Visiting Our Major War Theater

News is that President Obama has arrived in Kabul.

Good for him. That's our primary war theater and he is the commander in chief. It will surely help morale that the president has taken this level of interest in seeing what is going on.

Such visits to a war zone should be rare, of course. The president's life should not be risked lightly--and that's even apart from the consideration of the next two in the line of succession.

Stay safe out there, Mr. President. And thanks.

UPDATE: Details:

The trip, its secrecy forced by security concerns, was an extraordinary capstone to a momentous week in Obama's presidency. He achieved the most ambitious domestic policy initiative in decades with a historic health care overhaul and scored first major foreign policy achievement with a significant new arms control treaty with Russia.

Obama landed in Afghanistan for a stay of just a few hours, all in darkness, after an overnight flight from Washington. He flew by helicopter from Bagram Air Field to the capital, where Karzai greeted him at the palace. It was Obama's second stop in a war zone as commander in chief, coming about a year after a similarly secretive trip to Iraq.

Battling corruption was a big part of the talks.
 
And I assume the nutroots and press won't slam the state of the war effort by mocking the fact that the president stayed only a few hours on the ground in Kabul, arriving and leaving in the dark.

What Else is In It?

I have no doubt that there are some good things in the new health care act.

Indeed, supporters have been running through the talking points on TV ever since the act was passed.

Running through the list of things good in the act (for example, in this older talking points list) usually takes about 15 or 20 seconds talking fast.

Even if each of those nine good things (while at least admitting, can't we, that they will cost money to achieve?) needs ten pages of statutory language to achieve, what's in the other 816 pages of the act that nobody seems to be boasting about?

We're paying an awful lot for a fairly small list of nice things. But I'm sure it will all work out just swell. Well, our leaders are sure, in any rate.

The Coulter Affair

I've had several updates on the Coulter Affair post.

How to Make Friends

The Obama administration is on a path to make friends among our enemies and foes; while assuming that we can stiff friends without consequences.

Now we see what we need to do to make an enemy think about being our friend:

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on Thursday declared passage of American health care reform "a miracle" and a major victory for Obama's presidency, but couldn't help chide the United States for taking so long to enact what communist Cuba achieved decades ago.

Not that this is enough, of course. Castro would like to see more:
 

But the Cuban leader also used the lengthy piece to criticize the American president for his lack of leadership on climate change and immigration reform, and for his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, among many other things.

Those are just the ones that come to mind. I'm sure the wish list is longer.
 
Not that we should have much hope that communist Cuba could become a friend:
 

In Thursday's essay, Castro called Obama a "fanatic believer in capitalist imperialism" but also praised him as "unquestionably intelligent."

Wow! I wish.

Castro is the nutball, no doubt. So don't take his praise of our actions too seriously.

Do the Math

American casualties are up in Afghanistan:

The number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010 compared to the same period last year as Washington has added tens of thousands of additional soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum.

Those deaths have been accompanied by a dramatic spike in the number of wounded, with injuries more than tripling in the first two months of the year and trending in the same direction based on the latest available data for March.

U.S. officials have warned that casualties are likely to rise even further as the Pentagon completes its deployment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and sets its sights on the Taliban's home base of Kandahar province, where a major operation is expected in the coming months.

U.S. officials are quite correct. So while this story is certainly news, it is no reason to go into panic mode.
 
Indeed, the increased casualties are completely predictable.

Whereabouts Now Known

I remember this loss. I'm glad he's back:

The Department of Defense announced today an Army civilian employee, supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, was Returned to Military Control (RMC) on March 25.

Issa T. Salomi, 60, of El Cajon, Calif., became unaccounted for on Jan. 23, 2010, and subsequently declared Excused Absence Whereabouts Unknown (EAWUN). He was believed to have been kidnapped in Baghdad, where he was assigned to U.S. Forces-Iraq. Salomi’s permanent duty station is Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The circumstances remain under investigation.

So where was he? And why?

UPDATE: Ah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a Shia extremist group, had held him for the last 14 months. The group claims that they got 4 prisoners released in exchange. The Iraqi government denies that, but the group is one of many that the Iraqi government is trying to negotiate with to stop their activities.

Salomi is coming back home to America. Welcome back.

God Is Not Willing It

I know George W. Bush and the war in Iraq was supposed to have made al Qaeda recruiting easier. That's what every proper anti-war type says.

But while jihadists did flock to Iraq hoping to win one for the caliphate, getting their asses kicked there (and in Afghanistan) has not led to much action in the Arab Street for overthrowing Arab governments and forming a jihadi army to sweep the West out of the Middle East.

