Next Year in Mosul

Could we just get a little sense of urgency about smashing ISIL?

No, really, take your time:

"We may be able to begin the campaign, do some isolation operations around Mosul," [Marine Corps Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart] said. "But securing or taking Mosul is an extensive operation and not something I see in the next year or so."

So we're into 2017 before actually recapturing Mosul from ISIL. More than 2-1/2 years after ISIL took Mosul and more than 3 years after ISIL swept into Anbar province and captured Fallujah.

And I did whine about our lack of support for Iraq before that horrible year.

Two-and-a-half years after Pearl Harbor, we smashed the Japanese surface fleet and, on the other side of the planet, landed at Normandy on D-Day.

So the Sitzkrieg will continue. Apparently we're still churning out PowerPoint presentations.

And if ISIL morale really is shaken, perhaps in another year they'll recover their faith in Allah and will to die (and kill) for the caliphate.

But to be fair, our military has higher objectives than the mere defeat of bloodthirsty jihadis.

Our president didn't actually responsibly end the Iraq War in 2011, and now he knows it. But whatever we are doing in Iraq, it is hard to call it waging war.

No, really, take your time. What could ISIL do with this precious time we've granted, anyway? Spread their tentacles throughout the Middle East and commit terrorism in Western cities?

UPDATE: Seriously, if ISIL morale is shaken by the loss of people, money, and territory in Iraq, the time to strike them is pretty damn soon:

As the battle for its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul looms, an increasingly desperate ISIS has replaced much of its depleted senior ranks with child soldiers and drugged foreign fighters ill-equipped to use what’s left of the terrorist army’s stolen armaments, according to both Kurdish and national intelligence sources.

If given time, even a very rattled army can recover its footing. It is important to strike while they are shaky to really hammer them, scatter them and get them running as fast as they can away from the battlefield.

We keep giving our enemies time. I don't understand why.

UPDATE: Okay, here's one reason from the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency--despite claims that Mosul is next--for delay:

I’m less optimistic in the near-term about Mosul. I think there’s lots of work to be done yet out in the western part. I don’t believe that Ramadi is completely secure, so they have to secure Ramadi. They have to secure the Hit-Haditha corridor in order to have some opportunity to fully encircle and bring all the forces against Mosul.

Remember, I've long felt Anbar should be secured before turning against Mosul. Anbar under ISIL control leaves Baghdad too vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

But after taking Ramadi back from ISIL, all the talk in the media was about Mosul being next. If that was the case, why the delay into 2017?

But if Mosul really isn't next, and more of Anbar is the target, then I'm okay with the delay. Happy, even.

And if Jordan strikes into Anbar from the west in a supporting offensive? Well, I'll do my happy dance (okay, I really don't have one of those, but you get my point).

UPDATE: And given the talk of delays for the big push on Mosul, we must be thinking of Iraq's Anbar province first:

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter predicted on Thursday that recent U.S.-led efforts to accelerate the fight against the Islamic State group would produce "tangible gains" in Iraq and Syria by March, even as coalition partners pledged to expand and deepen their military contributions.

Anbar isn't mentioned, but unless "tangible" means something way different than I think it does, "gains" can only mean Anbar province territorial gains.

Come on, Jordan. Give me a win on that longstanding hope/prediction.

A Plethora of Bad Excuses

The ability of some people to provide excuses for Putin's aggression is simply astounding.

Which is why I don't really follow The National Interest and have so little respect for the CATO Institute when it comes to foreign policy. Bandow excuses Russian aggression there.

Behold:

--NATO officials are "happy" to have a foreign threat to justify their existence. That's nice. The people we trust to organize the defense of Europe are suspect because they recognize a threat to Europe.

--We should support Putin because he's relatively restrained in his aggression contra Russian public and elite opinion at home. Oh yeah, I'm feeling grateful. Question: What if Putin's "restraint" is caused by insufficient (right now) military means? What if his restraint evaporates with military rearmament?

--Russia doesn't threaten America or "old Europe" and is just trying to revive the Russian Empire to protect its borders rather than revive the Soviet Union with a global ideological threat.

First, let's overlook Russia's massive nuclear weapons stockpile, I guess.

But why is threatening "new Europe" okay and understandable? Why isn't the strength that Russia would gain with conquests there not threatening to "old Europe" and therefore America? Why is it okay for Russia to protect their borders by expanding them westward? Just where do we draw the line and make a stand? The Oder River? The Rhine River? Hadrian's Wall?

And will the Russians recognize when they try to cross a line between territory that doesn't threaten us and territory that does threaten us? Even Bandow makes that distinction.

Are we really to believe that the weakened NATO that overall spends little with even less to show for it in military capability is actually a military threat to Russia as Putin alleges?

--And let me quote this at length for all its wondrous glory of excuse-making:

Mikhail Saakashvili’s Georgia was actively anti-Russian, pursued close ties with America and sought membership in NATO—all certain to antagonize Moscow. Abkhazia and South Ossetia had resisted Georgian control in the past, giving Russia an easy means to weaken Tbilisi and pay back NATO over the latter’s dismemberment of Serbia, with historic ties to Moscow. (Russia’s defense of Belgrade helped turn an assassination into World War I.)

Seriously? Can you blame Georgia for being anti-Russian? Why doesn't Georgia have a right to be anti-Russian? Why isn't Russia's government supposed to wring their hands about "why do they (Georgians) hate us?" and figure out ways that is Russia's fault? Why doesn't Georgia have the right to associate with America and NATO?

And hilariously enough, according to Bandow, unlike Georgia's dislike of Russia, the dislike of Georgia by the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia actually justified Russia's absorption of those territories!

And seriously? Russia is justified in holding a grudge over NATO's defense of Kosovo against Serbian killing campaigns in 1999 because--wait for it!--an Austro-Hungarian member of the royal family was assassinated by Serbian nationalists in 1914 and Russia's defense of Serbia in that pre-World War I crisis justifies anger over anything done regarding Serbia nearly a century later? Are you effing kidding me? The Brezhnev Doctrine had nothing on the Bandow Wayback Doctrine that finds any interest anywhere no matter how far back in time you have to go as justification for military action now! So what part of the former Soviet Union's empire is outside the bounds of the Wayback Rule if Serbia falls under it?

--Bandow excuses Russian aggression against Ukraine by saying that Ukraine matters more than Georgia (so logically, if it's okey dokey to rampage over Georgia ...) based on historical and cultural reasons as well as interest in the Sevastopol bases that Ukraine leased to Russia. And really, he says, Russia was restrained in its aggression by taking "only" Crimea and parts of the Donbas region. And Putin only attacked after Ukraine tried to reject Russia and turn to the West. Putin's aggression, Bandow says, is "on par" with our military campaigns!

Say, who breaks it to Cuba that our base at Guantanamo Bay justifies taking parts of Cuba? (But don't worry, just parts of it--not all--so it is okay.)

With so much importance attached to Ukraine, where is the logical stopping point for taking Ukrainian territory? The Dnepr River? The border of Poland and Romania? As for the "on par" slur, just what military campaigns have we gone on in the last century that annexed anything at all? And the notion that Russia accepted Ukrainian independence until Ukraine exercised that independence to turn to the West is mind boggling. Yes, Ukraine was free to follow any foreign policy it liked--as long as Russia approves. Who says all conservatives lack nuance!

--And then, to get to the point of his article that the Baltic States have nothing to fear from Russia, he argues that Putin has no interest in controlling anybody who resists Russian control, Bandow says that the Baltic states would resist and that the ethnic Russians in those states have no interest in being controlled by Russia. So no worries. So no reason for NATO to worry. 

Indeed, if Russia did take the Baltics, a somewhat magical chain of events would follow that would wreck Russia without us doing anything at all.

Really, that latter thing is what he says.


