Resistance is Futile?

While it seems inconceivable that Australia would abandon Western ties and a reliance on America as an ally in favor of accommodating a rising China, that is exactly what this article raises:

American power has kept Asia peaceful and Australia safe for the past 40 years.

Arguably these have been the best decades in Australia's history, and we will be very fortunate if American power continues working this way to keep Asia stable and Australia secure forever.

But that may not be possible. If China's economy keeps growing, its strategic and political weight will keep growing, too. China will exercise more power in Asia. That power must either be accommodated or resisted.

It should be unthinkable for a democratic nation like Australia to essentially side with China. But a Chinese rise in power looming over a relatively tiny Australia without confidence that we have the power and willingness to resist China makes such a calculation very conceivable.

I wrote that to maintain the balance of power in Asia, allies and potential allies must believe we make the difference in choosing between resistance to China and accommodation. And if we don't, we will see defections from our alliance structure. Call it a domino theory, or not; but while it is no iron rule, it is certainly true that a loss in our coalition will make it more likely for other members to weigh the power balance and choose accommodation with China over resistance at our side.

Japan, as I note in this related post, has apparently decided that American power can be counted on and is substantial enough to allow Japan to remain tied to our alliance rather than accommodate China.

We would be wise to make the calculations of allies very clear--alliance with America is reliable and effective. If we don't, Australia won't be the last country to have this debate.

That Evil, Genius, Bastard!

Ted Koppel thinks we have fallen for Osama bin Laden's plan by fighting so much against jihadis and related governments:

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

We're playing into bin Laden's hands, it seems.

--Refusing to passively retreat from the Middle East played into his hands.

--Destroying his patron, the Taliban government of Afghanistan, played into his hands.

--Smashing bin Laden's terrorism sanctuary in Afghanistan played into his hands.

--Killing off his A-team in our offensive and driving them into Pakistan caves played into his hands.

--Turning off the illegal Pakistani nuclear proliferation network played into his hands.

--Ending major Pakistani support for the Taliban played into his hands.

--Fighting on the ground, man-to-man, when jihadi propaganda suggested we were too afraid to do anything but fling cruise missiles, and kicking their asses, played into his hands.

--Smashing the terror ally and fellow enemy of America Saddam played into his hands.

--Scaring Libya into ending their WMD plans played into his hands.

--Defeating the al Qaeda offensive in Iraq, again man-to-man where their fervor and faith supposedly gave them the advantage, played into his hands.

--Demonstrating to the Moslem world the depravity of al Qaeda's murderous intent which alienated the world's Moslems who until seeing the jihadis up close in Iraq, had backed jihad and suicide bombings in uncomfortably large numbers, played into his hands.

--Leading a coalition of the willing into combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan where we fought and defeated jihadis played into his hands.

--Leading the Europeans and much of the rest of the world--including Moslem majority countries--in efforts to find and smother al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers played into his hands.

I have one question for Ted: is Osama's big plan to take so many hits from us to his face that we bruise our knuckles?

Because from my perspective, falling for Osama's deep plan looks an awful lot like kicking his ass. The whole anguish thing seems largely to lie in his court.

And if Ted thinks that fighting jihadis is bankrupting us, please recall that our defense burden is far less than during the Cold War and we committed, in a couple afternoon signing ceremonies, to spending far more money in a stimulus and health care "reform" legislation. So who is running hither and yon spending us into oblivion?

Yes indeed, a terrorist can dream his unimaginable dreams. And Koppel, who rose to fame on America held hostage in 1980, can perhaps be forgiven for dreaming about an ideal world where America responds tit for tat to terror attacks and remains held hostage by refusing to fight and destroy jihadi terrorism. It worked so well the last time, right?

Still Not Islamophobic

Despite the efforts of the left side of the aisle to portray Americans as Islamophobic, Americans remain capable of distinguishing between Moslems who are our neighbors and jihadis who need to be killed.

Give CNN some credit for running this story about a cross-country trip across America by two young Moslem men. Funny enough, they weren't killed, attacked, shunned, or jailed.

Kill Them All

http://stafford.va.us/Residents/Military/Index.shtml

I'm still angry. We all should be. This is nothing less than a war between the civilized and barbarians.

Kill the jihadis. Every last one we can find. If we don't kill them, and if we don't help other Moslems control the fanatics who come from their society, many more people will fall victim to the jihadis, whether Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or even Moslem.

We're all their enemies. Never forget. Never tire.

Our Counter-Attack Begins

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/pubpapers/2002portv2.html

We're at War

http://www.uscg.mil/history/WEBORALHISTORY/911_Photo_Index.asp

We're Under Attack

http://architecture.about.com/od/worldtradecenter/ss/twintowers_3.htm

What Happened?

http://architecture.about.com/od/worldtradecenter/ss/twintowers_2.htm

When Bombs Were Still '60s Cool

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.''

Patriot Day

http://www.army.mil/patriotday/2010/index.html

Pre-H-Hour Attack

Before the Day:

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 9—An opposition leader and former defense chief, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was injured and his close aide was killed today in an explosion in northern Afghanistan, an opposition spokesman said.

Two men from Algeria posing as journalists are suspected of hiding the explosive device in their camera, the spokesman, Hajji Kahar, said in a satellite telephone interview from Khodja Bahauddin in northern Takhar province, where the explosion occurred.

It was the local decapitation strike.

Trouble in Paradise

I know the conventional wisdom is that we are losing in Afghanistan and the Taliban are "resurgent," but it is too easy to judge our visible problems against the problems of the enemy that we don't see in our papers, and conclude we have so many more problems that we must be losing.

Read Strategypage's assessment:

With the disruption to the drug trade in southern Afghanistan (Helmand province and around Kandahar), the Taliban are seeing less cash from the drug gangs, and growing hostility from tribesmen that formerly supported them. The Taliban had always sought to be feared more than loved, and these reverses have driven them to use more terror than ever before.

We are hurting the enemy and we can beat them in the field. And as long as our objective isn't to create a strong central government to rule Afghanistan, we will defeat the enemy and win this war.

It is true that al Qaeda could set up shop anywhere, so in theory al Qaeda doesn't need Afghanistan as a base to attack us. But the simple fact is that the Afghanistan Taliban are al Qaeda's ally. Al Qaeda is in neighboring Pakistan making it far easier to just roll across the mountains into Afghanistan rather than any of those other theoretical sanctuaries. Further, a Taliban win in Afghanistan will encourage the Pakistani intelligence people to ramp up support for the Afghan Taliban. And the Afghan Taliban will regain the support of a sanctuary in Pakistan as the Pakistanis back off suppressing their own borderlands Taliban.

And if you can still sleep at night at the wisdom of withdrawing and counting on us being able to sledge hammer any jihadi training camps that arise after we withdraw, the jihadis will have the potential powerball of seizing control of nuclear-armed Pakistan in their attempt to win the caliphate lottery and run the Moslem world.

The enemy has problems. So do we, to be sure. But for the most part, their problems are worse than ours.

Except for one, unfortunately. If we believe we are doomed to defeat, that problem will trump all our advantages over the enemy and make all their problems trivial as long as the enemy thinks they can hang on long enough to wave goodbye to our last troops sent to hunt them down.

So That Would Be 1,100

I've mentioned that Iran under the control of the mullahs remains our enemy.

You may scoff at that simplistice assessment and say we must engage them to resolve our differences with them.

This is how much of an enemy Iran was over the last seven years, according to our government's judgment:

U.S. officials believe that a quarter of American casualties in Iraq were caused by terrorists backed by Iran.

