Just the Two of Us

The six-party talks about North Korea's nuclear arsenal will go on after North Korea finally agreed to return to the table.

North Korea is one of the parties so we can eliminate them as a party interested in getting North Korea to give up nukes. If not, there would be no talks on the issue since North Korea would simply not have nukes. There are no six-party talks (or five-party, or twelve-party, or whatever) over making sure Canada gets no nukes (or Spain, etc.).

China does not want North Korea to be nuclear free enough to risk North Korea's collapse or defeat. Sure, a nuclear-armed North Korea might prompt South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to go nuclear in the long run; but in the short run, supporting our aim by cutting off the vital Chinese exports of fuel and food would risk North Korean collapse and reunification with Seoul. As a potential arrow in their quiver to shoot at America and Japan, the Chinese won't let Pyongyang die. Lots of North Korean refugees in Manchuria would be unwelcome also. As an aside, how does this short-term calculus bolster the idea that China's ancient culture makes them patient and far-sighted?

Russia still has phantom superpower pains. Even though Russia relies on nukes for defending their shrunken but still far-flung realm, you'd think they'd want proliferation of nukes solidly contained. But no, the instinct to stick it to America and our allies is still too strong for them to apply pressure on North Korea or to side with us to enthusiastically.

Sadly, even South Korea is not reallly with us on this, as their deputy foreign minister makes clear:

"The most important thing is North Korea giving up its nuclear development, but there are motives and reasons why the North wants to have nuclear programs," Deputy Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said on a KBS radio program on Monday.

Song also said the regional powers at the talks needed to take into consideration how any deal would impact on the North's economic and political stability.

You'd think that a country with its capital and a quarter of its population under conventional, chemical, and now nuclear threat would be a little less concerned about the motives for your apparent enemy keeping you under threat of a sea of fire.

But of course, from South Korea's perspective, the north's political and economic stability are important since South Korea doesn't want to win. The cost of absorbing North Korea would make East Germany look like child's play.

As for the nuclear threat to South Korea, who cares? Seoul has been wrecked by North Korea already and for the last five decades a war would have wrecked Seoul just from the conventional forces of North Korea assaulting the city and probably taking it. Even in the last decade as South Korea's strength has grown to the point where we could now defeat an invasion and in my estimation likely hold Seoul, North Korea retains the ability to destroy Seoul with high explosive shelling without even crossing the DMZ. North Korean nukes add little to this calculation. Even if we assume that in another decade that South Korea will have enough strength to invade North Korea and win, Pyongyang could still lob a nuke at Seoul as they went down. Doing anything to upset the current balance is not in South Korea's interest right now.

Nukes are only a new threat to America when Pyongyang can develop long-range missiles and to Japan anytime the North can mount a nuke on a missile.

So in the end, the only two parties that want North Korea de-nuclearized are America and Japan, while the third party you'd think wants to end North Korea's nuclear threat undercuts the coming talks by offering lots of electricty right off the bat:

Japan and the United States urged Pyongyang on Tuesday to abandon nuclear weapons or risk failure in six-nation talks, while South Korea offered to supply its reclusive neighbor with electricity in return for a deal.

What is really disturbing is the very different needs for security that America and Japan have on the one hand and South Korea's security needs. Since America and Japan fear nukes, we are willing to risk conventional war in South Korea with the risk of destroying Seoul in order to forestall a nuclear missile threat to our cities away from the theater. Japan, which has endured two nuclear strikes, probably has more incentive than us pacifist post-war reputation to the contrary. South Korea fears any type of war that could result in Seoul's destruction, and so will risk North Korea possessing nuclear weapons capable of hitting America and Japan. A North Korean collapse could precipitate a war that destroys Seoul almost as much as a North Korean decision to invade. My question is when will these apparently incompatible objectives drive South Korea away from alliance with America?

I would like to take exception to this comment:

"Just having a meeting is meaningless. If you don't make any progress, there is no point," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters at his residence after his meeting with Rice.

On the contrary, stringing North Korea along with the hopes of getting an agreement among the four powers who don't really want North Korea to give up nukes while North Korea collapses is very meaningful if it keeps the Pillsbury Nuke Boy from rolling the dice on war if it looks like he has two choices: collapse or war. Right now the PNB has a third choice: win in negotiations. As long as we and the Japanese don't lose our nerve, we can slowly squeeze North Korea to the point of collapse.

In the end, our only solution to the competing worries may be to partition North Korea.

A Well-Rounded Navy

A little while back I wrote about the Navy building littoral combat ships (LCS) to go back to the high-low mix of World War II. Right now we have a lot of capital ships even though we call some of them "destroyers":

First of all, I want a fleet second to none. The fact is, we have that easily. So any discussion of our fleet must start with the fact that we could beat any conceivable combination of enemies at sea.

Second, prior to Pearl Harbor, our fleet had a half dozen carriers and a dozen battleships plus some cruisers and lots of destroyers in the surface fleet. We had few ships above 10,000 tons (the heavy cruisers and up) while the rest were 5,000-ton light cruisers and destroyers of less than 3,000 tons. One thing you have to remember is that the 55 "destroyers" of the Arleigh Burke class and the 3 Spruance class that we still have weigh in at 8-9,000 tons. These ships are only slightly smaller than our 24 Ticonderoga class cruisers that tilt the scales at 9,600 tons. [These numbers are slightly different from the Strategypage numbers below.]

Our destroyers are really major capital ships and quite capable. It is a mistake to think that the terms are comparable from pre-WW II days. I thought that with all these capital ships masquerading as minor ships based on terminolgy, the Navy was prepared to build a lot of smaller ships and build up numbers fairly easily, relying on the cushion of our current heavy fleet.

Strategypage writes that we are going to build even smaller ships, littoral surface craft (LSC):

It’s a 1,600 ton (full load) catamaran that is 262 feet long, 72 feet wide and can operate in as little as 12 feet of water. Top speed is about 90 kilometers an hour, which is a unique capability for U.S. navy ships (especially of this size) and a major advantage in coastal operations. Even in rough seas (with up to seven foot waves), the ship can do about 70 kilometers an hour. This is partly the result of using a T shaped hydrofoil. The Sea Fighter has a crew of only 26, and room below and on the deck for twelve cargo containers. These containers can are called "mission modules" and hold weapons, electronics or robotic air, surface or undersea vehicles for jobs like mine clearing, anti-submarine warfare, destroying surface ships or delivering commandoes. The deck is broad enough to handle two helicopters. There is a dock in the rear for launching boats. The ship can stay for sea about eight days at time.

I like this trend very much. Back in April 1998, Army magazine published an article of mine, "Landpower Needed for Decisive Victory" (link to synopsis).

I had earlier tried to sell this to the US Naval Institute (and as a whine, they purchased two articles of mine in the late 1990s yet never published them--thanks a lot...) and for them emphasized the need for a balanced fleet. For the Army audience, I emphasized the problem of influencing events ashore even as the squadrons evolved into more balanced fleets with even a mercenary army organized to project our power ashore.

Even a balanced fleet that finally emerged was, with the local army we raised, only able to win a limited victory from the sea:

Preble's war ended on September 9, 1804, when Samuel Barron arrived. The new squadron was the largest and most balanced yet and included two American-built bomb vessels and nine American-built gunboats. Barron still lacked a ground threat to complement his powerful fleet.

To create a ground threat, the Americans raised a mercenary army around Mohamet Caramanli, brother of the Bashaw and claimant to the throne. The agreement reached between the Americans and Caramanli called for Tripoli to use tribute to pay America for the costs of the war! With some difficulty, the force advanced from Egypt and seized Derna after a march of 600 miles with the support of American warships offshore.

On August 26, 1805, the American Consul General arrived in Tripoli to commence negotiations. Terms were agreed upon on June 3, 1805. America agreed to pay $60,000 for peace and ransom for the POWs, but not the customary annual tribute.

Of course, now we have powerful American land forces engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our big-ship fleet dominates the blue water as no navy has ever done. Yet we still need a fleet able to enter the littorals and fight. The LCS and the LSC are necessary components of a balanced fleet to contribute to all war scenarios.

And Skip the Official Report in French and English?

Despots like to disarm their citizenry before the democide or genocide commences. Bad on the morale of the killers if the victims resist, don't you know?

Some argue that the right to bear arms should be an international civil right. I tend to agree. As Instapundit notes:

The U.N. seems to feel differently, of course, but given its record of supineness -- if not outright complicity -- in the face of genocide, that isn't much of an objection.

Of course, if a people could defend themselves, we'd never see the sight of the international community springing into action like this:

Annan told the Financial Times in an interview it was vital for African countries to break their silence to protect the continent's credibility in the eyes of the world.

