Scent of a Legacy

Tango!



Hooah.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Now we know what to do for Brussels.

Perhaps it's just me, but I think the last thing we need is an image of a softer America:

With baseball and tango Obama offers Latin America a softer US

I know President Obama was in a difficult position after trying to turn down the dance invitation.

And no, I don't think that rushing home after the Brussels terror attack was the right response.

But some advance work by his staff on what is appropriate after a terror attack--that killed Americans, too--should have been worked out with our hosts.

And it isn't like this image is overwhelmed by a reputation of resolutely fighting terror.

Drama?  No Obama.

UPDATE: Good point:

“It does explain why we gave away everything in the Iranian nuclear negotiations,” Krauthammer said. “The guy can’t stand up to a tango dancer, how is he going to stand up to the mullahs?”

Of course, Iran had the invaluable knowledge that our president desperately wanted to say "yes" to anything in his quest for a legacy.

UPDATE: Feel the power of the newly reset and hopey battle station!

Fidel Castro responded Monday to President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba with a long, bristling letter recounting the history of U.S. aggression against Cuba, writing that "we don't need the empire to give us any presents."

The 1,500-word letter in state media titled "Brother Obama" was Castro's first response to the president's three-day visit last week, in which the American president said he had come to bury the two countries' history of Cold War hostility.

An enemy that at least respected our power a little bit would have the decency to at least pretend for a little longer that our president's folly has a shot at working.

We All Look Alike to Them

How alien is our military to our professors in the educational-industrial complex?

This alien:

Heidi Czierwic, an English professor at the University of North Dakota, was in her office when she saw two individuals walking near her window wearing camouflage and toting what appeared to her to be guns.

The panicked professor scurried to her Safe Space — which in this case was under her desk — and proceeded to call 911.

She saw a couple ROTC students carrying fake or disabled weapons on campus.

But all she saw was camouflage--which she associated with crazed gunmen.

If she had any familiarity at all with our military, she might have noted that they were in full uniform.

Crazed gunmen may wear some camo gear, but they are rarely in a full uniform with proper patches, insignia, and whatnot, properly worn.

But that's our campus culture. I was once called a fascist as I stood in my Guard uniform waiting for a bus on campus at the University of Michigan. A passenger in a car saw camo and made a snap judgment. Not "defender of our nation and freedoms," but "fascist."

You can't defend the decent people without also defending the twits. I suppose that's the opposite of collateral damage.

Tip to Instapundit.

And the Answer is ... America

Apparently, China does not have a Minister of the Obvious:

China said on Monday agreements like the one reached last week by the United States and the Philippines allowing for a U.S. military presence at five Philippine bases raised questions about militarization in the South China Sea.

The actual question is "who will block China's militarization of the South China Sea to gain complete and exclusive control of this body of largely international waters.

The answer is, we will with the help of a lot of regional allies who want to know the answer to the actual question rather than China's farcical "who, me?" question.

I will say that this is a tremendous success of the Obama administration's pivot to Asia.

The pivot is small in military terms, really, and it just continued an existing trend since the end of the Cold War, but it has been working to give reasons for our allies to rally around us.

Have no doubt that this ability to rally allies is crucial to preventing China from simply absorbing the South China Sea as the City of Sansha.

A failure to reassure allies would lead countries to doubt us and eventually lead someone to be the first to cut a deal with China rather than rely on us. Once that process starts, it would snowball as combined allied power declines relative to China's power and more states decide that orbiting the Middle Kingdom is safer than resistance.

So far we are bringing allies in rather than seeing them peeled away.

So kudos to President Obama. I may worry that lack of resolve has weakened our ability to reassure allies. But in the western Pacific he is getting the job done.

Fear is Russia's Best Defense

Russia's conventional military is weak, able to carry out only small missions without resorting to expensive (in lives) brute force attacks. Nuclear weapons are the only way to keep an invader out of Russia. So it makes sense that the Russians stoke fear in the West of Russia's large nuclear arsenal.

Riiiight:

The East-West standoff over the Ukraine crisis has brought the threat of nuclear war in Europe closer than at any time since the 1980s, a former Russian foreign minister warned on Saturday.

