Remembering History by Seeing the Future

So an Islamist murders some Turkish judges. Just another story of the tragic decline of a once secular Turkey into some Islamic republic, you might think. The story of Turkey the last several years has been worrisome.

But all is not lost. There is a tremendous public and press reaction in anger to the tide of Islamism that seems to be flowing in Turkey:

The Turkish people are rallying and may strip the AKP of power. Accountability matters. The party has antagonized many Turks not only with its Islamist platform, but also growing corruption scandals. The Prime Minister's personal finances are murky. While he has declared limited assets, Turkish officials grouse that he refuses to discuss real estate, commercials interests, and funds shifted into his brother's portfolio.

Some Turkish officials are also suggesting that when the AKP leaves power, high level ministers may choose to leave Turkey-perhaps for Saudi Arabia—rather than face public inquiries.

Turkey has long been an ally, fighting with us in Korea and standing against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. With the EU stiff-arming them about membership and the Turkish public possibly rejecting the growth of Islamism in their officially secular society, a renewed and strengthened alliance between Turkey and America is a possibility now.

Block of Instruction (10 minutes)

The latest developments about our Guantanamo Bay detention facilities pretty much define our Long War pretty nicely.

First:

Prisoners with makeshift weapons battled guards trying to save a detainee pretending to commit suicide at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what military officials said Friday was a coordinated attack that left six prisoners injured.

And:

The UN anti-torture watchdog called on the United States to close any secret prisons it operates around the world and shut down its Guantanamo Bay centre because they breach international law.

So what do these two stories tell us?

One, by trying to stop an enemy unlawful combatant from committing suicide, we show that we care even about the health of our enemies.

Two, by faking a suicide to stage an ambush, the enemy shows that they can take advantage of our compassion rather than being moved by it to sing Kumbaya.

Three, by attacking us with whatever weapons they could fashion, the enemy shows that they are dangerous as long as they are alive.

Four, by getting their butts kicked, this shows that we can beat them as long as we fight them.

Five, the "international community" shows that it will ignore actual facts of the conflict to condemn us at every turn in whatever forum they can manage to do so. No matter what, they think we are the bad guys in this war.

And Six, there will be little real consequences for those enemy guilty of staging this attack. They will still get their Korans, plentiful culturally sensitive meals, and medical attention.

Sums up our war rather neatly.

Posing for the Cameras

I read that several weeks ago, in Pakistan, that 1,500 Taliban/al Qaeda types hit a small Pakistani army base in a desperate effort to grab something and thus score some propaganda points (sorry, forgot to blog it at the time). They got waxed for their troubles.

Well, as the press speaks of a big Taliban offensive in Afghanistan, it seems like the Taliban are having the same luck with their strategy:

A "very important" Taliban commander was captured in some of the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan in years that has left nearly 200 rebels dead, officials said.

The identity of the man caught in Kandahar province could not be released on security grounds, provincial governor Assadullah Khalid said, after reports he was Mullah Dadullah, credited as one of the masterminds of the Taliban insurgency launched nearly five years ago.

The man was badly wounded in a battle in Kandahar's Panjwayi that started on Wednesday and was fought by Taliban rebels who had come from across Afghanistan, Khalid told reporters. Around 100 were killed, he said, upping a previous figure of 18.

The US-led coalition helping to fight Taliban rebels announced meanwhile that 60 "enemy" were killed in a separate battle on Wednesday in neighbouring Helmand province. Afghan officials had said about 40 were killed.

The new tolls took past 190 the number of insurgents killed in two days of clashes between security forces and Taliban rebels in some of the heaviest fighting since the regime was toppled in 2001 by a US-led invasion.

I read elsewhere that we have some doubts about the status of the Taliban guy captured, but the enemy death toll is solid, it seems, and can't be too good for their recruiting.

If this is what their offensives look like, more power to them. When they mass, the usual result is that the "target" calls for help and then ground and air support comes in to repel the attackers and chase them down to kill them in large numbers.

As an aside, given that we are out looking for the enemy now, this doesn't seem so much like an offensive by the enemy but a low density mutual slashing. We are on the move more than the enemy, so this seems more like a meeting engagement if you have to categorize it.

Anyway, this current enemy activity will continue until the weather turns cold or they get tired of dying in large numbers.

Not that I'm trying to overstate the impact of these casualties on the enemy. With enough money, the enemy will have the ability to go into the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan and recruit more poor cannon fodder for new attacks. Body counts mean they aren't beating us--which is important; but the situation will only settle down into the usual tribal violence with no particular direction aimed against the nominally central government when the paymasters and/or leaders of the enemy get tired of a futile fight that might only end suddenly and badly with a PGM dropping out of nowhere on their heads.