"What is important -- and what is lacking on the continent -- is (a willingness) to comment on wrong policies in a neighboring country," he said before attending a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) top industrialized nations in Scotland.

Annan did not name Zimbabwe in the interview, but a special representative of the U.N. secretary-general is assessing Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's demolition of shanty towns that human rights groups say has made 300,000 people homeless.

When confronted with the barbarity of Mugabe, the Secretary General unleashes the dreaded oblique rebuke. My only surprise is that Mugabe didn't rush to turn himself in to the ICC for speedy justice.

I'm sure in two years we'll have a professionally done report on the killing fields of Zimbabwe in several official languages, nicely indexed and hard bound with bright ribbons and wax stamps that just scream "we care" to sit alongside the Darfur reports and the other assorted bureaucratic recordings of genocide and inaction in the face of evil.

When Zimbabwe's neighbors don't care enough to do something--or even to say something--I see no reason why we should expend any blood to stop this problem. Remember, Somalia started as a mission of compassion before it ended with a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. And the people who want missions of mercy the most are the ones least likely to support aggressive military action when it becomes necessary.

If we do anything, just drop cheap and simple small arms plus ammo into Zimbabwe. At least give the people a fighting chance. Perhaps it should be their right to defend themselves.

Lack of Respect

The Easily Offended (Easily Offended in a licensed trademark of MoveOn.org and CAIR, and any use of this trademark will annoy them) like to go on about any accidental disrespect for the Koran by a non-Moslem (but hey, burn an American flag freely, they say).

Why do the Easily Offended stay conspicuously silent when Moslems defile Islam? Fighting from mosques, blowing up mosques, using mosques to store explosives and arms, and other mosque-related offenses don't even make the Easily Offended utter a single word of concern.

So this latest won't cause anybody to question the motives of the terrorists in Iraq when they attacked a funeral procession:

Gunmen yelled at Salwa Saihoud, the driver and four elderly passengers to get out. "Some of them were screaming 'shoot them! Shoot them now!'" she recalled.

The seven gunmen hurried into the minibus and drove off, taking with them the six men. They included the late Saihoud's two sons — Saad, 30 and father of two, and Adel, a 37-year-old who could not hear or speak and had two children.

It was the last time the family saw them alive.

A day later, police fished the coffin of 70-year-old Saihoud from the Latifiyah river. The next day, the six men were found with gunshot wounds to the head and neck. Some of the bodies were mutilated.

...

The Saihouds were particularly distressed about the mutilation of the bodies, especially that of 30-year-old father of four Walid Khayoun. His right arm, bearing a tattoo of Imam Ali's sword, was cut off.

But no, hacking and slaughtering never seems to mark the hackers and slaughterers as disrespectful of Islam. I mean, if a few jihadi terrorists think that they are the true believers (although Mahmoud is a little suspicious, as far as the first two are concerned. They once spotted him practicing his Moon Walk when he thought he was alone), who are the Easily Offended to object?

The Shia have been very patient, all things considered. The Sunnis best hope that the Sunni insurgency is quelled before the Shias get angry enough to apply their full power to vengeance instead of building a new and democratic Iraq.

And the best way for the Sunnis to join Iraq is to join forces with the Shias and Kurds to destroy the foreign Sunni jihadis in a war of national resistance.

Um, Never Mind

North Korea is a serious problem that we must solve. The Pillsbury Nuke Boy is a threat who must be eliminated.

I'm no U.S. Senator but this approach is just ridiculous:

Seriousness is demonstrated by spelling out a package to the North Koreans that addresses their fundamental need for economic assistance. It is demonstrated by rhetorical restraint. Name-calling aimed at our opponent has only hampered diplomacy. Seriousness means sending a senior U.S. official to meet with Kim Jong Il. And the way to know whether we have been trying hard enough is to determine whether our Asian negotiating partners also think diplomacy has been exhausted.

Urgency is well demonstrated by putting forth a timetable. The administration should take a page from its aborted diplomacy toward Iraq. Just as we did with Iraq, we should negotiate with the Europeans, Asians and others to set international -- read United Nations -- deadlines for solving the crisis. The North Koreans have said they regard a U.N. sanctions resolution as tantamount to war, and Security Council members such as China are not likely to support sanctions unless there is a failure of diplomacy that the international community views as entirely North Korea's fault. Just as we worked with our allies to set deadlines for U.N. inspections in Iraq, we should seek a deadline for the next meeting with North Korea and another one for a final diplomatic agreement.

I have to laugh. North Korea's fundamental need for assistance flows from North Koreas despotism that funneled all resources into nukes. Why validate such a decision by North Korea? They could get all the assistance they need if they unilaterally cancelled their nuke programs and starting feeding their people.

Seriousness is demonstrated by not being stampeded into validating North Korea's nuclear option or their blackmail program.

As for name-calling hindering diplomacy, this is clearly rot since the authors are eager for diplomacy despite two generations of North Korean verbal assaults on us and our allies. If we have to endure their tirades, they can endure our accurate descriptions of their democidal tyranny.

And a deadline? Like with Iraq? Did they just compare their proposal with their past efforts to require X + 1 UNSC resolutions, where X = the number of current resolutions on the subject? And I guess they just telegraphed their intention to turn on any US military efforts to deal with North Korea after exhausting diplomacy. I do appreciate that.

And let me clue them in. Diplomacy is exhausted. We have little choice to be patient now and wait for the North to collapse. I am happy with the 6-party talks precisely because they can never lead to any agreement. I fear any agreement will just be a cover for surrendering either explicitly or by failing to enforce what the North 'agrees' to do. As it is, the talks (or hope of talks) keep the North teetering along with the hope that we will break and just bribe them instead of making them face the stark choice of collapse or war.

North Korea wants nukes, so the talks are doomed just from this point of view. Plus, our negotiating partners of China, Russia, and South Korea don't really want to stop North Korea from going nuclear. Only America and Japan share this goal.

But like I said, I want the talks to continue just to give North Korea hope that they'll win at talks while they collapse.

And despite the good senators' calls for bold surrender, the North Koreans have crawled back to the talks:

"The U.S. side clarified its official stand to recognize (North Korea) as a sovereign state, not to invade it and hold bilateral talks within the framework of the six-party talks," KCNA reported.

North Korea has long demanded that Washington apologize for remarks by Rice labeling it as one of the world's "outposts of tyranny." North Korea said Saturday it took Hill's comments at the Beijing meeting as "a retraction" of that earlier remark and decided to return to the nuclear talks.

The nuclear talks with representatives from China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the two Koreas last happened in June 2004. Since then, North Korea has refused to attend, citing "hostile" U.S. policies.

Hey, whatever they need to tell themselves to sleep at night. The North Koreans had to really want to return to talks to portray recent events as meeting their demands.

Thank goodness we didn't rush to offer a package addressing the North's fundamental needs and establishing a timetable for giving up as the senators suggested. It might have gotten in the way of the Pillsbury Nuke Boy scrambling back to talks before his sorry-ass state collapses around him.

Hey, I'm under no obligation to restrain my rhetoric. I am hostile.

Let Me Speak Slowly So You'll Understand

Tom Oliphant was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt.

Oliphant says he is generally supportive of fighting the jihadis. I know little of Oliphant. My impression of him isn't one of support but I concede I don't follow his work--only noting it when someone else notes it and links. I admit that this will lead to just the most outrageous statements.

Nonetheless, what to make of this:

HH: But if they had had, for example, radioactive material with which to make a dirty bomb or a biological agent like anthrax, do you think they would have used them in the course of doing this?

TO: Not necessarily, because what we're not understanding is the choices that are being made inside terrorist cells today. I understand theories and generalizations. But I think when the rubber meets the road, you're encountering real terrorists with very specific plans. There's no question in my mind that you're right, that many of the people involved in international terrorism would gladly used a weapon of mass destruction if they had one at their fingertips. What ought to disturb us, because it is going on right now, it that there appears to be a trend toward the selection of soft targets, and the acceptance of casualties, forty, fifty, is a major event to them now. And if this trend gets further established, the loss of life is going to be substantial over time.

Oliphant seems to be saying that while many terrorists would use a nuke if they had it, the rest (majority?) have specific plans that are now tending toward "soft targets" (and just when wasn't their target list composed of civilians??) with specific plans. Oliphant seems to be arguing that the enemy is deliberately choosing to kill only a couple score at a time for some political purpose.

I don't know what theories and generalizations Oliphant is talking about, but my reading of the enemy is that they want to kill as many of us as possible and that there is no message being sent.

