The Accordion Plays Again

I have absolutely no respect for Lawrence Korb's ability to analyze any defense issue. Yet here he is in Politico urging us to leave Afghanistan.

It speaks to his warped analysis that you have to get to the second page before you actually get past the ranting about Iraq to the part about hoping Karzai ejects us from Afghanistan:

Just as al-Maliki forced us to do the right thing, we should allow Karzai to take control of his country as soon as he wants.

One, is this no longer the "good war?" Just wondering. Actually, I've long known that the "good" war would become "bad." So Korb arguing for retreat is no shock.

But let's take a tour of Korb's idiocy.

One, there really should be a statute of limitations on Korb noting that he worked in Reagan's Department of Defense. Korb wouldn't get that job with his post-Reagan work, that's for sure.

Then there is the part about how we couldn't end the Korean and Vietnam wars without additional bloodshed.

On Korea, I'm shocked that one of only two wars bully blessed by the United Nations doesn't get more respect from Korb. The only way to end that war sooner was to go on offense and push the Chinese out of North Korea or just give in to the Chinese. In the end, we at least defended South Korea which, do not forget, was the original purpose of our intervention after North Korea invaded the south.

As for Vietnam, calling it a lost war that we couldn't bring ourselves to admit was lost has to ignore the fact that we did in fact successfully defend South Vietnam, destroying the Viet Cong as a force capable of defeating the Saigon government and creating a South Vietnamese army capable of defending themselves with American air and logistics support. When our Congress cut off that support, a conventional North Vietnamese mechanized army was able to conquer South Vietnam.

On Iraq, Korb calls it mindless and needless. Our Congress, which included a Senate controlled by the Democrats and a House controlled by the Republicans, thought otherwise in their declaration of war, I'd like to remind you. People like Korb ignore a lot of recent history to condemn Bush on the Iraq War.

Oh, and this part is rich:

Many supporters of the unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq assumed that sometime in 2011 al-Maliki would see the light and allow us to keep a residual force in Iraq after 2011, but, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, he never came around.

Regime change for Iraq was the law of our land (during the Clinton administration), so what is Korb's notion of defeating Saddam? And does he regret the good that has come from getting rid of an enemy regime that brutalize and murdered his own people (mass graves anyone?), threatened the region, supported terrorists, and which would eventually have re-acquired weapons of mass destruction? Shall we try to give Iraq back to the Baathists who might want to get out of Syria now to atone for our victory?

And the "occupation" Korb speaks of consisted of helping the government of post-Saddam Iraq defeat former regime elements, Iranian-backed Shia death squads, local jihadis, and al Qaeda suicide bombers who flooded into Iraq via Syria as al Qaeda made Iraq their main front in their war against us.

And yes, I assumed Maliki and all other factions would want US forces around after last year. And from what I read they did. It is a gross distortion of the record to say that we did not get an agreement "despite the best efforts" of Obama! He didn't try very hard and was happy to put the blame on Maliki rather than do what he needed to do to defend what we gained in Iraq. I don't care if Korb essentially wants to re-debate the question of going to war with Iraq. We did. We won. You want to argue that the war wasn't worth the cost? It's a free country.

But why is it better to expend the relatively small effort to defend what we achieved at the price we paid? Is justifying opposition to destroying the Saddam region so important that you welcome the abandonment of the Iraqi government and its defeat? Of course, as Vietnam shows, the Left will simply deny responsibility and insist Iraq was unwinnable all along. I'll admit that if they are in charge of our Iraq policy, that may very well be true.

And arguing that Maliki could not allow our troops to operate with immunity ignores that we could have found a way to get an agreement--as we have for decades around the world--that satisfied Maliki's objections while protecting our troops from harassment by Iranian-influenced judges. Again, Obama wanted to fail and he did. He just wanted the blame placed on Maliki. Amazingly, Korb goes beyond just fixing the blame to arguing Maliki did us a favor!

And then we get to some serious bull:

In arguing that, as a condition for NATO and U.S. troops remaining after 2014, the troops immediately cease night raids, pull out of villages and withdraw to their bases, Karzai is not merely reacting to recent incidents like the burning of the Quran by American soldiers and the killing of 16 civilians, allegedly by an American soldier, and the collateral damage continually caused by night raids. Rather, Karzai is motivated by the same concerns as al-Maliki. As president of Afghanistan, he wants to control what happens in his country, something the majority of his people want now, rather than in two years.

Really. The man spouts idiocy. The burning of Korans was a mistake and while offensive to Moslems, the Korans themselves were defaced by Taliban prisoners and the Taliban engineered the violence as a tactic in the war to discourage Westerners--like Korb. Although Korb is pre-discouraged, I'll wager, and just likes an additional excuse to run. (UPDATE: And Iran's hand, as it usually is when we face enemies, was involved in that engineered response rather than being a simple and natural reaction to an honest mistake flowing from Taliban defacement of Korans as Korb asserts.)

The issue of night raids isn't a sovereignty or collateral damage issue. They are among our most effective tactics and continuing corruption in the Afghan government allows the Taliban to influence the Afghan government to insist publicly that the raids stop. If we hold our ground, they won't be stopped because Afghan government people know they need us to avoid being defeated. The killing by an American soldier is a problem but isn't a reason to retreat unless you just want an excuse to run. We've had darned few incidents like that while the enemy routinely slaughters civilians as policy.

Let's continue the BS-fest:

We have achieved our primary objectives of killing Osama bin Laden and decimating the leadership of Al Qaeda. No matter how long we stay, we cannot control the future of Afghanistan; in the final analysis, it is up to them. Moreover, the Afghans increasingly resent our presence, as evidenced by the fact that one out of every five NATO troops killed this year was killed by Afghan police or army forces (“green on blue” incidents).

No. Our primary objective was not to kill bin Laden and his top lieutenants. Those are means to reach our objective which is to prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for jihadis to wage war on us the way they did on 9/11. Oh, and by the way, we broke the back of al Qaeda in Iraq and not in Afghanistan. The battle in Afghanistan is more about the Taliban who would shield al Qaeda--again and under new leadership--if we lose the war there.

And no, "green on blue" incidents do not indicate Afghans want us out. The vast majority of incidents are due to personal issues and lack of anger management skills in that violent society and not from pro-Taliban sympathies. Gee, with a lot more Coalition troops working side-by-side with a lot more Afghan security forces, why would incidents like that be higher now? Doofus.

And then Korb wraps it up with self-contradictory BS:

These steps would allow our troops to come home with the dignity they deserve and put the responsibility for military operations that result in collateral damage on the Afghan government, where it belongs. Moreover, it will increase our chances of getting the Afghan government to allow us to maintain a small military presence after 2014, which we can use to help prevent Al Qaeda from returning and Afghanistan from destabilizing the region.

What dignity is there is retreating and risking loss? Our troops and their families deserve the dignity of having the opportunity to defend our nation from actual threats to our security and very lives. And our people deserve a war plan that defends us. Korb and his ilk may enjoy defeat, but better Americans than he'll ever be prefer to win, and understand we must win or we'll lose.

And if we pull out our troops form the fight now as Korb suggests, how does he think Karzai will agree to our troops staying to launch night raids and air strikes to help prevent al Qaeda from returning? What? Korb doesn't think that our standard tactics that he thinks are reason to leave would be needed to stop al Qaeda? Will our special forces sneak into al Qaeda compounds and slap COEXIST bumper stickers on their car bombs to shame them into behaving? Lord, what an idiot.

Further, isn't it interesting that Korb doesn't care if more Afghans die because less capable Afghans do the night raids--just that the blame be obviously on them? But you know that we will still be blamed by the Left as we are blamed for any bad actions by any ally anywhere in the world.

And one last question. If it was so good for us to get our of Iraq altogether, why isn't it equally good to get out of Afghanistan altogether? Won't even a smaller presence as Korb says he wants offend Afghans?

But of course, you just have to give Korb time. Pretending right now that he really just wants to fight more effectively with a smaller and more focused force is just a tactic to get us running. Once we have given up trying to win, he'll write about the need--and wisdom--of pulling our small force out of Afghanistan altogether. If he's really lucky he'll get the dignity of seeing our last personnel pulled out by helicopter from some final outpost's roof. Then all he has to do is write about how inevitable our defeat was all along.

Korb couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel. He's no defense analyst. He just wraps up justification for retreat in arguments that can be defended as not retreating.

UPDATE: Wait. What?

Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool said on Thursday Afghanistan would not be used as a launch pad for U.S. drones attacks on neighboring countries after NATO combat forces leave by the end of 2014.

