Iraq's direction, and the Muslim world

The past several months have been interesting - and the next few days will be critical. Just as the United States has inaugurated its new President, so too will Iraqis be choosing their leadership at the provincial level tomorrow. The outcome of these elections, which were originally supposed to take place in October, will be key in making a number of important assessments about Iraq's social and political climate, the demographics of its regime and what direction it will take with its policies, both internally and externally.

SURGEMANIA

Things have gotten better in Iraq since 2006. That's not to say that they're splendid, or even that they're going well. As I'm typing this, I've just read that several Sunni Arabs have been killed so that they will not be able to run in the provincial elections. Stories like that one have not stopped coming out of Iraq at any point since 2003, nor will they any time soon. However, the nadir which the country reached in late 2006 - when some 3,000 civilians a month, according to the Iraq Study Group Report (and, in reality, the number could have been much higher), were being butchered - has passed - and anyone worth a damn should be glad that that's the case. Unfortunately, too many pundits, especially those on the right who have been mouthpieces for the Bush administration's war throughout all of its phases, want to create the impression that a situation going from worse to bad indicates that the underlying problem is being solved, or that those who were responsible for letting shit hit the fan in the first place deserve credit for others cleaning it up. The media, which feeds off of the fact that most American citizens only care about casualties (and realistically, only about American casualties) has been enabling them. Take, for instance, our old friend engram, who continues to astound with his consummately thorough analysis of the situation in Iraq:

With the war in Iraq essentially over (not because we abandoned our allies there to the wolves of al Qaeda but instead because the U.S. military defeated its enemies -- as history will undoubtedly record)

In his mind, and in the minds of most who buy into the John Wayne mentality that throwing more soldiers at Iraq "fixed" the problem, Iraq has been "dealt with" and is now off the table. They think that it's time to declare "victory" in Iraq. There is no room in their black and white logic for any kind of complicating social or political factors to enter the equation, regardless of whether or not they're necessary components. So prevalent has this "surge' narrative become, that even Obama himself, who opposed the surge initially, later "admitted" that it had worked. The cheerleading crowd, such as those at Gateway Pundit, gobbled that up like honey. Similarly inconceivable to them is the notion that Obama was actually correct initially, and that his reversal of position maybe - just maybe - had something to do with telling people what they wanted to hear so that he could get their votes. What a concept!

There's just one problem with the crowd who are pushing the "surge" narrative on the rest of us: almost none of them are Iraqis.

Defense Department: “Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq” October 2008

Some extracted figures from the research, courtesy of Musings on Iraq:

• 37% said the Iraqi Army was most responsible for security in their neighborhood, compared to 35% in Aug. 08, and 25% in Nov. 07
• 36% said the police were most responsible for security in their neighborhood, down from 38% in Aug. 08 and 43% in Nov. 07
• 7% said tribes were most responsible for security, up from 5% in Aug. 08
• 6% said the Sons of Iraq were most responsible for security, down from 7% in Aug. 08, but up from 2% in Nov. 07
• 3% said neighbors were most responsible for security, the same as Aug. 08
• 2% said the Multi-National Forces were most responsible for security, down from 3% in Aug. 08

As the polling data shows, the people who actually live in Iraq don't fit into the "surge" narrative that has become so dominate to western commentators at all. In fact, in a March 2008 BBC poll, the majority of Iraqis polled actually thought that the addition of foreign troops made things worse, not better (though the trend was not a new one):

Security in the areas where these forces have been sent
Better 36
Worse 53
Had No Effect 10

The polls do show that Iraqis are seeing general improvements in their overall security, that they are feeling more confident in the Iraqi Army, and, to a lesser extent, the Iraqi Police. Almost none of them, however, credit the decision to send more troops with these changes. So who should we believe: them, or right-wing ideologues who have been wrong on so many things?

The answer, of course, lies in the details - but rest assured that half-assed partisan rhetoric about the US "defeating its enemies" doesn't add anything to the picture.

SITTING DOWN

Praised by the supporters of this war - and even many who oppose it - for his role in "fixing" Iraq, David Petraeus is riding high right now. He was selected as TIME magazine's Person of the Year in 2007 and is practically drooled on by the surgemaniacs whenever his name is mentioned.

