Romanes Eunt Domus

The enemy in Iraq is apparently (via Instapundit) waging war by press release:

The purported incident in Ramadi never made the press releases at either Multinational Forces-Iraq or CENTCOM. The Associated Press has a reporter (Todd Pitman) embedded with the Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Mr. Pitman's blog is called AP Blog From Ramadi, Iraq, and the site has not been updated since April 7th. An inquiry to Captain Alfred Smith, the Public Affairs Officer from the 2/28th Brigade Combat Team, which runs Ramadi, produced the following reply; "There was some action , a little more active than the norm but just another day for us." This Week in Iraq, a Coalition bulliten, has a brief description of a fight in Ramadi but nothing like the media accounts.

No big enemy attack there, it would appear, despite the press reports.

As I wrote back in August 2005 about the downward spiral of enemy resistance in Iraq, I thought they'd soon be down to essentially scrawling "Romans Go Home" on Internet sites.

We are reaching that point, it seems. We just need to add Marine lessons in conjugation, I guess...

FUCing Insane

Rebels in Chad (called FUC) are trying to overthrow the Chadian government. The French have taken actions to prop up the government and it appears as if the rebels have failed:

France, which already has 1,200 soldiers in the country, on Wednesday ordered another 150 there in response to the worsening security situation that has triggered alarm across the international community.

The FUC rebels, which are seeking to oust Deby, were battling government troops Thursday on the outskirts of N'Djamena, and a number of them had entered the capital, military sources said.

The president however said that the army was in control of the city.

Now don't get me wrong--I'm sure Chad is probably the shining jewel of the Sahara region and all that. Heck, just having Sudan, Nigeria, and Libya amongst your bordering neighbors boosts your ratings considerably, I imagine--but don't you have to be seriously whackjob insane to fight to take control of the country? Shouldn't there be a classic comedy routine of a crowd of Chadians at the door to the presidential office with each saying to the others, "No, you first. I insist. Really" rather than actual fighting over who has the dubious privilege of running the dry cesspool with a UN seat?

I mean, you shouldn't be able to give the place away. Sure, there's oil and uranium, and so somebody can surely profit from it--but to run the place? Man, if I was Deby, I'd seriously be tempted to tell the rebels to give me an hour to pack my bags and I'm outta there. And shame on me if I didn't have a bank account in Swtizerland already.

Honestly, fighting for the title of president of Chad makes about as much sense as fighting to run Haiti.

UPDATE: I'm honestly shocked at the number of hits from Islamic countries on the term "fucing" on the apparent failure to realize that in English you really need a "k" in there to get what they are looking for (checking the google page for their search results was enlightening). They'd best hope the local morality and vice police aren't tracking their, erm, "key strokes" so to speak ...

Coalition of the Shamed

Gerald Baker (in Real Clear Politics) thinks that if crunch time comes and America contemplates military action against Iran to hit their nuclear program, we will be alone:

The Bush administration was excoriated at home and abroad for its unilateralism in confronting Iraq. But does anybody really think, when the hard decisions have to be made to face down the next threat, that anyone other than the US will be in the coalition?

Call me an optimist, but I think that our relative silence the last few years over Iran while the EU-3 futilely tried the magical wonders of soft power were part of a deal we made with them:

We'll try your way and if it doesn't work by a date set, you join us in a military strike.

Of course, just as allies bailed on promises to commit troops to Iraq after we captured Baghdad, our allies might bail on us again with Iran; but I think even the Europeans see a threat from Iran. And though China and/or Russia will save Iran from official UN Security Council blessings, we will have allies in the attack.

So Who Gets Trained?

Despite the attention paid to our military technology, our training and personnel quality are really our unseen advantage in combat. Few people really appreciate this and the constant effort over decades needed to ensure we maintain our skill advantage.

Great weapons in the hands of mediocre troops are just expensive piles of junk in the end if they go up against well-trained troops with lesser weapons.

So this is an unwelcome piece of news:

Twenty years after the U.S. Army started using its revolutionary National Training Center (NTC) to give troops combat experience in peacetime, China is opening its own version. The Chinese NTC is larger than the U.S. one (359,000 acres in the Mohave desert at Ft Irwin, California.) The Chinese center is to be used for training divisions, while the U.S. one trains only a brigade at a time.

A day later another post on Strategypage says that infantry and mechanized units will rotate through the facility:

China is increasing the training of up to twenty combat divisions (infantry and mechanized), upgrading equipment and personnel as well. A special combat training center, modeled on the American National Training Center, has been established, and these elite combat divisions will start rotating through the training center. Only a few years of this kind of training will give China a powerful, by world standards, combat force.

Now just because paratroopers, Marines, and amphibious-earmarked infantry divisions aren't mentioned doesn't mean they won't be part of the mix. Perhaps the Chinese just don't want to admit these units are going to be trained. Perhaps these more specialized units are considered well trained enough. Perhaps the paratroopers are even considered expendible and their main use will simply be landing and sowing confusion whether they survive or not--so additional training is pointless.

But if the airborne, airmobile, Marine, and regular army divisions earmarked for amphibious work are run through the Chinese NTC, I'd seriously start to worry about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Alternately, if mechanized units are in fact the major beneficiaries of this facility, perhaps the Russians should worry a bit more about their slavish devotion to arming China. Moscow may not be as clever as they think they are in their effort to point China south at America instead of north to Russia.

But by all means, pay attention to who gets trained at this new and expensive Chinese training facility. This is the key to success rather than relying on advanced weapons.

I've Mentioned This Decade Sucks, Have I Not?

Does anybody really doubt that we cannot afford to let a very evil Iran have nukes and that they are determined to have them?

Read Mark Steyn.

I'd like to highlight this:

Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:

-- contempt for the most basic international conventions;

-- long-reach extraterritoriality;

-- effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;

-- a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);

-- an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.

Yet the Europeans remain in denial. Iran was supposedly the Middle Eastern state they could work with. And the chancellors and foreign ministers jetted in to court the mullahs so assiduously that they’re reluctant to give up on the strategy just because a relatively peripheral figure like the, er, head of state is sounding off about Armageddon.

Instead, Western analysts tend to go all Kremlinological. There are, after all, many factions within Iran’s ruling class. What the country’s quick-on-the-nuke president says may not be the final word on the regime’s position. Likewise, what the school of nuclear theologians in Qom says. Likewise, what former president Khatami says. Likewise, what Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, says.

But, given that they’re all in favor of the country having nukes, the point seems somewhat moot. The question then arises, what do they want them for?

What do they want them for, indeed.

Go. Read it all.

Lovely decade we're having here, eh?

Being Suspicious or Hopeful

So is France rejoining the West?

Strategypage has this short piece:

France is sending its nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to the coast of Pakistan. There, the carrier will sent its twenty warplanes to bases in Afghanistan, to support NATO peacekeeping efforts. The de Gaulle will arrive off Pakistan in May, 2006.

Interesting. Why is France sending carrier planes to operate ashore in Afghanistan? Why not use land-based planes and just fly them in, hopping from land base to land base? Wouldn't land-based pilots have more expertise in ground support? Does France have enough carrier planes to deprive them of naval aviation with a mission like this instead of using air force assets?

Given France's assertion that they'd use nukes against Iran if attacked, recent internal problems with radical Islam notwithstanding past French sympathy to Islamist causes, and French efforts to get back on our good side, is France preparing to help us against Iran with a nice Afghanistan cover story?

And France wouldn't even need to take part in the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities to be of help. Any military campaign to hit Iran's nuke facilities would have to be wide-ranging and look very much like a war. France could join us to hit Iran's naval assets (hey, an aircraft carrier's air component would be perfect for that!) and free up our air assets to hit targets in Iran itself. The French could portray their military actions as purely defensive to protect the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping routes.

So, does De Gaulle take part in strikes before it is scheduled to fly its planes to Afghanistan or does it fly them off and secretly pick up a new wing (perhaps from Djibouti?) after? And then the fire works begin?

Very interesting.

Losing in Iraq

Strategypage has two posts on the enemy in Iraq.

Money woes and repeated pastings at the hands of the good guys are drying up recruiting for the bad guys:

The enemy in Iraq is having a manpower shortage. This is noted by the reduction in the number of attacks on American troops, and the smaller groups of attackers involved in things like ambushes. This is one of the reasons for the new American policy of fighting it out with ambushes rather than hitting the accelerator. Because of money and recruiting problems, most ambushes in Iraq are conducted by a very small number of attackers. Unlike Vietnam, where the communists might deploy a hundred or so gunmen for an ambush, in Iraq ambush teams are most frequently 5-10 men.