As for resistance deterring modern Russia from wanting to control territory. Ask the Chechens. Ask the Ukrainians in the Donbas who continue to resist. That the Soviet Union and Russia before that once held these Baltic State territories despite the hostility of the residents is dismissed.

Really, when protection of Russia's borders is so important to Russia, as Bando explains, why would the prospect of resistance by the tiny Baltic states deter Russia? Ask Finland about how Russia treated their resistance to Russian control when the Soviets wanted a buffer zone to protect then-Leningrad in 1939. (With a bonus that Russia wanted all of Finland but settled for border regions when that mission exceeded their military's powers to achieve.)

And who says that ethnic Russian opinions actually matter to what Russia claims is their opinion? How many ethnic Russians in Crimea really wanted to be annexed to Russia? What of those who disagreed? How many ethnic Russians in the east of Ukraine really want Russia to battle over them and ultimately control them? Russia cares not one bit about ethnic Russians except as an excuse to speak for them to expand Russia's borders.

Mind you, Bandow has a point that the Baltic states at the edge of Russia's aggressive posture should spend more on defense. But Russia is our renewed foe whether anybody else helps out or not. And the Baltics can't hold off Russia whatever they spend.

But if Russia advances through "new Europe," that will put Russian troops back to positions where they threaten "old Europe." And then, as I'm sure CATO will advise, we can retreat back across the Atlantic as they note that "old Europe" doesn't spend enough on defense. They didn't spend enough during the Cold War. Why would we expect more now?

Or, in a real demonstration of nuance, they'll argue that increased NATO defense spending will only justify Russian worries.

And besides, a chain of events resulting in the destruction of the new Russian empire will be triggered by their advance to the English Channel!

I hate using a technical term, but this entire exercise in excusing Russian aggression is "stupid."

UPDATE: This position that absolves Putin of any guilt from the isolationist, excuse-making right fits nicely with the left that (as this PBS video shows)--even after all that Putin's Russia has done and said--if NATO reacts by arming up, a new Cold War would be NATO's fault.

The video has both sides of the question speaking, but the notion PBS sets out that it is understandable that Russia would seek to dominate former Soviet republics is troubling. Once Russian, always Russian?

That's bad enough. But then the notion put forth that Russia wouldn't touch the Baltic states because they were independent states before World War II ignores that they only became independent after World War I and had in fact been part of Russia for a long time. Why would Russia see these states as something separate?

The viewer is left with the impression that Russia has understandable ambitions that we should not stop, that Russia would not go beyond those understandable ambitions, and that NATO reamament would just provoke the Russians.

Amazing.

Life Imitates Art

Life today:



Art twenty years ago:

Leading from Behind Just Means You Fall Behind

France thought that by yoking themselves to German economic power, France could leverage their own power by pulling the strings of the continent's powerhouse that was hobbled by their Nazi legacy. That's not working out.

France is losing influence in the European Union:

France has lost a great deal of its influence in the European Union and must work hard to get it back or risk being eclipsed further in Brussels, two French MPs warned in a bipartisan parliamentary report.

In their soon-to-be-published 116-page study, based on dozens of interviews with Eurocrats and elected officials, the authors cited several warning signs, including that Paris had fallen behind in terms of staffing top positions and that the use of French was on the wane in EU institutions.

What will France do to defy the logic of GDP disparity? Restart World War II war crimes trials?

If France wants more power within Europe, perhaps France should go to the old school measure of power--military capability.

German military power is virtually non-existent these days. So for the sake of French influence in Europe--and for the glory of France, of course--France should take responsibility for the Libya Front in the war on ISIL.

But Does It Go to Eleven?

The Europeans have a variable power bomb:

[A European company] has developed RADIUS (Range Adaptable Device Incorporating Unique Scaling) which allows high explosive bombs their yield (size of the explosion) set by the operator just before use. RADIUS was successfully tested using two 227 kilograms (500 pound). Each of these bombed contains about 45 kg (100 pounds) of high explosives. One of the modified bombs was detonated at full power setting, creating an explosion similar to an ordinary Mk 82,bomb while the other one was detonated at the lowest, 10 percent setting, with the expected, smaller output, roughly similar to that of a 155mm (6 inch) artillery shell. So far this is considered to be the upper end of size of warhead to which this technology is applicable, the low one being about 1 kg (2.2 pounds) missile warheads.

I'm just waiting for that 110% setting. For when you want that extra push over the cliff.

I'm Sure We'll Have Real Red Lines for Friends

We've failed to stop North Korea from going nuclear and we have surrendered to Iran's quest for nuclear weapons while rewarding them. Will be take a harder line when an actual ally wants nuclear weapons?

South Korea seems primed to get their own nuclear deterrent (tip to the editorial and analysis from the Weekly Standard):

The U.S. has passed the buck for taming North Korea to China, and China is doing nothing. Seoul now faces a real need for public discussion of the development of its own nuclear weapons.

If the public wants the country to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the government will simply have to scrap a joint declaration from 1991 to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and initiate talks with the U.S. to obtain the right to enrich uranium and reprocess its own spent nuclear fuel rods.

It will require delicate handling. If Seoul is too aggressive in pushing ahead with its own nuclear program, it could alienate the U.S. and face international sanctions.

Ponder that. South Korea is worried--after the unmentioned Iran deal that shoved massive amounts of cash to Iran in exchange for, at best, a ten to fifteen year pause in Iran's drive for nuclear weapons (and I don't think it will achieve that)--that their response to a North Korea arming up with nukes by getting their own nukes for deterrence will inspire us to bury South Korea with sanctions.

Perhaps South Korea should ramp up the "Death to America!" rallies and start kidnapping American citizens to properly incentivize America to cooperate with Seoul, eh?

But the basic motive for South Korea is coming true. If South Korea can't count on America to prevent Axis of Evil states from going nuclear, can they count on America to deter the use of those nuclear weapons? When that puts our people at risk for a nuclear strike?

The other thing that might happen if North Korea gets the ability to strike our soil with nukes is that our allies will lose the confidence that we will stand with them if North Korea nukes them. If North Korea nukes South Korea or Japan and still retains nuclear weapons that can hit America, would be retaliate for the strikes on South Korea or Japan and risk North Korea penetrating our thin missile defenses to attack us?

Even if we absolutely would, how sure can South Korea or Japan be that we would?

So if our allies lose faith in our willingness to stand with them in the face of a nuclear North Korea, our allies gain an incentive to acquire nuclear weapons themselves so that they have a deterrence against North Korean nukes.

Our nuclear deterrence was a free benefit for us when North Korea couldn't hit American territory. Will it be as secure if North Korea can hit America?

Can South Korea risk that? They (if that influential paper's editorial is representative) don't think so:

Would China come to the rescue if the North launched a nuclear attack against South Korea? Would the U.S. step in to protect Seoul? Judging by Washington's inaction in the military crises in the Ukraine and Syria, it would probably respond only after Seoul has been turned into a pile of smoldering ashes.

But would we respond if we feared that North Korea would then strike us? Might we not just say, "Well, sorry about Seoul. But why add Seattle to the toll when nuking North Korea will hardly make them less wretched than they already are?"

And will we really be more ruthless in stopping an ally under threat from going nuclear than we have been with enemies seeking nukes?

I mean, what have we done so far? Deplored--again--one of North Korea's nuclear or missile tests!

What are President Obama and his team doing about this? Secretary of State John Kerry has denounced this weekend's test launch as -- you guessed it -- "unacceptable," calling it "a major provocation."

What, exactly, has it provoked? Well, along with provoking Kerry to to call it a provocation, the launch also provoked National Security Adviser Susan Rice to call it "a flagrant violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, not to be outdone, called it "deeply deplorable." On Sunday the UN Security Council itself will hold an emergency meeting to discuss this latest violation. More words!

It would be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious to recall that President Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize for his potential on nuclear non-proliferation.

