeed in the entire history of the Arabs — President Bush has also quite consciously to my information created a new playground for the enemy away from Israel and even farther away from the United States itself.  By the very act of proving this lower ground he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.

This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's “bring 'em on” taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday when he was quizzed about the “growing threat to U.S. forces” on the ground in Iraq.  It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties.  What the media and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians both in Iraq and at large.  The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation — and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists compelling their response — is not a mistake.  It is carefully hung flypaper.

Nothing that has occurred since in Iraq and elsewhere has invalidated the fundamental correctness of this doctrine.  Warren himself has written considerably further on this topic, most recently during this last month here, where he says:

I do feel sure, that while the continuing terrorist carnage in Iraq, especially, but also in Afghanistan, must disturb us as conscientious human beings, we have less reason than ever to be alarmed by it.  We are witnessing what amounts to the purposeful bleeding of a septic wound, as the most fanatic Islamist incendiaries from within Iraq and abroad take their best, hopeless shot at bringing down the new Iraqi constitutional order.  It is a matter of life or death for their cause, and we could hardly expect them to abandon it easily.

As the author of the much-mocked “flypaper theory” — the phrase I used to describe the implicit strategy behind the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan — I am more and more persuaded it has worked.  All ground indications are that large numbers of Islamist terrorists who would otherwise remain dangerously under cover, not only across the region but in Europe and elsewhere, are irresistibly drawn towards these theatres of action, where they sooner or later get themselves killed.

As terrorists, they were, almost invariably, in a position to be more effective where they were.  They are lured away for emotional reasons, or “spiritual” if that word can be applied to something that is essentially not Godly but demonic.  It is the Islamist analogy to the way young socialists, anarchists, and adventurers from across Europe were drawn to Spain during its Civil War in the 1930s.

In addition to being annihilated, themselves, they deflate their cause by showing it to be losing.  And what began as a recruiting inducement, soon becomes the opposite.  For the near-certainty of getting killed oneself, in the cause of murdering (mostly) defenceless civilians, is not as attractive a motivator as the incendiaries make out.

Many other analysts have commented on this strategy, most recently James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's editorial OpinionJournal page, where he runs a daily feature the “Best of the Web Today.”  Yesterday, in a piece called “Red on Red,” Taranto notes a report from that day's New York Times revealing that insurgents in Iraq are now fighting each other as some local Iraqis, otherwise opponents of the Coalition's presence in the country, seek to forestall the imported foreign jihadists' proclivities towards blowing up Iraqis right and left in their campaign to prevent the newly installed elected Iraqi government from consolidating its hold on power and completing work on the new democratic Iraqi constitution.

As Taranto says, “it would seem to vindicate both Vice President Cheney's much-maligned view that the indigenous insurgency is in its ‘final throes’ and the ‘flypaper’ theory that liberating Iraq is drawing in terrorists and forcing them to face the U.S. military.”

In this regard, a report from the BBC just a week ago thoroughly reinforces this point of view.  While the BBC has been almost unremittingly negative with respect to the war on terror, including its Iraqi theater, even a stopped clock gets it right occasionally, and the BBC now and then does partially make up for its “sins.”

On June 15, 2005, BBC World broadcast a remarkable story (carried in the U.S. by PBS outlets) illustrating how fighting the terrorists in Iraq is making both America and Europe safer.  They reported, “Police in Spain say they've arrested sixteen suspected Islamic militants in raids across the country.  Eleven of them are said to be linked to Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq.”

As BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner (who was crippled a year ago incidentally by gunmen in Saudi Arabia) narrates:

Under cover of darkness, Spanish police move into position.  In five different locations around the country, more than 500 officers broke into the suspected hideouts of Islamist militants.  Sixteen men of North African origin were arrested, in what's said to be one of Europe's biggest ever counter-terrorist operations.  Spain's Interior Minister spoke today of jihad and would-be suicide bombers, but their targets, he said, were not in Europe, they're in Iraq.  Investigators believe they have uncovered an international network of extremists, financed and supported by robbery, drug dealing, and false documents.  They say most of those arrested in Spain are linked to a cell of Islamist recruiters in Syria dedicated to sending volunteers into Iraq to fight the US-led Coalition.  Five of those arrested are accused of links to last year's Madrid bombings.  The remainder are accused of connections to Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, the Al Qaeda operative who's been driving the insurgency in Iraq.

