The Great Gall of China

China's first line of defense against America's pivot to the Pacific is right here at home:

China has been more aggressively using lobbying and economic clout to suppress criticism of China in the West. At the same time China encourages foreign academics, journalists and government officials to give favorable treatment of the communist dictatorship in China by using cash, favors and threats. While many foreigners rebuff the Chinese, many do not, and China keeps at it.

This includes pressuring companies with ties to China to keep their own corner of the universe free of criticism of China. The remake of Red Dawn, for example, was rewritten to make North Korea the invading country instead of China. I know the movie requires one to willingly suspend disbelief to accept an invasion of America, but suspending it to the degree that allows you to accept North Korea as the invader requires the physical removal of parts of the brain related to awareness of the real world. I think Hillary Clinton would have trouble with that level of suspension.

Good grief, people. It would be more plausible to construct a scenario where Canada invades us.

But who are we to complain about what China does? Other than being behind the destruction of a movie that I will not watch as a result, they are reasonably enlightened, after all.

Citizens and Not Hired Guns

While members of the armed forces have limits on what they can say or do in order to maintain order and discipline, they are not without free speech rights.

I'll be interested to see what comes of this apparent controversy about a Marine in trouble for initially saying he wouldn't obey orders from President Obama but who, as the online debate continued, clarified that he would not obey unlawful orders.

I enlisted under President Reagan and my service ended during the Clinton presidency. I simply did not complain about the commander-in-chief while in uniform. I just didn't.

But I will be interested to see who complains about the Marine. When I enlisted, I was taught that my oath required me to obey the lawful orders of those lawfully placed in command over me. That is, I had an obligation to disobey unlawful orders from my actual commanders as well as an obligation to disobey even lawful orders from someone unlawfully assuming command.

Granted, that's a difficult position to put an enlisted man in and expect a judicial ruling in a moment. But nonetheless, the caveat to obeying orders exists.  "Just following orders" is no defense for actions taken.

If the context of that Marine's comments is correct and he was simply saying he would not obey unlawful orders, he's on firm ground. And you'd think that liberals especially would want a military composed of men and women who will not obey unlawful orders and who will not obey superiors who place themselves unlawfully in command of troops.

Still, the Marine should try to restrict his exercise of free speech in ways that don't address the president. Tea Party? Fine. But a Marine should know that freedom isn't free and sacrifices to defend freedom are necessary. If he must, he can wait for his enlistment term to end and criticize the commander-in-chief as much as he wants.

Take the Chance to Hurt Our Enemy

I still don't know why we aren't trying to arm the Syrian opposition. Their exact composition just isn't that important to me because I don't support arming the Syrian opposition in order to improve Syria. I support arming the Syrian opposition to harm our real enemy, Iran. And have no doubt, the loss of Syria would be a blow to Iran:

Iran will be the biggest loser when Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime falls, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

Not that I don't think that Syria can gain a lot by getting rid of their tyrant and ruling class, but that isn't my prime objective. Iran is our enemy. They have been for more than three decades and they've waged war on us in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I say stick it to them while we can.

Also, I take exception to the idea that it is a matter of "when" Assad falls rather than "if." It feels like we are trying to avoid making tough decisions by assuming that we don't need to make tough decisions to achieve a result that benefits us. Syria is not without friends or options and this could yet end with Assad in power:

The government has increased the use of force to suppress anti-government activities. Thousands of civilians, and far fewer armed rebels, have been killed in the last week. Russia, China and Iran have led the effort to prevent outside aid for the Syrian rebels, especially military aid. The state-controlled Russian media, for example, is full of stories about hundreds of foreign agents and mercenaries in Syria, causing most of the violence. ...

This propaganda campaign, largely unreported in the West, resonated with Arab populations long sustained by state-supported paranoia and conspiracy theories. As a result, a growing number of Arabs are not as eager to do in Syria what was done in Libya. With Arab League support wavering, the Turks are also not willing to cross the border and quickly settle the matter.

We've made progres on the Syria question since the Obama administration now thinks Assad should go. Now all we have to do is get the administration to accept that we might have to do something to get that result. There's no such thing as a Strategy Fairy who will come and wave their wand and make everything work out just grand.

How's That Confidence Level Now?

We obviously have no smoking gun proof that Iran is working on a nuclear weapon. We can note nuclear progress that has nothing to do with civilian nuclear programs and we can note words that strongly imply that Iran wants to use them.

Many argue that all this work still doesn't mean that the Iranian leaders have made the decision to put them together into a weapon.

Some can even note that of course Iran wants nuclear weapons--to protect themselves from potential American aggression (See? It's really America's fault!)--even as they demand iron-clad proof of what they assume.

Hey, maybe that American professor who opposed the Iraq War and wanted "a million Mogadishus" (Black Hawk Down events) to deter us will get his wish!

So the question is whether the lack of iron-clad, smoking gun proof means Iran isn't building nuclear weapons or whether they are just good at hiding what they are doing. I know which way I go on this.

Hey, what do you know?

Satellite images of an Iranian military facility appear to show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left by tests of a nuclear-weapon trigger, diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Recall that Syria did this after Israel bombed the nuclear site that North Koreans were working on, prior to saying the IAEA could inspect the site. It may be that this is a standard North Korean method. Which we should keep in mind as we seek to put inspectors back into North Korea.

Actually, I don't think a Facebook photo of Ahmadinejad standing next to a missile where he just wrote, in Farsi and English, "One missile for the one-bomb state" on the nose cone would be iron-clad proof for those who oppose stopping Iran. Any iron-clad proof is likely to come way too late.

I don't understand why opponents stress the bad things that could happen if we or Israel strikes Iran. Yes, bad things could happen. But the funny thing is, many of the bad things assume Iran is completely irrational by arguing Iran will--quite naturally--attack America and Arab countries if Israel attacks Iran. Or they assume Iran will choke off oil exports that will affect Iran just as badly if Hormuz is shut down for long.

But far worse things could happen if an Iran as irrational as even opponents of attacking Iran's nuclear program gets nuclear weapons. Even if Iran doesn't quickly use their nuclear capacity to attack Israel--who would then respond in kind--the resulting path of nuclear proliferation in the volatile Middle East would in time lead to an even worse nuclear exchange. I'm pretty confident about that. Is bombing Iran really madness?

My old friend Professor Sir Michael Howard, now 89 years old but still the repository of greater wisdom than any other British strategic thinker, said to me a while back: ‘The only thing worse than the prospect of an Iran with nuclear weapons would be the consequences of using force to stop them.’ This still seems a statesmanlike assessment.

We have learned to live with a world in which the Pakistanis, Indians and North Koreans have nuclear weapons — and, of course, the Israelis.

However reckless the fanatics in Tehran, it is hard to imagine them launching an unprovoked nuclear assault on Israel, amid the certainty of annihilatory retaliation.

Their failure of imagination shouldn't stay our hand. The British faced a madman before who they couldn't imagine would act in any way other than that of a properly trained British gentlemen when faced with reality and the horrors of war. But not a madman with nukes who might think taking one for the ummah is a beautiful idea with acceptable collateral damage (if they even think that "involuntary martyrs on a nuclear scale is damage at all).

You ain't seen nothin', yet, on that score if we let Iran get nuclear weapons.

I'd rather have regime change in Iran to stop them. But failure to spend the last decade working on that or using the last decade to squeeze Iran economically to increase unrest has made anything we might do on those fronts too little and too late.

Opponents of striking Iran say use of force should be the last resort only after all other options are exhausted? I dispute that but let's assume that is correct. Hey, guess what? All other options to prevent Iran from going nuclear are pretty much exhausted.

And guess what else? Waiting so long before striking is just giving Iran not just the chance to bury their program deeper, but to disperse it to places we don't see. Are we having fun yet?

So in the end, striking Iran doesn't "solve" the problem. I admit that freely. Few actions in the foreign affairs realm are silver bullets that solve a problem once and for all. In the end, a more enduring solution to nutballs in Iran wanting nukes isn't to keep the nutballs from getting nukes but to get rid of the nutballs. But for now, we must have more time--time with a non-nuclear Iran.

