Escaping the Straits Jacket

This op-ed argues that we need a Black Sea strategy:

Whatever else the extensive strategic literature on the Black Sea teaches us, it surely teaches us that where a vacuum is created due to neglect, inattention, or any other reason, someone else, often a hostile power, will fill it at the expense of those who live there and their protectors, because nature abhors a vacuum. Alternatively, we might also say that this literature teaches us that the Black Sea, strategically speaking, is a “sacred area,” for as the Russian proverb states, “a sacred space is never empty.” If we do not fill this space, Moscow will and in a manner that conflicts with our and our allies’ interests.

Of course, deploying naval power to the Black Sea runs up against the restrictions on our forces that the 1936 Montreux Convention imposes on any outside powers deploying ships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits into the Black Sea. Our deployments in response to Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008 were restricted because of that treaty.

So how could we avoid such restrictions? Especially the need to rotate a ship out after three weeks?

Could we base small patrol craft out of Romania? Perhaps sending the patrol craft up the Danube River to get them off the Black Sea after three week of deployment?

Or how about using modularized auxiliary cruisers to surge forces in the Black Sea when needed and then de-militarizing the container ships after three weeks?

Or how about using air ships for persistent patrols of the Black Sea? Could low-flying air ships--perhaps carrying small craft slung underneath for some work--be stationed on and patrol the Black Sea for long periods without triggering the limits that keep our ships on a short leash in the sea? Could we heavy them up so that they are more stable and durable at low altitudes of no more than a couple hundred meters at the price of not being able to reach very high altitudes like a traditional air ship? Or would we rather have a traditional air ship at higher altitudes able to fly for several weeks?

A Black Sea strategy is more than just military forces, of course. But strategy without force to back it is just wishful thinking, eh? And we unfortunately face severe limits on operating traditional naval forces in the Black Sea. So how could non-traditional forces do the job of such naval forces yet get around the treaty restrictions?

From Hell's Heart, I Stab at Thee. For Hate's Sake I Bake My Last Pouch in Thee

I wrote about what a hit the Easy Bake oven was for Lamb. My main complaint was that the pouches of baking ingredients are the toner of the toy world, the real profit margin for the company rather than the oven.

Although how expensive should the oven be, given that it is but a metal reflector surrounded by plastic that doesn't even come with the bulb it needs to cook the stuff? They should give the oven away!

Anyway, armed with the confidence of Internet searches for alternative recipes, Lamb tried out my recipe of three table spoons of Jiffy universal baking mix ($2.50 for a huge box), one table spoon of water, two tea spoons of sugar, and 13 minutes in the oven. And don't forget lots of chocolate frosting and sprinkles. That's the key, really. I was a little worried, I admit, when I couldn't flatten the mix in the pan and had to settle for centering it. but it expanded nicely horizontally to fill the pan.

Lamb was also a tad skeptical, but she ate the whole thing and next time wants to do the whole two-layered cake that the pouches display, as if your Easy Bake cake will ever look like that!

But with the inexpensive Jiffy mix, I'm game to try the full cake project as many times as she wants. As long as Lamb shares with me, of course.

Crazy? Or Just the First?

By now, we're used to seeing hopped up jihadi wannabees head off from their nice homes in America to join the jihad in Pakistan, believing that Allah wills it.

So is this just the first from our side of that conflict, a probably quite disturbed man who was picked up in Pakistan on his own mission from God?

An American construction worker has been detained in the mountains of Pakistan after authorities there found him carrying a sword, pistol and night-vision goggles on a solo mission to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.

Catching bin Laden was Gary Brooks Faulkner's "passion," his brother said, noting that the 50-year-old has been to Pakistan at least six times, learned some of the local language and even grew a long beard to blend in. Relatives and acquaintances said Faulkner is a devout, good-humored Christian who requires dialysis and did time in prison years ago.

It took a while before American Moslems started to trickle in to Pakistan (and Somalia) for their own private wars against America.

How long will it be before more serious efforts of private warfare from Westerners determined to fight the jihad on their territory are made rather than waiting for the next tower here to come crashing down as the result of a terrorist assault?

