Rules of War

As the aerial contest between Hamas (rockets) and Israel (air strikes) rages, it would be good to remember a number of things.

One, just because civilians die does not make it a war crime. It depends on who you are shooting at and how.

If you are aiming at civilians--as the 400+ Hamas rocket launches are--that is a war crime.

If you are aiming at military targets--as the Israelis are--it may not be a war crime if the civilian deaths are incidental to the military purpose.

For example, if you are taking sniper fire from a building, carpet bombing the entire city to kill that sniper is a war crime.

Using a couple artillery rounds even if one is off target and kills a civilian is not a war crime.

Further, you may be responsible for committing a war crime if an enemy kills your own civilians if you put your military assets close to civilians for use as human shields.

And forget about that "proportionality" nonsense. Military force is about achieving an objective and not "fair" casualties.

If someone attacks you, you've used too little force if your attacker isn't defeated.

No rule of war requires you to respond with ineffective force when attacked.

Can't Do and Can't Teach?

I know I've long written that I believe our military presence in Iraq would have helped Iraq entrench rule of law rather than allow corruption to cripple the Iraqi military and institutions.

But perhaps I've been hasty in assuming this administration could teach rule of law.

If presidential action is wrongly justified by the failure of Congress to legislate, that opens up a lot of areas for presidential authority, does it not?

And if the failure of Congress to act justifies presidential authority on a subject, if Congress does legislate on a subject, is the failure of Congress to legislate exactly as the president wants a justification for the president to act as he wishes?

Is this really what so-called liberals want for a country that is based on rule of law?

Tip to Instapundit.

Fourteen Candles

The Dignified Rant turns 14 years old today.

Yes, all that you survey began when I activated The Dignified Rant on July 12, 2002 on my existing Geocities site.

I was actually inspired by James Lileks' site. I liked his variety of blogging, writing, and other stuff.

I moved to Blogger in November 2004, as space ran out at Geocities and as non-blogging publishing faded as a goal.

My project to migrate pre-Blogger posts to this site kind of foundered on the tedium of copying, pasting, and posting. But that's still a goal.

This is my first post. About Iraq. I'm still blogging about Iraq.

And still operating as a one-man blogger. Which is apparently a rarity these days.

I just hope to contribute to the foreign policy debates of the age. And mock the idiocy every once in a while.

I do not use Twitter. Although I don't rule out supplementing this blog with that method, I lean against it. And I don't use Facebook.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Whoever and wherever you are. The idiocy remains a target-rich environment.

UPDATE: I mean twelve years. Is it better to claim bad math or that I forgot what year this is?

Winning?

Assad is winning his war?

When casualties exceed 170,000 so far, and his troops have lost almost 66,000 troops while killing 46,000 rebels (including 15,000 foreign jihadis), how can Assad's forces keep this burn rate up?

Also, Hezbollah has lost 500 dead while the Shia foreign legion has lost 1,600 dead. For Hezbollah, that's quite the body count.

If Assad's troops believe we are helping the rebels, will the prospect of a longer war break their spirit?

Zakaria Knows Conventional Wisdom

Fareed Zakaria says that President Obama's decision to arm Syrian rebels is surrendering to "conventional wisdom."

Hogwash. Conventional wisdom has said stay out because American involvement makes things worse.

But things have gotten much worse much faster in Syria without us compared to Iraq.

So now we'll try to influence events there.

Interpretive Dance

I haven't commented on Pakistan's offensive into the jihadi lair in North Waziristan despite my long desire that Pakistan would act. Sadly, Pakistan simply sent in the "redshirts" to die in order to make the show look real.

Yeah, Pakistan isn't exactly stepping up in the war on terror (tip to Defense Industry Daily email update):

For years now, the United States and Afghanistan have demanded that Pakistan conduct an operation in North Waziristan. North Waziristan is the ostensible home to the Haqqani Network and to slews of foreign fighters tied to al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban and various other militant groups operating throughout the region.

While Pakistan seems to finally be acting, don’t expect this operation to yield any big catches. The army, as it did in 2010, gave plenty of warning. Any terrorist worth his Chinese knock-off Air Jordans has long fled the scenes. Key members of the Haqqani Network have long been ensconced in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Jihadis keep attacking Pakistani civilians and the Pakistani government continues to draw distinctions between "bad jihadis" to attack Pakistanis and "good jihadis" who attack others.