UPDATE: Yes, why would our close military ally accept restrictions on developing nuclear weapons technology more limiting than we granted that nutball regime that runs Iran?

Why yes, President Obama did in fact get a Nobel Peace Prize for his potential on nuclear proliferation. But I think the Nordic panel assumed it would be for limiting proliferation.

Palestinian Fantasies Matter

#WhyPalestiniansCan'tHaveNiceThings.

And also another part of the explanation for why this is a Long War.

Tip to Instapundit.

That's So Cute!

An author explains how China "lost" Taiwan as Taiwan's people have started thinking of themselves as Taiwanese and not Chinese who temporarily lost the civil war. How cute! The author thinks Taiwanese public opinion and not Chinese military power is the key factor!

So China "lost" Taiwan because the Taiwanese are evolving apart from China, eh?

But it was the sentiment expressed by Mr. Chen during the rally that suggests why, unless Beijing resorts to force, the China-Taiwan divorce could be permanent. Polls show that the generation of islanders who identify as “Chinese” is fading, and more people are identifying themselves as “Taiwanese.” Decades of de facto independence have whetted Taiwanese appetites for the real thing. Polls show most Taiwanese are unwilling to rejoin even a democratic China.

These feelings will deepen as a younger generation of Taiwanese finds its political voice. Indigenous identity and attachment to liberal civic values are strongest among the increasingly assertive youth, whose Sunflower Movement spawned the New Power Party, which in coalition with Ms. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party toppled several Kuomintang incumbents in the election.

In reality, China won't rely on opinion polls in Taiwan to bring Taiwan into China. The growing distance between Taiwanese opinion and the mainland has been balanced by the growing power of the Chinese military that has shortened the physical distance across the Taiwan Strait.

So that caveat in the article, "unless Beijing resorts to force," is kind of important to refuting the notion that China has "lost" Taiwan.

Taiwan is the most central of China's "core interests."

And if the polling of Chinese indicates that they are unhappy with the Chinese Communist Party over the faltering Chinese economy that weakens the "Golden Chains" that hold the loyalty of the people in exchange for economic prosperity, don't be surprised if China's rulers decides that a war to reclaim Taiwan is the only option left to remain in power.

China's leaders may quickly find that the only decisions they can make to counter economic stagnation and even retreat are in the "foreign" realm rather than the "domestic" realm:

There are so many bubbles, and they are so vital to the prosperity and thus to the political tranquillity of the country, that the government seems to have reached a place where it is equally unsafe to stand pat or to move.

But since all threats to Chinese Communist Party control are a continuum of threats rather than being divided into foreign and domestic issues as Westerners think (and in any case, China considers Taiwan an internal matter of a renegade state, recall, even if Chinese rulers did frame the world the way we do), China could attack Taiwan as the only response to economic problems with no solutions.

China has "lost" nothing. Don't pretend they have.

Change!

As the expression goes, my favorite part of the Obama administration is all the racial healing.

Old, bad, segregation: Separate African Americans to keep them from contaminating whites:

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued in force until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1890 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans.

New, good, segregation: Separate African Americans to keep whites from contaminating them:

The University of Connecticut is hoping that black males will graduate at a higher rate if they spend more time with one another, and is building a new residence hall to facilitate just that.

I kid. It's really all the same.

Clausewitz Weeps

I guess the Obama administration really does believe that only global warming is an existential threat to America.

Lord, give me strength, but this is what it has come to:

If you wondered why our air campaign against ISIS was inept, consider the statement by Mike Morell, speaking on the “Charlie Rose” program Tuesday night that we didn’t take out the oil facilities that ISIS was using to become the best financed terrorist organization in history because of our concern the environment would be harmed.

Well, we refrain from bombing the wells partly out of environmental concern according to the source. We also don't want to destroy the oil infrastructure, apparently to preserve them for the post-ISIL owners.

Which is fascinating itself. If a Republican administration had made that claim, the Left would be going nuts by alleging it is all a--wait for it!!--war for oil. The chants write themselves, eh?

This is no way to run a war. How many innocent people have died already because we refused to take out those oil resources and ISIL has had the time and money to spread out and commit terror attacks?

And if concern for the environment is really the issue, why not do what wealthy liberals do? They just live their epic carbon-spewing lives while spouting the proper green nonsense and by buying carbon credits to offset their lifestyle of the rich and famous!

Hey, let's plant some trees every time we blow up an ISIL (aka ISIS) oil well!

Look, if it was up to me, I'd just wage war to kill enemies, take territory, and win as quickly as possible. But that's me. Lack of nuance; knuckles dragging; yadda, yadda.

If I was an administration official with this kind of twisted view of the world, I'd go the carbon neutral path to destroying ISIL.

I'd say this episode is amateur hour, but this administration has been in office for over 7 years now. This is just how they think. They're not going to get better with more experience.

They tossed out On War and highlighted passages of On Warm, eh?

No wonder our jihadi enemies think God is on their side. Hell, I'm tempted to agree at this point.

UPDATE: The tide of war is rising. Does the president notice?

UPDATE: You want a real threat of rising waters? You got it:

The US Army Corps of Engineers say they have identified "signs of distress" at Mosul dam, indicating that it is at "significantly higher risk of failure" than previously understood.

The internal assessment, made public by Iraqi parliament Monday, concludes that the risk of the dam failing has increased over the past year.

A half million could die depending on the timing. So after our enemies, corruption (lack of rule of law), which led to a poorly built dam, is a big potential killer. Climate change is way down there.

Aim Higher

We will build a bomb truck:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has revealed the existence of a program to develop a so-called "Arsenal Plane." Designed to back up fifth generation fighters such as the F-35 with a large number of conventional weapons, backing up the high-tech fighters with tried-and-true ordinance.

We already have a bomb truck. It's called the B-52.

Actually, it isn't a bad idea for a low-threat air defense environment. And the B-52 is rather old.

What I wonder is if we can build a plane that carries a butt load of air-to-air missiles:

It occurred to me that we have gunships that turn large transport planes into ground support aircraft. They work very well. Couldn't Taiwan use the same concept for air defense?

Taiwan has AWACS-type planes to watch the Taiwan Strait and Chinese air bases near their coast.

Would it be possible for Taiwan to pair up air-to-air missile-planes consisting of a large transport plane carrying lots of long-range radar-guided missiles?

If Taiwan's E-2s spot a Chinese air armada heading across the strait, the "air gunship" could fire off volleys of air-to-air missiles even as Taiwanese fighters were scrambling. Given that the Chinese aircraft would be closing with Taiwan at high speeds, the air gunships could fire while well out of range of Chinese missiles, counting on the Chinese aircraft to close within the missile range even if the missiles are fired while the Chinese planes are out of range.

If air-to-air volleys and then anti-aircraft missiles fired from the ground disrupted the Chinese air armada before it reaches Taiwan, Taiwan's outnumbered planes would have a far better chance of inflicting damage and surviving to continue the fight.

Which has also been mentioned (which I spotted a year after proposing it) in defense circles.

Compassion Versus Sainted International Community

If the sexual assault epidemic in Europe isn't just coincidentally happening while migrants are flooding Europe, I suggest the Europeans avoid calling for UN peacekeepers to help out:

The UN rights chief Friday expressed alarm at new allegations of child abuse by foreign peacekeepers in the troubled Central African Republic, including cases involving European Union troops.

Reports of sex abuse by soldiers serving with French and UN missions in the country already surfaced last year, but the latest charges detailed in a UN statement are said to date back to 2014 but to have been discovered in the last weeks.

So I'm not saying Moslem migrants are uniquely rapists. I'm saying the migrants uniquely get a pass from feminists and the Left in general if they are rapists.

For European women, the left's advice is to lie back and think of Diversity, eh?

If the migrants are just deemed members of a fraternity, feminists will finally see the crimes against women (and girls).

