Another Reason to "Torch" the Horn

Iran is looking for Uranium in Somalia.

Big deal, you might say. They have plenty in Iran or could buy it from friendly nations like Russia. Why worry about a little more?

Notes the article:

The uranium prospecting that Iranians are undertaking in Somalia creates problems for U.S. efforts to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. It would provide them with a virtually untraceable source of uranium ore that could be made into weapons.

Because we all know, when you want to generate electricity it is vitally important that nobody know where your Uranium came from.

The Islamists in Somalia are dangerous and are beating the local opposition. It is time for a Torch II operation in the Horn.

The Proper Response to an Ambush

When ambushed, you have to get out of the kill zone. Where you are when the bullets fly is where the enemy decided it could kill you best.

In vehicles, it is often best to drive through the ambush kill zone in order to counter-attack the ambushers if possible or to simply escape.

On foot, however, you can't get out of the kill zone fast enough. Escape is not an option. So an immediate counter-attack into the ambushers is often the best course to survive. This takes courage and training. But it is also the way to live.

So when CAIR ambushes our airline security, as is increasingly apparent (tip to Powerline) according to reports by Katherine Kersten:

So was the Flying Imams incident an instance of bigotry? Or was it part of a larger script? If so, whose script is it, and what's the final act?

I'll consider those questions in Thursday's column.

I eagerly await her consideration of those questions.

I repeat that our best course of action is to counter-attack.

I'm tired of living in the kill zone. And I don't think we can run from the attacks.

Is He New to the Job?

Kofi Annan is ending his ten-year tenure as Secretary General of the United Nations. He pretty much sums up his cluelessness and hostility to America with this statement:

"The Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests," he said in another jab at Bush.

That was a jab at President Bush? Truly, it is a pity we cannot all be as enlightened as the French, Russians, and Chinese.

Just how is that Darfur project going, Mr. Secretary General?

Don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out, Mr. Annan.

Disillusioned?

The growing consensus is that the Baker Commission and the November election won't really change our basic strategy in the Iraq War over at least the next couple years. I figured that was the case right after the election, despite my own immediate discouragement of what the election and pending report might mean.

Now consider that the Iraqi Sunni terrorists and insurgents of both the Baathist and jihadi variety may have a lot invested in the idea that our will was broken and we will withdraw from Iraq. This would leave them the chance to somehow overcome the majority Shias and Kurds. The Sunnis may have been getting smashed up all over Iraq, but in the nick of time we will pull a withdrawal and save them.

So, with each passing month where our forces go out and kill terrorists and jihadis with no sign we are about to pull out, will the enemy foot soldiers get seriously discouraged?

I'm not trying to put a smiley face on the situation. But consider that the enemy may have worked themselves up into a supreme effort to attack and affect our elections the last several months. Having succeeded (in their minds even if not true objectively) in getting Congress to flip party control, have the enemy convinced themselves they won the war?

If so, as we continue to fight even with the opposition party controlling Congress, a sense of futility could infect the enemy and lead to elements quitting the fight.

I don't know. But it is a possibility considering that I think the Sunni Arabs are on the verge of being wiped out in Iraq and all their talk of ultimate victory is simply farcical.

Getting Real About War Reporting

Via National Review Online, this article says that the world thinks we are indiscriminantly killing civilians in Iraq even as we exercise extreme care in avoiding civilian deaths during combat operations:

The [Pew Global Attitudes survey] found that over 90 percent of Jordanian, Moroccan, Palestinian, and Turkish respondents and over 80 percent of Indonesian and Pakistani respondents felt that the United States "didn't try very hard" to avoid civilian casualties in Iraq. That view was shared outside the Muslim world by over 70 percent of the Brazilians, French, Russians, and South Koreans polled.

And yet, despite some dark spots on its record, the U.S. military has done a better job of respecting noncombatant immunity in Iraq than is commonly believed. Over the past year, I have conducted dozens of interviews with commanders, judge advocates, and others who have served in Iraq; investigated operational "lessons learned" during a recent trip to Baghdad; observed the predeployment training of forces; and extensively reviewed unclassified Pentagon documents, official and unofficial histories, troops' memoirs and blogs, and human rights reports. I have found not only that U.S. compliance with noncombatant immunity in Iraq is relatively high by historical standards but also that it has been improving since the beginning of the war.

Yes indeed, the first victim in war is the truth.

I mentioned that we are suffering from this false perception and that individual victories against fake stories are being swamped by the enemy's victories of shaping perceptions.

What we really need is a commission on how to shape war reporting and not about waging the war in Iraq. The former fight is the one that is truly grave and deteriorating.

Answering the Question "How Stupid Are They?"

The Sunni Arabs of Iraq are just plain stupid.

For several years, I've foolishly expected them to get a clue and stop killing the Shias and Kurds who outnumber them by four or five-to-one odds. I thought they'd accept a diminished status in a democratic Iraq rather than fight futilely for their former neck-stomping dominance.

I wrote in January 2005, commenting on a Strategypage report that said the war was going to get very ugly due to Sunni Arab brutality:

The Baathists, having chosen to take this chance to be stupid when they could have prospered, will be eradicated. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people, in my opinion.

Brace yourselves. The Baathists and their jihadi friends have guaranteed that this will be an ugly fight. Sadly, the Iraqi government won't get the benefit of the doubt that the beheaders and car bombers presently get in our press.

Silly me. Faced with Shias angry for centuries of oppression and decades of seeing friends and families slaughtered in addition to the routine indignities of being despised by their Sunni Arab rulers, the Sunnis are going for broke (tip to Belmont Club). Iraq's Sunnis have their own television station:

"Chase the Shias from neighbourhood to neighbourhood," it urges. "Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner. Defend your houses by killing them."

So goes another broadcast on Al Zahraa, a satellite television channel catering to what is arguably one of the most unfashionable minorities in programming history – Iraq's Sunni Muslim community.

Nothing like telling the former victims who now run the government and outnumber you by about 4:1 odds that you consider them your enemy. Win or die, it seems.

But our press will have more sympathy for the educated English-speaking Baathists who will dominate the airwaves than the press ever had for the Shia bumpkins who have the nerve to be upset about being murdered by their social betters.

As I said before, as the Shias have started killing Sunnis in large numbers since the February Samarra bombing, we may not get our democracy embraced by Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis. But the Sunni Arabs won't be sitting in the palaces after the fight is over. The Sunnis are heading for the big dirt nap and they have only themselves to blame.

Has a community on this planet been more stupid and self destructive than Iraq's Sunni Arabs?

UPDATE: Obviously, I mean other than the Palestinians. Put them in the mix and nobody else can come close. That's hardly fair to aspiring Sunni Arab fools in Iraq who want to have their pure dream state in lovely Anbar province. Sand. No oil. Yep, quite the dream future for them. And they're just determined enough to get that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Washington Post recounts the Shia extremist terror campaign. Not to defend the Sadr thugs, but note how the English-speaking Sunnis are portrayed as victims. No mention of years of suicide bombings by Sunni terrorists that were largely overlooked by the Shias until February 2006. No mention of the decades of Saddam's rule where Sunni Baathists murdered Shias and Kurds in large numbers and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves. No mention of centuries of Sunni Arab rule over Shias and Kurds that kept Shias and Kurds distinctly second-class citizens.

The writer does note this very real development:

Just as the Shiites turn to the militias for protection, he now views the Sunni Arab insurgents as his family's guardians.

But the writer doesn't explain that this is exactly why the Sunni Arab terrorists have been targetting Shias--to provoke a response that will drive Sunni Arabs to support the terrorists as their only defense against Shia death squads. For years these Sunnis refused to turn on the terrorists in large numbers. Now they are paying for their support for the terrorists or neutrality.

Iraq's Sunni Arabs may be stupid in their choices, but they will continue to get a sympathetic Western press eager to portray them as victims.

Shield and Sword

Winning and losing in Iraq is big in the news after the Iraq Study Group said in essence we are losing.

Are we?

I know that the conventional wisdom is that we are losing. So let me speak some truth to power and assert that no we are not losing.

We are, in fact, winning.

To explain, our military is the shield behind which the Iraqi government can pursue government building and make advances to improve the economy, normalize the society, and attract support from the population. In time, the Iraqi security forces will be able to provide that shield. I have been quite consistent in this assessment since the fall of 2003. That we haven't won yet does not mean I am wrong. It means it is taking longer for the efforts to win the war to have an effect.

Lieutenant General Chiarelli offers this exact assessment in a press conference yesterday when asked if we are winning or losing. Said the general:

You know, I thought that -- I thought I'd escaped that one. But militarily, I can say without a doubt that we are winning.

