Cast a Giant Shadow

Although I have long recognized the need to neutralize Moqtada Sadr's militias, I worried that Sadr had enough support to make taking him out directly by arrest or killing too dangerous to contemplate. For some time, I just couldn't conclude from what I read whether Sadr was too popular to target. I recently concluded that Sadr is weak enough to go after and that doing so won't cause a mass movement of support for him that also considers the government and our forces as enemies. Sadr's support was far more illusion than real.

If we take out Sadr's militia which is killing even innocent Sunni Arabs, and if the Iraqi government can provide protection to the Shias, then the Sunnis might feel secure enough to finally surrender and end their support for Sunni terrorists who pose as Sunni protectors.

I don't feel so bad about my long indecision because of my doubt about the apparent evidence I could see in public sources. I wasn't alone. Frederick Kagan, too, was in doubt:

"Attempting to clear Sadr City would almost certainly force the [Mahdi army] into [a direct] confrontation with American troops," they wrote in a January report for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. "It would also do enormous damage to [al-Maliki's] political base and would probably lead to the collapse of the Iraqi government."

Now at least one of the authors questions that view. In an interview yesterday, Kagan said some early signs of success, including al-Sadr's recent disappearance from the public scene and successful sweeps of other heavily Shiite neighborhoods nearby, suggest that U.S. forces could move into Sadr City earlier than Keane and Kagan had advocated."

It appears that I overestimated the Sadrists and underestimated Maliki," Kagan said. "Our troops have operated in these neighborhoods, and these neighborhoods are not resisting."

We still don't want to treat the Shia neighborhoods like Fallujah, but we have room to maneuver. If we do it quietly enough and with minimal firepower, we can probably pick apart the leadership of the death squads and neutralize them as anything other than local protective forces.

We need to exploit his apparent weakness now and pile on the negative impressions with our own information campaign to show him as a coward, Iranian tool, and corrupt fool. If we don't get him now--our third opportunity since Baghdad fell--he could regain his popularity and make my original worry true

Phase VI victory depends on neutralizing Sadr.

Wallet on a String

Austin Bay notes this good commentary on the North Korea agreement recently penned.

The bottom line is that this is significantly different than the 1994 agreement despite the cries of administration foes and even friends who belittle it as Clinton II and wonder why we didn't make this agreement years ago or ask we would repeat failure.

And given that many steps have to be taken to put it into effect, it is too soon to even tell if it is an agreement at all. But that is good since it took us 8 years to figure out the 1994 agreement wasn't worth the paper it was written on. We need time to see if Pyongyang is even remotely sincere.

A lot depends on what North Korea does in the coming months. And as these new talks to implement this proto-agreement drag on, North Korea continues to crumble. The oil we will provide initially is really just a token amount and not enough to save them and allow them to get all North Koreany again, confident that they've bought some more time. The Pillsbury Nuke Boy still needs to play by our rules to save himself. And by signing on to this agreement, the North Koreans have committed to playing along with this route a little longer. Long enough to die? We'll see.

Even if this agreement was 1994 version 2.0, we'd have the advantage of North Korea being far more feeble and four allies with us. But even this minimalist position is not true. This is--or could be--a better agreement. I'm getting a little more confident in judging this a reasonable agreement. Assuming we don't put somebody like Albright or Carter in charge of implementing or negotiating it, of course. And that can't happen for a couple years, at worst.

Hammer and Anvil?

American troop strength is rising in Afghanistan. That has been reported already.

And now British troop strength will rise in Afghanistan:

British media said 1,000 more soldiers would be sent to Afghanistan to join the more than 5,000 British troops already there.

Add to this that we have another carrier battlegroup heading to CENTCOM's area and that nearly six additional brigades of Army and Marine troops are going to Iraq.

And consider that I really believe our new strategy in Iraq is far more important than new troops.

And we've neutralized North Korea for a bit with the new agreement and planned talks that are required to implement it. Would North Korea attack us, South Korea, or Japan in support of Iran if Pyongyang thinks that will end the gravy train they think they've ordered?

So, are we building up strength to strike Iran and make sure we have sufficient forces to confront Iran in a conventional fight even as we maintain enough troops to continue the counter-insurgency fights in Afghanistan and Iraq?

If we are going to address Iran forcefully, we will need Britain. I think the British will help us. But to get Britain, we need Prime Minister Blair. The prime minister won't be here much longer than the summer.

Once again, I think I see signals of impending action. Of course, I've been wrong up to now every time concerning Iran. So my predictive powers aren't what I'd like them to be.

UPDATE: VP Cheney reminds us all that the European diplomatic initiative has failed spectacularly:

"We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference," Cheney said.

"But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table," he said.

When diplomacy fails, those other options become a lot more relevant.

An Inconvenient and Belated Truth

I post about global warming on occasion here because foreigners like to beat us about the head and shoulders for our failure to cripple our economy in order to fix what science has deemed a crisis.

I'm just not impressed with how the scientists involved are acting. Their thin skin makes it seem like they aren't too interested in defending their science or policy recommendations.

And science is not the infallible measure that the global warmers liket to pretend it is.

Case in point is the debate over the first Americans. Twenty years ago, at a previous job, I talked with a colleague who was in graduate school for archaeolgoy. He was amazed that the evidence that called into the whole Clovis theory into question was simply ignored. Anybody who tried to question that theory by bringing up evidence of prior settlements had no future in the profession. My friend told me there were sites that predated Clovis but his profession wouldn't deal with them.

Questioning Clovis was heresy. That was the state of the science then.

Well, Clovis is finally being questioned:

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers writing in the journal Science on Thursday said the Clovis people, hunters of large Ice Age animals like mammoths and mastodons, dated from about 13,100 to 12,900 years ago.

That would make the Clovis culture, known from artifacts discovered at various sites including the town of Clovis, New Mexico, both younger and shorter-lived than previously thought. Previous estimates had dated the culture to about 13,600 years ago.

These people long had been seen as the first humans in the New World, but the new dates suggest their culture thrived at about the same time or after others also in the Americas.

Michael Waters, director of Texas A&M University's Center for the Study of the First Americans, called the research the final nail in the coffin of the so-called "Clovis first" theory of human origins in the New World.

Waters said he thinks the first people probably arrived in the Americas between 15,000 and 25,000 years ago.

Scientists are not immune to bias. And this example is over a topic few people really worry about. Imagine how bias can insinuate itself when the scientists are straying from the pure science and advocating policy?

I wonder what the state of global warming science will be in twenty years?

Back to my regular programming.

Who Owns the Flag?

Whenever a suggestion is made that perhaps our enemy likes the Left's plan to retreat and surrender to them, the Left is fond of putting an an outraged air and sputtering that their dissent is patriotic and that conservatives don't "own" the American flag.

Yet when one war supporter tries to hand out small American flags to war protesters, once they figured it wasn't some post-ironic statement in support of their protest and that nobody would be following the flag distributor to pass out lighter fluid and matches, the protesters refused to touch them:

Ah, so now defeatist protests are considered "art," and passing out flags is "vandalism." Got it.

I'd be persuaded that conservatives didn't exclusively own our flag if Leftists didn't react to the flag like vampires reacting to Holy Water.

Dutch Treat

Hugo Chavez is simultaneously on a buying spree for modern weapons and purging any of his officers who might understand how to use them. That's about par for the course for nutcase thugs, fortunately.

And as he trashes his own economy, Hugo might try to pick on a neighbor to rally his people:

But for the last two years, Venezuelan officials, including the country's demagogic president, Hugo Chavez, have made numerous public statements about the "reunification" of the islands of the Dutch West Indies (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaτao) with Venezuela. Added to that there is the ancient claim on most of neighboring Guyana, some disputed Colombian territorial waters, and very flimsy claims on Caribbean islands like Trinidad and Tobago. There has been some actions as well. Venezuelan violations of Dutch air space and territorial waters, including illegal over flights by military aircraft, have occurred with some frequency. In addition, Venezuelan authorities have urged residents of the islands to form "Bolivarian" cells, in support of eventual "reunification."

If I was in charge of Dutch defenses, I'd be worried about Hugo. Of course, the Dutch have taken some actions that would be of use in case Hugo tries to self-promote to the Axis of Evil from the Axis of El Vil at Dutch expense. With a little preparation, I have little doubt that the Dutch could hold their own and make Hugo pay for any date in the Carribbean Sea.

