Where the Sainted International Community Toils

While the United States military faces unjustified criticism for an inability to totally solve foreign problems grounded in dysfunctional societies and governance, the United Nations somehow escapes scrutiny for its failures in this regard and is still seen as the embodiment of the sainted international community. Go figure.

United Nations forces are preparing to go on offensive in Congo:

UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are taking up positions to support a planned offensive against Hutu rebels in the east after they ignored a deadline to surrender, a UN spokesman said.

Conveniently, that Congo is no longer called Zaire, so perhaps people forget that the DRC represents a continuation of that disaster.

Strategypage has not forgotten:

Since the Great Congo War erupted in the mid-1990s, every Congolese province has experienced anarchic violence. In impoverished, corrupt Congo, all too often anarchic violence quickly expands into a small but deadly war. When anarchic violence erupts, unprotected civilians are uprooted or robbed, sometimes raped, often killed. If the violence persists, relief agencies evacuate their personnel. In these terrible circumstances, Congolese civilians, aid groups and human rights organizations have legitimate cause to demand protection. In Congo --with the possible exception of the Kinshasha-based Presidential Guard-- the best available armed defense is provided by UN peacekeepers.

Millions have died there from the violence.

Yet the UN's reputation is unsullied among its fanboys (and girls)--even when the UN troops rape locals--and nobody tells them they are horrible people and should just get out to let the locals sort out their differences amongst themselves.

Oddly enough, Afghanistan isn't happy that we plan to let them sort out their own problems after 2016:

Afghanistan's president says that the US should "re-examine" its plans to withdraw its forces from his country, just days after the official end of combat operations there.

What? The sainted international community won't be enough?

I'm not saying that the UN mission in Congo isn't a thankless job. Or that they can do more than prevent the anarchy from expanding into war too often.

I'm just noting the differing expectations for the UN and the US military.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

If people going on about micro-aggressions directed against themselves reacted with micro-outrage over them, I wouldn't be so annoyed by the whole issue.

But that's not how it works, does it? God forbid a Princeton student should have their pronunciation corrected.

Lord, I feel the need to binge drink coming on.

Help Ukrainians Help Themselves

As I've been urging as an alternative to sending new major weapons to Ukraine, Ukraine is receiving existing weapons back into service after refurbishment:

A pair of MiG-29 'Fulcrum' and two Sukhoi Su-27 'Flanker' fighters were handed back to the Ukrainian Air Force (Povitryani Sily/PS) during a ceremony at Ozerne Airbase attended by President Petro Poroshenko.

In addition to the aircraft, about 150 ground vehicles and other weapons systems were handed over to the military during the event.

It always seemed counter-productive to me to ship in new weapons to Ukraine--even though they'd be better on paper--when Ukraine has lots of existing weapons that Ukrainians are already familiar with and which are more than adequate to face Russian troops.

The key is repairing and modernizing them. Our new NATO allies with recent experience with these same systems could be invaluable in restoring Ukraine's military. The article doesn't say who refurbished the weapons but I would be surprised if NATO was uninvolved.

Adequate as long as the Ukrainian forces using them are well trained and led, of course.

UPDATE: Ukraine needs these weapons since despite the mythical ceasefire in the east, Russia's hand puppets have never stopped trying to capture the Donetsk airport--which Ukraine could lose:

Shelling hit a passenger bus in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT), killing at least 10 people, and fighting intensified around the international airport in the city of Donetsk as separatists tried to oust government forces.

I've long been uncomfortable that the rules of this continuing war allow Ukraine to defend while allowing Russia to attack. Which means the fall of the airport is only a matter of time.

Time to change the rules and have the Ukrainians counter-attack around the airport to drive the Russian proxies back.

UPDATE: Is this development really a shock when you consider that Ukraine has been limited to defending?

The Ukrainian military has lost part of Donetsk airport Wednesday after four days of intense artillery bombardment from advancing pro-Russian fighters, according to reports from the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAN), citing Hromadske TV, a Ukrainian television channel. Ukrainian artillery support was able to slow the rebels' advance Tuesday, keeping them within 450 yards of the airport's newest terminal, but fresh bombardment overnight has allowed separatist fighters access to one-third of the terminal where intense fighting has continued.

The story reports that Ukraine's 80th Airmobile brigade is involved in the defense.

Ukraine is capable of going on offense and defeating the separatists. They did it before.

Yes, Russia may intervene again as they did back in the summer to halt that Ukrainian offensive. So what? Make Russia exert a bigger effort to win this war so they suffer the consequences of escalation. I really don't think Russia wants a bigger war.

If Ukraine won't change the rules, Ukraine might as well sue for peace rather than ask their troops to die for nothing. Eventually the troops will stop doing that anyway when they notice that the rules only allow them to alter the rate at which they lose the war.

UPDATE: A day later, does this mean Ukraine will act like they are at war, too:

Ukraine's parliament voted on Thursday to refresh its front-line forces and resume partial conscription after a top security official warned that Russian forces backing separatist rebels had sharply increased military activity in the east.

Because we are seeing what happens when just one side--Russia--acts like it is at war.

UPDATE: For now, Russia's ground power is limited despite being greater than their western neighbors' ground power:

Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Reuters an attack on another neighbor does not seem like an immediate threat because Moscow appears to have its hands full in Ukraine for now.

But that could change within a few years, when upgrades sought by President Vladimir Putin would give Russia the ability to carry out up to three such operations at the same time, without a mobilization that would give the West time to respond.

"Right now, without mobilizing, I don't think they have the capacity to do three major things at one time. They can do one thing, I think, in a big way without mobilizing. But in four to five years, I think that will change," Hodges said.

A bigger war is as much a risk for Russia--for now--as it is for Ukraine. I can't say who is more at risk. But I do know that at the narrow restricted fighting that Ukraine is engaged in with Russia, Moscow is winning.

UPDATE: Ukraine hasn't lost the airport and is pushing reinforcements in. Let's see if Ukraine counter-attacks, too.

Bastards!

The sooner we get on with the job of killing jihadis, the sooner we won't see little girls sacrificed for the glories of the caliphate-to-be:

A bomb strapped to a girl aged around 10 years old exploded in a busy market place in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 20, security sources said.

Odds are, it was set off remotely, I imagine.

Or was that little girl somehow angry about that French magazine?

Heck, perhaps she is worried that the Miss World pageant might come to Nigeria again.

UPDATE: Strategypage writes about female suicide bombers and female terrorists generally.

No word on this particular attack, but others have been nearly as young but not set off remotely even though that is not uncommon.

What Doesn't Anger Them?

Some like to say that jihadis hate us because we invaded Iraq. That is nonsense whether you consider that 9/11 happened before Iraq or whether you speculate that destroying a bloody regime that slaughtered and abused its own people was worthy of their anger.

Even France's leaders knew better than to believe that.

I'd like to point out that the jihadis hate France most recently not because France fought in Iraq (France refused to help us there in 2003-2011) but because a left-wing satire magazine, Charlie Hebdo, hurt their feelings.

Stop trying to figure out why we deserve their violent response.

Did we deserve anger over this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or this?

Was this a reason?

Good God, people, what doesn't set off jihadis?

So we are all Charlie, now, after the jihadi slaughter at the Charlie Hebdo office?

Well, even the French said we were all Americans, now, after 9/11.

Yet when we began to fight back, most of the world got over that solidarity and returned to viewing us as a threat and trying to avoid offending jihadis.

Why do they hate us, indeed. Why do we hate us?

UPDATE: And remember, we're just collateral damage--as I noted here--in what is essentially a Moslem civil war.