Socialism! Because Sometimes War and Natural Disasters Aren't Enough to Wreck a Society

Socialism wrecked Venezuela. The lesson is not learned here.

Check out this story about Venezuela's looming economic collapse:

The country is basically bankrupt.

That's not an easy thing to do when you have the largest oil reserves in the world, but Venezuela has managed it. How? Well, a combination of bad luck and worse policies. The first step was when Hugo Chávez's socialist government started spending more money on the poor, with everything from two-cent gasoline to free housing. Now, there's nothing wrong with that — in fact, it's a good idea in general — but only as long as you actually, well, have the money to spend. And by 2005 or so, Venezuela didn't.

Dude ...

Venezuela had problems before Chavez--like any country. But on the plus side, they had lots of oil and an educated people. The 2-cent gasoline and "free" housing that Chavez provided were part of the worse policies put it place! Somebody pays for "free" things and the bill is coming due now.

By pointing to low oil prices as the "bad luck" that made those "good ideas" untenable, the author is actually failing to credit the bad policies that Hugo Chavez set up with his Socialism With a Macho Face approach to effing up a wet dream!

"Bad luck," indeed. Robert Heinlein put it well:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

We're watching this play out in Venezuela and still can't see what is happening.

But at least the author doesn't hold back from calling the government policies "socialist."

UPDATE: You want to see a real hockey stick?

I'll admit that industrialism is a big part of this increase and so we'd see increases even under socialist industrialization. But other than the failed experiments with socialist economics in Russia (ended by the collapse of the communist empire-state) and China (ended by the communist government to save themselves) this period has been dominated by capitalism in free, Western (and Westernized) states.

If You Can't Win the Battle, Win the War

Russia could take the Baltic states of NATO if Russia launches a serious invasion. Duh. But that shouldn't end the war.

From the Bureau of the Bleeding Obvious:

If Russian tanks and troops rolled into the Baltics tomorrow, outgunned and outnumbered NATO forces would be overrun in under three days. That’s the sobering conclusion of war games carried out by a think tank with American military officers and civilian officials.

Well, yeah. The Baltic states of NATO are small and have tiny militaries. And NATO has few forces to help them in those three days. Of course NATO will lose the Baltic states in a serious fight.

And this is nonsense:

The United States and its NATO allies could try to mount a bloody counter-attack that could trigger a dramatic escalation by Russia, as Moscow would possibly see the allied action as a direct strategic threat to its homeland. A second option would be to take a page out of the old Cold War playbook, and threaten massive retaliation, including the use of nuclear weapons. A third option would be to concede at least a temporary defeat, rendering NATO toothless, and embark on a new Cold War with Moscow, the report said.

Of course we have to launch a counter-attack if NATO loses the Baltic states. Declaring that we can't regain lost ground after Russia initiates a war because Russia might get nervous just gives Russia a license to kill.

Threatening to nuke Russia isn't credible and conceding defeat is nonsense.

Who believes we'd trade New York for Riga if we are thinking straight?

And conceding the loss would encourage Russia to grab more chunks of territory and threaten nuclear war if we don't accept the loss. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And this is no solution:

However, the war games also illustrated there are preemptive steps the United States and its European allies could take to avoid a catastrophic defeat and shore up NATO’s eastern defenses, while making clear to Moscow that there would no easy victory.

A force of about seven brigades in the area, including three heavy armored brigades, and backed up by airpower and artillery, would be enough “to prevent the rapid overrun of the Baltic states,” it said. The additional forces would cost an estimated $2.7 billion a year to maintain.

No! If we put enough force into the Baltic states to hold the ground, Russia will simply advance through Poland and cut off our troops in the Baltic states, as the Russians did to the Germans in World War II, and leave them to rot away and surrender when the war in Poland is decided.

Much like NATO would have lost large chunks of West Germany in a war against the Soviet Union--before we counter-attacked, we will lose ground if Russia invades NATO.

The key is to survive the onslaught, inflict losses on the Russians as they advance, and then counter-attack.

As I wrote, I'd give good money for an old-fashioned armored cavalry regiment to screen the Baltic states.

With our special forces working with Baltic state irregulars to harass the Russian occupiers and United States Marines prepared to hit the coasts up there, I'd clean up the Russian Kaliningrad outpost and then counter-attack into the Baltic states to liberate them when we gather enough NATO heavy forces from further west.

Absolutely help the eastern-most NATO states beef up their militaries:

The US will devote a substantial portion of its defense spending to building up its military presence in Eastern Europe in an effort to deter Russian aggression in the region, Obama administration officials told The New York Times.

Countries belonging to the NATO alliance in Central and Eastern Europe will apparently receive heavy weaponry, tanks, and other equipment from the US, which quadrupled its budget from $789 million to more than $3.4 billion for military spending in Europe through 2017.

And building up the infrastructure to receive NATO reinforcements from further west is essential.

Losing the first battle doesn't mean we lose the war--unless we just throw in the towel. We could beat the Russians. Their army is not the Red Army of the Cold War any more.

All the News Made to Fit and Print

Strategypage describes the art of propaganda.

Or is it the New York Times new employee manual?

The Biggest Super Bowl Commercial Ever?

Well that's interesting:

North Korea could launch a rocket that it says will carry an earth observation satellite as soon as Sunday, after bringing forward and shortening the time frame for the launch, the Japanese and South Korean governments said on Saturday.

A North Korean launch on Sunday would certainly be a figurative shot at the Super Bowl.

I wonder if the North Koreans would actually aim the missile in the general direction of San Fransisco (though it would not reach the city) just to make an extra special point?

UPDATE: North Korea lit the candle:

North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Sunday carrying what it has said is a satellite, South Korea's defense ministry said[.]

No word on trajectory.

UPDATE: Given that earlier stories said we'd be tracking the North Koreans starting Monday, and given Japanese vows to shoot it down if it crossed into Japanese air space, was all this just choreographed to allow North Korea to get off a launch before we were "ready" to shoot it down?

And if we need advance warning of a missile attack, how good is our missile defense?

One more thing. The North Koreans launched the missile south. Are they testing the ability of Iranian missiles that could be based in North Korea to hit points to the southwest?

UPDATE: Whatever North Korea launched into orbit, it did fly over the Super Bowl stadium.

If Emmanuel Goldstein Had a Brother

I don't understand why the Left gets so worked up over the Koch brothers spending their money openly to influence political debate in ways they like. That's what liberal wealthy donors do all the time to the applause of the Left.

And more important to my utter bafflement of the intensity of the hatred that has gone well beyond two minutes is that the Koch brothers are hardly right wingers as the term is generally defined:

They are pro-gay marriage. They favor liberal immigration policies. They are passionate non-interventionists when it comes to foreign policy. They are against the drug war and are spending a bundle on dismantling so-called “mass-incarceration” policies.

I'm not a particular fan of the Koch brothers, as a general rule. But I am a big fan of their right to use our freedoms to affect the debate. I may not think much of the message that American film stars jetting off to Davos to affect a debate dear to their hearts, but they do have that right. Period.

What's with the need to hate? And the pride about their particular focus of hate?

More From the "Well, Duh" Files

The British say that the Russians are just trying to set up Assad in a core Syria in the west rather than fight ISIL. Thanks Captain Obvious.

Well, yeah:

Britain said on Tuesday Russia could be trying to carve out an Alawite mini-state in Syria for its ally President Bashar al-Assad by bombing his opponents instead of fighting Islamic State militants.

Assad has too few loyal troops to control all of Syria if actively resisted in those areas. I've long said Assad has to retreat to a core Syria in the west. And I looked at the numbers here.

Even if Assad wants to reconquer all of Syria, it has to start with securing the west to build a military capable of fighting for all of Syria.