A BBC interviewee, Jeremy Binnie of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, put it thusly:

The war in Iraq has minimized the threat to Europe [emphasis added] because everyone who's Jihad-inclined wants to go fight over there.  So even though some of these… the guys suspected of involvement in the train bombings have reportedly gone over to lodge themselves in Iraq.  So there are these radicals sort of coming out of Europe and actually going to a different theater altogether.

Gardner concludes his report, noting:  “Spain has seen terror-related arrests like these before, but despite early claims by the authorities, insufficient evidence has often seen them result in embarrassing acquittals.”

As one might expect from the BBC, the written report at their web site concerning this incident has been sanitized of all such stuff as “The war in Iraq has minimized the threat to Europe.”  However, the report does include some other very interesting tidbits, to wit:

Twenty-four men charged with terror offences recently appeared in court, three of them accused of involvement in planning the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US [!].  The BBC's Katya Adler says interior ministry sources say one Madrid train bombing suspect who escaped police is believed to have carried out a suicide attack in Iraq last month.

Thus, the importance of the war in Iraq for keeping terrorists at bay from the centers of civilization.  The BBC broadcast piece shows how the “flypaper strategy” for attracting terrorists to Iraq is working.  Instead of subverting European countries or attacking America, potentially at the cost of thousands of civilian casualties as we've seen before, jihadists are flocking to Iraq, where our military can kill them in detail.

It's also worth observing how the suicide bombers we hear about every day in the news from Iraq are actually arriving from abroad.  From the reports I've seen, essentially none of the fanatics willing to blow themselves up taking many Iraqis along with them are Iraqis themselves.  So much for the idea that it's primarily the Iraqis who hate Americans and the Coalition and want us out; rather it's radical Islamofascist foreigners from around the world who are desperate to prevent Iraqis from taking destiny in their own hands to establish a modern, decent democratic society in the heart of the Muslim world.
 

UPDATE — Follow-up article:  2005-06-29 17:50 UT:  A follow-up article to the original posting above, entitled “Flypaper Strategy II,” has been posted.
 

UPDATE — Reader's Write:  2005-06-26 17:30 UT:  A number of readers sent in their comments:

Got here from Instapundit.  It's a good read, but, and this is not directed at you, this is historically old news.  Not like old news last week, but more like old news 150 years ago.  The ole US fought what many historians now consider the first mechanized war (trains, repeating rifles, gatling guns, airships, mobile canon) during the Civil War.  We fought it on our soil.  And we learned a very valuable lesson — Better that the next war be an away game, than played here at home.

The long grey line has held to that maxim for nearly two centuries.  So the flycatcher strategy is just an outcome of making sure US involvement is always somewhere else.  The irony is, lacking perspective, much of the press as you reported it assume this is a new idea, which it is not.  Sigh.

Just my sense of it.

John McGinnis
Arlington, Texas

Good point.  Here's another letter:

I wanted to send you a thank you for your article on the “fly paper” theory.  I had gotten into a debate with my boss at the start of the Iraq war and this theory was essentially what I stated was the reason for going there.  I'm not by any means making a claim you took my idea, rather I am extremely pleased to see my perception of the war shared, posted and displayed for others to read and digest.  At the time of the war, this theory that until now I thought I only believed in, was the only logical reason for the war.  Sure, WMD's, that's great, but we need to find a place to allow this conflict to take place and Iraq was it.  Iraq was not the U.S. or Europe, it was a vast desert wasteland smack dab in the middle of this ideological fueled menacing region of the world.  To this day I still stand by going to Iraq post 9/11, and this theory actually gives me a name to call it by and with the recent BBC reports, I know have an actual resource to send my liberal friends to that they will accept.  Thanks, and keep up the good work!

Patrick Gordon
Malden, Massachusetts

Thanks for your reply, Patrick.  Your appreciation really should go to David Warren, however, rather than to me, as he's the one who originated the “Flypaper” concept.  I agree that his idea also chimes pretty well with my own thoughts on this issue.

I think TigerHawk's article that Glenn Reynolds linked to in that same posting as he did to mine is also quite significant in this regard.  I've always thought that Iraq's placement next to Saudi Arabia, as well as Iran, was a factor in the selection of Iraq as the next target after Afghanistan.  Not only would holding Iraq give the U.S. a much larger and broader footprint than Kuwait in its border against Saudi Arabia, but Iraq's oil producing capability (once ramped up adequately after the war) would help shield the developed world against too great a shock (which otherwise might cause collapse of the world economy) in case Saudi Arabia were to cut off oil supplies in a new boycott of the West as a result of too much pressure being placed on it to reform its terrorist-abetting ways.

