Spare the Poison, Spoil the Child

While we rightly focus our war efforts on our national interest in keeping Afghanistan from once again being a staging ground for attacks on our soil, remember who we're fighting over there:

Recently, some Taliban in Afghanistan poisoned fifty girls who were attending schools. Apparently the attackers used a high concentration of insecticide. Earlier in the year, several female students were disfigured by acid, thrown at them by Taliban attackers. The Taliban have burned down dozens of girls schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and intimidate teachers and students to stay away. Some teachers have been killed as well, for not taking this advice. One of the common beliefs among Islamic conservatives, especially the Taliban, is belief that education for women is forbidden. Currently, over 70 percent of Afghans are illiterate. But that varies greatly by gender. Some 44 percent of men are literate, but only about 14 percent of women. Many Afghan men want to keep it that way, and the Taliban have used that to cultivate support.

Yes, yes, I know that these scum pervert their religion. But it is hard not to notice that an awful lot of them pervert their religion, seemingly unconcerned that their beliefs don't mesh with "true" interpretations of their religion. Barely religious Christian Western experts on Islamic thought surely know more about true Islam than illiterate, mountain thugs, I suppose. It would help this interpretation if the most violent form of Islam wasn't extremely well funded by the Saudis. But that's irrelevant, right?

And the Taliban and their jihadi ilk seem rather militant about their poor interpretation of the religion in the name of all the rest. Fervor and guns (and box cutters, poison, or acid) are a deadly combination.

Please explain to the little girls that we have a year to show progress, according to some of our Congressional leaders, or it will be time to pull the plug on the whole thing--sanctuaries and little girls be damned.

Obeying the Rule

I'm not unsympathetic to the Speaker's argument that she couldn't talk about the briefings on enhanced interrogation methods.

After all, the first rule of Enhanced Interrogation Club is don't talk about Enhanced Interrogation Club.

So Logically ...

Joseph Cirincione seems to know the facts, but still blames a budding nuclear arms race on our decision to sell nuclear power techonology to the United Arab Emirates:

I don't claim any in-depth knowledge of the UAE. I have never been there. But I am deeply disturbed by what is happening in the region. This is not an isolated case. Over the past three years, a dozen Middle East countries have declared their intent to pursue civilian nuclear programs, including Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Turkey. Sixty years after the nuclear age began, these states have suddenly become interested in nuclear power. I have a hard time believing that Middle East leaders got together to watch Al Gore's movie and decided to reduce their carbon footprint. This is not about energy. It is about Iran.

Well there you go, Joe. It is about Iran. Fear of Iran. Not fear that Iran will have cheap and clean nuclear energy, but fear that Iran will have nuclear weapons.

When all those people go on about how we can live with and deter a nuclear Iran, ponder a future with a nuclear-armed Middle East. Perhaps you can organize the facts to blame America, as Mr. Cirincione has, but the cause is a nuclear-armed nutball regime in Tehran.

The solution isn't to abandon the nuclear deal with the UAE, but to destroy the Iranian mullah regime. I bet the UAE loses its enthusiasm for nuclear energy real fast, if the mullahs are overthrown.

The Main Front?

Changing commanders, let alone firing commanders, has been rare in the Long War. It is not uncommon in the history of warfare. Quite the opposite, actually. Executing losing commanders was not uncommon.

I have no particular opinion on the firing of General McKiernan as commander of Afghan operations other than to say that I don't think we are losing in Afghanistan, I don't think we need many more troops to defeat the enemy, and I'm worried about supplying more troops in Afghanistan. How much of this situation is "blamed" on McKiernan, I don't know. But a commander's job is to win and I have no problem in theory with replacing even good men and good commanders who aren't winning with somebody else. That at least, focuses the minds of the new people tremendously. Troops die when a commander doesn't win. I thank McKiernan for his long service but I won't feel sorry for him over this. A loss of career doesn't stack up sympathy-wise to death and injury.