UPDATE: More on the civil war within Islam. There are good guys in that civil war. And we have to fight it to win it.

I think we'll all be happier when Islam reaches the stage when we can hyper-focus on Islamist "micro-aggressions."

UPDATE: More:

The 30 Years War, spurred by Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation, savaged Europe -- but it ended in 1648. Here and now in our time, the most violent and dangerous struggle of the terms of modernity is within the world's Muslim communities, and it spills out across the globe.

All the liberal talk about how this isn't a war between the West and Islam--so it isn't really a war about Islam--misses the point that this is indeed a civil war inside Islam for whose view of Islam--the death cult radicals or those who wish to live in the modern world--defines Islam. We are collateral damage.

I'd have less of a problem with those on the left saying this war on terror has nothing to do with Islam--citing President George W. Bush (!) no less for his post 9/11 statements that Islam is a religion of peace--if I thought that this was just a polite fiction to get on with killing jihadis without pushing Moslems into the arms of jihadis by making them think we are at war with Islam rather than just with jihadis who kill us.

I had no problem believing that Bush was serious about fighting jihadis--the Afghanistan campaign, Guantanamo Bay, the Philippines, Somalia, and the Iraq surge in the face of serious political opposition demonstrated that he wanted to fight and win.

But President Obama? Not so much. Leaving Iraq prematurely (although going back in is something I salute--I won't demand a confession of error to support him), seemingly abandoning Afghanistan too early for my comfort, a premature declaration of victory against al Qaeda, continuing efforts to close Guantanamo Bay, and a host of other smaller surrenders to Islamo-fascist jihadis make me more sensitive about the language the administration uses to describe our enemies.

Rather than being a polite fiction, it seems like evidence to stop fighting an enemy.

The brave Moslems who want to make Islam modern and not Medieval barbarism need our support--including military support--to make that slow change.

And the vast majority of Moslems who are decent but too worried about angering the jihadis need our support to make it safe for them to back or accept the modernists as those who define Islam.

And of course, the jihadis just need to be killed. Whether we help other Moslems do it or do it ourselves, some people just need to be killed.

One day, Ramadan will be the start of a 3-day weekend sale. Perhaps Green Friday. Then we can be said to have finally seen the jihadis lose the Islamic Civil War that rages around us.

The Real Glavni Vrag

While Russia appeases China to allow them to focus on the paranoid fantasy of a conflict with a NATO incapable of posing a military threat to Russia, China gains ground against Russian influence in the former Soviet republics in Central Asia:

In some states, such as Turkmenistan, migration back to Russia has long since begun because of an increasingly inhospitable socioeconomic if not cultural environment. So while Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan will not directly challenge Moscow here, they will proceed by other means to strengthen their own national identity at the expense of the past Russian supremacy in culture and politics. Russian culture will hardly disappear anytime soon from Central Asia but it is steadily losing ground and will increasingly be more of a historical relic than a working alternative except in certain specific environments. English and Chinese, especially as China keeps building Confucius Institutes and consolidates its primacy as Central Asia’ main commercial partner, will displace Russian. And increasingly it appears that under the circumstances there is not much Moscow can do about it.

A good start for Moscow would be to stop thinking of NATO as the main threat to Russia.

Ratifying the Iraq War

If overthrowing the beastly regime of Saddam, ending the oppression of Shias in particular, ending his WMD ambitions, ending Iraq's threat to Gulf states, ending his threats to the Kurds, ending his support for terrorism, and turning Iraq into a state that fights terrorists (ISIL, now) rather than one that supports terrorists was such a monumental mistake, why is President Obama actually fighting in Iraq on the side of the Iraqi government?

It's almost as if the post-Saddam Iraqi government is worthy of our (and more importantly, President Obama's) support and that Iraq's survival is in our national interest.

The only thing I'm really sure of is that this time it isn't a war for oil. Our president won't allow a pipeline from Canada for oil. Why would he wage a war for the stuff?

So to all you Prius owners out there, scrape off those old "Already Against the Next War" bumper stickers! For now, this is a good war.

The Evolving Iraq War

American forces have been in combat in Iraq, as I noted in what I considered an unconfirmed report; and the Iraqis are receiving MRAPs that we repaired and stored in Kuwait, which will help spearhead Iraqi offensives to eject ISIL from large portions of Iraq that they control.

On the MRAPs:

Over the past two weeks, 250 US-made mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles have been sent to Iraq: 225 to the Iraqi Security Forces and 25 to the government in Kurdistan, according to the US Central Command.

I assume contractors will help maintain them since I doubt Iraq has the capacity to do that job.

Strategypage  (do read it all) covers the battle:

On December 17th 2014 there was a brief battle in Iraq between American troops and ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). The Islamic terrorists lost and retreated after taking heavy losses from American ground troops and air attack. ...

This brings us back to the December battle at Ein al Asad, where there were only about a hundred American troops at a base used by thousands of Iraqi troops. The base was deep in ISIL controlled territory and have been surrounded by ISIL for months. Supplies were brought in by air and the American had recently arrived to help train and advise as well as call in air strikes. To the Iraqis the Americans were also sort of good luck charm. To the average Iraqi soldier their American counterparts were masterful warriors who never lost.

The majority of Iraqis did not want the U.S. troops to leave in 2011, but their leaders did not agree because the Americans were always pestering the politicians and officials to be more efficient and less corrupt. Iraqi troops now believe the Americans leaving allowed the Iraqi politicians to destroy the pretty efficient army that had been built between 2003 and 2011. So the presence of so few American troops was good for morale and, since many of the American were special operations types, there were efforts to make sure security around the base was working and, when the ISIL gunmen were spotted approaching in the darkness (the Americans make heavy use of night vision devices) the Americans helped to quickly organize a formidable defense, which was reinforced by American bombers overhead taking out ISIL mortars and armored vehicles. The Islamic terrorists were soon in retreat and more Iraqis became convinced that the key to success was to have a few American troops around.

The Strategypage report also clarifies that our nearly 5,000 troops in Iraq include those assigned to diplomatic facility security, and that our training program is limited to 9 Iraq and 3 Kurdish brigades, even with a more recent increase in trainers that I speculated was intended to double the trained brigades.

Of course, those trainers can and should continue to train brigades after the initial 12 are trained. I just wondered if we wanted more for the initial offensives.

I also find it disturbing that in a bow to reality, our troops are expected to  have their boots in contact with the ground to provide air support to the Iraqis--even as our governments says the policy is not to have them there.

Thus careers could be destroyed if we suffer casualties doing what must be done but which is officially not being done.

Who knew our troops need a status of forces agreement with the White House to protect them from unjust prosecution as much as they need one with the Iraqi government?

UPDATE: As we again get worked up into a panic about training the Iraqi security forces, please remember that we had this panic in 2006--the year before the surge offensive with Iraqi forces in action with us--defeated al Qaeda in Iraq and then smashed up the pro-Iran Shia militias in early 2008.

The Iraqi troops will be good enough to defeat their enemies.

The Long War Continues

As additional problems arise in France after the jihadi attack on the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and as the original attackers are cornered, remember that the attackers could be trying to radicalize France's Moslems to get recruits and more supporters and that France's Moslems are already prone to providing active or passive support for jihadi attackers.

Be grateful that we do a far better job of integrating Moslems here rather than banishing them to virtually self-ruled ghettos that create something approaching sanctuaries for jihadis.

UPDATE: And while we rightly focus on the jihadi attack on freedom of speech in a major Western nation, let's not forget that the real bloodshed is taking place in Nigeria right now.

We may be used to shrugging off mass casualties in a continent that often has mass casualty wars and disasters, but a caliphate in northern Nigeria would be a rear area sanctuary to increase the casualty counts in France and elsewhere.