And Assad would need help, I wrote, because he was short troops to control even just the west:

So he's short. But not dramatically so. Perhaps with a realistic plan to survive, Assad could get Russia to commit a marine regiment to hold a base region on the coast and a parachute division in the north to help deter Turkey and help hold the front south of Aleppo. Call that 10,000 troops. Maybe Iran can toss in half that in irregular plain clothes thugs. Perhaps Hezbollah tosses in a thousand men. Surely, Assad could mobilize 18,000 local defense forces from Alawites and loyal minorities worried about the Sunni majority.

Russia's ground troop presence is smaller and emphasizes air power, but Russia did intervene and Assad has called on Hezbollah, Iran, and militias for troop strength.

Although I think Assad needs to focus on what he needs rather than what he wants in the west.

And while ISIL has the mantle of jihadi control of the abandoned parts of Syria, I was also spot on (in that post on securing the west) with this speculation in that post about a Syrian government focus on a western core state:

And perhaps with enough chaos in the abandoned parts of Syria, Assad could even count on Western and regional forces to move in and fight al Qaeda. Even if foreign troops move in just for humanitarian or WMD reasons, the possibility that mission creep will take place as jihadis attack foreign troops (the temptation will be great for al Qaeda types) could turn foreign troops into de facto allies against the jihadis, or at least weaken the jihadi fight against Assad's forces by spreading jihadi attention.

And yes, Russia has little interest in anything but the west where they have air and navy bases. Iran, too, really just needs the west to have access to an Israel Front through Lebanon and Hezbollah.

I mentioned that narrow focus even as I feared John Kerry would eventually save Assad:

We should let Putin flail in his military adventure in Syria. But no, John Kerry will help Russia achieve their objective of keeping a pro-Russian entity on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea where Russia can have a port and air bases; and Iran's objective of maintaining an outpost to support Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But since Assad formally steps down, Kerry will be able to pretend he is a brilliant diplomat.

Why would Russia want to help the West defeat ISIL in a more expansive fight that helps tie us down while Russia is more active in Europe and which has put pressure on Europe to back down by sending refugees and migrants to Europe in large numbers?

Strategypage has more on Russia's faux effort to fight ISIL and other issues regarding Syria.

One part of that fight for a core Syria seems to be Aleppo:

The commander of a U.S.-supported Syrian rebel group said on Friday the northern countryside of Aleppo province was completely encircled by Syrian government forces and its allies and heavy Russian bombardment continued.

Yet I continue to believe the city is a bridge too far for Assad, who can't afford to hold that city even if he manages to finally take it--especially given the casualties Assad's supporters have endured thus far. Russia is supplying air power to advance. But Assad still has his small ground force--which has sustained amazing casualties since I first judged the city a bridge too far--to hold the region and supply lines to it.

And if we defeat ISIL in Syria without building up Syrian rebels to defeat Assad (and no, the Kurds of Syria will no more storm Damascus than the Kurds of Iraq will storm Mosul), we will have unfortunately bolster the Russian-Iranian-Assad objective of securing an Alawite mini-state in the west, of a size still to be determined.

I'm so old that I remember when we didn't want to intervene in support of non-jihadi rebels because we didn't want to "militarize" the conflict.

UPDATE: Huh:

"The kingdom is ready to participate in any ground operations that the coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria," Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, who is also the spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen, told the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV in an interview.

I assume the Saudis mean their special forces and not combat brigades.

But if the Turks move into northern Syria in force, who knows?

The Russians are Probably Right About Turkey

Russia says Turkey is about to invade Syria:

The Russian military said Thursday that it has "reasonable grounds" to suspect that Turkey is making intensive preparations for a military invasion of neighboring Syria.

Images of a checkpoint on the border between the Turkish town of Reyhanli and the town of Sarmada in Syrian taken in late October and late January show a buildup of transportation infrastructure that could be used for moving in troops, ammunition and weapons, spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in an English-language written statement.

Odd as it may seem, just because their lips are moving doesn't necessarily mean the Russians are lying. (Although that's the way to bet, in general.)

The Turks probably are preparing to move into Syria. They've long wanted a buffer zone (or a safe zone or a humanitarian corridor or whatever you want to call it) along their border with Syria where rebels could have a sanctuary and to have a safe place for refugees short of reaching Turkey.

And with Russian-supported advances in the north, including around Aleppo, which would aid the Kurds of Syria (which the Turks oppose), the need to move into Syria increases.

Moving into Syria would extend Turkish artillery's reach into Syria, which is important because Turkey is wary of using air power given Russia's air force and air defense presence in Syria (and off the coast).

UPDATE: Does this telegraph a Turkish invasion?

"The kingdom is ready to participate in any ground operations that the coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria," Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, who is also the spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen, told the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV in an interview.

If Turkey goes in, they'd like to go in with a coalition of the willing.

Saudi Arabia would not make a commitment to act alone. And I assume the Saudis mean special forces rather than combat brigades.

We are unlikely to have the manpower committed to Syria to draw in Saudi special forces help. But a Turkish invasion of Syria would.

And Turkey and the Saudis certainly cooperate against Assad; and neither love the Russian or Iranians.

Hmm.

UPDATE: This could be the trigger for Turkey to move into Syria:

Russian and Syrian government forces gained ground north of Aleppo on Saturday, intensifying an assault on rebel-held areas that has prompted tens of thousands more Syrians to seek refuge across the border in Turkey.

And I bet Europe would at least quietly support the Turks to keep even more refugees from fleeing to Turkey and then move on to Europe.

Also:

Bahrain is ready to commit ground troops to Syria as part of a U.-S.-led coalition against Islamic State, the Gulf island state said on Friday, a day after its larger neighbour and close ally Saudi Arabia announced a similar pledge.

Again, I assume special forces since I don't believe Bahrain could afford to send already insufficient ground forces abroad--just in case Iran tries to foment unrest among the Shia majority.

I'll say it again, however. If Syria manages to take Aleppo, as long as the rebels don't lose heart and continue to resist, I don't think Syria has the manpower to hold the city.

UPDATE: This is humorous:

[Syrian] Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem warned Saturday that Saudi or other foreign ground troops entering Syria would "return home in wooden coffins," and called on rebel groups fighting a massive government offensive in the north to "come to their senses" and lay down their weapons.

Give the man credit. Syria needs Assad's enemies to believe resistance is futile. So why not claim that?

But countering that narrative, Hezbollah and the Shia foreign legion that Iran has recruited to fight for Assad can attest to the wooden coffins going home certainty. Perhaps Russia will have a long list soon. Assad's supporters inside Syria sure can verify the risk of fighting in Syria.

Unless the rebels just lose heart for the struggle, the loss of Aleppo won't end the war. It will just transform it into more insurgency and terror in and around an Aleppo held by Assad's stretched troops who have already suffered massive casualties over the last four years.

We'll see if Assad can hold Aleppo if he takes it. I think he can't hold it.

UPDATE: Okay, one more. Europe wants Turkey to slow the migrant/refugee flow:

Europe needs Turkey to dramatically cut the number of migrants reaching Greece within weeks or the pressure for more border closures and fences will grow, the EU's top official in charge of ties with Ankara warned on Saturday.

If Turkey says the only way to stop the flow is to set up a buffer zone inside Syria to keep refugees inside Syria, what will the EU say?

UPDATE: Really, just one more:

"[The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is] not talking about thousands of troops but we are talking about troops on the ground that will lead the way ... that will support ... and I think our position remains the same and we will have to see how this progresses," [Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash] said.

Ah, special forces, as I thought.

He speaks of needing American leadership. Which I assume means going along with the Turks and supporting the UAE in that effort rather than seeing us lead a ground force into Syria.

UPDATE: No, really. I meant to add this so it doesn't count. Stratfor's George Friedman rightly notes that Russian-Turkish hostility is the norm, so this tension is nothing new.