Or rather, the message is they want all of us dead and would we please be a little more cooperative about dying. Like the Spanish who have sportingly agreed to take their place in line while the actual fighters are targeted by the jihadis.

Our message back needs to be, "No, you first." Just kill the jihadis.

No regrets, people. This is a battle to the death and I want it to be their deaths.

Within a Minute--Except One

I noted earlier that I thought the London bus bomb was possibly a bomber fleeing home after cold feet, a defective bomb, or a change of heart.

The London police seem to have a new timeline that fits with this hunch:

Transit officials originally said Thursday's blasts occurred over a 26-minute span, but computer software that tracked train locations and electric circuits subsequently determined the first blast shattered the rush-hour commute at 8:50 a.m in Aldgate station, east London, with the next two erupting within 50 seconds.

A fourth explosion tore through a double-decker bus near a subway entrance, killing 13 people, nearly an hour later.

Saying that the bus bomber was heading toward the target means you have to assume that the terrorists were not in fact trying for a time-on-target blow to maximize the death toll by minimizing the ability to react to an early bomb. So why did the other three go off within 50 seconds of each other? It makes no sense that the bomber was going toward a target.

So what target was an hour earlier on the bus route? Will all the cameras in London be able to identify who got on the bus with a bomb and where the terrorist got on?

And of course, what neighborhoods were the bus scheduled to go to later on the route? Any mosques nearby?

Not News, Apparently

Remember the recent story about the Virginia mosque incident? It made all the news. In the face of beheadings and suicide bombings and hate directed against us, the certainty that an American had burned a Koran was horrifying to the elites of this country. Fox News should refresh your memory:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has called on Americans to read the Koran to show that "bigots do not represent our nation's values" — this after a shopping bag filled with a burnt copy of the Koran and other scorched Arab writings was found outside a mosque in Blacksburg, Virginia last month.

The American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee called it a hate crime, insisting, "books don't burn themselves and end up outside of a mosque."

Indeed they don't. Usually they go up in flames when jihadi terrorists blow up mosques. But I digress. This story continues:

But it turns out the bag came from a Muslim student at Virginia Tech, who was hoping the Koran, burned in a house fire last year, could be given a respectful disposal. The student, who called police last week , said he left a note with the shopping bag, but it apparently blew away.

Funny this didn't seem to make it above the fold or into the major news. How many people still hold this as proof of our equal guilt to the murderers out there? The real story just blew away in the wind.

And as an aside, why is CAIR calling for further defiling of the Koran? If non-Moslem Americans did read the Koran as they advocate, I'm sure that CAIR would then complain that all of us defiled the Koran by letting our infidel hands touch their holy book--you know, like they complain happened at Gitmo?

I'm Not Sure I Even Care

Russia is getting uppity as I wrote recently, given their aggressive actions against Finland and former Soviet states.

Via Instapundit, the Russians are pressing their Baltic neighbors:

Europe has been quite passive while Russia has continued its bullying in the Baltic. This bullying has taken many forms: Russia canceled the border agreement with Estonia that had been already agreed on, in Russia's favor, in June. As a pretext for the canceling of the agreement, Russia used an Estonian Parliament resolution that called the Soviet Union's occupation of Estonia…an occupation. Putin's Russia has started a campaign against its Baltic neighbors, using denial of historical facts as a way to attack its neighbors experience with Soviet Union.

I can't bring myself to care very much even though this is frustrating and annoying. Russia should be our friend. But we have China to worry about and a Vodka-crippled and shrinking Russia just isn't going to be much of a threat to us even if they go completely Soviet again. Simply put, this is a self-correcting problem:

As so often is the case, Russia's strategy of bullying may in the end harm its own interests. Russia's fear of NATO enlargement to Finland has to be seen in a wider perspective: for Russia, a NATO country is out of its sphere of influence and so possibly an enemy (or at least an obstacle). Violations of Estonian airspace ended suddenly when NATO airplanes started to patrol Estonian airspace.

If Russia becomes a threat, the Europeans who drifted away from us after the Soviets collapsed will re-engage to stop that threat. We won't need to use our power to contain this rising threat if it should happen--Europe will. This is a reason not to disband NATO in favor of the EU defense alliance. Our leadership of NATO will guard against the Old Euros trying to appease the threat at the expense of the new Europe on the front line.

All this makes Russia's apparent bid for past glories as sad as Al Bundy going on about four touchdowns in one high school game. Like Al (who I admire so much in a tragic, anti-hero way), the Russians are not and will not be major league.

The Russians need to join us, not engage in self-destructive behavior that will only alienate their only source of help when the Chinese extract all the military technology they can from Russia and decide that China should administer Russia's far east.

Oh Hogwash

Terrorists in Iraq murdered the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq and this article says the terrorists have succeeded in dividing Iraq and Egypt:

The crisis may have sown the seeds of distrust between Iraq's Shiite-led government and Egypt — an Arab powerhouse whose goodwill Iraq needs.

Oh hogwash. First of all, there are plenty of seeds of distrust to grow between a Sunni state and a Shia-majority state.

Second, Iraq and Egypt have long been rivals for leadership in the Arab world. Egypt, by its size, military power, and confrontation with Israel, was the leader of the Arab world until agreeing to peace with Israel. Then Iraq attempted to take advantage of Egypt's dethroning to become the leader. Being the Sunni Arab world's shield and sword against Shia Persian Iran was supposed to vault them to the top. Stalemate gave Egypt a chance to gain rehabilitation in the Arab world by helping Iraq. Iraq's decision to confront the US led to two defeats that made Iraq barely the leader of Iraq alone. With a democratic Iraq allied to the US emerging, Iraq could supplant Egypt in power and prestige. If the Arab world moves toward freedom, democracy, and hopefully economic progress while Egypt stays mired in authoritarian rule and stagnation, Egypt will lose out again.

So don't forget history when looking at today's events. Heck, it may be that Egypt's hesitant moves toward democracy are being taken to avoid losing out to a democratic Iraq for the leadership role of the Arab world.

Of course, free and democratic Arab states may not make that title as important as it once was when autocrats ran the board.

Axis of El Vil Update

We must watch Venezuela and that nutjob Hugo Chavez.

I've long considered myself a realist as far as foreign policy is concerned. Yes, during the Cold War I'd have loved it if all our allies were constitutional democracies, but given the price we'd pay for losing to the Soviets, I was willing to hold my nose and support authoritatian regimes that helped us against the main enemy. I figured we should quietly prod such friends to be more democratic and to respect human rights while bashing our enemies for similar behavior. I felt--and feel--no guilt for that outlook. Taiwan is today better than China. South Korea better than North Korea. You fight with the allies you have--not the ones you'd like to have.

Since 9-11, I've come to viewing the reform of the Islamic world as the only realist option to dealing with the problem of Islamist jihadis. I don't see it as a particularly idealistic position. I don't, for example, see why we should waste military efforts saving Zimbabwe when the African continent doesn't care and the vaunted international community doesn't care. Zimbabwe is a tragedy that we can assist others in addressing if they take the lead, but our resources must be focused on our main enemy. Our resources are not unlimited and we will not bear any burden to solve any problem anywhere in the world.

That said, as we focus on the Axis of Evil and A of E wannabees, we must not neglect what is going on south of here in our own hemisphere. Unlike Zimbabwe, Venezuela under the tinpot thug Hugo Chavez has oil, is close to us geographically, and is allied with Castro's Cuba. Like Zimbabwe, Venezuela is also forging closer ties with communist China. Nice, eh?

Winds of Change has a good report on developments in Venezuela. This one sentence sums it up:

While exporting and creating instability in Latin American neighbors, Hugo Chavez is busy consolidating legal and extra-legal power in Venezuela.

This vile one is trying his hardest to achieve evil-level capabilities. At some point we will need to take notice of his actions. While it would be cheaper to do so now rather than later, this also runs into our need to deal with jihadis now. Even though we have the power to deal with him, I think our national will to deal with problems is limited. Take on too many secondary problems now and the public won't support later action against primary threats.

So we watch. And wait. And constantly judge whether Chavez remains vile and annoying or whether he achieves evil and threatening. And if he achieves the latter, judge what we must do and can afford to do.

Or who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and he'll slip and fall in the shower, breaking his neck.

They Wouldn't Take Our Surrender if We Did

Already the cries that London got what it deserved because Britain fights with America in Iraq are going up.

Of course, this causes a problem for the Americans here who like to say of course they favored toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan--it is only Iraq that is a mistake and causing the enemy to fight. Sadly for these types, our enemy won't cooperate. They lump the "good" war in Afghanistan with the "bad" war in Iraq. As Victor Hanson put it:

So here we are. Even though the killers profess revenge equally for Afghanistan (the so-called “right” war), they expect Westerners to scream “Iraq.”