"The risk of confrontation with the use of nuclear weapons in Europe is higher than in the 1980s," said Igor Ivanov, Russia's foreign minister from 1998 to 2004 and now head of a Moscow-based think-tank founded by the Russian government.

I don't buy that judgment that conveniently covers up Russia's conventional military weakness.

Russia is really willing to risk Moscow for the Donbas? I don't think so.

But it is useful to Russia for people in the West to believe that Russian resolve over Ukraine is so solid that we risk nuclear war by standing in Russia's way.

I'm calling BS on that Putin front man. "Think tank," indeed.

What Could Go Wrong?

Oh good God, please tell me we won't inflict this young man on a platoon of our soldiers:

A member of the [West Point] class of 2017 asked [Secretary of Defense] Carter, "As a younger generation of millenials enters the work force, American corporations are shifting towards a less hierarchal and more flat and casual organizational structure. What is the Department of Defense doing to stay competitive in this new work environment?"

Because "casual" is a firefight-winning approach.

Tip to Instapundit.

[Stupid scheduled posting didn't work. Sometimes when I click on a future date for publication it reverts to today's date. Which can mean a post gets posted earlier in the same day ... Since some people have read it already, I'll just leave it here today.]

It's Okay, Israelis Aren't Doing It

Don't worry, this "war crimes" news will fade from daily headlines and nothing much will be heard about it from the usual suspects who get worked up when Israelis defend themselves:

The Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen for one year has caused the vast majority of civilian deaths in the conflict, the UN rights chief said Friday, warning international crimes may have been committed.

During its campaign against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen there have been repeated criticisms that coalition air strikes have not done enough to avoid non-military targets.

Human rights campaigners can be funny. Palestinian and Hezbollah attackers have a lower Jewish body count only because they have not done enough to accurately target non-military targets more frequently.

SIGINT

I don't want to sound alarmist on very little data, but in the last week I've noticed some hits from Russia on the subject of invading Ukraine.

People were surprised at Russia's drawdown of air power in Syria. Scraping up what good forces they have for a renewed Ukraine front would explain that.

UPDATE: FYI, this is the post that has drawn Russian attention. And the map about going big drew particular attention.

I mean, would Putin launch a big campaign in Europe while we are preoccupied with a presidential campaign during the lame duck period of President Obama?

That was a rhetorical question, obviously.

UPDATE: And why would Russia be eager to peddle this nonsense now?

There are no Russian troops in the Moscow-leaning Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, and there have never been, but there are Russian citizens who stand by local residents, RIA news agency quoted the Kremlin as saying on Saturday.

The Russians are aggravating on many levels.

The Big Push

A few days ago, I discussed the pending Iraqi offensive north to Mosul. Here we go:

The Iraqi military backed by U.S.-led coalition aircraft on Thursday launched a long-awaited operation to recapture the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State militants, a military spokesman said.

In the push, Iraqi forces retook several villages on the outskirts of the town of Makhmour, east of Mosul, early in the morning on Thursday and hoisted the Iraqi flag there, according to the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool.

That walking piece of breathing garbage, Moqtada al Sadr, is complicating efforts in Anbar, however:

One leg of the Iraqi military's efforts to clear some of that territory in Anbar has been put on hold. A political crisis in Baghdad has prompted al-Abadi to pull some of Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces back from the front in the Euphrates River valley to secure the capital.

The prime minister recalled the forces after influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr mobilized thousands and staged a sit-in outside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone last week in a show of force meant to put pressure on Iraq's political leadership.

It's a shame that the government needs to pull these troops in to make sure loyal forces are available in case Sadr tries (again) to launch an insurrection.

Let's hope the Mosul Storm (my name, not anything official) goes more rapidly than our more cautious estimates have predicted.

And as long as I'm hoping, it would be nice to see the Jordanians offensive into western Anbar to hit ISIL from the rear.

UPDATE: Our military hopes to add forces to support the Iraqi offensive and seems hopeful of progress in the coming months:

Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters that recommendations on ways to increase U.S. support for Iraq's ground fight against IS will be discussed with President Barack Obama soon.

"The secretary and I both believe that there will be an increase in U.S. forces in Iraq in coming weeks, but that decision hasn't been made," Dunford said. He did not say how big that increase might be.