Friends in High Places

American aircraft dropped supplies to Mali soldiers cut off and under siege by rebels:

A U.S. Air Force C-130 recently dropped supplies to several hundred Mali soldiers and civilians besieged in the town of Tessalit, near the Algerian border. Tessalit has been under siege by Tuareg rebels for several weeks, and a relief force of Mali troops was recently rebuffed before it could reach the town.

The Strategypage post describes our use of GPS-guided parachutes, assuming that is what we used.

I wondered if we could do this in Syria. Still, Tuareg rebels lack anything that could hit a C-130 flying high enough. Over Syria we'd need to drop much farther away from the drop zone to avoid Syrian air defense missiles.

But the morale effect of getting resupplied from America with such an amazing procedure has to be pretty positive.

Do I Even Have to Ask What if Bush Did This?

We will find you and we will kill you, and we don't need no stinkin' arrest warrant:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has defended the targeted killing of U.S. nationals living outside the United States who have taken up arms against the United States. ...

Holder added, "when such individuals take up arms against this country and join Al-Qaeda in plotting attacks designed to kill their fellow Americans, there may be only one realistic and appropriate response."

Mind you, I don't have a problem with this. I don't know why American citizens who decide to join an enemy to wage war on us to destroy America should simultaneously get the benefits of being a citizen. I mean, really, if they get injured in a training camp should they qualify for disability payments? Or Obamacare?

But then I'm old-fashioned and think politics should stop at the water's edge. We're at war and rather than switching my position on what is proper, I am grateful whenever this administration is willing to defend our country.

But what's the excuse of our liberal supporters of President Obama? Wouldn't this be "shredding the Constitution" if done between 2001 and 2008? Mind you, they also think that people who have actually read the Constitution are a strange breed, but obviously consistency isn't the most important quality they cherish.

There are a few liberal voices that hammer President Obama for anti-terrorism policies continued from the Bush administration. They are wrong but at least they are still judging by the same standards. Why are all the outraged BDS-afflicted people who once raged at Bush in print, TV, and in social settings so willing to stay quiet now even if they know they once opposed such measures and are uncomfortable that The One is doing the same thing?

We are at war. It doesn't matter if we are tired of waging it. If our enemies aren't tired, the war will go on.

What Violence?

Is violence decreasing in Afghanistan and is it a reason to bug out early?

As senior congressional Democrats call for a faster troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rate of successful enemy attacks on NATO troops is lower than previous winters, according to NATO data.

But some say the numbers can't be taken at face value, or used to convincingly show that, as Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said last week, "significant progress" has recently been made in the war-torn country.

There are problems with the numbers and interpreting the numbers.

One, violence isn't really a metric except in extreme changes that indicate one side has just collapsed (and so there is no way for the other side to shoot--so far less violence). As I explained during the surge when incidents go up, that isn't a sign of losing. It is a sign that more troops are in action. And since we used those additional troops more aggressively, that also increased levels of violence by pushing into enemy areas.

So I won't jump on decreased numbers to prove we are winning. Our troop levels are going down, we smashed up the Taliban in the south, and we may very well be using our troops less aggressively for political reasons. All those factors would result in some decreases. I'd worry if they didn't go down, but I won't declare victory because they are going down.

Second, what about the numbers themselves? The IED numbers are suspect in my mind. IEDs are a bigger part of the enemy's attacks and we changed the rules about how we counted them. We used to count IED discoveries or failures as attacks. Only IEDs that explode are counted:

NATO only includes IEDs that actually exploded.

"So all of the bombs they discovered and defused, or which did not go off, were not included in their IED attack statistics," Foust says.

I did say in the past that it was kind of weird to count discovered or faulty IEDs as "attacks" since you can't count indirect fire (rockets or mortars) attacks aborted or gun ambushes called off because the attackers got too scared or delayed by an orbiting UAV. But if the goal of your statistics is to measure enemy activity rather than safety, you shouldn't fail to count what you can just because there are things you can't count.

So I have to ask, why did we change the way we count IED incidents? Indeed, I did ask that recently:

While our casualties are down this year, which shows we've had success (unless we are avoiding casualties by sitting in our bases and not seeking out the enemy), civilian casualties are up. The report at least notes this is almost all due to Taliban attacks and that the Taliban are deliberately targeting civilians.

But if the statistical measure of attacks has been made, is the change retroactive or did we just change mid-fight to affect the graphs? I can understand changing how we measure violence. As I said, counting discovered IEDs always seemed like a case of looking where the light is best since we can't discover a planned mortar attack that is cancelled at the last moment or anything like that. But I understood why we would want to count failed IED attacks even when we couldn't count other types of aborted attacks. If our new statistics were changed going back to not count discovered IEDs, our measure is still good.

Look, my impression of the trend is that we are winning on the battlefield. I know it is common to say we are losing. But I don't see that. We've pounded down the enemy in the south of Kandahar and Helmand provinces, and need to move east. There we need to nail down the areas adjacent to Pakistan and we need to neutralize or seriously degrade the enemy sanctuaries inside Pakistan. What we then achieve with that military victory is another thing altogether. If you think military victory means we have to set up an Afghanistan government that is governed from Kabul where the debates are over bike paths, well then yeah, you are probably right to say we are losing.

But my objectives for Afghanistan have never been high. It is peripheral to the broader struggle against Arab jihadi ideology. It is important only because its remoteness allowed it to be a sanctuary for jihadis to attack us at home on 9/11. All I want to do with our battlefield victory is make sure friendly Afghans at the nominally national level and at the local level that counts prevent jihadis from setting up shop again:

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.

Afghanistan will be a violent place for many generations even without a war going on. So aim low and you won't be disappointed--or so easily panicked.

But the question remains, are we compiling statistics to measure what is happening to guide our actions? Or does the administration know what its actions will be and just needs the statistics to justify what they will do?

UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link.

Mars Needs Women!

Apparently, the European Commission thinks that the way to get people to support the EU super-state is to tell Europeans that the--ah, non-Europeans--are coming for their women.



I'm not so much amazed at how stupid this is as I am amazed that the Euro-elites in charge thought it was a great propaganda stunt.

I suppose I should be grateful that one of the threats wasn't a pasty white Republican American in a suit.

I hereby retract my partial unease of my EUzi crack.

Europeans should not welcome their new EUbot overlords--even if they promise to hold back the hordes of unwelcome Asian, Moslem, and African suitors who might prey on their lady folk.

A China Stew

I seemed to run across a lot of China-related stuff today. Let's see if I can tie it all together.

First, Austin Bay addresses China in light of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War:

The Chinese have concluded, according to the SSI, that Argentina failed to conduct an "accurate pre-conflict strategic assessment." Indeed, the junta underestimated British resolve. Chinese war planners intend to avoid that mistake. However, the Argentines were tasked with "preventing an outside power from interfering in a territorial dispute" -- a direct analog to Taiwan, in Beijing's estimate.

The Chinese believe Argentina failed to attack Britain's biggest weakness: its long sea and air supply line. The Argentines did not dramatically reinforce their ground units on the islands, nor did they upgrade island airfields to handle high-performance jets. Their aerial refueling capabilities were limited. As a result, Britain's jump jet carriers provided just enough air power to give the fleet a protective "bubble."

China intends to pierce any adversary's protective "bubble." Beijing has ballistic missiles designed to suppress Taiwan's airfields and conceivably U.S. bases on Guam. China intends to triple its arsenal of land-based maritime strike aircraft; robust air refueling capabilities increases their range. China is building more diesel and nuclear submarines, to attack supply ships and -- yes -- super-carriers. Trust that any Chinese invasion force successfully seizing an island will receive heavy ground, air and air defense reinforcements with alacrity. And never say never.

Still, this doesn't mean that I think that China automatically attacks America when they attack Taiwan. China insists that this is an internal matter so why would China make it an inter-state fight right off the bat by attacking America (and Japan, if it hits our bases on Okinawa, too)?

Not that I'd assume that when we plan our deployments and readiness in range of Chinese assets. Never say never.

I looked at the same publication that Bay addresses and figured the biggest lesson was that China doesn't need to defeat us to win--they just need to batter us enough to hold us off and buy time while they achieve their objectives.

On the Taiwan question, Stratfor does say never. Their overview of China's geopolitical environment is excellent. They even rightly point out that China may be rising but they aren't anywhere near to overtaking us as the most powerful country on the planet.

