Where Unicorns Frolic

Wait. What?

In a series of interviews with The Atlantic magazine published Thursday, Mr. Obama said a number of American allies in the Persian Gulf — as well as in Europe — were “free riders,” eager to drag the United States into grinding sectarian conflicts that sometimes had little to do with American interests. He showed little sympathy for the Saudis, who have been threatened by the nuclear deal Mr. Obama reached with Iran.

He also said the 2011 Libya War was a mistake because the Europeans didn't do as much as the president thought they'd do.

[As an aside, I was not in favor of going to war in Libya, arguing that the Europeans who opted out of Iraq and Afghanistan while we fought could handle Libya if it was such a problem for them. Once we went to war, I wanted to win, of course.]

Our allies don't do what we want and do what we don't want?

I'm so old that I remember when our Left said that Bush destroyed our relations with the world and that's why we couldn't get cooperation from them.

Oh, and the world cheered wildly and threw their panties on the stage in total joy at the dawning of a new age of nuanced American leadership. Yet still they don't cooperate enough.

You see, the problem is that our allies just don't live up to the standards of President Obama:

As the coasting President looks back, he finds something wrong with all of America’s friends. Mr Cameron gets off relatively lightly (though he is also criticised for speaking out against “radical Islam”). The then President Sarkozy of France is attacked for enjoying photo-opportunities, Israel for intransigence, Saudi Arabia for repression, Turkey for not being his designated bridge between East and West. Poor, loyal King Abdullah of Jordan complains: “I think I believe in American power more than Obama does”. It is not the Blessed Barack who has failed, but everyone else who has disappointed his high ideals.

Unless you think it is all trash-talking of foreigners, take heart. Our president does see some hopeful actors out there:

America’s enemies, by contrast, enjoy the presidential blessing (without offering him any gratitude in return). This is a good time to be a Cuban Communist, and the best moment since 1979 to be an Iranian ayatollah.

Well, perhaps the president's problem with the Europeans is similar to his problems with Americans--the president is just failing to adequately explain his brilliance to us (back to the interviews article):

“Every president has his strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “And there is no doubt that there are times where I have not been attentive enough to feelings and emotions and politics in communicating what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”

Yeah, the communicating is the problem. Time for outreach speeches all around!

Max Boot has thoughts on this interview, too (in a pre-publication addition.)

Whatever the president has to do to sleep at night, I guess. Dreams of unicorns are pleasant.

Vote Brexit On Sight, Vote Brexit First, Brexit To Kill the EU, Keep Brexiting

To wonder why President Obama will urge the British people to remain in the European Union is to answer the question.

Why is President Obama urging Britain to remain in the European Union?

The American view is very clear. Whether in code or en clair, the President will tell us all that UK membership of the EU is right for Britain, right for Europe, and right for America. And why? Because that – or so we will be told – is the only way we can have “influence” in the counsels of the nations.

It is an important argument, and deserves to be taken seriously. I also think it is wholly fallacious – and coming from Uncle Sam, it is a piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy.

There is no country in the world that defends its own sovereignty with such hysterical vigilance as the United States of America. This is a nation born from its glorious refusal to accept overseas control. Almost two and a half centuries ago the American colonists rose up and violently asserted the principle that they – and they alone – should determine the government of America, and not George III or his ministers. To this day the Americans refuse to kneel to almost any kind of international jurisdiction.

Really? I have to spell it out? It isn't obvious why the president will interfere in Britain's election?

President Obama has famously placed his historic presidency outside of the pre-Obama history of our America. A social democrat at heart, the president wants to embrace European-style social democracy and submission to international bodies to constrain our freedom of action at home and abroad.

If our most important ally rejects this path to submission to a supranational undemocratic authority, Britain makes it harder for America to abandon our glorious refusal to accept overseas control when it is exercised by reasonably enlightened bureaucrats. Our president wishes to bend the knee to that kind of technocratic autocracy.

So I say again to the British people, vote to get out of the European Union while you can. This could yet be your finest hour in defense of the West against the autocrats from the continent who would rule you because you can't be expected to freely go along with their diktats.

Outreach to the Reality-Based Community

Via Instapundit, of course Bush didn't lie us into war with Iraq.



That the so-called "reality-based community" fervently believes that Bush lied or that intelligence was manipulated says a lot about their grasp of reality.

Or perhaps it says a lot about what they are willing to do to reach their ends.

Intelligence was not manipulated. (Tip to Eric at Learning Curve). So there were no lies.

Yet as useful as this discussion is, the video underestimates the Saddam problem by simply declaring the intelligence about weapons of mass destruction wrong.

Saddam has missiles that exceeded allowable ranges--we know this because the UN was actually destroying them on the eve of war. These are one component of making WMD more useful.