Both are reasons to kill anybody who opposes them. And there are many other reasons, too, as Hitchens writes so well:

We know very well what the "grievances" of the jihadists are.

The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art. The grievance of the existence of Hinduism. The grievance of East Timor's liberation from Indonesian rule. All of these have been proclaimed as a licence to kill infidels or apostates, or anyone who just gets in the way.

FOR a few moments yesterday, Londoners received a taste of what life is like for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, whose Muslim faith does not protect them from slaughter at the hands of those who think they are not Muslim enough, or are the wrong Muslim.

It is a big mistake to believe this is an assault on "our" values or "our" way of life. It is, rather, an assault on all civilisation. I know perfectly well there are people thinking, and even saying, that Tony Blair brought this upon us by his alliance with George Bush.

Our cause is actually saved by the ridiculous catalog of "crimes" and grievances that our enemies profess to fight over. Even if our appeasers could shamefully enact their policies of treating these childish rants of Islamists as real claims, our enemies would not accept the surrender. I'd like to think that even Jimmy Carter would recoil from swathing his daughter in a burqa. I'd like to think that even Sean Penn would refuse to stone a homosexual and cry "Enough!" Hitchens continues after ridiculing the link between Iraq and London:

Don't even try to connect the two. By George Galloway's logic, British squaddies in Iraq are the root cause of dead bodies at home. How can anyone bear to be so wicked and stupid? How can anyone bear to act as a megaphone for psychotic killers?

The grievances I listed above are unappeasable, one of many reasons why the jihadists will lose. They demand the impossible - the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.

So we must fight by default. Even those who would appease would find in the end that there is no one with whom to negotiate, let alone capitulate.

But these same people continue to make it more difficult for us to fight our Islamist jihadi enemies. Hanson addresses this point:

To criticize Islamic fascism is supposedly to be unfair to Islam, so we allow on our own shores mullahs and madrassas to spread hatred and intolerance, as part of our illiberal acceptance of “not offending Islam.”

It is not that we don’t believe in Western values as much as we don’t even know what they are anymore. The London bombings were only a reification of what goes on daily with impunity blocks away in the mosques and Islamist schools of London.

The enemy knows that and thrives on it. That refuge in religion is why imams shout that “Islam doesn’t condone such things” — even as bin Laden has become a folk hero on the Arab Street. Jihadists sense that even here at home more Americans are more concerned about a flushed Koran at Guantanamo Bay than five Americans fighting for the Iraqi jihadists or Taliban sympathizers in Lodi, California.

As long as there is not any price to be paid for Islamism, either by governments abroad or purveyors of its hatred in the West, the propaganda works and the killing will go on. But when a renegade Saudi Prince, Pakistani general, London imam, or Lodi mosque leader screams out to the jihadist, “Stop that before those crazy Americans really do go to war,” the war, in fact, will be over and won.

This is not and should not be a war against Islam. It is a war against Islamist jihadis who claim to fight in all Islam's name. But our Left's refusal to admit that Islamist jihadis are our enemy for fear of implying all Islam is our enemy just makes it more likely that our people will eventually think just that. If hunting down and killing beheaders and suicide bombers who slaughter civilians offends Islam generally as our Left says, why shouldn't the logical conclusion be that all Islam is guilty? If not, why would Moslems be offended that we are killing terrorists?

And this isn't just our problem to solve, of course. Avoiding the destruction of Islam is not just a matter of morality for us but of survival for Islam. The clear majority of Moslems who would not slaughter innocents but who are at best uneasily quiet about it have a duty to join our fight against Islamist jihadis. Friedman actually gets it quite right when he writes:

Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

One way or the other, we will win this. As Hitchens writes, losing is not an option that our enemies will allow--only our death or total submission are options as far as they are concerned.

Yet we still have a choice of how to win. We either win by killing and discrediting a narrow subset of Islam and free Islam generally from the guilt of association with these terrorists; or we mistakenly defend the honor of Islam by refusing to see that only a part of Islam is our enemy. Since more Moslems die at the hands of the jihadis, it seems impossible to fail to recognize this difference. But if we refuse to see the difference, since surrender is not an option in the end, we will have to destroy all of Islam to avoid death and defeat.

Is this what the Left wants to see happen? Mecca and Medina slags of glass and ethnic cleansing in the West of all Moslems because we shrink from even identifying our enemy?

We have to ruthlessly kill the terrorists while siding with the wider Moslem world to enlist their aid in killing the terrorists.

London Bombing

Two unrelated thoughts about the London bombing after listening to the news on the way home and at home.

1. About 1,500 London police were in Scotland to watch over the bongo-playing puppet-masters of the anti-globalization movement. Posing as genuine revolutionaries, these pampered Westerners do have some dangerous types so we can't risk ignoring them. Was London thinner on the ground because of this ongoing tantrum against reality?
2. Two bombs were discovered undetonated in London. Was the bus bomb really an attempt to get people fleeing the tube? Or was this a bomber who got cold feet, or a change of heart, or had what he thought was a defective bomb, and was trying to go home? Sheer speculation but it will be interesting to see if the undetonated bombs were on the tube as well. If so, the bus bomb is an oddity that must be explained.

The war goes on. We must kill our enemies until they stop coming at us.

UPDATE: Investigators in London apparently have some reason to think that the bus bomb may have been intended for another target.

Fight Them in Their Streets

Islamist terrorists have struck again. This time in London.

Before this, Americans, Moroccans, Kenyans, Australians, Indonesians, Spanish, Iraqis, and Turks have died at the enemy's hands. Jews, of course, have been killed. If you are a whackjob Islamist and you can't kill Jews, what's the point of being a whackjob Islamist, eh? But even Saudis have been killed for being insufficiently whacko Islamic. Go figure.

And now British victims lie in the hundreds to be mourned or tended to:

Four blasts tore through packed London underground trains and a bus on Thursday, killing at least 37 people in the British capital's deadliest peacetime attack that disrupted a summit of world leaders.

Police said the four explosions -- within an hour of each other during the morning rush hour -- also wounded about 700 people. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy later quoted Britain's government as saying 50 people had been killed.

It doesn't matter to our enemies who they kill. Just that they kill those who do not fully share their sick vision of Islam.

I don't want to understand them. I don't want to appreciate their many grievances--from the loss of Spain to the wanton display of Britney Spear's navel. I don't want to respect them or their sick objectives. I don't want any weepy "we are all Britons, now" sentiments. Le Monde's declaration wasn't really a statement that Europeans were all Americans. If that was true, they'd have joined us enthusiastically in exterminating the diseased movement that dreams of getting nuclear weapons to kill us on an industrial scale. No, Le Monde hoped that after 9-11 Americans would become like them--that we were all Europeans, now. With a sophisticated shrug that knows that Old Europe has neither the will nor the resources to fight back, the Europeans would have moved on to the next item on the agenda to negotiate trade deals with whatever whackjob ruler with cash was in town.

The bastards who killed and wounded so many in this brutal London attack on innocents must be hunted down and killed. We must kill them, and kill more, and keep killing them until those that are left are too dispirited to do anything else but go home with their souls crushed knowing that the caliphate will not be reborn by their deeds.

I wrote in Kill the Dots that nobody is safe from the crazed killers we face:

We indeed have traveled a long way since 9-11. Too many people are back to 9-10. They hate us, people. All of us. Not just the current administration. Not just the Red State citizens. Owning a bongo and tie-dyed shirts won't save you. Nor will spouting sympathy for their cause. We're all targets and they'll dance over our graves if we let them.

Stop debating to the point of paralysis over what dots should have been connected and what dots existed. The dots keep killing us in the most gruesome manner they can come up with. Just kill the freaking dots! We are at war and we must win.

Churchill spoke in Britain's darkest hour of World War II when the British looked like they would be alone in the fight against fascism. It was a speech of defiance:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender[.]

The enemy this time has made it to the streets of London. We need to make the enemy fight in their streets, and their hills. We already have the strength to do so. All we need is the clear-headed will to fight and kill the enemy so that one day we won't need armed guards and dogs at our airports, subways, and train stations. So we won't have to hose human flesh from our streets.

Come on Europe, can we all finally be Americans? I just don't understand how people can fail to still be furious at the Islamofascists who stalk and murder us. I don't understand how people can fail to see we are at war with an enemy who we must kill--or who will kill us if we fail.

