The Day the Unicorn Died

The emperor has no close.

The Eastern Front

Strategypage looks at the variety of Ukrainian non-army units sent to fight in the Donbas.

Did Ukraine send way more troops to fight in the east than I suspected?

Ukrainian forces fighting in eastern Ukraine (Donbas) against Russian sponsored troops and Russian regular forces consists of Ukrainian Army units and an even larger number of volunteer battalions. These volunteer units comprise about 20 percent of the 50,000 armed personnel Ukraine has sent to the Donbas.

I think it is safe to assume that this number refers to the total number rotated through the eastern front and not the strength maintained there, since the Ukrainian army is only about 60,000 strong (pre-war active duty). And I have noted that a unit usually stationed in Ukraine's west was identified as fighting in the east.

Further, the Ukrainians were doing well until the Russians intervened directly with relatively small numbers of regular mechanized forces. So there couldn't have been too many Ukrainians if they were overmatched by a small Russian mechanized force.

Nor would it have been safe to commit such a large number of Ukrainian troops so far east where they'd be vulnerable to a battle of annihilation if the Russians escalated to cut off the region with mechanized forces.

I don't understand how the volunteer units could be both an even larger portion of the Ukrainian force sent to fight in the east and be just 20% of the armed personnel sent to fight.

Strategypage outlines Ministry of Defense territorial defense battalions (24+ battalions); Ministry of Internal Affairs special purpose battalions used for garrison duty in liberated territory (31 formed); volunteer National Guard battalions (4 formed); and a small -"Right Sector" Ukrainian volunteer corps of no more than 500, who are the armed wing of the political force of the same name.

I imagine we are talking about fewer than 25,000 light infantry in these units. I have no idea if they are in "for the duration" or just for the tour of duty. I suspect the latter.

These units have been crucial in holding the east while the army was demoralized:

These volunteer units played major role at the beginning of the conflict when regular units were ineffective due very low morale. The regulars were inspired by the energy and success of the volunteer units and eventually matched the volunteers in morale and effectiveness.

It would be helpful to know how many troops were committed on a day-to-day basis to the east and what Ukraine's current ground forces are.

But they did okay, all things considered.

The Best and Brightest

Is public confidence in our public officials dependent on the public not retaining what was said a moment earlier?

Because this reassurance by Tom Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control does not fill me with confidence in the competency of the federal government that President Obama said he'd demonstrate during his presidency:

I think there are two different parts of that equation. The first is if you're a member of the traveling public and are healthy, should you be worried that you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone. The answer is no. Second if you're sick, and you may have Ebola should you get on a bus, the answer to that is also no. You might become ill; you might have a problem that exposes someone around you..

I readily concede in a bow to the wonders of science that if you are sitting on a bus full of healthy bus riders, you won't get sick by sitting next to someone on said bus. And sure, in America right now, simple odds dictate that even in an Ebola world where infection by proximity is 100% certain, that getting on a bus should not be a worry because there are so few infected people riding on buses at any given moment.

But how is it possible to make the second statement about the risk of infecting someone else in a manner that implies you already forgot the first statement? He sounded like an idiot.

This ability starts at the very top. See the first update.

Clearly, the first statement should have simply said "Yes, you could get Ebola from someone on the bus who has the illness. But there are so few sick in America that it is not a worry if you are currently healthy. Should circumstances change, we will update our advice."

We are so screwed.

At the Mall

I went to the mall today, in which a toddler was saved from near injury.

I bought wooden spoons at a deep discount.

Checked out possible couch and shoe purchases.

Said "no thanks" to the pushy kiosk operator who tries to put cream on your face--and got really annoyed when she violated the boundaries of politeness to continue the interaction by asking me if she could ask me a question.

I ignored her. That kiosk really annoys me. Do I really look like a potential customer? Seriously?

I identified a potential Michigan cap for Lamb, since the one I got for her seems to have vanished in her mom's house.

I also finally bought something fried from that restaurant that recently replaced the hated sushi stand (which replaced the fresh-fried donut stand that was the subject of an early post on what was surely the old Geocities site). I realized I'd forgotten about it.

And I saw the most amazing parental save in my life. A young mother and the dad were pushing along a double stroller with two young children in it. The dad was pushing and the mom was walking next to them.

I know this because I was behind them and the mom was in really good shape. If I hadn't been in in a mall and hence on a countdown clock to get out before I become a "shopper" (aside from my need to get back home before the Lions game started--yes, they had a last-minute win to avoid sports frustration, thank you very much) I would have slowed down and gone wherever she was going.

Anyway, all was a happy afternoon at the mall. Me with chili cheese fries and wooden spoons, catching up with the lovely (from behind, anyway) young mom out with children and husband (I assume), when out of nowhere one of the toddlers decided to take a header out of the stroller.

Good grief, who would have seen that coming? Isn't this the parental fear I've gone on about over the years? Isn't this exactly why I did not turn on my fireplace while my kids were young out of fear that while I was in the kitchen one would toss a toy into the fireplace, causing it and then the child to burst into flames while my back was turned for one single freaking moment?

But the mom reached out and actually grabbed the child by the leg before the kid could hit the ground, saving her kid from potential injury.

Bravo! That was most amazing. The kid was crying from the shock of the whole experience but was fine. Heck of a catch, I must say.

I almost congratulated her as I went by, but didn't know how that would go over.

Anyway, that was my time at the mall today.

Hearts and Minds

Shia militias brought into the fight after the fall of Mosul and the north during the summer risk depriving the government of another Awakening by alienating Shias. But there is still hope of influencing minds if we start winning.