McKiernan, it seems, has spent most of his 11 months asking for more troops rather than formulating a plan to use what he has to win:

The Obama Administration has made Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror over the past month, it had concluded that McKiernan's tenure there had involved too much wheel-spinning even as the Taliban extended its reach. There was not enough of the "new thinking" demanded by Gates. "It's time for new leadership and fresh eyes," Gates said, refusing to elaborate. He noted that Joints Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, who as chief of U.S. Central Command oversees the Afghan war, had endorsed the move. Officers have typically served about 24 months in the slot, meaning McKiernan had served less than half his expected tour.

Military experts anticipate that U.S. policy in Afghanistan more militarily pointed as well as politically deft, once McChrystal and Rodrigues, his 1976 West Point classmate and fellow Afghan vet, are confirmed by the Senate. "McKiernan did his best - he was just the wrong guy," says retired Army officer and military analyst Ralph Peters. "McChrystal will ask for more authority, not more troops." By the end of this year, the U.S. expects to have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 21,000 ordered there by Obama.

If anything, this reinforces my view that most problems are solved by better leadership rather than more troops. I still have trouble seeing how more troops are going to solve the problem of crushing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Heck, I have trouble seeing just how we are losing the war. That conclusion doesn't add up, to me.

I know that as we win in Iraq, Afghanistan is supposed to become the main front. Yet even smashing the Taliban with an Afghanistan surge won't solve the problem. Even sealing off the border with our troops (and I'm not assuming this is even easy given the force-to-space ratio) and crushing jihadis in the interior of Afghansitan will be undone once our surge recedes unless the Afghan security forces can take our place to seal the border and keep Pakistan-based jihadis out.

Given that most of our Afghanistan problem lies across the border in Pakistan where we have little ability to affect the fight, it almost seems as if the administration is viewing Pakistan--whose nuclear weapons are a major concern should jihadis seize control in Pakistan, as long a shot as that is right now--as the main front, and Afghanistan is the cross-border operation designed to prevent support from going from Afghansitan to Pakistan.

The debate over what our objectives are in Afghanistan may depend on what our objectives are for the region. Just what is the main front?

UPDATE: Strategypage states that McKiernan is a good officer, but that McChrystal is just better:

The United States has replaced the current commander of American forces in Afghanistan, general David McKiernan, with lieutenant general Stanley McChrystal. McKiernan had done a good job, but it is believed that McChrystal, a career infantry and special operations officer, is more capable of innovating and developing new tactics and techniques needed to deal with the unique situation in Afghanistan.

This fits with my view that I haven't seen any obvious signs of command failure, other than the possibility that he was not doing enough while waiting for new troops. If so, McKiernan should have been allowed to leave in a better manner than this. I never agreed that Casey failed in Iraq since under his command we had made progress through spring 2006--but he did fail to adapt to the post-Samarra environment where Iraqis were incapable of making noticable progress to defeat the enemies who were intent on inciting civil war. And Casey was allowed to continue his Army career. Replacing McKiernan may have been the right thing to do, but the manner may have been unjust.

By All Means, Reciprocate

The Iranian leadership is just one big justification for why we have JDAMs. The Saberi incident is case in point:

Two weeks ago, a senior European diplomat arrived in Washington with a message from the Iranian government. The Iranians saw a parallel between the case of captive American journalist Roxana Saberi and that of three Iranian diplomats held by the U.S. military in Iraq. The Iranians were not demanding an exchange of prisoners, the European envoy told TIME, but were setting up a more subtle test of the Obama Administration's intentions. Now that Saberi has been released, Tehran will be watching the U.S. reaction for signs of a reciprocal goodwill gesture.

We grab three Iranian terrorists operating under diplomatic cover and an innocent reporter's arrest is the same thing?!

By all means, reciprocate. Arrest an Iranian at random, try him, convict him, then release him on parole. That my friends, would be "reciprocal."

This is not an open hand being extended to us.

Desperate for a Pretext

I warned that the Georgian government should not use force against the protesters out in the streets. The Russians are itching to have a pretext to finish the job they inexplicably failed to do back in August when they were an hour's road march from Tbilisi.