Fear and Loathing in Peking

TM Lutas responds to my recent China post and thinks that fear may be a motivation for China to invade Taiwan:

If the PRC is much less stable than we think it is. If the leadership sees itself getting ousted because the money to subsidize the great economic frauds of the SOEs [Note: state-owned enteprsies] is running out, it is a realistic possibility that they will take Taiwan for the money, cut loose the SOEs, and blame their resultant recession on the inevitable economic boycott that the rest of the world will impose on the PRC.

I can hardly disagree given that I wrote this piece (in the context of refuting the CCP idea that they are the modern-day Union to the Taiwanese Confederacy):

Taiwan is now the free part of China and the mainland is almost fully slave-inhabited with the slave-owning communist party on top of the heap, one would think that the Taiwanese should be cast in the role of Union liberator despite their miniscule size compared to the "secessionists" on the mainland.

Perhaps that is exactly what the Peking communists are worried about. After all, the old KMT captured all of China in the 1920s campaign called "the Northern Expedition."

China has multiple reasons for conquering Taiwan. And at any given point in time, one may stand out or prompt action at a particular time. Fear of the future is certainly a top contender to spark a war. TM notes a financial fear while I note a political rival fear. Either could motivate the Chinese and either could be right. As TM notes, calculations get messed up when they are not done rationally (or at least not as we would define rational). Fear messes up rational thought pretty effectively. General Sherman said "fear is the beginning of wisdom." Perhaps. But often, fear is the beginning of really stupid decisions.

TM also notes that the KMT on Taiwan and the CCP on the mainland share certain common viewpoints. I've also written that I worry about the KMT's commitment to defending Taiwan against a Chinese campaign to absorb the island:

It may seem counter-intuitive to worry about the KMT succumbing to the call of the homeland. They were the bitter enemy of the communists for over 80 years now. But the KMT officially believes in one China. They theoretically wanted to rule all of China since being defeated and fleeing to Taiwan over 50 years ago. I think the KMT can be vulnerable to pressure on the point of Chinese pride in what the communists have built. Might they not see developments on the mainland as acceptable? Get rich and be part of a rising Chinese civilization once again. The KMT was not in favor of democracy until the last 15(?) years or so. Pride in Chinese civilization runs deep. Commitment to democracy is still shallow for many of the older KMT leaders.

So TM Lutas' point is well taken on this as well.

An added point raised that I've also pondered is what we should do if Taiwan voluntarily joined China. That would be very bad. Bad like West Germany joining East Germany in the Cold War. West Germany was an asset that had to be kept out of Soviet hands. Likewise, we can hardly allow China to gain a platform to protect their mainland, project power into the western Pacific and the South China Sea, and interdict Japanese (and others') trade routes. Taiwan also represents a storehouse of modern technology and lots of cash to be looted and used against us.

We have a moral duty to help a free and democratic people keep the Chinese communists at bay. But letting communist China absorb Taiwan even if the Taiwanese want this would be a major strategic setback. That would be quite a dilemma for us.

Of course, if China became free and democratic, then the Taiwanese joining China wouldn't matter to us strategically and wouldn't compromise moral commitments. Win-win. Can we be that successful or lucky? We've dealt with a lot over the last century and won every time. I wouldn't assume we can't be that successful or lucky.

Green on Green

The Sunni Baathists hope that they can count on support from Sunni Arab states to help them win in Iraq and end a Shia-dominated Arab state.

The Islamist jihadis inside Iraq hate Sunni Arab states.

So when the jihadi allies of the Baathists start capping Arab diplomats in Baghdad, it can't be good for pan-terrorist solidarity:

Insurgents were pursuing diplomats to sow a climate of fear and "scare the other diplomatic missions so that they won't expand their presence in Iraq," Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kuba told reporters.

"This is a message from the terrorists to the Arab countries not to open embassies in Iraq and to prevent security, economic and political overtures to Iraq," said Abbas al-Bayati, a member of the parliamentary foreign relations committee.

The actions of the foreign terrorists undercut all their crap about resistance to the foreigners. And the local Sunni insurgents don't like this turn of events, apparently (via Instapundit):

Tribal leaders in Husaybah are attacking followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist who established the town as an entry point for al-Qa'eda jihadists being smuggled into the country.

The reason, the US military believes, is frustration at the heavy-handed approach of the foreigners, who have kidnapped and assassinated local leaders and imposed a strict Islamic code.

Who'd have thought that the Iraqi so-called Minutemen's tactics of beheadings and terror would fail to win hearts and minds?

A true national resistance against the real foreign invaders is taking shape.

Exit Strategies

Proof positive that those who speak of exit deadlines for US forces really just want America to lose:

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which groups Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, urged a deadline be set for withdrawal of the foreign forces from its member states in light of what it said was a decline in active fighting in Afghanistan.

The alliance's move appeared to be an attempt to push the United States out of a region that Moscow regards as historically part of its sphere of influence and in which China seeks a dominant role because of its extensive energy resources.

Yeah guys, right after Moscow announces an exit deadline for withdrawing from former Soviet states and the islands they stole from Japan in World War II.

And right after Peking announces an exit deadline from Tibet and a deadline for abandoning ambitions to conquer Taiwan if the Taiwanese don't want to joing China.

Exit deadlines, indeed.

Provoking Islamists

One train of thought has it that we provoked Islamist terrorism against us.

This article is fascinating. [October 2006 UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. Here's a good link to the article.] After spelling out the facts of immigration by Moslems into Europe and their failure to integrate under varying European visions of how to host their immigrants, the article hits three related points about how certain Moslems are enflamed into going jihadi.

The first is the idea that Iraq has provoked Islamists to take up arms:

According to senior counterintelligence officials, classified intelligence briefings, and wiretaps, jihadists extended their European operations after the roundups that followed September 11 and then again, with fresh energy, after the invasion of Iraq. Osama bin Laden now provides encouragement and strategic orientation to scores of relatively autonomous European jihadist networks that assemble for specific missions, draw operatives from a pool of professionals and apprentices, strike, and then dissolve, only to regroup later.

After the preceding parts on how Moslems radicalized in Europe under different policies, it is difficult for me to take this charge seriously. If freeing 25 million Moslems from a "secular" dictator like Saddam who tortured and killed on an industrial level "enraged" Moslems and "caused" them to hate us, then the word "cause" is meaningless to describe the problem. Added to the simple fact that jihadis killed 3,000 of us on 9-11 without Iraq to enrage them and indeed flocked to Afghanistan for training in the sensitive decade, this is clearly hooey. As a bonus, consider that in the 1990s we saved Moslems in Somalia, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, and in northern Iraq with direct military action. Shouldn't that have earned us some points with a normal population?

The second point is that Europe needs to do something to solve their Moslem problem. The Moslem population in Europe is sick. And arguing whether the numerous European policies contributed to this state of affairs is irrelevant. The slums of Europe are breeding grounds for Islamist terrorists and the Europeans are realizing they need to do something different:

Can Muslims become Europeans without Europe opening its social and political circles to them? So far, it appears that absolute assimilationism has failed in France, but so has segregation in Germany and multiculturalism in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Could there be another way? The French an the headscarf in public schools; the Germans ban it among public employees. The British celebrate it. The Americans tolerate it. Given the United States' comparatively happier record of integrating immigrants, one may wonder whether the mixed U.S. approach -- separating religion from politics without placing a wall between them, helping immigrants slowly adapt but allowing them relative cultural autonomy -- could inspire Europeans to chart a new course between an increasingly hazardous multiculturalism and a naked secularism that estranges Muslims and other believers. One thing is certain: if only for the sake of counterterrorism, Europe needs to develop an integration policy that works. But that will not happen overnight.

Nothing the Europeans have tried worked and the American model is not possible. It is too late to open the gates and let the Moslems in as equal citizens. They have too much fanaticism and too many grievances to assimilate even if the Europeans could accept them.

The third point is what will follow a decision to try something different when those peaceful options fail. Eventually the Europeans will have to choose between surrender and harsher options. Will Bosnia and Kosovo be the models the Europeans will follow in desperation as the alternative to surrender? I don't think the Euros are so permanently soft after five decades of easy life under our protection that they have forgotten centuries of brutal ruthlessness. The Europeans turned the Moslems back inside Europe itself at Tours and Vienna, and expelled them from Spain. They are capable of doing so again.

And this time the US won't come to the rescue of Moslems under assault. Unlike our past military actions to save Moslems, we won't intervene to save Europe's Moslems. We wouldn't want to provoke Moslem anger by doing so, eh? Ingratitude for past efforts will suppress any sympathy we have. Continued terrorism will lead us to at least remain quiet as Europe goes about its dirty work.

I dread this outcome.

