The Good War, After All

The stubborn insistence that the source of our problems with ISIL is invading Iraq in 2003 and getting rid of that beast Saddam and his evil spawn who would have made Saddam 2.0 even more beastly still shocks me.

We had plenty of reasons long before George W. Bush arrived to defeat and destroy the Saddam regime.

And the alternative of leaving Saddam in power should be self-evidently bad.

And in that post I forgot to mention that the Libyans would still have a nuclear program and the Pakistani Khan nuclear export business would still be thriving. I'm sure I forgot other things, too.

Indeed, we did such a good job improving Iraq that even Iraq War opponent President Obama deemed the non-Baathist Iraqi government worthy of our direct support to defeat its ISIL enemies. Could Saddam have laid claim to that aid?

Yet many anti-war types retroactively claim that George H. W. Bush's war in 1990-1991 was the right way to fight Saddam.

And the left did not protest Bill Clinton's armed containment of Saddam.

So the progression from the left's point of view is good war from 1990-2000; bad war from 2001 (when support for sanctions was visibly weakening) to late 2014; and good war from late 2014 to the present.

Yes. Here we are, fighting in Iraq again. I guess it is the good war, after all.

Clown College Commencement Address

Jonathan Alter argues that a bad deal with Iran is better than no deal because with a deal Iran won't pursue nuclear weapons for a decade; while without a deal the Iranians will race faster to nukes.

The article starts:

The president looks to secure his legacy with a deal that would prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But can he stave off the hawks both here and in Tehran?

Ah, the president's legacy. Yes, Israel getting nuked would do terrible things to the president's legacy. That's really the important issue here, right?

Oh, wait. What's that thing Alter wrote about holding off hawks here and in Tehran?

Yeah:

If President Obama and his defenders can't tell the difference between Iran's hardliners who want nukes and our "hardliners" who want a deal that actually keeps Iran from getting nukes, how am I supposed to trust the administration can tell the difference between Iranian hardliners and "moderates?"

So I'm going to stop commenting on a silly author making silly points about a very serious topic.

Is it 5 O'Clock Already?

General McChrystal is right that counting dead ISIL fighters is not a measure of winning:

Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal criticized counting the number of Islamic State terrorists killed by the U.S.-led coalition Sunday on This Week, saying “you can’t play a numbers game in this kind of effort.”

Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken said earlier this week that 10,000 IS fighters had been killed since the international campaign against the organization began nine months ago.

At the tactical level, you want dead jihadis because you want your force to be alive at the end of the fight and hold the terrain objective.

At the operational level, you want dead jihadis because you want your force to be able to protect the people in the theater of war and make them your asset and deny them from being an asset to the enemy. This dries up their recruiting pool, logistics support, intelligence assets, and sanctuaries; while allowing your side to recruit and gain intelligence on the enemy from the people.

At the strategic level, you want dead jihadis to buy time by protecting ourselves until the wider Islamic world first sees jihad against us as a one-way ticket to Paradise in a losing cause; and then rejects jihad as a part of their religious heritage.

Of course, in a conventional war the operational and strategic level objectives  change to defeating the enemy military and seizing important terrain or compelling the enemy leadership to admit defeat.

This position on dead jihadis may seem odd since I've never been shy about saying the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi. I stand by that.

But I've also insisted that war is focused violence that must support achieving an objective, whether it is holding the terrain, securing the people, or changing a society. If you don't do that, recruitment for the jihad will outpace our ability to kill jihadis unless we go fully postal on the entire Islamic world. I hope it isn't necessary to argue against genocide.

At the practical level, if we start measuring success with body counts, we'll get bigger body counts to report. That's human nature. Any man of military age running away will be considered an ISIL fighter; and any man of military age standing still will be considered a well-disciplined ISIL fighter.

That will undermine achieving our operational and strategic objectives even if it doesn't affect individual tactical operations.

And if the wrong people are counting the jihadi bodies (that is, Republicans), isn't it just bombing brown people? Thank goodness a president with the middle name "Hussein" is doing the counting!

The Killer Bunny

The notion that Russia is right to fear NATO's potential threat to their existence is nonsense.

I know, Russia says that Western Europe is a threat to them and apologists here say it is understandable that Russia wants their border as far west as possible.

Let's look at the air force capability of Europe's most capable military power:

As Saudi Arabia carries out the longest air campaign (against Yemen) in its history it was noted that the Saudis were sending up to fifty British made Typhoon and Tornado fighter-bombers a day on combat missions. The Saudis have 80 Tornados and 48 Typhoons with another 72 Typhoons on order. In contrast Britain has 125 Typhoons and 98 Tornados. Because of budget cuts and the resulting shortages of spare parts and maintenance personnel Britain could not put as many Typhoons and Tornados into action as Saudi Arabia. This is another example of how just having a lot of combat aircraft can be misleading. If you cannot afford to keep them flying your air force becomes much less capable than it appears.

For Britain this is nothing new. Since the late 1990s Britain's RAF (Royal Air Force) has had to deal with year after year of budget cuts.

Ponder the rest of Britain's defense establishment.

And then remember that France is below that and I'm not sure what other European power should even be mentioned in third place. At best, the rest could defend their own cities if the Russians could manage the logistics of marching to that country and securing their line of supply there.

But no, Putin says Europe is a threat to Russia. Europe is the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered continent you've ever seen!



The Europeans are not ordinary rabbits, the Russians say. Look at the bones!

Yes, the Germans (twice), French, and even the Swedes invaded Russia from the west in the past.

But the fear of somebody realistically pulling that off again is leading Russia to alienate potential friends and allies in the West when the real threat these days to Russia's territorial integrity is the gathering storm in the east.

Of course, there could be a simpler explanation for Putin's portrayal of the West as a threat. But if so, he's going well past rhetoric to create what he thought he could safely complain about.

Thanks, Captain Obvious

President Obama said we don't have a complete strategy to train Iraqis to defeat ISIL. The real problem is that we don't have a complete war strategy yet.

Isn't this reassuring?

President Barack Obama, reprising a phrase that caused uproar in Washington last year, said on Monday the United States does not yet have a "complete strategy" for training Iraqi security forces to reconquer territory seized by Islamic State fighters.

It's worse than that. We don't have a complete strategy, notwithstanding being 9 months into our three-year plan for victory. Key decisions have not been made by the White House.

I've defended the broad outline of our strategy to defeat ISIL: win in Iraq; build up non-jihadi resistance in Syria while hitting ISIL in Syria from the air to degrade their ability to affect the fight in Iraq; then win in Syria (Win, Build, Win).

Defending our deteriorating victory in Iraq by destroying ISIL is the priority.

And fighting ISIL in Syria now could just help Assad win--so we need an alternative to Assad to fill the vacuum when ISIL is defeated there.

But aside from this broad approval of our emphasis, I have problems.

Most basically, we have to treat Assad as an enemy who must be defeated and not use ISIL as an excuse to save a regime responsible for lots of American deaths in Iraq.