He and Carter said accelerating the campaign against the Islamic State will include more assistance like the artillery fire and targeting help that U.S. Marines provided earlier this week to Iraqi forces advancing on Mosul. But they said American forces remain well behind the front lines.

"I think there's a lot of reasons for us to be optimistic about the next several months," Dunford said. "But by no means would I say that we're about to break the back of ISIL or that the fight is over."

I think more troops is justified and I think Dunford is right that we should see progress against ISIL in Iraq if this offensive is truly a serious effort.

Indeed, I would not be surprised if the advance is more rapid than people seem to expect.

But with ISIL still dug in inside Syria and Libya, with branches elsewhere, even crippling ISIL in Iraq will not break their back overall or end the fight against ISIL.

But it is a good start. As I've long argued, our fight against ISIL should be an Iraq-first fight with strikes in Syria only for the purpose of supporting the Iraq campaign.

Sadly, I don't think we're on board the second "win" in that formula, seeming to be siding with Assad scant years after saying he had to go (President Obama) and comparing his use of poison gas to the Nazis (Kerry)

Green Lives Matter

Our president, who likes to pose as a peaceful man averse to war in contrast to Bush 43, actually seems to have a problem with winning wars--not fighting them:

Stephen Sestanovich describes Obama as a “retrenchment” president akin to Dwight Eisenhower or Richard Nixon—leaders elected to scale back the country’s overseas commitments. That seems to me not quite severe enough a judgment. The better parallel is to Lyndon Johnson fighting wars “he believed to be unwinnable” (as Goldberg describes Obama). Sending soldiers into harm’s way when you consider their fight pointless must weigh heavily on the conscience.

Yeah, the president's conscience is the problem. Not the lives wrecked by sending troops to fight and die in a war that we don't try to win.

I did note that President Obama had taken the lead in wars, so he isn't the anti-Bush as his supporters suppose he is.

And I did wonder why President Obama would order two surges in Afghanistan that drove up our casualty count tremendously only to needlessly risk defeat by pulling our troops out too soon.

Our troops have the right to expect that their nation will send them to win when their nation sends those troops to fight and die.

Progress!

Have I mentioned that I really despise Windows 10?

Oh, it looks fine. And functions fine.

But it doesn't function fine as much as it should.

First, Internet Explorer crashes more often. Sure, the system helpfully tells me that they are searching for a solution.

But that reassurance at this point is as comforting as OJ Simpson's pledge to find the "real killer" that he was acquitted of being oh so many years ago.

What really gets me, however, is the black screen.

Sometimes I get a warning that my memory is full and I have seconds to bookmark an open website I don't want to lose before the screen goes black.

Just now it simply went black. So I had to turn my computer off and restart--losing any open tabs.

So you know, your loss on my priceless bits of wisdom that will go unwritten for now.

And unlike the old IE, my computer doesn't allow me to reopen a past session that closed unexpectedly.

So really, kudos on the free improvement on my operating system. You get what you pay for.

Poverty Saves Russia's Paratroopers

Russia has canceled their plan to double their airborne forces because of financial problems. That will save their airborne forces.

On the surface, this seems like good news:

The Russian government revealed that in late January it had ordered a halt to a program that was to expand and modernize the airborne forces. This confirms rumors that the government has quietly halted military rebuilding and expansion efforts, especially for the special operations troops (which includes airborne units as well as the more traditional commandos). This is all because of the continuing economic crises.

At the time, I thought that this expansion plan was actually a counter-productive move.

So Russia's poverty has saved a pocket of decent troops that they have.

Which is a reminder--as I've often noted, even before the Ukraine Crisis--that Russia is weak compared to the United States in conventional military power.

But Russia does have the conventional power to defeat weaker states:

Eventually, deep Russian decline will limit its aggression. For the time being, however, a nuclear-armed Mr Putin is bent on imposing himself in the old Soviet sphere of influence. In Mr Obama’s last year as president, Mr Putin, fresh from Syrian success, could yet test the West one more time.

Unfortunately, such weaker states are close to Russia.

And Russia has a lot of nukes to rattle in order to keep any such conflict between Russia and a target from escalating to a conflict that draws in a coalition of Western states superior to Russia in conventional military power,

This is what makes Russia so frustrating. So many people dismiss the need to stop Putin by saying--rightly--that Russia is weak.