"Afghan soil will not be used against any country in the region," Rasool told Al Jazeera television when asked if Washington would be allowed to launch drone strikes against Pakistan after the troops' withdrawal.

Are you trying to tell me that Korb's deep and nuanced plan for retreating out of Afghanistan won't include his pause in running to keep a small American force that will resist al Qaeda attempts to return? Who could have seen that coming?

Victory and not calibrating how far we can run away should be our priority.

The Korb-O-Might Maneuver

Lawrence Korb thinks we can cut defense spending and our ground forces without hurting our national defense. My, that is convenient. As it turns out, he's affiliated with the Barney Frank report I mentioned as a disaster of a policy guide. But Korb's policy advice is as based on reality as the Corbomite Maneuver.

Korb, of course, isn't qualified to offer advice on anything related to national defense, as far as I'm concerned.

But let's get to his ground force recommendations:

We recommend cutting the Army and Marine Corps back to their pre-Afghanistan-and-Iraq levels when we withdraw from those theaters because, as Secretary of Defense Gates noted in the May/June 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs, “the United States is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Iraq and Afghanistan anytime soon — that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire.”

The reasoning of Korb and people like him who want to reduce our ground forces is stunning in its audacity. Their logic is that we don't need to buy sophisticated weapons or train for large battles because Iraq and Afghanistan prove that we need to focus on counter-insurgency rather than a force-on-force high intensity conventional conflict. And then they argue that after our Iraq and Afghanistan experiences, who thinks we'll fight another counter-insurgency? So why bother maintaining enough troops to fight a counter-insurgency we'll never fight?

Ah, logic. It's like they hope we won't notice that it is a two-step process to effective disarmament. Never mind that we never wanted to fight the counter-insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that's what we got.

Hopefully, we should understand that we don't usually get what we plan for. But we'll have to fight the wars we don't plan for anyway, no matter how unlikely Korb thinks such a war is. Hopefully, we don't take Korb's advice on our ground forces.

As an aside, let me mention his Navy suggestion, which I suppose should be compared to the Vulcan Death Grip if I'm to maintain the Star Trek allusion:

We also recommend reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships and argue that this can be done by reducing the number of aircraft carriers from eleven to nine (something that Secretary Gates has also suggested)[.]

I'm not against reducing the number of carriers, but I want to do that to free up surface ships and submarines for action apart from defending carriers, which should no longer be our primary weapon. Korb clearly thinks the reduced number of carriers should be our primary weapon at sea since he also calls for reducing the Navy by about 80 other ships, along with the three carriers, thus leaving us even more reliant on a smaller number of carriers. That makes the situation worse than the status quo. Our Navy won't be in any condition to come to grips with any enemy and kill them with this suggestion. Really, Korb is just getting on my nerves.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Korb. Perhaps he isn't trying to argue that we can maintain national security with lower defense spending and a smaller military as he advocates. Maybe he just wants a smaller defense budget and a smaller and less capable military. And the rest is just mumbo jumbo to convince the gullible that he's some type of defense genius (Reagan hired me! A long time ago!) who can maintain adequate defenses while decimating the military. The idea that defense will only be part of massive deficit reduction in the non-defense side of the budget is delusional at best and willful deceit at worst. Only defense will be cut, and everyone knows it.

If simply slashing our defenses is his objective, then bravo, Mr. Korb. I blow a vuvuzela to celebrate his budgetary prowess.

Korb's ideas on national defense will gut our military might quite nicely.

The Accordion

Why anyone would listen to anything that Lawrence Korb has to say on defense matters is beyond me.

Even before getting to the heart of this article, we see him highlighting that he was in the Reagan administration--over 20 years ago. The reason he does this is because Reagan would not have endorsed Korb's current defense views. But Korb wears that job as a talisman to ward off questions about what he proposes now, even though he has worked for leftist think tanks since he worked for Reagan. But he never seems to cite that in articles meant to persuade the general public.

In this article, Korb argues for painless defense reductions of $1 trillion over a decade. And he starts with an apples and oranges defense of cuts that should undermine any confidence you might have in his abilities to argue for cuts compatible with maintaining our defense edge:

Those opposed to reducing defense spending note that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said that any cuts of that magnitude would be catastrophic. They cite three reasons: We are fighting two wars; defense did not cause the debt problem; and Obama has already reduced defense spending.

But those arguments are without merit. Here are the facts.

He continues, but with facts that have nothing to do with the objections he cites:

U.S. defense spending, in inflation adjusted terms, is higher than at any time since the end of World War II. Over the past decade, the U.S. share of global military spending has risen from one third to one half. The United States now spends six times as much as China, the country with the next biggest budget.

And the proposed reductions in defense spending will not affect spending for the wars, which are funded in supplemental budgets (to the tune of $150 billion in the current fiscal year). The proposed reductions apply to the base budget.

This refutes the objections he cites? In inflation adjusted terms, our overall budget is a heck of a lot higher. Should that be slashed? Our economy is way bigger, and the burden of our defense budget compared to that is pretty darned low--even for peacetime levels during the Cold War.

As for the US defense budget being half of the world's--so what? The question is what do we need and what can we afford? We already see that Korb misrepresented what we can afford--as a burden compared to our GDP, defense spending is pretty low. Talking about defense as a fraction of our "discretionary" spending is also misleading because a vast span of domestic spending items are mandatory, while in the strange budgeting world of Washington, D.C., defense spending is a "discretionary" item--as if it is a luxury.

Back to the point, so what if we spend half of the globe's defense budget? One, this allows us to field forces to fight enemies far away from us rather than close to us. There is a reason that the only threats to our soil are terrorists and nuclear weapons. We enjoy the protection of our military keeping potential foes far from us. How much is that worth?

Second, the money buys us equipment and training that allows us to fight more effectively than our enemies. Spending money saves blood--that of our own troops and even the enemy's, too, for that matter. Yes we could win wars without all that stuff and skill. But we'd suffer far more casualties. And leave vast collateral damage in our wake.

As for his proposals not affecting the current wars, so what? Even if true (and the troops need the innovations and weapons that are paid for in the remainder of the budget even if the operations spending still keeps them supplied with existing weapons and ammunition), the ongoing operations are not the totality of our defense needs. We need forces for other types of war that we would like to deter and would like to win if we fail to deter them. The "base budget" creates the force that fights the current and future wars, and if that is inadequate, it will affect the outcome of the wars at worst and the cost in blood and treasure, at best, from higher casualties and a lengthier path to victory.

So what of his proposals?

He says we should reduce the Army and Marines to pre-Iraq War levels.

But those levels did not allow us to man the force structure fully. Korb says we won't engage in nation-building again so don't need the troops. We'll just support locals in fighting jihadis. Korb should really pull out the crystal ball he uses to predict the future so confidently. Ideally, we could do that. In practice, this will just allow anti-war types to argue that we can't fight a war until we build our ground forces up--which they'll oppose tooth and nail.

He says we should cut troops in Europe and Asia by 50,000.

Given the history of Europe, I think keeping a solid military capability in Europe is a prudent investment. Without our stabilizing presence, the long peace that Korb apparently thinks is the norm for Europe could disappear and major warfare could reappear on the continent. As for Asia, is he stoned? China is rising and if we pull back, our allies who are arming up to resist China will instead drift to seeking deals with China at our expense. So suddenly, with Korb's cuts in this area, we risk fighting potential foes closer to home.

He wants to cut the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles.

Fair enough. But if the EFV is cut, the Marines will need other armored fighting vehicles. Saying that a particular weapon system is not needed is not the same as saying no weapon system is needed.

He wants to cut a single aircraft carrier.

Again, fair enough. I think we should be preparing to phase out our use of huge carriers. But again, saying that the Navy doesn't need a particular ship doesn't mean that the money is just not spent. The Navy needs numbers to deploy globally. We may not need new carriers, but we need new ships. This is a matter of choosing where to spend Navy dollars and not whether they are needed.

He wants to cut the F-35 because he says "our existing fighter planes are the best in the world and unmanned aircraft are taking over more and more missions."

Now we are in to real Korbian levels of idiocy. Our existing fighter planes--other than the small number of F-22s--are ancient. They are good enough with the large logistical tail and support capabilities that our large "base budget" provides for planning, maintenance, training, and weapons, but Korb would risk that, too, of course. If we count on the yet to be developed unmanned fighter planes--that are a far cry from current unmanned combat drones--then we will have quite the gap one day not too far in the future. And if you think that Korb will be a supporter of the very expensive technology needed to create those unmanned combat aircraft that replace piloted warplanes, you're either stoned or stupid.

Let's move on.

He'd slash our strategic nuclear weapons arsenal.