And really, as a NATO country, The Netherlands would have reason to call on the NATO reaction force for help. I may not think much of the NRF given the lack of political will of the nations that contribute troops to the force (and an army directed by committee would only be as strong as the weakest member), but a direct attack on a NATO member by a nation with a military crippled by ideology would probably be considered an attack on all. Our 9/11 set the precedent for an out-of-area NATO response in the Western Hemisphere already.

If I was a betting man, I'd guess that if the new NATO force is ever used, the NRF sees service first in the Western Hemisphere rather than in Darfur or Afghanistan.

I still hope we can ignore the crazy man down south and that he'll self-destruct. But I don't know if we are that lucky.

Never Get Out of the Effing Boat

Our Navy is returning to the brown waters (via my Jane's email service):

After a near 35-year hiatus, the US Navy (USN) is returning in force to the riverine mission it quietly abandoned shortly after the Vietnam War. The Riverine Group, a battalion-sized unit conceived 17 years ago but implemented only after 2005, has stood up Riverine Squadron-One (RIVRON-One) and is in the process of standing up RIVRON-Two, using mainly ships borrowed from the US Marine Corps and navy special warfare units.

This is good. It seems unfair that there should be any bodies of water on this planet that our Navy does not dominate.

Why Collapsing North Korea Must Still Be Our Goal

Even if we have an agreement with North Korea that verifies they've shut down a reactor, I have little confidence that we can possibly keep them from pushing forward by different avenues to the same goal.

Two US nuclear experts think that North Korea could mount 5-12 nuclear warheads on shorter ranged missiles:

The non-governmental group's report added: "the warhead may not be reliable, and it may have a relatively low yield."

Many proliferation experts doubt whether North Korea has the ability to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on a missile.

The ISIS report said North Korea had probably obtained technology from overseas that would help it make a crude nuclear warhead.

Experts do not doubt that North Korea has hundreds of missiles, including its modified Scud-type missile called the Rodong, that are capable of hitting all of South Korea and large parts of Japan.

This is different from past assessments that figured detonating a nuclear device is a far cry from actually making a warhead. Althoughthe experts do question the reliability of anything the North Koreans might slap together.

But this sort of debate kind of misses the point. It's the regime, stupid. Always has been. A decent regime would be no threat with 100 nuclear weapons (even I don't worry about nuclear-armed France). A hideous regime is a threat with no nukes and I don't even want to think about what they can do with nukes.

Squeeze Pyongyang. Even committed to supplying oil, we must make sure we dole it out slowly so that the North Koreans can't accumulate a stockpile or sell it for short-term gain to bolster their regime. Keep these negotiations going and only give the Pillsbury Nuke Boy the hope that he can avoid collapse by dealing with us.

We can't trust them, you know. We do realize that, right?

Born Again

Does the near-religious fervor of our anti-war Left strike anybody else as a little odd?

At first, when I heard about all the contenders for the support of the Left in the Democratic presidential primary race recanting their past support for the Iraq War, it struck me that we were having our own version of show trials. Trot out the guilty and have them renounce their past crimes and embrace the current regime.

But this isn't quite right. Nobody is being executed for their guilt. No, they are being cleansed and embraced.

Really, this is more about a pure priesthood (Kos and the DU and their ilk) demanding that the candidates be born-again Lefties and renounce the DNC devil that tempted them from the purity of that Eden of Vietnam War-era thinking. And the candidates have trotted out, confessing their sin of wanting to defend America and pledging that they have accepted defeat in Iraq as their personal savior. Truly, voting for the Iraq War is the secular Left's original sin. And the 2002 authorization to use force against Iraq was the Alar-tainted apple that tempted them from Paradise.

But those who have become born again Leftists are embraced by the loving and forgiving flock and told to defend America no more (Can I get a "Halliburton! from the congregation?!).

Hillary Clinton is refusing to completely accept her sinful nature, and so the high priests do not forgive her. She has not accepted defeat in Iraq as her personal savior without reservation. She is unclean. She must be punished for her blasphemy.

Kos the Baptist will see to that.

Halliburton.

I'm Sure This is Our Fault

Our enemy in Iraq is using chemical weapons:

In Baghdad, a pickup truck carrying chlorine gas cylinders was blown apart, killing at least five people and sending more than 55 to hospitals gasping for breath and rubbing stinging eyes, police said.

On Tuesday, a bomb planted on a chlorine tanker left more than 150 villagers stricken north of the capital. More than 60 were still under medical care on Wednesday. Chlorine causes respiratory trouble and skin irritation in low levels and possible death with heavy exposure.

In Washington, two Pentagon officials said the tactic has been used at least three times since Jan. 28, when a truck carrying explosives and a chlorine tank blew up in Anbar province. More than a dozen people were reported killed.

Chlorine was the first chemical weapon used in World War I. I'm sure the outrage of the international community and assorted "progressive" and "human rights" groups over using banned chemical weapons will begin any minute now.

Yep. Any minute now.

Any minute.

Americans Still Want to Win

I mentioned that the national Democratic party is in danger of losing its credibility on matters of national defense by embracing defeat in Iraq.

Even if people (wrongly) think we are doing poorly in Iraq, most Americans want to win in Iraq and believe it is important to win:

57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism.”

57% “support finishing the job in Iraq, that is, keeping the troops there until the Iraqi government can maintain control and provide security for its people.

50% want our troops should stay and “do whatever it takes to restore order until the Iraqis can govern and provide security to their country” while only 17% favor immediate withdrawal.

56% believe “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.”

53% believe “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

Opinion polls will turn rather quickly on the Iraq question if we manage to tamp things down in Baghdad--and if the press reports that to our people, of course. The press continues to report (as they have for several years) on the "increasingly unpopular" war in Iraq. The press won't come out looking too good either.

I'd love a two-fer.

Fardh Al-Qanoon (And Be Careful About Translating That)

The effort in Baghdad, code-named Fardh Al-Qanoon, is showing results:

Despite the jump in terrorist bombings in the last few days, the death toll in Baghdad, since the security operations began two weeks ago, have declined by over 70 percent. Shia civilians were afraid that, with Shia militiamen off the streets, there would be more attacks by Sunni death squads. This didn't happen, mainly because Sunni civilians, who provided safe houses for Sunni terrorists, have been driven from Shia neighborhoods. The Sunni killers have to travel farther to find a target, and that is more difficult because the Iraqi army and police have erected more check points over the last six months. American intelligence analysts have also used predictive software to analyze terrorist attacks and movements, and determined the best places to put the new checkpoints, and what to look for. Getting past checkpoints has become a major chore for Sunni terrorists, and many of them don't make it. When you hear of a suicide bombing with only one or two dead, that's usually a car bomber caught at a check point. Sometimes they take the bomber alive, which is an intelligence bonanza, as the bomb, and the bomber, can be examined at length.

Despite the cries of opponents of the surge that there is no new strategy involved, there surely is:

Adding 20,000 troops to Iraq in a five- to six-month window is a significant increase but in and of itself not decisive, and certainly not a "new strategy."

The relentless, focused targeting of Shia and Sunni extremist organizations is a far more important feature of what Iraqis are calling "the new security plan" than more U.S. troops. The coalition's effort to better integrate the economic and political development "lines of operation" with security operations could have greater long-term effects.

And of course, in the end, the military effort is just one part of the effort. The Iraqis are trying to sway the Sunnis by allowing the less tainted Baathists to rejoin the government:

Former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi advocated a similar program in 2004, but Allawi's government was appointed, not elected. Saddam Hussein was also still alive. Maliki is an elected prime minister, and his government carried out Saddam's court-ordered death sentence. Maliki has the political capital to implement the program.

While I supported de-Baathification all along, I also recognized that not all Baathists can be pushed aside and given no choice but fighting or fleeing. And I have supported amnesty even when war supporters were outraged we'd allow those who killed Americans to get away with it. This view overlooked the objective of defeating the insurgency by substituting the objective of killing every enemy.

If we can draw in the Sunni Arabs (but not reverse the results of liberation, I should add), choking off the doomed but still lethal killers will pick up speed.

I worry a lot about using the level of violence as a metric for success or failure in this operation. In the long run, victory in the war will mean that the violence is squelched as the enemy is reduced. But in the short run, I hate to tie victory over a still-resisting (if doomed) enemy that just has to kill civilians in large numbers at least once a week to create that media effect of "resisting."

Oh, and check out the update to this post for an amusing aspect of the operation. Amusing in a tragic I-can't-believe-people-actually-think-this-way manner, but amusing nonetheless. The DU at work ...

Heh

Heh:

Paul Campos has beclowned himself. He did it in the usual way, by arguing loudly about things he does not understand.