And in the bigger picture, the more effective Shia and Kurd security forces that allow the Shias to exact revenge for decades of depravity at the hands of Sunnis plus the rage that jihadi terror attacks on Shia civilians has put the Sunnis of Iraq in the mind to get along:

The Sunni Arabs can offer no effective resistance. They have no allies. That's not a civil war. That's hopeless.

They may hope to restore their position with a nice coup in a decade or so but in the short run they know that continued resistance will just get them all killed or kicked out.

No money, no recruits, and no hope. Not exactly a winning strategy for the "resistance." Yet even as they get hammered, some over here demand we declare defeat and get out. Under those circumstances, were I an insurgent, I think I'd believe God was on my side, too.

A Larger Army

Critics of the Army reorganization into brigade combat teams claim we are reducing the number of deployable line battalions and so we are really making the Army smaller. The pre-reorganization brigades had three line battalions of three companies each. The new brigade combat teams have two line battalions of four companies each plus a targetting and surveillance (recon) battalion.

Critics don't count the recon unit as a line unit and fail to consider that the new battalions are a third larger. So I disagree, and point out that if you include the recon battalions as line units you have more battalions in the new organization. And if you look at companies, we have more line units even without counting the recon battalions as line units.

This article on captain retention notes:

The Army needs even more company-level officers today, as it expands the number of its deployable brigade combat teams.

More companies means more captains are needed. Because the deployable Army is indeed getting bigger.

Death Wish

Yes, as I wondered, the enemy is trying a new strategy in Iraq. Not against civilian workers in general but against Shias:

Al Qaeda has apparently implemented a new strategy, going after Shia Arabs, and only Shia Arabs, without endangering Sunni Arabs. The new head of al Qaeda operations in Iraq is an Iraqi Sunni Arab, and his tactic is to concentrate on attacks against Shia mosques, preferably during prayer services. This way, you kill a lot of Shia, and only Shia. The only Sunni Arabs you will find inside a Shia Mosque are suicide bombers, and the occasional soldier or policeman looking for illegal weapons, or Shia terrorists. During three days of suicide bomb attacks last week, over 250 Shia Arabs were killed or wounded. The only Sunni Arab casualties were less than a dozen suicide bombers.

The Shias were getting mad enough at the Sunnis when the Sunnis were suffering at the hands of jihadis, too. How much more angry will the Shias be when the Sunnis fail to join sufficiently in a campaign to kill foreign jihadis killing in the name of Iraq's Sunnis when the Iraqi Sunnis are not suffering at all?

Things will get very ugly indeed for Iraq's Sunnis if they continue to be stupid and try to play both sides of the game instead of fully allying with the Shias and Kurds to drive out the jihadi invaders and their local Sunni allies.

The Burden of Serving

The headline says it all, damning the administration for letting the Army unravel:

"Young Officers Leaving Army at a High Rate"

Via Stand-To! is this New York Times piece on declining reenlistment rates for Army Captains:

Young Army officers, including growing numbers of captains who leave as soon as their initial commitment is fulfilled, are bailing out of active-duty service at rates that have alarmed senior officers. Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.

It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.

The Army is responding with incentives. The reason for the declining numbers is clear according to the reporter:

The program was begun this year to counter pressures on junior officers to leave active duty, including the draw of high-paying jobs in the private sector; the desires of a spouse for a calmer civilian quality of life at a time when the officers can be expected to be starting their families; and, for the past two years, the concerns over repeated tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Army has had a far more difficult time in its recruiting than the other services because the ground forces are carrying the heaviest burden of deployments — and injuries and deaths — in the war.

Certainly, the war has had an effect. Causing loss rates to decline in the aftermath of 9/11 and as the fighting drags on, causing them to increase. I have no doubt that the war is an important component of both trends.

And I do not wish to minimize the importance of retaining these officers. We need them to stay in the service. I would, however, like to point out that the article speaks of retention since 9/11 but the helpful chart goes back to 1997. The loss rates for 1997 to 2000 were all higher than today's post-9/11 "high rate" (sadly for the article's premise, the trend ticks down for the first quarter of 2006). Indeed, in 1999 the loss rate was about a quarter higher than the 2005 year's rate.

So apparently, serving while at war is considerably less onerous than serving during peacetime in the late 1990s.

Just a little perspective, is all I'm saying.

Reacting and Not Retreating

Even though we have been turning over responsibility for areas to Iraqis, we recently went back into Baghdad:

American soldiers have again hit the streets of dangerous neighborhoods in western Baghdad that had been handed over to Iraqi forces, trying to keep a lid on sectarian attacks that have raged since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.

The U.S. military has refocused its mission to confront death squads that have tortured and killed hundreds, a tacit acknowledgment that Iraqi troops have not been able to control violence between Shiites and Sunnis on their own.

This is fine. I wondered about whether attacks on civilians in Iraq were a new tactic and wondered if we should take back some responsibilities for some areas from Iraqis. I think our move is a "yes" to both of my questions.

Reacting to enemy moves is a necessary part of fighting a thinking enemy. Taking responsibility for a region of Baghdad after we turned it over is not a defeat--it is adapting to fight the enemy more effectively.

If Iran Miscalculates

Ralph Peters echoes a couple themes I've discussed in regard to Iran:

SHOULD Tehran ignite a combat exchange, we need to ensure not only that Iran's nuclear-weapons program is crippled, but that its broader capabilities are shattered. Militarily, it will be time for our Air Force to prove its worth, with the Navy in support. Iran's recent experience of conflict is of attrition-based land warfare. But there's no need for us to employ conventional ground forces inside Iran (special operations troops are another matter). We'll have to watch the Iraqi and Afghan borders, but our fight would be waged from the air and from the sea.

If we're pulled into war, we need to strike hard and fast - before Iran's allies can make mischief in international forums. We should destroy as much of Tehran's nuclear infrastructure as possible, eliminate its air force and air defenses and wreck its naval facilities beyond repair - no matter the collateral damage. The madmen in Tehran must pay an unbearable price.

The results within Iran would be unpredictable. Fiercely nationalistic, the country's core Persian population might unify behind the regime, setting back our hopes for an eventual rapprochement with a post-Islamist government.

Alternatively, the regime may be weaker than we think and could topple of its own weight. Or it may continue to muddle through miserably for years. Iran's military could remain loyal to the mullahs or, sufficiently battered, might turn upon them. We don't know what would happen because the Iranians themselves don't know. The variables and dynamics are simply incalculable.

BUT a half-hearted military response to Iranian aggres sion would only strengthen the confidence of our enemies and invite future confrontations.

One, Iran could become irrational and start a conflict. Perhaps convinced we will strike they decide to hit us first. Perhaps we encourage this worry, too.

Two, if Iran initiates a conflict we must respond brutally and widely.

Three, we really don't know if a thorough military response that chews up the Iranian WMD, command and control, and military/security assets will solidify or undermine the regime's support.

I don't know if we can rule out ground forces. They might be useful just going after Iran's WMD; or in a broader siege; or as part of an effort to overthrow the regime.

Keep the slogans "if you strike a king, kill him" and "never do an enemy a small injury" in mind. Don't give the mullahs the option of getting revenge by letting them survive a military conflict.

If we must wage another Gulf War, let us make sure that this Fourth Gulf War is the last one.

Anti-Missile Shield

Via Instapundit, Chester writes that a treaty with Iraq in 2007 may set for a decade our commitment to Iraq and the region to make sure the next president carries out the broad outlines of President Bush's strategy to strangle jihadi support in the Moslem world.

I think Chester is right about this being a way to make sure we fight the Long War longer than seven years ending in January 2009.

But this could also help with Iran in the short run if we really have a year or two to deal with the mullahs. If we minimize the use of Iraqi bases when we strike Iran, we could eliminate Iraq as Iran's main target for retaliation. We would undermine the mullahs' methods of responding to our attacks by essentially keeping Iraq neutral but tied to us in a defensive treaty.

If Iran does not self-destructively close Hormuz, striking Iraq would be the only real method available to Iran of striking back; and doing that would only allow Iraq to activate the treaty's defensive provisions and allow Iraq to participate fully in the campaign as a matter of self defense while muddying the waters in the UN about who is doing what to whom.

A US-Iraq Mutual Defense Treaty would do a lot of good in both the short term and long run.

Liberation Day

Today is Iraq's Freedom Day.

Three years ago I wrote this to greet the day that witnessed the liberation of Iraq as a fact that even Baghdad Bob could not conceal:

"Urban Blitzkrieg" (Posted April 9, 2003)

The regime in Baghdad is crumbling. Scattered resistance will not alter the fact that Baathists have lost Baghdad. Cries are going out that the casualties from our urban blitz are excessive and that world opinion, Arab opinion in particular, will not forgive us. The assumptions and conclusions are wrong.