But in discussing buffers needed to shield the Han eastern core, they strangely don't mention Taiwan. It is doubly strange since China has elevated the status of Taiwan to a core interest on par with the status of Tibet. They aren't shy about reminding us:

Addressing reporters at an annual news conference, [China's Foreign Minister] Yang said the key to sustaining momentum is for each to heed the other's core concerns, although he mentioned only issues important to Beijing.

"In particular, the U.S. side needs to honor its commitments and carefully and properly handle Taiwan- and Tibet-related issues that concern China's core interests," Yang said at the packed conference, held on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's legislature.

Beijing has long pressured Washington to end arms sales to Taiwan — a territory China claims — and withdraw support for Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom China accuses of fomenting separatism in Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Granted, seizing Taiwan still doesn't address the problem of our Navy's ability to blockade China from a distance, but it does prevent Taiwan from being used as a jumping off point for attacks along the Chinese coastal core--such as attacks to disrupt their shore-based anti-access/area denial assets like aircraft and anti-ship missiles intended to keep us at bay.

But as I noted, Stratfor thinks invasion of Taiwan is not possible:

Indeed, the fear of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is unfounded. It cannot mount an amphibious assault at that distance, let alone sustain extended combat logistically.

I've long disagreed, noting that China might take risks and that it is wrong to assume an American template for amphibious operations.

Stratfor is useful for geopolitical information, but on military matters I don't have the same level of respect. Stratfor notes that China wants ports on the Indian Ocean (Burma and Pakistan could be of use here) but needs rail access to these ports to be useful:

Beijing cannot simply assume that building a port will give it unrestricted access to the port. Add to this that roads and rail lines are easily sabotaged by guerrilla forces or destroyed by air or missile attacks.

It is simply not true that rail lines are easily cut. Sure, those long stationary targets can easily be sabotaged or struck from the air, but our experience with supply lines in long conflicts in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam shows that rail (or road) lines can be struck but they can't be closed. The enemy will repair damage or reroute traffic. Perhaps the mistake is in thinking that a supply line needs to run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week with rail cars or trucks bumper-to-bumper moving supplies. That is wrong. A supply line needs to be open only a fraction of the time to supply all a military force needs to operate. Indeed, enemy attacks on our supply lines in Iraq demonstrate the same problem, too. We never ran short of supplies because of the extensive effort against our convoys.

So I take Stratfor's claim that China could never attack Taiwan with a sea of salt.

Again, I won't say China is about to overtake us in power. They have many problems with their military that would hobble them in a war with America:

In reality, a lot of the budget still disappears into questionable projects or non-military activities. Corruption remains a major problem in the military, as it has for thousands of years. China does not like to give this much publicity, and foreign media tend to ignore it.

But as I've emphasized, China doesn't need to defeat us. They need to delay fighting us while they defeat Taiwan. Is Taiwan's military likely to be more like ours or China's? If China is facing a Taiwanese military with similar problems as China has, doesn't that change all the calculations?

And as I've repeated enough to be tiresome, China is close to Taiwan and we are far. China has an opportunity in the time it takes us to move our military power close.

Strategypage also makes a mistake in assuming China won't attack Taiwan even though they aren't in the "never" school of Chinese capabilities:

The Chinese try to explain away the military buildup opposite Taiwan as political theater. This may be true, for a failed attempt to take Taiwan by force would not only disrupt the economy (and create a lot of unhappy Chinese), but would be a major failure by the government. Dictatorships cannot survive too many such failures, or too many angry citizens.

Strategypage dismisses the hot rhetoric of China's top brass:

For example, what alarms Americans most frequently is how the U.S. is being demonized by the Chinese military leadership. Chinese politicians speak in more friendly terms, while tolerating the bellicose attitudes of their generals and admirals. The politicians refuse to rein in the aggressive attitudes of their military commanders. China experts counsel that the rants from the military are mainly to build morale within the ranks, and make it easier for the politicians to reduce corruption in the armed forces.

That's a dangerous game China's leaders play. And we dismiss it as theater at our peril.

First of all, if defeat in war could be fatal to the regime, doesn't the nationalistic propaganda create danger in failing to try to win? At what level does failing to attack Taiwan become a defeat in the minds of the people of China raised on that bellicose attitude? China's leaders could well decide that the certainty of losing power to a revolt or to fellow leaders willing to fight (or just say they are) is more dangerous than attempting an invasion of Taiwan even if it risks war with America.

Further, the Chinese leaders believe they get to decide when China goes to war even if their generals have a more bellicose attitude. We are supposed to ignore the threats of the generals on the assumption that the more reasonable and rational political leaders would never ever risk war with us and doom their economic growth. But what if we have no idea about who gets to order the PLA into action?

And most broadly, how do we know that the Chinese who get to decide on questions of war or peace will define what is rational the same way we would (or think we would define it in a crisis, as if we are immune to passions that distort reason)?

The Chinese purportedly take the long view and are patient. Whether or not that is true (I'm not convinced), "never" clearly falls outside any rational definition of the long view.

China most clearly wants Taiwan and I don't know why we spend so much time explaining to ourselves that it is impossible for China to invade or that it is irrational for China to invade. I take the Chinese at their word that they want Taiwan and think that someone will give the order when it makes perfect sense for them to do so.

China may be stewing in a host of internal and strategic problems that hobble their military in relation to us. But China is making ROC soup and the ingredients are adding up.

Missing the Point

I am not satisfied that the employee who took away a child's lunch and gave her chicken nuggets was punished.

The problem isn't that the school district policy wasn't followed properly.

The problem is that the school district policy isn't that a child's parent can't send whatever the eff they think is appropriate for their own child!

Taxing My Memory

Oh, ef me.

I started my taxes yesterday and printed out the completed forms last night after typing the data in online. Hey, I'm not totally old school even though I use paper and the US Mail to submit my tax forms.

I left the forms and instructions up on my computer over night, figuring I'd walk away and then check the printed copies today for any errors today. Then I can just copy them and mail them. Or correct errors and reprint them.

Well, I thought I could do that until I opened up the Internet Explorer window for that series of pages to find an error message saying that the inputs were gone and that I should contact the person who made them in order to see them. For all of my forms at the state and federal level.

That helpful suggestion would be a problem to use, for obvious reasons.

Oh well, maybe I don't have any entry or math errors on all my forms.

If I spelled my name wrong, or something equally stupid, I'm going to be really annoyed.

Maybe I have some white-out that didn't dry up some time in the 1990s?

Funny enough, I had just seen a headline about a looming solar storm potentially affecting us here on Earth and it occurred to me that I shouldn't leave my forms up there for long. Apparently, we don't need an Electronic Apocalypse to affect me personally on the Internet.

UPDATE: Well, I only messed up one state form, failing to transfer numbers from another form to it. Not that it changed the final number at all, but the paperwork must be filed.

And as an aside, what a renewed joy it is to use a computer again with a fully functional left mouse button. It's amazing what you get used to if the pain is gradually increased. Hey, this is a tax post, after all.

Flash-Bang Above

I've droned on that China needs to win a war against Taiwan quickly to overwhelm the Taiwanese before America can reinforce our forward forces in the western Pacific and smash any Chinese force that strays too far from the Chinese mainland.

Blinding our satellite coverage is one way to knock us back and unbalance us long enough to achieve that quick win over China:

The DIA [Note: Defense Intelligence Agency] has discovered that the Chinese are working hard on jamming satellite signals and using lasers to damage satellites. All this is in addition to Chinese work on tracking satellites, a prerequisite for damaging or destroying them.

The Japanese thought pretty much the same thing (without the satellite thing, obviously). But we didn't stay knocked back and we came after Japan even though it took years.

On the other hand, Japan didn't have nuclear weapons. I'd rather stop the Chinese in their initial rush rather than count on cooler heads prevailing in Peking as we push them back.

UPDATE: While zapping our satellites would be an act of war easily recognizable, and so probably wouldn't be used at the same time China hits Taiwan (as I've said, China calls Taiwan an internal issue; so why would China make it an international issue by hitting America unless they have to?), cyber-warfare is tougher to identify and if done in low enough doses to disrupt our preparations to move forces to the western Pacific, could be done at the same time as the initial attack on Taiwan:

Chinese cyberwarfare would pose a "genuine risk" to the U.S. military in a conflict, for instance over Taiwan or disputes in the South China Sea, according to a report prepared for the U.S. Congress.

