“Slow March into Darfur” (Posted July 31, 2004)
The British, the French,
and the African Union are prepared to send troops to cope with the Darfur crisis. The UN is being dragged along
to halt genocide and the US
is the one dragging. Once again, Britain
is tugging along with us. The French are grabbing the rope, too, but I’m not
sure which end they are on yet. The vaunted “international community” is
debating the competing options of doing nothing or waiting until it is too late
and then making the situation worse. They really are that good.
Like I said, two battalion-sized ground forces—one US and
one European—can back up one US
and one European fighter squadron in two bases in eastern Chad.
Lord knows Chad
has little in the way of infrastructure, but there are air strips out there
that we should be able to use with some preparation. It could be a lot since I
have no idea if the airfields on the old maps I checked have been used in the
last two decades. But we do practice expeditionary warfare even with our Air
Force. And we don’t need massive force given Sudan’s
weak military. And France’s
long military presence in Chad
means there is a logistics path that can be used to supply the forces even if Libya
refuses to help.
Throw in AU forces that will patrol in Darfur, and Western troops can spot check on
the ground while providing ground security at the air strips. A no-fly/no-drive
zone will be enforced by Western air power. All this to get
aid to the region and keep the genocide from succeeding. That’s my story
and I’m sticking to it.
Ultimately, we’ll have to reverse the ethnic/religious
cleansing. I think the world should split up Sudan
and bugger the inviolability of African borders.
We shall see whether coping means stopping the genocide or
doing nothing until the international community can breathe a sigh of relief
that it is too late to do anything.
I happen to think that a humanitarian purpose supports a
national interest purpose in harming a state that has harbored Islamist
terrorists including bin Laden in the past and which is probably still a
playground for Islamist terrorists. The Darfurians
can be grateful that Khartoum does
not have WMD. Because otherwise the humanitarian lobby wouldn’t think action is
warranted.
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Your Axis of El Vil
update.
Chavez’s government thinks
he will win the vote next month on his recall:
Venezuela's vice president
told a U.N. envoy Thursday that the government will respect the outcome of the
Aug. 15 recall referendum on Hugo Chavez's presidency "whatever it
is."
This confidence is based on some real support (dictators
usually have a base of support) and a willingness to use state power to twist
the system to its advantage. Chavez will follow the forms of democracy while
using thug methods to shape the results. He is also making the election
process vulnerable to dispute and disruption:
Venezuela's opposition worries that a recall
referendum on President Hugo Chavez will, in the least, be made more difficult
by new voter lists, an electronic voting system and untested thumbprint ID
devices. At worst, some say, all that technology could be an elaborate attempt
aimed at making the vote fail.
If the people of Venezuela
are too afraid to tell the pollsters who they will vote for like the Nicaraguan
elections that turned the Sandinistas out, Chavez is readying
the excuses:
[Venezuelan]
Interior Minister Luis Rincon said
radicals were seeking to use plastic explosives stolen from a navy base to
create chaos during the voting.
"There are people here, and they aren't favored in the
polls, who want a scenario of violence," Lucas Rincon said. "They
think it will change the result of the vote."
Authorities have yet to recover some 138 pounds of C-4
plastic explosive and 80 detonators that were reported stolen July 17 from a
navy base in the coastal city of Puerto Cabello, 70
miles west of Caracas.
Rincon said that Chavez opponents, including dissident
military officers who have been discharged, could use the explosives in a
"subversive plan" to create chaos before or during the Aug. 15 recall
referendum.
I have no doubt that explosives will be used to disrupt the
elections. I also have no doubt that the bombers will be employees of Chavez.
If the vote goes his way, the voters supported him in the face of “US-backed
terrorists.” If the vote goes against him, the violence will be all the excuse Chavez
needs that the election was not “fair” and so will be nullified. Heck, even
without a few bombs, the election could collapse the way Chavez is setting it
up. Chavez has put in a self-destruct button on the whole process.
What will Jimmy Carter say? He is monitoring the process.
Will he stand up for America?
For Venezuelan democracy? Or just for the
anti-American thug?
And what do we do? As I’ve said, unless Chavez opens his
country to Islamist terrorists, this is not a military problem given the other
threats we face (Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran,
North Korea, Taiwan).
Sadly, stability is all we can strive for here, right now. And I bet Chavez
knows that even as he rails about imaginary US
plots. The Venezuelan opposition can only count on our moral support and
whatever good Jimmy Carter can do for them.
God help them all.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA31JUL04C
Iran
just started
the clock to regime change in Tehran:
Diplomats said this week that Tehran has restarted
equipment used to make uranium hexaflouride, which —
when injected into centrifuges and spun — can be enriched to low levels to be
used as fuel to generate electricity or to levels high enough to make nuclear
weapons.
Kharrazi said Iran restarted the
centrifuge construction after the three European countries failed to help
overcome questions about Iran's compliance with
International Atomic Energy Agency commitments despite promising in February to
work toward closure by June if Iran stopped making
centrifuges. It did so in April.
In a sign of progress, the 3 European countries in question
have not just gone along with the fiction that Iran
doesn’t want nuclear weapons.
There will be regime change and with some extra troops in
Afghanistan, we could cut loose a large brigade to go into eastern Iran and
maybe strip a division from Iraq from the west. The Marines might get a brigade
from the sea in the south. Iranian military forces loyal to the regime will
need to mass to oppose our regular forces, making them vulnerable to air power
(and to the brigades themselves). These American conventional units will just
be backups/support to air power and special forces
that will take the lead supporting rebels against the mullahs. Six brigades are
nowhere near enough to invade and conquer Iran,
of course; but I refuse to believe we’ve been idle with Iran
the last year or two.
We have little time to stop Iran
from getting nuclear missiles. We must act in spring 2005. Or,
depending on the election here, December 2004. If we make the Iranian
people and military wait to revolt until the spring under a new government here,
we’ll see a new Bay of Pigs to complete our JFK nostalgia
tour. And then in a couple years, a new missile crisis.
Are we having fun yet?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA31JUL04B
Peking sees
2008 as a critical year:
A senior Chinese official warned that Beijing won't rule out
war with Taiwan if the island's
president pursues his plan to adopt a new constitution by 2008, the
government's China Daily newspaper
reported Friday.
The Chinese are trying
to soften their recent rhetoric over taking Taiwan
(oh, excuse, me, “resolving” the issue):
China will exert its
"utmost efforts" to resolve the Taiwan issue by peaceful
means, but will never tolerate independence for the island, Chinese President Hu Jintao told his U.S. counterpart,
state media said on Saturday.
This isn’t quite the same as the headline:
China to Resolve Taiwan Peacefully, Hu Tells Bush
Of course, the
Chinese would like to resolve this
peacefully, but the key is they will “resolve” it and that means Peking
rules Taiwan at
the end of the day. Rice can confirm that the Chinese are determined to resolve
this issue:
When U.S. national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice held talks in Beijing this month, she
found Chinese officials focused on Taiwan.
North Korea
is trying to be a nuclear power and could trigger a war that devastates the
Korean peninsula or trigger events that could lead to South
Korea, Japan,
and Taiwan
going nuclear if North Korea
won’t dismantle its nuclear programs, and China
is blindered to those issues by their focus on Taiwan.
Were I the supreme ruler of China,
I’d invade Taiwan
with everything I could scrape up on the eve of the Peking 2008 Olympics. Who’d
think they’d spoil that symbol of arriving on the world stage? I would, for
one. A pageant is expendable when the real basis of your claim to legitimacy in
a monopoly on political power is slipping away.
A sense of urgency is needed on Taiwan
to build an effective military to hold the line until help from us can arrive.
And we need to be ready to help. We cannot let China
absorb Taiwan.
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I've opined repeatedly that
were I the China God, I'd invade Taiwan on the eve of the Peking 2008 Olympics. The Chinese
communists want Taiwan very badly and have not been shy about telling us this simple fact. I
happen to believe them. Still, I've read nothing at all to support this and so
lapse into worries that I'm being paranoid. Then that feeling wears off and I
write about this again. So this article from Strategypage is sobering:
Chinese diplomats have let it be known
that retired generals recommended to Jiang Zemin, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission and
former head of state, that China “settle the issue of Taiwan well ahead of the
2008 Olympics to be held in Beijing.”
And what do a lot of China's generals think? Listen to the rebuke they received:
A few weeks later, one of the deputy
chiefs of staff of the Chinese air force (PLAAF) made an address to army (PLA)
officers in which he chastised them for believing that a war with Taiwan and the United
States would be “easy to win.”
Although many analysts
disregard China's ability to invade, I do not. We should not mirror
image them. They may not be able to muster an Okinawa 1945-style invasion with all the specialized stuff that we excel at
making and using, but they can sure muster a half-baked Norway 1940-style invasion with what they've got:
If the number of active duty amphibious
ships in the Chinese Navy is modest, the U.S.
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) says the total number of Army, Navy, Coast
Guard (former Provincial Military District) amphibious ships and craft is vast.
Both PLA Ground Forces and PLA Air Force have formal shipping transportation
organizations not described or counted in most naval references.
In addition, according to ONI, there are
vast numbers of civil amphibious vessels used for island and river
communication, potentially available for mobilization. One analysis indicates
that formal military amphibious assets can lift 38 heavy (i.e. tank) battalions
plus 58 infantry battalions (of which reserve elements lift 17 heavy battalions
and 32 infantry battalions). In addition, assets serving as civil ferries
(probably understated as not all are listed in international registries) can
lift 7 heavy battalions, 30 medium (i.e. motorized) battalions, and 226
infantry battalions. No less than 95 of the latter can be carried by high speed
surface skimmers, an item of concern to Taiwanese military planners. Actual
maritime lift includes 139 heavy battalions, 362 medium battalions and 175
infantry battalions on merchant ships and a further 30 medium battalions and 23
infantry battalions on naval auxiliary ships. While only a fraction of these
would be available for mobilization, clearly the amount of lift exceeds any
realistic requirement.
China can invade Taiwan and they want Taiwan. And they fear
Taiwan will slip from their grasp forever if too much time
passes. Nukes and deeply embedded democracy, if allowed to develop on Taiwan, could keep Taiwan independent as long as the Taiwanese want.
I think that China's capabilities to invade are far greater than people
realize. But ultimately, when deciding on war and peace, it matters not what
the real situation is. What the decision-makers believe is most important. Once
the shooting starts, reality rears its ugly head, but by then thousands are
dying to prove what reality is.
Rush arms to Taiwan and get them to shape up militarily. Make it clear to
China that we will fight for Taiwan. Keep our Stryker brigades, Marines, and naval and
air power on guard. And given the opinion of Chinese officers that we would be
easy to beat, stop those ridiculous tours of our military units that we give
the Chinese routinely. We think it is shock and awe that will make them too
scared to fight us, but all it does is give them
insights on how to beat us.
We can beat China but I'd rather not have to. We're kind of busy.
Update: For the benefit of viewers linking in (thanks Rev. Sensing!), I'll repost this example of how an invasion can
be carried out in the face of a superior naval force. I'm ashamed to admit I
haven't gotten around to finishing this planned trilogy…
“The Taiwan Showdown—Part II (Invasion Without a Navy)” (Posted January 1, 2004)
Sources used include this 1997 Air Command
and Staff College research
paper by Major Brian T. Baxley; and Norway 1940
website.
Invasion Problem
This is the basic problem. You are a major land power with plenty of troops and aircraft and you wish to conquer a far smaller country. While the status quo is acceptable, a change for the worse is not. The problem is you have to cross quite a bit of sea to get to the target and you have little amphibious warfare capability. To add to your misery, a major power with a powerful navy that includes aircraft carriers, possibly supported by another major power, may intervene to stop you.
This is the basic problem. You are a major land power with plenty of troops and aircraft and you wish to conquer a far smaller country. While the status quo is acceptable, a change for the worse is not. The problem is you have to cross quite a bit of sea to get to the target and you have little amphibious warfare capability. To add to your misery, a major power with a powerful navy that includes aircraft carriers, possibly supported by another major power, may intervene to stop you.
This is China's problem today. They may need to invade Taiwan but the United States and maybe Japan stand in the way. But it
was also Germany's problem in the spring of 1940. As long
as Norway was neutral, Germany could import critical iron ore and remain
free from attack from enemy bases in Norway. Germany had to contemplate British and French
resistance to their plans or even pre-emptive action. Yet Germany pulled off the invasion and Norway remained under German control for the
remainder of the war.
So how did Germany do it?
Norwegian defenders
The Norwegians had 12,000 troops on active duty in 6 infantry brigades, three cavalry regiments, and separate units. Reserves were 120,000 strong. The brigades were poorly equipped and lacked mobility. The Norwegians had little artillery or anti-aircraft weapons. They had an old and small navy, dispersed across Norway’s long coast. The Norwegians had only about 40 old combat aircraft. In addition, neutral Denmark was in the way.
The Norwegians had 12,000 troops on active duty in 6 infantry brigades, three cavalry regiments, and separate units. Reserves were 120,000 strong. The brigades were poorly equipped and lacked mobility. The Norwegians had little artillery or anti-aircraft weapons. They had an old and small navy, dispersed across Norway’s long coast. The Norwegians had only about 40 old combat aircraft. In addition, neutral Denmark was in the way.
German invasion force
The Germans had six infantry division and a parachute battalion allocated to conquer Norway. The German navy was modern and of good quality, but had few ships. Thirty warships were available but Germany had no amphibious ships to carry troops.
The Germans had six infantry division and a parachute battalion allocated to conquer Norway. The German navy was modern and of good quality, but had few ships. Thirty warships were available but Germany had no amphibious ships to carry troops.
The Germans had 500 transport aircraft
each capable of carrying 28 troops. They also had 100 fighters and 330 bombers
for the invasion.
Allied expectations
The British only expected a small German effort if they went after Norway. The British based their plans on the Germans being able to invade with no more than eight battalions. The British had a large navy with aircraft carriers, although the carrier aircraft were not equal to the German aircraft nor could the British carriers hold many planes. Still, German bases were far to the south of Norway. The Norwegians expected the British to help them.
The British only expected a small German effort if they went after Norway. The British based their plans on the Germans being able to invade with no more than eight battalions. The British had a large navy with aircraft carriers, although the carrier aircraft were not equal to the German aircraft nor could the British carriers hold many planes. Still, German bases were far to the south of Norway. The Norwegians expected the British to help them.
German invasion plan
For ground forces, Germany was able to deploy 50 battalions of troops. The British wrongly assumed only 6-8 battalions could be landed. The Germans exceeded the worst-case British estimate by a factor of six. How did the Germans do this?
For ground forces, Germany was able to deploy 50 battalions of troops. The British wrongly assumed only 6-8 battalions could be landed. The Germans exceeded the worst-case British estimate by a factor of six. How did the Germans do this?
The Germans sent ships to sea six days
before the invasion date in order to attack widely separated targets
simultaneously. The Germans deployed a parachute battalion and about 9,000
infantry carried aboard warships in six groups for the initial landings at
different points in Norway (Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Kristiansand
& Arendal, Oslo, and Egersand).