ISIL forces threaten Baghdad from the west in Anbar province:

[Iraqis Brigadier General Saad] Maan also said that the Islamic State doesn’t have the capacity to seriously penetrate the capital. But maintaining a buffer zone is essential in protecting Baghdad from longer-range attacks like those on the Green Zone. And there are worries that the Islamic State will find sympathizers in the Sunni-majority belt that rings the capital, including Abu Ghraib.

Shia militias who commit violence against the Sunni Arabs who live there threaten to undermine Iraqi efforts to secure the western approaches to Baghdad

Even if ISIL can't take Baghdad, by taking positions on the outskirts, ISIL could send in terrorists to launch attacks that will shake the Iraqi government and make it look weaker.

Winning hearts and minds is often portrayed as a way of making the people like you and so not support insurgents or terrorists who operate among them (and with their help).

Yes, getting people to like the counter-insurgent side is good. That's the "heart" part of "hearts and minds."  That's only part of it.

A government that looks like it will win and that it will keep going until it does win can get the "minds," too. People can decide that it is futile to fight and that it is wiser to get on with life rather than die for a lost cause.

Do you really think that the 2006-2007 Awakening was a victory of the Sunni Arab "hearts?" The Sunni Arabs didn't suddenly love the Shia majority and the Kurds. Nor did they suddenly love the American troops who had destroyed their privileged position in Iraq under Saddam.

So while we should definitely try to rein in the Shia militias, because they affect both the hearts and minds part of the equation, we should make visible efforts to show that the Iraqi government will win the fight.

Unfortunately, Iraq is not demonstrating the ability to win. Especially when you remember that much of Anbar fell in January 2014, well before the fall of Mosul and other points north got our attention:

The Islamic State’s advances in Anbar Province, which is largely Sunni, have been a central concern for the Iraqi authorities since the beginning of the year. The militants first established a major foothold there in January when they seized the city of Falluja. They have expanded their authority throughout the province, sometimes by force, but also by taking advantage of the profound disenchantment among Sunnis alienated by the government in Baghdad.

The most recent string of Islamic State victories in Anbar Province began with the onslaught last month of the Saqlawiya military garrison, followed closely by the defeat of a detachment of Iraqi troops based in the village of Albu Aitha. The Islamic State also gained control of Hit, a town on the main east-west road between the Haditha Dam and the provincial capital of Ramadi, both of which the militants have sought to take.

Just saying that our plan to win which will eventually deliver victory is not enough. We need to start visibly achieving victories. Anbar would be a good place to start.

UPDATE: While Syria is still the secondary front in the war on ISIL, it is (or should be) a war on Assad.

Syrians opposed to Assad and ISIL need to be supported or by the time Syria is the main front for the fight against ISIL, Assad might be the only other force in Syria:

The cost of turning against the Islamic State was made brutally apparent in the streets of a dusty backwater town in eastern Syria in early August. Over a three-day period, vengeful fighters shelled, beheaded, crucified and shot hundreds of members of the Shaitat tribe after they dared to rise up against the extremists.

By the time the killing stopped, 700 people were dead, activists and survivors say, making this the bloodiest single atrocity committed by the Islamic State in Syria since it declared its existence 18 months ago.

The little-publicized story of this failed tribal revolt in Abu Hamam, in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zour province, illuminates the challenges that will confront efforts to persuade those living under Islamic State rule — in Iraq as well as Syria — to join the fight against the jihadist group, something U.S. officials say is essential if the campaign against the militants is to succeed.

We intervened in Libya in 2011 for less of a humanitarian reason than this.

How do we get non-American boots on the ground if we don't support those local boots?

Worse, how do we do it when it looks like we are effectively on Assad's side?

As U.S. and allied jets swoop freely over towns and cities under control of extremists in northern Syria, the Syrian army has scaled back its air activity over areas of IS control, doing as little as possible there to avoid confrontation. Instead, Assad's troops are now focusing their energies on the country's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo. ...

While few people think the American and Syrian militaries are actively cooperating or coordinating their operations, there appears to be a tacit alliance, ensuring at the very least that Syrian military operations would not come into conflict or friction with any American or allied aircraft.

We intervened against such a dictator in Libya in 2011 for far less than this level of killing.

R2P (Responsibility to Protect) had a short but exciting Obama administration policy life, I guess.

What Does This Study Really Say?

Ah, support for Syrian rebels is probably folly because a CIA study says that doesn't work very well?

The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

I'm not that surprised that a study of CIA support for insurgencies shows a lack of victories. That may reflect a use of support for insurgents as an alternative to US action rather than as a supplement to US action.

I'd be happier if we focused on replicating the factors that help insurgencies win.

UPDATE: Related.

Mission Accomplished

I lost the article (and don't feel like finding it or recreating the post before my Internet blinked out), but Green opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline from western Canada to our Gulf coast refineries will just make things worse for the environment and our economy.

That article explained that some oil tars are coming to America anyway via trains--more dangerous.

The Canadian alternative is a longer pipeline to the Atlantic--more dangerous than a shorter pipeline and Canadian workers get the project money.

The oil tars will then be shipped via tanker to our Gulf coast refineries--more dangerous than a pipeline.

And since the oil tars will go by sea from Canada's Atlantic port, the oil can go overseas where customers are eager to have this resource, too--which not only puts more oil on tankers on even longer voyages but means we will have to pay world market prices for the oil tars (Canada currently has to offer discounts to us since they have no one else to sell to).

So congratulations, Greens! That's quite the victory you and President Obama are engineering.

Now go and emit no more.

Mission Being Accomplished?