And Saddam had the scientific and technical organizations kept intact, plus raw materials, to restart chemical weapons production within months of deciding to do so.

Good grief, people, how much more would a Saddam dynasty freed of crumbling sanctions have been able to do given that ISIL has managed to cobble together chemical weapons in their embryonic  state?

U.S. aircraft have begun targeting Islamic State's chemical weapons sites near Mosul in Iraq in an initial round of air strikes aimed at diminishing the militant group's ability to use mustard agent, CNN reported on Wednesday.

This started a whole two weeks ago, I know, but let's have a little memory here even if going back to 2002 or the 1990s isn't possible!

Yes, Saddam was far from nukes. But given how we had missed how close he was until we had more access to Iraq in 1991, how could we take a chance?

And biological weapons research doesn't take a lot of machinery to conduct. That could have been hidden or started up quickly.

The Middle East is safer without Saddam or his evil spawn in charge of Iraq. The war was not a mistake.

The post-war was a mistake. Had we defended that win after 2011 instead of bugging out after hanging the "war responsibly ended" banner across the White House, we'd see more evidence of that today, I think.

And no, I don't accept advice from this crowd on truth-telling about Iraq.

Smart Diplomacy in Action

I give you, Secretary of State John Kerry, super genius:

Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a speech at the Australian National University that Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted after the Iranian nuclear deal was signed last year, did not bar Iran from testing the type of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that it launched last week.

"It doesn't call upon Iran not to test ballistic missiles, or ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads ... it calls upon Iran not to test ballistic missiles that were 'designed' to be capable," Zarif said.

"That word took me about seven months to negotiate, so everybody knew what it meant," he said, referring to "designed."

Now that's smart diplomacy.

Our State Department agreed to Iran's wording that allows testing of "ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads." And our diplomats pretended that it doesn't mean what the Iranians say it means--and what the Russians agree with.

So Russia has all the excuse it needs to block action against Iran in the UN Security Council.

Best and brightest, indeed.

Have a super sparkly future Iranian nuclear missile day.

UPDATE: Remember, this is what the Iranians are getting away with scant months after the decade-long nuclear deal went into effect:

Iran and Russia are right. Or, at least, they are better interpreters of international law than the Harvard Law Review editor currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After Iran test-fired multiple ballistic missiles last week, the Obama administration has been at pains to find a legal basis on which to condemn the launches and push for more international sanctions. They should have thought of that before negotiating away all meaningful international legal restrictions on Iran’s conventional weapons programs as part of last summer's nuclear deal.

Which begs the question of whether our vaunted Smart Diplomacy practitioners didn't see this coming or just pretended not to see it coming.

And ponder what Iran will do in the years ahead despite this faux deal that only pretends to slow Iran down on their nuclear path.

Then explain to me why Iran is spending money (thanks Iran deal, for releasing that money to help this project!) in Africa to gain favor with poor states who can push Iran's interests in the IAEA and on the Security Council, or who have nuclear materials?

A few years ago, I analyzed Iran’s extensive outreach into Africa. A few patterns emerged: Iran targeted its assistance to African states which sat as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council or in the IAEA Board of Governors. In effect, Tehran sought to buy their votes. Iran also provided aid in exchange for logistical bases or services, for example, in Djibouti, Sudan, or Senegal. Finally, a pattern existed — too extensive to be coincidental — in which Iranian authorities reached out to states which had significant uranium resources and which were building the facilities to bring those to market. Hence, Iran-Namibia relations were growing steadily.

Have a super sparkly, legacy-building day.

The Base With No Name

The truth is out there:

A mysterious, mile-long landing strip in the remote Nevada desert could be the home base for testing sensors on a top-secret fleet of drones, security experts speculate.

The asphalt landing strip is in Area 6 of the Yucca Flat test site, about 12 miles northeast of the infamous Area 51 that has long been the subject of conspiracy theories. ...

The area, which does not have a name, is fenced off and can be seen from the road by those touring the pockmarked Nevada National Security Site of Yucca Flat, where the military conducted hundreds of nuclear tests over several decades.

Unless Spinal Tap has taught us nothing, I think it is safe to say that Area 6 is 45 less important than Area 51.

Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

Tip to Instapundit.

Backassward

I think our decision to reduce the number of carrier air wings is exactly backwards.

I honestly can't get worked up about a slow erosion of our carrier numbers, but I don't like losing Navy air wings:

By the end of 2016 the U.S. Navy will disband one of its ten carrier air groups. This will mean the remaining nine carrier air groups will spend more time at sea and away from their home bases. The military term for this is “less dwell time” (with family and largely ashore). This is bad for morale but if the carriers spend less time at sea they will be less prepared for war.

A carrier air wing has about 2,500 personnel and 60-65 aircraft and helicopters. The elimination of a carrier air group is the result of the 2011 decision to disband one of its ten Carrier Strike Groups (SCGs), leaving only nine of them for the eleven aircraft carriers in service.