UPDATE: Funny that the always feared "backlash" from the jihadi attack strikes Jews rather than Moslems. Tip to Instapundit.

Obviously Moslems in general should not be judged guilty for the actions of jihadis. But recognize that the non-jihadi Moslems need our help to win what is essentially a civil war within Islam to define their religion.

At some level, refusing to condemn jihadis for their vision for Islam out of fear of tainting all Moslems just makes it seem as if all Moslems are pro-jihadi.

After all, if wanting to kill and defeat jihadis is tantamount to making war on all Islam, as the "why do they hate us?" crowd seems to allege by their constant prioritization of the "backlash" fear after a jihadi slaughter (and as the jihadis themselves claim, to nobody's shock), why won't Western people conclude that all Islam must support or tolerate jihadi violence?

It's a long war that sometimes seems endless not only because our enemies are committed and hateful, but because we seem incapable of sustaining a war against these jihadi enemies.

UPDATE: Related: "Je Suis Charlie" or "Je ISIS Charlie?" That is, do we stand up to jihadi demands to self-censor or do we give in to those demands? Either helps jihadis, really.

Which is all the more reason to support the moderates in the Islamic Civil War where we are props and collateral damage in their real war.

UPDATE: After the rallies on Sunday, will Europeans (and those Europeans-at-heart here) go back to viewing their own average non-Moslems as the real threat?

Islamophobia is a myth. Sure, some folks in Europe and elsewhere no doubt dislike Muslims, just as other losers hate the Irish or blacks or women. But the idea that there is a climate of Islamophobia, a culture of hot-headed, violent-minded hatred for Muslims that could be awoken and unleashed by the next terror attack, is an invention. Islamophobia is a code word for mainstream European elites’ fear of their own populations, of their native hordes, whom they imagine to be unenlightened, prejudiced, easily led by the tabloid media, and given to outbursts of spite and violence. The thing that keeps the Islamophobia panic alive is not actual violence against Muslims but the right-on politicos’ ill-founded yet deeply held view of ordinary Europeans, especially those of a working-class variety, as racist and stupid.

It's okay to hate jihadis. And kill them. Really, it is. That doesn't mean we must hate Moslems or want to kill them. After all, Moslems are the main victims of jihadi violence in this Moslem Civil War.

The Arctic Circle Marked By a Nine-Dashed Line

China is looking north for energy and shipping routes:

China declares itself to be a “near Arctic state” and an “Arctic stakeholder,” even though its northernmost territory lies more than 1,000 miles south of the Arctic Circle. As the most populous country in the world, China claims that it should have a say in Arctic policy and disagrees with Arctic issues being decided by Arctic states alone. More broadly, given the region’s resource reserves, shipping lanes, and implications for global warming, China argues that Arctic state interests and claims must be balanced against international interests in the seas and resources of the region.

Of course they make that argument. China's view is that what's mine is mine and what's yours should be mine--or at least a matter of debate. Why should the friggin' North Pole be any different?

What aren't they that "near?"

Ah, ya gotta love the Chinese government. No. Really. According to them, you must.


I will say that if China hopes a northern sea route will avoid Indian and American (among others) interdiction of their sea lines of supply for imports and exports, the northern route goes by Japan and Alaska and down through NATO waters.

And of course, the Chinese can totally trust the Russians not to interdict that traffic between those choke points!

I mean, Russia has ambitions to totally control the Arctic. No word on what the ethnic Russians of the North Pole think.

You have to admit that it would be rather bizarre if Russian-Chinese competition over the Arctic is what triggers more hostile relations.

Well Ef Me for Asking

In an update in this post about Boko Haram's capture of a military base at Baga, I asked how much worse could Nigeria get? This much worse (quoting the BBC):

Nigeria’s militant Islamists have carried out a second attack on the key north-eastern town of Baga, an official has told the BBC.

Boko Haram fighters burnt down almost the entire town on Wednesday, after over-running a military base on Saturday, Musa Alhaji Bukar said.

Bodies lay strewn on Baga’s streets, amid fears that some 2,000 people had been killed in the raids, he added.

Christ. Never ask if things can get worse.

The people of Nigeria have my sympathy--as much good as that does them with this much grief to go around.

Perhaps--hopefully--as many as possible of those missing simply scattered and have survived.

But that isn't the intent of the jihadis.

Yeah, that reformation should happen any time now, please. Yesterday would not be too soon.

And in the meantime, let's get on with the job of killing jihadis. Everywhere our power can reach.

UPDATE: Kill jihadis. Because against all the odds, that #bringbackourgirls Twitter campaign didn't do the trick.

UPDATE: While the statistics are still in doubt, the tragedy is not:

It’s not clear how many people were killed in Baga. Early reports on Thursday said hundreds. Others said it was many more. Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official in Borno, said Boko Haram killed more than 2,000 people which, if true, would mean the group equaled its total kill count last year in one attack. More were said to have drowned in Lake Chad while attempting to swim to a nearby island. Some estimates said more than 20,000 people are now displaced as a result of what one reporter called Boko Haram’s “most horrific act of terrorism yet.”

Baga, local government officials say, is simply no more.

The Nigerian military is making an effort to re-take Baga. They can probably manage that.

Whether they can hold it when Boko Haram comes back isn't something I'd want to trust if I was a (surviving) resident who had already relied on the military to protect them.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Now this is some normalization of relations I can get behind:

Saudi Arabia will reopen its embassy in Iraq for the first time in 25 years. Saudi officials will travel to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad this week to begin preparations so they can start building “at the earliest opportunity,” the Saudi Press Agency said Saturday. The move marks a major improvement in the once-rocky relations between the Arab neighbors, Reuters reported.

Saudi Arabia closed the doors of its Baghdad embassy in 1990, after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Saddam was overthrown in 2003, of course.

Since then, Sunni prejudice against Shias has made the Sunni Arab world leery of Iraq under Shia dominance because the Sunnis feared Iraqis would be more Shia than Arab, and so support Shia Iran rather than the largely Sunni Arab world.

That Iraqi Shias died in large numbers fighting Iran in the Iran-Iraq War (the First Gulf War) was not relevant, I guess.

Perhaps a bit of healthy fear that this incident represents prompted this belated diplomatic move:

A deadly confrontation on the Iraq-Saudi Arabia border Monday – between Saudi border guards and heavily armed men operating from Iraq’s Islamic State-controlled Anbar Province – presents a problematic US ally with the worrisome threat of rising challenges to internal security.

Saudi Arabia has long battled efforts by Al Qaeda to undermine the Western-backed Saudi royalty and its role as keeper of Islam’s holiest sites.

But now the Islamic State (IS) has joined the battle against the Saudi government, especially since IS forces swept into Iraq from Syria last year and Saudi Arabia signed on to the US-led coalition that aims to defeat IS.

So finally, Saudi Arabia realizes that driving Iraq into Iran's arms is a bad idea. Pity that realization couldn't have come a decade--or even 3 years--ago.

Refusing to Believe His Lying Eyes

I find this an amazing assertion that represents a triumph of belief over facts:

According to the poll, the most prevalent misconception appeared to be about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), with 42 percent of Americans overall stating that they believed US forces found WMDs in Iraq, part of the (false) justification for the invasion. That number jumped to 51 percent among Republicans. Even a solid 32 percent of Democrats believed that WMDs were found.

Let me say that chemical weapons were found in Iraq after we invaded. It is true that they were pre-1991 weapons, but they were chemical weapons that Iraq produced and we did find them.