Another 1,400 were dedicated to an assault on Denmark, which would provide convenient stepping
stones to Norway. Two battlecruisers
were the primary heavy naval force to escort the invasion elements in the
northernmost thrust.
The Germans disguised transport ships as
civilian cargo ships to carry the second wave. These ships made repeated trips.A half dozen submarines were outfitted to carry
supplies. German bombers were held in reserve to attack any British navy forces
found by recon aircraft over the North Sea.
The invasion
On April 9, 1940, German forces began their invasion of Norway. The Norwegian navy just watched the Germans go by, unwilling to initiate hostilities. The British lacked enough recon aircraft to track the German fleet.
On April 9, 1940, German forces began their invasion of Norway. The Norwegian navy just watched the Germans go by, unwilling to initiate hostilities. The British lacked enough recon aircraft to track the German fleet.
Two airborne landings were made at Stavenger and Oslo, supported by German airpower. German air
transports then airlifted 6 battalions into Oslo and 2 more into Stavenger
to reinforce. At Bergen, 3 seaplanes brought in troops. Air power helped the German
warships enter the harbors for the first wave. Initial objectives were captured
quickly and they began to fan out to the rest of the country. The Norwegian
navy did interfere with water lines of supply but Germans relied on air
transports for resupply. The Germans quickly put
captured airfields into use for their own aircraft to support the troops and
fight off any British naval intervention.
In the middle of April, small British and
French forces landed in Norway to resist the German invasion. Four
British brigades, 3 French demi-brigades, and a
Polish brigade (plus supporting units) were sent to Norway to oppose the Germans. The British
deployed a few dozen fighters to Norway but were unable to prevent the Germans
from gaining air superiority. German air power kept British navy in northern
Norwegian waters. The Germans were successful in pushing back the allies
everywhere but at Narvik in the north, which the
allies captured after fatal hesitation on May 28. Ten German destroyers in Narvik harbor were sunk by two British forays into the
harbor.
With the Germans crushing French and
British resistance in France, the allies withdrew from their isolated Narvik toehold by June 9. The Germans managed to sink one
of the British carriers in the final phase, 260 miles west of Norway.
End state
The Germans overwhelmed the Norwegian and Allied forces that tried to hold Norway. In the short run, the German surface fleet was crippled. Both battlecruisers were damaged and out of action for six months. But the occupation of Norway allowed the Germans to secure their iron ore imports from Sweden, protect their northern flank and prevent Allied attacks from that direction, and provided bases to send out ships, submarines, and planes to strike British naval forces. When Allied convoys passed by Norwegian waters to supply the Soviet Union later in the war, German bases here allowed the Germans to savage the vital supply lines.
The Germans overwhelmed the Norwegian and Allied forces that tried to hold Norway. In the short run, the German surface fleet was crippled. Both battlecruisers were damaged and out of action for six months. But the occupation of Norway allowed the Germans to secure their iron ore imports from Sweden, protect their northern flank and prevent Allied attacks from that direction, and provided bases to send out ships, submarines, and planes to strike British naval forces. When Allied convoys passed by Norwegian waters to supply the Soviet Union later in the war, German bases here allowed the Germans to savage the vital supply lines.
As one author of the campaign stated
(quoted in Baxley’s paper):
The occupation of Norway
was a great military success for Germany.
In the face of British naval superiority, the landing operation could only
succeed if the intention remained concealed long enough to make allied
counter-measures late and therefore ineffective. This was achieved. The Allies’
delay, and their failure to act immediately on receipt of the
first news of the German invasion, were contributory causes to the
German success.
It was an impressive performance for a
country with a small navy and a non-existent amphibious warfare force.
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Our military is good. Peters has the goods.
Despite the bitching that the press notes loudly, recruiting is going just
fine. And why? Well the low
casualties we endure even in war is one reason.
Patriotism is another. Why would the press understand that complaining is a
God-given right for our soldiers and they exercise it freely? Don't mean nothing, folks. Our guys and gals are reenlisting just fine:
Sensational media accounts make it sound
as though no soldier will ever re-enlist again, as if mutiny's just around the
corner.
In fact, re-enlistment rates in the
active-duty Army and the reserve components have risen dramatically. Re-up
rates are especially high in units that have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Our vets
are proud, not embittered. And all of the Army's components are meeting or
exceeding new-recruit targets, except for a slight lag in the National Guard — a gap recruiters expect to make up in the coming months.
Peters also notes what I like
to note, that our Army National Guard combat units are better than European
active duty combat units (the British excepted I imagine):
A few months ago, an Army
general with service in Iraq as well as extensive NATO experience remarked to
me, "Think of the weakest National Guard unit you saw in your career —
they're light years ahead of the best the [continental] Europeans have
got."
Our reserves are cursed to be
compared to our active duty forces and not our enemies (or allies).
Yet our military is too
small—our Army to be specific. We are adding 30,000 troops to the force in
addition to the mobilized reserves but adding new units can't be done too
quickly. But the military is wary of adding troops to relieve today's stress
when the stress may recede because of success before enough troops to relieve
today's stress can be put in place. Yet what if the stress does not dissipate
as the brass anticipates?
I'd like to suggest we
recruit our own foreign legion—An American Foreign Legion. At first I thought
we should establish a Free French force as the only realistic way to get the
French to help us given their dogged
opposition to any NATO help. That's the only way they helped in World War
II, after all (I don't count the live-fire training exercise that Paris gave
Germany in 1940). Why not try it again? As much as I ridicule the French, I do
actually have hope that some good fraction of the French people does support us
despite the cynical crooks who lead them and the many people who think we are a
greater threat than Islamist whack jobs. But then I thought, there are probably
lots of Europeans and others around the world who
support us despite the hostility, neutrality, or lukewarm support of their
governments. Why not turn a cheap shot at the French into a real policy option?
American officers and NCOs
with bilingual skills would lead lower-ranking enlisted personnel recruited
from foreign countries. Form them into national-based companies in plug and
play light infantry battalions that could be attached to our brigades or used
independently. Base them on US or allied territory overseas from basic training
on. Teach them English to understand commands and citizenship to give them
goals to work for. Teach them riot control and counter-insurgency techniques. Guarantee
that they will face two tours overseas in combat in a 6-year term of
enlistment. Provide them with citizenship upon completion of their terms (or
upon wounding or death in combat) and allow them to transfer at the end of
their service to the regular Army or Marines or become a civilian and move to America. There will be no retirement pay from the AFL. Think
of them as temps. Do not let them re-enlist in the AFL to keep a mercenary
force from developing in our military establishment. Indeed, max out their rank
at sergeant E-5.
And building such a force
would be better than a dedicated constabulary corps in the Army to keep our
Army a single force dedicated to winning wars instead of bifurcating into hard
and soft units. We will avoid the problem of needlessly expanding our military
and then having to pay for it since we can just disband these units at any time
and pull the US cadre back to the Army and Marines. We'd have
combat-oriented forces that we can actually use with a reward that many will
want very badly. Plus, we'd give people friendly toward us an opportunity to fight
with us when their own countries will not help us fight our common enemy.
We could aim for 15,000 in 30
battalions, bringing in 5 battalions every year as we discharge 5 battalions.
An American
Foreign Legion. I like the idea.
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The U.S. head of detainee
operations in Iraq, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, told the People's Mujahideen
Organization (MKO) its members held at a base in eastern Iraq had been
recognized as "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention."
I've seen them referred to as
MEK (Mujahideen-e Khalq),
but these are the same guys. Are we keeping them to accompany US forces into Iran to act as liaisons? We've had a year to shape them
and screen them for this role. And we have another 6 months probably before the
revolution. We will intervene when this happens/we spark it.
The Iranian mullahs aren't
happy at all about this development. And the French don't like the group. Far
be it from me to suggest that what these two countries hate we must
automatically like, but I'm willing to make the leap in this case.
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The Army is debating whether constant
patrolling of Iraqi streets by US troops is counter-productive:
Advocates of the new approach say U.S. troops would
be more effective if they were kept out of view of the Iraqi public, and even
removed to remote desert bases, appearing only when needed to conduct
operations beyond the capacity of Iraqi security forces.
Yes. I've been lonely out
here arguing that flooding the zone with troops would be counter-productive and
that we need to push Iraqis to fight the war against the Baathists.
Of course, this doesn't mean
cut and run:
Marshall, who has made two trips to Iraq
in the past year, said the issue for U.S. commanders
will be finding a way to reduce their presence without simply surrendering turf
to insurgents. "The real dilemma is when you leave a vacuum," he
said, "because that lawless environment will be filled by hard-liners, so
there's a balance that needs to be struck."
We needed to patrol as long
as we didn't have Iraqis capable of doing the job. As the Iraqis field more and
more capable troops, we need to pull back. Not too fast to create a vacuum but
not too slow to create friction with the local population. Note that this
doesn't mean that our presence is creating insurgents and we would have been
better off staying out of Iraq. We destroyed a threat by crushing Saddam's regime
and that required invading and patrolling the defeated country. Now we must
create a friendly Iraq and as any people would, the Iraqis don't like foreign troops—even
liberators—around for long (just ask the French about that). Pulling back to
let Iraqis fight will produce the friendly Iraq and keep the US-Iraq friction at a minimum. Our
troops should be the conventional backup, deter foreign invasion, and strike
quietly with special forces in tandem with the Iraqi security forces
Can we finally stop the silly
talk of needing several hundred thousand US troops to occupy Iraq?
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Ledeen came in too
late to add to yesterday's
post. It belongs there:
There are plenty of terrorists out there
who aren't Islamists. (There are even some suicide terrorists who have been
forced into it; Coalition commanders are reporting the discovery of hands
chained to steering wheels in suicide vehicles.) But all the terror masters are
tyrants. Saddam didn't have any religious standing, nor do the Assads, but they
are in the front rank of the terror masters. Ergo: Defeat the tyrants, win the
war.
And then historians can study the failed
ideology.
Machiavelli, Chapter Two: If you are
victorious, people will always judge the means you used to have been
appropriate.
Corollary from Lyndon Baines Johnson:
When you have them by the balls, the hearts and minds generally follow.
Just win. Or as I said once,
just kill the
dots. And the states that support them or cheer them on.
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I was just in awe reading Orson Scott
Card's latest. He hits on so many points that I have or would like to rant
on that I can only say read it all. As they say, I'll wait.
I'll nod emphatically in
agreement over only one point to save time since I know you went and read the
piece.
How on Earth can the endless
debate over the Iraq War be over who to blame? Hell, blame me! I'll take the
blame for ending a despot's nightmare reign of human rights abuses, threats to
conquer and intimidate his neighbors to advance his personal glory, support for
terror, pursuit of chemicals, bugs, and nukes. And all in a brilliant campaign
unique for its care for civilians and low friendly casualties. A campaign
successfully executed despite cries that the Moslem and Arab street would rise
up and split the region asunder. So toss in the diplomatic credit, too. Please, blame me. As Card notes:
I'm
fed up with the attempt to blame somebody for a
military campaign that by any rational historical measure was an utter triumph.
An utter triumph. So right. Sadly,
the ability to measure the results and means requires rationality. How
satisfying is that when you can chant "Jobs not war" like it actually
means something?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA27JUL04A
We are at war today. Really. We've been under attack for a long time but we first
began to seriously fight the war in the skies over Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. That day we fought back with nothing but our
determination and airline cutlery and won our first victory over the Islamist
terrorists.
I'm not that interested in
fighting over who bears more responsibility for 9-11. Our Islamist enemies are
at fault. Bush failed in 8 months to stop the attacks and Clinton failed in 8 years to stop the attacks. I only get
interested in the debate when the left's partisans insist that the 8 months are
the only fault involved. They forget their man. More amazingly, they forget the
attackers. Still, I largely agree with Steyn who wrote:
I'm not saying Clinton, Berger & Co.
are the Chamberlains of this new war. The point is
even Chamberlain wasn't Chamberlain when he died: Posterity had yet to chisel
him the one-word epitaph "Appeaser." And neither side of the
appeasement debate thought it worth spending the 1940s arguing about the 1930s:
There were other priorities. And, in fairness to Chamberlain, the overwhelming
majority of the British people supported "appeasement," just as, in
fairness to Clinton, most of the
American people were happy to string along on an eight-year holiday from
history.
Even if Clinton had pounded the podium for eight years, insisting
that we had to fight terrorists before they hit us, the public was not ready
for this fight yet. If it can even be said that we are now after 9-11, that is.
And I think our strategy for
fighting our enemies is the only reasonable way to fight the war. From the National Security
Strategy of the United States of America, we are committed to preempting
threats:
We must adapt the concept of imminent
threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. Rogue states
and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know
such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially,
the use of weapons of mass destruction—weapons that can be easily concealed,
delivered covertly, and used without warning.
The targets of these attacks are our
military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the
principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on
September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of
terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists
acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.
The United States has long maintained the
option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national
security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction— and the
more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves,
even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To
forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States
will, if necessary, act preemptively.
The United States will not use force in
all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a
pretext for aggression. Yet in an age where the enemies of civilization openly
and actively seek the world’s most destructive technologies, the United States
cannot remain idle while dangers gather. We will always proceed deliberately,
weighing the consequences of our actions.
To bolster our ability to
preempt and defeat threats, we seek dominance militarily over potential
enemies:
We know from history that deterrence can
fail; and we know from experience that some enemies cannot be deterred. The
United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an
enemy—whether a state or non-state actor—to impose its will on the United
States, our allies, or our friends. We will maintain the forces sufficient to
support our obligations, and to defend freedom. Our forces will be strong
enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in
hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.
I am personally shocked that
the simple ideas of being stronger than our enemies and willing to do what it
takes to defend ourselves are somehow controversial. We have not reserved the
right to destroy anybody at any time for just looking at us the wrong way. The
policy is clear: different threats require different responses and military
preemption is but one method. And if we can't trust the representatives of the
world's oldest democracy to decide on weighty matters of war and peace over the
judgment of that Star Wars bar of nations we call the UN, these are sad days
indeed.
If during
our election campaign, neither side decides that its effective motto is "Stronger
than France. Respected in Paris" I guess I'll be satisfied that the republic
will survive. And we will. Even if we decide we are not at war and that we
should extend a hand of friendship to those who have tried to kill us these
past several decades and for whom 9-11 was just the beginning of their
kill-fest. We will lose tens of thousands dead should we be foolish enough to act
on this feel good impulse, but we will once again learn our lesson and go after
our enemies. Perhaps this time with an anger that will
not be stopped short of destruction of the enemy. Indeed, perhaps with too much
anger as those in power have their cherished illusions shattered in a nuclear
cloud and seek righteous vengeance.
