And You Thought Box Cutters Were Bad?

Well, this is all sorts of stupid (tip to Instapundit):

Freaked out about the insecurity of its nuclear arsenal, the Pakistani military's Strategic Plans Division has begun carting the nukes around in clandestine ways. That might make some sense on the surface: no military wants to let others know exactly where its most powerful weapons are at any given moment. But Pakistan is going to an extreme.

The nukes travel "in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic", according to a blockbuster story on the US-Pakistan relationship in The Atlantic. Marc Ambinder and Jeffrey Goldberg write that tactical nuclear weapons travel down the streets in "vans with a modest security profile." Somewhere on a highway around, say, Karachi, is the world's most dangerous 1-800-FLOWERS truck.

If I said the Pakistanis are nuts, it would be an injustice to the mentally unstable everywhere who go about their business every day with the benefits of modern prescription drugs to aid them.

Sleep well. And if you can, contemplate the security of our Middle East oil supplies when Iran goes nuclear, and Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lord knows who else in the region follows suit.

Tell me that stopping mullah-led Iran from going nuclear even if we have to use force is too great a risk to take.

Smile

The loss of privacy because online archives live forever is starting to affect how young people act:

But today’s spring breakers — at least some of them — say they have been tamed, in part, not by parents or colleges or the fed-up cities they invade, but by the hand-held gizmos they hold dearest and the fear of being betrayed by an unsavory, unsanctioned photo or video popping up on Facebook or YouTube.

It's actually kind of funny. If parents made their young adult children carry surveillance devices to record what they do, the young people would be outraged. But they do it to each other for fun. With the same deterrent effect.

The book I linked to in my post I cite has much to think about in this type of all-seeing society that is developing.

Steady on the Line, Lads

Max Boot addresses points about the Afghanistan campaign that I made when he writes:

Since the beginning of a full-scale offensive to retake Helmand and Kandahar provinces in 2010, U.S. troops and their allies have driven the Taliban out of most of their southern strongholds. Enemy-initiated attacks are 20 percent lower this year than last, and 36 of the last 45 weeks have seen fewer insurgent attacks than the corresponding week a year ago. Despite a few high-profile attacks, Kabul remains fairly safe—as do the north and west. The exception to this good news story is in the east, where enemy attacks have been up, but then that’s why military commanders have been keen to shift resources there.

Yes, as I've written we really are making progress on the ground. Progress in improving Afghan security forces is slower but real, as well. Admittedly, we have a harder time in Afghanistan than in Iraq, but there was a time when critics of the Iraq campaign despaired of the Iraqis getting good enough. Iraqis got good enough and Afghans can, too.

Boot also writes:

Unfortunately, rather than regularly explaining and defending our troop presence in Afghanistan, President Obama focuses most of his public comments on his desire to withdraw. Last week the New York Times printed an article, widely seen as a trial balloon, saying that the administration is considering pulling out another 20,000 troops or more by June 2013. That would be a major mistake; the troop cuts that have already been announced—decreasing the force from 100,000 troops last year to 90,000 today and 68,000 by September—imperil commanders’ ability to stabilize the situation. ...

But President Obama’s hesitancy and irresolution should not be an excuse for Republicans to abandon the war effort. They should continue to pressure the president to respect the advice of his commanders in the field, who want to keep 68,000 troops through 2014, with a substantial residual presence after that.

Yes, the president's failure to rally the nation to the war he pledged was his focus as the "real war" on terrorism has been a terrible disappointment for me. Republicans have stood by this war despite the fact that it is being waged by a president they despise. Bush never had that advantage in Iraq, yet even he--tongue-tied as he is portrayed--managed to make speeches in defense of the war effort and maintained sufficient support to win that fight on the ground despite the claims of war opponents that it was a quagmire we could never win.

And the military thinks we need 68,000 for a few more years to win. I have long thought that we could win with 68,000, although I guessed the success could come faster with them, after a couple years of pounding the enemy. My major mistake was thinking we could tackle the problems in the south and east at the same time. Instead, we focused on the south in 2010 and 2011 after an additional surge, and our military hopes to turn to the east this year. Add a couple more years for that effort and you get to 2014 before our projected 68,000 level can recede with some assurances that the local security forces we train can prevail over the weakened Taliban.

Most importantly, Boot asks what is our alternative to winning this fight? We went into Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda's sanctuary and to destroy the Taliban regime that hosted and allied with al Qaeda. How do we prevent the Taliban from retaking Afghanistan (or parts of it) and allowing al Qaeda to reconstitute? Are we to rely on distant firepower that lacks the intelligence provided by friendly forces combing the ground day in and day out? And no, having those new unmanned aerial vehicles doesn't change the need for good information to guide the smart bombs. Extremely accurate bombs aimed at the wrong targets won't magically hit the right targets that we have no information about.

If not in Afghanistan, just where and how do we fight the "real war" against jihadi terrorism?

UPDATE: Secretary of Defense Panetta, at least, is working the problem in his visit to Afghanistan. Perhaps we've reached the nadir of panic:

There's no question that we've all been tested by recent events here and that I think all of us express concern about those events and the need to do everything we can to make sure that those events don't happen again. But we are also very unified in our focus in achieving the mission here. We haven't lost sight of our goal to ensure that al-Qaida and their terrorist allies do not find a safe haven here and that that goal -- in order to accomplish that goal, we need an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself.

In the discussions that I just completed with President Karzai and also with the other Afghan leaders, we really did focus on the strategy for the future and what needs to be accomplished as we move towards the end of 2014 and then, beyond 2014, the missions that we need to focus on to maintain an enduring presence. We focused on the future. We focused on the kind of enduring partnership that the United States and Afghanistan need to have not only now but in the years ahead.

