Georgia On His Mind

Senator McCain notes Georgia's defensive needs that I urged us to supply two years ago:

Another area where Georgia needs U.S. support is in rebuilding its defenses. Georgia is doing more fighting in Afghanistan than much of the NATO alliance it wishes to join. Yet it has been a struggle to get the administration to provide Georgian troops heading into combat even basic equipment, armored vehicles and replacement parts. Beyond this short-term assistance, Georgia needs long-term support to provide for its own defense. This is likely to entail antitank capabilities, air defenses, early-warning radar and other defensive systems that should not be misconstrued as U.S. endorsement for any Georgian use of force against its separatist regions. Georgia will always be less powerful than Russia, but that is no reason to leave it vulnerable two years after a Russian invasion. [Emphasis added]

Russia lost the Russo-Georgia War of 2008, having gained nothing but what they already had--two break-away regions already under Russian control.

But like any war won on the battlefield, our side can suffer if it won't wage the post-war. Supply the weapons Georgia needs to destroy armored vehicles and shoot down aircraft (and train them to use them!). Do that and the distant Russians will think twice about initiating round two.

And supply Georgia with appropriate weapons so other countries in Russia's near abroad won't conclude that Russia won in 2008, and so move toward appeasing Russia at our expense.

Telecommuting on Full Auto

This is an interesting development that bridges the gap between humans and robots on the battlefield:

The U.S. Department of Defense is developing a device that enables the ground controller, who usually talks pilots down to the location of a ground target, to take control of sensors (cameras and ground radars) and weapons on UAVs, or even manned aircraft, and pull the trigger himself. Developing this gear (PCAS, or Precision Close Air Support) is actually not a major undertaking, because some of it already exists.

I guess my notion of doing this on ground vehicles wasn't as imaginative as I thought.

Calculations

President Karzai will get some of our people killed with this order:

Afghanistan's president is issuing an ultimatum to thousands of private security contractors he says are undermining his nation's army and police force: Cease operations in four months.

President Hamid Karzai's strident decision, announced Monday by his spokesman, is expected to meet resistance from NATO officials who rely heavily on private security companies to guard convoys and installations across the country. ...

According to the Pentagon, there are about 26,000 private security contractors working in Afghanistan for 37 different companies — 17 of them Afghan-owned. The State Department and USAID rely the most heavily on the companies to provide their employees security.

Karzai knows we need those contractors--yet he also knows that the order won't lead to the Taliban beheading him after marching on Kabul. The order could only hurt our war effort and not undermine it fatally.

So what's the deal? Is Karzai that upset over our decision to field local defense forces over his objections?

So there will be a struggle over this issue. We'll win, ultimately, though I don't know what price we'll pay. Through it all, remember that as much as we may have trouble with Karzai, we can't own the war by replacing him with "our" man. It has to remain a matter of America and our allies supporting the Afghans at war, with leaders they choose (however imperfectly) and support.

In time, we should expand the local defense forces even more despite Karzai's unease. We fight subtraction with addition

The math sucks, but that's the way it is.

On the Other Side

Assange is on the other side of the Long War.

If you doubt it, note that he is no pacifist opposed to war and killing. He has just decided that he'd prefer our troops and our allies die rather than other people:

Any U.S. and allied casualties that result from the publication of classified Afghan war documents would be an acceptable risk, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested Monday, saying "such information is also likely to save a great many lives."

This is no dissent. Assange not being an American is only the starting point of that assessment.

Assange is on the other side waging war on us. How do we respond?

Yes, We Will Have Fries With That

General Petraeus thinks we can do fine at war in Afghanistan. He will not make dramatic changes from the fundamentally sound  campaign plan that McChrystal put in place while under Petraeus' CENTCOM. But one policy change will be welcome news for the troops:

One policy he has opted not to continue, however, is his predecessor's asceticism. He suggested that the fast-food restaurants McChrystal ordered closed on bases probably will reopen soon.

"With respect to Burger Kings, all options are on the table," he said.

Good. I opposed that policy when it was first made. Fast food is not a luxury--it is a tool to fight PTSD. The special forces commander did not seem to appreciate that not all his troops were A-Team killers (and I say that with all the respect and thanks in the world).

Most of the troops really would like fries with their meal. And sleep better for it.

Marines Fight Battles?

Apparently, the Marine Corps isn't happy about being the Army's largest allied ground force in the Long War:

The U.S. Marine Corps is again threatened, this time with a sharp reduction in its size. In response, marine commanders say they would prefer to be a smaller force, one that concentrates on its main mission; amphibious operations. The marines were unhappy with the way they have been used as an army auxiliary over the past decade.

Interesting. The old saying is that the Army does war and the Marines do battles. You could see this early in the Iraq War when the Marines were just about pulled out of Iraq before being recommitted to fighting a growing insurgencies problem.

At the height of their commitment, the Marines deployed two regimental combat teams to Iraq while maintaining a regimental combat team in the Western Pacific and keeping a couple Marine battalion-sized units afloat in Marine Expeditionary Units. The Marines did this with eight regiments and 3 reserve regiments.

If the Marines want to avoid war to focus on amphibious battle by shrinking, won't they have to get down to fewer than four regiments so that they can't rotate even a single regiment in a long-term war?

I hate to lose the largest ally the Army has had at war, but if the Army gets the funding to add four brigade-sized units to its force structure, I say we should wish the Marine Corps good luck and a happy life.

The Oracle of the Potomac

The DOD's annual assessment of Chinese military power is finally out.

The portions on Taiwan--like the portions on the rest of the document--are very vague. I can only assume that the portion that are done under security classifications are much more useful, else there is no excuse for the report being so late.

It is particularly annoying that there is a lack of internal consistency. On page 6, the report judges that despite Taiwanese defense purchases, the "balance of forces continues, however, to shift in the mainland's favor."

Yet on page 49, the report implies the opposite, stating that Taiwanese defense efforts "have, on the whole, reinforced Taiwan's natural defensive advantages in the face of Beijing's continuous military build-up."

So what is it? Or is there no contradiction, with the DOD simply stating that Taiwan is taking efforts to strengthen defensive efforts that complement the defensive advantages of their geography, yet is still losing ground to China? If so, they should have written this more clearly.

I will say that I am encouraged that the report says Taiwan has "taken important steps to build" their war reserve stocks. But I won't be happy until the report says that Taiwan has actually "built" war reserve stocks. If it takes longer for us to reach Taiwan, Taiwan needs to rely on local ammunition and parts stockpiles for longer than they once assumed they needed until we could airlift supplies.

China has a long way to go to challenge us as a global power, but I didn't need a DOD report to tell me that. I'd rather see judgments on how Taiwan could respond to various Chinese military actions, including invasion. And I'd like to see judgments about what Taiwan needs to defend their island. I'd like to see this report applied to all of China's neighbors, actually. A blogger can dream, can't he?

Maybe it's just me, but I find the report increasingly useless. As I said, I hope the classified version is much better.

UPDATE: Well, the first news report about the report I read did not notice anything particularly newsworthy in the report. Although I can forget that such a report is useful for the vast majority of people who don't pay attention to the issue on a near-daily basis.

Although it did note the report was delayed 5 months amidst tensions with China. Given the nture of the information provided and considering that there is nothing in the report that the Chinese certainly shouldn't already know, why we'd bow to China by delaying it, as the story implies, is beyond me. That's a bigger story itself than anything in the report.

UPDATE: A Pentagon press conference on the report. Nothing really new about China in the report, so I didn't miss anything. And the DF-21 carrier killer has a way to go before the missile is operational. Spotting, tracking, aiming at, and hitting a maneuvering carrier through any defensive weapons is no small feat.

And Taiwan replies with a request for F-16s and submarines. Taiwan needs both. I hope we supply them. Were I the Taiwanese, I'd be lobbying the Russians hard for planes and subs, too, in case we think we can appease the Chinese by saying no.