This is true. But my take is why shouldn't we help targets of Russia resist Russian aggression because Russia is weak enough to defeat?

I'd rather halt the Russians as far east as possible. I don't assume Russia will decline forever. They've always been poorer, after all, yet in the past have managed to build a military capable of pushing west.

Fighting for a Post-Syria Assad

Russia announced more than a week ago that they would pull out much of their air power from Syria, which is the subject of speculation now. Clearly, Russia only cares about northwestern Syria.

The Russians stated that they completed their mission and would withdraw most of their air power. Rather quickly, about half of the warplanes were pulled out:

Just under half of Russia's fixed-wing strike force based in Syria has flown out of the country in the past two days, according to a Reuters calculation which suggests the Kremlin is accelerating its partial withdrawal.

Strategypage addresses the reduction of forces:

Russia pointed out that their troops made it possible for Syrian government forces to retake over 400 towns and villages more than 10,000 square kilometers of territory and that Russian forces can leave now. While the Russian presence reversed rebel advances that threatened to defeat the Syrian government by late 2015 the Russian assistance has not defeated the rebels. Despite still being divided (and often fighting each other) the rebels remain more powerful than the government forces. Russia cites the long-delayed peace talks as made possible because of the Russian intervention. Yet the peace talks are more about posturing than performance. One tangible result of the Russian intervention was an opportunity to give many new Russian weapons some combat experience. That is a good thing for Russia but because of continued low oil prices and sanctions Russia cannot afford to keep their Syrian operations going at their current intensity. It is no secret that Russia is running out of smart bombs and replacement parts for many of these new weapons. The elite combat and support troops Russia sent to Syria are exhausted and need some rest. Then there is the additional expense of the entire operation, something that is easier to justify back home if it is not open-ended. Russia will continue to maintain its improvised naval base and airbase operations in Syria. This is much less expensive and could be done with only a thousand or so troops. This presence also implies Russian willingness to bring back the muscle if the Assad government gets in big trouble again.

Which is more interesting than just assuming Russia won. Russia will be able to rest troops--showing they don't have the forces to rotate troops to sustain even a small force in Syria in addition to their efforts in eastern Ukraine; the Russians will save money; the Russians can rebuild stocks of weapons; and the Russians got to test out new weapons.

Further, the Russians can come back easily if the rebellion starts pushing Assad back again.

And the Russians may yet feel that peace talks can cement their win, if the Russians can again play Secretary of State Kerry to ratify the survival of Assad if not the defeat of ISIL.

Let me add some thoughts.

One, regaining 10,000 square kilometers for Assad is a drop in the bucket when you consider Syria has nearly 186,000 square kilometers of territory. So Russia helped recover a bit more than 5% of Syrian territory.

But the territory is in the west, which as I've long said is all that Russia (and Iran, for different reasons) cares about. As long as Assad controls the northwest, Russia has a port and airfields that can project Russian naval and air power into the eastern Mediterranean.

This Russian reduction demonstrates the lie of Russia's pretense for intervention that they wanted to fight ISIL. Russia has pulled back just as Syrian forces were aimed east where ISIL's stronghold is--which seemed odd to me anyway because I didn't (and still don't) think Assad has the manpower to hold what he has let alone push into rebel-, jihadi-, and ISIL-held territory to clear them out and then hold that territory, too.

And a reduction in Russian air power isn't that significant if Russia has managed to get Assad's air force and artillery back in action, as the post also notes.

And Russia seems to have shifted to artillery support as their air power has been pulled back from the fight--but not completely out of the fight.

Further, does the lack of much of Russia's air power signal that Assad's offensives are over? A reduced Russian air expeditionary force may be sufficient for flying in defense of pro-Assad forces. Recall that when we were fighting in Afghanistan, a single B-1 bomber loitering over the country loaded with smart bombs was all the air support friendly forces needed. But is it enough to sustain offensives?

Or will restored Syrian firepower be enough to take up the slack to continue the offensives?

Although really, as long as Assad gets Iranian financial support, he doesn't need to hold more than western Syria to survive (and really, just northwestern Syria, since the capital region is expendable in my opinion).

Remember, too, that a Syrian offensive to retake Palmyra, which the Russians telegraphed, is as much to establish an outer perimeter for the defense of Damascus as it is opening a path to eastern Syria.