We've never been defeated on any battlefield certainly in this conflict, nor will we be. To ask us if we're winning in Iraq is to think that one could boil the situation down to a simple yes-or-no answer, and I don't believe there is a simple yes-or-no answer. I think it is the wrong question.

The real question that I think we should be asking ourselves is, are we making the progress toward our strategic objectives? And I would have to give that answer a yes. Are we moving as fast as I wish we were and I know General Casey wishes we were toward meeting those strategic objectives? We are not.

This is exactly right. Our military is providing the shield. We are slowly building up the Iraqi shield to take over. And the Iraqi government is attempting to get the opponents of the government to reconcile with the new Iraqi government. Their swords are on the economic, political, and social side.

This is taking more time than I thought it would. But then, I never imagined we'd let Iran and Syria get away with murder. They are supporting those who kill our troops and slaughter Iraqi civilians. So while the progress in Iraq proceeds very slowly, we grow weary of holding that shield to protect their non-military efforts.

We shall see if we can get the Iraqis to raise their own shield quickly enough to take over before we tire. Then, when our troops aren't dying , I imagine our people will be far more patient with the slow pace of non-military advances in Iraq.

And remember, too, that "losing" doesn't mean the Iraqi Baathists or Sunni jihadis take over the government again. Losing means the Sunni community in Iraq is largely destroyed.

Getting Real About What We Might Lose

Do not define our winning or losing in Iraq based on how the war turns out for the Sunni Arabs.

While we may not get the multi-ethnic democracy we are trying to give birth to in Iraq, this does not mean we won't get democracy. Failure to get a multi-ethnic democracy surely doesn't mean that the Sunnis can claw their way back to power. And it doesn't mean that Sadr's Iranian-backed thugs will win. It just means there won't be a lot of Sunni Arabs in whatever Iraq emerges after the insurgencies are ended and the large-scale crime is suppressed.

Yet as we contemplate the Iraq War, the burden on the civilians is commonly the metric for concluding we are losing the war.

But two-thirds of the dead are Sunni Arabs dying in revenge attacks by Shias and not an increase in Sunni terror victims of Shias and Kurds. The Sunni Arabs are losing and heading for the big dirt nap.

Which is why so many are fleeing Iraq now. This is another metric of failure as defined by some. As the New York Times reports (and I am still on my linking boycott):

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated in a report released last month that more than 1.6 million Iraqis have left since March 2003, nearly 7 percent of the population. Jordanian security officials say more than 750,000 are in and around Amman, a city of 2.5 million. Syrian officials estimate that up to one million have gone to the suburbs of Damascus, a city of three million. An additional 150,000 have landed in Cairo. Every month, 100,000 more join them in Syria and Jordan, the report said.

Better to have fled than be dead.

I called this interpretation of the Sunni flight back in June and stick by it.

The reason these Sunnis flee now is that these backers of the former regime of Saddam are probably losing hope that their killers can sweep them back into power with their campaign of terror and intimidation.

The fact that backers of the Baathists are now leaving Iraq is not a sign that we are losing. It is a sign that the enemy is losing. They see little hope of running things any time soon and are getting out of town before the new cops come around with war crimes and human rights violation charges in hand. They see that even Saddam is in the witness stand with his own life on the line and have no desire to follow him to the gallows.

So don't transform the fleeing Sunnis into poor oppressed victims. They are former neck-stompers who have given up on their dreams of continuing their neck-stomping. This is a good thing.

Not that I celebrate this development. Innocent Sunnis must flee, too. Remember, only a minority of Sunni Arabs were on the Tikrit gravy train. Although much like poor Southerners in slave states who received no material benefit from slavery as an institution but did get some psychological benefit of being in the "superior" class of Southerners, all Sunni Arabs were dominant and expected to be dominant.

But the Shia militia retribution campaign against Sunni Arabs that started after the February Samarra Golden Dome mosque bombing wouldn't have happened if the Sunni Arabs had come on board the new Iraq long ago. For years, we've been trying to coax the Sunnis into the government and society and to stop supporting or tolerating the killers among them. They have not done so. They persisted in their fantasy world of returning to their "natural" role of running Iraq and oppressing the lesser Shias and Kurds who sadly shared the same real estate.

And so the Sunni Arabs will flee and the Sunni-based insurgency will flop about starved of oxygen as the Maoist "sea" they need to swim in is drained from central Iraq. And then we will work on building a democracy with the Shias, Kurdish minority, and a dim shadow of the Sunni Arab community.

The Sunni Arabs have been obstructing democracy in Iraq and without them there may simply be one less obstacle to achieving that goal. That is the reality of Iraq today.

And let me add that the Shia minority (the Allawites) that runs Syria surely can't be real happy with so many Sunnis running around Damascus. Assad may be working to destabilize Iraq but his actions have a reaction. One would think we could take advantage of this. Why are we the ones acting all jittery? Others have much more to lose.

In Baker's World

In Baker's world, life is easy.

In Baker's world, Iran can be helpful in ending the violence in Iraq, because we all have a stake in a stable Iraq.

In Baker's world, we should talk to our enemies and let's just enter them with no preconditions.

In Baker's world, we have to earn Iran's trust. So any Iranian preconditions to talk are understandable.

In Baker's world, we don't have any proof that oil-rich Iran wants nuclear technology for nuclear weapons. And even it they do, we can deter them as we did the Soviet Union. Surely, we can understand why the want nukes in a dangerous part of the world? I mean, if they are really pursuing them--we wouldn't want to be hasty. Who knows?

In the real world, the reason Iran could be helpful in Iraq is because they are responsible for a lot of the violence. The Iranians are training thugs, sending in their own thugs, and sending money and arms to foment violence:

"The biggest help Iran can make is to stop what they're doing in Iraq right now," a senior U.S. military official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters.

In the real world, Iran is pushing forward with nuclear technology and it won't stop until they have nukes. And Iran knows the West has little stomach to stop them:

Resistance of the Iranian nation in the past year forced them to retreat tens of steps over the Iran's nuclear issue," the semi-official Fars agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. Fars is considered to be close to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards.

Iran has been locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program. The U.S. alleges that Tehran is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons, but Iran contends its program is for peaceful purposes including generating electricity.

In the real world there are stone cold killers who just want to murder us in our sleep in mega-deaths. In the real world, Iran is our enemy and has been since they invaded sovereign United States territory by seizing our embassy in November 1979.

The real world is ugly, dangerous, and requires hard choices and difficult solutions taken over long periods of time.

Really, it is nicer to be in Baker's world. In Baker's world we can all just talk about our problems in international support groups and emerge smiling with nicely bound, signed documents, affixed with bright ribbons and wax seals. Proper gentlemen can do that sort of thing, you know. I sure wish I could live in Baker's world.

But even if we can't actually live in Baker's world, we can pretend we live there.

For a while anyway.

UPDATE: The Washington Post doesn't think much of Baker's world either:

[The ISG's] diplomatic strategy is sweeping -- and untethered to reality. The Bush administration could and should adopt some version of the military plan, though it would be right to ignore the unrealistic timetable attached to it. But to embrace the group's proposed "New Diplomatic Offensive" would be to suppose a Middle East very different from what's on the ground.

Why is Baker called a "realist" anyway? Oh yeah, the same reason those who support a Baathist victory in Iraq are called "anti-war."

God Had But Ten Commandments

Can you believe the conceit of James Baker?

In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Baker urged Congress to accept most if not all of the report's 79 recommendations as part of a comprehensive strategy and said Bush should do the same.

"I hope we don't treat this as a fruit salad, and say, 'I like this but I don't like that,"' Baker said.

Brought down by Baker from Mount Bipartisinai (and with burning Bush surely in mind), these Seventy-Nine Commandments are not to be judged by mere mortals?

Pick and choose, Mr. President. Pick and choose.

I guess I won't really worry until Baker starts sending locusts and other plagues upon the House of Administration.

Getting Real About Multiple Deployments

Another dose of realism in the spirit of the new age of Realism.

We are constantly told of the stress our military is under. The press reports on this division or that brigade going for its third or even fourth tour in Iraq or Afghanistan. They can always find a soldier or Marine on their fourth or fifth tour to bring home this terrible strain.

Yet retention has yet to suffer one bit.

The answer is that our military is under stress but individuals less so.

First, consider that Marine units tour for 7 months while Army units go a year (at least, some go 14 or 15 months if extended). So a Marine unit essentially needs to be deployed nearly twice to equal an Army deployment. And Air Force people go for four months. The Navy deploys as it always has for months on end at sea--that is the way it is for them in peace or war since World War II.

Second, all those reports on units returning for a third or fourth time never seem to consider that only the institutional unit is going a third or fourth time. The soldiers or Marines in them change every deployment with new people just entering the military going to the unit and other people moving out. Nobody would ever assume that a story about how often the New York Yankees make it to the World Series means the exact same players are returning decade after decade. But reporters as a general rule are completely ignorant about the military, so they don't see this basic fact.