While I think that in the long run our strategy (if I'm right about it) to defeat ISIL could work, in the short run we could face defeats. Defeats that could undermine carrying out the long-term strategy.

I guess the Obama administration thinks we need to stay the course in Iraq:

White House press secretary Josh Earnest insisted that the president’s plan against ISIS was “succeeding.”

“We’re in the early days of the execution of that strategy,” he said. “But certainly, the early evidence indicates that this strategy is succeeding.”

Earnest pointed to two pieces of evidence for that claim from Iraq: the achievement of dislodging ISIS’s control of the critical Mosul Dam and the evacuation of embattled Yazidi civilians from Mount Sinjar.

But other events on the ground are not cooperating with the White House’s preferred narrative.

Defense officials acknowledged Tuesday that ISIS forces now have “relative freedom of influence throughout” Anbar province, after killing its police chief and taking over a military base.

“It’s hard to say how close Anbar is to falling,” Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday. “We know that ISIS can move freely around the Anbar province.”

On Tuesday, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno expressed reservations about the Iraqi military’s ability to protect its nation’s capital, Baghdad, saying he was “somewhat” confident they could do so.

In the long run, I think our strategy can work. At least if I am correctly reading that we are carrying out a strategy that I've called Win, Build, Win.

But surviving the short run is the problem. While the Kurds in the north are proving to be a capable ground ally, the problem of finding a core ground force to exploit our air power in the center and west still eludes us.

And if we can't get Jordan to provide a core force, we have to wait until we can retrain 3 Iraqi divisions to be that core offensive force.

Until then, the Iraqi army we have and not the Iraqi army we wish we had must hold the line against the ISIL fanatics who keep capturing Iraqi bases in Anbar.

I suspect--as I have since ISIL's Mosul region successes--that the threat to Baghdad isn't nearly as dire as some make out, but I can't be sure given ISIL advances during 2014.

Nor can I be sure that continued ISIL victories won't again crack Iraqi morale.

And apart from the simple battlefield balance, we have to keep Shia fanatics from undermining the ability to get Sunni tribes to re-Awaken to support a counter-offensive when we are ready. This is a real problem to executing our strategy:

Iraq's Shiite militias have abducted and killed scores of Sunni civilians with the tacit support of the government in retaliation for Islamic State group attacks, Amnesty International said Tuesday, as a suicide car bombing claimed by the Sunni extremists killed 23 people, including a Shiite lawmaker.

It's not large-scale--yet--but this could nullify ISIL's atrocities that provide the foundation for getting Iraq's Sunni Arabs to side with the Iraqi government.

We need forward air controllers on the ground to help the Iraqis hold the line north and west of Baghdad and claw back territory from ISIL both to break ISIL sieges of Iraqi bases and to give Sunni Arabs hope that our side can win.

If not, we'll never get beyond the early days of executing our strategy--and so lose the Iraq war that we had won by 2008 and which we still had within our power to defend at a low cost in 2011.

Check Your Muscle and Bone Mass Privilege

Strategypage discusses the issue of women in combat units.

Our Re-Reset Partner

Oh, that Putin! What a rascal he is!

Lovely little strategic stability you got there. It would be a shame if anything was to happen to it:

President Vladimir Putin warned Washington that a spat between nuclear powers over the Ukraine crisis could threaten global stability and said in remarks published on Wednesday that Russia would not be "blackmailed" by sanctions.

Taking a tough line on the eve of talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Milan, Putin said the sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union over Moscow's role in the crisis were hindering peace moves.

"We hope that our partners will realise the recklessness of attempts to blackmail Russia, will remember the risks that a spat between major nuclear powers incurs for strategic stability," he told the Serbian newspaper Politika before a brief visit to Belgrade on Thursday.

Yeah, the Western response to naked Russian aggression against Ukraine is the real problem here. And Putin (again) rattles his nuclear sabre to show his displeasure.

Which shows that Russia's desire to renew the Reset is merely a way to gain Western passivity in the face of Russian aggression. Let's recall the photo-op from the first Reset:

My, my. That was hilarious! I'm sure Lavrov had no idea that giving us the middle finger was a vulgar gesture, right?

Seriously, can Russia have friendly relations with anyone? Or are the Russians under Putin only capable of having enemies they control, fight, or intimidate into cooperation?

UPDATE: Ah, diplomacy. So sorry about splitting your territory with Nazi Germany back in 1939. We'd like to make it up to you, okay?

Poland's parliamentary speaker, Radoslaw Sikorski, has been quoted as saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to Poland's then leader in 2008 that they divide Ukraine between themselves.

I wonder what Lavrov's conversations with China sound like?

Smart Diplomacy

Syria's Assad has used the presence of jihadis in the rebellion against him to solidify support on his side. Assad or the jihadis is the choice Assad has given his people. Enough have chosen Assad to allow him to keep fighting despite the casualties.

Assad has also tried to put this choice to the West. Who is worse, he can ask? Me or ISIL?

This has allowed Assad to leverage our campaign against ISIL as more reason for his supporters to just hang on despite the costs so far. Assad can argue that he is our partner against jihadis--with our air strikes on ISIL as evidence.

Why don't we turn this argument to our advantage?

Can't we argue that we still want Assad to go, and that our air strikes on ISIL--rather than being a sign we side with Assad--is a sign that we won't let the jihadis replace Assad?

Wouldn't that assurance to Syrians tired of fighting with their backs to the wall that their decision to turn against Assad isn't a decision to let the jihadis win bolster our long-term goal of having a Syria free of jihadis and Assad?

