Forward Abandoned Forces?

An author makes the case for 3-tiered readiness ship standards to allow more of our Navy to be forward deployed. Then he undercuts the reason for being forward deployed.

The author of this article on maximizing our forward-deployed fleet withing existing financial conditions doesn't answer the question of why we should need to focus his proposal on deploying more of our ships forward.

He justifies the plan by pointing to war-fighting advantages of having more ships that can be mobilized, but apparently doesn't see any warfighting value in those forward-deployed ships:

Depending on where the war is, half the forward-deployed ships are in the wrong part of the world to fight immediately. Of the continental U.S (CONUS)–based rotational ships, a third are in maintenance, and half of the remainder are more than 30 days from the fight. Face it—any major wartime fight will not occur immediately with the forces on hand. It will occur later, after we’ve had at least two or three months to assemble our forces at the right place. World War II, Korea, the Falklands, and Desert Storm all were fought once available forces were assembled and pushed forward to the fight.

The value of more forward deployed forces is less than zero, for some wartime situations. One, some of the ships won't be in the theater of war and so will have to move to the theater.

But that pales in comparison to the problem of our forward-deployed ships in the theater. The author doesn't even anticipate that the forward-deployed ships will engage the enemy in a major wartime fight until those fleet elements are reinforced two or three months later.

Or rather, the survivors of the forward-deployed forces will have to wait 2 or 3 months before attempting a major fight. Since if war breaks out, we will likely be the ones on defense and our enemies will try to sink what is within reach.

Now, I'm assuming this waiting period doesn't mean we abandon our allies. But we'll fight east of them until reinforced. The air part of Air-Sea Battle will dominate to interfere with Chinese attempts to run wild in those two or three months we are gathering forces.

Which means China's arms build up has already achieved some part of their objective of keeping us away from the western Pacific until China can achieve their objectives against a neighboring state or states that must fight without decisive American help during those two or three months.

So if we need numbers, this idea might be a good idea. I'll leave that discussion to those with far more knowledge about the details of maintenance and reservist usage for major fleet elements we'd need in war.

But unless we forward deploy ships more expendable than the ships we have now, I'm not on board pushing more forces forward--which can't hope for reinforcements against a major enemy for two or three months--where they might just be targets for the enemy in the opening hours and days of a war we aren't expecting.

Keep His Day Job

While I am sure one retired Marine colonel's worry about Afghanistan's need for air power after we leave is spot on, saying he has credibility because he "predicted" the Iraq insurgency is undercut by the actual linked article.

I only want to address the prediction because failure to predict the long insurgencies is a common slam against supporters (like me) of the war. So let's look at the prediction for Saddam's strategy to defeat our advancing forces:

Phase one assumes eventual defeat in a conventional war. If defeat is inevitable, he must make the most of it.

Anwar Sadat of Egypt reclaimed a measure of Arab pride in 1973 in a war that, while lost tactically and operationally, was fought with enough skill to regain an Arab sense of honour and pride lost in 1967. The next precept is to make the conventional phase last as long and be as bloody as possible for the coalition.

The final sub-phase will be to attempt to turn Baghdad into an Arab Alamo, making "Remember Baghdad" a battle cry, for future generations and the rest of this war. At this point Saddam will go into hiding or exile, portraying himself as having led a glorious struggle against imperialism and vowing to continue. If he uses chemical weapons, I am wrong. There will be no sanctuary.

The second phase is a protracted guerilla war against the occupation (or liberation). The Ba'ath party has seeded the population centres with cadres designed to lead a guerilla movement. This is not a last-minute act. Americans have overrun facilities that have been in place for some time.

The war will be an attritional struggle against occupying forces and any Iraqi interim government. The strategic objective is to tire the coalition, which will turn Iraq over to the United Nations.

Phase three aims to amass enough semi-conventional power to overwhelm the UN and interim government - a combination of Black Hawk Down and the 1975 North Vietnamese offensive that crushed South Vietnam. A success would transform Saddam into a darling of the Arab world; a high-risk strategy, for a high-risk kind of guy.

Let's start with the assumption based on the 1973 war.

One, Sadat could restore some pride in Arab military prowess by initiating a surprise attack by well-practiced (for that task) troops against heavily outnumbered Israeli troops. Saddam was about to be hit by a superior enemy army (the mainly US-British force that struck).

Two, Sadat did not face the loss of his country regardless of the outcome. Israel was not going to conquer Egypt, first of all. And second, like any war waged by allies of America and the Soviet Union, the clock was ticking on the war once the fighting started. Pressure to end the war before it could escalate to super power involvement and the next worry of nuclear confrontation between those super powers limited what the Israelis could achieve. Saddam was on his own and Russia was not going to risk nuclear war to stop American tanks and smart bombs.

So Saddam's ability to replicate Sadat's achievement is not there based on the author's assumptions.

Further, while Saddam assumed defeat in a conventional fight with America, that is why he had little conventional military power to defend southern Iraq.

He did hope to hold at Baghdad because we'd be too afraid of casualties to go house to house, if my memory serves me; and hoped that French and Russian diplomatic help would end the war before we could gather up the forces to take Fortress Baghdad. So Saddam's assumption of losing the conventional war was way too optimistic, too.

For the first phase of conventional war--which was about to end with the Thunder Runs into Baghdad--Saddam did not inflict many casualties at all in the invasion and Saddam's forces broke after the Thunder Runs without making Baghdad an Arab Alamo.

So the prediction of phase I was wrong.

The phase 2 insurgency is where the author apparently earns his predictive reputation.

Yes, Saddam prepared his loyalists in the south to resist us. But Saddam assumed that this resistance would take place behind the front line held at Baghdad by Saddam's conventional Republican Guards divisions. And they'd have to fight only long enough for France and Russia to save his regime and get our forces out. Then, those loyalists would be in a better position to keep the Shias of southern Iraq from revolting as they did in 1991 in the wake of Desert Storm.

Saddam's loyalists did resist after Baghdad fell, it is true. But by December, Saddam was caught and resistance was crumbling. By February 2004, we went a week with zero combat deaths in a month that saw just 20 American combat deaths, and it seemed like Baathist resistance was fading fast.

The only reason that the fight continued was because al Qaeda with Syrian support invaded Iraq, and Iran supported Sadr and Shia death squads to start entirely new insurgencies. Our fight went on but it had nothing to do with Saddam's plans to tire us out. Other actors fought for their objectives--not for Saddam's (who in any case was in captivity).

The last phase ignores that Saddam had no place to build up a semi-conventional military power. I wrote as the war went on that the resistance was actually descending the insurgency ladder. Far from building up units to engage at higher levels over time, the insurgencies regressed to IEDs and rocket attacks with relatively few direct attacks and few of them at even platoon level.

Saddam's, Syria's, Iran's, and al Qaeda's strategies all failed to tire us or defeat us. By fall 2008, we'd won the war.

I don't mean to pick on the man, but this is no record of predicting the future. Not that the author of this is claiming this article as a sign of his ability to see the future. And Max Boot should know better.

And I did not predict an insurgency, I freely admit. Once Baghdad's defenders collapsed, I figured the Baathists didn't have the heart to wage an insurgency. And if they did, as only 20% of the population, I assumed they could not win. Nor did I think we'd let Syria and Iran get away with essentially invading Iraq to wage war on us.

Afghan's forces do need air support--both fire support and medical evacuation--or they won't want to take the field to resist the Taliban once we remove our air power. And you don't need to be Nostradamus to see that coming.

If we need to hire contractors to provide light air support and medical transport, we should do it.

The Stupidity! It Burns!

To say that this column is stupid is to insult legitimately stupid people around the world who are nonetheless functioning and contributing members of society. By comparison, Thomas Friedman really is a deep thinker with a big, nuanced brain. I should be happy enough that Tim Blair mocked the article. But I'm not.

Waleed Aly, an Australian, doesn't like our drone strikes on jihadi nasties. Let's take a tour of the results of idiocy linked to writing implements:

It seems inevitable that lots of countries – including ones that make the West uncomfortable – will soon enough have drones of their own. Perhaps the most overlooked story of the year comes from China, where the People's Liberation Army hatched a plan to send a drone to Myanmar to assassinate a drug trafficker who had murdered 13 Chinese nationals.

The fact that China will soon have drones is no argument against us having drones. At heart, the view is that somehow--against all history--if we don't use a weapon poorly then others won't either. We've used planes, mines, tanks, and rifles under the laws of war yet that hasn't stopped China from selling planes, mines, tanks, and cheap rifles around the globe to people who couldn't care less about the rules of war or even common decency. China will use and sell armed drones whether we use them or don't use them. And oddly enough for an example Aly is using to show how China will abuse drones, China did not use armed drones to kill a murdering drug dealer. Odd, that is, given his premise.