Consider the numbers from Strategypage:

In the last five years, 1.4 million American troops have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and adjacent areas. This includes navy (on land and ships at sea) and air force. Thus 414,094 army troops, and 150,074 marines were supported by 205,562 air force and 241,000 navy personnel. Taking into account those who have gone over two or more times, there have been two million troops in the combat zone.

1.4 million American troops have served in the war and provided 2 million troops for the fight. This means that just about half of the individuals served twice. Adjust this for some number who have served three times or four times (and remember the shorter Marine and Air Force tours plus the fact the Navy is doing what it always does), you could increase the number of Americans who have served just one tour.

Our military is stressed. And even one tour is service enough in my mind. But consider these numbers when the discussion of whether we are stressing the troops. Losing would stress out our military and troops far more than the current rate of deployment. We'll see how concerned some people are over stressing the military when the argument is over winning or losing, eh?

Just another edition of Getting Real About the War.

UPDATE: From Strategypage, a little more detail on multiple tours of duty. It is better than I thought:

Of the 650,000 soldiers who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, 26 percent have served more than one tour.

So there you go, despite talk of troops going for their third or fourth tour, 74% have served one tour in combat. There is stress on the Army and Marines, no doubt, but the facts of multiple deployment are one reason the military has held up so well.

Getting Real About the Draft

We don't need a draft. I mentioned the cruel numbers that demolish the idea that we need a draft to maintain our Army:

Assume we want to end the practice of relying on the Army Guard and Army Reserve. So let's say we boldly double our active Army. This doubles our need for new Army recruits to 160,000 per year. But rather than try to recruit more, we go to a draft. But retention will suffer with so many draftees, so let's say we would need 200,000 new recruits per year to sustain the million-man army. If we assume 80,000 volunteers as we get now, we would need to draft 120,000 Army recruits per year.

About 4 million Americans turn 18 each year by my rough calculations. So we would be starting up the expensive machinery of a nationwide draft to get 120,000 out of a potential annual class of 4 million. So instead of having a mechanism to share the burden of serving among all our population, we'd have to have a system of excluding the 97% of new adults who we don't need.

Strategypage has my six on this with a good post. In Vietnam, with even greater needs for bodies and a smaller overall population than we have today, less than ten percent of eligible young men were drafted.

A draft, much like talk of higher taxes so we all feel the sacrifice, is all about increasing public discontent about the war in order to end it short of victory. Don't ever be fooled into thinking these advocates really want us to win. Get real. Realism is all the kick these days, isn't it?

Maybe we should draft members of Congress instead of electing them.

NYT Reporter Pro War!

I said back in the summer that I'd keep my embargo on linking to the New York Times until I felt they actually wanted us to win the war.

Well, here's clearly patriotic reporting of our efforts to overcome adversity in war.

Sadly, it is about the rebuilding of our fleet struck at Pearl Harbor. The Greatest Generation of reporters is long gone.

So my Times DeSelect program is back on.

Note to current reporters: Read these dispatches. You can report on setbacks without barely suppressed glee that we have experienced a setback. Really.

Incompetence, Conspiracy, and Distraction

Critics of the Iraq War say we fight it incompetently, that we were lied into an unnecessary war, and that the war distracts us from hunting bin Laden--the real enemy who attacked us on September 11th.

On December 7, 1941, Japan hit us at Pearl Harbor. Our weapons were crap, we were unprepared, and we could barely fight back against the Japanese. It took half a year to win a decisive victory against Japan and in the meantime we focused our still limited power on Germany--which had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor despite nebulous ties. Besides, didn't President Roosevelt put our fleet in Hawaii to let Japan provide an excuse to go to war against Germany? That's what the conspiracy theorists charged. FDR was in the pocket of the Brits who wanted us to fight for them (Israel didn't exist yet so that particular charge wasn't available yet.)

Victor Hanson describes this incompetence in waging war, conspiracies hatched in the White House to drag us into war, taking our eye off the ball against our real enemies, and more:

Is our generation less competent?

Not really. The United States routed the Taliban from Afghanistan by early December 2001. America's first clear-cut victory against the Japanese, at Midway, came six months after Pearl Harbor.

Do we lack the unity of the past?

Perhaps. But we should at least remember that after Pearl Harbor, a national furor immediately arose over the intelligence failure that had allowed an enormous Japanese fleet to approach the Hawaiian Islands undetected. Extremists went further - clamoring that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately lowered our guard as part of a conspiracy to pave the way for America's entrance into the war.

Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq?

Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan - an Axis that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese and Russians.

But remember, victory in that war only seems inevitable since we did in fact win it. Had we lost, we'd have plenty of errors to point to and plenty of people to blame for getting us into an unwinnable war. Our Greatest Generation won not because they could not lose, but because they fought until victory.

We don't even need to exert ourselves as much as our society did in World War II. But we must exert ourselves long enough and strenuously enough to actually win. We are writing our history right now!

And when we do win, it will all seem so inevitable. That's what the history will show, because if it happened it had to happen. Right?

When we remember Pearl Harbor, we should remember the dark days following the Day of Infamy when victory was yet to be written and 400,000 Americans had yet to die to achieve that "inevitable" victory.

Good Enough for Government Work

The recommendations of the Baker commission are acceptable for the morst part though the assessment by the Baker commission of Iraq as grave and deteriorating is wrong. The Sunnis are doomed and only the Shias of the Sadrist variety backed by Iran can defeat us. We have not won but we are not with our backs to the sea hoping for evacuation.

But in our political environment, failing to say we are losing up front means the anti-war side will raise such a stink that few in the middle could support the report. Much of the report is banal and some is simply idiotic. But by divine writ it will be the basis of our policy for the next two years along with two internal reports by the Pentagon and National Security Council.

So what of the details of the Baker commission (Iraq Study Group) report?

1. New Diplomatic Initiative. Despite the capitalization, this is just another version of the old pre-war "we have to solve the Palestinian issue first" diplomatic initiative some favored. REJECT.

2. The Iraq International Support Group. The idea that our enemies will help us is ludicrous. We don't need neighbor help as much as we need them to let the Iraqis sort this out behind our military shield. We especially don't need Iran's and Syria's help to stabilize Iraq--we just need them to stop fueling the killing by supporting jihadis and Shia extremists! And maybe get the Arab world to stop shipping their jihadi wannabees to Iraq in order to die. REJECT.

3. Dealing with Iran and Syria. As with number 2, we don't need their help. Talking to them is complete rot and repulsive. Now if "deal" with them means a combination of economic, diplomatic, and military pressure to overthrow their regimes or make them fear us, then I support "dealing" with Iran and Syria. ACCEPT, BUT WITH CHANGES.

4. The Wider Regional Context. This looks like number one but is broader in scope. That is, instead of just betraying the Israelis over the Palestinian territories, we need to betray them over Golan and betray the Lebanese, too. However, if we accept that Iraq is part of a wider regional conflict that we must win as well, we can certainly address the wider regional context. As for adding American troops to Afghanistan, won't this just discourage NATO from taking on responsibilities? Too many NATO forces won't fight. Why add our troops when NATO troops already there could take on the burden? Isn't this the basic complaint about Iraq? Maybe we should embed American troops in German infantry units? And remember that deploying a soldier to Afghanistan costs four times as much as deploying one to Iraq. Even stripping Iraq of all our troops would let us send only 35,000 to Afghanistan and result in no reductions in our war costs. Still, if we adjust this point to fighting the wider war--including the "good war" in Afghanistan, we can work with this. ACCEPT, BUT WITH CHANGES.

5. Performance Milestones. Good grief, fine. We should say we don't want their oil or permanent military bases. What drivel to put in a big-brained report. And to be safe let's tell them we won't steal their air and their date palm production is safe, too. As for the milestones of governance? Fine. This is consistent with the basic goal of turning over the fight to the Iraqis over time. No deadlines, since this part admits deadlines may not be realistic. So as long as we don't have a drop-dead date, fine. ACCEPT.

6. National Reconciliation by Iraqis. The Iraqi government has been trying very hard to get the Sunnis to accept a de-Baathified role in Iraq as a free minority under rule of law. They have been trying very hard to get the Shias to not respond too harshly to continued Sunni mass murders. They've failed thus far in this area. We should continue to support Iraqi efforts here but reconciliation must never mean reversing part of the Baathist defeat. The Sunnis must accept they have lost and accept their chances as a minority in a democratic government. Baathists of higher rank must not be allowed into the government except in rare cases. Amnesty is fine. But the Baathists lost--that must be the basis for reconciliation. ACCEPT, BUT WITH CHANGES.