Even more important, we have to treat Iran as an enemy that is trying to carve out a Hezbollah-within-Lebanon-like sphere of influence in Iraq, rather than as an anti-ISIL ally.

I have no problem with using pro-Iran militias as cannon fodder against ISIL--two birds with one stone, and all that. But we must be prepared to eject this influence once their usefulness ends.

A step down, I think that Anbar should be the main front rather than Mosul. The Kurds are holding their own up there. And they seem uninterested--because they don't want to suffer heavy casualties for a city that Iraq's central government will control--in being the northern prong of an assault into Mosul, anyway.

In addition, if we want to halt Iraqi collapses, encourage Sunni Arabs to actively help the Baghdad government in a new Awakening, and protect Baghdad from constant bombing attacks, we need to push ISIL back and regain territory in eastern Anbar first, and then deeper into the province to defeat ISIL.

Further, we need to put our special forces into the fight with both direct action against ISIL and in the role of supporting reliable Iraqi units in the field to provide rapid air support when in contact with the enemy.

The most basic need is for core mobile forces that can spearhead offensives into ISIL-held territory.

In one sense, I won't complain about our training effort in Iraq. We are training Iraqi units but not feeding them piecemeal into the front to hold the line:

The U.S. training program has graduated about 7,200 soldiers, with another 3,200 in training. As of last week, none had been deployed on the battlefield. Iraqi and U.S. officials said their deployment was imminent, and would be one gauge of the program's success.

Italy has begun a training program for Iraqi police, which in some provinces is plagued by the same corruption and command problems as the army. The federal police, however, is a strong strike force showing success on front lines with special forces and Shiite militias in recent battles.

Instead, we are holding the units back until we have enough for an offensive. This is good--as long as the front generally holds until we stage that offensive. In that case, it actually would be possible to describe the loss of Ramadi as a mere "tactical" defeat that doesn't affect the big picture.

If we get to that offensive and succeed. But there is a problem of granting an enemy so much time until we unleash the killing blow--the enemy might use it to win more victories that prevent us from carrying out the long planned "final offensive."

I've long wanted core forces to spearhead the Iraqi offensives to allow merely adequate Iraqi forces to hold the ground taken. ISIL isn't that large, so the core forces of competent troops don't have to be that large.

Look at what we did in Afghanistan in 2001 and what the French did in Mali in 2013 with small but good and mobile forces to defeat larger amounts of jihadis.

If Nigeria, despite their ample problems with their own troops, with foreign forces that provided those core forces could drive back Boko Haram jihadis, Iraqis certainly can.

Heck, even the Russians manage to do this with at least minimal success with their fairly inept hand-puppet Donbas allies. Russia spearheads the assaults with special forces and regular mobile forces, with the Russian-led locals (and imported volunteers and mercenaries) manning the front when it is moved forward.

Iraq can provide some of these core force troops. They do have some decent forces. And if we train more troops--and directly advise and support them--Iraq can have more.

Remember (back to that third article), Iraqi troops will fight if led by officers who are trusted not to abandon them:

[An Iraqi soldier] and many of his trainees say they still can't shake the bitter aftertaste of previous fights—some in northern Mosul a year ago, others in Anbar province, where they said they were left without ammunition or altogether abandoned by their commanders.

Their lingering hostility reflects a widespread mistrust of military leadership among Iraqi troops, one of a host of problems hampering U.S.-backed efforts by Iraq's central government to revive the security forces after a meltdown last year as Islamic State advanced.

American forces with them will help provide that confidence to Iraqi troops that they will get the support they need to fight and win.

The Kurds can provide some--as long as we don't push them to spearhead attacks into Mosul where they'd suffer heavy casualties.

I also hope the Jordanians could provide a core force to attack ISIL from the western front of Anbar. And after their captured pilot was burned to death, I figured the chances of them providing this force went up.

We could also hire mercenary units to stiffen Iraqi brigades. It would be nice to have an entire contract brigade, but those don't seem to exist. Could we have units as large as battalions? Or would company-sized units be the limit?

I will say in defense of our long-telegraphed offensive that it is important that the first big Iraqi offensive works. After many defeats at the hands of ISIL, a debacle on the offensive could cripple Iraq morale and seriously undermine our ability to defeat ISIL.

We Americans may mock Britain's General Montgomery for his plodding style, but he was not wrong in knowing that after being beaten in North Africa by Rommel time and again, the el Alamein counter-offensive in 1942 had to work. Britain couldn't afford to be beaten again.

It may be that the Iraqis simply can't carry out a rapid advance deep into enemy territory as we did or the French did--or even the Nigerians did, after a fashion. Perhaps it has to be a plodding and highly controlled offensive that crushes ISIL with precision firepower ahead of a rolling offensive.

As I've noted, you go to war with the army you have and not the army you wish you had. It is surely good that we don't have the Saddam army as an enemy, but the Iraqi army we have as an ally isn't up to the task yet. It was good enough in 2010-2011, but that train has left the station.

And you go to war with the leader you have who has to make the decisions to fight the war and not the leader you wish you had.

UPDATE: As I started out this post, I said the president claimed that we don't have a complete strategy to train Iraqis. This video makes it clear this is what he is talking about.

So it is really annoying that so many media conservatives are spinning this as the president saying we don't have a complete strategy to defeat ISIL. That's not what the president said. I know that left-leaning outlets do this all the time against Republicans, but it is no excuse for Fox News to do it to President Obama.

It is true that our complete strategy has serious flaws and needs to be corrected, as I outline above. But the president did not say we don't have a complete strategy to defeat ISIL.

The reality is bad enough without taking the president's words out of context, okay?

UPDATE: We're addressing two of my issues by dispatching 450 more advisors and trainers to Iraq.

These troops will help Iraqi forces facing ISIL in Anbar and reach out to train and help Anbar Sunni Arabs to encourage a re-Awakening. Anbar does need more attention and the Sunni Arabs need us involved to forge trust to operate against ISIL

Note that as an additional force rather than a redirection of existing American forces, I take it we still have a Mosul-first outlook but don't want the Anbar/Baghdad flank to collapse while we aim north.

UPDATE: Here's a good quote from This Kind of War (the classic Korean War history) about the South Korean army:

Lynn Roberts had told Time that while the troops were excellent, the Koren officers' corps was not so hot. After all, in only eleven months staffs and commanders could not be made and trained, starting from scratch. Lynn Roberts, a professional soldier, also knew that soldiers are only as good as their officers make them. But that kind of attitude sounded un-American and was not popular in Washington, and there was no point in playing it up.

All the talk heard here of our past training efforts being pointless and a waste and proving future training is futile ignores that the real problem is an officer corps that deteriorated because of an emphasis on sectarian loyalty after we left.

UPDATE: But this kind of thinking doesn't help:

Iraq's former premier and current vice president, Nuri al-Maliki, blamed "conspiracies" Saturday for the loss of major cities to jihadists and said Baghdad should prioritise paramilitaries over the army to fight them.

He blamed politicians who opposed him and said a plot to weaken the army was hatched in a neighbouring country, but did not name names.