There are several pieces here when considering how we forward deploy carriers.

One, the number of aircraft carriers: 11.

Two, the number of carrier strike group (CSG) units, which are comprised of a carrier, a carrier air wing, and supporting warships and submarines plus support ships: 9.

Three, the number of carrier air wings: 9.

Because a certain percentage of aircraft carriers are out of the rotation because they are undergoing lengthy maintenance, we have fewer carrier air wings than carriers.

And since we organize fewer CSGs--that are based on a carrier--than we have actual aircraft carriers, we don't see the need to have an "excess" carrier air wing.

One problem with having fewer CSGs in the deployment rotation is that if we want to keep a carrier forward deployed in both CENTCOM and the western Pacific, we need to keep the CSGs at sea for a longer period of time. It's simple math. With more CSGs in the rotation, the CSGs could maintain two forward CSGs with less time on station.

What I don't get is why we forget that a CSG is the means to project an air wing forward and not the end.

In both the Persian Gulf and western Pacific, we have plenty of access to land-based airfields. So it is technically not necessary to have a CSG to project Navy air power into those regions.

Why not maintain more carrier air wings than carriers so the air wing rotation cycle keeps more of them ready to deploy?

If we did that, we could try deploying a carrier air wing without a carrier into the rotation to maintain Navy air power forward deployed without straining the morale of CSG crews by keeping them on station too long.

We want Navy air power forward. Why do we insist it must only be on a floating airfield when we have plenty of land airfields available?

So Who is the Target?

Saudi-hosted military exercises are billed as anti-terrorist training, but this is clearly force-on-force ground combat training. Who is the target?

The Saudis wrapped up an unusual--for the Saudis--military exercise:

Warplanes roared overhead, tanks rumbled across the desert and smoke filled the sky Thursday for the final day of what Saudi Arabia billed as the region's biggest-ever military exercises.

The 12-day "Northern Thunder" manoeuvres in the kingdom's northeast included 20 nations from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Saudi officials said.

This is training for combat against conventional enemy forces trying to control terrain.

Iran is the obvious potential enemy. But that would require Iran to move troops into Iraq, turn left, and march into Kuwait and perhaps beyond.

Yemen is a potential target, but the Saudi-led coalition seems to be doing well enough with a small core mobile force in support of local allies.

Libya is a potential target, if the Egyptians want ground allies before committing their own troops to an anti-ISIL fight to unify Libya.

Even Israel is a potential target, in theory. But in practice that is laughable.

And of course, ISIL in Iraq is a potential target. But Iraq--under Iranian pressure--doesn't want Saudis involved. So I don't see these troops helping with an offensive to liberate Mosul.

Would this Saudi coalition base out of Turkey to bolster a Turkish buffer zone in support of rebels in northwestern Syria?

Would this Saudi coalition base out of Jordan to support Southern Front rebels in Syria across the border?

Or from Jordan, lead an offensive into western Anbar province with the Jordanians in the lead to mask the Saudi role to liberate the largely Sunni Arab region from ISIL as Iraqi forces push west from central Iraq?

To be fair, any of those potential theaters would be north, latitude-wise, of the training site.

UPDATE: Apparently we can rule out Yemen, because Saudi Arabia has announced the end of major combat operations:

In an interview on Wednesday, [Saudi Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri] told AFP that "we are in the end of the major combat phase," to be followed by the creation of a stable security situation, then reconstruction.

I guess they figure that they've helped their allies take enough land that major offensives are no longer needed.

We'll see. Perhaps the Saudi-led coalition has gained enough ground to cut some deals with enough people to reach this point.

Perspective on the China Threat

There are many reasons not to hype the Chinese military. They have problems despite their advances in weapons technology. But consider what China must do with their military to win before declaring China to be a paper tiger.

Strategypage addresses weaknesses that make China's military less than it appears on the surface.

Do read it all.

But that doesn't mean that China can't win a war.

Consider that China is close to the potential theaters of war in the Korean peninsula, the East China Sea, Taiwan, and the South China Sea.

We are far away, with little of our military power forward deployed. Which is good, as far as I'm concerned.

But that means it takes time for us to mass power in the relevant theaters, from forces scattered around the globe or in the United States. Yes, once we have that power massed, we have the clear edge in war-winning potential despite China's advances in these areas.

As an aside, China's abandonment of the long war of attrition strategy against invaders by cutting the size of their army while modernizing it means that China's army is now vulnerable to defeat by our ground forces.

But China does not need to defeat our military to win a war. All China has to do is target an objective in one of those close theaters and then delay our entry into the war long enough for China to defeat the military forces of the actual target.

From China's perspective, the war should be over before we even have time to make a political decision to intervene.

I've been noting this simple fact of geography for a long time.