UPDATE: Roggio (via Instapundit) notes that the various battles and skirmishes are hardly part of a grand coordinated Taliban offensive. Get a grip people It amazes me that some people can't see our plan and progress for victory in Iraq yet see deep plans in any spasm of activity that our enemies throw out.

There Goes the Neighborhood II

Via Stand-To! Iran's neighbors don't seem quite so tranquil about Iranian nukes as a number of docile infidels in the West:

Washington - Iran's neighbours - including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates - are talking to the United States about ways to bolster their defences, the general in charge of US arms sales said on Thursday.

Iran, which has defied United Nations demands to suspend enrichment of uranium that could be used to build bombs, has "awakened some major concerns" among all its neighbours, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kohler said in a Reuters interview.

"We're in discussion with their services and their leaders to see what capabilities are required and how the United States can best fulfil those needs," said Kohler, who heads the Pentagon's Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which handles US government-to-government arms sales.

Potentially at stake are billions of dollars in US-built missile defence systems, ships to protect off-shore oil rigs and shipping lanes and the technology that would let Iran's neighbours share a digitally networked view of the Gulf.

Added to the likelihood that the neighbors of a nuclear Iran will likely go nuclear, and it is easy to see how the Gulf Arab states will back a military campaign to destroy Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Who's Unhappy in Iraq?

The New York Times would have you believe that ordinary innocent Iraqis are fleeing Iraq and so showing that the war has been a disaster for innocent Iraqis:

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.

Yet throughout the article there is no hint other than identifying one man is a Sunni about who is leaving. Given all the ink spilled by the press on the subject of civil war, you'd think that they might say which portion is going. Could it be Sunnis? The article hints this might be so given that it mentions that Shia anger after the Samarra bombing is fueling the fear that propels leaving Iraq. So just how "ordinary" are these people? The fact that the family portrayed looks pretty well off might clue you into the fact that they had benefitted from Saddam's rule. Some might actually be former oppressers who deserve to worry after decades of face stomping orgies against the Shia and Kurds. But the Times wasn't curious enough to explore this angle.

And nevermind that the granting of passports is not the same as actually leaving.

And despite the claims of massive numbers of refugees fleeing Iraq, check this out by Amir Taheri, who sees signs that Iraqi prospects are looking up:

The first sign is refugees. When things have been truly desperate in Iraq in 1959, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1980, 1988, and 1990 long queues of Iraqis have formed at the Turkish and Iranian frontiers, hoping to escape. In 1973, for example, when Saddam Hussein decided to expel all those whose ancestors had not been Ottoman citizens before Iraqs creation as a state, some 1.2 million Iraqis left their homes in the space of just six weeks. This was not the temporary exile of a small group of middle-class professionals and intellectuals, which is a common enough phenomenon in most Arab countries. Rather, it was a departure en masse, affecting people both in small villages and in big cities, and it was a scene regularly repeated under Saddam Hussein.

Since the toppling of Saddam in 2003, this is one highly damaging image we have not seen on our television sets and we can be sure that we would be seeing it if it were there to be shown. To the contrary, Iraqis, far from fleeing, have been returning home. By the end of 2005, in the most conservative estimate, the number of returnees topped the 1.2-million mark. Many of the camps set up for fleeing Iraqis in Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia since 1959 have now closed down. The oldest such center, at Ashrafiayh in southwest Iran, was formally shut when its last Iraqi guests returned home in 2004.

So refugees who fled Saddam are coming home. Huh. Read the other three signs he sees indicating real progress. But lets go back to the refugee issue.

You might wonder about the contradictions of the Times and Taheri. Taheri has a good explanation for that as well, as he tells of why the public thinks things are so bad in Iraq:

To make matters worse, many of the newsmen, pundits, and commentators on whom American viewers and readers rely to describe the situation have been contaminated by the increasing bitterness of American politics. Clearly there are those in the media and the think tanks who wish the Iraq enterprise to end in tragedy, as a just comeuppance for George W. Bush. Others, prompted by noble sentiment, so abhor the idea of war that they would banish it from human discourse before admitting that, in some circumstances, military power can be used in support of a good cause. But whatever the reason, the half-truths and outright disinformation that now function as conventional wisdom have gravely disserved the American people.

Sadly, Taheri ignores the ability of the media to just write stories that support their views of doom even if they can't get pictures of masses of Iraqis streaming across the border and have to settle for living room pictures of well-off Sunnis suddenly afraid for their lives as the price to be paid for making others fear for their lives for so many decades.

Some people deserve to be unhappy. And even experience a little of the fear they doled out. Not everybody deserves our pity.