Too much anger may be a
problem for a future after we try again to understand our enemy—only
harder—only to have them strike us harder, but that is not our problem now. Our
failure to crush the resistance in Fallujah when we
had the chance shows us what restraint gets us. Not thanks. Not dialog for
common ground. But
this:
The three-week siege is inspiring "a literature of
resistance and war," said Egyptian novelist Gamal
el-Ghitani. "Fallujah
is a symbol, in one of the worst eras we have witnessed, that it is not
impossible to stand up to America."
He said it also sends a message to Arab dictators about the
lesson people may draw about resisting oppression.
"I used to laugh, despite the ghastly daily news,
about how a bunch of poor, helpless Iraqis with primitive weapons are forcing
the greatest superpower in the world to negotiate. Honestly, the American army
was ridiculed," he said.
El-Ghitani, like many Arabs,
hadn't even heard of Fallujah until then. Now it is
being likened to Beirut under Israeli
siege in 1982, to the resistance in Egyptian cities on the Suez Canal against the
Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of 1956, and even Napoleon's 1799 siege of Acre.
Ibrahim el-Firjani, a Libyan university professor, said Fallujah has "shown America the real Arabs,
not those lining up to surrender."
Instead of talking and
exploring reasons we may have given our enemies to hate us and kill us, we must
kill them. No restraint. No mercy. I'm honestly not asking for their surrender.
They'll just get attorneys that we'll end up paying for. Let them stand up to
us. I don't care. But when the do, make sure we cut them down. Don't ever miss
an opportunity to kill them.
For those who would talk to
us, we must of course talk and even help them. Not all Moslems are our enemies.
Not even most. I firmly believe this. Our enemy is just a fraction that a
larger fraction has learned to cheer on.
Kill the fraction that would
kill us and the cheering sections will go home. Because if we
don't kill our enemies, we will be ridiculed by those who survive and the
cheering sections will cheer some more.
These are some
of the guys who are killing our enemies so we can hope to live quietly at
home.
Although American casualties
have gone up in July during official Iraqi rule from June, I think we may see
progress in the war faster than we expect. I wrote this thought a month ago,
and I still think it is possible and maybe even likely. I keep waiting for the
insurgency to dwindle and it hasn't. But I don't want to make the mistake of
thinking that because the insurgency has stumbled along at a low but lethal
level that it will always continue to do so. I've hammered away that the key to
winning is getting Iraqis to fight for their country against the Baathists, and we are succeeding in doing this. If my main
focus is being achieved, I can't ignore the possibility that this will work,
now can I? As Strategypage notes:
The Iraqi government is taking their new
powers seriously, and so are the Iraqi police and security forces. No one
expected that such an administrative event, the declaration of Iraqi
sovereignty, would have such a dramatic impact. But the large number (over
200,000) of trained Iraqi police, troops and security forces, the continued
street crime and kidnappings, and growing public anger over the lack of public
safety, combined to produce an energetic Iraqi crackdown on the source of the
problem. The number of tips about who is attacking Iraqis, and Americans, has
skyrocketed. And most of the information is real, with the subsequent raids are
yielding dramatic results. Criminal, Baath Party and al Qaeda leaders and
key members are being picked up, or killed in shoot outs. Records, cash and
records are being seized. The records are often interesting, for the Baath Party groups, which hire a lot of the men who plant
the roadside bombs or fire mortars or RPGs at
government or American targets, keep records of who got paid how much for each
attack. In some cases, moonlighting Iraqi police are found on the list.
We'll see if the Iraqis can
move rapidly or at least steadily to control the Baathist
thugs.
A significant barrier was crossed when President
George W. Bush spoke aloud, Monday, about the possibility of an Iranian role in
the 9/11 attacks on the United States. By doing so, he was responding -- in a language
that the ayatollahs would understand -- to escalating threats and provocative behaviour from Iran. No matter who is President after November, it
appears the U.S. and Iran are now on course for
another history-making collision.
Spring 2005, I should think. I
haven't worried about the lack of overt US pressure on Iran since I figured that next year was the time for
action and there is little point to stirring the pot until then. If we
broadcast too much support to the Iran opposition too soon, the Iranian mullahs would just
sweep everyone up. And our allies are actually getting to see the futility of
talking to the mullahs while the mullahs build nuclear missiles instead of just
taking our word on the matter.
At some point we'll see the
public rhetoric heat up for regime change in Tehran. A nice discussion in the election campaign might be
a good start.
I can't forget we are at war.
I just want to win. That is my priority. Let history lay blame.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA26JUL04A
I watched The Terminator last night.
I shouldn’t watch movies like this I suppose. But it
provides more lessons than Titanic.
Listen! And understand! That terminator is out there. It can't be
bargained with! It can't be reasoned with! It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or
fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead!
The 9-11 Commission report (as Instapundit
noted) says
this about our enemy’s desire to defeat us:
It is not a position with which
Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even
respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or
utterly isolated.
I still have no problem saying we are in a war on terror
rather than a war on Islamists. The reason I feel this way is summarized in the
last sentence above. We must destroy or isolate the threat. Can we destroy
Islamism? Can we wipe it out? No. We cannot. There will always be nutballs who think it is God’s work to kill us. I think the
key is utterly isolating the Islamists. Defang them. Make them impotent in
their rage at the modern world and us. Ultimately, if the Islamists are
impoverished nutballs sitting in the desert bemoaning
their fate and cursing us for their poverty and hopelessness, I don’t care what
they think about us. I just care what they can do to us. I just don’t care
enough about them to want to save them from themselves. They are welcome to
their self-inflicted misery and backwardness as long as they leave us alone.
But we’re a long way from having to decide between utterly
isolating them or destroying them. For now we must kill them where we can and
imprison them when we must. We must pursue them into their safe havens and
destroy those safety zones.
And we have an advantage over the humans fighting the
machines—our enemies are not tougher than we are. They do in fact feel fear. And
we are the ones with the machines
that will kill them for us.
We just need the determination to admit we are at war and
the toughness to kill them, pursue them, and kill them again and again until
they are driven from power and stripped of their appeal to the hopeless masses who see a glimmer of hope in nihilistic death rituals.
Frighteningly enough, there are plenty in our country who see
threats all around them but the Islamists are way down on their list.
“Understanding” the rage of the Islamists is futile because
they will not be stopped, ever, until we are dead. Or until we kill them or
isolate the Islamist terrorists.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA25JUL04B
Via NRO, the first ABM is
loaded in Alaska:
Five additional interceptors will be installed at the
700-acre complex by the end of the year, along with another four at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California. Ten more
will be installed at Fort Greely by late
2005, launching the Bush administration's multibillion-dollar system.
Critics in the article lamely argue that we have a
defense—attacking enemy missiles before they could even launched:
If U.S. troops saw a
"country building a missile, they would blow it up on the ground. They
would never wait to see if it was launched."
Yeah right. As if we could get away with
such a pre-emptive move without the left introducing impeachment
articles—unless one of their own ordered it, of course.
Just as importantly, as we debate how to prevent nuclear
proliferation, won’t creating a reasonable defense dissuade states from
pursuing nukes that won’t do them any good? I think a solid missile defense
will be better for anti-proliferation than any number of treaties.
Drive on. I wonder what it will feel like to live in a world
where our missile-armed enemies don’t have the automatic option to destroy us?
I think I’ll like it.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA25JUL04A
Much has been made by some that the source of our problems
with the Baathists in the Sunni triangle is that we
didn’t come rampaging south from Turkey
through Tikrit during the Iraq War. I disagreed.
First of all, the major source of resistance in Fallujah and to a lesser extent nearby Ramadi, would have been
nowhere near the line of advance for such a northern attack.
Second, we would have been forced to kill regular army units
that otherwise were frozen in place by the Kurdish threat. These Iraqi units
were out of the fight and if we’d gotten near them we’d have had to destroy
them for the safety of our own units marching south.
Third, we would have risked casualties amongst Kurds in the
north who were our allies, plus extra destruction that we’d have to fix on top
of the massive reconstruction job. What if the oil fields had been collateral
damage in this offensive?
All in all, I felt a threat of a northern front was far more
valuable than an actual northern front. Finally, in an otherwise good article
that notes what I’ve noted before that many people support the war only if
successful (so win the war against the resistance and stop worrying about
bolstering support for the war in other ways! Only victory will persuade the wobblies!) Hanson notes as well that the cakewalk of the
war led to urealistic expectations. It did for me,
I’ll say, only I didn’t go wobbly when the post-war turned more difficult than
it appeared it would be in April 2003. But on the northern front, Hanson says
in passing:
It was, of course, a very good thing at the time to have the entire
Sunni trial collapse without Americans descending down into that miasma from Turkey shooting and bombing.
We still should have dealt with Fallujah
in April 2003 but that is a separate issue from the northern front. I’d like to
see Hanson address the whole issue of the northern front as a separate piece. I
think we made no mistake in staying out of that miasma.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04F
Not to be too flippant, but we’ve identified one of the major sources
of foreign support for the Baathist resistance in Iraq:
SERGIO Vieira de Mello, the U.N. envoy killed by terrorists in Baghdad
al most a year ago, was no cynic. But he recognized cynicism where he saw it.
Soon before his tragic death, he described attempts at putting the United
Nations at the center of things in Iraq as "a cynical ploy" by powers not
prepared to give it meaningful support.
I happen to think we’ve successfully used the UN so far and
not let them lead us around by the nose contrary to our interests, but that
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant.
Keep the UN narrowly and technically focused and keep real
power in our hands and our Iraqi friends’ hands.
The UN’s only interest in Iraq
is helping enough so they won’t be blamed by the US
for failure if it happens. They just don’t want to lose our funding and their
prime real estate in New York as
punishment for standing in our way. They are willing to risk a democratic and
successful Iraq
to prevent these losses but don’t ever think the UN’s rogue’s gallery actually
wants freedom and prosperity in Iraq.
We, the Iraqis, and our friends on the ground in Iraq
are the only ones who want success.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04E
Interesting that the British are looking into intervening
in Darfur:
Blair made his comments about military assistance after the
Guardian newspaper reported he had asked officials to draw up plans for
possible military intervention in Sudan.
The Sudanese are opposed and promise that there will be
resistance. Just who will fight? The starving and oppressed Darfur people? The Arab militias that the
government supports but claims to be restraining? The
Sudanese military?
It’s time for the African Union to abandon the rule that
borders never change. If they won’t, we should. Recognize Darfur and the south as independent nations
with a new doctrine that sovereign states can lose the right to rule parts of
their country. We should back them up with arms shipments and no-fly zones.
Of course, the Chinese and Russians won’t like it. Bad
precedent don’t you know.
This isn’t just a humanitarian mission after all. Sudan
was hip-deep in supporting terrorism and likely still is, and it is probably
payback time. Bombing an aspirin factory wasn’t enough of a punishment for
conspiring with our enemies.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04D
Iran
defiantly continues its nuclear program that the international community will
not stop. Iran
will get nuclear warheads mounted on long-range missiles if given enough time.
So can we or the Israelis bomb Iran
to end their programs as with Iraq
in 1981? I don’t think so and this
article agrees:
"Military action is not the answer," said a
senior international diplomat involved in the investigation of Iran's nuclear
plans.
"It would only push them underground, like in Iraq," said the
diplomat, who declined to be named. Israel has hinted it could use air strikes
to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, which it and Washington believe are
part of an attempt to acquire atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear
power program -- a charge Iran denies.
Convinced that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear
weapons, Israel bombed Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981. But instead of stopping him
from pursuing the bomb, Saddam went underground and worked in secret until the
program was uncovered by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in 1991.
Several analysts and diplomats said Iran learned from Iraq's mistakes and
may be hiding nuclear sites from U.N. inspectors, who have been probing Tehran's atomic program
for nearly two years to verify that it is peaceful as Iran insists.
"I think it's impossible to take out Iran's nuclear
weapons program with military strikes," a defense industry expert, who
declined to be named, told Reuters. "They can recuperate."
Assuming we know where to attack, we could delay the arrival
of a nuclear-armed Iran
by years, but how confident are we that we can identify the crucial facilities?
Iran is a big
country, and if they are smart they’d build redundant facilities with some only
partly hidden to draw our attention. What if the Iranians learned the lesson of
going deep underground long ago? While I would strike Iran
to buy time as a preferred option to doing nothing, what if even a solid strike
campaign like Desert Fox won’t buy us that time?
I still hold that regime change is the only method to get Iran
to end its nuclear weapons drive. And the only real way to get a regime change
that sticks is to support a military rebellion supported by the regime’s
dissidents. We could support a revolt with special forces,
air power, and some conventional brigades. We could secure WMD facilities or
destroy them and supply the rebellion and seed the rebel units with special forces to call in air strikes. We should strike al Qaeda elements still in Iran
as long as we’re at it.
We have replenished our stockpiles of JDAMs
and smart bombs by now, I should think. In January 2005 there will be an
elected Iraq
government. We will be rotating troops so we’ll have extras in the region. We
can extend some troops if we need to. But maybe Iraq
will be settled down enough or the Iraqi security services will be carrying the
burden and thus freeing US troops from a good portion of the patrols in Iraq.
And our election will be over, with the decks cleared for military action in
the spring of 2005.
Honestly, if this administration isn’t planning on doing
something about the remaining Axis of Evil elements and isn’t dedicated to
remaining on the offensive to destroy our enemies before we suffer a nuclear
9-11, why vote for them? At least with an administration that abandons the war,
when we are hit even worse the French may again claim they are all Americans
now. In reality, we’ll all be Europeans, but still, we’ll value the sympathy,
right?
Regime change in Iran:
Spring 2005.
Before it’s too late. In light of silly
arguments that we should have addressed North Korea or Iran before Iraq
since Iraq was the weakest of the Axis, no doubt some will say leave Iran alone
until North Korea is solved (but only by giving them money they’ll also mumble),
let me repeat Dunn’s Axiom.
As I’ve noted enough times (or not), it is better to stop
the nutballs who want to get their first nuke than to
stop the nutballs who want their second (or even
fourth or tenth).
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04C
In a surprising development following the complete surrender
by the Philippines
government to the demands of kidnappers to leave Iraq,
kidnappers have stepped
up their demands:
Militants took six foreign truck drivers
hostage and threatened Wednesday to behead them unless their company ends its
business in Iraq, and their countries — India, Egypt and Kenya — pull all their
citizens out.
Of course, the militants are picking on insignificant
contributors to Iraq
reconstruction, and the first two of those states have long histories of
fighting Islamist terrorism so they probably won’t break despite lack of
interest in Iraq
itself.
And it isn’t just these countries:
In a separate threat, a previously unknown group calling
itself al-Qaida's European branch posted a message on
an Islamic Web site promising deadly attacks in Bulgaria and Poland if the two
countries do not withdraw their troops from Iraq.
The group, calling itself the Tawhid
Islamic Group, said Bulgaria and Poland will "pay the price" just as
the United States and Spain did, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on
New York and Washington and deadly train explosions in Madrid in March of this
year.
During a recent hostage crisis, Bulgaria refused demands
to pull its 480 troops out of Iraq, and Polish
Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zemke
said Wednesday that withdrawing troops would be a "terrible mistake"
that would only encourage terrorism.