It may be nerve wracking for Saakashvili to watch the protesters, but as long as the protesters just remain peaceful, let them protest. The protesters will eventually tire of the protesters if the government doesn't give the non-protesters reason to support the protesters. Any use of force could be a problem:

In addition, using even minimal force would just risk giving the Russians a pretext (because the Russians might engineer bloodshed or just lie) to use their nearby troops to "rescue" the protesters.

The government briefly and on a small scale with no fatalities or serious injuries, used force, and the Russians are lying about it. Putin is on record:

“Rallies are violently dispersed, opposition figures are wounded, shot at with rubber bullets, there is blood in the streets, there are more and more political prisoners, mutinies in the armed forces,” Putin said in the interview, transcript of which was posted on the Russian government’s website.

Russia wants to crush the pro-Western Georgia and they're ready for round 2:

Anti-government protests since April 9 have paralyzed Tbilisi by blocking roads and obstructing entrances to government buildings.

A brief and bloodless mutiny at a tank base outside Tbilisi last week raised questions about Saakashvili's grip on power. The mutiny occurred on the eve of NATO military exercises in Georgia, which Russia has condemned.

Less than two weeks after Russia took formal control of the borders of Georgia's rebel republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a buildup of Russian forces along the de-facto border between South Ossetia and Georgia — 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Tbilisi, Georgia's capital — was evident.

"It is clear that we have seen the second wave of the increase of forces and armor in the last month," said Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior Ministry's analytics' department. "These are alarming signs for us."

My expansive faith in the good will of Putin's Russia does not extend to believing they are not involved in trying to foment chaos in Georgia to justify a march on Tbilisi.

Difficulty Imagining Their Country At All

I don't understand why Westerners don't feel, in our bones, the superiority of our culture and the need to defend it from those who would undermine it and destroy it. For all our physical and material power, if we don't have the will to win, we will lose to aggressive and confident enemies even if their material weakness makes their threat seem like a joke.

Even as we fight jihadists overseas, parts of the West are hacking away at our figurative walls from within, weakening our confidence in our system.

And many of our leaders are so blinded by their disdain for our system of government and culture that they condemn them both regardless of the facts.

Steyn has a disturbing piece about the Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff’s account of the death of two little children as a condemnation of Canada itself, which he has difficulty imagining as a country, it seems:

“To imagine it as a citizen is to imagine it as a resident of Yellow Quill reservation in Saskatchewan would have had to imagine it, this Canada where two half-naked children died in a snow-covered field in the sub-Arctic darkness because their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it, and all you can hope is that death was as mercilessly quick as the cold can make it. What does a resident of Yellow Quill imagine, what do we Canadians imagine our country to be, the morning we learn that children have perished in this way? It is surely more than just a tragic story of one family. It is a story about us.”

Ah. The deaths of two native children is clearly a story about Canada's failings, he says. The poor father was compelled to make a desperate journey in bitter cold, seeking help for his children. How could Canada be so distant as to require that doomed dash through the night?

But as tragic as that episode is, and the image of two little children dying that way is truly horrifying, is it a story about Canadians? About us? I think not:

“Their father tried to take the sick little girls to his parents and never made it.” I wonder what it takes to formulate it that way, knowing, as Ignatieff surely does, that Christopher Pauchay was drunk, so drunk that he was oblivious (or so we must presume, for he was found guilty merely of negligence, rather than sadism) to the fact that it was well after midnight, minus 50 with the wind chill, and he had dressed three-year-old Kaydance and 16-month Santana only in T-shirts and diapers. At 5 a.m., Pauchay was found on a neighbour’s doorstep, stinking of booze, frostbitten and aggressive, so that the RCMP were obliged to accompany the paramedics. It was not until eight hours later, in the hospital, that he mentioned the children.