Remember who the New York Times feels sorry for, eh? Shades of the Ukraine in the 1930s, I guess.

Lost Luggage

Airlines lose luggage all the time.

But 200,000 AK-47s?

As the AI investigation (Note: see page 16 of the PDF) found, there is no record of the 200,000 AK-47s flown from the U.S-military controlled Eagle Base near Tuzla, Bosnia, ever actually reached Iraq. The End User Certificate were from the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority and the interim Iraqi administration.

Sent to Iraq in 2004? By the US government? And we don't know where they are?

Call me suspicious, but I find it hard to believe that we lost 200,000 rifles. And that since 2004, we haven't tracked them down.

Could there have been a little typo on the shipping order that we corrected in time? You know, cross off the "q" and insert "n?" And store them inside Iraq until we can send them to their proper destination? Absolute sheer speculation based on nothing but a suspicious mind, I hasten to repeat. But odd. And if the mullahs rely on the Basij for suppressing any revolt, having automatic rifles would put the people in a much better position to fight back.

Remember, nothing says revolution quite like the AK-47.

Hugo? Sort of Rings a Bell ... I'm Sorry, Who?

Strategypage notes that some analysts think the best thing to do about nutjobs like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales is to ignore them and let them spout off but generally remain relatively harmless:

Although the U.S. and many of its friends have come to view the advent of Hugo Chavez as President of Venezuela and Evo Morales as President of Bolivia, as something of a disaster, a lot of cultural and policy analysts have concluded that ignoring them is likely to be the best policy. Despite their often revolutionary rhetoric, neither has an attention-span sufficient to carry through any kind of serious program, much preferring to mug for the crowd, promising pie-in-the-sky but not investing much effort in delivering the goods. To be sure some of their henchmen are more focused, but their status in the hierarchy and their ability to implement programs is very heavily dependent on keeping the bossman entertained.

And this will allow them to just anger their own people and neighbors. So the problem may be self correcting if we are careful.

This is what I wrote a month ago about what to do:

So while Chavez will continue to puff up and "defy" the United States, we should go about our business and pay him no mind. Say nice things in public about Venezuelans in general. Ignore Hugo as much as possible. And encourage NGOs, the EU, and the UN to support civic institutions inside Venezuala. This is one state that we can afford to take the time to encourage an Insert-Your-Color-Here Revolution.

Let him rant. Let's not make him a hero in Latin America by reacting to his bluster. We aren't about to devote 200,000 troops and five years to take him out so let's not even pretend we might or start issuing threats. In the end, we'd have to back down and give Hugo a victory.

We have real problems to deal with, remember? Just smile and nod at the crazy man and keep walking by him.

Though I worry that Chavez will do something to make him an actual threat, Strategypage eases my worries a bit on this score. I think we should watch him just in case but relax a bit.

So we must ignore Chavez even when our Left learns to love him. That makes it hard to smile and nod and pack away the smart bombs.

I worry that the impact of our Left's love affair with Chavez will succeed in getting Americans angry enough at Chavez (as I did here, in error I think) to provoke our government to actually issue empty threats.

Lord knows these guys have faces made for JDAMs, but we must keep perspective. Just keep Chavez and his buddies in the Axis of El Vil and don't promote them up to Evil status.

Iraqi Perspectives Update

Ok, another of my long awaited comments on the outstanding Joint Forces Command Iraqi Perspectives report.

I'm keeping all my comments together as I go through my notations on the report. Read the actual report.

The First Wired War

The impact of new means of communication and news dissemination on our ability to maintain public support for war is one we are still debating. This information war is critical to the outcome. Cheap cameras and computers bring war live into our homes and blogs bring wide viewpoints to bear. Iraq, but not Afghanistan so much, is an Internet War just as the 1999 Kosovo War was. But Kosovo did not drag on long enought for the effects to be seen. And blogs are new to this war, too, ramping up the impact of the Internet.

Comparisons to Vietnam, which was the first television war and that brought us the previous day's events on the evening news, are common. And this whether you hope the new medium of communication will end an unjust war or whether you count on it to support the war in the face of a hostile MSM.

While this is a critical issue, it is hardly new to either this or the last century's wars.

When I worked for the University of Michigan, one of my jobs was to replace old worn out publications. One such publication was a British newspaper nicely bound. I can't remember which one, but what struck me was the similarity of the problems they discussed. In particular, I remember (and wish I'd saved) an article written during the Crimean War that decried the impact of the telegraph on public opinion. In particular, the article complained that the speed of the telegraph in bringing up-t0-date news to the public had diminished the public's attention span and basically led them to jump from report to report. I was amazed at this oh so very modern critique of war reporting, technology, and the public.

