Water Under the Bridge

I have to believe that if President Obama had speech writers older than 15, he wouldn't have made this bad driving reference in defense of his favored candidate trying to hold Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Said the president, while mocking an ad by the opponent that featured a truck:

So I'd think long and hard about getting in that truck with Martha's opponent. (Laughter.) It might not take you where you want to go. (Laughter.)

Yeah, that line is taking you where you don't want to go.

But hey, at least the president didn't ridicule the Republican candidate and then demand, "I wish the chap would quit it." (With fond thanks to a very old Saturday Night Live skit for that line.)

This Would Explain a Lot

Our updated illustration of Osama bin Laden has a bit of a problem--it's based on some Spanish guy's picture:

A Spanish lawmaker on Tuesday rejected the United States' apology for the FBI's using a photo of him to create a poster showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today, and demanded the U.S. investigate.

Gaspar Llamazares, of the United Left party, said he wanted to know if the FBI has a habit of keeping files on leftist politicians in the U.S., Europe, Latin American or elsewhere.

You have to feel sorry for the guy. I mean other than for his over-inflated sense of importance. Every time he hears the whine of a toy airplane overhead, he dives for cover now in case it is a Predator making positive ID on him.

Hey, I sympathize. I really do. I live in fear of somebody angry over a shoddy consumer electronics product gunning for me.

So our crack counter-terrorist portrait unit is going back to the old picture of the bearded man that they based their first Osama poster on:

I'm starting to figure out why we haven't found bin Laden yet.

The Luxury of Compassion

This is pretty interesting, and will help troops avoid long-term problems from traumatic brain injuries, including development of post-traumatic stress disorder:

The U.S. Department of Defense is seeking portable brain scanning devices, so that troops with head trauma, can be detected as soon as possible. It's become increasingly clear that head trauma, from roadside bombs, traffic accidents or explosions encountered in combat, are a cause of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), especially cases that do not manifest themselves for years.


In recognition of this, the army and marines have been limiting troops to only three incidents of concussion, from roadside bombs, per combat tour. Troops that reach this limit, are given a non-combat job for the rest of their tour. The marine criteria is more complex than the one used by the army, taking into account all sources of concussion.

This policy is also a luxury, stemming from our low casualty rates at war. Note also that the policy will cause more deaths, although you'll never be able to pinpoint which death is caused by the policy. But taking troops out of combat to leave the remainder short of men has to have a bad effect on those who remain to fight.
 
Right now, we can accomplish our mission despite the handicap of fighting with this policy. But mission always comes first, and the policy could not be carried out in high-intensity conventional warfare without risking the mission.

The Middle Pundit

Thomas Friedman is the most over-rated so-called strategic thinker I have ever read. To be fair, I've read worse idiocy on occasion (coughfareedzakariacough), but Friedman has a reputation built on--well, I have no idea how he got that reputation.

Anyway, Goldberg slams the giant 'stache:

Not everything in Tom Friedman's latest column is wrong or stupid, but where it isn't that, it's terribly boring. And I should be clear, it's not boring because what he says is so conventional. It's boring because he says the same thing week after week after week. In column after column it goes like this: China's awesome. America's not, but it could be if it became more like China and bossed around its citizens and businesses without paying heed to their wishes. Dick Cheney's wrong. And — always! — my feelings are the newspeg.

And a news flash to Friedman, Taiwan is a democracy and Hong Kong wants to be, and is desperately hanging on to the shreds of it while Peking pushes to extinguish the flickering flame of freedom there.

Why the man has such a big crush on the friggin' People's Republic of China is beyond me. Get a room.

Lights, Camera, Action!

The Taliban have pulled off an attack on Kabul:

Taliban militants struck in the heart of the Afghan capital Monday, launching suicide attacks on key government targets in a clear sign the insurgents plan to escalate their fight as the U.S. and its allies ramp up a campaign to end the war. At least five bystanders and security forces were killed and nearly 40 wounded, officials said.

The Defense Ministry said seven attackers had also been killed in the brazen attack, which occurred 10 days before a major international conference in London on ways to shore up the Afghan government to confront the growing Taliban threat.

After a series of blasts and more than three hours of subsequent gunfights outside several ministries and inside a shopping mall, President Hamid Karzai said security had been restored to the capital, though search operations continued amid reports that more attackers were hiding in the city.

