“They Are Against Whatever We Do” (Posted October 30, 2004)
Opponents of the war today complain that we failed to get Osama bin Laden. For them, our victories are hollow as long
as this single man hides from us.
Yet recall 1990, when opponents of the Persian Gulf War
complained that President Bush (41) was personalizing the war by making it Bush
against Saddam. That was so simplisme they said.
So what changed? Why is Osama
himself the gold standard now?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA30OCT04C
Though I slam France
on occasion, I do recognize that while France
may try to screw us over in some areas, especially Iraq,
that does not mean that France
is wholly useless. As Sensing
notes:
One reason President Bush has refrained from
criticizing the French is because while Chirac's government is no ally in Iraq, it is an
important ally in Francophone Africa, where French
intelligence is very active and effective. Africa, you may recall, is the
coming thing in al Qaeda's operational base.
In general, I try to take the long view in our coalition of
the willing in the fights in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and
globally. While some allies shrink from helping in some areas, they are helpful
in others. These are willing partners after all, and help willingly given will
be worth more than compelled help. Spain
could be more helpful in the future. So could Germany.
So could the Philippines.
So too could France.
Of course, just as France
opposes us when they think it is in their interest; we should look to our
interests when dealing with France and others. After all, where they cooperate
with us, they are doing so because it helps them—not as a favor to us. We owe
them no favors. We could consider doing them a favor when they do something to
help us even when they think it won’t help them. That’s what being an ally
means. France
should look into that.
We have friends in every country even when those friends do
not run the government, so if I slam a friendly country that is not as helpful
as I’d like, take that into account. It is not really a general condemnation of
the country as much as it is a condemnation of the country’s government in the
question at hand.
Of course, France
has a way of drawing attention to itself as an opponent of the US
in the most obnoxious fashion possible. They choose to be a lightning rod so
they shouldn’t be too shocked that Americans like myself
are upset with them.
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So after three years of the US
and our allies fighting back against Osama’s mad
version of Islam, is Osama happy at the scene he
surveys from his lovely cave?
Some here say we’ve made it easier for Osama
to recruit Islamists. I think that is bull, but this
article notes that we really aren’t studying it much or reporting on it to
really answer that question. He thinks it could be true but where are the
reports that can be compared to earlier reporting on Islamism? Still, the
thrust of the article is that the argument we are making things worse by
fighting is bull. The environment is better for us and worse for the Islamists:
What we do know: Al Qaeda was born and grew rapidly in a time when the United States was ignoring Afghanistan, wasn't occupying Iraq, and was committed to negotiating Palestinian nationalist
and religious aspirations through the Oslo Accords.
We know that Osama bin Laden used as a tocsin call
American retreats from the Middle
East; that the defining
moment for him, and perhaps for his movement, was President Clinton's
"Black Hawk Down" withdrawal from Somalia.
We know that Osama bin Laden, his number two, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, and other much more respectable members
of the Sunni Muslim community have called for the streets to rise in the Middle
East against the infidel American invaders. Yet the streets have been, once
again, mostly quiet (despite the Westerner-paid opinion polls that tell us how
much the average Muslim man hates the United States). In a newspaper or magazine article we get a quick quote
from some European intelligence official telling us that al Qaeda
has been revitalized by the American invasion, but what we don't see or hear,
at least not yet, are European officials and responsible academics who actually
visit the Muslim communities they write about, screaming over the postwar
radical deluge. (And we would
hear the Europeans, particularly the French and the Germans, frantically
pressing this with U.S. officials and reporters, yet all seems rather quiet.)
NOW FOR WHAT we are beginning to see in the Middle East: The Iraq war has intellectually convulsed the region. The war and
President Bush's statements about the need for greater democracy in the Middle East have
provoked a vibrant conversation about democracy in the region and in the
influential Arabic press published in London. This conversation is still in its infancy, but the range
of the discussion, and the extent to which even the controlled presses in
dictatorships have been forced to engage it, are impressive.
Anyone who has spent
much time watching Arabic television knows how hard the satellite channels have
tried to depict the Iraqi resistance as a national, fraternal affair even
though the vast majority of Iraqis--the Kurds and the Arab Shia--have
not joined in action or sympathy the Arab Sunni insurgents. This line doesn't
quite ring true, and the Arab journalists and guests often have a hard time
tiptoeing around the obvious--that the vast majority of Iraqis do not look upon
the war as illegal, immoral, or a great geostrategic
blunder. Serious discussions have started in the Arab press about the savagery
of some of the Iraqi insurgents, about how they kill more Iraqis than they do
Americans. Bombings of Arab Christian churches and all of the beheadings have
caused some soul-searching, even among Islamic activists.
Prior to 2001 when we stomped the Taliban, happy jihadis trained safely away while we were sensitive,
nuanced, worshipping the UN, and oblivious to our so-called allies who were
helping Saddam for profit and to screw us over. The Jihadis
plotted to kill us and they carried out attacks at relatively low rates until
they murdered 3,000 of us in New York, Pennsylvania,
and Virginia. Let me post this nice
summary from The Corner:
I realize that Tommy Franks, who was there, is pretty effective
rebuttal to the inane Dem talking points (from Kerry, Holbrooke,
et al.) about how we supposedly had Bin Laden cornered in Tora
Bora but let him get away because we were diverted by
Iraq -- a total non-threat ... except of course for a few missing tons of HMX
that are a galactic danger to mankind and that the "incredible
incompetent," GWB, forgot to guard. But I really think contenting ourselves
with the General Franks response misses a more important point.
In August 1998, the embassies were bombed, killing 257 people. This was
a coordinated military attack on sovereign American installations. President Clinton, whom Kerry would emulate (as he reminded
everyone in Philadelphia this week), lobbed a few
ineffectual cruise missiles on a single day. Big rocks were turned into smaller rocks, but there was no meaningful
effort -- none, zilch, nada -- to hunt down and kill Bin Laden even though
everyone in the administration acknowledged that al Qaeda
was planning more attacks on the United States.
In October 2000, the Cole was bombed, killing 17 American sailors -- a
direct attack on the American military. It turns out, though, that by Cole
standards, the embassy retalliation was robust.
President Clinton did absolutely nothing -- not even cruise missiles -- to
respond. Again, there was no Bin Laden manhunt and no disruption of al Qaeda's command structure at a time when everyone in the
Clinton administration, and everyone on the Senate Intelligence Committee on
which the Junior Senator from Massachusetts sat, knew that more attacks were
being planned.
Against that background, the Tora Bora BS is not only infuriating but insulting to the
intelligence. How dare these people suggest that BUSH hasn't done enough to
hunt down Bin Laden. This war didn't start on 9/11.
These people had YEARS to try to grab this guy -- while everyone knew he was
planning atrocities such as the one that occurred on 9/11 -- and they never
even tried. They were too weak to confront the Taliban. They were too weak (and
too dug in to their non-proliferation pieties) to conduct a wilfull
carrot-and-stick dialogue with Musharaff to convince
him that we were going after Bin Laden and Pakistan could either go along with
us or suffer the consequences. They didn't have the nerve.
President Clinton makes the vapid complaint that greatness eluded him
because there was no great historical challenge to meet during his two terms.
He could not be more wrong. Had he taken the embassy bombings as the
call-to-arms that they were, had he used his unparalleled political and
rhetorical skills to rally Americans to this great cause, we, as patriotic
Americans, would have rallied around him, he'd have been remembered as a
personally flawed but otherwise superb president, and we'd right now be
grousing over next Tuesday's likely ushering in of the second Gore term --
although not that depressed because 9/11 would never have happened.
President Bush has failed the minor detail of actually capturing Bin
Laden, who must live every waking moment in fear of his life, after the major
accomplishment of shredding al Qaeda's capacity to
project force. The last time the Democrats had the wheel,
neither Bin Laden nor al Qaeda's infrastructure was
touched even though the Clinton
administration knew exactly what they were trying to do. Did Senator Kerry ever
convene a congressional hearing to probe why the Clinton administration was not using the Defense
Department to hunt down and capture or kill Bin Laden? Did he ever demand
answers for why the response to al Qaeda attacks in
1998 and 2000 was so pusillanimous? I must have missed those.
My point in quoting this isn’t to attack Kerry or Clinton,
but to point out that the idea that this administration isn’t serious about
taking on the Islamists is insulting given the record. Much more could have
been done in the past yet was not done. Could Reagan have done more? Yes. Though this ignores the fact that we had the more important Soviet Union to worry about
and could not get bogged down in a lesser threat. Bush 41 had managing
the collapse of the Soviet Union and German
reunification not to mention the Persian Gulf War. But what was Clinton’s
excuse? We were supreme in power and prosperous at home. Perhaps the American
people would not have answered the call to fight hard, eager to find a happy,
normal, post-Cold War world. But we’ll never know. Our president did not try. So
during the’90s the Islamists trained and rested and spread out to fight us,
killing us where they could and finally hitting a medium jackpot with the 9-11
attacks. They are eager for bigger and better attacks.
Now the Islamist training must come on the job and US and
allied forces kill or capture them at a rapid rate. And the Moslem world is
finally beginning to ask some serious questions about their society. With Afghanistan
gaining freedom, the questions will grow. With Iraq
gaining freedom, the questions will grow harder. Certainly, the Moslem “street”
is quiet and the issue of freedom has been broached. We have done well in the
short run and the signs are good for the long run, too. My, Osama
must be a happy cave camper.
As I said, some think we are recruiting terrorists by
fighting back. I might take the claim a little more seriously if the jihadis hadn’t grown in strength, confidence, and
capabilities, and planned 9-11, while we were fighting a sensitive war aimed at
keeping deaths at a nuisance level. Indeed, these people who argue fighting is
counter-productive seem to agree with the Islamist idea that we provoked them.
No provocation against us is apparently
enough for us to fight back, but somehow what we have done is a provocation
sufficient—and understandable—for them to kill us in large numbers. I’m
amazed and dismayed at this world view. The Islamists would want to kill us if we
all convert to Islam yet insist on the relaxed American version where women get
to show ankles and we don’t stone homosexuals with rocks bigger than 8 ounces.
That is their record—nobody is pure enough, and unless Michael Moore thinks
Americans can make better little jihadis than the
masses of existing Moslems who are the main target of the Islamists lately, he
should just be quiet about our so-called guilt.
Ultimately it is too soon to tell if we will win and
suppress the instinct to join the jihadis, the author
says. We don’t know the full impact of what we have achieved so far. Nor do we
know whether we will win the war on terror, including the campaign in Iraq.
No war is guaranteed in its outcome. If we walk away—they win. And they will
draw encouragement from it. See VDH on this.
There is no substitute for victory. Osama
knows it. And in his latest video, he knows he won’t achieve it.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA30OCT04A
Osama bin Laden is back on the
air.
I say welcome back. I’d begun to think that the long absence
meant he was dead. Clearly not.
But it also means that he has been impotent these last three
years to attack us.
He has seen his al Qaeda
organization ripped apart.
He has seen the Taliban helpless to stop progress in Afghanistan.
He has seen the Afghan people vote in free elections.
He has seen his buddy Saddam dug out of a hole and put in
shackles.
He has seen his friends in Iraq
take priority over his own war in Afghanistan.
He has seen Iraqis join pro-US forces to fight the Baathists and his jihadi buddies.
He has seen the Saudis go to war against the Islamists.
In short, he has seen his vision of an Islamist caliphate
under his command go down the toilet. And he is reduced to whining in public.
His threats aren’t even as believable as the California
nutcase dressed up in his “My Little Terrorist” outfit. Osama
spent 3 years running and hiding and all he can do is beg us to leave him alone
in exchange for him leaving us alone.
Not a chance, you weak horse dork. The deal was
always the
other way around: you leave us alone and we don’t give a rip about how
you live
your miserable life. But you did not leave us alone. No, you killed
3,000 of us
and we came after you. We reached around the globe and wrung your
scrawny neck.
You may have fled successfully but we killed your legions like they were
ants.
You experienced defeat and lived to see further defeats. And now you
spout Michael Moore talking points and expect to Madrid us? Screw you.
And best of all for us, after thinking you might be dead already, we essentially get the pleasure of killing you
“again.”
And you will die at our hands. No matter what, you will die.
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I’d mentioned in the invasion of Iraq
that I thought there would be a race by our intelligence services with those of
allies and others to grab information in a collapsing Iraq.
I
was off on my timing:
American and European intelligence agencies believe that between
January and March, 2003, Russian intelligence and commando units went to Iraq to destroy, as much as possible, evidence
of Russian aid to Saddam Hussein during the period of the UN embargo. For over
three decades, Russia has been a major supplier of weapons, and weapons technology, to Iraq.
Well that would explain a lot, now wouldn’t it? Everybody
assumed that Iraq
had a lot of stuff he wasn’t supposed to have. Yet we faced no chemical weapons
in the invasion and although we’ve found plenty of damning information,
supplies, and equipment, there has been nothing the press has been willing to
call a smoking gun. I disagree strongly with that assessment by the press, but
there it is nonetheless.
We were clearly about six months too late in invading in our
strangely termed “rush to war.” We gave our enemy plenty of time and they used
it. And we pay the price still.
I’m not happy with Putin over this
Russian interference. Not happy at all.
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Our troops in Iraq
are fighting off a Ramadan surge of Baathist and
Islamist attacks. Last year in November, we faced another Ramadan offensive.
But didn’t Western experts on Islam insist in 2001 during
the Afghanistan
campaign that we had to halt our offensive during the holy month of Ramadan?
Didn’t those experts assure us that fighting during Ramadan was so contrary to
Islam that the street would rise up against us if we fought in that time?
Where are those experts now? Why aren’t they imploring the Iraq
terrorists to halt their attacks during this sacrosanct time of peace and
reflection?
Or does their advice change depending on whether it would
harm the United States?
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So if you like my site, why not link to it (I know, I don’t blogroll and that is a terrible oversight that I plan to
remedy when that alien concept of “time” is given to me).
Or check out my List of Annoying
Things (which is almost a separate blog in its
own right), or Home
Front (and be grateful that unlike Lileks—praise be his site—I separate out this soft stuff
from the thunder and guns stuff), or Landfill which I
update far too infrequently.
Oh, and since I’ve added Sitemeter
to The Dignified Rant, I’ve noticed that I have readers in almost every time zone on the planet. This is very
gratifying and
humbling. I say almost since there is a gap at 10 hours minus Zulu time.
I have been amazed at some of the places I've gotten hits from.
Khazakstan? Really. France? Expat or Gaullist? I don't know. I do know
that I’m counting on getting a hit from the expanse of empty Alaska
or scattered Pacific islands, but if you know somebody there, tell them to
click on this site just to round out my global coverage. Yeah, it’s a small
thing but that would be a nice present too!
And thanks for reading. It’s been fun.
UPDATE: Dang. One day later and somebody came through from -10 hours
Zulu time! And despite my mis-stating of the time zone. My global reach
is complete! Muhahahahaha! Thanks!
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Let’s assume the IAEA really did verify that the 400 tons of
explosive powder that are now missing really were under IAEA seal in early
March 2003 as they say.
Let’s assume that 3rd ID missed the IAEA seals
when they rolled through early in the war and that the stockpile was there at
that time.
Let’s assume that 101st AB missed the IAEA seals
when they rolled through a week later and that the stockpile was there at that
time.
Let’s assume that the Baathists
managed to truck the explosive powder out sometime between the 3rd
ID’s departure and the arrival of 75th Exploitation Task Force which
confirmed that the stockpile was gone.
Let’s further ignore the apparent fact that this raw
material for a very powerful explosive has not been used against us or our
Iraqi or Coalition friends since we won the big unit phase of the war.
Let’s assume all these things for the sake of argument.
So, my question is. Where is it? Are those jumping on this
plastic Turkey
story trying to tell me that the Baathists could grab
something this important as the war swirled around them with death raining down
on any Iraqis moving in the open? Are the critics saying that something so
important as to dwarf the other munitions we’ve destroyed or secured in vast
numbers since Baghdad fell was
overlooked by the Baathists until the US Army had
overrun the site?
Most importantly, are the critics saying that the Baathists could hide nearly 400 tons of explosive powder that
they stole during the war since May 2003 without being discovered by Coalition
forces who control the entire country? Are they really saying that while they ignore
the possibility that important WMDs or WMD components
could have been hidden prior to our invasion when the Iraqis controlled the
country and could plan better?
So either it is possible to hide 400 tons of something
inside Iraq even when the hiding is hastily done; or we have to question any
one of the assumptions I conceded for the sake of argument in the beginning and
admit that the Iraqis probably moved the explosive powder prior to our
invasion. And if that far more likely explanation is true, where is it? Hidden
inside Iraq which holds open the possibility that we will find more important
items stashed in Iraq; or it was sent to safety in Syria or less likely Iran (I
doubt Saddam would give a useful component for nukes to Tehran)?