He bases that on one analysis from the Air War College. Was it a term paper from a student? It may make sense, but then again, since nuclear war would be the biggest bad thing that can happen, I'd rather be more cautious in slashing this part of our arsenal. Insurance, baby. Don't leave home without it. Maybe some cuts are justified. But take it slow. Once gone, they aren't coming back. And when we realize we don't have enough, it may be because deterrence failed.

He'd cut the V-22 Osprey.

Once again, I'm not a fan of the system. Maybe we don't need to buy more but the Marines will need new helicopters, at the very least. Again, this isn't a spending question but a choice of spending question. Clearly, Korb is again using bait and switch by arguing against a specific weapon and concluding we don't need any weapon to meet the needs that weapon is supposed to meet. Further, arguing that it did not meet mission standards in Iraq is wrong-headed. I assume he means availability rates. That a new weapon in a harsh operational environment did not meet standards is hardly a shock. That was also a learning environment to learn how to meet availability rate goals. Nice try.

He wants to save money on pay and health care fees.

We ask a lot of the relatively few who volunteer to defend us. Cutting here during war is insulting, as far as I'm concerned.

Finally, he argues for a general application of his apples and oranges approach to cutting by saying that savings from waste that Gates wants to redirect to other spending should instead be simply cut for the sake of the deficit (yeah, I trust that any money saved here won't be spent on domestic fluff--dang, I just attracted more attention from Nigerian email scammers for that display of gullibility). Note that saving money on the EFV and spending it elsewhere is one of the savings that Gates proposes.

So there you have it: A proposal based on misleading arguments designed to do what Korb always wants to do--slash our defense spending.

Korb has been playing this awful tune for years. Go deer hunting without this accordion. I don't know what Korb was like in the 1980s, but Reagan would not have hired this Korb for anything in the defense realm.

UPDATE: The military lays out how it would like to save money and redirect it to programs it thinks it needs more.

UPDATE: An argument that we should not balance the budget on the backs of the military--which, given that we are at war, I heartily endorse. Anybody who claims that we can cut the military budget to become "leaner and meaner" is selling you something other than national defense. In the end, those people don't care about the "meanness" level and just want the "leaner" part.

The Army Not Broken

Major General Scales (retired) is a good military analyst. And when he said last year that our Army was broken, I paid attention. I didn't see any evidence that it was broken but the stress was clear and I worried he was right. Or would be right if we didn't reduce the stress on the Army at some point.

Well, he now says he was wrong:

"If you haven't heard the news, I'm afraid your Army is broken, a victim of too many missions for too few soldiers for too long. ... Today, anecdotal evidence of collapse is all around."

But now, one year later, Scales has done an about-face. He says that he was wrong. Despite all the predictions of imminent collapse, the U.S. Army and the combat brigades have proven to be surprisingly resilient.

One of the reasons?

Scales said he didn’t take into account that, unlike Vietnam, this Army is sending soldiers to fight as a unit — not as individuals. He also neglected the "Band of Brothers" phenomenon — the feeling of responsibility to fellow soldiers that prompts members of service to re-enlist.

I can understand this belated realization. It wasn't until I read a book on the Vietnam war recently that I was reminded of the terrible policy about withdrawing soldiers instead of units. At this point it finally hit me that this was a key reason for the resiliency of our Army and Marine units despite the tempo in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lawrence Korb disagrees with Scales. But Korb is unfit to comment on military matters as far as I'm concerned. Says Korb:

Not all the military analysts who made similar predictions last year agree. Lawrence Korb, who worked on personnel issues during the Reagan administration, testified to Congress last July: "As Gen. Barry McCaffrey pointed out when we testified together before the Senate Armed Services Committee in April, ‘the ground combat capability of the U.S. armed forces is shot.'"

Korb, a resident scholar at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, told FOX News the Army is worse off than it was a year ago. He suggested that the Army is not being honest with its re-enlistment and retention numbers, an accusation echoed by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo.

The Army’s use of stop-loss — the automatic re-enlistment of soldiers whose units are being redeployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, even if their service time is up — has distorted the figures, Korb said.

He also said that while the numbers of captains leaving the military may not be alarming, the number of captains educated at West Point is. According to Korb, half of the eligible captains from West Point’s class of 2002 have left the service.

And then there are the re-enlistment bonuses, which rose from $50 million in 1998 to $562 million per year in 2007. The amount of re-enlistment bonuses paid is now five times what it was at the start of the Iraq war, according to U.S. Army figures.

Korb is mixing things up to argue the Army is broken. He says the Army is worse than last year and that our "ground combat capability is shot" is not the same as saying the Army is broken. Truly, our ability to fight conventional combat operations is shot. This means that the Army is "unbalanced" in that we are--rightly--focusing on counter-insurgency training to win the wars we are in. When we can free up troops--troops who've gained valuable combat experience--we will retrain them in conventional combat operations.

And Korb does not understand stop-loss. This is about defending unit cohesion when a unit is about to deploy so it will remain effective. It is not any type of "back door draft." This policy saves lives by keeping units intact when they go to war.

As for his charge of distorting retention numbers, the Army is expanding its ranks successfully during war so how exactly is the Army hiding something? Somebody is manning our new units.

On the captain loss, I've yet to see anything that shows we are losing more than we usually do to any significant extent. This charge has been raised before yet our Army still wins.

Finally, enlistment and reenlistment bonuses are certianly higher, but they are a tool to recruit troops. How on Earth is this proof the Army is broken? Korb may not like the fact that we've had to pay more to put soldiers into the field during war with an economy that still has historically low unemployment, but the fact is we have maintained our strength using tools like the higher bonuses.

Our Army is stressed. And we need to take actions to counter and eventually relieve that stress. So far, we seem to be doing that successfully. Don't confuse this, as Korb seems to do, with the other problem of being unbalanced--so focused on counter-insurgency that we are slighting conventional warfighting skills. But once Iraq deployments slow after victory, the problems of both stress and balance will be resolved. And we will retain the combat experienced troops for a generation.

But winning the Iraq War is priority one. Remember that the Army exists to win our wars--we don't lose wars to preserve the Army. And if we lose the Iraq War in order to relieve stress on the Army, the defeat will break the Army far more effectively than stress will.

Our Army has performed magnificently. And don't you forget for one moment that this pisses our Left off more than anything. They'd hoped for an Army that frags its officers, torches villages, and smokes dope.

Instead our Army is breaking enemies all over Iraq and Afghanistan.

They Don't Pay Me Enough to Read This Dreck

Please tell me that nobody actually listens to Lawrence Korb's advice on military and defense matters. He dismisses the Russian threat in Europe.

The man has long amazed me. He boasts of serving in the Reagan administration to obscure his left-wing agenda these days, and I can't imagine Reagan hiring him today. Truly, he has as much value on national security issues as taking an accordion on a hunting trip.

Korb, of course, dismisses and excuses what Putin is doing in Europe.

Let's start with the big picture of stupid with the title:

Don’t Fall for Obama’s $3 Billion Arms Buildup at Russia’s Door

So President Obama is the hawk trying to fool us into a defense spending spree?

And this subtly highlighted executive summary of the stupid is astounding:

There is no Russian resurgence. Washington is playing on your Cold War fears to get you to pay for something the U.S. does not need and can’t afford.

Again, this is the Obama administration doing this and it is guilty of playing on our fears?

Really? This is what we are to believe?

I can actually feel brain cells committing suicide in protest. But I will bravely soldier on.

In one of the key justifications for the new $600 billion defense spending request, the Department of Defense has fallen back on a tried-and-true Cold War boogeyman: the threat of Russian aggression against allies in Europe. ...

The Russian Federation of today is not the Soviet Union of the 1980s, despite the fervent wishes of those looking to restart the Cold War. ... The Russian military no longer has the ability to mobilize the combined forces of the USSR and Warsaw Pact as it once did.

At this point, a strong ef you Korb is in order. People worried about Russia really pine for the Cold War of constant nuclear tension and the threat of war hanging over us? That's the accusation.

Really Korb, that's small of you. Nobody can disagree with your passivity in the face of Russian rearmament, so-far smaller attempts to restore the empire that Putin makes no secret of wanting back, and aggressive rhetoric that paints a nearly disarmed Europe as a threat to Russia? No, we who worry about Russia wish for a threat to the West?

So sod off Korb. That charge is so offensive that I can't restrain myself.

But at least Korb admits that the Soviet Union posed a military threat. And yes, I've written that Russia's military is still quite limited in capabilities. I have not been shy about writing about their weaknesses.

But Russia is there. We are far away. And European NATO's limited military power is scattered across the continent. Russia's faces initial weakness in front of them and could push into that relative vacuum with little short of nuclear strikes to stop them.