7. National Reconciliation Help We Can Provide. Yes, we can help the Iraqis pursue reconciliation. But the status of our military's presence or role can never be on the table. We must hunt the enemy while we talk to them and let the enemy decide whether they want to be killed or be included. ACCEPT, BUT WITH CHANGES.

8. Militias and National Reconciliation. Since the commission recognizes that military force is part of the solution, I have no problem with having international advisors and a central office to promote demilitarization of militias. ACCEPT.

9. A Military Strategy for Iraq. Seeding many more advisors throughout the Iraqi military is an excellent idea. Supporting the Iraqi military with capabilities they do not have is what we are doing and appropriate for the future. Getting better equipment such as armored vehicles to the Iraqis is necessary but I wouldn't leave behind our heavy armor--we need it, and it is too complicated for a new Iraqi military. Let them procure weaponry--perhaps with our and allied assistance--from other more appropriate sources. Pulling our troops back from routine offensive and presence missions is appropriate and as long as we take this section's caveat about conditions affecting the pace, I have no problem with this section. But pulling our troops back or out can't precede time for training Iraqis. As for making sure the Iraqis know they don't have an open-ended commitment from us, all I have to say is haven't they watched CNN for the last three years? This is a dopey suggestion. I think the fact that our commitment to fighting in Iraq isn't open-ended is apparent from the very fact we have a Baker commission. Consider this message sent. And as our forces pull back into Iraqi bases as an interim step to leaving some years in the future, while in Iraq they will be able to reconfigure for major combat operation which will have the effect of worrying Iran and Syria and strengthening our efforts to get them to stop supporting terrorism in Iraq. I think the administration could drive a truck to victory through this section's loopholes, so accept them with pro-war assumptions. ACCEPT.

10. Restoring the U.S. Military. This is a money issue. Let's see if the new Congress responds. ACCEPT.

11. Police and Criminal Justice: Iraqi Actions. All good ideas, I think. Some of it is reconfiguring reporting lines in true bureaucratic fashion. I hope the Iraqis do them. ACCEPT.

12. Police and Criminal Justice: US Actions. These are all reasonable goals and in line with the general approach we already have. I've long called for FBI help for the Iraqis. Rule of law is as important as voting for Iraq to succeed. ACCEPT.

13. The Oil Sector: Short Term. All reasonable ideas. ACCEPT.

14. The Oil Sector: Long Term. As another highly technical area, this seems to be more in line with the expertise of the commission's members. Reasonable ideas. ACCEPT.

15. U.S. Economic and Reconstruction Assistance. Getting the international community to help is fine and getting Iraqis to move forward is fine, but I disagree with making sure we donate $5 billion per year in economic assistance. With a lot of the Saddam-era debt forgiven, we should encourage more to be forgiven. And then Iraq can borrow money for reconstruction. This will make them more conscious of using the money wisely. How carefully is "found money" spent? Loans will also make the international community more interested in Iraq's success so they get their loans repaid. Any US money should be to combat unit commanders for quick and small projects in their areas of operation. REJECT, UNLESS CHANGED.

16. Improving the Effectiveness of Assistance Programs. These seem fine assuming they don't undercut the changes required for number 15 to be acceptable. ACCEPT.

17. Budget Preparation, Presentation, and Review. Fine. With a change in party control this will happen anyway so even if I disagreed it would be pointless. It will happen. ACCEPT.

18. U.S. Personnel. Now this is good stuff. Our military shoulders the burden of stability operations and our civilian agencies should do more of the non-fighting stuff. ACCEPT.

19. Intelligence: US Actions. Like mom and apple pie, tough to be against these recommendations. Intellignece must be better. Banality does not make their recommendation any less good. ACCEPT.

20. Intelligence: Iraqi Actions. Um, yes, the Iraqis should be better at this too and we should help out. ACCEPT.

So that's my evaluation of the 79 recommendations in 20 groupings. I reject two outright and reject one unless changed. I accept thirteen and accept four but only if certain changes or assumptions are made. I'm feeling downright bipartisany with such a ratio of acceptance!

Really, that's pretty good for a report I expected to be nothing more than crud. With a little tweaking and sufficient courage to reject the idiotic parts (using the other two forthcoming reports to justify rejection), if this Baker report can provide some rough consensus it will be good enough for government work.

So let's move forward as the report claims it wants, shall we?

UPDATE: Back Talk thinks we can live with this report, too.

Do We Discourage Killing Our Enemies?

I'll say it again, US troop numbers are not the issue in Iraq.

If we add 100,000 more troops who can't actually kill the enemy, what good would it do (tip to Instapundit)?

What we need are robust rules of engagement. What we have are confused Soldiers and Marines, afraid to fire their weapons.

I'd rather try giving our existing number of troops better rules of engagement.

While it is certainly appropriate to have more limited rules of engagement in a pacification setting than you would in the major combat operations phase, if the enemy is able to take advantage of our rules to the extent that our troops can't get at the enemy and the enemy can hit us more effectively, the rules of engagement must change. Not that they need to be uniformly loose everywhere. But our troops simply must be authorized to actually shoot our enemies.

I guess I just don't know enough to say if this is a serious problem or not. I hope one of the learned panels addressing how to win in Iraq addresses this issue. Adding more US troops afraid of the consequences of firing their weapons won't do a damn bit of good.

I did address this problem some time ago (the post links to three other relevant posts) and it is possible it is coming true earlier than I thought. As I wrote:

I would never suggest that our troops should not be held accountable for crimes. They should. That isn't the question. But will this result in troops being judged guilty for simply fighting?

This ability to scrutinize every action, let alone every crime, in the midst of battle is a very new development. Where every battlefield action could be seen and recorded, how do we address this and prepare our troops to operate successfully in this environment? How do we prepare our officers who see such possible violations of the rules of war?

I still don't have any answers. But the need to get them is growing more urgent every day. We want a military that fights clean--but we need a military that fights and wins even more.

I assumed we'd have time to address this clearly emerging problem. We may not have that luxury if we don't want to handicap our troops for winning the current war in Iraq.

UPDATE: More on the issue of rules of engagement. I am being swayed that our troops are handicapped by the rules.

I Make the Case for Realism

South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun isn't too worried about even a nuclear-armed North Korea:

"North Korea cannot win if it goes to war with South Korea. Even if it has nuclear weapons, it may inflict fatal damage, but cannot win," Roh was quoted as saying. "A country doesn't go to war with a country that it cannot defeat."

I guess North Korea didn't know it could not defeat South Korea in 1950.

And Japan didn't know it could not defeat America in 1941 (remember today's anniversary).

And Germany didn't know it could not defeat the Soviet Union in 1941.

And the Soviet Union didn't know it could not defeat Afghanistan.

And China didn't know it could not defeat Vietnam in 1978.

And Argentina didn't know it could not defeat Britain in 1982.

And Egypt and Syria did not know the couldn't defeat Israel in 1973.

Clearly, I could go on. The point is that a country doesn't go to war with a country that it doesn't believe it can't defeat. In all the examples above, the countries thought they could win. And to be fair, they probably could have in at least some of the cases. But nobody adds up all the strengths prior to war and then everybody just accepts that one side will win so why go through the motions. Wars must be fought to be won and lost.

So it doesn't matter if everyone knows that North Korea couldn't win if they invaded South Korea. If North Korea believes they can win, they may invade. And since wars must be fought to decide victors and losers, one can't tell what will happen when the balloon goes up even if the odds seem to favor one side. Heck, the confident victim makes the hopeless aggressor's job a little easier just by believing the aggressor wouldn't dare attack.

Further, even if North Korea knows an open war will almost certainly lead to their defeat, if they think that not going to war will without a doubt lead to their defeat, then going to war with the odds against them actually improves their odds.

Just don't count on our enemies being rational as we define rationality.

Hmm. I think I just described the basic flaw of the Baker commission.

Death By Americans

Donald Sensing, citing Strategypage reports, notes something that has been apparent since the invasion: Arab states are sending their budding local jihadis to Iraq in order to kill Americans to thwart us and, more importantly, be killed by Americans there so they won't be a threat to the sending regimes. From Saddam's fedayeen who contested our invasion force to today's jihadis who plant bombs and carry out suicide attacks, Arab states are providing the most bloody-minded of the Islamist cannon fodder waging war in defense of Saddam and against the newly democratic Iraq. Said Reverend Sensing:

In effect, these countries export their Islamist radicals to Iraq and use the United States and the Iraqi Security Forces to carry out antiterrorism on their behalf. At the same time they fight the United States.

For the sending states, the jihadis are dead, and instead of the international community getting mad about hundreds if not thousands of exectutions, the international community is mad at us for killing them. Pretty sweet deal for a nervous autocrat who will never learn to govern well to deaden the appeal of Islamism.