I think this is an interesting question that has gone
unasked. Just where is this “looted” explosive powder?
Al Caca, indeed.
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I wrote earlier (and no I'm
not going to spend the effort to find this) that I didn't think our enemies
could see enough difference in our political parties to believe one or the
other would be better or worse infidel Crusaders.
I could be
wrong. As one thug said:
"American elections and Iraq
are linked tightly together," he told a Fallujah-based
Iraqi reporter. "We've got to work to change the election, and we've done
so. With our strikes, we've dragged Bush into the mud."
Mowafaq
Al-Tai, a London-educated architect and intellectual, said different types of
resistance fighters have different views of the U.S.
election.
The most pro-Kerry, he said, are the
former Saddam Hussein loyalists — Ba'ath Party
members and others who think Washington might scale back its ambitions for Iraq
if Mr. Kerry wins, allowing them to re-enter civic life.
The most pro-Bush, he said, are the foreign
extremists. "They prefer Bush, because he's a provocative figure, and the
more they can push people to the extreme, the better for their case."
Sure, I accepted that at some
level just changing the current administration under pressure like Spain would delight them, but I had a problem thinking they
would incorporate it into their strategy. Still, as
the article states, the feeling is hardly monolithic though the insurgents I
believe are the real problem—the Baathists—want Bush
out.
Perhaps I need to amend my
thinking—or focus it. As the article further notes:
"The nation of infidels
is one, and Bush and Kerry are two faces of the same coin," said Abu Obeida, nom de guerre of a leader of Fallujah's
al-Noor Jihadi regiment.
"What is taken by force will be returned only by force, and we don't care
what the results of the elections are."
Whoever wins this Tuesday,
our Islamist enemies will still seek to kill all of us infidel Crusaders
whether we live in red states or blue states. Your hatchback may sport a
"Bush Lies!!!!!" bumper sticker and they will still blow you up with
as much glee as if your pickup truck has a gun rack. That is our new state of
normality, folks. We can't vote our way out of war and it will be fought by our
enemies regardless of who you think will do a better job on our side as the war
goes on. And please note that whoever you think can best win the war, we are
winning now. Peters has a
good post on Iraq.
One other thing I note with
envy in the first link is that both the "pro-Bush" and the
"pro-Kerry" terrorists are able to put their differences aside when
they consider their common goal of killing Americans. I wish we could be that
practical. Whoever wins the presidency, I want my president to win this war.
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I have some sympathy for the idea that we should strive to make
terrorism just a “nuisance” again.
The good old days when attacks on the World
Trade Center
failed; bombs targeted US ships and barracks; overseas embassies blew up; and
Americans died in relatively small numbers here and there. We went on happily
with our lives only dimly aware that predators circled just outside the light
of our campfire waiting to pounce on and kill the weak.
I’m partly serious here. These terror attacks were worthy of
serious intelligence attention and serious military retaliation—more serious
than we acted; but could anybody say that fighting to prevent a couple dozen
dead a year would justify a war in which 1,000 plus die in three years of
fighting back? I couldn’t. That would be a high price to pay for possibly stopping several dozen deaths
per year. And even if our government had embarked on such a policy in the
1990s, our people would never have sustained such a policy or the casualties.
It is a close enough thing even after 9-11.
The problem with the desire to go back and make terrorism a
nuisance is that the means of killing us have expanded beyond simple
explosives. So has the hatred. Nineteen men with box cutters and hate killed
three thousand of us. The hatred itself has made it likely that we can’t go
back to nuisance levels of terrorism.
But it isn’t just their hatred that is at a fever pitch.
Their means to kill us in catastrophic numbers have increased dramatically.
What was once the niche domain of advanced nation states is becoming mass
market items. It is in this context that 1,000 dead
soldiers in three years becomes a bargain indeed—we are fighting to stop mass
murder on a scale in our country that we have never seen. What could the
Islamists do with a nuke? Sarin? Or bio weapons?
This article provides a very
good reason why terrorism can never be assumed to be a nuisance:
Iran has moved much faster than expected in manufacturing and
assembling these centrifuges, diplomats said. The rapid progress means a pilot
centrifuge plant near Natanz, in central Iran, could soon be equipped with enough
machines to begin large-scale enrichment.
Two senior European diplomats said the pilot plant could be expanded
from the existing 164 centrifuges to 1,000 within weeks and produce enough
material in less than a year to fashion a crude nuclear device.
They could perhaps have nukes by 2007. Or
maybe earlier. We just don’t really know. And who knows who Iran
would share the weapons or technology with.
When the biggest psychopaths have nuclear weapons,
terrorists can never ever be thought of as nuisances again. It is sheer wishful
folly to pretend we can go back to thinking of terrorism as a nuisance.
You can’t go home again. I’m really sorry. But there it is.
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This article runs through the case
for the Iraq War quite nicely:
The American
and coalition intervention in Iraq was the right
war, at the right time. By all means, there remain legitimate grounds for
questioning the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war and
reconstruction. Rich Lowry’s
latest cover story in National Review,
entitled “What Went Wrong,” provides some interesting
and well-source observations on that score. But don’t let the revisionists,
isolationists, and anti-Bush ideologues rewrite history through selective
quotation, innuendo, and outright fraud and deceit. Saddam Hussein represented
a grave danger to the United States, was a common denominator in the threat of
anti-American terrorism and of the use of bio-weapons against us, and was one
of the cruelest dictators of the 20th century.
Damn right. But damned if I can remember where I saw this
first.
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I read on NRO that the Europeans have 2 million men under
arms but only 15-20,000 deployable troops. Sounds about
right. Afghanistan
and the Balkans pretty much tie down the non-British European deployable
military force. The continentals designed their militaries to defend Europe
itself in the Cold War and so didn’t have to do anything more logistically
complicated than drive out of their parking lots and start shooting Russians.
As we think about how to transform our military in an age
when military technology is rapidly advancing and when we must fight
terrorists, their state sponsors, and nuclear-armed rogue regimes anywhere on
the globe, we may be tempted to contrast our military that has deployed
globally with the static European militaries.
But keep in mind that Abrams tanks are not inherently more
strategically mobile than Leopard IIs. Nor are Bradleys more deployable than Marders.
We have deployed armored forces around the globe twice in victorious campaigns
since the Cold War ended. We did this with a Cold War military. What made the
difference is our focus on getting our military from North America
to global hotspots, whether West Germany
or the Persian Gulf. We have unmatched logistical
abilities.
So as we focus on a deployable military, we should not make
it a light force to make it more deployable. Lighten it where we can, of
course. But victory is not our birthright. We must build a military that can
win once it is in theater and then build the logistical capabilities to get it
where we need it.
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Saddam Hussein is responsible for killing hundreds of
thousands of people. Whether in mass slaughter or in individual atrocities, his
hand is visible. The Iraqis want to try Saddam in a fair court of law and then
punish him—probably by executing him. First of all, you are at best confused if
you think “fair” trial means you have a 50-50 chance of getting off scot free.
Saddam is guilty and a fair trial will find him guilty and will sentence him to
a justly deserved death.
But back to the point of this post.
The UN
won’t help Iraq train judges and prosecutors to make this process run
smoothly:
"The Secretary-General (Kofi
Annan) recently stated that United Nations officials
should not be directly involved in lending assistance to any court or tribunal
that is empowered to impose the death penalty," Stephane
Dujarric said at a news conference.
"We have no specific mandate for this," he said.
"In addition ... we have serious doubts regarding the capability of the
Iraqi Special Tribunal to meet the relevant international standards."
Wow. The UN is upset that a man who killed hundreds of
thousands could be executed. What a triumph of process over results. But fine,
let the Iraqis dispense justice without the “help” of the UN. They’ve done
enough.
I guess the “relevant international standards” include being
bribed with oil vouchers. I bet UN help would be forthcoming if the Iraqis
greased some palms.
I have serious doubts that we should support the UN as
currently configured.
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In another flash, hundreds of tons of explosives are missing
in Iraq.
Without these 380 tons, the Sunni Triangle would be as quiet as the Shia and Kurdish areas. They may have been missing since
March 2003 but no matter.
Inconveniently for opponents of the Iraq War, they were in Iraq
for Iraq’s
non-existent nuclear ambitions.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA25OCT04A
That Mooreworld patriot Zarqawi has claimed responsibility for murdering those
unarmed Iraqi soldiers on leave, execution style. This is something his scum
kind brag about.
The amount of press coverage given to some Iraqi prisoner
with underwear placed on his head by an American will not be matched by the
amount of coverage given to the murder of these four dozen Iraqi security
personnel. Nor will there be anywhere near the
outrage. Lawrence O’Donnell is capable of rage—but not over what our enemies do
(Man, I wouldn’t have believed the reports if I hadn’t seen that bout of insanity
myself). If the word “atrocity” is even mentioned, I will be shocked. Killing
little kids failed to inspire press outrage over Saddam’s thugs. Mass graves
failed to do it. Gassing Kurds wasn’t enough. Stealing from the weak in the
Oil-for-Food scandal failed to do it. Beheadings failed to inspire outrage. The
press doesn’t care. Ho hum. Hey, did you hear the
American troops ran low on supplies during the war?! Now that’s something to write about!
And it isn’t enough to say that the press expects far better
from us. Of course they do. They should. I expect far better from our troops. Fine. Expect more from us. But it would be nice for the
press to acknowledge that the reason more is expected of us is that we are far
better than our enemies. If they don’t admit our superiority, how else can they
explain the vast differences in coverage and outrage? How can they explain why
they get upset when we kill instead of arrest our armed enemies; while our
enemies get a pass for any atrocity?
How indeed.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24OCT04C
With there blinders on, ignoring both the proven past and
the predictable future, opponents of the Iraq War still pretend Iraq was no
threat to us or his neighbors (and you really have to press them to admit his
threat to his own people). They pretend that Saddam was safely in a box even
though the French and Russians were slicing away with box cutters to free the
Hussein family and set them loose on their victims. With a defense attorney’s
eye, they look only through Blix’s eyes and note that
right now we don’t see any WMD.
But for those willing to look beyond the law enforcement
approach to protecting us, Saddam’s threat to us
was clear.
Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's banned weapons programs,
including nuclear weapons.
Saddam was determined to develop ballistic missiles and
tactical chemical weapons when the U.N. sanctions were either lifted or
corroded.
Saddam retained the industrial equipment to help restart
these programs, having increased from 1996 to 2002 his military industrial
spending 40-fold and his technical military research 80-fold. Even while U.N.
weapons inspectors were in Iraq, Saddam's scientists were performing deadly experiments on
human guinea pigs in secret labs.
To what end? The overlooked section of the Duelfer report could not have put it any clearer: "Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agents in a period
of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two." While Saddam had
abandoned his biological weapons programs, he retained the scientists and other
technicians "needed to restart a potential biological weapons
program," and he "intended to reconstitute long-range delivery
systems [that is, missiles] and . . . the systems potentially were for
WMD." These conclusions were based on interviews with Saddam Hussein, his
closest advisers, and his weapons scientists, along with the kind of industrial
equipment the Iraqi government imported and maintained.
But we should have left him alone. We had not right to look
anywhere but straight ahead with our blinders firmly affixed. According to Moore and his International ANSWER buddies and
Moveon.org buddies, anyway. As Zuckerman concludes:
What stopped Saddam was the will of a few strong-minded
leaders who believed in a more forceful response than simply joining hands and
singing "Kumbaya."
We stopped Saddam. And what we stopped him from
doing—whether you consider building nukes and missiles or slaughtering and
torturing innocents—we did the right thing. I’m damn proud of America
for standing up to this challenge in the face of morally depraved opponents who
see us as the bigger threat and greater monstrosity.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24OCT04B
Some over here like to pretend the Baathists
and their Islamist buddies are Iraqi nationalists fighting the good fight. I
don’t understand how these people can think this. Here is another example
of what our enemy is:
The bodies of about 50 Iraqi soldiers were
found on a remote road in eastern Iraq, apparently the
victims of an ambush as they were heading home on leave, Iraqi authorities said
Sunday.
Oh, it is just war, those people will say. What do you
expect these brave freedom fighters to do when they are occupied by the US
and that puppet regime of the 90% of Iraqis who used to be on the neck end of
the Baathist boot-stomping-on-necks regime?
Gen. Walid al-Azzawi,
commander of the Diyala provincial police, said the
bodies were laid out in four rows each, with 12 bodies in each row.
"After inspection, we found out that they were shot
after being ordered to lay down on the earth," he
said.
Executed in cold blood.
Of course, this was just standard operating procedure back
in the good old days of Saddam’s rule. Killing for fun and profit, eh? But
then, al Jazeera wasn’t making it known because they
loved the murdering bastards. They still do. And CNN wasn’t reporting stuff
like this because they wanted that Baghdad
byline and wouldn’t risk giving their audience actual news as the price of
maintaining that access.
Just how much more do these scumbag
have to do to convince the ilk of Michael Moore that our enemy is evil? How can
these Bizarro World people conjure up fanciful
conspiracies to prove in their minds that the administration is up to no good
yet ignore atrocities and murder on a mass scale by the Baathists
and Islamists who hope to terrorize the Shia, Kurds,
and sane Sunnis into submission once again? The Baathists
are killing for fun and the hope of future profits if they can kill their way
back into power. Will the Moorwackians not be happy
until we abandon Saddam’s victims to their fate and let the Baathists
return to killing Iraqis on an industrial scale?
We have nothing to feat but fear itself was a nice
slogan in
its day. Now we have actual murdering thugs to fear (come to think of it
though, even then we had fascism to fear though we refused to see it).
Kill them. That’s what I
hope. No mercy. And if we catch them, drop them in Gitmo
and keep them there until they rot lest they return to their murdering ways.
Our enemies are drawing us pictures. Look at them!
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA24OCT04A
Is the enemy in Iraq engaged in a Tet-style
offensive to undermine our morale in the US prior to our election to compel us to withdraw? That
is what this
article (via Real Clear
Politics) argues:
It is more than coincidental that the
recent increase in attacks are occurring during the period when Americans,
through the presidential election, are deciding the thrust of their policy
toward terrorism and the Middle East.
This seems to have entered
the realm of conventional wisdom. Our enemies can’t beat us on the battlefield
so they really aim for our home front when they fight us. Tet
is Exhibit A and there are no other exhibits. It is then noted in disgust that
the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were decimated in the offensive and that we
won that series of battles.
But was it really North Vietnam’s intention to fight our home front?
According to the US Army’s American Military
History, the Tet offensive’s purpose was
two-fold:
Communist plans called for violent,
widespread, simultaneous military actions in rural and urban areas throughout
the South—a general offensive. But as always, military action was subordinate
to a larger political goal. By focusing attacks on South Vietnamese units and
facilities, Hanoi sought to
undermine the morale and will of Saigon's forces.
Through a collapse of military resistance, the North Vietnamese hoped to
subvert public confidence in the government's ability to provide security,
triggering a crescendo of popular protest to halt the fighting and force a
political accommodation. In short, they aimed at a general uprising.
Hanoi's generals, however, were not completely confident that the general offensive
would succeed. Viet Cong forces, hastily reinforced with new recruits and
part-time guerrillas, bore the brunt. Except in the northern provinces, the North
Vietnamese Army stayed on the sidelines, poised to exploit success. While
hoping to spur negotiations, Communist leaders probably had the more modest
goals of reasserting Viet Cong influence and undermining Saigon's authority
so as to cast doubt on its credibility as the United
States' ally. In this respect, the offensive
was directed toward the United
States and sought to weaken American
confidence in the Saigon government, discredit Westmoreland's
claims of progress, and strengthen American antiwar sentiment. Here again, the
larger purpose was to bring the United
States to the negotiating table and hasten
American disengagement from Vietnam.
That is, the enemy thought
that the plan could bring victory by winning in the theater itself. They aimed
at a general uprising and did not assume defeat on the battlefield would be
balanced by the loss of US resolve at home.
So if our current enemy is
banking on pulling a Tet on us, they are operating on
a false historical example. Yes, Tet did result in a
failure of our home morale even as we won militarily. But that was not
pre-ordained. Perhaps if our press had not portrayed the offensive as a
communist victory, perhaps we would have gone on to win. Perhaps if the
military had not been too optimistic for the circumstances, it would not have
been a shock from which we could not recover. In World War II, a similar
surprise enemy offensive in the Battle of the Bulge did not lead to a crack in our morale
but depleted the enemy’s armor and paved the way for victory in Europe.
Ultimately, then, if our
enemy is trying to “Tet” us this Ramadan season prior
to our elections, they are not even remotely hoping to defeat us in the theater
as our 1968 enemy was, but are banking everything on a public relations
victory. So we can completely defeat their hopes if we react in a “Bulge”
manner and just go on to kill the bastards and win. Baby boomers like to talk
with admiration about our “greatest generation.” How will the boomers react
today? Will they rise to the example of our World War II generation or will
they repeat their performance that gave the communists victory in 1968?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA23OCT04B
Supply shortages in Iraq that appeared in fall 2003 pale in the face of the
reality shortage it inspired.