And Russia has their own massive nuclear arsenal to deter that kind of escalation.

But let's return to the stupid, where Korb excuses the Russians:

Russia has long opposed the expansion of NATO into its traditional sphere of influence. The reasons are rooted in a history of aggression from Western Europe, as memories of the devastation meted out by Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler still linger.

Ah, a "traditional sphere of influence." Which means that Russia has long controlled a lot of people against their will--look how eagerly eastern Europe and parts of the Soviet Union itself bolted when they got the chance between 1989 and 1991--and Russia would like to control them again.

Like the new NATO states in eastern Europe. Who don't think that a "tradition" of being subjugated by Russia is understandable. So apparently there is a tradition of not liking the Russian boot stomping on their face.

And really, Russia is to be given a pass on aggressiveness because 200 years ago Napoleon invaded Russia? Yeah, look out for the French! They could get expansionist again any minute!

Is this to say that Russia would be justified in advancing to the Rhine River to pen in the French lest they get all Corsican on the Russians?

And Germany, with an army barely large enough to pacify Denmark is going east in strength anytime in our lifetime?

Yet Germany invaded Russia twice in the twentieth century (we'll ignore the Teutonic Knights--which the Russians haven't forgotten--beware the Holy Roman Empire!). Is Russia justified in advancing to the Oder River for a nice defensive line to forestall a third try? This is why we should give the Russians a pass on their aggressiveness lately?

Let's push on into the Korbian Stupid as the stupid gathers strength as he complains about the fairly small spending program to reassure our new NATO allies:

But what will this program accomplish? It’s meant to deter further Russian aggression, but fails to identify where that aggression might reasonably fall. A NATO buildup of this magnitude also neglects to take into account just how provocative such a move would be; by concentrating troops on Russia’s border, we are playing into Putin’s long-standing criticisms of NATO encirclement.

Since we don't know where Russia could threaten NATO from Estonia to Bulgaria, we can't respond? We need a picture of Putin standing next to a tank with "Riga or bust" painted on the hull to justify a reaction?

And keep in mind that the "magnitude" of the American build-up is just the equipment of two heavy brigades, with a discussion of an actual heavy brigade that might be placed in Germany. This would be in addition to the Stryker brigade (which lacks tanks) we have in Germany and the very light parachute brigade in Italy.

This is not "concentrating troops on Russia's border" any way you look at it. You simply can't be stupid enough to believe this nonsense.

I hope. But I've been disappointed before.

And since Russia under Putin has complained about NATO aggression and encirclement while Europe's military has atrophied since the end of the Cold War, why should we refrain from taking precautions in the face of renewed Russian aggression?

Speaking of Europe's far larger military budget as Korb does ignores that the spending is largely for a civil service in uniform with very little actual military power created. Arguing that Europe could handle Russia esily ignores that Europe couldn't handle half of Libya (the half loyal to Khadaffi as the civil war raged) in 2011!

Russia isn't a superpower. But they have lots of nukes, modern weapons, and enough decent troops to take ground from their relatively weak western neighbors that could only be ejected by a lengthy mobilization and movement of NATO troops east, including a lot of American forces shipped and flown across the Atlantic.

All being done as Russia rattles their nuclear sabre to maintain their new hold on people they "traditionally" controlled.

Let me end this. I could quibble over every line of this drivel, and even delve into whether the use of semi-colons is misleading, if I let myself.

Korb ends his drivel (and I extend my sympathy to the intern stuck with Korb for this article) with the standard leftist response to any defense spending--it takes away money that could be spent on domestic spending.

As if the only way to find the money in our massive federal budget to rebuild a bridge somewhere is to look in our defense budget.

Honest to God, Korb is basically saying that President Obama--he who "responsibly ends wars" and believes "being on the right side of history" is defense enough--is making up a Russian threat to restart the Cold War!

Don't listen to Lawrence Korb. He plays the accordion badly, anyway.

Oh, and I was a soldier during the Reagan presidency. I like to think that Reagan would not regret having me associated with his presidency.

Excuse me, I need to take a long, hot shower.

UPDATE: Khazakstan recognizes the Russian threat:

There is no separatist rebellion in northern Kazakhstan, but the ethnic Russians, who make up more than a fifth of the country's 18 million population, are feeling increasingly insecure and some sympathize with the separatists in Ukraine.

The Ukraine experience has made the Kazakh authorities highly sensitive to any signs of disloyalty by ethnic Russians. Ethnically based political parties are banned.

Sadly, Khazak's rulers don't have the advice of big-brained, nuanced liberal analysts like Korb to dispel those worries.

Sorry, But Korb Hasn't a Clue

Lawrence ("I worked for President Reagan!") Korb says President Obama did not lose Iraq. Why anyone would listen to Korb on any matter other than the proper spelling of his name is beyond me.

On a narrow technical matter, President Obama has not "lost" Iraq since he is in the process of trying to save Iraq. Properly speaking, President Obama allowed Iraq to deteriorate. Whether President Obama loses Iraq is still up in the air--and no, delaying the loss until after our president leaves office in 2017 doesn't save the president's reputation if we lose then.

Still, let's enjoy the Korbian spectacle of self-beclownment, shall we?

First, Korb claims that President Obama did not fail in an effort to negotiate a deal with Iraq to remain after 2011:

Obama’s hands were tied by the agreement President Bush signed. Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq in 2011 according to the timetable that President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki had agreed to in December 2008, when the UN mandate that allowed the United States to occupy Iraq after the 2003 invasion expired. And even though President Obama was willing to leave between 5,000 and 10,000 American troops in Iraq, the Iraqi Parliament was not willing to modify Bush’s withdrawal agreement to allow this residual force.

So there are two arguments deployed. One, Bush negotiated a withdrawal by 2011; and two, Iraq refused our offers to keep troops there.

The 2008 agreement under Bush was the best he could have gotten given the climate of the day. And everyone expected it to be replaced by a longer term agreement. If not, why did the Obama administration even negotiate at all with Iraq on a new agreement? That seems to be a major flaw of the "Bush is to blame in 2008" argument, isn't it?

On the second, talk of up to 10,000 troops is nonsense. We dropped to an offer of 3,000, which wasn't enough for Maliki to risk angering Iran. It was too much to appease Iran and too little to resist Iran. So Maliki said no as he was supposed to.

Yet still I gamely tried to figure out if we could work with this number. Even though I wanted 25,000.

We could have gotten to "yes" if it had been a priority of the Obama administration. Remember, to believe that President Obama tried very hard to stay in Iraq after 2011, you have to believe that he tried very, very hard to get something that is the opposite of his campaign pledge to get us out of Iraq and which was the opposite of his post-withdrawal boast that he got us out of Iraq and responsibly ended the war.

You'd really need Korbian levels of idiocy to believe this, in fact.

Let's move on.

This is confusing. Korb says that it is a false charge that the poor showing of Iraq's security forces is the fault of President Obama. Yet the argument he sets forth is pretty much the argument I'd use to lay the blame on the president's desk:

By the time U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, the Iraqi military was in pretty good shape. Not perfect, but over $25 billion in training and eight years of U.S. training had done a lot to build up a credible, functional armed force.

Even before the American forces left, Prime Minister Maliki had begun to systematically undermine the Iraqi military, by placing his Shiite cronies in key leadership positions. Salaries have gone unpaid while “ghost” soldiers collect salaries, maintenance has been neglected, weapons sold off, and Sunnis have been pushed out. Over the past three years, the Iraqi army has unraveled. Witness the comments made by soldiers who are now on their second or third round of training the Iraqi Security Forces—they have been shocked at its current state.

While we remained, Iraq's military was in pretty good shape. And now they are at least half crappy. In between we withdrew. I'm thinking there's a link.

As for Maliki's role, I accept that. But in 2008, Maliki was good enough and took on Iran's hand puppets in the Charge of the Knights operation at Basra against Shia militias.

And if you want to blame Maliki, you have to remember that in spring 2010, when the Sunni Arab Allawi [CORRECTION: While Sunni Arabs backed Allawi, he is a Shia. My memories faded ...] won the most seats in parliament, which should have given him first crack at organizing a government, the Obama administration sent our people to Iraq to support Maliki in remaining in power on the theory that we'd better have a Shia strongman to keep "stability" in Iraq rather than let elections stand in the way of getting out of Iraq and thus "responsibly ending" the war. I wrote several posts in that time lamenting the failure to push for rule of law.

So basically, Korb is denying Obama had a role in the determination of the Iraqi ground forces because some of the seeds of deterioration began because of Obama policies prior to the withdrawal.

That's quite a defense.