So, we suffered a bit over 4,400 dead in Iraq. That means more than 1,100 KIA were the fault of Iran. The overthrow of the mullah regime, one way or the other, should be our objective.

And I still can't believe that the bloody Iranian hand puppet, Sadr, is still alive and running free.

The Rise and Fall and Evolution of China?

A rising China will provoke opposition from neighbors, assuming the neighbors think that opposing China can succeed. Our strength will be a major factor in the calculations these neighbors make about opposing China or conforming to China's friendly advice.

But China's rise doesn't mean they will keep going at the same pace--or even in the same direction.

I recently addressed those points here, with a number of links to flesh out the points.

Let me add two more links. Japan points to China's rise as a cause of worry and points to their alliance with America as important:

Japan's Defense Ministry stressed the importance of U.S. military forces in Japan and cast a wary eye on China's military expansion in an annual report Friday, as diplomatic tensions with China rose following a collision near disputed islands.

In one sentence, this gets to the point of why I think we need to maintain our power in the western Pacific in order to bolster allies in the region who wish to oppose Chinese ambitions.

And here, Gordon Chang boldly predicts China's economic progress will reverse and that Japan will reclaim the number two GDP position.

So don't panic about China. Address our weaknesses, to be sure. I don't mean to sound complacent. But China is a challenge and not a steamroller destined to swamp us. We do need to worry about the potential military power of even a third place China. In time, that kind of economic power will allow China to become a major power in east Asia. Remember that Japan in 1941-1945 posed quite a military challenge despite the fact that our GDP at the beginning of the war was about ten times that of Japan's. China with a GDP a third of ours will be a force to be reckoned with.

And heck, who knows, China might, as the result of economic progress that is creating a middle class--as we've hoped for close to two decades now--actually evolve into a more representative government that values getting along with us and prospering more than they value regaining their position as the middle kingdom at the center of the world.

US Defense Strategy Unbalanced?

Stratfor thinks that our focus on fighting terrorism is unbalancing our strategic thinking and that we should downgrade Afghanistan in particular and the war on terror in general. This seems to be the heart of the essay:

The emergence of a hegemonic contender that could challenge the United States globally, as the Soviet Union had done, was the worst-case scenario. Therefore, the containment of emerging powers wherever they might emerge was the centerpiece of American balance-of-power strategy.

The most significant effect of 9/11 was that it knocked the United States off its strategy. Rather than adapting its standing global strategy to better address the counterterrorism issue, the United States became obsessed with a single region, the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. Within that region, the United States operated with a balance-of-power strategy. It played off all of the nations in the region against each other. It did the same with ethnic and religious groups throughout the region and particularly within Iraq and Afghanistan, the main theaters of the war. In both cases, the United States sought to take advantage of internal divisions, shifting its support in various directions to create a balance of power. That, in the end, was what the surge strategy was all about.

The American obsession with this region in the wake of 9/11 is understandable. Nine years later, with no clear end in sight, the question is whether this continued focus is strategically rational for the United States. Given the uncertainties of the first few years, obsession and uncertainty are understandable, but as a long-term U.S. strategy — the long war that the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for — it leaves the rest of the world uncovered.

Consider that the Russians have used the American absorption in this region as a window of opportunity to work to reconstruct their geopolitical position. When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, an American ally, the United States did not have the forces with which to make a prudent intervention. Similarly, the Chinese have had a degree of freedom of action they could not have expected to enjoy prior to 9/11. The single most important result of 9/11 was that it shifted the United States from a global stance to a regional one, allowing other powers to take advantage of this focus to create significant potential challenges to the United States.

One can make the case, as I have, that whatever the origin of the Iraq war, remaining in Iraq to contain Iran is necessary. It is difficult to make a similar case for Afghanistan. Its strategic interest to the United States is minimal. The only justification for the war is that al Qaeda launched its attacks on the United States from Afghanistan. But that justification is no longer valid. Al Qaeda can launch attacks from Yemen or other countries. The fact that Afghanistan was the base from which the attacks were launched does not mean that al Qaeda depends on Afghanistan to launch attacks. And given that the apex leadership of al Qaeda has not launched attacks in a while, the question is whether al Qaeda is capable of launching such attacks any longer. In any case, managing al Qaeda today does not require nation building in Afghanistan.

But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States.

I would like to offer a qualified agreement on this general view. Look, I've long said that my objectives for Afghanistan are minimal. I just don't want it to be a launching pad for terror attacks on us, as on 9/11--or worse. I think we could reach an objective of a decentralized Afghanistan with friendly locals and a friendly nominal sovereign reigning in Kabul without more than the initial surge to 68,000 US troops done at the beginning of this year. But I trust the military that they can do the job quicker with the current surge to 100,000, or so. I worry about our supply lines, but fine, go to it.

Further, while I disagree that taking down Saddam was unneeded, I certainly agree that once in Iraq we need to remain to contain Iran. I think we can achieve more than that, but let's not quibble at this point.

I further agree that we have world-wide responsibilities and that we can't just focus on the CENTCOM region as if it is the whole area of interest for us. I don't think we have been distracted with dealing with the rest of the world, and saying that others have made gains does not prove we have not paid attention or could not pay attention. Weren't we far more focused on Western Europe in the Cold War even as we looked globally to confront the Soviet Union?

The Army has continued to address North Korea and Colombia, and is a big player in the new AFRICOM. The Navy has been relatively untouched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and devotes considerable attention to the vast Pacific and set up a new 4th Fleet for South American operations.

The Air Force is threatened by procurement decisions that could endanger the air supremacy mission several decades in the future, but starts so far ahead that I am not overly worried about that issue or the push to support ground operations right now undermining the core mission of defeating others in the air. At least not for the next two or three decades, it's a problem on my radar screen but not on my urgent to-do list.

Really, it is just the Army that has been focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the Marine Corps has kept its amphibious mission high in its mind when it could return to that focus. And I do worry that the Army could be unbalanced in training, organization, and equipment purchases for counter-insurgencies at the expense of conventional operations.

And a balanced US military is necessary for a global focus. But just as focus on West Germany in the Cold War was the key to the global struggle against the USSR, focus on Iraq and the war on terror is a key to the global struggle against Islamist extremism.

And I just don't see that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the effort to fight Islamist terrorism is keeping us from a global effort. China certainly doesn't think we are neglecting them given our presence in Central Asia, our new relationships with India and Vietnam; our existing still strong alliances or friendships with Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Australia; and our strengthening relationship with Indonesia.

Russia, too, believes we are out to get them. Russia has made some gains in Georgia and Ukraine, but what could we have done to prevent Russia's gains in Ukraine as the result of Ukraine's own elections? And who believes we would have gotten into a shooting war with Russia if we weren't even in Iraq? Even if we wanted to fight Russia, the war was over in 5 days. You think we could have intervened in that time frame?

We should be focused on the war we are in. Recall that one senior American general said he wasn't going to wreck the army to win in Vietnam (by gearing it to COIN rather than preparing for high intensity armored warfare to defend NATO). So what did we get? A wrecked army to hollow to fight in Europe anyway. And it took so long to defeat the enemy in Vietnam that Congress legislated defeat there soon after we were gone, effectively getting us both a wrecked army and a sense of losing.

Nor should we just shrug our shoulders about "acceptable" civilian losses here as the price we need to pay to keep our military unengaged in case we need them for a major war. We have a right to expect our military (and more broadly, our government) to protect us.

Stratfor is right that fighting terrorism cannot be our sole focus. And I have concerns if we really are trying to build a strong central Afghanistan government. I keep reading stories going both ways, so I am not sure what our goal is in practice. But if we can't fight terrorism while maintaining proper efforts to look after other interests, we've got real problems in our government structure.