Another militant group on Tuesday threatened Japan's 500 troops
here. A Japanese Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday that Tokyo would not comply.
More than 60 foreigners have been taken hostage in recent
months in Iraq, where thousands
of foreigners toil as contract workers for coalition forces, in crucial
reconstruction jobs or as truck drivers hauling cargo for private companies.
Hmm. 9-11 and 11-M had the same motivation? I guess Iraq
wasn’t the reason for being targeted after all. Could the reason be that we
aren’t and aren’t likely to be Wahabbi Islamist fanatics and they don’t like
that?
The Poles, Bulgarians, and Japanese are standing firm. All
these states can thank the Philippines
and Spain for
the encouragement.
On the bright side, Spain
is stepping up in Afghanistan
as part of a short NATO deployment to assist in protecting elections. Maybe Madrid
is realizing that they didn’t take the target off their backs by surrendering
meekly over Iraq.
Still, the Islamists will likely make sure that Spanish troops and civilians
are targeted since it worked so well in the past.
I don’t see how the kidnapping wave is bad for the war
effort (as opposed to the very bad effect on the individuals kidnapped). The
Islamists now have to care and feed captives for a while which probably
increases their chances of getting caught. Plus, the effort will keep them from
carrying out more promising attacks on American and Iraqi targets. While the
publicity is surely what they crave in order to frighten the West and other
states, the sheer number of crimes will take away the newsworthiness of the
kidnappings. The latest celebrity trials will seem more newsworthy under the
circumstances.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04B
The North Koreans have rejected
our Libya model
of complete and verifiable nuclear disarmament followed by diplomatic relations
and economic help:
Calling the American proposal "nothing but a sham
offer," the communist state reiterated that it would freeze its nuclear
facilities as a first step toward their dismantling, but only if Washington provides energy
aid, lifts economic sanctions and delists the North
as a sponsor of terrorism.
"It is a daydream for the U.S. to contemplate
forcing the (North) to lay down arms first under the situation where both are
in a state of armistice and at war technically," said an unidentified
spokesman of the North's Foreign Ministry.
They prefer the old “freeze” method that is followed by
economic aid.
And why shouldn’t they? It has gotten them so much in the
past and they are still in possession of a small number of nuclear devices or
at least on the verge of building them. (Whether they have them in a
deliverable device I do not know)
So far the administration has admirably refused to panic in
the face of lack of progress. Many over here get twitchy without something to
sign after a while—no matter what the details. The act of signing is strangely
satisfying to them.
We must insist on verifiable nuclear disarmament and the
dismantling of the entire North Korean nuclear program. Then some aid.
Hopefully not enough to reverse their slide but enough to give them hope that
they don’t need to risk it all on a military strike.
And squeeze them. Intercept their drug shipments. Discourage
private investment and certainly don’t insure the risks of companies that
decide to operate in North Korea.
Insist on verifiable progress on human rights and disarmament for every
shipment of old Commodores we send them.
And send aid that cannot be integrated with other elements
of the aid. Make sure they are just pieces that won’t provide synergy joined
together. The North Koreans are so primitive that any aid will look helpful.
Of course, prepare for war. Regime change in line with our
official strategy should be the goal should war occur. Make sure that always-insufficient
aid appears to the Pillsbury Nuke Boy to be a better route for survival than
war. I think the signs are there that the regime is crumbling from within. We
outlasted better thugs than them and we have an ally stronger militarily than
the North unlike the situation in NATO where the threat of the Red Army
reaching the Rhine was very real during much of the
struggle.
As the North Korean spokesman helpfully noted, we are at war
technically.
Nice of them to remind us.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24JUL04A
I've noted that I firmly
believe that prior to the Iraq War, Saddam had chemical weapons and programs of
unknown status to produce bio and nuclear weapons. He had the clear
determination to have all these WMD and long-range delivery systems in order to
advance his visions of power in the Gulf region and the Arab and Moslem worlds.
I've also asserted that I
don't think that all the intelligence services of the world were wrong in their
assessments and I don't think that all of Saddam's scientists lied to him about
fake programs to keep money coming to them. We will find what happened to these
weapons and programs. I worry that our troops might be hit with something dug
up from the Sunni triangle.
The first reports on finding
nuclear missiles in Iraq were too unbelievable as far as I was concerned (though
it would have been heartening) and the later
denial made much more sense.
When I read the first report,
my thoughts went to how it would make sense if true. That is, if missiles with
nuclear warheads were found, would this even make sense given the apparent lack
of an ongoing nuclear program when we invaded Iraq?
Yes it would, and it would still
explain some things even with the first report shown to be false. Recall that
when we built the SR-71 Blackbird, we destroyed all the plans after we built
them so that nobody could ever steal the secrets. If we had destroyed the
planes soon after and somebody went looking for the plans to prove we once had
them, no plans would be there to prove it. Without any plans, would the true conclusion
be that we never had them? Of course not. Now, the analogy clearly can't be
pushed too far but the point is that we destroyed our ability to build the
planes after we built the planes. So does absence of program evidence mean that
Saddam was a decade away or that he already succeeded? He did have chemical
weapons. That is not in doubt. And we know that in 1990, Saddam was far closer
to nukes than we suspected.
If Saddam succeeded in
building certain WMDs in the 1990s or prior to the
Iraq War in 2003, wouldn't it make sense to hide them (with a very tiny
footprint to conceal), keep the innocent-looking technicians, scientists, and
knowledge base intact for future use, and destroy the numerous physical traces
of the programs in order to get sanctions lifted? Once the international sanctions and scrutiny
were removed from Iraq, Saddam could restart his WMD and missile programs that would produce WMDs in a few months (for chemicals), years (for the
missiles) or a decade (for nukes and bugs). As a bonus, he'd be able to haul
out the small numbers of weapons produced and hidden to brandish the instant
deterrent and threat.
All I'm saying is don't be
surprised if we do find something deadly buried in the Sunni triangle or
smuggled to another country.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA22JUL04A
Sandy Berger apparently stuffed some confidential documents down
his pants to get them out of the National Archives. The question is whether
Berger is trying to hide embarrassing information. He says he took them
inadvertently. I know, that seems ridiculous. But I
think we’re possibly being too hasty here in condemning Mr. Berger.
Stay with me. Remember, Berger was
the national security advisor to President Clinton. Surely he knows how to
handle secret documents. As a senior member of CONTROL (Clinton Officials Now
Telling Redacted Old Lies), he would know that when handling secrets, one uses
the Cone of
Silence. If that is broken, the Closet of Silence will do. Being away from
headquarters, the Portable Cone of Silence is required. Or
perhaps the Umbrella of Silence. But what if my knowledge of CONTROL
procedures to thwart CHAOS is obsolete? Perhaps they have been updated for the
fight against al Qaeda. I mean, the former
administration says they were on top
of the threat, right? With no actual evidence of action in the real world
apparent, perhaps the activity took place in the intelligence front. I think it
is possible that Berger was using the hitherto unknown Pants of Silence to
secure secret documents. The Socks of Silence and the Jacket of Silence may
also have been employed.
I’m just saying that we should check with the Chief before
we assume Berger is hiding something and go off on yet another investigation or
committee probe.
And if Berger is hiding something, I’m sure the Media of
Silence will go into overdrive to ignore this.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA21JUL04A
The fact that we have not
been able to tamp down a low-level Baathist
resistance yet is blamed on our failure to have a better plan to win the
post-war.
Yet there is this:
American officials believe that millions
of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food
program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against U.S. forces and the
new Iraqi government, The Post has learned.
The vast sums
of money that the Baathists have at their disposal is
clearly a major factor in fueling the attacks on us. I under-estimated the
financial resources the Baathists had to replace the
major foreign support I knew they would never get.
Now we know one avenue that
Saddam accumulated the wealth. Yet this problem was caused by the UN's
corruption. One wonders what kind of plan could have stopped this outrage
committed by the international community.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA20JUL04B
The Marine who was shown on
television in the pre-murder pose we've seen a lot lately says he was
kidnapped and held against his will:
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun has been under a cloud of suspicion since failing
to report for duty June 20. Videotaped images later surfaced showing him
apparently kidnapped; he emerged unharmed in Lebanon on July 8 and was
brought back to the United States last week.
Although there is some
speculation that Corporal Hassoun deserted, that
doesn't seem right. His demeanor suggests he is a Marine through and through:
I would like to tell all the
Marines as well as all those others serving in Iraq
to keep their heads up and spirits high. Once a Marine, always a Marine, Semper
Fi," Hassoun said,
invoking the Marine Corps motto, Latin for "always faithful."
If Hassoun
was trying to defect and the sword play was staged, why release him? If he
tried to defect in a moment of weakness and then changed his mind, again, why
would the kidnappers release him?
So I doubt it was a straight
Islamist kidnapping. It seems far more likely that Hassoun
was held for ransom. He has a large clan in Lebanon and I bet the kidnappers showed Hassoun
on TV as a threat and then arranged for a payment to get his release. After 30
years of civil strife in Lebanon, I bet the network for resolving kidnappings is
fairly evolved. As a pure business transaction, the kidnappers might have just
gone by the rules of the game and released Hassoun
once the money was paid. The route that allowed money to flow to the kidnappers
then was reversed to get Hassoun to Lebanon.
The fact that Hassoun voluntarily went to our embassy bolsters the
held-against-his will theory.
If something fishy is going
on, I bet it could be because Hassoun was lured off
base without permission with an appeal to his religion. But I bet that it was
an appeal to help fellow Moslems rather than an appeal to betray his country
and his Corps. Having been tricked to leave, Hassoun most
assuredly violated regulations and so could be punished for that.
Corporal Hassoun
may also have something to say about the rat-line that stretches from Fallujah all the way to Lebanon through Syria.
Sheer speculation, I know,
but the idea of a real kidnapping by Islamists or an attempt by
this Marine to defect do not seem to fit with the events reported.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA20JUL04A
I note this
here in NSA only because it is an issue over which we uniquely are beaten
about the head and shoulders for failing to do what the crisis-mongerers want
us to do:
Global
warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun
is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years,
according to new research.
After years of looking for
reasons to blame people for the problem, somebody finally looked up from their
weak correlation calculations and noticed the big, hot, bright thing up in the
sky.
I suggest a giant hose
stretched from Earth to the Sun so we can finally address the roots of this
problem.
Oh, and I note it because it
is very amusing and I get very annoyed by the global warmers who have elevated
belief in every last detail of their global warming spiel into dogma that
cannot be denied or debated.. Dang, I can't remember where I saw this. Many
thanks.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA19JUL04C
So the President's sixteen
words in the SOTU have been tarred as a lie for a year.
As Steyn concludes in his
solid (and satisfying) article:
Any
Democrats and media types who are in the early stages of yellowcake fever and
can still think clearly enough not to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or
Houston -- or even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman -- need to consider
seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An ambassador, in Sir
Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a good man sent abroad to lie for his
country. This ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the media
helped him do it.
We've all experienced how the
media helped over the last year. What is really amazing is that the media
continues to help even as Wilson
is thoroughly discredited and shown to be the real liar in this whole episode:
Check out the lead paragraph
in this
AP report:
It was one of the first
signs that the intelligence used to go to war in Iraq
was wrong: White House repudiation of 16 words in last year's State of the
Union speech that had suggested Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Africa.
Yet even as two recent reports sharply criticized prewar intelligence, they
also suggested President Bush's claim may not have been totally off-base.
"May not have been
totally off-base." Pray tell, what part of the President's claim is even
slightly off-base in the light of revelations? What part of Wilson's serial lying is even partly on-base? My Lord, is it
not even possible for the press to report on events instead of defending their
opinions to the hilt?
Safire nicely sums
up the latest developments and the conclusion that one should draw
regarding the administration's apology for including those 16 words in the
SOTU:
That
apology was a mistake; Bush had spoken the plain truth. Did Saddam seek uranium
from Africa, evidence of his continuing illegal
interest in a nuclear weapon? Here is Lord Butler's nonpartisan panel, which
closely examined the basis of the British intelligence:
".
. . we conclude that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union
Address of 28 January 2003
that `The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was
well-founded."
And as Steyn notes, Saddam
wanted that Uranium because he wanted to use it to kill us.
Lies, indeed.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA19JUL04B
One of the popular complaints
of both pro- and anti-war sides over the Iraq War is that post-war planning
was poor (via Winds of Change). Is this an indictment or an admission of reality that we could
not have done much about anyway? I mean, we couldn't even openly talk to
humanitarian organizations before the war lest we be accused of pre-judging our
plans for resolving the Iraq crisis and from fear by the humanitarian
organizations of being accused of approving invasion by even talking to the US government.
And what if we did start
extensive planning? We planned extensively for post-World War II because it
took us nearly four years to win the war—not because we delayed fighting until
we had the plans nicely indexed and bound. And anyway, the plans didn't help us
much in practice since we dumped the plans in the face of post-war realities
and instead improvised our way through years of ugliness before our conquered
foes emerged as allies.
I think some of the elements
of the charge that we failed to plan are just silly. I don't think anybody
claimed the Baathists would welcome us. They weren't going to give up four
centuries of neck stomping easily. Would more post-war planning have led to
even the Sunnis welcoming us? The Shias and Kurds certainly felt liberated even
without the chimera of the perfect plan tucked into Tommy Franks' hands in
March 2003. We've suffered few casualties in the Shia and Kurdish areas so the
argument must be that more planning would have reduced our casualties in the
Sunni areas. This is possible—even likely—but by how much is an open question.
I don't see an argument that a plan would have gotten the Sunnis to love
liberation so their resistance would not have been eliminated with a plan. And
what if the plan called for rounding up every senior Sunni male? Would the plan
have been lauded? A plan for immediately fighting a counter-insurgency might
have reduced our casualties. That I will not dispute.
And if we'd taken the time to
develop the plan to perfection, and if we did in fact go to war with that plan
maybe a year later despite the howls that we shouldn't invade in the primary
campaign season, how would the war have gone? Might not Saddam have finally
concluded that we would invade and then actually defended his country with some
effectiveness? Would we have won with remarkably few friendly and civilian
casualties? Would we have won that war or would the stretching of a more
difficult war into months have given the French and Russians the time—bolstered
by a global anti-war movement with yet another year to agitate and march—to end
the war? Subtracting casualties in the post-war by insisting on the plan before
going to war could have increased casualties in the major combat operations and
could have even undermined chances for victory. And let me add this, if the
plan called for several hundred thousand Americans to patrol Iraq, would we have simply succeeded in Americanizing the
post-war and inspiring resistance instead of pushing Iraqis to the front to
fight for their country? We are clearly assuming that a laboriously-written
plan would actually have been correct.
Really, the demand for more
post-war planning by the anti-war side always seemed part of the plan to delay
the war until opposition could derail the war. It was never to make the
post-war situation more successful. Just think back: The UN route. One more
resolution. Time for more inspections. Persuade France to agree. Were these really good-intentioned cries to
insure success? No. And "The Plan" was just one more idea to stop the
war, keep Saddam in power, and humble America. Why the pro-war side would want to jump on this
bandwagon is beyond me.