These discussions really convince me that ISAF and the Afghan government are indeed responding positively to recent challenges. I commended President Karzai, I commended Minister Wardak, Minister Mohammadi in the way that they've responded to these recent events, in maintaining order and in being able to assert the kind of control that is so important to the future security of this country.

And I think everyone also agreed that we need to stick to the strategy that we've laid out for the future.

This is good to read. Although I still await an explanation for our sudden drop in casualties in February and March. If we've just been lucky--that's great. If we are simply at a lower level of activity as we prepare for a more intense effort in Regional Command East, that's understandable, too.

But if it isn't either of those, how does our relative inactivity fit with staying the course on our strategy, which was supposed to include an offensive in Regional Command East this year?

And if we aren't remaining on the offensive, how do we reach our goal of ensuring that al Qaeda and their terrorist allies do not find a safe haven in Afghanistan (again)?

Beware the NeoCloons

George Clooney is still raising awareness about the Sudanese government's persistent urge to kill civilians at genocide-levels:

The slaughter of civilians in Sudan goes on with too little attention.

But when George Clooney gets involved, the world takes notice. And that's at least a step in the right direction.

Clooney brought the media spotlight with him Friday, as he protested outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington and was arrested alongside his father, longtime newsman Nick Clooney.

Clooney's been doing this awhile, so awareness-wise it hasn't been anywhere near the media spotlight level of a movie premiere, to pick a random example. At this rate, George Clooney will be able to get arrested with his adult son one day at another step in the right direction.

I will give the man credit that he is still doing this even with Barack Obama in the White House and not George W. Bush. So he's no fair-weather interventionist. That does count for something in this day and age when our left looks away from things Obama does that they once said were evil.

Nonetheless, I'll raise the issues I raised six years ago when Clooney was raising awareness:

Much like sporting a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on your Volvo, it is awfully satisfying in some circles to proclaim to the world your concern for the downtrodden and oppressed. But let's hear even a little bit about just exactly how George Clooney and his ilk anticipate we will "do something" about Darfur. And it if if it doesn't involve heavily armed American or Western soldiers fighting, killing, and dying for a good cause, just how much hope can the people of Darfur expect from Clooney's speeches?

So get back to me in 2012 when you've finished that perfect plan (in English and French) you all say we have to have before we intervene. If anybody in Darfur is still alive, we'll talk. I mean, I'd never say it would be immoral to intervene, but Sudan does have oil so that has to raise suspicions does it not? Bad luck for the victims of the first genocide of the 21st century to live in a country with oil. Perhaps the Kurds can reach out and explain the situation to the Darfurians.

Fancy that, it seems to be 2012. I assume that by now the plan to save Sudan must be freaking awesome.

March Madness

My contribution:

More here. Although I confess I relied on Wikipedia for the quick military career history.

Out of Reach

The most disturbing part of Osama bin Laden's plot to assassinate President Obama (other than the actual target--I'm sorry, you just don't go taking shots at our president, and I don't care who is president--we reserve the right to say when we've had enough and we do that every four years in November) isn't that someone in the line of succession might have taken over. As long as that plot was post-Speaker Pelosi, the republic would have survived.

What is most disturbing is that Osama bin Laden apparently was completely unmoved by President Obama's Cairo outreach to the Moslem world. Was Osama too busy watching ISI-provided porn on VHS to catch that big event? Was no translation provided for him? Was he not moved by the president's assurance that only a small minority of Moslems are whackjob-level, nonsense-spewing, kooky, murdering, terrorists?

Well, maybe he did realize that last part. So he's got an excuse, I guess.

It's almost like some people are just immune to the soothing balms of hope and change.

Oh well. Osama's dead and fish food now. Tough luck for him.

Getting Sort of Pregnant

Turkey may take a tentative step into the Syrian revolt:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, once a firm ally of Assad, said he was considering setting up a buffer zone along the border with Syria. Ankara might then withdraw its ambassador once its nationals had returned home.

"A buffer zone, a security zone, are things being studied," he told reporters in Ankara, but said other ideas were also under consideration. "It would be wrong to look at it from only one perspective."

This is something that I've been expecting since the summer when Turkey issued an ultimatum to Assad to stop killing civilians. At the time, many people said Turkey couldn't pull off an intervention. Whether or not that was true at the time, Turkey has had over 6 months to prepare for such an intervention.

While not a decisive action, it is more likely that it can be done without appearing overtly anti-Assad. It puts Assad in a dilemma: allow sanctuaries for the Free Syria Army to be established on Syrian soil or challenge the Turkish forces and perhaps invite NATO aerial intervention or even a full Turkish invasion that drives on Damascus after Assad throws the first punch.

UPDATE: I didn't know if I should draw too much of a conclusion from the line "once its nationals had returned home," but Strategypage writes that the Turks told their people to leave Syria.

Now the question may be what international body is sufficient to green light the sort-of invasion. The UN Security Council won't because China and/or Russia will veto that route. Would the General Assembly provide enough cover for Turkey to move? Would NATO approve as in 1999 for Kosovo? Would an Arab League request (well, we twisted it enough to get a UNSC resolution that we also twisted) be sufficient, as it was for Libya last year? Is there some other body that Turkey might consult the way we got the OAS to ask us to deal with Grenada in 1983?