And another letter along the same lines:

Congratulations and thank you!  Your ‘Flypaper’ piece is the most cogent, articulate, and truthful presentation that I have seen yet.  Your piece shows what my grad school mentor, Theodore Ropp, called ‘a firm grasp of the obvious,’ or something that is very simple in its complexity.

I have been saying essentially the same thing, but without the documentation, for months to anyone who would listen, in reference to all the whiners about the on-going terrorist insurgency.  Someone should forward your article to the clowns in Congress, as well as the media, who want a timetable for withdrawal — you know, like the timetable we had in Vietnam, which is where the Democrats' and the media's collective memory seems to have stopped.  What I see today is an administration that consciously has made the decision NOT to make that mistake again.

Iraq is like the Tet Offensive on a continuous loop — the longer it goes on, the more terrorists, jihadists, unreconstructed Baathists, and assorted other fanatics are drawn into the kill boxes to die in the slums of Baghdad and assorted other Arab gothams, while the other regimes in the neighborhood continue to sweat the ‘are we next?’ ponderable.  Meanwhile, the hand-winging Europeans, along with too many misinformed Americans, remain blissfully unaware that they are safer indeed, mourning instead, in the case of the Europeans, the lost economic opportunities to sell those same terrorists the weapons they would have eventually turned on them anyway, our devoted friends, the French, Germans, and Russians.

And if, perchance, some terrorist in the future decides to launch another attack against a symbol of decadence and corruption in the United States, we can only hope they choose that high-rise beside the East River.

Tom Fairfull
Honolulu, HI

This reader, on the other hand, finds the article an occasion for mirth:

My friend George sent me your column re: The “Flypaper Strategy.”  He knows how much I enjoy satire, being a lifelong devotee of media such as National Lampoon, Spy Magazine, Saturday Night Live, Firesign Theater, Monty Python, etc.

For future column subjects you may wish to consider the following:

The Bubonic Plague — How it solved the Medieval housing shortage.  [You might be surprised at how many historians actually talk that way. –Ed]
The Fall of the Roman Empire — The foundation of today's entertainment industry.
Pompeii — Farsighted Italian tourist development.
The Great Chicago Fire — Urban renewal's first success story.

Although none of these columns could match the “Flypaper” for pure fun and absurdity, I know as a satirical writer you have to keep the laughs coming.  Someday Bush will be gone and you may have difficulty finding material.

Thanks for the laughs,
Your new fan Joe

P.S.  I have not seen flypaper in use for quite a while.  Do you think kids that are eligible for the draft today even know what it is?

Always glad to provide comic relief to the readers of Impearls.
 

UPDATE — Links to the piece:  2005-06-23 15:00 UT:  Glenn Reynolds the Instapundit linked to this article, with the comment, “the ‘Flypaper Strategy’ is getting strange new respect.”  The posting by TigerHawk that he links to in the same posting is very much worth perusing in this connection as well.

Winds of Change links to the article twice: once (by Colt) in the “Thursday Winds of War” section, and again in a piece by Bill Roggio specifically about Iraq called “Training Grounds, Magnets, and Hunters in Iraq,” commenting:  “Michael McNeil from Impearls cites an unlikely source for confirmation of the Flypaper/Magnet theory: the BBC.  Not only has Iraq become a magnet, but it has increased Europe's security by redirecting fighters from their European soil.

Marc at USS Neverdock also linked to the piece, noting “It's been said many times that the war in Iraq makes Europe and America safer.  The flypaper strategy is proof of that.”
 

UPDATE — Links to the piece:  2005-06-29 17:45 UT:  Many more blogs have linked to this article:

Cold Fury in a posting amusingly but aptly titled “Snatching victory from the jaws of Democrats,” quotes David Warren and links to this article, commenting:  “Warren as usual is perfectly correct, and all the handwringing defeatism the Democrats and their Old Media poodles can possibly muster won't change it.  (Via Michael McNeil — and this is a fine post as well, btw, and well worth your time if you haven't seen it yet — and Insty.)”  Cold Fury has an active comments section, with leftists reacting to the article with their usual hyperbolic outrage, and the blog's regulars coolly taking them on.  I'll reply to some of the leftist points in comments to the Cold Fury piece in a separate posting.