Unless a solid agreement that joins Assad, Russia, and America to defeat ISIL is achieved, cementing American power to bolster Assad's survival, Assad has no interest in defeating ISIL and has a lot of incentive to leave ISIL intact to keep America focused on ISIL rather than on Assad.

And unless the Russians achieve another photo-op of a smiling foreign minister Lavrov shaking hands with a clueless Kerry over such a deal, will Assad's supporters suffer a critical loss of morale by seeing the Russians pull back leaving them holding the line?

Could the morale of Assad's supporters survive a major defeat that once again denies them the prospect of a victory in the near future that they and their sons survive?

Can the Syrians and their Hezbollah and Iran-sponsered Shia foreign legion endure the casualties to sustain an offensive that tries to add more territory to Assad's core Syria?

And will the rebellion regroup over the coming months and begin clawing back territory from the Syrian defenders?

So Russia turned the tide temporarily for Assad, buying time for diplomacy to cement the limited victory; and Russian forces can come back anytime if the Russian base area comes under threat from a revived rebellion in the future.


And yes, the Russians claim victory and warn they can come back quickly:

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday declared his country's Syria mission a resounding success, but stressed Russia would continue to support the Syrian government and could build up its military presence in the region again within hours if necessary.

The initial intervention beefed up the infrastructure and can now host a return of forces to Syria (REFORSYR?) should Russian objectives require it.

Oh, and under cover of Russia's reduction, according to Strategypage, Hezbollah--which is getting tired of their adventure--may have withdrawn some of their troops. We'll see how this develops.

It will be interesting to see what Turkey and Saudi Arabia do going forward.

UPDATE: Syrian forces are approaching Palymyra, supported by Syrian and Russian air power:

Syrian government forces and their allies pushed forward against Islamic State fighters to reach the outskirts of the historic city of Palmyra on Wednesday, state media and a monitoring group said.

The government lost it last May. Did Russian intervention really revive the Syrian military enough to hold it if retaken?

UPDATE: Pro-Syrian government forces may have entered Palmyra. The link wording doesn't match the article, but whatever. Perhaps recycling links reduces AP's carbon footprint.

Where Microaggressions are Punished

Let's remind our college campus Maoists who dwell on microaggressions and safe spaces what exactly that University of Virginia student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea actually did:

The U.S. student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor by North Korea's supreme court was convicted for trying to steal a banner invoking former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, state media footage of the trial indicates.

The court sentenced the student, Otto Warmbier, on Wednesday for "crimes against the state", North Korean media reported.

He tried to steal a banner. A freaking banner. Which was deemed a crime against the state--Kim Jong Un.

I hope people with authority in American institutions of higher learning and people with the power to finance them take a hard look at the end of the road when you empower petty tyrants with the authority to define and punish trifling matters.

Just where is Mr. Warmbier's safe space, I wonder?

Bigger Than President Obama's Legacy

The continuing debate pushed by our Left over who is more responsible for the rise of those butchers of ISIL--Bush for invading Iraq or Obama for prematurely leaving Iraq--really misses the point.

Sure, I think that the fact that under President Bush 43 the pre-ISIL jihadis in Iraq were beaten down and brought under control argues against his responsibility under the narrow focus of Iraq as a cause; and the rise of ISIL on President Obama's watch after failing to defend that victory argues for his responsibility--again on the narrow focus of Iraq (although slightly broader when you throw in Syria).

But as much as the Left likes to paint Iraq as ground zero of all things jihadi-related, that narrow focus is simply not appropriate.

Radical Islamism has plagued the world for centuries. And we have been coping with it for decades--long before we fought Saddam.

The people who are responsible for the rise of ISIL are Moslems.

Mind you, Moslems are also on the frontline of resisting radical Islam, including ISIL, and suffer most from jihadi savagery.

But radical Islamism springs from Islam, and until Islam itself beats down this jihadi effort to define Islam in the sick image of the jihads, we will be at risk of suffering collateral damage in what is really an Islamic Civil War.

If you really want to assign blame for the rise of ISIL, of course, this is what you must conclude, rather than just attacking Bush and rallying around Obama to shape a rather pointless struggle for a presidential legacy.