Let's move on to self-beclownment the third. It isn't Obama's fault that ISIL rose up in Iraq:

The real blame for the rise of ISIS in Iraq falls both on Malaki and on President Bush. Even aside from the original sin of invading Iraq under false pretense, there were a number of early mistakes whose impacts are still being felt. After the initial overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government, President Bush did not send in enough troops to stabilize the country after overthrowing the government. Notably, he fired then Chief-of-Staff or the Army General Shinseki, who when pressed, said in testimony that the United States would need to have hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground. Bush compounded the problem by disbanding the Iraqi government and the military through a misguided attempt at de-Baathification, leading thousands of newly-jobless Sunnis. Finally, the selection of Maliki, who had spent his exile years in Iran, as the country’s first prime minister, ensured that sectarianism would play a dominant role in Iraqi politics.

That's a lot of ignorance in one paragraph.

One, there were no false pretenses in invading Iraq. We had lots of reasons as the declaration of war laid out. The reasons were so strong that it was official policy of the United States, as signed by President Clinton, to promote regime change in Iraq to remove Saddam and replace his regime with democracy. [UPDATE: See here for more.]

And while we did not find newly manufactured chemical arms in Iraq after invading, Saddam never did prove he disarmed--as was required--and he in fact had every intention to restart chemical weapons production in relatively short order. If Saddam was bluffing, that was a violation of the 1991 ceasefire that required him to prove he had no chemical weapons programs; and possession of chemical weapons was a bluff that Saddam had every intention of covering as soon as he could.

The idea that we needed 300,000 American troops to pacify Iraq is false given that even Korb admits that we did in fact leave Iraq with a decent security environment in fewer than five years of serious fighting despite never having even 180,000 US troops in Iraq at the height of the surge.

As my tediously repetitive posts during that time showed, we had enough troops--American, coalition, contractor, and Iraqi--to win the military campaign. And we did win. If not, we couldn't have the sight of people like Korb arguing that the unraveling from a previous level of success (which Obama and Biden boasted about) is not President Obama's fault.

Also, General Shinseki was not fired by Bush (by Obama, yes, at the VA). He served a full 4-year term and his retirement was announced a full year before his statement on troop levels.

Korb also insists that but for de-Baathification and disbanding Iraq's army, Iraq's Sunni Arab minority would not have waged an insurgency and terrorism campaign.

This is nonsense. Disbanding the Iraqi army was a legal formality long after the Iraqi army self-disbanded during the war. And consider that the Shias--already a bit suspicious of us for encouraging their revolt in 1991 yet letting Saddam stomp them down when they did rise up--would not have sided with us if we'd kept their torturing Sunni Arab overlords in positions of power.

The real problem is that we allowed Syria and Iran to support insurgents and terrorists. Even so, we ground down our enemies in the period 2003-2006 while building up the Iraqis (and then in the 2007 surge and Awakening) in what is a remarkable accomplishment against what so many war opponents insisted was a "national resistance" to our "occupation."

Finally, while Maliki had a role in Iraq's post-2011 failure, he did well in 2008 when we were firmly in place fighting enemies of Iraq. And President Obama put our weight behind Maliki in 2010 despite his second place finish in a mistaken belief that Maliki would provide stability to justify withdrawal in 2011:

Campaigning on a nonsectarian platform, with Sunni and secular Shia candidates, the coalition won two more seats than did Maliki’s State of Law coalition. Maliki refused to stand down, however, or to concede to the INM the right to attempt to put together a governing coalition. Choosing not to weigh in, the Obama team eventually tired of the stalemate, conveniently concluding that Iraq needed a “Shia strongman,” convinced by elements within the government (presumably the CIA) that Maliki was “our man.” They sent Joseph Biden to deliver, in his ham-handed way, the message to the INM leadership. And with that, according to Sky, the chance for Iraqis “to break the Lebanon model of cementing sectarianism within institutions” went out the window.

So throwing Maliki under the bus to excuse President Obama is a bit too brazen for me.

Also, to blame Bush for the rise of ISIL is to argue that Saddam was superior despite being a brutal, chemical weapons using, terror-sponsoring, aggressive state if he could keep "tame" jihadis in Iraq rather than the feral strain of al Qaeda. Assad thought he could do that, too, when he funneled jihadis into Iraq and then found that the channels he built to do that could simply stop at Damascus to be used against him. Assad did not provide stability and Saddam was not capable of doing that, either.

Jihadis were not created by Bush. Bush simply fought them where we found them--even if they inconveniently fought us in Iraq.

You also have to consider that al Qaeda didn't flee to Iraq until after we destroyed their safe haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban government's protection. Was the "good" war  a mistake when we could have kept al Qaeda in Afghanistan (where they plotted 9/11, recall)?

And given the failure to complete the fight in Afghanistan which was supposedly the "good" war against al Qaeda, I don't want to hear this farcical notion.

Seriously. Korb is a joke.

Let's move on to number 4. Korb says it is "hypocritically wrong"  to blame Obama for the rise of ISIL in Syria:

In the summer of 2013, towards the beginning of the Syrian civil war, President Obama asked Congress to approve U.S. bombing in Syria. In the midst of the chaotic civil war, it was already apparent that ISIS—then one of several Islamist rebel groups in Syria—was more ruthless, systematic, and disciplined than any of them. Congress, as has become typical, dithered and delayed.

One, this is long after the Obama administration refused to help non-jihadi rebels on the theory that we didn't want to "militarize" the conflict. That was 220,000 dead ago. So jumping to 2013 as Korb does glosses over a lot of missed opportunities after our president declared that Assad had to go.

Two, the bombing campaign against Syria was to be "unbelievably small" as Secretary of State Kerry stated. That is not a commitment to overthrowing Assad. That was Concern Theater that few in Congress wanted to go along with.

Three, the bombing was in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons rather than a regime change step by supporting rebels.

And four, President Obama--who does have primacy in foreign policy and as commander-in-chief of the military--chose to ask Congress--whose role is more advice and consent--for permission in the knowledge that they'd save him from having to act. Please note that we are bombing ISIL in Syria and Iraq right now without Congressional permission as Korb says President Obama needed in 2013.

Jesus Christ, I'm still on the first page of this nonsense.

For his fifth point (I feel like a fifth of something at this point), Korb says sending more American troops is historically wrong as a solution. The explanation is on the second page and I'm almost giddy in anticipation of this! Let's click on "Next"!

There is already a robust U.S. presence in the Gulf—35,000 troops in the region—and in Iraq, where some 3,000 service members are on the ground, re-training the crippled Iraqi army. U.S. forces have conducted over 4,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. The real issue is whether the Iraqi forces are willing—and able—to fight for their country. Adding more U.S. troops without real Iraqi commitments to both defeating ISIS and working to heal the sectarian rifts in the country would be as foolish as sending more U.S. troops into South Vietnam in 1975.

I hate to be picky, but 35,000 troops in the Gulf region is not the same as troops in Iraq.

Our air strikes are too cautious, not directed by forward observers, and haven't stopped ISIL. And that is different from forces on the ground, too, I hasten to add.

And that real issue of Iraqi forces fighting ignores the fact that the Obama administration did have a role in their failure in this regard. Yes, Iraq must fight. And our commitment of a relatively small number of troops to directly support Iraqi units we train to enable the army we have is not the same as adding several tens of thousands as we did in the 2007 surge--which worked (historically)--or even 300,000 as Shinseki wrongly insisted we had to commit to win that military campaign.

Yet Korb is insisting that Iraq demonstrate that they don't need our help to defeat ISIL before we help them?

As for the Vietnam in 1975 comment, that says a lot. Yes, after ignoring North Vietnamese overt aggression and failing to provide Saigon with the expected logistics and air power support for two years, direct intervention in 1975 as South Vietnam fell would have been futile. Korb sounds like he is just eager for Iraq to get to the boat people stage so he can move on to arguing for our defeat in another theater of war.

And on that point, mercifully, the article ends. 

Yes indeed, national security analysis with Korb is like going deer hunting with an accordion. I have nothing but disgusted contempt for his analysis and frustration that anybody would take his analysis seriously. The man couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

As a side note, shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on Korb noting that he worked in the Reagan administration when Korb is so awful on defense issues that he is considered appropriate for the Center for American Progress?

And his presence in The National Interest is another reason I don't take this publication seriously.

Did He Mention He Worked for Reagan?

Good grief. Lawrence Korb is at it again. With some guy named Katulis tagging along.

Waving his tenure in the Reagan administration like a talisman to ward off criticism of his love for retreat, Korb wants to vigorously bug out of Iraq. He's always wanted that, but now he has a new hook to replace the "redeploy" ploy:

It is now clear that there is a bipartisan consensus that the United States should reset its entire Middle East strategy. However, this reset must be immediate and sweeping. This nation cannot afford any more half-measures.