If the jihadis really think that all of us are fair targets in their jihad (and they clearly do believe that), how long will it be before enough of our people accept that view and respond as combatants who won't just wait for the jihadis to strike?

UPDATE: Well, not the first. But that just means the trend is already starting. Of course, I'd guess that serious private efforts would take place in countries whose citizens don't have the option of joining their military at war against the jihadis.

The Shape of Things to Come

I noted that we are shaping the battlefield of Kandahar and putting off our general "offensive" until we can make the region receptive to a hearts and minds approach.

I wondered, as I have in the past, about whether we need to kill off the enemy who won't switch sides (and who kill or indimidate those whose hearts and minds can be won).

Well, apparently we are doing that:

Gen. McChrystal has shifted his strategy away from population-centric nation-building to Special Forces night raids against the Taliban.

The rest of the article is a generally gloomy picture of Afghanistan that I don't share, but that tidbit is a useful piece of information.

Sometimes you just have to kill the enemy. Then the rest are more receptive to the hearts and minds thing.

All of Them Aren't Paid?

So North Korean World Cup fans are really Chinese paid cheerers?

I'm shocked. I assumed all of the people in the stands had to be paid to be there.

Between a ROK and a Hard People

The North Koreans are threatening war if they are blamed and punished for killing fewer than fifty South Korean sailors on the corvette that was struck by a North Korean torpedo:

North Korea on Tuesday threatened to take military action if the UN condemns the Stalinist regime over the sinking of a South Korean warship, ratcheting up tensions in the international standoff.

"We don't want the Security Council to take measures provoking us," Pyongyang's ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son Ho, told reporters in a rare press conference here by North Korea.

If the 15-member UN Security Council takes action against Pyongyang "follow-up measures will be carried out by our military forces," he warned.

Consider what kind of regime North Korea is. From our point of view, a country willing to just kill 50 sailors out of the blue is naturally willing to kill many more if forced to bear the punishment for that act.

But if North Korea is innocent of the charge, they are still willing to kill many more because they are insulted by being punished for the sinking?

If North Korea is not a proper threat to world peace that the sainted United Nations should halt, what is?

Of course, North Korea may have more serious problems than a wordy rebuke written in English and French, and mild enough to get past China's veto:

The currency switch last November was intended to finish off this potentially troublesome middle class, but instead it caused a general collapse in support for the government and the ruling family (Kim Jong Il and his clan). People now openly criticize the government and Kim Jong Il. Bravery borne of desperation is the order of the day, and the secret police and prison camps aren't so scary anymore. This has made the ruling elite very nervous. A few percent of the population lives well, while everyone else suffers. The elite have the guns, but not the numbers and, worst of all, they are no longer scary. At the moment, the situation is quiet up north. Too quiet.

It may well be the case that the North Korean leadership simply can't afford to be seen retreating before anyone lest their own people rise up against a visibly weakened regime. And if the army isn't fully on board with defending the regime from the people, that could be fatal to the few percent that live well at the expense of everyone else.

Perhaps the northern elites feel it would be better to get the army busy fighting South Korea and bleed it a bit to wring out any building resentment at the pampered elites, even at the risk of battlefield defeat. Maybe South Korean war plans that North Korea has gotten give them the confidence that South Korea would not exploit even a clear defensive victory by driving on Pyongyang and watching as angry people hang those paper-hanging SOBs from the nearest lamp posts.

Still, one has to wonder whether the North Korean leaders believe their army can conduct a conventional attack on South Korea. If they believe that, this could be bloody yet ultimately result in the destruction of the Pyongyang regime.

On the other hand, if the North Korean elites are fully aware of the balance of power, military action might just consist of a massive bombardment of Seoul by all the artillery massed north of the DMZ. Such a response wouldn't require North Korea to expose their fragile army to defeat (or require use of expensive fuel and other war reserves to move the army south in an offensive).

We can't afford to let North Korea slide on this incident if we have even the slightest hope that the UN can be a force for collective defense. But we're dealing with a loose cannon that China has coddled for decades despite their repugnant nature. So we'd best be prepared for what we would think is a completely irrational response to a global wrist slapping--a North Korean attack on South Korea's capital or even a general (if futile) offensive.