This is not the first time that American soldiers have killed troublemakers. In 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait in part to keep his huge army busy lest it try a coup. Saddam couldn't demobilize so many troops without having jobs available, yet couldn't afford to keep them. So he hit the bank to keep them busy and pay for them, too. We didn't go along with the program and killed off much of his army. In a sense, we coup-proofed him. We did the job directly in the end, but back in 1991 it was death by Americans for potential regime foes.

And in the Korean War, the new communist China largely sent the former KMT foot soldiers into Korea to kill Americans and die at our hands to keep these potential counter-revolutionaries out of the country. For Peking, killing Americans or being killed by Americans were good things. Again, death by Americans.

So what Arab autocracies are doing in Iraq isn't new. It should be recognized as a complicating factor in what is simplistically being called a "civil war" by Matt Lauer and his disciples.

And one additional point on this subject. Critics of the Iraq War like to say we've just created a training ground for terrorists who then go back home to plot mayhem in their home countries. Clearly, the Arab governments encouraging their domestic jihadis to go to Iraq don't think they are being trained as more effective terrorists. The Arab regimes think we will kill their jihadis off and keep the regimes safe.

The Arab regimes are right about this. Iraq is a strange training camp indeed when almost all the trainees die before "graduation."

UPDATE: Really, the Arab governments involved agree with our government that it is better to fight the war on terror "over there" in Iraq rather than at home. I do agree with that sentiment.

Fifth CAIRlumn

This article (tip to Real Clear Politics) is a nice defense of US Airways in regard to the Flying Imams:

US Airways is right to stand by its flight crew. It will be both dangerous and disgraceful if the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation and, ultimately, our federal courts allow aviation security measures put in place after 9/11 to be cynically manipulated in the name of civil rights.

But holding off these attacks on our security as the Flying Imam case seems to be is not enough. We must counter-attack under our laws.

There are many fronts in our war and we must fight on this one, too.

James Baker Will Win the Nobel Peace Prize

Given the opportunity to kick us in the leg again (as they did when they gave it to Jimmy Carter a few years ago), I find it hard to believe that James Baker won't get the Nobel Peace Prize for his miserable report that appears to be equal parts banality and fantasy.

For the former, it simply spins the idea that we need to train Iraqis and eventually turn over the fight to the Iraqis in terms meant to make it seem like a retreat out of Iraq.

For the latter, we get to the Nobel Peace Prize material. Jeff Jacoby writes:

SHOULD THE United States turn to Iran and Syria for help in reducing the violence bloodying Iraq? James Baker's Iraq Study Group, out this week with its well-leaked recommendations, thinks direct talks with Tehran and Damascus would be a fine idea. I think so too -- right after those governments switch sides in the global jihad.

As things stand now, however, negotiating with Iran and Syria over the future of Iraq is about as promising a strategy for preventing more bloodshed as negotiating with Adolf Hitler over the future of Czechoslovakia was in 1938. There were eminent "realists" then too, many of whom were gung-ho for cutting a deal with the Fuehrer. As Neville Chamberlain set off on the diplomatic mission that would culminate in Munich, William Shirer recorded in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," Britain's poet laureate, John Masefield, composed a paean in his honor . When the negotiations were done and Czechoslovakia had been dismembered, the prime minister was hailed as a national hero. The Nobel Committee received not one, not two, but 10 nominations proposing Chamberlain for the 1939 peace prize.

Talking to our enemies isn't all bad as I noted here. The key is recognizing them as enemies and not partners.

But talks under the assumptions made by the Baker commission will be a disaster. Iran and Syria have no interest in helping us and their own interests do not coincide with ours even a little bit. I trust the President will shred that chapter on a nationally televised address to the nation.

Mark my words, you don't get the Nobel Peace Prize for just any ordinary work of crud. You have to stick it to America, too.

Baker. Crud. Sticking in to America. Nobel Peace Prize. Get used to it.

I'm just being realistic, here. That's all in fashion nowadays, isn't it?

UPDATE: Robert Tracinski doesn't think too much of the report:

Few have recognized the empty banality of the ISG report because they have focused on a few seemingly radical recommendations.

I raise my hand skyward on recognizing the banality of the report in the first paragraph of this post.

But more important than lauding my word choice, Tracinski also says:

The whole ISG report is a spectacular punt. It contains a few broad, vague goals for our policy--and a whole range of specific recommendations for actions that are not in the power of the American government to take.

I think the President could take this punt and run it back for a score. Really, as banal as the bulk of this report is, it sets a floor beneath which our policy will not fall. It gives cover for the non-Michael Moore parts of the opposition (and those who simply don't want to be blamed for losing another war even if they support what Michael Moore wants) to support our basic policy of getting the Iraqis to take over the fighting--what we've been doing since the summer of 2004.

But by saying the sainted Baker commission calls for this and calls for that, the opposition party and those who were pro-war but have strayed out of nervousness will be able to support our war policy again. Just spin what we are doing just a little differently, make some necessary changes consistent with the basic policy (and that's what "staying the course" means, people--not that no change is necessary ever), and many will feel it safe to say they've saved our war policy!

I don't care who gets or shares the credit for victory as long as we win. I fault our President for failing to rally the country to support the war every damned day and I've complained about this failure for three years. It is this administration's own fault that we even have a Baker report to cope with. But if Baker provides enough cover to actually carry on the war until we win, I will retract all the unkind things I've said about him over this report.

If the Iraq War becomes known as the Baker-Pelosi War of Iraqi Liberation, I won't care one bit. You can accomplish a lot if you don't care who gets credit for it. Heck, I'll even nominate Baker for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fight, Fight. Talk, Talk

John Podhoretz (tip to Real Clear Politics) thinks our mistake in Iraq is our failure to fight consistently in favor of allowing political processes to take priority:

Yes, we'd stay in Iraq and fight the bad guys when we had to, which seemed mostly to be when they decided to attack us first. Our resolve was intended to give the Iraqi people the sense that they were being given control of their future, and to give Iraqi politicians the sense that they had a chance to forge a new kind of country in which everybody could prosper.

For this reason, we relented on several occasions when we had a chance to score a major victory over the bad guys. Because politics was more important than military victory, because playing the game was more important than killing the enemy, we chose to lose.

After the beheading of Americans in Fallujah, we had the city surrounded - but, because it seemed an attack on Fallujah would be problematic for Iraqi politics, we pulled back. We had the Shiite monster Moqtada al-Sadr in our sights as well, but let him go as well for fear Iraq's leading Shiite cleric would turn on us.

Each of these decisions seemed prudent at the time. In retrospect, they seem disastrous. Our failure to take Fallujah after the deaths of Americans gave the enemy the sense that we were weak. Our failure to kill Sadr has led to a situation in which he has excessive power over the elected government.

I think he is only partly correct. The political side is what will starve the insurgencies of oxygen in the end. The military provides the shield for political (and the related economic and social progress) to win over neutrals to the government's side and push enemies into the neutral or even friends columns. Even as we have started and stopped, the political side has moved forward in many areas. But not fast enough to balance out our growing weariness with the slow rate of overall progress.

What is wrong I believe is the idea that we have a choice between either fighting or pushing political moves. I heartily agree that we made an error in holding off on Fallujah in April 2004 and against Sadr in May and August 2004. I said so at the time. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)

Our military campaign should go on without pause for political talks. We should never halt them or slow them down as a gesture of reconciliation. Letting up the pressure that led the enemy to want to talk gives the enemy a chance to recover. When they recover, making concessions doesn't seem nearly as necessary as it did the day before the pause of our military operations. Then we have to ramp up the pressure all over again to reclaim the position we once had. Do that enough and our enemy learns to believe that we'll never pin them to the mat when we have the advantage

So, yes, we must push our military campaign ruthlessly (no, not massive bombardment--ruthlessly at the level of violence necessary) and relentlessly.

But the political side is the side that will end the war with victory. Let the enemy and their supporters talk to us. But make sure the sound of gunfire as Iraqi and American troops kill the enemy and the sight of Sunnis fleeing central Iraq are always present in the talks. The enemy needs to know that the longer they drag out the talks, the worse the future will be for them--not that buying time will allow them to weaken us and emerge victorious. Make sure that we are all clear that talking is about how the enemy can avoid complete destruction and not about who wins the war.

In the end, we must destroy the willingness of the Sunnis to fight. And short of genocide or expulsion of Sunni Arabs from Iraq, convincing Iraqi Sunnis that it is futile to fight (by never letting up on hunting them down) and safer to lay down their arms (by allowing them a non-Baathist role in a free Iraq) is our only real alternative.

And we need to do the same for the Sadr thugs. We had them by the balls in August 2004 and then let them go. What a surprise that they didn't react with gratitude and lay down their arms.