No Sanctuary and No State Support

Steven Metz questions our strategy in Afghanistan, asserting that terrorists do not require a physical sanctuary to plot against us and that terrorists do not need a state sponsor to plot against us. The September 11th attacks could have been achieved without sanctuary or Taliban regime support, he claims, so why bleed to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan?

After all, he argues, it is false that lack of our troops fighting on a large scale will just let the Taliban march on Kabul and take over the Afghanistan state.

I do agree with Metz that lack of our direct troop support doesn't mean the Taliban will march on Kabul. But if we can't defeat the Taliban and leave Afghan security forces at national, regional, and local level able to fend off the Taliban, it does mean that the Taliban will get a sanctuary in southern Afghanistan even if they never take Kabul and become the nominal national government.

And while a sanctuary is not required to attack us, it sure does help a lot. So there is value in denying al Qaeda a sanctuary to complicate their efforts to plot new 9/11-scale attacks. Just slowing them down buys us time to discover the plot and stop it before they strike.

As to state sponsorship, while a Taliban regional victory would deny al Qaeda a formal UN-recognized state sponsor based in Kabul, al Qaeda would have a pseudo-state sponsor in the region. Plus, with a regional sub-stae base, they could get a sub-state sponsor from Pakistan, as elements within the Pakistan government use their UN-recognized state privileges and resources to support the regional Taliban government in southern Afghanistan.

Metz seems to forget one of the reasons we don't want al Qaeda to have state sponsorship is that we fear an escalation from 9/11-scale attacks to those that use chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons to attack us. Remember, that is one of the reasons we destroyed the Saddam regime--we couldn't afford to risk that such a terror-sponsoring enemy of ours might help terrorists attack us with weapons that a state has access to making.

Further, Metz ignores that giving the Taliban a sanctuary in Afghanistan could allow Pakistani Taliban to draw support from Afghanistan to threaten Pakistan's central government--already a nuclear power. This is a single campaign being fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we'd have little comfort from suffering a nuclear attack from Pakistan-based al Qaeda if we can say at least the plot did not originate in Afghanistan. Giving up defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan just shifts the major theater to Pakistan. And given how tough it has been to get Pakistan to fight this war with our troops doing a lot of fighting, too, how hard will Pakistan fight if we essentially pull out of the fight?

Finally, I firmly disagree with his assumptions that the Taliban would not be so foolish as to allow an al Qaeda sanctuary and that if they did that we could easily crush an al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan if we detect it forming after we leave. On the former, the Taliban would see us retreat from Afghanistan and count it a glorious Allah-provided victory. How would that convince the Taliban that we'd return to defeat them?

On the latter statement, how well did our no-fly zone attacks work in Iraq in the 1990s? How has Israel done with Gaza and Hezbollah in sotuhern Lebanon? The fact is, Moslem world opinion will not tolerate attacks on Moslems for long even if they are terrorist targets. Al Qaeda and the Taliban will make sure that plenty of children, puppies, and women die in our attacks, and that baby milk and medicine factory signs appear in the rubble of what we destroy.

If you accept Metz's first two assumptions without examining them, his condemnation of our military campaign make sense. I can understand why one would question our strategy if you believe the first two assumptions, since his third assumption that the Taliban couldn't easily reconquer Afghanistan if we were not there fighting is accurate, I think. But examining the two assumptions about the value of sanctuaries and state support, what al Qaeda could get from them, and then looking at the fights in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a single Taliban Campaign make that final accurate assessment rather pointless from the point of view of deciding on our strategy.

We can argue about what we need to achieve our goals, but I have no doubt that we need to deny al Qaeda a sanctuary and state support in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. And right now, beating down the Taliban in Afghanistan with our forces while supporting Pakistan's efforts on their side is needed to allow a decentralized Afghan government and local allies to hold the ground we clear.

Metz is right to question our assumptions nearly 9 years into the fight in Afghanistan. We should never fear to do that. But this effort falls short of providing a reason to follow his advice.

A New Worst Case Scenario

For several years now, it seems as if the South Koreans considered a North Korean collapse that led to South Korea absorbing North Korea to be worse than a North Korean invasion because in case of the latter, South Korea (with our help) would win; while the former would cost South Korea a generation of treasure to just start to bring North Korean standards of living up to southern standards.

But now, South Korea seems to have realized there is something worse than South Korea absorbing North Korea--China absorbing North Korea--via investments that lead to invervention--and taking the place of the North Koreans on the DMZ:

But what South Korea really fears is a North Korean agreement that would allow massive Chinese investment in North Korea. The Chinese investments would be safe, because the Chinese would not hesitate to send in troops to deal with any North Korean misbehavior. Large scale Chinese investment in the north would enable China to eventually take control of North Korea, and annex it. Many starving North Koreans would prefer to be prosperous Chinese, while North Koreans who opposed such an arrangement would be killed. China is still a communist police state, and knows how to act like one. This Chinese takeover would solve China's problem with the growing economic decline and political instability in the north. The South Koreans are horrified at the thought, although China has taken control of the north before (in the distant past). China would apparently prefer not to have control of North Korea, but the growing problems there will not go away.

Yeah, right now China would prefer not to occupy North Korea because of the cost. But like South Korea's realization, China will understand that having South Korea on the borde of Manchuria is worse than absorbing North Korea.

If China and South Korea no longer consider occupying North Korea the worst case scenario, how do we prevent a collapse from leading to war?

I say, partition the damn place.

Why Do They Hate Japan?

Jihadis targetted Japan. Remember that recent mysterious accident in the Strait of Hormuz?

Fortunately they weren't good at terrorism

The attack on the tanker was amateurish, as the explosives were not prepared properly. The fertilizer based explosives are difficult to make correctly (the fertilizer and fuel oil must be mixed in the right proportions, and mixed properly). When the explosives are mixed badly, there is a much smaller explosion, and a very slow going one as well. ... All the "low (speed) explosives" could do was dent the hull, while turning the suicide bomber into fish food and his boat into kindling.

Those darned NeoCon Japanese invading Iraq, and all that. What do they expect?

Why Do They Hate Us?

Yet still, we help them:

The Department of Defense announced today the deployment of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (KSG ARG) and 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (26th MEU).

The combined Navy and Marine Corps team will leave later this month to bring significant heavy- and medium-lift aircraft and other assets to support flood relief efforts in Pakistan. The Kearsarge ARG/26th MEU’s capabilities will allow sailors and Marines to provide food, water, transportation, and other support, in partnership with the Pakistani military, to those in need.

The group is expected to arrive in the Arabian Sea in late September.

We don't require them to like us in order to help them. That's who we are.

Explain to me again why Pakistanis and other Moslems think so poorly of us.

The World of BoreCraft

Open Europe emails about an online role-playing game paid for by the European Union which allows you to step into the fascinating world of the EU bureaucracy.

My character, Claude, is already a Level 8 Rulemaker; Level 9 Insufferable; Level 12 Entitlement; and Level 20 Pay--with a personal staff of 28, already!

I make Bribery saving throws of 7, so I have a way to go on that. But my Red Tape Level is 15, so nothing happens in my subcommittee without my say so!

The wonders of Citzalia await you!

• Regulate the cheeses!
• Raise the VAT!
• Condemn Israel!
• Debate the European-wide common yogurt policy!
• Assign the 3rd Junior Drafting Assistant to the Senior Administrative Assistant to take a memo to the Subcommittee Chair on Workplace Safety to approve your bill on Stapler Safety Standards for consideration by the full Committee on Labor and Soft Cheeses! 
• Take all of August off for vacation!

They really do live in their own little world, don't they?

UPDATE: Heh. Mad Minerva fell asleep while reading the Citzalia site.

Aim High

I wrote that India is focusing on China rather than Pakistan as their main military problem; and that India's most pressing problem regarding the balance of power with China is their air force.