Just Another Brick in the Wall

Russia seems to be preparing to intervene directly in Kyrgyzstan:

Moscow said it was looking at sending rapid reaction forces to intervene as it rallied regional support from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a grouping of post-soviet states.

It said that members would send helicopters, trucks and other supplies to the Kyrgyz security forces to strengthen their capacity to handle the unrest. Russia has already sent at least 150 paratroopers to Kyrgyzstan to protect its Kant airbase.

Stratfor puts the crisis in the context of flat Russia looking for defensible borders while aware that the clock is ticking demographically for Russia, no longer able to flood a conquered region with colonists to hold conquered regions, and soon to face the bleak fact that they may have too few people to hold what they already have.

Worse from Moscow's point of view, Uzbekistan would be unhappy with a Russian intervention to establish a defensible border before the alarm goes off. Stratfor's conclusion:

Russia is attempting to finesse a middle ground by talking the Uzbeks down and offering the compromise of non-Russian troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military organization, as an alternative to Russian forces. This may resolve the immediate crisis, but neither the Uzbeks nor the challenges they pose are going anywhere. And unlike Russia, Uzbekistan boasts very high demographic growth.

The bottom line is this: Despite all of Russia’s recent gains, Moscow’s strategy requires tools that the Russians no longer have. It requires Moscow delving into the subregional politics of places that could well bleed Russia dry — and this is before any power that wishes Russia ill begins exploring what it and the Uzbeks might achieve together.

We shall see if the cover of CSTO approval will blunt Uzbek reaction.

The crisis could also affect our war in Afghanistan since we have a refueling base in Manas--for now.

More broadly, areas like our new NATO members in the Baltic region--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Romania; Ukraine; Georgia, and even Poland have to worry whether Russia is looking at or past them at a defensible border (or just space to trade for time), judging whether they can reach that line of defense before Russian power starts to wane.

And we have to wonder whether the Russians think that we are willing to stop them.

Preparing the Home Front

American military leaders are warning of casualties this summer:

"Violence is up, and I think violence will continue to rise, particularly over the summer months," Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, NATO's Afghanistan commander, said last week.

By then, there will be 100,000 pairs of American boots on the ground - more than double last summer, including three times as many Special Operations Forces. With more troops comes more combat - and more casualties.

This is all quite predictable. We'll see how steady the anti-Iraq War side is after years of claiming we had to retreat from Iraq to win the "good war" in Afghanistan.

Ready and Set to Go

I've discussed the changing balance of power in the Taiwan Strait almost since the beginning of this blog back when it was on old Geocities. My basic point was that China was building the capacity to overrun Taiwan before we could effectively intervene. We are more powerful than China, but we are more distant from Taiwan than China is.

Over five years ago, I wrote of my hunch that summer 2008 would be a great time to spring a surprise invasion. In some circles, the idea was mocked as the "million-man swim," as Chinese amphibious capabilities were traditionally derided. I saw the trends and thought that at some point, by 2008 perhaps, China would be strong enough to take a shot at invading. I set forth my invasion scenario, too, in response to criticisms that our Navy would make short work of a Chinese invasion armada.

Strategypage writes that the Chinese sure think that they can do the job:

The chatter in China, and military deployments, indicate that the leadership believes they are now able to take Taiwan by force, before the United States can intervene. Such an attack would have to be without warning, because the United States would put forces in the way if there was any indication that an invasion was imminent.

This development comes as no surprise to those who have been watching military and political developments in China and Taiwan during the past two decades. At the end of the Cold War, China had three million troops on active duty, but their weapons, warships and aircraft were largely 1950s technology. They had no ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, because the only missiles China had were equipped with nuclear warheads and aimed at Russia. The Chinese navy had miniscule amphibious forces and little confidence that the Chinese air force could attain air superiority over the Taiwan Straits, so that they could get troops across.

Twenty years later, the Taiwanese navy has declined while the Chinese force has expanded and been modernized. The Chinese now have nearly as many modern aircraft as Taiwan, and Chinese pilots are much better trained. Amphibious shipping has been greatly expanded, as have airborne forces and army units trained for amphibious landings.