UPDATE: I have to do one more:

Aid trucks and ambulances entered Syria from Turkey on Sunday to deliver food and supplies to tens of thousands of people fleeing an escalating government assault on Aleppo, as air strikes targeted villages on the road north to the Turkish border.

Is Turkey taking a page from Russia's invasion of the Donbas by leading with relief aid to establish their presence inside the target country?

No wonder Russia recognizes what Turkey is doing!

UPDATE: A late one:

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday he expected both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to send special operations forces to Syria to help local opposition fighters in their drive to retake the city of Raqqa from Islamic State.

So there you go. I just wonder if the Turks will send in conventional forces, too.

Making a Federal Issue Out of Everything

An expression from my youth isn't used anymore because it no longer makes sense: "Don't make a federal issue out of this!"

That is, don't make it such a big deal. Move on, why don't you?

America is more polarized:

In sum, explains former Harvard president Larry Summers, “there is a kind of creeping totalitarianism on college campuses.” Barack Obama, a product of the PC university, is the most polarizing president since Richard Nixon. Obama has reinforced the “which side are you on?” hyper-partisanship of the campuses, which is spreading beyond the campus. Ordinary working Americans are bullied by bureaucrats, who were, as Glen Reynolds, puts it, “credentialized” in college without being educated. These preening bureaucrats are the ideal instruments of government overreach. They impose their ideological agenda in the name of racial, gender, and environmental equity, not to mention obscure IRS rules. And working Americans are forced to pay for a now-vast population of unemployed but subsidized Americans of working age, even as new immigrants—legal and illegal—undercut their wages. Meanwhile, college graduates educated in “victim studies” weaponize what they’ve learned and go to work in the aggrievement industry. The rhetoric of multiculturalism, feared Schlesinger, placed the American republic “in serious trouble.”

And while the degeneration of our colleges into left-wing finishing schools rather than places of education play a role, the vast expansion of the federal government's reach in what is considered a national issue rather than a state or local issue has complemented this trend in society.

Which is certainly one fundamental reason that polarization has grown during President Obama's tenure despite his promise to unite all Americans. By championing a more powerful federal government, more polarization had to take place absent a general surrender of the opposition to President Obama's vision of a more activist Washington, D.C.

With people more interested in their own victimhood coupled with a federal government more powerful, the stakes for control of the federal government are much higher. So of course national politics are more bitter!

When a distant national capital's decisions are decisive in your daily life, of course you will fight harder to make it more to your liking.

We need to reduce the power of the federal government by restricting its scope in favor of state and local governments in order to reduce the stakes for controlling the federal government.

Really, if California wants to be a left-wing caricature, let them! Why should it bother me? But if California wants to do it to me? Of course I care. Very much.

Heck, if California makes that work, I'd like to think I could learn from what they do even if I never thought it would work. People will flock there to live. Experts will copy what works and move it around.

And if it doesn't work? Then people will move elsewhere. And California can send experts to other states to see what worked there. Truly, the states can return to being a laboratories for our democracy rather than the subsidiary carrying out the orders of the single federal government that either gets it right or wrong for every state and territory.

And the first thing I'd do to reduce the scope of federal power to more managable levels is make United States Senators appointed by the state legislators rather than directly elected as they are now, so they will once again be defenders of their states rather than just more powerful members of the national government.

And then the appeal "don't make a federal issue out of this" will make sense again. And polarization won't matter nearly as much.

Lesson Learned?

The Chinese figure the Soviets made a huge mistake under Gorbachev by combining economic liberalization to get the economy growing and political liberalization that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Do the Chinese really think they have the political liberalization part figured out now?

I found this speculation about China's troubling crackdown on dissent interesting:

There are some well-connected Westerners who believe that this is just a phase. One such figure, the head of a major multinational corporation who has been a close confidant of the Chinese President since he was a minor regional official, insists, in private conversations, that Mr. Xi is simply setting the stage for a long-term Gorbachev-style reform that will lead to something like a liberal-democratic system: “He’s playing a long game.” He’s not the only business figure I’ve heard say this: It’s a dark irony that the most loyal defenders of the Communist Party of China’s leaders these days are the captains of global capitalism.

So Xi has to root out and crush dissenting thought in order to build a system capable of tolerating dissenting thought?

Really?

The obvious explanation for Xi's crackdown is that the Chinese still believe Gorbachev was a fool for loosening Soviet communist party control, and that in light of weakening economic performance that was the basis for legitimizing the Chinese Communist Party's control of China (the Golden Chains) the party has to tighten control to make up for the looming loss of legitimacy under the old bargain.

But no, Xi has a deep plan to crush dissent and then allow it.

The obvious explanation for the Western corporate leaders' opinion that Xi has a deep plan to liberalize--in the long run--is that a pure Chinese crackdown to maintain party control--forever--will harm Chinese efforts to forge trade tides with Western countries (like Canada in this case) that will increase their corporate profits. So they must profess to believe this two-stage strategy of political liberalization to keep notions of human rights from getting in the way of trade deals.

People are funny.

We Should Build Roads in Central Asia

Central Asia could be the key to keeping China and Russia too busy with each other to bother us.

This is an interesting question:

The United States has struggled in the post-Soviet era to define a durable framework for its relations with Central Asian states. Initially, securing the Soviet Union’s nuclear legacy was the main focus of US policy. Then, after 9/11, policy was shaped by Washington’s need for Central Asian support for US military operations in Afghanistan. But as Washington redefines its global priorities, what should guide its policy toward Central Asia?

Our interest in projecting power into Central Asia was fleeting and not an enduring need. We have higher priorities.

I think getting out of the way and letting Russia and China throw elbows at each other should be our policy.

The Second Honor

Iran handed out medals for capturing our sailors in the Gulf:

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has said Iran should remain wary of its arch-enemy the United States even after a landmark accord over Tehran's nuclear program, awarded the Fath (Victory) medal to the head of the navy of the Revolutionary Guards and four commanders involved in the seizure of two U.S. Navy boats.

Huh. A Victory medal for a rescue mission? That's what we said it was, recall.

I guess the Proclamation of Gratitude from Kerry wasn't enough of an honor.

UPDATE: Reset!

The head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy said Monday that if the U.S. seeks to humiliate Iran, the IRGC would release footage of ten U.S. sailors detained last month that is much more embarrassing than images released earlier.

Feel the responsible regional partnership growing!

And this, by the worst Secretary of State in living memory, really sticks in my craw (whoa, where the heck did that expression come from?):

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry both declared themselves angry about the images publicized by Iran – although Kerry also said their release came from the IRGC, not from the foreign ministry. [emphasis added]

So since the Revolutionary Guards released the footage, it doesn't count?

Does that mean if our Air Force bombs Iran, we can say, well, the bomb releases were from the Air Force and not the State Department, so stop your whining?

The eagerness to make excuses for murderous, evil swine is strong in Kerry.

Is Snowden Ready for Hillary?

Every substantive Clinton defense about her private email server that clearly damaged American national security has collapsed. When do we finally conclude she is just lying?

First, Clinton said she had turned over all emails to Congressional investigators looking into Benghazi, and that everything was in government hands already.

But that wasn't true, as the existence of the server and emails proves.

Then she had "no classified material" on her private server. It was mostly just yoga class scheduling and Chelsea's wedding.

But that wasn't true. There was classified material.

Then she said nothing was "classified at the time." This is just a rules thing. Gosh, government is so complex! Really not her fault.

But that wasn't true either. The material was classified at the time and she should have known it. Not having a stamp on it is no defense.

Then, she said nothing on her server was "marked classified." It's not her fault that somebody else failed to do that! Right?

Well, even if that defense is valid--and it isn't--that isn't true, either. We even have an email where Hillary explains how to take marked material, strip of the markings, and put it on the private email system.