Even as the weaker military power, China can choose the time and place of striking to make sure they have a decisive--if fleeting--advantage in the theater of war.

If China does that, we have to contemplate extending a war to recapture what was lost in the face of Chinese nuclear weapons threats.

Sure, we have them too. A lot more. But once nuclear powers start shooting, the emphasis will be on stopping the shooting whatever the situation is.

This is back to Cold War logic when any proxy battles between America and the USSR generally had to be over quickly before one side or the other threatened to escalate to save their client.

So don't panic over China's military power. It has weaknesses we can exploit.

But don't dismiss China' military power because of those weaknesses. China can exploit the tyranny of distance that places our military power far away.

Case in point:

China also [in addition to building up amphibious warfare assets] keeps track of hundreds of commercial ferries and barges that can be mobilized by the military and used for amphibious operations against Taiwan. It is believed that there is sufficient lift for over 300 infantry and mechanized (tank and mechanized infantry) battalions. That’s about 24 divisions. There is additional shipping (mostly civilian) for moving support units.

Well, that's the assault elements of 24 divisions, anyway. I think China has about 9 army divisions trained for amphibious warfare apart from their small marine force. But follow-on forces after a bridgehead is formed would be needed, too.

Those who dismiss China's ability to invade Taiwan like to point out China's small marine force and relatively small formal amphibious warfare fleet. When you just have to sail about 100 miles, such a specialized fleet that defines our amphibious warfare capabilities isn't necessary.

And add in several divisions of paratroopers and an airmobile division that can be devoted to an invasion, and China might be able to end the war before we can even decide to spin up a response sufficiently large to penetrate China's area denial/anti-access shield and rescue Taiwan without suffering heavy casualties.

Of course, I have made this point before, as I discovered while searching for that old post about geography.

But perspective is why you visit here, right?

Pre-Peeled Trees and Atrocity Forests

The Bike Path Left has struck a blow against the atrocity of pre-peeled oranges. That's what they worry about?

Ah, victory:

‘Definitely our mistake’: Whole Foods pulls pre-peeled oranges from the shelves after being hammered on Twitter.

Yes, it does seem silly to pre-peel oranges, although people with arthritis might disagree. But the outrage mob won.

I don't understand why this segment of our population isn't the most aggressively supportive of the war on Islamist terrorists.

Our enemies wage an actual total war on women and have created societies where a gay couple can only dream of having to find a different baker to make their wedding cake.

Yet this segment of the perpetually outraged left can't seem to get a good outrage worked up to support the war on terror by killing and defeating jihadis.

Life is funny.

Behold the Blinding Glory That is the Brilliance of Secretary Kerry!

Remember how the Obama administration touted their success in getting the world to unite in a diplomatic solution to stopping Iran from getting nuclear missiles? Remember how opponents of the deal suspected that Russia might not be fully on board that sainted international community bandwagon?

We want to get UN action in the Security Council in response to Iran's banned missile tests.

And is Russia--who our president inexplicably thanked for their help in getting to the signing ceremony--in agreement with this plan? Well:

"This merits a council response," U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told reporters. "Russia seems to be lawyering its way to look for reasons not to act ... We're not going to give up at the Security Council, no matter the quibbling that we heard today about this and that."

We've already seen Russia run interference for Tehran's nutballs.

But the actual nuclear agreement will be much better right? What with "snapback" sanctions?

First, the snapback provisions have so many ways around them that Iran will lock in place deals immune to any such response to their violations.

And second, if you think that Russia won't lawyer up on the provisions of the nuclear deal that essentially nullify the Security Council veto of the permanent Security Council members, you're either stoned or an Obama administration policy expert.

As I noted about the deal's provision amending the Security Council veto:

And let me add a question I've asked before. Can the United Nations charter be amended by this deal to carve out an exception to the veto power of the 5 permanent members of the Security Council?

Here's what the Chapter V, Article 27 of the UN charter says about the veto:

1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.
3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.

Because I can see the Russians or Chinese objecting to the whole notion that UNSC resolutions can be reimposed after 30 days of inaction by the Security Council. What do we do when the Russians and Chinese (probably correctly, but it has been a long time since I had an international law class) argue that this deal provision is invalid and that no sanctions resolutions can go into effect without 9 votes, including the concurrence of the five permanent members, and they will not go along with it?

Yeah. Expect the Russians to lawyer up if we ever try to impose new sanctions on Iran under the Iran deal.

No doubt, at that point the deal's defenders in the West will say that enforcement isn't really important when you consider how the deal will bring in Iran from the cold and turn the Islamic Republic into a responsible regional power.

We are so screwed.

The Obama Awakening

We are a de facto Assad ally. Which the Russians recognize even if the White House doesn't like to admit that.