The Happy Carpenter, in a piece called “The "Fly Paper" strategy, vindicated,” links to the article, commenting:  “Well, duh, of course it's working.  How could it not?”

Russ Mitchell at Boxing Alcibiades, in a posting entitled “Flypaper for asshats…,” writes:  “Over at Impearls, an interesting article: BBC confirms the flypaper strategy.  This has long been suspected, of course.  It's what the soldiers speak of when they talk about how it's better to play “an away game” than a “home game.”

Clayton Cramer at his blog, in a posting titled “The Flypaper Strategy,” writes:

This blogger links to several reports that suggest that even the BBC is beginning to recognize that the flypaper strategy — of attracting deranged jihadists from all over the world to Iraq to blow themselves up — is making the rest of the world safer.

This isn't great for the Iraqis, who are bearing the enormous burden of civilian and police deaths, but if the jihadists are intent on mass murder, I would prefer it somewhere far away from the United States.  Unfortunately, I don't see any alternative; there is no reasoning with the jihadists.

“Ace” at Ace of Spades HQ, in an article called “Flypaper Revisited: Even the BBC Acknowledges The War In Iraq Has Made Europe Safer,” links to my piece and quotes from the BBC broadcast, calling it “stunning.”  He goes on to say:

The whole thing is worth reading.  The left jeers at the “flypaper” theory, but the fact is, the world's terrorists are flocking to Iraq — rather than Israel, Bali, or Los Angeles — because they understand, better than the left does, how crucially important Iraq is to their cause.  If Iraq “falls” — that is, if Iraq succeeds in becoming a peaceful, democratic pluralist semi-secularist decent regime — the jihadist cause suffers a powerful defeat.

As a side benefit, of course, these rotten bastards are going up against well-trained and well-equipped soldiers and Marines rather than 103-lb. flight attendants.  Which is not their forte.

“Winds of Change” in The Command Post, in its “Thursday Winds of War” column, passes along the earlier mention from Winds of Change, noted here before.

“Firehand” in his Irons in the Fire blog, in a piece called “All you need to know about Gitmo,” links to a column by James Lileks on that subject, and also to this article, noting:  “And an interesting bit on the ‘flypaper strategy’ and how, among other things, it's been saving a lot of Europeans from themselves, here.”

Brad Lips at the Lips Brothers, in a piece called “The Iraq Project,” links to this article, writing:  “When I put my finger to the wind, even among conservatives, there seems to be a growing exhaustion over Iraq.  I'm still very pleased with how well things have gone.  Is this stubborn clinging to a position, or (as I like to think) having a sense of perspective about the inherent challenges and costs of war that a lot of other observors lack?  All I know for sure is that this post about the ‘Flypaper’ strategy of bringing war to Iraq resonates with me as mostly true.”

“antimedia” writing in Media Lies, in a lengthy piece called ‘Rethinking the Downing Street memo,” links to this article in an update at the end, noting:  “For a different point of view on the strategy behind the war, read about the ‘flypaper strategy.’  I confess, I wasn't aware of David Warren's essays, but I've written essentially the same thing before myself.”

“Mr. B” in New Optimates, in a posting titled “What's the most efficient way to kill lots of flies?,” answers his own question (and links to this article) presenting the solution, “Lay down some flypaper….”

Pierre Legrand, in Papa Doc's Pink Flamingo Bar & Grill blog, posts a piece mainly about an Ann Coulter article entitled “Coulter gives out some much needed perspective on Gitmo,” ending it with a link to this article, writing:

Are we committed to defending ourselves or not?  Are we as soft as our enemies have believed?  Will we crumble and end up fighting these madmen here at home?

We are winning folks.  But we cannot stop now.  Iraq is drawing the Islamic fanatics into fighting our soldiers who are the best prepared and most able soldiers to have ever picked up a weapon.  Do we want to cripple our efforts by listening to the pollyannas like Andrew Sullivan?

Even the BBC understands that Iraq is drawing people who would otherwise be attacking us in the US or Europe.

Another post on winning.  And check these posts out to see how we are winning.  Here is a related article at the NYT.