If Turkey has decided to go in, they'll find some body to provide the diplomatic cover, secure in the knowledge that a UN Security Council veto by America, France, or Britain will prevent a condemnation of Turkey in the Security Council (if that type of resolution could get even the votes to pass without a veto).

Insurance

This is a sure sign that we are getting ready to defend the Strait of Hormuz:

Looks like the U.S. Navy is getting serious about a potential war with Iran. Witness the news that four Avenger-class minesweepers are being sent to Bahrain from the U.S., doubling the number of American minesweepers in the Persian Gulf. More minesweeping MH-53E helicopters are also being sent.

Carrier battle groups send a very public signal to Tehran. Minesweepers are practical assets for the nitty gritty of keeping the oil flowing.

While it is accurately noted that we have few mineweeping assets, to be fair we let allies with ports that we want to keep clear to focus on minesweeping in the last 20 miles of a trip while we built the blue water fleet elements to go the other thousand miles or so. Perhaps we need more of our own, but we can't seem to build the numbers of warships we need without having to divert scarce money to these types of ships.

Minew warfare is a vitally important capability that is often ignored in peacetime, but my question is whether our allies make up for our shortfalls. If that's the case, I'm not overly worried about our relatively few assets.

Paying a Price

We are paying a price for bugging out of Iraq:

The Iraqi government has refused U.S. requests to stop Iranian cargo flights to Syria, despite being aware of credible intelligence that the planes are transporting up to 30 tons of weapons, according to a U.S. official.

For Iraq, allowing Iran to ship supplies to Syria is some insurance that they can buy Iranian restraint. Not strong enough without our presence to fully resist Iranian pressure through their ability to manipulate Moqtada Sadr and other Iranian-friendly death squads, Iraq practices their own "reset" with Iran.

We aren't happy with that since it looks shockingly like "appeasement." If we still had 25,000 troops in Iraq to guarantee domestic and foreign peace, Iraq could have made a different calculation.

Hopefully, Iraq is strong enough with our smaller level of support to still emerge successfully from liberation from Saddam and the defeat of Syrian and Iranian efforts to break Iraq between them in civil war. And hopefully the small amount of support that Iraq allows Iran to send through Iraqi air space will be insufficient to materially affect the Syria revolt.

Much history is yet to be written.

Every Man a Criminal

I'll say it again, we have too many laws (and rules).

We've reached the point where it is difficult to go through your day without unknowingly violating a criminal provision of our laws and rules. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating them, but our government couldn't provide a list of crimes so we could even in theory read and memorize every one of them.

And so we reach a point where prosecutors are the ones who decide what laws are enforced with limited resources and what laws are ignored. They decide which "law breakers" are prosecuted and which ones are ignored. This is arbitrary and subject to political manipulation to a degree that should outrage us. They are sending out swarms of regulators to harrass our people eat out our substance.

That's no system of rule of law that I know. Our federal government is just too damned big.

UPDATE: Or every woman a criminal, of course:



I'm not trying to oppress anyone, after all.

Hate Alert

Saint Patrick's Day is tomorrow, and I for one am glad to have part of my heritage a day devoted to drinking.

But on the radio this morning I hear an advertisement for a pub that included a mention of the drink called the "Irish car bomb".

Can you imagine a drink being called the "Moslem car bomb?"

Of course you can't. You have to pick the targets to offend very carefully.

The really funny part of this is that people who use this name for the drink aren't even worried about offending actual Irish terrorists who used them.

Who Can Blame Them?

The military is raising objections to intervening in Syria that are obviously over-blown. The ideas that Syria's air defenses are too much for us or that Syria's army could last long in the field against us are laughable. But who can blame our military leaders for trying to stop from being committed to a war by this president?

Just four years ago, candidate Obama was just about promising to invade our more-or-less ally Pakistan to win the "real" war on terror in Afghanistan. Today he just wants out and consequences be damned.

The idea that since we killed Osama bin Laden that we can call it mission accomplished neglects that al Qaeda was only part of the problem. Remember that al Qaeda could attack us because they had Taliban protectors who let them set up shop in Afghanistan. If we abandon Afghanistan before they can defend themselves and keep al Qaeda out, might not the Taliban regain power and renew their alliance with al Qaeda? Hmm?

Back to the Syria point, what has President Obama done in the last three years to encourage the military to trust him?

Afghans, the Taliban and neighbors such as Pakistan can reasonably conclude that the United States, rather than trying to win the war, is racing to implement an exit strategy in which the interests of Afghans and their government are slighted. Americans, meanwhile, rarely hear Mr. Obama explain the mission or the stakes. In this context, it’s not surprising that Afghans show little tolerance for U.S. failures — whether it is this week’s shooting or the accidental burning of Korans. And it’s little wonder that most Americans favor withdrawing troops as quickly as possible. If it’s evident that the president won’t defend the war, and is focused on “winding down” rather than winning, why should anyone else support it?

Obama escalates twice in Afghanistan, authorizes offensives to secure Afghanistan, focuses on domestic issues while the military bleeds and he fails to rally the country behind his escalation in order to win, and then cuts the military off on the eve of his re-election campaign.

The military can rightly ask why they bled these last three years. I'm surprised just one soldier has gone on a rampage, under the circumstances. Our troops aren't machines. They are skilled but they are also good people who need a reason to fight and kill enemies that makes the death of their friends and comrades--or their own death when they will leave a family behind to mourn their loss--worth that price. Fighting to fulfill a campaign promise and then being set aside when the fight becomes inconvenient is not worth the price. They aren't mercenaries the way some on the Left describe them simply because we pay them a salary for their job. The military can rightly wonder whether the president will support them when the going gets tough in a future war. Say whatever you want about Bush (and I never liked his domestic spending--little did I know I should have appreciated his relative restraint), but no soldier, Marine, airman, or sailor doubted his commitment to winning the wars he ordered our troops to fight, even when the going got tough and support in Congress and at home wavered.