Perhaps the most important change since 1991 is China's force of precision guided missiles and rockets.

And don't go minimizing this by arguing that Chinese leaders are deluded if they think they can win a war. I think they could. It would be no guarantee, but they have a shot at winning. But what do the Chinese think? We are not deterring the Chinese, either, with our implicit promise to defend Taiwan. The Chinese think they can beat us, too, and may expect to fight us:

In February, Colonel Meng Xianging promised a “hand-to-hand fight with the U.S.” sometime within the next 10 years “when we’re strong enough.” “We must make them hurt,” said Major-General Yang Yi this year, referring to the United States.

And last month, at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing, a Chinese flag officer launched a three-minute rant that stunned the 65 or so American officials in the audience. Everything that is right with U.S. relations with China is due to China, said Rear Admiral Guan Youfei. Everything that is wrong is Washington’s fault. According to Guan, the United States sees China as an enemy.

Of course, such an attitude is exactly why our military has sought military-to-military contacts with the Chinese military:

The assumption in Washington has been that America was so powerful that we could integrate hardline Chinese leaders into a liberal international system they had no hand in creating. To this end, successive administrations sought, among other things, to foster ties between the American and Chinese militaries.

The Pentagon, therefore, pushed for port calls, reciprocal visits of officers, a hot line, and an incidents-at-sea agreement, with varying degrees of success. Admiral Timothy Keating even went so far as to offer to help China build aircraft carriers.

But I've never liked these exchanges and I'm happy enough they are cancelled. Despite the exchanges that took place, the Chinese clearly have not come away with an awe of our military strength. No, I'm guessing they simply think they've gained insights into our moral weaknesses and how to beat us. In short, they didn't learn what we were teaching.

And more important than precisely defining for ourselves what the balance of power is, if the question is simply whether there will be a war and not who will win it, all that matters is that the Chinese leaders believe they will win. Once they conclude they can win, they'll attack Taiwan and/or America and Japan to achieve their objective.

Don't be fooled by China's charm offensive against Taiwan that is lulling many analysts into believing war is less likely. China wants Taiwan, thinks they can conquer Taiwan, thinks we're at fault for strained relations, and believes they can make America hurt. Crazy? Don't count on it. Remember, Peking gets to define what is rational.

Climate Feedback Loop

Climate scolds want us to replace our incandescent light bulbs with so-called Earth-friendly twisty bulbs.

But the compact fluorescent bulbs are not appealing to the eye--one would think that would be a key flaw for a lighting device. Apparently not for the true believers and those who wish to pose as true believers with a relatively cheap but visible means of demonstrating their purity.

So what is a new trend in defiance of the Green ritual of screwing in the twisties? Old-fashioned, bare filament bulbs that use even more electricity than the damned incandescent bulbs the twisties were to replace:

They are not the latest cliques of beautiful people, but something quite old and plain: exposed-filament bulbs, energy-guzzling reproductions of Thomas Alva Edison’s first light bulb. And despite the escalating push to go green and switch to compact fluorescents — or perhaps because of it — their antique glow has spread like a power surge.

I think I now understand the concept of a feedback loop in climate science.

Laugh with me! This is funny.

Measuring Deterrence

The growing consensus of the establishment foreign policy elites is that Iran can be contained when they get nuclear weapons. This writer doesn't think Iran can be deterred.

I agree, but can we quantify this?

Let me try. It is back-of-the-envelope and relies on minimal research (5 minutes on Google, tops, plus whatever I remember off hand).

The premise of deterrence is that Iran won't launch a nuclear attack on Israel because Israel could counter-attack and inflict unacceptable casualties. We have virtually infinite retaliatory capabilities but Israel will be in the line of fire first, so let's stick with that scenario.

It is common to claim that Israel has 200 nuclear weapons. Israel has never admitted to even having nukes, while hinting at the capability to deter enemies from destroying Israel. These enemies have repeatedly attacked Israel with conventional weapons over the last several decades despite Israel's nuclear arsenal, but no matter--we're discussing nuclear deterrence of nuclear attack.