Of course the Russians are ready to help America eject ISIL from Raqqa, Syria:

"We are ready to coordinate our actions with the Americans, because Raqqa is in the eastern part of Syria, and the American coalition is mainly ... acting there," Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying in an interview with the Ren-TV television channel.

And the revolution in our thinking about Assad will be complete, as I predicted before the faux chemical arms deal regarding Syria was concluded:

Remember, when it comes to Assad, President Obama is approaching the end of a revolution in thinking.

President Obama came into office as someone who thought he could talk to Assad and as the head of a party whose leaders believed Assad was someone America could do business with. We believed Assad had chemical weapons though Assad never admitted this.

Then came the revolution and President Obama said Assad had to go. Indeed, President Obama even warned Assad not to use chemical weapons in order to cling to power.

Recently, President Obama and his administration portrayed Assad and his use of chemical weapons as a threat so great that we had to strike Assad quickly.

Now, even after Assad has used chemical weapons multiple times, President Obama says that we can talk to Assad through Russia as long as Assad says he gives up his chemical weapons. Russia's price for this deal will be Assad's survival, of course.

So Assad will survive. Russia will gain stature in the Middle East. Syrians will have died in large numbers in a failed revolution that will keep the people beaten down for another generation. Jihadis will scatter back to their homelands to sow mayhem. And other than a reputation for failing to oppose enemies, all we will have is a paper WMD disarmament deal (in English and French, so Kerry can read either one!) that the next president will still be trying to verify as completed.

The revolution will be over and we'll be back to where we started.

And this will be called smart diplomacy.

A true revolution turns 360 degrees, recall. [And that's the entire post. So you don't need to click through.]

Although Stratfor believes this was a revolution from behind, so to speak, it is no less a revolution in our policy because Russia did the job:

The United States had a political problem. Not only had it opposed Assad, it had been deeply aligned with anti-Assad factions. It could not suddenly become the protector of the Assad regime. At the same time, the United States, at that moment, could not afford the fall of Assad. The Russian intervention solved the problem for the United States. Assad was saved. IS was blocked and a situation that was spiraling out of control was contained.

Was this a formal deal or merely the unexpected outcome? I doubt that papers were signed but I also doubt that it was unexpected by either side.

I would like to add to the subject of the Stratfor article that Russia's seizure of Crimea gave Russia a reason to intervene in Syria to maintain their bases in Syria. Crimea is essentially a power projection platform. And projecting military power into the eastern Mediterranean Sea is a traditional Russian objective.

So that has been awakened, as well.

Disco Balls and Vipers' Nests

North Korea likely has not actually advanced their nuclear technology to go from a technician-pampered "device" to a rugged and miniaturize "weapon":

The accompanying article said Kim was congratulating his nuclear weapon scientists for having developed a miniaturised nuclear warhead: a claim being met with scepticism by various Western analysts.

I admit that I'm just a history major, but it looks like the North Koreans are trying to weaponize a disco ball.

Speaking of mind-numbing stupidity, check out the North Korea expert who is really upset about our larger-than-usual joint exercises with South Korea that prompted a northern temper tantrum:

Various security policy think-tanks have accused Washington and its South Korean allies of raising tensions on the Korean peninsula, calling the exercises ill-advised. Stephan Haggard from the School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego, who authors a blog on North Korea, told news sites like CNN, "I didn't see the logic of expanding the exercises. I personally think that upping the sizes of the exercises didn't serve any material function. It's not clear that the size will bring North Korea back to the diplomatic table, so there's no real purpose to do that. All you've done is stir the viper's nest."

Ah, the in-depth knowledge that enables an expert to put North Korea's actions in "context."

It's a viper's nest. Which means there are vipers there.

The vipers are pre-stirred, you must admit. What doesn't set off North Korea's nutball ruler?

North Korea on Wednesday sentenced an American student who admitted stealing a propaganda banner from a hotel to 15 years' hard labour for subversive activities, state media said.

And while I have sympathy for the young man's ordeal, let's ignore for now the stupidity of vacationing in North Korea and the immorality of providing that concentration camp with a UN seat hard currency to pay for that experience.

[UPDATE: I'm not the only one to feel this way:

It’s not a country, it’s a prison camp and a torture chamber. Taking a tourist trip there means spectating on the murder and abuse of your fellow human beings, and putting hard currency into the hands of the people responsible for those crimes.]

As I complained more than a decade ago about another expert who counseled working with the vipers:

What is it with some experts? Why do so many believe that the best use of their expertise is to identify the proper officials to whom we should surrender? Why do they think we need to know the precise language and manner of our surrender notice so that we don't offend them with our crude ways?

I have deep respect for the knowledge that subject experts have on their subject. What I don't have respect for is the judgment to make broader conclusions about what to do about the subject they can explain.

I swear to God, some academics simply live in an echelon above reality.