This is war. Stuff happens. The enemy wants to win and if they can get enough volunteers willing to die in an attack where surviving is unlikely, the enemy can launch such attacks.
 
But the enemy got their message out: a "brazen" attack reflecting the enemy's determination to "escalate" in response to our surge. And if you doubt the objective, check out the details from Stratfor:
 

Taliban spokesman Zabihollah Mojahed said 20 suicide assailants were attacking the Presidential Palace, the Central Bank and the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Mines and Industries. The Serena Hotel, the Defense Ministry and Afghan Telecom had also reportedly come under attack.

 
The first Stratfor report noted that the hotel is where journalists, among others, stay.
 
This was not an offensive in the sense that the Taliban could possibly take and hold the capital. It was a Mumbai-style terrorist attack that struck a wide number of targets at the same time. So far, it doesn't look like any of the attackers are holding anything to prolong the press coverage. So it is different from Mumbai in that sense.
 
It is bloody. And shows the enemy is not crushed. But it is not "an offensive."  So mop up, find and kill or capture the attackers and their enablers, pursue the enemy, and kill them.

Natural Allies

To me, it was always a bizarre result of the Cold War that the two largest democracies--America and India--were not allies.

We're correcting that historical error:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates heads to India this week to promote a blossoming "strategic partnership" with a country that has strongly endorsed the US-led mission in Afghanistan.

Defense officials said Gates' two-day visit is part of an effort to cultivate a broad relationship with India, a country Washington recognizes as an increasingly powerful player on the international stage.

"We obviously view India as a regional power and emerging global power," a senior defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

"The key objectives for the trip are to emphasize the importance of this bilateral relationship, and the role defense relations play in advancing the strategic partnership," he said ahead of Gates' scheduled arrival on Tuesday.

Interesting enough, one of the factors moving us closer is our common potential foe China. And China was the reason India was once a firm friend of the Soviet Union--both viewed China as a potential foe. It would be nice if shared democratic values makes our friendship firmer, but balance of power interests rather than democratic values surely pushed us together.

Taliban In It's Sights

We are testing a new guided 70mm rocket made by BAE (Lockheed Martin (full disclosure: I have a tiny amount of LM stock) has a competing DAGR):

After more than a decade of development effort, by several different companies, there now several guided versions of the 70mm air-to-ground rocket. Now the U.S. Navy is buying fifty AKWS II (Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System) 70mm missiles, to test on Marine Corps AV-8 (Harrier) vertical takeoff aircraft, and U.S. Air Force A-10 (Warthog) ground attack aircraft.

Taliban have limited our firepower use with their use of human shields. On the technology side of the issue, our weapons can't get much more precise to avoid civilian deaths while we kill the enemy, so the only solution is to use smaller warheads that won't kill much beyond a small kill radius.

It would seem like the 70mm guided rocket will allow us to shoot in some cases that we cannot today with existing precision weapons. It won't be a silver bullet solution to all cases of human shields, but it will help.

The Weakest Link

We are moving fast to help Haiti, but we can only go so fast until we can repair the damaged infrastructure and create more ways into the country:

[Aid] delivery was still bogged down by congestion at the Port-au-Prince airport, quake damage at the seaport, poor roads and the fear of looters and robbers.


"Many people are just fleeing to the countryside, they are looking for a place to stay and for food," said Enel Legrand, a 24-year-old Haitian volunteer aid worker.

The airport congestion also touched off diplomatic rows between the U.S. military and other donor nations. France and Brazil both lodged official complaints that the U.S. military, in control of the international airport, had denied landing permission to relief flights from their countries.

Unless someone wants to argue that President Obama just doesn't like Black people and that's why help is taking so long to reach Haitians, cut us some slack. It is heart breaking to see the suffering, but moving help into a devastated area is difficult no matter how much you care. This is why local areas need to be able to survive on their own for a few days.
 
In time, aid will flow in sufficient quantities to reach the survivors. Our military knows how to do this. Until then, celebrities (like the UN Secretary General, for example) might want to phone their concern in, rather than bump a few relief flights for their photo ops.

UPDATE: So nobody listens to me on the price of photo ops:

Josette Sheeran, the WFP director, said this system had been used for previous emergencies and would “ensure the prioritisation of humanitarian work”. She added that a senior WFP logistics officer had been sent to the airport to make sure “the prioritisation is there”.


Ms Sheeran said there had been a “dramatic improvement” in the “flow of goods coming in”.