This article on the Crimean War of 150 years ago notes, rightly:

For the first time, improved technology allowed news to reach home very quickly, and the telegraph reports sent by William Russell, war correspondent of the Times of London enraged British public opinion to the exten[t] that the government of Lord Aberdeen fell, the first time the condition of the fighting men had aroused such emotions.

Fascinating. And that was real incompetence and poor equipment unlike the ridiculous charges aired today about the best trained, equipped, and led force in the history of our country.

The first wired war. Add photographs for the American Civil War. Add sensationalism with heavy competition for newspaper readers and profits for the Spanish-American War. Add silent film for World War I. Add talking movies for World War II [UPDATE: and radio]. Add taped television for Vietnam. Add 24-hour cable news for Desert Storm. Add the Internet for Kosovo. Add blogs for Afghanistan and Iraq. Each step up overwhelmed the sensory inputs of a public used to the prior modes of communication. And each provided new challenges for coping with public perceptions.

As the public gets used to each step up in speed and impact, the impact will wear off. And then when the next leap occurs, we will long for the good old days when the Internet allowed us to leisurely analyze the events of war and draw reasoned conclusions.

There is little new under the sun.

There Goes the Neighborhood

Iran's neighbors sure don't want to go nuclear in self defense. I can't believe they'll protest too much if we relieve them of the burden of coping with Persian nukes. And Iran really shouldn't want nukes if they just want them for self defense:

Iran is the strongest state by far in the Gulf region. If the region (and I'll consider Israel out of the region for this purpose) remains non-nuclear, Iran will be the dominant local power. Throw in nukes and Iran's influence is blocked in theory. Press too hard and somebody else might lob a nuke at them.

Iran will not be the last Middle Eastern country to go nuclear if we don't stop the mullahs:

Officials and opinion leaders on the west (Arab) coast of the Persian Gulf are talking openly of using a chunk of their oil wealth to buy nuclear weapons, if Iran gets them. This would be a defensive move, to defend their oil from Iranian aggression. The Iranians have been the aggressors and empire builders in the neighborhood for most of the past five thousand years. Arabs have long memories, and few of the ones that involve Iranians are pleasant. If Iran remains without nukes, the Arab oil states are not going to spend billions of dollars, and lots of favors, to buy nuclear technology. But if Iran has nukes, they will more likely be aimed at Arab oil, before they are pointed at Israel. The Arab oil can't fight back, unless the Arabs have nukes, but the Israelis can, and there is no doubt that they will.

The Arabs could offer a huge amount, in cash or oil, to buy nuclear weapons technology. While the UN, and nations, would protest, none could fail to see the economic logic of protecting your major asset.

We'll need a new meaning for MAD should this happen. How does one have mutual assured destruction when a simple dhow can pull into a port and go mushroom cloudy?

Killing Jihadis is Fun and Easy

I've remarked that our video game culture gives us an advantage in modern war just as our mechanical aptitude gave us an edge in World War II.

The Army is taking the look and feel of the CROWS remote weapons station and putting it on their America's Army video game:

CROWs is a "remotely-operated weapons system." In plain English, it's an automated, unmanned turret that can be operated from inside a vehicle, with the gunner using a joystick for firing and control while looking at a screen that shows visual, infared, or other images from the RWS sensors. The weapon is also stabilized, which means it will adjust automatically as the vehicle it's on shakes and moves. Does that sound like a video game to you? The US Army thought so too...

Acting on that insight, the US Army worked with game developers to put a CROWS module and mission sets into the new version of the hit Pentagon-sponsored videogame/ recruiting tool/ preparation tool "America's Army." Indeed, what could be more logical than using a computer video game to train people on a video game
weapon?

Basic training was never more fun, I guess. And a lot of young men arrive at basic ready to use their play technology to kill our enemies. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my Asteroids expertise to be called to service in defense of the realm.

Seriously, this is fascinating. After all the talk from our enemies that we are too soft to fight, we've proven we can go toe-to-toe with the so-called warriors of Islam and rip them a new one.

And to add insult to injury, our video game culture is helping us kill them more effectively. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of mediaeval barbarians.

Our Good Friends, the French

Without minimal comment, I offer you our allies the French:

As Philadelphians cope with another police slaying, news comes that a suburb of Paris has named a street for Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of the 1981 murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Hundreds of supporters of Abu-Jamal attended a ceremony on April 29 to dedicate the Rue Mumia-Abu Jamal in the city of St.-Denis.

"In France, they see him as a towering figure," said Suzanne Ross, cochair of the Free Mumia Coalition of New York City, who was part of the ceremony.

