Weekend Data Dump

I'd be happy enough to start with building rule of law in Afghanistan to make national and regional governance more stable with more legitimacy; and let democracy flow from that if it will. The problem with ignoring governance in Moslem countries is that so far these countries have largely been autocracies. Iran gives us a mullahocracy. And mis-rule by autocrats has given Islamists a powerful weapon to argue that a mullahocracy is the only alternative to better rule. Democracy at least should be a goal to have an alternative. And rule of law is a good start that provides good benefits even short of democracy.

Projection. Tip to Instapundit.

I strongly disagree with the "go big or go home" objections to the apparent Afghanistan plan. Remember that the Iraq surge was an increase of only about 20% in American troop strength. More important was a change of focus and the Anbar Awakening which led a critical mass of Sunni Arabs to flip from fighting us to fighting alongside us. I remain wary of putting too many troops into Afghanistan when our supply lines aren't very secure. My worries never materialized but that doesn't mean my worries were groundless. And we now have to worry about needing more of our scarce ground troops in NATO Europe and in South Korea. I do not want to over-commit to Afghanistan. I want to do enough. This remains an economy-of-force theater as it has been since we drove the Taliban from power.

I have to admit that when I first heard the report of "Kasich/Hickenlooper 2020" I assumed it was a predicted near miss by some asteroid or comet in three years that will raise a stir and than quickly be forgotten without having any impact. So basically I was right. Tip to Instapundit. Honestly, I don't even think it will pass within the moon's orbit.

I worry that so much debt will lead to policies that erode debt burdens with inflation, thus hurting the relatively few people like me who did not rack up huge debt by borrowing for education, distant and frequent vacations, houses too large for their income, and lots of possessions and luxury cars and trucks that they really don't need. The fact that such policies are ultimately harmful to everyone is no comfort. And it is how you get people dangerously angry for being punished for their responsible behavior.

A closed dictatorial country might be opening up a bit. So what? Eritrea is a bad place and will continue to be if it opens up to the world a bit. It drives me nuts when academics place so much value on small changes that amount to peeing in the ocean. In college I ranted in some poli sci test about how it was ridiculous for people to essentially argue that the USSR was opening up because peasants were allowed to own a few chickens--it was still a dictatorship where violence was kept (barely) under wraps because people there fully understood the violence the government was capable of inflicting on the people.

A reminder that liberals said diversity in college was the most important thing ever, liberals got the laws and jobs to make that thing come true, and liberals failed miserably when you look back 35 years at the college world before the legions of highly paid administrators tasked with that job had their chance. It's odd. It's almost like caring a lot isn't enough.

The statue kerfuffle is a symptom of a certain type of leftist that really doesn't like the Western civilization that made that certain type of leftist possible in the first place. For these people, everything in the West's past must be disavowed and destroyed while nothing our modern enemies do needs to be condemned. Why do we hate us?

Basically, the Confederate sub Hunley was a submerged suicide explosive device, albeit unintentionally. I hadn't really thought about that sub loss, but if I had, the experience we've had with traumatic brain injury in our wars would have made it clear that putting a bomb at the end of a spar big enough to sink a ship would scramble the crew's brains at the other end of the spar.

We're way too sophisticated to swept along in something as absurd as witch trials, right? It always seemed ridiculous. It was. But for the people whose lives were ruined, it was a nightmare.

An article on false compassion in warfare. It uses dragons in Game of Thrones as a point of departure. I've discussed the false compassion of failing to win a war quickly with a more intense casualty toll when the price is a much longer war with more casualties in the end from the duration, even if the intensity is lower. Although I disagree with the notion that you can't use maximum force without using nuclear weapons. Maximum conventional force is still possible--as it has been throughout history prior to nuclear weapons--even though we really should rule out use of nukes in all but the most desperate or vital situations.

I have to say that I am disappointed with the media's 24/7 fixation on Hurricane Harvey, which is a trivial event compared to the need to maintain 24/7 coverage of the Nazi/Confederate Restoration that Trump has been plotting since his election. Priorities, people.