We're a global power. But this means we should be able to act around the globe and not remain paralyzed in inaction against an objectively less dramatic threat like terrorism just in case we must do one big thing somewhere on the globe against a serious conventional threat.

Lower Down on the Hierarchy of Worry

I've mentioned the threat of an EMP (electromagetic pulse) attack on us. I haven't really addressed it since I have no idea whether the results would be as bad as claimed or if we could reasonably be attacked that way. Is it really a way a poor or even non-state actor could nullify our national strength in a moment of blast?

Stratfor addresses the issue. We are vulnerable. But only major players could attempt it and they know that such an attack would trigger nuclear retaliation. And we really don't know the extent of damage that would result.

The bottom line?

The world is a dangerous place, full of potential threats. Some things are more likely to occur than others, and there is only a limited amount of funding to monitor, harden against, and try to prevent, prepare for and manage them all. When one attempts to defend against everything, the practical result is that one defends against nothing. Clear-sighted, well-grounded and rational prioritization of threats is essential to the effective defense of the homeland.

Hardening national infrastructure against EMP and HPM is undoubtedly important, and there are very real weaknesses and critical vulnerabilities in America’s critical infrastructure — not to mention civil society. But each dollar spent on these efforts must be balanced against a dollar not spent on, for example, port security, which we believe is a far more likely and far more consequential vector for nuclear attack by a rogue state or non-state actor.

That sounds about right. No crash program is necessary, but we probably should have standards for new construction and maintenance that would harden infrastructure over time so at least something survives to provide a basis for rebuilding. And we should have plans to rebuild and cope until we can rebuild.

An Invisible Success

At the beginning of the year, I predicted we could see American casualties this year on the order of  573, based on the casualty rate of 2009 and our added troops. I was trying to get ahead of the curve on what I was sure our press would report as a sign of defeat, when they reported on casualty trends. Our press corps has not disappointed me, in this regard.

Yet so far this year, our casualties don't seem to be running high enough to match my expecations. We probably won't reach that tally. If we don't, Strategypage explains something we've gotten good at in Afghanistan--combatting IEDs:

The tactics and equipment that neutralized IED (Improvised Explosive Device, a roadside, or suicide car bombs) in Iraq, have arrived in Afghanistan. There are now 12,000 MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles in Afghanistan, and they have played a major part in reducing NATO casualties there. In Iraq, the use of a similar number of MRAPs, reduced casualties from IEDs by over 60 percent. In Afghanistan, the math is similar.

We still have hard fighting to do, as we try to defeat the enemy in their home ground of Kandahar, so it is too soon to tell if my guess is accurate. It may be that our casualty rate should go up as we press the enemy in their lair. And so it may be that the counter-IED effort will be a success even if we suffer the casualties I expected.

Our Left always insisted that the Afghanistan war is the "good" war. I always suspected that they thought it was only good for undermining the Iraq war. We shall see if the anti-Iraq war people can make the gut check to win what they said was the good and necessary war. Don't count on it, however, since their brethren in the press corps will continue to sing the call of retreat as they report on our casualties in Afghanistan.

When Paranoia Strikes

Some bad luck in the Dutch West Indies:

A huge fire caused by a lightning strike has halted operations at a Venezuelan fuel terminal on the Dutch island of Bonaire.

Not that I'll pretend to be able to get inside the purported thinking process of that pathetic, half wit who misrules Venezuela, but this is just the sort of thing that I think Hugo Chavez could believe is part of a Western plot to get him.

The Dutch need to keep their powder dry. You never know.

I Salute You

I was not aware that French General Marcel Bigeard passed away on June 18th at the age of 94. Among other things, he led the French forces at Dien Bien Phu in the First Indochina War. His passing is marked here. He was a true warrior.

I commented briefly on that battle here, paying tribute to the French who damned well could have won that battle. I did not know that Bigeard still lived when I wrote that post.

Let Me Handle This

From Classical Values:

I just want it on the record that many of us recognized Tom Friedman was a fool well before the China bubble burst.

Yes. Nice thought. But get in line, Dave.
 

 
But kudos to the line "bromantic poli-crush." I stand by my "King of the Doofi," but still, a good turn of phrase.

As I like to say, I'm not saying you can't drown in a pool of Friedman's wisdom, but you'd have to be drunk and face down to do so.

Stretching China

I count this as good news:

The PLA is currently mechanizing much of its army and is developing at least two powerful armor mechanized corps modeled after the 1980s Soviet Operational Maneuver Groups which are designed for breakthroughs and deep exploitation roles in an offensive operation. The force is too heavy for amphibious landings or operations in China’s tropical areas; thus Martin Andrew surmises that the corps is designed to ensure Chinese energy security. He believes that this force, though it would use Xinjiang as its springboard, would aim to overrun the defenses of any Central Asian state to secure relevant oilfields.

Why? Because I don't like it that the Russians have pointed China at us by selling the Chinese naval and air assets.

I think we need to get China pointed inland toward the interior of Asia, including Russia. This will divide Chinese military power and force them to make efforts to become both a naval and air power in the Pacific and a land and air power on Asia. With luck, they'll be unable to be good at either and stretch themselves too thin, confronting too many potential foes in the process, as the kaiser's Germany did.

The opportunity to spark anger at their rising power isn't to be dismissed, either.

China is rising. But so are others. And I don't assume China will pass us in raw power in my lifetime, if ever. But even if China does becomes more powerful than we are, unless we abandon these other nations not disposed to knuckling under to Chinese power, Peking's rise does not mean we are doomed.

What a Bloody Giveaway!

I've often said that there are people who simply do not like the war we are in. They may say that they think the war we are in distracts us from the real war we should fight (like Iraq once "distracted" us from Afghanistan), but the real threat is a moving target.

So now that Iraq can no longer be said to distract us from Afghanistan, where our troops are twice as numerous as in Iraq, this anti-war cadre must pivot to oppose the Afghanistan campaign. But what, oh what, can be the greater threat that Afghanistan distracts us from confronting?

Well:

The Afghanistan conflict has now grown disproportionally large in the global portfolio of U.S. national security concerns, outweighing and tilting attention and resources away from other troubles in the Middle East, from Iran, from North Korea, from the global consequences of an ascending and more powerful China.

Please! You're killing me! You want me to believe you want us to confront North Korea? Iran? China?

This from a member of the Afghanistan Study Group, which takes its name from the Iraq Study Group that tried but failed to get us to lose in Iraq. Say what you want about them, but they do have a sense of whimsy.

Somebody Alert Hollywood!

This news about Cuba is going to be something of a shock to a lot of our Hollywood (and faculty lounge) Lefties:

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

It's like the dreaded NeoCons are everywhere! Castro even called Ahmadinejad an anti-Semite. What more proof do you need?

Pedestrians: Evolve or Die!

The Canadians aren't thinking this safety measure through:

Officials in West Vancouver, Canada, apparently aren't satisfied with the driver-slowing properties of traditional speed bumps. On Tuesday, the town unveiled a new way to persuade motorists to ease off the gas pedal in the vicinity of the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School: a 2-D image of a child playing, creating the illusion that the approaching driver will soon blast into a child.

Let's not even speak of the heart attacks that could be caused when someone thinks they are about to hit a little girl. Or the real pedestrian struck when a driver swerves to avoid the little girl.

What about desensitizing drivers who may not assume seeing a little girl means there is a real little girl?

Well, said the head of the British Columbia Automobile Association Traffic Safety Foundation :

"People tune out. It takes an attitude shift for people to change," Dunne said. "Pedestrians need an attitude shift too. They have to realize that just because they are in a crosswalk doesn't mean they are safe. In fact, most get hit while using crosswalks."