He then raises the issue of civilian casualties as a reason to oppose drone strikes:

But even if we could get a reliable figure, it's unclear precisely what it would mean. The problem here is that we're dealing with a counter-factual. How many civilians would have died if conventional weapons were used instead? How many (if any) of these strikes would not have gone ahead if drones weren't available? Again, we can't say. And, sadly, we're in an era when civilian deaths are deemed an acceptable inevitability of war, rather than a reason to avoid it.

Apparently, Aly is not well read. In the end, Aly doesn't care whether the number of innocent civilians killed by our drones is high or low--or whether more conventional weapons would have killed more or fewer. But he does know that we live in an era when civilian deaths are acceptable.

What rot. Civilian deaths--at least for Westerners who wage war--are not acceptable. If they were we wouldn't actually have rules of war that we enforce with prosecutions against our own troops if they violate them. We live in an era where Westerners go to extreme lengths to avoid unintentional civilian deaths--exceeding even the requirements of the rules of warfare. Those rules do not require us to hold our fire when going after enemies if civilians might die. How many civilians died in World War II as we fought the Nazis? Lots. Lots of German civilians and lots of friendly civilians who got in the way. To say we live in an era when civilian deaths are acceptable is idiocy and blindness.

Blindness because Aly doesn't see that the only side in the war where civilian deaths are acceptable--desirable even--is on the side of our enemies. They hide among civilians in the hope that we won't shoot at the jihadis and risk civilian deaths. They dress like civilians in the hope we will not shoot--and even if we do they might persuade the Aly types around the world that those killed were innocent civilians. They deliberately target civilians and even justify the deaths of their own civilians who die as simply creting involuntary martyrs.

But don't go away yet. Aly is just getting warmed up:

The central problem is drones permit a kind of no-risk, low-cost warfare. Indeed, they so radically and fundamentally alter the nature of war that they risk making war seem far less grave, and far easier to wage.

I assume I missed the earnest Aly article about the evils of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombers that our enemies use to kill mostly civilians but some troops if they get lucky. The idea that we shouldn't wage war unless our troops die in sufficient numbers is so bizarrely stupid that I can hardly stand it. When we are at war, we need to win. And if more of our troops survive and more of the enemy's die, that's freaking great and not a reason to despair. How many troops did we lose overthrowing the Saddam regime or the Taliban regime? How many did we lose over Libya, Bosnia, Serbia, or Kosovo? And without armed drones in sight in any of those fights?

But he's just approaching the heart of his brain synapses randomly sparking:

War is a kind of contract. Each side confronts the other, with the risk of death and defeat. In short, war should come at a cost. That contract is shredded when you're attacked by something that cannot itself be killed. It's not remotely a fair fight. It's scarcely a fight at all. For all the horror, pain, and gore of the battlefield, there's something to be said for it. It's one of the very best reasons every nation has not to go to war. The greater the sacrifice, the graver the decision to fight.

A contract! Did we fail to read the fine print that made slamming our planes filled with people into the World Trade Center--also filled with people--an expected part of our war with the jihadis?

Are more than 6,500 military dead not enough of a price we have paid? Are Thousands more with wounds physical and mental not enough? Are the hundreds of billions of dollars we've spent not enough of a price? Are the limits on our freedoms and civil liberties due to measures to stop jihadis from killing us "on the battlefield" of our home towns not enough of a price? Is Aly really that stupid?

What was fair about seizing our planes on 9/11 and killing nearly three thousand? What was fair about bombing Bali? What was fair about bombing hotels? What was fair about bombing Boston? What was fair about slitting an off-duty soldier's throat in London? Or bombing mass transit in London or Madrid? What's fair about suicide bombing polling places?

What's fair about jihadi IEDs and mines? How do we kill them?

What's fair? What's fair about idiots lecturing on politics at Monash University?

And if sacrifice deterred a decision to fight, why aren't jihadis refraining from that choice given the unfairness that Aly heaps uniquely on our armed drones? Shouldn't the logical conclusion of Aly's argument be that we must kill even more jihadis and their civilian fans to make the price of waging jihad on us felt by their society?

Don't the jihadis tell us they will beat us because in their contract, we love life and they love death? I'm no attorney, but I'd call that a contract we can work with!

The fact is, the central argument of Aly is ridiculous. He thinks the price we pay for using drones to kill enemies is so low that we'll use them wherever we want. But the fact is, we don't. We use them in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we use them in Yemen and Somalia. These are all places where fighting is actively going on and pre-dated our development of armed drones. Where else are we unleashing the drones rather than reying on allies to take down jihadis with their own police or own forces? So far we aren't even using them over Mali where a war against jihadis is being waged by France.

War is no contract between combatants. We don't want war but they attempt to kill us. Under those circumstances I simply want our troops to kill as many of the enemy as we can--as carefully as our technology and objectives allow--and do so as quickly as possible to finally defeat our enemies.

Aly then pretends to have a notion of the historical record more granular than his knowledge of his own buttocks:

The historical record suggests our every military development seems to have made war less and less costly for those waging it, with horrific results. Once, rulers risked their own lives on the battlefield. Then the lives of ordinary citizens, called up by conscription. Now they risk the lives of professional soldiers who make the choice to get in harm's way. And in the meantime the ratio of civilian casualties to those of combatants has ballooned.

Seriously? Hysterical record is more like it.

I suggest our scholar consult World War II--that splendid era of conscript armies. Entire armies sweeping across countries killed lots of civilians even when those armies weren't trying to kill civilians.

Who knew, I might add, that the mass murders of Rwanda in the 1990s was inflicted by impersonal drones rather than up-close guns and hatchets. I guess they can all be proud that they paid a price worthy of respect by an academic of Aly's caliber.

And that age of glorious conscript warfare that Aly extols? It had a fairly brief shelf life of about a century in the West. Before that, it was volunteers. Now we're going back to volunteers. Hell, before conscription, private hired military units were pretty common. I know, buzz kill for the "cost" arguments here.

Good God, I suppose I should be grateful that we don't have a monopoly on raving lunatic stupidity masquerading as deep thinking.

In the end, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Mr. Aly is only concerned that American soldiers aren't dying in high enough numbers to suit him. Who is his contract with, anyway?

UPDATE: A reminder from the glory days of World War II:

The U.S. has long been accused of having an unfair advantage in war, because of the American tendency to throw more material and money than manpower into the fight. This was most notable during World War II, when German prisoners often complained (when debriefed) about it. To the Germans (or Japanese), American artillery, aircraft and tanks seemed to be everywhere, all the time and in unbelievable quantity. Should the enemy launch an attack, every American gun within range would, as if by magic, begin firing on the advancing troops. The result was that both the Japanese and Germans were surprised, and usually pulverized, when they encountered the artillery support that accompanied U.S. ground units. The Germans thought this massive artillery support was somewhat "unfair" (if only because the Americans had it and they didn't), while the Japanese found yet another way to die nobly.

I don't understand why people are complaining that it isn't fair for us to use drones to kill our enemies. I can understand why those who side with our enemies don't like them. But is it really a case of people being for us or against us?

If it makes people feel better, the Strategypage post discusses our difficulties in perpetuating our tradition of unfair advantages.

UPDATE: So is this an admirable way of fighting:

Also on Saturday, an Italian soldier was killed and three were wounded when a child threw a grenade at a NATO convoy in the western province of Farah, a spokesman for the governor and a Taliban spokesman said

"A brave, heroic 11-year-old Afghan child hurled a hand grenade at dismounted Italian troops in Farah city," the Taliban said in an English-language statement.

Sadly, since the Taliban celebrated the attacker, I guess the Afghans aren't paying the price for their method of warfare.

Land, Ho!

It is good to read that Air-Sea Battle is recognized as a means to reach China and not the end.

I've been puzzled that Air-Sea Battle efforts to penetrate Chinese anti-access weapons in order to operate near China haven't really said what we'd do with the ability to operate near China:

I know, the Navy likes to say that 80% of the world's people live within 300 miles of a coast, as a justification for their role. That's an interesting fact, but quite irrelevant. If I may be so bold, 100% of the world's people live on the land.

Which is my main point of contention with Air-Sea Battle. I have no problem with the idea that we need to be able to pierce China's anti-access forces to operate close to China. But what do we do when we pierce that shield? Sail around broadcasting, "Here we are and there's nothing you can do about it!"? Presumably, we should have a point for wanting to operate near China, no?