I find Campos to be amazingly ill-informed on the rare occasions his columns come to my attention. He seems to be a less talented and less well-groomed version of Paul Krugman or something. I sometimes wondered if I just caught him on weeks he picked to give up sniffing glue, or something. Apparently not.

Search TDR for "campos" if you really want to see my comments on some of his past articles. He isn't worth my effort to make the links. Sorry.

Building the Army

This is a good overview (via Stand-To!) of the direction of the Army from the recent past to the future.

It addresses a number of aspects so I can't really highlight anything of particular note.

The Bear Awakens

When Putin's Russia is openly pining for the days when Moscow ruled an empire, events in Ukraine should make friends of freedom raise our defenses (via Jane's):

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has seen his position steadily undermined following the introduction of a new constitution in January 2006 as part of the package of agreements that saw him become president in December 2004. The main benefactor of the reforms has been his opponent Viktor Yanukovych who returned as prime minister and head of the anti-crisis majority parliamentary coalition government in August 2006.

The Ukraine was the greatest foreign asset of the Soviet Empire and Putin and other like-minded "former" Soviets are too keen for my tastes to get it back.

Secretary Rice should be in Kiev bolstering our friends and not chatting up terrorists in the Middle East.

UPDATE: In Berlin, Secretary Rice rejected Russian complaints about anti-missile systems in eastern NATO countries (see my post linked above). The Russians insist this is bad:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow sees the establishment of the missile defense sites as a signal that the United States wants to gain nuclear superiority over Russia. He dismissed U.S. claims that it was to counter Iranian threats.

"If they talk about potential threats coming from Iran or North Korea, missile defense elements should be located in a different place," Lavrov said in an interview published Wednesday in the daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "We can't help noting that these facilities would be capable of intercepting missiles launched from Russia."

Lavrov said that having the ability to shoot down Russian missiles could allow the United States to consider the possibility of a nuclear strike on Russia without fear of retaliation.

I can't help notice that in regard to North Korea, we certainly are putting missiles in a different place.

I can't help but notice that the Russians think that we can place missiles designed to protect Europe in locations other than Europe. Clearly the Russians don't want us to protect Europe from nuclear missiles.

I Also can't help noticing that the Russians still ponder lobbing missiles into Europe.

And finally, let's ponder that in that hypothetical US nuclear attack on Russia, a Russian counter-strike would be launched over the North Pole and not go anywhere near the anti-missile system's firing radius. So again, the Russians are worried about losing the ability to nuke Europe.

Lovely fellows, those Russians are lately, eh? I couldn't help but notice that.

My Semi-Annual Disclaimer

The Left has been annoying me more than usual lately. So it is time I dust off my semi-annual explanation of my contempt.

I don't use the terms "left" or "anti-war side" as synonyms for Democrats. There are anti-war Republicans, too, though admittedly they are in far smaller numbers.

I know many Democrats and they are fine people. On state level issues, I have no real problem with either party. These are things to be negotiated over in committees.

But at the national level when issues of national security are at stake, I cannot trust the Democratic party because they have been seized by a palace coup of Lefties and moonbat anti-war fanatics.

It is possible to disagree over policy. But what we have is a fundamental inability to even see the same world.

I cannot accept debate over whether we should win a war lawfully and justly begun. And I cannot accept debate over who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in this war.

As long as the national debate is over these issues, I will never trust the party that represents the view that we should lose and deserve to lose with the power to lead our nation.

And I don't like that situation. The Republicans deserved to lose the last Congressional elections, no doubt. But I could never say the Democrats earned the right to win.

I want that to change. We need two national parties that can be trusted with defending our country. We don't have that now.

Shrieking Weenie-Fest

With the latest faux armor crisis in full bloom, it might be good to recall the history of armor in Iraq that I wrote some time ago.

It is sometimes difficult to remember that critics of the war once bitterly complained that our troops in body armor and sun glasses were too intimidating and that we had to get our troops in soft caps walking about amongst the IEDs--I mean, walking amongst the people.

I would just add that if Representative Murtha's standards had been in effect in 1944, no American would have been allowed to hit the Normandy beaches that June. Because, without armor that cannot under any circumstances be penetrated, we can't win a war.

Victoryphobia is an ugly thing to see in action.

Thank You Canada

Canadian soldiers are doing an outstanding job in Afghanistan fighting our common enemies.

They are being recognized:

The heroic efforts of Canadian soldiers who've risked their lives in Afghanistan were recognized in a special ceremony in Ottawa Monday, as Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean handed out the first-ever Military Valour Decorations.

This is a vast improvement over past practices. Canada's soldiers deserve better and I'm glad to see them get the public accolades for their courage.

While I might (and do) lament the decline in the quantity of Canada's military, the quality of their soldiers is quite high and the willingness of the Canadians to actually fight with us when so many of our NATO allies will only sit and consume supplies is something I do not take for granted. Canada's military tradition lives on. This is good.

Thanks, Canada. Our common sacrifice will not be in vain.

Splitsville

I don't know why I ever read E. J. Dionne. He is such a party hack that I rarely bother, but Real Clear Politics noted his piece where he complained that the looming struggle between Congress and the President over waging war in Iraq is the President's fault:

The president is inviting a full-scale confrontation over his warmaking powers in the expectation that the Democrats' narrow majorities will deprive them of the votes they need to win such a fight. He is ready to split the country rather than give any ground to those who ask whether it's wise to risk ensnaring American troops in a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

The President is ready to split the country? Does Dionne even bother to look at the facts before he reflexively slams the president?

Congress, after supporting war against Saddam in 1991, making regime change in Iraq the official policy of our country in 1998, applauding the 1998 Desert Fox campaign, funding a decade of containment, and again supporting war against Saddam in 2003, now is getting its collective panties in a twist and wants to go full speed to the rear? And splitting the country and inviting a constitutional crisis is the President's fault ... how?

I mean, the President is properly waging war in Iraq with the object of victory, and we are doing a good job despite the Iranian and Syrian intervention that is fomenting the civil strife and killing of civilians inside Iraq. When Congress authorized war, I'm reasonably sure they expected both a vigorous execution and ultimate victory.

Or was it an authorization to use ineffective force? I guess I can't rule that out.

Congress, by advocating a reversal of course on a policy that stretches back more than 16 years, is the party courting a constitutional crisis by seeking to supplant our president as the commander-in-chief and put our Congress in the role of directing our forces in the field. Congress would, if it gets its way, split the country, split Iraq, and split from the Middle East entirely.

If Congress attempts to attach so many strings to their spending bills that the President cannot carry out his constitutional role of commander-in-chief, perhaps the President could request donations from our allies to fund our troop surge. Let our President seek the role of financing this part of our war effort apart from Congress. If Congress wants to violate the separation of powers portions of the Constitution, let the executive branch return the favor.

Ramping Up

Our newly rediscovered Guam is getting another work out as it prepares for a larger role in projecting American power in the western Pacific:

"This exercise highlights GuamÂ’s strategic value and will show the world that we are prepared to defend our island and our nation from any threat of terrorism," Governor Felix Comacho said in his State of the Island address.

Guam and neighbouring US territories including the Northern Mariana Islands are considered by the US as strategic locations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Guam is home to one of the largest US military naval bases in the region and 8,000 marines will soon be relocated there from Japan.

The island, with a population of 170,000, is banking on the US military buildup to bail it out of its economic woes.

The US and Japan are spending 15 billion dollars on the relocation of the marines from Japan, which is expected to further boost Washington's military strength in the Asia-Pacific.

Guam will stand astride any Chinese attempts to push their sea frontier east.

And nothwithstanding the deal with North Korea to eliminate their nuclear programs (which I am refraining from praising or condemning until I see more), we perhaps are not so sure that the Pillsbury Nuke Boy won't try to earn some cash by selling what they have learned thus far.

Troubling Metric

Our plan for winning in Iraq certainly makes sense but I worry about the metrics for judging success.

Major General Fil describes the plan:

This new plan involves three basic parts: clear, control and retain. The first objective within each of the security districts in the Iraqi capital is to clear out extremist elements neighborhood by neighborhood in an effort to protect the population. And after an area is cleared, we're moving to what we call the control operation.


Together with our Iraqi counterparts, we'll maintain a full-time presence on the streets, and we'll do this by building and maintaining joint security stations throughout the city. This effort to re- establish the joint security stations is well under way. The number of stations in each district will be determined by the commanders on the ground who control that area.