Multi-task, people. Multi-task. Killing our enemies and talking to them are not mutually exclusive.

All Atwitter With Anticipation

Tomorrow the Baker commission will issue its report on Iraq options. There are other studies by the Pentagon and National Security Council pending, too.

So what will we receive tomorrow? Let's ask the new Secretary of Defense:

"It's my impression that, frankly, there are no new ideas on Iraq," said Gates, who left the commission when Bush nominated him to be defense secretary. The Senate panel voted 24-0 to recommend his confirmation.

Why would that be? I mean, all those big realist brains in one room and there are no new ideas on Iraq? Did the dreaded neo-cons infiltrate the group and put flouride in their water?

There will be no new ideas on Iraq because what we are doing in Iraq is, broadly speaking, the correct way to fight an insurgency. Set up local governing and security institutions to take over the fight in place of our forces. Over the last three years we have set up the local governing and security institutions. The only question is how long it will take to get them to take over the fight in place of our forces.

We can adjust details, but the reality is we are fighting the right way and only the ample money and munitions the enemy has available has allowed them to fight this long and inflict so much death and destruction on the Iraqi people and Coalition forces. Nonetheless, the enemy is doomed in the long run by the more numerous Shias and Kurds who now run the governing and security institutions.

So those who advocate surrender and retreat will need to find another savior to disguise their wishes as wisdom. "Realism" isn't going to cut it this time.

Really, though, I haven't been this eager for the dawn of the new day since Abba released their last album.

The Incredible Shrinking Invasion Force

Retired generals Scales and McCaffrey were on NPR discussing Robert Gates.

I like Scales. I respect McCaffrey for his role as division commander of 24th ID in 1991, but in 2003 he was prone to predicting disaster on the march up to Baghdad at every pause it seems. That lessens my respect for his analytical skills but I do respect him on the whole.

Still, he said something that just ticks me off. It is common for critics of the invasion to say we did it with too few troops. It is often said--incorrectly--that we invaded with only three divisions. I've refuted this enough to be too tired to look for a link. Suffice it to say, we invaded with the equivalent of nearly three Army divisions (28 battalions of line units), over three divisions of Marines (32 battalions of line units), and a British division (10 battalions of line units). That's seven divisions and well in line with our thinking about what it would take to win a Major Theater War.

But today, McCaffrey improves upon the "three-division" invasion myth. He said we invaded Iraq with one division of Marines and 1-1/2 divisions of Army troops.

In another decade, the invasion will be down to Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and eight guys with suspicously Jewish-sounding names.

Debate what it takes to win but for goodness sake, don't start out with incorrect assumptions.

Why They Boast

The Sunni Arab enemy inside Iraq is making brave noises:

A man claiming to be the top spokesman for Iraq's former ruling party said the group will not stop aiding the insurgency or engage in national reconciliation efforts unless the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad accepts conditions that would lead to its end.

Among the demands are the complete withdrawal of American troops, the abolition of laws enacted since the ouster of Saddam Hussein's regime and trials of all Iraqis who cooperated with the United States and the U.S.-supported administration.

What the heck. As long as the Sunnis are heading for the big collective dirt nap, why not make extreme threats just in case our side wets our collective pants and gives in?

And the Baathists do think we will break first despite the dire straits the Baathists are in when faced with the majority population increasingly able to control the power of the state to defeat the Sunnis. However bad off the Sunnis are, as long as they boast of strength, they believe enough Americans will boldy proclaim retreat as victory and leave Iraq too soon.

This enemy confidence that is on display (whether they believe it is somewhat irrelevant) despite defeat in the actual war is the price we are paying for dissent over the war. So our enemies plant another bomb in a market and kill another American soldier. All because they think we can't hack it.

We are paying the price for an image of weakness. We'd be far better off if our enemies knew deep down that we finish what we start and that anybody who stands in our way dies:

If our so-called leaders would have the strength of character to back a war that they actually authorized until we win, we would not tempt enemies to kill as many of our troops as possible in order to drive us from the battlefield. In the long run, a reputation for doing what it takes to win will lead our enemies to learn that resistance is futile.

Remember, it takes a village to raise enemies to believe we're weenies.

I am disappointed in those who in February and March 2003 were war supporters, but who now have bailed on the troops who will bring us victory if we don't abandon them. We declared war. We went to war. We must win the war. Luckily, my concerns about our President's determination to win have lessened since last month.

There was no sunset on the legislation declaring war on Saddam's Iraq. Our troops took an oath to fight no matter what. Can't we at least focus long enough to win? When we are winning?

Suck it up and soldier on, people. Victory is the objective.

UPDATE: Like me, Wretchard doesn't understand why people don't see that the Sunnis are doomed:

One of the greatest pieces of disinformation that the press ever sold the public was this notion that the Sunni insurgency was on the verge of defeating American forces in Iraq. This idea has made it difficult for much of the public to understand the dynamic of the fight and it represents a failure of narrative which is only latterly being corrected.

Still, despite the confusion, I don't think even the Baker report can save the Sunnis from crushing defeat. They really are their own worst enemy.

To Lose You Must Have Previously Gained

General Abizaid warns we must not retreat from Iraq short of victory and must not stop fighting the wider war against terrorists:

"We can walk away from this enemy, but they will not walk away from us," Abizaid told the forum audience during a discussion titled "The Long War."

"We have not failed yet and we will not fail if we all understand what we have to do. If we can stay together nothing can stop us and we can make the world a better place."

Abizaid cited what he called the three greatest challenges facing the world - the Arab-Israeli conflict; the rise of extremist groups "with a dark vision of the future"; and, specifically, the dangers posed by "Shia revolutionary thought."

Critics of the war will say we shouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place and so just caused our looming defeat (assuming a rapid withdrawal and the failure of the Iraqi government to defeat the Sunnis without us--which I don't assume). This misses the point that our enemies consider the "good war" in Afghanistan or even bad cartoons as reason to kill us. They don't need Iraq to want to kill us. Heck, they didn't need Afghanistan to kill us as 9/11 shows.

More importantly in regard to Iraq, it ignores why we would lose in Iraq if we pulled out and chaos results from our withdrawal. The only reason we could lose a lot if we withdraw from Iraq is because we've already gained much. And if we hold fast until we defeat the insurgents we could win even more.

Consider that if Iraq devolves into civil war we would consider it a defeat. Then remember that in February 2003, we would have considered a civil war in Iraq as a great victory. It would have meant that the people of Iraq had risen up against the Baathists. It would have meant that the Shias were battling the entrenched Sunni Baathist regime with a chance of ending the regime. We would have had the opportunity to try and send in special forces to repeat our Afghanistan success. Civil war and chaos would have been an improvement over an enemy regime running Iraq that supported terror, threatened the stability of the region, and wanted WMD.

Had we helped the Shias and Kurds win that insurrection, we would have gotten a Shia-run Iraq with the Kurds still safe in their mountain redoubt. The death and destruction that would have been necessary for the Shias to defeat the Baathists when the Shias had only their numbers going for them would have dwarfed the losses of the last three and a half years. The Baathists probably wouldn't have accepted their defeat whether the Shia victory meant Shias marched on Baghdad to take the capital or just managed to eject Saddam's security apparatus from the Shia south.

Sounds worse than what we have today, eh? And that scenario would have been an improvement over the status quo of February 2003.

Today a civil war in Iraq would be a defeat for us rather than a victory. Why? Because the established Iraqi government is freely elected and represents the majority. Despite some Sadrists and "ex"-Baathists inside the government, the government fights with us and is our ally. A civil war that weakens the authority of our allied government would be a step backwards.

Is this not crystal clear? To accept that we would lose in Iraq now should a civil war break out on our withdrawal requires us to accept that we've gained much already by invading and establishing a democracy inside Iraq.

So by fighting in Iraq we have the opportunity for a great victory along with our risk of a great defeat. As General Abizaid said of the Long War--and which applies to Iraq itself:

"Think of it as an opportunity to confront fascism in 1920 if only we'd had the guts to do it then," he continued. "I believe that if we don't have guts enough to confront this ideology today, we will move toward World War III tomorrow."

Victory should be our only goal. It's the only goal of our enemies, after all. And victory in the Iraq campaign could be a great stride toward victory in the Long War. We've won a lot already, don't you know.

Have the courage and confidence to collect the Iraq victory that our soldiers and Marines are bleeding to provide us. All we back home have to provide are money and patience.

Is that too much to ask of the citizens of the greatest nation on this planet? God help us if it is too much.

It's Winter Already!

Wow. Fall has flown by. I mean not by the official calendar start of winter but it sure feels like it.


