The Elephant in the Room

This Russian site warns of problems for Russia if there is instability in the former Soviet republic but now independent "stans" of Central Asia. Conspicuously absent is any mention of China.

For all of Russia's loud and idiotic focus on the nonexistent NATO threat in the west, in the south problems loom for Moscow:

“The main type of military threat to Russia is diffused guerrilla operations generated by an explosion of religious extremism, an explosion which would be almost inevitable after a hypothetical failure of one or several of the Central Asian regimes." ...

The analysis concludes that growth of internal tensions in these states could lead to weak governments exporting instability through war, and it recommends Moscow undertake various projects in the former Soviet space to manage the situation. Despite changes in the level of Moscow's involvement in Central Asia due to economic and geopolitical pressures elsewhere, it is to be expected that Russia will continue its range of security, political, and economic relationships with Central Asian states through bilateral and multilateral ties it has been strengthening since the dissolution of Soviet Union.

Terrorism blowing back into Russia and collapsed states from the stresses of jihadi terrorism are threats, the article says.

What the article lacks is any mention of China as a threat to Russia in the region.

China has the money, interest, and power to offer significant help to central Asian states that want to resist jihadi threats. China has an interest in forging trade links to Europe and the Middle East through the "stans," and getting a buffer zone to keep Russia, America (from our activities related to Afghanistan), and Islamism from affecting China's west.

But China remains unnamed. Far safer to pick on Ukraine and bully small western democracies in Russia's western borders than to name China as a threat to Russian territorial integrity of their "near abroad" (and actual territory in the Far East).

Although there are signs that the Russians aren't as blind as their loud bluster against NATO suggests.

Although it is annoying and dangerous to be a prop in what is essentially an effort by Moscow to disguise their appeasement of China.

Standing Their (Tiny) Ground

I've long written that countries that claim islands in the South China Sea need to defend their claims with military force on the ground if they want to avoid having China grab the islands as they find the opportunities to expand their claims. Vietnam has taken such a step.

Yeah, raise the bar for China grabbing land:

Vietnam has discreetly fortified several of its islands in the disputed South China Sea with new mobile rocket launchers capable of striking China's runways and military installations across the vital trade route, according to Western officials.

Diplomats and military officers told Reuters that intelligence shows Hanoi has shipped the launchers from the Vietnamese mainland into position on five bases in the Spratly islands in recent months, a move likely to raise tensions with Beijing.

It raises tensions because China claims it all and isn't really interested in discussing anything that doesn't start with that assumption already agreed to.

Anybody else that hopes to defend their claims in the face of Chinese expansion had best be capable of defending their islands, too.

Fittingly, the Nixon Doctrine Lives On

ISIL has essentially lost control of Sirte, Libya:

Libyan forces battling to oust Islamic State from Sirte on Wednesday captured a large convention hall complex in the city center, seizing a symbolic base where militants once held meetings and flew their black jihadist flag.

Securing the Ouagadougou Conference Centre as well as hospital and university buildings would mark the biggest advance made by Libyan forces in weeks. The United States 10 days ago began air strikes on Sirte, which fighters say hastened their progress.

An odd feature of the war with ISIL has been that the capture of a city center really seems to mark change of control, rather than just being one victory in an effort to clear a city block by block of defenders. Why this is I don't know. Although perhaps its just an artifact of reporting.

So while the battle for clearing out Sirte isn't over, I think we can say ISIL lost control of the city--unless they can manage a counter-attack.



We've had a role in this progress:

U.S. Special Operations forces are providing direct, on-the-ground support for the first time to fighters battling the Islamic State in Libya, U.S. and Libyan officials said, coordinating American airstrikes and providing intelligence information in an effort to oust the group from a militant stronghold.

The positioning of a small number of elite U.S. personnel, operating alongside British troops, in the coastal city of Sirte deepens the involvement of Western nations against the Islamic State’s most powerful affiliate.

If information and air strikes are enough to enable local allies to defeat common enemies, that's great.

Just remember that this isn't always possible. Sometimes we have to risk more to defeat enemies when our allies aren't good enough to carry the burden.

I still think the French should have taken the lead on this front.

I'm Not Sure What the Point of an Assad Victory Here Really Is

The long battle for Aleppo is continuing. Although Assad and his allies believed they had the rebels in Aleppo cornered and cut off, the rebels broke the ring of pro-government forces with a major victory. Let's see if the rebels can hold their ground.

The Assad victory in Aleppo is postponed:

Despair, it seems, forced a show of unity by the disparate rebel groups, with striking effect. On the weekend of August 6th-7th, mainstream and jihadist groups used suicide bombers, artillery guns and tanks to break through regime positions. The rebels seized a military complex, captured weapons and ammunition, and opened a narrow corridor into areas that have been under government blockade for weeks.

The lightning advance took Syrian government forces by surprise; they have responded with fury. The regime has stepped up its bombardment of rebel-held parts of the city as it seeks to reverse the opposition’s successes. Activists in eastern Aleppo say that they have counted more than 100 air strikes over the past two days.

The corridor isn't secure 24/7. But the weapons and ammo captured are pretty real. That has to hurt Assad.

I'm not sure how the battle will go. But I'm not sure Assad can afford even a victory.

I'll repeat what I said four years ago when I judged the city a bridge too far for Assad's forces:

I think Assad might be biting off more than he can chew. Sure, it is a big and important city with regime defenders to protect, but it is close to Turkey and adds more people to the defense perimeter of Core Syria than I think Assad has the forces to pacify.

Extending the Syrian perimeter north to secure just the approaches to the city strains Assad's battered forces.

Defending the perimeter of the conquered--and wrecked--city will strain Assad's forces.

And trying to pacify and/or protect the city residents will strain Assad's forces.

I just don't know where Assad finds the troops to secure this territory and all those people.

Assad may yet win this battle--my 4-year-old prediction could yet fail--but then Assad has to defend the win.

Haven't Assad's supporters endured enough casualties so far? Will they keep dying to defend the city?

If they take it, of course.

The Coup Plotters Surely Feel Silly Now

If you wonder what the Turkey coup plotters were worried about, look no farther than what Erdogan is going after the coup attempt to understand.

Wonderful:

For years, Mr. Erdogan, an Islamist, has celebrated great moments of the Ottoman past when Istanbul was the seat of the Islamic caliphate, and played down Turkey’s secular history established by Ataturk. With last month’s failed coup, he now has his own story, and he has wasted little time propagating his own set of events and symbols to cement the narrative in the national consciousness. ...

Mr. Erdogan is trying to create a new narrative of a Turkish Islamic identity “that reaches beyond” what Ataturk built. Other analysts say Mr. Erdogan is essentially using the coup events to create a founding myth of an Islamist Turkey.

Imagine the coup plotters being worried that Ergodan would take Turkey in an Islamist direction!

UPDATE: I will say that I agree that after whatever wobbles the coup attempt and purge have on US-Turkish relations, Turkey has an interest in having America as an ally rather than Russia.

The US is far with a record of leaving when asked. The Russians have a record of many wars with Turkey (as the Ottoman Empire).

So I don't expect a flip with Turkey exiting NATO and courting Russia as an ally.

Stretch Their Capacity

Is Russia preparing to grab more land from Ukraine by renewing the war of movement? We should complicate Russia's offensive efforts.

Despite calls to observe the notional ceasefire, Russia appears to be ready to renew the war against Ukraine:

But there are signs of both sides going back to a war footing: Kyiv is on high alert and has deployed special-forces units and battle-hardened battalions to the front, while Russia has reportedly amassed large amounts of military hardware in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula it seized from Ukraine in March 2014.

Ominously, there are reports of Russia's activity in Crimea. A move out of Crimea either overland or with airborne or naval infantry would imply an escalation beyond the incomplete Russian conquest of the Donbas region in the east.

When Russia announced their "withdrawal" from Syria (which was just a reduction of forces by a bit) earlier this year, I wondered if Russia wanted to refocus on Ukraine. Their limited military really would have trouble with multiple fronts given that most of their military is not in top shape.

Perhaps they are focusing on Ukraine now.

All the more reason we should be working to help Ukraine kill more Russian soldiers who have invaded Ukraine and to complicate rather then help Russia's intervention on behalf of Assad in Syria.