So this article by an admiral and Air Force general is welcome to read:

Air-Sea Battle is not a military strategy; it isn't about countering an invasion; it isn't a plan for U.S. forces to conduct an assault. Air-Sea Battle is a concept for defeating threats to access and enabling follow-on operations, which could include military activities as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster response. For example, in the last several years, improved integration between naval and air forces helped us respond to floods in Pakistan and to the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. [Emphasis added]

Although it is amusing, too. Chinese anti-access weapons will try to stop us from responding to floods or earthquakes? The point is, Air-Sea Battle enables follow-on operations. Which would be on land in or near China. If we simply wanted to bombard China, we could focus on building weapons to do that from beyond the range of China's anti-access forces.

And the authors describe the concept of breaking the kill chain of Chinese forces that seek to deny us access to regions near China:

Air-Sea Battle defeats threats to access by, first, disrupting an adversary's command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; second, destroying adversary weapons launchers (including aircraft, ships, and missile sites); and finally, defeating the weapons an adversary launches.

This approach exploits the fact that, to attack our forces, an adversary must complete a sequence of actions, commonly referred to as a "kill chain." For example, surveillance systems locate U.S. forces, communications networks relay targeting information to weapons launchers, weapons are launched, and then they must hone in on U.S. forces. Each of these steps is vulnerable to interdiction or disruption, and because each step must work, our forces can focus on the weakest links in the chain, not each and every one. For example, strikes against installations deep inland are not necessarily required in Air-Sea Battle because adversary C4ISR may be vulnerable to disruption, weapons can be deceived or interdicted, and adversary ships and aircraft can be destroyed.

Yes, this is precisely what I described more than two years ago in a lengthy post called "Breaking the Kill Chain."

The article authors add cyber-war to the took kit, but I tend to place more faith on things that explode on, jam, or confuse enemy assets. But I'm open to the possibility that one day cyber-warfare could be used against precise targets in as timely a fashion as launching a missile of some type.

Let's not lose sight of the land on the other side of our massive Air-Sea Battle investment in technology, tactics, and outlook.

Sadly, A Spine is Required

It has long seemed like a no-brainer that we should arm the Syrian rebels. Assad has been an enemy and enemies should know that we will take any opportunity to strike back. What are we worried about? That Assad will get mad and send jihadis to kill us? He or his father have been doing this for decades and our patience still hasn't helped cure Assad's ruling class of their love of killing us and our friends.

And with Arabs stirring against autocracy, does it really hurt to side with opponents of autocrats even if the rebels lose? Or even if we have to fight some of the rebels later? Who can blame Arabs for thinking we like tyrants?

Syria’s blood-soaked tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, is finally right about something. He recently told an Argentine newspaper that he doubts the joint Russian-American peace initiative will stop the bloodshed in his country. Of course it won’t. Syria’s civil war is an existential fight to the death between the Alawite minority that dominates the regime and the revolutionary Sunni Muslim majority that will be smashed if it loses. The peace initiative would merely be a naive waste of time, then, but circumstances might conspire to make it something worse than that: from the proverbial Arab Street’s point of view, by cooperating with Moscow and refusing to back the rebels, Washington appears to support the Assad dictatorship.

After looking away in 2009 when Iranians rose up in the streets, our administration has only itself to blame for Arab views that we are really siding with Iran. Iran got a pass on repression, Syria is getting a pass (from us) on waging war on its people and using gas, Iran is defying us on nukes. Why wouldn't Syrians believe we are really on Assad's side?

It would have been better to have openly sided with Assad's opponents much earlier. As I wrote early on:

I'd rather have the Turks go in to Syria in force to have a chance at ending this problem sooner rather than later. But if the question is simply whether we support the insurgents, the answer is "heck yes."

Does anybody remember that through the Iraq War Assad funneled jihadis into Iraq for al Qaeda where they blew up Iraqi civilians and American and allied troops in suicide bomber attacks? And otherwise supported insurgents fighting us in Anbar and the Sunni Triangle?

We owe Assad payback. Even if the anti-Assad forces don't win we should support the anti-Assad forces. Our enemies should know they don't have a free shot at us, and fear that even if we don't hit them immediately, we'll bide our time and strike when we can.

We still owe Assad payback. Pay him back!

UPDATE: We remain unwilling to kill the king. I'm sure Kerry retains hope of "flipping" Assad when the unpleasantness is over.

Why we won't arm the rebels to defeat Assad is beyond me. We are about 90,000 dead past the issue of "militarizing" the conflict, aren't we? Shouldn't we try to win it? A jihadi victory isn't good. But neither is an Assad win. At least if the rebels win we will have an opportunity to then help friendlier rebels fight the jihadis.

If there are greater worries than whether Assad survives this civil war that are keeping us out, that's a reason for staying our hand. But I've heard no reasons offered on these grounds. Assad should be defeated.

And don't despair at Assad's recent gains. The retreat from eastern Syria and the influx of hundreds of Hezbollah fighters plus tens of thousands of Iranian-organized militias have given Assad the manpower to go on the offensive within his smaller Core Syria stretching from the coast and down to Damascus and points south, including the Israeli border, it seems. Assad is following up the Qusayr victory with ambitions to secure the Noms area and take Aleppo from partial-rebel control:

With fresh momentum from the capture of a strategic town in western Syria, President Bashar Assad's forces have turned their sights to driving rebel fighters from the country's densely populated heartland, including the cities of Homs and Aleppo.

Hezbollah can't afford too many more victories as they spearheaded at Qusayr. In addition to the high loss rate, Hezbollah has to retain enough strength to resist Israel if there is a war between them in Lebanon.

And Aleppo is too large of a city and too far from Assad's core region to really secure even if he can retake it. The rebels could again bleed the Syrian ground forces if Assad sends the militias into the city which Assad's regulars could not capture last year.

If rebel morale holds and they can bleed with irregular warfare and stubborn city defense the ground forces Assad is aggressively using, the momentum will swing back to the rebel side and Assad will then face the choice of abandoning Damascus to retreat to a Rump Alawite state with an inland buffer zone.

But the rebels--especially the non-jihadi majority--need arms and signs of support to keep up the fight. If the rebels can't keep up the fight, we might get the worst of all worlds--an angry Assad in power in a smaller Syria that allows him to base Russian ships and host Iranian bases to operate in Lebanon; a dispirited non-jihadi resistance that fades away; and jihadis in power in the eastern part of Syria beyond Assad's reach where they will have a new sanctuary to destabilize Iraq and Jordan.

I'm Sure Ratings Will Be Spectacular

No more beauty pageants in Moslem countries.

Who cares who wins the Evening Potato Sack portion of the event?

What's Plan D?

Now, despite the many reasons cited in our declaration of war to go to war with Saddam's Iraq, war opponents insist that only the presence of existing chemical weapons would have justified the war. What? Syria has and is using chemical weapons? Squirrel!

Saddam had used chemical weapons extensively in the 1980s, had advanced programs in the past for nuclear weapons (pre-1991) and biological weapons (even in the mid-1990s) as well as the technical capability to make chemical weapons and missiles do deliver them (even after Desert Storm) and was poised to resume his programs when sanctions faltered. Yet war was unjustified because we did not find post-1991 chemical weapons after we defeated Saddam's regime.

So our president said only Syrian use of chemical weapons would justify our intervention in Syria. It was a "red line," our administration said. Clearly, our administration never thought Assad would actually use chemical weapons.

While chemical usage has not been routine, it has been used:

Britain has joined France in declaring that sarin nerve gas has been used in the Syrian civil war, though it did not go as far as France as to accuse President Bashar al-Assad's regime of deploying the chemical weapon.

It's possible that local commanders used the weapons on their own. Jihadis may have also used them.

So after laying down the marker that only chemical weapons were a cause for war in Iraq (after the fact) and after insisting that Assad must not use them, we do nothing to back the president's red line on chemical use in Syria.

And in the meantime, 80,000 have died by more conventional means of slaughter.

We are building the capacity to do so, of course, in Jordan. But Turkish troubles make their vital help more uncertain. While a foreign adventure might be useful to distract Turks from local disputes, it might just as well keep Turks too inwardly focused to act in Syria.

I'm not happy. Plan A for the administration was to make Assad our friend. We didn't try Plan B to overthrow the Assad regime by supporting rebels when the fighting got going seriously a year and a half ago. We figured we could always break out Plan C to cope with Assad's chemical arsenal apart from dealing with the Assad regime. But now with Turkey's vital role in Plan C in doubt, and Iraq crumbling under the pressure of existing between Syria and Iran, do we have a Plan D?

I hope so. Because Plan W (blaming Bush) just isn't going to cut it any more.