This
article noted a report that generated a fair amount of hand wringing:
The top U.S. commander in Iraq complained to the Pentagon last winter that his supply situation was
so poor that it threatened Army troops' ability to fight, according to an
official document that has surfaced only now.
The lack of key spare parts for gear vital to combat operations, such
as tanks and helicopters, was causing problems so severe, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo
S. Sanchez wrote in a letter to top Army officials, that "I cannot
continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low."
Ralph Peters addresses this
as part of an article noting that we are having to relearn just what war is and
disabuse ourselves (well, not me) of the idea that war is a perfectly planned
computer program that churns out predictable results based on how good your
inputs and plan are. On the supply issue, Peters notes:
Forecasting what the
military will need in wartime isn't a new problem. In World War II, we
overestimated the amount of air-defense artillery required and badly
underestimated the need for artillery shells and infantrymen. In the latter
months of 1944, as our troops approached the Rhine,
artillery rounds had to be rationed. At one point, the infantry replacement
pool for the entire European Theater was down to one very lonely soldier.
People who have to run to a 7-11
to pick up milk during the week because they didn’t plan their usage correctly
when they last went on their weekly grocery shopping think this report is a
scandal. It is not. It is business as usual. It is a problem to be
corrected—not ignored or blown out of proportion.
Peters notes a bigger problem
of a peacetime system that seems to focus on big ticket items suspiciously
optimized for the Cold War while we need batteries and body armor for an actual
war. Peters has a point. But I’ve read enough about rapid fielding initiatives
to get items into the field quickly that I don’t know if this should be raised
to the crisis level.
Just so this doesn’t look
like a typical “this is reality so get used to it” post (though many problems
noted in the press do fall under this category) let me note a problem this does
highlight. I think our just-in-time-delivery focus for logistics is an error. Big time. This move stems from the great amount of time it
takes America to deploy military force overseas to virtually any theater the
United States by sea and air. This stems from the fact I’ve read that we
shipped home 90% of the supplies we sent to the Gulf for the Persian Gulf War
in 1990-91. Eliminating “iron mountains” of supplies
to focus on getting supplies to the troops just in time is a way to ease
deployment. Unfortunately, it is also a way to ensure shortages when something
unexpected happens—something enemies have a disturbing tendency to do. In 2002,
I noted in “Equipping
the Objective Force” that focusing on efficient supply lines is dangerous:
Such a solution, if even possible, may
not be wise if it creates a force that is vulnerable to even a hiccup in the
supply line. Think of how simple the enemy's task is if he knows that merely
slowing the supply flow can bring great benefits. That is far easier than
severing a supply link for weeks as is necessary when iron
mountains can sustain forces without a supply line. Some in-theater
support and iron hills, as opposed to iron mountains,
may be necessary so units can defend themselves at least a short time if the
supply link is severed.45 Otherwise, we rely on an enemy who is too
unimaginative, passive, or incapable for secure logistics. The Persian Gulf war taught many Americans that winning is easy, but the Army
should not act on that assumption. Underestimating an opponent to that degree
would be criminal.
So part of the problem noted was just the usual adaptations that an Army must make when
fighting a real, adapting enemy. But is part based on the idea that
just-in-time industry-style logistics is the pattern we should follow? I hope
this experience leads to a reassessment of this philosophy before we face an
enemy that can really take advantage of supply problems to defeat our forces in
the field.
As Peters concludes:
These recent problems simply reflect the
changing shape of war. Our military is evolving with the times — and doing so
effectively. But no matter how good we get, we'll never see trouble-free
combat. To pretend otherwise is immeasurable folly.
I’m hoping that after the
election, no matter who wins, we can discuss problems without the “out” party
immediately leaping on them as an argument to impale the “in” party rather than
using the discussion to solve the problem. After all, the enemy is trying to
win the war—not embarrass the “in” party.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA23OCT04A
Secretary Rumsfeld
counts our progress in the war on October 18th in The
Australian:
From the outset of this
conflict, it was clear that our coalition had to go on the offensive against an
enemy without country or conscience.
A little over three years
ago, al-Qa'ida was already a growing danger. Its
leader, Osama bin Laden, was safe and sheltered in Afghanistan.
His network was dispersed throughout the world and had been attacking US
interests for years.
Three years later, more
than three-quarters of al-Qa'ida's key members and
associates have been detained or killed, bin Laden is on the run, many of his
key associates are behind bars or dead and his financial lines of support have
been reduced.
Afghanistan, once
controlled by extremists, today is led by Hamid Karzai, who is at the forefront of the world's efforts in
support of moderates versus extremists. Soccer
stadiums once used for public executions under the Taliban are today used, once
again, for soccer.
Libya has gone from being
a nation that sponsored terrorists, and secretly sought nuclear capability, to
one that renounced its illegal weapons programs, and now says it is ready to
re-enter the community of civilised nations.
Pakistani scientist AQ
Khan's nuclear-proliferation network – which provided lethal assistance to
nations such as Libya
and North Korea
– has been exposed and dismantled. Indeed, Pakistan,
once sympathetic to al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, has
under President Pervez Musharraf
cast its lot with the civilised world and is a
stalwart ally against terrorism.
NATO is now leading the
International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan
and is helping to train Iraqi security forces. The United Nations is helping
set up free elections in both Afghanistan
and Iraq.
Over 60 countries are working together to halt the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction.
Three years ago, in Iraq,
Saddam Hussein and his sons brutally ruled a nation in the heart of the Middle
East. Saddam was attempting regularly to
kill US and British air crews enforcing the no-fly zones. He ignored 17 UN
Security Council resolutions.
Three years later, Saddam
is a prisoner, awaiting trial. His sons are dead. Most of his associates are in
custody.
Iraq
has an interim constitution that includes a bill of rights and an independent
judiciary. There are municipal councils in nearly every major city and in most
towns and villages. Iraqis now are among those allowed to say, write, watch,
and listen to whatever they want, whenever they want.
Have there been setbacks
in Afghanistan
and Iraq?
Of course. But the enemy cannot win militarily. Their
weapons are terror and chaos. They attack any sort of hope or progress to try to
undermine morale. They know that if they can win the battle of perception, we
will lose our will and leave.
These are difficult times.
From the heart of Manhattan
and Washington
DC,
to Baghdad,
Kabul,
Madrid,
Bali,
and The Philippines,
a call to arms has been sounded, and the outcome of this struggle will
determine the nature of our world for decades to come.
Today, as before, the hard
work of history falls to the US,
to our coalition, to our people. We can do it knowing that the great sweep of
human history is for freedom – and that it is on our side.
I am glad he chose a paper in
the country that did not go wobbly in its last national election to lay out our
successes. The Australians have been important in our success thus far and we
shall continue to stand side by side.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA21OCT04D
Our election approaches. I
think the Islamists would
love to pull a Madrid on us. And I fear that the example of Beslan is appealing to those bastards. Some might say that
the Islamists would not dare attack us because we would not buckle like the
Spanish. Some might say that the Islamists would not be so foolish as to attack
our children.
But I think the Islamists
hate us so much that they want to kill us no matter what. They are quite a bit
away from their own goal of killing four million of us. They will kill whoever
they can and our kids are not safe from them.
Unfortunately, Halloween is
only two days before our national election. Lots of kids will be out at night
and who would pay much attention to grownups dressed up out that night too? Our
kids will perhaps be easy targets that night.
I just have a really bad
feeling about this Halloween. I hope that I am worrying about ghosts and
goblins and not the enemy. Just another reason to want to
fight that scum overseas and not wait for them to come to us.
Make them scared of us.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA21OCT04C
The UN thinks our invasion
and liberation of Iraq was illegal. They disdained US protection in the aftermath of the war and had their
headquarters blown up for their carelessness.
As the UN re-enters Iraq, they hope for the protection of the vaunted
international community. States that refused to liberate Iraq in high-minded internationalism were supposed to join
the vanguard of the international community to protect them from the thugs the
UN used to deal with in the oil-for-food scandal. Well
guess what?
The United Nations no longer
objects to American soldiers to guard its staff in Iraq
after the search for separate contingents from around the world failed,
diplomats and U.N. sources said on Wednesday.
Well, well. The international
community won’t come through for the UN? Once again it will fall to the United States of America to bail out the UN and make their words mean
something. But the UN still has to be the bunch of a-holes we have come to know
and loathe—they no longer object to our odious presence near them! As if we should now feel honored to protect those rogues and
incompetents.
But we’ll do it. France and Germany sure as heck won’t. Though they are
proper international citizens.
If it falls to our troops, I
hope we detail soldiers from 1st CAV and have them wear their cowboy
hats to rub in just who is keeping them safe from the Baathist
and Islamist thugs the UN loves to talk to and protect.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA21OCT04B
This
article (via Winds of Change)
argues that Iranians are likely to resent any US military intervention or US support for a revolution
against the Iranian mullahs.
The regime-change idea
is greeted with skepticism by many Iran experts. A high-profile task force at the Council on
Foreign Relations, headed by former Carter national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former
CIA director Robert Gates, published a report this summer casting doubt on the
prospects for a democratic revolution in Iran any time soon, and recommending
that Washington therefore pursue a focused dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear
program and other regional security issues."
Despite considerable
political flux and popular dissatisfaction, Iran is not on the verge of another revolution," the CFR
report said. "Direct US efforts to overthrow the Iranian regime are
therefore not likely to succeed. The ferment of recent years demonstrates that
the Iranian people will eventually change the nature of their government for
the better."
But eventually isn't
soon enough for Ledeen, who concludes most every
article on the issue by imploring "faster, please." Ledeen believes that with a little push, the United States could help revolutionary efforts among Iranian exiles and
dissidents along. This won't require military action, he insists, just
"money, communications gear and good counsel."
This is the gist of it.
Regime change will happen eventually if only we don't poke our noses into Iran and those who think we could succeed don't understand
Iran. We should just learn to love the Iranian bomb and
move on. No matter that Iran could get nukes before that inevitable day Iranians "naturally"
overthrow the mullahs. One day happened in the Soviet Union. It might happen in North Korea. Heck, by this logic it would have happened in
Saddam's Iraq and the Taliban-run Afghanistan. Unhappy people always revolt eventually, right? And
in time to make a difference to us, right? Heck, no mullahs with nukes would
consider lobbing them off as the peasants storm the castle. Really, only
paranoids get worked up over Iran with nukes.
Look, I don't know what the
future has in store for Iran. But an aerial attack on Iran seems unlikely to do anything but kick the can down
the road. Containing the Iranians won't work—it hasn't worked to keep North Korea from getting nukes and the Pillsbury Nuke Boy doesn't
even have high-priced oil to tempt the world with. Regime change is the only
way to go. I don't think we have the horses to pull off a straight invasion
without mobilizing all the Guard combat units for several years and making
service "for the duration." But with so many Iranians unhappy with
the mullahs, supporting a revolution seems the only alternative left that doesn't
leave our safety in the hands of Islamist nutballs.
The article doesn't think regime
change will work. The author thinks that the Iranians will rally to the mullahs
should we support opponents of the regime. Yet wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did not cause the regime opposition to rally to the
government. On the contrary, they eagerly took our help and today they fight on
our side. So, the article's contention is not supported by recent history. And the
article concludes in a way that undermines the thrust of the article:
With Iran's recent defiant statements
about its right to pursue a nuclear program, and US and Israeli intelligence
projecting that Iran could have nuclear weapons sometime in the next two years,
advocates of a military strike against Iran's nuclear sites are likely to gain
the upper hand. Even so, the fate of democracy in Iran will hardly
be determined solely in Washington. A year
after NATO bombed Serbia to halt
Milosevic's brutal crackdown against the Kosovo Albanians, Serbian students led
a peaceful struggle to overthrow Milosevic. The forces that lead to regime
change are often unpredictable -- and not easily suppressed.
The article itself cites the
case of Yugoslavia in 1999 where we intervened against a dictator in
support of Moslems who the Serbs hated and carved off that chunk of land from
Serbian control in the rump Yugoslavia. Despite this, Serbs managed to put aside rage at the
US to overthrow their dictator the next year. Shouldn't
the Serbs have stayed rallied to Milosevic? As the author notes, forces that
lead to regime change are not easily suppressed. It seems that even support
from the United
States
for those forces does not suppress such forces to help evil regimes stay in
power.
Regime change in Tehran: 2005. Before they get nukes.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA21OCT04A
The Spanish pulled out of Iraq
when the Islamists threatened them with violence, with the Madrid
bombings to emphasize the point. That should have been that, right? The
Islamists would obviously honor the "deal" and leave Spain alone. Well.
no:
Spanish police have arrested
seven "radical and violent Islamic activists" in raids across the
country, an Interior Ministry statement said.
Officials say the men were suspected of plotting to attack
the country's High Court and included three Algerians, a Moroccan and a
Spaniard.
Maybe the Islamists really want what they say they want—to
kill us or convert us. These little things like pulling out of Iraq
are just immediate wants. And by “us” I mean anybody not a nutball
Islamist and that includes the vast majority of Moslems.
Why do the Spanish think they are special? That they are
immune to Islamist violence?
The Spanish need to rethink their surrender and rejoin the
war against terror. Because as far as the enemy is concerned,
the Spanish never left the war.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA19OCT04A
Kofi Annan
continues his reign of error as the head of the dysfunctional community of
nations we call the UN. The oil-for-food scandal enriched Saddam and the money
continues to supply the Baathists as they try to kill
their way back to power. But it is surely simplisme to think that the money
some members of our international community received from Saddam had any effect
at all on their actions:
"I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese
government would allow itself to be bought because some of his companies are
getting relative contracts from the Iraqi authorities," Annan said. "I don't believe that at all.
"I think it's inconceivable, these are very serious
and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics."
As Winds
of Change notes (and I am sorry they beat me to the punch on this one
making my own post redundant):
You don't get many
hanging curveballs like that in your life.
[Vizzini has just cut the rope
The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo
Montoya: You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
It is truly inconceivable that some people trust this man
and this institution.
And is the esteemed leader of the international community dissing some of its tropical members with that last crack?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA18OCT04C
We have asked the British to redeploy
one battalion further north to free up one of ours for offensive
operations:
Facing a barrage of hostile questions from lawmakers
reluctant to see British troops sent into the more volatile U.S.-controlled
sector, [Defense Secretary Geoff] Hoon said the
government did not want to let Washington down.
This is throwing the opposition to the Iraq War in Britain
into a tizzy? They are upset that we are moving the Brits from the quiet Shia south to the Baghdad region.
People, this is a single
battalion. Six-hundred and fifty troops. This is
not a big deal.
Of course, it is nice to see that critics of the war admit
there is a quiet south. They seem to argue that all of Iraq
is aflame—until the Brits are asked to move a
single battalion north from the safe area. Labor member Robin Cook said:
"Would you consider carefully the
risk to British troops, if they free up U.S. forces for the next attack, that
they may be seen by some Iraqis as equally responsible for civilian casualties
for which neither you nor they will have any control whatsoever?"
I am amazed that some worry about ticking off the enemy. It is not, however, inconceivable.
Thank goodness the British government is made of sterner stuff.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA18OCT04B
I was prepared to be quite upset when I read the post
at Intel Dump that said that we were eating our seed corn by sending 11th
Armored Cavalry Regiment, our OPFOR (opposition force) that trains our units in
exercises tougher than the combat we’ve faced, to Iraq for a year. The LA
Times article linked says:
For years, The Box has been a stage for the Army's elite
"opposition force" — soldiers expert at assuming the roles of enemy
fighters, be they the Taliban or Iraqi insurgents. Their mission is to toughen
new soldiers with elaborate simulations — staging sniper fire, riots, suicide
car bombings and potentially dangerous culture clashes.
Staging such scenes has long been the work of the fabled 11th Armored
Cavalry Regiment, or Black Horse Regiment. But starting next month, the
3,500-member unit will begin shipping out to Iraq from the Ft. Irwin National Training Center, near Barstow.
Training is more important than the latest technology as far
as I’m concerned. Expensive weapons are so much expensive junk to be wrecked by
an enemy if the troops using them are not up to par. OPFOR is key to keeping our troops trained. Indeed, our OPFOR has
been called the best Soviet-style Motor Rifle Regiment in the world as it faces
off against our units in desert combat. OPFOR prepared our units for the big
one in NATO that never came and its worth was proven against the Iraqis in two
wars.
Then I read the linked LA Times article further. It isn’t
the problem that I thought. The article notes that National Guard soldiers will
replace 11th ACR in the training role. But the training is no longer
in mechanized warfare:
Erecting fake villages on training grounds where tank battalions once
rumbled — along with dispatching the Black Horse to Iraq — reflects a shift in Army training
policies. The Box once served as a battleground for simulated fights between
nations, often with the Soviets as the enemy. Now, military officials say, the
emphasis is on urban battlefields without front lines or uniforms.