Strategypage notes that the Indian air force is gearing up for the Chinese threat:

India is replacing its MiG-27s with Su-30s at TACDE (Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment). TACDE develops new air combat tactics and trains pilots to deal with potential enemies. TACDE was established in 1971, to train the top one percent of fighter pilots, who would then spread what they learned from each other, to all the other pilots. Two years earlier, the U.S. Navy had established the original "Top Gun" training program. ...

TACDE was initially created to cope with Pakistani air power, which was why MiG-21s and 27s have long been used to represent foreign aircraft. But now the most troublesome foe in the air is seen as China, where the top aircraft are, as in India, Su-30s.

In some sense, this must be very discouraging for India. For decades since independence, Pakistan was the main threat. After decades of progress, India clearly outclasses Pakistan. But now, India finds that while they were looking west, the Chinese to the north became a threat. India now is looking up, again, with the task of matching and surpassing a new primary foe. It will be decades before India can say they've matched the new threat--if they can at all, given that China has a stronger economy and is moving forward with their military.

But that's why national security has a diplomatic component. China has many potential enemies all around it that can be wined and dined to help India contain and disperse Chinese power.

What Allah Knows

As our chattering class begins to work up a proper panic about the war in Afghanistan, it would be wise to keep in mind the words of Kipling I ran across some years ago:

Man cannot tell, but Allah knows
How much the other side was hurt.

That is, while we focus on our own problems--real or perceived--it is too easy to ignore the problems of the enemy we don't see and conclude only we have problems. Our press and many commentators made this mistake repeatedly during the Iraq campaign.

Strategypage addressed the Afghanistan campaign, noting the contents of a letter from Mullah Omar to his lads in Afghanistan, which indicates a number of problems his side is having. It isn't all happy IED planting and beheadings for our enemies these days.

Too many people here think our troops are just acting as targets in Afghanistan. They are, in fact, hurting the enemy. We are not losing. I think we are winning. And if we don't run away, we'll win this yet.

Data Dump

I found this stranded as a draft post dated from March 2008. It looks complete (and I fixed the link that died over the last couple years). As I've mentioned, sometimes posts get lost when I schedule a posting but don't notice that the post never went live. And this was before the whole Climategate affair brought the overall data into question. For what it's worth:

A vast array of Argo buoys sampling the seas was supposed to show global warming.

But the data are not showing any warming in the oceans, which are supposed to generate the increase in air temperatures:

When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before. No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors.

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys' findings? Because in five years, the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters' hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, "there has been a very slight cooling," according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

Dr. Willis insisted the temperature drop was "not anything really significant." And I trust he's right. But can anyone imagine NASA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the UN's climate experts -- shrugging off even a "very slight" warming.

So clearly, the data must be bad. The global warming "consensus" is far more resilient to inconvenient data, so it won't panic at the prospect of conflicting reality.

I will repeat my views on the subject. I don't accept that the recent increases in recorded temperature (which are actually flat the last 7 years) since the mid-1970s is anything more than the natural fluctuations of climate that should really be viewed in context over centuries of time; I don't accept that even a verifiable rise in temperatures over significant time frames is caused by man given the size and complexity of our planet that makes me skeptical that climate scientists can pin the problem on man's production of carbon dioxide; and even if the temperature rise is both real and man made, I don't accept that the suspiciously socialist solutions proposed by the global warmers are wise or affordable.

I question the conclusions drawn from the existing data. But at least my position, whether right or wrong, does no require me to ignore the data.

Carbonstraum

Interesting. The Germans figured green posers would be more effective than gray panzers in advancing their national interests at our expense.

The Mouth That Roared?

Could Hugo Chavez pick a fight with the Netherlands?

Thus far the bully's threats have been gunboat hype and showboat hoopla. The question is, will bluster give way to bombs? An expansionary ideology propels Chavez, one that inflates his already explosive ego. He bills himself as the new Simon Bolivar, who will reunite the South American continent while cowing the United States and other imperialists -- like the Dutch.

Which is where Curacao enters Hugo's gunsights. Though the Dutch West Indies no longer formerly exists as a political entity, Holland retains responsibility for Curacao's defense and other foreign policy-related matters.

Hugo is screwing up his own country. But a war would be a good way to deflect the blame to someone else. But only the Dutch seem like a good target--European, present near Venezuela, but far away and too weak to hold their positions against a serious Venezualan attack.

I've addressed this issue before. This could become another out-of-area NATO issue if Hugo acts as stupid as he seems.

The Dutch should beef up their forces to make sure they can hold an enclave even if they can't hold all the islands, until help can arrive from home and from America to eject Hugo's invaders.

The People Have Spoken, Damn Them

Whenever I am mildly tempted to enable comments, I always fire up the Yahoo! news site. That always cures me.

I rely on the Yahoo! site for the bulk of the krill flow of news that I feed on. But reading the comments reminds me that there are a lot of really stupid, hateful, and paranoid people out there. And I have no desire to provide one more bit of real estate for them to spout on.

Relying on email for feedback has resulted in much higher quality comments.

Anyway, if you've wondered why I don't have comments, that's one big part of my reasoning.

The second is that I don't want the time suck of patrolling the comments to respond to comments, delete for idiocy or hate, or watch for spam.

And third, I don't want to be trapped by commenters. Sure, I see lots of idiot commenters on other sites, but that isn't the real danger of comments. The real danger is from people who like what you write. I think it is too easy to be seduced by positive commenters into tailoring posts to appeal to commenters. I try to offer accurate thoughts on events based on what I think, and I think that could be endangered with comments.

So there you go. If you're curious.

Between Jihad and Democracy

Winning the war in Iraq was a success in its own right, having turned an enemy Iraq into an allied Iraq. But we can leverage this narrow win into a broader win if we can help Iraqis create a real democracy that shows Arabs and other Moslems (like in Iran) that there is an alternative to the current choices of secular autocracy and jihadi rule. Liberals shouldn't reject this goal just because George W. Bush pursued this objective earlier in his time in office. The win in Iraq shows that Islamo-fascism can be discredited and defeated.

Iraq's terrorists are running out of money to fight the government:

The Sunni Arab groups don't really want to take on the security forces, as the terrorists have been running out of money and just want the police to leave terrorist groups alone. The Sunni Arab terror organizations are spending more of their time committing crimes like robbery, extortion and kidnapping, in order to raise badly needed money. These terrorist groups have payrolls and other expenses, and without sufficient income, they will disappear. The Saddam era cash is gone, as are donations from foreign Sunni Arabs who approve of the effort to put the Sunni Arabs back in charge in Iraq.

Spending more time fund raising means less time for killing. This is good. And the need to get money corrupts the terrorists, too, putting them on the road to becoming criminals with an outward shell of (sick) idealism for their cause.

Funny how the foreign Sunnis aren't motivated to donate money to the losing cause of Iraqi terrorists.

The recruits from the Sunni world already dwindled to a trickle as the thought of dying in a losing cause made more think twice about going to Iraq.

Beat up the jihadis enough in Afghanistan and they'll stop volunteering for that jihad, too.

More broadly speaking, we need to dry up the recruiting pool in the Arab world (and we'll need to address the recruiting in Central Asia and Pakistan) by promoting rule of law:

Elections, though vital in the end, are not an early panacea. What the Arabs need most, in a hurry, is the rule of law, independent courts, freeish media, women’s and workers’ rights, a market that is not confined to the ruler’s friends, and a professional civil service and education system that are not in hock to the government, whether under a king or a republic. In other words, they need to nurture civil society and robust institutions. The first task of a new Saudi king should be to enact a proper criminal code.

In the Arab lexicon, the concept of justice means more than democracy. In the end, you cannot have the first without the second. But the systems that now prevail in the Arab world provide for neither.

The article describes how the aging leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia may mean they will soon be faced with the choice of moving towards rule of law or succumbing to jihadist rule.
 
It could go either way. But the need to move toward democracy and rule of law has become apparent to more in the Arab world. The Arab spring of 2005 that saw significant movement toward democracy in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and elsewhere reversed course in 2006 after the Samarra mosque bombing almost caused a civil war in Iraq.
 