Al Qaeda is weaker, and reduced to begging Moslems in the West to take up arms against us:

It has come a long way from the early days of as Sahab, when bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders issued defiant threats of launching a follow-on attack against the United States that was going to be even more destructive than 9/11. The group is now asking individual Muslims to conduct lone-wolf terrorist attacks and to follow the examples of Hasan and Mir Amal Kansi, the Pakistani citizen who conducted a shooting at a stoplight outside CIA headquarters in January 1993 that killed two CIA employees.

Such attacks will be deadly on a local scale, but they won't be very likely to be on the scale of 9/11 as planned or even as executed.

And the jihadis should be careful what they wish for. When jihadis could not kill enough American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, they settled for killing local civilians in those countries. Moslem reaction to jihadi bombings on themselves did not, strange as it may seem to the jihadis, did not include feeling honored to be involuntary martyrs to the cause. Moslems turned on the jihadis.

If local jihadis start killing our people in ones and twos or a score or more at a time in our places of work or entertainment, the American people will react with anger at the jihadis and not retreat from the world. It will renew our commitment to killing our jihadi enemies.

Jihadis might want to consider whether Allah is really on their side, after all. Hejust  doesn't seem to be that into the jihadis.

The Hour of Power

If I turn off my lights tonight from 8:30 to 9:30 (Even the efficient, green twisty lights? Well, if I had any, of course. I'm just asking for the sake of those who will anguish in darkness tonight despite their eco-friendly lighting choices.), will the warmists shut up the rest of the year?

I thought not.

Happy Human Achievement Hour!

The Army Looks Forward to R & R

The Army has been stressed for the last 6 years as it has been sent to fight our wars. So far, recruits have answered the call to an unprecedented degree. We didn't know if volunteers would fight a war for so long. Our people came through.

And the Army has adapted and won in campaigns to overthrow the Taliban, defeat Saddam's military, defeat the insurgencies and terrorism campaigns in Iraq, and held the line in Afghanistan.

With the Iraq drawdown after victory looking to relieve the stress more than escalation in Afghansitan adds to stress, the Army is going to get a break:

The Army's vice chief of staff said by 2011, Soldiers should find themselves spending twice as much time at home station as they do deployed.

"2011 is definitely a transition year for the U.S. Army -- that is a year we see ourselves getting back into balance," said Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli. "We define balance as 12 months deployed, 24 months or greater at home. That's the interim goal for us in 2011."

The general told the House Armed Forces Committee readiness subcommittee March 16 that it will likely be the larger part of the Army that will reach that goal next year, but Soldiers with some military occupational specialties, such as Soldiers in aviation, might reach it later.

The break will allow individual soldiers to recover from the stress of combat tours and break the accumulation of stress that leads to PTSD. A long break can literally reset the clock on this source of combat loss for many of our troops.
 
The break will also allow the Army to regain conventional warfare skills. We've been focused so exclusively on counter-insurgency that I don't think anybody other than our Army in South Korea could fight conventionally on short notice.
 
But that COIN focus paid off, and our troops emerged victorious, experienced, and deadly. When trained for conventional combat, they'll be the most potent conventional army on the planet.

A Night of Singing

Lamb took her place in the choir at school this last week:

And she had a brief speaking part, in the show that also explained the science of sound:

If I stepped back, I might find it amusing that I take such pride in such a simple little thing as Lamb taking part in a grade school concert.

But there is no chance I'll step back that far. That's my girl!

Ah Yes, I Remember It Well

I've long complained that the media has a leftward slant. It amazes me that it isn't obvious. It is especially aggravating when National Public Radio begs for contributions, boasting about how they report it straight and factually. On the war, their bias has been multiplied by their continuing ignorance of anything related to the military or military history. I'm sure they honestly believe that they just report the facts. But that's part of the problem, now isn't it?

Without digressing into a post on the health care act, the media was pretty bad in reporting on it.

But first, a song:



Consider that Congress and the president couldn't even get Republican Senator Olympia Snowe to vote with them. It would not have been difficult to craft a more centrist plan that wouldn't cost nearly as much yet address commonly accepted problems, and draw significant numbers of Republicans to support it. Instead, we have what we have. And it is a purely Democratic piece of legislation--which is all the fault of the Republicans, as the press releases cry.

The press went along with the defense of that line of defense by claiming that the Republicans are just reactionaries committed to saying "no"--and always have been:

PBS's Jim Lehrer on Tuesday wrongly accused Republicans of always being against major social legislation in this country including the Civil Rights Act, Social Security, and Medicare.