Science Deniers

Hey, could we get worked up about science deniers who actually deny actual science causing actual people to actually die?

Tip to Instapundit.

Sounds Like a War Thing, To Me

The Obama administration is carrying out large-scale traffic analysis of phone calls. I'm not prepared to complain.

The information isn't about contents of the calls:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

This allows the government to see who is calling where and when. If we know phone numbers of terrorists, we find out if they are calling for pizza or their boss.

Now I don't find this odd since we are at war. Why the administration thinks it needs to do this is beyond me, given that they say the war is just about over--and is being done on our schedule.

When a similar program came out in the Bush administration, I'm sure I didn't complain then. We were at war. So unless there is something new that comes out that makes this worse, I'm not going to complain now.

But why aren't the people who then claimed Bush was shredding the constitution out on the streets complaining now?

UPDATE: I did a quick check, and I wasn't upset at the time when the facts came out. With a bonus reference to war measures and levels of outrage.

UPDATE: Related thoughts on war and war measures. I suppose the thinking is that if Bush "unilaterally" went to war, the anti-Bush can unilaterally end the war.

Frustration and Anger

Are the Turkish protests a bigger deal than I think?

This article thinks the reaction of Prime Minister Erdogan could be crucial to whether he survives or goes:

Erdo-gone? After Taksim, Turkish Leader’s Political Future May Hang in the Balance

And it assumes his reaction has to be on giving in to the protesters on the narrow issues at hand and strengthening rule of law rather than seeing elections as ratifying autocracy of the majority.

Stratfor doesn't see the protest movement as it stands as leading to much:

But even as the appeal of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (also known by its Turkish acronym, AKP) is beginning to erode, it will remain a powerful force in Turkish politics for some time to come, with its still-significant base of support throughout the country and the lack of a credible political alternative in the next elections.

Turkey is certainly becoming more polarized between Islam-friendly people and the secularized elements who used to rule Turkey. But it just doesn't seem like the Islamists and Islam-friendly elements are losing the political battle (or the demographic battle, for that matter).

Could the protests reinforce the concept of rule of law and rein in Erdogan's efforts to rule like China for a day--every day? I'll certainly look to others with far more knowledge on this than I have for clues.

But unless the Turkish military has the desire to intervene in politics and can leverage a military crisis with Syria to justify such an act, it just doesn't seem like the protests will lead to significant, lasting changes in the basic strength of secularists and Islamists (moderate or more radical).

Dumb Asses

The Malian army got their asses handed to them by Tuareg rebels over a year ago. Malian forces panicked when the jihadis headed south several months ago. Malian forces proved barely capable of following in the wake of the French blitzkrieg (or "bitskrieg" as I prefer to call their rapid but tiny offensive) that smashed up the jihadis in the north early this year. But now the Malians are feeling big? Dumb asses.

In what world do the Malian government forces think this will work?

Malian troops seized a village after heavy fighting with Tuareg separatists on Wednesday and are advancing towards the town of Kidal, the last rebel stronghold, the army said.

It was the first combat between the MNLA separatists and the Malian army since a French-led military offensive launched in January against Islamists in northern Mali.

As I've written, we don't have a dog in the fight between the northern Tuaregs and southern Mali majority that rules them. Our only interest is in keeping jihadis from setting up a sanctuary. The Tuaregs drew us in only because they initially sided with jihadis to defeat the central (southern controlled) government. I've begged the Mali government to work out an autonomy deal with the Tuareg to achieve that goal.

In many ways, the Tuaregs have valid complaints and reason to separate. If the Tuaregs pledged to fight jihadis, I'd be perfectly willing to support a Tuareg independence movement against those idiots from the south who pay no heed to our reasons for helping them in the first place. And if the Mali government is determined to provoke a resurgence of jihadi support in the north, we have every reason to oppose them.

Let's see how France handles this. Nuance is their first language, after all.

UPDATE: Dumbassery subsides:

Mali's government and Tuareg separatist rebels began talks on Saturday that both sides said they hoped would lead to a ceasefire ahead of national elections next month and pave the way for a permanent peace deal.

For now.

The French say that if the talks fail, a military campaign would be "legitimate." Is that to pressure the Tuaregs? Or is it to pressure the Mali central government to negotiate or have the French removed as an excuse for why Mali's army doesn't pound the Tuaregs? I think the Mali army would get beaten and the French are a convenient excuse for why the Mali troops don't teach the Tuaregs a lesson.

Big Bang Theory

Living in Ann Arbor, I sometimes feel like a stranger in a strange land.

But in contrast to growing up in Detroit, the city is very good and worth the price. A college town with a vibrant downtown provides ample entertainment options, and none of them involve monster truck rallies.

Not that there's anything wrong with such rallies. I don't understand the appeal but I don't think less of someone who does. Same with opera, truth be told.

But Ann Arbor certainly has a reputation. Perhaps a snooty reputation. But a reputation. And Lord knows, I do sympathize with that suspicion of my town.

But this is a good town to live in, insulated from the world by space and a fine university that just oozes brain power and gravitas. We're not crazy--we've been tested. Our gas stations may dispense Regular, Gasuccino, and Ultra Unicorn Blend, but the homeless guy asking for change will probably actually buy a latte and might have more college credits than I do. I know the guy baking the artisan bread sure does.

Anyway, I really like sitting outside at a pub on a nice day downtown, people-watching, in this town. And by "people" watching I mean women watching. Fine. I'm a pig. But life is good. And I don't stare and I don't whistle or yell out, "Hey babe! Wanna get lucky?" Perhaps I just need time.

So imagine my buzz kill this week when I'm sitting there, reading, drinking a pint of Bass, and letting the world (women) pass me by in this most intellectual of cities, and a man walks by and very clearly announces, "Damn, I've gotta take a s**t."

That's nice.

It says a lot about Ann Arbor that it wasn't actually more than a momentary buzz kill. Life is that good.

Decent Interval

Why is the Obama administration ignoring Iraq? Good question. Why won't they work the problem?

We lost more than 4,500 troops and spent north of $700 billion to defeat Saddam, Iran, and al Qaeda in Iraq. Why are we doing nothing to preserve that costly win?

We fought a war in Iraq because it is important to our security. Has the price we paid blinded us to that basic reality? Why do we ignore Iraq?

It is hard to determine why Iraq receives so little U.S. attention as it drifts towards sectarian conflict, civil war, and alignment with Iran. Tensions in Iraq have been rising for well over a year, and the UN warned on June 1, 2013 that "1,045 Iraqis were killed and another 2,397 were wounded in acts of terrorism and acts of violence in May. The number of civilians killed was 963 (including 181 civilian police), and the number of civilians injured was 2,191 (including 359 civilian police). A further 82 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed and 206 were injured."

This neglect may be a matter of war fatigue; the result of a conflict the United States "won" at a tactical level but seems to have lost at a strategic level. It may be the result of the fact the civil war in Syria is more intensive, produces more human suffering, and is more open to the media. The end result, however, is that that the United States is just beginning to see how much of a strategic pivot Iraq has become.

President Bush won the war in Iraq. Yes, it was a tactical victory in that we "only" defeated Saddam to create a friendlier Iraq, set back Iran's ambitions to control post-invasion Iraq, and smashed up al Qaeda's invasion of Iraq.

Yet Bush set the stage for a strategic victory that required very little from President Obama to cement. But the Obama administration would not defend and exploit Bush's tactical win to create a strategic win of a stable and prosperous democratic Iraq in the heart of the Moslem world.

I don't think the Obama administration wanted anything more from Iraq than a decent interval before Iraq is lost. If Iraq succeeded without much of our help, they wouldn't complain. But they wouldn't do much to help defend "Bush's" war of choice (and we'll ignore the declaration of war on Iraq from a Republican House and Democratic Senate supported by both parties).

And the quiet is lasting long enough for the Obama administration to pivot from the Middle East to the Pacific.

So if Iraq collapses after we have gotten out of the Gulf region and washed our hands of the problem? Oh well. That was Bush's fault.

But no, the Obama administration can't avoid responsibility for what happens to Iraq on its watch. At this point, if Benghazi was "a long time ago" as Carney tried to claim, the Bush administration is ancient history.

And it isn't too late. Iraqi Shias aren't destined to be pro-Iran. But the Iraqis are afraid of Iran. We have a problem in Iraq and we must work the problem rather than look away and pretend it doesn't matter (from the first link):

A revitalized U.S. office of military cooperation and timely U.S. arms transfer might give the United States more leverage, and U.S. efforts to persuade Arab Gulf states that it is far better to try to work with Iraq than isolate it might have a major impact. Limited and well-focused U.S. economic and governance aid might improve leverage in a country that may have major oil export earnings but whose economy needs aid in reform more than money and today has the per capita income of a poverty state, ranking only 162 in the world.