In an interview with NPR, here is what Petraeus - the man who the talkings heads on both the left and right are patting on the back for his part in the surge - had to say about its actual mechanics:

MR. CHADWICK: No one could look at the results of what’s happened and not say, this has been well managed, just in terms of the numbers that you cite from last June: 60 percent reduction in attacks. But you yourself must wonder, how loyal are these people to the ideas that we’re trying to implant there? How long do you think you can count on these people once the Americans are gone?

GEN. PETRAEUS: Well, as long as it is in their interest. And what has happened in a place like Anbar Province, the individuals there, they really did have an awakening. You know, they don’t subscribe to that kind of extremist thinking and they absolutely rejected the indiscriminate violence which actually began to consume their own communities. Now, I don’t want to make this sound like sweetness and light because, first of all, intellectually, this is very difficult for us. I mean, this is to sit down with people who, again, were shooting at us. But that is how you end these kinds of conflicts. You don’t end them by killing everybody. You can’t. You cannot kill your way out of an insurgency of this size. But, clearly, over time, they have to see a hand being stretched out from the central government so that it is again in their interest, so that they feel that they have a seat at the table.

Basically, Petraeus is saying what intelligent people who understand the politics of Iraq were saying for years: that you have to deal with insurgencies like the one that the US created in Iraq through political means, not brute military force. Obviously Petraeus was a proponent of sending additional troops - but he understands that the main factor in affecting the change of conditions in Iraq was a diplomatic effort, not a military one. He discusses Anbar province specifically in the interview - which is where the Awakening movement that actually ousted al-Qaeda in Iraq (which was mostly native Sunnis in the first place and not foreign fighters) originated - and yet, of the 25,000 soldiers sent as part of the surge, only 4,000 of them actually went to Anbar Province:

Bush’s 2007 “surge strategy” sent 4,000 additional U.S. Marines to Anbar to support Iraqi security forces and the “Sons of Iraq” -- a group of area residents, including former Sunni insurgents.

The Sons of Iraq, of course, are separate from the Anbar Awakening movement. The Anbar Awakening movement was an organic, locally-grown effort on the part of Sunni tribal leaders to reassert influence over their own affairs; the Sons of Iraq is a paramilitary organization that was bankrolled by the United States. Baghdad is more than happy to let the Sunnis deal with their own problems in Anbar Province - but the central government is another mater. Since the Bush administration and its Coalition Provisional Authority conveniently de-Ba'athified that for them - probably the stupidest decision imaginable at the time - the Shi'ite majority now controls it, and, quite frankly, does not intend to let go of it. Most of the Sons of Iraq themselves already know this:

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been suspicious that the Sons of Iraq is a ploy by Sunni insurgents to gain time and money to regroup.

...

But in the audience, two local Sons of Iraq leaders were skeptical.

"This is all just false talk, empty talk. There is no reconciliation," said Abu Ali, complaining that both he and colleague Abu Taleb had arrest warrants for terrorism hanging over their heads. They were concerned the warrants would be executed now that Iraqi authorities were taking over.

With the US having halted its funding for the SOI, or CLC, or whatever name one chooses to assign them - it will now fall on a Shi'ite-dominated Baghdad to fund them and integrate them, and they don't seem very enthusiastic about doing so. The current agreement is that 20% of the militias will be integrated - far less than the US would have preferred - and how effectively they will be integrated and to what end remains to be seen (note that Shi'ite militias have been integrated into the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police en masse for years now, despite records of criminal activities that those within the ISF often perpetrated).

The point is this: the progress made in Anbar province and with the Sunnis in general is localized and something that shouldn't have required three years of bullshit policies to come to fruition. Al-Qaeda wasn't the problem there - they're an ideologically incompatible third party who exploited Washington and Baghdad's poor relations with the Sunnis - which was the real problem - for all that it was worth. It's got nothing to do with reconciliation with Baghdad - and it's not owed to whoever stuck their finger in the air in 2006 and said "more troops!"It's owed to a change in general strategy made by informed people like David Petraeus, General Surge:

Petraeus was the only US general I met at this time who had a grasp of Iraqi politics and saw that what Iraqis thought was happening would be very important. He kept the Iraqi exiles, the opposition during Saddam Hussein's time, out of Mosul where they were deeply unpopular. He sent the Kurdish units which had captured the city, thanks to US air cover in April 2003, back to Kurdistan, a popular move among the Arabs. When he was leaving in early 2004, I asked him what was his single most important piece of advice for his successor. He said, after reflection, that it was "not to align too closely with one ethnic group, political party, tribe, religious group or social element".