You Responsibly End a War By Winning the War

Colombia has come so far in their 5-decade-plus war against communist and drug gang insurgents that our Pentagon spokesman can describe the country as an exporter of security:

Colombia continues to expand its role as a security exporter across the region, and Secretary Hagel will underscore the United States' continued support for these efforts, as well as Colombia's internal counterinsurgency operations as the government pursues a peace process. He will also seek new avenues for future security cooperation and visit a Colombian military base to observe training for Colombian special forces and aviators.

That is, after decades of being an importer (or consumer) of foreign security provided to Colombia to cope with the threat, Colombia can now help others get security.

I congratulated the Obama administration for staying the course on this long war, which went against his political base's determination to lose that war when the president was Bush.

Colombia's dramatic progress after so many decades of appearing to be on the ropes should be a lesson to us in perseverance as we continue to fight Islamist ideology that spawns the jihadi death cults.

Winning is the only way to responsibly end a war.

Anbar Front

Iraqi forces are being reinforced to hold Anbar. Will this be the location of our first Iraqi offensive effort?

ISIL continues to make gains in Iraq's Anbar province:

A string of jihadist attacks has shrunk the Iraqi government's footprint in Anbar to a bare minimum and officials are warning time is running out to save the western province from falling completely. ...

Kurdish and federal troops backed by US-led airstrikes have pinned back their enemy and notched up gains in northern Iraq in recent weeks, but in Anbar the jihadists have retained the initiative.

A senior US defence official told AFP that the Iraqi's army position in Anbar was "tenuous".

"They are being resupplied and they're holding their own, but it's tough and challenging," the official said. "I think it's fragile there now."

We are aware that Anbar, which starts just west of Baghdad, is very important:

Some of the hundreds of US officers who have been deployed to Iraq in an advisory capacity have been helping Baghdad plan its next move in Anbar.

But it remains unclear whether Iraq's army, sometimes described as a "checkpoint army" with only a few thousand elite forces really capable of fighting IS, can buck the trend in Anbar.

A "checkpoint army" was sufficient when the enemy was decimated and largely strategically immobile. But with our foot off of the jihadis' necks after we left in 2011, the jihadis exceeded the capabilities of such a security force.

As I've noted, Iraq's good mobile forces seem to be composed of just their small counter-terrorist force of special forces-like troops.

We need our advisors to whip regular army troops into shape to carry out this role and begin to check ISIL's advances and to roll back ISIL's Anbar gains.

The Iraqis have pushed more of their forces to the Anbar front, it seems, according to the Pentagon briefer:

Q: Just a quick follow-on on Anbar. You mentioned, I think, that about a third of the Iraqi security forces are there now, and what I'm wondering is, is that sort of a redeployment of forces? Have they pushed forces in that direction?

REAR ADM. KIRBY: Yes.

Q: And, secondly, is it your assessment that those forces are sort of -- at this point capable of offensive-type operations? Or would they still need a fair amount of support before they can do that?


REAR ADM. KIRBY: Yeah, so the answer to your first question is, yes, we've seen them move forward. Number two, yes, but -- we do see Iraqi security forces branch out, move forward. They're taking the offense in some areas. But as we've said, again, all along, these forces for three years were not given the proper resources, staffing and leadership that they needed, so it's a mixed picture.

I can't honestly look you in the eye and say that every unit there of that third of the army is of the same caliber of quality and competence. They aren't. That's one of the reasons why our advise and assist mission is so important and why, you know, we continue to try to give them help, again, at the brigade level or higher.


And we do have, I think, seven advising teams that are focused on Iraqi headquarters in the south and in and around Baghdad. The other five are up near Erbil. So that's a key part of this effort, is to...

Q: Sorry to interrupt, but any of those teams in Anbar?

REAR ADM. KIRBY: No. As I said, they're at -- they're at brigade- or division-level headquarters. Those headquarters staffs do not go out in the field. The advising teams are not out in the field. The Iraqi security forces -- to Jim's question, they very much are, and they are pushing forward. But with mixed success. And I said that, I think, in my answer to Phil. There's -- it's a mixed picture there in Anbar.

I'll guess that we have advisors with a division and four brigades up with the Kurds and are supporting 2 division headquarters and 5 brigades around Baghdad.

Perhaps the 200 Australian special forces advisors stuck outside Iraq waiting for a legal agreement with the Iraqis are intended to complement our efforts there to expand the number of brigades being supported.

This would support two of the three offensive thrusts that I've discussed: the Kurds moving southwest to liberate Mosul and cut lines of communication between Syria and the front north of Baghdad; and a drive from the Baghdad area west into Anbar.

Will Jordan strike from the west into Anbar to assist this effort from the other side?

American-led airpower is crucial for this, of course, guided by Coalition forward air controllers.

And will we be able to help the Iraqis strike north from the Baghdad region, too, in a third thrust once ISIL is looking over its shoulder worried about the advance from the Kurdish region?

Killing ISIL troops fighting around Kobane is important both to keep ISIL occupied on the secondary front of Syria and to kill them so fewer troops can be shifted to the main Iraqi front.

We can defeat ISIL. They aren't supermen. Their eagerness to die gives them a morale advantage against shaky defenders. But that eagerness to die can be exploited by well-trained troops who can send them on their way to Paradise.

The Iraqi Kurds now seem to be holding their own in the north and the Iraqis north of Baghdad seem to have a largely static front since more recent Iraqi offensive efforts petered out.