If Putin wants to exploit our election period to make gains on the ground (and make a traditional attack timed to coincide with the Olympics games), this would make an interesting test to see if Trump can move beyond his pro-Russian advisors and to see if Clinton can refuse to grant Putin "flexibility" lest more emails be released.

UPDATE: Uh oh, Russia may be manufacturing a pretext for renewed war:

President Vladimir Putin says he'll beef up Russia's military force in Crimea, after Russia's security service claimed that it thwarted a would-be terrorist incursion from Ukraine over the weekend.

The Federal Security Service, the FSB, said that teams of commandos from Ukraine's defense forces made two attempts to enter the Black Sea peninsula, with the intention of sabotaging vital infrastructure. The FSB said Ukrainian forces attempted to cover the infiltration by directing heavy fire at the Russian side, killing two Russian servicemen.

Ukraine denies the charge and our ambassador to Ukraine says there is no evidence of such an attack.

And even Ukraine did try to sabotage military or other valid targets, what's wrong with that? Russia took Crimea from Ukraine! Surely it isn't illegal to try to fight back, is it?

I hope Ukraine is ready with naval mines to plant outside of Crimean naval bases; and has long-range artillery and missiles to bombard the Sevastopol naval and air bases.

If Russia restarts the war to make it a war of movement again, Ukraine needs to increase the cost to Russia by breaking Russian things and killing Russian troops.

Tip to Instapundit.

UPDATE: If Russia is looking to make gains in Ukraine, we should be especially be wary of making deals with Russia over Syria that makes their situation easier:

Russia is eager to make whatever deals it can to win the war in Syria and get out. Many American military leaders and intelligence officials are warning the U.S. government that closely cooperating with the Russians will not end well for the United States and the West because the Russian goal is keeping the Assad government in power. That is not and never will be popular in the United States, not as long as Iran’s official policy is “death to America and Israel.” But American leaders are attracted to the idea that cooperation with Russia and Iran in Syria would do more to destroy ISIL than any other strategy.

We might ease Russia's problems rather than make them worse under the odd notion that we need Russia to defeat ISIL? Good grief.

We are more than strong enough to defeat ISIL without siding with Assad to help him survive this civil war. It drives me nuts that some in our government are thinking of making that kind of trade.

As if Russia could be trusted to fight ISIL after pocketing the Assad concession, anyway, if it was a good deal.

And don't think that Assad will be suddenly grateful to America if we side with him at this late date.

When you strike a king, kill him, as the saying goes--not strike him and then offer a hand, saying "let's not bicker and argue over who killed who!"

Testing, Testing ... Is This Thing On?

We must "test" Russia's commitment to peace in Syria, our president says:

Obama said, “There are going to be some bottom lines that we expect for cooperation with Russia. That means restraint on the part of the regime that so far has not been forthcoming.

“So we are going to test and see if we can get something that sticks, and if not, then Russia will have shown itself very clearly to be an irresponsible actor on the world stage that is supporting a murderous regime and will have to answer to that on the international stage,” Obama said.

I get the feeling we grade easily. Since Russia hasn't seemed to pass a test on peace in Syria, well, since ever.

Yet we've seen this effort to see if we can trust Russia before, haven't we?



Kerry may love to hear himself talk, but it will achieve nothing:

But it is hard to see how he can enter into such an agreement with Russia while the ferocious assault on the rebel-held areas of Aleppo continues. Given that Bashar al-Assad’s regime believes that controlling Aleppo is key to its survival, it is equally hard to imagine either it or its Russian and Iranian allies pulling back now.

The problem is, Russia wants to win:

The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia.

Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power.

But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning C.I.A.-backed rebel forces with an air campaign that has sent them into retreat. And now rebel commanders, clinging to besieged neighborhoods in the divided city of Aleppo, say their shipments of C.I.A.-provided antitank missiles are drying up.

This is the most frustrating thing about the whole war. Assad led a minority government with a divided military against the majority of Syrians who opposed Assad. This should have been the easiest intervention ever.

Had we seriously supported the rebellion before jihadis flocked to Syria to fight Assad, the regime could have been overthrown relatively quickly several hundred thousand dead and several million refugees ago (remember early on in the civil war our government said we didn't want to further "militarize" the conflict by supplying arms to rebels).

But no, President Obama assumed Assad was defeated, tried to go to the head of the parade by saying "Assad must go," and then refused to dirty his hands by actually helping the rebellion--which has also destabilized Iraq and put Jordan and Lebanon under threat.

Yet still anti-Assad forces fight:

Syrian insurgents who broke the siege of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Saturday in a significant territorial gain came under intense air attack from pro-government forces on Sunday trying to repel the advance which also cut government-held Aleppo's main supply route.

Rebels have taken most of a large government military complex southwest of Aleppo city in a major offensive begun on Friday to break a month-long siege and are now attacking further into government held territory.

Instead of trying to defeat Assad, we will again "test" Russian sincerity for peace in Syria. Good God. Kerry will be lying on his back staring at the sky again.

And this is called "smart diplomacy" by our leaders in Washington.

Tinker Tailor Broadcaster Spy

Thank goodness Britain has penetrated jihadi groups and Russian spy networks so thoroughly that these foes are helpless to harm Britain!

Because if not, how do you explain devoting resources to this?

The BBC is to spy on internet users in their homes by deploying a new generation of Wi-Fi detection vans to identify those illicitly watching its programmes online.

The Telegraph can disclose that from next month, the BBC vans will fan out across the country capturing information from private Wi-Fi networks in homes to “sniff out” those who have not paid the licence fee.

The corporation has been given legal dispensation to use the new technology, which is typically only available to crime-fighting agencies, to enforce the new requirement that people watching BBC programmes via the iPlayer must have a TV licence.

The equipment is typically only available to crime-fighting agencies? Nice.

The British people voted to reject the EU. Even if the elites don't undermine and cancel that unfortunate bit of democracy, don't get cocky. The Television police are still on the job.

Actually, the British authorities might nab more jihadis who are pirating the BBC than the police services will arrest.

And in Cuban Reset News

I guess your average oppressed Cuban doesn't think that normalizing relations with America will lead to either prosperity or freedom in Cuba anytime soon.

The Cuban regime is unhappy with America (say it ain't so!):

Havana on Sunday blamed Washington for a surge of Cubans trying to reach the United States by land and sea, accusing the Obama administration of encouraging illegal and unsafe immigration.

Tens of thousands of Cubans over the last two years have flocked to the U.S.-Mexican border and taken to the sea in hopes of reaching Florida, fearing a growing detente between the Cold War foes will lead to a change in U.S. policy.

I'm sure that the Obama administration will explain that changing the law on Cuban refugees is meaningless since the administration doesn't really consider anyone who enters America an "illegal" migrant.

When the doors are wide open, nobody has any particular advantage or disadvantage.

And the Cubans probably committed a micro-aggression of some sort by calling that immigration "illegal."  Shame on them.

The Dinosaurs Evolve

Tanks are always on the verge of being declared obsolete. Yet heavy armor continues to prove its value. In the long battle between guns/missiles and armor which has been supplemented by active defenses, passive defenses have made some new progress:

There appears to be another breakthrough in armor protection. The new one is CMF (Composite metal foam) that is produced by bubbling gas through molten metal to a lightweight metal matrix.

Strategypage reports that smaller vehicles and infantry body armor will likely be the first beneficiary of this technology.

I assume heavy armor and ships will benefit eventually.

Lancers West

We are sending B-1 bombers to Guam. While the article notes land-attack capabilities in regard to North Korea, I'm more interested in naval strike capabilities.

We need long-range strike aircraft in the western Pacific:

"The B-1 units bring a unique perspective and years of repeated combat and operational experience from the Central Command theater to the Pacific," said a statement from Pacific Air Forces headquarters in Hawaii.

Guam is a U.S.-controlled island territory in the western Pacific, some 1,550 miles east of the Philippines.

"With a large weapon capacity and exceptional standoff strike capability, the B-1 will provide U.S. Pacific Command and its regional allies and partners with a credible, strategic power projection platform," the statement said.

Land attack is important. Small Chinese artificial islands in the South China Sea could be hammered quite effectively with a full load of JDAMs.