No plan survives contact with
the enemy. And no plan, no matter how detailed, guarantees victory. We won the
war and we are improvising to win the post-war. Criticize by all means but keep it in
perspective.
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It sounds like the Chavez opposition is taking the heart Grant’s
idea that you don’t waste too much time worrying about what your opponent is
doing to you, but instead spend your time thinking about what you
can do to them:
The opposition's "Vote Yes!"
campaign has hit the airwaves, billboards and talk shows. But this time around,
campaign leaders are being careful about what they say about Chavez.
There's a list of Do's and Dont's
when criticizing the president, Fernandez said — partly because many
Venezuelans grew tired of vituperative rhetoric during a December 2002-February
2003 general strike that failed to oust Chavez.
Calling Chavez a "dictator" is a no-no because he
has embraced the recall.
Accusing the former paratrooper of graft is frowned upon
because past governments, led by current opposition leaders, were largely
corrupt.
Criticizing Chavez's human rights record should be avoided
because the opposition is trying to reach Venezuela's majority poor,
whose rights were often ignored in the past.
"Messages emphasizing hope rather than hate are
best," said Fernandez, an oil executive fired by Chavez during the strike.
"We want to send positive, not negative, messages."
Not that I trust Chavez, but he does have support (as most
dictators have), and he is working hard to win within the system, albeit by
twisting the system to the breaking point.
If the opposition wins the recall vote, then we will see
what Chavez does. I suspect he will not go. He will interpret the results or
circumstances of the vote in a manner that he will use to justify staying in
power. My only major question is whether former President Carter will validate
Chavez’s shenanigans.
Of course, I don’t know what we can do about this situation.
When we are trying to reform the psychoses of the Middle East,
doing something forceful about a peripheral problem that might interrupt one of
our major sources of oil and tie up military assets better used elsewhere is
foolish. This is one of those things that we have to push diplomatically with
the OAS and regional players. Unless Chavez turns Venezuela
into a base for Islamists, this is not a military problem.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA18JUL04B
As readers may know, I
am a fan of heavy armor. People have predicted heavy armor’s doom since at
least the 1973 October War. These critics could be right now, but I need to be
persuaded based on the continuing record of success. Yes, it is true we have
not faced a really high quality enemy army with good anti-tank capability, so I
could be persuaded that the absence of evidence does not mean that it is not a
true assessment. Still, with the evidence showing armor is still crucial, the
burden of proof for the end of heavy armor is on the proponents of light armor.
I will say that the Strykers seem to have performed
well in Iraq,
although they were not rushed into the theater to fight as they drove off the
plane ramps and they had additional armor added on to make them more survivable
against RPGs. This is good. I do think that medium
forces have a role in bridging the light infantry/heavy armor gap when
deploying. They also have utility for peacekeeping, counter-insurgency, and
company- or battalion-sized vertical envelopment. They will never be able to
slug it out with enemy armor, in my opinion, although our air power will help
even the scales a good deal.
But the Army has not succumbed to the siren song of
lightness as it seemed to be doing until 2003. I wrote in 2002 about the need
to get heavy armor to the fight more rapidly:
It may be
unwise to rely solely on a light FCS if the Army needs a survivable system. If
it can find a way around deploying from CONUS, future heavy systems would not
need to conform to the tradeoffs necessary for the FCS to get to the theater
quickly, and they might exhibit the same dominance as today’s MBTs. Pre-positioned future heavy systems, perhaps afloat,
should not be overlooked. Where pre-positioning is impractical, sealift from
CONUS must be faster. We may even need to explore deploying more forces
overseas to get ground troops closer to potential trouble spots for the initial
rapid response.
According to a July 2, 2004 news item
from Jane’s that they emailed me:
The US Army plans to
field three flotillas of ships before 2010, each with a brigade-sized combat
force and the supplies to sustain it for an extended period, according to
service logistics officials.
We have armor sets on land in places we expect to fight (or
in the case of Europe, expected to fight at one time)
and we are now making mobile sets so we can get heavy armor to unexpected
fights. I once read we are taking some of the Europe-based sets and moving them
so maybe these mobile sets are being assembled from the former NATO-oriented
sites. I’ve also read ideas for faster sealift.
Heavy armor lives on. And we are preparing to make sure we
will have it early in any war we might have to fight.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA18JUL04A
It is approaching three years since al Qaeda
struck us. Whether this is because of good counter-terror operations on our
part; or because al Qaeda didn’t have a follow-up
blow planned (assuming we’d collapse at one big blow) and started from scratch
on a bigger plan, I don’t know. But the buzz is that we are in a time of major
danger with our elections coming up. Al Qaeda wants
to repeat their Madrid regime
change success over here, apparently. So why would al Qaeda
want Bush out of office if he has played into their hands by attacking them
wherever we can find them? Isn’t one of the claims of the law enforcement approach
side that by attacking the Taliban and Saddam we are creating the war of civilizations
that Osama wanted all along? First of all, I don’t
know if that is true. If this was the approach, why wouldn’t there have been
follow-up attacks here to keep us off balance and to provoke ineffective spasm
attacks? It is very possible that Osama thought 9-11
was the killing blow and no more were necessary. That is, he may have thought
that strike would bring victory and not civilizational war. But if Osama really did want to provoke a war on terror, does this
mean we are falling into their trap? I don’t think so.
I think the answer is fairly simple: Osama
wasn’t that prescient. The Madrid
11-M attacks show that when it comes down to it, al Qaeda
would rather discourage war against them than encourage them. If attacking al Qaeda and Iraq
militarily has been a mistake, why try to defeat a pro-American government
fighting with us in Iraq?
Clearly, we’ve given al Qaeda more of a fight than Osama wanted. Osama may have
wanted more ineffective spasms of military action to inspire Islamists, but the
sustained counter-offensive that started in Afghanistan
and smashed up his organization and eliminated allies was surely not what he
anticipated. After all, Custer really wanted the elusive Sioux to finally stand
and fight. He finally got what he thought he wanted at Little Big Horn.
So what do we do if we are struck this summer or fall? Some
say (via Winds of Change) that retaliating
won’t be too satisfying:
I imagine that after another attack people will still feel, on a gut
level, like we ought to retaliate, but there really won't be anything to be
done. Just as Australia and Indonesia didn't respond after Bali, and Spain didn't respond after the Madrid attacks, if someone blows up Grand Central Station
there's not really going to be much of anything we can do in response. A lot of
people, myself included, would find that pretty
unsatisfying on an emotional level, but it's hard to see any reasonable policy
options.
First of all, Australia
did respond—by standing with us all through Iraq
and in cooperating with us after the war even more closely in military manners.
Spain, too, responded—by retreating. Ok, he’s got Indonesia
on the no-overt-response category, but this is Indonesia
we’re talking about—Islamic with little military capability. What more could
they have done with their planes, soldiers, and frigates that we aren’t? But
what is he talking about that there are no reasonable policy options? I’ll
agree on one point: I won’t feel satisfied by failing to retaliate, either. But
will retaliating bring me satisfaction? At first, when I saw our carrier surge
underway, I thought that we should use an attack on us as an excuse to hit
terrorist bases and cells worldwide. We’ve had three years of law enforcement
and in some areas of the globe where law does not reach, Islamist terrorists
are gathering to plot against us and our allies. I thought,
we use the carriers to rapidly hit these guys globally. Use the lesson of Afghanistan
where we responded quickly and saw ineffective domestic opposition and the
contrast of Iraq
where we took too long to fight and gave the other side time to mobilize
protests that continue through today. Hit while the wreckage over here is still
smoldering. But then I thought, that really is unsatisfying, too. Screw the
protesters. Why insist on perhaps thousands of dead Americans before we hit
again? Why pretend that this is tit for tat and proportional and all the other
crap that tries to tie our power up in knots?
Actually, I’d prefer to preempt the enemy.
Our carriers in Summer Pulse ’04 won’t be
on station all the way until the election and so can only be used to retaliate
if the attacks take place relatively soon. [As an aside, they are in every
theater and not massed near Taiwan
as some rumor had it. I read the original press release when it came out and
noted the exercise and so when the rumors of massing came up I doubted it—news
last night confirmed no massing. Of course, the idea in war is to mass the
carriers, so the lesson is the same…] Thinking about it, while the message and
practice are both worthwhile, it seems a shame to waste that much carrier air
power at sea. Why not attack globally against Islamist cells we know are all
over the world? We are at war so I don’t think we need an excuse to
“retaliate.” Just hit them. We’ve surely restocked our ammunition since the
Iraq War. And a lot of our power is at sea right now [As another aside, I don’t
think that the “Status of the
Navy” shows that 95% of the surface fleet is at sea. That would be
amazingly high. I think the “ships on deployment” (42% of the surface fleet) is
a subset of “ships underway” (53%) and not two separate categories to be added
together. In the Cold War, about half of our fleet was at sea at any time and
that was high compared to other navies. A little over half seems in line with
past practice] Use carrier air, sea-based missiles, land-based air, special
operations guys, and CIA assets. Hit any safe houses or training camps or
facilities or ships used by the Islamists. Strike from Southeast Asia to Iran to
Lebanon to the Horn of Africa to West
Africa to North Africa and to Columbia if we
see Islamists hanging around. Hit them hard. Kill them. Before they strike us. We’ve had nearly three years for other
states to use a law-enforcement approach to rounding up the Islamist
terrorists. It may be time to give them a JDAM hand if they are unable or
unwilling to eliminate them.
If we attack, the opposition will of course say Bush is
attacking to distract the public and “wag the dog.” Yet if we don’t attack
through the election, or if we are struck first by terrorists, the opposition
will say we are too distracted to fight al Qaeda because
of the Iraq
campaign. Or that we failed to connect the dots. So politically it is probably
pointless to cater to what the opposition thinks.
Did Lincoln hold
off the 1864 summer offensives lest it be too political? Did Roosevelt
cancel D-Day and the liberation of France
in summer 1944 because a presidential election was coming in the fall? No. We
were at war and so we waged war. Holding back now implicitly accepts the idea
that we are not at war and that an interruption of our peacetime quiet is an
attempt to influence the elections or domestic politics (full disclosure: I
refuse to believe that Clinton attacked Sudan and Afghanistan to distract from
the Lewinski affair and I don’t think Desert Fox was designed to distract from
the impeachment trial).
I thought we should have hit in the Horn of Africa by now to
show progress in the war. My basic reasoning still holds true as far as I’m
concerned. I’m not as concerned about accusations of politicking as I was in
the winter. We are at war and need to fight it without paying attention to the
election cycle.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA17JUL04A
F-9/11 has some interesting fans.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA15JUL04D
A unified Europe
under the anti-American Eurocracy cannot be accepted
let alone encouraged. We must not support European political unification and if
we can't stop it, we should weaken it.
With Germany
and India supporting one another for UN Security Council permanent seats
(with the all-important veto as its perk), we should go one better.
[German foreign minister Fischer] said there was an "urgent need for an
effective multilateral system and an efficient UN system that reflects the
realities of the 21st century".
We should agree with this
position. And since a European Union is a reality of the 21st
century too, the EU should have a permanent UNSC seat and veto. India, too. And Japan while we are at it. Of course, we should
not stand for an outrage similar to the Cold War outrage when Moscow had three General Assembly seats due to the
fictitious independence of Belarus and Ukraine. So, of course, it would be ridiculous to have an EU
with a permanent seat and then have Germany, France, and Britain with their own permanent seats. By this logic, California, New York,
and Texas should have permanent seats, too.
So France will have to weigh
the prestige of a permanent seat that gives them influence above their power;
Germany will have to contemplate having newly recognized great power status
submerged in the EU superstate before they can even
touch it; and Britain will have one more reason to stay out of the EU. Russia, too, would think again about becoming just another
state that might share the rotating delegate as the EU permanent seat with the
likes of Belgium and Greece.
On another issue, I read that
the Euro currency is taking a stab at displacing
the US dollar as the currency of choice for the world. US $100 bills are
widely used the world over for the underground economy as a trusted currency.
The Europeans have introduced their 500 Euro note to challenge the $100 bill in
this role. Worth 5 times as much as our $100 bill, the 500 Euro note is denser
and thus more easily carried about. I say, inflation alone has made the fact
that the $100 bill is the largest bill we've produced in fifty years kind of
obsolete. Why not introduce a $500 bill? I dare say we wouldn't see it too much
at home, but the people using the $100 bill would love the added convenience of
the Euro note size that also keeps the stability of the dollar. Europe's
efforts to be a financial rival would be undermined. And in a move to undercut
some of the debate over here, we could put Ronald Reagan's portrait on the
bill. It would be a fitting tribute to the man who brought freedom to hundreds
of millions.
Two measures to contain the
EU and bolster our diplomatic and financial positions in the world.
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In the renewed debate over
whether we are worse off now than before the War on Terror began,
my November 2003 take on the issue.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA15JUL04B
Yes indeed,
it (via NRO) takes a village to raise a terrorist. I think we found one of
those elusive "root causes."
This stands without need of more
commentary. I would hope, anyway.
Permalink to this
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China's influence is rapidly rising and America's is rapidly declining. While this
realization may be unpleasant for Washington, the sooner administration officials accept
this reality the faster they can deal with it. Unfortunately, they have
virtually ignored East
Asia, preoccupied as
they are with Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trade
numbers help explain the transformation in Asia. Within six
years, China's economy will be double that of Germany's, now the world's third largest. By 2020,
it is expected to surpass Japan as the world's second-largest economy. Japan already imports more from China than it does from the United States. And China has become the largest trading partner of South Korea, the world's 12th-largest economy. Clearly,
the juggernaut has already begun.
Faced with a rising China
that will reduce our influence, the writers decide that the best way to cope is
to essentially undermine our alliances by bringing China and the rest of
Northeast Asia—including North Korea perhaps!—into a regional forum where we can all just get along:
Most important, if structured properly, [the forum]
could allow the United States to reassert
its leadership (provided it listens to other members), mitigating China's influence.
Ah yes, the constant problem
with getting along is that we just don't listen to dictatorships like China and North Korea enough. But if we submerge ourselves in a forum of
everybody we can be properly humble.
And what can we expect with
this strategy? Well, a few more years of leveraging our diminishing influence
before we are overwhelmed:
As
a nation, the United States would be well positioned for several years
to serve as a counterbalance to the historic rivalries among these Asian
countries. But we should not take these tensions as a sign that these countries
will never work together. While the outcome of a choice between joining with us
or working together might not seem in jeopardy today, the future — as our
failure to win their support for our policy on North Korea recently
demonstrated — might well be very different.
Amazing. Where do they find these people? I know I expected
the panicking to begin after North Korea continued to refuse to respond to anything but
absolute appeasement, but this is ridiculous! These guys are panicking all the
way up to China now!