Clinton has another whopper, too:

Clinton’s latest defense is that “it’s likely what they are referring to is the forwarding of a New York Times article” containing leaked intelligence about the drone program. First, she has no way of knowing that. Second, even if true, that is still not a defense. Think about her argument: Because the Obama administration leaked highly classified information about our drone program to the New York Times, she was no longer obligated as secretary of state to treat the program as classified? That is not going to go very far with the FBI agents investigating her right now.

And Team Clinton is facing the fact that the State Department won't release some of the latest documents because they are so secret that revealing them even now, even in part, would damage our national security:

In total seven email chains, covering 37 pages, are being withheld from scrutiny for containing material that could do "exceptionally grave" damage to national security if disclosed.

In response to this decision, we have this delightful new defense (see the 8:50 PM portion):

Clinton's campaign has questioned the secrecy of the messages and called for their release.

The Clinton campaign can't deny there is classified material, classified documents, classified and marked material, or material classified at the time.

So now the argument is that the information shouldn't be classified and should be released to the public!

Isn't that how Edward Snowden justified his theft of classified material from the government and making it public?

I think we are up to 1,300 Clinton emails with classified material in them. I have no doubt the Russians and Chinese have them all already. Oh, the damning files they must have!

Good God, people, imagine what these countries' intelligence services would have paid to get this kind of access? And they got it for free!

And if memory serves me, aren't these just the emails that Clinton released in the belief they were clean? Isn't the FBI recovering emails from the server that wasn't wiped as thoroughly as Clinton believed? Or are they gone forever?

And what about those 30,000 emails that Ms. Clinton had deleted? “I’ll spend the rest of my career trying to figure out what classified information was in those,” stated an exasperated Pentagon counterintelligence official, “everybody is mad as hell right now.” “The worst part,” the counterspy added,” is that Moscow and Beijing have that information but the Intelligence Community maybe never will.”

Not that what Clinton did isn't bad enough. But we may never know since what we have doesn't include recovered emails.

What Hillary Clinton did to avoid the government classification process was wrong. The private server itself  is the crime even before you get to a single email!

Consider, all of Hillary Clinton's evolving (and false) defenses would be irrelevant if she had simply conducted her business on a government email as she was supposed to do.

Who's ready for Hillary, indeed. A court room and maybe a prison cell should be ready, I think.

Oh, and in a damning aside that is seldom mentioned, the Obama administration could see that their Secretary of State was using a personal email service and did nothing to stop her.

The government knew Clinton didn't even have a government email:

“This was all planned in advance” to skirt rules governing federal records management, said Howard J. Krongard, who served as the agency’s inspector general from 2005 to 2008.

The Harvard-educated lawyer points out that, from Day One, Clinton was never assigned and never used a state.gov e-mail address like previous secretaries.

Oh, and by coincidence, State didn't have an IG to look into wrongdoing:

He also points to the unusual absence of a permanent inspector general during Clinton’s entire 2009-2013 term at the department. He said the 5¹/₂-year vacancy was unprecedented.

“This is a major gap. In fact, it’s without precedent,” he said. “It’s the longest period any department has gone without an IG.”

How unfortunate for open government types, eh?

Which may explain why the current spokesman for the president defends Hillary so strenuously--which just "pisses off" the FBI, apparently.

Is it any wonder that Secretary of State has no achievements to boast about other than her mileage (which Kerry appropriately surpassed)? Our foes were probably reading her emails before her recipients got them!

Well, maybe Snowden will get a roommate at his Moscow residence. Heck, maybe the Russians will have to reserve an entire dormitory depending on who cooperated with Clinton.

UPDATE: It's worse than we think. (Tip to Instapundit)

Seriously, is Hillary Clinton still running as a bargaining chip to get a pardon? Is she threatening a Viking funeral ride for the Democratic party this year if she doesn't get a pardon by continuing to run, daring the administration to charge her with crimes, even as running tears apart the party and prevents a more viable candidate from entering before the brand is too damaged?

I don't put it past her, of course, to throw as many people as she has to under the bus to save herself. I just wonder if that is what she is doing.

UPDATE: The news doesn't end: should Hillary Clinton retain her security clearance while the investigations continue?

UPDATE: "To believe anything Hillary Clinton asserts requires a willing suspension of disbelief."

Dynasties Fall

This article argues that both the Clinton and Bush family dynasties are falling. Good.

Mind you, I liked both Bush presidents (on foreign policy, anyway, which stifled my concerns about domestic policies) and thought little of the only Clinton president and even less of the woman who would be the second.

But it is not healthy to have family dynasties running our country. Even if I think Jeb Bush would be a decent president, I could only support him if he is the actual Republican nominee to run against whatever unacceptable candidate the Democrats put up.

And that's my standard for Trump.

You might think that the Clintons are owed another presidency to match the Bush family and be called a dynasty.

But if Hillary wins, do you doubt that Chelsea would be groomed for the presidency?

Did you see her royal wedding?

No. I would have both dynasties fail. With my thanks to the Bushes and my good riddance to the Clintons.

We have a republic, after all. If we can keep it.

Sitzkrieg

I would have exploited the Ramadi victory to finish a campaign in Anbar province, but if we are turning to Mosul in the north, it would be nice to get on with it.

American forces to bolster the Iraqis and Syrian rebels mean that our efforts to take Mosul in Iraq and also Raqqa in Syria are serious, as our secretary of defense noted a few weeks ago:

[Secretary of Defense] Carter's broader message signaled the completion of a military plan to help Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces oust Islamic State militants from their headquarters in Raqqa.

He described operations that would send Iraqi forces from the south and Peshmerga forces from the north to encircle and cut off Mosul. But he warned that taking it back will not be quick or easy, and he offered no timelines.

But the speed of doing this is an issue. As I've complained. But that seems to be getting some attention, too:

The United States is willing to deploy Apache attack helicopters and advisers to help Iraq retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State as it considers options to speed up the campaign against the militant group, a top U.S. general said on Monday.

U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they want to accelerate the campaign against Islamic State militants, and have called on allies to increase their military contributions to efforts to destroy the group in Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqis are being prepared for mobile warfare:

"It's not about defeating IEDs (improvised explosive devices); it's about breaching obstacles," MacFarland said following a training exercise at the Besmaya base near Baghdad.

The aim of live-fire exercises of this kind is to practice integrating "infantry, armour, engineers and indirect fire to overwhelm the enemy and combine the effects on an enemy force", he said.

Two brigades -- the 71st and 72nd -- have been through the new training, with the latter finishing the final exercise of more than two months of instruction on Wednesday.

During the exercise, 72nd Brigade soldiers combined mortar fire for smoke cover, engineers equipped with mine-clearing charges and bulldozers to open gaps in defences, and infantry in armoured vehicles to provide covering fire and then advance toward the objective.

Which is interesting in light of my ancient call for core mobile forces to help the less-skilled Iraqi units advance against the far smaller but fanatical ISIL forces occupying Iraqi territory.

Even recently, it seemed like the Counter-terrorism Force was still the only Iraqi force capable of leading an offensive. I continued to hope that the Jordanians would provide a mobile force striking from the west to help clean out Anbar.

But because this Iraq War 2.0 has dragged on so long, the coalition training effort may have had the time to train Iraqis for mobile warfare. (and remember, that's what we should have been doing since the end of 2011 instead of leaving Iraq, which then had a counter-insurgency army.)

In that light, I assume this call by the Kurds is more of a bargaining stance to get more for the Kurds who will be needed in a Mosul offensive rather than a sincere push for statehood:

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani has declared that the "time has come" for the country's Kurds to hold a referendum on statehood, a move likely to raise tensions with Baghdad.

We shall see. It would be nice to get on with destroying ISIL in Iraq (and then Syria) before they are entrenched in too many countries and before they can mount too many terrorist attacks against the West.

When You Play the Game of Caucuses

After the Iowa caucuses where Clinton was nearly humiliated but for 6 coin tosses, Hillary Clinton meets Bernie Sanders who tells Hillary that she must be gone before New Hampshire or face his wrath.