Operations against computer networks have become fundamental to Beijing's military and national development strategies over the past decade, said the 136-page analysis by Northrop Grumman Corp released on Thursday by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Do some of this as a shot across the bow and they could slow down our reaction. And save full cyber-war attacks and satellite attacks for the stage when we are about to challenge the Chinese area denial region that they hope will keep us away from China while they subdue Taiwan.

Groundhog Day

Our European friends want to start a new round of negotiations with Iran over their nuclear weapons program. Our Europeans-at-heart in the White House will no doubt go along.

A slight problem is that the Iranians deny they are working on nuclear weapons.

Not to worry, the negotiations have a way to go before we get into the nitty gritty of stopping an Iranian nuclear weapons program. No, we have to take baby steps of "building confidence:"

Top international Iran negotiator Catherine Ashton has written to Iran proposing new talks on its nuclear program as soon as possible. But Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, stresses in her letter to Iran's Saeed Jalili, the talks should initially focus on a confidence-building measure.

I'm confident that the Iranians won't do anything to build confidence in their ability to negotiate since the Iranians deny doing anything wrong and insist that negotiations are only useful to get us to accept what they are doing.

On the bright side, we won't have to keep on going through the charade of this approach to Iran forever. Iran will go nuclear and then they won't even bother to talk to us at all.

Muddling Through a Death Spiral

Defense spending in the Western world is under tremendous pressure. We aren't going to have more money while we face the massive deficit and debt problems that have accumulated in the West over the last couple generations. For the United States Navy (and other navies), which counts its assets in smaller numbers than the other services, fewer hulls will be laid down or kept in service, which will affect the size of the fleet decades down the line.

So we will produce fewer ships. And because we produce fewer ships, unit costs will increase per ship. Which will result in fewer ships. Which increases the unit cost. How's that for a death spiral?

As I argued many times on this blog, numbers matter for the Navy. We speak of the tyranny of distance that constrains our ship design because we have to travel long distances to fight (and mind you, I'm not saying I'd rather have the strategic situation where we could build small, heavily armed ships with low endurance that only have to leave port to engage the enemy), but there is a tyranny of numbers, too. One high quality ship that can beat any conceivable foe simply can't be in two places at once.

And with numbers of hulls dropping, we will face more and more situations where we need more hulls than we have. The world isn't shrinking and the problems sure aren't shrinking. While it is nice that we try to make more of our existing hulls by using multiple crews or forward basing some ships to avoid the time it takes to transit from home port to deployment station, those measures are only useful for peacetime and don't address the problem of having too few hulls to endure many losses in war and still carry out our missions. If a ship is damaged or sunk, it just doesn't matter if the hulk is forward deployed or if there is a fresh crew ready to fly out to man the non-existent ship.

My notion is to bulk up with Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers.

This post at Think Defence expands on the idea to include not just long-endurance container ship-based auxiliary cruisers but also faster but lower endurance catamarans and movable but robust barges (with this as an example) for point defense. I'm basically a land power guy whose interest in naval affairs stems from the need for naval power to get our land power anywhere we might need it. So I'm glad that this idea is being pursued by others with more knowledge and interest than I have on the idea.

The Think Defence post notes this DARPA interest. I guess I'll always wonder if my post had any influence on that idea. Even before that post, I did notice hits from some interesting sources on my source posts that led to the more in-depth article/post. Although I will say that another idea I broached in an article some years ago (as part of another subject) was already in motion and I simply didn't realize it. Great minds (or just adequate, in my case) think alike sometimes and come to the same conclusions given the same problem and similar data. There are other links of interest, too.

I'd rather have purpose-built warships. But until we can afford them, we need to muddle through with 70 percent solutions (or even 40%, I'll admit) to maintain the numbers we need. Auxiliary cruisers, auxiliary corvettes, and auxiliary anchored bases are one way to get the numbers.

Sometimes muddling through is all you can do.

Don't Forget the Red Sea

Iran's recent forays into the Mediterranean through the Red Sea and Suez Canal should warn us of another option Iran might have to interrupt oil traffic. While we focus on the Strait of Hormuz, we could get blind-sided by an Iranian attempt to interdict the Red Sea and/or Suez Canal. Iran could lay mines in the Red Sea and increase the panic level in the West that could lead us to end a confrontation with Iran short of defeating Iran.

In 1984, Libya mined the Red Sea in support of their then-ally Iran. It was a one-off so we could handle the mine sweeping problem (with Operation Intense Look). Also, the Strait of Hormuz was still open for business despite the still-low key Tanker War going on between Iran and Iraq during their war from 1980 to 1988.

Remember, too, that Iran has courted Eritrea as an ally. Why else do that if not to gain a position to interfere with what we hope is our trump card of non-Persian Gulf oil routes to guard against an Iranian attempt to close the primary Strait of Hormuz route?

So don't neglect the threat that Iran could pose to Red Sea traffic. Warship, submarines, civilian ships, or aircraft could seed the Red Sea with mines and wreak havoc. Let's not even contemplate what Iran could do with a ship in the Suez Canal if it scuttles itself loaded with nasty surprises to hinder removal efforts--or even detonating the magazine of an old warship with enough of the crew on a suicide mission to set the bugger off inside the canal.

That's all Iran has to do to really put a scare into us, and we need to be prepared for Iran's efforts to demoralize us with unexpected actions before we can use our superior power to beat them. Iran has to count on frightening us away to avoid defeat. We can pass a gut check and go on to crush them, can't we?

How The Government Decides

Legal Insurrection corrects the notion that Andrew Breitbart deceptively edited the Shirley Sherrod tape. The Left has attempted to discredit Breitbart generally with this incorrect criticism of this one story. Their attempts continue after Breitbart has passed away:

So let’s put to bed the claim that the original Sherrod tape was misleading, defamatory or reflective of racial codes or racism on the part of Breitbart.

Andrew Breitbart is not around to defend himself anymore, and we owe it to him to push back, hard.

Defending a good man's honor when he no longer can is admirable. But the bigger problem that Breitbart fought is more important: big government is too big and cannot run our lives even if we assume the best intentions and the goals. Just because they care doesn't mean they should get to make decisions that affect us all.

Consider that the government fired Ms. Sherrod over the tape revelation even though the tape actually showed Sherrod doing the right thing in the end. Even in the edited tape, the government had the data to make the right decision (and not fire her). The government also had the knowledge that they could get more information from the full tape. And they even had the opportunity to get more information from Ms. Sherrod herself, who worked for them. Yet with sufficient data on hand and the knowledge that more complete data was available, the government made a hasty and wrong decision.

Yet we are supposed to accept that the government can make good decisions on far grander scales regarding society, the economy, and the climate without even the possibility of getting all the data or understanding the entire system? When they couldn't on a small situation?

And the funny thing is, Ms. Sherrod blamed Breitbart and not the government for her plight. When you assume the government can't screw things up or if you believe they care about the same things you care about, I guess it makes sense to never question the authority of the government to make decisions that affect you.

Caring is not the same as understanding.

The Ten Thousand

I can't say that resistance isn't futile. I can say it is honorable. Tip to Instapundit, who credits IowaHawk.

Sometimes you just have to fight your way home.

By chance, this is my 10,000th post on Blogger, by my statistics count.

Define "Europe"

Walter Mead (tip to Instapundit) wants Europe to fix their economic woes because it is in America's interests:

Americans need a strong and prosperous Europe.

True enough. But let's define our terms of what America needs:

Europe will not be our friend. European states can be our friend. And Europeans even in countries without governments friendly to us can be our friends. Why let these sources of support, friendship, and alliance be submerged in an EU supra-elite culture of hatred for America?

We need a strong and prosperous continent of European countries--not a strong and prosperous single European political entity. I sometimes doubt if our elites understand the difference. Or why we need the former and not the latter.

The Rules Change So Quickly

So it was wrong for Rush Limbaugh to call a female college student a "slut" for asking the government to pay for contraception?

Well, "moocher," sure. Hey add condoms to the portfolio of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and make them free, too, and you'd have a real party weekend combo. But "slut?" I wouldn't have gone there, but Rush did, I read.