The President Might Be Right

A while back, President Obama touted the economic recovery on his watch:

Political candidates who are telling voters that the economy is bad are living in an "alternative reality," President Obama said Friday.

Touting the jobs report Friday morning that showed relatively strong growth, Obama accused people skeptical of the economy of engaging in "fantasy."

Well, Bernie Sanders is one of those candidates.

And there is one liberal writer, at least, who starts with the assumption that the president denies.

But I can't rule out that the president is right. Lord knows I'm not going to start taking economic lessons from a self-identified socialist, now am I?

Sure, labor force participation rates are much lower, making the unemployment rate perhaps artificially low.

And wage growth seems stagnant.

And the GDP growth has been painfully slow with no rapid take-off like other recoveries--and yes, I understand that banking-induced recessions take longer to escape, but it's been over 7 years since then.

And let's not even mention the huge increase in the national debt only masked by the artificially low interest rates that push down what we pay to borrow.

I just doesn't seem like a recovery.

But during the Bush 43 years, I scratched my head as the Left aggressively said the economy was doing poorly despite what seemed like good statistics for growth and employment.

Since economics is outside of my lane, I can't rule out the possibility that our economy is doing alright.

Let's Not Pretend 30mm is a Huge Deal

I'm all for upgunning our Europe-based Stryker infantry carriers from (usually) 12.7mm machine guns to 30mm auto cannons to have a better chance in a mechanized fight, but let's not get silly about this necessary but insufficient move.

Oh, please:

A “Stryker’s not a tank, but if you go from a 20mm to a 30mm it will enable us to be a lot more effective if we ever did have a kinetic engagement,” Hodges said.

The Army plans for General Dynamics Corp. to integrate 30mm cannons from Orbital ATK Inc. into unmanned “Protector” turrets built by Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. General Dynamics will first build eight test vehicles.

“The 30mm is a big deal,” Jim Hasik, a senior defense fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said in an e-mail. “I frankly used to doubt that, but I’ve had enough armored infantrymen tell me otherwise” because the weapon in close terrain “can hold off heavy tanks by damaging their sensors, weapons, running gear.”

That American general is right, changing the upgrade to a 30mm weapon instead of a 20mm weapon upgrade [Note: although I thought it was a 25mm upgrade like we have on our Bradleys] is very helpful. But let's not oversell this. I'm not sure what Hasik is thinking.

Nobody in their right mind wants to go up against 125mm gun-armed main battle tanks with 30mm guns on lightly armored wheeled vehicles (although that is more sane than trying it with machine guns).

Sure, the small cannon could smash up sensors, gun tubes, and running gear if the gun battle gets that close. But the 125mm rounds will slice through Strykers--and keep going.

And close terrain that denies the Russian tanks long fields of fire to kill Strykers without getting into 30mm damage range is not what I'd count on in eastern Europe.

The 30mm really just means that the Stryker can tear apart infantry fighting vehicles and scout vehicles.

If the Stryker is to take on the big tanks--unless we assume absolute aerial supremacy to let air power take the job--the Stryker will need anti-tank missiles added to them in addition to the 30mm.

And as I've said before, if you want a quick increase in Stryker brigade anti-tank power, add a tank battalion to the brigade.

Heck, up-gun the Strykers and add the tanks and you are getting close to recreating the old armored cavalry regiments that our Army is probably missing a lot right about now.

And if there was the money, I'd upgrade all the Stryker brigades and not just the Europe-based brigade.

And while I'm at it, rotating more Army troops into Europe as the article discusses is a nice short-term measure; but in the long run we should have the leading edge of a corps there.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

After sixty years of North Korea accusing us of plotting to invade them, I think that they might finally be right.

North Korea's conventional armed forces are growing weaker every year as training is abandoned for economic activities by troops and as weapons age from obsolete to war museum quality. Yet North Korean continues to threaten the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) with destruction.

A successful northern invasion of South Korea increasingly requires North Korea to focus on weapons of mass destruction to completely cripple the South Korean army with a massive nuclear and chemical strike; and to successfully insert tens of thousands of commandos to disrupt the ROK army from deploying.

In that case, North Korea's army might be able to manage a road march into Seoul against scattered opposition--if the officers can keep their troops from stopping to loot South Korean malls on the line of march.

And North Korea is on the path to nuclear weapons, has lots of chemical weapons, and keeps lots of conventional artillery to pound Seoul within range of that city. So Seoul could be heavily damaged even without crossing the demilitarized zone (DMZ) with an invasion.

We do worry about this bombardment threat:

"If North Korea decides to use their long-range artillery, which they have so many pieces of, Seoul would be in direct range," Captain Harry Lu of the U.S. Army's 37th Field Artillery Regiment said.

"So our mission here is to make sure we destroy that artillery before they can cause any more damage to the greater Seoul metropolitan area." ...