I've said this before, but our war on terrorism is as much a war to save Islam is it is to save ourselves from Islamist terrorism. If it ever comes to a war of civilizations, we will end the extreme restraint that we have fought with thus far. I don't want to go that far. I want to lose our cities in nuclear flames even less.

Olympic Warm-Up Event

I took some grief for my post Ready. Set. Go? that speculated that China was getting ready to invade Taiwan on the eve of the 2008 summer Olympics. The element of surprise could be quite huge if done then. Who'd think Peking would blow their coming out party?

Well me for one. Hitler's Olympic pageant didn't work out so well for him in the long run so why wouldn't China figure that solid real estate gains were more important? And if the Chinese think that people wouldn't dare miss the pageant, how powerful would they seem if countries still attended despite a brazen conquest of a free island?

Many thought it was silly of me to assert and that China did not have the capability of invading any time in the near future. (Though I was looking ahead three years strictly speaking, so this should be irrelevant. Nonetheless I do think China could attempt an invasion today if it had to.)

Well, I may have been a little too cautious in my estimates of when China would invade (via Winds of Change):

Meanwhile, one crucial element in China's overall consideration is the 2008 Olympics, which Beijing is set to host. Professor Dreyer says if China thinks Taiwan is acting provocatively, it could, in her words, "act sharply," sooner rather than later. "I think they (Beijing) would like to get it over before the Olympics, because I think they don't want the Olympics disrupted. But they consider it the business of taking Taiwan to be more important than the Olympics. Nonetheless, if they could get it over with in, let's say, 2006 or early 2007, the heat would be off. The Olympics would take place anyway," she said.

But security expert, Mr. Fisher, says he believes it would not be so easy for China to win back the rest of the world if it did attack Taiwan. "I think the government in Beijing is deluding itself if it believes it can overcome the global reaction, a reaction that will likely include very destabilizing economic embargoes, which will last a long time and have a fantastic effect on stability and political relations that China has around the world," she said.

The key to the issue is whether Beijing thinks Washington will get involved. The United States has promised to help Taiwan defend itself if the island is attacked by China.

The article also notes that the example of democracy on Taiwan could be destabilizing to Peking as I wrote here.

If the key is whether or not Peking can delude itself into thinking the world and America will just look the other way, I'm not going to sleep easily the next few years. I assumed that the Chinese would attack in 2008 to maximize surprise. If the Chinese think the world is so timid that they don't need this maximum surprise, why not invade sooner?

Still, China is building for a 2008 timeframe it seems so I still think that China would go early only if they felt they had to based on events on Taiwan. Here's my invasion scenario.

I'd sleep better if the Taiwanes would buy enough ammo to do more than fire a symbolic volley before surrendering. Everything depends on Taiwan holding out long enough for Japan and America to intervene.

At least China's intentions are getting a serious hearing instead of just blanket dismissals. The Chinese aren't ten feet tall but they are capable enough to harm us.

The Main Enemy

The main enemy. That's what the Chinese government considers America, according to a Chinese defector in Australia (via Winds of Change):

"The United States is considered by the Chinese Communist Party as the largest enemy, the major strategic rival," Mr. Chen [Yonglin] told The Washington Times in a telephone interview from Australia, where he is in hiding after breaking with Beijing in May.

All Chinese government officials are ordered to gather information about the United States, "no matter how trivial," he said. "The United States occupies a unique place in China's diplomacy," Mr. Chen said.

This isn't too surprising. And it isn't just that we are the most powerful nation on the planet so naturally they would see us as a potential enemy. India doesn't. Japan doesn't. Britain doesn't. I'm not sure what the heck the Russians are thinking. And in my generous moods, I don't even think the French think of us as an enemy. We are friends or competitors as worst for these countries. With some silly resentment thrown in for a couple of them.

But China does think of us as an enemy. Why? Because they are evolving into a fascist state and see us as a natural enemy--we who have slain militarists, fascists, and communists in turn during the last century.

We were much stronger economically than either Japan or Germany in 1941 yet they still were a tough challenge. Don't underestimate Chinese ability to harm us even if our economy is still much larger. We are the middle kingdom of Earth and China doesn't like that one bit.

More Army Combat Brigades

At one time, I argued for adding 40,000 troops to the Army in order to create two new divisions. Later, I argued for the same number but thought we should create separate brigades--perhaps eight instead of six in two divisions--in order to put more line units into the mix.

More recently I've given the Pentagon the benefit of the doubt as it plans to add ten to fifteen more brigades within the force structure. Since this plan will result in more brigades at minimum than my call for more troops and perhaps double the amount, I'm willing to hold off on arguing for higher end strength to see how the Army does with this plan. Strategypage has some details:

As part of the major reorganization the U.S. Army has been undergoing for the last 18 months, it is using outsourcing and temps in a big way. As a result, about 20 percent of army troops are finding themselves getting moved, from civilian type jobs, closer to the fighting. The army is scrutinizing every job they have, and deciding which could be done by civilians. While the media reports a “recruiting crises” in the army, they are missing the real story of how the army is reorganizing so that it can get along without the people it is having trouble recruiting. The people who actually do the fighting continue to join up, and stay in. It used to be that most army jobs were, well, just government jobs. Once a year you might have to go to the rifle range, and a couple of times a year you might have to load gear on trucks and go “camping” (field exercises) for a few days. You wore a uniform, and saluted your superiors. Not a lot different than working for a major corporation, except the army had a better pension plan.

Moving 20%, or about 100,000 troops, to combat units while replacing these troops with contract civilians is the equivalent of adding 100,000 new slots to the Army. It is easy for some hawks to argue that we need more troops either in Iraq or in the Army--or both, in order to burnish their independent credentials by criticizing the administration. Those who oppose the war in general can make this criticism too in order to appear tough.

But in reality, the Army is working to increase the result wanted--more combat units--by a method that is different than just adding to the old structure. Indeed, the effect of the Pentagon approach will result in twice the improvement that the results of those who want to add to end strength would achieve.

I'm willing to say I was wrong about adding end strength and give the Pentagon the chance to increase combat power their way. Perhaps I just don't feel the need to pose as a tough guy out-toughing the Pentagon.

I can always call for 40,000 new soldiers again if this path doesn't work.

This is Just Horrifying

I try very hard not to associate criticism with disloyalty in the war. I criticize aspects of the war or defense policy without wanting us to lose.

But the hard core Left sets the tone for even the opposition that does not actively seek our defeat. The majority hears the words the hard core uses and feels sympathy for them. And they can't quite bring themselves to denounce the Moores, fake Indian professors, or Chomskies of their side for wanting us to lose or thinking we deserve the death and destruction we've endured. The hard Left types who spout off sound so sincerely for peace, human rights, and democracy, the general Left seem to think.

So when a Leftist like Daniel Lazare gives away the game (via Powerline) it is just horrifying to read:

Michael Medved: Daniel Lazare, would you like to see the elections scheduled for January 30 in Iraq fail?

Daniel Lazare: I'm totally opposed to what the U.S. is doing in Iraq. Therefore, I would no more support U.S. elections than I would support German elections in France during World War II.

Michael Medved: So you're sticking with this comparison of the United States to Nazi Germany?

David Horowitz: He is, because he believes it in his soul.

Daniel Lazare: I believe it. I believe it entirely.

David Horowitz: I think the audience has had a good look at how the American Left dissembles. Unless it is called to account by people who know what they're talking about, they will pretend to be civil libertarians, they will pretend to be democrats, they will pretend to be for “peace.” They will pretend to be humanitarians. But what they really are is America-hating totalitarians who want the enemy to win.

This summarizes what led up to the declaration of support for the enemy though it doesn't quote a lot from Lazare. From denial of anything but the purist of idealistic and peaceful motives to the admission that he admires the Fallujah terrorists and wanted them to win and that he supported the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He thinks America is like Nazi Germany. But go read the whole thing, as they say.

It is horrifying to see the honesty of this position. How is it possible to believe it? I try to tell myself that this does not represent the whole side that criticizes the war. I fear deep down, because so many of their complaints are just ridiculous, that Lazare is just one of the few to be honest about their true feelings.

I'm horrified that some on the Left think this way. I'm horrified that I fear that a lot more think this way.

I wouldn't have to chant "they are the loyal opposition" so much if the broader Left would shun the whackos instead of celebrating and honoring them.

Delusions of Grandeur

Just what are the Russians up to anyway? From my Janes email alerts, two little teasers:

1. Finland's relations with Russia are shaken but not greatly damaged after a spate of air space violations.

2. Evidence continues to mount of Russia's behind-the-scenes involvement in the domestic politics of states that once fell within the sphere of Soviet influence. JID's regional correspondent focuses on the Kremlin's overt and covert intelligence activities in the Czech Republic.