"[T]hrough history, recent history in particular, Republicans have opposed things like Social Security, Medicare, even civil rights legislation, but then, once they lost, they took some deep breaths and moved on, and then finally ended up embracing many of these major changes in -- in laws and in the way we do business here," the News Hour host amazingly said to his guest Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

It is not true, no matter how well a seasoned journalist like Lehrer remembers it. Read it all, as the saying goes. It even has voting numbers for those big pieces of legislation.

It is easy for the press to believe they are neutral and just reporting the facts--everyone they know is just like them, and so of course their views are the commonly accepted wisdom.

They just don't know what they don't know.

UPDATE: And they know who they sympathize with. It is unhinged to get angry at Santa Claus. Of course people get angry with evil people. Who wouldn't be mad?

I won't defend over-the-top Tea Partier actions that stem from that anger, but where was the "crisis of society" coverage during other campaigns of anger at people and policies our press didn't align themselves with?

UPDATE: More evil people who naturally just piss normal people off enough to incite or carry out violence. It's almost like the reporting class has biases, or something!

Bridging the Strait

The Chinese air force and navy will keep major Taiwanese warship out of the strait, protecting a Chinese invasion flotilla from that threat.

While China's air force is gaining the edge over Taiwan's air force, the superiority is not so great that the Taiwanese won't be able to send aircraft against the invasion transports.

So China has a Plan B to protect the ships, deployed along their coast:

China now has eight battalions of S-300PMU2 anti-aircraft missile systems, on the coast opposite Taiwan. These missiles have a range of 200 kilometers, and are positioned to fire on Taiwanese fighters as soon as they begin to cross the 180 kilometer wide Taiwan straits.

Such missiles won't stop all attackers. And they won't affect Taiwan's ability to strike ships as they get closer to Taiwan with helicopters and aircraft.

But the SAMs do get the ships part way to Taiwan in relative safety and will reduce the damage they take when closer to Taiwan. it could be the difference between winning and losing a battle to make it ashore.

Those S-300s should be prime targets for Taiwanese cruise missiles.

Welcome This Challenge

This is not bad news, though for those who want a nice and quiet process that doesn't disturb our evening dinners (and withdrawal from Iraq), it may seem bad:

The next prime minister will lead a government that presumably will be in power when the U.S. completes its scheduled troop withdrawal from Iraq next year. There has been fear among some in the West that a U.S. withdrawal would effectively leave Iraq as an Iranian puppet.

Al-Maliki, the U.S. partner in Iraq for the past four years, announced in a nationally televised news conference that he would not accept the results, which gave his bloc 89 seats to Allawi's 91 in Iraq's 325-seat parliament.

Gesturing angrily, he said he would challenge the vote count through what he described as legal process. By law, he would have until Monday to register his complaints with the election commission.

After the complaints are addressed by the election commission, the results may be revised and then finally submitted to the country's Supreme Court, which must ratify them. The entire process could take weeks.

Al-Maliki and his supporters in his State of Law coalition had previously called for a re-count, saying there had been instances of vote rigging and fraud. But election officials had refused, and international observers have said the election was fair and credible.

The top U.N. official in Iraq, Ad Melkert, called on all sides to accept the results. That sentiment was echoed by U.S. Ambassador Christopher R. Hill and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military official in Iraq, who praised what they described as a "historic electoral process," and said they support the finding of election observers who found no evidence of widespread or serious fraud.

Ayad Allawi has the pole position to try and form a coalition. While Maliki has been fine--proving himself in his Charge of the Knights operation in Basra to rout the Sadrists--it is wrong to pin out hopes on one leader. Voting and rule of law are our objectives.

So, while Iraq has shown they can hold elections, they always needed to pass the big test of peacefully transferring power from a losing incumbent to a winning challenger. Better to have that test now while we have nearly 100,000 troops in the country to remind everyone to play nice.

Maliki has at least indicated that his "rejection" of the results will take place through legal challenges. That's fine. As long as that is all he contemplates.

And for those convinced that we delivered Iraq to the Iranians, will they finally settle down and stop that nonsense?

Remember the Maine?

When I read the first sparse story about a South Korean warship (1,500 tons and 104 crew) going down off the west coast of the Korean peninsula, my first thought was that the North Koreans hit the ship with a torpedo or perhaps a mine. After many surface clashes where the North Koreans came off decidedly second best, such a course made sense.

Well, the usual suspect certainly is in the minds of the South Koreans:

A South Korean naval ship was sinking on Friday after possibly being hit by a North Korean torpedo and several sailors were killed, South Korean media reported.