And he even said that denying the existence of a conspiracy amounts to one: "It is a conspiracy to say that there is not a conspiracy."

While our 2011 withdrawal had a role in creating this paranoid version of Maliki by exposing him to Iranian pressure, the ability to think his resort to sectarian loyalty as the major factor in officer selection is symptomatic of the entire region's problems--they're their own worst enemy and don't recognize that fact.

Just 27 Months to Go!

Killing jihadis is nice, but aerial attrition is just a holding action until we defeat them on the ground.

Warfare isn't just a matter of killing all your enemies. It is about defeating them by driving them out of the land they hold, eliminating their hope of victory, and discrediting their cause in the population the enemy recruits from.

While this is good news in the sense that the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi, it is not a metric of winning:

"We have seen a lot of losses within Daesh since the start of this campaign, more than 10,000," Blinken said on France Inter radio, using a mildly derogatory term for Islamic State. "It will end up having an impact."

I hope the latter comment is recognition that attrition is valuable only if it sets up the enemy for defeat on the ground. At best, we are "shaping" the battlefield.

At worst we believe this is the sum total of our effort to defeat ISIL.

I don't believe our military believes the latter. They know better these days.

But you never can tell about a civilian leadership with a "kill list" mentality. The list is getting awfully long, you must admit.

It's like hope and change have no effect on these monsters!

Blinken said not to worry because we are only 9 months into our 3-year plan. But even if we've killed 40,000 ISIL jihadis from the air by then, we won't have victory without defeating them on the ground.

Remember, we killed far fewer jihadis and other enemies in Iraq in more years of war to achieve a battlefield victory--perhaps 27,000 in a little over 8 years.

We did this because we beat them on the ground; deprived them of hope for victory (until we took our foot off their neck), and even discredited jihadis to reduce their recruiting (for a while).

If it is just attrition--even at a much faster rate--victory relies on the enemy getting tired of being killed before we tire of killing them. Will we commit to that endless war?

We're fighting people who believe they are on a mission from God, remember, before you answer that question that is fully intended to be rhetorical.

And ISIL recruiting from a large recruiting pool doesn't seem to be a problem, now does it?

Retired Gen. John Allen, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama to build a coalition against Islamic State, told a conference in Qatar the group was not merely an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem but "a regional problem trending towards global implications".

The group has lost about a quarter of the populated areas it once held in Iraq, but countering its ideology might take a generation or more, he told the Brookings Institution's U.S.-Islamic World Forum.

Despite the body count, ISIL has the image of the strong horse in this fight. As long as jihadi wannabees believe that, the recruits will keep coming--to Iraq, Syria, and perhaps a shopping mall near you.

Reality Matches Theory

Australia has reason to worry about China's new defense policy:

Last week, China's State Council released a new White Paper on Military Strategy. Although somewhat overshadowed by heightened tensions in the South China, the document has deep long-term implications for Australian defence. For the first time since World War II, a regional state is officially developing the full suite of conventional military capabilities, and now also the doctrine, to pose a direct threat to Australia and its vital interests. This is a big change.

Yet I thought Australia's defense strategy pretty much assumed this is the strategic environment they'd face for the near future:

Australia needs to defend at sea, for if any enemy intent on waging war makes it to shore, Australia would need a huge army to defend their nation/continent. That's not going to happen, although it wouldn't hurt the Australians to organize light infantry local defense forces to fight until the good but tiny army arrives to fight any enemy force that does make it ashore.

But the basic defense will be aircraft and submarines that could attack enemy ships on the way to assault Australia. Even if the enemy had a couple carriers, the F-35s with their stealth abilities would be a good weapon to sink them and shoot down any aircraft they carry. The submarines would be able to operate against the invasion fleet, too, even in the face of enemy naval superiority.

The frigates would be best for leveraging allied help to sail with either American or possibly Indian ships to fight a common foe. Alone against a major enemy fleet they'd be fairly worthless.

I know nobody is being rude enough to name that enemy but the only conceivable foes that might in the future pose an invasion threat are China and perhaps even Indonesia. So the added advantage of their defense plan is that it gives us confidence that Australia will still be fighting by the time our forces can arrive to help.

Of course, I did wonder if Australia would fund their planned military. I still do.

At the time, China was not mentioned as a potential threat in this planning.

Perhaps a more tangible Chinese threat will push along spending to defeat that threat.Although the author seems to wonder if Australia will fund counter-measures even now.

UPDATE: This article argues that Russia is pivoting to the West notwithstanding confrontations with NATO over Ukraine and other issues; and that Australia must consider what that means for Australia's security.

I say that the reason Russia is picking a fight with a toothless NATO (in regard to threatening Russia) is to hide their appeasement of China; and that if Russia is pivoting to Asia now, it is to be strong enough by the year 2021 in order to hold off China.

The Anti-Iraq

Every day I cherish the thought that the big brains in our government learned the lessons of Iraq and refused to commit American ground forces to stabilize Libya after attacking Libya, and just provoke jihadis into going to Libya in response.

Wait. What?

Islamic State militants have seized another town in Libya, the group and a military source said on Friday, expanding the territory they control in the strifetorn country.

The militant group ... has exploited a security vacuum in Libya as two rival governments struggle for power, four years after the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi. Islamic State took over the city of Sirte on Libya's central Mediterranean coast in stages this year[.]. The group has now also taken over the town of Harwa to the east of Sirte[.]

Obviously, bombing Libya in 2011 until the dictator Khaddaffi was killed but staying out on the ground after that allowed the locals to constructively resolve their own problems without our destructive presence.

In 4 years of war, civil strife, and civil war, Libya has suffered about 15,000 dead in its 6 million population--625 per year per million people. About 120,000 (I'll leave out the farcical studies that extrapolated dramatically higher death tolls) Iraqis died in 8 about years of serious fighting (prior to the current round of fighting) in a population of about 25 million--600 per year per million people.

And remember that Iran and Syria were actively funneling jihadi killers into Iraq to increase the violence.

Only in a Sick Person's Fevered Dreams, Indeed

After invading Georgia, pulling Belarus into closer orbit with a slow motion Anschluss, seizing Crimea from Ukraine and continuing to invade eastern Ukraine--while denying it, helping rebels shoot down a civilian airliner, probing Swedish and Finnish sea and air space, conducting no-notice military exercises near the Baltic states, resuming patrols near American air space, supporting Assad of Syria and Iran, kidnapping an Estonian police officer, threatening Denmark with nuclear attack, and generally rattling nuclear sabres against America and NATO, Putin says Russia--the successor state to the USSR whose collapse Putin insists was a historical tragedy--is misunderstood?

Seriously?

"I would like to say - there's no need to be afraid of Russia," Putin told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published Saturday, ruling out a major conflict between Russia and NATO member countries.

"The world has changed so much that people in their right mind cannot imagine such a large-scale military conflict today."

"We have other things to do, I can assure you," the Russian president said.

"Only a sick person -- and even then only in his sleep -- can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO."

This is comedy gold.