The West has reached amazing heights of prosperity, freedom and culture over the last 500 years. Well, call it 450 years for the culture advancement, anyway. That was still a good run. Yet the notion that in our society you can advance the most by adopting certain responsible values is considered hateful by some loony toons in our society. I'm sorry, but isn't trying to stop a person from trying to tell someone who is failing how they can help themselves really the hateful thing to do?

Speaking truth to the power to behead. This is the kind of discussion we need within the Islamic world to resolve their civil war over the definition of Islam in ways that don't encourage losers to kill us.

Privatized aerial refueling. Which is a category of warfare I've written about.

The Saudi-led forces in Yemen are slowly defeating the Iran-backed Shias. But the Saudis may not want to bear the cost of eventually reaching a victory, as the overview indicates. The outcome is likely to be some sort of deal between the parties. Which is why I've long not paid a lot of attention to the civil war there. Maybe in the aftermath everyone can focus on killing al Qaeda and other jihadis there. But I do hold out the possibility that Saudi and Iranian involvement in the civil war might harden attitudes in Yemen that will make the divisions of the country more difficult to manage with deals.

Representative Pelosi was late in condemning antifa violence in Berkeley. But she only said that the people committing violence "deserve unequivocal condemnation." And she said it was wrong to "fight hate with hate." If I've learned anything from the Left, the delay in condemnation is troubling and might indicate Pelosi likes the violence and those antifa thugs who committed it. Further, Pelosi only said the people "calling themselves antifa" acted badly, and appears to reflect a belief that the black-clad attackers were not, in fact, actually antifa. Further, by saying that those people--whoever they really are--"deserve" condemnation without actually saying she condemns them, this is clearly a dog whistle of support to communists and anarchists waging war on American democracy with their street battle tactics. Finally, rather than simply condemning the antifa attackers, Pelosi goes to the whole equivalence mistake of saying there was hate on both sides. So according to the logic of the Left, Pelosi secretly likes the antifa thugs and rather than truly wanting them to stop is actually signaling them to keep going with Pelosi's quiet support. Isn't this fun? And in related annoyances, why isn't the media asking every Democrat why they haven't condemned antifa violence already in absolute terms?

I'm asking this seriously, but doesn't the use of Fortran and COBOL and floppy disks make it more difficult for enemies to hack federal government systems? I defer to the author's expertise, of course. But I do wonder.

The nation-wide fixation on the horrors of old statues raises a disturbing question: Just when did President Trump erect all those statues in cities across America? I mean, they must have been recently put up given that no such outrage existed prior to the Trump administration. Surely you aren't telling me that President Obama let those insults to all decency stand during his tenure and that liberals didn't mind them one bit at all (if they noticed them)?

President Trump has been slamming the media for its bias. The media has been taking to their fainting couches that this is a dog whistle for Trump's supporters to attack journalists. And indeed, attacks on journalists does seem to be on the rise. But you'll never guess who is attacking journalists. Wow! They heard the dog whistles?

It's almost as if the Democrats at the state and local level wanted a riot at Charlottesville.

Venezuelan security forces (so not the army?) crossed into Colombia and robbed people. I assumed if Venezuelan forces went abroad they'd hit the Dutch.

I often say, check the definitions section. America has more than the 8,400-troop cap in Afghanistan. Duh. The military worked with the definitions established to define the cap. Replacing a unit? Do you really have to pull the unit at the end of its deployment out before putting the replacement in? No. You overlap so the cap is technically breached. Do you count special forces in for particular missions? Who do you pull out to let them in and do you really want to let the enemy know because this is all public? Is there a maintenance backlog? Should we count a unit sent in to clear up the backlog if it is in there for a short period for that specific mission? This is nothing. I am sure we did this at the peak of our Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Indeed, I specifically advised extending the unit rotation overlap to maximize troops on the ground. But when you have 170,000 in the country, having 15,000 more because of rotation overlaps doesn't seem like a big deal as it does now with far fewer troops. Don't like how the Pentagon follows the rules? Change the rules.

Yes. Good Lord, what is wrong with admiring something from another culture and adopting it? Why isn't it racist to argue that you have to stay in your racial and ethnic lane?