Ross said the street is in the town's Human Rights district, which includes Nelson Mandela Stadium.

Richard Costello, past president of the Philadelphia lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the street dedication was "deplorable" but "consistent with the offensive position the French have taken in this matter. They've made him into some type of hero."

Abu-Jamal, 53, was sentenced to death in 1982 for the shooting of Faulkner, who was 25. A memorial plaque honoring Faulkner has been installed at 13th and Locust Streets, where he was shot.

I'd suggest we retaliate in kind, but the French have conveniently already named many of their cities after famous French military defeats in battle ...

I really must Google that "human rights district" some time.

Adding Up

With 27 million people there, critics of our force deployments in Iraq continue to assert we have too few troops to pacify the population. With a minimum of 2% needed, we should have 540,000 troops in Iraq. Strangely, some only like to count American forces. Why this is so confuses me. As if Saddam didn't pacify Iraq with only Iraqi forces, I might point out. We should count Iraqis, I think.

Let's cut out the purely Kurdish north and assume 3 million people there are guarded by local Pesh Merga which are never counted in the totals anyway.

So 24 million Iraqis in the non-Kurdish regions would need 480,000 by this crude measure, even ignoring the fact that we should judge numbers by local threat levels.

So (going by memory) 130,000 Americans plus 260,000 Iraqi army and police (going to 325,000) plus 20,000 Coalition troops plus 10,000 foreign contract security personnel add up to 420,000 right now. Not enough by the crude measure to maintain security, according to critics of force size. I think we have enough but no matter, let's press on.

But oh wait, what about the armed and uniformed Facilities Protection Service personnel that guard infrastrucure? Add in 150,000 here. Why that's 570,000 total security personnel inside Iraq. Comfortably above the 2% number (2.375% to be precise). I guess we have enough under definitions established by critics.

I had always assumed the FPS were included in the police category since in the past these guys were counted in the totals of forces fighting the insurgents and terrorists. Apparently not anymore.

As an aside, how can this security force have gone unmentioned for so long given the focus on numbers? If they didn't exist, police or army units would have to do the job they do, after all. They surely aren't as good as regular army but their mission is point defense, so they don't need to be as good.

Note: Yes, the Strategypage article that I cite for this number notes problems of death squads in the FPS. I'm not discounting that. But my point is that the number counters should use all the numbers.

Jittery

The Iranian mullahs seem a bit, ah, sensitive:

The government has announced that it is going to increase security forces in southwestern Khuzestan Province, largely inhabited by Arab Shiites, by about 10,000 troops. About a fifth of the reinforcements will be Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC) personnel. In addition, internal security forces in the province will be put under RGC control. Khuzestan (or "Aarabistan" to the locals, and Arabs across the border in Iraq) is where most of Iran's oil, and Arab minority, are located.

Interesting case of nerves. I wonder if the Iranians are worried about something.

The Euro Plan to Stop Enrichment

Because it worked so well with North Korea:

Key European nations are considering offering Iran a light-water nuclear reactor as part of incentives meant to persuade Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment program, a senior diplomat said Tuesday.

Seriously, people, how far away are we from Europe just offering Iran a nuclear warhead to halt Uranium enrichment and calling that a victory?

Old Europe: refining our understanding of "supine" every day.

UPDATE:

Iran rejects the kind offer and mocks Europe in response:

In a nationally televised speech before thousands of people in central Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast scorn on the proposal.

"Do you think you are dealing with a 4-year-old child to whom you can give some walnuts and chocolates and get gold from him?" he said.

Members of the crowd shouted back: "We love you, Ahmadinejad!"

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi mocked Europe's offer by saying Iran was willing to give its own incentives in return for recognition of Tehran's right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel.

The Euro offer of an actual nuclear weapon (But a relatively low yield one, the French will say. "No more than 50 kilotons! That is our final offer!") can't be far away now.

"W" Lied! People Died!

This border issue is really just a distraction away from the real crimes that have taken place on the border.

The latest on the plan to send the Guard to the Mexican border reminds me that we really should look into impeaching the president for failing to nail a terrorist thug who attacked us on our own soil. Despite years of effort, the terrorists got away with killing Americans. And in the end we stopped looking for him in order to go off on some crusade to impose democracy on people with no history of anything but violence and autocracy in a pure war of choice.