An area moves into the retain phase when the Iraqi security forces are fully responsible for the day-to-day security mission. At this point, coalition forces begin to move out of the neighborhood and into locations where they can respond to requests for assistance as needed.


During these three phrases, efforts will be ongoing to stimulate local economies by creating employment opportunities, initiating reconstruction projects and improving the infrastructure. These efforts will be spearheaded by neighborhood advisory councils, district advisory councils and the government of Iraq.


We'll know when we're succeeding when the levels of violence are reduced. Some areas of the city will see rapid improvement, while others will take some time to make the same levels of progress. We are here for the duration.


The Iraqi people have not given up their hope for a prosperous and peaceful Iraq, and we should not give up on them. We're working literally day and night with the Baghdad Operational Command to help bring down the levels of violence, and the government of Iraq continues to move forces into Baghdad as we bring in more U.S. forces. It's an extremely complex and difficult mission, but together we are up to the task.


It's important to remember that all of this will take time, and the mission is going to be tough. It will take time for additional forces to flow in; it'll take time for these forces to gain an understanding of their areas and to establish relationships with the local Iraqi leaders and the citizens. It will also take time to conduct the clearing operations and then to build on our achievements.

All this makes sense. This is an appropriate approach to defeating our enemies inside Iraq.

But the metric is troubling. Are we really saying that we will define whether our surge is successful based on the number of attacks over the next six months?

This is what I'm worrying about. Certainly, victory in the end will be signalled by the great reduction of enemy violence. Eventually. But in the near term, this is problematic. An enemy determined to fight can pull off spectacular kills even with our troops all over the place. Terrorists need only the will to kill and nearby civilians grouped together.

And if there is little violence, it could mean the enemy is waiting until we leave as much as it means we have won. This metric of levels of violence assumes near-term success can be achieved when a counter-insurgency against a well-financed and fanatical enemy could go on a decade more.

I would rather have a metric of success that judges whether we have prepared Iraqis to fight this decade-long fight. If we have done that, even if the violence in Baghdad is roughly the same, we can call it a victory. But if we truly are judging the surge based on ending violence, unless the enemy suddenly breaks, I fear we are setting ourselves up for a paper defeat. Which in our political environment will quickly be translated into actual defeat.

We need a surge of patience in Iraq more than anything else. The plan we have is reasonable. The hopes we have for it may be dangerously unreasonable.

Feel the Love

The Russian missile forces chief Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, threatened the Czechs and Poles for wanting to defend themselves as part of NATO:

"If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic take such a step ... the Strategic Missile Forces will be capable of targeting these facilities if a relevant decision is made," Solovtsov told reporters in Moscow, asserting the U.S. plan could upset strategic balance of power in the region.

Solovtsov spoke as Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Polish counterpart, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, both in Warsaw, suggested they were ready to move forward with a plan by Washington to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic.

Can you imagine that all the Warsaw Pact nations fled the loving embrace of the Soviet Union as soon as they weren't compelled to be members? And that then the Soviet Union itself fell apart?

The Russians need to stop pining for the days of their communist past.

UPDATE: The Polish prime minister is not so eager for the Bear's embrace:

"To make it clear — this is not about Russian security; these installations do not in any way threaten Russia," Kaczynski said on state Radio 1. "It's about the status of Poland, and Russian hopes that the zone, in other words Poland, will once again find itself ... in the Russian sphere of influence."

"From the moment the missile bases are installed here, the chances of that happening, for at least decades to come, very much declines," he said.

And note that the article understates the past by mentioning only the 45 years of Soviet occupation after World War II. No mention is made of the absorption of Poland for a couple centuries prior to World War I.

All Roads Lead to Home

Michael Barone slams the strange relationship our "reality-based community" has with intelligence:

Again we encounter the idea that intelligence agencies' conclusions should be regarded as Holy Writ, not to be questioned or analyzed critically by high government officials -- that there can be an intelligence product that is 100 percent accurate, and that every intelligence community conclusion must be treated as if it is.

The Bush critics' position is that we must believe without reservation or criticism any intelligence that can be used to argue against military action and that we should never believe any intelligence, however plausible, that can be used to argue for it. That's not very intelligent.

The Left has no clue about military matters and in the art of spycraft has just as little a clue.

When all intelligence is interpreted by our Left in a manner that always supports their preference to never confront our enemies, I think the proper response is to question the motives of our Left and not our intelligence reports.

Iraq

Before the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), Iraq's Sunni minority rulers worried that the Shias would not defend Iraq when faced with fellow-Shia Iranian enemies. Eight years of war ended that threat and Iraq portrayed itself as the shield of the Arab world against the ancient Persian enemy. Iraq as a nation was strengthened by this foreign threat despite Sunni domination.

But the shield of the Arab world was always a shield of the Sunni Arab world. The Shias counted as nothing but cannon fodder in service to the Sunni Arabs. Saddam's cruel era of oppression, torture,and mass murder eroded the common sense of Islamic solidarity.

And the post-Saddam support of the wider Sunni Arab world for the Sunni Arab killers inside Iraq who slaughter innocents has dealt perhaps a fatal blow to Islamic and Arab solidarity of Iraqis:

Suspicion toward foreign Arabs stems, in part, from the fact that the Sunni-led insurgency has included many foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, who are blamed for deadly attacks that have claimed thousands of Iraqi lives.

Could this alienation from the wider Arab world by Iraq's Shias help in Iraq?

With Kurds already suspicious of non-Kurd Moslems whether Turk, Arab, or Persian, with Sunni Arabs suspicious of Persians, and with Shias suspicious of foreign Sunni Arabs, do all Iraqis have a basis for unity on a rejection of foreign influence and foreign intrigue in Iraq? Are some speaking of splitting Iraq (as if we should draw borders as colonial powers once did!) just as the divisions this so-called solution are based on becoming less important than a shared anger at foreign intervention?

With massive oil reserves, a reserve of education that can be rebuilt, American influence that can build a more effective state and military, American friendship, and Iraq's geographic position, Iraq is in a good position to reject the region's hatreds and make the region adapt to Iraq.

While there is of course a danger of extreme Iraqi nationalism with great power in the long run, it is also often said that nations that must struggle for their nation's independence forge stronger bonds of nationhood than countries granted their freedom with no cost. Surely, the bloody intrusion of Syria, Turkey, Iran, and the Sunni Arab world into Iraq to fight their own wars at the expense of Iraqis of all stripes counts as a struggle for Iraqi independence.

We should all want a unified Iraq. Let's exploit the enemies' actions to help Iraqis unite to expel the invaders--all of them.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, how long do you think it will be before the anguished cries from the Sunni world of "why do they hate us?" erupt over this Shia anger?

Yeah, never mind. The Sunnis think little of Shia lives, so why would they think much of their opinions?

Always Faithless

We went 10-0 in our wars until Vietnam.

We actually won that war before we pulled out, but the anti-war Left reached back after the race was over to deny us the ability to defend South Vietnam against a North Vietnamese blitzkrieg that conquered Saigon the old-fashioned way.

So we were 10-1 at war.

We won some small ones after that and renewed our winning streak. Our Left tried to derail the Persian gulf War but our smallish aims could be achieved too fast to let the Left add another notch in their bongo.

And now, the generation that gave us defeat even after we won in Vietnam is trying to relive their glory days by defeating us in another war:

We'd have to go back to Benedict Arnold to find Americans as eager as Murtha & Co. to see an American defeat on the battlefield.

For all of President Clinton's faults, he at least removed the stain from his party that resulted in our people refusing to entrust them with defending our nation. But that gain is short-lived at the hands of the victoryphobic of the Left that wants our defeat so obviously that it is painful to watch.

But I guess if you are so ill-informed that you believe dissent is the greatest form of Patriotism, actively aiding the enemy must seem like the act of Jefferson himself. Funny, but a year ago, surrender wasn't quite so obviously the plan they trotted out.

The Left will ensure that nobody will trust their party for another generation. Any success at the national level will be as fleeting as Jimmy Carter's victory in 1976.

Raptors Rising

Our newest fighter, the F-22 Raptor, has deployed to Japan:

The total of a dozen Raptors and some 250 airmen from Langley air force base will conduct drills in Japan and South Korea.

The US fighters would be deployed for three to four months, according to Colonel Anne Morris, a spokeswoman for US Forces in Japan, who said the mission was a reflection of the US commitment to the US-Japan security alliance.

They didn't go to CENTCOM. Neither Iran nor Syria have earned that distinction. They didn't go to Europe. Sorry about that insult, Putin, but it's been awhile since the Red Army scared anybody but new Russian recruits.