The tide of war is coming in and we choose to do nothing. The stupidity is mind bottling. One day we'll remember when hopes for a free Iraq were alive, if we watch the chaos gather and grow.

UPDATE: More on the Shia tide coming in to match the al Qaeda tide:

In the last two years al Qaeda been very open about its desire to regain control of parts of Iraq that it lost in 2007-8. Terrorism deaths have increased since the last American troops left at the end of 2011, and until recently the Shia controlled government, and the Shia majority, have not retaliated against the Sunni Arab minority. But now the armed (and technically illegal) Shia militias have resumed their use of death squads to drive Sunni Arabs out of their remaining neighborhoods or even out of Iraq. In the last two months there have been over 2,000 terrorism related deaths, and a growing number of the victims are Sunnis.

I assume our administration department secretaries and staff don't believe all this since their boss told us he "responsibly ended" the war in Iraq in 2011.

Out Damn Spot

Syrian forces have captured Qusayr, an important position on the supply line to rebels in Homs from Lebanon. We'll see if it was critical for the rebels to hold and whether Assad can hold the town.

Syria's government trumpeted the fall of Qusayr:

The Syrian army triumphantly announced Wednesday the capture of a strategic town near the Lebanese border, telling the nation it has "cleansed" the rebel-held Qusair of "terrorists" fighting President Bashar Assad's troops. ...

On the ground in the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of Assad's government. A wide offensive on Qusair was launched on May 19.

The fall of Qusair deals a huge blow to the opposition. The overwhelmingly Sunni town has served as a conduit for shipments of weapons, fighters and supplies smuggled from Lebanon to the rebels inside Syria.

As Assad contracted his perimeter by abandoning large chunks of eastern Syria, formed Iranian-trained militias to replace Assad's depleted infantry (they suffered heavy losses and the survivors just can't be eager to die), and received Hezbollah reinforcements who are fresh enough to be willing cannon fodder, Assad has been able to regain the initiative in his smaller realm.

I suspect that Assad's losses will mount over the coming months and that Syrian morale will drop if the rebels can hang on and start to reverse Assad's recent gains and inflict more losses that the Assad side can ill afford to endure. If rebels can also bypass Qusayr for their supply lines to Homs, then the Battle for Qusayr won't be as important. And if the rebels can infiltrate the city and resume the fight, the Assad side won't gain a lasting psychological advantage from this battle.

But for now, Assad has a local victory. Will he use it for a better deal in negotiations or wrongly think he has turned the entire tide of war?

UPDATE: Amazingly, a lot of rebels escaped to fight another day:

Another fighter said he was going home to rest after four sleepless nights. "We went in, there was some fighting and then (the rebels) withdrew," he said. "We saw them leaving in about 400 cars."

Four hundred cars (with at least 400 rebels in them) escaped? That's not a hard count, of course, but hundreds of rebels escaped. They could revert to irregular warfare rather than trying to hold terrain. If a lot of pro-Assad forces go home to get some sleep, that doesn't speak highly of discipline in the ranks.

How many of the Syrian forces are irregulars who may or may not be able to hold the town now?

Some had the ability to carry on the fight, but tankers moving toward an enemy-held village, 6 were mentioned in the article, are clearly regulars. Just how many of the Qusayr attackers are pursuing the defeated rebels and how many are looting or sleeping?

UPDATE: Strategypage writes of the battle:

The Assad soldiers and their Hezbollah allies managed to defeat their fanatic opponents. However, the first lesson from this battle was that the Assad/Hezbollah alliance could not blitz (hit hard, demoralize and roll over) the rebels, at least not when the defenders have some of these fanatics among them. Hezbollah and the Assad troops, guided by their Iranian advisors, learned quickly how to deal with the rebel resistance. Hezbollah gunmen were used when the ground fighting got tough, with Syrian army infantry largely withdrawn to provide security elsewhere around the town. Syrian army artillery and air power were still present, mostly killing civilians (most of the 30,000 inhabitants fled during the battle). It was a bloody battle, by the standards of this war, with several thousand casualties, including over a hundred dead Hezbollah men.

Hezbollah had to bear the brunt of the fighting. So their casualties had to be really high when you toss in wounded and consider that Hezbollah has a few thousand gunmen on active duty right now. How many of them are in Syria to fight? And how long can they endure 400 casualties (assuming wounded at three times the killed rate) per victorious battle? Sure, Assad would love to fight to the last Hezbollah fighter, but how long will Hezbollah go along with that?

Shield First, Then Sword

We have put headquarters elements into Jordan capable of commanding 20,000 troops. Now we will put in forces to protect the introduction of those troops. If the West intervenes, this will be our part of the front.

The period when American forces are flowing into a theater but before we are organized with enough troops is our period of maximum vulnerability. The Jordanian army is good enough to protect against Syrian ground attacks. We're getting ready to handle missile and air threats by planning to leave Patriot missiles in Jordan after a training exercise ends:

Oscar Seara, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said the military would be deploying Patriot missile launchers and F-16 fighter planes as part of a training exercise with the Jordanian military called Eager Lion.

“In order to enhance the defensive posture and capacity of Jordan, some of these assets may remain beyond the exercise at the request of the government of Jordan,” Seara said.

With the air defense missiles in place, the aircraft could return quickly if ground personnel remain, too.

With a shield in place, the question then arises about the sword that we might deploy in this southern front. Troops can be flown in, of course. But equipment must be shipped in. Crossing Israel or Iraq is unlikely. I'd guess we would ship equipment in through Aqaba. When we invaded Iraq in 2003, I kept looking for signs we were moving in enough equipment for a heavy division to advance out of eastern Jordan.

We did advance out of eastern Jordan, but it was limited to special forces with support from separate Army National Guard infantry battalions used to garrison airfields in western Iraq. I think there was a small contingent of Marines, too. The main effort came out of Kuwait.

But this time our main effort has to be Jordan. And this time, shipping stuff north from Aqaba would be the way to get equipment in. The equipment we could ship in most quietly would be the afloat prepositioned equipment of our Army and Marine Corps.

Other equipment in the Gulf region for Army heavy forces should remain in case Iran gets active in that region. But the afloat equipment could be moved in fairly quietly, I'd think.

Just a single Army brigade and a Marine Corps air-ground force based around a brigade-sized ground element would get us close to 20,000. We could also fly in a paratrooper brigade directly from the United States if we had to. We also have a paratrooper brigade based in Europe. I don't recall seeing casualty notices from 173rd Airborne in recent months, so I'll assume they are free rather than deployed in Afghanistan.

We'd also need a couple Turkish corps moving in from the north. Plus a Jordanian corps moving with our troops. Would French, British, and Italian forces enter Lebanon to keep the fighting from spreading too much there? And then move north and east to support the northern and southern fronts?

We need to defeat Iran and Assad. This won't be a clean win, given all the jihadis running around and the chemical weapons stockpiles that we'd have to deal with in the post-Assad chaos; but it would be a win to get rid of Assad who has been a deadly enemy of ours, and to remove an asset from Iran's ledger.

I still hope that supporting rebels could minimize our need to intervene except in the more narrow (but still tough) mission of securing chemical arms and missiles. But the war has dragged on so long and expanded so much during our period of inaction that I don't know if we can get away with the cheap option.

And I'd like to add that Assad would be in a tougher position if we hadn't walked away from Iraq at the end of 2011. Had we retained 25,000 troops in Iraq and remained active in promoting Iraqi political developments, there is no way that Iraq would be supporting Assad under tremendous pressure from Iran.

Good Enough for Government Work

Who really thought Afghanistan could be Vermont? We can achieve more than enough to call it victory if we stay and defend it.

A generally pro-Obama think tank's report thinks that despair is the wrong way to approach Afghanistan:

The report disputes critics who consider the Afghan war a “lost cause,” but acknowledges that the U.S. mission has achieved only partial results and has been plagued by Afghan corruption, a fickle ally in Pakistan and a resilient enemy in the Taliban.

The United States “has wound up with a reasonable ‘Plan B’ for achieving its core objective of preventing Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” it says. “This plan is not guaranteed to work, of course.”

Despite ongoing challenges, the report says that reasonable success can be achieved if progress continues in building a proficient Afghan military.

As long as we don't get caught up in declaring the tide of war as receding--the way we did in Iraq--we can defend what we've achieved.

Come on, my goals for Afghanistan were never that great:

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.