Of course, the thug was Pancho Villa and the war was World War I. Despite our invasion of Mexico, we never got Villa:

Advanced elements of the expedition penetrated as far as Parral, some 400 miles south of the border, but Villa was never captured. The campaign consisted primarily of dozens of minor skirmishes with small bands of insurgents. There were even clashes with Mexican Army units; the most serious was on 21 June 1916 at Carrizal, where a detachment of the 10th Cavalry was nearly destroyed. War would probably have been declared but for the critical situation in Europe. Even so, virtually the entire Regular Army was involved, and most of the National Guard had been Federalized and concentrated on the border before the end of the affair. Normal relations with Mexico were restored eventually by diplomatic negotiation, and the troops were withdrawn from Mexico in February 1917.

My grandfather was in the New York National Guard when he was called up to serve on the border prior to World War I. So I might have standing to sue, shouldn't I?

So when do we impeach President Woodrow Wilson?

I mean, really, does anybody actually think the Germans could have sunk the Lusitania on their own? Oliver Stone, call your office.

Guard on the Border

So sending the National Guard to the border will involve sending reservists there on their annual training rather than a regular mobilization? Will this really be awful as this article argues?

First of all let me say that I generally oppose the use of the Guard on the border. We have specially trained Border Patrol personnel for this job. If we have too few, pay for more.

On the other hand, leaving aside whether we should have spent the last five years increasing our civilian assets, as a temporary measure until we train and equip more border forces, I could live with it.

Second, annual training is not limited to fifteen days. I was on one for three weeks and I didn't have any choice on it. So we could still get two weeks of service with a week of travel time added on to annual training time.

Third, if the missions were related to the units' missions, this would still be good training. Engineering units could build walls, roads, bridges, and detention facilities; military police could guard detainees; helicopter units could ferry personnel and supplies; transportation units could do the same with trucks; cavalry and infantry units could patrol and report; signal units could set up communications; UAV units could observe the border; and so forth. And all after deploying perhaps thousands of miles. This is all good training.

Finally, I believe this is how we kept troops deployed in Honduras during the 1980s. If we managed to send reservists to Central America on their annual training to support our policies, why can't we send them to the US-Mexican border?

As I say, as a rule I oppose using the Guard for border protection if it is just illegal alien protection. This should be a civilian function. But if we are going to do it, the problems stated aren't necessarily real or insurmountable.

Of course, if the Guard really is going to be "deployed" to file paperwork, this is a horrible idea. Hire some temps for goodness sake, if that's the case.

UPDATE: This article clarifies the Guard role:

President Bush announced Monday that he will send 6,000 National Guard troops to the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, but said the troops will provide intelligence and surveillance support to U.S. Border Patrol agents and will not catch and detain illegal immigrants.

And then I get a really good WTF? feeling from this:

"If there is a real wave of rights abuses, if we see the National Guard starting to directly participate in detaining people ... we would immediately start filing lawsuits through our consulates," Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in an interview with a Mexico City radio station.

Are they effing kidding me? Is this a joke? File suit if we protect our border?

Look, I'm pretty pro-immigration. As long as it is accompanied by assimilation. America is defined by the idea of freedom and is not a racial/ethnic thing or one based on the land of ancestors. Americans-at-heart live all around the world. And many have come here and have joined us just as my grandparents came here. But I don't pine for the bogs of Ireland with some irredentist fury. St Patrick's Day is a day to wear green and drink beer without guilt. My Hungarian ancestry lives on by me calling my son a "kookoobacha" (which I believe means little crazy one, in an endearing sense).

On the whole and up until now, immigration has been good for us. We are stronger because of past immigration. Is it good now? And at the current rate? And under the current circumstances? Well, that's why we are debating.

But when officials of a foreign country start issuing threats to sue us if we enforce our border crossing laws, I am ready to support digging a moat on our southern border and seeding it with mines. What we decide to do with our border is our damn business.

Hey, would it be rude to suggest a member of the Kennedy family drive each and every illegal immigrant across the Rio Grande?

ANOTHER UPDATE: This interview with lieutenant general Steven Blum confirms that the bulk of the Guard force will be reservists on their usual annual training of 2 or 3 weeks led by a cadre of long-term headquarters that will coordinate the units moving into and out of the border:

Well, it would work in a combination of ways. There would be a duration force. There would be people there from the effected states, from the Joint Force Headquarters of the National Guard in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas that would be there for the duration and they would coordinate and plan and synchronize all the efforts of these National Guardsmen that would come in for shorter periods of time.

You wouldn’t be meeting a new commander every week and you wouldn’t be making a new relationship with the Border Patrol and the Immigration people.

What you would be is, for instance the heavy equipment operator, the bulldozer operator that’s building a barrier or a fence or a road, or an engineer. He or she may be there for two weeks to three weeks and then go back home so that it fits their normal National Guard model that they’re used to. They know every Guardsman is going to have to get together for training for anywhere between two and three weeks every year. We call this annual training. The employers of the civilian citizen soldiers and airmen expect it and so do their families and they plan for it.