While it is conventional wisdom that George W. Bush was spectacularly wrong in wanting to inspire democracy in the Arab world, the fact is that the overthrow of Saddam did spark awareness of the need for democracy in the Arab world as well as inspire real movement toward democracy.
 
But given the history of Arab autocracy, nobody should expect steady progress toward democracy and rule of law. But if we do see the Arab world finally achieve democracy and rule of law, we can give a good part of the credit to George the Liberator. He, at least, compared to the so-called "compassionate" left, never assumed that democracy and freedom are beyond the capabilities or needs of Arabs.

Failure to Launch

We are working on UAVs able to strike a ballistic missile during its launch phase. These would loiter near an enemy launch point (from my Jane's email updates):

The US government is exploring the possibility of using a new armed aerial reconnaissance drone, known as the Predator C Avenger, to conduct surveillance of ballistic missile launch sites. Manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) says the US government has shown interest in using the high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE) unmanned aircraft to locate and target missiles for a boost phase intercept[.]

Add this in to the rest of the layers behind it, and we may yet be able to use this shield to protect ourselves while we strike Iran.

It isn't ideal, to say the least, to restrain ourselves from using force until Iran openly goes nuclear. But if we do refuse to act until Iran is openly a nuclear weapons power, we still do have options to end that threat.

Very Special Tourists

China's special forces have one main job that drives them:

Chinese SOF units mainly train and plan for operations against Taiwan. This would include attacks on key targets, as well as kidnapping or killing senior military and political leaders. Some of this would involve Chinese SOF operators who snuck on to the island as tourists or commercial travelers beforehand.

Indeed. That is a problem for Taiwan.

Don't Forget the Magic Word!

The Oxford Research Group concludes that "military action against Iran should be ruled out as a means of responding to its possible nuclear weapons ambitions." Their reasons are ridiculous.

One, the fact that they don't believe there is any real evidence to support the idea that Iran wants nuclear weapons kind of calls into question their analysis.

Two, the fact that they tout their predictive abilities when they advised against overthrowing the Saddam regime by saying they predicted the insurgency and that it would spur recruiting of jihadis doesn't impress me. One, the pro-Saddam insurgency was pretty narrowly based and we did actually beat it. Two, jihadi recruiting took quite the hit once we beat the insurgencies and terrorist groups supported by Syria and Iran and bankrolled by massive amounts of oil-for-food money and pre-war stocks of weapons. And three, today Iraq has hopes of building a lasting democracy if we don't abandon them. ORG's claimed predictive prowess is akin to predicting that an operation to save one's life will result in a lot of bleeding and concluding that you should never have that operation. The prediction is right as far as it goes. The conclusion is, however, wrong.

Once in to the report, it actually gets amusing. After saying that there is no evidence Iran wants nuclear weapons, the report claims nuclear weapons are a defensive weapon for Iran's leaders. Just gliding over that little sleight of hand, how would nuclear weapons help defend Iran? Will it stop conventional attacks on Iran the way Israel's nuclear arsenal has stopped attacks on them? Or the way our nuclear arsenal has stopped enemies from fighting us? Will Iranian nukes deter a nuclear attack by Israel or America on Iran? What has stopped either of us up to now if nuclear deterrence is needed? No, it is far more likely that Iran wants nukes to nuke Israel. At best, Iran thinks nukes will be a shield for even more aggressive terrorism, breaking the sanctions, and perhaps covering conventional attacks.

Which brings us to the objection that a strike even by America will not end Iran's nuclear program and just encourage the Iranians to both strike back in the region and accelerate nuclear weapon work. The prospect of repeated strikes over years and decades seems too dangerous for ORG to think about.

One, our 4-day Desert Fox operation in 1998 seems to have ended progress in Iraq's nuclear program (although the infrastructure and people remained in place, our sanctions kept them from restarting it).

And two, if you don't think one strike by Israel (or one campaign, if by America) will halt their nuclear weapons ambitions, why not think of the strikes as buying time to overthrow the regime for good? Bombing the heck out of them is war-like enough, no? Why would attempts at regime change make it more war-like. We'd be at war. We'd expect retaliation. Why wouldn't we pursue regime change if for no other reason than to have leverage to convince Iran not to retaliate in exchange for not going for regime change? At worst, we've bought time. And I'd rather have time to stop the mullahs from getting nukes than let Iran get nukes.

Also, perhaps you'd like to contemplate who else in the region will get nukes to counter Iran, and what the balance of terror will look like under those circumstances? Are you really ready to rule out the use of force to stop Iran from going nuclear?

But what is really funny is ORG's alternative to strikes to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. They have two brilliant options:

One, ask the Iranians not to develop nuclear weapons (diplomacy); or

Two, ask the Israelis to get rid of their nukes and so get Iran to stop pursuit of nuclear weapons (regional diplomacy).

Yeah. Good luck with those alternatives. Still, perhaps if we say "please" the mullahs' hearts will melt. And just maybe Israelis will learn to be as gullibly trusting of the Iranians as the ORG.

The ORG thinks that the possible reactions to a US and/or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities are too horrible to contemplate (Like Iraq's response to Israel in 1981 or to America in 1998; or like Syria's reaction to the 2007 raid by Israel?). They'd rather have the pretend peace and quiet of hoping that Iran doesn't do anything bad with nukes (and if they do use them, it is probably just a week's worth of horrible news of Tel Aviv's destruction and not anything Europeans need to worry about, they may reason, after which the Europeans can get back to normal).

I happen to think that Iran with nukes under the mullahs is a nightmare waiting to happen. And that nightmare doesn't even have to involve Iran using their nukes.

Support Your Local Sheriff

I've long flogged the need to get local defense forces into the fight in Afghanistan (as I advocated in Iraq). When we talk about troop densities needed to win, these part-time forces have a vital role to play as long as they aren't stressed by trying to make them do more than they can. Forces from special forces to security guards have their roles. I've also emphasized the need for local forces in light of the fragmentation and poverty of Afghanistan that precludes the use of a national security force from the central government to provide security.

This RAND report discusses the local option. The main points I'd like to highlight:

Afghan and NATO officials have increasingly focused on protecting the local population as the linchpin of defeating the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Certain steps are important to achieving this objective, such as building competent Afghan national security forces, reintegrating insurgents, countering corruption, and improving governance. This document focuses on a complementary step: leveraging local communities, especially the use of traditional policing institutions, such as arbakai, chagha, and chalweshtai, to establish security and help mobilize rural Afghans against the Taliban and other insurgents. Effectively leveraging local communities should significantly improve counterinsurgency prospects. Gaining the support of the population—especially mobilizing locals to fight insurgents, providing information on their locations and movements, and denying insurgent sanctuary in their areas—is the sine qua non of victory in counterinsurgency warfare. By tapping into tribes and other communities where grassroots resistance already exists, local defense forces can help mobilize communities simultaneously across multiple areas. The goal should be to help cause a “cascade” or “tip,” in which momentum against the Taliban becomes unstoppable. In 2010, a growing number of communities in Kandahar, Helmand, Paktia, Herat, Paktika, Day Kundi, and other provinces mobilized and fought against insurgents. These cases present significant opportunities for counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

And:

[Local] security forces are vital but should be small, defensive, under the immediate control of jirgas and shuras, and supported by national security forces.

Remember, these local defense forces have limited static defense capabilities. They can't be asked to act like mobile troops or police. Nor can they be asked to hold against numerically superior enemy forces. So we must supervise them and support them with greater force if the enemy tries to intimidate all of these forces by wiping out a local defense force unit.

And ultimately, these forces must be the basis of security across the country, supplemented by a much smaller national force that the Afghan central government can afford to pay.

And have no doubt, the locals will need to defend themselves from the Taliban, who have abandoned their brief formal flirtation with kinder and gentler methods.

Assume a Strategy

I know I mocked the idea that Taiwan should go low tech and adopt the Hezbollah strategy of inflicting casualties on China to hold off China.