Normally, the good cop/bad cop routine requires two cops. That's why Putin keeps his hand puppet Medvedev around, isn't it?

I guess we have to count on the possibility that Putin's actions have just attached the electrodes to his own junk:

Putin has indeed managed to baffle, bewilder, and distract everybody with his hybrid war in Ukraine. But the consequences of his failures and mistakes will likely be much more enduring than his shock-and-awe tactics.

Let's hope Neo-Red, lion-taming Putin is more of a pink panther.

UPDATE: Speaking of a sick person's fevered dreams:

The Nazi-Soviet pact that divided Poland in 1939 - which saw Moscow seize much of what is now Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States - is now seen in a positive light. A new justification has been found for the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and some of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's worst crimes have been played down. ...

Russian children will also learn in the new textbooks how Putin's Soviet and Tsarist predecessors repeatedly defended Russia against Western aggression and machinations.

Yeah. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, I guess.

How do you possibly "reset" that way of thinking?

UPDATE: Putin formally ended some leverage I worried about early in the crisis:

Yet another casualty of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is supply lines for Western troops in Afghanistan. In response to sanctions Russia has shut down railroad access to Afghanistan via Central Asia and Russia.

This is one advantage of our reduction of troops in Afghanistan--apart from whether we have enough to win there. Lines of supply through Pakistan don't give Pakistanis the leverage to cut it because now in an emergency we could maintain an air bridge. So land supply in that route is more secure, I think.

So we have more freedom to support Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion.

And a civilian supply line through Iran is being developed by India. Which would be nice for us regarding Afghanistan if Iran gets a non-nutball regime.

Down for the Count?

Assad has been on the ropes before, but was rescued by our failure to help rebels and by Russian and Iranian help to prop up the Syrian economy, rebuild his ground forces, and keep his air force flying. Who saves Assad as he goes down again?

It is looking bad for Assad:

"Based on current trend lines, it is time to start thinking about a post-Assad Syria," argues a U.S. intelligence official. Until recently, American analysts had characterized the situation there as more of a stalemate. But over the last month, rebel gains in northern and southern Syria have begun to tip the balance.

I recently noted that the recent strings of defeat seemed to be a real change finally making the heavy attrition Assad's forces have been enduring a problem. The math looks bad for the Syrian army but doesn't indicate when Assad's forces could break.

The initial article notes that Assad looked down before but recovered. But Russia and Iran aren't likely to be the source of a rejuvenated Assad combat ability, as things stand right now. Money is tight.

And Assad's supporters who can are starting to think of escape options.

Clearly, the recent trend lines are bad for Assad. Assad may be counting on President Obama to save him. Assad wants America to intervene on his side by concluding Assad is the lesser of many evils in Syria; and hopes a faux nuclear deal with Iran will release mullah financial resources to double down on Assad's survival.

There is one other option for Assad. The last time Assad's trend lines were in the losing direction--but before Russian and Iranian help revived Assad's fortunes--I wondered if Russia would commit ground troops in a symbolic move to bolster the morale of Assad's ground forces to hold a core or rump Syria in the far west that preserves a Russian base in Syria.

Would Putin gamble on such an option, seeing it as "sticking it" to the West in revenge for his Ukraine problems?

Although it is possible that Assad's forces have suffered so much that no new promises of a "light at the end of the tunnel"--even if President Obama throws a lifeline--will prevent Assad's supporters that it is "every clan for itself" time.

UPDATE: the generally more acceptable rebels of the Southern Front are attacking a Syrian base northeast of Deraa:

Syrian rebels attacked a major army base in the south of the country on Tuesday, seeking to increase pressure on President Bashar al-Assad after his recent losses elsewhere in Syria.

This region is too far south for Assad to hold for long.

UPDATE: Rebels took the base. And an air base is under threat (even if claims it is captured are premature):

Issam al-Rayyes, spokesman for the Southern Front alliance of rebel groups, said al-Thala air base in Sweida province had been "liberated".

ISIL cut off the flow of energy to Damascus from the east:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said IS blew up the pipeline near the T-4 military airport in the east of central Homs province shortly after midnight.

"This pipeline was used to carry gas into the suburbs of Damascus and Homs to generate electricity and provide heating in individual homes," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

If memory serves me, Syrian cash went to ISIL to keep energy flowing. If ISIL is willing to cut off the supplies rather than profit from them, what changed? It may be that ISIL sees the accelerating regime defeats as indicating that the end game for Assad is near.

Russia and Iran may feel that way, too:

Russia and Iran are both reconsidering their support for the Assad government. Despite the mess Russia has got itself into with Ukraine, Russian diplomats still have better contacts in the West and the Middle East and are now trying to negotiate a Russian-Iranian supervised peaceful political settlement of the Syrian civil war. The goal here is to prevent ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) from conquering the country.

Getting rid of Assad doesn't mean ending Alawite rule in the west, however. Since Iran is pushing more of their Shia foreign legion into Syria and since both have reason to want friends to run western Syria (access to Lebanon, for Iran; and access to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, for Russia), expect these two foes to push for an Assad regime without Assad.

And note updated casualty figures:

Since 2011 the fighting in Syria has killed about 230,000. Some 30 percent of the dead are civilians while 21 percent are Syrian security forces, 14 percent pro-government irregulars (local militias and foreign volunteers) and 35 percent various rebel factions (many killed fighting other rebels).

That's 69,000 dead civilians; 48,000 Syrian security troops; 32,000 irregulars, including the Shia foreign legion (and including Hezbollah?); and 80,000 rebels.

UPDATE: The Syrians claim to have regained control of that air base under threat noted above:

Syrian army troops regained full control of an airbase in southern Sweida province on Friday, a day after rebels overran large parts of it, a monitor said.

Also note that the rebel claim of success was largely accurate, even if the rebels couldn't hold the base.

The Remaining 2/3 of the Axis of Evil

Iran and North Korea have a history of working together on nuclear and missile technology. Are they more allies than business partners?

Here's one article on missile technology that nonetheless manages to ignore the bleeding obvious:

“Although Iran has paused progress in some areas of its nuclear program and fulfilled its obligations under the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), it continues to develop technological capabilities that also could be applicable to nuclear weapons, including ballistic missile development,” a one-page unclassified summary of the [Pentagon] report says.

So we have Iran working on ballistic missiles. That's dangerous enough when you consider nobody builds long-range conventional missiles.

But has it not occurred to the authors of the Pentagon report that perhaps Iran has "paused" indigenous nuclear programs because they don't need them now? Perhaps because Iran has subcontracted nuclear warhead work to North Korea?

This article should be disturbing for showing how Iran can do an end-run around any nuclear deal with Iran:

Growing cooperation between Iran and North Korea suggests that Tehran may develop a nuclear weapon with support from Pyongyang despite ongoing negotiations with the P5+1. Accordingly, the United States must seek to prohibit any form of nuclear cooperation between the two regimes as part of a final nuclear agreement, and challenge their broader goal of undermining U.S. global leadership.