Do you really think Hillary won 6 out of 6 coin toss tiebreakers by chance?

Run, Bernie! Run! Before the king returns from his golf game!

The Clue Bat Has an Effect

We are rethinking drawing down our small troop commitment in Afghanistan.

We went all-in on Iraq, overthrowing the dictator and committing troops to winning, enduring casualties to defeat our enemies, won the war--and then left Iraq on its own to fight the remnants of the jihadis and resist Iranian pressure.

Now we are back in Iraq, fighting.

We stayed out of Syria and didn't even try to help rebels kill the dictator.

Now we are fighting in Syria.

We kept our troop out of Libya, bombing until locals killed the dictator, and did not do much to help the locals sort out their mess.

Now we are thinking of entering that fight.

With this history of doing different things yet ending up fighting jihadis anyway, I count it as a victory for reality-based thinking that after escalating the fight in Afghanistan twice and enduring a lot more casualties in the process, that the administration is rethinking our big skedaddle from Afghanistan, where our war on jihadis began in October 2001 after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks here:

"I don't see any drawdowns" in the near future, said James Dobbins, Obama's former special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He predicted Obama would leave the decision to the next president.

"They are just hoping that things hold together and they won't have to face a decision on whether to actually implement the force reduction they're talking about until late summer, early fall, by which time the administration will be on its last legs," Dobbins said.

Seven years into the administration, with hope and change liberally applied to the Islam problem, and a lesson is learned: jihadis aren't George W. Bush's fault.

All hail the Clue Bat!

If it Even Comes Close, Shoot it Down

North Korea appears ready to fire a missile in the next few weeks to test their capabilities.

Japan is getting ready for it:

Japan has put its military on alert for a possible North Korean ballistic missile launch after indications it is preparing for a test firing, two people with direct knowledge of the order told Reuters on Friday. ...

Japan's Minister of Defense Gen Nakatani has ordered Aegis destroyers that operate in the Sea of Japan to be ready to target any North Korean projectiles heading for Japan, the sources said.

Japan has reportedly told their military to be ready to shoot it down.

I think Japan should shoot it down if it even comes close to Japanese territory.

Of course, ten years ago, I thought we should have done that. But perhaps the technology was too uncertain to risk a failure then.

And now we may all be confident that the anti-missile systems work.

UPDATE: How much would China risk to back their little psycho client?

UPDATE: And in light of the missile defense option that starts with blowing up the missiles in their launch silos, this post on layered missile defense against an Iranian threat applies to North Korea. 

The Lines in the Hearts of Men

One popular blame for wars in the former colonial world rests on the borders that colonial masters drew without regard to local populations. I've long complained that if they are so bad, why won't any of the countries involved agree to change them to "make sense." If the borders are so bad, why isn't South Sudan at peace?

Seriously, the creation of South Sudan in defiance of longstanding African determination to avoid opening a Pandora's Box of border-based wars should have been a big deal in showing that redrawing the colonial-era boundaries can solve problems.

But instead of resolving that colonial-era problem, South Sudan remains at war internally:

South Sudan's civil war began on the night of December 15, 2013, when a firefight erupted between soldiers serving in the presidential garrison in the capital city, Juba. "Between" is an important word. The battle pitted soldiers from the Dinka tribe (largest in South Sudan) against soldiers in the Nuer tribe (second largest).

And this complaint about one peace proposal stands out:

The rebels contend [President Salva] Kiir's move violated power sharing agreements central to the ARCISS peace deal. The rebels are right. Kiir imposed a most dangerous gerrymander reminiscent of the worst 19t century European imperialists. Borders of the new states break up tribes, some of which belong to the rebel coalition.

There are always lines to be drawn that will divide people. It just depends on what you are willing to do to enforce--or break--those lines.

The Stupidity is Really Starting to Burn

Iran got a close-up look at one of our carriers through a periscope. At this point it is folly bordering on criminality to put our carriers in the Persian Gulf.

Have we been warned enough by now?

Iranian Tasmin News media outlet has aired a short video, allegedly filmed by a Ghadir-class submarine during a maritime exercise in the Strait of Hormuz.

The footage (click here) shows the submarine or a warship (the image above seems to be taken from a certain height from above the sea level…) somehow aiming or at least pointing its sensors at the American warship.

Seriously, WTF are we doing there with big expensive carriers? They do not belong in the Gulf.

Is it any wonder the Iranians believe God is on their side? They figured that they needed to build a pretend American carrier to gain propaganda points should a war break out, and here we are dangling one in front of them for real.

Memo to Navy: Please stop this. Now.

Plan B in the Air

Japan is working on their own stealth fighter. I wonder if it is a true all-around stealth plane or more like the Russian and Chinese planes that are front-only stealth planes. Still, this effort makes me feel better about our F-35.

Japan is building a stealth fighter:

Japan publicly unveiled its Mitsubishi Heavy Industries X-2 stealth fighter demonstrator earlier today in Toyoyama. If all goes as planned, the prototype aircraft will take to the air in the middle of February for a series of flight tests—making Japan the fourth nation to demonstrate such capabilities.

But they can't really afford to build it. But this makes me feel very good:

Unlike the Pentagon’s Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the X-2—which until recently was called the ATD-X—is optimized for high agility and boasts three-dimensional thrust vectoring. ...

Japan is not likely to develop the X-2 into a fully operational stealth aircraft—the cost is just not worth it for a limited production run. Instead, the country is likely setting itself up to participate in a future co-development effort with an international partner. The most likely partner would be the United States, which is gearing up to develop the F-X and F/A-XX follow-ons to the F-22 Raptor and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.

Why does it make me feel good? Because I'm worried about our design philosophy for the F-35 and we don't have nearly enough F-22s should that philosophy prove premature:

As a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found last year, 'advances in electronic sensors, communications technology, and guided weapons may have fundamentally transformed the nature of air combat.' Other than its stealth capability, these are attributes where the F-35 boasts significantly advances. It seems the stealth characteristics that were the big selling point of the F-35 may become second tier, and its sensor and communication capabilities could make it the plane for our time.

Perhaps the Air Force is right and the need to maneuver is a thing of the past. But in case we can't fly with the tray table down, it will be nice to have a Plan B with a partnership with Japan that creates a maneuverable fighter.

Reinforce United States Army Europe

The Army Force Commission reported to Congress, including a recommendation that the Army deploy a heavy brigade combat team to Europe. That's a start.

Do read it all, but this was of most interest to me:

The commission is recommending the Army should forward station an Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT) in Europe as Russia continues to antagonize Eastern Europe.

The ABCT would also be closer to other volatile contingencies where it could deploy more quickly than if it were stationed in the United States, [retired Gen. Carter] Ham explained.

The Army already has a Stryker brigade in Germany and an airborne brigade in Italy.

I'm long on record as thinking we should have 5 brigades in Europe (and no, I do not have a PhD. The Dignified Rant has a Master's Degree--in history. At one time they corrected that error, but it crept back in).

It is long past time to pretend we have a quiet front in Europe.

The article on the recommendations doesn't mention where it should go. I suggest southern Poland.

Plus some prepositioned brigade sets.

And I'd pay good money to rebuild an honest-to-God heavy Cold War era armored cavalry regiment to have its squadrons screen the Baltic states borders with Russia and Belarus.

Doing the Jobs [Insert Nationality Here] Won't Do

Strategypage has an interesting post on how countries recruit foreigners for their armed forces.

Since we seem to have problems recruiting nations to fight with us for what should be a common fight to defend the West, couldn't we recruit Westerners who would fight for the West if their own country would step up?

Surely there are Westerners who would rather join our military to actually fight to defend what we hold dear rather than be a uniformed civil servant in their own country's military, who might be sent on some thankless peacekeeping mission rather than fight.