Not that I think that we should intervene in Syria with our own military. I don't think this president has what it takes to win a tough fight, so that prevents me from even weighing that option. But we should arm the rebels; give them training and political support outside the country; and provide them with intelligence on Syrian troop movements, strengths, and vulnerabilities. Hurting Assad should be our goal to show that we will pay back his killing of American troops in Iraq. If we can turn in out of office, so much the better. Turkey and Jordan should be supported in case they need to move in to smash a desperate Assad regime that might try to take down the region to save his regime or if we need help to secure Syrian chemical and biological weapons.

Our military will do what they are ordered to do. That's the way it is in this country. But don't expect them to put their lives on the lines willingly when they don't know whether their sacrifice is to defend our nation or defend their command-in-chief's re-election ambitions.

Keeping Them Busy and Happy

One aspect of the privatized military issue is the practice of a government hiring out their military for monetary gain. We turned a profit on the Persian Gulf War, although that was not our motivation. Pakistan has rented out entire brigades to Saudi Arabia for defense. And the whole UN peacekeeping system relies on giving poor donor nations a monetary incentive to commit troops to UN missions.

In Somalia, Ugandan soldiers have been in the thick of it for years, now. Uganda's government gets a great benefit from this arrangement even aside from the strategy of defending Uganda by keeping neighboring Kenya from being destabilized by a chaotic Somalia:

The lowest paid Ugandan soldiers earn around $120 (£76) per month; if they opt to fight in Somalia they earn more than $1,000. ...

Mr Njoroge claims there is another reason.

"Uganda has never had a peaceful transition of power. Guns and soldiers have always been involved in a change of regime.

"The ruling NRM party does not want thousands of soldiers hanging around in barracks with time on their hands. And there is no work for them outside the army - unemployment is 50% here," he says.

"President Museveni has been in power for almost 26 years and his popularity is waning. Military officers are already getting restless. From the government's point of view, better for them to be fighting in Somalia."

Unstated is that Uganda's government surely gets benefits directly for this mission, too. I'm sure we provide military aid and training for Ugandan forces. And don't forget direct American military help.

Defending Uganda from internal and external threats, improving the military, and defending the government by keeping the military busy abroad are all benefits that have resulted for the Ugandan government from renting Ugandan soldiers for Somalia service.

This aspect of privatized warfare is difficult to describe with certainty because reasons of state also motivate these rentals. But one day it might be overt. With military budgets around the world under pressure, some day somebody will more obviously rent out their units as a way to pay for them until they are needed for reasons of state.

Stop Your Complaining

I can't believe people are getting all nervous about a North Korean long-range missile test:

North Korea said on Friday it will launch a long-range rocket carrying a "working" satellite to mark the centenary of founder Kim Il-sung's birth next month, sparking regional condemnation that it was in breach of a U.N. resolution.

Come on! Get with the program. North Korea has promised to suspend their nuclear programs! What are they going to do with a working missile? Put nutritional supplements that we pledge to send them in exchange for suspending their nuclear programs in the nose cone? If North Korea wants to waste their money on a weapon system with absolutely no military worth to North Korea without a nuclear warhead, who are we to object?

Sometimes the lack of nuance in some people is distressing. Regional condemnation, indeed.

UPDATE: This, at least, is encouraging:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says the North Korean launch would violate U.N. resolutions prohibiting the use of ballistic missile technology and counters last month's agreement to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to again inspect North Korean nuclear sites. ...

Nuland says it is a highly provocative move that makes the delivery of 240,000 tons of food aid hard to imagine. While she says the United States does not link humanitarian assistance with political issues, Washington will not deliver food aid to Pyongyang unless it is convinced that food will go to those in need.

Unless our leaders conclude the problem is a lack of imagination on our part.

Don't save the North Korean regime. If we provide any aid, it should only be enough to string them along in the belief that they can con us into a major aid scam while they continue to slide into the abyss.

A Gateway Fuel?

So Nerf guns are a "gateway" gun leading to sick adults blazing away at people with real guns? (tip to Instapundit)

So why hasn't a generation of children playing with radio-controlled cars--powered by batteries--been a gateway car leading to adults blazing down our roads in real Volts?

Although to be fair, "range anxiety" isn't much of a problem when you just pick up your toy car when it runs out of juice and carry it home.

But remember kids, Nerf guns don't sting people. Foam suction-cup darts sting people.

It's almost like the whole idea is stupid.

A Simple Request

Could we grow a freaking pair? I mean, as a nation. We're at war against bloodthirsty terrorists in Afghanistan and we wish to retire to our fainting couch because one of our troops killed some civilians and because our enemy managed to fan some angry protests over a Koran burning mistake?

In Afghanistan, the killing of civilians is called "what happened today," and usually involves the Taliban doing the killing. The latter is what happens when we deal with the defenders of the "religion of peace" who have never even heard of a "COEXIST" bumper sticker. Ugly stuff happens in war. We need to keep waging this war. I hear tell that a number of the anti-Iraq War left have called Afghanistan the "real war on terror," the "good war," and even the "necessary war" (as opposed to a "war of choice").