The Left is all outraged (naturally). They who are so concerned with the delicate sensitivities of all women.

I just wish the Left would put out memos about when terminology changes from being liberating to being a gross revelation of deep-seated misogyny. I'm sure the journalists share that information amongst themselves. The public should get the same courtesy.

UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link.

UPDATE: And the farce continues. Slut Walk of Austin, Texas, urges a boycott of Rush Limbaugh sponsors for his hateful words.

I have to say I admire the men in the Slut Walk protest picture. No signing up for ball room dancing or cooking classes--or going to religious services--to meet women for these clever guys. No, they go right to the organisation of easy chicks (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course). Still, "slut" is not the same as "attractive." Caveat oculor, and all that...

What's the Excuse This Time?

Remember how the Left savaged Rumsfeld for saying the obvious that you go to war with the Army you have and not the Army you wish you had? With too few troops to rotate through Iraq, deployment tempo threatened to wear the Army out. In the end, we didn't wear out the Army, but the threat was there.

So we expanded the brigades we had from 33 to 45 (and had planned to go to 48, actually). Now, with the experience of Iraq behind us, what are we doing?

The reduction of five more brigade combat teams is necessary to add a third maneuver battalion and an engineer battalion in each brigade, the Army’s top officer said Feb. 24 at the Association of the U.S. Army Winter Symposium.

The Army will cut another five brigade combat teams in addition to the eight already on the chopping block, bringing the total from 45 to 32 teams.

Well that's just effing great. We'll have fewer brigades than before 9/11. Granted, each brigade will be bigger (I assume--or will we go back to triangular battalions of 3 maneuver companies each rather than the four maneuver companies our non-Stryker battalions have now?) and self contained. But rotating brigades will now be back to pre-Iraq levels.

When you wonder why we must go to war with the Army we have and not the Army we wish we had for the crisis at hand, remember that whatever Army we have was once designed to be the Army we wished to have.

And right now we wish to have 32 combat brigades. That's just effing great.

Two for Two

Will China prevent Iran from going nuclear?

It’s doubtful that the United States and Israel will see eye-to-eye on the potential use of force, but any friction between the two could have an upside: fearing an Israeli airstrike, China may be more willing to use its own influence to pressure Tehran.

Coming off China's long but successful effort to curb North Korea's aggression and nuclear policies, some hope that China will take their success on the road.

Wait. China's little psycho pet is still nuclear-bound and still attacking and making threats to destroy South Korea?

Oh, then never mind.

Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing

I really need to focus on writing. So instead of the news, I think it is time for a Sledge Hammer! marathon.

And Another Thing

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of people forgetting the recent past, what's with the praise President Obama has gotten for our pivot to the Pacific? While I wrote that I have no problem with this and kudos for the Marines to Australia annoucement, I didn't understand why it had to be paired with contrasts that condemned Bush for ignoring the Pacific. Obama's actions were not fixing a problem of the Bush adminsitration no matter how much this was portrayed as newly discovered smart diplomacy.

As with many good things Obama does, the pivot to the Pacific was a continuation of Bush policies. I ran across this in my older Yahoo!Geocities site (now mostly preserved at Reocities and I think another site?):

“Preparing for the Future” (Posted November 13, 2003)

We are transforming our global deployment to end the Cold War traditional deployment and create a force agile enough for the war on terrorists and their sponsors and for preempting nuclear threats. Right now the focus is Asia:

The changes will be part of a worldwide adjustment of U.S. forces to reflect Rumsfeld's view that the static defensive positions adopted by the United States and its traditional allies during the Cold War are not well suited to meet the evolving security threats of the 21st century.

We may also deploy a carrier battle group to Guam, according to the article, or perhaps Hawaii, to be closer than our West Coast bases.

/END POST QUOTE/

You'll need to scroll down if you want to see the original (but since this is the entire post, I don't know why you would) since this pre-dates even my primitive anchors that substitituted for post links prior to my move to Blogger.

President Obama's only refinement is to make this implicitly directed at China rather than a global war on terror thing. Which is smarter diplomacy will never be asked in this day and age of teeny bopper press coverage of their dreamy president who still gives them tingles up their legs.

Memory Problem

I find this fascinating--in a sense that I'm reaching the point that when I hear or read what President Obama says, he infuriates me. My sympathy for all the problems the president must face in foreign policy always goes up the less I actually hear from the president.

On Iran, President Obama remains firmly committed to the buck stopped in George W. Bush's term:

[President Obama ...] placed blame on the Bush administration for letting Iran become the threat it is today, claiming that a policy of putting pressure on Iran was “in tatters” when he took office.

Huh. And why would that be? Could it be that Bush Derangement Syndrome had so infected the Democratic Party that they believed Bush would lie us (again!) into a war, and so resisted anything that Bush tried to do regarding Iran? Could it be that the BDS-infected Democrats in the House of Representatives after the 2008 elections would have impeached Bush if he had attacked Iran to prevent the problem from being passed on to Obama? Or that the Reid-controlled Senate would have tried the president on the impeachment charges and ejected Bush from office? Hmm?

I say only in partial jest that President Obama would get the Nobel Peace Prize if he nuked Iran. But I have no doubt that Congressional Democrats would have impeached President Bush had he disarmed Iran's nuclear program and then voted to send him to the International Criminal Court to face war crimes charges.

The nerve of President Obama blaming Bush for the problem with Iran is just amazing.

And do people actually forget how the loyal opposition treated Bush during his terms of office?

Whirlwind

Lamb was on fire yesterday.

She played a bit on her online computer game. And then, in serial fashion, had me build a paper deer from a paper animal kit I just got for her, made some crayons in her crayon "maker," played with her Spirograph, used her stamp sets, started to paint a little snow man figurine (she stopped when the paint dripped and she decided she needed it to dry and paint over it with white), and put on a magic show for me and several of her stuffed animals. Oh, and she checked out her inventory from the scrap box store (where you buy industrial debris useful for arts and crafts), since I recently promised we'd return there to pick up odds and sods she'd like.

On the magic show, I'm relieved. I got that for her (or did Santa? Have to be careful about that...) but the instructions for most of the tricks are fairly complicated. But she enjoys wearing the cape and making up her own "magic" tricks based on some of the ones we tried after Christmas.

Oh, and we went over the science fair project plan and timeline, so she'd understand the project and know when I expect her to work on it. Apparently, projects are closely held secrets at school as the angling for the single trophy per grade has kicked in. I said if anyone asks her about her project, she can say her dad calls it "the Manhattan Project." She didn't get it. That's OK. Sometimes I make jokes only I get. I'm odd that way.

And she had a lovely snack of cracker pizzas; cucumber, lettuce, and carrot salad; chocolate-dipped strawberries; and vanilla-flavored milk, before it was time to cart the kids off to their mom's house.

I enjoy seeing that kind of activity. Kids should have fun. They'll spend a lifetime at work as it is. As long as they do what they need to do in school, I see no reason to Tiger Dad them to a premature ulcer. Hey, she had a very nice MEAP result, so you can't say I'm fast-tracking her to a minimum wage career path.

Equipment Failure

I think I had a blinding flash of insight.

I've been intermittently cursing my computer as I've had occasional problems highlighting text the last several months. I'd try to highlight and it either wouldn't stick or would move text somewhat randomly as I dragged the cursor with my mouse. Usually it worked. But not always. I cursed Internet Explorer--where I usually noticed the problem.

Then yesterday I noticed that a game I have was doing some strange things as I tried to left click on units. It would apparently double-click and issue two orders even as I held the left mouse button down trying to issue a single command.

Then this morning, as I had the same problem here, the new game problem came to mind.

My left mouse button is faulty.

It was a Eureka! moment.

Sadly, the several mice I have in a box are all old style and only useful for Lamb's older computer. So I'll soldier on today and head to Target or the office store (I honestly can't remember which one even though I go there fairly often) for a new mouse.

Mouse failure seems so odd. They last almost forever which is why I have several old ones stored away. I'd have more but I threw away some really old style mice with humongous plugs that I had to admit were worthless. This might be only the second mouse I've had that actually failed.