But I'd be more interested to know if these particular B-1 bombers have naval strike and naval mine-laying capabilities.

If the Chinese fleet sorties in anger, that capability would be pretty useful.

UPDATE: If the B-1 can carry some of these, that would be great:

The Navy is pursuing high-tech seeker upgrades to the submarine and ship-launched Tomahawk missile as a way to better enable the weapon to destroy moving enemy ships at sea.

The B-1 could sink Chinese ships leaving port without being exposed to Chinese air defenses with that kind of capability.

Clean, Cheap, and Top Secret Nuclear Energy!

Hillary Clinton should be grateful she wasn't the foreign minister of Iran, given how Iran punishes those who reveal their top secrets to enemies.

The Iran deal is portrayed by our White House and their fanboys (and girls) as a great victory for the West in making sure Iran won't get nuclear weapons.

So how is this possible?

Iran has executed a nuclear scientist convicted of handing over "confidential and vital" information to the United States, a judicial spokesman said on Sunday.

"Shahram Amiri was hanged for revealing the country's top secrets to the enemy," Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie told reporters in Tehran.

If Iran is and always has been involved in only peaceful nuclear energy research, how can anything he has done been confidential and vital information considering that nuclear energy technology isn't exactly new technology?

And how can America be considered an "enemy" after the nuclear deal that has put Iran on the secure path to being a responsible regional power and partner of America?

But the Iranians hanged the man by the neck until he was dead. That's quite a head scratcher, isn't it? Isn't death really only important if the man gave nuclear weapons secrets to an actual enemy?

And the big-brained nuanced gang in the White House--and their fanboys (and girls)--have assured us that Iran has no nuclear weapons ambitions and that Iran will be our friend by the time Iran might get them.

I mentioned his disappearance back in the day. Whatever he told us didn't matter since as I've long said, the basis of a nuclear deal with Iran has long been clear: Iran will pretend they don't want nuclear weapons; and we will pretend to believe them.

Face it, Iran wants nukes. And Iran hoodwinked the West and is cheating on what they didn't win in the document in order to get nuclear weapons.

Heck, with the money freed up by the nuclear deal, Iran might not even need their own nuclear program to get their first nukes.

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton's private email system that bypassed government security equipment and procedures mentioned the executed scientist. I wonder who else read that conversation?

This summary from U.S. News & World Report has additional details and speculates that the Iranian government threatened his family. Amiri did return to Iran to be welcomed as a hero. Then, in May 2011, the regime arrested him and accused him of treason. Amiri, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary government, had spied for The Great Satan (the U.S.).

Amiri’s execution intersects with the 2016 U.S. political elections. As the linked article notes, two emails transmitted in 2010 through Hillary Clinton’s off-the-books and unauthorized server appear to refer to Amiri. Clinton senior adviser Jake Sullivan was involved in both emails: one he forwarded on July 5, 2010 (10 days before Amiri returned to Iran) and another (one he sent) dated July 12. The July 5 email said, “Our friend must be given a way out.”

Ah well. What difference does it make, now, anyway?

Mobile, Protected, With Firepower, and Already Paid For

Unless we plan to airlift infantry brigades into combat, why on Earth does the Army want to build newly designed light tanks to support infantry brigades when we have thousands of M-1 Abrams tanks sitting in storage?

The MPF [Note: mobile protected firepower] program “will be a lightweight combat vehicle that provides the Infantry Brigade Combat Team long range, precision direct fire capability that ensures freedom of movement and action during joint expeditionary maneuver and joint combined arms operations,” according to the statement.

Why should the vehicle be lightweight? Paratrooper, airmobile, and light infantry could use something light enough to be airlifted or airdropped, but why should motorized infantry units want such vehicles when we could use the tried and true method of attaching tank companies or even battalions to an infantry brigade in order to give them mobile protected firepower?

In World War II, our motorized infantry divisions were basically like German panzergrenadier division (mechanized infantry--with only a portion of the infantry in armored vehicles with the rest in trucks) because they each had a tank and tank destroyer battalion attached to them.

We produced a lot of M-1 Abrams tanks to defend Europe, but with our Army's reduction of combat brigades after winning the Cold War and conversion of many to lighter units, we need very few of these tanks in our existing formations.

Now those still useful tanks sit in storage. they'd be useful for replacing losses but could also be used to reinforce infantry brigades. Even older model early production versions of the Abrams would have better protection and firepower than a new light tank design.

I say attach M-1 units to our infantry brigades (and to our Stryker brigades, as I've mentioned) if we want to give them mobile protected firepower.

And yes, the comments section of that YouTube video does remind me of why I don't enable comments here. People obviously have the right to say whatever they want. As they should in a free country.

What they don't have is a right to have me provide a platform for their ill-informed commentary.

I've certainly gotten good comments over the years, but having to send email rather than pop in a comment seems to deter idiocy for some reason.

A Logic Gap

Air power is valuable but why does the Navy assume it can only be based on aircraft carriers?

Okaay:

Earlier this month, the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group (CSG) returned to Norfolk from an eight-month deployment, a cruise extended a month to meet strike requirements in Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). As “extended” tours become the norm across the fleet, it is yet another reminder that aircraft carrier demand continues to outmatch supply. The question is whether this latest warning will be enough to change plans and redirect investments.

I'm up for changing plans and redirecting investments, but not to ramp up our carrier numbers. I'm more worried about a mineshaft gap, really.

In the long run, big deck carriers just aren't survivable in the face of network-centric warfare (or distributed lethality or the strategic cloud or whatever it will be called in a decade).

Of course, carrier air wings are still quite useful against enemies without naval strike capabilities. So I would never decommission the carriers we have.

But why do we need aircraft carriers operating in the Persian Gulf (and that's another pet peeve of mine) when we have allies with plenty of land air bases within range of ISIL targets?

Why can't we save our carrier deployments by dispatching carrier air wings to land bases in CENTCOM to launch those strikes?

And that's glossing over the issue of whether the Air Force needs help from the Navy to carry out ground support missions.

Really, wouldn't it be better if our carriers focused more on air defense over a strike group and naval strike to gain sea control rather than bombing land targets, which is pretty much the reason we have an Air Force?

A carrier gap doesn't have to mean an air power gap unless we insist that air power can only be deployed on carriers.

The Flame of You Infantry are On Your Own?

Israeli artillery again seems like it wants to be more like the air force. For the love of God, why?

So Israel has a new artillery doctrine:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Artillery Corps is in the process of introducing a new tactical doctrine that combines short bursts of shell fire with guided surface-to-surface missiles.

So far no problem. They want precision and missiles to supplement tube artillery.

And the article says artillery has a primary role of supporting maneuvering ground units. That's good--if true.

Let's go on about the Flame of Fire Artillery Brigade implementing the new doctrine:

The IDF Ground Forces Command has been investing in developing the Artillery Corps' ability to carry out rapid and independent surface-to-surface strikes. The techniques are specifically designed to target asymmetrical threats such as militants who vanish into civilian areas after carrying out hit-and-run attacks.

Independent surface-to-surface strikes using organic surveillance assets?

I thought that this thinking was discarded as I noted in this 2014 post. I quote a now-dead article that indicates that the Israelis had abandoned this line in favor of supporting ground units in combat:

Just a year ago, Israel’s Artillery Corps was crafting a new mission statement and doctrine to transition from its traditional role of fire support to the leading ground force provider of standoff attack. Its Fire2025 master plan aspired to one-shot, one-target accuracy at increasingly long ranges, with saturation fire relegated to second-tier status.

I quoted more of the article to show that the artillery branch was recommitting to ground support instead of being a second air force that fancies itself able to achieve decisive results on the ground without playing second fiddle to ground maneuver units by being tied to supporting them, and commented:

As an aside, I may wonder about our Air Force's commitment to ground support, but the Israeli army's own artillery was attempting to be an air force that doesn't fly? Really? Inter-service rivalry is better than intra-service rivalry any day.

The army artillery change is that the artillery will remain committed to army ground support even as it is allowed a parallel effort to gain market share at the expense of their air force's deep strike missions[.]

But the first article makes me wonder if the "primary" mission is more than lip service since the focus of the article is on the long-range independent deep strike parallel aspect.

Why does Israel need a second air force on tracks while the army seems to be left without anybody committed to fire support for them?