Mad Minerva asks what we should think of this piece that starts by asking us to continue the mission:

Afghanistan policy is in crisis, at least in the United States. With Osama bin Laden now dead, some are wondering whether it's time to declare this mission accomplished -- or with Afghanistan so troubled, perhaps it's mission impossible? In fact, it is mission incomplete: The Afghanistan mission is going worse than we had all hoped, but better than many understand. With patience and perseverance, we can still struggle to a tolerable outcome.

Riedel and O'Hanlon say that, as I've discussed recently, that our plan was a phased offensive with surge troops that first targeted Helmand and Kandahar provinces in the south. Once that was secured, we were to shift to the east where the enemy has been strong in order to shield Kabul. The north and west are basically fine. And all the while we would build up friendly Afghan forces to take over security duties once we pounded down the enemy. Hey, the authors even talk about securing the ring road which I featured over three years ago as I discussed the coming initial surge. And they think we can still fight and achieve a victory.

The rapid de-surge and the threat of other allies leaving is putting that latter offensive in jeopardy. But I still think we can handle the enemy under these circumstances. So I think that this piece is a much needed boost to the idea that we need to defend our country in Afghanistan.

We simply are not losing this war. We are, in fact, winning this war. If you want something at the end of this as safe and well governed as Detroit. Which will actually be an improvement for Afghans. And that can be a country that is not a haven for terrorists to plot how to kill us.

What we are seeing is a bunch of people looking for reasons to run. They've seized on some excuses that distract them from winning and that will be good enough for them. Hell, they'll pride themselves on being "realists."

Good grief, do you blame our jihadi enemies for thinking God is on their side? They spend the last three years getting their asses kicked up and down both sides of the Hindu Kush and yet a couple of relatively minor events shake our will to fight and win? Are you effing kidding me?

I'm disgusted. Work the damn problem, people. Don't be the freaking problem.

UPDATE: Another massacre. Don't expect hand wringing over this common event.

And one of the Afghan military killers who supposedly show our allies are really secret Taliban was just protecting his corrupt side business.

Stuff happens in war. There is little glory in what our troops have to do to fight a war. The objective is what is supposed to be what makes that stuff worth it. If we won't try to achieve something good, it is just good soldiers and civilians dying for no damn reason. And no, the president's re-election doesn't count as something good worth their sacrifice.

Going Through the Motions of War

For some reason, this analysis of Britain's war effort around Basra seems relevant to us:

North makes clear that ordinary British soldiers showed courage and grit under fire, but they lacked proper equipment, their government was intent on bugging out, and their commanders did not believe victory was possible. When the British Army abandoned its base at Al Amarah, they made to deal with the Mahdi Army to release Mahdist prisoners in exchange for being allowed to retreat unmolested. The insurgents then looted the base and turned it into a huge bomb factory. Basra became a chaotic hell, ruled over by militias, criminal gangs, and Islamist fanatics. The situation was only retrieved by the American surge, and by Operation Charge of the Knights, in which US and Iraqi forces finally swept into Basra and routed the Mahdi Army.

At the time, I resented the comparisons of the sophisticated British method contrasted with our loud, blundering, violent failed efforts to fight insurgents in the Baghdad region. It seemed unfair given the different threats, and over time it was clear that the quiet in the south was not from British success but from cutting deals with the enemy for relative quiet in exchange for British passivity.

No Blood for Dirt

Tensions are rising between poor Ethiopia and poor Eritrea:

Ethiopian forces entered archrival Eritrea on Thursday and carried out what a government spokesman described as "a successful attack" against military posts.

Shimeles Kemal said Ethiopia launched the attack because Eritrea was training "subversive groups" that carried out attacks inside Ethiopia.

They went hammer and tong a decade ago. For what end I have no idea.

I will say that I don't trust the Eritreans one bit. They are far too friendly with Iran and jihadists to suit me.

The Lost Resort?

One of the problems with striking Iran in the near future to hurt their nuclear infrastructure is that over the last decade, as the threat of attacking has been dangled over Iran's head, they have had time to adapt. We may not have taken this "last resort" off the table, but Iran may have made attacking Iran a "lost resort" by taking it off the table with their own actions.

Certainly, both American and Israel (and I'm going to assume Britain, too) have had time to build the capabilities to attack Iran. But Iran has had a decade to develop their nuclear industry, which means the breadth and depth of knowledge and facilities require more attacks to set the Iranians back and make it easier for Iran to recover from an attack with the surviving assets and knowledge base.

I've also worried that as we've put the pressure on Iran, that Iran has dispersed key nuclear work outside of Iran to survive either an Israeli or an American-British attack (could this be why President Obama has rediscovered out British special relationship?). Remember that when President Clinton ordered the destruction of that pharmaceutical plant in Sudan back in 1998, we believed it was linked to Iraq's Saddam Hussein (and al Qaeda) and was a WMD facility.

North Korea is an obvious ally. So is Syria, where Israeli aircraft destroyed a Syrian nuclear facility several years ago where a number of North Korean technicians were killed in the attack. But both North Korea and Syria are problems in the long run given our focus on them and their own internal problems, so Iran courts Venezuela as an ally where they could hide nuclear work. Indeed, the entire Latin America region could be a reserve nuclear asset to rebuild whatever is destroyed inside Iran because Iran is cultivating ties there:

[US Southern Command commander Air Force General Douglas] Fraser says there is concern Tehran sees the region as a way to circumvent international sanctions over its nuclear program.

So we will pay the price of delaying a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. Once they were fewer, more poorly defended, and more likely to be inside Iran. With a more resilient program, Iran also has fewer reasons to negotiate the halt of their programs even under threat of attack. So a last resort may be lost to us as an effective response to seriously slow the Iranians down. We make a terrible mistake in acting as if the Iranians are stupid and can't take their own actions to frustrate our efforts to attack them as a last resort. Do we really think they are just sitting their waiting for us at our leisure to decide to destroy a program that is clearly very important to them?

