News about Iraq has recently dropped off, and the military has filled the void with intimations that the surge is working. The explanation is clearly due to US military efforts, which are capable of fixing everything. That we are still within the six-month ceasefire window opened by Moqtada Al Sadr in August is a minor detail. The BBC is happily burbiling away right now with interviews of people from the American Enterprise Institute (a favorite source for the BBC) telling us that weak Democrats are now the only thing preventing certain victory in Iraq. As if Democrats were somehow anti-war or something. As if we knew what "victory" denoted in this context. <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/21/us_soldiers_stage_mutiny_refuse_orders" source="Democracy Now!" title="U.S. Soldiers Stage Mutiny, Refuse Orders in Iraq Fearing They Would Commit Massacre in Revenge for IED Attack">U.S. Soldiers Stage Mutiny</a> brings us news that at least one platoon has decided not to go out on any more missions in Iraq because, having lost so many of their compatriots, they <iq>were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.</iq> Their timing is infinitely better than that of other platoons in Iraq, who only starting having such concerns <i>after</i> the massacre. So things <i>are</i> looking up. Also heartening is that the standards for a mutiny seem to be so much lower than in Bly's day. These soldiers haven't applied force to their leaders nor have they left the service nor are they refusing other work---they just won't go out on missions and are visiting with psychiatrists instead<fn>. So the 21st-century mutiny is a much more touchy-feely affair. Not only that, but the standards for the words "slaughter" and "decimated" have slipped considerably as well. According to Kelly Kennedy, who was embedded with them, the <iq>hardest hit unit in Iraq</iq> lost 14 of 138 men<fn> in 12 months. The battalion, with more than 1000 members, lost 31 people all told, which she deemed <iq>pretty extreme</iq>. Every human life is precious, 31 of them more so. But 3% of a battalion over the course of a year is not extreme by historical standards. Losses in WWI and WWII racked up tens of thousands in one day in the slogging battles of the Marne, the Somme or the Bulge. Unfortunately, casualty numbers among Iraqis---most of them civilians---fail to arouse similar feelings of indignation among the same people, even though the numbers there are orders of magnitude higher. However, soldiers losing their taste and stomach for war at a much lower threshold than in the past is a very good sign; it's only when the foot-soldiers stop believing the myth of fighting for honor and country (my country right or wrong) that we have a chance at peace. A war machine cannot function without fuel and it's to be hoped that this is only the beginning of a debilitating energy crisis for the US military. <hr> <ft>Which, don't get me wrong, is a very, very, very good thing because anything that distracts from waging war is a good thing.</ft> <ft>When asked whether there were any women in the unit, she responded <iq>No, it was all infantry.</iq></ft>