But I should be fair. Let me look at how Taiwan could adopt the Hezbollah strategy of using rockets and missiles--updated for precision and aided by UAVs--to strike the Chinese, and light infantry holding out against Chinese attacks to inflict so many casualties on China that China won't attack Taiwan.

The actual Hezbollah strategy in 2006 inflicted about 160 deaths on Israel--military and civilian.

China believes that a successful invasion of Taiwan would result in 21,000 Chinese dead. As of 2004, that was an unacceptable price for China's rulers. And that is a price Taiwan would inflict on China with their current strategy.

So, if the idea is to deter China with casualties, which strategy--Hezbollah's or Taiwan's--inflicts more casualties on the Chinese?

On it's own terms, I judge the Hezbollah strategy for Taiwan to be an epic fail of strategerizing.

Here is an interesting article detailing Taiwan's efforts to avoid going to a low-tech strategy by default.

A Lot of Little Booms

Our 285 lb. small diameter bomb (SDB), a GPS bomb that glides over a 100 kilometers to the target, was billed as a smaller boom for city fighting, to kill the target and avoid collateral damage. But troops thought it took too long to arrive from launch point. And besides, we have GPS shells and Hellfire missiles that provide an even smaller precise explosion. But we have a bunch of SDBs in stock with a feature much more useful than a small explosive content:

But the SDB also has a hard steel, ground penetrating, front end, that can penetrate nearly two meters (six feet) of concrete. Not much use for that in urban warfare. But such a capability is very useful for taking out underground installations, particularly the entrances and air intakes.

I really haven't paid much attention to the weapon since I don't hear of it being used, but apparently the penetrating characteristic is what makes it important (as well as the small size which means planes can carry many more of these bombs), and it may never have been intended for city combat. So who's it for? Why, worried Iranians and North Koreans.

For the Iranians, they have nuclear inftrastrucure that could be hit with swarms of these delivered initially by stealthy B-2s and F-22s (and later F-35s) and by non-stealthy aircraft in subsequent waves. North Korea has the nuclear stuff as well as lots of buried air field hangars (which may house ballistic missiles, too) and artillery bunkers that loom over Seoul.

We may hope to protect Seoul by using SDBs to knock out all those artillery pieces in the opening hours of a war. Of course, we've been promised this result before in the relatively brief history of air power. I still assume we'd (well, more specifically, the South Koreans) need to carve out a no-launch zone to protect Seoul. but who knows? Maybe this time, for sure.

But this post also answered my long puzzling question of why we needed to build bombs capable of penetrating all the way down to a bunker no matter how deep it is in order to destroy it? Why, I wondered, can't we blow in the entrance and effectively destroy it by denying entry or exit? Apparently, the SDB can do just that.

NOTE: I added the link to the Strategypage quote, which I forgot.

Friends in Low Places

The Taliban are no "resurgent" or whatever you want to call them. We continue to beat them and Afghans don't like the Taliban. What they are is protected:

In most of Afghanistan, the Taliban and drug gangs are non-existent or a minor presence, because the locals (tribal or government) have the power to handle whatever armed force the enemy can muster there. But most of the drugs are produced in two southern provinces (Kandahar and Helmand), and that's where the Taliban (and drug gangs) are strongest. In the rest of southern Afghanistan, the Taliban sustain themselves with bases across the border in Pakistan. While the Pakistani Army has shut down some of these bases in the last year, there are still many of these in North Waziristan (opposite southeastern Afghanistan) and Baluchistan (opposite southern Afghanistan, especially Helmand and Kandahar). Western diplomatic pressure on Pakistan is all about getting these terrorist sanctuaries shut down.

This Pakistani protection provides a floor that prevents them from being knocked down too far by our efforts. I've long lamented the fact that Pakistan is not wholly on our side in the war in Afghanistan and that this limits what we can do on our side of the border. Mind you, it is better to have their imperfect help than to have them fully on the other side. But this is a problem.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, knocking out the mullah regime in Iran and replacing it with a friendly government would cut the Gordian Knot in this problem (and others, for that matter). By allowing us to resupply Afghanistan through Iran (and other routes to the north) rather than through Pakistan, we eliminate one of the brakes on our pressure applied to Pakistan to crack down on elements within Pakistan that support jihadis.

Mind you, Pakistan's stability given their arsenal of nukes is still a brake on our pressure, but we could press Pakistan more when they don't have an effective hold on our supply lines to Afghanistan.

Build Shooters--Not Targets

I worry that limited ship-building money combined with the mistaken desire to keep our big deck carriers as the central weapon system of our fleet will cripple our Navy, both in numbers and maintenance.

Strategypage writes:

To fix the current readiness problems means you will not be able to afford some new ships. The fix is replacing older equipment in current ships, with new, more reliable and easier to maintain systems. Most of the problems are on surface ships (the "surface combatants" like frigates, destroyers and cruisers). Most admirals see the carriers and nuclear ships as the key naval vessels. Should money be shifted from subs and carriers to fix the surface combatants, and similar problems aboard carriers and subs? The navy budget is shrinking, and the answers to these questions will be pretty obvious over the next few years. There are definitely two factions in the navy on this subject, and keeping score is as simple as counting new ships built, and the number of existing ships failing their readiness inspections.

We can't afford carriers in the numbers we have if we want to maintain numbers of other ships and maintain them so they can actually fight. This might seem like a dilemma until you realize that our carriers just aren't worth the expense given what they can do versus what other platforms can do more cheaply--while being less of a target to an enemy.

Our carriers have become such prestige vessels that they are objectives in war--for our enemy to sink and for us to protect--rather than being tools to win a war. Phase them out over the next several decades and reserve them for peacetime prestige missions and war against enemies without navies and air forces that could attack them while they carry out their missions.

And use the better-maintained ships and subs that would have escorted the carriers (and additional ships and subs from money saved building carriers) to form surface action groups for missile-based offensive task forces.

Stand Your Ground

Seriously, stop the growing sense of panic over Afghanistan.     And while we're discussing unreasonable panic and that urge to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, stop worrying that we've effectively turned Iraq over to Iran by deposing Saddam.     We're winning. Really.

Flashback

ShamWow!



If this doesn't remind you of this old SNL skit, well--well you're not as old as I am, clearly.

And a bonus sleeping in the White House fundraising joke to foreshadow the 1990s!

Why Do They Still Hate Us?

Question 1: Why do they hate us?



Question 2: Are you really going to answer Question 1 by speculating that we (or more specifically, George W. Bush) did something to get them to hate us?

Before you answer, I'd also like to remind you that they hate us despite the fact that we elected the anti-Bush to the presidency 20 months ago.

I really think they are immune to the soothing balms of hope and change. I'm beginning to suspect that the whole Cairo speech just didn't sink in, eh?

A Return to Normalcy

China's rising power, North Korea's nuclear threat, and Russian refusal to discuss the status of islands north of Japan captured by Russia from Japan are leading the Japanese to think about shedding their pacifist outlook and reliance on America for their security from foreign threats:

A Japanese government panel will recommend deploying more armed forces in coastal areas that have seen heavy Chinese naval traffic and relaxing rules on nuclear arms transfers, media reported Tuesday.

The expert panel argues that Japan's Cold-War era defence guidelines have become outdated and that the pacifist nation must prepare for "contingencies" on the Korean Peninsula and in the Taiwan Strait, and small-scale invasions.

The recommendations will be sent early next month to Prime Minister Naoto Kan before Japan revises its defence guidelines in December, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun dailies reported without disclosing their sources.

All the talk of a rising China forgets that Japan rose long ago, economically, and has only to awaken a bit to be a major counter-weight to Chinese military power.

And Japan is just one of many potential counter-weights to China's power.

I would not trade positions with China.

Hu's Smiling Now?

China seems to be alarming the nations of Southeast Asia with their claims in the South China Sea and their elevation of winning these claims to the same level as controlling Tibet and Taiwan.

Huh, it seems like only yesterday that experts were all tingly-legged at how the Chinese were charming the Southeast Asians with their soft power--their "smiling diplomacy."