"Smash-mouth, regiment-on-regiment battles are not what I'm
concerned with right now," Cone said. "For the next year, I'm
stressing low-intensity conflict and cultural awareness."
Each month, the fort trains 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers from other
installations. Among other things, GIs learn to shoot to kill from a convoy
barreling along at 50 mph and how to spot an improvised bomb.
This isn’t the highly choreographed all-arms battle that the
OPFOR excelled at providing. I think the National Guard troops will be able to
handle the training for irregular fighting for the next year while the Black
Horse Regiment is in Iraq.
And when the 11th returns, it will have real world experience that
will provide even better training for our troops in the future in this type of
fighting. The fighting just isn’t so intense that it will destroy the regiment.
The regiment will be blooded and experienced.
Is our Army stretched? Yes. I’d love to see 40,000 more
troops in separate brigades and battalions added to the Army. Is this the
disaster of eating our seed corn that I thought it might be? No.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA18OCT04A
The “hockey stick” graph that purports to show a dramatic
swing up in temperature over the last hundred years in support of global
warming has a bit
of a problem (via NRO):
But now a shock: Canadian scientists
Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a
fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce
the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to
use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find
the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.
But it wasn’t so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and
they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA,
but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as
mistaken.
Now comes the real
shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that
do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To
demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick
created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method
of generating random data is called “Monte Carlo” analysis, after
the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test
procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these
random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!
That discovery hit me like a bombshell, and I
suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the hockey stick,
the poster-child of the global warming community, turns out to be an artifact
of poor mathematics. How could it happen? What is going on? Let me digress into
a short technical discussion of how this incredible error took place.
Give me a “heh” here. Surely this
information must get out to inform our debate, right?
McIntyre
and McKitrick sent their detailed analysis to Nature
magazine for publication, and it was extensively refereed. But their paper was
finally rejected. In frustration, McIntyre and McKitrick
put the entire record of their submission and the referee reports on a Web
page for all to see. If you look, you’ll see that McIntyre and McKitrick have found numerous other problems with the Mann
analysis.
Gee, the high priests of the global warming religion didn’t
want to see this problem with their faith? The author of the article cited
still thinks global warming is real but honestly requests that we work with
reliable science. That’s all I want. In theory, global warming seems like a
real event. But in the real world, what does the role of mankind do to the
temperature in the face of natural warming and cooling trends caused by the
oceans, the Sun, and other factors? And just what would the ideal temperature
of the planet be? Is it miraculously our current age’s temperature that we must
defend at all costs? Is it 5 degrees warmer? Ten? Is
it five degrees cooler? Seriously. Tell me what the best temperature for human
life on our planet is. If you can’t do that I don’t know why I should agree
that slapping down our industry is the correct response to defending the
current temperature. And I sure don’t want to be lectured by our European
brethren on our refusal to head for the penalty box and cripple our economy for
false data.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA17OCT04C
The military will have a new quadrennial defense review next
year to focus the military in the light of our current strategic situation.
This opinion
piece from the Army War
College highlights the challenges.
The article thinks we pay too much attention to a peer competitor (like a
rising China):
The most
likely, virulent, and persistent challenges for the foreseeable future will be
irregular and increasingly catastrophic in character. Further, although nonstate sources pose the most pressing irregular and
catastrophic threats today, we cannot discount the prospect that all hostile
competition—to include that with states—will trend in this direction over time.
Taken to their logical ends, strategic adjustments founded on such an outlook
would mark a very distinct philosophical shift in the strategic calculus of
some American strategy and policy elites. Further, it would balance strategic
priorities and address what has been an over-emphasis on the prospect of future
peer competition.
To make his point clear, the author states:
First,
American predominance in traditional military power has not, as was widely
believed, deterred active resistance to our influence worldwide. It has simply
foreclosed adversary options in traditional realms. Second, hostile rogue
states and budding great powers are not the only prospective challenges of
strategic relevance. Our preeminent position draws active resistance from many
directions—most immediately by less traditional, often nonstate,
challengers. Thus, we must prepare to contend with a period of persistent
irregular and potentially catastrophic conflict for the foreseeable future.
He has a point. We do have a war to win and we must organize
to win the fights in Iraq
and Afghanistan
where we are currently engaged in battle.
I want to avoid the problem of failing to balance
transforming with winning the current war. In Vietnam,
one general noted that he was not going to wreck his Army to win that stupid
war. That is, he didn’t want to destroy the Army needed to defend NATO by
turning it into something optimized to win Vietnam.
This makes some sense in that defeat in Vietnam
did not destroy us while defeat in NATO had it come to war would have been a
disaster. The problem is, defeat in Vietnam
did wreck our Army for a good ten years. So it isn’t always a neat choice.
On the other hand, in the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam optimized
his army to fight the foot-mobile fanatical Iranians and won that war. But the
army designed and equipped to fight the Iranians was ill-suited to face America
in the Persian Gulf War and was crushed in a lightning campaign.
So should we adapt our ground forces to defeat the Baathists and Taliban, what happens if we must send that
victorious adapted military into battle against a conventional foe that might
outnumber us? I think that would be a mistake. I am not of the opinion that our
military is more important than the wars it fights. We must win in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
But I cannot forget that conventional war is the best way to inflict decisive
defeats on us.
So what do we do? Some want us to create a separate
constabulary force optimized for guerrilla warfare and pacification so that our
big unit Army can stay focused on conventional warfare. This would tear up the
current Army to create this force. I don’t like it.
We already have:
- The active conventional Army with its heavy, light and airborne divisions;
- Special Operations Command with active and reserve groups and Rangers;
- The Army National Guard heavy and motorized combat divisions;
- The Army National Guard enhanced separate brigades (infantry and heavy); and
- The Marines (infantry with armor support).
National Guard and Reserve support units aid all of these. Why
can’t we task these five armies to fight the full spectrum of warfare from high
intensity conventional warfare to counter-terror operations? Why add another
army?
- At the low end of the conflict spectrum where we’d like to keep things, we can use our special forces plus small numbers of the other services to train and advise indigenous troops to make them more effective.
- For a low level guerrilla war, the Marine infantry could take the lead with the assistance of special forces and active component light infantry and airborne force where needed.
- For an intense guerrilla war, Marines and Army infantry could be bolstered by National Guard enhanced infantry brigades and some Guard heavy brigades in supporting roles if necessary.
- For a major theater war, we’d rely on active component heavy and airborne forces bolstered by National Guard enhanced separate heavy brigades if necessary.
- At the high end, perhaps a regional war against China, we’d rely on active heavy and airborne forces bolstered by the heavy enhanced heavy brigades and the National Guard combat divisions. Special ops, light infantry, and Marines would have supporting roles.
Such a division of labor would call on reserves in small
numbers for the lower level and introduce reserves in larger numbers only as
the scale of fighting increased. It may require adding 40,000 more troops to
create more Army motorized infantry or MP units. It also requires the Marines
to change their focus the most. Amphibious warfare, the Marine mission begun
after World War I and practiced to its fullest in World War II with a last
glorious gasp at Inchon
in Korea, is
obsolete. While MEUs remain valuable, divisional
amphibious assaults are not going to happen. The Marines should refocus on the
Three-block war concept of stability operations where Marine units in close
proximity in space and time may be delivering aid, patrolling, and assaulting
enemy strongpoints.
But the idea that we need a sixth army to be composed of
constabulary units seems ridiculous to me. We already have five armies.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA17OCT04B
Pro-Baathist/Islamist and
anti-trade protesters marched
in Britain:
Many of the marchers said they hoped to send a message to
American voters ahead of the Nov. 2 U.S. elections through
the demonstration.
"I think our message to Americans is simple: Don't
vote for Bush," said Emma Jane Berridge, a London resident.
No word of whether the crowd estimate
includes puppetry.
Ms. Berridge is right on one
point. There message is simple. Simple-minded. Simply wrong. Simply reprehensible in its assumption that Iraq
was better off under Saddam. And it is simply astounding that these Brits would
pine for a vote in America
when they are about to give up their freedoms to the EU superstate
that the Brussels apparatchiki are
constructing under their noses! In ten years they’ll be protesting to be heard
in the EU corridors of power. In fifty they’ll be begging for us to liberate
them.
They will surrender on the beaches. I can imagine their ilk
giving a lovely inspiring speech to their backers in Trafalgar
Square:
Even though large tracts of the world and
many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the
Islamists and all the odious apparatus of fascist religious rule, we shall not
fight or resist.
We shall go on marching to the end, we shall
surrender in France, we shall give up on the seas and oceans, we shall run away
with flagging confidence in our society and growing insanity on the air waves,
we shall surrender our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall surrender on
the campuses, we shall surrender on the airports, we shall surrender in the courts
and in the streets, we shall surrender in the press; we shall never fight for
our society, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a
large part of it were worthy of defending, then our EU friends across the
channel, castrated and neutered by the EU bureaucracy, would forbid us from
defending ourselves, until, despite Kofi Annan’s protests, the New World, with all its power and
might, steps forth to invade the old to seize the North Sea oil reserves."
Truly, the surrendering class can inspire with words like no
other.
I trust that most Britons are made of sterner stuff.
And I hope my message to the protesters is clear.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA17OCT04A
Some members of a Reserve
transportation unit in Iraq refused
to go on a convoy mission. The members say that the vehicles were in poor
shape and not up to withstanding an attack. Other members of the unit carried
out the mission.
First of all, we’ve had
breakdowns in discipline in every war we’ve fought,
including an incident where George Washington himself had to quell a soldier
strike in the Revolution. Heck, the entire French army mutinied for a time in
World War I. So don’t panic.
That said,
military justice is about military discipline and maintaining military
effectiveness first and justice for individual soldiers second.
These soldiers must be
punished. Whether it is a mild or severe form depends on the leadership of the
unit. If leaders truly failed to keep the unit in shape for missions, leaders
must pay the higher price. Still, the lower ranks cannot get away with refusal
to obey orders even if justified in some sense. Soldiers cannot decide which
orders to obey (except for unlawful orders, that is).
They needed to use other avenues to protest shoddy leadership if leadership
failure is what happened. Of course, if it is sheer mutiny, they need to be
made an example. An army is nothing without discipline.
The Army will deal with this
incident, move on, and fight. Sadly, some over here will draw hope from the
incident. Shame on them.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA16OCT04C
The Iranians say they might give
up their nuke program in exchange for a no-regime-change pledge by us:
Iran might be willing to
give up its uranium enrichment capabilities but it wants many things in return
-- above all a guarantee that no one will try to topple the Islamic regime,
diplomats and analysts say.
As the saying goes, fear is
the beginning of wisdom. But is this the beginning of wisdom or just a ploy to
buy time? After all the effort they have made to get nukes and ballistic
missiles are they suddenly wiling to give it all up for a pledge from people
they don’t even trust that we won’t overthrow them?
Or do the mullahs play on the
need by some over here to explore every
last option before war before we think about acting forcefully? Do the
Iranians count on the excitement of some to attend another conference with
Evian water around the lovely Oak table, ribbon-festooned documents in two
official languages, and pledges all around to meet again in 6 months?
This article also
ridiculously asserts that the 2003 Iraq War convinced Iran to go nuclear!
"Iranian leaders got together after the Iraq war and decided
that the reason North Korea was not attacked
was because it has the bomb. Iraq was attacked because it did not," the [non-US] diplomat
said, citing intelligence reports gathered by his country.
As if Iran had nothing in place and no intentions prior to March
2003! Must be a French diplomat.
And if true, what does this
say about Saddam’s ability to restart his WMD programs if he was still in power
and managed to survive the 2002-2003 crisis, shrug off sanctions, and become
free of international scrutiny? If Iran could be on the verge of nukes less than two years
after the war, how much quicker could Iraq have done it? But of course, there is no point in
going down this path since Iran has obviously been pursuing nukes for a couple
decades, even during lip-biting sensitive administrations
Iran may fear us, but they are not about to give up their
nuclear programs for promises not to attack them and whatever else the “many
things” they want encompass.
Just say no to conferences in
Switzerland. Regime change in 2005. I do
hope we’ve spent our time wisely building up Iranian resistance to the mullahs.
A revolt in December?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA16OCT04B
When the Baathist
insurgency (and I don’t get wound up over terms—we would know that they are
brutal murderers even if we call them “friendly helpers”) started to pick up
steam in July and August 2003, some wondered if the insurgency was Saddam’s
plan all along. Opponents of the war said we were falling into Saddam’s clever
plot to suck us into Iraq where we could be fought in a manner that negates our
conventional war advantage. I thought the idea was hogwash. I should reevaluate
this based on some new information, I suppose.
On
the eve of the American invasion in March 2003, Saddam Hussein instructed top
Iraqi ministers to "resist one week, and after that I will take over.'' To
his generals, Mr. Hussein's order was similar - to hold the American-led
invaders for eight days, and leave the rest to him.
Some
of those who have recounted those words to interrogators believed at the time
that Mr. Hussein was signaling that he had a secret weapon, according to an
account spelled out in the new report by the top American arms inspector in Iraq. But what now appears most likely, the
report said, is that "what Saddam actually had in mind was some form of
insurgency against the coalition.''
American
intelligence agencies have reported since last fall that the broad outlines of
the guerrilla campaign being waged against American forces in Iraq were laid down before the war by the Iraqi
Intelligence Service.
Where we once assumed the Red
Line was the line that would prompt chemical strikes if we crossed it, this theory
says it was the line at which the Iraqis would abandon conventional warfare and
scatter.
The NYT says further:
By
January 2003, the [Duelfer] report says, Mr. Hussein finally accepted that American military action
was inevitable. But he also believed that Iraqi forces could hold off the
invaders for at least a month, even without chemical weapons, and that American
forces would not penetrate as far as Baghdad. "He failed to consult advisers who
believed otherwise, and his inner circle reinforced his misperceptions,'' the
report said. "Consequently, when Operation Iraqi
Freedom began, the Iraqi armed forces had no effective military response.''
"Saddam
believed that the Iraqi people would not stand to be occupied or conquered by
the United States and would resist - leading to an insurgency,'' the Duelfer report says. "Saddam
said he expected the war to evolve from traditional warfare to insurgency.''
This contradicts the idea
that Saddam was going to go guerrilla as the main line of defense. He thought
he could resist a month before being defeated and he believed that even in
defeat we wouldn’t reach Baghdad
in the first month.
As I wrote in my Red Team
analysis in July 2002, Saddam did have military options for fighting us.
Even if you strip out my assumption about chemical warfare—which I thought
would not be decisive against our well trained and fast moving troops
anyway—Saddam could have faced us in battle with some chance that dragging the
fight out and imposing a high cost would bring a ceasefire and save his regime.
We also know this from Time magazine about Saddam’s
thinking:
Well into 2002, he never thought the U.S. could
stomach the casualties of an invasion to depose him, and then "thought the
war would last a few days and it would be over." Said Aziz: "He was overconfident. He was clever. But
his calculations were poor."
So even though Saddam thought
a US-led invasion would take a month to defeat his military and even then fail
to capture Baghdad, he didn’t really expect an invasion. Even into March
2003, press reports that we had only three divisions in Kuwait (3rd AD, 1st MEF, and the
British division) could have led Saddam to believe a ground invasion was not
our plan. As I noted repeatedly before and since the war, this was a false
image. First of all, the Marines had more than two division’s worth of units.
The Army mechanized division had nearly 4 brigades of troops. This 3-division
guess also ignored a brigade of the 82nd AB and the entire 101st
AB that was moving into Kuwait as a follow-up force. It also excluded separate
battalions. We had 70+ line battalions of infantry, armor, and reconnaissance
(from memory, about 30 Army, 30 Marine, and 10 British) in the area—the
equivalent of seven divisions—assuming that we were using air power to replace
artillery and that we were skimping on supply dumps (“iron mountains”) and
relying on near just-in-time supply. And I don’t even consider 4th
ID in this number
I also read and posted some
time ago the report that Saddam expected that any actual ground invasion would
kick off from Jordan. In addition, I’ve read (and I assume posted) that Saddam thought that
France and Russia would use their Security Council vetoes to protect
Saddam’s Iraq from an invasion.
So what do these reports tell
us of Saddam’s plans for insurgency?
First of all, I don’t think
that Saddam saw an insurgency as his first line of defense. I don’t think
anybody assumes defeat, which is what this is.
Saddam first of all did not
think we’d invade. He expected another round of air strikes, perhaps a little
tougher than Desert Fox in 1998 but no worse than Kosovo in 1999 where a ruler
of sterner stuff and destined for greatness (like Saddam) would have withstood
the barrage.