I was right not to get my hopes up.

Although my basic view on Pakistan remains that I'd rather have them as a highly flawed ally than have them as an enemy who we manage to have multilateral talks with to resolve differences. Face it, if we could get relations with Iran like Pakistan, we'd call it a diplomatic triumph.

Stop. Don't. Come Back

China is pivoting to the interior of Asia. Good.

I enjoyed this:

The Silk Road, an obscure Kazakh-inspired security forum and a $50 billion Asian infrastructure bank are just some of the disparate elements in an evolving Chinese strategy to try to counter Washington's "pivot" to the region.

While Chinese leaders have not given the government's growing list of initiatives a label or said they had an overall purpose, Chinese experts and diplomats said Beijing appeared set on shaping Asia's security and financial architecture more to its liking.

"China is trying to work out its own counterbalance strategy," said Sun Zhe, director of the Centre for U.S.-China Relations at Beijing's Tsinghua University and who has advised China's government on its foreign policy.

Added one Beijing-based Western diplomat who follows China's international relations: "This is all clearly aimed at the United States."

It's clearly aimed at America?? They better check their sights.

I mean, I hope they don't. This will teach us a lesson, no doubt.



Diluting Chinese power between the sea where we are and the interior of Asia where we aren't is a good thing.

Go West, young Han superpower-to-be.

He'll Fit In Nicely

When I read that MSNBC's scrolling news feed was filled with "gibberish," my first thought was, "And this is different ... how?"

But that would be cruel. My second question was, "Has Jay Carney started working there already?"

MSNBC story tip to Mad Minerva.

Putin Wants That Flexibility He Was Promised

Let's not bicker over who invaded who, eh?

Russian President Vladimir Putin called for better relations with the United States on Friday in a congratulatory message to President Barack Obama marking U.S. Independence Day. ...

"The head of the Russian state expressed hope that ... ties between the two countries will develop successfully on the basis of pragmatism and equality despite difficulties and disagreements," the Kremlin said in a statement.

Yeah. Putin assumed that post-2012 election American "flexibility" would include beginning the reconquest of Ukraine without so much fuss.

Clearly, we're going to need a bigger "reset" button.

Vote While We're Young

A week and a half ago, Hong Kong held a protest election that their Peking masters did not like one bit:

An informal referendum aimed at bolstering support for greater democracy in Hong Kong wound down Sunday after drawing nearly 800,000 votes and the ire of Beijing, which denounced it as a political farce.

Hong Kongers used the straw poll to express their desire for greater say in choosing their leader. ...

Beijing has slammed the poll by organizers of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement as illegal, and the state-run Global Times newspaper blasted it as "mincing ludicrousness."

I though "Mincing Ludicrousness" was a new rapping boy band, but what do I know?

To be fair, all votes in China pretty much have the defining feature of mincing ludicrousness.

So why should the Hong Kong vote be any exception? Don't Hong Kongers know that there is only one direction this is all going?

No Guns of August, Please

The Crimea and Iraqi crises have shaken my resolve, but I am again trying to limit posting so I'm not just noting every event of interest in the world. We'll see how the rest of the summer goes.

Please be a quiet August. For the world's sake, if not for mine.

Meanwhile in Red Line-Free Syria

I still have my doubts about whether Assad has the troops to hold Aleppo if he takes it, but he is making progress with the help of his Hezbollah shock troops, it seems.

You don't have to be sad that jihadis are taking losses to be sad that Assad is recapturing territory:

Syrian armed forces have taken strategic ground around Aleppo this week, residents and state media said on Wednesday, squeezing the main rebel supply line into the city after months of battlefield gains by Damascus.

The government advance, after close to two years of stalemate, was bolstered by fighters from the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah, an ally of President Bashar al-Assad, according to sources close to Hezbollah.

This is a new front for the Hezbollah troops.

Interestingly enough, the article states that Hezbollah has embedded advisors within Syrian units to bolster them. Just who built Syria's army, anyway?

And Also, the Sun Rises in the East

I'm shocked. Shocked that special operating is going on in Somalia.

The whole point of our large special forces capability is to keep armed problems small so that we don't have to send 100,000 troops to fight them. So why is this a shock?

U.S. military advisors have secretly operated in Somalia since around 2007 and Washington plans to deepen its security assistance to help the country fend off threats by Islamist militant group al Shabaab, U.S. officials said.