So there you go. You people walking near freaked out drivers need to pay more attention and stay ready to leap out of the way. This is really doing you a favor. Wow.

Adapt or die, pedestrians. Adapt or die.

Still, at least it isn't as bad as the Hot Babe Massacre System that German automotive engineers are developing.

In the Land of Real Hope and Change

Is it really so hard to accept that the end of formal combat missions in Iraq at the end of August is a victory? Just as the formal end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003 was a victory. Neither was the final one in Iraq (if that is possible to claim in a world where new problems always seem to replace the problems solved), but victories nonetheless. Strategypage speaks of the signs of hope and change in Iraq as the result of the war begun in March 2003 (or February 1991, if you prefer):

Iraq's free, boisterous and critical press is another example of genuine change. Its existence is unarguable. It is there, alive and signaling the birth of liberty, which is also a huge victory in the Global War on Terror. It signals an emerging democracy in the predominantly Arab Muslim Middle East, an alternative to the terrible non-choice of tyrant or terrorist, the vicious ying-yang that has savaged the Arab heartland.

I remain astounded that much of our country can't recognize that we've won something potentially far more important than "just" removing a bloody dictator from power in Iraq. I am equally astounded that we might not invest the money and effort to exploit what we've achieved so far.

My biggest fear is that our Left won't forgive Iraqis for being liberated by George W. Bush.

UPDATE: As we draw down, the Iraqis increasingly realize they will need our support for a number of tasks I've discussed for years now. Our military certainly knows we need to stay to preserve what we've gained (and achieve more, I'll add), as we've stayed in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea:

In an interview last month, the chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, Gen. Babakir Zebari, predicted the need for U.S. forces to remain in Iraq until 2020, and said he would like to see America maintain "three or four bases" to help deter possible threats from Iraq's neighbors. U.S. officials have also said Iraq's army will need assistance beyond 2011.

When the Iraqis finally settle on a new government (again, as frustrating as it is, I'll look at the bright side that nobody has decided to just settle this dispute with guns), they'll likely approach us to negotiate a new deal to extend our military presence in Iraq. I hope President Obama will conclude such a deal with the Iraqis.

They are a Persistent Lot, Aren't They?

Huh, I ran across a post of mine from June 2005 about an effort to put up a Moslem center at the World Trade Center site. I asked:

If our Islamist enemies could win and implement their dream of an Islamic caliphate under their tender mercies, what kind of memorial might they erect (or rather, contract with some infidel dhimmi firm from South Korea to build) to celebrate their 9-11 triumph?

I then quote from a Wall Street Journal article that describes something awfully familiar that could fit the bill.

Still a bad idea to build a jihadi monument, I think.

Oz Chooses

Australia will be run by Prime Minister Gillard in a minority government aided by dribs and drabs that decided to back her:

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard retained power by a tiny, one-seat majority Tuesday after winning the backing of two key independent MPs in the first hung parliament in decades.

Will a government built on such a shaky foundation do more than continue existing policies and try to survive for three years until a new election? Can such a government be ambitious for more than that?

A Can Do Spirit?

It is commonly held that the Chinese leaders would never risk their comfortable lives and growing economy by risking war with America. But what if the Chinese leaders are changed?

“China’s military spending is growing so fast that it has overtaken strategy,” said Professor Huang Jing from the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. (He kindly let me quote his remarks.)

“The young officers are taking control of strategy and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s. They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous.

“They are on a collision course with a US-dominated system”.

Remember that the Chinese are building weapons that expand what they "can do" to us.

I did raise this issue of who gets to order the PLA into action five years ago.

It is important to judge the US-Chinese balance, but not necessarily the most important thing to consider. What do the Chinese believe the balance is? What if they simply believe we won't fight? Or what if they see worse alternatives to even losing a war with America?
 
And what if we don't even know who "they" are?

They Remain Our Enemy

Iran wants nukes. And it would be helpful as we debate what to do (or not do) about this problem that we remember that Iran under the mad mullahs is our enemy and actively works to kill our troops in Afghanistan--as they did and still do in Iraq.

Their Craptacular Peformance Continues

Wholly anticipated casualties in Afghanistan are, of course, reported as a shocking indicator of our doom:

Violence across Afghanistan has hit its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Military and civilian casualties are at record levels, with U.S. and NATO commanders warning of more tough fighting ahead.

The spiraling death tolls come despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan and will be another worrying statistic when U.S. President Barack Obama conducts a strategy review of the war in December.

Public support for the war is flagging, with a recent opinion poll by NBC television and the Wall Street Journal showing as many as seven in 10 Americans saying they did not believe the war would end successfully.

At 328 US casualties so far this year in Afghanistan, we are clearly taking more casualties. But this is wholly predictable. Personally, I was expecting 573 US killed in the war this year. With four more months to go, I think it is safe to say that we fortunately won't reach that number, even though the press won't notice that the sheer number of troops aggressively going after the enemy will lead to more casualties.

As Rumsfeld might have said, you go to war with the press corps you have and not the one you'd like to have.

You May Sink When You are Ready

If the Olympia rots and sinks or has to be scrapped, the demise of this ship during the Obama administration (which is not responsible for the ship, I will add), could be sadly symbolic of our military rise and fall, since the ship led us to global status in 1898 by leading the conquest of the Philippines from the Spanish:

The USS Olympia, a one-of-a-kind steel cruiser that returned home to a hero's welcome after a history-changing victory in the Spanish-American War, is a proud veteran fighting what may be its final battle.

Time and tides are conspiring to condemn the weathered old warrior to a fate two wars failed to inflict. Without a major refurbishment to its aging steel skin, the Olympia either will sink at its moorings on the Delaware River, be sold for scrap, or be scuttled for an artificial reef just off Cape May, N.J., about 90 miles south.

Although you'd think that with nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending on highly questionable projects carried out over the last couple years, we could have allocated the relative pittance to maintain this symbol of our new status.

But if our military is on the down slope with our own version of Britain's post-World War I "ten-year rule," as I suspect, despite cries of protest from the Obama administration that our military will remain the most powerful, the destruction of this ship will be sadly symbolic.

--Independence Seaport Museum: http://www.phillyseaport.org/

--Friends of the Cruiser Olympia: http://www.cruiserolympia.org/

--The Cruiser Olympia Historical Society: http://www.tcohs.org/

Still Not Capable of Doing Their Job

I've expressed my amazement that our press corps is, collectively, still clueless about military matters despite having nearly nine years to learn their subject matter, and a year and a half to gear up for the Iraq War. A paper wouldn't stand for that kind of subject ignorance on fashion or sports coverage, but for war that doesn't seem to be an obstacle to success. Strategypage addreses this and covers some of the media myths about the Iraq war:

Since September 11, 2001, the mass media has been covering military matters much more intensively than they had in the previous decade. It showed, in the amount of misinformation and bad analysis that flowed from so many media outlets. These are some of the more misleading ones. ...

Too Many Contractors In The Combat Zone.

The Invasion of Iraq Was Illegal and Misguided.

The Invasion Was a Failure.

The Invasion Helped Al Qaeda.

The U.S. Did Not Work With Locals.

Iraqis Were Better Off Under Saddam.

The U.S. Needed More Soldiers.