Not content to just retreat from victory in Iraq, Korb wants an entirely broader retreat in the entire Middle East to cover the Iraq bug out. No half-measures for Korb! And of course, he wants us to all retreat together (can't have the Left being blamed for any calamity!) .

Talk about shock and awe!

And the birth of a new word for retreat is born! "Reset."

And lest you think that Korb is just trying another path for victory, think again:

Finally, to fulfill a key moral obligation to the Iraqi people, the United States should increase the number of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons it accepts annually from the current 7,000 to 100,000.

Anticipating lots of refugees from the Iraq we leave, are you Mr. Korb? Why would that be?

I have little use for Lawrence Korb's analysis. It's been a while since he worked for President Reagan, so he might try tagging his byline with something a little more recent--and a little more accurate. A Reaganite he isn't.

Let's use all our big brains in our think tanks to win this war, not dress up retreat in language designed to lull us into thinking defeat is a good thing.

Moving Under Our Own Power

When it was published, I emailed myself this opinion piece by Lawrence Korb and a couple other guys who presumably are as poor analysts as Korb is on national defense. It struck me as idiocy. I was honestly put off from blogging on it by its sheer depth and breadth of idiocy. Sometimes a target-rich environment just means your position just gets overrun.

But then Mickey Kaus wondered about the piece, specifically their assertion that the use of local defense forces will hurt the future Iraq. Kaus asks:

In the meantime, how does "progress at the local level," including "declines in the overall level of violence," actually hurt? Without that argument, the piece looks like positioning.

Indeed. I am shamed into tackling it. This is what Kaus is criticizing:

Proponents of the current path claim that, after four years of failed strategies, the surge was needed to get Iraq on track. They point to recent declines in the overall level of violence and cooperation at the local level between some Sunni insurgents and U.S. forces. But the progress being made at the local level often undermines the stated goal of creating a unified, stable, democratic Iraq.

As Kaus notes, the assertion is unsupported. Having denied that our military can do any good in Iraq by misinterpreting the truism that insurgencies are not primarily a military problem, war critics like Korb are now saying the enemy cannot defect to our side. So we can't defeat them in the field. And we also can't allow anybody fighting us in the field stop fighting us and join us. Huh?

As for Iraq being less united, stable, and democratic because of the surge and the enemies' defection, I don't think so.

Under Saddam, the Shia south was kept under sullen control after mass killings and continuous oppression. Western Anbar was subcontracted to the Sunni Arab tribes and not under control of Saddam. The Kurdish north was de facto independent under American and British protection. And even the center was largely subcontracted out to criminal gangs. The Iraqi state was really Saddam's family and favored Tikriti Sunni Arabs plus the security apparatus and a UN seat. It lived off of the people of Iraq but was not a country at all. No unity and no stability except the quiet calm of a corpse, and surely not even Korb believed Saddam was winning those elections at 99+%.

Today, the Kurds remain part of Iraq despite their autonomy. The Shia south is again part of Iraq--and willingly so. Anbar is at least as much a part of Iraq now as under Saddam, and if oil revenue is shared out to the province it will become solid. And the government is gaining control of the center--including tackling the criminal gangs. And through it all, democracy is being honored. And stability is growing from military and political success, and Iraq will be more stable for the democracy we are helping Iraqis build rather than being the sullen quiet of people too beaten down to raise their voices in protest.

Is ethnic division still significant? Yes. But as long as the resulting competition can be confined to politics and elections, why is this ethnic division any more serious a threat to democracy than the bitter Republican-Democratic divide here? Are all of our ethnic groups evenly divided between the parties?

As long as rule of law and minority rights keep losers from pulling out their guns and keep winners from enforcing victory in perpetuity by their guns, competition is actually normal and healthy. Who says they have to get along or like each other much? They just have to play by democracy's rules for this to work.

But according to Korb and his buddies who don't think we can kill our enemies and don't think we can trust our enemies to switch sides, our only apparent option remaining is to surrender.

Which they go on to advise, saying the surge is only making things worse for the region as evidenced by more refugees heading out of Iraq; asserting that our presence in Iraq gives others the excuse to "meddle" in Iraq; and that if we pulled out, all the neighbors would see the folly of their meddling because instability would harm them and instead work to stabilize Iraq.

First of all, the recent wave of refugees really got going when the Iranian-supported Shias and Syrian-supported jihadis started slaughtering civilians in an effort to spark a civil war. And how soon we forget that Saddam's Iraq was known for the large number of Iraqis who had fled Iraq before we invaded. Millions had fled Saddam's "stability."

Korb's call to run away is folly. Maybe people should look at former Zaire where the country collapsed and the neighbors basically decided to loot the bits nearest them. I have difficulty seeing how all these countries soberly decided that stability in the Democratic Republic of Congo was really in their interests.

Our enemies would meddle in Iraq even more if we weren't there. Our presence keeps them from winning. Indeed, we've seen reductions in Iranian support for Shia death squads, reduced Syrian support for jihadis coming in to Iraq, reduced al Qaeda presence as we chase them down and kill or capture them, and the beginnings of the return of refugees from abroad. And military and civilian casualties continue to drop in Iraq to pre-Samarra (February 2006) levels.

If we left, Iraq would be a battleground as each hostile neighbor and al Qaeda tried to control Iraq or pieces of it close to them to create stability that they define and control. A stable and democratic Iraq that is our friend is not in Iran's interest, Syria's interest, or al Qaeda's interest. If Korb and his clique believe otherwise, they should turn in their "reality-based community" badges and decoder rings.

Their solution is to get out of Iraq:

There is one sure way to stop this drift. The United States must set a firm withdrawal date. It is the only way Iraqis and regional leaders will make the compromises necessary to stabilize Iraq and the entire Middle East. This withdrawal can be completed safely in 12 to 18 months and should be started immediately.

President Bush seems content to let Iraq drift until he leaves office, but America can ill afford this policy or, worse, continuing to drift until 2013.

What unadulterated hogwash. Once again, retreat is dressed up like victory and trotted out to see if anyone will buy it. I expect nothing less from Mr. Korb.

The "drift" these fine gentlemen sense is our steady progress toward victory. I just hope whoever becomes president in 2009 is capable of maintaining that motion until 2013.

Dude, The Instructions are Written on the Heel

I wouldn't look to Lawrence Korb for insights on how to spell his last name, let alone for foreign policy or defense advice.

Lawrence Korb has some thoughts on Syria. I will certainly agree that the notion that chemical use that kills a small number of civilians should be the definitive red line that triggers American intervention in a conflict that has caused close to 80,000 dead so far is plain stupid. But Korb's attempt to tie that to a policy of inaction over Syria isn't logical. And his attempt to even avoiding a debate by tarring the Syria crisis to Vietnam, President Clinton's strikes on Sudan, and the Iraq War is both wrong and illogical even if Korb is right about his past warning signs.

I hate having to re-debate the past that many have forgotten just to get to the current debate. Let me just say that Tonkin Gulf did not cause us to go to war with North Vietnam. We had many underlying reasons to go to war. Tonkin Gulf was merely the trigger when we were already poised to intervene to protect our interests.

President Clinton's action would be an example if we were just thinking about a one-off to disarm a country of suspected WMD development (and in Sudan, we worried this was al Qaeda related--should we really have taken that chance looking for courtroom levels of proof?). But Syria is not even close to that situation. We know Syria has chemical weapons. This isn't a question of wondering if Assad has chemical weapons and whether we should try to stop him from getting them. It is a pointless historical example for what is admittedly a pointless (and now discarded, anyway) red line.

As for Iraq, this is just stupid (and that would be K-O-R-B, while I'm at it):

A third historical precedent resurfaced on the tenth anniversary of the ill-fated 2003 invasion of Iraq, when Stephen Hadley, deputy national-security adviser at the time of the invasion, wrote that no one on the Bush team ever thought about questioning whether Saddam Hussein was bluffing about possessing nuclear weapons, a possibility because of his fear that the Iranians might seek revenge for his brutal invasion of their country in 1980. Moreover, nobody questioned why, if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he let UN inspectors return in late 2002, knowing that the Bush administration’s public agitation for war was justified by Hussein’s alleged attempts to acquire nuclear weapons.

It's our fault that Saddam was good at bluffing? This ignores that Saddam had a positive duty to prove he had no WMD or WMD programs. He failed to do that. And after running inspectors around for years, why would letting them back into Iraq in 2002 be a particular problem for Saddam if we did not compel Saddam to prove he had disarmed? We knew Saddam had hidden programs before--even in the 1990s--until caught, so why would we conclude that because we didn't find anything that Saddam didn't have anything?