Hu Jintao's smile was just a tactic. The same expression is more threatening with fangs.

The Peasants are Revolting

This British author (tip to Mad Minerva) thinks that our left wing is becoming more like the European left in its attitude toward working people:

Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".

Yeah, that growing snobbery seems right. Lord knows, I don't understand the appeal of NASCAR. But I don't sneer at those who do like it. It is no more incomprehensible to me than the thought that some people love opera, soccer, or PBS.

The Left wants to rule for the benefit of the general public--as long as they accept what the elites tell them they need and want--but they don't really care for them. Or respect them.

Perhaps this is an outgrowth of the Left's disdain for our soldiers who are largely drawn from this recruiting pool, who are viewed by our Left as too stupid to know what is good for them, and who are too stupid to either know they shouldn't enlist or have any alternatives to military service.

I don't get it. Yes, I live in Ann Arbor and I have some letters after my name from many years in college. But I was born and raised in Detroit (and even worked for what can only be described as a "slum lord," briefly). I was the first in my family to go to college.

And I am grateful that my parents always pointed me toward college. But while I value a college education, I never absorbed the attitude that anything less than that makes you less of a person. Yes, as my father once quipped, I went off to college and "married the professor's daughter," but  it did not take away my respect for honest work away. These people who are "not the right sort" are my people (and do click through to read Orson Scott Card's piece that I quote and link there). God help us if we have too few of them and too many trust fund lefties.

One of my worries is that my children, who live in a good city with parents who have education, will start with advantages that so many others won't have without realizing they have a head start. I worry they will develop the view that there are people who are "not the right sort." I may live in Ann Arbor, but literally and figuratively, I'm not that far from Detroit though they are cities worlds apart.

My children were born in and are growing up in Ann Arbor. They will go to college. Period. I want them to have opportunities greater than the ones I have been blessed with.

But they don't have one foot firmly planted in the class that works with its hands. I hope that I can instill in them a deeply held respect for those who don't get degrees and who don't work in offices, with hands and backs strained by honest work.

More broadly, I can't help but be distressed that such a large section of our elites is becoming like Europe's elites with their views of the rest of society which does not share their view of how America should be governed. Heck, it is fashionable for some of our elites to day dream about the enlightened wisdom of China's elites. It is distressing because we lived through an age when the elites of the center of power in the world all had the same education and outlook. Before World War I, the ruling elites had more in common with their fellow rulers (even when not related by blood) than they did with those they ruled or governed.

That linkage at the top did not prevent a terrible war that ripped apart the West and damaged it deeply. I honestly can't say that this transnational elite caused World War I based on the divide between ruled and rulers. Nor can I point to a plausible way that such a linkage at the top in today's elites could lead to war tomorrow. But my unease at the growing gap between our governing class and the rest of the country that provides the basis of our wealth and defends our country is real nonetheless. No good can come of it, even if the impact does not extend to foreign affairs.

I just hope that I can keep my little portion of the gap bridged for one more generation.

Why Do They Hate Us? Part 96

It is conventional wisdom that President Bush wrecked our relations with the Islamic world by overthrowing Saddam Hussein's tyrannical and bloody reign of terror. Although to be fair, many of these same people were asking that question on 9/11, long before we overthrew the Saddam regime.

President Obama said he needed to repair that breach for the crime of liberating Iraq and other insults over the decades and centuries pre-Obama.

So how's that outreach to the Moslem world working for us? Apparently, our point man on repairing those relations, Rashad Hussain, was a bit shocked at a recent meeting:

Rizvi held America responsible for many woes in the Muslim world. "You supplied arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, then invaded Iraq in the name of searching for weapons of mass destruction. You created the Taliban with the help of Pakistan. You have been backing Israel ever since its creation. First, right the wrongs that you have created if you want to establish peace in the world,'' said Rizvi to applause from the students.

Huh. Although it is hard to call the man nuts about believing we were supplying arms to Iraq during the 1980s --lot of liberals here believe that. The fact that Russia and France supplied the vast bulk of the arms to Saddam counts for nothing. Noting that Brazil supplied more arms to Saddam counts for nothing. Indeed, nothing we sent to Iraq during the war actually had weapons on them. No matter.

But hey, at least we now know what we need to do to erase that hatred:

--Restore the dead Saddam to power.

--Restore the defuct Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan.

--Destroy Israel.

Although I'm reasonably sure that if we go one for three on this list, they'll like us--for a little while, anyway.

A Key to Paradise

Are the parties around southern Lebanon ready for a new war?

Should a new war break out, Israel is determined to strike a more devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last conflict, in which it failed in its objective of destroying Hizballah. It has publicly warned that it would destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, and that Syria, as Hizballah's armorer, would not be off-limits. But Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the Shi'ite militia. And, of course, amid regional tensions over Iran's nuclear program, members of the self-styled "axis of resistance" - Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah - have deepened their alliance, raising the possibility of any one of those groups joining the fray should any of the others come under attack from Israel or the U.S.

I said early that Israel screwed the pooch on the Hizbollah War of 2006 (and the related Gaza operation). I was given little reason to change that assessment as more information came in on the war. Here's one post-mortem on how the Israelis screwed up in southern Lebanon.

But I've had confidence that the Israelis would do better the next time and do what they should have done in 2006--move in fast with lots of troops to overrun the rocket launch sites rather than rely on aerial bombardment to stop the rockets from hitting Israel.

Hezbollah is foolish if it thinks that its longer range rockets deter Israel from "finishing off" Hezbollah. Israel already knows that it should have used massive ground power in 2006 and the ability of Hezbollah to strike deeper into Israel will only increase Israel's motivation to pound Hezbollah on the ground.

Those rockets that Hezbollah has are no key to deterrence without the ability to defend the launch sites from Israeli ground forces. Israel will not rely on air power to suppress the far larger number of rockets that Hezbollah now has. No, the rockets will just be the keys to paradise of lots of Hezbollah members and people who get in the way as the Israelis take over southern Lebanon.

The only question will be how long Israel stays in southern Lebanon. Do they regret leaving southern Lebanon since abansoning that territory did not remove motivation to attack Israel? Or do the Israelis stay long enough to scour the area to cleanse it of enemy forces and arms depots in a narrower effort to buy time?

And if the Israelis want to stay, will any potential local allies step up after Israel abandoned southern lebanon allies once to their fate?

Word To Your Mother

This is pretty funny:



The only thing I could really add is Halloween duty. Lamb still cracks up over pictures of me at a school party wearing a pumpkin suit. Mister refused to wear it, so I decided to wear it as a lesson in just not worrying about how you look--just have fun. Sadly, the contraption that was supposed to inflate the shell (and cool you, too) didn't work and so the orange fabric just hung there. If I was a pumpkin, I was a pumpkin as it looked in the compost pile in mid-November, I'd say. Yeah, I was a babe magnet that night.

But that's part of the dad life, too. Oh, and I should add playing with stuffed animals using a silly voice with your daughter. That's a special thing, too. But with a son of the same age, playing with small cars and tanks that have no pink coloring at all isn't the same level of a dad's life.

And yeah, I teared up a little watching Despicable Me with Mister and Lamb when I took them, when Gru finally kissed his new daughters goodnight.

Yo.

Thanks, France!

Two years ago, the Russians invaded Georgia. Their Black Sea fleet took part in the invasion, and the Russians have noted that they could have carried out the amphibious operation incredibly faster if they had proper amphibious warfare platforms.

Source: From the Wikipedia article linked above.

The French (via my Jane's email updates) decided to sell the Russians their Mistral amphibious warfare ship--but without weapons:

Russia will buy Mistral-class amphibious assault ships from France without weapon systems, according to a 5 July report by Russian state-owned news service RIA Novosti. Under the sale, the ships will come with navigational equipment and technical documentation, but Russia will equip them with its own weapons and helicopters[.]