I mean, China hasn't even emerged as a superpower yet and already
some are pushing to preemptively surrender to their assumed power! You'd think
they'd at least have the decency to wait until they are an imminent threat.
But seriously, assuming that
China does reach the described apex of power, surpassing Germany and then Japan
and finally challenging our economic and military power, why is telling our
allies that we will no longer fight with them a way to maintain our power and
influence in the Western Pacific and East Asia? I'd think that the nuance of retreat
would not be lost on our friends. They'd soon distance themselves and we'd be
out-voted every time in the new forum. I guess when we are on the short end of
the stick, that listening skill will be all important.
If China reaches even parity with us, that doesn't mean we
must surrender our influence or our allies. As I've noted before, I'd never
trade our strategic positions. We have Canada and Mexico on our borders. The only close enemy is Cuba. And to our rear is our NATO alliance. What does China face? Oh, major land powers such as Russia, the Republic of Korea,
Vietnam, and India on their borders. Japanese, South Korean, Russian,
Taiwanese, Thai, and Indian air and naval forces box them in. And how many
nukes will a more powerful China face if Peking gets pushy in
the neighborhood? America stands behind all of them with a resolute Australia
nearby and American forces in Central Asia, South Korea, Japan, and afloat in
the Pacific.
And with this potential
situation we're supposed to curl up in a fetal position and beg the Chinese to
be nice to us? And assume our allies won't look at us in horror as we bow and
scrape?
What's more, the scenario of
inexorable Chinese advances in science, economic progress and military
advancement is not a given.
China's economic and military advancement does not impress
me. They are building low-tech TVs and toys, and buying some advanced weapons
from Russia that at best give them a
niche capability of swarming and conquering Taiwan. While China will grow in military capacity what backs it up? Their economy? I don't think so. Any nation of peasant
farmers can generate impressive GDP growth rates simply by putting even the
most productive subsistence farmers into even the most low-tech, polluting,
finger-smashing sweat shop factory. This is how Soviet Russia got great stats
year after year (when they weren't just lies, that is). Once you run out of
those farmers and must improve productivity with existing workers and few new
inputs, growth falls off tremendously as it did for Moscow. Our strength is that our mature economy continues to
achieve remarkable productivity growth. Although most seem to assume a looming China behemoth, Jane's in their recent email, does not:
TOWARDS the end of last
year Foreign Report suggested that, contrary to popular belief, the economic
miracle in China was not all it had been cracked up to be. We said that unless
the modernisers in the party triumphed over the hardline political dogmatists, the economy was heading
towards an inexorable decline. Such a decline has not yet. happened.
But it is close. China watchers are unconvinced by recent actions of the
Beijing government, which has failed to convince that it
is capable of keeping the economy on course.
So, a powerful China is hardly unstoppable. China may not even become powerful. Or even hold its
current position. And who knows, China may not even be hostile if it becomes more powerful.
And even if they become powerful yet remain a thuggish dictatorship, does that
mean we cease opposing them? My, how high-minded.
All I'm saying is put away
the white flags for now. I don't think we'll be needing
them.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA13JUL04A
The Dignified Rant turned 2 years old today. Bring on the
terrible twos, I say.
I’m still in the mood to rant. It’s a freaking target-rich
environment, after all.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA12JUL04B
The conventional wisdom—which the electorate of Spain
endorsed in their March election—is that the Islamist terrorists targeted Madrid
on 11-M because Spain
had soldiers in Iraq fighting the Baathists at our side.
One Egyptian terrorist was recently
arrested and wire taps indicated the following:
"The Madrid attack is my project,"
the Egyptian told the Palestinian, according to a transcript published last
week in the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera. "The project has cost me a lot of study, it took me 2 1/2 years."
Let’s see, 2-1/2 years would put the start of planning in
September 2001. Well darn it all, I guess Spain
didn’t earn the Islamists’ wrath over Iraq
after all. Who’d have thunk it?
Not the Filipino government apparently, which announced
a withdrawal from Iraq
to placate the terrorists. This decision was made despite decades of Moslem
unrest in the Philippines.
Will the surrendering class never learn? And what country’s nationals will now
face death because of this surrender?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA12JUL04A
So we now know that Joe Wilson is full of it, and not only
did Saddam try to get uranium from Africa, he tried to
get it from Niger
itself. Another so-called lie falls victim to the
gathering truth that Saddam’s Iraq
was a gathering threat.
So perhaps we should discuss why Saddam wanted uranium. I
mean, we’re told that Saddam had no viable programs to build them. The threat
was years and years away so we had time to deal with Saddam. Never mind the
mass graves, defiance of the international community, and terrorism in this
analysis of what is a threat or human rights violation. Let’s just look at this
dot of uranium interest and see what it might connect to.
Why try to get the tell-tale uranium when he supposedly was
a decade or more from building a bomb? Why not just get the more difficult to
hide uranium in year nine?
Since we know that Saddam was once very close to getting a
nuclear bomb until we nailed him in 1991, might the Iraqis have had some
confidence that they could have beat that decade-away wild ass guess of ours?
Might not the scientists, technicians, and dual-use equipment have been in such
a state that Saddam thought he could ramp up quickly once the French and
Russians pried the sanctions regime loose?
Because otherwise, how does acquiring uranium so early in
the process do anything but risk detection should someone more familiar with
nuclear weapons than sweet mint teas be sent to investigate?
Or were the Iraqis confident that they could hide it for as
long as it took even if inspectors were driving around Iraq
with Geiger counters? What would that explanation tell us about the
ability of Saddam to hide his programs and equipment inside Iraq?
Saddam was either closer than we think to producing some
nasty stuff or he knew he could hide stuff as long as he needed to, whether or
not UN inspectors ineffectively traveled around.
The question isn’t whether Saddam had chemical weapons and
programs to produce bio and nuclear weapons. The question is where are they
now? That is what I’d like some Congressional committee to investigate.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA11JUL04B
This
article notes that our military is estimating the Baathist
fighters at a strength of 20,000 full- and
part-timers:
The Iraq insurgency is far
larger than the 5,000 guerrillas previously thought to be at its core, U.S. military officials
say, and it's being led by well-armed Iraqi Sunnis angry at being pushed from
power alongside Saddam Hussein.
Although it was noted in the article by one analyst that the
previous guess of 5,000 was a “wag” (wild ass guess), he says the estimate shows
the past estimate to be ridiculous. This harsh assessment is given despite more
in the article that says:
U.S. military analysts disagree over the size of the
insurgency, with estimates running as high as 20,000 fighters when part-timers
are added.
That is, the higher figure is also a wag. We don’t know.
Just how many people are expected to carry out X attacks per day? I don’t know.
Apparently our military does not, either.
The article also notes that few Islamists are in this total
and that Baathists are the main force in the
opposition.
Well, yeah. Nice to know my impression is right.
While I’m sure this is going to be spun as a refutation that
we are winning since the insurgency has “grown;” and that Islamists are
virtually irrelevant, showing the idea that we are fighting terrorism in Iraq
to be wrong, both assessments are ridiculous themselves.
The number is just not important. I’ve never focused on it.
I’ve noticed in the past that the estimate of 5,000 stayed the same even after
any given month that we killed a thousand or so. This is also why body counts
are irrelevant to measuring success, as I’ve long argued.
Really, we have the density of troops to win assuming the
enemy can’t mass into fairly large-sized forces to carry out sustained attacks
on isolated posts; and by the 10:1 rule we could successfully fight 40,000 pure
insurgents. As I’ve said in the past, tell me when the Iraqis are massing in
platoon and company strength and mounting attacks. Then I’ll worry that the
resistance is progressing. A couple times in the past I’ve noted this budding
ability and worried about it, only to see it collapse into minor attack patterns
again. The big pushes in the Fallujah and Sadr revolts led the enemy to mass and we smashed them up
pretty good. Since then, we’ve stopped doing the body count thing, for which I
am glad. Perhaps it was felt that while we were getting hit hard, we had to
reassure the public that we were giving far better than we were taking. I don’t
know. But the bottom line is our casualties and not their casualties are what
count. This is because losses can be replaced if the political and economic
measures don’t improve to dry the recruiting pool. Just like weakening our home
front is the only way to get us out despite nearly 1-1/2 deaths per day on our
side, weakening their morale is key. With sufficient motivation, we can both
replace losses indefinitely.
Getting the Iraqis (the Shias,
Kurds, and even some Sunnis) into the fight fully against the Baathists and Islamists is the key, not some wag about the
number of fighters we are currently up against. Use the attacks per day and our
casualties to judge progress. As self rule, economic rebuilding, and democracy
progress, we will see these numbers drop.
As for the Islamists, as I’ve repeated over and over, the Baathists were always my main worry and not the foreign jihadis. The latter are more easily identified and killed. They
tend to alienate all Iraqis against the combined Baathist/Islamist
resistance anyway. They appear more significant because of the high profile
suicide attacks they pull off.
Of course, downplaying the Islamic nature of the resistance
undercuts one of the complaints of the anti-war side that we are creating
Islamist enemies. So take the good with the bad, I guess.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA11JUL04A
The UN Security Council is
divided on Darfur.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one who believes we have a
particular responsibility to intervene to halt human rights violations just
because nobody else will. We must look to our own security first and anything
else truly is a war or intervention of choice. That said, shouldn’t the
international community as its supporters idealize it be in the vanguard of
those calling for the ending of outrages such as Darfur?
I mean, is debating whether this crime reaches the level of genocide rather
than how to stop the crime a little ridiculous?
Will the international community act? Who knows? Depends on
how many oil contracts France
has signed with the Sudanese government I suppose. And
whether Islamic nations decide that killing black Sudanese is really that
terrible when truly horrible things like defensive barriers to stop suicide
attacks on civilians are waiting for their action.
But we could once again act to enforce the standards that
the UN purports to stand for:
But as public opinion mounts at the crisis in Darfur, some diplomats
believe the United States should just call
a vote next week and dare nations to block the resolution.
My earlier
post on the Darfur issue
still stands.
I think that a battalion-sized force sent in for a time will
not strain our ground forces. It didn’t in Liberia
and it didn’t in Haiti.
And our Navy and Air Force should be able to handle the strain too, assuming we
get civilian air transports on a contract basis for much of the supplies. Our fighter
squadrons are not now strained, our air transport units are quite busy still.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10JUL04D
Ah, the joys of rendering unto Castro what which is Castro’s:
Members of an American humanitarian aid group
arrived in Cuba Saturday in
defiance of U.S. law and wearing
T-shirts calling for "regime change" in the United States. …
The volunteers, who ranged in age from 10 to 91, came in
from the United States and six other
countries. They wore T-shirts reading "Regime Change in the US — Not in Cuba."
“Pastors for Peace,” indeed. The failure of people who purport to guide people in good versus
evil in their private lives see evil in America
and good in Cuba.
Reverends for Repression is more like it.
Unbelievable.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10JUL04C
The North Koreans have deployed
new missiles that can reach out into the Pacific and reach Guam, a major US
base that would be important in fighting North Korea should it come to war:
North Korea has begun making
and deploying new intermediate-range ballistic missiles that could reach U.S. military targets
in Okinawa, Japan and the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam, South Korea's Defense
Ministry said Thursday.
The missiles themselves and their ability to target US bases
around the Korean peninsula are not my major worry.
What I really worry about is what the North Koreans have
learned from recent American wars. Kosovo reinforced their burrowing
tendencies. We are working on this and the North Koreans have to worry that
precision and our technology will give us weapons that can reach into their
subterranean bunkers. The lessons of Desert Storm taught the lesson of our land
and air offensive power. The Iraq War reinforced the lessons of Kosovo and
Desert Storm and added the terrifying speed of execution with relatively few
troops that we are capable of producing. What might the North Koreans learn
from this recent history?
They might have learned that the only way to defeat us is to
hit us hard with everything they’ve got from H-Hour on. Their army is already
forward deployed near the DMZ in an offensive posture. So we know that they
would attack if they can. But with missiles capable of reaching Guam,
the North Koreans may figure they need to disrupt our rear areas to trip up our
precise firepower. And since they know we have anti-missiles, the North Koreans
may well assume that they need to use chemical weapons immediately both on the
ROK military but on US rear area bases such as Guam. Since they don’t know how many warheads will
hit, they’ll want them to have more bang for the buck.
I hesitate to say they’d use nukes since we’d destroy North
Korea’s state apparatus with nukes of our
own. North Korean nukes may be the ultimate time-out card if the offensive
stalls short of victory and the North Koreans need to sue for peace (and try
invading again in another 20 or 30 years).
I don’t know how we’d deal with that kind of threat. Would South
Korea want to risk a nuclear strike after
surviving a conventional invasion (with chemicals)? In theory, once the balloon
goes up, I’d want to destroy the North Korean regime by the end of the war.
Playing for a tie yet again (after 1953) should be ruled out. Who knows what
they’d develop in another 20 years?
The point is, the theater of war
won’t just be the Korean peninsula and the waters just around it. A narrow
theater plays to our advantage as we project massive firepower into the theater
from areas outside it. Guam’s air base will hold B-2s
and other long-range assets that will devastate North Korean military units.
The North Koreans will try to take the war to us.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10JUL04B
Ok, I’m better now. The treatment of one of our veterans at
the hands of anti-war scum (and I’m talking specifically to that parade and not
generally) is still horrible and I still worry that much like other fringe
anti-war ideas, this trend will go mainstream. But I am not in a funk over it. Just mad. If those esteemed ladies and gentlemen still want
to debate the justice and need to overthrow Saddam, I say bring it on. They are
perfectly welcome to argue that Saddam should still be in power.
As American forces mass in the Gulf region and Saddam
Hussein continues to defy nearly a score of resolutions demanding he come clean
on his WMD programs and as he continues to add to mass graves, the American Congress
continues
its debate on whether to invade:
Following release of the 511-page review Friday, the
panel's top Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said three-quarters
of senators would not have voted to authorize the invasion if they had known
how weak the intelligence was.
Oh wait. You say we eviscerated the Iraqi military? Saddam
has been charged with a host of crimes and will stand trial? The Iraqis are
retaking their place in the world as a free state?
We are preparing for elections there?
Well I’ll be darned. Yet we continue to debate the decision
to go to war. Huh. Very odd.
Except it’s not odd at all. I
stopped debating Liberia
when we went in. I stopped debating Haiti
when we went in. I stopped debating Kosovo when we went in. And of course, the
debate over our mistakes in Iraq
adds fuel to the fire (and so how many mistakes did the other side say we made
in the Cold War? And we won that decisively?).
For some, debating means arguing until
they win. They never give up.
I remain satisfied that we ended Saddam’s threat to his
neighbors and to us. I remain satisfied that we ended his terrorism
sponsorship. I remain satisfied that we ended his drive to get WMD—including
nuclear weapons. I remain satisfied that his reign of terror has been ended.
And I remain convinced that establishing a democratic Iraq
will aid us tremendously in creating a Middle East that is not an incubator for
crazies who want to kill us.