Regime change is the only way to protect the planet from nuts with nukes. No nuts and the nukes really are less of a problem. Remember, nuts without nukes are a major problem as it is.

But we may have to strike even though we can't destroy everything (because not everything is in Iran, even if we destroy every target in Iran), just to buy time. But make no mistake, once we join the war that Iran has been waging war on us for three decades we need to finish it with regime change during the time we buy when Iran won't have nukes (well, unless Iran buys some warheads from North Korea or Pakistan).

Lying With Irrelevant Statistics

One more reason that I don't trust President Obama when he speaks. His claim that drilling for oil is pointless because we have only 2% of the world's oil reserves relies on the irrelevant (for policy purposes) amount of oil in proved reserves.

Add in oil we can get to and we have lots of oil that we could recover.

It's gotten to the point where I question anything the president says. I need someone I trust to verify the statement because he's got no credibility with me.

I say this with no satisfaction. I don't like not trusting my president. But that's how it is working out.

UPDATE: Krauhammer addresses the president's "flimflammery":

Who do they think they’re fooling? An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live.

High gasoline prices are a major political problem for Obama. They are not just a pain at the pump, however. They are a constant reminder of three years of a rigid, fatuous, fantasy-driven energy policy that has rendered us scandalously dependent and excessively vulnerable.

The president got exactly what he wanted to make his precious fantasy fuels competitive with oil and finds that voters don't appreciate his "reasonably enlightened" views on energy use. Are the president's opponents "flat-earthers" for opposing these green energies as President Obama claims? I don't care to get into that. But if President Obama is putting himself in the position of being the bold explorer to reach out to the New World's opportunities, let me just say that Columbus made it to his unexpected future with the old fuels of his time. He never proposed flying to Asia on the backs of magical, pink, unicorns.

UPDATE: Steyn writes that our president is the last man who should sneer at ignorance.

More Blowback

Just as Mexico's cartel wars are spilling over our border, the effects are also spilling over on Mexico's southern border:

Two high-ranking U.S. military commanders say Mexico's violent war against drug cartels has moved into other parts of Central America.

Air Force General Douglas Fraser, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that transnational organized crime rings are threatening to overwhelm law enforcement and are “seriously impacting civilian safety” in the area.

Of course, for the Central American governments who lack the more robust governing and security infrastructure that we have, the problem is far more serious.

Demanding His Worst Fear

President Karzai of Afghanistan says we should pull back our troops from combat in the countryside:

Karzai, in a statement from his office after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, said as a result of the weekend massacre, "international security forces have to be taken out of Afghan village outposts and return to (larger) bases".

Interesting. I wonder if Panetta broke the news to Karzai that we are already pulling back from the countryside, as I fear.

Karzai needs us to help him fight the Taliban. But if we are pulling back from combat, Karzai has little to gain and much to lose by urging us to stay in the fight. So why not demand we pull back and at least look confident?

I just don't trust the Obama administraton to do the right thing when it comes to defending our country except when doing the right thing abroad coincides with their own domestic political calculations. Even the "good" "real war" against terrorism is optional for this crowd.

UPDATE: Without diminishing the responsibility of the soldier who is alleged to have massacred 16 Afghan civilians, when troop morale declines, discipline suffers and troops are more likely to commit atrocities. If the Obama adminsitration has already decided that we will not fight to win and will only try to hide that decision from our public until after this year's election to avoid the image of retreating, brace yourself for more atrocities. Words have meaning, I'm told. And our troops don't think that they fight for victory anymore.

Nothing is Inevitable

I really hate it when administration officials--from the president on down--say that the departure of Bashar Assad is a question of "when" and not "if." No, the question is "if," especially if you remember that the elites could do a musical chairs number and ease Assad out of the spotlight even if he remains in power or if someone else committed to his same power base gets the big chair.

Oh sure, technically it is a question of "when" since Assad will age and die of natural causes if nothing else. So he will leave. But obviously that isn't what the Obama administration means when it says that.

I worry that the mantra of "not if but when" is simply an excuse to do nothing. I mean, if the question is "if" you might have to actually do something for the Syrian people that we purportedly have a responsibility to protect from their own government (remember Libya?).

Assad isn't rolling over and his forces are still pounding the rebels and killing civilians. Some of the army's Sunni soldiers have defected, but after a year the security forces are still holding together. Support from Iran, Russia, and China has been enough to keep them going. And Assad is getting away from using helicopter gunships to fight the enemy.

And a year into the uprising, Assad's supporters are rallying:

Thousands poured into the streets of the Syrian capital Thursday in a show of support for the regime as soldiers tightened their siege in opposition areas on the one-year anniversary of the country's uprising.

We should funnel arms to the rebels. They want to fight against an enemy of ours. Why on Earth wouldn't we want to topple someone who spent years killing Americans and Iraqis by funneling jihadis into Iraq? Are we really worried that they might get mad and not talk to us? I mean, the Obama administration got over Assad killing American troops, and a year ago even sent an ambassador to Damascus (good timing, eh?).

Assad certainly believes the question of his departure is "if" (or that "when" is in his old age when he passes the baton to a picked successor). So he is fighting hard to answer the right question.

We don't need to intervene militarily. But sending arms to fight Assad seems like a no-brainer.

Laugh or Cry, At Your Discretion

So the UnaAffordable Care Act is projected to cost twice what the President claimed it would (Tip to Instapundit).