We probed and raided and found Iraqi defenses lacking. We decided to bounce the city rather than lay siege. Would fewer Iraqis have died if we had sealed off the city? With death squads punishing disloyalty; and regime thugs hoarding all the food, water, and medicine? Would giving the thugs time to recover their will to fight after the pasting they took really have lowered casualties? Ours and theirs? Clearly, winning fast lowers casualties by ending the damn war. How this can be overlooked is beyond me.

As for the rest of the world not forgiving us? Are they to refuse "forgiveness" in the face of happy Iraqis? The Moslem world seems to have no problem forgiving the French, the Soviets, and the Russians for their brutal wars against Algerians, Afghanistan, and Chechnya. And they slaughtered Moslems for years. The Russians are still doing it. Indeed, the Moslem street seemed to forgive Iraqi slaughter of Iranians and Iraqis with ease.

The Moslem world will learn to see the bright side of ending Saddam's despotism. They may even draw hope that their own misery can be ended.

Honest to God, the stories of Iraqis finally free to express their feelings brought tears to my eyes. This war is not "just" one in our national security interests—it is just. And we did it in the face of moralists who claimed leaving Saddam's regime in power was the right and moral thing to do. In the face of the near universal disapproval of leaders of western religions. Against world opinion. And we did it with fewer casualties than I thought possible. In three weeks. America's determination to lead others who believed as we did is to be commended for sticking to the goal of overthrowing Saddam's regime. The coalition of the willing is also the coalition of the right. The coalition of doing the right thing, that is. I eagerly await the news of the planned anti-war protests this weekend.

The war is not over yet. The Saddamites may yet try a last stand in Tikrit. Some might yet launch chemical weapons in a last spasm of murder. Get the Patriots to Baghdad by all means. When the rulers think the people have "betrayed" them, the Saddam thugs could unleash chemicals on their favorite target—Iraqi civilians. The best quote I've read today? From this article:

"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day," said Yusuf Abed Kazim, a Baghdad imam who pounded the statue's pedestal with a sledgehammer. "Only now will I start living. That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal."

They can finally live.

This has been a good war.

Our enemies still fight us even as the Iraqi government and security forces make great progress in replacing the terror regime that we toppled three years ago:

"Despite much progress, much work remains," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey, Jr. said in a joint statement. "The legitimate security forces must quell sectarian violence. Population centers must be secure to allow Iraq's new institutions to take root and businesses to flourish. Finally, the people must be able to trust their leadership."

Yes, freedom isn't free, as we should know. Eliminating the Baathist control of the state was a necessary task but not the only one required to build a new and free Iraq.

It was a good war. And though the enemy has resisted with more stength than I thought possible at the time due to money, ammunition, the ability to deny reality, and foreign jihadis, we are finally visibly winning the post-war struggle.

And if there is a silver lining for the Iraqis to winning such a struggle, it may be that the Iraqis will come to treasure Freedom Day as a day worthy of respecting the sacrifice they endured to end tyranny and embracing the freedom they bled to achieve. It may be a day to remember that Americans bled to free them. Had the Iraqis settled into peace and the forms of democracy without having to fight for them, it might have seemed like an American import that could be discarded when convenient.

And in fifty years, maybe Freedom Day will be marked with a three-day blow-out sale event--all over the Arab and Moslem worlds.

Smile and Nod at the Crazy Man

Venezuela under Hugo Chavez is a pain in the butt no doubt, and Chavez is a poster boy for why we have JDAMs.

His latest goes beyond insults and rhetoric with a mob attack on our ambassador's motorcade:

The State Department accused Caracas city officials of complicity Friday in an attack on the car of U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield in the Venezuelan capital.

Nonetheless, dealing with him would be a distraction from the Long War. Chavez is a charter member of the Axis of El Vil (along with Castro) but mostly an annoyance.

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

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

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

UPDATE: Strategypage notes that Chavez is more popular with foreigners than with Venezuelans these days:

Things are not going well in Venezuela. The poor, who have expected so much for supporting president Chavez, have received little. Chavez is more concerned about buying himself a better international reputation, and internal security, than he is with economic reform. The people are unhappy about this.

Like I said, don't confront him. If he is determined to alienate his own people, let him. Help the targets of his ambitions in the region resist his influence-buying, but don't confront Hugo to give him a cheap victory against the Yanquis.

Contain him as much as possible so he doesn't build his Leftist empire. Constrain his freedom of action at home so he doesn't feel like he can go postal on his people. Sustain the opposition indirectly through entities that can't be successfully called American stooges. And wait him out.

This is one problem that we can afford to kick down the path a little bit and hope for the best.

When the Power to Destroy the Earth is Not Enough

A while back I wrote that the United States Air Force should accept that aerial ground support functions will migrate to unmanned assets controlled by the Army (or Marines). Rather than fight a losing battle for this mission, I wrote the Air Force should look to space to become the Space Force:

I think the Air Force needs to go up to space and let the ground guys take over the aerial missions needed to directly support the troops.

Air superiority (including counter-air missions against enemy airfields), space control (both offensive and defensive), ICBMs, air transport, and electronic warfare should be the Air Force missions. Missions that are directly in support of ground forces should be controlled by those services with either helicopters or UAVs.

Science fiction calls space assets "ships" but there is no reason we must have a space navy in the future. Aim high, Air Force. Space Force has a nice ring, too.

Well, Jim L. wrote to note an article that argues that the Air Force is blowing the space mission. It argues for a separate Space Force:

It’s time to admit that the 2001 decision—in keeping with the recommendations of the second Rumsfeld commission—that made the Air Force the “Executive Agent for Space” has just not worked: not due to any malfeasance or corruption or lack of good will, but simply because the USAF has other priorities.

So if the ground forces get the low flying ground support and recon missions; and a new Space Force gets the space missions, what is left for the Air Force? ICBMs and airlift? There was a time, say circa 1957, that the power to destroy the planet was sufficient to justify the existence and dominance of the service that could do that. Not any more. Which is a good sign, I should add.

We will have a Space Force one way or the other. And if the Air Force isn't able to become this force, there won't be a separate Air Force for long. Like I wrote, the Air Force needs to Aim High as their slogan asserts and become the Space Force.

Overwhelming What?

This writer lauds Weinberger and slams Rumsfeld:

Weinberger preached that a war plan had to be "wholehearted": Preparation often precludes the need to fight. So in Iraq, where was the overwhelming force needed to subdue a country of 25 million? Where was the training for counterinsurgency? The adequate armor? The effective anti-improvised explosive device technology?

In fact, there was a disgraceful lack of military preparation for Iraq, and the war hasn't been handled well since, either.

Complaining that we don't use the Cold War-era Weinberger Doctrine in the Iraq War fails to consider that these are different eras. Consider that in the Cold War, we had the Soviet Union to consider and any distraction with a smaller war could be fatal if we then had to confront the Soviet Union while we were engaged with another small war. So winning any conflict quickly to minimize the amount of time the Soviets had to take advantage of our distraction was a key consideration. In essence we were focused on the Soviet Union in the 1980s and no other threat was considered important enough to draw away our power. Not being a dreaded "neo-con," I guess I am free to defend that approach and not complain about failing to confront jihadis in 1980s Lebanon. That was a future threat not a threat greater than communist Russia. But we are in different times now.

And comparing the Lebanon civil war with modern-day Iraq is an error. There is no civil war right now in Iraq. There is a Shia- and Kurd-dominated government fighting Sunni insurgents and terrorists for the most part. Lebanon saw various factions controlling their own chunks of territory. Only by broadening the definition of civil war to be meaningless can Iraq be brought under the definition in order to create a cudgel to batter our current strategy.

But what I really want to address is was it actually "whole-hearted" to gear up so much firepower in 1990-1991 to win a limited objective war as we did in Desert Storm under the guidance of the overwhelming force doctrine? Or was smashing the Saddam regime completely in about three weeks in 2003 "whole-hearted?" I think the latter is an example of whole-hearted grand strategy and the fact that we did smash the regime in three weeks shows that we did indeed have overwhelming force to do the job operationally, too. Desert Storm was a demonstration of whole-hearted operational art only. Big difference.

The rest of the complaints are farcical. It is absurd to say we prepared inadequately for the war. Critics may not like it, but you do go to war with the army you have and not the army you wish to have. So did our enemy. And we smashed them. Setting a land-speed record in the Middle East in the process, I might add.

And since the toppling of the regime, we've adapted to the insurgency very rapidly and are beating it down. And doing it increasingly with Iraqi troops. Since counter-insurgencies are a matter of persistence and not overwhelming force, we are succeeding without the massive numbers some insist would have somehow prevented the insurgency/terror campaign from starting.