If we did invade, he figured
that we’d march out of Jordan and Kuwait (he couldn’t ignore our troops there) to hit him from
the west. With Saddam’s troops deployed to the east and north, they’d be
largely safe from such an invasion axis of advance and thus preserved for the
post-crisis security mission. Our troops would advance into the Baghdad area where Saddam’s more loyal troops would fight us
at the red line, if
necessary pulling into the cities as a last ditch defense where soft Americans
would not pursue him. By sending important people and material to Syria prior to the invasion reaching the Baghdad area, Saddam would negate the advantage to us that American
control of the west of Iraq would normally mean in terms of cutting Saddam off
from his Syrian friends.
With Americans stalled
outside Baghdad out of fear of inflicting civilian casualties and enduring
American casualties, the imported Islamists supplemented by loyal Baathists using arms caches scattered around the country would
harass American and British forces. The Baathists
would have plenty of money, too, thanks to the UN and some of our so-called
friends. And speaking of the international community, in the UN the bought
French and Russians and Chinese would push for a ceasefire to halt the
humanitarian crisis amply broadcast by al Jazeera,
CBS, CNN, and all the other gullible, hostile, or docile (to stay in Iraq) news
media.
So yeah, guerrilla warfare
was pre-planned. But it seems to be only a component of a layered plan to win
the war. Saddam did not willingly plan to give up his palaces for a hole in the
ground in some brilliant plan to trap America in an insurgency. Saddam just isn’t that good a
strategist, people. And I don’t think that would work anyway. People advancing
this thought are looking at the past and assuming cleverness in creating it.
Saddam had multiple defenses that he thought would hold at some point and keep
him in power. Saddam was wrong and now he is up for trial by a free Iraq. That was quite the diabolical plot, eh?
The NYT article also says, in
an indictment of our year-long "rush to war," that some of our
problems stem from waiting so damn long to destroy Saddam's regime:
The
[Duelfer]
report does not offer a clear verdict on the extent to which the Iraqi
insurgency that has raged for 18 months was planned. But it says that from
August 2002 to January 2003, Army leaders at bases throughout Iraq were ordered to move and hide weapons and
other military equipment at off-base locations, including farms and homes.
I argued again and again in
the months before the war that if we gave Saddam time, he would use it. My main
Red Team analysis for the aim of an Iraqi defense was this:
Overall,
the idea is to delay American deployment, inflict casualties, and publicize
Iraqi casualties whether they exist or not. You want to influence American,
European and Japanese, and Arab opinion. Only time can save Baghdad. Time to sow anger and
fear to a degree that America will stop the war. Once America is stopped, Saddam Hussein and his sons
will be safely entrenched. There just won't be a third try absent use of
nuclear weapons against us.
I feared Saddam would prepare
chemical weapons primarily but time is so valuable you never know what your
enemy will do with it. Now we know. Saddam prepared a last ditch insurgency to
harass our rear. He may have thought there would be a frontline behind which he
would direct the war from a deep bunker, but when we conquered the whole
country, the insurgency went from being a component of resistance to being the
entire resistance.
In early 2002, I thought we
could have gone into Iraq in the fall of 2002. By the time I started my blog in July 2002, I assumed the end of December 2002 give
or take a couple weeks. When it dragged on to March 2003 without an invasion, I
worried about what Saddam would do with the time we gave him. And was amazed we
delayed so long. We need to remember that time is a weapon and speed overcomes
it. When we choose to go to war, we will go up against an enemy with their own
plan, their own ways to hurt us, and their own conviction that they will win.
We are not so powerful that we can consider war merely a live-fire exercise. Fight to win. Move like we could lose—or at least suffer
heavily while winning.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA16OCT04A
I wrote that one part of the
Russian response to the Beslan massacre would be the
assassination of Chechens in foreign countries. Jane’s
is on this aspect:
What are the
Russians up to?
So, why are the Russians still insisting
on their own doctrine of military pre-emption against alleged overseas
terrorists? There are two reasons. The first is long term and remains strategic.
Ever since the end of the Soviet Union, the
Russians have wanted to maintain control over the oil-rich and strategically
important Caucasus region and especially over the neighbouring republic of Georgia. The
Georgian government, now assisted by the presence of some US military
personnel, has always resisted these Russian advances. Under the guise of
fighting terrorism, the Russians now hope to reimpose
control over Georgia. It is
rather convenient that they can do so by using the same justification that the
Americans are using elsewhere in the world. But, more importantly, Russia’s
pre-emption doctrine represents a free-for-all for its secret agents. For
years, the Russian government demanded the extradition of Chechen political
leaders who sought asylum in other countries, claiming that they were
terrorists. Without exception, courts in Western countries rejected these
claims as unfounded. Well before the school massacre, however, the Russian
security services adopted a new technique — that of simply assassinating such
people. The former Chechen president was assassinated in the Gulf state of Qatar in February
and further assassinations are sure to follow. Yet again, the Russian
authorities will claim that they are doing nothing different from what the US Central
Intelligence Agency has done. In practice, however, the Russians are targeting
all those Chechens with whom a peaceful deal to the crisis can still be
negotiated — far from eliminating terrorism, they are eliminating the chances
for any political settlement.
Our
prediction: Wholesale assassinations of Chechen protagonists and
Russian bullying of Georgia. Do not
expect Western governments to say anything about it either.
Look, I know very well that
the Chechen question is different from our war on terror. The Chechens want
independence like other people who were under the Soviet empire. But jihadis have made this fight their own and when a
people—even one with some claims to our sympathy for independence—slaughter
children with evident glee, they forfeit our support. I feel much the same
about the Palestinians. However much in abstract they deserve a nation, their little murdering proto-dictatorship that would
run the nascent thugocracy has forfeited my sympathy.
It isn’t as if the Israelis conquered free Palestine after all. They captured the Jordan-held West Bank and Egyptian-held Gaza. But
I digress.
The Russians will respond to Beslan. I wish them well in this endeavor. But their wider
objectives to recover as much of the old Soviet Union as they can should be resisted by us.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA14OCT04B
The eagerness of some to
oppose the way we fight the war on terror is old thinking. Opponents want to
get out of Iraq though our military victory was absolute and our
counter-Baathist campaign is holding the line as we stand
up a new free Iraq. They prefer stability and a reduction of our deaths to some
acceptable level that we can call mere nuisance, though our offensive against
terrorists and their state sponsors is killing terrorists and pressuring state
sponsors. And our efforts to stop nutball regimes
from getting nuclear weapons are all unsettling to opponents of the war as it
is being fought. They prefer UN negotiations, non-existent mystery allies,
arrests, and an increase in funding and preparation to cope with the loose nuke
or bio weapons that gets through our defenses. Some call this September 10th
thinking. Thinking unchanged by the 3,000 dead that our enemies made on a down
payment to the 4 million Americans they believe they are entitled to murder.
And should they kill that many of us, it will be just the beginning. Give them
what they want and they’ll leave us alone, indeed.
But while this is September
10th thinking, it is not September 10, 2001 thinking. It is just as
much September 10th 1989 thinking.
On September 11,
1989, our entire strategic
environment changed when Hungary opened up its border completely, thus allowing East
Germans who could get into Hungary to flee to the West. Although not publicly announced
until October, this action revolutionized the strategic environment that the US operated in.
Until the Cold War and the
threat of mutual nuclear annihilation, when America went to war, we went to war to achieve our
objectives. Independence in the Revolution and the Part Deux
War of 1812; for land in the Mexican War; for the union and freedom for slaves
in the Civil War; to expel Spain from the Western Hemisphere and free Cuba in
the Spanish-American War; to defeat German militarism in World War I; and to
crush the Axis powers in World War II.
The Korean War was a
transitional war. We entered the war to preserve South Korea and when that was done after Inchon and the Pusan breakout, we attempted to achieve total victory by
crushing the North Korean regime. But China intervened and the Soviets loomed over Western Europe. Suddenly we were in the wrong war in the wrong place
at the wrong time. Instead of victory, we sought peace before something worse
could happen. We still deal with the results of this inability to pursue
victory in Korea. Subsequently, in Vietnam and in countless crises around the globe as we and
the Soviets squared off, controlling conflicts to prevent escalation to nuclear
war was the highest priority rather than victory. Only in Grenada in 1983 did we see what victory looked like again.
Though only a small taste of total victory, we liked it. Or
some of us, anyway.
In 1989, as the Berlin Wall
was crumbling unseen, we achieved total victory in Panama too, by overthrowing Noriega with a lightning
military take down. Even when the Berlin Wall was physically torn down and the
Soviet Union was teetering, old habits died hard and we eagerly accepted a
partial and narrowly defined if decisive military victory over Saddam Hussein by
expelling his army from Kuwait in 1991. Stability and fear of the unknown if
war dragged on led us to declare a well-deserved military victory and pull our
army out short of total victory. But there was no external limit on our
military. The Soviets supported us in the war as did the UN and France and even
the Syrians. Whether we could have endured the casualties needed to defeat
Saddam totally in 1991, I do not know, but the point here is that we were
self-deterred under the lingering effect of Cold War nuclear caution. When The
Soviet Union itself went under in August 1991, the change was complete.
As the sole superpower, once
again we could pursue victory when we went to war. In Kosovo, we still sought
limited objectives but were pleasantly surprised when the Serbs themselves
provided regime change in the aftermath of war in 1999. Again, victory was good—though
it was not our objective—without the lingering threat from partial wins
and ceasefires that we still couldn’t quite shake. In Afghanistan in 2001, with the memory of 9-11 still strong, we
pursued total regime change instead of mere revenge from high altitude. And
when we decisively beat Saddam’s legions in 2003, and since then slowly grind
down the UN-funded Baathist resistance while creating
new Iraqi governmental and security organizations out of the Shia, Kurdish, and sane Sunni majority, a sizable portion
of our people still fear the consequences of a war that drags on. Every day,
they expect the Moslem street to erupt, or the Iraqis to pull a Sepoy Mutiny, or the French to scold us severely, or the
Islamist terrorists to get really mad
at us. They fail to see that only we can lose our wars for the foreseeable
future by faltering in our determination to win.
So while those who suffer
under the delusion that we can at best hope to moderate our deaths to terrorists
are certainly failing to understand the September 11, 2001 world where Islamist
thugs want to kill us in the millions and in their less lucid moments, bring us
into the worldwide Islamist paradise they dream about, this is only part of the
delusion of the war opponents. They also fail to understand the September 11,
1989 world where the
constraints on our power imposed by fear of nuclear war are gone. We are
limited by our own objectives. Of course, perhaps their reflexive grasp for the
UN’s approval or some global test given in perfectly accented Left Bank French are
reflections of their desire for an external constraint on our power. They are
the ones strangely nostalgic for the Cold War that they didn’t want to win
then. They inexplicably trust the Security Council more than our Congress. They
trust Paris more than Peoria.
Our war needs to be waged
under September 11th thinking. We need to kill our enemies and
reform the survivors before they kill us and we must pursue victory as our
objective. There is no substitute for victory. But we did have to settle for
less for fifty years. Once again, there is no substitute for victory. Don’t get
me wrong, I’m not saying that we cannot lose any war we fight. No war outcome
is ever inevitable. We must fight and win our wars without holding back because
our enemies want to win too. We just have to realize that our strategic
environment has changed for the better.
Win! Doesn’t it feel good to
say? It will feel even better to achieve.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA14OCT04A
The successfully completed direct
presidential election in Afghanistan was a triumph in the war on terror. To
reach this point, we had to leap a number of hurdles:
- Overthrow the Taliban (American task): check.
- Kill and disperse al Qaeda (American task predominantly): check.
- Keep the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants quiet in the countryside (Coalition of the Willing task): check.
- Keep Kabul quiet (NATO task): check.
- Register to vote in the face of terrorist threats (Afghan people task): check.
- Accept—even reluctantly—that elections are the means to compete (Afghan leaders task): check.
- Keep polling stations safe on election day (Coalition /Afghan task): check.
- Vote (Afghan voter task): check.
- Procure the permanent ink (UN task): not so much a check; but it will do considering it was the job of the vaunted international community.
So with a little stumble,
voting was a success. The enemy certainly wanted to disrupt the election:
Militants from the ousted Taliban regime spent months
making fiery threats of attacks on election day but even in Afghanistan's
insurgency hit south and southeast voter turnout was unexpectedly high.
Perhaps the Taliban and their
foreign Islamist friends focused on disrupting step 9 rather than 1 through 8. ("Mullah
Omar! Abdul here. I can report success! We have
introduced water-based inks into 3 of 1,348 polling stations! Surely Election
Wizard Carter will be able to work with this to undermine the elections…")
No, wait, here's the excuse
that the Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi provided:
"In order to avoid bloodshed of innocent Muslims we
did not target the polling stations," he told AFP Tuesday by satellite
phone from an undisclosed location.
Hmm. Perhaps I've missed the entire point of their whole
Islamist regime while they ran the show and the last three years while they ran
around kidnapping and killing.
The people who used UN-built
stadiums (hey, we can check a UN task!) to execute sundry undesirables and who
have been happily killing innocent Moslems whenever and wherever they can,
wanted to avoid bloodshed!
Baghdad Bob has met his match
with Afghan Abdul in the screaming whoppers category.
Next time, we'll let the
newly democratic Afghan government buy the ink.
Now I’m not saying that the
UN doesn’t have its uses. If properly supervised, they can pour water out of a
boot that has the instructions written on the heel. Unfortunately, if
unsupervised by responsible adults, the UN would spend all its time translating
the instructions into French, issue a lovely bound report (in English and
French), and then jet off to a conference in Geneva to discuss the implications
and issue congratulations all around while denouncing the US for even having
boots. Of course, the boot would still be sitting on the ground, filled with
water. Until an American (or a Brit, Pole, or Aussie, to name but three others
in our
coalition) came over, kicked the boot over, and got the job done.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA12OCT04A
This article says that we are
facing a complex
insurgency in Iraq and that we are losing the war. The author goes on:
Independent analysts say 16 months of escalating warfare by
U.S. troops with
little practical experience in fighting insurgents have made clear the
difficulty of defeating militants who mount attacks while hiding and moving
among civilians.
While quoting a US officer who notes correctly that history is filled
with insurgencies that failed, the author gets to the Vietnam Nostalgia Tour he
is eager to embark on with this line:
History is also replete with insurgencies that triumphed.
Vietnamese guerrillas ousted the United States in 1973. Afghan
militias similarly embarrassed the Soviet Union in 1989.
Then of course we get to the
heart of it:
"It's more complex and challenging than any other
insurgency the United States has fought,"
aid Bruce Hoffman, a RAND counterinsurgency expert who served as an
adviser to the U.S.-led occupation administration.
He also says:
"Vietnam was not easy, but
it was certainly far less complex and more straightforward."
Let’s start with Krane’s first statement. Yes, we have little first-hand
experience. But our Army and Marine Corps are well trained and adapting. We
have studied past insurgencies and we are preventing the insurgents from
interfering with the creation of a new Iraqi government and security forces. So
our experience is of little issue here. After all, I do believe the insurgents
lack practical experience in fighting a technologically superior enemy and a
majority population that will not be under their boot again. The insurgents
have discovered the difficulty of defeating a government who mounts attacks
from out of nowhere and whose troops and people control the vast majority of
the country. The point is, this is just a silly statement with no bearing on
whether we will win or not.
Let’s ignore the Afghanistan comparison since that was a resistance by most of the
population against a minority puppet government. The insurgents had a sanctuary
in Pakistan and a superpower patron. The Soviets also had to
worry about a global contest with us that they could not ignore while they
fought in the Afghanistan mountains. China too was a threat that could not be ignored.
But the heart of it is Krane’s Vietnam comparison. Most basically, Vietnamese guerrillas did
not oust the United
States
in 1973. By 1973, South Vietnam was largely pacified with indigenous Viet Cong long
dead and replaced by North Vietnamese fighting as pretend insurgents and in big
units. We were exhausted in pitched battles that killed nearly 60,000 of our
troops in the previous 8 years. We weren’t pushed out. We turned around and
left. And when South Vietnam fell, it was to North Vietnamese regular units
spearheaded by armor that conquered the South.
The statement that Iraq is
more complex and challenging than any othe insurgency
we’ve fought is unclear to me—especially the idea that Vietnam was far less complex and more straightforward. Excuse
me? We faced a communist insurgency/irregular fight; a regular army operating
from sanctuaries in North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos; and a corrupt friendly government with Buddhists and
Catholics vying for power. We had our enemies backed by the Soviet Union and communist China who shipped arms, provided training, and limited our
escalation; with Europeans screaming at us for waging war in Vietnam. We had the USSR looming over Western Europe and the Chinese looming north of North Vietnam and North Korea, potentially able to intervene in both locations.
This is less complicated than Iraq? I think the expert is being confused by the apparent
simplicity of history already written down and the confusion, complexity, and
uncertainty of history being written.
So what makes the Iraq insurgency so complex?