The last one is one I offer a qualified agreement on. I supported squeezing 9 more brigades out of the existing manpower rather than adding troops, which we did. We got more troops after that but we basically won the war in Iraq before we could really incorporate the added troops. That said, it would have been nice to have the extra troops to help rotation to avoid stressing the troops on repeat rotations. On the other hand, we didn't break the Army, and now with the administration seeking to cut the military's budget, the extra troops no longer needed for rotations could very well lower the quality of the troops as training and readiness is slighted to pay for troop pay and housing, and all that.

And one that isn't so much a misconception but an explanation:

The Three Year Rule.

Do read it all. It is frustrating to me, and by all means I'd like everyone to be just as frustrated at the low quality of the reporting. As I've long held, you can figure out what the reporters are seeing if you have a grounding in political science, history, and military matters, so you know what to disregard and what to accept (or what they probably meant).

This is still a long war against Islamo-fascists. So it isn't too late for those reporters (with rare exceptions who do know their subject) to get a clue about military matters and military history. Absent that, they could just focus on reporting and spare us their lame attempts to analyze the news.

Great ...

Sigh:

Several hundred Afghans chanting "Death to America" rallied outside a mosque in the Afghan capital on Monday to protest against an American church's plan to burn a copy of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The protesters, mostly students from religious schools, gathered outside Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque to condemn plans by the Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center to burn copies of the Koran to mark the ninth anniversary of the attacks against the United States.

Now our jerks are acting almost as intolerant as their jerks. At least our jerks haven't resorted to mindless and brutal violence.

UPDATE: A reminder that even with this latest advance in stupidity in our world, we remain far behind our competition:

The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In an unusual turn in the case, the lawyer also confirmed that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was lashed 99 times last week in a separate punishment meted out because a British newspaper ran a picture of an unveiled woman mistakenly identified as her. Under Iran's clerical rule, women must cover their hair in public.

Yeah, talking to these animals would be really productive.

Time for a Lesson in Nuance?

I have two questions regarding this statement by that lounge lizard in charge of Iran:

"Any offensive against Iran means the annihilation of the Zionist entity," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar. "Iran does not care much about this entity because it is on its way to decay."

One, how would Iran carry out that annihilation if it doesn't get nuclear weapons?

And two, shouldn't someone in the sainted international community's so-called human rights industry school Ahmadinejad on the subtleties of "proportionality" in responding to military attacks?

I mean, isn't that the key concept in understanding why Israel's response to terrorism attacks is always wrong and most likely a war crime? How does murdering millions in response to the death of hundreds or even thousands qualify as proportional?

Or is that only a concept that applies to Israel?

No. No. No need to answer. I said I had but two questions.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go Now?

It has always been clear that the Iraqis will need us in Iraq after 2011, notwithstanding the official agreement now in force. Now we are hearing more details on this reality:

Baghdad's military remains heavily dependent on US logistical support, air power, equipment and expertise, while most Baghdad politicians are anxious to retain American troops as a peacekeeping force in reserve.

"The more pressing requirement is less teaching them how to use weapons and more providing reassurance to threatened internal communities that they won't be exploited by their erstwhile internal rivals," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Exactly. The defense angle has always been obvious. The political angle is just as important. It is great that the long negotiations over forming a government have not broken down into fighting for power. If our troops weren't there, would all the Iraqi parties have the confidence to remain in the realm of politics? They have corrupt politics, but corruption is the norm in the region. And only our presence can help to minimize it.

So how many troops?

"I think it could get down to even less than 10,000 and still be viable," John Ballard, a professor at National Defense University and a retired army officer, told AFP.

That's ridiculousl low for the next decade. That's basically just ground combat forces, and doesn't count support personnel, special forces, or Air Force. I call it closer to 25,000 to make sure we can carry out all our missions. But we'd still rely on forces outside Iraq to reinforce in an emergency:

Perhaps we can draw down to three [combat] brigades (one near Basra, one near Baghdad, and one near Mosul and Kirkuk), with a total of 10,000. Perhaps we get down to 12,000 support personnel and a few thousand special forces. That would total 25,000. Plus civilian contractors for training, maintenance, and working with the State Department. Perhaps we can count on using air power based in Turkey and Kuwait to miminimze the need to put fighter aircraft and support planes inside Iraq.

And I'd be happy if we had a couple brigade sets of equipment in Iraq so we could rapidly fly in troops to reinforce our troops there in a crisis.

Assuming we could also call on an airborne brigade based in Italy and a Marine Expeditionary Unit afloat within CENTCOM, we could more than double our ground power in a short time.

I think we have a couple more brigade sets for the Army in the region (Kuwait and afloat?), meaning we could get a bit more without even calling on forces in the United States.

I hope our politicians at home don't try to save a small amount of money at the expense of reinforcing the success that the far greater amount of money we've already spent (and our casualties) has achieved.

If we go there will be trouble. And if we stay it will be double.

Yes, staying means we will continue to bear the burden of fighting, but failure to fight will be far worse for us.

Just Leave the Euros on the Dresser

A real government would have real reporters following them around to write real stories about their real work. So it says a lot that the European Union has decided that hiring the journalistic equivalent of an escort to accompany one of their leading lights out to dinner is easier than actually being worthy of reporting on:

Journalists' expenses will be paid if they accompany the European Commission president on foreign trips, in a new public relations drive which will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of euros.

Of course, a real escort is expected to put out at the end of the evening. Will the journalists suck up to the European Commission president and provide a happy ending for the chap?

I suggest the journalists paid for their services wear kitten heels, push-up bras, and brush up on their cheese subsidy regulations to make sure they are proper company for a proper EU lord.

What a joke. The really funny thing is that the Europeans are doing this to themselves.

UPDATE: More on the Europarliament of whores. The EU Commission president denies his planned 3-hour speech (I got that from another source) is designed to bolster his image. At that length, I think we have to take him on his word. But when the EU has to buy support from European reporters, who are naturally pro-sucking up to the EU, can we all agree that the EU is a monster imposed on the people of Europe?

The Three Trillion Dollar Pyramid

As long as these guys are still peddling this garbage, I guess I shouldn't tire of arguing they have got it wrong.

An Honor Just To Be Nominated

Kim Jong-Il wants to hand down the family business (his criminal gang with a UN seat) to his youngest son, Kim Jong Eun, who seems to be the only one capable of misruling the people of North Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will probably use an upcoming meeting of party elites to introduce his heir apparent, initiating the Stalinist dictatorship's second hereditary power transfer, U.S. and South Korean experts and officials say.

The way North Korea is going, I suspect that the honor will be less than it once was. I suspect that the designation will merely target The Un as the one who will be ritually strung up by his heels from a lamp post in the city square of Pyongyang.

If Eun makes it to the top, he'll be the last of the Kim dynasty.

Woo Hoo! Fall is Back in Town

Mister and I just finished dinner (well, a pizza we grabbed walking home), after coming back from the University of Michigan home opener against Connecticut, in the new stadium that set a record for attendance today.

While our kicking game needs work, to say the least, this was a satisfying way to begin the season. A bit chilly for the first game, but the walk back after a win felt just fine. It felt good to walk home and see the University of Michigan flag flying from my door.

And Mister loved the fanvision device he had.

And I'll give up my commemorative stadium pin for Lamb, who has no interest as yet in Michigan football. We shall see.

Go Blue!

There's a Curse About This, Isn't There?

The Europeans always said they wanted an America more like Europe. Well, our European-Americans are trying to do just that.

The Europeans have noticed:

America Has Become Too European

Of course, for Europe to remain Europe, they need someone like America to provide the hard power that shields the Europeans so they can pretend that regulations and seventy-four varieties of cheese are all they need to prosper. And now America is in danger of no longer being America.

The piece is one focused on our economy, but if we become European in our economic policies, a Europeanized defense and foreign policy won't be far behind.