The 30-year relationship between Tehran and Pyongyang reflects both shared interests and shared opposition to the United States and its allies. Iran seeks, and North Korea possesses, nuclear weapons in part to challenge U.S. influence and authority. Moreover, as Iran’s key supplier of ballistic missile technology since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Pyongyang has relied on Tehran for a major portion of its hard currency. ...

Today, the two countries seek to advance not only ballistic missile sales, but also a common strategic goal. North Korean deputy foreign minister Pak Kil Yon said during a 2011 visit to Iran that the two countries lie in “one trench” against “arrogant powers.” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told North Korean leader Kim Yong Nam the following year that the two nations have “common enemies.”

If they have common enemies, what else might North Korea do to help Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions?

I've suggested that North Korea might host an Iranian missile arsenal that could reach Iran's enemies and deter attack until Iran can build nuclear weapons on their own territory:

What if North Korea sells Iran nuclear missiles and rents the facilities in North Korea to launch them?

From North Korea, these missiles could reach Europe, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and a number of targets in America. So Iran doesn't need to have the missiles inside Iran, really.

This is the map of the radius of the latest missile that North Korea is developing.

What target relevant to Iran is outside of that radius if North Korea rented Iran launch silos in North Korea in addition to selling Iran the nuclear missiles themselves?

That would count as sharing one trench against their enemies, right?

Have a super sparkly day.

To the Death?

If there is a developing Saudi Arabia-Iran War across the Middle East, Saudi Arabia could have an internal front.

This has long been a point of vulnerability for Saudi Arabia:

When Sunni suicide bombers belonging to an Islamic State cell targeted mosques of Saudi Arabia's minority Shi'ite community last month, the government quickly pledged national unity across sectarian lines and offered compensation.

The two blasts killed 25 people, stirring divisions in a kingdom dominated by the ruling Al Saud family and a majority Sunni population that makes up its support base and includes clerics from the strict Wahhabi school who often say Shi'ites are not true Muslims.

Yes, this was ISIL (the Islamic State, as they call themselves now), which is a Sunni Arab terror group. But it is so convenient for Iran that I wouldn't rule out Iran's involvement in clearing a path for the jihadis to strike.

Or even if uninvolved, they simply might exploit this event. If Arab Shias feel under assault in Saudi Arabia, they might turn to Shia Iran for protection.

It would probably help if the Saudis attempted to support dissidents inside Iran to return the favor.

On the bright side, if Iran hopes to scare Saudi Arabia by threatening missile attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, this will damage that hope:

Saudi Arabia said it shot down a Scud missile fired by Yemen's Shiite rebels and their allies early Saturday at a Saudi city that is home to a large air base, marking a major escalation in the monthslong war.

The Saudis are showing their air force can bomb targets and their Patriot missiles can shoot down ballistic missiles. So a battle to the death of oil exports will be worse for Iran.

Think of Crimea as an Occupied Asset

Ukraine's president vows to keep seeking the return of Crimea, which was seized from Ukraine last year. Ukraine can't seize the peninsula any time soon. They should treat it as a vulnerable asset under Russian control.

Ukraine's president has no choice but to remember Crimea:

Speaking at a news conference on June 5, a day after warning of a "colossal threat" of the resumption of full-scale fighting with Russian-backed rebels in his annual state-of-the-nation address, Poroshenko said that "every day and every moment, we will do everything to return Crimea to Ukraine."

He vowed to continue working with Western nations to maintain sanctions imposed on Moscow over its annexation of the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014, which followed Russian troops deployments and a hastily-staged referendum condemned as illegitimate by about 100 UN member states.

Not relinquishing their legal claim on the territory is just the first thing Ukraine needs to do.

Ukraine needs to fortify the outlets from Crimea to pen the Russians in to protect their southern flank in order to focus on the eastern and northern fronts; and to protect Ukrainian artillery assets that could bombard Russian defenders.

Ukraine also needs to build up their long-range missile arsenal in order to bombard Russia's Crimea bases should Russia go to war against Ukraine. This would hold the Sevastopol bases hostage counting on Russia believing they are a big asset for power projection into the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Then build up mine laying assets in order to hinder Russia's use of the naval base in case of war.

Finally, Ukraine should bill Russia for the conquest of Crimea, its property, and its natural resources; and charge a monthly rent until Ukraine regains control. And then pursue these monetary claims through whatever legal channels are appropriate.

I imagine that any Western company that deals with any Crimean entity could be challenged in various national court for not contracting with the legal owner of Crimea, which is Ukraine.

Perhaps part of the money damages recovered this way could go into a fund for Crimea that pays for a government-in-exile and pays for losses of any residents of Crimea who fled--or flees in the future--to Ukraine rather than live under Russian control; and which also earmarks money for a trust fund for reconstruction in Crimea once it returns to Ukraine's control.

Russian claims defy repeated Russian relinquishment of the territory to Ukraine, recall, despite Putin's claims. Ukraine must challenge Russian control of Crimea at every turn to damage its value to Russia now and prepare to put it at risk as an asset for Russia's military until Ukraine can get it back.

UPDATE: Let Russia isolate themselves when they insist on justifying their control of Ukrainian territory:

Russia has refused to sign off on the U.N. nuclear watchdog's annual report because the document lists a nuclear reactor near Crimea's Sevastopol as being in Ukraine, two diplomats present at the meeting told Reuters on Monday.

The report goes out. Just without Russia's signature.

We should look for ways to make Russia stand apart from the rest of the world over Ukraine.

The Dog That Did Not Bark

Hillary Clinton surely will have a difficult time defending her record as Secretary of State. But there is one glaring omission from one article's compilation: Iraq.

Sure, foreign policy is hardly an appropriate subject area where Hillary Clinton can string up the "mission accomplished" banner:

Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, gave an interview to Bloomberg View's Al Hunt in April in which he said holding up the “major accomplishments” from her State Department tenure would be a centerpiece of her campaign. Podesta may want to reconsider that plan. Running on Clinton's signature diplomatic initiatives is fraught with risks because, on closer inspection, most that he mentioned don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Why isn't Iraq mentioned? Every Republican candidate was asked about Iraq when none of them voted for the war nor had responsibilities for managing any aspect of the war.

But Hillary Clinton? In addition to voting for the war and making the case for it, she had a big role in defending our gains after we left in 2011:

Remember that the fallback position for failing to keep American troops in Iraq to bolster the Iraqi government and help keep them on track was a massive State Department paramilitary effort to replicate what our military would have done had we stayed.

Sure, she handed off that responsibility to Kerry a year later, but the program should have been up and running so well by then that even Kerry couldn't screw it up.

How'd that work out? Surely, somebody will ask about that.

4 Million Grains of Sand

China now has sensitive data on 4 million federal government employees:

Hackers working for the Chinese state breached the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management in December, U.S. officials said Thursday, and the agency will notify about 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data may have been compromised.

Now China has better data for targeted spear-phishing cyber espionage efforts, as the article notes.

And they have data to craft blackmail or bribery efforts.

Or they could simply harass and attack those beyond blackmail or bribery efforts.