UPDATE: If you really believe jihadi murderous impulses have not sprung from a tragically persistent strain of Islam but from Western actions, pray tell what did the Belgians do to "deserve" this?

A suicide bomber blew himself up at Brussels airport on Tuesday killing at least 11 people and a further blast tore through a rush-hour metro train in the capital shortly afterwards, claiming 10 lives, according to public broadcaster VRT.

A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two blasts struck the packed airport departure lounge.

Why do they hate us (as if we did something to provoke it)?

Why do these bastards hate? Full stop.

UPDATE: Related.

UPDATE: My first update was meant to highlight how little Belgium has done in the war on terror--which if Westerners fighting jihadis causes jihadi anger against Westerners, should mean Belgium is safe from attacks.

But my assumption is wrong. Belgians are surprisingly active in the war on terror--on the other side:

Belgium has just 11 million people, and Pew estimated that about 6 percent of the population was Muslim as of 2010. But Belgian and French nationals make up around a quarter of the Europeans who went to fight in Iraq in the mid-2000s. While the government has acknowledged that hundreds of Belgians have gone to fight with ISIS or for other groups in the Syrian civil war, Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an independent researcher, calculated in October that 516 Belgians had fought in Iraq or Syria, far higher than the government’s figures. Based on his numbers, Belgium has contributed more fighters per capita to the fight in the Levant than any other European country.

Is Belgium a "Western" country if more Belgians fight against the West than for it?

UPDATE: Austin Bay has thoughts:

The war against ISIS, however, won't be won by police forces. ISIS must be defeated in Syria and Iraq. Yes, in the Middle East -- that battleground from which Spain withdrew in 2004. The U.S. withdrew its forces in 2011. Last week ISIS forces killed a U.S. Marine in Iraq. To defend Brussels and New York, U.S. ground forces must go back.

Europeans should realize that refusing to fight jihadis "over there" in the Middle East doesn't insulate them from being targets of jihadi hatred as the war on terror comes to them, instead.

As I read reports of how more US troops than the official ceiling are in Iraq by adjusting definitions for "boots on the ground," as more contractors are hired to serve in Iraq in lieu of countable boots, and as the reminder (to me, anyway) of how we use troops in Kuwait (where a troop rotation of headquarters forces there to command Operation Inherent Resolve) keeps relevant troops from counting against the limit, we see that we have to learn that lesson again, too.

One can wish that we'd remained in Iraq after 2011 to help the Iraqis completely wipe out the jihadi that we nearly eliminated with our Surge offensive/Awakening outreach.

But that was inconvenient for reelection rhetoric. So here we are with a whole new Iraq War 2.0.

Let's win it over there to keep from waging it over here.

The Obama Administration Has Never Been Strong on Logic

This part of a critique of President Obama's "our allies are letting us down" excuse-fest cracked me up--in a "we're so totally screwed" sort of way:

If the U.S. won’t act to protect the kingdom, Saudi Arabia will act on its own, as it is currently doing in Yemen, Syria, and other countries — and the U.S. is unlikely to be happy with the consequences.

Yeah. Remember when "leading from behind [allies]" was all the rage in nuanced foreign policy circles?

When we want allies who can fight without us taking the lead--wait for it--we get allies who can fight without us in the lead.

So they might fight in Vietnam. Or invade Egypt.

If we're unwilling to have allies capable of fighting in their own interests, and we're unwilling to pay for our own defense capabilities that could convince our allies that they only need military capacity that complements our capabilities, what's left?

Will we wish for our foes and enemies to simply stop being threats? Or just pretend they aren't threats?

God help me, but I think I just wrote the 2016 Democratic presidential foreign policy.

As I noted after the Libya War, we once had that world. Did we like it then?

Well, we have it now. Even a blogger could see this coming.

I sometimes think back to the first couple of years of the Obama administration when I had regular readers in the White House executive office (two, it seemed, from patterns and IP addresses).

At the time, I never mentioned it because every once in a while I wrote a post with just one audience in mind, and didn't want to taint the waters.

I guess it didn't take.

Or maybe it did have an effect and they were forced to resign.

The best and brightest, indeed.

God Must Love Democrats

What am I to make of the fact that in national polls Bernie Sanders has a higher percentage of Democratic voters than Trump gets from Republicans; yet socialist Sanders is doomed to lose his nomination fight and Trump is handily in the lead?