Could we please argue about what to do about Iran
and North Korea?
You know, the other two legs of the Axis of Evil still out there threatening
us? Could we debate how to make intelligence better so that we might have a
better idea of when a threat is “imminent” as the anti-war side insists is the
standard for action? There is plenty to debate, after all. Why continue the
Iraq War debate to this ridiculous extreme? Although perhaps we could debate
the Joe Wilson ‘Bush lied about Niger Uranium’ charge just
a little more (via NRO). Or if we want to debate intel issues a little more deeply, why did the CIA
send such an inept hack on such an important mission?
Oh, and one last thing on the WMD issue:
In the unanimously approved report, senators concluded that
the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts; engaged
in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction; and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State
Colin Powell to make false statements.
Is it just me or is it amusing that a report accusing the
intelligence services of “group think” was passed unanimously? I do not believe
that every intelligence service in the world was wrong on this issue. Oh, sure,
details will be shown wrong but the big picture was not in error. I do not
believe that all of Saddam’s scientists played the game of “lie to get funding
from the senile dictator” while his bloodthirsty lads roamed Iraq
looking for excuses to feed people into plastic shredders. I strongly believe
that our prolonged year-long “rush to war” gave Saddam time to hide, destroy,
or ship overseas his key WMDs and programs. We know
he had chemical weapons and missiles. We know he wanted bio and nuclear
weapons. We will find the chemicals and the programs for the rest. I think what
we’ve found is damning enough, but there will be more discovered unless we call
off the whole war on terror and go back to September 10th.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10JUL04A
From Instapundit, a link to this article
that starts:
Think
about the Seattle area -- Bainbridge Island to be exact -- and you think scenic views and liberal-minded
tolerance.
Why yes, I do think of liberal-minded tolerance. And from
long years of experience, that expression doesn’t mean what the liberal minded
think it means. They are tolerant of a wide range of political expression
ranging from Ted Kennedy on the right to Karl Marx and Fidel Castro on the
left. And they’ll even forgive somebody outside that range if they are properly
anti-American. Their minds are so closed and they actually believe they are open minded.
One American veteran, Jason Gilson, of the Iraqi War was in
the Fourth of July parade there and he was greeted with jeers and calls of
“baby killer” and “murderer” from the liberal-minded crowd.
Those F-ing bastards!
Oh yeah, they oppose the war but support the troops. Oh
yeah, they love our country and soldiers and just want the best for them.
No. They hate our soldiers. They want more to die in penance
for daring to liberate 50 million people in two countries in the last 2-1/2
years. They want the enlisted troops to frag their
officers. They want them to refuse orders and desert. Any soldier who won’t
fight is a hero and every one of our enemies is a freedom fighter who deserves
an attorney and all the protections they’d deny our soldiers. They want our
troops subject to the ICC. F-ing bastards!
I’ve seen this attitude and have been waiting for it to gain
currency in this war. I wear my ID card on an Army-emblazoned necklace and I
was amazed when one co-worker remarked to me that the non-standard necklace was
a “political statement.” If you think so, I replied, and ignored the remark.
But that amazed me. After all the loud protests that they love our troops too,
you’d think a simple “Army” printed on the band would be a neutral statement.
‘Cause, you know, both sides support the troops, right?
But what do we expect with the likes of Michael Moore
gaining hero status in the anti-war movement. Is it 1968 all over again? No. In
Vietnam, defeat
meant we went home and left our allies to the tender mercies of the Hanoi
conquerors while we went home to get on with our lives. Now, if we come home
our enemies will follow us here as they already did on 9-11 and keep killing us
until they are finally sated with our blood. And they will never be satisfied.
Enough of us will never die to make them leave us alone. Is it 1968? No. It’s
1936 France. When “Better
Hitler than Blum” motivated the right wing in France who hated the French
Socialist Blum more than they feared the Nazi Hitler. Divisions in France
contributed to their weakness in standing up to the Nazis while they still had
the strength to do so. Defeat was the result. The hatred on the anti-war left
is that bad today. And they would lose rather than see this administration
continue for four more years. And they’d yell cruel insults at our soldiers.
It can’t come to this. It can’t. And if the people in
leadership positions who look to these thugs to support them in elections won’t shame them into civility,
our war against our overseas enemy will turn into a war here, too.
But don’t call them unpatriotic. Oh no. That is wrong. They
may defend your right to burn the flag to their dying days but don’t dare call
them unpatriotic. Fine. I won’t.
They are just fucking bastards.
I usually don’t use vulgarity on this blog.
But it should not be reserved for use only against Senators. The worthless
pieces of living garbage that would taunt our soldiers with these insults when
they have risked their lives to protect us and to free strangers from tyranny are shameful.
No, on second thought, it isn’t just shameful. It’s
liberal-minded. But hey, at least they still have their scenic views.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA09JUL04A
Hugo Chavez, Number Two in
the Axis of El Vil, clearly has no intention of
going quietly as he prepares for the monitored recall vote in August. I've
already written that he will likely try to hinder the election and the subsequent
counting to engineer a delay that a compliant court will say puts the election
past the point where a recall triggers a new presidential election. Once past
the August date, the vice president assumes the presidency instead and Chavez
governs in all but name. Or if all else fails, he simply says this is an
American plot and digs in his paramilitaries and loyal military units around
the presidential palace and dares anyone to get rid of him.
But of course, Chavez would
prefer not to go that route. Even Carter might tut tut at that bit of blatant power grab. And Chavez, budding
Castro that he is, does have support amongst the poor. So actually winning the
vote would be a lot more convenient for Chavez. That doesn't
mean Chavez will go by the book:
Outraging Venezuela's
opposition, President Hugo Chavez has conscripted the military and the
broadcast media in his bid to defeat an August recall referendum.
He is violating agreements to
play fair:
But opposition leaders charge that Chavez violated an
agreement in which the government and private media pledged to give equal time
to both sides in the campaign before the Aug. 15 referendum.
And of course, getting friendly
voters on to the electoral rolls is a must for any self-respecting thug
dictator:
Venezuela
has granted citizenship to 216,000 immigrants since May under a fast-track
nationalization plan, President Hugo Chavez announced Tuesday.
More are on the way, of
course.
This doesn't erase the
anti-Chavez votes that will be cast, but it does increase the chance that
Chavez will get one final card to play if his other stratagems fail and he
needs to dig in those supporters around the palace:
Re-elected in 2000 to a six-year term, Chavez can be
recalled if the opposition gets more votes than the 3.7 million votes he won in
2000. Elections would be held within 30 days to serve out his term, which ends
in January 2007.
It isn't clear what would happen if the opposition
surpasses 3.7 million votes — and Chavez surpasses the opposition vote. Courts
have yet to address all possibilities in a presidential recall, which was
included in a new Constitution instituted at Chavez's urging after his first
election in 1998.
I think it is pretty darned
clear what would happen. Chavez would claim a mandate and the constitutional
provisions be damned. Wonder how Carter will react to
this?
Chavez will not go without a
toe tag.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA08JUL04A
The amnesty is one part of
suppressing the insurgency. It will aim for the less dedicated. As I suspected,
it is not intended for the most hard core.
The new emergency
law will be used to go after the hard Baathists
and the Islamists.
I suggest Fallujah
would be a good target. Seal it off. Ration food. Go house to house and check
identifications. If anybody has suspicious powder burns or even looks funny at
the Iraqi National Guard and police, take them in for questioning. Seize
weapons. Sift the city for the undesirables and make it stick.
And US forces will remain
nearby—and overhead—just
in case.
The Iraqis seem to have the
will to beat the insurgents. I wonder if this can get better faster than we believe?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07JUL04C
Some say the war in Iraq is stressing the Army National Guard to the breaking
point. Some of the people making this charge are upset that any reservists are being called up.
These people are unclear on the concept of reserves. But for those who accept
that reserves should indeed be mobilized in an emergency or time of war, are
they right that the war is straining the Guard?
I think there are three Guard
brigades in Iraq. A couple more support operations in the Balkans. I
think we have the Sinai battalion as a Guard responsibility. We also have
separate battalions for base security and other functions but I don’t know how
many. But some activated for base duty are from combat support units and not
the combat brigades. Still, say 8 brigades as a guess.
The Guard has 8 divisions
with 24 brigades, 3 separate brigades, and 15 enhanced separate brigades. The
enhanced units are the ones that get extra training and money to be available
faster. We used 15 battalions during the Iraq War in various duties. (This is
all on memory, too) So the total is 42 combat brigades plus combat support
units like artillery, air defense, signal, etc.
Can we really say that 8 out
of 42 brigades—less than 20% of the total—is straining the reserves to the
breaking point? We could mobilize units for 5 years at this rate without
recalling the same unit twice.
If this level of commitment
is stressing the Guard, we need to seriously reorganize the Army National Guard.
Given that the premise of the “big one” in which we mobilize every trooper we
can find is gone (and has been gone since 1991) it is time we look at our reserve/active
balance thoroughly anyway. War makes it even more important.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07JUL04B
Yes, we've made mistakes in Iraq. Some of the alleged mistakes are not mistakes at all
(e.g. disbanding the nonexistent Iraqi army). Others are only mistakes in
hindsight. Let's look at some of the mistakes and their cures and speculate on
what might have resulted had we acted differently
We're taking too long to
turn Iraq over to Iraqis.
I remember when the French
and others were concerned that our initial plan called for drafting a
constitution and then by the end of the second year of occupation we'd hold
elections. This was too long, critics said. We of course see the result of
accelerating the timetable and re-ordering the sequence. Now there are
complaints that we are turning things over to the Iraqis before they are ready.
We disbanded the Iraqi army.
Let's just assume that either
we were able to retain the Iraqi army or quickly recall it to bases not stripped clean. Our
forces and this army would have faced the Baathists
from the Special Republican Guards, the Republican Guards, the various
intelligence services, and of course the Islamists both amateur and
professional. So first of all, keeping these guys employed would not have
eliminated the pool of potential resistance. Remember, the army had largely Shia lower ranks so they presumably weren't going to join
the Baathists anyway. But we'd be keeping Sunni
officers.
And how would this have been
received? Well the cry of betrayal is not too tough to anticipate. The charge
would be that we spoke of democracy yet kept the same killers in charge. How
could the Shias trust us if they see the same
faces—with US-provided guns now—lording in over them? It was just about oil
they'd say and not about freedom from tyranny. And when the Sunnis counter-attacked
in Fallujah and formed units of the old army defected
and fought us, the cries of what kind of idiot would keep the soldiers of the
former regime in power would blast the administration daily as Marines and
soldiers fought a more serious revolt.
De-Baathification
cripples rebuilding.
Let's also assume that we
were able to keep the government buildings intact so that the existing
"technocrats" could all keep their jobs. Oh sure, Shias
and Kurds were excluded over the decades and most weren't even allowed to get
the schooling to apply, but no matter. And forget that many with Baathist credentials have blood on their hands. Stability
would have been enhanced if we had kept them.
And how would the anti-war
side have reacted? Again, the cries of betrayal of the Shias
and Kurds who must weave their way through government bureaucracies staffed
with their long-time oppressors would be raised. Just add all the complaints
about the army but add that our reconstruction would now be pouring money into
the Baathists! Why did we fight this war?
We should have shot looters.
Of course, looting of
government buildings, hospitals, and museums was a setback. Letting it go on
arguably taught the defeated that we were too soft to rule them as occupiers. A couple days of shooting and killing a score or so as a lesson
would have prevented chaos and destruction.
So what if we'd killed a
score or so and the situation remained calm? I'll tell you what would happen.
The Army divisional commander would be testifying before a Congressional
committee and the military would be under fire for not court martialing the offending officers and men. How could we
shoot desperate poor people? Wasn't the rapid collapse of the regime forces a
clear sign that we won and that the people just want to get on with their lives
and not resist us? Good grief, they'd say, is it any wonder we need to ratify
the International Criminal Court? I'm sure the Belgians would have prepared
charges against our troops forthwith.
We failed to impose
martial law in Sunni triangle.
Like the shooting of looters
issue, our failure to move into the Sunni areas bypassed in the war after Baghdad fell and lay down the law is seen as a signal that we
were too weak to clamp down. We should have rolled into the Sunni triangle in
strength, and crushed the Baathists and their Sunni supporters to preempt resistance.
If we had done this after the Baathists collapsed so quickly in the
major combat operations, would the opposition really have understood
that we were preempting resistance? Would they have accepted anything
with that argument? If Sunnis were dying and being rounded up before
they resisted, Tommy Franks would have been accused of all sorts of
crimes. I recall stories speaking with sympathy about how the poor
Sunnis were no longer the top dogs and they didn't know what the future
would hold. I happen to agree that this was a mistake but let's not
pretend that the alternative would have been greeted by the anti-war
side with anything but hostility. How would we prove that the Sunnis
would resist? Point out that they ruled for 400 years? Please.
We should have patrolled
in light vehicles with soft caps to project strength.
Some argue that the Army
should have emulated the British and Marines who patrolled their Shia areas at ease. Had the Army done this can we guess the
reaction? You failed to protect our soldiers? How could you patrol in Sunni
areas without body armor and armored vehicles? We need a commission!
There are still power
blackouts in Baghdad. Can't we at least provide electricity?
We actually have surpassed
pre-war production but since the reporters are in Baghdad and they never saw blackouts under Saddam, they seem
to assume we aren’t doing as well. Their minds don’t grasp that we are fairer
now and that other parts of the country get to share the electricity produced.
So would the reporters have been happy if we’d kept the Baghdad-first policy?
Might they have not mentioned the poor Shias of Basra
forced to go without power 20 hours per day?
We still haven't spent
much of the money Congress appropriated for reconstruction.
Yes, the money is slow. But
we spent captured money and we had access to other funds plus oil revenue as we
got the new money into the pipeline. And if we’d spent the money already, would
people have been happy? Why then we’d have investigations into why proper
bidding wasn’t done and why wasn’t the money allocated according to a plan to
spend it most effectively. Why was there waste?! And God help us all if Brown
and Root made more than a 3 percent profit.
We invaded with too few
troops.
All our problems come from
too few troops in the invasion force. But as I’ve noted ad nauseum we did
invade with the line elements of 7 US and British division equivalents. This is
exactly what our plans for a major theater war have called for since the
Persian Gulf War. What we did not have were the massive amounts of support
troops used in 1991 and we did not need them.
If we’d taken the time to
mass the unneeded troops, might the attack have started months later? Would
Saddam have finally admitted we were going to invade and seriously prepared?
Would we have had the troops to rotate into Iraq to replace the invasion troops? How many Guard combat
brigades would we have mobilized by now? Would the North Koreans have acted
while we struggled?
The follow-up is that we have
too few troops to occupy Iraq. Again, hogwash. I’ve done
amateur calculations and I think we are fine. And since I am in the company of
V. D. Hanson in thinking that using the troops well is more important than
adding more, I’m happy enough with my judgment.
We brought in too few
allied troops for the occupation.