First, I think that it is unlikely that Israel has 200 nuclear warheads. Britain has 250. France probably around the same number, and China likely has a bit more. So we're really going to say that tiny Israel has nearly as many as three great powers? Remember, Israel has an incentive to let enemies think they have more. I'd guess 80 warheads, for their missiles, subs, and planes. But let's call it 100 nukes to deter Iran from using a single nuke on Tel Aviv.

These aren't going to be huge nukes, I 'd guess. Perhaps they are on the order of Hiroshima/Nagasaki-sized bombs. Let's average the deaths at Hiroshima (66,000) and Nagasaki (39,000) and say Israel can kill 50,000 Iranian civilians in a counter-attack with each weapon, assuming some will hit water, mountains, or desert well outside their CEP.

So if Israel used all 100 of their nukes on Iranian population centers, they could kill 5 million Iranians using all their weapons.

Iran has a population of about 75 million. So effectively wrecking Israel by destroying their largest city might be done at the price of  6.7% of Iran's population.

And that's worst case. Israel can't use all their nukes. They aren't just going eye-for-eye after being nuked. The purpose would be to establish deterrence against any other anti-Semites with nukes by showing Israel can strike back hard. So Israel needs to have more nukes in reserve for the theoretical second and even third or fourth attacker. So perhaps Israel can afford to only use a quarter of their nukes--25.

Let's say the Israelis use their biggest and most accurate weapons and aim them at the densest population centers to increase the lethality to 100,000 per strike. Maybe we're talking total dead as 2.5 million, or about 3.3% of Iran's population.

Would the prospect of losing 3-7% of their population deter Iran?

Iran endured a pounding in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War (the First Gulf War, as I prefer to call it). Iran lost between 300,000 and 500,000 to kill half as many Iraqis. Let's call it 400,000 dead Iranians to kill 200,000 Iraqis. With a wartime population averaging about 40 million, Iran endured the loss of 1% of their population to kill Iraqis.

So, how much more do Iranians hate Jews than fellow Moslems--albeit Arab Moslems? Twice as much? Ten times as much? Consider that Iran waged war on Iraq after they ejected the Iraqis from Iranian territory in 1982 in order to--as they claimed--get to Jerusalem to kill Israelis. So Iran lost 1% of their population just to get at the real enemy--Israel--they really wanted to fight but for that inconvenient Saddam between them. Then add in the 2% of population losses as the price of killing Jews in large numbers that might wreck Israel.

If you conservatively assume Iranians hate Jews only twice as much as they hate Arabs, you'd have to say that Iran would easily be willing to lose 3% of their population--2.1 million people--to nuke a single Israeli city if they believe Israel truly is a "one-nuke country." Maybe Iran is deterred, based on how many Iranians could die in a counter-strike. But maybe not.

And what if the Iranians aren't thinking of the base population as Iran as the point of measuring acceptable pain? What if Iran really is contemplating taking a spear for the Ummah, thinking that losing 2.1 million Iranians is a small price for the entire 1.6 billion world Moslem population to endure? Losing 0.13 % is nothing from that perspective. Even inflicting 5 million dead on the entire global Moslem population by using all their nukes--which then leaves Israel open to attack with anyone else with a nuke since Israel can hardly deter without any nuclear weapons--doesn't get you to the level that Iran was willing to lose just to fight Iraq.

Can Iran be deterred if this is the calculaton? Not with Israel's arsenal.

And maybe not with anyone's arsenal. After all, deterrence relies on a certain rationality that we shouldn't assume Iran's mullahs share with us.

Iran might not be very good at math, anyway.

The Sound of Sanity

The soccer lords won't ban that annoying buzzing horn that has been like a mosquito flitting about one's ear for the duration of a game:

World Cup organisers Monday ruled out a ban on the vuvuzela horns that have been driving some players and broadcasters mad, with FIFA president Sepp Blatter defending the instrument on Twitter.

Keep the vuvuzelas blaring. May it leave a lasting impression on American viewers and network exectutives.

Soccer is boring enough without encouraging it in the United States. The annoyance of watching the rare World Cup event with that din is well worth the price to save us from that ridiculous game. We've got real football here, already.