This sounded good, but it was never going to work as a policy because if the US was wholly neutral in the sectarian politics in Iraq it would end up with no friends. The Kurds were the main allies of the US in northern Iraq and were furious when their military forces were pushed out of the city.

Petraeus tried hard. Based in an old palace of Saddam Hussein's, he tried to keep economic life going and ensure adequate food and fuel supplies. To evade the self-destructive decree by Paul Bremer against employing Baathists, he arranged for former Baathist security officers to renounce the Baath Party and all its works. When the 20,000 men of the 101st withdrew, they had lost only 60 men from hostile fire and accidents over 10 months.

The same counsel and prudence was shared by counterterrorism experts, regional or international experts and many others who had been calling for this more intelligent approach to ethnic/sectarian heterogeneity for years. The war cheerleading crowd, who now tout the surge as the ultimate cure for all of Iraq's ailments, just weren't listening. Just like how:

They didn't listen to the informed opinions when they were told that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat and that containment was working.

They didn't listen to the informed opinions when they were told that invading Iraq in the hopes that it would become a flowering democracy was a bad idea that would end up sending fundamentalism and regional instability through the roof.

They didn't listen to the informed opinions when they were told that the US military wasn't nearly well enough prepared for the task that was being handed to it.

They didn't listen to the informed opinions when the CPA instituted de-Ba'athification and disbanded the Iraqi military.

They didn't listen to the informed opinions when they were told that their policies of alienating Sunnis were leading to things like the events at Abu Ghraib that were feeding the insurgency.

They didn't listen to the informed opinions prior to late 2006 when told that they needed a change in policy.

They aren't listening to the informed opinions now when it comes to dealing with Iran or with the simple ground truths of Iraqi political reconciliation.

Only when voters' dissatisfaction over casualty numbers lead to the GOP getting its ass handed to it in 2006 did they start listening - and only on the things that directly concerned them.

Now, they don't want to acknowledge what the "surge" was actually about, and want to take credit for having had the insight needed to "fix" Iraq.

Disgraceful.

ELECTING A NEW IRAQ

A recent government poll showed something that I never thought I would see:

Gulf Times: Maliki allies on course to win elections: survey

BAGHDAD: Candidates affiliated with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki are set to defeat the rival Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq in January 31 provincial elections, according to a poll published yesterday.
The Coalition for the State of Law led by Maliki, a Shia, will win 23% of votes, ahead of the secular National Iraqi list headed by former premier Iyad Allawi, which will get 12.6%, the survey predicted.
The poll was conducted among 4,500 Iraqis across the country by the Centre for National Media, a government organisation.
The big loser in the elections will be the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq led by Abdel Aziz Hakim, which will take third place with 11.4% of votes, according to yesterday’s poll.
Hakim’s party currently controls eight of Iraq’s 18 provinces, 11 of which have a Shia majority.
The list of another former prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, will take 11.3% of votes, according to the poll.

Two years ago, the numbers would have been (and were) far, far different. However, over the past year, Nouri al-Maliki has surpassed my expectations and managed to sell himself to the Iraqi people as some kind of nationalist. Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shi'ite cleric who has headed a very turbulent movement for years now, finally had the majority of his support taken away from him when Maliki did what others who had tried to deal with Sadr could not: convince Iraqis that he was going to do a better job of looking after their interests than Sadr was. Now, Sadr's movement is down to its core followers and is latching onto other Shia parties, while most of his ex-followers are rallying behind Maliki to see what he can do for them. The result is that Maliki now has unprecedented sway both in terms of political power and recognition from various social classes in Iraq (among Shia anyway). Assuming the polling data is accurate, this raises several questions:

How will Maliki choose to use his power, given that he has extensive control of both political institutions and the military? Will he use it to quelch opposition and consolidate more power for himself?

Will Da'wa (Maliki's party) and the SIIC, the largest of the Shia parties, become obfuscated as a result?

Where does al-Sadr fit into all of this? Will he find the means with which to maintain a foothold with poor Iraqis who view Maliki as alien and socially distant, or will he have to slip into obscurity as his followers mix in with other Shia parties to form an opposition to Maliki?