Recall that Ethiopia went into Somalia in December 2006. Who didn't think we were helping? It made the news back then! Let me repeat a quote from a linked article in that post:

U.S. ground forces have been active in Somalia from the start, a senior military intelligence officer confirmed. “In fact,” he said, “they were part of the first group in.”

These ground forces include CIA paramilitary officers who are based out of Galkayo, in Somalia’s semiautonomous region of Puntland, Special Operations forces, and Marine units operating out of Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.

The presence of U.S. airpower in Somalia became public knowledge yesterday when CBS News reported that an AC-130 fixed-wing gunship carried out a strike against suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia. Unmanned aerial drones kept the targets under surveillance while a gunship operated by the U.S. Special Operations Command flew from its base in Djibouti to the southern tip of Somalia.

You remember Djibouti, right? Major American base in the Horn of Africa for our special operations forces? We even work with the French there? Does this ring a bell at all for our press corps that just discovered we fight jihadis in Somalia?

So no, this isn't exactly a news "exclusive."

With jihadis running around in Somalia (and let's not forget Iran's interest in the Red Sea), in what alternate world of outreach to the Islamic world would this base not be used to fight jihadis next door?

Contributing to Collective Defense

China's growing power requires all countries to be prepared for collective defense rather than having the luxury of counting on America and helping each other at their convenience.

So it is good that Japan is making their significant military power available to fight at our side:

Japan took a historic step away from its post-war pacifism on Tuesday by ending a ban that has kept the military from fighting abroad since 1945, a victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe but a move that has riled China and worries many Japanese voters.

The change, the most dramatic policy shift since Japan set up its post-war armed forces 60 years ago, will widen Japan's military options by ending the ban on exercising "collective self-defense", or aiding a friendly country under attack.

When China had little power projection capacity, this wasn't a big deal. We didn't need anybody's help to hold the western Pacific.

And if the Soviet Union wanted to attack us, they pretty much had to attack Japan to get at us. And there was no legal issue with Japan accepting our help.

But the situation had evolved to the bizarre situation where if North Korea launched a nuclear missile at an American target not on Japanese territory, Japan legally could not engage it with their anti-missile systems.

More broadly, if China attacked American forces in the western Pacific but avoided striking any Japanese territory, Japan could not legally respond to help us fight China even though a Chinese defeat of America would obviously harm Japan's security.

Japan is ending that ridiculous legal constraint. Which is why China is complaining so loudly.

History May Rhyme, But With What?

Israel is reacting with force to the continuing rocket barrages from Gaza. I assume Hezbollah is drinking Pepto-Bismol like sweet tea.

Sometimes you just have to kill jihadis until they run rather than shoot:

The Israeli military launched what could be a long-term offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday striking nearly 100 sites in Gaza and mobilizing troops for a possible ground invasion aimed at stopping a heavy barrage of rocket attacks against Israel.

The last time Israel went in to Gaza, during the winter of 2008-2009, Hamas took some damage.

Before that, in 2006, the operation against Hamas spread to and was eclipsed by a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I may not think much of how well Israel fought that 2006 war, but Hezbollah was hurt.

Hezbollah is pretty heavily engaged in Syria right now defending the Assad regime.

And while Assad needs Hezbollah shock troops, Assad is hardly in a position to intervene on Hezbollah's behalf if Israel does strike Hezbollah.

So I assume Hezbollah's leaders are praying very hard that an Israeli attack on Hamas is localized like 2008 rather than regionalized like 2006.

Assad no doubt wishes the same thing.

UPDATE: Oh, and then there was the air-only November 2012 conflict. I forgot about that one.

That's the one Hamas--if not Assad--probably prefers.

The Amazing Mark

Facebook experimented on its users to manipulate their emotional state.

Really?

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed on the weekend that in January of 2012, Facebook manipulated the feeds of 689,003 English language users, making slight alterations to see if they could change the large scale mood of the populace. The answer was a resounding yes, a terrifying and appalling yes. The most obvious scandal here is that Facebook is willing, just to see how strong it really is, to experiment with its users' happiness and sadness. But what is most troubling about the PNAS study is the simple fact that a new force for social control has emerged.

Sure, you can be upset about the abuse of their position and the failure to get user approval, and even the general idea that people can be manipulated this way.