In bellicose rhetoric, North Korea routinely threatens to turn Seoul into a "sea of flames" and the city was reduced to rubble in the 1950-53 Korean conflict, which ended in a truce, not a treaty, meaning the two sides are technically still at war.

Because of these factors, I think that our war plans are evolving to go north of the DMZ; and that these plans include three main lines of attack:

A decapitation strike on North Korea's command and control to paralyze their armed forces:

Massive joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises are a spring ritual on the Korean Peninsula guaranteed to draw a lot of threat-laced venom from Pyongyang. This time, not only are the war games the biggest ever, but the troops now massed south of the Demilitarized Zone have reportedly incorporated a new hypothetical into their training: a "beheading mission" against Kim Jong Un himself. ...

They are targeted attacks to eliminate an adversary's leader, or leaders, in an attempt to disrupt or destroy its command chain as soon as a crisis breaks out or appears imminent. They are seen as particularly effective against enemies with a highly centralized command focused on a small group, or one leader. With the leader out of the way, the thinking goes, it's a lot easier to take the rest of the enemy's forces down — or at least keep them from maintaining a coordinated and sustained offensive[;]

A limited invasion north of the DMZ by South Korean forces keep the North Koreans too busy to focus on the third part below and to carve out a no-launch zone to protect Seoul from bombardment by all but the longest range North Korean missiles (hello missile defenses!); and

A joint South Korean-American lunge with a specialized unit into North Korea to grab nuclear missile facilities to avoid relying on air power to destroy the nukes (but we'll try while the troops are on the way, with missile defenses on land and ships spinning up to protect the region until the troops are standing on the ground. Heck, it could be a layered defense starting with American fighters loitering over the North Korean missile sites (although I was thinking about Iran at the time).

And we would retain the amphibious threat to expand a move north:

About 55 U.S. marine aircraft and 30 U.S. and South Korean ships, including the USS Bonhomme Richard and USS Boxer, which carry AV-8B Harrier attack jets and V-22 Osprey aircrafts, took part in the assault on beaches near Pohang city, the U.S. navy said.

"They will penetrate notional enemy beach defenses, establish a beach head, and rapidly transition forces and sustainment ashore," the U.S. military based in South Korea said in a statement before the exercise.

That's what I'd plan for, anyway, were I Lord of PACOM.

As an aside, when you hear that these exercises have record numbers of troops involved, don't forget that including an American aircraft carrier task force adds many thousands of sailors to the total count.

Ah, the Glories of Smart Diplomacy

Another ally is thrown under the bus by the Obama administration and gets blamed for a war that we are supporting.

This time it is Saudi Arabia:

Iran had moved into Saudi Arabia’s backyard, Mr. Jubeir told Mr. Obama’s senior advisers, and was aiding rebels in Yemen who had overrun the country’s capital and were trying to set up ballistic missile sites in range of Saudi cities. Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors were poised to begin a campaign in support of Yemen’s impotent government — an offensive Mr. Jubeir said could be relatively swift.

Two days of discussions in the West Wing followed, but there was little real debate. Among other reasons, the White House needed to placate the Saudis as the administration completed a nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s archenemy. That fact alone eclipsed concerns among many of the president’s advisers that the Saudi-led offensive would be long, bloody and indecisive.

Mr. Obama soon gave his approval for the Pentagon to support the impending military campaign.

But don't blame the president! Oh no!

Robert Malley, the top White House official in charge of Middle East policy, said in an interview that the United States was right to support its longtime ally, but put distance between the Obama administration and the conflict’s messy outcomes.

“This is not our war,” he said.

So Yemen's instability is all Saudi Arabia's fault? It's "not our war?" Yeah, not so fast Sparky.

When President Obama announced the air campaign against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, he defended the decision by pointing to his air war over Yemen as a model of action.

We were already at war in Yemen in support of the government. That support--that the president once boasted about--did not prevent the Yemen government from falling, embroiling the country in a civil war, opening the country for increased jihadi activity, and providing Iran with an opportunity to gain a foothold on the Red Sea if they could back their faction to victory.

For added humor, the Obama administration decided to back Saudi Arabia's effort in Yemen to get Saudi Arabia's acquiescence for a nuclear deal with Iran.

The Obama administration got that looming-atrocity-on-a-document, yet Iran did not begin to evolve into a responsible regional power as the Obama administration's top strategeryists hoped, and instead Iran maintained its intervention in the civil war in Yemen.

How we got along all these decades without "smart" diplomacy is a mystery.

If You Break It, Who Owns It?

World powers are considering a soft division of Syria to halt the bloodshed. That won't stop the bloodshed. It will just concede that Assad's regime survives.

Syria would exist, but power would be given to regions under a new notion:

Major powers close to U.N.-brokered peace talks on Syria are discussing the possibility of a federal division of the war-torn country that would maintain its unity as a single state while granting broad autonomy to regional authorities, diplomats said.