Let me further say that Saddam had chemical weapons raw materials when we invaded--a class of material whose destruction in Syria as part of the Kerry-Lavrov deal in 2013 was counted as a WMD disarmament success by the Obama administration.

And Iraq had banned missiles with ranges too long, which the UN was destroying on the eve of war, don't forget.

The article goes on:

Why? Part of the confusion may come from reports, including a recent article by the New York Times, that thousands of individual chemical weapons shells (manufactured prior to 1991), and related items have been found in Iraq, mostly thought to be vestiges of a WMD program shut down after the U.S.-led invasion in 1991. But unlike the justification given by the Bush administration for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there was no active WMD program in Iraq at the time.

So the author has actually admitted that chemical weapons were found in Iraq! Doesn't that rather undermine one of two major points in his article?

While it is true that Saddam did not have an active WMD program at the time, that is not the same as saying no chemical warheads were found--they were found.

Nor should it be forgotten that having chemical weapons stocks was only one reason (as even the author seems to admit and then forget for the purpose of the article) of many set forth to destroy the Saddam regime.

Personally, I don't think the pre-1991 weapons were a military threat. Iraq learned to make their own chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, but they weren't that good at it, so the poison gas had a relatively short shelf life as a useful weapon. But finding even old chemical shells does indicate that WMD could be hidden in Iraq.

Further, as we recognized in the Syria deal, however flawed the deal is in other respects (such as not stopping Assad from using chemical weapons made with raw materials not part of the deal), the fact that the Iraqis had raw materials and equipment to make more poison gas is important. Saddam could have restarted chemical weapons production in a manner of months even if he had no actual smoking gun post-1991 shells in his arsenal.

Given that chemical weapons were found in Iraq, as the New York Times even confirms and which this author even admits, it should be amazing that so many people don't believe that we found chemical weapons in Iraq.

But the author does provide an explanation:

But there's another reason so many people believe something that has been definitively proven false. They want to.

The idea that we did not find chemical weapons in Iraq had definitely been proven false. But a lot of reporters want to believe the Iraq War was wrong, illegal, and whatnot. So there you go. They "find it comforting to have reasons and answers, even if they are wrong."

War opponents are wrong about many things. Perhaps a review is in order.

By all means, discuss the significance of those finds and whether that issue is the most important when discussing Saddam's WMD status or the reasons to eliminate his regime. But don't be in denial about whether chemical weapons were found in Iraq. We found chemical weapons in Iraq.

UPDATE: Oh, and I should mention that Learning Curve has a very thorough review of  the Iraq War.

I owe Eric commentary on his post but it is a larger task than I assumed when I agreed to provide my modest thoughts on his work! I'm working on it.

Why God Gave Us JDAMs

Three pre-dead men murdered French magazine staff and for the offense of writing satire that the idiots found offensive, as well as killing two police officers :

Hooded gunmen stormed the Paris offices of a satirical magazine known for lampooning Islam and other religions on Wednesday, killing at least 12 people in the most deadly militant attack on French soil in decades.

Police staged a huge manhunt for the attackers who escaped after shooting dead some of France's top cartoonists at the Charlie Hebdo weekly, as well as two police officers.

One of the assailants was captured on video outside the building shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) as shots rang out. Another walked over to a police officer lying wounded on the street and shot him point-blank with an assault rifle, before the two calmly climbed into a black car and drove off.

I offer my deepest sympathies to the French.

I hope that we offer whatever help we can to make sure the attackers are not pre-dead for long.

The only good jihadi is a dead jihadi, after all. Let's be grateful there aren't more alive.

The Iraqi Weakness

I noted that ISIL took advantage of their attacks that weakened the Iraqi army around Mosul over a period of two years, combined with Iraqi military leadership problems inflicted by the government.

I've been blogging so long that I forgot that in 2003, we essentially exploited the same weakness of Saddam's army:

Iraq's army in 2003 disintegrated due to a far more interesting factor than simple bombs on target. The Saddam regime itself paralyzed and demoralized the Iraqi army and Republican Guards long before we crossed the border. Ground and air attacks destroyed Iraqi ground units, and even units not attacked disappeared as troops deserted and went home.

That post was primarily about disabusing air power enthusiasts from thinking precision weapons make ground forces optional. Other factors made Saddam's army vulnerable to our admittedly excellent air power.

But the parallel between Iraq's army in 2014 and 2003 is interesting. Already weakened by decisive military defeat in 1991 against the American-led coalition and under intermittent air attack throughout the 1990s (the equivalent of ISIL's two-year campaign), Saddam completed the hollowing of the Iraqi military with his fear of coup (which is why Maliki wrecked his officer corps, too), with the result that Saddam's military collapsed when we invaded in 2003 just as Maliki's ground forces collapsed in 2014.

Yes, Saddam's conventional forces in the south collapsed under impact with a sizable conventional invasion force coming out of Kuwait, but Saddam's northern forces collapsed, too, despite facing only a reinforced American parachute brigade committed to support the Kurds.

The Iraqis are capable of fighting well enough to win. But they need outside efforts to keep them focused on military duties.

The Dog That Did Not Bark in the Night

It does seem curious that Russia emphasizes the largely self-defanged NATO as the primary threat in their formal defense policy when growing China looms over their vast, resource-rich, and partly former Chinese-owned but ill-defended Far East. Yet don't doubt that Russia knows China.

Yes, this is an odd omission:

Although often presented as cold-minded, objective, statements of national policy, military doctrines are part of a wider public diplomatic activity tightly enmeshed with a country’s foreign policies. Furthermore, doctrines are prisoners to a great extent of those same policies. Thus, it comes as no surprise to find no recognition of any potential military threat from China in Russia’s 2014 military doctrine, just as none was to be found in its 2010 predecessor. Bent on recovering economically, militarily, and in terms of self-image and worldwide prestige, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia seems on the surface to have found in China the ideal partner to escape from Western Sanctions and any real or perceived encirclement. However, leaving aside (more on them further down) for a minute potential areas of competition or conflict such as the Arctic and Central Asia, we should perhaps remember Russians’ traditional insistence that it is “capabilities, not intentions” which count, a mantra religiously chanted every year at RUSI’s conference on missile defence. It is thus clear that the 2014 military doctrine’s silence on China cannot be taken at face value.

Despite Russian military exercises that highlight NATO as a threat and which even practice nuking Poland, I believe--as I say in those posts--the intent of those exercises is to practice fighting China.

Russia just can't say that. So focusing on NATO which can't react to Putin's bluster by invading western Russia makes far more sense than antagonizing China, which could roll across the Russian eastern border.

When you realize that Putin is really appeasing China, it all makes sense.

The Russians did not write their military policy as an objective third-party looking at capabilities and geography. It supports their diplomacy and security.

So absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of an awareness in Moscow that China is the real threat to Russian territorial integrity.

Thanks Doctor Obvious!

Behold the genius of the smartiest smarterrific man in the world!

It's so obvious!

This man has devoted fans, recall.

Tip to Instapundit.

Events, My Dear Boy, Events

The new Army battalion activity sets for Europe that I noted earlier will have the other assets to make the planned three sets enough for a heavy combat brigade, thus ending the gap I lamented so recently.

Although I have no idea how the author could claim we once had 20 tank divisions in Germany. Even in World War II we never reached that many. I know Army Times isn't an Army publication, but really ...

Crossing a Red Line

President Obama has increased sanctions on North Korea:

North Korea was hit with more sanctions on Friday designed to impede access to the U.S. financial system in the wake of a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, which the Obama Administration has said was supported by the reclusive country.

The U.S. government named three entities, including North Korea's military intelligence agency, and sanctioned 10 people with links to weapons sales and proliferation.