Yes, I know. We can use our shocked face:



And this increase is just from getting closer to having ten years of taxes and ten years of costs to judge it.

What happens if bureaucrats can't actually design an effective government-run Obamacare program and then execute it efficiently?

A Ripple of War

The fall of Khaddafi has rippled out from Libya as arms and veterans of the civil war flow outward from Libya.

Weak Mali, already experiencing domestic divisions, is apparently the first to feel the effects of the war.

We tried to bolster the Mali government in the face of Tuareg rebels, but we haven't been able to stop the tide of revolt:

With the fall last weekend of the northern Mali garrison town of Tessalit, and its airstrip, to Tuareg secessionist forces, U.S. counter-terror policy in Africa is dealt a stunning setback. A USAF airlift brought supplies on February 14 to the besieged town, which reportedly was overwhelmed by a column of Tuareg fighters in early February only to be retaken by a Mali Defense Forces (MDF) column a few days later, which then found itself – with the military families – surrounded by a more numerous and better armed rebel detachment. Bu there are no reports of further U.S. involvement.

The big worry is that al Qaeda or other jihadis could find a safe haven in the wake of a Malian government defeat in the region. AFRICOM is probably trying to figure out what we can do.

Speaking Truth to Cower

Silly Mark Steyn!

It's far safer to demonize those who don't have many demons among their ranks.

That's Been My Experience

Obviously, when a theory is confirmed by my personal data, it looks pretty solid. Instapundit notes that President Obama's popularity goes up when he is largely out of sight and goes down when he is in the public spotlight.

For me, my sympathy goes up when I don't hear from him. And my sympathy drops when I actually hear him speak with his overtly partisan rhetoric.

And true to form, as I listen to the president on TV with Prime Minister Cameron, I get furious at his posturing. At moments like this, even The Donald seems like an improvement over The One. This time, he brings up the silly idea that Iraq "distracted us" from Afghanistan.

Yet the president was once more lenient than I was in determining the period when the Taliban rebounded and you could say that we could not commit more forces to Afghanistan because we were fighting in Iraq.

And by the time you could say that we had this dilemma, the dilemma was less than it really was because Iraq was the central front in the war on al Qaeda since al Qaeda itself had decided to make Iraq the main front in their war on us.

What would have been the point of pulling up stakes while we were fighting al Qaeda in Iraq hammer and tongs in  order to patrol Afghanistan where al Qaeda had not yet returned? The real war against terrorism was in Iraq!

Lord, he's infuriating.

Not So Bad, Really

Three months after we left Iraq, Iraqis are managing to hold together OK despite some high profile terror attacks that seemed a leading indicator of chaos:

Last month, 150 died from terror attacks, a new record low. In January 151 died. Despite all the high profile (to attract the attention of local and foreign media) terror attacks in the last few months, 2011 terrorism related deaths were down 27 percent from 2010. This was a continuation of the decline from the 2007 peak of 18,000 deaths. Last December had the lowest death toll (155) since 2003. While the Sunni Arab terror groups are being beaten, as long they can still carry out their attacks, which mainly kill civilians, the entire Sunni Arab community will keep feeling the hate.

Hey, one sign of potential success is that iCasualties doesn't even bother to track Iraqi civilian casualties any more.

Even with less support for Iraqis than I'd prefer, Iraq could turn out fine. Or at least far better than under Saddam for both Iraqis and our interests.

Don't rule out success. I certainly don't and remain hopeful that Iraqis can muddle through to a better future.

Still in the Fight?

I'm worried that we are effectively out of the fight in Afghanistan.

Austin Bay writes that we need to continue the fight.

President Obama says we aren't running:

U.S. President Barack Obama says there will be no "rush for the exits" from Afghanistan despite the killing of 16 Afghan civilians in a rampage by a suspected U.S. soldier on March 11.

On the surface, that is good. But I worry that the president's statement is not inconsistent with the first two observations.

We can refrain from rushing for the exits without trying to win. We might just sit there and try to avoid casualties--trying to seem like we are there and continuing the fight--until the clock is run out and our presidential election is over. But this is just a plan to lose a war while exposing our troops to death and maiming to avoid the political fallout of being seen as deciding to retreat.

I'd rather hear words like "victory" from our president when he speaks of our theaters of war rather than talk of "responsibly ending" a war or assuring us there will be no "rush for the exits."

War is surely an an extension of politics. But that doesn't mean war is an extension of a domestic reelection campaign. Well, it shouldn't be, anyway.

UPDATE: President Obama is answering questions now on TV with Prime Minister Cameron of Britain, and says that during the coming fighting season in Afghanistan that we will retain troops there to make sure the Taliban know they can't regain momentum.

That sounds like the plan is to remain on the defensive. So it looks like no offensive in Regional Command East to beat down the enemy there. But we'll remain to be targets, if nothing else.

Ah Yes, I Remember it Fairly Well

Remember the uproar over Arizona's attempts to enforce federal immigration rules? Remember how the liberal side of the aisle was outraged that states would interfere with a clear federal job? Oh those conservatives! Evil and ignorant!

Well, from the Ellis Island web site (funny enough, while looking for information on my grandfather who served on the Mexico border since he served in the New York National Guard at the time), I find this fascinating statement of federal-state roles on this hot button issue:

Prior to 1890, the individual states (rather than the Federal government) regulated immigration into the United States.

Fancy that. For 114 years, states regulated immigration (longer if you count the colonies, I suppose, since they probably just continued doing what they always did after independence). For the last 122 years, the federal government has regulated immigration. Yet Arizona was intruding on a clear federal job.