Remember that those late 2002 inspections did uncover that Iraq had violated restrictions on missile range. Inspectors were actually destroying banned missiles before we invaded! What else Saddam might have was not a ridiculous notion to have.

Finally, Korb acts as if WMD were the only reason to destroy Saddam's regime. He could read the declaration of war for the full set of reasons that our Congress used to justify war. We only emphasized one reason--WMD--because the CIA said it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam had them, and it seemed easier to focus on that one big reason than discuss the broad array of evil and threat that Saddam posed to us, his neighbors, and his own people.

Which brings us to Syria. I have no interest in sending in our ground forces. Turkey, Jordan, and even Israel have ground forces capable of handling a crisis in Syria and neighboring Lebanon. Indeed, even if I was convinced that we should send in troops, I wouldn't support it because I don't think our country has the determination to finish the fight until victory if we go in. It would not be immoral to intervene, of course. But there is no way we would stay the course to win. We can fill in gaps in capabilities for our friends and allies, but ground combat units aren't necessary in my opinion.

But intervening in Syria doesn't mean we have to invade.

Indeed, since Assad has already worn out his air force, we don't even need to penetrate Syrian airspace to hit Syria's air force and airfields. The Turks, Jordanians, and Israelis have plenty of air power to take down anything that Syria puts in the air.

My main point through all of this violence is that it should be a no-brainer to arm rebels who are trying to hurt Assad who has been an enemy of America with plenty of our blood on his hands. Refusing to help the rebels hasn't "militarized" the crisis as the administration famously put it. That happened without us. And even now, some are complaining that we have "let" the blood bath take place--damned if we're Bush, damned if we're anti Bush, eh?

So we have an interest in intervening in Syria--which doesn't mean it has to be direct intervention with our forces--regardless of Assad's chemical weapons use. And focusing on whether Assad has used chemical weapons as if that is the sole reason to intervene in Syria is just plain wrong.

But we're talking Lawrence "I worked for President Reagan" Korb here. So you don't expect him to offer any good advice, do you? If you want a better critique of intervening, try here. Under the circumstances, there are severe limits to what we can do:

So what is an American leader to do in such circumstances? How can one be a statesman in the face of reduced American influence in a semi-anarchic world and in the face of an increasingly demanding media?

The answer may be exactly what Obama is doing now in Syria: modestly assisting some of the rebel groups, but essentially avoiding the level of involvement that would make him henceforth responsible for events on the ground. In other words, let Iran get sucked deeper and deeper into the Syrian maelstrom, not the United States. The maintenance cost for Iran in a crumbling Syria will grow, even as Iran enjoys less influence there than it did during the era of a strong al Assad regime. At the same time, intensify the economic and diplomatic aid to Jordan, which, with its relatively small population and small economy, may well be possible to save. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and so forth are all destined to be weak, quasi-chaotic states that the United States cannot put to rights without the kind of gargantuan effort that would undermine its interests elsewhere in the world and at home.

Again, I'd rule out a big American intervention. I have no problem arming rebels yet refusing to commit troops to support them. Nor do I insist on a perfect outcome to call it a victory. Defeat Assad. That would be a victory. Cope with so-called "blowback" later. That's just life. We spent four decades of dealing with the "blowback" of Soviet power in central Europe after defeating Nazi Germany, after all.

Could our current modest efforts work if they get Iran sucked in, bankrupting Iran and still seeing Assad lose? Sure. But I worry that Iran doesn't go bankrupt and instead gets a partial win out of Assad's partial defeat if we don't assist the rebels more.

This isn't engineering with precise rules. I've conceded that Iraq and Afghanistan could work out fine with minimal American assistance after our campaigns--but I think chances are lower without us. So I admit that Syria could work out fine with minimal US assistance to the rebels. But I still think the chances of our success and Iran's defeat are lower without our assistance.

Repair the Foundation

Our financial and economic problems are bringing to the fore a problem that any long range strategy must address. We need to maintain a military to deal with near-term military problems (a war in Afghanistan, two half-wars in Iraq and Libya, a shadow war globally against jihadis). Toss in containment and gray area skirmishes with pirates, North Korea, and Iran, and we have a full plate right now.

We also need to invest in the military for the next decade's military problems because what we do now will define our capabilities in a decade or two. This means technology, buying weapons, and training high quality people.

Yet our military hardware and technology rely on a sound economic base. We are easily still the largest economic power on the planet. But the cracks in the foundation are apparent:

Standard & Poor's, one of the world's three major credit rating agencies, cited "difficulties in bridging the gulf between political parties" as a major reason for the downgrade from U.S.'s top shelf AAA status to AA+, the next level down. The rating agency has essentially lost faith in Washington's ability to work together to address its debt.

This is a good reminder that raising our debt limit is not the same thing as dealing with our skyrocketing budget deficits. The media conflated the two, acting like failing to raise the limit was failing to satisfy the markets watching our economy. The markets aren't, apparently, impressed with our debt problem being solved with authority to borrow more. Fancy that.

Did President Obama cause this situation? No. Many on the right were not happy with the financial stewardship of the Bush presidency. But my God, President Obama makes Bush look like a skinflint.

In response to our financial problems, Fareed Zakaria counsels defense cuts. And rather than seeing that as a tradeoff that has to be made, he welcomes our new debt overlords:

It would be a much-needed adjustment to an out-of-control military-industrial complex.

A what? Ah yes, the dreaded "military-industrial complex." Boo!!

First of all, before addressing Zakaria's complaint, I must say that I have absolutely no respect for Zakaria as a foreign policy and defense analyst. But it gets worse. Zakaria cites another analyst to bolster his thinking:

Lawrence Korb, who worked at the Pentagon for Ronald Reagan, believes that a $1 trillion cut over 10 to 12 years is feasible without compromising national security.

Good God, it's the Korb leading the Zakaria. Korb, who I believe had his last name officially changed to "Who worked at the Pentagon for Ronald Reagan," is an even worse analyst than Zakaria.

So Zakaria thinks we spend too much on defense, stating:

Over the past decade, when we had no serious national adversaries, U.S. defense spending has gone from about a third of total worldwide defense spending to 50 percent. In other words, we spend more on defense than the planet’s remaining countries put together.

So what? The questions are what do we need and what can we afford? As I wrote in the post criticizing Korb I wrote:

Our economy is way bigger, and the burden of our defense budget compared to that is pretty darned low--even for peacetime levels during the Cold War.

As for the US defense budget being half of the world's--so what? The question is what do we need and what can we afford? We already see that Korb misrepresented what we can afford--as a burden compared to our GDP, defense spending is pretty low. Talking about defense as a fraction of our "discretionary" spending is also misleading because a vast span of domestic spending items are mandatory, while in the strange budgeting world of Washington, D.C., defense spending is a "discretionary" item--as if it is a luxury.

Back to the point, so what if we spend half of the globe's defense budget? One, this allows us to field forces to fight enemies far away from us rather than close to us. There is a reason that the only threats to our soil are terrorists and nuclear weapons. We enjoy the protection of our military keeping potential foes far from us. How much is that worth?

Second, the money buys us equipment and training that allows us to fight more effectively than our enemies. Spending money saves blood--that of our own troops and even the enemy's, too, for that matter. Yes we could win wars without all that stuff and skill. But we'd suffer far more casualties. And leave vast collateral damage in our wake.

We get a lot for our defense dollars at a relatively small (and since Eisenhower, decreasing) burden on our economy. But Zakaria thinks that we spend too much and also that we spend too much relative to non-defense foreign policy:

Defense budget cuts would also force a healthy rebalancing of American foreign policy. Since the Cold War, Congress has tended to fatten the Pentagon while starving foreign policy agencies.

Dude, if your concern is "balance" we could spend the money to get our State Department people some new cell phones. Hell, give 'em a State Department band or 20 if it makes you feel good. But this is typical of left-wing thinking. Worried about the gap between rich and poor? Hobbling the rich is easier and if the gap is narrower, it's the same as raising the poor. And if poor and rich are better off but the rich are more better off? The horror!

If Zakaria is worried about our non-defense foreign policy lacking funding, address that spending. If we slash defense spending to get that magical "balance," will our State Department officials suddenly get upgrades from coach flights as Zakaria complains?

Again, the questions for defense spending are what do we need and what can we afford? In both the near term and the long run?

Remember that Eisenhower wasn't complaining about an imbalance between defense spending and foreign policy spending. His complaints about the military-industrial complex were about warning that they should not have excessive influence in our civilian decision making. This is what Eisenhower said on that score:

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. [Emphasis added]

So Eisenhower thought the actual military-industrial complex was necessary. He goes on about the actual military and industry. Let's go back to the speech Zakaria links but did not apparently read:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

Huh. We need our military. We need industry. And we need them working now in case we need them in the future.