Europe doesn't need another European state over here. They need America.

And so do we.

UPDATE: If you doubt that the Europeans need us to protect their little hot house of long vacations and weak militaries, check out the first sentence of this so-called analysis by some European foreign policy outfit:

The end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq this month has been an anti-climax. There is no defining image for us to remember – nothing like the last helicopter out of Saigon or the last Russian tank out of Afghanistan. 50,000 American military trainers remain in Iraq.

Are you kidding me? This is a statement made by a serious foreign policy think tank?

The reason our draw down to 50K didn't look like the two examples given is that those examples were defeats (and the US helicopter thing was two years after all our combat forces were gone and we starved South Vietnam of support, thank you very much Congress for that little bonus) while our milestone in Iraq reflected victory.

I didn't even bother to read more than a couple more sentences before I wondered what the heck I was doing wasting my time taking foreign policy lessons from a pan-European neutered defense outlook.

UPDATE: Ok, to be fair to the Russians, they pulled out and left a friendly government in charge, too. And their ally only fell after the Russians dropped support for the Afghan government. But the Russians stopped support because the Soviet Union collapsed rather than as a conscious choice as our Congress did.

So to be fair to the European foreign policy outfit, if we screw up things after 2011 (and I think we'll still have troops there after that year, when all is said and done), maybe then they can put our withdrawal in with their two defeat examples. We won't be that stupid and spiteful, will we?

Paths Taken and Not Taken

The idea that Iraq was a huge mistake because, after all, who can really tell how Iraq under Saddam would have ended up without our invasion, is supremely idiotic.

I think we can make some guesses, including the biggest mistake of all over Iraq's WMD status. Can anyone really doubt that Saddam would have eventually gotten nuclear weapons. I can't. And neither can Henninger:

The definitive account of Saddam's WMD ambitions is the Duelfer Report, issued by the Iraq Survey Group in 2005. Yes, the Duelfer Report concluded that Saddam didn't have active WMD. But at numerous points in the 1,000-page document, it asserted (with quotes from Iraqi politicians and scientists) that Saddam's goal was to free himself of U.N. sanctions and restart his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and other WMD.

The report: "Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability. . . . Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability." The Survey Group described Iraqi plans to develop three long-range ballistic missiles.

Saddam was obsessed with Iran. Imagine the effect on the jolly Iraqi's thinking come 2005 and the rise to stardom of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly mocking the West's efforts to shut his nuclear program and threatening enemies with annihilation. That year Ahmadinejad broke the U.N. seals at the Isfahan uranium enrichment plant. In North Korea, Kim Jong Il was flouting the civilized world, conducting nuclear-weapon tests and test-firing missiles into the Sea of Japan. In such a world, Saddam would have aspired to play in the same league as Iran and NoKo. Would we have "contained" him?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and Saddam Hussein in Iraq simultaneously would have incentivized Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan to enter the nuclear marketplace. Pakistan and India would be increasing their nuke-tinged tensions, not trying as now to ease them.

We ought to be a lot prouder of our troops coming home from Iraq than we are showing this week. They deserve a monument. That war wasn't just about helping Iraq. It was about us. The march across the nuclear threshold by lunatic regimes is a clear and present danger. The sacrifice made by the United States in Iraq took one of these nuclear-obsessed madmen off the table and gave the world more margin to deal with the threat that remains, if the world's leadership is up to it. A big if.

As I wrote long ago, in regard to chemical weapons, if Saddam was bluffing to deter Iran, how long would Iraq have taken to cover that bluff?

Further, I still don't rule out that Saddam had a small stockpile of chemical weapons to cover a gap between an Iranian attack and Iraqi production of chemical weapons from his stockpiles of raw materials and retained expertise. I still think that the conventional wisdom on Iraq's WMD has another step to take.

So Iraq's path absent the elimination of the Saddam regime was clear enough. He endured over a decade of sanctions because he refused to prove he had disarmed from all WMD. Remember, under the Persian Gulf War ceasefire, he was obligated to prove he had no more capacity to make WMD. Too many here say we didn't prove Iraq had WMD, when the obligations were exactly the opposite.

And we can see a potential path today that is much better--from the French (!) ambassador to Iraq:

Iraq is true laboratory of democracy in the Arab world today. It is there that the future of democracy in the region will play itself out. Iraq could potentially become a political model for its neighbors. And, whether one likes it or not, all this has come about thanks to the American intervention of 2003.

Thank you, ambassador. It is a sad day in our country's history when a French diplomat makes a better case for what we've achieved in Iraq than our own purportedly gifted president.

But it will take work to make that laboratory work and set an enduring example in the region. That is why we need to stay in Iraq to give them the help they need to prosper and entrench rule of law.

And by all means, get on that monument thing.

International Justice Delayed

Ah, international justice!

Judges warned Friday that Radovan Karadzic's genocide trial could stretch into 2014 — two years longer than expected — if prosecutors and the former Bosnian Serb leader do not speed up the case.

Karadzic's American lawyer said the landmark trial could last even longer than that, and urged judges to slash away a major part of the indictment if they want to rein in the case against the accused, who faces 11 charges, including two counts of genocide, for allegedly masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the Bosnian war.

Recall that the Bosnian war ended in 1995 after we led an intervention to end the killing spree.
 
And this trial could still be going two decades after the end of the fighting. At best on the time issue, if some of the charges are dropped to speed it up, the trial will not quite reach that milestone.
 
Karadzic will die in his sleep unconvicted. But that's the way international justice works. Even when they manage to latch on to an actual bad guy guilty of felony crimes as opposed to taking on the easier targets in the West for misdemeanor offenses or made-up crimes, they take so long that the concept of providing justice is a mockery.

I remain grateful that we handed over Saddam to the Iraqis who executed him after a speedy trial rather than turn the man over to the UN for trial.

When the Cowboy Rides Off

Hanson writes of the new nostalgia for Bush (or at the least, the realization that Obama hasn't been that successful so far as the anti-Bush).

Look, I had disagreements with the Bush administration over a number of domestic issues and some foreign policy issues. Who gets someone as president who meshes perfectly with their wishes? But in foreign policy, I at least trusted Bush to have an instinct to defend us. President Obama? Not so much.

Yet this caution has to recognize that President Obama has not been the anti-Bush in many foreign policy areas despite my fears:

Senator and then candidate Obama demagogued Bush on a variety of issues, which, as president, he simply flipped and endorsed. Remember Bush’s gulag at Guantanamo? Or how about the terror-producing Predators? Or the need for an immediate pull-out from Iraq? Or those terrible renditions and tribunals?

In case after case of national security, Obama dropped the cheap rhetorical one-upmanship, and, when invested with the responsibility of governance, simply adopted, or even trumped, the Bush protocols. General Petraeus, whose testimony Hillary once suggested required “a suspension of disbelief” and whom Obama cut off and did not allow to speak during his infamous 2007 Senate hearing, suddenly is to be Obama’s savior general.

Candidate Obama claimed the surge failed and all combat troops should be out of Bush’s Iraq war by March 2008. President Obama now calls Iraq a “remarkable chapter” as his vice president claims it as one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” In short, almost daily, Obama is following the Bush anti-terrorism policies — the irony made worse by petulance and ingratitude in not acknowledging his debt.

Yet my worries about our foreign policy remain. Why? Because while Bush instinctively knew he was a war president and was drawn to doing what is necessary to defend our nation and protect our national interests, Obama seems like he has to reason and calculate his way to the same place. As I wrote, we are at war but President Obama just doesn't seem to feel we are at war. Hanson puts it well:
 

Americans would prefer to be in a foxhole with George Bush, who would swagger and announce as decider-in-chief at H-hour, “OK, pard, we’re going over the top together on this one.” They wouldn’t want to be with Obama, who would stutter and give a long-drawn out exegesis why race and class had condemned us to such an unfair predicament, whose only solution is to go into a fetal position and condemn “them” who did this awful thing to us.