As to “the sick little girls,” Santana wasn’t sick until her father’s carelessness made her first ill, and then dead; and Kaydance’s body was discovered with a cut on her leg, but, given the number of Pauchay’s knives found scattered on his path through the snow, or the others his brother-in-law had seen him putting under the sofa that afternoon, there’s no way of knowing whether, amidst the other abuses he heaped fatally on her, the cut was also her father’s fault—or more benignly the consequence of a three-year-old toddling around in her diaper during her “parent’s” all-day bender.

Why couldn’t Ignatieff have used words like “drunk” and “abusive,” or even “minus 50” and “dressed only in diapers”?

Oh, come on, be reasonable. He’s a caring, progressive party leader. Can’t go around being judgmental. Stick to the passive voice—“children have perished”—and the usual sentimental evasions. The price of “imagining Canada” Ignatieff-style is that an awful lot of cold hard reality has to be discarded.

But that's how you chip away the bricks that make up our confidence in our sytem of government and our free society, based on centuries of building our institutions and customs. You condemn us all for the failures of individuals, and use that as an excuse to refuse to defend our countries or our common free society--and even to condemn them, ignoring all the good we've achieved.

When our leaders are so eager to undermine what we've built, who can we count on?

Ignatieff has views all too common in the Western world. We need better leaders.

Praying for Nukes and Demoting the Spooks

North Korea's communist regime had previously relied on a strategy of spooks and nukes to maintain their power. Nuclear missiles would deter foreign invasion and secret police would control the army and people.

The army was the loser in this scheme but without money, something had to give, and it wasn't going to be the privileges of the elites.

With reports of a new nuclear test out there, the nukes pillar is still an objective.

But even the spooks proved insufficient, and the North Korean elites stripped some of their best remaining competent troops to reinforce the spies.

This move, apparently, is just a sign of the restoration of the military as the pillar of support for the elites:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has apparently selected his youngest (25 year old Kim Jong Un) son as his successor. As the first step in this process, Kim Jong Un has been appointed to a low ranking job with the National Defense Commission (or NDC), where he can be rapidly promoted over a few years to give him some "experience." But his father, Kim Jong Il, does not look long for this world. So an interim government, composed of a committee of generals and security officials, will rule as regent until Kim Jong Un is considered old enough to take over. That might be never, because North Korea is not expected to last much longer. Unless the leadership up north can reverse the economic and social decline, the North Korean police state is just going to collapse. The NDC is run by the generals, and has also had most intelligence operations of the communist party transferred to them. This weakens the communist party, while making the generals more powerful. Apparently, the leadership up north (which basically represents a few percent of the population) believes that their best chance of survival is with the generals, not the communist politicians. The communist party had previously controlled two intel agencies, which kept an eye on the south (as well as some people in the north.) But now the communist party has fewer eyes, and the generals have more.

The spies seem to be losing out. But remember that the military lost out in the power play before because the army cost too much to maintain relative to the costs of spies and nuclear weapons. How can the elites rely on the army when the army is still too poor to be a pillar of the regime? Is just moving the spooks to army control more than just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

I'd feel better about the impending regime collapse if the world wasn't spending so much on stimulus spending. How will we help South Korea with the costs of that collapse? A price that will be huge even if no war results should the North Korean elites try to roll the dice by trying to attack South Korea.

A New Main Enemy in Iraq

Long before we managed to knock back all the armed threats to victory in Iraq, I noted Strategypage's comments on the eventual need to fight corruption and institute rule of law in Iraq.

Prime Minister Maliki, at least in words, sees this fight coming:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared Saturday that the theft of public money and other forms of corruption were problems no less pressing than the sectarian ethnic strife that brought Iraq to the brink of collapse.

Maliki's remarks suggested that corruption would be a pivotal issue in parliamentary elections expected by year's end, and they came amid growing criticism in parliament. The topic has dominated newspaper headlines and emerges in many conversations in Baghdad's streets.

I hope we stay involved to help fight this battle. It is crucial to entrenching democracy in Iraq that will outlast the presence of our troops.

Human Shields

Our enemies in Afghanistan are still working on nullifying our air power:

A joint U.S.-Afghan investigation confirmed that an unspecified number of civilians died in a southern Afghan battle local officials say killed dozens of villagers, but the initial findings released Saturday appeared to blame Taliban militants who used locals as "human shields."