Fooling Some of the People All of the Time

I remain bewildered that some people here, who benefit from a long history of free market economic growth (and no, crony capitalism is not the same as a free market economic system), fall for the siren song of socialism.

Free markets outperform state-led economies:

Whether it’s North Korea vs. South Korea, Cuba vs. Chile, or Ukraine vs. Poland, nations with bigger governments and more intervention inevitably decline compared to market-oriented alternatives.

Of course, while the long run is sure, in the short run prosperous leftists can pretend that redistributing the wealth created by past free market economic growth is a wonderful alternative to the growth policies. After all, the momentum of past growth and practices takes a while to run out of steam. In the meantime, the poorest get more while the wealthiest and middle class aren't affected too much. And while that period exists, all looks grand:

Well, Joe Kennedy also deserves our scorn and disdain. The former politician actually mourned the death of the evil slug who is most responsible for the mess in Venezuela.

Former congressman Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) is mourning the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today, praising Chavez as someone who made a difference for poor people. …Kennedy also said that “some of the wealthiest people on our planet have more money than they can ever reasonably expect to spend.” Kennedy joins Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) among the few American politicians to praise Chavez after his death Tuesday.

How disgusting and unseemly. Makes the Che sycophants seems like moral giants.

But then the people who spread the wealth run out of wealth from the past, and discover that they crushed the system and habits of building the wealth in the first place.

But the fools abroad insulated from the disaster who cheered on the redistribution and socialism remain fooled of course. They will insist that all will be cured by turning the socialism to 11.

And when the socialist descend into Soviet, Maoist, or Khmer Rouge levels of socialism that slaughter and imprison their own people?

Well, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to create a socialist paradise omelet, eh? What can ya do?

Tip to Instapundit.

UPDATE: More (via Instapundit):

Malnourished children who faint in class. Children who, in the worst cases, die from hunger, their bodies nothing but skin and bones, the outlines of their ribs visible.

Images like those have become common in Venezuela, where critical food shortages are pushing hundreds of thousands of children under a blanket of misery and hunger more often seen in the poorest countries in Africa.

And:

A mob of starving people advanced on the presidential palace chanting, “We want food”. They were met by soldiers and police dispatched by the tyrant from his lavish palace decorated opulently with a golden sun, giant rock crystal mirrors, sparkling chandeliers and towering oil portraits.

The scene wasn’t 19th century France, but 21st century Venezuela.

And if you are wondering why you haven’t seen it on the news, it’s because Venezuela is a Socialist disaster area that was once being used as a model by the left.

The peasants are hungry? Let them watch Sean Penn and Danny Glover!

Explain to me again how socialism is a product of caring so much for the poor.

You Go to November With the Candidates You Wished to Have

I haven't written much about the polling in the presidential race. Until Labor Day, I think it is rather pointless. Most people have lives and mental health stability, and so don't focus on the election starting 44 months out like the Washington crowd and those who read them (including me, truth be told--but I at least know that it isn't normal). Really, wait until the polls are of likely voters before figuring out the state of the race.

I was going to write about the problem with polling fever and how the race would tighten once polls starting using "likely voters" rather than "registered voters" or--God help us all--"all adults." This article beat me to it.

I'm sure there are reasons to use registered voter polls so far out--it may be too soon to refine models of who is a likely voter, for example.

Or maybe the press just likes to have drama to have a fake closing the gap as polls shift from Democrat-favoring registered voters to more Republican-friendly likely voters.

Anyway, the race will likely tighten a bit as people start to pay attention and answer polls on more than name recognition, and as likely voters are defined.

I do vow to take the average of the polling seriously rather than look for reasons why the polling is systematically biased against the Republican candidate.

Yes, there were some problems in non-presidential year Congressional elections. But those problems did not translate into presidential year elections.

Last election I thought that election models surely had Romney winning, with the state of the economy; and so paid attention to articles claiming samples were skewed to explain President Obama's advantage. The polls were not wrong.

I also took hope from enthusiastic crowds for Romney. Crowds of thousands are not hard to get in a country of over 300 million, in fact. So that means little in the face of polling data.

Plus, another reason not to focus on the race is that I hate to pay attention to this awful race.

I've been clear that in a race been a clown candidate and a corrupt candidate, I choose the clown.

But the bottom line is that it is a race between a clown candidate and a corrupt candidate. 

And even more depressing is that we chose these two deeply flawed people to be the standard bearers of our two major parties.

So God help us all, but we'll get who we deserve, I guess.

UPDATE: The last two sentences are the really depressing part. A lot of Republican voters decided that they'd rather trust a strongman in Trump.

 But at least many Republicans are still standing for rule of law.

And the Democrats are worse. A majority are willing to overlook Hillary's deep corruption to get their candidate into power. And a vocal minority wanted a freaking socialist.

God help us all if democracy, individual rights, and rule of law lack popular support in America.

But I Do Know That I'm Superior to You

Is it truly possible that American college students largely believe that slavery was a uniquely American practice rather than a common form of labor for thousands of years of recorded history (and which still exists underground in large parts of the world)?

Don't know much about history:

I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students - I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.

I think I'm going to be physically ill.

No wonder so many of these credentialed dolts believe America is exceptionally evil.

These fools should note that even the new British leader, Prime Minister May, has put her weight behind fighting the modern problem in Britain.

Tip to Instapundit.

Star Trek: Into Court Rooms?

At this point, I think I will wait until it comes out on Netflix to watch the latest Star Trek movie.

I'm rather annoyed that the powers that control the Star Trek franchise are using an iron fist to stamp out increasingly sharp fan films:

To avoid a lawsuit from Paramount, a fan production must be no more than 15 minutes long; have a budget no bigger than $50,000; have no paid professional actors or crew and no one who has ever worked on an official Star Trek production; no merchandising, not even the little perks usually given out for crowdfunding efforts (and what is a crowdfunded project without a T-shirt?); and all costumes from the franchise must be official Paramount merchandise. This can only be viewed as an attempt to ensure that no fan films with decent production quality or and kind of ambitious scope can be produced.

Paramount is claiming to control the actions of anyone who has worked on Star Trek for the rest of their lives? Really? That's even legal?

I've never watched these fan films until recently when I picked up on Star Trek Continues. It is hit or miss but really has the spirit of the original series. Kudos.

And a couple days ago I watched Star Trek Horizon. That delighted me by being in the Enterprise universe, which I liked far more than critics, I guess. Although in Horizon why are they in serial production of an experimental ship? Why NX-01 to NX-04? Shouldn't the "X" be out by now?

But I digress.

And of course, Prelude to Axanar, which prompted the Paramount/CBS decision to go full Tienanmen Square on the producers of these films.

All of these are pretty darn good. Axanar especially. So let me add this before the Paramount red shirts go after them.



Although I've sampled some low-budget stuff that I couldn't continue to watch after more than 5 minutes. So there's that.

But are the studios seriously worried that good fan films--which can be better with technology getting cheaper--will wreck their franchise?

These fan films simply increase the appetite for "real" movies. They are essentially free advertising for the franchise. If they are good, they make Star Trek more popular. If bad, nobody sees them and those who do would never mistake them for the studio brand.

The only way that these fan films can be bad for the franchise is by doing a better job than the studios.

Really, why doesn't Paramount view the fan films as their farm team? If story lines, actors, or film crew come up with something that strikes a chord with fans, bring them up to the big league.

If the fan films suck--as most do--let them wither and die unwatched.

So maybe rather than issuing draconian guidelines to fan film producers to limit them, the studio should issue guidelines to their professionals to ensure a higher quality movie, eh?

I hope that the fan films manage to get around these guidelines. Start with breaking up their films or episodes into 15-minute slices, each with $50,000 official budgets.

Maybe actors can temporarily renounce their professional status.

Perhaps non-actor crews can sue to prevent Paramount from governing their lives just because they were hired once by a Star Trek outfit.

Can lawyers figure out how different uniforms have to be from the studio versions to be legal?

And there has to be a lot more that can be done to go around limits. That's usually how limits work, isn't it?

The bottom line is that this policy is pissing me off. I'd normally see the latest Star Trek movie as I've seen every other one. But now I'll skip the theater experience.

Screw you Paramount. You became the Borg Collective so slowly, I hardly noticed.