All wars have mistakes and we've committed some. But we've committed no fatal errors and have adapted to the mistakes we've made. What is disgraceful is failing to see how superbly equipped our military entered the battle, how well we have fought, and how much we've achieved.

We're winning, people. And it is ok if President Bush gets the credit for the win. Really. Much like opponents of the Cold War, Desert Storm, and the Afghan campaign became supporters after these struggles were won, all you opposing the war in Iraq today can in five years insist you were for this war all along, too.

Jerk-in-a-Box

Hutchison writes to refute the idea that we had Saddam safely contained and so did not need to invade Iraq. Read it all.

His conclusion:

This review of the evidence shows that the containment was limited to conventional military efforts at best. Saddam Hussein was not only seeking a means to attack American interests around the world, his regime had already worked with al Qaeda in an effort to launch a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction. If this is containment that is "working well", what would containment that was failing look like?

Recall that in 1994, even with Saddam "in his box," we had to deploy significant ground, air, and naval forces to respond to his massing of troops that appeared to be preparations for another invasion of Kuwait--just four years since his last invasion! If we ever lacked the ability to react in such a matter because of commitments elsewhere no matter how brief, Saddam might eventually have hit Kuwait again.

And with France and China poking holes in the box while China held it steady, even the flimsy restraints that still held Saddam back would have broken up in short order had we not ended Saddam's regime. We would not have like what emerged.

Because That's How it is Done

OK. One more time. [Pause to reach for the cheap gin to steel myself once again] Just because we did something in Vietnam does not mean it was wrong. Or unique to Vietnam. And if we are now doing something in Iraq that we did in Vietnam, that fact should not taint it with the eagerly sought after aroma of defeat. Sometimes the press is shocked when they discover something new to them, when it is just how something is done. Now, to proceed.

This is what AP writes:

U.S. Marines along the volatile Syrian border have largely abandoned big bases to fan out over a dozen smaller outposts within cities — part of a resurrected Vietnam-era strategy to live among civilians and mentor local soldiers.

Spreading out to provide security for civilians is standard operating procedure in counter-insurgency. The problem in spreading out is that if the enemy can mass forces to pick off those small detachments it gives the enemy victories. In response, the counter-insurgent force may have to mass forces and abandon protecting civilians.

That is why I've harped on the idea that we need to atomize the enemy. Break them down by hitting them until they cannot mass in larger numbers so small detachments of either Americans or Iraqis are not vulnerable to being overwhelmed. Failing to atomize the enemy means we have to operate in larger units and so cannot cast as wide a net. But we have broken up the enemy so we can spread out--even in Anbar.

The article at least hints at this reasoning without grasping the significance:

The strategy, implemented after a large-scale U.S. and Iraqi offensive in the area last November, is in part a reaction against a common U.S. military tactic in Iraq of relying on patrols that depart from sprawling bases on the edges of cities.

"You've got to be in the towns, live among the people, eat with them ... until the people start telling you where the bad people are," said Lt. Col. Julian D. Alford. "If you live on the (bases) outside the city and come in for patrols, you're not going to win this."

Got it? Our strategy is working. And in time, because of our efforts in larger-scale attacks to atomize the enemy that peaked late last year, Iraqi troops will be up to the task, too.

And it just doesn't matter that we did this in Vietnam, too. Indeed, it would have worked there if we hadn't abandoned Saigon just as we'd beaten the internal enemy and let North Vietnam's mechanized spearheads conquer South Vietnam.

Horse Shoes and Journalism

Ledeen writes of the need to fight back in the propaganda war when our enemies lie quickly and easily and the press believes them with equal speed.

Most interesting is how the enemy (in this case the idiot Sadr) tricked (or does the press with their apparent love of the brave "resistance" even need to be tricked?) the media into believing a very good raid by Iraqi forces backed by US troops was instead an assault on a mosque. Ledeen writes:

In less than an hour, 20 bodies were laid out in a mosque nearly two miles away, and American and Iraqi journalists were invited to see the "scene" of the "massacre." A classic disinformation campaign was under way, which, at least for a while, was a more potent blow in the war than the special-forces' operation. Initial press reports (and even comments from the usually careful and restrained Iraqi blogger Zayed) spoke of an American raid against a mosque, not an Iraqi assault against a terrorist haven, and the usual claims of random killings of civilians went out on wires and airways.

It is frustrating. And it isn't even as if we could join the lying campaign to counter the enemy. Oh no. Then our press would suddenly get really interested in verifying claims and exposing lies on the front page.

And one question for the thugs. Did they save these bodies from past slaughters just in case or did they kill them just for the job at hand?

You'd think our press might like to know that.

No Nukes Refined

A little while back I wrote that I thought Iran was foolish to want nukes since as the biggest state in the Gulf it would dominate the Gulf with conventional weapons. Adding nukes to the region risks tying them down against weaker states that get nukes in response. Jeff at Caerdroia was a bit doubtful of my claim.

Victor Hanson, too, sees value in nukes for Iran:

If they obtain an Achaemenid bomb and restore lost Persian grandeur, it will remind a restless population that the theocrats are nationalists after all, not just pan-Islamic provocateurs. A nuclear Iran can create all sorts of mini-crises in the Gulf — on a far smaller scale than Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait — which could spike oil prices, given the omnipresence of the Iranian atomic genie. The Persian Gulf, given world demand for oil, is a far more fragile landscape than in 1991.

The Islamic world lost their Middle Eastern nuclear deterrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union — no surprise, then, that we have not seen a multilateral conventional attack on Israel ever since. But with a nuclear Islamic Iran, the mullahs can claim that a new coalition against Israel would not be humiliated — or at least not annihilated when it lost — since the Iranians could always, Soviet-like, threaten to go nuclear. There are surely enough madmen in Arab capitals who imagine that, at last, the combined armies of the Middle East could defeat Israel, with the guarantee that a failed gambit could recede safely back under an Islamic nuclear umbrella.

Lastly, Iran can threaten Israel and U.S. bases at will, in hopes of getting the same sort of attention and blackmail subsidies it will shortly obtain from the Europeans, who likewise are in missile range. All failed states want attention — who, after all, would be talking about North Korea if it didn’t have nukes? So, in terms of national self-interest, it is a wise move on the theocracy’s part to acquire nuclear weapons, especially when there is no India on the border to play a deterrent role to an Iran in the place of Pakistan.

Yet all these "good" things (from whackjob mullahs' views) could founder on one small detail:

There are only two slight problems with this otherwise brilliant maneuvering: George Bush and the government of Israel.

Neither will allow Iran to be a threat to either America or Israel, respectively.

So let me refine my statement about whether Iran benefits from possessing nuclear weapons:

Iran would gain tremendously if it can successfully become a nuclear weapon state and also prevent any other regional state from also getting nuclear weapons.

Iran loses a lot if its pursuit of nuclear weapons draws the violent attention of America or Israel. America alone, though allies would be welcome, can damage Iran's nuclear ambitions with conventional weapons alone. Israel would need to use nukes, I think, to do comparable damage. And if Israel thinks we won't stop Iran, Israel will stop Iran. Which is why I think we will do the job in the end.

And Iran loses a little bit and puts itself at risk for devastaing loss if it goes nuclear and neighboring hostile countries respond by going nuclear. Will MAD work when everyone there is already quite mad?

On a final note, Hanson notes what I've written about before as well: why do we assume that only bad things happen to us if we strike Iran? He writes:

Moreover, who knows what a successful strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might portend? We rightly are warned of all the negatives — further Shiite madness in Iraq, an Iranian land invasion into Basra, dirty bombs going off in the U.S., smoking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, Hezbollah on the move in Lebanon, etc. — but rarely of a less probable but still possible scenario: a humiliated Iran is defanged; the Arab world sighs relief, albeit in private; the Europeans chide us publicly but pat us on the back privately; and Iranian dissidents are energized, while theocratic militarists, like the Argentine dictators who were crushed in the Falklands War, lose face. Nothing is worse for the lunatic than when his cheap rhetoric earns abject humiliation for others.

One thing for sure, Iran with nukes is nothing but bad news for us. I cannot fathom this president not defending our country by eliminating the Iranian threat before he leaves office.

Another Chilling Tale of the Bushtatorship

You've heard the claims before--the Bushtatorship has suppressed dissent and critics have experienced a chilling effect that silences them.

No, really, stop giggling. Some war critics truly believe that the truth only gets out because some Baldwin brother manages to smuggle crudely reproduced tracts from Michael Moore from one organic market to the next in unnamed body orifices as part of a network of safe houses to inform the devoted few who resist the fascist state that suppresses all dissent. Good grief man, one day they might look up your library records! Maybe! Perhaps! Can't rule it out!