Heavy fighting took place in two villages in Farah province over several hours Monday and Tuesday, a joint statement said. It said U.S. forces responded to a call for help from Afghan forces, and that militants attacked the troops from several locations around the villages.

It said troops called for airstrikes on the militant positions.

"The investigation suggests that villagers had taken refuge in a number of houses in each village. Reports also indicate that Taliban fighters deliberately forced villagers into houses from which they then attacked ANSF (Afghan security forces) and Coalition forces," a statement from the U.S. coalition said.

Neither the U.S. nor Afghan forces took responsibility for killing civilians in Saturday's statement, but appeared to lay the blame on militants.

"The joint investigation team strongly condemns the brutality of the Taliban extremists deliberately targeting Afghan civilians and using them as human shields," the statement said.

Ralph Peters isn't happy about the script that our enemies write, the media reports, and too many in the West believe:

THE most effective weapon terrorists have found to wield against us isn't the headline-grabbing suicide bomber or even the deadly roadside bomb, the IED.

Such weapons can harm us, but they can't stop us. Terror's super-weapon is the lie.

Lying about civilian casualties is the one sure way to impede or even halt US (or Israeli) operations, to force such tight restrictions on our troops that they can't win.

The casualty con's so effective as both propaganda and tactic that terrorists everywhere have adopted the technique. It's been so successful that our enemies long ago transitioned to the next phase: creating civilian casualties and blaming us.

It works. The media love the charge. Our troops and pilots are always guilty -- even if proven innocent. Because so many on the left want us to be guilty.

Few journalists bother to investigate. If the Taliban, al Qaeda, Hezbollah or Hamas says it, it must be so. In Media Wonderland, terrorists never lie. Now every successful strike on a Taliban target generates the instant claim that the dead were all civilians.

Even if some in the administration think we just air raid villages and kill civilians, Secretary Gates understands the situation, as he explained in answering a question about the latest accusation against our forces:

The -- first of all, I'm well aware of this. And as I have -- have said many times before, we -- from the United States and our coalition partners -- do everything we possibly can to avoid civilian casualties.

Representatives of General McKiernan and the Afghan Ministries of Defense and Interior have gone to Farah to investigate what happened there. The information that you cite about Taliban throwing grenades into houses to create civilian casualties and put the blame on the United States is a report I have heard. But I think we will have to wait -- to wait and see what the results of the investigation are.

We regret any -- even one -- Afghan civilian causality -- innocent civilian causality, and we will make whatever amends are necessary. And I believe that Gen. McKiernan's spokesman, in fact, has already expressed regret about this incident, regardless of who caused it.

We all know that the Taliban use civilians casualties, and sometimes create them, to create problems for the United States and our coalition partners. We will have to wait and see what happened in this -- in this particular case.

But I would make one additional point.

Since the beginning of this year, civilian casualties in Afghanistan are down 40 percent. Casualties American, coalition partners, and Afghan security forces are up 75 percent.

So I believe that the Afghan government, the Americans and our international partners are doing everything we can to avoid civilian casualties. And we will continue to do that.

Even in cases where our bombs are involved in killing Afghans, the actual responsibility lies with the Taliban for using human shields. It is simply not right to just assume death by our bombs means our responsibility:

It is responsibility that is the question. And here the UN does a great favor to the Taliban by placing the blame on them for just 55% of the deaths. The 277 deaths from small arms and artillery, presubably, and 552 airstrike deaths are assumed to be fully the fault of the United States and our Afghan allies.

The airstrikes especially are usually part of the enemy's propaganda campaign to silence our planes that devastate Taliban groups roaming the countryside. But when the enemy fights among innocent people, it is not our fault if our bombs kill nearby innocents when we target combatants. We are not obliged to hold fire against the enemy just because innocents are nearby. Nor is not our fault if civilians aiding the enemy are later proclaimed to be innocents by the Taliban when the UN teams and reporters come around with cameras and notebooks. These deaths properly should be apportioned to the Taliban for responsibility.