The Raptor went to Japan because we have conventional threats on the Korean peninsula and on the mainland with an ambitious China that this hot-as-Hell fighter would tear apart if it came to a fight.

This single step has done more for the defense of Taiwan than the Taiwanese parliament has done in a decade.

The Surge

The so-called Surge in Baghdad has already begun.

A few Iraqi brigades, understrength and smaller than American brigades even when at full strength, have arrived in Baghdad to support an additional American brigade that has been deployed. More are scheduled to be sent.

In a city of 6 million, how is it possible that these first units, fewer than 10,000 additional troops, could count as a surge?

And how could these troops do anything when the loyal opposition claims there is no new strategy for these troops?

Yet already Sadr has fled to Iran and the Mahdi Army appears in disarray due to arrests of senior leaders and small numbers of the army itself. Sadr's forces are certainly quiet.

And jihadis have made for the exits in anticipation of the surge.

So deaths are down in Baghdad.

All this was achieved before our troops even really engaged the enemies and actually started operations.

All this is possible because, as I've argued, a surge of effort is necessary and not a surge of new American troops.

We have a better approach that recognizes that the Shia death squads are the primary obstacle to reaping the fruits of victory over enemy Baathist and jihadi attempts to defeat the new Iraqi government. There really is a cycle of violence in Iraq right now. The jihadis and die-hard Baathists with blood on their hands must be killed or driven from Iraq, but most Sunnis know thay can't shoot their way back into power. Even a couple years ago, it was possible to see that the Sunnis were attempting to surrender and move on.

But the Samarra mosque bombing of a year ago ignited the enemy strategy of provoking a Shia onslaught on the Sunnis so that the Sunni Arabs would embrace the jihadis as a source of protection rather than give up. Iranian and Syrian help to the Shia thugs helped this along nicely, of course. No point in leaving things to chance when you can support both sides involved in the killing. The Sunni Arabs became too afraid of the Shia death squads to surrender to the Shia-dominated government.

So knocking back the Shia death squads, of which Sadr's Mahdi Army is the most famous, is necessary to get the Sunni Arabs to quit the hopeless fight. The continuing flight of Sunni Arabs shows that the Sunni Arabs know that the jihadis don't actually provide protection, however. The jihadis just keep the cycle of killing going. The cooperation we've gained from Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar to fight the jihadis shows that the Sunni Arabs can be brought at least partly in from the cold.

So with Baghdad the key objective, we have new rules of engagement that allow us to fight both the Shia death squads the Sunni terrorists who still bomb innocents.

And we have political support in Iraq to do what is necessary. Not scorching the Earth as the Russians did in Grozny--but what is necessary.

The very fact that our surge is being spread out over several months should be a clue that the new American troops themselves are not the key to winning. Yet the focus on the new troops means that the surge of effort has some time to defeat the enemy before people impatiently ask if the surge has worked once all the new American troops are in place.

The talk of military force being necessary to militarily defeat the enemy is wrong. Military force is necessary--I would never say that is is not important. But the enemy which is indistinguishable from surrounding civilians (which is why they are unlawful combatants, if you remember) can disperse and hide when hit too hard, making military defeat of insurgents extremely difficult. A conventional enemy that is hit hard and dispersed loses its effectiveness because being organized and large is what generates power. Irregular and terrorist enemies don't lose their inherent strength when they hide.

What is important is that other elements of government power then exploit the limited achievement of the security forces. Military force is a shield that allows the non-military efforts to succeed in strangling the enemy by ending public support for the enemy. To be sure, the non-military efforts can't succeed without the shield that kills the enemy and atomizes their force as much as possible. But killing is not the measure of success.

The key to winning has been the political decision by Maliki to actually pacify Baghdad, including Sadr. Once that political decision was made, with the support of political decisions made by the Bush administration, the enemy wilted when faced with our newly focused power. This has nothing to do with the numbers, though numbers will help.

This does not mean the fight is over and won. The enemy will regroup and try to cope with the new situation in Baghdad. They will strike back. It will take time to win this new phase of the war. And winning will require the non-military efforts to exploit the atomization and fear of the enemy inside Baghdad. Unfortunately, victoryphobia at home encourages the enemy and undercuts what we try to achieve in the field.

But remember that we keep knocking down the primary threats inside Iraq. We will knock down the threat this time, too.

The victoryphobic among us actually seem to feel more comfortable losing even to vicious enemies who oppose every ideal our Left holds dear, except for a shared hatred of our president. That shared hatred is enough for our Left to overlook the ideology of the jihadis that would send women back to the 14th century, end our freedoms that the jihadis view as immoral, and kill homosexuals.

The enemy of their enemy is our anti-war movement's friend. Or if not "friend," then close enough for government work.

Let's not be so eager to surrender to the enemy that we are battering down every day.

Behold and Be Afraid

We are expanding a base in Vicenza, Italy, to accomodate the full 173rd Airborne Brigade where previously only a paratroop battalion had been stationed.

Some Italians are protesting the decision by the Italian government to allow this expansion.

One of the dimmer stars in the protesting firmament made this statement:

"To build a military base is not the gesture of a peaceful government," said 24-year-old city resident Simone Pasin, draped in a rainbow peace flag. "I think it's time to dismantle military bases and put up structures of peace."

The quotes from the clearly addled Mr. Pasin are priceless in their juvenile ignorance.

The picture of absolute idiocy is completed by the comment that the dim-witted Pasin was wrapped in a rainbow peace flag. Only the possession by Mr. Pasin of a giant puppet could have improved the imagery.

The full drooling idiocy on display is perhaps slightly obscured by the failure of the article to draw from the rainbow peace flag-clad Pasin some details about just what a "structure of peace" would be. The mind boggles at what that might be. An actual, literal structure of brick and mortar? Or perhaps a figurative structure that would allow us to think that a rainbow peace flag is either a good fashion move or a clever political statement?

Mr. Pasin is a waste of perfectly good oxygen better utilized by mammals and certain of the cuter reptiles. I am continually amazed that such people exist. On the bright side, given the demographics of Italy, I'm reasonably sure he isn't breeding.

Punishing Good Deeds

As I noted in this post, any complaints that we don't have enough of a specific piece of equipment stems from our continual attempts to improve our equipment or replace it with better stuff. Our troops are superbly trained and well equipped by any real-world standard you can think of.

So members of the Loyal Opposition who are hyper-ventilating about armor shortages are horrifyingly ignorant at best or cynically lying at worst.

Note this detail of one Army commenter to this post:

The short version of the story is that they call this upgrade to the Armor, FRAG5 because it is the fifth such armor upgrade to this one vehicle in just the four years of the war. This number of upgrades does not include the turret upgrades and unit driven upgrades. The number of upgrades per truck sits now at a minimum of eight, with only five being manufactured for the body of the truck. A little quick math and that works out to two per year for just one vehicle type, which we happen to have over 70,000 of.

Got it? We continually improve. And the speed and scope of our improvements is astounding. But as we replace older models with newer ones, there is going to be a period of time before every troop has the new model. And that is a gap wide enough to allow the Loyal Opposition to assert that we are failing to support our troops. As if the Loyal Opposition wants to win!

The willingness of the Loyal Opposition to simply lie about the actual situation is simply stunning to me. Wait. No, that's not right.

The willingness of our press to allow our Loyal Opposition to get away with such gross distortions is stunning. No, I can see that. Again, not quite right.

Ah Hell. We go to war with the press and opposition we have and not the press and opposition we would like to have.

But I can note that if our opposition put as much effort into winning in Iraq as it does in winning Pennsylvania Avenue, we'd probably be arguing about another peace dividend by now.

Failure is Not an Option

Hugo Chavez is screwing up Venezuela faster than I thought even that certified fool could do so. Drezner quotes a New York Times article:

Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls.

Fortunately for Hugo, he established his Third World "authenticity" by verbally attacking America generally and President Bush in particular. Chavez has embraced Iran and buys Soviet arms. All of Hugo's failures will be forgiven abroad because of this simple precaution. Had Hugo been friendly to America, no failure would be too small to escape the withering attention of the Professional Concerned Class in the West.

So really, think of Venezuela as the Anti-Iraq. Our Left will explain away every failure of Venezuela, every crime Chavez commits against his people, and every act of aggression or violence, because Hugo hates the right people.

Victoryphobia

Congress declared war on Iraq in 2002.

And now, in 2007, the House of Representatives is attempting to declare war over:

The passage of this legislation will signal a change in direction in Iraq that will end the fighting and bring our troops home," she vowed after the vote, in which 17 Republicans joined 229 Democrats in a wartime rebuke to the president.