Just so we remember what the division of labor really has been.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pseudo-Polymath for the link.

November Good Enough?

All along, I thought our strategy for Afghanistan was to focus on the Taliban south (Helmand and Kandahar) and then pivot to Regional Command East to hammer that part of the country's Taliban contingent. After knocking them down while continuing to build up Afghan security forces and pound the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, we could begin to draw down and pull back from direct combat.

We finished the initial missions in the south, held them without losing ground over the last year; and I thought this spring we'd be shifting the focus to the east.

Apparently not:

Though the official line is that the U.S. withdrawal timetable is unchanged, some U.S. officials have begun to talk about speeding it up—in part because there are also positive developments that might make a faster pullout more feasible. ...

Some Obama administration officials are also convinced that the Obama “surge” of 30,000 additional troops, scheduled to be wound down by September, has left just enough stability on the ground, or what Petraeus has called "Afghan good enough" in the crucial part of the country called “regional command east.” As National Journal senior correspondent James Kitfield wrote in a perceptive assessment from Afghanistan in December: “Although they remain dependent on coalition ‘enablers’ such as airpower and logistics, Afghan security forces have increasingly shouldered the burden in RC East and kept the insurgents on the defensive.”

We haven't yet made our main effort in the east, but we have decided we've already done enough? Why? This is disturbing. Even before the latest shooting incident it looked suspiciously like President Obama was ready to pull the plug on the war before the pivot east. Is it really good enough now to declare victory without another fighting season of going after the enemy? Are Afghan forces really good enough already?

Or are we looking for excuses to run away? And pretend we aren't running? Well, to at least obscure that fact until after November?

Just what the Hell is going on?

UPDATE: We shouldn't be at this point where public support for the "real" and "good" war is fragile enough to be shattered by the actions of one soldier. I once hoped that President Obama could use his purported silver tongue to support the war in Afghanistan. I complained during Iraq that President Bush only hauled out a good speech about Iraq when polling got particularly bad and wished he would have done that routinely.

Now I pine for what Bush did on this issue. Obama hasn't even bothered to give speeches on Afghanistan and why it is important to win.

But if the only reason Obama talked about Afghanistan was to hammer Bush and if the only objective he has is to avoid losing the war before the November election, all is clear.

And as for the president's supporters who bitterly said Iraq "distracted" us from winning in Afghanistan? A pox on them for failing to support the war in Afghanistan. I knew they could never support the only war we have. Politics may mute their opposition to keep their man in office, but never believe them when they say they are only opposed to the current war because their nuanced, big brains understand the real threat we have to man up and face. Feh.

UPDATE: It really does look like we've pulled back from combat in Afghanistan. How else to explain the dramatic drop in casualties in February and March this year? We went from 26 in January 2012 (compared to 24 in January 2011 and 30 in January 2010) to 10 in February (compared to 18 in February 2011 and 31 in February 2010) and 4 so far in a March nearly halfway done (compared to 29 in March 2011 and 24 in March 2012).

This is just not consistent with going after the enemy in Afghanistan with an offensive in Regional Command East. Even if we've only pulled back during the aftermath of the Koran incident and the massacre incident, that wouldn't have shown a dramatic drop off back in February. Maybe we've just been lucky--despite the press coverage that we are in free-fall disaster--and our luck will even out as we stay on the offensive. Perhaps I'm just not reading the right reports or misinterpreting what is happening. Maybe there really is a lull because we need to reposition forces for the RCE offensive this year and the ongoing withdrawal of the fall 2009 surge increment is complicating our efforts. I may need to watch the trends longer into the spring.

But it sure feels like we've decided to avoid casualties in an election year, hunker down, and get out as fast as we can. I hope I'm wrong.

Or can any war become a "war of choice" when it is too inconvenient for our left wing?

Saving Major Malfunction

Tom Hanks has been given the job of saving the last Democrat who survived O-Day.

Well, I hope the special effects are good, anyway:



It's a FUBAR mission. But as Hanks would say, if asked if his little reelection movie is worth it, "Especially if you think the mission's FUBAR."

Or more to the point: "We're not here to do the decent thing, we're here to follow f*cking orders!"

Hollywood got their orders. It's about their duty as progressives. Because they know what is at stake in saving President Obama. Cue Hanks: "He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb."

Killing a Little Higher

Assad's forces have escalated the level of killing by adding helicopter gunships to the mix:

In a frightening escalation of the Assad regime’s war on its people, helicopter gunships now hang in the air above the countryside, shooting at civilians on the move, or turning their fire on rebel villages - in addition to the armoury of tanks and artillery already punishing those who dared to oppose.

A no-fly zone enforced by Western planes hasn't made sense up to now since Assad hasn't used air power. Now Assad is using air power.

How desperate is Assad to win soon that he is risking providing an excuse to begin escalation by the West in the one area we reign supreme (with few risks of serious friendly casualties)--in the air?

Storm Warning?

If we were going to attack Iran (or cooperate with or simply accept an Israeli attack), it makes sense that we'd let China know that it is coming. Not that we'd let them know when (they might warn Iran). But out of common courtesy for a rising power, we'd give them time to prepare to cope with the loss of Iranian oil.

So China might do this (tip to Instapundit):

China has "started filling its emergency petroleum reserve at Lanzhou in the nation’s northwest, according to an official at the nation’s largest crude producer."

Some things make sense. What if China isn't the only country buying oil now? Just in case?

But I've thought oil reserve issues made sense before, and here we are.