A South Korean warship later fired at an unidentified vessel toward the north, indicating a possible attack, and the South's presidential Blue House was holding an emergency security meeting, the Yonhap news agency said.

"The ship appears to have begun sinking after an explosion at the rear of the ship," Yonhap quoted the South Korean Navy saying in a statement. "We have been unable to find the exact cause of the incident as of this moment."

News since that story came out is that the ship sank. It is unclear how many sailors died. It could be an accident. Not everything bad that happens near North Korea is caused by North Korea. Ideally, the South Koreans can raise the ship and tow it to port to examine the impact.

If the North Koreans are responsible, it would be one heck of a provocation given that such an incident would not be an unexpected escalation but a deliberate ambush by the North Koreans.

I'll have to look at maps of the area. It may be that South Korea would want to retaliate--if North Korea is guilty of sinking the ship--by building up their military presence on the disputed islands out there that South Korea holds.

Or, South Korea should sink the next North Korean ship that puts to sea. Maybe, if North Korea denies responsibility, the South Koreans could quietly lay mines where North Korean ships like to play. And then insist that the mines must have been left over from a training exercise, or something.

Best to keep this an off-shore crisis where South Korea has a good advantage (nothwithstanding this sinking) than escalate on the DMZ where plenty of ROK civilians could die if the tit-for-tat goes too far.

Still, you have to wonder what else the North Koreans are willing to do if they are indeed guilty of this attack.

UPDATE: Stratfor emails:

A South Korean presidential spokesman said North Korea did not cause the sinking of the South Korean vessel Cho An.

As my title implied, I didn't want to jump to conclusions. although if North Korea does choose to challenge the South Koreans at sea, I'd expect a submarine ambush that achieves a result that looks just like this rather than a surface clash that the South Koreans are likely to win.

UPDATE: Forty-six sailors are missing. I don't hold out much hope for their souls at this point.

At a higher level, this apparent accident highlights the danger of North Korea's hostile rhetoric even when the Pillsbury Nuke Boy doesn't intend to attack South Korea:

Despite early fears of an attack, there was no immediate indication that North Korea — which lies within sight about 10 miles (17 kilometers) from Baengnyeong — was to blame, the Joint Chiefs said. Still, troops were maintaining "solid military readiness," Vice Defense Minister Jang Soo-man said.

Earlier, North Korea's military threatened "unpredictable strikes" against the U.S. and South Korea in anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country.

The potential is clear:

 

1. North Korea issues threats of destruction against South Korea.
2. Something in South Korea shortly thereafter is destroyed in an accident.
3. South Koreas assume North Korea is responsible, and partially mobilizes just in case.
4. North Korea, knowing they didn't do the deed assume "war mongers and militarists" in Seoul are planning war on the pretext, and knowing that they are weaker than South Korea and so can't afford to let South Korea strike first, unleash their only military threat--they pound Seoul with thousands of artillery pieces poised north of the DMZ
5. South Korea then invades North Korea to at least try to clear the area within range of Seoul of North Korean artillery pieces and attacks longer range missile sites deep in North Korea. 

For a long time, North Korea could make threats secure in the knowledge that South Korea couldn't do anything about those threats without American help. And America is far enough away not to take many of those threats too seriously--at least not seriously enought to react hastily. Our capital (and a quarter of our population) was never threatened.

But now South Korea has the military power relative to a rotting North Korea to do something about those North Korean threats. And North Korea keeps making the threats.

Now we're having fun, eh?

So Much For the Arab League

Iraqis got a reminder that we who shed blood at their side are their true friends:

Delegates say Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has walked out of an Arab League ministerial meeting in Libya to protest against Moammar Gadhafi's declared support for Saddam Hussein loyalists.

Iraqis, at least those who run the show now, are just not the Arab League's sort of people. Of course, I shouldn't pick on the Arab League. Plenty in our State Department and think tanks have the same view.

Iraq needs a long-term defense treaty with America.

Trembling and Obeying?

I half seriously wondered if Australia's Internet censorship was influenced by China's policy.

Well, it is worse than I feared. I have to wonder whether a lot of Australia's policies are being affected by China's rising military and economic clout:

The hardest heads in the Australian system understand what the Hu business is all about. Beijing has sent a message to Australia: tremble and obey. ...

Of course it is remotely possible that Hu, like millions of others in China, paid or received a bribe, although there is no reason to think so. But Beijing's decision to prosecute him, and the ostentatiously contemptuous manner in which it has dealt with the Australian government, was taken to intimidate Australia. In this, Beijing seems to have succeeded.