But Anbar is eroding--both in terms of Iraqi security forces and in terms of persuading Sunni Arabs that it is safe to turn against the jihadis. If we can look like the strong horse, we'll get more help from the locals:

The bombing campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria is limited in effectiveness because of the lack of a good informant network in areas ISIL controls. This is largely because most of the territory ISIL controls is populated by Sunni Arabs. ISIL prefers to kill or drive non-Sunnis out of areas they govern. Most Sunni Arabs back the idea of Sunnis, especially Sunni Arabs, being in charge. That belief is so widespread that it’s extremely difficult, and dangerous, for Sunni Arabs to act as an informant against ISIL or any other Sunni Arab leaders.

We have to focus there just to stop the retreat and keep Iraqi security force morale from taking another major hit by losing a major force to jihadi attacks.

I hope it doesn't take too long to get the Iraqis moving forward.

The Exceptionalism of America

The USS America has been commissioned as a new type of amphibious warfare ship that focuses on air operations rather than launching small vessels to carry Marines to shore. While the ship can work as a poor-man's aircraft carrier, it is not a carrier.

We have a new ship in the fleet:

Yesterday, as part of San Francisco's Fleet Week festivities, the US Navy had a high-profile commissioning ceremony for the USS America LHA-6, the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name and the first in a new class of amphibious assault ships that are really more like aircraft carriers, yet somehow, compromised as both.

America is not both. So calling the design compromised in both missions is wrong. She is optimized for aerial delivery of Marines to the shore because of the proliferation of cheap precision anti-ship missiles makes it too dangerous to approach a shore to deliver ashore by more traditional means.

America can stand over the horizon and launch an assault using helicopters and the new Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

That's a rational response to the threat. So it is not compromised as an amphibious ship. It is a different type of amphibious ship.

Nor is the ship compromised as a carrier since that wrongly presumes the ship was designed to be an aircraft carrier like our large Nimitz and new Ford class vessels. America is not a carrier.

America simply has a secondary mission of being a small and greatly inferior carrier if needed by virtue of being an air-centric amphibious vessel.

It would be inefficient to actually build a carrier specifically designed to carry 20 F-35Bs as its main offensive arm.

So this line of attack on the ship is wrong. The America design surely represents a stealth carrier fleet, But it could not and should not replace the large super carriers designed for power projection and sea control missions.

Which doesn't mean that America is the best option for an amphibious ship with a secondary carrier role. Doing the analysis is beyond my expertise, but I do throw out this option for consideration:

Why not build amphibious warfare vessels even larger than America class ships that would be real reserve strike-capable aircraft carriers if needed.

What if we made our amphibious warfare ships based on the Ford hull? Which is the pinnacle of aviation optimized ships.

We did use a big-deck carrier for special forces missions in the initial Afghanistan campaign, in 2001.

And we used a big-deck carrier to carry Army forces in a Haiti mission before that, in 1994.

But build the amphibious warfare Fords without much of the gear needed for the first line fleet carriers but with the ability to add this equipment if we need more strike carriers.

I assume we'd need fewer Ford amphibious warfare vessels than America class because of the greater size of the former.

And as big-deck carriers, we'd save money on needing vertical take-off versions of our fighter and strike aircraft. The Marines could simply use the Navy version of the F-35, for example. [UPDATE: To my surprise, the Marine version is actually cheaper. If there is to be savings, it would be from decreasing Navy costs per unit by buying more. And maybe some savings by having just two types of aircraft to build and support.]

Knowing we have an operational reserve carrier fleet dedicated to moving Marines, we could build fewer of the fleet carriers and put that money into surface combatants and subs to achieve sufficient numbers for our fleet.

My notion could be inefficient or stupid, I admit. I don't think it is inherently the latter while I admit that I lack the expertise to evaluate the former. But given the unjustified confusion over what America is, I'm not too worried about looking stupid.

But I digress.

America is an exceptional ship. Judge her on her means to perform her primary mission and not on what you think her mission or means should be.

UPDATE: I will admit to one misgiving about the whole notion of delivering Marines from beyond the horizon. If the coastal region isn't secure enough because of shore-based anti-ship missiles for amphibious ships to approach the shores to deliver Marines by small boat, how will we supply those Marines we put ashore from the safety of beyond the horizon?

Squeezing the Balloon

So much of (some) people's faith in government regulation assumes that a government change in rules will work because only the variable imposed by the rule changes in the equation.

So rules on bike helmets assume that bike riders ride their bikes exactly the same way as without a helmet, so safety increases. The regulators don't assume that bicyclists might ride more aggressively with the knowledge that their brains are more protected.

And with better football helmets, advances in protection are undone if players lead with their helmets to use their heads as a battering ram, more secure that they won't risk their spine.

Or does better gas mileage required by the government just give people the freedom to drive more and so use the same amount of gas?

Have increasingly complex restrictions on money in politics reduced money in politics or just pushed it into new areas that only people with the money to afford campaign finance lawyers can utilize to get their message out?

And then there are plastic bag bans so trendy with the Green crowd:

Unfortunately, study after study has shown that most of the supposed “benefits” of these bans and taxes have a negligible effect on the environment at best, and can actually have unintended consequences that cause greater environmental harm. Take Ireland['s plastic-bag tax], for example. When the New York Times reported the 94 percent decrease [in plastic-bag use], it neglected to specify that it was referring only to plastic grocery-bag use. Sales of non-grocery plastic bags (garbage bags, etc.) rose an astonishing 400 percent, amounting to a net increase of 10 percent in total plastic-bag consumption. In an interview with National Review Online, Patrick Gleason, state-affairs manager of Americans for Tax Reform, explains why.