In other U.S. wars, the enemy
was clear. In Vietnam, a visible leader
— Ho Chi Minh — led a single army fighting to unify
the country under socialism. But in Iraq, the disorganized
insurgency has no single commander, no political wing and no dominant group.
This just stuns me. Normally,
unity of command is an advantage in war. But in Iraq, the fact that the enemy is a disorganized insurgency
with no commander, no political wing, and no dominant group is somehow an
amazing advantage! Gee, we should hope that they unify, declare a political
strategy, and subordinate themselves to one faction and then we will be living
large and kicking ass? Let me say this clearly so I am not misunderstood—it is
good that our enemy is disorganized, lacking a single commander and political
wing, and fragmented with no dominant group. It is good.
So what of this complex
insurgency?
The insurgency is made of 4
main groups plus a fifth that adds to the climate of fear and violence that
also contributes guns for hire:
The largest insurgent bloc is composed of Iraqi
nationalists fighting to reclaim secular power lost when Saddam Hussein was
deposed in April 2003.
The second is a growing faction of hardcore fighters
aligned with terrorist groups, mainly that led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The U.S. military believes
they want to turn Iraq into an
anti-Western stronghold that would export Islamic revolution to other countries
in the region.
A third group consists of conservative Iraqis who want to
install an Islamic theocracy, but who stay away from terror tactics like car
bombings and the beheading of hostages.
The fourth, al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, seeks to make the cleric the nationwide Shiite
leader.
Ordinary criminals also pitch in on attacks when they are
paid. And gangsters who abduct people regularly sell their hostages to terror
groups, which have beheaded some.
First, the criminals can be
swept up with police work. They are out for money and when the price for their
criminal activity is high enough, they will back off.
Sadr’s thugs are isolated in the Shia
community and though he clearly seeks to be a nationwide Shia
leader, he has failed miserably.
The “conservative” Sunnis who
want a Sunni theocracy are a minority even in the Sunni community and the Shias—even those who like Sadr—would
not accept such a government.
The foreign-led Sunni
Islamists are killing Iraqis and pissing off the Iraqis. They can cause mayhem
but they cannot lead a revolution to control Iraq. Indeed, I think their presence has made it easier
for us to rally Iraqis to our side by painting all insurgents as murderers.
This example of Sunni love of Iraq does not help in persuading Shias
or Kurds to rally to their side.
When it comes down to it, the
first group is the only one that really matters. Defeat them and cranky Shias, foreign Islamists, and criminal gangs can be swept
up. The Friends of Saddam have ample money, arms hidden in Iraq and smuggled in from Iran and Syria, military and intelligence skills, experience in
brutal thuggery, and a dose of fear over what might happen to them if their
former victims get their hands on the Baathist thugs
to inspire them. While they are persistent, the casualties they are inflicting
are not enough to break our ground forces and they are confined to Sunni areas
rather than being a nationwide Iraqi resistance. Nor are they slowing down the
creation of an Iraqi government and security forces.
Is this resistance tough and
complex? Sure. But we are tough and complex, too. And we have numbers on our
side with 90% of the Iraqis ill disposed to a Baathist
dictatorship returning to rule Iraq. Like any war, we could lose this war. But only if we break here at home in our determination to win.
Nothing about the Iraqi insurgents and terrorists is inherently too tough to
beat. I think we are winning.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10OCT04B
I’m no fan of pure
humanitarian missions. They are truly wars of choice that may be undertaken if
they will not harm American security or run unacceptable risks to undertake. At
some point, the horrific nature of the humanitarian crisis can take precedence.
I don’t know what that level is but the world did not think Cambodia under the
Khmer Rouge, Rwanda in 1994, or Saddam’s Iraq qualified as bad enough to do
something on humanitarian grounds.
However, when an intervention
supports national interests and there
is a humanitarian crisis, the humanitarian nature of the problem certainly
shields the interveners against accusations of immoral imperialism or whatever
the charge of the day is. Iraq, of course, is a case in point. One may argue over
whether the invasion was wise (I think so) but to argue it was immoral in the
face of the massive death, torture, and oppression that the Saddam regime was
responsible for is just out of bounds.
Darfur is certainly a humanitarian crisis:
The UN Security Council passed a resolution in September
threatening sanctions against Sudan's vital oil industry
for failing to rein in pro-government Arab militias accused of atrocities in Darfur. The UN says
50,000 people have died since a revolt erupted in February last year, and
another 1.2 million made homeless.
But Sudan has also had a history of support for terrorism and
the usual suspects of France, China, and Russia are running interference for the Khartoum government. In addition to this guilt by association,
we have further proof that Sudan is seeking Candidate
Status for the Axis of Evil:
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Khartoum
to start a three-day visit to Africa's
biggest country whose government has come under pressure to act over what the
United Nations terms a humanitarian crisis in the western region of Darfur.
Khatami is due to have
talks with Sudanese leaders on bilateral, regional and international issues,
and presidential sources said he and Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir began their first meeting soon after the Iranian
leader arrived.
Details of their
talks were not immediately available. [emphasis added]
Secret
talks with the Iranians does not
indicate the ideals of the international community, I think. The
reality, yes, but not the ideal. I imagine that the details are not ever
going to be made available. Bilateral issues surely include WMD production and
use; regional issues of course include slaughtering Darfurians
and helping al Qaeda transit the region; and international
issues include terrorism and proven means of getting France, China, and Russia to run interference on the UN Security Council.
I think that an intervention
to split Darfur away from the butchers in Khartoum is warranted. If the Europeans can take the lead with
Tony Blair placing emphasis on Africa this year and the EU possibly eager to
use their newly established intervention force in a non-US-led intervention, I
could see a post-election move to mount a joint EU-African intervention through
Chad with US logistical help and perhaps US air power and small US ground
forces—perhaps a reinforced parachute battalion—for local base security in Chad
and a backup force just in case.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA10OCT04A
David Brooks is a must
read today:
Saddam
knew the tools he would need to reshape history and establish his glory:
weapons of mass destruction. These weapons had what Duelfer
and his team called a "totemic" importance to him. With these
weapons, Saddam had defeated the evil Persians. With these weapons he had
crushed his internal opponents. With these weapons he would deter what he
called the "Zionist octopus" in both Israel and America.
But
in the 1990's, the world was arrayed against him to deprive him of these
weapons. So Saddam, the clever one, The Struggler, undertook a tactical
retreat. He would destroy the weapons while preserving his capacities to make
them later. He would foil the inspectors and divide the international
community. He would induce it to end the sanctions it had imposed to pen him
in. Then, when the sanctions were lifted, he would reconstitute his weapons and
emerge greater and mightier than before.
The
world lacked what Saddam had: the long perspective. Saddam understood that what
others see as a defeat or a setback can really be a glorious victory if it is
seen in the context of the longer epic.
Yes. Saddam launched his first war for
glory in 1980. And though he was stymied at every turn in his sick quest
for conquest ever since then, his desire for nukes to finally get his place in
the sun was clear for those who can see. But too many see nothing. As Brooks notes:
I have never in my life seen a
government report so distorted by partisan passions. The fact that Saddam had
no W.M.D. in 2001 has been amply reported, but it's been isolated from the more
important and complicated fact of Saddam's nature and intent.
We stopped a nuclear threat.
If some people cannot see the inevitable linkage in the chain stretching from a
brutal aggressive dictator to a future brutal aggressive nuclear-armed dictator,
I don’t know what more can be said. They saw the threat during the Clinton administration. They deny seeing it now. What
changed?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA09OCT04D
John Howard has been returned
as the PM of Australia pledging to remain in the Coalition to win in Iraq and beat terror. At a bigger than
anticipated margin. Funny it isn’t getting more attention here.
Australians are made of
sterner stuff than many over here hoped.
With Afghans
also voting in a victory for our Coalition strategy, we have hope that we
can beat the Islamists by maintaining the Coalition and by creating new allies
where once there had been enemies. Democracy and rule of law will sustain us
despite setbacks as in Spain. And even with Spain (and France and Germany, too, for that matter), their return to the war could
be another election away.
There is no substitute for
victory. Or liberty.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA09OCT04C
Opponents of the Iraq War are
a subset of those who opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War. A lot of people
formerly pacifistic had their minds changed by 9-11 and are more hawkish now.
But the whole group in 1991 thought war to liberate Kuwait was wrong. Their opposition to war in 1991 when the
aggression by Iraq against a sovereign member of the international community,
Kuwait, was clear; when the international community voted to reverse that
conquest; when our alliance included troops from France, Egypt, and Syria in
addition to Britain and smaller allies; when we went in with overwhelming
numbers of troops; and when our allies such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Japan
largely financed the war, makes a mockery of their current claim that they
would of course defend America if we pass their hurdles. Despite all this, the
vote for war was quite close in Congress.
But what pray tell was
missing from this test in 1991? When some today claim they just wish to fight
smarter and with allies who are impressed with our sensitive manner, and that
they will never let any foreign state or entity stop us from defending
ourselves, what does this 1991 test tell us?
Well, first of all I believe
them when they say no foreign nation or entity will be allowed to veto our
decision to go to war to defend ourselves.
After all, to have a foreign
nation or entity in a position to veto our decision for war, it assumes such a
group of sensitive warfighters would decide to wage
war. They will not.
I don’t see how people who
decided that the 1991 test was insufficient to go to war will ever vote for war
shy of getting CNN reports of boatloads of al Qaeda
unloading in Manhattan while hauling a dirty bomb ashore in a direct attack. Or
maybe they’d still decide to send the police to arrest them. Who knows?
Face it,
there is no possibility of a foreign or UN veto of America going to war if America under their leadership will never decide to go to war.
They are self-deterred.
I could be wrong. Perhaps for
a majority of those opposed to the Iraq War, the global test asks only one
question—what party is the president proposing war? That would be a real
shame.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA09OCT04B
Some critics of American
policy on Iraq have insisted that we should have dealt with North Korea first
since Pyongyang is the only member of the Axis of Evil to actually have nuclear
capabilities (but let me add as an aside that these critics are relying on the
same intelligence sources that they say hyped Iraq’s capabilities). Aside from
my general rule that dealing with the nutball who
wants his first nuke trumps dealing with the nutball
who wants his third, the options we have to deal with the Pillsbury Nuke Boy
show why dealing with North Korea first means never dealing with anybody else ever. Since
our options are all limited in what they can provide or what they would cost,
how could we ever solve this problem first?
- Military option. An aerial offensive to destroy North Korea’s nuclear facilities and their conventional artillery that threatens Seoul. Or, I would add, possibly an invasion to conquer North Korea.
- Isolation. The world could make sure that North Korea does not have access to energy, aid, or trade.
- Negotiation. We could try to persuade North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons by offering them alternatives—such as energy, aid, and trade.
- Containment. We could accept a nuclear North Korea and wait them out, building anti-missile defenses.
Clearly, invasion is off the
table. We can’t do it alone and if we planned to do it, we wouldn’t be pulling
our few ground troops away from the DMZ. Nor can an aerial offensive win
quickly enough to keep North Koreas from destroying Seoul at the very least. It is good to have military
options, but they can only be reasonably used if North Korea attacks or collapses—or if it looks like the North
Koreans are about to strike and we have no choice but to hit the nuke sites.
Isolation can never be
complete given South Korean determination to engage with the North. The ROK has
no desire to pay for unifying with the North even on victorious terms. Seoul sees aid as a guarantee that the North won’t
collapse.
Negotiations got us to where
we are at now and I fail to see how more of this will do anything but stall the
North. And a deal might accelerate their progress by freeing PDRK resources to pursue
nukes and missiles.
Power Politics notes that the
last option seems best:
The final option – left publicly unconsidered until only very recently
– is accepting the North Korean arsenal de facto, and implementing a regime of
containment, inspection, and missile defense. This is, understandably, the
option of last resort, since North Korean possession of nuclear devices runs
decidedly contrary to American interests. However, advocates argue, it may in
fact be the only realistic solution. Proponents cite the flaws of other potential
options, and suggest measures taken now to implement a system of containment
would do much more good than merely ill fated attempts at disarmament.
Essentially, a strategy of containment would be trifurcated into three
significant components. First, North Korean territorial and power ambitions
would be suppressed. The U.S. military would stage a powerful force
presence in the general area (particularly naval wise), and would station
overwhelming forces in South Korea. This would deter North Korea from attempting to annex South Korean
territory (such as outlying islands), and would keep Pyongyang in line when it comes to maritime matters
(the North has been making trouble for shipping in the area for some time).
Second, smart sanctions would be instituted against Pyongyang. It would be completely banned from
exporting CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) technology or
components. It would be banned from importing such components, or other
advanced weapons systems. Preferably, it would also be prohibited from
exporting advanced arms (such as missiles), or sharing missile technology with
rogue regimes. These measures would be backed by American naval power, and
enforced through aggressive inspection protocols. Intelligence would keep tabs
on air and sea shipments, which would be intercepted and searched if considered
potentially compromised. Ships and airplanes believed to be violating the
sanctions would be unofficially destroyed. Third, American allies in the region
would be protected by a robust, interconnected missile defense grid. This grid
would be comprised of ground-based surface to air missiles, ground based
kinetic energy kill vehicles, and sea based anti-missile vehicles.
The risk inherent in this strategy, of course, is that North Korean
nuclear technology finds its way to terrorists and hostile regimes.
Nevertheless, this option of last resort may very well be the optimal way for Washington to address the crisis.
I’ve advocated such a course
for a long time. North Korea is nutso but they are not
part of the Islamist jihad. They want to survive and so at some level they can
be deterred. At worst, they are a source for nukes but as long as the nutballs have Iran, they don’t need North Korea for nukes. North Korea is well suited for containment as the last Cold
War-era Stalinist regime around (I’m not sure what you’d call Cuba…) and has little to offer anybody. Nobody outside of
a few history departments on Western campuses is a loyal follower of Kim
Jong-Il.
South
Korea’s
willingness to wait out the North is clear in their plan to move
their capital out of vulnerable Seoul to a point south.
Our long-term
posture in South Korea shows invasion is not in the works, though the
option of an aerial and missile offensive is being kept on the table. We are
reducing ground troops in South Korea, deploying our units away from their hostage-position
on the DMZ, and making sure combat power is increased (which, with ground
troops moving out, means air power).
We are also putting missile
defenses around the Korean peninsula and in Alaska. The Japanese are also looking for missile defense.
So we are prepared to ring
the North with firepower and minimize our weaknesses. The last part is making
sure the North doesn’t sell a nuke to Islamist nutballs.
This is the interdiction
component of our strategy to contain North Korea:
The
Department of Defense announced today that it welcomed operational experts from
seventeen countries to the first Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)
maritime interdiction game hosted by the U.S. Naval
War
College
in Newport,
Rhode Island
September 27 through October 1.
Delegations
participated in a series of intensive simulations designed to test
decision-making about potential interdictions of proliferation-related
shipments. The event was intended to assist in developing the operational
capability of PSI participants to interdict maritime shipments of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD), their delivery systems, and related materials.
Participants
in the PSI maritime interdiction game included operational experts from
Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, the United
Kingdom and the United States.
PSI
is a global initiative to enhance and expand efforts to interdict shipments of
WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials to and from states and
non-state actors of proliferation concern. More than sixty countries
around the world are supportive of PSI, which was launched by President Bush on
May 31, 2003.
With a solid defense against
direct North Korean aggression and a means of stopping the North from shipping
WMD to buyers, we can wait them out. Even South Korean aid will not allow the
inept managers of the Northern economy to escape their death spiral. North
Koreans will continue to escape and their numbers will increase. At some point,
the fear that the Northerners have will not eclipse their despair and they will
pull down the statues of the Pillsbury Nuke Boy and the monster who spawned him.
It is sad that North Koreans
will suffer and die until this happens—for years or even decades—but we have
few good options to engineer a regime change at an acceptable cost. North Korea can never be first. If it was, we’d be stuck there
for a long time. Isolate them and move on to the next objective: Iran. We still have time to keep Iran from becoming a problem too hard to solve at an
acceptable cost. But not much.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA09OCT04A
The Russians have apparently learned
nothing from Beslan:
Russia will continue its
nuclear energy cooperation with Iran, a senior Russian official said Thursday,
despite international concern that Tehran
might be trying to develop atomic weapons.
I mean, this is safe, right?
Because Iran’s mullahs are perfectly trustworthy. And even if Iran slipped a little nuke to Chechen terrorists, they
would never use it on the Russians, right? Shooting little kids in the back is
one thing, but truly mass murder is out of the question for the Chechens and
their jihadi buddies who’ve joined them, right?
No, it is much better to make
a couple bucks selling the mullahs the knowledge and facilities they need to
make nukes. Moscow would never ever ever
possibly be the target.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07OCT04E
Having run away from Iraq after the Madrid bombing like good little tame infidels, the Spanish
continue to align
their actions to please their Moslem rulers:
In another dig at the United
States, the Socialist government
has dropped plans for U.S.