Sadly for us and our Iraqi friends, ending the fighting will not be accomplished by bringing our troops home too early. We can only declare our war over. The enemy will keep fighting.

If we bring our troops home soon, the Iraqi Shias will still defeat the Sunni Arabs. And maybe the Kurds won't split off from Iraq. I imagine there is a very good chance we will keep Iranian puppets from seizing control of Iraq. So we will not have an Iraq likely to be a threat to us.

But the Iraqi government won't be able to prevent the creation of a Sunnistan haven for al Qaeda in Anbar province. Nor will we be likely to get a democracy in Iraq any time soon.

We will have a minimal victory. One that realists understand. One that does nothing to eliminate the causes of 9/11. One that guarantees that the Long War will go on even longer by giving our enemies hope of forging that caliphate they drone on about.

Or, we could keep moving forward to build on the victories we've already achieved to create an allied Iraq, free and democratic, that will be an asset in the Long War against Islamo-fascism and an example to other people suffering under despots.

All the loyal opposition has to do to ensure victory is to reject that great fear of victory that might be credited to President Bush. But the victoryphobia evident in our opposition is likely too strong to allow that to happen.

Now all we can do is race to victory before the Left can forfeit victory. I'm counting on our Senate to stop this rush to declare defeat even as our troops fight and die for victory as Congress authorized in 2002.

Oh, what our House did today was not in my name. They should be ashamed for their efforts to abandon our troops and inflict defeat on our nation. Victoryphobia is an ugly thing to behold.

UPDATE: Enough Senators stood in the way of surrender to prevent Congress from declaring war over. This is good.

But this will get worse. It is quite possible that Congress will attempt to act as commander-in-chief by delving too deeply into the control of the war. But when your objective is the White House and your real enemy lies inside that structure, details like engineering our defeat and provoking a constitutional crisis are small matters.

Take Apart the Mahdi Army

With Sadr hiding with his Persian masters, Ralph Peters argues we must take advantage of Sadr's pants-wetting run for the border by undermining his credibility and taking apart his thugs:

We need to flush him out. By shaming him.

If he returns to Iraq, we should bust him. If he doesn't return, he'll bust his credibility. Either way, it looks like Muqtada's previously sound instincts failed him this time. He made the wrong call by sending himself into exile.

What should we do now? In addition to taunting Mookie in public, we need to hit his organization even harder - while he's hiding and his courage is in doubt. Nobody wants to die for a braggart who bails out when the flak starts.

I had worried that Sadr might be too popular to tackle directly even as I advocated doing something about him. Apparently he is not terribly popular.

A quiet surge to take down his organization without inspiring anybacklash among Shias is what is needed. If Sadr's actual strength is as shallow as recent days make it seem to be, we don't need to wait for more troops to do so.

Take down the fanatics, convert the reasonable, and nail Sadr. There really is a cycle of violence in Iraq as Sunnis who might be ready to essentially surrender after years of fighting inevitable defeat continue to kill out of fear of being killed by Shia thugs.

And if the daily killing sprees in Baghdad subside, we will have bought the time we need to finally defeat the many forces that fight democracy and peace in Iraq.

We haven't caused this cycle of violence but we could interrupt it. Starting with the Idiot Sadr.

Read the Fine Print

The article headline says "Report: North Korea ready to disarm".

The article doesn't provide enough information to make this leap of logic, saying only:

"The talks went well," Kyodo News agency quoted North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan as saying at Pyongyang's airport on his return from the Beijing session.

"We are ready to implement the results of the meeting," he said at the airport to both Russia's ambassador to Pyongyang and a senior Chinese Embassy official, according to Kyodo.

"Ready to implement the results of the meeting" only means "ready to disarm" if the North Koreans admit that this is what the agreement requires them to do.

Does the agreement do this? And do we and the North Koreans agree on this interpretation.

How to Enrage a Nutter

Hugo Chavez is seriously nutty.

He inhabits the Axis of El Vil and wants very badly to get a promotion to the Axis of Evil.

But unless he seriously does something to harm us, we can't afford to deal with him. We have more serious problems than some loony tinpot budding dictator who lacks the cojones to actually do anything to harm us.

Like I wrote some time ago, ignore him and he'll alienate his own people:

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.

Strategypage has long argued for the same thing and still does:

Two things keep Chavez in power, his promises of "pie in the sky" to the country's poverty-stricken masses and his ultra-nationalist anti-Americanism. Sooner or later the message that the U.S. is behind all of Venezuela's problems will begin wearing thin, particularly as Chavez spends more and more money of weapons procurement and buying influence abroad. This will certainly lead to internal problems, which will spark increased police state measures. These, in turn, will only create more discontent. The optimal American policy toward Chavez should be one of amused indifference, which will probably irk him more than any active measures to unseat him.

Even as Chavez impoverishes his own people, the Venezuelan oil company Citgo sells gas a bit cheaper, it seems, than other companies. And Hugo goes around selling cut-rate oil to poor Americans to reap political gains here.

Actually, we in America should probably help out. So how about we take a page out of the idiotic "we're sorry" movement and have Americans wearing tuxedos and fur coats filling up their big SUVs at the local Citgo and holding signs thanking the Venezuelan people for their generosity.

Somebody out there should set up a site to collect them!

And our government should pay for advertisements in Venezuelan publications and on TV and radio thanking the people of Venezuela for their generosity to America!

Shoot. Communicate. Move on Out.

Australia and America will set up a new communications station in Australia:

The base would serve as a ground station for communications with American military forces throughout the world, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told parliament.

Australia already hosts a major satellite communications base at Pine Gap outside Alice Springs, which is jointly manned with the United States.

"These facilities are fundamental in underpinning and giving practical effect to the US alliance, and the government is strongly committed to the alliance as the key guarantee to our nation's security," Downer said.

This will be useful for projecting power throughout the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Useful to America, Australia, and our allies.

Pardon Me, But Your Stupidity is Showing

What the ef is this?

The loyal opposition is trying to pretend that they are Deeply Concerned ("Deeply Concerned" is a registered trademark of the Loyal Opposition) about properly equipping our troops going to Iraq:

According to recent news reports, the Army lacks thousands of advanced armor kits for Humvees that could protect against roadside bombs, the cause of 70% of American casualties in Iraq. In addition, we understand that existing shortages of trucks and other crucial equipment such as jamming devices, radios and other gear will only be exacerbated by the troop surge. Lodging and logistical support is also reportedly in short supply for the newly deployed forces. We hope these reports are wrong, but we suspect they are not.

Mr. President, it is wrong to deploy troops to the Iraqi theater until they have the up-armored Humvees, equipment, lodging, training and other support required to carry out their mission. We hope you will work with us to make sure that they do. Our troops and their families deserve nothing less.

You'd almost think that the Loyal Opposition wants us to win so badly that they are prepared to spare no expense.

But you'd be wrong. The authors of this letter are, in a word, idiots.

Our troops are the best-trained and best-equipped force to ever roam a battlefield. Period. Full stop. Don't you dare add a "but."

Any "shortage" of equipment arises from the fact that we are continually building and deploying new equipment to replace earlier versions or to counter-act evolving threats. While these dim stars in our Congressional firmament may have difficulty understanding this, our economy can't just make 500,000 items in a day or two once invented. It takes time to produce these items and get them to the troops.

And if we can't deploy troops until Humvees can withstand IEDs, we will never deploy our troops. Ever. Christ almighty, when I was in the Guard, the Humvee I drove had vinyl doors. Vinyl!

Of course, we could avoid this problem by never ever designing new equipment for our troops. Just building the old stuff to replace losses is much easier and would never expose our military to the false charge that they are inadequately equipped.

Or we could refuse to issue new equipment until there is enough for everyone. That would fulfill their kindergarten notion of what is fair, I dare say.

Or we could do what makes friggin' sense and improve our weaponry and deploy it as fast as we can, while understanding that new equipment will trickle in at first before flooding in to equip all troops--and then be out of date since new equipment will start trickling in to replace that.

Are our Congressional leaders really ignorant enough to believe this argument or simply dishonest enough to make it? Either way, they are wrong to make this argument.

How can they be so determined to lose what our troops are winning?

UPDATE: If you want a reality-based description of the situation instead of the full-shrieking weenie mode the Loyal Opposition has given you, read here (tip to Stand-To!).