I truly don't understand why the Russians don't want to become part of the West. They seem to want to be important in their own right even if they have to be total bastards to do it. They need to get over their empire. It's gone. Moscow needs to worry about their own declining population from their abysmal health record so that large swaths of Russia won't become depopulated by the end of the century.

It may take the passing of the current generation that remembers when the world trembled when Moscow spoke and misses it so much that they are willing to arm China and betray the West to rattle the world in the process.

Russia belongs with the West. The rulers still have a Soviet mindset. They are quite delusional.

UPDATE: Via the Corner, this article on the collapse of the Russian military:

Russian generals have always relied on two strategic superfluities: lots of land and enough people to compensate for the poverty of their equipment, training and feeding. But Russia's rapidly shrinking population, combined with draft-dodging, is threatening the old calculus.

As the article noted, the current Russian military can basically surrender after being a killed a bit by an enemy or nuke them into oblivion (and pray the enemy doesn't then do the same). That's quite a choice.

But no, the Russian leadership would rather pretend they are just a superpower a little down on their luck for the moment. But if the Russians persist in their delusions, one day somebody will challenge Moscow's fantasy world and the Russians will have to make their choice.

Or the Russians can take their place with the West. That's a better choice for their long-term security than playing with fire thinking they can manage and manipulate the Chinese.

Ah Crap

We lost some of our very best in Afghanistan when a Special Operations Command MH-47 went down with the loss of everyone aboard. Eight SEALs and the SOC helicopter crew died when the craft was shot down. And a team on the ground is lost even as we search for them. They are either dead, captured, or so deeply involved in chasing some target that they can't communicate (or we aren't admitting to communicating with them).

This is a heavy loss. Perhaps twenty dead. Any twenty are equally tragic from a human point of view, but from a military point of view these dead are a big loss. It takes many years to train one of these special operators. It was a lucky day for the enemy, to be sure. But it was a matter of luck. We will recover and drive on. Luckily for our troops in Afghanistan, almost all of the people here who oppose the Iraq campaign hold tightly to their chest their support for the fight in Afghanistan to shield themselves from the charge of not wanting to defend our country against enemy threats.

UPDATE: Wretchard speculates that the operation is not over and that the original team "lost" may still be on the hunt as I suggested:

Because several hundred US troops were inserted into the area after the loss of the MH-47 it seems evident that the US could obtain local tactical superiority anytime it wished. The fact that did it not send in the several hundred troops for a sweep instead of the four man recon team strongly suggests that the recon team's mission was to fix a very high value target before it could flee from an airmobile assault.

Or it could be a rescue mission to save the original team, and therefore the operation is effectively over and we lost this attempt.

The continued silence from the military could mean either thing. These were serious assets put in place and combined with the location, the target of the hunt could be bin Laden.

This could still turn out good despite our losses.

SECOND UPDATE: We've rescued one of the lost military personnel:

US military officials told thd CNN television that the rescued soldier managed to "evade the enemy" and has been successfully rescured by US forces.

This would seem to rule out the original team still hunting their target. Evading is not hunting. The extra troops that Wretchard notes have been put into the region may mean that new forces have taken the lead in the job.

Hopefully, the other three will be found although the fact that one was separated from the team does not seem to bode well for the rest. Unless we had more than one team in the area to begin with.

Hopefully this mission isn't over yet.

THIRD UPDATE: A second special operations soldier has been located but not secured:

[Kunar Gov. Asadullah ] Wafa said Afghan police and soldiers were trying to rescue the second missing U.S. service member, who was believed sheltering in a house in a remote part of Kunar, a mountainous province on the border with Pakistan.

"He is with an Afghan family and we have heard he is injured," he said, citing intelligence sources.

Wafa said the first member of the elite U.S. military team to be rescued had also taken shelter in the home of an Afghan village elder in the province, before American forces were notified of his location and picked him up.

Two wounded who took refuge in separate locations. Does this mean that the team was attacked and scattered with each team member compelled to evade and survive on their own? Are the others dead or wounded in separate locations? Or captured? Or are the remainder still pursuing their target, having left behind wounded members with friendly Afghanis?

I just don't know.

FOURTH UPDATE: One Navy personnel* (a SEAL commando is not a soldier. *I corrected my original reference here of a "sailor" since that isn't accurate either. Not a soldier. But not a sailor, I think. Sorry) is still missing after two were found dead. Reports of the other team member being safe were apparently wrong:

Two of the Navy SEAL commandos were found dead, the US military confirmed in Kabul. A third member was rescued over the weekend.

The Pentagon said US forces were looking for the fourth missing soldier.

On the assumption that only one team was on the ground, this operation looks broken. Crap.

FINAL UPDATE: Details of the mission have been published. US troops are still in the area:

U.S. commanders refused to give up hope for the fourth missing service member. About 300 troops and numerous aircraft were still in the area Wednesday, searching for him and hunting "a large number" of militants, Yonts said.

It seems like the mission is broken but I don't know if the troops are trying to find the fourth team member or whether the mission continues. Any targets have had a lot of time to exit the area. So unless we have reason to believe targets have gone to ground hoping we will leave without finding them, the mission seems over. Crap.

They Are So Effing Annoying

The North Koreans are unclear about the whole DMZ thing and why we don't want them to have nukes. They must be oblivious of this basic issue for them to say this:

North Korea told the United States that it must withdraw its description of the communist nation as an "outpost of tyranny" and treat Pyongyang as a friend if it wants nuclear talks to resume, a senior North Korean official said Friday.

Treat them as a friend? Just how starvation addled are they? If they were our friends we wouldn't care if they had phasers and photon torpedoes. It is because they are our enemy that we will not accept them as a nuclear power. And if we hugged them and called them our best buddies in the whole wide world they wouldn't believe us anyway, so I don't know why the paranoid North Koreans even bother with such rot.

If Seoul was a about a hundred miles further south we'd treat the North Koreans a whole lot differently. Truly they are annoying.

Not Bad for Cowboy Diplomacy

China could be a long-term threat if it avoids revolution or civil war.

While Europe shrinks from carrying its burden to defend the West in order to maintain their extended August holiday from reality, in Asia we gain important friends. Ties with Vietnam improve, Australia and Japan step up, and other allies such as Indonesia and Thailand face Islamist threats within. And a big piece on the board has joined us. India and America have effectively allied as Michael Barone notes in the flagship article. And the result is an alliance:

There is not likely to be a formal NATO-like alliance among Japan, Australia, India, and the United States. But increasingly there is the functional equivalent of one. There is fierce debate in many quarters whether China will emerge as a military threat. Some, like strategist Thomas Barnett, argue that China is too well integrated into the international economy to allow its gains to be lost by military aggression. Others argue that the Chinese are seeking to project their military strength outward and cannot be counted on to refrain from aggression in Taiwan. Whichever view you take, our emerging alliance with India is good news. Despite official denials, it provides something of a counterweight to China. And it increases the clout of a nation that is showing what representative democracy, the rule of law, and the free marketplace can do.

Winds of Change has the rest of the good details on an alliance that helps us both:

It doesn't get much stronger than being a geopolitical strategic partner of the United States. China doesn't have to be challenged directly or even mentioned to have its options hemmed, and that's what just happened.

Not bad for cowboy diplomacy. Maybe it isn't us after all. Maybe it's Europe's problem. And the problem of the European-at-heart here at home.

As we fight Islamist terrorism, we are not ignoring the rising potential Chinese threat.

Neither Midgets Nor Giants

Strategypage writes that the Chinese probably have about a third of our total combat power.

We are starting to realize that China is arming up and that they look at us as their main potential enemy. Strategypage has a word of caution, however:

Unfortunately, it's now an open secret that all the scare tactics of the original Cold War were based on lots of puffery and paranoia. When the Cold War ended, and a more accurate assessment of Russian military strenght was possible, it was seen that the Russians were much weaker than the Cold War era estimates had them. Some thing is happening with China, as the neo-Cold War begins to paint the PLA (People's Liberation Army, the official term for the Chinese military), in bolder and more intimidating strokes. It's much easier getting money out of Congress if you have a scary threat to justify it.

Like I've repeated, even when I've warned of the Chinese threat, I wouldn't change positions with them. We have the clear advantage in power. Given enough time, we would gather enough strength to pound the Chinese. And a high percentage of China's power is in their army while our Navy and air power are far superior to their air and naval power.

But rather than inflating the Chinese threat I've noticed far more who belittle Chinese strength.