Yes, indeed, China is taking their "thousand grains of sand" espionage approach up several orders of magnitude.

Even if it isn't China that did this, somebody did. And enemies could buy the data from whoever took it.

Of Course He Does

Fascinating how our president thinks:

“You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,” the president claimed, according to Axelrod.

No doubt that President Obama thinks he makes a better Jew than Jewish people:

Obama’s self-confidence was stratospheric. “You know, I’d make a good chief of staff,” he said.

And:

I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

So really, why shouldn't our president believe he's the best Jewish person?

Are You Ready for Europe?

"Europe" will arrive--voters be damned.

Behold Euro-style democracy (tip to National Review Online):

Exactly ten years ago, the people of France voted, by 55 to 45 per cent, to reject the European Constitution. Their “Non” was followed, three days later, by an even more emphatic Dutch “Nee”: 62 to 38 per cent.

Across Europe, democrats let out a sigh of relief. It seemed that the federalist project had been definitively halted. For half a century, European integration had been pursued by the élites – by diplomats and bureaucrats and lobbyists and bankers and politicians. Now, ordinary voters had finally been given their say, and they could hardly have made themselves clearer.

Ten years on, what has happened? Every single measure – every single measure – proposed by the European Constitution has been implemented: a European President, an EU foreign minister and diplomatic corps, legal personality and treaty-making powers for the EU, a “passerelle” clause to allow further integration without needing new treaties, more majority voting, fewer national vetoes, the whole hog – totus porcus.

Before the votes, I was pretty sure the outcome was already set since the Euro elites believe they are saving Europeans from themselves:

It will be bad for us and bad for Europeans if the Brussels bureaucrats gain power. Certainly, with the close calls that voting is providing for the EU, the EU won't make the mistake of letting that go on for long. I mean, when only the best and brightest in Brussels stands between peace and a populist-led holocaust, suppressing freedom will be a blessing, right?

After the French voted no, I still didn't think this was enough:

I suspect the EU elites will learn their lesson and they will work hard to make sure the French and Dutch votes are the last real votes there will ever be on the EU project.

No, not nearly enough to drive a stake in the brain of the Brussels zombie:

I fear that the EU sees the no vote as merely an obstacle to implementing exactly what the EU elites have wanted all along.

Yet when the Dutch voted no, too, I dared to express a small hope:

It should kill it. But who knows? The Euzis in Brussels aren't known for their devotion to democracy. The unwashed masses are so ignorant, don't you know?

The Euro elites quickly disabused me of that sliver of hope by denying that two "no" votes meant voters were voting no to Europe:

"I really believe the French and Dutch did not vote no to the constitutional treaty," insisted Jean-Claude Juncker, the "President" of "Europe"[.]

With a bonus "you have to pass it to find out what is in it" sentiment:

"It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text," declared Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

The EU didn't take too long to craft a new path that avoids pesky peasant voters interfering with the plans of their betters for a new and improved Europe.

Well, the EU couldn't avoid a vote in Ireland for that--which Ireland rejected--but even that wasn't a real obstacle. The beatings continued until voting improved.

And ten years later after that grand Euro experiment with democracy, here we are with Europe being built one onerous cheese regulation at a time while the unwashed masses are ignored:

And, as I've long written, we need to worry about the European Union being that potentially hostile power if it ever builds upon ever-expanding cheese regulations to become the real government of Europe, leaving national governments as mere executing bodies for EU power delegated to them.

Are you ready for Europe?

Trick question. Like Brussels even cares what you are or are not ready for!

Anbar Demands Attention

Our military may prefer a Mosul-first strategy, but Anbar is demanding attention. Anbar is getting it, but is it enough?

I've long been in the Anbar-first camp, arguing that the need to protect Baghdad and the need to support Anbar Sunni Arab tribes who we hope to flip back to the government's side make this the priority front.

After the recent debacle at Ramadi, it seems like Anbar is getting more attention if not top billing:

Iraq's allies Tuesday pledged support for Baghdad's plan to retake the city of Ramadi from Islamic State jihadists, whose advance Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described as a "failure" for the global community. ...

But despite a series of battlefield wins by IS, the coalition maintained it had a "winning strategy" and gave its seal of approval to Iraqi plans to claw back territory at crunch talks in Paris.

We'll see if our interest is just a short-term effort to regain Ramadi before returning to our Mosul-first strategy or if it reflects a change in overall effort.

And this attention is needed since Anbar Sunni Arabs seem to be following the "strong horse" out there:

A number of Sunni tribal sheikhs and tribes in Iraq's Anbar province have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

The sheikhs and tribal leaders made the pledge in a statement read out by influential Sheikh Ahmed Dara al-Jumaili, after meeting in Fallujah on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said it was not yet clear if the tribes had been forced to pledge allegiance by ISIL fighters, who control Fallujah and most of Anbar province.

Even if the pledges are under duress, it demonstrates the need to focus on Anbar to give the Sunni Arab tribes the opportunity to re-Awaken.

On the bright side, we achieved something that will help Iraqis on the battlefield:

An air strike in the Iraqi town of Hawijah completely levelled one of the Islamic State group's largest car bomb factories, causing heavy casualties and extensive destruction, officials said.

The blast caused by the strike and the destruction of explosive material was heard as far as Kirkuk, a city under Kurdish control that lies 55 kilometres (34 miles) away.

This is far from Ramadi, so I don't know if this facility supplied those attackers. But I did complain about the failure to do this:

What I find most horrible about this more than the Iraqi rout is that ISIL was left unmolested and allowed to build this phalanx of truck bombs and then move them to the front and use them on the Iraqi defenders despite our absolute aerial supremacy.

Mind you, I still think our overall focus on Iraq while striking ISIL targets in Syria for the purpose of limiting cross-border support for the Iraq front is the way to go.

I can't get too upset that one set of enemies (al Qaeda and ISIL) are ripping apart another enemy--Assad's forces. Especially when Assad is clearly trying to Jedi mind trick the Obama administration into thinking Assad is an ally against jihadis. I personally do not forget that the Assad regime happily funneled jihadis into Iraq to kill our troops (and Iraqis) during the Iraq War.

So watching Assad ride the tiger to the end gives me some satisfaction.

However, I'm not happy with our lack of a sense of urgency to get on with the counter-offensive in Iraq, as I've repeated.

Nor am I happy that we have not tried to build up non-jihadi rebels to have a local alternative to the jihadis if they do dethrone Assad.

But we have a safety net because Turkey and Israel are two powerful forces that could cope with a jihadi win in western Syria until we can focus on them.

Iraq is our priority over Syria; and in Iraq, Anbar should be our priority over Mosul.

Sorry, But Korb Hasn't a Clue

Lawrence ("I worked for President Reagan!") Korb says President Obama did not lose Iraq. Why anyone would listen to Korb on any matter other than the proper spelling of his name is beyond me.

On a narrow technical matter, President Obama has not "lost" Iraq since he is in the process of trying to save Iraq. Properly speaking, President Obama allowed Iraq to deteriorate. Whether President Obama loses Iraq is still up in the air--and no, delaying the loss until after our president leaves office in 2017 doesn't save the president's reputation if we lose then.