I'm not sure how much 6,000 troops will help, but it won't hurt the border situation and it certainly won't undermine training and readiness. If anything, it will increase readiness because of the distances involved, the real world environment, the practical goals, and even the low chance of violence that will keep the reservists a little more on their toes.

To the Shores of Nuance

We have pulled Libya out of the enemy column in our Long War without firing a shot (at them). This is a good thing.

In September 2001, when contemplating what our new war should look like, I wrote:

The first aspect of our fight is diplomatic. Diplomacy must shore up allied support to carry out all the operations we must organize. We need bases, information, and military and political assistance. Yes, we are powerful, but we have friends who we need to stand in the front ranks too. Our diplomacy must also tear away as many of the host states from supporting terrorists as is possible. Let us not be indiscriminate in our treatment of those states sympathetic to the terrorists or their grievances. That sympathy can never be used to justify mass murder and we should not, but their sympathy does not mean they support mass murder. Some states with minimal involvement should not be pushed by our rash attacks into full hostility. They may have been guilty in the past of heinous crimes; but if today, out of fear, a change of heart, or weariness, a government wishes to completely halt its support for terrorists, we should give that government the chance to aid us. In time, we can push for further justice from these states that "see the light" if they are sincere in siding with the West. We must avoid the mentality of forcing states to either be "for us" or "against us." This will be difficult in our just rage at the inhumanely awful crime that we endured. If we insist on this distinction, too many may conclude they must be against us if we demand unquestioning allegiance. We are the only superpower but we are not more powerful than the entire world combined. Would it really be better to push Pakistan too far and have Taliban sympathizers seize control of that nuclear-armed state? It is better to have some help freely given.

We must instead reward those who help us in proportion to their aid; and act against those who thwart us, perhaps with only economic penalties, in proportion to their opposition. We will of course remember those who help us fully; but we must accept lesser help with gratitude if it is all that can be offered. We will of course remember those who oppose us, but we must not apply overwhelming military force against any degree of resistance. Only those who brazenly and actively fight us should be taken down by our full might. This approach will add to our strength and allow us to destroy the hard core of enemies who will not bend to reason, guilt, or fear. By taking such measured actions we will isolate the battlefield and keep the war from spinning out of control.

And later in the piece, in the conclusion:

Fighting the states that have supported terrorism is another matter. They must not be treated the same as the terrorists. The goal with these states is not to destroy them but to prevent them from supporting the terrorists. Destroying such states should only be an option when we cannot persuade them by other means to end their support for terrorism. Just as ruthlessness is the proper mindset for going after the terrorists, cool reasoning is the proper state of mind for dealing with the supporting states. Making these states neutral or friendly will help dry up the terrorist recruiting pool and cripple the infrastructure that supports them. Terrorism is the main enemy and an emphasis on fighting the supporting states is a potential distraction.

I had Libya in mind with these words. And with America restoring diplomatic relations with Libya, Libya is being brought in from the cold:

Gadhafi was once known here as perhaps the most dangerous man in the Middle East. President Reagan ordered air attacks against Libya in 1981 and 1986, the latter because of suspected Libyan sponsorship of a terrorist attack at a West Berlin disco frequented by American soldiers. Two Americans died there.

Since 2003, however, Libya has been held up as a model by the administration for the way aspiring nuclear weapons powers should behave.

The American attack on Iraq made Gadhafi wonder whether he would be next. In December 2003, he agreed to surrender his weapons of mass destruction facilities and agreed to allow them to be shipped for storage in the United States.

Rep. Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said the administration's decisions were fully warranted.

"Libya has thoroughly altered its behavior by abolishing its program to develop weapons of mass destruction and ending its support for terrorism," Lantos said.

We can't do everything and we can't do even what we can all at once. If we can get a country like Libya to exit the Long War out of fear, we should take it. They gave up WMD programs and would rather not be high on our list. I guess the Libyans don't think we are too tied up in Iraq to deal with Libya if we must.

Libya's opposition in exile isn't happy with this decision. But we have enough enemies who cannot be talked out of fighting us and trying to kill us. Save our military might for them. When we have made progress with these states and pushed democracy in other places, countries like Libya will be more vulnerable to lesser efforts to free the people of Libya from their local dictatorship and poverty machine.

This is a victory in the Long War.

UPDATE: How we achieved this victory.

Traffic Analysis

Traffic analysis is not eavesdropping. I was stunned at the hyper-ventilating over the latest disclosure that our NSA analyzes patterns of communications inside our country to determine whether any suspicious contacts are taking place. Just knowing who is talking to whom, how often, and when they communicate can tell us a lot.