But until this system was agreed on Sunday – five days after the devastating earthquake - the prioritisation of flights was haphazard and the US military was accused of putting its own needs first. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, was able to land on Saturday, while some planes carrying aid were turned away.

What could Clinton do in Haiti that she couldn't do at SOUTHCOM headquarters?

But someone else is aware of the realities of disaster relief without taking cheap shots.

Not Even Close to Cool or Awesome

This writer thinks it is pretty awesome that Google took on China in a bit of cyber-warfare:

One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers. It "began a secret counteroffensive," breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government.

I beg to differ.

No Significant Supplies

Russia isn't exactly rushing to help us supply our forces in Afghanistan:

Still, the presidents were able to smile and shake hands over one key "deliverable": an agreement that would allow the United States to transit lethal military cargo via Russian airspace to Afghanistan. That deal was said to mark an important uptick in bilateral cooperation on stabilizing Afghanistan, a goal that both sides emphasize is in their strategic interests.

Speaking a few days after the summit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized the grand scale of the accord, saying, "the U.S. military plans to carry out a significant number of flights, up to 4,000-and-something per year."

But six months later, that agreement has produced no significant results, despite the growing insecurity of U.S. supply lines to Afghanistan through Pakistan and the dramatic increase in the number of coalition forces deployed in the region.

You'll recall that our administration claimed that the supply issue success was a direct result of our giving up the Bush-era missile defense plan for eastern Europe. Russia saw it as the other way around.

And either way you look at it, Russia isn't allowing supplies to flow to our forces in Afghanistan, which are growing every day. And you wonder why I worry so much about our supply lines when Russia has their hand firmly on one of the lines we are counting on? And seem in no hurry to loosen their grip? Heck, I suspect the Russians are enjoying themselves too much to easily stop.

It's like that Clinton reset button doesn't work at all!

The Counter-Revolution Proceeds

You could see it coming. And now the Ukrainians are on the verge of accepting the embrace of Russia:

Polls showed Yanukovich with a clear lead going into Sunday's elections, albeit without the majority required to avoid a second round run-off against his main challenger, the glamorous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The Orange Revolution protests of late 2004 swept Ukraine's old order from power and created hopes of a new era of prosperity and European integration for the country of 46 million people bridging the EU and Russia.

But amid grave public disillusionment after five years of botched reform and political stalemate, the Revolution's hero, pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko, is set to be bundled out in the first round.

With Tymoshenko making much of her warm ties with Russia's strongman Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the outcome of the February 7 run-off is already being seen as good news for the Kremlin, which cut off all business with Yushchenko.

Ukrainians can fool themselves that they can have warm relations with Russia and also move toward the West without antagonizing Moscow.
 
I have to ask, have Ukrainians learned nothing from their long, sad experience with Russia? Russia sees only absolute submission to Moscow as acceptable, and will push for that no matter how cooperative Ukrainians believe they are with Russia.
 
Ukraine gained true independence after centuries of Russian rule. I guess a couple decades of that was enough for Ukrainians.

UPDATE: It will be Russia's stooge versus the leader no longer willing to stand up to Russia in the runoff election:

The surveys predicted that pro-Russian opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych will finish first in the hard-fought campaign. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will finish second, clearing the path for a runoff between the pair next month, polls showed.

Russia will be happy either way:

Today, both say they will abandon efforts to join NATO and pledge to repair ties to Russia, the region's dominant power.

Both democracy and independence are at risk in Ukraine. What have Ukrainians done?

Another One Bites the Dust

The Iraqis announced that they've had the man responsible for the horrific UN bombing in Baghdad in 2003 that basically drove the UN from Iraq (remember that the UN--but not America and our willing allies--left Iraq to its fate the next time you want to extol the sainted international community):

Iraqi authorities have captured a senior leader of a militant group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq who oversaw the 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and other attacks, the military said.


The announcement of the arrest — which took place in June — comes as Iraq's government looks to reassure voters it can keep the country safe before a parliamentary election in March. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made improved security one of the centerpieces of his re-election bid.

Baghdad's top military spokesman announced the capture of Ali Hussein Alwan Hamid al-Azzawi in a televised news conference that included videotaped statements by a man who identified himself as the insurgent leader as well as lower-level accomplices.

I assume the time lage between arrest and announcement means questioning the man is no longer likely to result in further leads. Or it means the government would like to highlight a counter-terrorism success before the March national elections.
 