Sound the vuvuzelas!

A Road to Somewhere

Well, this is good news for our Afghansitan effort:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

 
One, it could provide a means for paying for the Afghan security forces needed to secure the country so it does not become a lawless, ungoverned haven for terrorists. That's for the long run.
 
In the nearer term, it will provide a reason to build a tranportaion network inside Afghanistan and to Afghanistan from the outside world. The minerals have to be shipped out and equipment has to be shipped in to dig it out. Such a road and rail network (and cell phone network) will be infrastrucutre that security forces can use to suppress insurgents and terrorists. And it will enable trade apart from the mining industries.
 
This wealth shouldn't be an excuse to create a strong central government and a modern society in Afghanistan. We still need to aim for a stable federation that reaches the 19th century.
 
Could free money wreck Afghanistan? Possibly. Nigeria's oil hasn't done much for its people. But who are we to keep them poor "for their own good?"
 
The objective is to prevent Afghanistan from being an exporter of terror (with a side effort to halt heroin expoerts, too). And perhaps the sainted international community can be motivated to help Afghans from wasting the money through corruption.
 
I'd be more worried about the possibility that wealthy and wordly Afghans will buy off Islamists the way Saudi Arabia does.
 
But one problem at a time, eh? For now let's defeat the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies and stabilize a reasonably representative Afghan government and society so that we can draw down our military effort some many years down the road.

UPDATE: I guess this was just news to me.

The Era of Consequences

I think that we can pull off an attack on Iran to knock back their nuclear programs. But I do not think we can risk surgical strikes. Of course, the question is largely moot since our administration believes that the risk of action to forcibly stop Iran from going nuclear outweighs the risk of allowing Iran to proceed toward nuclear weapons.

This defense of striking Iran believes Iran will take the surgical strike and not respond:

Critics of military action against Iran argue that it would open up a third front for American forces in the Middle East. Our troops would be at risk from Iranian missiles. Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz (causing oil prices to skyrocket) and use its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to carry out attacks well beyond the Middle East, including perhaps on the U.S. homeland.

Yet if we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, against sites used to train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited.


It’s unclear, for example, that Iran would want to risk broadening the conflict and creating the prospect of regime decapitation. Iran’s rulers have shown that their preeminent concern is maintaining their grip on power. If U.S. military action is narrowly targeted, and declared to be such, why would Iran’s leaders, already under pressure at home, want to escalate the conflict, as even one missile attack on a U.S. facility or ally or a blockade of the Strait would obviously do?

Why would Iran respond irrationally? For the same reason we don't want the mullahs to have nuclear weapons--they are not rational as we define it.
 
If we attack Iran's nuclear facilities, this will be viewed by Iran's leaders as a serious attack on Iran. Iran will fight back. I happen to think their counter-attack won't be as bad as some fear. One, the track record of worries about Saddam responding to attacks in 1991 and 2003 with attacks on our homeland didn't pan out. I doubt Iran can do better. Two, I think Iran isn't doing more to fight us in Iraq and Afghanistan because they can't raise the ante--not because they've chosen to be nicer.
 
But I also believe that once we go after Iran's nuclear facilities, we have to simultaneously wage a broader campaign to blunt their counter-attack. Israel could pull off the narrow attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities, I think, with a decent chance of significant delay imposed on Iran's nuclear progress. But Israel couldn't do the same type of job as we could on the nuclear facilities, let alone match our attacks on Iran's conventional military capabilities and terrorist-supporting institutions.

But we are still firmly in the era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays. Until Iran openly flaunts their nuclear weapons--and perhaps until they use one--we will remain in this era.

Have a nice day.

Happy Birthday, US Army

The Army is 235 years old today:

By May 10, just weeks after hostilities began in Massachusetts, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. On the agenda: creating a common army to defend the colonies.

A month later, on June 14, the Congress approved the creation of that army -- the Continental Army. The new force was made of those militiamen already gathered outside Boston -- some 22,000 of them -- plus those in New York, about 5,000.

The following day, the 15th, the Congress named Virginian George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and named Ward his second in command the following day.