And according to the media, Republicans are the people wrecking their party by voting--in smaller percentages than Democrats are voting for a socialist--for a clown?

If we needed another lesson that life isn't fair, this is it.

Mosul Storm?

I remain disturbed that a year and a half after we and our allies started training Iraqi army forces, the Counter-Terrorism force remains the only core force capable of leading Iraqi offensives. But does this apparent weakness mask preparations for a blitz north?

Iraqi forces continue to press their offensive in Iraq's Anbar province, after liberating Ramadi from ISIL control:

Led by the elite Counter-Terrorism Service, forces from the police, army and local tribal fighters were making a final push to retake Hit, 145 kilometres (90 miles) west of Baghdad.

"They have begun a broad operation to liberate Hit and Kubaysa," Major General Ali Ibrahim Daboun, the head of the Al-Jazeera Operations Command, told AFP.

We are providing air support, along with Iraqi aircraft.

Although I assume that we have trained Iraqi forces capable of spearheading less-trained ground forces who follow in their wake to hold gains but are holding them out of the line for the Mosul offensive (once that last and most important PowerPoint presentation is finally made!), it does remain disturbing to me that the small counter-terrorism force remains--as it was in June 2014 when ISIL took Mosul--the only Iraqi force actually spearheading Iraqi offensives.

I hope my assumption is right. Sadly, a recent Marine casualty indicates that we probably are getting close to unleashing a Mosul Storm:

The Marine killed in an ISIS rocket attack in Iraq on Saturday was at the first American firebase that had only become operational a few days earlier CNN has learned.

The existence of the firebase had not been made public. The Pentagon had planned to acknowledge the firebase this week, a defense official tells CNN.

The rugged location for now has a "couple of hundred" Marines living in tents near Makhmour in northern Iraq. It's assumed ISIS observed the Marines moving into the area and saw them firing practice rounds with their howitzers, the official said.

This is our first firebase--a protected artillery unit (usually a battery guarded by a company of infantry) to support units in the field--and is called Firebase Bell. Although we have artillery on bigger bases to help defend them.

We were perhaps not dug in yet and perhaps not acclimated to the hostile environment. ISIL took advantage of that.

I've long wanted our fire support to include not just air power but helicopters and artillery. So this is good.

I hope this indicates a pending offensive since I'd guess we wouldn't want to dangle a potential rocket magnet like that out there too long for no purpose.

And I hope that ISIL morale in their Iraq contingent is as fragile as I think it is, and that once the Mosul offensive starts it will make progress more rapid than observers assume--and kill ISIL defenders in large numbers by pursuing them until they break and run.

UPDATE: Strategypage has thoughts on the pending offensive, which follows operations to interfere with ISIL lines of communication into Mosul:

Government forces south of Mosul and Kurdish troops (and non-Moslem militias) north of the city and government forces and Shia militias south of the city are already preparing for the final attack on the densely built city center. This “approach battle” is meant to cut the city off from other ISIL forces in Anbar and Syria. The main road to Raqqa was cut in late February with the capture of the town of Shaddadi. That followed the continuing advance into western Anbar since the liberation of Ramadi in December 2015. Another important success has been government forces becoming as effective as the Kurds in regularly defeating ISIL counterattacks. You rarely hear of successful ISIL attacks on Iraqi security forces anymore.

Reports from inside Mosul indicate growing panic and declining morale among ISIL personnel (at all levels). This has led to growing internal violence, like public executions of misbehaving ISIL members. Recently 21 ISIL men were publicly executed for refusing to fight.

Politics, as in how to handle the Kurds and pro-Iran Shia militias and what they might want, is what is holding the offensive back rather than narrow military issues.

Do read it all.

And I'll say it again, I'm not sure that enough ISIL members in Iraq are willing to fight to the death these days to hold off the offensive.

As long as I'm at it, I'd like to see a Jordanian offensive into western Anbar to complement the Iraqi push that has continued since the liberation of Ramadi. This would reduce ISIL ability to shift forces to Mosul and potentially collapse ISIL across all its Iraq territory.