What will happen to the Sunni political blocs? Will they continue to feel shunned and excluded, and follow a pattern of non-participation? Or will somebody throw them a bone?

Will a new Parliament be able to be make progress in areas where the current (and previous) assemblies have failed?

To what extent does Maliki rely on his party's connections to Tehran? Is his newfound image as a nationalist an illusion? Or does he actually have his constituents' interests at heart?

The answers to these questions will only come with time. With the elections being held tomorrow, we'll get a glimpse of what the future may hold. Iraq is not as those on the far left who oppose the war in all its manifestations view it. It sure as hell isn't how those who have served as mouthpieces for the Bush administration's horribly misguided efforts there see it either. It simply is what it is - and the ones who ultimately have to deal with it, and who have a real stake in this, are the people who live there, not those who get to comment on what happens there from afar. Those who claim to be in their corner can start by acknowledging the massive social, economic and political hurdles that Iraq still faces - and will likely face for generations - as well as acknowledge and learn from the many, many mistakes that have been made there, instead of pretending that we should ignore them all and buy into the delusion that we've solved the country's problems by doing things that should have been done from the beginning. I've certainly been guilty of being unkind when discussing these issues, and it's because of what I view as partisan dishonesty from people who don't do any of these things. When they do, then they'll have some credibility in my eyes, and, perhaps, that of the Iraqi people as well.

THE MUSLIM WORLD

Barack Obama gave an excellent interview on Tuesday to Dubai-based al-Arabiya, an Arabic language news channel, with an interesting, if vague, message:

Obama cited his Muslim background and relatives, practically a taboo issue during the U.S. presidential campaign, and said in the interview, which aired Tuesday, that one of his main tasks was to communicate to Muslims "that the Americans are not your enemy."

I'm encouraged. I understand the disappointing reality of foreign policy, and the constraints that public opinion can place on those who make it. I don't expect miracles from Obama. I don't think he's the Messiah; and while I voted for him, I have my doubts. However, hearing this kind of language makes my decision feel vindicated.

For the past eight years, the Bush Administration has divided, inflamed and estranged the rest of the world with its rhetoric. Its preposterous notion of waging war on "terror" - which is a tactic, not a state or even a recognizable group of people - has drawn a line in the sand, creating a childish, oversimplified black and white dichotomy between "us" and "them" that completely fails to encapsulate the complexity and turpitude of world politics, and ultimately, in many cases, shoots its own objectives in the foot.

Muslims aren't our enemies. Those in the west who think that they are are every bit as ignorant, xenophobic and stupid as those who they think speak for the entirety of Islam. Just as no one should believe that extremists speak for the whole of Islam, nor should the rest of the world think that Islamophobes and idiots speak for all of us. Obama, so far, has done a good job of conveying that message. The hopelessly bankrupt "clash" mentality that so many westerners buy into has to be defeated by way of intellectual honesty and open-mindedness - two things that the previous administration (and its supporters) proved to have absolutely none of.

The history and the relevant information are all there for the taking for those who want to learn about the Muslim world - and Obama, unlike Bush or virtually anyone in his administration, has at least read a few chapters. So for now, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

We'll see.

Pro-War Propaganda Vol. I: Back Talk

As I said in my first entry, I have a history of stirring up trouble on pro-war blogs. Probably my most bold and protracted campaign was at Back Talk. Back Talk is a gathering point for pro-war "intellectuals" to get their talking points from. It is fairly well-read and is held in very high regard within the pro-war community, so it was a natural target for me and over the course of several months I went on a rampage there, tearing through as many of engram's posts and readers as time permitted. Here are some examples from the beginning:

Barack Obama Explains his Opposition to the Troop Surge

Muqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire

There are many other examples from the following months, through until May, in fact, with similar results: the blog's proprietor, engram, a "liberal by some measures" who supposedly became curious after 9/11 (read: threw his lot in with Bush and his neocon cabal) posting nonsense disguised as fact, me knocking his argument down and then dealing with a few members of his cult-like fan club. My real goal was to engage engram in a debate directly, but what I found is that he didn't want a debate. In fact, he'd go out of his way to avoid responding to me altogether, even if it meant responding to other commenters and pretending that I hadn't shattered his original article to pieces. Finally, I got an admission of what I had known all along:

"No, I'm not going to argue with you. I often do have discussions with people who think like you do, and I've learned that it is just impossible to make any progress with them. I know that you think that I'm the one who is impervious to evidence, so we are at an impasse. Arguing is not going to get us anywhere."