Still kicking ass and taking names after all these years.

Spider Goggles

I'm sorry, when I read stories like this (tip to Instapundit), I can't go along with the designation of "developing country." No, this is something out of the Third World--the Tarantula cocktail:

The arachnophobe’s nightmare is made using rice wine, jack fruit and a tarantula – which many Cambodians believe can help your heart and work as an aphrodisiac.

Photographer Tim Whitby, who took the pictures, said the tarantulas are added live to the mixture to preserve their freshness.

Oh yeah, you don't want to have a "stale" spider, now do you? Makes all the difference in the world between disgusting and delicious.

Have these people not heard of beer?

So Close ...

The charge that we "took our eye of the ball" by invading Iraq and not putting more troops into Afghanistan persists even though President Obama himself didn't claim that the enemy was doing better until after 2007 (I judge it to be after 2006). Secretary Gates is so close to being right about our commitment to Afghanistan:

We basically won the war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban -- in 2002, when the Taliban fled to Pakistan.

What happened over the next three or four years is that, by using -- taking advantage of safe havens on the Pakistani side of the border, the Taliban were able to reconstitute themselves, and so the level of violence began to increase again in 2006.

We saw that. When I took this job in December 2006, I told President Bush that I thought that we had not paid enough attention to Afghanistan. And within a couple of months of taking the job, I added another American brigade. We added a further American brigade, and then the president in 2008 brought the total troop numbers from, when I arrived at about 17,000 U.S., to about 42,000. That had been authorized and a lot of those hadn’t arrived by the end of 2008.

So far, so good. We won the war when we attacked in 2001 and the Taliban fled to Pakistan in 2002. There was nobody in Afghanistan to neglect for many years. 

Given that reality on the ground, why would Gates then say this?

So the reality is, both on the civilian and the military side, that Afghanistan was neglected until 2007 or so. We took our -- we did take our eye off the ball. And it gave the Taliban the opportunity to capture the momentum, and particularly in the south.

Really? The only thing we could have done to fight the Taliban from 2002 to 2006 was to send troops into Pakistan itself.

So who amongst the Distractinistas is on record advocating that course of action from 2002 to 2006? In fact, our so-called "distraction" consisted of not doing what nobody would have done.

It wasn't until 2006 that violence started going up in Afghanistan as the result of the sanctuary in Pakistan. And President Bush agreed to recommendations from the Department of Defense to do something about that. Note that we reinforced Afghanistan even before the surge in Iraq took place. Winning in Iraq also led to another boost for the Taliban by compelling al Qaeda to shift their focust to Afghanistan after 2007.

President Obama has continued the Bush-era trend of reinforcing Afghanistan, eased by the victory in Iraq that we achieved during that terrible so-called era of distraction.

Nobody should be surprised that this is how the campaigns played out. Our military--in particular our ground forces--have been sized for a couple decades now on the premise that if we are in two wars, we win in one war while we hold in the second--and turn to the second war for the win only after we win the first war and transfer the troops used in that first war.

So not only was there no point in adding more troops to Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, there was no ability. And nobody on the anti-war side was getting worked up demanding we expand the ground forces to fight two wars fully at the same time. Well, other than those calling for a draft designed to erode support for the war rather than to win the wars.

The third reason it made no sense to add troops to Afghanistan in the 2002-2006 period is that the enemy was regrouping in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan (assuming nobody would use more US troops to invade Pakistan--which was also our primary line of supply for our troops in Afghanistan, remember).

We won the war in Afghanistan. And it was proper to then use our military against another threat--Saddam Hussein' Iraq--rather than keep our military uncommitted and poised for action for years just in case the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated.

We won the war in Iraq, and we fortunately won that war in time to begin sending troops to Afghanistan before the regrouped Taliban could make too many gains. And we now have Pakistani support that has seriously damaged the Pakistan-based Taliban.

Now we can try to win the war in Afghanistan with more resources, bolstered by serious Pakistani efforts to win on their side of the border. That's far closer to the reality of Afghanistan than any complaints--even by Gates--that we were distracted by Iraq.