Perhaps It Depends on Who We are Signalling

John Bolton doesn't like the agreement with North Korea:

"It is rewarding bad behavior of the North Koreans by promising fuel oil," said former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who emerged as an outspoken critic of the nuclear accord.

"It's a bad signal to North Korea and it's a bad signal to Iran," Mr. Bolton said in an interview, noting that the message to would-be arms proliferators around the world is that "if you hold out long enough and wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded."

Also, giving up financial leverage on North Korea after further talks by agreeing to lift banking sanctions is a "huge" mistake, Mr. Bolton said. "That leverage is what brought them to the table. ... The Chinese were paying them to come to the talks. Now we're paying them."

I am sympathic to this view. I want to squeeze North Korea until they collapse. It isn't clear to me that this deal either undermines this goal or supports it. Many details are yet to be revealed or even negotiated. This deal might not lessen the squeeze enough to really matter. Even if North Korea continues to crumble at a slower rate than before, they might still be crumbling.

As for the signal, I have to disagree on two points.

One, saying this sends a bad signal to Iran assumes that Iran could be persuaded to halt their drive for nuclear weapons. I don't think that Iran under the current mullah regime can be persuaded by any diplomatic approach to voluntarily halt their nuclear weapons programs.

Second, arguing we are sending a bad signal to Iran assumes that Iran is the intended target of this message.

What if the Europeans are the intended target of this message?

So what if the North Korean deal is nothing that saves North Korea in the long run, but provides us with a great example that we really will cut a deal--even an imperfect one--and are not determined to go to war with a member of the Axis of Evil? What if this deal lets us paint Iran's refusal to deal --even as we've shown we will deal with another member of the Axis of Evil--as evidence the mullahs are determined to go nuclear and unwilling to negotiate with us?

What if the North Korean deal helps us rally support for forceful action against Iran?

Even if this is a bad deal when examined in isolation, we might be starting down this path in order to advance a more important goal--halting Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And with North Korea being so weak after years of squeezing them, maybe they will collapse despite this agreement.

Or we could be pulling a Carter/Albright fiasco. That, too, is possible. Remember, the Clinton administration assumed that North Korea would collapse before they could get nuclear weapons under what they knew was an imperfect agreement. Even though North Korea is far weaker today than in 1994, we could be assuming too much if we think an imperfect agreement won't matter because Pyongyang is collapsing anyway. I just don't know.

I guess I'll wait before I judge this a mistake or not. My gut feeling says it is a mistake, but I don't want to be afraid to take yes for an answer if this is indeed a yes. Nor do I assume that this should be judged in isolation from the broader Long War. The President has defended it. Is he right? We shall see.

Odd Man to Be Out

Japan won't supply North Korea with goodies while the fate of its citizens is unresolved:

Japan is faced with hard choices on North Korea with its hardline stance leaving it the odd man out after a compromise deal on the communist state's nuclear programme.

Japan has ruled out any funding for the agreement, reached Tuesday in six-nation talks that included Tokyo, until it resolves a row with North Korea over its past kidnappings of Japanese civilians.

What kind of strange world is it where Japan is the "odd man out" in any grouping that includes China, Russia, and North Korea?

How can Japan be called "hardline" because it is upset that the crime syndicate with a UN seat and nuclear power won't explain what happened to the Japanese citizens that North Korea kidnapped over the years?

Ah yes, those values of the vaunted international community on display again.

The Elite?

This article states something that continually annoys me:

A car loaded with explosives blew up near a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of them, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards? I don't think so.

I've been annoyed with the media's absolute ignorance over what troops are "elite" since they droned on about Iraq's "elite" Republican Guards in 1990 and 1991 during Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Elite troops are exceptionally well-trained troops with high morale. They often have weapons better than the rest of their military. They are effective fighters and can defeat troops many times their number who are merely trained or just rabble in uniform.

Our press continually refers to the loyal and pampered bully boys of other regimes as "elite." This is wrong.

The so-called elite Republican Guards of Saddam's Iraq in 1991 were merely adequate troops in comparison to the regular army infantry units of Iraq. In 2003, they were again adequate in comparison to the rabble infantry units of Saddam's Iraq. The so-called elite Special Republican Guards who some expected to turn Baghdad into a Stalingrad-on-the-Tigris ran when they faced our troops rather than the usual frightened civilians the SRG were used to confronting.

I've heard the palace guards of Third World Hell holes called "elite."

And this article calls the Revolutionary Guards "elite." They are not well trained. They are not well equipped. Their morale? I've read the regime doesn't trust even the Revolutionary Guards who were formed after the Khomeini revolution and evolved during the Iran-Iraq War into a parallel armed force to balance the untrusted regular military that the Shah had built. The regime looks to the Basij as regime enforcers now.

The Basij aren't elite either, by the way.

Stop confusing loyal and pampered bully boys for troops on par with our Army Rangers or our special operations troops. Indeed, our run-of-the-mill troops are so well trained and equipped that if they weren't part of today's excellent United States Army and Marines they'd be considered elite.

So there you go. Some men in uniform are called elite but don't deserve it. And others would be considered elite by past standards and suffer only from being compared to our special forces people--those we term elite by standards incomprehensible to our press.

An Alternative Explanation

The deal with North Korea is supposedly a bad deal that sets a bad example for Iran. This line of thought says we are showing Iran that going nuclear will be rewarded in the end.

But North Korea has always been the junior member of the Axis of Evil. The Long War is against Islamofascists and North Korea is the odd man in there, remember? North Korea fits in there as a possible supplier of nuclear technology to Islamofascists. There are few Kimunists outside of International ANSWER.

That is why I've long placed North Korea at the bottom of the pile in our threat universe. We have the Proliferation Security Initiative to intercept nuclear shipments with allies watching for this threat. And Seoul is in no more danger of destruction if Pyongyang gets nukes than they are from thousands of North Korean artillery and rocket tubes pointing at the city. Containing North Korea until they collapse has always been my preferred method of dealing with them.

And in the meantime, Iran is the biggest remaining threat. They are aggressive, hostile, and on the verge of going nuclear. Tehran is what we must worry about.

So, work with me here. What if we are committed to stopping Iran from going nuclear. Some accuse us of wanting war with Iran and fabricating reasons for war. This makes it a hard sell to take down the mullahs.

So what if the North Korean deal is nothing that saves North Korea in the long run, but provides us with a great example that we really will cut a deal--even an imperfect one--and are not determined to go to war with a member of the Axis of Evil? What if this deal lets us paint Iran's refusal to deal --even as we've shown we will deal with another member of the Axis of Evil--as evidence the mullahs are determined to go nuclear and unwilling to negotiate with us?

What if the North Korean deal helps us rally support for forceful action against Iran?

I just offer this speculation as an alternative to the argument that suddenly the Bush administration has gone all Albrighty on us over North Korea after years of holding solid against a pretend deal.

Oh, What a Bloody Giveaway!

When the going got tough in Iraq, Sadr ran for home:

Al-Sadr left his Baghdad stronghold some weeks ago, the official said, and is believed to be in Tehran, where he has family. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. monitoring activities, said fractures in al-Sadr's political and militia operations may be part of the reason for his departure. The move is not believed to be permanent, the official said.

Sadr went where he felt safe--Iran. Sadr is an Iranian hand puppet and it is hard to argue that Sadr represents some indigenous movement after this display.

Hopefully, we can continue to take apart the extremists of Sadr's organization, pressure the less fanatical to defect to the government, and push the Sunni Arabs to halt their resistance.

1994 Part Two?

We have a tentative deal with North Korea:

In a sign of potential problems to come, North Korea's state news agency said the country was receiving 1 million tons of oil for a "temporary suspension" of its nuclear facilities — and failed to mention the full disarmament for which the agreement calls.

It wasn't clear if the report represented an attempt by the government to backtrack on the deal, or was simply a statement of bluster for a deeply impoverished domestic audience that Pyongyang has rallied around the nuclear program as a cause for national pride.

And by tackling so many issues in a process likely to take years, the deal could unravel, pulled apart by differing agendas of its six signers, which also include China,
South Korea, Russia and Japan.

John Bolton isn't impressed with the deal:

This is in many respects simply a repetition of the agreed framework of 1994. You know, Secretary Powell in 2001 started off the administration by saying he was prepared to pick up where the Clinton administration left off. President Bush changed course and followed a different approach. This is the same thing that the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we going to cut this deal now, it's amazing we didn't cut it back then. So I'm hoping that this is not really what's going to happen.

I'm not sure I'm happy with it. I will say that even if it is just the 1994 deal or the 2001 approach, North Korea is much weaker now after years of our pressure.