One brave man, surely braver than the man who carried out the cheap stunt of standing in front of Chinese tanks in 1989, spoke truth to power:

A man who identified himself as Harry Taylor rose at a forum here to tell Bush that he's never felt more ashamed of the leadership of his country. He said Bush has asserted his right to tap phone calls without a warrant, to arrest people and hold them without charges and to revoke a woman's right to an abortion, among other things.

Bravo Mr. Taylor.

So what happens when some brave Leftist rises up and confronts the man himself? Surely he would be beaten and dragged off. Or silenced with a withering presidential glare while VP Cheney unslings the shotgun, right?

Well no. Even after the audience booed the man:

He was booed by the audience, but Bush interrupted and urged the audience to let Taylor finish.

"I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administraiton," Taylor said, standing in a balcony seat and looking down at Bush on stage. "And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself."

Bush defended the National Security Administration's survelliance program, saying he authorized the program to protect the country.

"You said would I apologize for that?" Bush told him. "The answer is absolutely not."

Damn right the President shouldn't apologize for defending our country. The day we can't listen in on our enemies even if they call someone in America--especially if they call someone in America--is the day we aren't taking this war seriously.

I heard on the television news that the man actually thanked the President for hearing him out. The man may be clueless about the war, but at least he has the sense to realize that he isn't likely to be disappeared. Heck, he'll probably join the Sheehan tour and become a minor celebrity on the Hollywood circuit.

Oh, and is it my imagination that the AP writer wrote with some regret that our President was on stage and that the hostile questioner was in a balcony overlooking the stage but only shot a question at the President? Nah. Couldn't be. The writer would have to know a little history to hint at that analogy.

Dying in Place

Nearly ten years ago, I worried about the ability of even poorly trained fanatics to take a toll on our troops in an urban environment if all they had to do is sit and die in place while we dig them out. I wrote, concerning the fight for Khorramshahr in 1980, in The First Gulf War and the Army's Future:

The demonstration that troops apparently hopelessly outclassed can make a good showing -- even if they have to do nothing more complicated than die in place in their bunkers -- is useful. Iran's ill-coordinated light infantry forces were stubborn obstacles to Iraq's ambitions when deplyed in the cities of Khuzestan. Fighting a determined foe block by block and house by house as the Iraqis died in Khorramshahr would force our Army to play by our enemy's rules. Although it is possible that information dominance could extend our superioirty in open warfare to urban areas, that breakthrough has not happened. We must not forget that urban conditions may limit our technological and training advantages, lest we epxerience our own Khorramshahr debacle on day.

Strategypage notes that the enemy thought they could achieve exactly this inside Fallujah in the fall of 2004:

Most of the fighting was done by small groups – fire teams and squads – with little or no direct supervision by higher command. Their orders were essentially to impede the U.S./Iraq forces by any means necessary. Their tactics relied heavily on traps, ambushes, infiltration, and long range fire. This is how the Japanese fought the final battles of World War II. It was based on the assumption that, if you could not beat the Americans, then you could at least try to hurt them.

But Fallujah in fall 2004 showed that fanatical enemies who are expected only to die in place can be killed without letting the enemy kill lots of our troops in the process. Five thousand of our troops ripped apart 4,000 defenders:

The end result of all this was a two week campaign that resulted in some 500 American and Iraqi casualties, but the obliteration of the defending force (1,200, 1,500 captured, the rest either got out, or were buried in bombed buildings). While the enemy were not, compared to the U.S. troops, well trained, they were motivated, and often refused to surrender. But the speed and violence of the American assault prevented any coordinated defense. The U.S. troops quickly cut the city into sectors, that were then methodically cleared out.

So the enemy's plan did not work out and my worries were shown to be misguided or obsolete. Most charitably, we were successful in creating the information dominance in the ten years since I wrote that cities were a dangerous place for our troops.

Of course, this doesn't tell us how we could uproot skilled defenders who fight an organized regimental battle to defend a city against our attacks. But sheer hatred and willingness to die aren't the equalizer our enemies assumed they had. Or what I assumed ten years ago.

UPDATE: In my own defense, even though we smashed up the Fallujah defenders rapidly, keep in mind that it took us about the same time and casualties to take one city from 4,000 defenders as it did to take the entire country from several hundred thousand Iraqi military personnel.

Sowing Division

Strategypage writes about our time-consuming efforts to divide the terrorists from each other:

These counter-terror tactics take advantage of the fact that Islamic terrorists are dominated by Arabs, and Arab terrorists share certain cultural habits common throughout the Middle East. The biggest weaknesses being exploited are the corruption and paranoia.

Read it all, as "they" say.

This supports my contention in September 2001 that we are hardly helpless in the face of the terrorist threat. There was much we could do against the enemy covertly, I wrote:

Intelligence and covert operations are the first line of active defense and the first echelon of attack. The aerial suicide attacks on our people and the symbols of our power took enormous amounts of time to carry out. This is one weakness of our enemy. While they may carry out small attacks using small arms or small bombs at a moment's notice, truly horrific attacks require time because they must be planned in the shadows to avoid detection. We must increase our ability to detect such preparations and make sure the information is interpreted to provide timely and specific warnings. Then, the people who need this information must actually get the warning in time to take actions.

More importantly, we must exploit the fact that these attacks take time to organize. Intelligence must track the enemy terror cells in order to strike the enemy and disrupt them by keeping them on the move and by killing or arresting their operatives. We must sow confusion and paranoia in their ranks to slow them down and get them to fight each other. Our ability to use so many weapons is one advantage of being a powerful state. We may be a large target but we are not a helpless giant. America can direct precise or massive force quickly and globally as needed. Keeping the initiative is crucial. This will compel our enemies to start their preparation from scratch again and again. Giving the enemy time to prepare only guarantees that eventually they will be ready and will strike.

Our intelligence services must also preserve allies against anti-American coups and look for opportunities to help domestic enemies of hostile regimes to overthrow those governments. This serves to isolate the terrorists and prevent surprises that will harm our war effort.

The problem in appreciating all of this hidden struggle is, as Strategypage notes, that our successes must go unheralded to keep them going. But we are achieving success on this first line of defense and our first echelon of attack.

Head Fake?

Well, March clearly wasn't a point-of-no-return date for action against Iran's nuclear facilities. Or if it was, we failed and nothing can be done now.

Even though events feel like a pre-conflict period more now than at any time in the past couple years, I can't rule out that we are doing with Iran what we did with Iraq prior to the invasion to gain an element of surprise--repeatedly ratchet up the prospects of action only to pull back. Ideally, our forces near Iran get in a better status to act with each ratchet up and we get the enemy used to these periodic upticks and dull their senses to these upticks.

Then at one of those ratchets up, instead of fading back we keep going and hit the nutballs hard.

This is really the only way to gain surprise in our 24/7 news environment.

Passing the Baton

Another analysis of our casualty trends in Iraq.

The war is still going on, but we are succeeding in turning over the fight to the Iraqis.

Still, as the post observes, don't expect a discussion of the overall trend if April turns out to have more casualties than March. And since we had a bad day--which is rare--already in the month, in which nine of our personnel were confirmed killed (including an accident where three are missing and I assume dead), this is increasingly likely.

If we still come in lower in April that will be pretty significant in continuing the trend.

And via Instapundit, this post about other casualty and attack statistics declining including Iraqi security force casualties and suicide bombs.

Let me caution that declining American casualties are not a sign necessarily that we are winning any more than rising casualties indicate we are losing. They are not the metric of success or failure. The larger trends, however, that show we are winning will eventually result in lower casualties as the enemy is ground down and either give up fighting, are killed, or flee the country.

The question is whether this fairly broad statistical trend is the result of the past larger trends in winning and therefore an indication that victory is finally arriving.

The Glory of the Calipharce

Via Real Clear Politics, a short history of Islamist imperialism. Hint for the dense: it has nothing to do with reacting to American policy:

Whether in its militant or its more benign version, this world-conquering agenda continues to meet with condescension and denial on the part of many educated Westerners. To intellectuals, foreign-policy experts, and politicians alike, "empire" and "imperialism" are categories that apply exclusively to the European powers and, more recently, to the United States. In this view of things, Muslims, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, are merely objects--the long-suffering victims of the aggressive encroachments of others. Lacking an internal, autonomous dynamic of its own, their history is rather a function of their unhappy interaction with the West, whose obligation it is to make amends. This perspective dominated the widespread explanation of the 9/11 attacks as only a response to America's (allegedly) arrogant and self-serving foreign policy, particularly with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As we have seen, however, Islamic history has been anything but reactive. From Muhammad to the Ottomans, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of an often astonishing imperial aggressiveness and, no less important, of never quiescent imperial dreams. Even as these dreams have repeatedly frustrated any possibility for the peaceful social and political development of the Arab-Muslim world, they have given rise to no less repeated fantasies of revenge and restoration and to murderous efforts to transform fantasy into fact. If, today, America is reviled in the Muslim world, it is not because of its specific policies but because, as the preeminent world power, it blocks the final realization of this same age-old dream of regaining, in Zawahiri's words, the "lost glory" of the caliphate.