 
Note the long, drawn-out internal debate a year ago on increasing troop strength in Afghanistan. And when the president does go on instinct, it seems amazingly counter to our interests. Note the entire Honduras crisis when we quickly sided with the Chavez stooge Zelaya and then only slowly (and quietely) backed down when the Hondurans stubbornly defended their contstitution and democracy despite our pressure.
 
Things may yet work out fine under the Obama presidency. He has made good and bad decisions in foreign and defense policy, but I feared much worse. And we are a strong country that can recover from the bad, I think. Yet the unease over the president's instincts remain. I do miss Bush.
 
 I won't offer comments on the domestic side since that isn't what I do here and I don't think I can add much value to the debate. I certainly have opinions and I think I'm reasonably well read on many of the issues, but as under Bush when I stayed in my lane here, I will continue to do the same for Obama. And hope for the best as I did back then even as I focused on my foreign policies and defense priorities.
 
And kudos to Hanson for the Shane reference.

What is God Doing?

Stephen Hawkings weighs in on God:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

This torques me off. If God didn't create the universe, what the heck has he been doing all this time? Laying on the couch, eating Cheetos, and playing HALO?

He had but one job--create a universe where we can exercise free will to be good people. But did he do that? No.

Ne'er-do-well! Layabout!

Sometimes, You Just Have to Be Unilateral

I know that multilateralism is supposed to be the be all and end all of our foreign policy, but we can never be afraid to go it alone to defend our interests. Get allies when we can, of course, but never forget our objectives and don't let the promise of some help keep us from pursuing what we need to get.

After all, as Stratfor notes about Afghanistan, our allies there often have objectives different than our own:

•The United States does not want the country to revert to being a refuge for al Qaeda and other transnational jihadist groups. At the end of the day, this is the real U.S. national interest in Afghanistan. It is not counterinsurgency or building democracy or anything else.

•Russia does not want the Taliban to return to power. The Russians view the Taliban as a disease that can infect and erode their sphere of influence in countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and then move on to pose a threat to Russian control in the predominately Muslim regions of the Caucasus. This is why the Russians were so active in supporting the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime. There are reports, though, that the Russians have been aiding the Taliban in an effort to keep the United States tied down in Afghanistan, since as long as the United States is distracted there it has less latitude to counter Russian activity elsewhere.

•On the other side of that equation, Pakistan helped foster the creation of the Pashtun Taliban organization and then used the organization as a tool to exert its influence in Afghanistan. Facing enemies on its borders with India and Iran, Pakistan must control Afghanistan in order to have strategic depth and ensure that it will not be forced to defend itself along its northwest as well. While the emergence of the Pakistani Taliban and the threat it poses to Pakistan will alter Islamabad’s strategy somewhat — and Pakistan has indeed been recalculating its use of militant proxies — Pakistan will try hard to ensure that the regime in Kabul is pro-Pakistani.

•This is exactly why India wants to play a big part in Afghanistan — to deny Pakistan that strategic depth. In the past, India worked with Russia and Iran to support the Northern Alliance and keep the Taliban from total domination of the country. Indications are that the Indians are teaming up with the Russians and Iranians once again.

•Iran also has an interest in the future of Afghanistan and has worked to cultivate certain factions of the Taliban by providing them with shelter, weapons and training. The Iranians also have been strongly opposed to the Taliban and have supported anti-Taliban militants, particularly those from the Shiite Hazara people. When the Taliban captured Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998, they killed 11 Iranian diplomats and journalists. Iran does not want the Taliban to become too powerful, but it will use them as a tool to hurt the United States. Iran will also attempt to install a pro-Iranian government in Kabul or, at the very least, try to thwart efforts by the Pakistanis and Americans to exert control over the country.

And our enemies have different objectives, too, even if some here think they should have the same goals as we have.

I disagree with Stratfor's judgment that we are losing the war, but I agree with their summary of what we need to do to win. Although I think counter-insurgency is the way to go right now to get there in order to strangle the Taliban and their drug lord allies enough to get them to give up the fight. I've always said my objectives for Afghanistan just aren't that high. As long as we aren't tying our victory to creating a centralized government in Kabul, I think we'll do just fine:

The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.

And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Hopefully our military surge recedes by the end of 2011 and we can get down to a single combat brigade plus air power that function as a fire brigade and a hammer for the central government should a local difficulty exceed Afghan military capabilities.

Oh, and of course the anti-war side will stop seeing Afghanistan as the "good war." The Left will start advocating defeat there, too.

My objectives for Afghanistan have never been high , and I think we could get there without the surge or the risk to our troops in landlocked Afghanistan should Pakistan collapse or turn hostile. But as long as our supply lines through Pakistan hold, a surge can get the job done faster and maybe achieve more.

One, I was way off in assuming our Predator strikes would be phased out, although I wanted an effort to extend our ability to fight across the border into Pakistan. And while I think eventually we can draw down, my hopes for the end of 2011 that I expressed nearly two years ago won't happen. But I still think the broad outline is valid even if my time line was too optimistic. Sadly, I was absolutely correct in how the anti-war side would turn on the "good war."

But do remember that getting allies to help us doesn't mean they check their own national interests at the door and sign up wholly for our purposes. It is nice to have allies. It is foolish to hobble our efforts to keep them on the line when their objectives may work at cross purposes to ours.

It's all about the nuance, people.

With Apologies to the Nervous, Punctual Friend

Remember the incident in what looked like a probe of our airline security when agents found suspicious items in some luggage?

There they found a cellphone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, three cellphones taped together and several watches taped together, but because no explosives were discovered, he was cleared for the flight to Chicago.

Unfortunately, the man, through no fault of his own he says, ended up on a plane with another man, but without that luggage.

But they have been released:

Today, the two Yemeni men with ties to metro Detroit were to fly back to their country -- courtesy of the FBI, according to Dutch authorities and the attorney for one of the men.

Their trip comes after Dutch officials cleared them Wednesday and released them without charges. But not before their reputations were ruined, the attorney said.

If their reputations have been wrongly sullied, that is truly unfortunate. But this has not dragged on in the media, so unless they complain so much that everyone remembers their names because of weeks of news stories, they can easily resume their lives. Their names should not have been released given that no charges were made. But the idea that they were profiled because of their ethnicity seems far-fetched:

The detention of two Yemeni men this week on suspicions of terrorism has renewed the intense debate over whether Arab Americans are being unjustly profiled by federal authorities trying to thwart terrorist attacks.

Separating from his luggage and the odd contents were what flagged the two, as far as I can tell. I'd hope that anyone doing that would get extra attention. And for me, this explanation strains credulity:

It's common, local Yemenis say, to pack items as bundles when bringing them as gifts.

Well, you know, maybe that's one local custom that should be shelved as long as items taped together in luggage can look like a home-made bomb on a scanner screen.

And spare a little sympathy for the unnamed friend in Yemen--the anal retentive guy who is very punctual, gets nerve-wracked at the thought of being late to an appointment, and has no way to see what time it is or call ahead to double check his appointment time--who had to wait days to get his thoughtful gift of Pepto Bismol and a phone.