Marines to march in a high-profile parade commemorating Christopher Columbus's
arrival in the New World.
And to make sure we know that
they have surrendered supinely to the new jihad:
Instead, French troops have
been invited to march in the parade as part of celebrations marking the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of Paris
from Nazi occupation
As if the French had anything
to do with the liberation of France from the Nazis. The French troops might not know
whether they are celebrating or mourning the defeat of the Nazis. But as a
leader of the new surrendering class of Europe
it makes perfect sense.
What has become of the
Spanish?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07OCT04D
A stupid
Marxist terrorist wannabe will remain in a Peruvian jail. Good. This stuff
isn’t a game and she doesn’t get to say quit once caught and go try for a dull
middle class life in America, now. All she’s learned is to dress like a nice
little girl. Maybe another decade in prison will teach her that plotting to
murder innocents is not a college directed studies course in practical
communism.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07OCT04C
This is what the President
said regarding the Duelfer report (summary
here):
"The Duelfer report showed
that Saddam was systematically gaming the system,
using the U.N. oil-for-food program to try to influence countries and companies
in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said as he prepared to fly to
campaign events in Wisconsin. "He was
doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world
looked away."
Opponents of the war have
seized upon the confirmation that we have not found stockpiles of WMD in Iraq since invading to argue that the war was an error and
that sanctions and inspections should have continued instead.
To start, I do want very much
to know why our intelligence (and the intelligence services of every other
country as well as the UN and even anti-war groups) believed Saddam had
chemical weapons stockpiles on the eve of war. Either they were all wrong or
something happened to them prior to invasion or shortly after before we were in
place.
The idea that this
administration misled the American people is ridiculous. Every responsible
group thought Saddam had chemical weapons. Even though the report concluded
that Saddam made no WMD after 1991, the fact that Saddam was willing to endure
sanctions for 12 more years rather than comply with his agreement to disarm and
verify that disarmament tells us of his determination to get WMD. Indeed, it
wasn’t until the mid-90s that we discovered the existence of his bio warfare
program. If we were wrong to invade Iraq then all through the 1990s we were
wrong to maintain sanctions on a country with no WMD and were wrong to have
struck Iraq repeatedly, including the heavy Desert Fox air campaign in 1998.
But the report makes it clear
that Saddam had preserved the technical and scientific knowledge to ramp up
chemical and biological weapons within months in some cases, once sanctions
were gone. Primitive mustard gas could have been made quickly in a few months
and nerve gas would have taken longer. Nukes were even longer away but with the
progress made already, it is possible that Saddam could have leapt forward with
a timely purchase of the needed nuclear materials from either the Pakistanis or
North Koreans and maybe Saddam could have purchased an entire nuclear warhead
from North Korea to gain a quick nuclear weapon until domestic efforts could
ramp up.
And sanctions were collapsing
prior to the war. We were fighting a rearguard action hoping to get focused
sanctions instead of the broader sanctions that were collapsing. And we know
that Saddam had corrupted the oil for food system and was bribing Security
Council patrons and journalists to undermine the sanctions. Those who claim
that war was unnecessary must answer why they think it was possible to maintain
sanctions in these impossible circumstances. Given Saddam’s clear intentions to
get WMD as soon as sanctions were ended, the sanctions could never have been
lifted if we were to follow this route. The war critics therefore must also
explain how we were going to maintain sanctions indefinitely.
No, the exact status of Iraq’s WMD programs and stockpiles was irrelevant given
Saddam’s determination to have WMD. Even before the war, I had concluded that
nothing short of regime change could end the Iraqi threat. From my January 30, 2003 post "Averting
War" I looked at options short of war for forestalling Saddam's WMD
threat to us. This is what I wrote about one option:
Or there is the full cooperation option. What if Saddam
caves and says, you are right, we have everything you say we have—here it is,
come and destroy it. Even if he destroys it all, what if he has more than we
think? And what happens after he is certified weapons--free and we go home?
With his wealth, scientists, and technical expertise, he begins again. And not
from scratch since the knowledge is the key ingredient. All else can be
purchased with his wealth and hidden even better, with the knowledge of what we
can do. And who in Iraq
will dare tell us anything knowing we let the thug escape—yet again.
I worried that Saddam might
comply with our demands and if he was disarmed verifiably, the UN would lift
sanctions and we would be able to do nothing. Our military would go home and
Saddam’s continued rule meant that he would quickly get WMD.
So while I want to know why
we did not know there were no WMD in Iraq on the eve of war, this is a concern over
intelligence and not our intentions and ultimate goal. I assumed there were
chemical weapons in Iraq and while finding them would make the argument over
the war easier, the opponents of the war are being disingenuous in seizing on the
lack of WMD as a new reason to oppose the war. For when even they assumed
Saddam had WMD, they still opposed the war. If we had found them, the opponents
would still say the war was wrong. But as I said before the war, the key to
preventing a grave and gathering danger in Iraq was always regime change.
We did that and I’m glad of
it. Saddam or his lovely boys will not have nukes or bugs or chemicals. And the
end of his beastly regime is a humanitarian bonus as well.
And for what it is worth, I
still think we will find the WMD. Duelfer could not
find evidence of production or stocks. That means either Saddam did not have
them or that we did not find evidence of them. I’m betting on the latter.
Saddam was awfully stubborn and sacrificed a lot over 12 years for a reason.
And if the reason was that he preferred his people to suffer rather than
comply, that is surely a good humanitarian reason to have destroyed his regime.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07OCT04B
Bill Whittle has a good
post up on the war we are in. What grabbed my heart was this:
I tried to enlist on September 12th, 2001. I
knew a little about airplanes; maybe the Air Force would trust me to wash them
or something so as to free up useful people. They asked how old I was, thanked
me, and told me they’d give me a call if they needed me.
So here I am: feeling useless. But President
Bush warned that this was going to be a different war – something unlike
anything we had ever seen. The front line now, at this critical time, is in the
hearts and minds of our own people. That’s where the real battle is now. That
is our weakest point, our breach, our point of failure. We have not made the
case to enough people and time is running out.
So maybe now, at this absurd point in this
new kind of war, we’re the
crack troops, we old and useless pajama patriots reduced to printing up
pamphlets to sell war bonds to the weary, to make the case for holding on to an
unglamorous, uninspiring, relentless grind because that – not Normandy and
Midway – is the face of war in this gilded age of luxury and safety and plenty.
Maybe that’s our job. Maybe we can help cover
some small gap in the lines.
We’ll see. But for now, I will take up the
sword of the pajamahadeen,
and rise up: just another citizen-wordsmith, trying to put words and ideas
where they are needed: into the stumbling gaps, exasperated expressions and defensiveness
of a brave and exhausted man under a lot of pressure.
I believe I wrote that in the two weeks or so following
9-11, I marched again. I didn’t walk. The forgotten cadences returned and my
fingers were curled and I marched like I was a soldier again.
But I was not a soldier. And I could do nothing.
And even when I was a soldier, I was not a snake eater. I was
a signalman and a reservist to boot. Not exactly Rambo material, eh?
But in September 2001 I felt guilty that I was not in
uniform. That I was not going to be sent to fight our enemies. And yet I was
grateful, too. Only a fool would eagerly want to fight and leave a young son
behind. Had I been in uniform I would have done so—I had faced that question in
1990 and knew I would go if called. I expected to be called up then and in
January 1991 it seemed certain. But in the end, I was lucky. I was not called
up and I did not go to war.
But in 2001, our nation went to war and in October we sent
our soldiers off to war in turn to destroy the Taliban, to hunt al Qaeda, to crush Saddam, and to struggle in the shadows
around the globe out of the media spotlight.
I remained at home. And I could do nothing. And much more is
ahead before we can claim to be at peace again.
In time, I discovered the blogsophere.
Lileks
especially inspired me. And it seemed to offer a way for me to do something
useful. If only just a tiny bit. I was a citizen-soldier. Now I am a
citizen-wordsmith. I enjoy it. But I also feel I must do it as a duty. That is
why I sometimes stay up late writing. I don’t fool myself that I am critical to
the war effort any more than I was critical to the US Army as an E-4 signalman.
But in each I could play a role along with many others who share my goal. I
hope that by standing on the ramparts in this small way that I am contributing
to killing our enemies and beating the bastards that made our skies quiet one
clear September day in 2001.
I have not forgotten that day. The silence
in the skies. Not by a long shot. Nor should any of
us. And I do not forget that this war is not yet won. Indeed, it is not
even fully settled that we should fight this war. Each of us can do something.
This is what I do.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA07OCT04A
Orson Scott Card has an excellent
article with a lot of good points.
I’ll just highlight one:
But
the American people remember: President Bush landed on that aircraft carrier at
the end of major force combat in Iraq. The initial mission was to destroy
organized military resistance and topple Saddam's government. That mission was
indeed accomplished, in remarkably quick time and with astonishingly few
casualties on both sides.
I should just cut and paste
the whole thing. It would be nice if politics did end at the water’s edge.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA06OCT04B
American forces are on
the offensive in the Sunni Triangle:
With Samarra under government control, American and
Iraqi troops have now moved to Babil province, just
south of Baghdad, and
arrested 160 people suspected of criminal activity. The roads in this part of Babil province (where the ruins of ancient Babylon are) have
been the scene of many ambushes, road side bombs, kidnappings and robberies. A den of thieves, as it were. American and Iraqi
intelligence forces have collected a lot of information on who has been doing
what in the Babil area. There is a long list of
people the police would like to talk to. Some of those people turned on to be
heavily armed and not interested in getting close to police interrogators.
Fighting is expected to go on for several days. …
Meanwhile, Muqtada
al Sadr's armed followers in Baghdad, where most
of his gunmen always came from, have been getting pounded by American smart
bombs and troops for the past week.
This military offensive is a
necessary component of defeating the Baathists and
uprooting the foreign Islamists. As Mac Owens writes in his article
on the need to crush sanctuaries and this apparent offensive:
This is good news. It indicates that the
final battle against the insurgency may now be underway.
I am tremendously relieved
that we are taking the initiative to win instead of hunkering down and trying
to avoid losing. In my September 26 post "Are
They Fixed or Just Safe?" I was worried that we were fooling ourselves
into thinking that letting our enemies have sanctuaries was setting a trap, and
concluded:
End the sanctuaries. Now. Because our enemies won’t hold off in October in
deference to our election schedule. Better to be going after them than to get
hit day after day, reacting to their initiatives. And take that one-man
sanctuary, the idiot Sadr, off the streets. I worry
that he will eventually succeed in engineering the destruction of a holy site
and enflame Shias against us. If the Shias turn against us, we can’t win at a price we are
willing to pay. And then our enemies will have a national sanctuary again. But
that is good, right? The ridiculousness of claiming we are “fixing” our enemies
is evident. End the sanctuaries now.
Our military success in Samarra also validates my bandaid off fast rule—it is better to strike hard and
get it over with than to let the enemy adapt, get set, and call in the al Jazeera and CNN news crews to spin the fight for the
insurgents:
Speed has been my basic
approach to fighting. Take the bandaid off fast, as I say.
Fight wars fast to keep public opposition from developing and to crush
the spirit of the enemy so they can’t react effectively. While some might think
that fighting slower saves our troops’ lives, that is
false compassion for our soldiers and Marines. It is better to lose extra men
in the short run to win rather than let the battle drag out to give our enemies
chances to kill more of us over time. Time is our enemy and if we give our
enemies time they may use it.
The
two-day sweep through Samarra incorporated lessons
learned on the ground over the past several months — especially the need to win
swiftly in urban settings. Our soldiers performed flawlessly under difficult
conditions. Iraqi commandos, backed by our Special Forces, liberated two key
mosques before a hostile media could intervene on terror's behalf. The city's
population is glad that their oppressors are gone.
Our troops are good enough to
win if we tell them to. And the Iraqis are shaping up nicely,
it seems, to fight the insurgents and terrorists. Still, as I've written
before, military strength only buys us time—it is not sufficient to pile up
enemy bodies. We can't just focus too narrowly on the rapid and successful
conquest of cities like Samarra. We have to implant effective Iraqi government control,
too. So moving American troops on to the next hotspot can be for naught if we
fail in this part of the fight. This author notes correctly:
The assault on Samarra by coalition forces over the weekend
was probably the first step in a broader offensive intended to quell insurgent
hot spots before the Iraqi elections in January. It was a promising start, as
American and Iraqi forces quickly swept through the city, in the Sunni triangle
north of Baghdad. Now comes
the difficult part: establishing an effective government to prevent the return
of the insurgents.
Though I dispute the idea
that Samarra must be peaceful and secure before taking on the next sanctuary—those
other sanctuaries if left untouched will be used to strike Samarra—as a concept he is right about the next non-military steps.
Austin Bay
describes it this way:
Bullets, money, ballots: Call this trio
of words the highly condensed version of coalition strategy in Iraq, with recent
operations in the Sunni-Triangle town of Samarra as a pertinent example.
It will take time to defeat
even a narrowly based insurgency that is desperate to regain power, is fearful
of retribution from the formerly oppressed, has lots of money, and is well
trained in killing and instilling fear.
Though it will take time for
the fight—increasingly carried out by Iraqis themselves—to win, we should
remain confident that we can defeat these insurgents who lack popular
support:
The
terrorist movement in Iraq, at times graced with the label of "insurgency," is in no
position to impose its will on the nation. With the help of its outside
backers, it could, to be sure, continue kidnappings and killings for years.
We need the confidence in our
troops and cause to endure brutal bombings of children in order to win. But it
all starts with going on the offensive. Nobody ever won a war sitting on their
butts.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA06OCT04A
We are supposedly involved in
a unilateral fight in Iraq and against Islamist terrorists. I think this is a
ridiculous charge but this isn't what is bugging me. What bugs me is the
assertion that this unilateralism is in stark contrast to the broad NATO
alliance that we had backing us in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.
What rubbish. Where to begin?
First, this requires you to
ignore the many over here who railed against containment as some type of
irrational hatred of a morally equivalent—if not superior—communism. It is
funny to see people who used to hate the Cold War while the outcome was in
doubt now lament the fact that the Europeans no longer follow our lead.
It requires you to ignore the
rabid protests against American efforts to defend Western Europe by Euro-communists and their nuclear freeze friends.
It requires you to ignore the
détente proponents here and their European counter-parts who strove to trade
with and aid the Soviets.
It requires you to forget
that France kicked NATO out of France.
It requires you to forget
that Greek hatred of Turkey undermined NATO defenses in the eastern Mediterranean.
It requires you to forget the
constant nagging we had to do to get the NATO countries to spend money on
defense.
Most importantly, it requires
you to forget that the only reason that we were able to get a broad alliance to
work with us to resist the Soviets was because the frontline was in their front
yard. Masses of NATO troops stood on the central front in Western Europe with American soldiers in large numbers and our whole
military was geared to rapidly reinforce from the continental United States. We also had the role of resisting the Soviets in the
rest of the world. While the Cold War was a global struggle, NATO was not in
the business of acting "out of area." That's why NATO's tiny mission
to Afghanistan is so significant—it is out of area.
So what did our broad
alliance assisting us in the global Cold War do for us outside of Europe?
Well. Not much. Who helped us
in Korea? Individual nations like Britain, Australia, and Turkey who contributed small numbers of troops. Who helped
us in Vietnam? Well the Australians, the Thais, the South Koreans,
New Zealanders, and some others who contributed anywhere from a battalion to a
corps. Who helped us in fighting the Libyans in the 1980s? Ok, France did from their foothold in Chad but that was to defend their quasi-colony. We were
really helping them in this. When it came to helping us by just opening up
their precious air space in 1986 so our bombers in Britain could strike
Khaddafi, the French said no. Where were the Europeans in the Middle East? In '56 they were invading Egypt without our approval; and slaughtering Algerians.
When we needed help in '73 to face down the Soviets in the October War crisis,
only the Portuguese were helpful by opening their Azores
bases to our planes. Ok, the Europeans did help us with naval forces in
1987-1988 when we went into the Persian
Gulf to stop Iranian attacks
on oil tankers, but this was still as individual nations and not as NATO. In
any number of Cold War crises, our NATO alliance was nowhere to be found if it
was outside of Europe. As in the Iraq War, individual allies decided to
help on their own.
So when our current alliance
that is joining us in Afghanistan, Iraq, around the globe at sea and in small deployments,
and quiet intelligence work is contrasted with the "broad alliance"
that helped us win the Cold War, please remember what NATO did and where it did
it. Mind you, I'm not disrespectful of what NATO accomplished during the Cold
War in preserving Western
Europe from the Soviet
conquest, but let's not try to pretend it was more than that. We fought the
global war. NATO defended their front yard. So let's not denigrate what we've
accomplished today in mobilizing support by comparing it to some non-existent
past performance.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA05OCT04A
So why would Saddam send WMDs or components to neighboring countries? That's what
Daniel Chisholm of New
Brunswick asked
me after reading my "We
Will Find Saddam's WMD" post.