On the bright side, after I get a new one I can see if I can pry open the current one to see if I can mess with it somehow. Although I suspect I'm fooling myself if I think that it will be like cleaning the contacts on the control panels of those 1980s upright video arcade games.

I'm sure I'll look at the guts, have no idea what I'm looking at (much like I do if I lift the hood on my car), and toss the old mouse in the garbage.

And I expect I owe IE an apology for darning them to the netherworld these last several months. Well, for that reason, anyway.

UPDATE: With a new mouse, I've had no problems two days later. That was it. My mouse button was mis-firing, either clicking without me or failing to click. I did take apart the old mouse to peer inside. I put back the spring that popped out and brushed the guts, but there doesn't look like anything that I could do other than replace guts. Obviously, I'm not going to do that for a $10.00 mouse. But it goes in a box just in case I need even a faulty mouse for a replacement if I can't get to a store for a new one.

Hey? Will Obamacare pay for my new mouse? It was certainly raising my blood pressure the last several months.

Once More, With Feeling

I'd rather not fight alone. Yet the Europeans understand that they have largely decided to become irrelevant to American military power:

US armed forces find coalition warfare more and more difficult and decreasingly helpful. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan accelerated the transformation of US operations; the missions are now too wired, too widely dispersed, too precise, and happen too quickly for other allies to keep up. In the old days, the allies used to carve out battlefields in distinct ‘areas of responsibility’. But because US forces are now able to respond quickly across long distances, they see less and less value in segregating the battlefield by time, location, or mission. As a result, they find it more difficult to give less capable militaries meaningful assignments.

So I thought I'd write a post about how we could leverage bits of European capabilities to reinforce our existing divisions and brigades by plugging European brigades or battalions into our units. Heck, maybe we could design some cadre brigades designed for European battalions (or even companies?) plus our own Army National Guard units.

Then I noticed that I wrote that post a month ago.

Well, then. More coffee would be in order.

We've spend 50 years urging our European allies to spend more on defense. We won't suddenly become more successful. I'd rather adapt so that willing partners can contribute usefully at whatever level. I will say that this would involve either making sure our allies have the command-and-control equipment that allows these brigades and battalions to plug into our headquarters. We'd either need to convince them to buy them, provide them outright, or create command-and-control headquarters assets that could be attached to the allied brigade or battalion to bridge the gap that would exist as information is passed from our higher headquarters to allied units. Allied brigade or battalion headquarters could obviously communicate down easily enough with their organic equipment. But they might not be able to fully communicate up to our controlling headquarters. So we'd have to spend money on making sure enough information can be passed. If it leverages allied help, it would be worth spending.

Actually, our Army National Guard might be useful to study in this regard given that Guard divisions and even brigades are made up from units scattered across a state or even multiple states to form the larger units.

Belarus is a Road, Not a Nation

Belarus continues to live as a faint shadow of the former Soviet Union.

But Russia has gained control of Belarus' pipeline from Russia to Western Europe and has finally gotten Belarus to sign an agreement for a joint air defense system. With Russian support, the Belarus regime can accelerate the destruction of the glimmers of human rights, which further alienates the West and makes Russia the only game in town for regime suvival.

The Rolling Anschluss continues.

Russia's intent to prop up Belarus economically is clear. Russia already speaks of economic integration being linked with political integration.

And on top of the air defense agreement, Russia has spoken of putting offensive missiles in Belarus. The Russians have also exercised with Belarus' military to practice the invasion of Poland.

Oh, and then there is that agreement that essentially allows Russia to legally take over Belarus formally.

Then again, when Russia has all this, maybe formally taking over Belarus isn't that big a deal. Remember, Belarus had a UN seat as if it was truly independent even when it was part of the Soviet Union.

It Really is the Regime, Stupid

As we wait to see what is in the North Korean deal, never forget that the basic problem is the regime:

North Korea Friday renewed threats to launch a "sacred war" against South Korea, indicating cross-border ties will remain icy despite Pyongyang's surprise nuclear deal with Seoul's close ally Washington.

The North's agreement to freeze some nuclear and missile activities in return for massive US food aid has raised cautious hopes of eased tensions under its new young leader Kim Jong-Un.

First, note that the article says that North Korea has agreed to freeze "some" nuclear and missile work. What they do not pledge to freeze may be more vital to them right now.

But more basically, even a North Korea without nuclear weapons is a grave threat to peace. If North Korea recovers (say if China decides to replace the Soviet subsidies that kept the gulag with a UN seat going), even without nuclear weapons they could rebuild a conventional military capable of invading South Korea. Even now, North Korea could bombard Seoul and inflict many casualties and a lot of damage from their existing positions north of the DMZ.

Whatever else we do about North Korea's nuclear programs, it should not have the effect of saving the existing beastly North Korean regime.

UPDATE: North Korea doesn't actually intend to change their policies:

North Korea's willingness to cut a surprise deal with the United States on the future of its nuclear program does not signal any policy shift by the reclusive state's young new leader, a source with links to both Pyongyang and Beijing said. ...

From Pyongyang's perspective, last week's deal was possible because it believed that the United States was the one that returned to the table willing to make concessions.

But the North Koreans do think this represents a change in our policy:

From Pyongyang's perspective, last week's deal was possible because it believed that the United States was the one that returned to the table willing to make concessions.

I fear they might be right about that.

Strategypage also touches on the tentative agreement:

The North Koreans are unwilling to provide the kind of verification the Americans insist on. Apparently the Americans want North Korea to stop peddling their nuclear weapons secrets to other nations. The North Koreans refuse to do this because they need the foreign currency in order to buy goodies to keep their ruling class happy. ...

Everyone (except North Korea) wants to halt work on miniaturizing North Korean nuclear weapons and making them rugged enough to operate in ballistic missile. This is, in many respects, more difficult that building the first nuclear weapon. Apparently the North Koreans are not cooperating in halting this work. North Korea has made it clear that it will not eliminate their nuclear weapons program, just slow it down in return for some food.

So, North Korea won't halt proliferation of their nuclear technology and North Korea won't stop their nuclear weapons program. Yet we will provide nutrition aid for a year. Which has the advantage of getting North Korea through a famine season with the illusion that everything is fine at home and our president through an election season with the illusion that smart diplomacy has made progress on an Axis of Evil nuclear threat.

I'm willing to make concessions if they are meaningless as far as reviving North Korea and simply give North Korea's rulers hope that they might recover. If they think that way, they won't roll the dice and launch a war they will almost certainly lose (but cause lots of casualties and damage before they lose) while their military continues to rot away and their people continue to think the unthinkable about revolt.

The problem is, it is difficult in the short run to tell the difference between stupidity and nuance, eh? Still, given how bad North Korea is, it seems unlikely even real stupidity on our part could save the regime in Pyongyang. Or I hope so, anyway. We'll see.

What We Get for Our Defense Dollars

Europeans are starting to worry about how they can possibly defend their interests without American involvement. Europeans hated Bush and figuratively threw their panties at hopes that they had for a new, European-friendly Obama administration. The Libya War was a real eye-opener for them, it seems (Tip to Defense Industrial Daily), as they saw that America isn't an automatic ally:

Therefore many future crises will go unanswered unless the Europeans themselves do the work; some future operations will last longer, and perhaps involve more bloodshed, because they will be fought without the benefit of American military might. ...

Europe looks weaker than it is because too often it wants to fight wars as the US does, not as the Europeans can. The Libya example is illustrative. In an operation in which the US did not want to lead or play a major role, it nonetheless fired nearly all of the cruise missiles that destroyed Libya’s air defences in advance of allied strike missions, provided the great majority of the aerial tankers and nearly all of the surveillance and electronic warfare elements on which allied flights depended, and flew 25 per cent of all sorties. Without American support, the Libya operation could not have been fought in the way that it was. But that does not mean that it could not have been fought at all. The conflict would have taken longer, inflicted more civilian casualties and damage, taken more allied casualties, and been (as the British say) a much closer run thing. ...

The European governments’ hesitation has much to do with the perceived risks of a ‘European way of war’. The US throws enough money, weapons and people at conflicts to guarantee an overwhelming advantage for itself; it also has the technology to do much of the fighting from afar and therefore in relative safety. Wars fought without America’s weapons bring troops in closer contact with the enemy, and last longer, than those fought to the American doctrine. And the more lives are lost, and the longer the fighting lasts, the harder governments find it to keep public support.