I'd like to point out that this was done because North Korea hacked Hollywood--not because Pyongyang is building nuclear missiles that will threaten our allies and us when the warhead and missile programs advance enough.

Not that this is a particular slam against President Obama. President Clinton, who made a deal to "solve" this problem, was worse. And I worried that President Bush might go wobbly on this.

My basic view is a policy of "talk, talk; die, die."

To Serve Dogs

No word if President Obama is interested in one of these dogs.

Reduce the Flashpoints

The federal government is just too damn big.

Yes, political party polarization is increasing. And that is a problem--if an issue worth fighting over (such as slavery, in an era when we also had high party polarization) arises.

But trying to forge a sensible center is a losing response. No, reduce the scope of the federal government in our lives and we won't feel compelled to elect partisan hardliners to defend our views in Congress.

Honestly, if another state wants to institute single-payer health care, raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, or make the 1% "pay their fair share," my interest in that state's experiment in fiscal suicide will be academic.

I assume that if Texas wants to reduce corporate income taxes, that Massachusetts voters won't stage "die-ins" in protest.

And state and local governments will anger people--let's not pretend, as some on the right are prone to do, that these levels of government don't do things that offend us. They do. Although in the issue cited, there is hope this trend can be reversed. But at least those problems are localized and not a threat to national unity.

Right now, absent a move to restrict the federal government to issues truly national (and international) in nature and allow states to forge their own paths based on their own wishes without nationalizing bike path-level politics, partisan "deadlock" in Washington, D.C. that at least prevents the federal government from making fiscal policy worse (although in the long run, policies already locked in place will make things fiscally worse)--"gridlock"--looks like a successful defense rather than a failed offensive.

Given all the issues the federal government has its hand in--remember when saying "don't make a federal issue out of this" meant don't make it such a big deal?--we aren't going to forge a mythical "no labels" consensus on all those issues that just don't belong at the federal level. The best we can do is reduce the number of issues we fight over at the national level.

I will also say that a focus on internal divisions rather than one that reduces the scope of federal power will all too likely focus on just one portion of the potential threat, as the Diamond's examples show, rather than be a real (but futile) attempt to find a "sensible center."

The federal government is just too damn big.

It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye

The darling of the American Left, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela (and under Maduro, it still is Hugo's), is going to go down and the only question is how hard:

By many measures, Venezuela is already a failed state. According to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a record 25,000 people were murdered in the country in 2014, the second-worse homicide rate in the world after Honduras. The U.S. government estimates that half of the cocaine produced in South America now moves through Venezuela — 300 tons a year — with the help of top leaders of the military and police. There have been deadly clashes between official security forces and the armed civilian “collectives” organized by the regime. And Wall Street has begun anticipating a Venezuelan default.

Reliant on oil revenue, Chavez managed to outdo even socialism in wrecking Venezuela's oil industry even before the recent price plummet for oil.

Yeah, it would have been horrible if that coup against Chavez (you'll have to scroll down to October 6, 2003 for that post) had succeeded back early in the Bush 43 era. And it would have been horrible if we'd have been involved as so many Hugo fanboys (and girls) alleged.

A Bloom for the Arab Spring

The right people are finally asking the question, "why do they hate us?"

It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma [Islamic world] to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! ...

I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.

That was Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Wow. How Islamophobic, eh? But he speaks the truth. A "green line" around the borders of Islam is aflame, which creates that problem for the rest of the world.

When a leader of Egypt is not trying to legitimize his rule by appealing to a tame form of Islamist fervor to compete with the lunatic Islamists who want to establish a Taliban-like or ISIL-like government, that is good news.

I have not lost hope for the Arab Spring. Success is slow in coming, and by no means guaranteed (and it can go backwards, as we've seen), but it is a long project.

It gave me hope that those who marched in the streets in 2011 against autocratic rulers did not call for Islamist governance as the alternative. However much they did not know what "democracy" means, with all the rule of law that is implied in that term, they associated it with good things and wanted to try it and see if it could do better than military-backed rulers or mosque-backed rulers.

I said at the time that we have to teach them how to elect good men. That is, the process of democracy with that rule of law is the key part to reform and not the choice of any particular ruler.

And reforming Islam itself so that the fanatics become an even smaller part of the ummah which the majority can safely marginalize without being afraid of opposing them or having some sympathy for their goals if not their methods, is a key part of allowing a process of electing leaders who will not give Islam a bad name in the rest of the world. If the fanatics are allowed to define who the "good" men are, there is no hope.

The ground of the Arab Spring is surely rocky and difficult to cultivate. But the same can be said for every other part of the world that has made the long transition to rule of law and democracy. The notion that Arabs are incapable of living in a democracy is just ridiculous.

And if anybody but leftists who say that to undermine our efforts to fight he Long War said it, it would be considered racist.

We must not stop helping reformers make these fragile shoots bloom. Fighting the jihadis "over there" until Moslems can do so is one major thing we can do to make sure that we don't have to fight an endless war that erodes our civil liberties "over here".

UPDATE: The news media has missed this story. And this is the first I've heard of another bloom, in Bahrain. Tip to Instapundit for both.

New growth will die if kept in the dark.

Is This the Game We're Playing Now?

Explain to me again the reasons we shouldn't help Ukraine arm up because it might provoke Russia.

Russia doesn't seem too worried about provoking Britain:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to conduct a review of its plans for the defence of the Falkland Islands following reports that Russia is to supply Argentina with Sukhoi Su-24 'Fencer' strike aircraft, UK media reported on 28 December.

The review follows a report in the Daily Express newspaper that Russia is to lease 12 Su-24s to the Argentine Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Argentina - FAA) in return for foodstuffs.

On the day France finally sends that Mistral amphibious warfare ship to Russia, Britain could exercise the nullification option I wrote about and sell anti-ship missiles (and Mistral blueprints) to any state with a coastline bordering Russia.

What We Will Believe?

In light of the Green Reformation by Pope Francis, I suppose a revision to the Nicene Creed is in order for my fellow Catholics.

I'm on it:

I believe in one Gaea,
maker of Whole Foods Market,
of all things green and organic.

I believe in one IPCC,
the Only legacy of Earth Day,
born of the Malthusians,
Heat from carbon, Energy from Light,
true profit from Carbon credit,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Model;
through Code all predictions were made.
For us, Mann (and for our salvation),
he came down from Penn State,
and by the Hockey Stick was incarnate of the Global Warming,
and became famous.
For our sake he was defamed by Mark Steyn,
he suffered ridicule and was harried,
and sued again in the DC Superior Court
in accordance with the Consensus.
He ascended into Interstellar
and is seated at the right hand of the Alba.
He will testify again in glory
to judge the green and denier
and his revenue will have no end.

I believe in the Electric Vehicle--the Prius--the giver of zero emissions,
who proceeds from the battery and the cord,
who with the windmill and solar panel is adored and glorified,
who was subsidized because of no profits.

I believe in one, holy, coded and apostolic Model.
I confess one recycling station for the proliferation of bins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the polar bear
and the Climate of the world to come. Amen.

Sorry, I skipped past my interpretive dance threat. It's best, really, for all of us.

Although after that song, my poetry, this creed, and even a couple haikus,  I'm bloody well running out of alternatives to the dance. Be afraid.

Now go and emit no more.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Mark Steyn on the issue.

This Enemy is Safer than Jihadis

I remember when a sitting Pope fought the greatest danger of our day--Soviet communism.

Well, this should be interesting in a "why are Catholics abandoning their faith these days?" sort of way:

Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, will issue a major document known as an “encyclical” in March of next year. ...