But we can't sustain military spending in the long run if our economy can't support the research and production base of that military. If--and this is a big "if"--we slash domestic spending (discretionary and non-discretionary) I'd be willing to cut defense spending in the short run to leverage those cuts.

But if our apparent resolve to balance our budget fails to change business as usual and the usual suspect of defense spending bears the burden of cuts that won't affect the bottom line anyway (because legislators turn around and spend saved defense dollars on domestic projects), then I oppose any defense cuts at all since we'd harm the foundation and gut the existing defense "building" that rests on the foundation.

I wonder if Eisenhower had anything to say about balancing today's wants with tomorrow's needs? Ka-ching!

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Inconveniently, we've become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow (well, AA+ rating, anyway).

Oh, and as long as we are having fun with Eisenhower's farewell address, might this section be relevant to the global warming science industry today that wants to regulate every aspect of our life for our own good?

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Beware the "scientific-technological elite." Words to remember.

Balance, people. And when domestic spending has outstripped defense spending since Eisenhower was president, don't be so quick to assume where that balance lies.

God, I hate myself when I waste my time reading Zakaria's so-called defense analysis. Let me go take a shower, now.

UPDATE: Samuelson has more on the declining defense budget:

Even before the deal, the Obama administration projected that — assuming continued withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan — defense spending would shrink to 15 percent of the budget by 2016. This would be the lowest share since before World War II. The deal’s cuts, potentially as much as $950 billion over a decade, would reduce that further. In the 1950s and ’60s, defense often was half of the budget.

Balance, indeed. I don't think that word means what Zakaria thinks it means.

Down But Not Out

Secretary Rice said we might draw down of troops in Iraq by the end of the year. It could be fewer than 100,000:

There are now about 133,000 American troops in Iraq. Military officials have expressed hope they can reduce the number below 100,000 by year's end.

Considering that a brigade has 3,500 and that we are perhaps looking at a withdrawal of 35,000 troops, this could mean that 8 of our 15 brigades/regimental combat teams pull out plus 7,000 other supporting troops. That would leave seven brigades plus a whole lot of Army support personnel and Air Force and Navy people in support roles. So even if the total draw down doesn't look too great, the fact is more than half the trigger pullers could be out. Our casualties could be down to single digits of KIA per month if we remain in the fight.

What I will really be interested in seeing is whether the remaining seven brigades are in combat or in garrison to watch the Iranians (assuming we still need to watch them).

And given that the Iraqi military will still be a light infantry counter-insurgency army at the end of the year, I wouldn't expect our numbers to go down much from just under 100,000 for quite some time. But the important thing will be that our combat role should dwindle.

I expected that at some point our troop strength in Iraq would be 75,000 including 7 combat brigades. As Iraqi logistics and support troops come on line, we could drop another 20,000 or so to get to this point.

And once there, we will remain at that level until the Iraqis can handle large scale conventional operations to defend their borders from conventional attack. And if the Iraqis want us to leave and we want to leave.

Even after Iraq can defend itself, I could see a few American combat brigades and Air Force units remaining in the 25,000-30,000 level for a long time if the Iraqis are agreeable.

We are so close to winning this that it is frustrating to see the panicistas gaining clout back home.

UPDATE: Stand-To! links to a piece of idiocy by two so-called defense analysts who either don't understand what I wrote above or who just want us to lose:

The best alternative among these is a balanced plan named "strategic redeployment," which calls for a gradual drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq over the next two years. The plan began circulating in Washington in September after Lawrence Korb, a former Reagan administration assistant defense secretary, and I published a paper on it at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.

The plan calls on the Bush administration to encourage Iraqi leaders to take control of their country by saying the U.S. military is going to leave Iraq - and set a timetable for doing so. The proposal says the United States should draw down its troop presence from its present level of 136,000 to 60,000 by the end of the year, and to virtually zero by the end of 2007. It also encourages more vigorous diplomacy in the region and in Iraq, to bring the country's factions together.

I remember back in 1975 when Saigon announced they were carrying out a "strategic withdrawal" in the face of Hanoi's massive offensive. What it meant then was retreat and eventual defeat. It still means the same thing.

And as I note, drawing down to virtually zero too soon means that Iraq will lack the support services that they cannot yet provide (intelligence, logistics, repair, training, etc.) and will lack the robust conventional power to deter foreign invaders. These capabilities will take time to build in Iraq, but Katulis and Korb don't care about that. Or don't understand.

I don't know who the article's author, Brian Katulis, is; but I do know Lawrence Korb. I think he legally changed his name to "Lawrence Korb Former Reagan Assistant Secretary of Defense" since I never see his name in print without the former job appended to it. He can chant "Reagan" as much as he likes. But I remember Reagan, and Korb is no Reaganite.

And this plan is no plan at all. And do I need to even address the idea that "vigorous" diplomacy with Iran will do any good inside Iraq? Some people are seriously ignorant of the basics.

An Issue of Timing

I swear, some lefty analysts really couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel:

My colleagues at the Center for American Progress and I have been arguing for several years that the best hope for creating a stable Iraq and enhancing our ability to deal with the critical threats to our security-particularly in Afghanistan-was to set a specific date for withdrawal of U.S. forces. Although we were severely criticized by the Bush administration and its acolytes for "cutting and running," we were vindicated when President George W. Bush, in November 2008, signed the security agreement that was part of the Status of Forces Agreement. The SOFA stipulated that all American troops would withdraw from the Iraqi cities to their bases by June 30, 2009 and not conduct independent military operations after that date. The United States also agreed to leave the country completely by the end of 2011.

After his election, President Barack Obama began implementing the strategic agreement and began to fulfill his campaign promise by agreeing to withdraw all combat troops by August 31, 2010 and all remaining troops by the end of 2011.

Lawrence Korb, who wrote the above, is one of those clueless analysts. Is he truly saying that withdrawing according to a fairly set schedule after winning--which we are doing (and based on no bad surprises so far to alter our plan)--is the same as setting a timetable for withdrawal while the fight was raging at its peak? Which is what the president wanted, of course--withdraw before we won and pray for victory.

Yet Korb thinks doing the former is the same as the latter--"vindicating" his advocacy for withdrawal based on a timetable before the surge took effect. The fact is, President Obama could not carry out his campaign promise because we won the war--which I marked as the date of the SOFA signing--before he took office.

So Korb's claim of vindication is like saying that calling for a withdrawal timetable for our troops in Europe would make no difference whether it took place in May 1944 or May 1945, ignoring the difference that the fighting from D-Day to the fall of Berlin made. The diffence, of course, is that the former would have been "cutting and running" while the latter was "victory." CAP should look into the nuances of that difference.

Korb truly is that dense. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever read anything by him that wasn't drivel.

I eagerly await his impressions of Iraq, where he currently is.

Never Mind

The liberal side of the aisle here in the US has long claimed that we need more troops in Afghanistan, and that Iraq "distracts" us from sending more troops.

Of course, right up until the President decided on a surge in Iraq, the left side of the aisle claimed that we had too few troops in Iraq. Once we decided to add troops, the loyal opposition reversed course.

So, of course, even as Barack Obama argued for more troops for Afghanistan and his loyal minions backed him up, you had to know that the left side of the aisle would change their minds about the surge for Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for, right?

Ahem:

Sending more U.S. forces to Afghanistan is an idea whose time has come. The question is whether the time when it could work has already gone.

President-elect Barack Obama, departing President George W. Bush and holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates have backed a plan to send 20,000 or more troops next year. Those forces must confront an increasingly entrenched Taliban enemy and a population grown hostile to foreign troops after seven years of U.S.-led warfare.

“We may have missed the golden moment there,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who has long advocated an increased U.S. focus on Afghanistan.

Well what do you know? Korb long supported more troops. But now that we will do exactly that, it's too late! Never mind. That mythical "golden moment" sadly passed! It always does for them, doesn't it? They're the Goldilocks Warriors.

Look, I don't think we really need a surge of troops in Afghanistan. We simply aren't losing and our objectives shouldn't be that high for the country. And most of our Afghanistan problem is actually a Pakistan problem. Besides, I worry about the safety of our supply lines to Afghanistan through Pakistan.

But the point is, I knew our Left would come to think the "good war" was bad once it becomes the only war they have to oppose. With Iraq all but won, Afghanistan is rising up on the Left's hit list.

Good God, man. Don't tell me you ever believed our Left wanted to win in Afghanistan!