Smart Diplomacy

It's disturbing enough that we sent Iran $400 million in unmarked bills to get Americans held hostage by Iran released. The payment isn't news, although I don't buy the notion that we couldn't get around a court case to pay Iran given that Iran is a sponsor of terrorism. But what does the pattern say about our diplomacy?

Sure, if I made a $10,000 bank transaction, it would draw the attention of the federal government worried about why I had that much cash.

Indeed, if I made a $9,900 transaction, the government would be suspicious that I was "structuring" the transaction to avoid the $10,000 trigger level for scrutiny.

Yet we need not worry what Iran--a sponsor of terror as our State Department labels Iran--will do with $400 million dollars of currency. Got it. Iran is more trustworthy than American citizens.

But let's ponder how we got to that coincidental same-day delivery of cash and release of hostages:

The fact that the Iranians held onto the hostages until the delivery of all that cash from the United States illustrated their ability to make the West fold on virtually every one of its starting positions. A tougher-minded administration that was not desperate for a deal at any price would have demanded the release of the hostages after the first preliminary agreement in November 2013, which began the process of unraveling the system of international sanctions on Iran. But as with other key points—such as President Obama’s election-year pledge to force Iran to dismantle its nuclear program—that quest was abandoned. At every stage of the talks, the Iranians would dig in their heels and Secretary of State John Kerry would buckle. Iran held onto the hostages until the very last possible moment, only giving them up once this cash payment was handed over.

Oh no, we don't negotiate for hostages:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday defended the Obama administration's payment of $400 million in cash to Iran, denying it was a ransom for the release of American prisoners by Tehran or tied to the Iran nuclear deal.

"The United States does not pay ransoms," Kerry told a news conference in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

We just coincidentally deliver huge amounts of cash to Iran right before Iran releases hostages. That's way different.

Yet we're to believe that these Keystone Cops negotiated a solid nuclear deal with the mullahs.

Indeed, this is one more example of the Obama administration's Smart Diplomacy!

In reality, the Iranians are so good that our diplomats may actually believe that they achieved a victory.

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett doesn't think it is no big deal despite the vague discussions earlier in the year. This really stuck out at me, on top of the policy problems:

Finally, there's the ugly matter of Obama belittling anyone who might question or criticize his cash payola for Iran. That shows an utter disregard for his own promises of transparency, and gross disrespect for the American public. It's terrible policy for an American president to secretly ship $400 million -- or is it by now $1.7 billion? -- worth of cash to the terror-sponsoring ballistic-missile-testing Islamic Republic of Iran. It's even worse when the president, caught out by the press, chooses to defend himself by denigrating the reporters, and his fellow citizens generally, as sensation-seeking fools. The best retort by now, no matter what the presidential mockery, is don't stop following the money.

That's really a major feature of this administration. It's been one giant arrogant sneer at anyone who questions their brilliance (as they see themselves).

The arrogance would be easier to take if they weren't a bunch of clueless fools.

Responsibly Reviving Our Wars

The Obama administration and it's slogan of "hope and change" has been a clear--if bloody--experiment in disproving liberal criticism of American foreign policy.

Recall 2009 and shudder with horror at the hope of our domestic left (and the left around the world) that the new President Obama would change course and responsibly end the "Bush wars," bringing about an age of global harmony as the new president stopped provoking the world into violence.

Heck, the president reached out to the Islamic world with a lovely outreach speech in 2009 and looked the other way as Iran crushed a revolt that year to curry favor with the mullahs. How could it fail to work?

But where are we now, nearly 8 years later?

With renewed American involvement in Iraq beginning in 2014, we have Iraq War 2.0.

We had Libya War 1.0 in 2011.

With renewed American involvement in Libya this year, we have Libya War 2.0.

With renewed American involvement in the defense of NATO against Russian belligerence since 2014, we have Cold War 2.0.

With reinvigorated American involvement in Afghanistan this year (more air support to fight the Taliban), we have Afghan War 1.0 bis.

We have the expanded Iran Expansion project that is running into our Arab allies in the region, which requires our regional involvement with military forces and arms sales to reassure our allies.

We have the brand new Syrian War 1.0.

And we still have Yemen War 1.0 (but messier and regionalized now), Pakistan Border War 1.0 (against jihadis inside Pakistan), and Somalia War 1.0.

And those are just the major operations. United States AFRICOM has been ramping up American military help to many countries fighting a surge of jihadis or similar whackjobs (the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda).

And so we find that when we try to pull back and avoid resisting evil forces, instead of peace we get more war with evil forces emboldened by our efforts to retreat from global responsibilities.

Therefore, President Obama will be the first president in our history to be at war throughout two terms of office.

So we got the change--if not the hope.

UPDATE: Hmm:

US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to visit Turkey later this month, Turkey’s foreign minister announced Friday.

The title asks "Could John Kerry’s post-coup trip to Turkey soothe ties?"

Good Lord, I'll count it a roaring success if that buffoon doesn't drive Turkey to declare war on us.

Good Advice for 2013

An author believes that to tilt the balance against Assad, that America should attack Hezbollah in Syria. That would have been good advice three years ago when Hezbollah was the decisive strike force for the Assad regime.

I think this advice is too late:

Washington could inform Tehran, Moscow and Beirut that Hezbollah should withdraw from Syria by a certain date or the United States would target any of its troops attacking non-extremist opposition forces in and around Aleppo and elsewhere. If Hezbollah failed to withdraw, the United States would then need to be ready to attack as soon as the ultimatum expired.

Hezbollah is no longer the major pillar of Assad's offensive capabilities. After so many casualties (a thousand plus dead) as the bleeding edge shock troops of Assad's attacks, I've read that Hezbollah's supporters are upset about the casualties against a non-Israel foe. So Hezbollah isn't as willing to attack for Assad. And reports that Hezbollah was manning tanks to reduce their casualties supports this.

Further, Iran's Shia foreign legion and Iranian-organized local militias are taking up more of that shock troop role.

And the Russians are far more important in sustaining offensives with logistics and fire support.

Even if Hezbollah is wiped out, Assad will continue to have offensive capabilities. So taking out Hezbollah--a relatively marginal factor--now won't affect the outcome of the civil war nearly as much as the author claims.

Also, how do we pinpoint Hezbollah targets in western Syria in face of Russian air defenses? Without spotters on the ground, we need persistent aerial surveillance to spot and track targets. Will our UAVs survive in a hostile air defense environment? Will we risk manned aircraft? Will we risk stealth F-22s to avoid Russian air defenses?

Are we really willing to risk combat with Russia for a lower tier objective that won't affect the war decisively? If we were to do this, it would have been better to do it before Russia entered the war last year.

So what do we do if Russia resists and defends Hezbollah by shooting down our recon drones and manned planes and contesting our strike aircraft?

Do we really risk war with Russia over the now-minor factor of Hezbollah support for the Assad regime when we haven't been willing to got to war to oust Assad even before Russia intervened?

No, if Hezbollah is to be struck, it should be at the end of the war--whether an Assad victory or defeat--as Hezbollah prepares to redeploy their expeditionary force from Syria back to Lebanon.

The Big Lie

Hillary Clinton will lie about her email violations until her supporters nod in agreement and those in the middle are too confused to know what to believe.

Is our media going to let Clinton get away with this?

Hillary Clinton is repeating her false claim that the FBI said her statements on her use of a private email were "truthful."

"As the FBI said, everything that I've said publicly has been consistent and truthful with what I've told them," Clinton said in an interview with KUSA's Brandon Rittiman on Wednesday.

Clinton made a similar claim -- which was widely debunked -- in an interview last weekend on "Fox News Sunday."

The woman is shameless--or delusional.

I'm not sure whether it is more disturbing that she lies so easily or the alternative that she possibly believes what she is saying.

2012 is Calling

As the Democrats rediscover (or is it "discover?") the Russian threat, let's recall what their leader said about Russia just four short years ago.



Yeah. Funny stuff.

I think 2012 is calling. They want their wildly unjustified arrogance back.

UPDATE: A tour of Russia from Strategypage.

Although I wouldn't write that Russia has "invaded" Syria along with Ukraine. The latter Russia has invaded. Russia has intervened in Syria on behalf of the odious Assad regime. Which isn't an invasion, despite being bloody and without conscience.