Catching Their Eye

The Russians are letting the Chinese into their Far East to extract raw materials for China's expanding economy:

Russian companies clamor to sign deals over Siberian resources — including iron, coal and timber — to sell into the insatiable Chinese market. Russian oil, too, is an increasingly sought-after commodity passing through Siberia to China.

For resource-starved China, overland supply of Russian metals and oil is an important diversification away from seaborne shipments. The transborder commerce in this region helped China surpass Germany to become Russia’s largest trading partner early last year, with $39.5 billion in goods and services passing between the two countries in 2009.

Last year the Russian Far East was the only region in Russia for which investment grew, rather than contracting. As a further sign of Russia-China interdependence, on Thursday, the two nations’ presidents, Dmitri A. Medvedev and Hu Jintao, plan to meet in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for a conference of their regional security alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

In one sense, this is good since it gets China looking inland and away from the sea (and us, with our allies and fleet in the Western Pacific). If China looks inland for resources to diversify from their sea lines of communication that China feels is vulnerable to our Navy, China will split their attention and military capacity between the land and the sea, hopefully becoming inadequate to match any of the military threats they face on land and sea.

On the other hand, if China becomes reliant on Russian raw materials, the Chinese might decide that the leverage Moscow has is too great--and that the Russians are too weak to hold their Far East. China might go to war to control those resources. If China wins, they have a much better position with control of large portions of the Russian Far East that gives them more avenues to threaten Japan i.n addition to the raw materials captured.

Or it could result in a nuclear war if Russia decides their conventional inferiority can only be bolstered by nukes to defend Russian territory. And then China shoots back, of course.

I'm just very uncomfortable with a weak Russia becoming so important economically to a strong China.

Supplying Bad Headlines

At best, it looks bad for the country hosting a key logistics hub for the war in Afghanistan to be wracked by ethnic violence:

More than 100 people have been killed and over 1,000 wounded in the impoverished Central Asian nation since the violence began Thursday night. Doctors and rights activists say that toll is far too low because wounded Uzbeks are too afraid of being attacked again to go to hospitals.

Thousands of Uzbeks have fled in panic to the border with Uzbekistan after their homes were torched by roving mobs of Kyrgyz men. Some Uzbek women and children were gunned down as they tried to escape, witnesses said.

Fires set by rioters have destroyed most of Osh, the country's second-largest city, and looters have stolen most of its food. Triumphant crowds of Kyrgyz men took control of most of Osh on Sunday while the few Uzbeks still in the city of 250,000 barricaded themselves in their neighborhoods.

The rampages spread quickly Sunday to Jalal-Abad, another major southern city, and neighboring villages, as mobs methodically set Uzbek houses, stores and cafes on fire. The rioters seized an armored vehicle and automatic weapons at a local military unit and attacked police stations around the region trying to get more firearms.

Police and the military appeared to be on the defensive across the south, avoiding clashes with mobs.

Great. Security officials don't want to perform their function. The Soviets used to have the job of maintaining order in Kyrgyzstan. Do we want them to do it, now? I think not.
 
But we certainly don't want to do the job, which would put a further strain on our ground forces just now looking forward to a sustainable deployment rate.

So we provide advice and non-troop assistance to end the fighting and end the sight of murder and mayhem in a supply hub. Or we are forced to pack up and leave because of the chaos.

Never Mind

One year ago, Ahmadinejad stole an election:

The one-year anniversary of Iran's disputed election passed quietly Saturday with little more than a subdued Internet appeal by opposition leaders for supporters to speak out on the Web against government repression.

Fearing bloodshed and calculating that it would gain them nothing, the movement's leaders called off a day of mass protests, reflecting their increasing powerlessness against the government's military muscle. Witnesses and the opposition reported a few isolated confrontations in the capital.

The protesters are largely suppressed, now.

The history of the last year's relations with Iran over their nukes and support of terrorists who kill American soldiers kind of makes the Obama administration's decision to reach out to the mullahs with an open hand rather than offering even a little bit of vocal moral support to the dissidents seem somewhat less than the "smart diplomacy" we were promised.

But at least the protesters aren't "tainted" with President Obama's support. That has to count for a lot, right?