First, they came for our cartoons ...

Remember, just because their goal is insane doesn't mean they aren't trying to achieve it. And trying to kill lots of us in the process just adds to their enjoyment.

Kill the jihadis, destroy the enablers, neutralize the cheerleaders, and encourage the moderates. And above all else--be proud of our civilization and be willing to defend it.

Civil Liberties

Europeans bleat about our so-called civil rights violations involved with the imprisonment of our enemies at Guanatanamo Bay. Our ACLU (and others who think like Europeans) is along for the ride in undermining our ability to do such a basic thing as holding captured enemies so they don't fight us again.

And yet the Europeans deny rights we consider basic-- not to illegal combatants and terrorists--but to their own citizens. Freedom of speech itself is under assault in Europe, flowing from misguided attempts to stifle speech that offends:

This swirl of speech-law charges, lawsuits, and investigations is now sustained by an "antiracism" industry. Dozens of antiracism groups and self-appointed representatives of religious and other communities, like France's Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP) and the Muslim Union of Italy, readily file complaints and suits and sometimes are the direct beneficiaries when fines are imposed. Their complaints provoke investigations by an alphabet soup of government agencies, like Belgium's Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism and Britain's Commission for Racial Equality. These in turn feed into the court system. If America had practices like these, the debate over, say, the Dubai ports deal would almost certainly have sparked a shower of civil suits and criminal investigations against elected officials and columnists charged with "anti-Arab . . . anti-Muslim" bigotry (to quote the Council on American-Islamic Relations).

Couldn't a group of well-heeled Americans fund a European Civil Liberties Union to help fight such represssive laws in Europe? Defend the little guys against the stifling of free expression?

Europeans want to interfere in our internal policies from waging war to elections to the death penalty? Fine--fight them on the ground of freedom itself. Strategypage calls it "lawfare" and we should give them some of the same. Considering we may come to rely on the support of Europeans out of power to express their views and reclaim the governing and press centers of power, wouldn't it be good to give those out of power the tool of freedom of speech? The governing class suppresses such speech precisely because it runs against the elite assumptions sometimes imposed on the commoners.

I'll become a card-carrying member of the ECLU if it is ever created.

The Difference Between a Boom and a Bomb

Ya know, I really need to follow my instincts and use my latent math abilities. I took calculus and physics in college, after all. Anyway ...

I wrote of the huge friggin' explosion we are planning for our test site in Nevada.

When I read about the same test in Strategypage...

The Department of Defense emphasized that no nuclear explosion would occur, but that it would be a nuclear size explosion. Some 500 tons of explosives to be exact. That's a .5 kiloton weapon. The test, called Divine Strake, will be to investigate the effectiveness of a nuclear weapon designed to destroy facilities buried deep underground.

And then it hit me. Doh! Of course it isn't a conventional bomb. Just a substitute for testing purposes of a nuke. And we couldn't deliver such a conventional explosive, it suddenly dawned on me. Wrong week to give up sniffing glue, as they say ...

I had vaguely wondered what the heck we'd use to deliver such a huge weapon without taking it a step further and remembering that we don't have anything that can lift that much of a payload! We'd have to drive it to the target site in a convoy of semi-trailers and assemble it on the spot.

This is why we have the term "weaponize."

Still, enemies contemplating a burrowing half-kiloton nuke won't sleep well at night thinking about Divine Strake. We can deliver one of those.

Swing and a Miss?

I recently wrote about China's efforts to develop an "assassin's mace" to take out our carriers in the event of a war (say,picking a country at random as an example, over Taiwan).

An issue separate from whether the Chinese can achieve this is whether it would matter if they did.

Sure, losing a carrier would be a huge prestige blow; but if we could withstand the propaganda impact, would losing a carrier or two stop us from successfully intervening over Taiwan and beating China? The bigger question is whether China could conquer Taiwan before we intervene. But in terms of the naval battle, I think we'd still wipe up the PLAN even without our carriers once we enter the battle.

As I argue in this post, it has been a long time since our carriers were our nearly sole offensive weapon. And carriers may even become a liability in time--a propaganda loss for losing one without a commensurate gain in capabilities for preserving them. In the 1970s, it made sense for the Soviets to target our carriers; but in the decades since then, anti-ship and land-attack missiles have spread to all of our surface combatants and submarines. And as we network what we have, the ability of our Navy to mass effect on the enemy has become independent of carriers.

I guess the main question then becomes, can we deploy sufficient fighter aircraft to help control the skies over Taiwan without carriers? If we can cover Taiwan from Guam and Okinawa and even get the Philippines to host an air expeditionary wing, we wouldn't need carriers for the fighter aircraft they carry any more than we need their strike aircraft to strike Chinese ships. If we can safely base aircraft on Taiwan the aerial refueling issue disappears--though defending against incoming guided ballistic missiles would be pretty tough, I think. I don't count on basing on Taiwan in the early stages, at least.

So, China could swing their magic mace and hit our war horse without harming our ability to actually fight and beat them with masses of missiles distributed across the western Pacific.

And the scary thing is, if the Chinese mistakenly think such a blow will win the war for them, war will seem very rational to them, and they will be more likely to swing the mace and go to war with us.

High Seas Fleet

When the Soviet Union collapsed, I expected their fleet to dwindle away. Czarist Russia rarely had a major sea-going fleet in its history, since it was a continental power that relied on armies to protect its long frontiers. To have a navy--a major expense--required a major effort and strong leadership to push forward. I figured the inertia of history would kill the Red fleet.

Without the will to confront America, Russia had no desire to expend money they did not have on maintaining the large ex-Soviet fleet. After fifteen years of neglect:

Russia recently did a study of their navy and found that, because of the age of their ships, and the lack of maintenance since the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the fleet would be reduced to sixty seaworthy warships and submarines in ten years. Because of its geography, the Russian navy is divided into four widely separated fleets (North, Pacific, Baltic and Black Sea). Assuming that the fleet is divided equally into four parts, in a decade, the Baltic Sea Fleet would be inferior to the nearby Swedish and Finnish fleets. The Black Sea fleet would be inferior to the nearby Turkish navy.

It's nearly gone. The fleet that in 1975 practiced a world-wide Pearl Harbor against our carriers will in a few years be a coast guard with some nuclear attack and nuclear missile submarines. Plus a small number of prestige capital ships to show the flag and remind others (but mostly themselves) that they were once a major naval power.

So is China's drive for a blue water navy similarly vulnerable to lack of interest? Is it a vanity project to gain the trappings of a major power? Will this fleet atrophy and die like Soviet Russia's fleet after a flurry of ship-building? Will modern China continue the trend of Imperial China which had no major fleet through most of China's long history?

I don't think so. Unlike Soviet (or Putin's) Russia, China is not just a land power. Chinese trade and energy and raw material needs require access to the world via the seas. China has every interest in building a blue water navy to safeguard their access to these markets and resources.

So Chinese naval power is a fact of life we have to get used to and not assume is just a passing fancy. As long as China remains a unified state, that is.

On the other hand, since China is still a land power in addition to being a newly developing sea power, they may founder on the dilemma of the Kaiser's Germany--too few resources to fund both the armies to defend the land frontier and the ships to patrol the sea frontier at the same time. America and Japan at sea to the east and armies/air power in an arc from Vietnam to India to Russia to South Korea.

We'll see if the Chinese can do better than the Germans of a century ago. I doubt it.

Classic Peacekeeping

Via Stand-To! is this interesting article about Tal Afar. We will be pulling back after driving the enemy out of the town:

The date for handing off the city to Iraqi security forces has in fact been moved up, as the White House intends to draw down troop levels in Iraq to 100,000. If anything, however, Tall Afar shows the folly of doing so.

Having spent part of January there, I do not doubt that the town amounts to a genuine success story. Even from the parapets of Tall Afar's centuries-old Ottoman castle, a visitor gleans evidence of real progress. After assaulting the city and putting a halt to the gruesome depredations by insurgents, Washington poured millions of dollars into Tall Afar, and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment launched 150 infrastructure and cleanup projects.

It also locked the place down, establishing 29 patrol bases throughout Tall Afar, stationing Abrams tanks at intersections and rebuilding from scratch the local security forces. Most important, it planted itself directly at the heart of a once-hostile population center, establishing the Americans as an essential buffer between the town's feuding sects.