The latter may seem like a poor motive, but I like to think that it is a good sign that the government feels pressure by the public to protect them and knows that the voters could punish them by kicking them out of office in favor of someone else who will catch the bombers still around.
 
He eluded capture a very long time, indeed. The story of the Iraq War is still being written and uncovered.

Quite the Dilemma

Even after the Cairo speech to the Moslem world, this is a problem?

President Barack Obama's decision to boost U.S. aid to Yemen to help the small Arabian Peninsula country fight al Qaida risks tying the U.S. more closely to an autocratic ruler whose repression of economic and political grievances is strengthening the terrorists and pushing his impoverished nation toward breakup.

"Any association with the (Yemeni) regime will only confirm al Qaida's narrative, which is that America is only interested in maintaining corrupt and despotic rulers and is not interested in the fate of Arabs and Muslims," warned Bernard Haykel , a Princeton University professor.

So is the president unable to leverage his so-called appeal to the Islamic world to defend our necessary fight against al Qaeda in Yemen?

Or are large segments of the Islamic world so whacked out and sympathetic to the cause of jihad that no American president--even President Obama--can make them trust our judgment about what we need to do in Yemen to defend ourselves from jihadi nutjobs?

I eagerly await the outcome of this debate.

Learning from the Jihadis

Since his usual threats aren't working much, the Pillsbury Nuke Boy has gone Turk on us by issuing a form of threat that he's noticed usually gets appeasing results in the West:

North Korea threatened Friday to break off all dialogue and negotiations with South Korea in anger over Seoul's alleged contingency plan to deal with potential unrest in the communist country.

The National Defense Commission — the North's most powerful state organ headed by leader Kim Jong Il — also warned the North will initiate a "retaliatory holy war" against South Korea over the plan, which the North claims is aimed at toppling its regime.

A holy war? From the communists? Heavens to Betsy.

It's a bad day in Pyongyang when the threats from the worker's paradise no longer make Seoul quake in its boots, and the northerners have to appeal to the martyr's paradise, instead, which seems to work for any cave-dwelling loser with a $200.00 video camera and a smattering of English.

The north may not like it, but South Korea needs contingency plans like that.

UPDATE: Hello, hyper-inflation?

The past month has seen an extraordinary spectacle in North Korea: the failure of a hastily announced "currency reform" and the subsequent collapse of the won, the official domestic currency. These developments are of more than numismatic interest. Pyongyang's currency move marks the end of an era of hesitant economic experimentation and ushers in a new era of greater economic, and perhaps political, uncertainties.

And with the destruction of the tiny private market, kiss goodbye the good it did in averting starvation by providing a profit motive to get and sell food.

Strategypage has the overview. And I do wish to commend the Obama administration for refusing to halt the collapse of the regime by shoveling money north. As Strategypage put it, in regard to Pyongyang's demand for a peace treaty and normalized relations:

The U.S. quickly turned this down, and told North Korea to start negotiating, or else they can starve in the dark.

For too long, North Korea's leaders have leveraged the fact that we care more for their people than the regime does.

Bowing Out

Had this happened during the Bush administration, I'm sure Newsweek would have a 3-part series on how Bush damaged US-Japanese relations as the cause for this decision (from my Jane's email updates):

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) is to end its nine-year at-sea replenishment mission in support of NATO's Operation 'Enduring Freedom' in Afghanistan on 15 January. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which took the reins of government following a general election in August, has stated that it will not renew the Replenishment Support Special Measures Law that allowed the JMSDF to deploy tankers and escort ships to the Indian Ocean to refuel allied warships[.]

They're turning their back on the "good" war, of all things!

Obviously, President Obama did not cause this. On the other hand, the president didn't charm the Japanese as our "first Pacific president" into continuing a mission begun under the dread unilateralist Bush.

Sometimes (I mean, a lot of times), stuff just happens for reasons other than our actions or inactions.

The Plastic Arugula Issue

After all the Lefty complaints about the so-called plastic turkey that President Bush carried in Baghdad, while he visited with the troops (and which was in fact a real turkey and not a prop), grant me that this news from the current White House is funny:

The produce used on the Food Network’s Jan. 3 Iron Chef of America two-hour special White House show was billed as being from the White House garden. But the show did not disclose that “stunt double vegetables” were used and not produce from the First Family’s garden.

This has to be a metaphor illustrating a grander truth, right? I'm sure it will be repeated for the rest of the president's term in office whenever a reporter or critic wishes to undermine the president's message.