“I don’t know about you, but bags from the store I usually keep to reuse again, to line waste bins, clean up after a pet, etc., so when you don’t have a stockpile built up and aren’t saving these bags, you have to go buy new ones. This goes together with the nonsensical nature of this policy, which has no positive impact on the environment. What’s the point of discriminating against bags on one side of the checkout from bags on the other?” Similar results were found in San Francisco, where, as Gleason notes, “not only was there no change in [the amount of] total litter, but plastic bags comprised a greater share of the litter after the ban.”

The first study he cites is from a source I used not infrequently in my career in the state legislature (Connecticut's OLS did nice work). So I got a kick out of that.

But this issue is something that frustrates me to no end. I have that same experience. I have never purchased plastic garbage bags in the more than a decade I've lived in my post-divorce home. I re-use those planet-killing grocery bags almost exclusively for garbage bags.

The other tiny fraction is met by a partial roll of larger plastic bags that I found in my home when I moved it. I have used it so little that I really can't place where that roll is right now. Somewhere in my kitchen, I assume. But even my larger bag needs are largely met by Toys R Us and department store bags that I re-use and not that legacy roll.

But these studies cited assume that the purpose of plastic bag bans is to reduce the use of plastic bags. Don't be silly.

The purpose is to make the backers of such bans feel superior about themselves. They would never sully their designer trash receptacles with grocery store-logo bags! They buy trash bags anyway and so by using their cloth grocery bags they feel superior for doing without those grocery plastic bags that the peasantry uses.

(Or perhaps they just don't notice the cause and effect of having to buy garbage bags.)

Or the purpose is simply to raise money if the "ban" is imposed as a charge for using the verboten plastic bags in order to inflict pain for using them.

So in those perspectives, who cares if a plastic grocery bag ban doesn't improve the environment? That's pretty irrelevant to feeling superior to the ignorant peasants who whine about losing their plastic bags or having more money to spend on pet projects.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We've Got a Name

Our military effort against ISIL has a name: Operation Inherent Resolve.

I will quibble that our resolve is not inherent in the operation. We have to earn that reputation and not assume it.

I assume the website for the war will be updated soon.

WMD Scandal in Iraq!

The 1991 ceasefire required Iraq to disarm of WMD and document that disarmament to our satisfaction. We found 5,000 old chemical warheads, often buried, during our fight there, suffering casualties in the process.

In many ways this is old news:

From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.

In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

I've blogged on this since we were fighting in Iraq. This isn't new. (NOTE: Although the scale is on an order of magnitude greater than previously thought.)

Nor is blaming the West and America for this:

Others pointed to another embarrassment. In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.

There is no claim that we provided the design to Iraq. Indeed, later the article explains that a European company sold the American-designed warhead. Western European involvement was well known at the time. I won't defend any of that.

I'll just say that an Iranian victory in that Iran-Iraq War would have been worse. I have no problem with the non-WMD support we gave to Iraq to prevent an Iranian victory.

And the urge to blame Bush is strong:

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Hussein was hiding an active weapons of mass destruction program, in defiance of international will and at the world’s risk. United Nations inspectors said they could not find evidence for these claims.

Our intelligence agencies and those of our allies believed Saddam was hiding chemical weapons. Bush acted on that intelligence. Just as Clinton had in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox by launching attacks on Iraq's WMD infrastructure.

Also, the NYT inverts the requirement. Saddam was interfering with inspectors. And Saddam was required to demonstrate to those inspectors that he had disarmed--the ceasefire did not require the inspectors to prove Saddam had not. This is one of the most frustrating errors that the anti-war side continues to make.

Indeed, I could jump on this part of the article:

Chemical munitions can resemble conventional munitions — a problem compounded by Iraq’s practice of mislabeling ordnance to confuse foreign inspectors and, with time, by rust, pitting and dirt.

Inspectors were a post-1991 factor. If all of Iraq's WMD were pre-1991, why would Iraq mislabel ordnance to confuse foreign inspectors?

I attribute this to writer sloppiness--just as failing to understand the responsibilities of the inspections program is sloppiness--rather than being a smoking gun of Saddam's WMD arsenal post-1991.

I'm being harsh, I know. In many ways it is a good article. It's just that basic misunderstanding of the inspections process clouds the framing of the article.

Even infrastructure survived the 1991 war--and 2003 war--as the article acknowledges:

Many chemical weapons incidents clustered around the ruins of the Muthanna State Establishment, the center of Iraqi chemical agent production in the 1980s.

Since June, the compound has been held by the Islamic State, the world’s most radical and violent jihadist group. In a letter sent to the United Nations this summer, the Iraqi government said that about 2,500 corroded chemical rockets remained on the grounds, and that Iraqi officials had witnessed intruders looting equipment before militants shut down the surveillance cameras.

This is "just" a storage facility now, that was supposed to be "entombed" to seal everything in. But it is an example of infrastructure surviving the 1991 war (as it must have since we struck more in 1998, recall).

Yet the article isn't so much about Saddam failing to abide by the 1991 WMD disarmament provisions as the basis for war in 2003 as it is blaming us for not following rules:

Nonproliferation officials said the Pentagon’s handling of many of the recovered warheads and shells appeared to violate the Convention on Chemical Weapons. According to this convention, chemical weapons must be secured, reported and destroyed in an exacting and time-consuming fashion.

Got it? Saddam's failure to account for 5,000 warheads as he was required to do (and the continued existence of WMD facilities, which ISIL now controls) isn't the issue--our failure to fill out the right paperwork is the issue.

There was fighting going on. We had other things to do. And surely we did not want to highlight that there were WMD rounds hidden around Iraq when insurgencies and terrorism were rampant. People could have panicked and terrorists could have focused on finding those rounds.