This article makes an excellent point. And I'm not a particular fan of Robert Kaplan. Even though in general it is wise to turn over turf to Iraqis, in areas where ethnic populations come in contact like this city, it may be wise to set down roots for a while as we and our allies have done in Bosnia to separate warring factions from each other.

Iraq is a big and varied country. One approach cannot work everywhere. Anbar is different from the Shia south which is different from the Kurdish north. In a big city like Tal Afar it may be better to assume a sizable presence for quite some time. We will need garrison forces in Iraq for a long time anyway, so why not put them where they do good instead of parked in some isolated desert base? Casualties should be minimal in such a role as they have been in Bosnia and even Kosovo.

This article calls into question some of the assumptions of calling for the Tal Afar option all over Iraq, but bolsters the approach in one key component.

First on the question:

What it is, though, like so many places in Iraq now, is a city increasingly divided along sectarian lines. The neighborhoods we patrolled were largely Shia; those our reporter found barricaded and dangerous were mostly Sunni. "I'd say that zero percent of Bush's talk about Tall Afar is true," said Ahmed Sami, 45, a Sunni laborer. "They turned Shiite neighborhoods into havens, and Sunni neighborhoods into hells." Even in the Shia neighborhoods, people were far from satisfied. "This is all just an outdoor prison for us," said school teacher Abu Muhammed. "We can't even go as far as the market street up there." He gestured to the top of his road, where the Ottoman fortress that dominates the town is located (and which we couldn't visit due to a security scare, even though it holds the mayor's office). "We know the American Army and the Iraqi Army are working and doing their best," said Bakr Muhammed Bakr, a dressmaker whose shop, like most others on the streets, was open for business. "But what are they going to do, put a soldier in front of each Sunni house?"

If Tal Afar is a success because we did not turn over security to the Iraqis as our overall plan calls for, the fact that Tal Afar is not quite the happy pacified city it is commonly referred to now by war supporters should be a caution about using the same tactics elsewhere. If the US presence has not pacified the city, the overall strategy of turning over security to Iraqis is not negated by the Tal Afar example.

I've not jumped on the band wagon of extolling Tal Afar in part because calling attention to success makes it an obvious target for the enemy to undermine our efforts. In addition, by mistakenly claiming a happy pacified city when our strategy merely calls for Iraqis to take over the fight is driving some war supporters to call for abandoning the hand-over of responsibility for security to Iraqis in favor of our keeping it in our hands as long as it takes. And if we need to keep troops in Iraq in large numbers so be it, they say.

But Tal Afar is a success without trying to prove complete pacification of the city's Sunnis and Shias. Let's not over-reach our claims of success or we risk having them blow up in our face. A setback after a decent success is no morale killer but a setback after portraying a moderate level of success as a major and revolutionary change is a morale killer. Success is coming--don't be over-eager to claim complete victory too soon.

On the other hand, the concentration of troops in Tal Afar is not as great as it is portrayed:

In fact, at all times at least 3,000 Iraqi Army, police and U.S. soldiers are on duty inside the city, stationed at a welter of police stations and camps and on checkpoints. Most are Iraqis. They patrol by foot and vehicle constantly. Thousands more are at bases outside the city. Tall Afar's population is only 150,000. (As many as 100,000 people, mostly Sunni, fled during last year's fighting and most have not returned.) That's at least one armed man for every 50 residents, more if reinforcements are used. "That's a pretty high ratio," acknowledged MacFarland, "which is why the enemy is having a hard time. It would be pretty hard to replicate that in a city like Baghdad or Mosul."

One troop for every 50 civilians? That's just restating the minimum from history for successful counter-insurgencies of 20 troops per thousand population--2%. Excluding the Kurds who have their own security forces, we have about 400,000 Iraqi police and soldiers, US troops, Coalition troops, and contract security for 20 million Shia and Sunni Iraqis--2%.

So with current troop levels this ratio should not be impossible to maintain in hot spot cities given that a lot of Shia areas will need far fewer than the 2% of the population for security. Perhaps 1% or less in some areas. Since not all areas need 2%, a reduction of US troops should be possible even if Iraqi security strength does not match our withdrawal on a 1:1 basis from this point forward.

Patrolling between factions is not beyond our capabilities. We may not need a full armored cavalry regiment in Tal Afar, and with good enough Iraqi units that we watch over and support, smaller number of US troops can prevent open civil strife from breaking out. As we defeat the Baathists and jihadis, internal divisions rise in relative importance and we must adapt to defeat this threat.

So consider the Tal Afar model for some areas. Iraq is a big country and one solution does not work everywhere. As the enemy seems to go after Baghdad targets, we may need to redeploy existing forces to use the Tal Afar model inside Baghdad or parts of it.

But by all means, do not abandon the overall strategy of pushing security on to the Iraqis. It is not our obligation to turn over a country as quiet as a Vermont hamlet--just to give Iraqis the tools to win. It is their country--help them fight for its future.

Is This a Trick Question?

I haven't commented on Jill Carroll's ordeal. Just because I live in Ann Arbor doesn't mean I have special insight on this. Mostly, I was just glad she was released and didn't want to comment on her reported statements since she'd just been held hostage by bloodthirsty killers for a couple months. Give her time, I thought.

And this despite my jumping on the statement of the so-called Christian so-called peace team organization on the release of three of four members kidnapped by the enemy. (What happened to the fourth you ask? Oh, murdered by the enemy.) That was a reaction to the statement by the corporate idiots safely out of the war zone.

In any case, Jill's seemingly pro-enemy statements were inspired by fear and she has disavowed them. She may not be a fan of the war but she knows when stone cold killers have held her life in their scummy hands.

Instapundit notes Powerline's post on Jill's undestandable desire to get the heck out of Dodge before honestly commenting. And then asks:

As I said yesterday, Jill Carroll has an obvious excuse. What is the excuse of those on the American left who utter similar nonsense and who defended the substance of Carroll's original coerced drivel?

Is this a trick question? What's the excuse? Have the boys at Powerline not been paying attention?

Those uttering similar nonsense without a gun pointed to their heads want the enemy to win.

Battlefield: Iraq

Strategypage notes trends in Iraq that indicate we are winning.

Sunnis increasingly concluding they have lost. Allying with al Qaeda just tainted them. And the Shias and Kurds have successfully built security forces that cannot be beaten. Contrary to Sunni assumptions, American will to fight was good enough to shield the new Iraqi government while it built up. And unlike their propaganda, American forces have been lethal on the ground and have smashed up the Sunnis and foreign jihadis in battle. Plus, Sunnis are getting tired of being poor and are worried that they are being left behind as Iraq as a whole--and especially the Shia and Kurd areas--forge ahead economically.

With our casualties going down month after month, the pressure on our forces to pull out too soon will decline. And I've read for a while now that al Qaeda has decided Iraq is a losing front and is transferring emphasis back to Afghanistan.

It should not be too long before Iraqi casualties decline, too, as only the remnant jihadis and Baathists with no place to go continue to fight. When those former Baathists funding the insurgency decide that they'd rather keep the money they have and retire to a safe haven with nice pools and authorities who don't ask questions rather than spend it on a fight that even they can't deny is lost, it could be a rapid decline.

And then the fight against the criminals that are a large part of the violence in Iraq will be targetted.

The big question for me is what Iran will do. Iran sees that we are winning in Iraq. Iran retains influence with some Shia militias inside Iraq, including the idiot Sadr. With American and even Western European attention turning to Iran, the Iranians may well decide that to buy the time they need to go nuclear they will need to counter-attack more openly inside Iraq. Will the Iranians order the Shia militias to rise up?

And do the Iranian mullahs see Iraqi democracy as a threat to their rule? Or do they believe they will use Shia Islam to pull the strings in Iraq? Do they think that Iranians have no use for democracy even if it succeeds in Iraq? That is, is a democratic Iraq a threat to Iran's mullahs even aside from the nuclear question? Will this alone lead Iran to escalate in Iraq?

And if they do, will the Iraqi government hold up against this threat? Will American public opinion hold up against an apparent defeat? We held up well against the April 2004 jihadi-Sadr revolt but can we again? Will this be the Battle of the Bulge offensive that we stop and in the process crush the enemy's last assets? Or Tet when the American public concludes we've lost?

And for Iran, is rolling the dice wise? Could they buy the time to go nuclear without this risky move? Or will an Iranian defeat in an open stab at our position in Iraq simply give us the excuse to hammer Iran rather than stop us by tying us down?

We are winning in Iraq. But outside factors may yet intervene to threaten what we've accomplished so far.