Of course, if spun the right way, this could work out well. Imagine the disclaimer, "No actual White House vegetables were harmed in the making of this show."

Let's Set a Doomsday Clock Back, Shall We?

I was out of my depth in wondering about a presidential order regarding Interpol immunity in America. And I admitted it. Though I still worried.

But Krauthammer sets my mind at ease:

I defer to no one in believing the U.N. ought to sink into the East River and disappear. But this is really benign. This basically is saying that INTERPOL has the same rights as the Swiss delegation, so it will not have to pay parking tickets.

Now, that may be a scandal, I think it is, but it's not a black helicopter landing in your backyard.

I am persuaded that this is nothing to worry about.

Condostieri

Nations are unsure of the rules of warfare in cyber-space. So most national cyber-warfare is focused on defense and gathering information and methods. Countries that would like to go on offense seem to be mostly sub-contracting their attacks to the private sector.

The private sector had a success in this field:

While Western governments debate the efficacy, or legality, of going on the offensive against Internet spies and criminals, more Internet security companies, and academic researchers, are taking the initiative. The most recent victory was the elimination of the Neustar of Lethic botnet, which represented about ten percent of all spam email sent. Other efforts have crippled botnets, and some botnets have been taken down quietly (because illegal, or methods of uncertain legality were used.) No government has had the courage to openly go after destroying botnets, although it's believed there is some classified activity in their area.

This is not good. Though on the surface it seems good that some bad guys were taken down.

Eventually, innocents could get hurt in the cyber-cross fire if this trend expands.

And it gets worse than mere collateral damage. Right now, the private entities respond to patriotic calls to serve their country (sure, they make a profit, too, but business can travel with pleasure for a time).

If governments, because our laws don't let them wage war in this realm, encourage these cyber-war companies in the belief that governments can always safely buy their services, the private e-mercenary companies will eventually get so much better than governments' cyber-warfare entities that the private cyber-war companies may wonder why they have to do the bidding of the paying governments.

Governments, in time, will find that they can only rent these outfits--not buy them. And not for long.

And eventually, in a little more time, governments will learn to fear these cyber-warfare companies, not knowing if they wish to continue being hired or want to fight for their own objectives in cyber-space.

All because right now we're too squeamish to contemplate how we can lawfully wage war in cyber-space with our own assets.

Is My Assumption Wrong?

America can do a much better job than Israel can of taking out Iran's nuclear facilities and striking related Iranian military and political assets to blunt any Iranian counter-strike against us or our allies in the region.

My assumption has been based on Israel taking one main shot at Iran. Missiles might carry out follow-up strikes, but no aircraft would be used.

But why do I assume this? Israel is certainly capable of carrying out a campaign against targets within easy range--in Gaza and southern Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon fairly recently, for example. Just because Israel's strikes on nuclear facilities in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007) were single mission package strikes doesn't mean that is all Israel is capable of doing.

If either Turkey or Saudi Arabia are fully on board and willing to take the hits in Moslem world public relations in order to facilitate Israeli strikes (even if just by looking the other way and denying Israeli aircraft are flying over their territory), Israel could launch multiple waves of aircraft against Iran.

Now, Israel still can't do as good a job as America even if Israel launches more than one wave of air strikes. And there is no way that Israel would waste strike missions on non-nuclear or missile targets to muffle an Iranian counter-attack in the region, so again American capabilities are superior.

But questioning my assumption about the necessity of a single Israeli strike does put the whole question in a different light.

A lot might depend on Israeli refueling capabilities--either aerial or at a temporary ground location in either Turkey or Saudi Arabia on a nice long stretch of highway closed off to traffic for a couple days.

Isolating the Battlefield

The Sri Lankan success against the Tamil Tigers had a big assist from the Sri Lankan navy's ability to finally degrade the Tigers' sea lines of supply back to India:

A former navy commander has admitted that it was a lot of new technology, in the last few years of fighting, that played a major role in cutting government shipping losses (to enemy suicide boat attacks), and keeping the separatist rebels from bringing in weapons and munitions to the island nation.

If the enemy there had still had their supplies, the Sri Lankans would still be fighting their war.

The borders matter in Afghanistan. In order to deny our enemies supplies and reinforcements/replacements from Pakistan, we have to do the same on land. I remain worried that our focus on securing the people of Afghanistan will neglect this vital component of protecting them.