Still, let's enjoy the Korbian spectacle of self-beclownment, shall we?

First, Korb claims that President Obama did not fail in an effort to negotiate a deal with Iraq to remain after 2011:

Obama’s hands were tied by the agreement President Bush signed. Obama withdrew American troops from Iraq in 2011 according to the timetable that President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki had agreed to in December 2008, when the UN mandate that allowed the United States to occupy Iraq after the 2003 invasion expired. And even though President Obama was willing to leave between 5,000 and 10,000 American troops in Iraq, the Iraqi Parliament was not willing to modify Bush’s withdrawal agreement to allow this residual force.

So there are two arguments deployed. One, Bush negotiated a withdrawal by 2011; and two, Iraq refused our offers to keep troops there.

The 2008 agreement under Bush was the best he could have gotten given the climate of the day. And everyone expected it to be replaced by a longer term agreement. If not, why did the Obama administration even negotiate at all with Iraq on a new agreement? That seems to be a major flaw of the "Bush is to blame in 2008" argument, isn't it?

On the second, talk of up to 10,000 troops is nonsense. We dropped to an offer of 3,000, which wasn't enough for Maliki to risk angering Iran. It was too much to appease Iran and too little to resist Iran. So Maliki said no as he was supposed to.

Yet still I gamely tried to figure out if we could work with this number. Even though I wanted 25,000.

We could have gotten to "yes" if it had been a priority of the Obama administration. Remember, to believe that President Obama tried very hard to stay in Iraq after 2011, you have to believe that he tried very, very hard to get something that is the opposite of his campaign pledge to get us out of Iraq and which was the opposite of his post-withdrawal boast that he got us out of Iraq and responsibly ended the war.

You'd really need Korbian levels of idiocy to believe this, in fact.

Let's move on.

This is confusing. Korb says that it is a false charge that the poor showing of Iraq's security forces is the fault of President Obama. Yet the argument he sets forth is pretty much the argument I'd use to lay the blame on the president's desk:

By the time U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq at the end of 2011, the Iraqi military was in pretty good shape. Not perfect, but over $25 billion in training and eight years of U.S. training had done a lot to build up a credible, functional armed force.

Even before the American forces left, Prime Minister Maliki had begun to systematically undermine the Iraqi military, by placing his Shiite cronies in key leadership positions. Salaries have gone unpaid while “ghost” soldiers collect salaries, maintenance has been neglected, weapons sold off, and Sunnis have been pushed out. Over the past three years, the Iraqi army has unraveled. Witness the comments made by soldiers who are now on their second or third round of training the Iraqi Security Forces—they have been shocked at its current state.

While we remained, Iraq's military was in pretty good shape. And now they are at least half crappy. In between we withdrew. I'm thinking there's a link.

As for Maliki's role, I accept that. But in 2008, Maliki was good enough and took on Iran's hand puppets in the Charge of the Knights operation at Basra against Shia militias.

And if you want to blame Maliki, you have to remember that in spring 2010, when the Sunni Arab Allawi [CORRECTION: While Sunni Arabs backed Allawi, he is a Shia. My memories faded ...] won the most seats in parliament, which should have given him first crack at organizing a government, the Obama administration sent our people to Iraq to support Maliki in remaining in power on the theory that we'd better have a Shia strongman to keep "stability" in Iraq rather than let elections stand in the way of getting out of Iraq and thus "responsibly ending" the war. I wrote several posts in that time lamenting the failure to push for rule of law.

So basically, Korb is denying Obama had a role in the determination of the Iraqi ground forces because some of the seeds of deterioration began because of Obama policies prior to the withdrawal.

That's quite a defense.

Let's move on to self-beclownment the third. It isn't Obama's fault that ISIL rose up in Iraq:

The real blame for the rise of ISIS in Iraq falls both on Malaki and on President Bush. Even aside from the original sin of invading Iraq under false pretense, there were a number of early mistakes whose impacts are still being felt. After the initial overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government, President Bush did not send in enough troops to stabilize the country after overthrowing the government. Notably, he fired then Chief-of-Staff or the Army General Shinseki, who when pressed, said in testimony that the United States would need to have hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground. Bush compounded the problem by disbanding the Iraqi government and the military through a misguided attempt at de-Baathification, leading thousands of newly-jobless Sunnis. Finally, the selection of Maliki, who had spent his exile years in Iran, as the country’s first prime minister, ensured that sectarianism would play a dominant role in Iraqi politics.

That's a lot of ignorance in one paragraph.

One, there were no false pretenses in invading Iraq. We had lots of reasons as the declaration of war laid out. The reasons were so strong that it was official policy of the United States, as signed by President Clinton, to promote regime change in Iraq to remove Saddam and replace his regime with democracy. [UPDATE: See here for more.]

And while we did not find newly manufactured chemical arms in Iraq after invading, Saddam never did prove he disarmed--as was required--and he in fact had every intention to restart chemical weapons production in relatively short order. If Saddam was bluffing, that was a violation of the 1991 ceasefire that required him to prove he had no chemical weapons programs; and possession of chemical weapons was a bluff that Saddam had every intention of covering as soon as he could.

The idea that we needed 300,000 American troops to pacify Iraq is false given that even Korb admits that we did in fact leave Iraq with a decent security environment in fewer than five years of serious fighting despite never having even 180,000 US troops in Iraq at the height of the surge.

As my tediously repetitive posts during that time showed, we had enough troops--American, coalition, contractor, and Iraqi--to win the military campaign. And we did win. If not, we couldn't have the sight of people like Korb arguing that the unraveling from a previous level of success (which Obama and Biden boasted about) is not President Obama's fault.

Also, General Shinseki was not fired by Bush (by Obama, yes, at the VA). He served a full 4-year term and his retirement was announced a full year before his statement on troop levels.

Korb also insists that but for de-Baathification and disbanding Iraq's army, Iraq's Sunni Arab minority would not have waged an insurgency and terrorism campaign.

This is nonsense. Disbanding the Iraqi army was a legal formality long after the Iraqi army self-disbanded during the war. And consider that the Shias--already a bit suspicious of us for encouraging their revolt in 1991 yet letting Saddam stomp them down when they did rise up--would not have sided with us if we'd kept their torturing Sunni Arab overlords in positions of power.

The real problem is that we allowed Syria and Iran to support insurgents and terrorists. Even so, we ground down our enemies in the period 2003-2006 while building up the Iraqis (and then in the 2007 surge and Awakening) in what is a remarkable accomplishment against what so many war opponents insisted was a "national resistance" to our "occupation."