Read the article to get the context of Stern Hu. But for my purposes, the point is that China is clearly looming over Australia, and as the self-professed middle kingdom, expects those near them--like Australia--to orbit nice and quiet like.

At some level, Australians recognize that they need to bulk up to resist that gravitational pull that we can see now. If Australia doesn't tremble, Australia will have no need to obey China.

The Shy One Speaks

I think Osama bin Laden has been sniffing cave fumes for a little too long:

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden threatened in a new audio recording released Thursday to kill any captured Americans if the U.S. executes the self-professed mastermind of the Sept.11 attacks or any other al-Qaida suspects.

The U.S. is still considering whether to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four of his fellow plotters on military tribunal for their role in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Obama administration is also looking into recommendations for civilian trials, and is expected to announce a decision soon.

In a brief 74-second audio tape aired on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden said if the U.S. decides to execute any al-Qaida suspects in its custody — and explicitly mentioned Mohammed — his terror network would kill American captives.

The terror leader said such a decision "would mean the U.S. has issued a death sentence against whoever of you becomes a prisoner in our hands."

Is bin Laden seriously stating that only now is he willing to kill us?

It is humorous to see what angers the jihadis and "causes" them to kill us. Fighting back makes them hate us, now.

How long before this becomes a talking point of our Left?

Kill the jihadis. Kill them as fast as we can. Keep killing them until they can't recruit idiots fast enough to replace their losses.

Still Trust But Verify

The Obama administration will sign a strategic arms limitation treaty with Russia:

The new agreement to reduce long-range nuclear weapons would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expired in December. An important feature of the new deal is that it includes a legal mechanism for verifying that each side complies — an element that was absent from a 2002 deal, known as the Moscow Treaty, that accelerated the weapons reductions laid out in the 1991 treaty.

The Moscow Treaty set limits on both sides' strategic nuclear warheads at between 1,700 and 2,200. The new deal, whose provisions have not been made public, is expected to lower that to about 1,500. It also would reduce the permissible number of strategic launchers — the missiles and bombs that deliver warheads to their targets.

Verification will be the key to getting Senate approval. I assume nobody thinks that judging Medvedev's or--God fobid--Putin's soul status is enough.

While I'm certainly on record as judging that, given our conventional military superiority, we'd be better off in a world with no nuclear weapons; in practice I don't think we can ever afford to give up our nukes since I don't trust many governments to live up to any deal to eliminate all their weapons--or the ability to assemble one in hours or days from non-weapon components.

Missile defense is our insurance policy against the risks of going lower than we will agree to with this agreement, but even missile defenses don't give me the confidence to go without a significant number of nuclear weapons.

But I do hope that our verification concerns are addressed in the treaty and not in a nebulous "annex" that we are working on still, and which Russia may or may not consider important as a practical matter.

A Very Sensitive Issue, Indeed

I thought it would make sense for Russia to sell submarines to Taiwan.

But Russia doesn't seem like they're interested in that path:

Russia will continue to support China on the 'sensitive' issue of Taiwan, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.

'Russia is very careful about (its) ties with China,' Putin said during a meeting in Moscow with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to succeed Hu Jintao as president.

I still think it makes sense for Russia to sell submarines to Taiwan. Perhaps one day, if Taiwan can't find another supplier and Russia concludes that it would be better to tie down China at sea and can't count on America and Japan doing the job all on our own, Russia will change their mind.

Remember, it does Russia no good if China can quickly overwhelm Taiwan. Russia needs China pointed at Taiwan--but not moving in that direction. Russia needs China fixed in the southern direction--not victorious. Once Taiwan has fallen, China can afford to direct more defense resources inland, where Russia's vulnerable and resource-rich Far East dangles in front of a hungry China. So it is in Russia's interest to make sure that Taiwan does not fall to China.

With a shield on Taiwan, assuming China manages to take the island democracy, to hold off our fleet from approaching China's shores, will China want to run their supply lines at sea where America (and India, and anyone else along the long route for that matter) can cut them at will? Or will the Chinese seek to gain land lines of supply safely away from our dominant naval and air power?

Maize and Blue and ... Is It Hot in Here, or What?

Do I love or hate Jessica Alba's "technicolor" eyes?

What is that author complaining about? In my book, that's maize and blue. If I was just a tad more delusional I could convince myself she's sending secret messages to me.

To answer the question, "yowser."

My first installment of Dark Angel arrives in the mail from Netflix this week. I don't know how I missed that series the first time through.

Clearly, as the expression goes, I'll be in my bunk.