As for me, I love Facebook. It is much better than MySpace. I'm going to use it again and again.

If I May State the Obvious

As Iran spars with the West over nuclear weapons, denying that Iran is even trying to acquire such weapons, their supreme nutball perhaps gives away a bit much in an effort to use a Western expression to push back.

Said the Iranian Supreme Nutball:

"They make it seem like Israel wants to attack, but America is stopping it: the good cop, bad cop trick," Khamenei told senior statesmen at an iftar (fast-breaking supper during the holy month of Ramadan) function.

If I may state the obvious, you play "good cop, bad cop" with criminals when you are trying to get the criminals to confess to a crime you know they committed.

Which is actually pretty accurate, I admit.

Stemming the Tide

Ukraine's slowly growing military power in the east is collecting the gains of the turning point rather than creating it.

This is good news:

Ukrainian security officials said on Sunday they were in full control of the former rebel stronghold of Slaviansk after re-taking it in a victory which President Petro Poroshenko said could mark a turning point in the fight against the separatists.

Yes, it is a battlefield victory that may signify an accelerated Ukrainian offensive against the pro-Russian secessionists.

But the real turning point was the May 25 election that demonstrated the Ukrainian government had legitimacy and which seemed to prompt a Russian pull back from direct intervention to capture the eastern portions of Ukraine where the secessionists are active.

Russia is still supporting these separatists. Russia has even sent anti-aircraft missiles and heavy armor, in addition to trained men and special forces.

But Russia seems to have concluded that they'd have to invade rather than count on the subliminal invasion of special forces, outside volunteers and mercenaries, and a minority of locals to simulate a widespread revolt. And the Russians probably realize their military isn't as good as they cay it is, and that they can't hold at an acceptable price what they could no doubt take.

Yet while Russia has decided not to win, the separatists have held a lot of the ground. So the Ukrainians must win. Their capture of Slaviansk is a step on the road to defeating the separatists.

Let's also not forget that Russia may have given up for now on taking eastern Ukraine, but they've mostly gotten away with taking Crimea from Ukraine. We'll see if there is a price to pay for that or whether we go back to business as usual.

Chicken or the Egg?

I know that the Sunni Arabs are the official victim in Iraq--despite their role in decades of Saddam's brutal rule and centuries of dominance over the majorities--but let's not forget that the Shia-dominated government of Iraq had good reasons to worry about the intentions of at least some of the Sunni Arab Iraqis.

Iraqi Prime Minister is the designated fall guy for the poor Sunni Arab-Shia relations that have allowed ISIL to lead a Sunni Arab revolt in Iraq's north (May) and west (January).

But let's not forget that Maliki had reason to be wary of the Sunni Arabs. Stratfor notes this detail of our Awakening effort that bore fruit in 2007:

The [Iraqi Sunni Arab] tribal sheikhs basically used the jihadists as a tool, and when the United States made concessions to them -- and essentially bought them off -- they quickly turned on the jihadists, who were nearly destroyed. In a December 2013 assessment of the group, Stratfor noted that the Sunni sheikhs did not totally destroy the Islamic State in Iraq because they thought they might need to use the group as a tool again. This dynamic played a large role in the current insurgency. Many Sunni sheikhs were unhappy with al-Maliki's treatment of them, prompting them to allow the jihadists to rise in order to elevate their strategic position against Baghdad.

There is enough fault on both sides for the collapse of their mutual grudging trust without settling on the Shia Maliki as the guy who has to go to pay for the current crisis.

My only concern is that Iraqis choose their leader under their laws in order to give that leader legitimacy--not under pressure from us to bend to our will.

Which is another reason I wanted our troops to remain in Iraq after 2011. Without our safety net, mutual fear prompted escalating "defensive" actions that the other side rightly saw as threats.

And so here we are.

We Came. We Saw. We Conquered. We Left

Remember, for the Obama administration, leaving Iraq in 2011 was a "Promise Kept."

I can't find the section where the administration says we tried to stay in Iraq after 2011 but Maliki thwarted us. No, getting out of Iraq was a promise kept. It isn't a regret. It's a boast.

I also find it significant that on the page devoted to "Iraq" rather than the "veterans" issue, the "Continuing Support" section isn't about defending our gains in Iraq, but on spending for veterans issues.

As long as we are clear on the issue.

Tip to Defense Industry Daily.