What's amusing about this is that the "professor" debates other readers - just not the ones that he thinks might actually make him look bad. A good example of that is here, where engram skewed evidence to support his agenda (which includes pretending that America's economy is doing just swell). An anonymous reader challenged him, and engram tried (and failed) to back himself up. Apparently having learned his lesson, he simply stopping trying to answer serious challenges even when pressed:

Engram, I hope you will engage the point I made in the last thread. It was, I believe, a valid criticism of your argument. If your belief in being open to evidence and discourse is more than a pose, I expect you will respond.

Note also in that same discussion engram's demand that I limit the size of my comments after I discredited his entire article. Not too long after, one of my comments actually did get too far under his skin and he deleted it. So, I stopped. Of course, since I have my own blog now, I'm free to discredit engram and others who spout his rhetoric without having to worry about someone else deleting my comments.

Back Talk annoys me because engram is not just a typical war propagandist: he is a propagandist with an uncanny ability to make himself appear like an intellectual. For this reason, he needs to be seen for what he really is. If just one person reads what I post here and manages to see through his facade, then it will add to the satisfaction of discrediting him in the first place.

So as not to draw this post out too far, I'll start with a rather simple deconstruction of one of engram's most recent entries: a typical whinefest about liberal defeatism with a chorus of pro-war cheerleading. From the beginning of his article:

It seems to me that one issue that separates the left from the right on this issue is that, if you are on the right, you see nothing good -- nothing at all -- in America suffering a military defeat (either in Iraq or in Vietnam). If you are on the left, although you might patriotically prefer an American victory, you might also be able to see at least some good in our powerful military being defeated.

This is classic engram propaganda: draw a false dichotomy between the left and right and paint the left as less patriotic by default. By making a base like this that's supposed to sound reasonable, he builds himself a platform from which to push on his readers the idea he really wants to convey: that liberals are defeatists.

Furthermore, engram routinely tries to lure his readers in by building the foundation for his arguments with utter fallacy, such as this:

The conditions that caused Harry Reid and the editors of the New York Times to declare that this war is lost have been reversed. I wonder if they are starting to think that this war is won? I am.

Of course he limits his qualification to what Harry Reid and the Times were upset about: which is that violence was sky-high in 2006. He doesn't want to talk about the things that Middle Eastern experts, intelligence experts or political scientists were upset about, which is that political conditions, such as the refusal of Iraqi Sunni and Shia to even sit in the same Parliament together, the lack of support for the central government among Iraqis and favor of the likes of Muqtada al-Sadr as well Iran's massive influence are the reason that the war is lost and has been for some time now.

Nor is Engram particularly interested in reality regarding al-Qaeda, as this blatant lie demonstrates:

Al Qaeda has not been operating in Afghanistan for many years. They've been in Iraq instead.

As I have tirelessly pointed out on my blog, Osama bin Laden long ago diverted his suicide bombers away from Afghanistan to fight the Americans in Iraq (note the year of publication).

This assertion is so utterly incompatible with the facts that even by engram standards it is shocking. Here is the reality of the situation:

AFGHANISTAN: NEW APPROACHES NEEDED TO DEFEAT INSURGENCY - EXPERTS

Hoffman began by observing that "the lawless border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has, I think, become really America’s most acute foreign-policy challenge, even more so than Iraq." He noted that, "every single major Al-Qaeda plot or attack since 2004 has emanated from precisely that area," referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

There is plenty appearing regularly in the news regarding concern over al-Qaeda's role in Afghanistan, which is largely administered from the safe haven it established in 2001 after the botched invasion of Afghanistan. So the idea that al-Qaeda has been exclusively in Iraq (where the vast majority of its organization is/was comprised of native Iraqis) and not present in Afghanistan is simply nonsense. The reality is that the major elements of al-Qaeda have actually managed to operate relatively unscathed in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border area, and that the Iraq-centric policy of the Bush administration has failed to diminish their capabilities. Just last week the Department of Defense contracted a study highlighting all of this:

A terrorism study prepared for the Defense Department has some bad news for the Bush administration—and presents a sizable challenge for whoever is next in the Oval Office.