How Convenient

Data is increasingly unnecessary because we now have Mann-made global warming:

“Fundamentally, I’m a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate-model output and observational climate data trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change,” Mr. Mann told the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee at a hearing.

“What is disconcerting to me and so many of my colleagues is that these tools that we’ve spent years developing increasingly are unnecessary because we can see climate change, the impacts of climate change, now, playing out in real time, on our television screens, in the 24-hour news cycle,” he said.

Well, Mann-declared global warming, anyway. Ah, Science!

Does Mann's claim mean Congress can safely cancel all funding for global warming research?

This is why I don't need data to conclude that Michael Mann is a clown. It's playing out in real time before us.

Of course, different data might lead to different things playing out in real time.

Tips to the Instapundit Borg.

Playing With Nuclear Fire

North Korea upped the ante by splashing a ballistic missile into Japan's exclusive economic zone. Sometimes things change.

This didn't strike Japanese territory, but it is a provocation:

North Korea fired two missiles. One blew up immediately after launch -- a common occurrence. Compared to South Korea and the advanced nations it threatens, North Korea's manufacturing base is primitive.

However, the second missile flew 1,000 kilometers then splashed into the Sea of Japan. It was a provocative splash -- one Japan and its allies cannot ignore -- for the missile hit within Japan's maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. Missile tracking data has confirmed the strike location.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the violation of Japan's EEZ "an intolerable act of recklessness." An EEZ isn't sovereign territory, not quite, but the North Korean test shot amounts to a calculated provocation. Japan has the internationally recognized right to defend its EEZ.

The Japanese government promised a "resolute response," in cooperation with the U.S. and South Korea.

Japan and South Korea are stepping up defensive and offensive capabilities in response to North Korea's persistent threats and growing nuclear capability.

So this is a change in reaction that abandons trying to buy off North Korea.

North Korea's missile launch int the EEZ was a change for them, too.

How much more might they change?

Unclear on the Concept

This conclusion is wrong:

Islamic terror could drive Europe into the arms of the far-Right[.]

No, Islamist terror won't cause Europe to embrace the far right. The failure of the existing center-left/center-right parties to fight Islamist terrorism could cause Europeans to embrace the far right (or far left, for that matter).

This mistake is related to my utter frustration with our current leaders who insist that the American people are afraid of jihadis and prone to panicking. If only our population would be more resilient and shrug off deaths that don't match bathtub fall casualties, our president says!

We are not afraid. We are not panicked.

What we are is angry at our bloody-minded enemies, and frustrated that our leaders don't seem interested in waging war on the jihadis and the Islamist ideology that incubates the terrorists:

At its heart, the United States’ strategy was to identify terrorist groups and destroy them. ...

Operationally, the strategy worked. Terrorists were identified and killed. As the organizations were degraded and broken, terrorism declined – but then surged. These endless intelligence and special forces operations may have been brilliantly carried out, but the strategic goal of the United States has not been achieved. The war is not being won and a stalemate is equivalent to a loss for the United States.

The essential problem has been a persistent misunderstanding of radical Islamism. It is a movement, not an organization. Or to be more precise, radical Islamism is a strand of Islam. How large or small it is has become the subject of a fairly pointless debate. Its size is sufficient to send American forces halfway around the world and it is capable of carrying out attacks in Europe and the U.S. Whether it is a small strand or a giant strand doesn’t matter. What matters is that it cannot be suppressed, or at least has not yet been suppressed.

This reflects what I've been saying for a long time. Military action is a holding action to keep the jihadis away from us and provide some protection for the Moslems who reject Islamist thinking. That is the ultimate fight--the Islamic Civil War that is seeking to define what Islam is. Until we can help Islam win that conflict, the nutballs will keep coming at us in periodic waves, individually and in groups organized from cells to caliphates.

Which is why building democracy in Iraq was so important rather than walking away in 2011 as if the battlefield victory was sufficient.

We needed a functioning Moslem democracy within the heart of the Arab world to demonstrate to Arab Moslems that there is an alternative to being governed by autocrats--whether royal or secular--or Islamist dictatorships.

The Arab Spring actually showed that there is a desire for that alternative to the traditional choices. But we've done too little to try to advocate that alternative and put it in practice for the long term victory.

What we want is victory, though it will take a long time to achieve. So let's get on with it.

Lavrov's Bread Baskets

Russia lost a helicopter to ground fire in Idlib province in Syria:

Russia's defence ministry said the Mi-8 military transport helicopter had been shot down after delivering humanitarian aid to the city of Aleppo as it made its way back to Russia's main air base in the western province of Latakia.

The Russians claim the helicopter was on a humanitarian mission. Delivering food.

Oh?

While we don’t yet know which rebel group shot down a Russian military helicopter in Syria today, killing all five on board, photographic and video evidence of the wreckage reveals that what Russia is presenting as a pacific tool of humanitarian aid was in fact an assault craft rigged with rocket pods.

What was it?

The Mil Mi8-AMTSh, nicknamed “the Terminator,” is an assault variant of the veteran transport helicopter, equipped with multiple hard points for carrying missiles and unguided rockets. In several videos of the wreckage we can see a B-8V20A rocket pod.

Yeah, it's always safer to soften up the landing zone before bringing in the loaves of bread.

Huh:

A Syrian rescue service operating in rebel-held territory said on Tuesday a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a town close to where a Russian military helicopter had been shot down hours earlier.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) accused President Bashar al-Assad of being behind the attack. Assad has denied previous accusations of using chemical weapons.

The Syrian government claims that rebels used gas.

So a Russian assault helicopter was shot down near where a chemical strike was made, and the Russians claim the helicopter was delivering food.

You'd think the Russians would update their propaganda after 77 years:

In 1939 the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, claimed the Soviet Union was not dropping bombs on Finland, but merely airlifting food to starving Finns. The Finns, who were not starving, ironically dubbed the RRAB-3 cluster bomb "Molotov's bread basket", and named the improvised incendiary device that they used to counter Soviet tanks the "Molotov cocktail", as "a drink to go with the food"

So Lavrov's bread baskets?

UPDATE: Russia denies using chemical weapons. Actually, it is far more likely that Assad is using them--as he has in the past, notwithstanding the glorious chemical weapons deal that Kerry negotiated with Lavrov to get rid of Assad's chemical weapons arsenal.

UPDATE: Ah, the effing Russians. They consider a body count a feature rather than a bug while backing poison-gas-using Assad, yet manage to project their crimes on America which has opposed gas use in Syria and which is obsessively careful about avoiding civilian casualties:

Russia's foreign ministry sharply criticized U.S. behavior in Syria on Thursday, accusing Washington of backing rebels who use poison gas against civilians and of killing hundreds in air strikes.

The ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, referred to rebels supported by Washington as "animals" and said Washington and its allies were recklessly carrying out air attacks leading to numerous civilian deaths.

The offensive to take Aleppo will no doubt plumb new depths of Russian murderous strategy.

Don't trust them. Ever.

I Really Don't Get Nuance

I really don't get big-brained nuanced thinking, it is clear.

So let me get this straight, Hillary Clinton said that her 30,000 deleted emails withheld from the government for archiving from her unsecured home server that she used instead of secure government email systems were all about yoga classes and Chelsea's baby, and so of no interest to Americans under freedom of information laws and other regulations requiring the retention of government emails and communications.

It was a "nothingburger" that only partisan Republicans could insist was a big deal.

Now that Donald Trump said Putin should release those "lost" emails (he said he was joking, which is highly plausible considering he also said the Clinton-loving media would appreciate the information), saying they'd be as interesting as DNC email releases by the Russian front Wikileaks, Democrats are crying "treason!" on the theory that Trump was advocating cyber-espionage by Russia that would harm our national security.

So just what was really in those deleted emails, anyway, eh? Must be quite the big deal to justify the indignation from the Democrats!

How is it possible for Democrats to compartmentalize both declarations as true?

One, isn't "treason" working for the enemy? Didn't Hillary "reset" our relations with Russia?

Two, I guess I'm heartened that Democrats consider Russia a potential enemy. During the Cold War, they couldn't be bothered to really think of the USSR as the enemy. But the Russians harmed Hillary, so that's the difference, I suppose. Hillary is the state and must not be opposed.