We choose to avoid striking to reduce the deaths, but we are under no legal obligation under the laws of war to hold fire as a routine matter and put our troops at risk. This is all about triggering their integrating air defense media system:

We had to supply Stinger surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) to Afghan resistance groups in the 1980s to blunt Soviet air power. Today the Taliban just needs to deploy their intergrated global air defense system--the media. Yet if we fail to adapt, we make it more difficult to keep public support in Afghansitan and at home to continue the fight.

As Secretary Gates notes, Afghan civilian casualties are actually down. And if you think it is because our enemies are fighting cleaner rather than our forces accepting risks to fight more carefully, I have no use for you.

Always remember, civilian casualties are the point of enemy attacks. Civilian casualties are something we try to avoid even if it poses some risks to our troops. By the bizarre logic of the world, our failure to be perfect is something to condemn even as our enemies get a free pass on their behavior that intentionally kills civilians.

The Challenges from Across the Border

If you are wondering why violence continues in Iraq despite our victories over al Qaeda and the Sadrists so long after the surge ended, General Odierno explains:

We are fully aware that the challenges are still in front of us, as Iraq continues to involve and improve the problem -- as the situation continues to involve and it continues to improve, the problem set actually becomes more complex as we move forward.

But we still see evidence that Iran is funding, training and equipping surrogates who are conducting disruptive operations within Iraq. While the level of Iranian interference is somewhat lessened, it is nevertheless not what Iraq should expect from a neighbor. We expect that Iraq will have a relationship with its neighbors, and Iran has had an opportunity to make that relationship a positive one based on respect for Iraq's sovereignty. It should be clear to Iranian leaders that the ratified security agreement, which Tehran has strongly opposed, and the recent provincial elections, which largely repudiated outside interference, that the Iraqi people demand respect.

Likewise, some elements of foreign fighters continue to traffic through Syria. This rate has also been reduced, but Syria also has the opportunity to improve its status with Iraq through actions that demonstrate a commitment to eliminating the use of its soil as a staging area for foreign fighters.

It has been difficult to snuff the remaining terror groups because the Iraqis aren't as good as our forces and because Iran and Syria continue to bolster these enemies. Iraq's forces will continue to get better, and will eventually beat them down.

But for now, our enemies continue to kill our troops and our allies' people, even as we reach out our open hand to them--instead of making them pay for killing our people.

Is it any wonder our friends worry we'll betray them to strike a deal with Iran?

UPDATE: The Syrians value their Iranian alliance more than improving relations with America:

After a long hiatus, the Syrian pipeline operated by the organization al-Qaeda in Iraq is back in business.

The revival of a transit route that officials had declared all but closed comes as the Obama administration is exploring a new diplomatic dialogue with Syria. At the same time, Washington remains concerned by Syrian activities -- including ongoing support for the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as activities involving Iraq.

On Wednesday, acting Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey D. Feltman and National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro arrived in Syria for their second visit since Barack Obama's inauguration as president. Two days later, however, Obama renewed U.S. sanctions against Syria, accusing Damascus of supporting terrorism in the Middle East and undermining Iraqi stability.

I guess bad relations with Syria weren't George W. Bush's fault, after all.

All Better Now!

I mentioned that we'd try al Qaeda terrorists after superficial changes that the administration would portray as major improvement over the awful procedures of Bush.

Behold:

The Obama commissions will be, in every material way, exactly the same as the Bush Commissions: they will allow the trial of terrorism suspects in a setting that favors the government and protects classified information, and they will be criticized — perhaps not quite as sharply, but sharply — by the same hard Lefties that Obama and Holder were courting during the campaign. ...

The Obama campaign slandered the commissions, just like it slandered Gitmo, military detention, coercive interrogations, the state secrets doctrine, extraordinary rendition, and aggressive national-security surveillance. Gitmo is still open (and Obama and Holder now admit it's a first-rate facility), we are still detaining captives (except when Obama releases dangerous terrorists), the Obama Justice Department has endorsed the Bush legal analysis of torture law in federal court, and Obama has endorsed state secrets, extraordinary rendition, and national-security surveillance (and the Bush stance on surveillance has since been reaffirmed by the federal court created to rule on such issues).