My timeline was off. One, we had a second surge after I wrote this about the first surge. So it took longer to build up the forces and also takes longer to draw down. And to be fair, our last major offensive was in 2011 with the 2012 Regional Command East offensive cancelled.

Of course, given the worry that even a think tank associated with the Obama administration has about walking away from Afghanistan, this was of course prescient:

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

Afghanistan was easy for a long time because al Qaeda chose to confront us in Iraq. After we beat them in Iraq, al Qaeda shifted back to Afghanistan, which led to our surges there.

Now al Qaeda is stronger in Iraq after we walked away from Iraq prematurely. Iraq has always been more important than Afghanistan. But I'd like to defend a win somewhere these days.

Too Little, Too Late?

I read earlier in the year that we sent our intelligence people to reinforce the Iraqis as al Qaeda rebuilt in our absence. Their scope may be too narrow to matter.

This is good news:

The Iraqi military announced today that it arrested five members of an al Qaeda cell that was seeking to manufacture chemical weapons, including sarin nerve gas, and plotting to conduct attacks within Iraq, Europe, and North America.

The Defense Ministry announced that it arrested the five members of the al Qaeda in Iraq cell and raided two factories in Baghdad that were used to research and manufacture the deadly chemical agents. The arrests were made with the help of undisclosed foreign intelligence services.

I assume the unnamed intelligence services included our CIA.

But as we strike al Qaeda, all of Iraq may be breaking down:

Al Qaeda in Iraq launched a concentrated wave of car-bomb and other attacks specifically against civilian Shi'a targets in and around Baghdad. Shi'a militias are mobilizing and have begun a round of sectarian killings facilitated by false checkpoints, a technique characteristic of the 2006-2007 period. Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki has taken a number of steps to demonstrate that he remains in control of the situation. The expansion of Shi'a militia activity, however, is likely to persuade many Iraqis that he is either not in control or is actively abetting the killings.

I wrote that until the Shia death squads return to the field that it wasn't a return to 2006-2007. But now that is happening, despite what I'd read (from the same sources) just days ago to the contrary.

Our failure to keep troops in Iraq to protect Iraqi politicians from Iranian pressure and to reassure Iraqi parties that politics is the way to resolve disputes could be coming back to bite us already.

President Obama may have hoped for a decent interval before "Bush's war" was lost, but the failure to decisively support rebels in Syria a year and a half ago has destabilized Iraq as Iraq bends to Iran's will to support Assad and as Iraqis take side in Syria's civil war. Had we pressed Assad when he was on the ropes, Iraq could have resisted Iran's pressure and avoided reigniting sectarian tensions.

And Hezbollah's role in Syria is dragging Lebanon into the fight, too.

The White House had best check their dictionary. I don't think "receding" means what they think it means.

And I don't think the CIA is enough to keep Iraq from dissolving into sectarian fighting. For a president who doesn't want to fight wars, President Obama sure does seem committed to losing as many as possible. If we have any smart diplomacy at all, I'd like to see some now, please.

Climate Change--Not Weather

Will the protests in Turkey lead to a Turkish Spring? I doubt it.

Quoting the Washington Post:

While the protests evolved into a full-scale demonstration against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (more on that later), they started out much smaller. The peaceful sit-in began on Monday to counter planned construction at the park, which would replace one of downtown Istanbul’s few green spaces with a shopping mall. The scene looks similar to what cities like New York and D.C. experienced during the Occupy protests: large crowds of people milling around, playing instruments and sleeping in tents.

While Erdogan is not exactly a democrat of the highest credentials, he has won free elections and does represent the wishes of a majority of Turks. We can wish the Turks were as secular as their reputation says, but birth rate differences between the rural more religious types and the urban protester class have changed Turkey.

And for me, comparisons with the Occupy Marxists is no way to generate sympathy. But I'm perhaps not the Post's target audience.

But these protests do not reflect a majority sentiment being suppressed by the majority. They may represent the release of pent up frustration at being on the electoral and demographic losing end the last decade, but this is not vanguard of the silent majority.

Some might hope that the military would rely on the support of such protesters to save secular Turkey from the Islam-friendly government (and society), but the military is probably purged sufficiently to prevent that. Besides, would the rank and file follow orders to remove Erdogan who probably reflects their views more than those of their officers?

Further, even if the army did take over the government, the protesters are exactly the type who would not be grateful for long. They'd agitate for democracy again--which they'd lose in such a contest to the Islam-friendly parties, again.

Perhaps the biggest danger is that the government, fearing the army is not purged enough and willing to use the protests as an excuse for a coup, might order the Turkish military to intervene in Syria to get the army busy.

Turkey is a democracy. And the majority is getting what they want. We can be disappointed by that. But there you go.

Turks are not Arabs, of course, but Turkey represents a long-term problem in the Arab world that we can't expect to be solved in a season. The Arab Spring of 2011 has dashed many hopes for rapid improvement, it is true:

"The Arab Spring is moving into, let's say, a more mature phase," says Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Gulf Affairs. "There is Syria, of course. But the rest of the region is moving into a slow burn now. Voices are speaking up against corruption and political arrogance in the Gulf, but also in places like Egypt and Tunisia that went through their revolutions and are still undergoing a political shakeout."

Twitter and social media is as insufficient alone to plant democracy as our military has been. Each provided Arab and/or Afghan Moslems a chance to build democracy by tearing down the autocrats who stifled movement to freedom, but each is insufficient alone.

But this movement to freedom is not over. Remember that in 2005, there seemed to be a stirring of freedom throughout the Arab world as the ripples of Iraq spread out. Lebanon, Kuwait, and Egypt all seemed to feel the pressure to reform and assert freedoms. The Lebanese actually ejected the Syrians from their country before the impulse for freedoms stalled.

Remember, in 2005, it seemed like the Iraq War was won. Elections had taken place and we planned to reduce our Army in Iraq by the end of that year considerably. It is easy to forget this given that the spring 2006 bombing of the Shia Golden Mosque in Samarra eventually sparked the sectarian bloodshed of August 2006 to August 2007 that we so easily think of as the norm for the entire Iraq War.

But in 2011, stirrings for freedom from autocrats and Islamists shook the Arab Moslem world. Sadly, this will be a long process. But the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century did not bring instant fraternity, equality, and liberty to the French. Even in the modern world the French have struggled against impulses for a strongman to rule them. Threats of a military coup were in the air as France withdrew from Algeria, which was considered a part of France itself rather than a colony.

So how much longer might the Arab Moslem world have to struggle?

I just want to see progress, as halting and reversible as it seems (and is). We did make progress in Iraq even if we risk all we've achieved in a futile attempt to deem the war over there. Iraq would be a better example of democracy for the region if we were still there to help Iraqis keep violence from reappearing, would it not?

We have made progress in Tunisia and even Egypt. Even Libya has seen progress. Syria, too, could yet benefit once the strongman of minority-rule is swept away. There is even hope that Iranians might finally tire of their decades-old mullah rule and seek to end that experiment in the joys of religious dictatorship.

So don't hope for too much or despair that all is lost when the weather of individual regimes seem to go hot or cold. Neither is a necessarily trend in the Moslem climate for democracy, rule of law, and freedom.

I hope the climate is really changing for the better, and that one day we can look back on this era as a key moment in that eventual change. But it is too soon to tell.

It is certainly too soon to give up on Moslems. Heck, I still have hope for France.

Uncertainty Abroad

Withdrawing troops from Afghanistan can look like retreat unless we're careful. An unlikely source reminds us of this fact.

A retired general wants a firm presidential commitment that despite troop withdrawals, enough American troops will remain after 2014 to defend our gains:

Retired Gen. John Allen, one of the president’s former commanders, said it’s high time for an announcement.

“I’d like to see it soon,” Allen said at a roundtable with reporters Friday to unveil a new report he co-authored on Afghanistan.

Allen, the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said that the U.S. should state its commitment because it will reassure Pakistan, which has been an uneven ally, and the Afghan people, who are unsure about control of the country after most NATO forces depart in 2014.

“What is missing right now are the specifics,” Allen said. “Giving [the Afghans] the clarity of what that enduring presence looks like will give them the confidence that they need.”

Hell, I need some confidence that we want to win the war.

Nuke Count

SIPRI has estimates of nuclear arsenals out. Their estimate of Israel's arsenal makes way more sense than the common view.

The nuclear powers have the following arsenals:

Russia: 8,500 warheads.

America: 7,700.

China: 250.

France: 300.

Britain: 225.

India: 90-110.

Pakistan: 100-120.

Israel: 80.

North Korea: Up to 8.

The Israel estimate is of most interest given that I've doubted all those references to Israel having two or three hundred large warheads.