So I guess that Hillary finally answered that 3:00 a.m. phone call from the 1980s asking for their foreign policy back, as President Obama mocked Mitt Romney in a 2012 debate belittling Romney's contention that Russia was a geopolitical threat.

And three, so it must be true that it is a big deal that Hillary refused to use government-secured email systems and procedures to secure her emails. For Russia to release those emails, Russia would already have to have them in their possession because Hillary deleted them and wiped the server.

Yet no reasonable prosecutor would levy charges against Hillary for doing what she did with her private server and handling of sensitive and secret information?

And in bonus what-are-they-thinking territory, why would the Clinton campaign be more concerned about the FBI seeing her campaign system than the hackers seeing their mail, when the FBI warned the campaign that the system was under attack and offered to help?

In a meeting with senior officials at the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters, FBI agents laid out concerns that cyberhackers had used so-called spear-phishing emails as part of an attempt to penetrate the campaign’s computers, the sources said. One of the sources said agents conducting a national security investigation asked the Clinton campaign to turn over internal computer logs as well as the personal email addresses of senior campaign officials. But the campaign, through its lawyers, declined to provide the data, deciding that the FBI’s request for sensitive personal and campaign information data was too broad and intrusive, the source said.

I guess the difference between criminal negligence and treason is tough to determine.

But I'm just a simple unfrozen caveman blogger. I really just don't get nuance.

UPDATE: Watch for Hillary's Russian connections.

Really, I worry about what Trump might do based on his rhetoric. But I worry more about what Clinton will do based on her record.

We Came, We Saw, He Died, We Strike

The American strike on Monday against ISIL forces at Sirte, Libya, was not a one-off:

President Obama has authorized a 30-day mission for the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes against the Islamic State terror group in Libya as new strikes were unleashed Tuesday, Fox News has learned.

Marine Corps Harrier jets launched from the Navy amphibious assault ship USS Wasp conducted at least two airstrikes against ISIS targets in the coastal city of Sirte Tuesday. USS Wasp is set to remain off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean Sea for the next month along with an escort ship, the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney.

The U.S. has launched at least seven airstrikes in total since the campaign began Monday.

One, this is a nice example of using in a strike role the "stealth carriers" we have which have a primary mission of moving Marines.

And two, I have to withdraw my snark from 2011 during the Libya War when I asked where the post-war plan was. After all, Democrats had bitterly complained about the need for a multi-volume post-war plan before starting a war. In August, I said the plan must be awesome by then.

We haven't seen much evidence of a post-war plan for Libya as it descended into chaos and as ISIL flooded the country.

But clearly, I was wrong to wonder where the post-war plan was. Because the war isn't over yet.

But really, by now the plan--chock full of wonky nuance--must certainly be freaking awesome.

UPDATE: In contrast to jihadis in Iraq, the Libyan-based jihadis do seem more interested in the fighting-to-the-death commitment:

[Pro-GNA--the UN-backed body in Libya--]militias now claim there are only a few hundred ISIL fighters left in Sirte, but these are fighting to the death and the advancing militiamen are not suicidal at all.

The militiamen are happy to have the support although annoyed they haven't had it since 2011.

UPDATE: More:

"Our morale has been lifted, especially after the last raids carried out by our American friends," said Khaled al-Ghosh, another fighter.

"They were excellent hits. Victory will be close if there are more such hits," he added.

Now the militias just have to take the objective.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

The global situation is worse now than in January 2009. But how is it possible to think Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Party will even try to restore the situation when the party has lurched even more leftward since then?

Despite Democratic boasts about President Obama's achievements abroad, when you scan the landscape your pucker factor simply has to edge up:

Iraq, which was unified and mostly peaceful in 2009, is in flames again, and Syria is in even worse shape. The Islamic State has achieved what al-Qaeda never could, controlling territory from which it launches destabilizing attacks in France, Belgium and elsewhere. It is establishing outposts in Afghanistan, Northern Africa and beyond.

Chaos in the Middle East has spun off millions of refugees who have proved so traumatizing to Europe that the continent’s great accomplishment of the past half-century, political union, is in jeopardy. In a stunning violation of post-World War II norms, one European country has invaded and occupied part of another, and no one expects Crimea or eastern Ukraine to be restored anytime soon.

Meanwhile, democracy is in retreat. Repression has intensified inside Russia and China, and both countries are spreading their models of intolerant authoritarianism. Formerly democratic allies such as Turkey and Thailand are moving or have moved into the camp of dictatorships. U.S. engagement has not moderated Iran’s support for terrorism or Cuba’s squelching of dissent. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is advancing.

Add in China's aggressiveness and territorial objectives despite our pivot to the Pacific. (Although we have strengthened ties with allies in Asia and the western Pacific who worry about China's ambitions, so that's to the president's credit.)

And yes, as the author notes, the president has had a change of heart a bit about retreating from leadership by launching Iraq War 2.0 to salvage what we had achieved in Iraq by 2009; and to cancel plans to leave Afghanistan by the end of this year to defend the gains made in Afghanistan after our president's two surges of troops there since 2009.

So sure, as the author says, the president isn't really a total isolationist. But you could say we acted abroad even when we were isolationist between the world wars. So I'm not sure what that defense of the president even means. The president has pulled back from trying to influence what goes on in the world in the apparent belief that our efforts just make things worse rather than better, and that without us things will work out just fine.

That's as close to isolationism in a globalized world as you can get, really.

Clearly, things aren't better as our enemies--whether specific countries or anti-democracy forces generally--gain ground by filling the vacuum.

This development abroad as the president focused on domestic transformation is something that seemed likely to me before 2009 was over:

Saying that foreign policy is a distant second in priorities for this administration might seem an odd thing to say for a president who has traveled abroad so much already.

But it makes sense if you think of the trips abroad as efforts to disengage from foes and retreat a bit by giving our foes what they want in order to buy time to pass domestic legislation.

Understand that when you retreat, it takes a while for an enemy to pursue you and fill the vacuum. And that time it takes for the enemy to re-engage will surely be much quieter.

And if you want to, you can argue that the period of quiet while the enemy approaches is actually "peace." It isn't peace, but you can pretend for a while that it is so you can focus on domestic issues.

Can we still pretend our policies have produced peace? Can we continue to pretend that our policies have transformed enemies into friends?

Despite the partial and small reconsideration of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are still giving our enemies what they want--whether it is Iran, Cuba, or Russia in regard to Syria at least--in the hopes that they'll reset themselves into responsible partners on the right side of history.

Can we pretend that Hillary Clinton, who barely subdued a rebellion by Sanders socialists by posing as the heir to Obama's legacy, is the one to lead the charge to repair this damage?

UPDATE: This article denying that the president is an isolationist who is withdrawing from the world addresses what I noted above. The author says that because we are involved in the world that we aren't really isolationist.

But with a definition of isolationism that seems to define true isolationism as withdrawing all forces to the continental United States (Good luck Hawaii and Alaska! And Guam and Puerto Rico and Samoa and all the other smaller islands.) and closing down most of our embassies and CIA stations abroad, of course what President Obama is doing isn't "isolationist."

But to deny that we are shrinking from confronting our enemies on the theory that things work out better without our involvement is wrong. Perhaps we need another term to describe what is going on because a virtual retreat to the western hemisphere is no longer going to happen regardless of how unsure of our role in the world our president is. This isn't the 1930s and America's position in the modern world is different than it was in the 1930s.

But to argue that we aren't ceding ground abroad to bad actors by a refusal to back allies and oppose foes resolutely is madness.

Never Forget the Objective

I sincerely believe that a common European Union (EU) military is being proposed not to create a military more capable of standing up to Russia but to overwhelm national resistance to a new European empire based in Brussels.

The Euro-elites are pretending to be upset that another aspiring empire is expanding its realm and power:

For EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, the answer is straightforward; it is all about standing up to Russia.

Speaking to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag last year he said that a common European army would make it plain to Moscow, where he felt the EU was not being taken “entirely seriously”, that the Union was fully committed to defending its values. According to Juncker, a unified military force would be able to act as an effective counterbalance to Russian expansionism – or at least that is the pitch he has been using since the annexation of Crimea to try to sell the project.