Do these people ever get called on their hypocrisy?

Well, not likely. Not by our media.

But I'll be grateful that the administration is carrying on the Bush legacy on this matter.

And at some point, enough of the media will get tired of just picking up their cash on the dresser on the way out of the hotel room to actually report on this administration.

Unchanged Hostility

North Korea has barely allowed the hoopla over the administration's first hundred days to pass before declaring the whole thing a sham:

"Nothing would be expected from the U.S., which remains unchanged in its hostility toward its dialogue partner," North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried Friday by state media. The North "will bolster its nuclear deterrent as it has already clarified."

North Korea actually behaves as if the concepts of hope and change are meaningless to them!

I think I may end this line of posts. I think I've made my point that the problems we have in certain sectors of the world--whether enemies or uncooperative friends--were not the fault of George W. Bush. He was merely a convenient scapegoat for our problems.

And another reason this type of hope and change post has appealed to me is that it addresses a long-standing mistake of people to assume all foreign actors are mere passive subjects who react to what we do or don't do. How many times have you heard somebody blame America for some other country's actions, as if they sit around intently watching what we do (or don't do) before deciding on a course of action?

Countries act on their own, for the most part, without regard to what we do. And the continuity of actions by other nations when shifting from dealing with the "cowboy unilateral" Bush to President Obama--the man who just about wrote the "global test"--should make that clear.

Don't make me use sarcasm again.

This Should Be Embarrassing

From the land that once shook Europe:

According to reports in the Berliner Zeitung and Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspapers on Friday, games like paint ball and laser tag are to be banned in Germany in the future, and people who violate the law could be fined up to €5,000.

"These games simulate murder," Wolfgang Bosbach, who heads the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in the German parliament, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. He said a deal had also been reached with German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "

So the Germans think their paint ballers are more aggressive than their army's soldiers, who don't fight?

If the Germans keep this up, not even the French will be afraid of them any more.

If They Go Further, They'll Die

Europeans seem to believe that if they hate Jews as much as their radicalized Moslem citizens, when the Moslems are in the majority, they'll think fondly about their non-Jewish Infidel neighbors.

I'm sure that the plan sounds really good in the original French and makes perfect sense. Unfortunately for the nominally Christian Europeans, that's their logic and not the Islamists' logic. This path will turn out badly for the Europeans, as Steyn writes:

The joke about Mandatory Palestine was that it was the twice-promised land. But isn’t that Europe, too? And perhaps Russia and maybe Canada, a little ways down the line? Two cultures jostling within the same piece of real estate. Not long ago, I found myself watching the video of another “pro-Palestinian” protest in central London with the Metropolitan Police retreating up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly in the face of a mob hurling traffic cones and jeering, “Run, run, you cowards!” and “Allahu akbar!” You would think the deluded multi-culti progressives would understand: In the end, this isn’t about Gaza, this isn’t about the Middle East; it’s about them. It may be some consolation to an ever-lonelier Israel that, in one of history’s bleaker jests, in the coming Europe the Europeans will be the new Jews.

This will end badly for the Europeans, if they keep going this way. Heck, how will the Europeans complain about the tactics of Islamist persecution of Europeans once the Jews are gone if their only complaint will be that they are now on the receiving end of those tactics by the majority Moslems?

How much time does Europe have to realize it must take its place in the front ranks to defend Western civilization from Medieval forces that would tear down what Europeans have built over the centuries?

The NeoCons Strike!

Congress is messing with the open-hand buzz over reaching out to Iran to talk them out of nuclear weapons (which they deny they are pursuing). This report is hardly hopey at all:

Congressional investigators say some foreign intelligence analysts believe U.S. intelligence is underestimating Iran's progress toward designing a nuclear warhead before Tehran halted its program in 2003.