Maybe next year Iran gets on the list, eh? That would be swell.

Peking Needs to Work on Their "Reassuring" Skills

China considers it "totally legitimate and uncontroversial" for other countries to do what China tells them to do about the South China Sea and just shut the Hell up about it.

Other countries with claims in the South China Sea, disagree, of course.

The Second Track

Iran's two-track path to nuclear weapons includes their centrifuges spinning away to create nuclear bomb material. The other spinning program is just as important.

So who believes this isn't as important a component of Iran's nuclear weapons program as the scientists and technicians?

The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said on Monday talks with Iran have been "going around in circles" - unusually blunt criticism pointing to rising tension over suspected nuclear arms research by Tehran that has increased fears of a new Middle East war.

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, vented growing frustration at the lack of results in getting Iran to address suspicions of military dimensions to its atomic energy program. Tehran denies the accusations.

Everything keeps going in circles yet Iran still gets closer and closer to nuclear weapons.

The Source of All of My Problems, Really

Yeah, I blame the fact that I need corrective lenses on this. Dim light and squinting. Yep. Gotta be the cause.

Although my partially fallen arches are caused by lugging around my gold bars all the time. Another burden in my life. Yep.

The Dickens, You Say?

While I take anything that promises that air power can finally be a decisive stand-alone weapon, Strategypage reports on Iran's vulnerability to air attack. Which is good since I think any war with Iran would be an air-naval affair.

For all of Iran's brave talk, they don't want to face our air power:

The world is applying a record number of economic sanctions on Iran in an effort to halt the Iranian nuclear weapons program. That has led to the realization of some unique air attack opportunities. There are two of these that are particularly crucial. Iran has limited oil refining capability (less than a hundred targets for air attack) and electricity generating capacity (again, fewer than a hundred targets). Add to that air defense system targets and naval bases (where mine laying ships are) and you have a situation where fewer than a thousand smart bombs or missiles would plunge Iran into darkness, create a fuel shortage and cripple their military capabilities (interfering with ship traffic in the Persian Gulf). ...

Iran has lots of bridges and tunnels in its road and railroad network. These targets are easy for smart bombs to destroy and difficult to rebuild. Today’s sensors allow for the detection of stealthy rebuilding efforts (which the Germans used extensively during World War II) and scheduling more smart bomb attacks.

The Iranians are aware of their vulnerability.

I've long said that an air campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities would last weeks and look a lot like war given the need to strike naval, air, and missile targets to blunt an Iranian counter-attack into our across the Persian Gulf, too; as well as the need to strike ground units and command-and-control assets to keep Iran from lashing out at Iraq.

Now I'll add transportation choke points. Possibly those could substitute for attacks on some of the ground force assets.

Because I think that a war with Iran would be aerial (and missiles from the Navy), this is good news.

My questions of ground power center on whether we deploy several Army brigades to Kuwait just in case Iran tries to surge across the Iraq border and turn south; and whether our Marines seize Iranian-held islands in the Persian Gulf. Taking Kharg would be a serious sign we are at war.

Since I doubt that the Obama administration will really want to start a war with Iran just as the tide of war is receding elsewhere (he says), I'll guess that we won't attack the power plants and oil facilities. We'll blockade Iran for the duration of the air offensive and hold the threat over Iran's head of going after civilian infrastructure and the promise of lifting the blockade once the air campaign is over in order to convince Iran to avoid retaliation.

I think that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities should be the start of an effort to change the regime, so I'd hit the civilian targets, too. But I don't think we'll see this as a war. Just a time-limited, scope-limited kinetic action, eh?

Of course, I worry that Iran may have dispersed facilities abroad to avoid our air power. If Iran just sits and takes our attack, will that mean we deterred them with the threat of attacks on civilian infrastructure? Or will it mean Iran figures they absorbed our best and can rebuild without worry of us taking another shot?

What Difference, Indeed

Apparently, we might be able to blame some lousy pre-Internet video that nobody saw for enraging Adolph Hitler, who was just strolling around the border of Austria before being incited into an Anschluss.

"Always forward," indeed.

Tip to Instapundit.

Huh?

Say what? Survivability isn't important for Russia's sea-based nuclear forces? Because that's the only conclusion I can draw from Russia's hopes to be able to fire nuclear missiles over the south pole, too.

Just who in the southern hemisphere has become nuke-worthy from Moscow's point of view?

Russia plans to resume nuclear submarine patrols in the southern seas after a hiatus of more than 20 years following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Saturday, in another example of efforts to revive Moscow's military.

The plan to send Borei-class submarines, designed to carry 16 long-range nuclear missiles, to the southern hemisphere follows President Vladimir Putin's decision in March to deploy a naval unit in the Mediterranean Sea on a permanent basis starting this year.

In what world does this constitute "revival?" Russia has theoretical bastions in the Barents Sea and Sea of Okhotsk to sail their nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) protected by Russian fleet and air elements from counter-attack and still be able to reach any reasonable target nation.

How does poking their SSBNs outside of those bastions do anything for Russian deterrence? Russia's SSBNs will now simply be more vulnerable to attack by nuclear attack submarines (SSNs) or even simple accidents far from home waters.

I can understand Russian desire to have a naval presence in the Mediterranean again. That interest pre-dates the USSR, after all. That makes sense if Russia wants that.

But sailing SSBNs into the southern hemisphere makes no sense to me from any point of view other than just being a bigger threat to others--and likely just to be a threat to America.

Let me add that sailing into the North Atlantic for these patrols only has the purpose of creating a first-strike capability against us by reducing our detection time for a launch down from the already short 20 minutes for launch from Russia's heartland. Does Russia plan to do that, too? Or is deploying to the South Atlantic just an excuse for Russia' SSBNs to take a long, slow sail past our east coast with only a nominal crossing of the equator?

This is just madness. "Reset," indeed.

Reinforcing Their Tendencies

India and Japan are bolstering their defense ties with each other as each worry about Chinese power and aggressive stances on territorial disputes. Looking at a map, it is clear that such ties aren't as valuable without American stitching the seams of this pairing together.

China may feel that after a millennium of ruling Asia, their rising power means they should resume that role. But after a century and a half of not having to bow to China's whims, Asian states don't want to go back to China's glory days. Japan and India are reacting:

During a three-day visit to Japan this week, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed several major infrastructure and defense-technology deals, and agreed to speed up dialogue on nuclear cooperation and conduct more joint naval exercises. His host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, called Singh a “mentorlike leader.”

But the bonhomie appeared calculated, at least in part, to send a not-so-subtle diplomatic message to Beijing in the wake of a border row between India and China last month, as well as the dispute between Japan and China over resource-rich islands in the East China Sea.

Since these two countries are quite literally on opposite sides of China, China's interior position gives Peking the opportunity to defeat in detail this alliance even if Japan and India very closely coordinate their military actions.

Other states are also worried about China's rise, but there is no Asian NATO to coordinate and command the many forces that wish to keep the Chinese at bay:

Vietnam's prime minister called for unity among Southeast Asian countries as China asserts its claims to the energy-rich South China Sea, warning that any conflict could disrupt international trade and the global economy.

Tensions in the decades-old territorial dispute between six Asian claimants have risen in recent weeks after Chinese vessels converged near a ship the Philippines ran aground on a reef in 1999 to mark its territory.

"Somewhere in the region, there have emerged preferences for unilateral might, groundless claims and actions that run counter to international law and stem from imposition and power politics," Nguyen Tan Dung said in a speech on Friday at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual regional security forum in Singapore.

That is where America comes in. With our many bilateral defense agreements and military power that spans the entire Asia-western Pacific region, we provide the glue to hold together this--not alliance--but perhaps tendency to oppose China by making sure these states know that American help is available even if not much from other states near China can be counted on due to local defense needs.

Idea Across the Bow

So now China is retracting a claim about owning Okinawa published in the Chinese Communist Party's house organ People's Daily?

"China's position has not changed... Scholars can put forth any idea they want and they do not represent the views of the Chinese government," the deputy chief of general staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Lieutenant General Qi Jianguo, told delegates at a security conference in Singapore.

Lord knows how that slipped by their layers of editors and fact checkers, eh?

When China is strong enough, Japan will hear that claim again, I'm sure.

Too Stupid To Be Helped

I'd thank Canadians for helping Moore, Oklahoma, tornado victims, but it seems we are just too stupid to be helped.

In a neighborly gesture, Canadians have attempted to send help to Americans hurt in a massive tornado strike and suffering in its aftermath. But that isn't going to happen (tip to Instapundit):

American officials will not allow the 20,000 kilograms of food, blankets and diapers into the country until every item on board is itemized in alphabetical order and has the country of origin of every product noted.