The latter New York Times article that Legrand points to illustrates yet another instance where a Muslim conspiracy in a Western country (Britain in this case) maintains links and provides support (including yet another suicide bomber connection) with the jihadists in Iraq.

Jay Fitzgerald at Hub Blog, on the other hand, in a posting entitled “Stabilization vs. Fly-trap, Part II” (he'd earlier written about the subject here, in a posting criticizing Austin Bay for having the temerity to mention the “Flypaper” theory), follows up on his previous piece with a link to this article, writing:

Now here's a good Austin Bay column (via Instapundit) that concentrates on what's been accomplished in Iraq (i.e. stabilization).  Notice no mention of the Fly-trap nonsense, a desperate rationale periodically pulled out of the argumentative drawer when things aren't going well in Iraq. …

Update – 9:40 p.m. — Oh no.  The ‘flypaper’ strategy is getting a new airing (via, sadly, Instapundit) and is now called a ‘doctrine.’  You see, Iraq was always envisioned as a ‘playground’ in which we'd shoot 'em up while at the same time trying to build a stable democracy.  Yeah, that was the plan.  Oops.  ‘Doctrine.’ …

Map of Mars

While on the subject of Mars (see the next posting for that earlier piece), above is a strikingly beautiful, relatively recent (from a few years ago) map of the Red Planet, that I suspect few people have as yet encountered, derived from the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft's MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) instrument, which for the first time puts together a detailed look at how the elevations of the terrain on Mars stack up with respect to each other.  The color-coding legend shown at the top of the map extends from −8 kilometers (−5 miles) below the standard “datum” to +8 km above that level, while latitude and longitude on the map proper are indicated in 5° increments for the Mercator projection portion, and 10° for the polar projections (left one is south, right for north).

Click on the map to link to a larger version at NASA with surface elements labeled (I like it better without the labeling, frankly).  See also this link to the NASA “MOLA” homepage, and this one for the MOLA Image Gallery.  On the Image Gallery page, don't miss the large scale maps, particularly here (at 1,080 × 620 pixels), and here — for 12,032 × 6,912 pixels (careful, it's a 17.6 MB file!).

Using the MOLA data, researchers can now discern, for instance, how the descending altitude of apparent streambed valleys really could have conducted water down their courses back during warmer-wetter days on Mars; and it's also possible to compute how three-quarters of the martian terrain during such earlier times would have drained down to the “northern lowlands” (purple-blue along the top portion of the map), where oceans — if ever there were any on Mars, as seems increasingly likely — would have resided.

Taking inspiration from Edgar Rice Burroughs' “John Carter of Mars” stories of our youth, those northern lowlands (plus the enormous impact basin in the southern hemisphere known as Hellas) would have constituted the martian “dead sea bottoms” of yore and lore!
 

Also, for illustrative purposes, below is a view of our own planet using a similar altitude-coding representation (not precisely the same altitude scale).  Notice how Antarctica appears red, not due to some weird false-color rendering of its coldness, but because the continent is so high altitude-wise: it's covered by an average of 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) thickness of glacial ice.  (Click on the map to link to John Walker's “Earth Screen Saver for Windows,” the source of the image.)

Shining Frozen Lake on Mars

The latest Nature journal reveals a stunning image from the Mars Express spacecraft, presently orbiting Mars in a polar orbit, showing a frozen lake gleaming in the sun on the floor of a high latitude martian crater.  As the piece says: ¹

First three-dimensional colour image reveals a frozen wonder.

This image from the Mars Express spacecraft shows a pocket of water ice nestling in a martian crater, bathed in the late martian summer sun.

The shadow of the crater's rim, which towers 300 metres over the surrounding plains, prevents the ice from vaporizing in the planet's thin atmosphere.  A dusting of frost survives inside the rim to the upper right, while the sun glimmers on its south-facing outer edge.

The 35-kilometre-wide crater sits 70° north of the martian equator, in a low-lying region known as Vastitas Borealis.  Previous orbiters have spotted ice deposits in craters, but the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board the European probe is the first to return a three-dimensional colour image of an icy spot.  The ice may be up to 200 metres thick, and lies over a dune field that has formed in the sediment on the crater's floor.  The data were collected on 2 February, and this image was created for Nature last week.
 

¹ “Snapshot: Sunlight on an icy martian crater,” Nature, vol. 435, p. 723 (issue dated 2005-06-09); © copyright 2005 Nature Publishing Group, figure reproduced by permission.