There is some interesting stuff there. I said Europe could defeat Libya without us. I've long pointed out that Europe had a problem in the post-cold War world because in the Cold War there job was to fight in place against a Soviet invasion. And the idea that Europeans wouldn't want to undertake a war without our capabilities is fascinating. Given how European governments and people complain about how we fight kills civilians, it is understandable that European governments would be hesitant to show their people how waging war with Europe's sensitive militaries would go as far as civilian casualties. Already, I argued that the civilian toll in Libya's drawn-out war was pretty darned high compared to Iraq's civilian toll. It was just easier to ignore the toll without Americans at the front.

Mostly, I want to point out how the authors argue that Europe can still fight and win but admit what the price of not having our capabilities would be. When people complain of our large defense spending compared to the rest of the world, arguing we can slash our spending and still be superior, they ignore a number of things. One, they ignore that unlike any other country, we have to have the capabilities to move and sustain a large military long distances to fight. That costs money.

And it ignores what we get for our money. Note how the authors say that with less capable militaries, wars fought by Europe would last longer, involve more bloodshed, inflict more collateral damage on property, and risk losing the war--either on the battlefield or by losing domestic support (although this ignores that we still fight in Afghanistan and fought long years in Iraq without losing so much support that we had to retreat).

This is what we get for our defense budget. And that's aside from the humanitarian missions that our military can undertake as a side benefit of our capabilities for deploying and sustaining forces around the globe.

Still, the European angst is a bit amusing. Life without America was an appealing notion for Europeans to contemplate back when we were willing to fight for Europe. Living through it is another thing altogether. Even more amusing, the authors still think President Obama did them a favor by making Europeans confront the reality that they need to defend themselves. It will take a little longer for the shock that no Europeans will confront that reality with enough defense spending to set in.

Europeans will find that an America willing to fight is more Europe friendly than an America more like Europeans in its view of miltiary force. Who knew that Europe got something from our defense dollars, too?

As Long As We Let Them Die

Making deals with North Korea over their nuclear weapons ambitions is a fool's game--if we expect to talk the current North Korean regime out of nukes. But I don't assume we are screwing the pooch with the proposed deal.

Already, the North Koreans have announced different ideas about what America and North Korea agreed to. They say we'll talk about providing nuclear reactors that don't easily and directly allow for diversion to nuclear weapons programs. We say we said no such thing.

So North Korea already has a reason to violate any limited pledges they give on suspending nuclear programs--after they get the nutritional aid.

And since it seems unlikely that North Korea will abandon their nuclear weapons drive because their conventional military is rotting away every day, I have to suspect that the North Koreans have simply decided that either they have advanced enough for now to suspend activities; or they have other facilities that they don't consider part of the deal that can pursue their nuclear program; or they really are desperate enough to pause their programs to get food aid to pass the immediate crisis period.

So this deal won't solve the problem of North Korea.

But it might help with the ultimate solution. As I've long written, I'm all in favor of talking with North Korea. As long as we let their regime die.

I don't want North Korea to have nuclear weapons but their possession is not nearly in the same league as Iran getting them. I think the risk of containing North Korea is worth taking even as I think the risk of trying to contain a nuclear Iran is not worth the risk. And that's the worst case.

Even before North Korea gets nuclear weapons (at best they now have a nuclear device that North Korean scientists can partially explode in laboratory conditions), China will have more problems with North Korea getting nuclear weapons than we will. We are far from North Korea and have missile defenses both off the coast of North Korea on ships to hit missiles going up and back in the United States to hit any coming down.

China is close to countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan who might decide that they need nuclear weapons, too, if North Korea gets them. Is China really eager to live with nuclear-armed states that close to China? And if China simply increases their arsenal to cope, how will India react? And will other countries go nuclear once the genie is out of the bottle and the stigma of going nuclear is diluted with a rush for A-bombs? And what about Russia? They claim to worry about America when we have no interest in destroying Russia (we are happy with stopping with the Soviet Union's death). If China--close by, growing in economic and military power, and with old memories of Russian territory once being Chinese--gets a larger nuclear arsenal, I do believe one or two senior generals in Moscow will soil their armor.

And really, for us, there is at least the advantage of our friends going nuclear that China can no longer threaten us by asking are we willing to trade Los Angeles for Tokyo, Seoul, or Taipei?

Even our food aid might be OK. We say it will be in the form of nutritional supplements appropriate for small children and not basic food aid that can be diverted to the black market, the ruling class, and the military. And we say we will monitor the aid. If we do that, this doesn't violate my notion of talking while letting their regime die. We want to prevent North Korea from deciding that their position is hopeless so they might as well roll the dice and start a war. If food aid impossible or difficult to divert from children is part of the price we need to allow North Korea to continue to rot away without starting a war, I'm fine with that.

During the Bush administration I was not quick to jump on them for talking or offering limited aid as long as it was insufficient to rescue North Korea but enough to keep them from starting an expensive war. We'd win--unless North Korea got really lucky and early and heavy use of chemical weapons caused the complete collapse of the South Korean army--but it would be an expensive win.

So I'll keep an open mind on the deal. I just hope the big-brained practitioners of nuanced, smart diplomacy don't believe that they have found the secret that has eluded their predecessors for persuading North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons programs.

If our ultimate goal is to bring about the collapse of North Korea and our tactics are merely to prevent Pyongyang from rolling the dice on war with their remaining military capabilities until it is too late to exercise that option, I'm fine with talking and even some aid. We shall see.

Still Good Enough

I tackled a plumbing issue today. So far everything is holding.

That issue was in question. Let me back up. My half bath downstairs developed a problem when the toilet seized up in mid-flush. After that, it would refill slowly and had a slow leak that fed into the bowl.

But it still worked. And I have two more full bathrooms that work. So no crisis that calls for me to spring into action.

Also, I don't have complete control of my water supply. So if I need to turn off the water for my entire  condominium unit, I need to get into the common stairwell to the ranch units by ringing doorbells and hoping someone lets me in. And then hope that I can find the water shut off valve under the stairwell before I flood.

Also, the valve to that particular toilet has a history of being iffy. I once turned it off to fix the toilet and left the water off long enough to compress the rubber enough so that it did not actually open up the flow of water when I turned the valve back "on." It took months for it to loosen and open. Luckily I was in my home when it indicated its new "open" status by spraying water onto my wall because I hadn't tightened one piece enough. (And since no water flowed through, how was I to know?)

So I had the situation where the toilet worked and if I tried to fix it I could make it worse or even face a plumbing disaster if everything went belly up. The 70% solution seemed tailor made for me.

So I had bent the float road and propped the intake tower to reduce the flow of water to a trickle. The toilet took minutes rather than seconds to fill, but it worked.

Then a week ago I messed with it. I tried readjusting the float and the water flow really picked up. So in my mind we were down the the 55% solution. And the weather was good today so the prospect of dealing with flowing water in mid-winter didn't deter me.

So I grabbed the repair kit I had already bought and prepared for work. I cleared out the rug and other stuff around the toilet. I vacuumed up the spider and its old meals in the corner that I hadn't been able to see before. And I prepared to get this done quickly to avoid that old valve problem I had faced.

I turned off the water and flushed the toilet. Or rather, I turned the water valve all the way to the right. Water still flowed into the toilet, although at a slower rate.

My plan had failed already. But that's OK. I fully understand that no job survives first contact with the plumbing.

But my plumbing job was now a race against time with time measured by how long the bucket I had could collect the water that would leak when I pulled the tube from the water source to the toilet.

So my toilet repair triage immediately ruled out replacing the flap mechanism. That seemed to work fine so the old one stays.

I had trouble removing the plastic mechanism. I loosened it enough to get water flowing into the bucket but it is old-style requiring tools to loosen rather than a hand-cranked bolt. Now the tower mechanism was out and the tube was free.

Water was up to about the 20% level in the bucket.

I put the new tower in and added the bolt to the outside bottom and tightened it up. Then I got the new outer bolt that keeps the tube in place that I can fortunately hand tighten with the wings, and ...

Well, and at that point I noticed that adding the new outer bolt would require me to remove the tube from the valve mechanism near the floor so I can slip the new bolt up the tube to fit under the flared top of the tube.