I may have already summarized
my reasons for this opinion months ago. I've certainly raised bits and pieces
over the last year and a half. But this question is as good as any reason to
attempt to summarize and explain my view on this question.
First of all, I assume that
Saddam wanted glory for himself and Iraq. He styled himself a conqueror and natural leader of
the Gulf, the Arab world, and of Islam. He invaded two countries in an effort
to bring about this glorious state of affairs and he had not given up getting
it for himself or his gruesome sons. Having been thwarted in two wars and
ground down under sanctions, Saddam saw WMD as his ticket to glory.
I therefore start with the
assumption that Saddam had WMD and WMD-program components to hide. I assumed
before the Iraq War that Saddam had chemical weapons and missiles in excess of
the range allowed by the international community from the simple fact that
Saddam used such weapons in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War on a large scale. Saddam
probably concluded that chemical weapons saved his butt in that war and there
is no way he was going to go without them even if he didn't think they'd be
effective against superior US troops. Our attention could fade if Saddam could drag
out the crisis long enough, while the Iranians would always be right there. I
was not too worried about chemical weapons on the battlefield given our good defensive
capabilities to fight in a chemical environment. I did not worry about missiles
with chemicals or conventional warheads. They had a harassing value only. I
assumed there were biological weapons efforts going on and that their progress
was unknowable since bio programs could be easily concealed. I thought it
possible but not likely that Saddam had bugs weaponized.
I also assumed that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons but that Saddam wanted
them. Given our failure to detect the extent of Saddam's nuclear programs prior
to 1991, there was room for a big surprise here. In summary, Saddam would
eventually get nuclear weapons and the timeline—while not imminent—could have been
much shorter than we assumed. Given the consequences of Saddam with nukes, this
was an area that we could not take a chance on being wrong about. Nor do I
believe that the entire Iraqi WMD organization was involved in a campaign of
lies to deceive Saddam about non-existent WMD programs. These nerds (no
offense) were going toe-to-toe with the master of torture, rape, and plastic
shredders for people? I don't think so.
Second, Saddam did not really
expect us to invade and march on Baghdad. At worst, he thought he'd have to endure further
inspections. US power could insist on in the latter while the
Russians and French would block the former. Having endured inspections before,
Saddam knew that he could hide most of what he had; although he also knew that
given enough time or just luck, inspectors might catch Saddam in some
violation. Thus, Saddam did not need WMD for war and only needed to hide them
until this latest wave of US attention waned. Heck, with UN sanctions already
porous and weakening, a failed round of inspections might kill sanctions for
good. When we did invade, the visible remnants of the programs were scrubbed
(by Iraqis or Russians?) as the destruction of certain computers and the evidence
of facility removal even after the fall of Baghdad reveal. Remember also that we've found several dozen
chemical shells in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, including one that was detonated as a roadside bomb.
While not of recent origin, their presence in Iraq proves that WMD could be in Iraq somewhere even right under our noses.
Third, in covering his tracks
by hiding his WMD, Saddam wanted to avoid putting all his eggs in one basket. Surely,
some WMD and components could be hidden inside Iraq, but they could be discovered. A single person in the
know could blow it wide open. If even part of the WMD program was found, Iraq would be set back even if sanctions were lifted in
the belief we had finally found everything. And discovery of WMD might have
reinvigorated sanctions instead. As Daniel noted, Saddam did send his best
warplanes to Iran at the start of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Tehran repainted them in Iranian colors and kept them. The
mistake of banking everything on one partner just as devious was probably clear
from this episode. But Saddam's options were limited. Iraq had little choice but to count on the fact that times were different. Iran was also a charter member of the Axis of Evil and
fear of US action to defang both of them could easily have
prompted a new Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of their own. But history was not
irrelevant and the Sunni Arabs in Iraq had to worry about Persian Shias.
So who else could be entrusted with Iraqi WMD to spread the risk? Turkey? Not even the newly Islamist government would go for
that. Kuwait? I think not. Jordan? Too weak to stay bought. Saudi Arabia? Like that could be hidden from the Americans who
permeate the country. That leaves Syria. Sure, Syria supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War and Syria's Baathists despise Iraq's Baathists as only kindred
spirits can hate one another. But Syria, too, was worried about American actions. Further, chronically
impoverished Syria could be bought with hard cash. And once Syria is in on the game, Lebanon is in play as a wholly owned subsidiary of Damascus.
So we have Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and the vastness of Iraq itself to hide WMD and components. And we have the human
knowledge base sitting in Iraq to use it all or reconstitute any part that fails to
return home after the crisis. Our victory could have negated all this and the
WMD sent into hiding are still out there.
Of course, we don't know
where else Iraqi WMD could be. Sudan? Reports of recent Syrian tests of chemical weapons on
Darfur civilians and our 1998 strike on the so-called
medicine factory indicate another possible basket for Saddam's deadly eggs. And
given Daniel's mention of the still unsolved 2001 Anthrax attacks in the US (because a domestic loner has kept quiet or because
professionals did it?) and the exotic attempted Osmium Tetroxide
attack in London, where else might Saddam have shipped his WMD? Do
those terror ties that some refuse to see have a role here?
So I am confident that the
chain of Iraq WMD did not suddenly end on the eve of the 2003 Iraq War. Saddam's
WMD are out there and I damn well hope we find them before they are used
effectively against us or our allies.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA04OCT04B
Iran wants nukes. I don't like it that Iran wants nukes. Nothing good can come of it.
But Iranian
President Mohammad Khatami claims that Iran
wants to talk with the Western world:
"If we want the dialogue between the two civilisations to open a new page in the world, we must free
it from the negative tendency of mutual recrimination with the aim of reaching
positive cooperation," he told parliamentarians in Algiers.
Khatami, who is on a
three-day state visit to Algeria at the invitation
of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika,
said such a dialogue was "a necessity for everyone's future" and that
"dialogue and good neighbourliness were the
characteristics of civilisations."
I'm sure some here will leap
at the chance to have a talk—perhaps even a lovely summit—to discuss our
issues.
And while the diplomats chat
in French and English, the serious work of building Iranian nukes will proceed
apace in Farsi (with Korean heard in the background on occasion).
So how long will those talks last? Well, that depends on how long it
takes the Iranians to build nuclear missiles. Make no mistake, the mullahs fear
we will stop them from acquiring nukes and they want desperately to buy time to
get them. The only question is how much time are they
trying to buy.
"It is time to base our
relationship on the establishing of new models of regional and international
cooperation," he said.
We won't like the models the
mullahs have in mind if they get nukes.
Regime change in Iran has to be our objective. And we have little time.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA04OCT04A
This
article has two interesting aspects. First is this statement in a tape to
inspire the jihadi nutballs
out there:
The audiotape aired by Al-Jazeera
television Friday identified the speaker as Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian-born confidante of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Following a technical analysis, a U.S. intelligence
official said authorities were able to determine with "high
confidence" that the tape was authentic.
"You, youth of Islam, this is our message," the
speaker said. "If we die or are detained, continue the path after us, and
don't betray God and his prophet, and don't knowingly betray the trust."
"The interests of the Americans, British, Australians,
French, Polish, Norwegians, South Koreans and Japanese are spread
everywhere," the speaker said. "We must not wait more ... or we will
be devoured one country after the other."
Not exactly a “win one for the Gipper”
speech now is it?
It seems to anticipate their death or capture and begs
others to carry on the fight. It pleads for more jihadi
action as the nutballs are hunted down all over the
globe. It seems to see the youth falling for the siren song of Western
lifestyles and perhaps liberty rather than the suicidal purity of
their twisted view of Islam.
It is also interesting that in addition to the usual
suspects who are loyal allies that the jihadis hate,
we have the Norwegians again, symbolic of the smaller countries that fight at
our side; the Japanese and South Koreans who are old friends but new allies on
the world stage at our side now; the Poles who are new allies after our win in
the Cold War (just as Iraq is becoming an ally in the fight after our victory
over Saddam’s regime); and the French, who for all their public hostility
toward the US, quietly work with us to hunt the jihadis.
I don’t know what the metrics for victory look like, but
this sure doesn’t sound like the tape of a confident enemy. The jihadis are being tested and they aren’t measuring up. Iraq
can’t be going well for them. Nor can Afghanistan.
The other thing to note is South
Korea’s alert over the threat. While some
South Koreans with no sense of history for our sacrifice may have doubts about
fighting with us in Iraq,
with the Pillsbury Nuke Boy looming to the north, South Koreans can ill afford
to show weakness in the face of threats. If a couple beheadings and car bombs
can frighten Seoul, what will Kim Jong Il think he
can accomplish with thousands of artillery tubes pointed at Seoul and a few
nukes to brandish? Seoul can’t
afford to pull a Madrid. This is
bigger than 2,800 ROK troops in Irbil.
Weakness in Irbil
could kill tens of thousands on the DMZ if Seoul
sends the wrong message.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA03OCT04A
While our casualties are inching up each month, the
insurgency is not spreading. It is still a Sunni
fight against the new reality with help from their jihadi
friends from abroad seeking to die for Allah:
A recently published survey of attacks on police and troops in Iraq revealed what had long been taken for granted, over 80 percent of the attacks took place in just
four Sunni Arab provinces. Another three provinces with large Sunni minorities
accounted for another 15 percent. The other 11 provinces were pretty quiet,
each having a dozen or fewer incidents a month. Interrogations of captured
gunmen has made it clear that most of the attacks are planned, and the
attackers recruited, by the gangs that have found refuge in the
"outlaw" towns like Samarra and Fallujah.
This fact had seemed apparent to me so the charge that the
resistance is spreading seemed ludicrous on the face of it. Yet the press still
says this. Amazing. The fact that
after the many months since the fall of Baghdad that the Shias and Kurds are with us should be heartening.
The fact that the Sunnis have been unable to fool the 80% majority of Iraqis
into siding with them should be instructive. Apparently not for a lot in the
West who prefer to see defeat.
And as I’ve noted before, all we need to do is create a Shia-Kurdish-sane Sunni government that can take on the Baathists and the Islamists. We appear to be doing that.
This is the key to success.
And we are finally taking on the sanctuaries that the enemy
has created. Take those down and the attacks per day will go down as the enemy
gets too preoccupied with surviving to fight another day to spend a lot of time
figuring out how to strike us. And we’ll have damaged the enemy enough so that
our Iraqi friends can take on the scattered resistance.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA02OCT04D
Polish special forces participated in the invasion of Iraq
in March 2003. Please
note:
IT CAME AS A SURPRISE to
many when the U.S. postwar plans for Iraq were finally revealed. Like Gaul, Iraq would be divided into three parts: an American zone, a
British zone, and a Polish zone. But what role did Poland play during the war? It turns out a very important
one--albeit one that was kept mostly secret.
One of the primary
objectives during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom was the port at
Umm Qasr. Without it, delivering adequate humanitarian
aid to the rest of Iraq would have been nearly impossible for the coalition. Not
long after the start of the war, the port was secured--in large part thanks to
GROM, Poland's elite commandos
It is apparently still a surprise to a lot of people.
This site notes that Spain and
Denmark contributed naval forces to the invasion.
I thank all of them. Even the Spanish who have since turned
and fled. They helped then. They may help again.
Just so we’re all clear here.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA02OCT04C
The traveling exhibit of 1,000
pairs of boots to represent our casualties in Iraq
was in Lansing this week. I did not
go to it though I was tempted. Paying my respects to the memory of the thousand
soldiers, Marines, and other service members who died is something that I certainly would have liked to
do. They have died to keep me safe. To keep my family and
nation safe. On the surface, the display seems to mirror the military’s
own practice of using boots, rifle, and helmet to honor a fallen soldier.
But I could not go. Because the people
putting this display on do not do this to honor the sacrifice of our volunteer
troops in a just cause. The motivation of the sponsors’ mimicry is a far
cry from the motivations of the military’s original tribute. No, the sponsors
wish to undermine the war. At best, they think our dead are victims of an
unjust war. At worst, they are guilty of war crimes themselves. The sponsors
wish to use the deaths of our troops as props to end the war before we win and
thereby doom our troops to a futile death as well as undermine our security and
condemn Iraqis to more death and destruction by bolstering the Baathists and Islamists as they try to reverse the freeing
of the Shias and Kurds from Sunni oppression. And if
I went to that exhibit even with pure heart to honor our dead, my presence
would have been interpreted as supporting the sponsor’s message of defeat and
shame. And guilt. As if we should feel guilt for
defeating Saddam. Their level of shame is astounding to me. Are they gleeful
when they get to add another pair of boots? Did they hold a party to celebrate
reaching 1,000?
Motivation means everything in this case. They can take
their damned “memorial” to Berkeley
where I’m sure it will be well received.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA02OCT04B
My global test for whether to attack our enemies is twofold:
- Did somebody attack us or are they acting like they are going to attack us?
- Are they somewhere on the globe?
Two out of two earns a visit from Mr. MOAB and their
snake-eating friends. Or a corps or two. Whatever it takes to defeat the threat.
And if it takes using small yield earth
penetrating nuclear weapons to destroy a rogue regime’s nuclear arsenal, I
do not think we need to feel any guilt at all wielding them as we tell those
rogues to give up their nuclear weapons. We are not morally equivalent. I have
no patience with somebody who thinks our possession of weapons designed to
destroy enemy weapons is the same as an enemy with weapons intended to
slaughter civilians. Railing against our earth penetrating weapons is
ridiculous and failure to deploy them means we prefer to give our nuclear-armed
psycho enemies the advantage of knowing that their nuclear arsenals are immune
to our attack short of large nukes that will irradiate large chunks of their
country creating a humanitarian crisis and killing or wounding lots of
civilians. What do they care? Just let the world press film it all and the
mullahs or Pillsbury Nuke Boy will be delighted.
Destroy our enemies before they kill us. I will not draw a
whole lot of satisfaction by killing millions of civilians living in an enemy
state in retaliation for their psycho ruler’s successful nuclear attack on one
of our cities. And have no doubt about it, if we are nuked, we will have to
respond with nukes unless we want to declare open season on US citizens.
Destroying those nukes with our own small nukes isn’t quite so immoral in this
light, now is it?
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA02OCT04A
The Russians just made the Europeans very
happy:
Russia's Cabinet on
Thursday endorsed the 1997 [Kyoto] agreement and
parliament is expected to ratify the document by the end of the year. Without Russia, there would not
be enough signatories for it to come into effect worldwide.
"Russia's green light
will allow the climate train to leave the station so we can really begin
addressing the biggest threat to the planet and its people," said Klaus Toepfer, the head of the U.N. Environment Program.
Russia's decision was welcomed by the governments of
Germany, Italy, Britain and Japan, and by the European Union, which have been
among the agreement's most energetic backers.
Once the deal enters into force, industrialized countries
will have until 2012 to cut their collective emissions of six key greenhouse
gases to 5.2 percent below the 1990 level.
Call me cynical, but since Russia is about a quarter under
its ceiling since the ceiling was figured out when the Soviets had lots of
heavily polluting factories that are long gone, I don’t think this has anything
to do with global warming. Nor do I think it has anything to do with the
millions or billions Russia
will earn selling their emission excess (though they won’t mind the cash).
No, I think the Russians are about to do some serious
Chechen pounding and Moscow wants
to mute the sanctimonious EU reaction by making them worry that Russia
will not ratify the agreement by the end of the year.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA01OCT04B
We are on the offensive in Samarra, a city that had been dominated by Iraqi
insurgents for months:
Backed by warplanes and tanks, some 5,000 troops [3,000 from 1st ID and 2,000 Iraqi army and
National Guard] swept in to seize the
city hall, the main mosque and other important sites in Samarra, leaving only
pockets of resistance after more than 12 hours of combat, according to the U.S. military and
Iraqi authorities.
The city appeared calm late Friday except for American
snipers on rooftops firing at anybody appearing in the streets below. Troops
ordered residents to stay inside and announced a 7
p.m. to 7 a.m. curfew. Water and electricity services were severed.
This seems to be the beginning of an effort to clean out the
Sunni triangle. The Iraqis are getting some experience with our guys. We’ve
killed a lot of insurgents with few losses. And we will put the Iraqis back in
charge in Samarra.
While I don’t care if these areas are calm enough to vote in—that’s a Sunni
decision if they want to blow their chance to participate early—I do care that
they be eliminated as sanctuaries that are used to send out terrorists to
attack us and blow
up innocent little kids happy to get some candy to brighten their day.
Oh, and we rescued a Turkish hostage being held in that
former sanctuary.
And of course, it is always better to have our enemy more
worried about what we are going to do to them than contemplating how they will
harm us. Maintain the initiative. Break the sanctuaries. Atomize the insurgents
so Iraqi police and security forces can handle them without air strikes and
artillery and all the other fancy hardware that we have a monopoly on.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFAOCT2004ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA01OCT04A