And Lord knows what the anti-war side would have shrieked--I can imagine them charging the military with justifying a failed war with false WMD evidence just as our Senate was close to refusing to fund the war, distracting us from actually winning the war.

It is an issue if our people were not treated for chemical exposure. That is unacceptable. I don't understand why we failed to do that. Amends must be made both in medical care and in recognition.

But even if all the chemical warheads were old and pre-1991, don't forget that Saddam had the facilities, staff, and raw materials to restart chemical weapons production rapidly. Indeed, the chemical weapons disarmament deal with Syria a year ago included in its WMD disarmament "success" types of raw material that Saddam had possessed at the time of the invasion in 2003 that somehow don't count as WMD.

And I still wonder if all those intelligence agencies were wrong. Just as this is being heralded as a new development, what new developments will we find in the years ahead? What else was buried in Iraq or otherwise hidden?

Remember, as the NYT article reports, somebody was trying to recover Saddam's WMD three years into our occupation in summer 2006:

Even as the Senate committee worked, the American Army made its largest chemical weapons find of the war: more than 2,400 Borak rockets.

The rockets were discovered at Camp Taji, a former Republican Guard compound, when Americans “running a refueling point for helicopters saw some shady activity on the other side of a fence,” said Mr. Lampier, who lived at the camp at the time.

An Iraqi digging with a front-end loader ran away when an American patrol approached, leaving behind partly unearthed rockets. ...

The rockets appeared to have been buried before American airstrikes in 1991, he said. Many were empty. Others still contained sarin. “Full-up sloshers,” he said.

We ended Iraq as a WMD threat (well, other than ISIL holding a chemical weapons facility). So far the issue isn't as clear as shiny new WMD captured in the invasion, but left to his own devices, Saddam would have rebuilt and used his WMD arsenal--again. Just as Assad has used chemical weapons despite President Obama's "successful" WMD deal with Syria.

UPDATE: This effort to deny we had reason to destroy Saddam's regime over WMD is just sad:

[On] Septmeber 12, 2002, President Bush described a different threat while making the case for the 2003 Iraq invasion: “Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.” The Times' investigation doesn't mention any findings of biological weapons.

He went on, “The regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.”

According to the investigation, the chemical weapons discovered by U.S. soldiers after the 2003 invasion were all manufactured before 1991.

He also notes that we did not get a UN Security Council resolution to attack Iraq.

The NYT article is about chemical weapons we found in Iraq, so the bio weapons statement by the president is irrelevant. But the fact is, in the mid-1990s we discovered that Saddam had a bio weapons program. Since bio weapons programs are small and can be conducted in facilities meant for non-weapons programs, it would have been folly to assume there was no bio program, given intelligence indications--especially since he had the knowledge that the much-harder-to-hide nuclear program of Saddam was much more advanced in 1991 than we suspected when we drove Saddam's army from Kuwait that year.

The fact that the warheads discovered in Iraq during the Iraq War were pre-1991 manufacture does not refute the assessment that Saddam was improving facilities to allow for future chemical weapons production. That capability was long known and confirmed after the war.

And the lack of UN authorization for the 2003 war has nothing to do with whether Saddam had chemical weapons capabilities or production capabilities in 2003.

So strike three on what the anti-war side still says is a slam dunk about our reasons for war.

UPDATE: Related thoughts.

And let me again repeat that prior to the 2003 war, even opponents of the war believed that Saddam had chemical weapons. It's just that they didn't think going to war over that was justified--or even thought that the defeat of Saddam would lead to chemical weapons getting loose either as a revenge policy by Saddam or in the chaos after defeating Saddam, so it was safer to let Saddam keep them secured.

So claiming that "only" thousands of pre-1991 chemical warheads discovered prove the war was unjustified involves a dramatic re-write of history.

Preparing to Deter the Next Invasion

Ukraine needs a stronger military and stronger economy to resist Russian pressure and aggression. Iraq certainly shows that a corrupt country undermines military effectiveness.

Ukraine will purge themselves of pro-Russian elements which did so much to undermine Ukraine's military:

Ukraine's president approved legislation Thursday to purge government bodies of officials linked to the rule of the country's previous leader, Viktor Yanukovych.

The law is aimed at restoring public trust in authorities and building "a new system of government in line with European standards," President Petro Poroshenko's office said in a statement.

People may be banned from government jobs for 5-10 years. As long as this isn't too heavy handed, this is absolutely necessary to promote rule of law. And it was done in other former Soviet satellites in the past.

Further, if it is accompanied by efforts to bring in Russian speakers and ethnic Russians who weren't part of the corrupt government bureaucracy, getting rid of the worst of the people who did help Russia undermine Ukraine and could again is a good thing.

In another effort to promote rule of law, Ukraine is also working to combat corruption in the judiciary:

Separate legislation, awaiting approval, includes will obligated judges and law enforcement officials to declare their financial holdings, and will create an anti-corruption agency charged with investigating any extravagant lifestyles of government officials.

Promote rule of law and Western investment will flow to Ukraine. With Russia losing that investment, Ukraine has an opportunity to soak up that money with no place to go.

With a stronger economy, Ukraine can better resist Russian pressure by being able to afford alternate energy sources and by making their standard of living better than Russia's--reducing that Russian appeal to join Russia.

Ukraine needs help to rebuild their military, too. We should do that.

Our mantra in this age seems to be that others must provide the ground force rather than us. When Ukraine is willing and able to be a ground force to defend themselves, why won't we help them now before it is too late? Look at the difficulty we are having in Iraq and Syria getting that local ground force!