Strategypage explains this better than you'll get from the press:

The recent controversy over the National Security Agency "eavesdropping" on Americans with the assistance of AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth, is another case of media distortion. First of all is the fact that the NSA is not even "eavesdropping", they are acquiring phone records. This is part of a form of communications intelligence called traffic analysis.

Traffic analysis does not involve listening to words. Instead it tracks the pattern of communications, and has long been recognized as a valuable means of gathering intelligence. Changes in the patterns can tell the NSA (or any other agency) that something is up (through an increased amount of traffic), or who the "big fish" are (simply by seeing who is talking to whom). This effort can even locate new terrorists without knowing what has been said. If a known terrorist starts having lengthy conversations with someone new, traffic analysis can pick that up. If the communications suddenly stop, it can be a sign that the bad guys are on the move, or they are about to attack.

Really, it may seem like I just reflexively defend the administration. But it isn't true. For one thing I only blog on the war, defense issues, and foreign policy. And second, within these areas the Left seems to think that any effort more strenuous than a firmly worded request to please stop killing us is out of bounds. If it wasn't for one plastic turkey issue after another, I'd be more inclined to criticize. But how can I not defend the administration on what are at their core, simply stupid charges?

When the initial revelations about eavesdropping came out at the end of last year, I was prepared to be upset and was angry that we might have done what the press said we were doing. The president had best have an awfully good explanation for this, I thought.

But as I read the news accounts spiced with outrage, I wondered what the heck is wrong with you people? This is reading the enemy's mail and is not domestic eavesdropping no matter how often you call it that! (Yes, NPR, I'm talking about your clueless operatives.)

And so when the latest came out, after so many plastic turkey issues that the other side brings up as outrages, I didn't even blink at the new NSA revelations. Sure enough, as details came out, it is no big deal. As I wrote:

It is very sad that reasonable attempts to protect our people while we win the war are taken by administration opponents as unreasonable civil rights violations. And bizarre, too. But really, reactions like this stem from the simple fact that many on the Left simply don't believe in their hearts that we are at war.

No big deal we do it--big deal that asshats decided to reveal it. It is something of use to our enemies to know.

If you wanted to do a traffic analysis of the Left, which complains about any effort our government takes to fight the enemy, you'd have to conclude--even without reading the specifics--that they just don't think we are at war. Or want the enemy to win. I have little patience for either attitude.

Next plastic turkey issue, please.

Suck it Up and Saddle Up

Wretchard senses that the bloggers are faltering in their convictions:

My own hunch is that in the last two or three months there's been a change in the tone of the blogosphere. Nothing definite, simply a change in atmosphere in proportion to the degree of abstract tendencies of the blogger. Authors who trafficked in ideas and concepts have altered the most. Some have paused to take
stock, pleading disgust or confusion; still others have returned to writing as seemingly different persons; others seem to be suffering a kind of nervous breakdown, obsessed with hatred for one or more public figures or inventing new words and finding conspiracies in everything they see.

By chance, I made the following comment the same morning regarding how the Left has waged war against the administration of George W. Bush with an intensity that they could never work up over actual enemies who seek to kill us:

I'd sink into despair over our current culture that undermines our war efforts, but that would be a luxury we who support the war can ill afford to indulge in while our troops dutifully win the war that many in our country would just as soon lose.

Was I reacting to the same feeling that Wretchard described? I don't know. Perhaps. But though I may have been reacting to the forces that Wretchard is describing, I did not succumb to them. As I wrote, succumbing to them is a luxury. Our troops can't afford to succumb to anxiety or worry that the cosmos are just unfair or wrong. Actual enemies are shooting and bombing them so practical details of surviving and killing the enemy take priority.

We who only have to type a few goddamn words on blogs have a duty to display only a shadow of the resolve that our soldiers and Marines are displaying every day at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and in locations we never read about.

Perhaps I don't traffic in ideas as Wretchard speculates. I won't judge that. But I am confident enough in my ability to judge what is going on to resist the siren song of giving in to despair. Believe me, as a resident of Ann Arbor I'd have an easier time if I just got with the program and declared that I no longer supported the war because of this reason or that.

But that would be both cowardly and intellectually dishonest.

We are winning this war. And our troops who are winning it for us deserve our support until even the waverers can no longer deny it--or until their denial just doesn't matter. Maybe this unease is why I again felt the need to start linking to my victory post.

There should be no expiration date on our support for a just war.

Get over your self-centered angst. If you don't support our victory, you support our defeat.

UPDATE: Chester (via Instapundit) is unimpressed with this keyboard fatigue. I say some people need to be slapped.