China could never think of projecting power much more than a few hundred miles beyond its borders. We fight globally. But the fact that we will be fighting China close to China evens up the odds a bit for China. At least in the short run when the distant tip of our spear is but a fraction of our total power. We can be beaten if the Chinese plan a short campaign that exploits our distance and their closeness. We need to be on guard for this.

The Chinese aren't ten feet tall. But they aren't incapable of beating us. We need to respect their capabilities even if they aren't as well rounded as ours. It might be enough in limited scenarios.

WMD

Hysterical cries to the contrary, keeping Saddam from getting weapons of mass destruction was a valid reason to destroy his regime. That he did not have any in firing condition on the eve of our invasion is a reason for gratitude and not a reason to shriek that we lied to go to war against a non-existent threat.

The anti-war Left continues to misrepresent the WMD situation we found in Iraq. Lying. Dying. For crying out loud.

I truly get tired or arguing the same point over and over. But for the Left, no argument is ever over until they win. Then it is shut, old news, and never ripe for bringing up again. But until they win, they will come back again and again with the same discredited arguments.

So this article going over the whole WMD evidence from prior to the war is useful to read:

American intelligence and other foreign governments concluded at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Senior Clinton administration officials stated that the regime possessed stockpiles. Saddam has "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country," declared former Vice President Al Gore on September 23, 2002. And even a month after the invasion Defense Secretary William Cohen believed we would find weapons: "I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them."

On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq's "Unresolved Disarmament Issues." It stated that the "long list" of "unaccounted for" WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998--the month inspections ended in Iraq--and beyond were still "unaccounted for." The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been "weaponized"); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced "3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent." Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials.

I do not believe that the last two administrations, every intelligence agency in the world, and indeed every opponent of the Iraq War were wrong about the basic premise that Saddam did have some chemical weapons (remember they said we could deter Iraq from using WMD or argued that conquering Iraq would risk terrorists getting WMD in the chaos of war) and the means to pursue chemicals, bio weapons, and nukes given enough time to escape the weakening international sanctions that the French and Russians especially were hammering on.

I think we will find the weapons or the evidence of who erased them given enough time.

And I still want to know why the lack of WMD matters to the anti-war side when their assumption that Saddam had them didn't lead them to support war before March 2003.

9-11, 9-11, 9-11, Iraq, 9-11, 9-11, 9-11

I know the anti-war Left doesn't want to hear this, but Saddam's Iraq had links to terrorism generally and to al Qaeda specifically. It is difficult to discuss any part of our war effort without reflecting that 9-11 taught us that our enemies will kill us in large numbers if we give them a chance. We simply cannot take chances of getting hit first when the next weapon might be a nuke or bio weapon and not "just" a jumbo jet loaded with fuel. Having the press echo the Left's insistence that Saddam had no relation with al Qaeda despite the evidence doesn't make the connection any less real.

Once again, let us debate what was once considered the bleeding obvious (I mean, at least to the Clinton administration and to the member of Congress who presumably read the declaration of war on Iraq in 2002 that Congress voted for). Iraq had ties to al Qaeda:

Beyond what people are saying about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection, there is the evidence. In 1992 the Iraqi Intelligence services compiled a list of its assets. On page 14 of the document, marked "Top Secret" and dated March 28, 1992, is the name of Osama bin Laden, who is reported to have a "good relationship" with the Iraqi intelligence section in Syria. The Defense Intelligence Agency has possession of the document and has assessed that it is accurate. In 1993, Saddam Hussein and bin Laden reached an "understanding" that Islamic radicals would refrain from attacking the Iraqi regime in exchange for unspecified assistance, including weapons development. This understanding, which was included in the Clinton administration's indictment of bin Laden in the spring of 1998, has been corroborated by numerous Iraqis and al Qaeda terrorists now in U.S. custody. In 1994, Faruq Hijazi, then deputy director of Iraqi Intelligence, met face-to-face with bin Laden. Bin Laden requested anti-ship limpet mines and training camps in Iraq. Hijazi has detailed the meeting in a custodial interview with U.S. interrogators. In 1995, according to internal Iraqi intelligence documents first reported by the New York Times on June 25, 2004, a "former director of operations for Iraqi Intelligence Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19." When bin Laden left Sudan in 1996, the document states, Iraqi intelligence sought "other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location." That same year, Hussein agreed to a request from bin Laden to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state television. In 1997, al Qaeda sent an emissary with the nom de guerre Abdullah al Iraqi to Iraq for training on weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell cited this evidence in his
presentation at the UN on February 5, 2003. The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Powell's presentation on Iraq and terrorism was "reasonable."

We had many reasons to destroy Saddam's regime, from national security interests to humanitarian impluses. Saddam and Osama didn't share office space with a common receptionist but there were contacts enough to justify destroying Saddam's regime for this reason alone. And there were many reasons to stomp Saddam as I set forth here and here.

Could we get back to debating whether the turkey that President Bush carried in Baghdad on Thanksgiving 2003 was plastic or real, or some other equally vital topic?

Protecting the Border

When people talk about the need to add troops to Iraq, one of the points they make is that we don't have the troops to keep reinforcements for the terrorists from entering Iraq. O'Hanlon makes this point in this article:

Second, in keeping with the recent ideas of Democratic Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and John Kerry of Massachusetts, we should attempt to gain more allied assistance to protect Iraq's borders. Since the jihadist threat is indeed serious, growing and a danger to all, there is a chance the allies would listen.

On the surface this seems like a reasonable argument. In this case, it is a call for troops other than American forces in order to get in a dig at the administration for not getting enough foreign help. But I'll ignore the attempt at a cheap shot here.

And indeed, the jihadis committing the most newsworthy and bloody attacks do indeed come in across the border from Syria mostly:

Iraqis have carried out less than 10 percent of more than 500 suicide attacks since 2003, according to one defense official. At least 213 attacks have occurred this year — 172 by vehicle and 41 by bombers on foot — according to a count by The Associated Press.

While most suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be Gulf Arabs, North Africans are also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths, the officials told the AP. The young men are not so much fighters as human bombs — a relatively small but deadly component of the Iraqi insurgency.

Case closed, right? I mean, foreigners are coming in to kill Americans and Iraqis so we clearly need more troops on the border to stop them. Well not quite. This exchange from a DOD press conference is instructive:

Q Going back to Iraq for a moment, General, if I may. I believe it was a former Iraqi general talking to a New York Times reporter some months ago who said if you dig in Iraq, you either find oil or you find weapons. And either Saddam Hussein was like I am in a hardware store and couldn't deny buying weapons, or this stuff is coming in from outside. Do you have any idea on these caches we find how many are indigenous or there before, and how many are coming in, say, from Iran and Syria?


GEN. CONWAY: You know, I can't speak to contemporary results [NOTE: Conway commanded I MEF in Iraq from March to September 2004]. I can tell you in my time there that it all appeared to be old stuff; that there were no new weapons coming in of some other nation's mark that appeared to be freshly oiled or just out of the Cosmoline. I suspect there are people in country that are doing that kind of analysis because it's extremely important. But I don't have the figures for you.

So the actual weapons that the insurgents and terrorists are using are still being dug up from inside Iraq for the most part. Only the terrorist volunteers and cash are coming into Iraq from the outside. If Conway's experience is still the rule, and someone of his rank would surely be in the know on this I should think, this would still hold true. So I'll assume that the enemy is still getting its weapons inside Iraq until I see anything to the contrary.

This is a far more difficult influx to combat. If the enemy was smuggling in significant amounts of weaponry and ammunition, even if it was just small arms stuff, we'd have an easier time of it and the calls for more troops to watch the border would make sense as an isolated observation. We'd be looking for trucks filled with weapons and ammo.

But when combatants who look like anybody else are the only asset the enemy needs to import and they are coming across the border to enter Iraq, how do we tell who is normal and who is nutball? Do we shut down the whole border and declare it a free fire zone? Mine it and let whoever comes across--whether shepherd or suicide car bomber--go up in a poof of smoke?

I've said from early on that this insurgency by a small minority is only so persistent because it has access to plentiful money and arms stockpiled inside Iraq prior to the invasion. The normal practice of sealing the border to prevent such assets from getting inside don't work in Iraq since those assets are already inside Iraq. Putting 20,000 troops along the border would be a waste of effort and would either subtract troops from other missions in the interior if we didn't add them to the current force or would further stress our military if we had increased our troops strength in Iraq for this mission.

In time, we'll have more Iraqis in fully equipped border posts and they will be better able to tell locals from distant foreigners. But this problem shows the complexity of the problems we face and why the obvious solution isn't necessarily the solution.