Francis is scheduled to visit Tacloban, a Philippine city destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan in 2012. After that visit, he will publish the encyclical, which will be distributed worldwide through Catholic Churches. The document is expected to endorse the science behind the warnings about global warming, and to make a moral case for taking steps to reduce the production of greenhouse gases that contribute to the problem.

That's one way to get the Left to stop going on about  shielding priests who abuse children, I suppose. Now the Church is the Defender of the Science!

Ah, the science behind the warnings.

Science moves in mysterious ways when it comes to data selection, indeed.

You must admit that dealing with carbon footprints is much safer than confronting car bomb footprints. Pope Francis won't make that error again!

I'm sure the beleaguered Christian minorities under assault in the Moslem world will appreciate the papal clarity of focusing on real problems that affect their lives.

Yet Rome should not expect the Ukrainian Catholic Church to put this very high on their agenda. They have bigger problems:

The church, a minority faith in largely Orthodox Ukraine, has a long history of guarding the country's identity and independence. Now, it is doing so directly, by supplying ammo, medical kits, and armor to soldiers fighting in the east.

Silly Ukrainian Catholics! What are they thinking? One can hope that the Pope will at least make sure these supplies are properly recycled in appropriately colored bins!

Still, I have to admit that the Pope can claim infallibility on matters of faith and morals. Praise be the science!

So this papal initiative on global warming makes perfect sense. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

As the Pope abandons Catholicism in this Green Reformation, Urban Dictionary will revise the answer to the question "Is the Pope Catholic?" to "No."

Now go and emit no more.

Leading From Waaaay Behind?

So where did leading from behind on Libya get us? Other than a dead ambassador and three other Americans, plus jihadi blowback in and around the territory called "Libya?"

The French are calling for action to contain the problem of post-war Libya:

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday world powers must tackle instability in Libya but he stopped short of openly backing the military intervention called for by regional powers in the Sahel.

France took part in the original Libya operation in 2011.

And they did step up to lead a military response to the rise of jihadi control of northern Mali that was partly the blowback of the Libya War.

So I'm not going to complain that the French are basically calling on America to lead a response to the current problem.

Which might be interesting in the sense of measuring just how far behind those doing the lifting can we be and still be said to be leading?

I'm still waiting for the anguished New York Times focus on what went wrong with the Obama post-war plan for Libya. Unlike the one for Iraq, the Times editors likely won't find one for Libya.

The only thing one can say we really achieved is that we made good on the president's insistence that Khadaffi had to go. As Secretary of State Clinton cackled at the time, "We came, we saw, he died."

So the sum total of the president's foreign policy success is represented by two dead thugs--Khadaffi and Osama bin Laden--and a growing legion of living thugs that I suppose provide potential for more such victories if they are put on the presidential "kill list."

In the meantime, Libya has not sorted out its post-dictator internal problems on its own without our "destabilizing" presence. That's a useful lesson for many, I suppose.

UPDATE: France will cope with unrest rippling out from Libya to threaten their former colonies in Africa, but will not tackle Libya itself:

French President Francois Hollande is ruling out unilateral military intervention in Libya but says French forces will strike Islamic extremists leaving the country to bring arms to Africa's Sahel region.

Hollande urged the United Nations to take action to stem growing violence in the North African country.

Recall that France jumped the gun on NATO operations against Khadaffi to get pride of place. That was fun, but not so much any more, I guess. Now everyone wants to lead from behind on Libya.

Is Jordan Now Holding Back?

If this report is to be believed, we made a fairly major effort to rescue a Jordanian pilot captured by ISIL when his plane went down in Syria.

I'm not sold on the source of this report, but there is a story about a January 1st attempt:

ISIS hostage rescue attempts by U.S. Special Forces were abandoned after the team took heavy fire in Syria. Jordanian fighter pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh was reportedly being held in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa – in northern Syria.

The U.S. Special Forces were carried to Syria to rescue the Jordanian fighter pilot via two gunships. Muadh al-Kasasbeh was captured by ISIS on December 24. Heavy raids on Islamic State fighters were carried out by coalition troops during the rescue attempt last night.

I'll just say that I've been wondering how ISIL's control of that pilot would affect Jordan's role (which I'm assuming is in play) in a fight against ISIL in Iraq's Anbar province.

Rescuing the pilot would certainly help in maintaining that cooperation.

Hopefully, just making the effort will keep Jordan on board.

I freely admit I may be constructing a picture by connecting dots with no actual relation to each other.

Measuring Incompetence

If you want a simple measure of how inept at governing--but not campaigning--our president is, consider that he came into office with the intent of raising energy prices in order to spur alternative energy sources.

And then note that despite 6 years of trying to demonize fossil fuels and get in the way of producing or using them, gas prices have recently dipped to below $2.00 per gallon.

For added laughs, his supporters who once lauded the president for his so-called visionary stand on energy now boast of the low gasoline prices that he obviously had nothing to do with achieving.

Face it, the man can eff up a wet green dream.

UPDATE: Related. It shames me to say that it did not occur to me.  As supporters of the president's activist vision of spending investing to revive the economy celebrate some good economic news at the year's end as proof of the president's brilliance, are we to forget that the president and his supporters spent the last 4 years complaining that Republicans prevented government from doing anything to help the economy?

If the government was prevented from doing anything to help, how can the president be credited with improving economic statistics?

Something Fishy, Indeed

Darn those exploding fish! (Said the boat first mate right before the explosion, "I told you C-4 isn't good for bait.")

An Indian coast guard ship intercepted a Pakistani fishing boat suspected of carrying explosives in the Arabian Sea, and the four occupants of the vessel blew it up after a nearly hour-long chase, India's Defense Ministry said Friday.

The ministry said intelligence sources indicated that the boat from near Karachi was planning an unspecified illegal transaction. It said an aircraft and the coast guard ship intercepted the boat late Wednesday and demanded it stop to allow a search of its crew and cargo. The boat attempted to escape from Indian waters after warning shots were fired, it said.

"Illegal transactions?" I'll admit our "man-caused disasters" is an improvement on that terminology.

I blame global warming, of course.

The Planet is Settled

The notion that the president isn't screwing up our foreign policy because the world is actually getting more peaceful is misleading.

Don't you worry about the President's handling of world affairs! Remain calm! All is well!

As troubling as the recent headlines have been, these lamentations need a second look. It’s hard to believe we are in greater danger today than we were during the two world wars, or during other perils such as the periodic nuclear confrontations during the Cold War, the numerous conflicts in Africa and Asia that each claimed millions of lives, or the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that threatened to choke the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf and cripple the world’s economy.

The author then runs through various statistics to show that violence is actually down worldwide.

While the gun deaths and sexual assault declines are welcome, they speak more against the fear-mongering panic on the Left about these topics than wars themselves.

I'll readily admit that we are safer than we were during the world wars and Cold War. But are we really judging the president's performance with these worst-case situations as the baseline? (Although that's how the president defends his budget record.)

If the question is how is the president doing, you have to measure his competence against the historical trend, now don't you?

This explanation for the recent uptick in wars is kind of funny:

Indeed, absent the Islamist conflicts, there would have been no increase in wars in the last few years, with just two in 2013 and three in 2014.

So other than Islamist-related wars, all is well? That's one point of the critiques of our president!

Despite being the anti-Bush, despite a lovely Cairo outreach speech to the Islamic world, despite embracing increasingly Islam-friendly Turkey and insulting Israel, despite having the middle name "Hussein," and despite "responsibly ending" our wars against jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamist conflicts account for the recent increase in wars counter to the downward historic trend.