However, Juncker’s federalist ambitions for a ‘United States of Europe’ are no secret, and some have suggested that this is simply one more example of his opportunistic leveraging of a crisis to further a Eurocratic centralist agenda. Euroscepticism aside, there may be a kernel of truth in the suggestion, since Juncker himself has said that “such an army would help us design a common foreign and security policy” – and the Treaty of Lisbon already contains the fundamental framework to make that possible.

Come on, the common currency the Euro wasn't based on its value as a currency but as a means to overwhelm national resistance to a new European empire based in Brussels.

When the bulk of military power that can defend Europe is the American military that is not part of such a plan, why would anyone think the Eurocrats are really interested in building a military capable of standing up to Russia?

Europeans are less than enthusiastic about spending more on their own national militaries. Does anyone really believe that Europeans would be eager to spend more on a military that isn't even their own? With their money spent where Brussels wants it spent rather than their own governments' desires?

Of course, if Juncker gets that common foreign and security policy run by Brussels, national resistance to the EU's objectives would be moot. Pay up and shut up, thank you very much.

Really, if the Europeans want better capacity to resist Russia and are willing to abandon their national militaries to do it, the European militaries would be better off linking up with America's military.

It just depends on what an EU military is supposed to fight: Russians and other potential enemies or European nations themselves?

I know how I'm betting.

Black Cannon Fodder Matters

As is usually the case with violence-prone protest movements, communists and other assorted whackjobs who infiltrate the BLM movement are more interested in using Black lives as a weapon for their own goals than in actually making sure those lives matter to the government.

I would hope that people of all races with good motives can at least reject the communists who would exploit racial divisions rather than bridge them.

Because we do seem to do better without radical agitators looking to exploit events for their own purposes.

UPDATE: Related:

As a longtime observer of, and one time participant in, left-wing protests, the unrest in Ferguson seemed to me to have all the markings of generalized left-wing agitation opportunistically grafting on to the understandable protest over an unfortunate event.

Yeah, for the hard core revolutionaries exploiting shootings, Black lives matter as props for their own objectives.

If you start with the assumptions that communists are ignorant and evil, you won't go wrong.

The End is Nigh

The offensive to take Mosul from ISIL seems likely to take place sooner rather than later. Troops are trained and the jihadis aren't loving death as much as they used to.

The Iraqis have a retrained force ready to go and our ISIL enemies are weaker on the battlefield than their death-loving reputation would have you believe:

The Iraqis have put together a force of over 30,000 troops for the final assault. This includes 24,000 recently trained (by the Americans) and certified as combat ready (at least by Iraqi standards). There are also over 5,000 Kurds and other (like Christian) groups that the Americans have experience with and consider reliable and effective. Iraq has also relented and allowed the Americans to use a dozen or more AH-64 helicopter gunships and about as many HIMARS.

Yet to be determined is the role of the pro-Iran Shia militias, who don't want to cooperate with America (or get our air support).

If it was up to me, I'd expend the militias in frontal assaults on ISIL positions on the road to Mosul in order to bleed the militias and drain some of the fervor from their ranks. Better to have them die killing a member of ISIL than killing our people, as that piece of garbage Sadr has called for, eh?

But then keep the militias out of the city itself.

The Iraqi forces should face 5,000 ISIL defenders trying to hold a large city with 100,000 mostly hostile civilians still around them.

With the defenders left to fight the Coalition-supported Iraqi offensive seeing fellow ISIL members being redeployed to Syria to get out of the way of the long-anticipated offensive, how hard will these ISIL guys deemed expendable actually fight (as Strategypage notes)?

It did not go unnoticed by anyone that in the last few months many of the ISIL defenders in Ramadi and Fallujah were not willing to fight to the death, or even fight at all. This despite ISIL commanders ready to shoot on the spot any subordinate who faltered. The upcoming offensive to liberate Mosul is taking weakening ISIL morale into account and low level combat commanders have been told what to look for (a true morale collapse and not just a feint) and take advantage of it to quickly advance.

Indeed. I noted this back in December 2015:

Note that the jihadis--who proclaim to love death the way their enemies love life--did not stand and die in place for the joy of killing enemies trying to dig them out of the Ramadi city center, regardless of their own fate. Paradise awaits, right?

This comes on the heels of the jihadis declining to fight to the death for Sinjar in northern Iraq last month. ...

But after two major battles where the jihadis declined to die for their cause in a last stand, I think we can say that the primary advantage of the jihadis--their apparent disdain for death--is evaporating. ...

Which means that we really should be able to speed up the pace of operations to exploit what could be shaky ISIL morale right now. Morale is a funny thing. Hit forces when their morale is weak and you can crack them and scatter them, inflicting a major defeat and perhaps ending the caliphate in Iraq.

And I've mentioned it many times since then. Which is why I've urged us to get on with launching the offensive before ISIL morale can recover.

UPDATE: This article suggests and then provides evidence to refute the notion that the offensive on Mosul will take place in October and will benefit the Clinton campaign.

Is it a politically motivated "October surprise" to begin the offensive in early October and complete it by the end of the month?

One, I'd take any motivation to get the offensive moving.

Two, such motivation is hardly new in warfare.

Three, the Iraqis have been pushing the offensive more than our military advising the Iraqis.

Four, it is tough to count on war to benefit your campaign. In summer 2003, Democrats were arguing that the Iraq invasion was designed to propel Bush 43 to reelection in 2004. By 2004, the Democrats were exploiting the ongoing insurgencies to try to unseat Bush.

Further, an October surprise requires you to believe that the offensive won't have any hitches. Perhaps if undertaken by American troops, you could count on that in the short run.

But we are relying on Iraqi troops to move and fight flawlessly; relying on Shia militias not to slaughter civilians or otherwise behave badly; relying on no images of humanitarian collapse and ISIL slaughter of civilians in Mosul in retaliation; relying on no wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere to distract us from the offensive; and relying on no images--real or faked--of civilians killed by our fire support for Iraqi forces marching on Mosul.

All in all, given the fog of war and friction of war, you risk more bad things happening during an offensive than good things if your motive for the offensive is to affect domestic American politics. It would be far safer to keep things quiet until after the election if politics is your motive.

And five, why would a completely successful offensive in October on the eve of the election benefit Hillary Clinton?

Doesn't it just remind people that the Iraq War continues? That Hillary denied success in the surge offensive when she was a senator and that she was part of the premature withdrawal of American forces in 2011 that led to the need for the October offensive?

Wouldn't it remind people that in the absence of American military forces after 2011 that our plan was to rely on Hillary Clinton's State Department to take up the slack?

Even if the political motivation for the timing of the pending offensive is correct, I don't think that we can assume the public reaction will be to rally around Clinton.

This Guy Makes the New York Times

This author believes France endures more big jihadi attacks because its national policy of secularism alienates Moslems. I'm not going to try to figure that out given this bit of insight:

And so the strength — the weight — of France’s national identity has become a problem. It only heightens the discontent of young people with foreign origins, especially North Africans or their descendants, all the more so because the Maghreb’s decolonization occurred in pain and humiliation: When France withdrew from Algeria, it left behind hundreds of thousands dead and created scars in the collective unconscious that remain to this day. British decolonization seems almost painless in comparison. [emphasis added]

So Moslems in France are embracing Islam because France is aggressively secular? So where are the militant Christians and Jews killing civilians, if that secularism is a cause?

And if  France should abandon that policy to welcome Islamic practices, explain why that would end terrorism. If embracing Islam protects you from Islamism, why are most terrorism casualties in Moslem countries? Why does Saudi Arabia experience any jihadi terrorism?

More to the point in my amazement that the author is given a platform in a major paper, the Algerian war of independence more than half a century ago still angers young men not even born then to embrace Islamism in France now?

The long and bloody Algerian government fight against jihadis during the 1990s didn't work to delegitimize Islamism as a way of life?

And what's with the notion that British decolonization was almost painless in comparison to Algeria? Was the division of the newly independent subcontinent--despite the lack of a war of independence--a walk in the park?

And why isn't Russia rather than France the target of jihadis given Russia's brutal fight against Chechens and the Soviet Union's brutal fight against Afghanistan? What about those far more recent scars on the collective unconscious?

I guess I'm not ready to take foreign policy advice from a French sociologist.