And of course, even if we pass this looming test, the task of breaking long habits of corruption and tribalism in Iraq will test us. But others since World War II deemed by the experts to be incapable of democracy--Latin Americans, Spanish, Asians, and East Europeans--have built democracies. Not to mention the Japanese and Germans who lacked real democracy before we imposed it.

Trends are good. No doubt. And they have been for quite some time even though our press has failed to recognize this. To be fair, fighting has continued because our enemies did not decide to quit even though they were losing. Saying we have been winning could seem stupid to assert if you only looked at the headlines without examining the bigger trends. Indeed, polling on Iraq shows that it has been very easy to conclude we are not winning. But we have been. I've gone blue in the fingertips blogging on this for close to two years now. The only time I had my doubts about the trends was in April and May 2004. But I didn't panic and we endured the enemy's shot and recovered. Now we are moving toward victory.

But let's not get cocky. A trend is not victory. Don't let good trends lull us into thinking some hard times cannot happen. Iran may still want a say in whether we win inside Iraq.

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive European

Mad Minerva notes that Prime Minister Blair lectured before the Australian parliament about the need to defend Western civilization from threats. And he reminded his audience that without America such a defense is not possible. America may be a difficult nation to be an ally of, Blair said (perhaps echoing Churchill's comments about the only thing worse than fighting without allies is fighting with allies), but we are needed:

The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is that they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved. We want them engaged. The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them. Our task is to ensure that, with them, we do not limit this agenda to security. If our security lies in our values and our values are about justice and fairness as well as freedom from fear, then the agenda must be more than security and the alliance include more than America.

Prime Minister Blair is wise to remind our fellow allies in Australia that we must stand together and fight. The European path of supine indecision interrupted only by meaningless spasms of tough talk would be easy to follow. Indeed, many here as well as in Britain, Australia, and Europe vigorously advocate such a course and pretend it is real security against threats to our society and freedom.

And it would be tempting to just say screw all those ingrates and good luck to them. But the world is too small to safely consign any large portion to the category of "doesn't matter." And there are people even in Europe who would stand with us to fight, so we cannot abandon them falsely assuming their more realistic views can never prevail in Europe.

The Europeans in power may not like to hear the harsh truth about the need to defend what we've spend centuries building, but they need to hear it. And I have hope they will in time heed what we say. Or at least enough of them to matter.

Friends don't let friends conduct foreign policy European.

They Need to Be Careful of What They Wish For

I like Strategypage a lot. So much that I subscribe when I could just get it for free.

But I have to wonder about this:

Iran is doing little to discourage American talk of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Such an attack would entrench the religious dictatorship that is currently running Iran. Iranian nationalism being what it is, a bombing campaign would destroy much of the pro-American feelings that exist in Iran. The Islamic conservatives know that such an attack would slow nuclear weapons research, but not halt it. Also, unless the Europeans signed on for a bombing attack, such a strike would make the Europeans far more amenable to forgetting about sanctions.

First of all, I don't know why we assume that Iranians who hate being ordered about by religious fanatics will suddenly be pro-religious fanatics if we deprive said religious fanatic dictators of their nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Perhaps they will. But I've seen nothing that seems to actually analyze this. Perhaps it can't really be analyzed with any certainty. I simply note that the September 11 attacks--except for a brief period--didn't rally nearly half this country to the government. Why would Iranians--who are actually repressed unlike the fantasy oppression here imagined by Hollywood types--be more loyal to their government?

And second, just because the mullahs in their twisted world view think that an attack on them will strengthen them doesn't mean it is acutally true.

Didn't the Taliban and al Qaeda want America to strike back at Afghanistan imagining that we'd be ineffective? Bad call on their part.

And don't we now see that Saddam assumed that he'd weather any attack on him in 2003 and emerge stronger for defying us again? Once more, bad call on his part.

Still, the certainty that an aerial campaign to knock out their nuke facilities will only set them back added to the possibility that the people of Iran will rally to the regime means our prime strategy should be to overthrow the mullahs. A rational regime, at best, will decide that Iran does not need nukes. At worst, a rational regime with nukes is better than a nutcase regime with nukes.

The question in my mind is do we have the time to overthrow the mullahs before they get nukes? Are our intelligence people good enough to engineer this? If not, I do not find the idea of containing nutball Iran an acceptable alternative. Striking Iran to buy the time it would purchase is the only reasonable alternative to regime change if our objective is to protect our people from this very real threat.

So I don't have confidence that Iran's rulers have made the right call in wanting us to attack. Not even if they are correct in assuming that we will merely hit them from the air. We may go for far more. When you strike a king, you should kill him, as the saying goes. Regime change may yet be our ultimate disarming strike--even if done while we hit the nuclear and other WMD sites.

Seeing the Assassin's Mace in a Mirror

America is well ahead of China in overall military technology and capability. So China, it is sometimes said, is looking for a silver bullet solution--a so-called Assassin's Mace--that will nullify our existing advantages.

One proposed mace is the ability to target our aircraft carriers without building a blue water navy of their own. Long-range anti-ship missiles on subs and surface ships are one method, of course. This is pretty conventional thinking.

Another is more ambitious:

The PLA’s historic penchant for secrecy and surprise, when combined with known programs to develop highly advanced technologies that will lead to new and advanced weapons, leads to the conclusion that the PLA is seeking [to] field new weapon systems that could shock an adversary and accelerate their defeat. In the mid-1990s former leader Jiang Zemin re-popularized an ancient Chinese term for such weapons, “Shashaojian,” translated most frequently as “Assassin’s Mace,” or “silver bullet” weapons.

One potential Shashoujian is identified by the [DOD’s 2005 report on China military power]: a maneuvering ballistic missile design to target U.S. naval forces. In 1996 a Chinese technician revealed that a “terminal guidance system” that would confer very high accuracy was being developed for the DF-21 [intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM]. Such a system could employ a radar similar to the defunct U.S. Pershing-2 MRBM or could employ off-board sensors with rapid data-links to the missile tied to satellite-navigation systems. Nevertheless, should such missiles be realized they will pose a considerable threat as the U.S. Navy is not yet ready to deploy adequate missile defenses.

A separate observer states:

Land-based conventional tipped ballistic missiles with maneuverable (MarV) warheads that can hit ships at sea.... would be a Chinese “assassin’s mace” sort of capability — something impossible to deal with today, and very difficult under any circumstances if one is forced to defend by shooting down ballistic missiles. The capability is dependent on Beijing’s ability to put together the appropriate space-based surveillance, command, and targeting architecture necessary to make this work.

One more observer states:

There is yet another exceedingly important chapter being written in the [PLA] ballistic-missile saga. China is trying to move rapidly in developing ballistic missiles that could hit ships at sea at MRBM [medium-range ballistic missile] ranges — in other words, to threaten carriers beyond the range at which they could engage Chinese forces or strike China. Among its other advantages for China, this method of attack avoids altogether the daunting prospect of having to cope with the U.S. Navy submarine force — as anti-submarine warfare is a big Chinese weakness. Along with these efforts to develop ballistic missiles to hit ships, they are, of course, working diligently to perfect the means to locate and target our carrier strike groups (CSGs). In that regard, an imperfect or rudimentary (fishing boats with satellite phones) means of location and targeting might be employed even earlier than the delay of several more years likely needed to perfect more reliable and consistent targeting of ships. Chinese missile specialists are writing openly and convincingly of MaRV’d ballistic missiles (missiles with maneuverable reentry vehicles) that maneuver both to defeat defenses and to follow the commands of seekers that spot the target ships. There seems little doubt that our naval forces will face this threat long before the Taiwan issue is resolved.

It is interesting to me that in a discussion of Chinese efforts to develop a means of short-circuiting our advantage at sea and in naval air power that rely on our superior technology (and enabled by our training, more importantly), the analysis says China will rely on a technological solution to target our carriers at sea. The analysis says the Chinese--while trying to nullify our technological edge--will themselves rely on technology to solve the targeting problem with complex and expensive satellite and communications networks. Civilian ships spread out with simple communications gear are given as an unconventional work-around to the targeting problem.

Let me offer a non-Manhattan Project-style and unconventional solution to China's targeting problem. What if Chinese agents placed a signalling device on the keel of an American aircraft carrier while in port? Or a homing device in the galley's coffee machine before it is installed? Or buried in the storage bins of some bulk product? What if the Chinese maneuvering ballistic missiles were designed to home in on the signal of such a device and the Chinese had a means to turn on the device when needed?

Simple. Low tech. And utterly devastating if the Chinese actually get homing ballistic missiles before we get missile defenses at sea capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.

I don't know if planting homing devices on our carriers is possible, but as long as we are looking at asymmetrical means of fighting our forces, let's think outside our technological frame of mind for how China might create such an assassin's mace.