The foreign analysts believe that Iran ended its work because it had made sufficient progress, not because of international pressure, as the 2007 U.S. national intelligence assessment concluded.

The report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not identify its sources, referring only to "intelligence analysts and nuclear experts working for foreign governments." It says some research was conducted in Israel, which has been publicly critical of the 2007 U.S. assessment.

The foreign analysts believe "intelligence indicates Iran had produced a suitable design, manufactured some components and conducted enough successful explosives tests to put the project on the shelf until it manufactured the fissile material required for several weapons," the report says.

The revelations by the committee, headed by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., come as President Barack Obama is promising direct engagement with Iran and seeking diplomatic openings. The report backs the Obama administration's approach but recommends balancing new openings with continued pressure.

Wait, that's John Kerry's committee? How embarrassing. He doesn't even look Neoconish.

It is probably a bit of butt covering in case the Obama administration misses Iran's nuclear threshold completely. The Senate, at least, will say they warned us. Even though they still say they support the president's policy, it makes just enough of a warning for a US Senator to claim wisdom and foresight and so absolve themselves of all responsibility.

And that is far more important than actually stopping Iran from going nuclear.

About Those Resurgent Afghan Taliban

I know everyone in the media says the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating. I just don't see it. Which is why I haven't been eager to put more troops into Afghanistan where we have supply lines far less secure than I'd like.

Strategypage doesn't see the Taliban has this mighty force about to conquer Afghanistan:

The Taliban have announced (via messages posted on the Internet) that they are going to launch a major offensive this year. In reality, the Taliban are playing defense, as they lost their ability to carry out large scale offensive operations over the last two years. Now, with three additional American brigades arriving, as well as additional troops for several NATO contingents, the Taliban are bracing for more attacks on their bases and drug operations.

With more of our troops being more active in Afghanistan in more places where we never operating persistently in, of course casualties go up. Combat intensity is not a measure of winning or losing. It just isn't.

We're going in for the kill. Let's see if the hand puppet crowd will tolerate that.

Georgia on Their Mind

The contrast between our yawns over Russia's forays into the Western Hemisphere and Russia's fist-pounding fury over our forays into Russia's former empire is amusing:

NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia on Wednesday after heavy criticism from neighboring Russia and a brief mutiny in the Georgian military.

Russia — which regards NATO as a Cold War relic with intrusive ambitions to expand into former Soviet countries — angrily dismissed Georgian accusations that Tuesday's mutiny was a Moscow-engineered coup attempt.

The Russians really are clueless that Russian aggression is what drives her former republics to seek security in NATO from their predatory threats. And Russia's fury over a distant and tiny country is just bizarre.

But whatever Russia is up to, NATO forces are in Georgia and will start small-scale maneuvers some time after May 11.

Hopefully we'll spend our summers in Georgia with lots of small NATO exercises to keep the Russians at bay lest they try for round two.

And the Georgians had best make sure their armored units are loyal and ready to resist the Russians.

Well

I'm feeling bloggy. So here's another episode of Women I'll Never Touch.

Zooey Deschenel:



Source: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/zooey-deschanel.jpg

I saw her in Tin Man.

Really hot. Totally in my Pantheon of Babes. She has that dark angst thing going.

I am so screwed.

Ripples of Concern

Secretary Gates has opened his "we won't stab you in the back" tour of the Middle East:

The Obama administration's efforts to start a dialogue with Iran have sent ripples of concern through the capitals of America's closest Arab allies, who accuse Tehran of playing a destabilizing role in the Middle East. In a rare confluence of interests with its Arab neighbors, Israel has also singled out Iran as the greatest threat to stability in the region.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was in Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week, has sought to reassure the Arab allies that any contacts with Iran would be "open and transparent" and regional allies would be kept informed "so nobody gets surprised."

The premise of our outreach seems to be that we're at fault. But when you notice that Iran has lots of enemies, you should wonder is it really our fault?

Our allies get nervous when we reach out to our common enemies, notwithstanding hope and change.