Dennis Sauve, the volunteer co-ordinator for Windsor Lifeline Outreach and the food bank co-ordinator at the Windsor Christian Fellowship, the two organizations that gathered the goods, said it's a "physical impossibility" to do the paperwork required in time to get the perishable food to Oklahoma before it spoils.

Because U.S. President Barack Obama hasn't declared Moore, Okla., tornado a disaster area, the 52-foot trailer of goods is considered a commercial shipment rather than humanitarian aid.

A country that prides itself on a can-do, frontier-conquering attitude is frozen into inaction because the bureaucracy has not managed to check a box to make this act of charity allowable.

If only the paperwork was in order, nobody would worry about Canadians slipping a load of anthrax or maybe a nuke into America in the confusion. It is simply a matter of somebody saying it is okay. And nobody at the border is willing to give that okay to speed needed help to Oklahoma absent that official stamp or signature.

We can mock the Chinese government for being uncomfortable with non-state actors helping disaster victims. And yet here we are.

Our government celebrates the Life of Julia that could not exist without government help--and then makes sure that Julia can get no help that isn't from the government. Convenient, that is.

The Canadians who tried to ship that aid (and what the Hell are "kilograms" anyway? Use pounds, for God's sake, and maybe we'd acknowledge your gesture!) should be grateful we don't charge them with illegally dumping products below production cost on us in violation of NAFTA, or something.

We can be so proud of what we are becoming, eh? We're officially too stupid to be helped.

Could Is the Key Word

Jordanians are nervous our military presence there could draw Jordan into the war in Syria.

Jordanians both like having our protection but worry we could open a front against Assad that would drag Jordan in to the war:

The United States has been slowly building a small military contingent on the Syrian border in Jordan as conflict rages in Syria. ...

The U.S. has plans to boost its small presence in neighboring Jordan, begun last year, to some 200 personnel - to prepare for a variety of scenarios, including a spillover of violence or the need to secure chemical weapons. ...

But some in Jordan were rattled when The Los Angeles Times last month quoted senior U.S. officials as saying up to 20,000 U.S. troops could be deployed, says analyst Fayez al Dwairi.

Our presence is just a headquarters element at this point, just in case we decide to intervene. I figured a division headquarters could command 50,000 considering we had three division headquarters commanding forces in Iraq and had north of 160,000 fighting there. And I did offer the caveat that the headquarters cold command 50,000 "if reinforced." So I've got that going for me.

Assuming this is just a forward command element with less capability than a full division headquarters, just 20,000 is the right number, it seems.

But that statement that we could deploy 20,000 is simply theoretical rather than a hint at things to come, I'd guess. The official simply stated the obvious--a headquarters of that capability could command and control 20,000 troops.

My guess is that if we go in, Jordan will already be dragged into the war in Syria. And note that Jordan is already taking steps to get involved on their own.

Garden Counter-Insurgency

My garden only gets direct sunlight in the morning. So when the sun came out and I didn't hear the new solar powered fountain running just now, something was wrong.

I cleaned off the solar panel and when even direct sunlight when the clouds parted didn't start the fountain, I knew something was really wrong.

Sure enough, the power cable was cut.

It could be squirrels or some other rodent-type animal.

Or it could be a weed-whacker-wielding lawn care guy going out of his way to cut the cable. Circumstantial evidence for the latter is a clean cut and a cut branch from the shrub. I can't pinpoint noticing the fountain not working with the last visit from the lawn care company.

But who knows what gnawing damage looks like, I guess? I didn't notice damage to the plastic stand for the solar panel, arguing for animal causes. And a suspect squirrel has been paying attention to the nearby bird feeder. So I don't really know the cause.

Not that repairing the damage was hard. A quick stripping of wires, some twisting, and electrical tape, and it was good to go. Then I buried the part of the cable not already buried and added stone barriers to block rodent or weed whacker.

But for now the water is flowing.

UPDATE: It's nice that I can impress Lamb with basic repair skills. I told her about my squirrel suspicions and repair, and she expressed amazement that a cut line could be repaired. And this from a girl who has plenty of confidence in my ability to fix broken toys.

This is Kind of Funny, Actually

Malians have gotten over that throwing-flowers stage of gratitude for France routing the jihadis who controlled the northern part of their country.

Even France took longer than this to forget about their gratitude to America for D-Day and liberation in 1944:

Youth in the recently-liberated Malian city of Gao held a sit-in on Thursday to protest against what they see as France's tacit support of the Tuareg ethnic group, the first indication that the mood toward the French in Mali is changing.

Gao was the first city where Islamic extremists were pushed out by French forces in January, and is now where the population is staging the first act of protest against the French.

Yeah, kind of sucks, huh?

Obviously, the British and Canadians were there for D-Day and even the Poles contributed a lot of troops for the drive through France, but lack of gratitude seemed to be reserved for America.

Concert!

Lamb's year-end concert was a grand success. She seems to like the violin and will continue over the summer with lessons.

Wow. This is the last year for that elementary school after about a decade of being part of that school.

The Tide is Coming In

The fatuous notion our president has peddled that he "responsibly ended" the war in Iraq should be obviously wrong by now. We need to deploy counter-terrorist forces back to Iraq before the sectarian war reignites.

The war in Iraq rages without us:

Officials in Iraq are growing increasingly concerned over an unabated spike in violence that claimed at least another 33 lives on Thursday and is reviving fears of a return to widespread sectarian fighting.

Authorities announced plans to impose a sweeping ban on many cars across the Iraqi capital starting early Friday in an apparent effort to thwart car bombings, as the United Nations envoy to Iraq warned that "systemic violence is ready to explode."

Government efforts better get moving, because the death toll is returning to wartime levels when we fought the terrorists and insurgents:

More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, the United Nations reported on Saturday, stoking fears of a return to civil war.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in Syria and by Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands five years ago.

And it gets better:

"Shi'ite militant groups have largely stayed out of recent violence. If they are behind bombings of Sunni mosques, that suggests that they are being drawn into conflict," said Stephen Wicken, at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

The Shias haven't responded in kind yet.

Remember, the real bloodletting in Iraq didn't start until late summer 2006 when the Shias started really dishing out murder on a large scale to counter the al Qaeda-led killings of Shia that they announced with the bombing of the important Shia mosque in Samarra.

From August 2006 to August 2007, civilian casualties in Iraq were over 1,000 per month (often much more) until our surge offensive and the Awakening broke the Sunni Arab violence. The April 2008 Iraqi offensive at Basra that broke the Shia Sadrists witnessed casualties decline even further after that.

Civilian casualties remained low throughout the rest of our presence in Iraq. Sure, plenty of people insisted that casualties could only be snuffed out if we eliminated the cause of the continued violence--our troop presence--but that was a ridiculous charge. Now it should be obvious that we were the solution and not the problem.

But no, our president couldn't bust a gut to come to an agreement with the Iraqis to keep an American presence in Iraq to hunt down the remnant al Qaeda who now can be called resurgent. Oh yeah, the State Department army would do the job.

All I wanted was a presence of 25,000 US troops to help the Iraqis finish the job. The president keeps unfurling the "mission accomplished" banner wherever we fight jihadis. In reality, we need to return our CIA, special forces, drones (mostly for surveillance), and anti-IED people to Iraq again. Because God help us, it really might still be low tide in Iraq. As I wrote 2-1/2 years ago in that post:

It would be the height of folly to fail to put the resources into Iraq needed to exploit and defend what we've won already at the price we've paid.

It's a funny thing. Our president can pretend that a war ends by stopping our part in it. But it doesn't mean the war actually stops--or is won.

UPDATE: A private report's author says that Afghanistan will need a "bridging force" above our long-term post-2014 small commitment to carry the Afghan military through the transition by providing needed capabilities:

Retired Marine Corps Gen. John Allen co-authored a report that says the U.S should consider a “bridging force” to help support the Afghans after the end of 2014. ...

“For two to three years after 2014, the United States may need an additional force package of several thousand personnel to help the Afghans finish building their air force, their special operations force and certain other enablers in the medical realm, in counter-IED capability and in intelligence collection,” the report said.

I'm sure he's right. I want more troops for Afghanistan than we plan for the immediate post-2014 missions.

But I think we could use a bridging force for Iraq, too.

Life Among the Barbarians

The Ugly Chinese have replace the Ugly Americans.

I still think we got a bum rap from a lot of polite American tourists claiming to be Canadian to avoid hostility abroad.

I also wouldn't be shocked if Canadian tourists caught doing something rude also claimed to be Americans.