I mentioned in the last weekend data dump that America doesn't actually inspect Iran for compliance with the farcical nuclear deal. The UN does. Despite our calls for the IAEA to inspect Iranian military bases, the IAEA says it sees no need to do so. As I noted some time ago: "Remember, we don't inspect Iran. The IAEA does. And if we point the IAEA at particular locations, we risk revealing sources and methods. Worst of all, the IAEA can only inspect in approved locations. Like the Fordo plant. So the correct assessment is that the IAEA hasn't seen any prohibited activities in the narrow range of areas they are allowed to look. Which is a different thing altogether, you must admit." Go ahead, admit it. The Obama/Kerry/mullah deal is designed to let Iran evade scrutiny.

To Hell with those people. They are, of course, free to believe those things. I am free to think they are assholes undeserving of respect.

Marijuana prices are dropping, putting pressure on growers. How many hippies thought legalization would be great, only to discover that Big Buzz megabusinesses that bring in cheap Central American hippies to cultivate the crop will put them all out of business? Bummer.

American aircraft cratered a road in Syria to prevent a bus convoy of ISIL terrorists from reaching the Iraq border. I'm not sure why we couldn't bomb the buses notwithstanding the civilian drivers. Isn't sending ISIL gunmen to kill our allies and our troops (and that's what depositing ISIL there would do) an act of war that the rules of war allow us to resist despite the human shields driving the vehicles? Three hundred ISIL gunmen in a 17-bus convoy are still in the Syrian desert. Coalition jets also ran a mock attack on the convoy. I bet we would have fired if it was only the drivers we had to consider. But with families in the convoy, it can't really be a target, I suppose.

A very tiny number of horrible people on the left (so I am clear I am not tarring all liberals with that hate) are delighting in the Houston devastation, saying Republicans deserve what they get. But keep in mind that Houston is represented by that shining star of the Democratic firmament, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (who should be a two-fer of antifa anti-Confederate symbols protests, shouldn't she?). I think Houston has suffered enough without a hurricane, personally. Tip to Instapundit.

I still don't like President Trump much--although I remain grateful he denied the corrupt and incompetent Clinton the Oval Office. But in line with the idea that you don't have to be faster than a bear to avoid a mauling, just faster than the slowest person in your group; my opinion of the media has dropped my view of them well below my view of Trump that is at least on a shallow upward vector. So congratulations, our professional anti-Trump journalists. You make Trump look better. You couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

Venezuelans continue to fight against their socialist tyranny. Bullets are always the last thing that a socialist country can afford to pay for.

A rose by any other name: "Colombia's FARC former guerrillas relaunched Friday as a political party, changing their logo of rifles for a red rose after disarming to end a half-century civil conflict." I hope that Colombians aren't fooled by a bunch of "former" narco-communist terrorists wearing suits.

Tales of the insane from the University of Snowflakes. Truly, they display all the brain power of a mossy rock. Tip to Instapundit.

Just exit the Iran deal. It was a bad deal made worse by front-loading benefits to Iran. But that compounding error is no reason to keep what is fundamentally a bad deal.

Imagine how much she'd charge if she had won the election. Tip to Instapundit.

Hurricane Harvey had nothing to do with global warming. Period. So stop it.

Just a reminder that Cuba either attacked or allowed someone to attack our diplomats in Havana who suffered mild TBI and permanent hearing loss from whatever caused it (I suspect a surveillance device of some sort with unfortunate collateral effects). Communists can't help but be communists, glorious diplomatic reset triumphs notwithstanding.

Peking continues to grind Hong Kong's face into the pavement. China isn't even pretending to follow the "one country, two systems" provisions that they promised to do for fifty years. There will be no taking a knee during the Chinese anthem. I imagine China will kill the prosperity that they hoped to incorporate into China with free-wheeling rule-of-law Hong Kong.

The Philippines has been engaged in a fight with ISIL for the city of Marawi for over three months now. If that seems odd, remember that American forces were engaged in the Philippines alongside Filipino troops against al Qaeda in one of the early campaigns against that terror group after 9/11.