The French may try to use the lack of shooting weapons as an excuse for the sale not being an actual weapons sale, but it ignores the fact that the big deck of the Mistral is the weapon. That ship--without weapons--is the weapon that will allow the Russians to hit the Georgian coast in force in a short amount of time.
 
I suppose this means the Georgians could really use some Harpoon anti-ship missiles, now.

Dire Strait

So, whatever happened to the "million-man swim"?

A computerised scenario carried out by Taiwan's military showed that in a war with China the island's capital Taipei would be in enemy hands in just three days, a report said Wednesday. ...

Under the scenario, assuming war in 2011, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) launched intensive air raids on Taiwan before sending in ground troops from sea and air, Next Magazine reported.

The war game found that Chinese troops could march into Taipei on the third day of hostilities, seizing control of Taiwan's top military command and the presidential office, it said, quoting unnamed sources.

Uh oh. That's far worse than any scenario I've contemplated. But it does indicate that contrary to many assumptions that the Chinese would land on southern beaches, China would air drop on or near the capital and land in the north. As I've written, I'd expect the Chinese to go right at Taipei and right for the ports rather than do a traditional over-the-beach invasion, which would be limited by a small traditional amphibious warfare fleet in any case.

But not to worry.

Taiwan's defence ministry dismissed the report.

I've been working on a back-of-the-envelope paper simulation of an invasion. It is getting more complicated as I try to factor in the various elements of an invasion. I should just start running it and improvise as I go.

I suspect losing in three days is way too pessimistic. The whole point of reorganizing Taiwan's army into brigades is to make them more mobile so they can react to a landing. Would it really be that bad?

And I can see reasons for Taiwan to worst case the scenario even though there is a risk of demoralizing the troops with such a dire prediction.

Still, even if the Taiwanese are wrong about the speed, they could be right about the result even if it takes longer for China to reach and seize Taipei. If Taiwan can't drive the invaders back and lets them secure bridgeheads, the game is over even if the question of timing is not settled.

No Blood for Dirt

So is East Africa poised for a major war?

Austin Bay thinks that the terrorist bombings in Uganda last month is just one factor that could spark a war that could bring in a number of countries:

Oil revenue and water rights disputes, religious differences, ethnic struggles and terrorists exploiting every division -- East Africa's fragile states edge toward a war of the poor that will create greater poverty.

The countries of the region are poor enough, now. Divert scarce money to buy weapons and use them to destroy what little has been built and we have a real tragedy.

And once the war is over, money will continue to go to weapons in case there's another round of fighting instead of repairing the damage done.

I'm not sure what objectives are worth that kind of disaster.

Two Can Change That Game

There is a lot of panic over the Chinese DF-21:

Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas.

China may soon put an end to that.

U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).

It could be an impressive weapon. But let's not panic over this issue. The DF-21 represents no new type of threat. Approaching land-based air power has long been a threat to carriers. We had this problem in World War II and we had this problem in the Cold War with the Soviet Unioin.

The problem comes with the apparent assumption by many that our carriers are invulnerable. Losing a carrier when you think this is true would be a horrible psychological shock, indeed.

Carriers can, in fact, sink. I deduce that from the fact that they float.

But carriers don't have to be our primary weapon in the face of the DF-21--or any other land-based threat to surface ships.

Adjust our attitudes toward carriers so they are just one weapon among many to be used to win and not a symbol of our power and an objective themselves, adjust our naval tactics and war plans to minimize the exposure of carriers under enemy threat and use other assets until carriers can operate with acceptable risk, and change our naval building priorities so we have many missile-armed ships and subs capable of carrying out offensive missions separate from carrier groups. Do those things and the DF-21 is just a weapon that won't fundamentally change the game--or the outcome.

And we have missiles, too, in the works. China is just guaranteeing that we will strike China's mainland to go after the DF-21s before they can be launched. Now that's a changed game.

Is the DF-21 a game changer? Only if we continue to make the same moves.

UPDATE: Before even discussing whether the DF-21 is or should be a game changer, the Chinese have to get it in the game. And the real game changer could be internal.

We Come Full Circle

The anti-war side had some fanciful arguments against the Afghanistan campaign back in the day. Remember urging us to have the UN indict bin Laden and try him? Remember the claims that we had to stop fighting once we inflicted the same number of casualties as we lost on 9/11? Or the Ramadan truce we were supposed to observe? Or the fierce Afghanistan winter?

Once the insurgency in Iraq got going, of course, Afghanistan became the good war. All the hip anti-war people called Iraq our new Vietnam.

Once we won in Iraq, the hints of relabeling Afghanistan as the once-again bad war were evident with Vietnam analogies hinted at.

And now they are in full-blown Vietnam territory, with this article headlined, "Yes, Afghanistan is Vietnam". We have come full circle. Afghanistan is the "bad war" once again.

Yeah, we didn't commit troops to Afghanistan while we were "distracted" by Iraq, and now that we do, the deep thinkers of the anti-war side say that the casualties that such a commitment logically means will lead us to lose the war as public support dwindles because of the casualties.

We could lose the war in Afghanistan. Especially if analysts like this one gain influence in public thinking. Afghanistan is Vietnam only in the sense that any war (including Iraq) is like Vietnam because upright bipeds are shooting at us.

I'm amazed. These nimrods don't know what happened in Vietnam. Yet I'm supposed to wet my pants over our prospects in Afghanistan because the said nimrods compare Afghanistan to Vietnam and conclude we are doomed?

Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Why Do They Hate Us? Part 95

Why do they hate us, indeed.

They'll hate us for liberating Moslems. And they'll hate us for bikinis. They'll hate us when we are amongst them. And they'll hate us when we are far.

Face it, they just hate us. I'm in no mood to get on the treadmill of figuring out how much we need to do to satisfy their constantly evolving reasons to hate us.

Wear the bikinis. Kill the jihadis. Ignore the intolerant. Support the reasonable to transform Islam so the jihadis are rare, the intolerant are shunned, and the reasonable are dominant.

Camp Over

Lamb enjoyed her Littlest Pet Shop camp. The last day included a play and song. Lamb was a frog.

It took a while to remove the face paint. The staff's assurance that a couple products that I'm sure are standard equipment in a woman's bathroom would get it off quickly was of no use to me.

Luckily, I discovered that vaseline would do the trick and Lamb's supply of that was sufficient to get the paint off without removing skin.

The play was very sweet.

The Instructions Were Written on the Heel

Their journalism degrees did not prepare them to accept the obvious in a briefing by administration officials.

The journalists were brought into the room, given the boot, informed that the instructions were written on the heel--and still the floor remained dry.

Who knew our press corps is that bad?

The administration is learning to face the reality of Iran. Can the journalists?

Is it too late?

Noko Jojo

North Korea responds to South Korean naval exercises:

North Korea will "counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation," the military said Tuesday in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.

Whenever I read North Korean statements, I always think of Mojo Jojo.



I really can picture Kim Jong-Il talking like this based on their press releases. Kind of amusing, if you can forget about all that Stalinist oppression, "sea of fire" threats, and starvation stuff.

China Rising--Above Peking

The talk of a rising China often raises the question of whether China will push America out of the western Pacific. This talk is ridiculous.

Note recent Chinese military exercises:

The "Vanguard 2010" exercises would involve coordinating more than 100 aircraft from the army, air force and navy, with live firing of missiles, to simulate defending Beijing from air attack, the China News Service added.

And note this context:

The increased activity comes as China and the United States have argued over joint U.S.-South Korean drills in the seas off South Korea, and coincides with Beijing's anger at U.S. comments about a sensitive territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

China is rising in power. Their increased economic power is being used for greater military power.

But China's military exercises were designed to protect their capital from air attack. Then note that our naval exercises were carried out within range of China's capital.

Are the implications of that clear? China may be rising, but the power balance is still so lopsided in our favor that we plan military operations close to China and so does China.