Ah, smart diplomacy.

Worse, the overall decline in wars and deaths has taken place in areas where we don't have vital interests. Yet as we pivoted away from the Middle East to focus on Asia, and as we thought Europe was safe, Asia remains under threat by a rising China while the Middle East burst into flames again and Europe has again become a point of conflict as Russia attempts to reverse the territorial losses of our victory in the Cold War.

A survey of those involved in foreign policy shows where our interests lie.

Sure, this isn't predictive since stuff can blow up in areas we aren't focused on. But it does indicate the problem areas right now that our president should be addressing with the tools at his disposal.

I'll give the president credit for reversing his neglect of Iraq, but that attention needs to be successful for him to get full credit.

And while Russia isn't highlighted as a (red) high priority region, it is the reason Ukraine is highlighted. Further, while America is highlighted, the reason is that our territory is obviously a high priority to defend against jihadi terrorists.

Looking at the areas we have interests in, are we really to be comforted in a national security sense by the fact that the death rate that raged in Congo and other gray areas on the map in the past have abated? Great for them, obviously. But their fate had little impact on our security as opposed to our conscience.

Further, with Russia getting all Putin-y, remember a major reason that the world has gotten safer the past 25 years:

Even with spectacular (at least in the media, which is no accident) threats like ISIL and Russia in Ukraine (and threatening to use nukes, wars continue to decline in number and intensity. Those that still exist get lots of publicity because that’s what the media does. But overall there are more conflicts ending (via negotiation, mutual exhaustion or one side actually winning) than new ones getting started. And new wars are more frequently quickly addressed with peacekeeping efforts. This is all a post-Cold War trend that has been going on since the 1990s. Let us hope it continues.

Most current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies which are seen as out-of-step with the modern world. Many are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism and other forms of radical socialism) that still resonate among people who don't know about the dismal track records of these creeds. Iran has replaced some of the lost Soviet terrorist support effort. That keeps Hezbollah, Hamas, and a few smaller groups going, and that's it. Terrorists in general miss the Soviets, who really knew how to treat bad boys right. [emphasis added]

If Russia gets back into the bad boy support business in a big way, kiss that overall trend goodbye.

So yeah, if you want to measure the president based on the past pre-Obama (which the president early in his presidency tended to dismiss--not just the Bush 43 era--as not his fault since he was so transformative), we're doing just fine. The statistics are settled. The planet is fine. Why are you complaining about the president?

But if you judge the president on just his term of office--let alone measuring against his lofty ambitions to transform the world by his mere presence and every sweet-sounding utterance--the world where we have interests in is worse.

And I worry that the last two years of his presidency are viewed as a window of opportunity for enemies and enemies-in-waiting.

I'm not the only one worrying (tip to Instapundit):

The crucial flaw in the Democratic left’s model of global governance is that it has little or no answer to containing or deterring the serious threats that emerge in any region of the world when the U.S. retreats from leadership. ...

The final two years of the Obama Presidency will thus be the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War as the world’s rogues calculate how far they can go before a successor enters the White House in 2017.

Yes. Imagine the shame of being the only rogue at the Axis of Evil convention without a trophy from the Obama era?

So be prepared to update those statistics.

UPDATE: Here's some place that shouldn't blow up but might given the odd behavior of their prime minister. Are you kidding me?

UPDATE: Why Nigeria is on the map:

A senator in Borno state said troops had abandoned the base in the town of Baga after it was attacked on Saturday.

Residents of Baga, who fled by boat to neighbouring Chad, said many people had been killed and the town set ablaze.

Baga, scene of a Nigerian army massacre in 2013, was the last town in the Borno North area under government control.

It hosted the base of the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), made up of troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger.

It was the last town in North Borno under government control? How strong is Boko Haram relative to the government when that can be the situation on the ground?

And how much worse will it get?

What If They Held a War and Everybody Showed Up?

If Western governments won't resist the jihad that a minority of Moslems wage, a minority of Westerners will still fight the jihad.

Westerners can easily make it to the Middle East to fight ISIL:

In a rare, exclusive interview with Fox News, a U.S. military veteran with multiple tours in Iraq detailed his journey to Syria to fight against ISIS, on the condition his identity was protected.

The veteran, who asked to be identified as “John,” described a surprisingly simple process that took him from America to the dangerous Syrian civil war – and not as part of the U.S. military.

Already, Moslems living in the West feel more free to fight for the jihadis. Now Westerners are stepping up for the other side, too?

I've long written that the fight against Islamists might be privatized if our government doesn't fight the enemy.

I don't believe anybody should be happy about that trend and where it might lead, but the fight against Islamist terrorists won't end just because Western governments--responsibly or otherwise--end government's role in that fight.

UPDATE: With all the (accurate) talk of non-state actors with their own foreign policies proliferating, jihadis aren't the only ones who can play this game:

The U.S. charged two Americans with attempting to overthrow Gambia’s government in a failed coup last week, including a Texas property developer who allegedly planned to install himself as the country’s leader.

We could see more of this type of private warfare (and only 99 cents!).

Dreaming of a White Christmas, Indeed

I went to a holiday symphony orchestra concert over the Christmas season. And let me just say that it is the whitest thing ever.

Seriously, I counted one African-American musician and another singer in the many scores of people performing.

Otherwise, except for a decent Asian contingent (who of course don't count as minorities because they lack proper victimhood credentials that only the Left dispenses), this had to be whiter than a country-western concert, Howard Dean meet-up, or NASCAR race.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. It's just that I suspect this demographics issue won't attract a lot of liberal attacks of conscience.

Now if this was noticed in a Texas concert ...

It Really Isn't a Floor Wax and Dessert Topping

The notion that our military can't win wars--and hasn't--is just nonsense.

I'll just skip the nonsense that our military is not scrutinized in a rush to "support the troops." Let me just say that "scrutinize" isn't what a large segment of our population did to the troops who fought in Vietnam. And I wonder how many veterans were in the Congress that authorized the war in Vietnam, eh? The piece is a somewhat incoherent mish-mash complaining about civil-military relations, military effectiveness, weapons acquisition, and military accountability.

Here's one response.

Let me address the other nonsense about the record of "failure" of an admittedly high quality military.

Oh good grief:

Yet repeatedly this force has been defeated by less modern, worse-equipped, barely funded foes. Or it has won skirmishes and battles only to lose or get bogged down in a larger war. Although no one can agree on an exact figure, our dozen years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and neighboring countries have cost at least $1.5 trillion; Linda J. Bilmes, of the Harvard Kennedy School, recently estimated that the total cost could be three to four times that much. Recall that while Congress was considering whether to authorize the Iraq War, the head of the White House economic council, Lawrence B. Lindsey, was forced to resign for telling The Wall Street Journal that the all-in costs might be as high as $100 billion to $200 billion, or less than the U.S. has spent on Iraq and Afghanistan in many individual years.

Yet from a strategic perspective, to say nothing of the human cost, most of these dollars might as well have been burned. “At this point, it is incontrovertibly evident that the U.S. military failed to achieve any of its strategic goals in Iraq,” a former military intelligence officer named Jim Gourley wrote recently for Thomas E. Ricks’s blog, Best Defense. “Evaluated according to the goals set forth by our military leadership, the war ended in utter defeat for our forces.” In 13 years of continuous combat under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the longest stretch of warfare in American history, U.S. forces have achieved one clear strategic success: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Their many other tactical victories, from overthrowing Saddam Hussein to allying with Sunni tribal leaders to mounting a “surge” in Iraq, demonstrated great bravery and skill. But they brought no lasting stability to, nor advance of U.S. interests in, that part of the world. When ISIS troops overran much of Iraq last year, the forces that laid down their weapons and fled before them were members of the same Iraqi national army that U.S. advisers had so expensively yet ineffectively trained for more than five years.