At least at that point I had the open tube over the bucket. If I removed the tube from the bottom, water would flow to the floor while I did the switch.

So another triage moment. I went with the existing outer bolt. Luckily in my haste to remove it quickly I hadn't destroyed it assuming I had another.

The water in the bucket wan't more than a third up.

I added the rod and ball float. I put the new overflow tube in place. And I opened the valve. Water wa coming into the tank and it wasn't leaking at the opening in the bottom!

As the water flowed in, suddenly the tower shoots up like a kid's toy based on compressed air. Except this isn't fun and water is fountaining (mostly) up. I turned the water off and flushed the toilet to remove the water.

Did I mention that I had removed the carpet and had an old small blanket ready in case of a moderate water emergency? Well, yes, I did do that. So the blanket goes in place to dam and absorb the water flow. For such a brief leak there sure seemed to be a lot of water.

Apparently the locking mechanism to adjust the height of the intake tower was in the unlocked position. I attempted to lock it. I opened the water again. This time I held my hand over the tower and only had the valve opened partly. At some point, the tower popped up. But I avoided the fountaining and closed the valve again.

The water in the bucket was about half way up.

In the end, it took two more tries and on the second one I extended the tower a bit before locking, and it seemed to lock.

I turned on the water a bit. The tank filled and then the water flow stopped! As it should! I flushed and it quickly refilled. Success!

And the bucket as no more than 60% full. Granted, a lot of water that I had hoped would go in the bucket was residing in towels and a blanket. But still.

I emptied the bucket down the sink. Then it was a job for water and bleach on the floor and sink area.

Then the wet stuff went to the washing machine and I went to the shower. I dreaded leaving the new mechanism in place unsupervised. But I returned and the repair was holding.

I did put a small plastic bowl under the opening to catch any drips when the floor felt damp since I remembered that another toilet had leaked a bit before seals expanded sufficiently to stop all the water after I opened the valve. I probably didn't dry that part of the floor enough. But just in case, this would tell me.

In a perfect world, I'll wait for the water to go out to the entire building one day and quickly swap out the old outer bolt for the new one since I could remove the tube from the base without water flowing out. On the other hand, I'm at 100% now with toilet functionality. So perhaps not.

And I do want to replace the faucet in that bathroom and need to fix a slow drip in my kitchen faucet that developed recently. I used to be able to tilt the handle just so to stop that leak. No more. Now I can only turn the faucet so I can't hear the dripping. I'm just not sure if I'm below the 70% solution there or not. And I am sure that I can't turn the water off if something goes wrong.

I will say that I'll take the faux crises of the comfortable middle class over real problems any day.

Israel's New Friend Near Iran

I've wondered if there are ways to get around Israel's aerial refueling limits in order to design an attack on Iran's nuclear program that gets enough bombs on target.

This was one method I speculated about:

Perhaps, like we planned for the Doolittle Raid, the Israelis will plan this like a one-way mission where most Israeli planes recover in nearby countries after hitting Iran, with only those within the capacity of Israel's aerial refueling capacity return to Israel at once. Would Georgia be a likely site (where Iran tried to kill Israelis recently)? Armenia to thumb their nose at Turkey? Even Jordan or Kuwait? Or even land at a remote airfield or road on the way back in the Desert One option to be refueled after the mission? Note that our assumption failed and we lost all our planes in the Doolittle Raid

How many Israeli warplanes could land at any one site without being an "incident?" If only small numbers land at some places (like Jordan or Kuwait) could Georgia, as an example, handle most as long as they aren't the only site?

The one country I didn't mention? Azerbaijan.

Speaking of which:

Iran challenged Azerbaijan on Tuesday over $1.5 billion in arms it said were purchased from arch-foe Israel, state media reported, in a sign of further strains between the neighbouring countries.

Azebaijan's ambassador to Tehran was called in to the foreign ministry to explain the weapons and to receive a warning that Israel must not be permitted to use Azerbaijan to stage "terrorist acts" against Iran.

Well, airfields in Azerbaijan are certainly close enough to help out if available to Israel. Is the arms sale a sign of deeper cooperation?

500 Ways of Summer

Some? I'm thinking an entire series, mass-produced. Some people really fail to appreciate Summer Glau:

Source: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1132359/resumephotos

Still, the potential for great evil exists:

Live to Fight Another Day

Syrian rebels are bugging out of Homs:

Most Syrian rebels pulled out of the besieged Baba Amro district of Homs on Thursday after a 26-day siege by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, activists in contact with the fighters said. ...

He said defeat for the rebels in Homs would leave the opposition without any major stronghold in Syria, easing the crisis for Assad, who remained confident he could survive.

Holding a stronghold in the heart of Syria would be nice but it is not necessary. This is a guerrilla and irregular fight still, and the rebels don't have nearly enough men and equipment to fight toe-to-toe with the Syrian security forces for very long. Syria is supposed to be able to go wherever they want if they mass enough troops.

But if the rebels continue to stretch the Syrian ground security forces in the Damascus region, the rebels could yet establish strongholds in the east or near Turkey or Lebanon, as bases where they can rest and recuperate and sortie from to attack Assad's core areas.

Syria and Qatar want to arm the Syrian rebels. That seems like an easy call to make. And even if we don't want to do it directly, we should figure out how to openly provide some help to the rebels just to give them hope that they aren't alone.

Not That Impressive

Singapore security appears to have broken up an Iranian attempt to kill Israeli diplomats there:

Al-Jarida, a Kuwaiti newspaper, said that three members of an Iranian Hezbollah cell were detained in Singapore this week after Mossad agents passed on intelligence.

An Israeli official said the report was "completely wrong", adding: "No one knows anything about any incident. There has been no alarm."

Israel denies that this was a plot to kill their Minister of Defense, but it isn't at all clear if that denial extends to a plot to kill any Israeli.

But if so, add it to several mostly bungled attacks on Israeli targets in Thailand, Georgia, India, Azerbaijan, and Washington, D.C.

Then consider that these are 5 or 6 attempts to kill hated Israelis in a battle over Iran's most coveted program--their nuclear weapons program.

If Iran can't manage more than this against the hated Jews in defense of their priority nuclear program, we have to wonder about whether Iran can really unleash a wave of terrorism against us if we attack Iran's nuclear program (and, out of necessity, large parts of Iran's military and command and control infrastructure).

Not that I'm underestimating their desire to kill. And I'm not mocking the attempts since only failed attempts look amateurish. A big body count just makes trips to strip bars and other details unimportant. But we shouldn't panic over the idea that Iran will fight back with whatever they have.

Andrew Breitbart Has Passed Away

There is breaking news that Andrew Breitbart has passed away of natural causes at the age of 43.

I don't understand what is natural about dying at 43 and leaving a wife and four children.

May he rest in peace.

UPDATE: Confirmed. This is a great loss.

Shock and Awe

The Chinese are active in cyber-espionage and hope to surprise us in battle by degrading our computer- and satellite-based military capabilities:

China uses all this Internet based theft to improve Chinese military capabilities, and weaken American ones. Department of Defense officials also see China's ambitious space program as another component of Chinese military strategy. By combining the ability to knock down American military satellites, while at the same time launching Internet based attacks at American military, government and commercial Internet activities, China believes it could make up for a lot of current American military superiority. At the very least, the Chinese believe that all this stolen (via the Internet) data and damage to American space satellites would cripple American military power aimed at China.

We don't know how well this will work, of course.

The problem is that it doesn't have to work that well or work for that long to be good enough.

As I've written many times, we are much more powerful than China. But China is much closer to potential theaters of war than we are. So China can gain local superiority for a period of time by striking first while we will need to defend our forward-deployed forces while the Chinese go after their objective, and reinforce our forward-deployed forces to overcome the Chinese surge.

China wants to win any fight before we can reinforce our forward-deployed forces (those that endure and survive the initial attacks).

So if Chinese cyber-war and anti-satellite efforts just degrade our forces even if we overcome their attacks and regain our pre-attack capabilities over time, China has bought the time. And they will have shocked us, inflicting a morale hit that may make us more cautious because we don't know what else they can do.

If China buys time and injects uncertainty into our minds, they might reach their objectives before we can gather our superior strength to counter-attack.