Mister has had a good term in school with a fine report card to show for his efforts. Lamb enjoys her day care (calling it "school" like her big brother). They just went to their mom's work Christmas party for kids where Santa handed out presents and the kids got to play. I picked them up so their mom could go directly on duty. And I seem to finally be starting to shake the crud of viruses that have kept me sick all but about a week in the middle of November! Oh, and the Christmas decorations are up. Thanksgiving is the first date I consider putting decorations up and last weekend was the day. Mister and Lamb enjoyed putting the bulbs up after I put the tree together and strung the lights. Plus window lights and a wreath and a few other miscellaneous things. All that is left are a couple stockings for the fire place and a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on Christmas Eve! And on Friday, a bad storm where my job is allowed me to stay home, sleep in, and recover a bit more rather than hit ice-covered roads going up there.

But what happened to Fall?

It seems like only yesterday that Mister and I went to the Vanderbilt game at the Big House for the season opener. Sure, it was easy, but it was the first game offering new hope in a new season. Just being there was a treat. Then we went to the Wisconsin game for a fun game against a good team. Then we went to a friends house for a reunion of old fraternity friends and other college friends. I took Mister and Lamb while others brought their young ones (and not so young ones, too). Some of them I still see since they live around Ann Arbor but some I haven't seen in years. College days were some time ago! And finally, we saw the Ball State game complete with an F-18 flyover from a Marine Corps squadron and a real scare from the Ball State team. Our only loss was to the hated Ohio State squad and we may yet get a re-match on neutral ground to win the prize that Ohio State believes is their destiny this season. Denying them that would be almost as sweet as winning the national championship.

Plus we've seen movies this Fall: Cars, Over the Hedge, and Flushed Away. All were rather good I must say.

My home movie Parker Posey Fest continued and I even picked up UFO the series from back in 1970. I remembered it from my young days and I couldn't believe how truly atrocious the series was! And it wasn't just dated. My God, the tactical sense of this crack team was matched only by the equally awful alien military genius. And really, I remember 1980 as much better than the future 1980 of UFO. Though I'll admit the mini-skirts would have been nice. And good grief, was there really a time in American workplaces where flirting with the female staff was common and seemingly welcome? Let me tell you, UFO came off my Amazon.com wish list after viewing that DVD.

With a flex schedule from summer continuing until early November, I also had the pleasure of taking Mister to school and picking him up at least once a week. I like that since I get to see the teachers and remind them that dad is around. Plus one day to myself for the most part and one less long commute per week were welcome relief from the regular grind. And we've had various school events including the Math Night that we just went to where computers and games were set up for math related fun. Mister loved that.

And with more time off and Lamb's grandmother away visiting family for six weeks, I took care of Lamb a little more, too. I picked her up from day care and otherwise had her over a lot. She is a cutie and she has gotten rather used to coming to my home. It is quite possible that she has more toys here than at her actual home!

Celebrations were good this fall, with two birthdays to celebrate (mine and Lamb's), Halloween and Trick or Treating. Lamb was adorable in her princess costume and once again Mister could not choose a costume so a couple days before Halloween after scouring stores for a decent costume, I once again took scissors and tape, added cardboard, scrap poster board, and aluminum foil, and converted a cheap plastic fire helmet into a helmet complete with nose guard and ear protection, built a chest and back plates, constructed a shield complete with heraldry, and added Misters pirate cutlass from last year. Mister loved it and he got several compliments on our route. I just like homemade costumes better than those bought from a store. Plus I had a great Thanksgiving hosted by my sister and her boyfriend. All in all, a very nice season for celebrations!

I also started running again and was well on my way to my goal of running two miles at my old Army pace when my knee gave out. Then when that went away and I stopped limping, my Ex's schedule changed which kept me from starting up again. Plus, I spent November on sick call. With the weather outside frightful, my Ex's schedule returning to one where I can actually run at night before midnight, and the lingering virus fading, I think in less than a week I can consider just how Im going to pick up running again. I hate winter. I'm not thrilled with running though I like it that I ran every time I finished running. So if I can just get in the habit and keep myself to three times a week rather than the five or six a week I was doing before my knee gave out, I could be good to go once again.

Finally, Im wrapping up my experiment with online dating. It was ok. I met a few women but nothing really clicked. Still, lots of foreign women from distant lands were eager to move here to meet me, so I've got that going for me!

Anyway, the Fall is over and it went by so fast I can't believe it. And now we are in the Christmas season! I have some presents bought already and I'm building Mister a table for his new train that I'm disguising as part of a home improvement project. That's one expensive table Mister is getting, let me tell you. I'll write about that later.

I don't like winter, but Christmas and New Year's are at least good holidays to ease into the horrible driving days of January and February. I hope those two months go by quickly! But slow or fast, life is good. It is hard to forget that for long with all the reminders of family, children, friends, a home I enjoy, a job I like, and good health despite a sub-par November.

As a last minute post-script, my car's electrical system is misfiring. Wouldn't start tonight with various dash warning indicators flashing on. I almost couldn't take Mister and Lamb to their mom's. But half an hour later the car started. [Since Lamb had helpfully offered that I probably hadnt said the magic word and half an hour later the car started, I can only assume she thinks %&@#!! is a magic word. Just kidding. No swearing took place (aloud).] And started again to get me back home an hour later. So Monday morning, assuming I don't have to have my car towed first, I'm off to get my car fixed; and my work week and a pile of work are put off another day. Argghh. It hurt enough to lose Friday! But at least the problem became apparent right at home. Boy what a pain it would have been had this problem arisen in Lansing or on the freeway in between. So even with bad luck on my car I have good luck on the timing. Probably just spark plugs or something. I do have over 109,000 miles on the car so the plugs should be replaced anyway. On my last car, they lasted to over 130,000 miles until I lost all power on the freeway but had enough luck to coast off the freeway, through a usually busy light without touching the brakes, around the corner and then just enough momentum was left to turn into a restaurant parking lot! And this time I'll have new plugs before the winter.

Life is good, indeed.

Keep Our Powder Dry

One way or another, we will have to confront Iran.

I once thought America and Britain had resolved to destroy the mullah regime. Since our election, I think our will to act has decreased.

I've also repeatedly said that if we retreat, our enemies will follow. Our existence is the cause for war. Any grievances cited are just the reason du jour.

With our home front divided about any confrontation with Iran, we may well need a provocation by Iran to steel our will to act. I also worry that Iran won't merely provoke us but try to win it all by striking first and hard.

Some months ago, Ahmadinejad called on President Bush to convert to Islam. As I noted at the end:

A couple hours after I first posted this entry, it occurred to me that the letter really seemed more like an ultimatum. It lays out Iran's grievances against us and states what we need to do to make amends for those grievances. Left unstated is just what Iran will do since we have refused the kind offer to surrender to Iran's mullahs. But I thought, I'm reading way too much into the letter. Now I'm not so sure I was correct to ignore my gut feeling.

As I wrote, just why is Ahmadinejad so confident he can issue such a call to surrender? And when is their deadline for compliance?

And now Ahmadinejad is calling on all of us to repent of our injustice:

Citing from the Koran at the close of his letter, he says that if Americans "repent" of their "injustice," they will be blessed with many gifts. "We should all heed the divine Word of the Holy Koran," he says.


The context of this particular verse (28:67-28, Sura "Al-Qasas," or The Narration), is very clear. It follows a graphic description of destruction and devastation that will befall those who fail to repent of their injustice, i.e., support for Israel and refusal to adopt Islam.

It also sets out the terms of the traditional Muslim warning to the enemies of Allah. "And never will your Lord destroy the towns until He sends to their mother town a Messenger reciting to them Our Verses." This is precisely what Mr. Ahmadinejad does in his letter.

Dump George W. Bush, allow the Muslims to destroy Israel, and adopt Islam -- or else you will be destroyed. This is Mr. Ahmadinejad's message.

When Ahmadinejad is praising Allah, you can be sure we need to be passing the ammunition. On the bright side, I think we have the power to destroy our enemies and lack only the will to do so. If our enemies inspire our will to fight them, they are screwed.

That whackjob in Tehran is up to something. He gave our President a chance to repent six months ago and he just gave all of us notice. I think the Long War is about to get pretty hot within the next six months.

Unless you believe those first 100 hours we've been hearing about in January consist of dumping the President, destroying Israel, and adopting Islam. You never can tell when the children finally get the gavel, I suppose.

Yes indeed, lovely decade we're having.

But the next decade could be much better if we keep our heads and don't give in to unjustified panicky impulses.

UPDATE: Ahmadinejad is telling Iranians he warned us to convert or die:

"These oppressive countries are angry with us ... a nation that on the other side of the globe has risen up and proved the shallowness of their power," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northern town of Ramsar.

"They are angry with our nation. But we tell them 'so be it and die from this anger'. Rest assured that if you do not respond to the divine call, you will die soon and vanish from the face of the earth," he said.