Really? Let's ignore the cost stuff. First of all, we actually spend money to avoid casualties--the "human cost" (ours, the enemy's, and civilians in the way). In the big picture, that cost is irrelevant to the issue of winning or losing. You can cite it to say that the result wasn't worth it, but that's another debate isn't it?

And cut out the part about the Iraqi military collapsing. That's really a condemnation of leaving the Iraqis on their own. Perhaps if the author had more familiarity with the military he'd understand that a military requires constant training to maintain its quality rather than being something you train and then just have ready for action.

What we are left with is the idea that our military has not won its wars and has failed to bring lasting stability to areas where we intervene. I'm sorry, but just who expected the Middle East of all places to be instantly stable and peaceful? That is the measure of success or failure? Are you kidding me?

Face it, in Iraq we destroyed the Saddam regime that was a conventional threat to the Gulf region, supported regional terrorism, and was an evil bloody despotism; defeated al Qaeda, Baathist resistance, and Iranian-sponsored Shia death squads trying to become the local chapter of Hezbollah there; and left Iraq with a functioning if fledgling democracy with the three major groupings (Sunni Arab, Kurd, and Shia) more unified than under Saddam, that in time could be an example to other Moslem majority states of an alternative to autocracy or Islamism to govern.

But the Iraqis aren't debating bike paths already, so the war was a failure? Get over it. We won in Iraq.

Who has ever said that military force--a blunt instrument--is the only tool in our kit? Aren't the people who claim our military has failed the same ones who say that "smart" diplomacy requires non-military assets? I certainly agree, although sometimes successful military action is the prerequisite for the use of other assets of foreign policy. That's why so many supporters of the Iraq War wanted our military to stay there after 2011 even when our military objectives were achieved.

The fact is, sometimes a situation is so bad that only military force can even get close to eliminating factors that inhibit those non-military means of pursuing our objectives. How is it possible to complain that eliminating evil foes doesn't lead to the ascendance of the Baghdad Chapter of the League of Women Voters all at once?

Come on! What did the Revolution achieve all at once when we took another decade to get a reasonable form of government, had to re-fight the war of independence in 1812, and had to finally settle the question of slavery initially left to fester in 1865?

What did the War of 1812 settle when the ending of the Napoleonic Wars really ended the reasons for war?

Was the Civil War really a success when Jim Crow laws kept freed slaves too close to their old status, and which required Civil Rights laws a century later to finally kill off legal discrimination?

Was World War I a victory given that 20 years later we had a rematch in Europe with a new fight in Asia to add to the fun?

Was World War II really a victory when it led to the Nazis and Japanese militarists being replaced by communist despots in the Soviet Union and China--whose body count was far higher--as threats to world peace, and which as a result we still keep troops forward deployed to defend our interests and allies?

In light of all this, this bit of the article is amusing:

The last war that ended up in circumstances remotely resembling what prewar planning would have considered a victory was the brief Gulf War of 1991.

Say? Isn't the fact that we fought Saddam's Iraq again after the 1991 ceasefire--and have kept troops in Kuwait ever since--proof that we really lost that war, too? Or did I miss the lasting stability created?

Actually, I'm so old I remember when academics argued that we really lost that 1991 war. Now, safely in the rear view mirror, that war can be safely ratified in order to condemn the recent wars. That's how the anti-war side works.

Do remember that the Afghanistan campaign was only the "good war" as long as the anti-war side wanted to focus on losing the Iraq campaign. Once we defeated our enemies in Iraq, the anti-war side turned against the only war in town.

Our military has given us battlefield victories over all of our recent foes, whether conventional, irregular, insurgent, or terrorist--including in 1991, of course. That is what we have the right to ask of our military assets.

If you have problems with the post-wars, maybe you should speak about other tragedies of government policy and institutions--or of the flaws of societies themselves that prove so oddly immune to the soothing reform of JDAMs. If you want New Shimmer Pentagon, forget it.

UPDATE: Related--with points I make above.

El Gruber, Where are You?

The problem isn't that a dictatorship is treating its people badly, it's that by treating its people badly so that we can see it, opponents of helping the dictatorship will be strengthened.

Got it.

UPDATE: Oh, this is as good a place to mention something I'd meant to write before. The notion that our embargo or blockade or isolation of Cuba hasn't worked ignores that Cuba is not suffering from an embargo, blockade, or isolation from the rest of the world:

Normalization has not advanced democracy in China or Vietnam. Indeed, it hasn’t done so in Cuba. Except for the United States, Cuba has had normal relations with the rest of the world for decades. Tourists, trade, investment from Canada, France, Britain, Spain, everywhere. An avalanche of nylons — and not an inch of movement in Cuba toward freedom.

So we didn't have 50 years of a policy of isolation.

Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that 50 years of Cuban isolation of America has pushed our system closer to Cuba's socialism.

You Responsibly End a War By Winning the War

So the president has ended the Afghanistan War. What is our enemy's vote on this as the new year dawns?

So where are the parades?

Taking America off a permanent war footing is proving harder than President Barack Obama may have suggested.

U.S. troops are back in Iraq, the endgame in Afghanistan is requiring more troops ? and perhaps more risks ? than once expected and Obama is saddled with a worsening, high-stakes conflict in Syria.

Last spring, Obama described to newly minted Army officers at West Point how "the landscape has changed" after a decade of war. He cited then-dwindling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he said Osama bin Laden, whose plotting from an al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan gave rise to what became America's longest war, "is no more."

"You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan," Obama declared to a burst of applause.

The president is responsibly ending the war in Afghanistan, he says. But the Taliban still fight the allies we've left in place.

And oddly enough we still have more than 10,000 troops there.Because when the Taliban controlled Afghanistan, they hosted al Qaeda which struck us at home on September 11, 2001.

The president ended the war in Iraq, too, in 2011, when we left.

We seem to be back fighting jihadis in Iraq. With a bonus campaign in Syria. Because our enemies voted on this question, too. They decided to fight.

In 1997, in a paper I wrote and presented at an Army convention (The First Gulf War and the Army's Future), I noted this lesson of the Iran-Iraq War, when Iran did not fold under the pressure of the initial Iraqi invasion of Iran:

Not wanting to repeat our experience in Vietnam, many speak of needing an "exit strategy" before committing troops. Such an approach seeks to minimize our losses under the assumption that we will at some point lose, so we had better know when to cut our losses and get out. It also assumes that the situation allows for an exit and that our enemy will allow it. The Iraqis desperately wanted out of the war they initiated in 1980 but were locked by Iran in a death grip that allowed for no easy exit.

Perhaps the president is right and those new officers won't go to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq. Although the continuing commitment of American troops to help Afghanistan and the renewed commitment of American troops to help Iraq argues otherwise even if the circumstances of killing and being killed isn't defined by the president as "combat."

Yet even if no Americans go into combat in Afghanistan or Iraq, because our jihadi enemies still wage war on us those new American officers and those who follow will find themselves in combat somewhere against jihadis. Perhaps in Libya. Maybe Syria. Could be Yemen or Somalia. Maybe Jordan or Egypt.

Or maybe someplace completely off our radar screens right now.

When you are locked to an enemy because they have a death grip on us, we don't have the luxury of exiting a war short of victory. Under those circumstances, the basic truth of the situation is that either we win or they win.

Taking America off a war footing is harder because the war is not yet won.We can only pretend the choice is ours alone for a little while until our enemies remind us of the basic truth.