Much of the heavy weapons for Ukraine should be Russian-designed stuff--our new NATO allies who are switching over have that to sell if Ukraine needs more--to fit their arsenal. Remember, more than thirty years after Camp David, Egypt is still shifting their arsenal from Soviet to American weapons. Ukraine doesn't need that kind of churn.

Modernize the Russian stuff with Western components, but leave the platforms in place. We can help with training, command and control, and weapons for niche military capabilities they don't have. Once we've maxed out on that route (and once Ukraine is more prosperous), we can think about providing Western weapons to replace Russian-made equipment.

With Russia's proxies still fighting despite the ceasefire in Donbas, the Twilight Struggle is already beginning. Ukraine needs to win this before Russia feels strong enough to make a lunge for Kiev.

UPDATE: Ukraine is, on the surface, determined to be better prepared to fight Russia:

Ukraine's new defence minister vowed on Tuesday to build an army capable of withstanding Russia as sparks flew ahead of talks between Moscow and Washington over their worst standoff since the Cold War.

The high-stakes diplomacy comes after renewed bloodshed despite a tenuous truce, with indiscriminate shelling killing seven people in a funeral procession in the disputed southeastern port of Mariupol.

A sense of public disbelief and fury at the mounting death toll and the humiliating performance of Ukraine's once-proud armed forces has set the backdrop of a crucial general election at the end of the month.

Really, Ukraine should only be disappointed in their response to the subliminal invasion of Crimea. Ukraine put in a decent fight against the local and Russian irregulars in the Donbas region, failing only when the Russians committed larger numbers of conventional forces to the fight.

And as I've written before, Ukraine could not risk pushing too much of their regular forces into the east lest they be cut off by a big Russian escalation that could catch such a deployed Ukrainian force in a pincer.

But by all means, prepare to defeat Russian forces in the east--or at least kill lots of Russians in a losing battle. That could deter a war that Ukraine might lose.

You Only Have to Be Better Than Your Enemy--If You Will Pay the Price

Russia has lost rather a lot of soldiers for a splendid little war to weaken Ukraine's hold on a fraction of the Donbas region in the east.

Strategypage writes of the cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:

The fighting in Ukraine has left about 3,500 dead so far. About 25 percent of the dead have been Ukrainian soldiers and militia. About 30 percent were rebels and nearly ten percent were Russian soldiers. The rest were civilians. The death of so many Russian troops, and the attempt by the Russian government to hide the fact that they died in Ukraine, has caused a growing number of anti-government demonstrations and protests. About ten percent of those deaths occurred after the September 5 th ceasefire agreement with Russia and the rebels continuing to attack. That agreement has been regularly violated by the rebels who seek to capture the airport outside rebel held Donetsk. Russia insists that the rebels are defying Russia with all these violations of the ceasefire. No one believes that, least of all NATO intelligence, which has been tracking the presence of Russian troops and special operations troops in Donbas and just across the border in Russia.

So that's over 850 Ukrainian troops and militia versus 1050 pro-Russian rebels and nearly 350 Russians killed in combat.

I assume that since the Russian count specifies "soldiers" that Russian mercenaries and civilian volunteers are part of the "rebel" count. Which makes sense since the rebels were heavily reinforced with outsiders to make the Russian invasion look more like an insurrection than an invasion.

And 1,250 civilians caught in the crossfire. I don't know if that counts the dead from the Malaysian airliner shot down by the rebels or just Ukrainians.

For Ukraine's military being in shambles at the outset of the war that began in Crimea in February, that's really a pretty credible showing for the Ukrainians to have killed the well-equipped enemy at such a favorable ratio.

And it demonstrates that for all the talk of Russia's rearmament effort that Russia's army is still not that good despite some pockets of excellence and just enough adequate troops to get the job done against second-rate opponents (sorry Ukraine, but your military was shot at the outset of the war--but imagine what you could do if you were ready. Get on it.)

Sadly for NATO, much of NATO itself consists of second-rate militaries:

The current mess began in 1991 with the end of the Cold War. Europe was, for the first time in nearly a century, truly at peace. There was no military threat. There were some Islamic terrorists, but that lot didn't have an army. They were considered a public safety, not a military, threat. It was a unique situation in European history, and European generals and politicians had a hard time trying to get their heads wrapped around it.

There were potential military threats, but nothing in the immediate future that required a large force. There was peacekeeping, and that's what the Europeans were trying to organize for. That, however, was found to cost a lot of money. The post-Cold War military budgets could not support the traditional type forces and the new peacekeeper ones as well. But the idea of disposing of ancient military traditions and organizations that created combat ready troops was, well, hard to accept. But that’s what happened.

And there lies Russia's opportunities. Russia doesn't have to have a good military. They just have to have one better than their enemy's.

The fact that the Europeans and the Russians have poorly trained armies doesn't mean that there won't be war. It just means that when armies of amateurs clash the casualties will be high.

I'm Reasonably Sure He's Correct

The president of Iran believes a nuclear deal with the West is possible:

"We have reached consensus on generalities and there are only the fine details to be worked out: whether we would reach an agreement within the next 40 days, if the time will be extended, etc.," the president told his people in a late evening address broadcast live on television.

I'm pretty sure Rouhani is correct.

Although I've lost track of the "deadlines" regarding Iran over the years, I've long believed that President Obama could reach a consensus with Iran over Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.

Yes, the consensus is that, in general, Iran will pretend to stop work that could lead to nuclear weapons.

And we will pretend to believe them.

Anything more specific is a matter of mere fine details.

Have a super sparkly day.