Like we
could have gotten more, first of all.
But if we had, they would have been worthless in a fight. Except for the
British, our allies seem to have very restrictive rules to keep their troops
out of combat. Why after all did we have to retain 1st Armor
Division and 2nd Cavalry Regiment (Light) to fight Sadr’s nutballs when the revolt
was in the Polish-Ukrainian division’s sector? Because they wouldn’t fight,
that’s why. It does us no good to have too many troops that we have to shadow
in case trouble erupts. All those allied troops in 1991 except for the British
and French were mostly worthless and had no impact on the war. God help us if
one of our units got in trouble and we had to hope for allied help to rescue
our troops. Anybody remember Mogadishu and the non-US troops that stood by for
hours while our guys got shot up escaping?
Failing to seal the
borders with Syria and Iran allowed foreigners to infiltrate.
Yes, we’d have been better
off if the borders had been sealed. But this could have been done by instilling
some fear in Damascus and Tehran but we all know that wasn’t going to happen. And if we’d rushed troops to the borders? Why the cries that
we were threatening neutrals and preparing to roll through innocent Moslem
countries in some type of plan to create an American empire would have been
eagerly spread in our media and possibly the subject of a stupid movie or two.
Failing to account for and
secure all the arms depots in Iraq has fueled the insurgents.
Indeed, one author I read
strongly implied that our rapid advance was the cause of this problem. The
implication was that we should have taken the time to secure the depots before
we continued the advance.
But if we had slowly advanced
destroying depots as we went how long would the war have lasted? How many more
would have died. Would the French and Russians have finally gotten us to halt
the war with Saddam in power? And given the large numbers of arms depots, even
destroying or securing 90% probably would not have been enough.
The Congressional inquiries
into the failure to crush the demoralized and ill-equipped Iraqi military in
two weeks would have been lengthy and vicious.
So, mistakes were made. War
is uncertain and we can’t pretend different decisions would have been right
100%.
But don't expect all those
critics piously claiming that they just want the administration to admit
mistakes so we can correct them to admit to these uncertainties. They opposed
the war and still do notwithstanding their claims to the contrary. They only
want to hammer the administration over the mistakes of the war. And they'd
hammer the administration whatever was decided. Yes, we made mistakes. So has
our enemy. Yet we won the war. And we are winning the stabilization phase, too.
We'll make a lot more
mistakes as we push forward to victory. I guarantee it.
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Amnesty for Iraqis who have fought us is under
consideration by the Iraqi government.
At first blush this sticks in the craw. It seems outrageous.
Indeed, one commentator I saw said we should immediately withdraw our troops
from Iraq if
the Iraqi government does this.
We don’t need to grant amnesties since I think that as Iraqi forces
get stronger we will be able to pull back and have the Iraqis shoulder the
burden of suppressing the Sunni/Islamist terror campaign. But the Iraqis
probably would like to end the decades of killing at last. In some forms, this
could be ok.
Consider that many critics of the war complain that we
disbanded the Iraqi army (again, this is false—disbanding the disintegrated
army was a mere formality) when we should have used it and also complain about
de-Baathification since it deprives Iraq of
technocrats to help rebuild (no, it gets rid of criminals if done at the right
level, but my point is it is a claimed “mistake”). If dealing with our enemies
is out, why did so many who oppose the entire war latch on to these complaints?
Why were they eager to have people who killed us and Iraqis put into the
military and government to work by our side?
Remember our objective. It is to turn over an Iraq
in good enough shape to pursue economic rebuilding, suppress the insurgents,
and build democracy. It is not to kill or jail every Iraqi who has ever taken
up arms against us.
Would we be willing to lose another 100 or 500 soldiers and
Marines to keep killing those who have killed us in the past? Remember that
combating insurgencies ultimately depends on political measures to turn off the
flow of replacements. Killing insurgents in the field is necessary in the short
run but few enemies are required to keep an insurgency going. And when they
lose too much they can pull back into their homes and we are hard pressed to
identify them and arrest or kill them. They can regroup and come back when
ready. Killing for vengeance over what we’ve lost thus far will just lead to
more of our deaths.
Remember the objective!
As long as this isn’t some faux deal like Fallujah, an amnesty deal that gets enemy fighters to go
home, cooperate with the new government, and get on with their lives is
acceptable.
And this still leaves the foreign jihadis
for us to hunt down and kill. They won’t accept.
And I imagine the hard core Baathists
resisters won’t accept either. Nor
will the idiot Sadr. The target audience is the
larger less-motivated group that takes money to attack us and which may not
have done too much harm anyway.
Nor does it mean we have to deal with any bad guys in an
official capacity. Amnesty does not have to mean high rank in a new Iraq—and
it shouldn’t. And we might be able to take care of the problem more quietly
after Iraq has
settled down. I’m sure that policy on not assassinating our enemies has been
thoroughly rewritten by now. And if they ever travel overseas we could nab them
and try them under our laws.
This amnesty sounds bad. It feels bad. But it is not bad if
done right. Remember our objective.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAJUL2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA05JUL04C
This
from the British Foreign Secretary:
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said he was
unsure whether to believe Iran's insistence that
is has no intention of trying to build nuclear weapons.
In related matters, Straw reported that he is also “unsure”
about whether the Pope is indeed Catholic. He opined that he is “unclear” about
whether he may already be a winner in the Publisher’s House sweepstakes. Further, he “does not know” if it is safe to drink milk one day
past its expiry date.
With US-prodded pressure on the nuclear issue and Iraq’s
pressure on Iran’s
support for terror inside Iraq,
we could very well be moving toward a crisis with Tehran.
With outside pressure, domestic resistance to the mullahs may finally be
emboldened to take action. I concede that all this remains unclear.
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I wrote in my First Gulf War
(1980-1988) summary (I have a torn-apart manuscript on the war that I doubt
I’ll have time to put together in the near future. I almost sold it in an
earlier version. I tried to sell this summary with footnotes but
failed—eventually I did get an account of the initial invasion sold in “The
First Gulf War and the Army’s Future” in 1997) back in the mid-1990s:
Finally, the war is a sobering reminder that wars do not usually go
according to plan. Whether one looks at Iraq's assumptions about a quick war in
1980 or Iran's belief from 1982 onward that Iraq would crumble if pushed hard
enough, it is easy to see that war has a life of its own and can spiral out of
our comprehension when we decide that war will advance our interests. Our
precise assumptions about the minimum force we will need to win in the future
must be questioned since the type of enemy we may face cannot be chosen ahead
of time. Even if we know what our enemy will look like on day one of a war, we
could be wrong. Or it could change as months or years pass. While not an
argument for a 1945-size American Army capable of beating anybody (and simultaneously
crushing our economy) the First Gulf War should warn us against assuming victory
is ours for the asking. Decreases in the size, training, modernization, and
morale of our military, especially the Army, matter a great deal even in a time
of peace.
The Iraq War has only reinforced this belief. This basic
mindset is why I have not panicked in the face of a Sunni and foreign jihadi-supported resistance over a year after Baghdad
fell. Enemies adapt. And despite the resistance, we fight well against our adapting
enemy and are winning with what are remarkably low casualties for what we have
accomplished. In addition, I believe that the Iraq War was in our interest, so
a setback in rapidly bringing the post-war stabilization mission to a close
does not discourage me. The casualties are dispiriting since I hate to see the
casualty reports every day or so, but this does not erase what we have done.
Certainly, as I’ve called for in the past, we need a larger
Army. Uncertainty over the future and the need to have a margin of error is
something I’ve been focused on and why I’ve been worried that Rumsfeld wanted to kill two Army divisions (I haven’t seen
this brought up in the last year, so this may have died) I’d settle for 40,000
more troops as a start to see what that does for us. We can’t force too many
troops through our training establishment anyway. For years I’ve thought this
should mean two more divisions. Now, I think we should add separate UA-brigades
and battalions that can be plugged into our new-style divisions.
Enemies adapt and evolve. I’m sure our adaptations and
evolution are even more discouraging to our enemies. As long as we keep
adapting and evolving while we stand up the Iraqi government and its security
forces, we will emerge with an allied Iraq
that could be a beacon of democracy in the region.
And just a thought: the anti-war types who are usually for
intervening in humanitarian crises where there is little national security
reason to go in should not be hammering on the fight in Iraq.
Are they really saying that the massive human rights violations by Saddam did
not justify invasion? Just how bad would they have needed to be to justify
action? Mind you, I think this war was and is in our national interest. I’m
just wondering about the reasoning ability of the “anti-war” side.
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We are seeing threats
to US citizens in Bahrain:
Increased threat of terrorist attack has led Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve the temporary relocation of eligible
family members and non-emergency Defense Department personnel from Bahrain.
So who is trying to penetrate this Shia-majority
state (not Shia-run, mind you)? (the
Shias are 70%, Sunnis 30%)
And then
I read:
Bahrain's king said Saturday that his tiny
Gulf kingdom is ready to send a naval force to help safeguard Iraqi territorial
waters, if asked by the new Iraqi government, the official Bahrain News Agency
reported.
Anybody attacking by sea seems likely to be coming from Iran
since if you’re inside Iraq
you might as well, you know, attack the stuff around you on land where you can
escape after the attack more easily rather than sit in a more identifiable boat
right after the big boom occurs.
Is an undeclared war going on between Bahrain
and Iran? Bahrain
hosts our Fifth Fleet headquarters and our ships base out of there. And in the First Gulf War
between Iran
and Iraq, Iran
did try to foment
a coup among the Shias in Bahrain
in 1981 and has tried to destabilize the country since. Are the Iranians back
to their old tricks or is al Qaeda trying to
penetrate the Sunni community to launch attacks? Sending the Bahraini navy to
help us either spits at the Sunni terrorists and annoys Sunni-majority states
if an al Qaeda-related group is posing the threat to
the US; or spits at the Iranians for trying to undermine the Bahraini
government if Iran is behind the threat. This at least wouldn’t annoy the
Saudis too much since Saudi Arabia
has their own Shia “problem” in their oil provinces.
Very curious.
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I was skeptical of reports that US soldiers had forced
Iraqis to jump in a lake and one drowned. The accounts painted pictures of US
troops without any light discipline and other problems. Well, US soldiers have been charged in the
incident.
Of course, it is still possible that the eyewitnesses were
lying about the details to increase the chance they would be believed. You
know, make it sound worse. The killing is the bad part however, and the embellishments
did not (and still do not) ring true.
Nonetheless, I was wrong. The guilty should be punished.
That is a given.
Given the readiness of the press—even our own—to jump on any
claim that our troops have done something wrong, it is difficult to assess
these charges from a distance. As a rule, I assume nothing until proven guilty.
And I assume we have the integrity to investigate allegations and find the
truth. Most turn out to be nothing. Some are true and we act. So far my
assumptions are holding up.
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This is not just America's—or the President's—war against terrorists.
Europeans can sing louder and avert their eyes but our
enemies are their enemies:
"To the European people ... you only have a few more
days to accept bin Laden's truce or you will only
have yourselves to blame," read the purported statement by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, referring
to bin Laden's three-month "truce offer" --
effectively an ultimatum -- which ends in mid-July.
"The race now is between you, time and European
governments which have refused to stop their attacks against Muslims.
"So do not blame us for what will happen and we
apologize to you in advance if you are among those killed."
I will say that it is so nice
to see that politeness is not forgotten even amongst homicidal, delusional
maniacs. In that spirit, I'd like to apologize to the terrorists in advance for
the death of every last damn one of them. Whether by JDAM or rifle fire, we
will seek you out and kill you. And win.
Tough luck chaps, and sorry
and all. But you will all die in the end.
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Since Saddam's statue fell,
I've been eager to get the Iraqis fighting the former Baathists
and cleaning up the country. I wanted the Iraqis to try the Baathists
for war crimes. I wanted Iraqis to take the lead in security on the front
lines. We must support these efforts, of course, since the new Iraq is but an infant, but Iraqis must fight for a new Iraq.
And we see the benefits
of Iraqi National Guard (the former Iraqi Civil Defense Corps) units getting
out front:
The eagerness to see Iraqis back in
charge of the streets of Baghdad suggested
that replacing U.S. soldiers
with Iraqis could go a long way toward reducing popular resentment directed at
the U.S. military
presence here. That resentment has helped nourish a campaign of bombings and other
attacks against American soldiers and Iraqis seen to be cooperating with them,
particularly police and National Guard recruits.
And the benefits of
trying the Baathists:
Coming just three days after an Iraqi
government assumed limited political power from the U.S.-led occupation
authority, the view of Hussein in a defendant's dock also appeared to encourage
many Iraqis to imagine a country more in their hands than ever.
In the end, it is Iraq's fight. We had done a lot and sacrificed much, and
we will do
more to help. But we can only help. But it looks like the Iraqis are stepping
up in the proper
spirit! (via Instapundit)
We are winning this fight.
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Saddam Hussein and some of
his top thugs were
formally charged for his numerous crimes.
But Saddam lashed
out, reflecting what is sure a common view amongst
Michael Moore fans:
The deposed dictator fixed
the judge with a penetrating stare and declared: "This is all a theater by
Bush, the criminal."
Ah yes. Saddam of course, was
charged with but a fraction of his crimes:
Accused
of killing religious figures in 1974, gassing Kurds in Halabja
in 1988, killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983,
killing members of political parties over the last 30 years, carrying out the
1986-88 "Anfal" campaign of displacing
Kurds, the suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites, the 1990
invasion of Kuwait.
I know, invading Kuwait was just defending the honor of Iraq. And the Kurds were probably just using a
malfunctioning space heater. And the Shias?
Well, they just walked into a door. The rest are mere details. The crimes left
out hardly worth mentioning.
No, the real
crime is deposing such a murderous monster and his underlings without the full
set of twenty UN Security Council resolutions and the blessings of Chirac. Now
we're talking real wrath-inspiring outrage. The hundreds of
thousands who died as the result of his crimes and sick ambition are mere
statistics. But that one additional UN resolution that we did not get—that's a
significant number. That warrants spittle-flecked rage at our country. That inspires
hope that we lose the war (via Instapundit).
That is mind boggling.
The trial will be
amazing. Already we see some wondering whether Saddam can get a fair trial. But
Saddam is guilty. Shooting him as we dragged him out of the hole he hid in
would not have been injustice under the circumstances. Yet just wait for the
complaints by some that Saddam is not getting a fair trial. They are the ones
who think "fair" means a 50-50 chance of
not-guilty verdict. There are some who think that the proof
of guilt is not a "slam dunk." How is it even possible to think this way? They are wrong. One
former victim of Saddam put
it well:
"We must do this to show we are a
legal society," said the 35-year-old engineer, sitting in a friend's home
in Baghdad. "But
at the end, he should be executed. And then when his spirit rises from his
body, the spirit should be strangled and executed again."
Try Saddam and execute him. In that order, of course. Wouldn't want to
ignore the legal niceties. But by all means execute him. Anything less
belittles his crimes over the last three decades.
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