Finally, while Maliki had a role in Iraq's post-2011 failure, he did well in 2008 when we were firmly in place fighting enemies of Iraq. And President Obama put our weight behind Maliki in 2010 despite his second place finish in a mistaken belief that Maliki would provide stability to justify withdrawal in 2011:

Campaigning on a nonsectarian platform, with Sunni and secular Shia candidates, the coalition won two more seats than did Maliki’s State of Law coalition. Maliki refused to stand down, however, or to concede to the INM the right to attempt to put together a governing coalition. Choosing not to weigh in, the Obama team eventually tired of the stalemate, conveniently concluding that Iraq needed a “Shia strongman,” convinced by elements within the government (presumably the CIA) that Maliki was “our man.” They sent Joseph Biden to deliver, in his ham-handed way, the message to the INM leadership. And with that, according to Sky, the chance for Iraqis “to break the Lebanon model of cementing sectarianism within institutions” went out the window.

So throwing Maliki under the bus to excuse President Obama is a bit too brazen for me.

Also, to blame Bush for the rise of ISIL is to argue that Saddam was superior despite being a brutal, chemical weapons using, terror-sponsoring, aggressive state if he could keep "tame" jihadis in Iraq rather than the feral strain of al Qaeda. Assad thought he could do that, too, when he funneled jihadis into Iraq and then found that the channels he built to do that could simply stop at Damascus to be used against him. Assad did not provide stability and Saddam was not capable of doing that, either.

Jihadis were not created by Bush. Bush simply fought them where we found them--even if they inconveniently fought us in Iraq.

You also have to consider that al Qaeda didn't flee to Iraq until after we destroyed their safe haven in Afghanistan under the Taliban government's protection. Was the "good" war  a mistake when we could have kept al Qaeda in Afghanistan (where they plotted 9/11, recall)?

And given the failure to complete the fight in Afghanistan which was supposedly the "good" war against al Qaeda, I don't want to hear this farcical notion.

Seriously. Korb is a joke.

Let's move on to number 4. Korb says it is "hypocritically wrong"  to blame Obama for the rise of ISIL in Syria:

In the summer of 2013, towards the beginning of the Syrian civil war, President Obama asked Congress to approve U.S. bombing in Syria. In the midst of the chaotic civil war, it was already apparent that ISIS—then one of several Islamist rebel groups in Syria—was more ruthless, systematic, and disciplined than any of them. Congress, as has become typical, dithered and delayed.

One, this is long after the Obama administration refused to help non-jihadi rebels on the theory that we didn't want to "militarize" the conflict. That was 220,000 dead ago. So jumping to 2013 as Korb does glosses over a lot of missed opportunities after our president declared that Assad had to go.

Two, the bombing campaign against Syria was to be "unbelievably small" as Secretary of State Kerry stated. That is not a commitment to overthrowing Assad. That was Concern Theater that few in Congress wanted to go along with.

Three, the bombing was in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons rather than a regime change step by supporting rebels.

And four, President Obama--who does have primacy in foreign policy and as commander-in-chief of the military--chose to ask Congress--whose role is more advice and consent--for permission in the knowledge that they'd save him from having to act. Please note that we are bombing ISIL in Syria and Iraq right now without Congressional permission as Korb says President Obama needed in 2013.

Jesus Christ, I'm still on the first page of this nonsense.

For his fifth point (I feel like a fifth of something at this point), Korb says sending more American troops is historically wrong as a solution. The explanation is on the second page and I'm almost giddy in anticipation of this! Let's click on "Next"!

There is already a robust U.S. presence in the Gulf—35,000 troops in the region—and in Iraq, where some 3,000 service members are on the ground, re-training the crippled Iraqi army. U.S. forces have conducted over 4,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. The real issue is whether the Iraqi forces are willing—and able—to fight for their country. Adding more U.S. troops without real Iraqi commitments to both defeating ISIS and working to heal the sectarian rifts in the country would be as foolish as sending more U.S. troops into South Vietnam in 1975.

I hate to be picky, but 35,000 troops in the Gulf region is not the same as troops in Iraq.

Our air strikes are too cautious, not directed by forward observers, and haven't stopped ISIL. And that is different from forces on the ground, too, I hasten to add.

And that real issue of Iraqi forces fighting ignores the fact that the Obama administration did have a role in their failure in this regard. Yes, Iraq must fight. And our commitment of a relatively small number of troops to directly support Iraqi units we train to enable the army we have is not the same as adding several tens of thousands as we did in the 2007 surge--which worked (historically)--or even 300,000 as Shinseki wrongly insisted we had to commit to win that military campaign.

Yet Korb is insisting that Iraq demonstrate that they don't need our help to defeat ISIL before we help them?

As for the Vietnam in 1975 comment, that says a lot. Yes, after ignoring North Vietnamese overt aggression and failing to provide Saigon with the expected logistics and air power support for two years, direct intervention in 1975 as South Vietnam fell would have been futile. Korb sounds like he is just eager for Iraq to get to the boat people stage so he can move on to arguing for our defeat in another theater of war.

And on that point, mercifully, the article ends. 

Yes indeed, national security analysis with Korb is like going deer hunting with an accordion. I have nothing but disgusted contempt for his analysis and frustration that anybody would take his analysis seriously. The man couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

As a side note, shouldn't there be a statute of limitations on Korb noting that he worked in the Reagan administration when Korb is so awful on defense issues that he is considered appropriate for the Center for American Progress?

And his presence in The National Interest is another reason I don't take this publication seriously.

Help Iraqis Kill Jihadis

Iraq's soldiers will fight ISIL if led by decent officers, and dismissing our training efforts prior to our departure in 2011 is absolutely wrong because the army we trained is not the army that broke and ran.

Strategypage addresses the Iraqi army's difficulties fighting:

This rapid and unexpected loss of Ramadi by a much smaller force (government troops outnumbered nearby ISIL gunmen by ten to one) brought forth accusations by the U.S. and other Western governments that Iraqis did not have the will to fight. That was not true and the real problem, as it has always been, is leadership. As the old saying goes, “there are no bad troops, only bad officers.” In late 2014 The U.S. reported that most of the troops they trained before they left in 2011 had since left the military and many of the replacements were poorly trained (and even more poorly led) by corrupt Iraqi officers appointed by the recently (April 2014) replaced Maliki government. ...

The basic problem was bad officers, in particular officers more interested in politics and getting rich (via corrupt practices) than running an efficient army. This is not a new or unique problem in the Iraqi Army. Since 2011 the Shia politicians running the government chose politically reliable Shia officers over those who were merely competent at their jobs. That led to the collapse of the Iraqi army in the face of a mid-2014 ISIL offensive. That should not have happened, but it did and will again unless the Iraqis put more emphasis on competence than political loyalty when selecting military officers.

I addressed this issue recently, since I am unhappy that the Iraqi ground forces are being scapegoated. Their supposed inability to be effective is being used by opponents of the war as an excuse to walk away again without helping them fight jihadis.

The Iraqis will never develop the military reputation of Prussia, but they can be good enough to defeat our common enemies if trained, well-led, and supported.

Let's help Iraqis be good enough to win this war. That's how you responsibly end a war.

UPDATE: And do remember, as it is all too easy to forget, that it is better to have an imperfect Iraq helping us kill jihadis than have Saddam's Iraq creating and supporting terrorists.