The current strategy for defeating al Qaeda has not been successful in diminishing the group's capabilities and is unlikely to do better without a shift in emphasis, the Rand Corp. study concludes.

The article goes on to explain why this is the case, which I won't discuss right now, but the point is that people need not dig very far to see that what engram is trying to push on his readers is simply bullshit of the lowest order. It is my hope that more people take it upon themselves to make sure that uninitiated readers aren't fooled by it.

This is merely the first in what I intend to make a series of articles debunking the lies and rhetoric of those who support the failed policies of neoconservatives and their ilk. Engram is merely a drop in the bucket but he is a good starting point nonetheless.

Review: The Dark Knight

Last week I went to the theater (a rare occurrence) to see Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. I had not followed the film at all until I saw the trailer for it leading into Crystal Skull, which I saw back in May. Nonetheless, the hype machine surrounding the movie just in the month or so preceding it alone built up my expectations for it considerably.

So did it live up to them? Yes. It did. Not only does it surpass Batman Begins, it surpasses most other movies that have been made in the last 10 years. Why? It's simple: it's entertaining and it makes you think. This is not merely some by-the-numbers action movie. Nor is it just a smart, well-crafted action movie like Batman Begins. No, this film is a smart, well-crafted crime drama that's engrossing, thought-provoking and at times downright disturbing. Dark Knight takes all the things that worked so well with its predecessor and seamlessly adds in a dark and unnerving tension that it pulls off for one reason:




Everyone should be familiar with the story behind Heath Ledger's involvement in this film. Ledger died of a prescription drug overdose in January of 2008, after months of sleep disturbances and other issues that many (including Ledger himself) attributed to his work on The Dark Knight among other factors.

Watching the film, it is not difficult to see why. Ledger's Joker is so brilliantly malevolent that his mere presence on the screen creates a certain uneasiness upon a first viewing of the film. He surpasses nearly all other onscreen villains - including Hannibal Lecter - in creating the illusion that he is capable of doing anything to anyone no matter what the situation.

Joker's sense of always being in control follows an idea that Alfred elucidates early on the film: that some men just want to see the world burn. Joker has no code of ethics, no real agenda, nothing to protect, and thus no Achilles heel. He just wants to see the world destroy itself. Batman, on the other hand, seems outdated and ineffective by comparison. Rigid and inflexible, bound by principle, he is not a match for a force as destructive as The Joker. Ledger gives his character so much depth that he essentially becomes the film itself and embodies the key ideas and questions that it raises. He says at one point in the film that "people are only as good as the world allows them to be." Whether Joker is right or wrong is debatable - and I imagine one of the purposes of the film was to get people to consider questions like that one - but the film clearly suggests that he has a point.


The Dark Knight is an outstanding film that makes itself unforgettable in a way that other superhero and comic book movies cannot, because it takes a risk and makes a point that few of them dare try to convey: that the world is not black and white, but instead many shades of gray. It's a theme that I've found intriguing for years, and this film manages to combine it with all of the other things that I would want in a film: style, wit, action and suspense. This is how movies should be. The only regrettable thing is that the very thing that makes it such a powerful film - Ledger - will never get a chance to do it again.

Warpoet Blog

This is my first entry on this blog. It's not my first attempt at blogging, however. Rather, it's the latest in a string of efforts spanning across several years, culminating in numerous blogs that were attempted, given maybe one or two entries and then abandoned altogether.

Still, throughout it all, I've been active online - gaming, in chat rooms, and on message boards - and have engaged in many discussions on a variety of different topics. I've been successful these past few years because my tone has more accurately reflected me than it had in years prior. Perhaps that's what I needed to make a successful blog.

I will talk about a lot of things. My hobbies: gaming, film, television, MMA/Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu etc...but I think that the more important topics are the political ones. I have a very serious interest in politics, particularly Middle Eastern affairs and the Iraq War. As a result, I've spent much of the past several years patrolling the internet, usually behind enemy lines, trolling and brutalizing morons (usually neoconservatives and those who support them) to spectacular results. Still, after being banned and having my posts edited on so many occasions, I began to wonder: would it not be easier to launch attacks from my own base of operations? Where my ability to shatter propaganda could never be hindered? I look forward to finding out.