Look, I don't think people should be profiled based on ethnicity. I hope these guys weren't tagged that way. It will do more harm than good in my mind by alienating law-abiding people and just get the terrorists to look for non-profiled recruits to plant the bombs while security is focused on the wrong people. Behavior is a better guide to judging whether someone needs higher scrutiny. And in my book, parting company with your luggage--intended or not--is a flag. And having a bottle of fluid taped to a potential detonating device--a cell phone--should raise a red flag.

Having tripped red flags, being of a certain ethnicity should not deter added attention to a person any more than being of a certain ethnicity absent red flags should automatically trigger added attention.

But over time, that's what over-the-top reactions about profiling to incidents like this will do to our security efforts, even without any malice on the part of the travellers.

Not a Hurricane. It's a Pageant

Instapundit rips the coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which our news media still considers a mission accomplished moment:

What the press found superlative about its Katrina reporting was the realization — very comforting post-RatherGate — that if they all agreed on a storyline and pushed it, they could still move the polls despite the alternative media. That the reporting was crap didn’t matter at all.

It didn't take long after the event to figure out that the coverage was awful. I remember being astounded at how bad the press was in reacting to the storm. But that didn't stop the media from passing out medals all around to anyone remotely near a camera for the disaster.

There is more on the failure. How many foreigners still think that New Orleans was the scene of cannibalism, rape, and murder based on what our reporters told them?

Is it any wonder I have such contempt for the establishment media?

This We'll Defend

As long as our nation is in the mood to thank our troops for accomplishing their mission, never forget what one determined soldier can achieve. Or in this case, one determined tank crew:

On September 1, 1950, MSG Ernie Kouma, Company A, 72nd Tank Battalion, was ordered to hold a portion of the Nakdong River line. The North Koreans were crossing the Nakdong River in force and overran the American defenses, destroying two tanks, but MSG Kouma kept fighting. When everyone else withdrew because the North Korean attack was too fierce, he and his tank crew stayed and held the line. He fought all night and most of the next day with his single M4 Sherman tank. As his ammunition ran low and the enemy surrounded his tank, MSG Kouma jumped from the armored turret, coming under hostile fire, and reached the .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the rear deck of his M4 Sherman tank. He fired point-blank into the North Koreans until his .50-caliber was out of ammunition. He killed North Koreans, but more kept coming. With his machine gun out of ammunition, he threw grenades and then drew his .45-caliber pistol, killing the remaining North Koreans who tried to climb up onto his tank. MSG Kouma held up an entire North Korean regiment for a day, and he and his crew killed about 250 of the enemy, blunting the enemy attack and holding the line. If the North Koreans had broken through that day—if Ernie Kouma had thought only of himself and run away—the Pusan Perimeter might have collapsed, and the history of the world would have been different today. He didn’t, and that made all the difference. For his actions on that day, MSG Kouma was awarded the Medal of Honor.

By comparison to what that crew did, I might as well have been a civilian despite wearing the Army uniform for a little while. I stand in awe.

Man, would that make a great movie. But unless the crew gunned down civilians and torched a village, I suppose it is one that won't be made by our current industry. There are more stories at the linked article.

Forget About Surgical Strikes on Iran

As I long ago concluded, Stratfor thinks that our target set would have to be far broader than just nuclear facilities if we go after Iran's nuclear facilities. It will be a war no matter what we call it.

It's an interesting piece.

Dawn of the Dread

The president spoke last night of the formal end of our combat operations in Iraq and the beginning of Operation New Dawn to support Iraq in moving forward. This is indeed a great occasion, given the conviction of many of our leadership class that the war could not be won, that we were doomed to defeat, and that they had to do all they could to get us to retreat and lose before the cost became higher.

The speech was fine, and as good as war supporters can reasonably hope for given that the president who gave the speech was one of that pro-retreat leadership class. Yes, there were parts that grated on nerves. But other than having George W. Bush give the speech, I'm not sure I would have been happy at an emotional level at the words or tone. So on substance, it's good enough for government work. I hope our friends and enemies in and around Iraq heard the words of support and believe President Obama will defend what he thanked our troops for gaining.

I think this assessment by Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, is very appropriate:

"As an Iraqi and a victim of Saddam Hussein, I can say that the war was worth it because it ended one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world," Zebari told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "We appreciate the sacrifices the U.S. military and the American people made while standing with us in these very, very difficult times," he added.

"The war for Iraq's future is ongoing and it should be fought and won by the Iraqi people and their leaders," Zebari said. "It's more or less the same war Americans fought against terrorist and extreme elements who want to undermine the democratic government. But it's our duty to fight it and win it."

In time, Iraqis may be as ungrateful as the French for their liberation, but right now we have an ally in the common fight against jihadi terrorists; and they still appreciate what we did. They miss us already as they face the future without our troops so prominent in the fight.

Hanson has a fine piece looking back on our victory.

The Telegraph has a piece less fine. Aside from the mis-statement that al Qaeda had no presence in Iraq prior to our invasion, this is really silly:

So was it worth it? That is an impossible question to answer, for we have no way of knowing what Saddam would have done if the Allies had backed down in the spring of 2003. Iraq may now be, after Lebanon, the most democratic state in the Arab Middle East, but that is hardly a crowded field. President Obama – who opposed the war from the start – said at the weekend that Iraq is now "like any sovereign, independent nation, free to chart its own course". That will only really be true when the last Americans leave; only then will we start to learn whether this was a prize worth fighting for.

I expect more nuance from the heirs to an empire. Do we really have no way of projecting Saddam's probable course absent our invasion based on his nearly three-decade long reign of terror and blood-letting?

And Iraq's democracy is less valuable for being so rare in the Middle East? Really?

And is Iraq not sovereign because American troops remain to defend them after the war? Hmm, please break the news to the Kuwaitis, South Koreans, Germans, Italians, and Japanese that they are not yet fully sovereign until the last US troop leaves. And let's not forget the US forces still in Britain along with those other countries, who have prevented Britain from really being a sovereign, independent nation, free to chart its own course.

We've won the Iraq War. In truth, it was won two years ago. Yes, we must win the peace (and more war in the region), but we can move forward into this new dawn with confidence that we can face our enemies and defeat them. In time, perhaps decades, we'll be able to get our force levels in Iraq down to South Korea levels and make plans for how best to send reinforcements.

This is the beginning of a good day, people. Embrace it.

Worthy of a Raised Eye Brow

Did alien cells rain down on India (tip to Instapundit)?

For years, claims have circulated that red rain which fell in India in 2001, contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive  ...

It would be fair to say that more evidence will be required before Kerala's red rain can be satisfactorily explained. In the meantime, it looks a fascinating mystery.

Fascinating, indeed. I'll want more proof, of course. But interesting if true, to say the least.

The Skeptical Alarmist?

It is with some regret that I note the passing of Bjorn Lomborg, long a voice of reason on global warming, to the global warming side of the debate:

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront."

I'd clarify one thing, however. Lomborg was hardly a skeptic of global warming, as far as I could tell, though actual skeptics welcomed the questions he raised in the face of the steamroller of warming so-called consensus. As the article on his switch notes:

Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.

Yes, he raised objections to the conclusions on the question of human-caused warming's extent, and he questioned the socialistic solutions proposed by global warmers, but he was never a skeptic in the sense that the warmists would describe real skeptics--a "denialist."

So his "defection" is not as great as the warmists would like to portray it. I can only hope that Lomborg will maintain his skepticism on the solutions to the so-called problem even as he has concluded that yes, there is a problem indeed that must be addressed.

And good luck to the man. He will find that once inside the religion of warmists, any deviation from their religion will be dealt with harshly, with more venom than he received as an outsider. One expects little from the heathens, after all--but the chosen ones must adjust their views to the consensus. Now go and emit no more.