This Will Work Out Just Swell

Under Democratic management, the city of New York is now fine with littering , urinating in public, and public alcohol consumption:

[The] NYPD’s announcement this week that it will no longer arrest those who litter, drink in public, or urinate on Manhattan streets will have an entirely predictable result on the quality of life in New York City. Gotham will become less orderly and, over time, less safe. Abandoning 25 years of successful public policy and expecting that the city won’t begin to revert to its former levels of disorder is worse than insane—it’s practically criminal.

Well, we wouldn't want to have an ugly "hands up, don't pee" incident, now would we?

It's always interesting to see what kind of future "progressives" want to make progress toward.

Haven't we seen how this works enough without falling for it yet again?

Sigh. But for those with no memory and no knowledge of history, it all seems so fresh and new--even when a confused, elderly man presents it.

It's no wonder young people are pro-Bernie Sanders. It wasn't so long ago that they believed in Santa Claus who brings neat stuff out of nowhere to give to good little boys and girls.

Tip to Instapundit for the NYC article.

Speak Hopefully and Carry a Big Shtick

I think the next president will need to give an outreach speech to the American Allies world to undo the damage our president has done to it.

Behold the president who restored our reputation with our allies (you do remember the nonsense charge that President Bush wrecked our friendships, right?):

American alliances are not in good shape these days, with many countries worrying that President Obama does not value the alliances, their own role in those alliances, or the commitments our alliances imply to the safety of states that are to some degree dependent on the United States.

It is therefore mysterious why the president decided to inflict further damage in interviews with The Atlantic.

Well, maybe not a speech. The outreach speech to the Islamic world hasn't seem to have done squat diddly. But our president had no clue about the history of our relations with the Islamic world let alone the causes of ill feelings.

Hope and change was just a marketing gimmick, it is clear.

I really don't get nuance. After viewing it in action for 7 years, how is it different from ineptitude?

UPDATE: Although I don't think the leading contenders for either major party is the one to repair this damage.

We live in interesting times.

Hasn't the Hope and Change Reached Its Best-By Date?

Some lunatic just hijacked a plane to Cuba!

Wait. What?

Oh, never mind. Air Force One touched down in Cuba:

President Barack Obama arrives in Cuba on Sunday for a 48-hour visit, making history by venturing into what was once enemy territory and sparking enthusiasm among Cubans who have seen their Communist government vilify 10 previous U.S. leaders.

What were those past presidents thinking when they vilified a cruel and aggressive communist dictatorship? Now it is all smiles.

Look, I don't think we have to have a frozen foreign policy against Cuba. That's not my problem with the presidential outreach. If we can have a policy that helps Cubans without tightening the government's grip on the Cuban people in the process, I say fine.

But you have to admit that our "frozen" policy of isolating Cuba from American trade at least--in the absence of a major power to subsidize them as the Soviets once did--helped keep a threat too weak to do a lot of harm in an important region.

And we at least didn't soil our hands with any type of approval of the Cuban regime.

Further, if you want sanctions as an alternative to militarized responses, what does ending sanctions without compelling regime changes say to current subjects of our sanctions?

Sure, Iran is the biggest sanctions example and Cuba just bounces the rubble. But anyone under sanctions knows that they can endure and see sanctions end in time with their regime intact. If their people are poorer, the regime supporters at least know they got through okay.

Sure, defenders of President Obama's policies say that opening up to Cuba will unleash forces that will liberalize Cuba in the long run.

Maybe. I can't rule that out.

But recall that the Castro regime agreed to open up not to doom their regime, but to save it.

Given how the world seems to burn wherever our president touches it, whose objective seems more realistic?

Although the way our president throws friends under the bus, Cuba may find being our foe brings greater respect from us.

Will liberals still swoon over Cuba when Starbucks and McDonald's move in and Cuba loses its glamour?

Really, I'll at least say that at this point Cuba is way down on my list of worries.

But perhaps that will change in a decade.

UPDATE: Well, duh:

"Decades of friendly partner-like relations link Russia and Cuba," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with reporters. "We are interested in Cuba, which is friendly to us, maintaining good relations with all its neighbors and above all with the United States."

If we call off the cold war with communist Cuba, Russia's problem of defending their friend in the Western hemisphere decline immensely. And economic ties with America will reduce the need of Russia to subsidize Cuba to maintain this intelligence outpost just off our shores and logistics stepping stone to the Western Hemisphere.