And I've mentioned before that I'm not opposed to giving North Korea aid if it is insufficient to save them but enough to string them along on a path to collapse while they believe we are giving in. Remember, while we'd like North Korea to collapse we don't want them to lash out with their residual military power. Are we buying time for the North Koreans to crumble?

Remember, North Korea did not decide to hold out for two more years to get a more compliant regime--even after the results of the 2006 mid-terms here show how a change in party can affect our debate. How desperate might they be to end our sanctions and get aid? And are they getting enough aid to make a difference?

Did President Bush cement into place a process that provides some aid to North Korea but establishes requirements that are better than a successor American administration might require?

And perhaps Japan, China, South Korea, or Russia will pull the plug on the deal in the years ahead leaving North Korea worse off and we will escape blame.

I'm just speculating here. Many seem ready to charge the Bush administration (or at least the State Department) with surrendering to the North Koreans. I find it hard to believe President Bush would do that.

Am I giving him too much credit?

Just Like Vietnam

Sometimes I get frustrated that people will say something happening today in Iraq is just like Vietnam, while ignoring that they are simply describing a technique of counter-insurgency that is common to any counter-insurgency campaign. The fact that we did something in Vietnam and also do it in Iraq does not mean that Iraq is just like Vietnam.

That said, I've read in the past that we were setting up firebases near the Pakistan border region to help interdict Taliban and al Qaeda traffic crossing the border into Afghanistan. This is one result:

Pakistan admitted that, although they forbid it, they have tolerated American artillery in Afghanistan firing across the border at Taliban mortar and rocket teams, that were themselves firing across the border into Afghanistan. The Taliban also send teams across the border to attack American camps with AK-47s, RPGs and hand grenades. The survivors of these attacks then flee back across the border, and American artillery can often catch them on the trails.

In Vietnam, the enemy mistook isolated infantry companies dug in with an artillery battery as vulnerable targets. In fact, they were hard targets that could robustly defend themselves and call on nearby firebases and aircraft for support. The enemy lost many troops trying to take down these "vulnerable targets."

It looks like the Taliban are making the same mistake in Afghanistan. And with precision firepower and superior recon ability, we are likely hammering the enemy a lot harder as they flee.

Can the Internet Be Physically Attacked?

I'm feeling a little better about the ability of the Internet to absorb physical blows.

I went searching for information on the Internet's robustness. My lack of technical knowledge was a hindrance in searching since I needed plain English sources. But I think I found what I was looking for.

I was right that my memory of the situation is that the push for efficiency has led to co-locating previously dispersed computers for moving traffic. But there is still enough redundancy to survive physical attacks:

The good news is that it would be very difficult to cause major disruptions across the country, although destruction of some key parts could seriously degrade Internet quality. “When it comes to the Internet, there is strength in numbers,” said Morton O'Kelly, co-author of the study and professor of geography at Ohio State University.

“There are so many interconnections within the network that it would be difficult to find enough targets, and the right targets, to do serious damage to Internet reliability nationwide.”

I admit I'd feel better if it wasn't a computer simulation of a truncated network that led to the conclusion.

But if physically attacked, damage could be done to the Internet:

Many have speculated that a physical attack on one of the major Internet exchange locations, such as MAE-East (near Washington, D.C.) or the PAIX facility (near San Francisco), would cause serious disruptions. Internet exchange locations are facilities at which a number of ISPs install routers on a common network. This mode of interconnection is often more cost-effective than is arranging a separate physical connection to each network at which an ISP wishes to peer. Concern is simultaneously heightened as well: an attack on an exchange location would break multiple connections between ISPs. But as best as the committee can determine, such an attack would not pose a serious risk to the Internet as a whole. Most ISPs are connected to it at more than one point, both to increase their redundancy in the face of unintended events—such as fiber cuts and power failures—and because they generally seek to exchange traffic with other ISPs as close as possible to the traffic’s origin, thereby avoiding additions to the load on their own networks. Indeed, the largest ISPs are connected to one another at dozens of points throughout the United States. The committee finds no reason to believe that there is a point (or even a small number of points) in the Internet that, if removed, would partition the country’s system into a disconnected group of networks. Another concern is that an attacker could sever a critical fiber-optic link. However, as a matter of practice, large ISPs maintain networks with redundant paths to ensure connectivity in such circumstances. To be sure, the level of redundancy can turn out to be lower than the literal counting of links would suggest.

How much damage could be inflicted with an old fashioned physical attack?

It all depends. Damage can certainly be inflicted as this GAO study shows:

The Internet’s infrastructure is vulnerable to disruptions in service due to terrorist and other malicious attacks, natural disasters, accidents, technological problems, or a combination of the above. Disruptions to Internet service can be caused by cyber and physical incidents—both intentional and unintentional. Private network operators routinely deal with Internet disruptions of both types. Recent cyber and physical incidents have caused localized or regional disruptions, highlighting the importance of recovery planning. However, these incidents have also shown the Internet as a whole to be flexible and resilient. Even in severe circumstances, the Internet has not yet suffered a catastrophic failure.

The experts seem to think the Internet can't be sufficiently attacked physically to knock it down. Yet their confidence seems based on assuming that no attackers could attack enough of the Internet's physical infrastructure to knock it down. Am I missing something (and I certainly could be--I'm a history major with a computer and not a computer major who knows history), or is this logic a bit circular?

I'm not ready to take back my climb down on vulnerability. I think my brief research indicates the Internet is not as vulnerable as I thought. Still, the search for efficiency has created vulnerabilities that have only been counter-acted by the massive growth of the whole which has created redundancies from sheer size, it seems.

But I'm not convinced the Internet is as robust as it needs to be. And if I was an enemy of America, I still think I'd devote more attention to physically attacking the Internet in time of war rather than trying to hack the system down. This is especially true not so much for terrorist groups but for nations like China which could use conventional power. After all, those who defend the Internet spend almost all their time trying to stop hackers--not missiles.

Just when we are getting ready for the first blogged war, will such an attack that takes down the Internet in the opening minutes of a war end that progression of reporting?

UPDATE: Via Strategypage email updates, a cyber-attack on our infrastructure won't be limited to cyber-counterattacks:

If the United States found itself under a major cyberattack aimed at undermining the nation’s critical information infrastructure, the Department of Defense is prepared, based on the authority of the president, to launch a cyber counterattack or an actual bombing of an attack source.

The primary group responsible for analyzing the need for any cyber counterstrike is the National Cyber Response Coordination Group (NCRCG). The three key members of the NCRCG, who hail from the US-CERT computer-readiness team, the Department of Justice and the Defense Department, this week described how they would seek to coordinate a national response in the event of a major cyber-event from a known attacker.

As I noted, we mustn't get so caught up in cyber-warfare that we forget that old-fashioned warfare can blow things to bits without resorting to bytes.

Is This a Yes?

So are we about to see a success regarding North Korea?

The U.S. envoy to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, emerged in the early morning hours of Tuesday looking weary after a marathon 16-hour negotiating session and announced that a tentative deal had been struck at the latest round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear program.

The draft agreement contained commitments on disarmament and energy assistance along with "initial actions" to be taken by certain deadlines, Hill said. Working groups will be set up, hopefully in a month, laying out a framework for dealing with regional tensions, he added.

I have to believe that the North Korean nuclear test was a fizzle and that they are worried about collapsing. If not, they'd wait until January 2009 to talk to a more cooperative government the way they waited for January 2005 to avoid talking to the Bush administration.

The alternative to believing the North Koreans are in tough shape is to believe we've caved in to North Korea's critical demands.

So we must wait to see the details. I have hoped that we will squeeze the North Koreans until they collapse. I hope that whatever agreement we make doesn't actually save them from that collapse. Can we calibrate our aid enough to look better but not actually reverse their crumbling?

I worry an agreement could save the Pillsbury Nuke Boy.

But I also don't want to be afraid to take yes for an answer if we can get the North Koreans to dismantle their nuclear weapons programs and verify that step.

That this could leave the North Korean people to suffer and die under this psychopath sickens me.

But I'm still enough of a realist to accept that our main fight is against the Islamofascists. North Korea is a member of the Axis of Evil only because their nuclear technology could be passed to jihadis or jihadi-supporting states.

I hope that we can topple the North Korean regime soon. I'll accept neutralizing them until the main fight is won. But I don't have to like that bargain with the Devil.

But this compromise with morality has yet to be verified as real. The North Koreans are perfectly capable of backing away. And Japan has yet to get satisfaction for the kidnapping of their citizens by North Koreans.