The outspoken president also maintained Iran's defiance over its controversial nuclear programme, saying it was on course to fully master nuclear technology.

"Thank to God's help, we have gone all the way and are only one step away from the zenith.

"We hope to have the big nuclear celebration by the end of the year (March 2007)," Ahmadinejad said, echoing comments he has made on numerous occasions in recent months.

But this was before the Baker commission report came out and explained how we and the Iranians can just talk given our vast pool of common interests.

Civil War

Orson Scott Card has a book out on a hypothetical American civil war. Instapundit doesn't think this is realistic:

I think that we're a long way from a civil war. But I also think that Card's right to warn people against too much division, and too little emphasis on our common interests as Americans. While I don't think that we're in danger of a civil war, I do think that our current political system is unhealthy, with polarization serving mostly as a tool for the folks in power to keep their bases in line, while they pursue agendas that are mostly self-serving. I hope that both the people and the press will make some conscious efforts to moderate the tone, and make that approach less effective.

I wish I could be so sure. I know Red Staters mocked the notion of the Left that they'd secede after the 2004 election (heck, I did a bit myself), but I don't have the same level of confidence that it cannot happen here. I think the Left is composed of true believers who think they've spent a generation being robbed by Republicans and Democratic Leadership Council types.

True believers are the ones who commit the most vicious crimes because deep down they believe you have to break a few million eggs to make your utopian omelette.

And recall that in 1860, when a presidential election prompted the south to secede, it took place after a decade of political realignment that left the North a Republican stronghold and the South a Democratic stronghold. Extreme political disagreements bolstered by physical separation made violence a real option to waiting for the next presidential election. Today, we see the Republicans becoming a party of the south while Democrats increase their stranglehold on the north. Should this geographic separation of our main political parties get worse and persist for long while we face hard debates over serious policy choices, I wouldn't be so quick to assume civil war here isn't possible.

Still, we are lucky that we are more than a North and a South. The Midwest and the West keep the electoral college in play so purely regional parties aren't a fact of life. Plus, even in the Northeast, Democratic strength is mostly in the cities. The by-county election results of 2004 put small blue enclaves in a sea of red. I certainly don't think we face the threat of civil war any time in the next generation. But if those by-county election results start to show regional bases for each party, I will start to worry.

In today's world, only Americans can ultimately defeat America. I hope Card is just a good storyteller and not a prophet.

News From Perfectoworld

In what strange world is this newsworthy?

"As to whether the United States has made mistakes: of course, I'm sure we have," Rice told interviewer Saad Sillawi of the Arabic satellite television station Al-Arabiya. "You can't be involved in something as big as the liberation of a country like Iraq, and all that has happened since, and I'm sure there are things that we could have done differently."

Gee, a war in which both sides are trying to win and it is shocking that we have made some mistakes? Yeah, that's worth some pixels to broadcast.

What is newsworthy is how few mistakes we have made fighting in Iraq. Not that you'll read much about that.

A Counter-Attack Would Be Appropriate

The Flying Imams have apparently tried to enlist the ranks of the Easily Offended ("Easily Offended" is a registered trademark of CAIR) to weaken our airline defenses. Or so it appears from supporting facts, including:

All six imams had boarded together, with the first-class passengers - even though only one of them had a first-class ticket. Three had one-way tickets. Between the six men, only one had checked a bag.

And, Pauline said, they spread out just like the 9-11 hijackers. Two sat in first, two in the middle, and two back in the economy section. Pauline’s account is confirmed by the police report. The airline spokeswoman added that some seemed to be sitting in seats not assigned to them.

One thing that no one seemed to consider at the time, perhaps due to lack of familiarity with Islamic practice, is that the men prayed both at the gate and on the plane. Observant Muslims pray only once at sundown, not twice.

“It was almost as if they were intentionally trying to get kicked off the flight,” Pauline (a passenger who was a witness to the events) said.

The FBI should investigate these imams to see if they were in fact trying to provoke an incident. Trying to give the impression that they were guilty of "flying while Moslem" rather than "flying like a bunch of jihadi suicide bombers" would have the effect of weakening our defenses for actual terrorists. Criminal charges should follow if appropriate.

US Airways should consider a law suit for civil damages for the attempt by the Flying Imams to portray the airline and its employees as violating their civil rights.

Passengers should file suits for damages both to their lost time and the fear that the imams appeared to deliberately inflict on pasengers and employees on that flight. A jury should have the option of weighing the evidence.

Our enemies and their sympathizers engage in lawfare to tie us up under our rule of law to inhibit our ability to fight our enemies. If such incidents dull our responses, the effect will be that actual terrorists will get on our flights. It is time for our goverment, corporations under threat, and citizens who are the targets of our enemies to use lawfare to the extent we can.

Our society should not be the ones being judged in this incident, it seems. Further inquiry is in order rather than just accepting the Flying While Moslem conclusion. Investigate the Flying Imams and take the appropriate criminal and civil remedies to end efforts that result in softening up our institutions for actual attackers to successfully hit us.

I mean, as one witness said, it was almost as if they wanted to provoke an incident and get kicked off the flight.

Rivals for a Day

GO ARMY!

BEAT NAVY!

Well drat. Congratulations to Navy on their win. I don't want to talk about the 4th quarter.

But after four quarters of battling each other, Army and Navy are one team again with one fight. No quarter to our enemies. Kill them all. Let Allah sort them out.

Still, there is an interesting development for Michigan fans ...

Another Such Victory Will Undo Us

As the blogosphere celebrates (in a disgusted sort of way, I admit, rather than from joy) exposing yet another MSM distortion of the war with the "police captain Jamil Hussein" affair, I have to ask why we bother with pursuing these tactical victories?

They are few and far in between. And these victories don't deter the vast majority of the press who view such exposures as isolated events that hardly prove their views of the war as wrong and going badly for us as incorrect. Everybody in the press knows those views are correct. (Tip to Instapundit)

The press just presses on to the next horror story or American casualty report.

We need to win the press war and not focus on winning isolated battles.

How many more such tactical victories will it take to lose the war?

The Enemy of My Enemy

So are Iraq War critics being suckered into buying the Baker commission report?

As details leak out, I've started coming to the conclusion that "staying the course" with a different spin is what will result. Mudville Gazette beat me to posting on this. As he notes:

That sounds like a 360-degree about face to me.

I have certainly been highly critical of the early rumors of what the commission will recommend. Lots of pro-war bloggers and commentators have been. And so logically, war opponents have reacted to this criticism by embracing and sanctifying the report virtually unseen.

I am highly hesitant to attribute events to deep plans rather than muddling through that only seems like a plan in retrospect, but it would be really cool if the administration has been planning this all along. And bonus points if firing Rumsfeld was part of the plan, too, to increase the noise around the same path--a path that will take us to victory if we don't panic.

Really, simply saying we won't stay in Iraq forever fighting insurgents has always been assumed. If this is the heart of the Baker commission report, I'll owe him an apology.

The real question (the one that has always been the question) is then whether we leave before the Iraqis can win without our help (without ethnically cleansing the Sunni Arabs, that is. If we leave too soon, the Shias and Kurds can certainly do that without us). As long as the President will make the hard choices to stay if necessary rather than start drawing down troops too fast, we can keep on doing what we've been doing. Heck, if the Sunni Arabs keep fleeing Iraq as the Sunni terrorists deliberately provoke the Shias into killing Sunni Arabs, the insurgency could dry up from lack of Sunni Arabs regardless of what we do over the next year! And is this a sign we are forcing the Sunni Arabs to confront this reality?

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.

Am I misunderestimating some people?

Fueling the Fire

For a long time, the insurgencies in Iraq seemed to only need the importation of foreign jihadis for the more brutal suicide tactics the enemy uses. Money looted from the Baathis regime initially provided all the money they needed. Of late, crime and corruption have provided the insurgents and terrorists with money. As for weapons, loads of Saddam-era munitions made importing weapons pointless.

Money may still come from inside Iraq, but it seems (tip to Instapundit) as if at least some weapons have to be imported:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

I think we know what to ask Iran to do to help us solve that whole Iraq violence problem that our Left seems to think is our fault.

Can we destroy the Iranian regime now?

Or at least recognize they wage war on us? I'll take any small step toward realism when dealing with Iran.

Death Watch

Does the West really lack the confidence that our system and values should prevail over 12th century fanatics who reject all that we stand for?

I prefer to think that only some in the West lack the will to fight--for now. And that enough will wage a war in defense of Western values against barbarians in order to preserve our common culture.

Or should the Vatican again outfit its Swiss Guards as a proper army to maintain itself in Rome.

I do wonder if the Vatican has plans buried deep in its vaults to relocate to Africa or Latin America if necessary?