If you wonder what we get for our defense dollars, this is just one aspect--we will fight "over there" rather than defending our own shores from approaching enemies. That's pretty significant, but most people don't seem to appreciate that advantage when they complain about how our defense expenditures are such a high percentage of world defense spending. Given the small burden our defense spending is as a percentage of our GDP, I call that a wise investment.

China will have to rise a lot more and we will have to decline quite a bit before that imbalance shifts significantly in China's favor. China is surely gaining the ability to fight us in their own neighborhood. And they could conceivably beat us in their neighborhood. But the battlefield will be in their neighborhood.

And as long as China faces neighbors who'd rather side with us, China faces an even steeper climb to dominance that pushes the battlefield further east and closer to our territory.

Complementary and Not Conflicting: Part Two

General Petraeus is not abandoning our restrictive rule of engagement in Afghanistan. He is making sure that they are not misinterpreted to mean that we must avoid contact with the enemy or let them escape. Kill them all, he says, but we can't rely on Allah to sort them out--we have to be careful who we kill.

The actual directive is here.

As I've long held, we have to kill the enemy, but it is counter-productive to forget that the population is the objective and not body counts. Killing the enemy must support driving the population to our side and not lead to more people joining the enemy. It is not that fighting jihadis just makes more jihadis, but fighting ineffectively makes more jihadis. Killing too many innocents while we kill actual enemies is fighting ineffectively.

And fighting ineffectively by killing innocents in the way of our efforts to kill enemies will get more of our guys killed by provoking more attacks on our troops.

It is not and never has been a choice between more firepower to save the lives of our troops on the one hand and risking our troops' lives by restricting firepower use. Being careful while we hunt the enemy is the reality of Afghanistan. We can whine that the Iraqis had more tolerance for civilian losses caused by our troops (still low, by historical standards) during the course of our operations to kill enemy forces, as the article notes, but that's the way it is in Afghanistan. They are more sensitive and we have to bow to that reality if we want to win this war.

I want to win this war. I thought our left wanted to win this "good war," too. But their rules of disengagement are pretty strict, too. They'll protest the only war they have.

Complementary and Not Conflicting

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I don't get this analysis:

When President Obama announced his new war plan for Afghanistan last year, the centerpiece of the strategy — and a big part of the rationale for sending 30,000 additional troops — was to safeguard the Afghan people, provide them with a competent government and win their allegiance.

Eight months later, that counterinsurgency strategy has shown little success, as demonstrated by the flagging military and civilian operations in Marja and Kandahar and the spread of Taliban influence in other areas of the country.

Instead, what has turned out to work well is an approach American officials have talked much less about: counterterrorism, military-speak for the targeted killings of insurgents from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Faced with that reality, and the pressure of a self-imposed deadline to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011, the Obama administration is starting to count more heavily on the strategy of hunting down insurgents. The shift could change the nature of the war and potentially, in the view of some officials, hasten a political settlement with the Taliban.

I've mentioned my worry that our focus on counter-insurgency and protecting the people would neglect the necessary component of killing the bad guys.

And I often mentioned this in regard to Iraq. All too often it seemed that proponents of the oil spot strategy of protecting civilians forgot that killing insurgents and terrorists is as necessary to protecting those civilians as is standing with them physically.

Further, the two strategies are not in conflict. Killing bad guys makes it easier to protect civilians by encouraging them to cooperate with us. Just as valid for those who just want to kill bad guys, it is not possible to have a really effective killing strategy without the cooperation of the people providing information--and that requires classic counter-insurgency to protect the people from retaliation.

Forget that talk of going to a "counter terrorist" strategy and abandoning "counter-insurgency." This is chicken-and-egg stuff, here. Killing bad guys requires protecting the people; and protecting the people requires killing bad guys.

You Effed Up

I've long felt that the Palestinians were the stupidest and most self-destructive people on the planet. They keep kicking away deals that come up short from the maximalist goals of ejecting the Jews from the territory they call Palestine. They've been egged on for years by the Arab world that has given lip service to the priority of satisfying Palestinian goals. That may be changing:

IT has long been conventional wisdom that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a prerequisite to peace and stability in the Middle East. Since Arabs and Muslims are so passionate about the Palestine problem, this argument runs, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate feeds regional anger and despair, gives a larger rationale to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and to the insurgency in Iraq and obstructs the formation of a regional coalition that will help block Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

What, then, are we to make of a recent survey for the Al Arabiya television network finding that a staggering 71 percent of the Arabic respondents have no interest in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks? “This is an alarming indicator,” lamented Saleh Qallab, a columnist for the pan-Arab newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat. “The Arabs, people and regimes alike, have always been as interested in the peace process, its developments and particulars, as they were committed to the Palestinian cause itself.”

But the truth is that Arab policies since the mid-1930s suggest otherwise. While the “Palestine question” has long been central to inter-Arab politics, Arab states have shown far less concern for the well-being of the Palestinians than for their own interests.

If the hope of being rescued by the entire Arab world riding to their aid is finally shown to be the falsity it has long been, perhaps the Palestinians will show more interest in progress to a better life over the mere chance at killing Jews.



Yes, indeed, the Palestinians effed up. They trusted the rest of the Arab and Moslem world would really stomp on Israel for the sake of the Palestinians' maximalist goals.

Restoring Our International Reputation

President Obama's supporters alleged that Bush alienated the world with the "unilateral" war in Iraq, and that President Obama would repair our tattered relations and gain international support for the appropriate war approved by NATO in response to the 9/11 attacks originating in Afghanistan.

So what's up with this?

The Netherlands became the first NATO country to end its combat mission in Afghanistan, drawing the curtain Sunday on a four-year operation that was deeply unpopular at home and even brought down a Dutch government.

The departure of the small force of nearly 1,900 Dutch troops is not expected to affect conditions on the ground. But it is politically significant because it comes at a time of rising casualties and growing doubts about the war in NATO capitals, even as allied troops are beginning what could be the decisive campaign of the war.

Canada has announced it will withdraw its 2,700 troops in 2011 and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has promised to pull out his country's 2,600 soldiers the year after.

That is likely to put pressure on other European governments such as Germany and Britain to scale back their forces, adding to the burden shouldered by the United States, which expects to have 100,000 troops here by the end of next month.

The Netherlands gone? Canada leaving? Poland leaving? The rest of the Europeans wavering? Congress itself starting to peel off from the good war?
 
This pre-election line of reasoning that Bush trashed our alliances won't survive much more of this. Before long, if this keeps up, it will be us and the British fighting in Afghansitan.
 
Perhaps the bust of Churchill will find a place in the White House again.

And perhaps the president could bust a gut and give a few speeches about the importance of winning the war. He's supposed to be good at that.

Fire Up the TelePrompter

One thing that I complained about routinely during the Bush administration was the failure of the administration to make a full court press to persuade the American public to support the war in Iraq. As casualties mounted, public support dwindled and Congress came close to de-funding the war. We won despite this failure of President Bush, but it wouldn't have had to come to that if the president had made more of an effort.

I hoped that the election of President Obama would at least provide us with a president with some oratory abilities. But President Obama has failed--worse than Bush--to defend the war in Afghanistan. As we add more troops to Afghanistan and use them more aggressively, our casualties are predictably rising and the press is reporting on this as if it is a disaster:

In a summer of suffering, America's military death toll in Afghanistan is rising, with back-to-back record months for U.S. losses in the grinding conflict. All signs point to more bloodshed in the months ahead, straining the already shaky international support for the war.

Six more Americans were reported killed in fighting in the south — three Thursday and three Friday — pushing the U.S. death toll for July to a record 66 and surpassing June as the deadliest month for U.S. forces in the nearly nine-year war.

A "summer of suffering," indeed. More bloodshed ahead. And shaky support for the war. The story writes itself. Just do a universal find and replace with "Afghanistan" for "Iraq." We've seen it before.

I wish President Obama would start making speeches to bolster support for the war. And get all his cabinet to bolster this theme. This is serious stuff. Act like we're at war before the press can sap our will to win. The press corps may love the president, but they still don't have a clue about war and military manners.