Russia and Iran support this notion. Which should tell you all you need to know.

This is just a fig leaf to get Assad out of the presidency of "Syria" and put him in charge of an Alawite-dominated region in the northwest.

This gives Russia their naval and air bases on the eastern Mediterranean; and gives Iran their supply line to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And the other regions would be controlled by Kurds--who, with their own territory now, will then opt out of the war on Assad and will limit their right against ISIL to defensive measures; or ISIL, which will continue to be attacked by the American-led alliance, effectively making us an ally of Assad.

Other regions might formally go to other rebels. But then these rebels will no doubt be expected to vacate their positions within the Assad-run region. And the only acceptable target for them will be ISIL under a "peace" deal. At best, they will wear themselves out by fighting ISIL. Or they will opt out of the war and declare victory by having a regional bastion.

So Assad will rebuild his base of support and rest and rebuilt his ground forces while America leads the campaign to destroy ISIL.

And in time, Assad will be able to go on the offensive to pick off the now divided rebellion one regon at a time--with Russian and Iranian support.

Look, I brought up the division of Syria with a similar proposal many years ago:

We'd need to give the Alawites and their Christian allies a province they demographically dominate on the coast and mountains of western Syria; the Kurds would get a province in the northeast; and the Sunni Arabs would get the rest.

Damascus would be a federal enclave.

Power would be devolved to the provinces, including foreign affairs excepting some symbolic aspects reserved to the mostly nominal federal government. Assad could become president of the Alawite province and carry on as he has.

The Kurds and Sunni Arabs would get their own provinces. Perhaps the Sunni Arabs get multiple provinces based on existing provinces or groupings of them. The various rebel factions could be bought off with control of these provinces.

At the federal level, the rebels would dominate, with a rebel in the position of prime minister representing legal "Syria" at the UN. Powers might be restricted to the federal zone and certain legislative areas not reserved to the provinces, such as allocating oil revenue and tariff revenue to the various provinces.

So we and the rebels get rid of Assad as the ruler of a relatively strong Syria (he will be demoted to just another despot who can't do too much harm to us with his resources); the rebels eject Assad from the presidency of Syria and take charge of the national government as the dominant groups, and control their own people's lives in the provinces; WMD assets outside of the Alawite area are secured (I assume Assad will want to quietly keep some), perhaps with an international force to do the job; Lebanon gets to edge away from resuming the civil war; Israel gets a weakened threat to their north (although the Golan border could get hotter with terror threats, the conventional threat will be much lower for a long time); Turkey and Jordan get to send the refugees back to Syria; Iran and Russia retain a pocket of influence in a rump Assad realm to retain access to Hezbollah or naval and intelligence bases, respectively; the Kurds get the hope of an independent state in fact if not legally; tens of thousands of further deaths might be prevented; and the UN gets to feel that it achieved something through diplomacy.

Unless the deaths are merely delayed as all sides--or even just one side--prepares for round two for control of all of Syria.

But the situation was much different then. Back then, we had not yet seen the rise of jihadi resistance (and it was well before ISIL). And back then, pushing Assad back into a northwest corner of Syria would have been a defeat for Assad.

Now, ISIL and other jihadis dominate the rebellion. So a division leaves these nutjobs in control of a lot of Syria.

And now that Assad has already been forced to retreat to the west after enduring heavy casualties, a division of Syria would function as a safety net for Assad.

I also had two main caveats.

One, to divide Syria we needed to have an objective that superseded getting rid of Assad--like fear of chemical weapons getting loose in Syria should Assad's forces collapse and abandon their depots.

And two--which I added later after figuring that Assad would prepare for round two--we would need to maintain the objective of getting rid of Assad in his rump state:

While defeating our long-time enemy that Assad regime has been should be an obvious objective, I'm open to the possibility that the cost (chemical weapons proliferation in the chaos, jihadi sanctuaries, and regional unrest) might be too high. If we settle for a limited victory over Assad, let's not make the mistake of thinking we achieved peace by failing to then begin phase two to totally defeat Assad in a safer environment.

The man (and his father) have made Syria our enemy for decades now, with ample American blood on the regime's hands that he should pay for.

Is that what we would be doing, given the support from Iran and Russia?

We can certainly ponder a post-Syria Assad rather than a post-Assad Syria in the short run. But let's keep in mind what our objective should be.

And keep in mind that we should not instead be helping Russia's and Iran achieve their objectives.

UPDATE: The Kurds are starting the process:

Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system imminently, Kurdish officials said on Wednesday, taking matters into their own hands after being excluded from talks in Geneva to resolve Syria's civil war.

The step aims to combine three Kurdish-led autonomous areas of northern Syrian into a federal arrangement and will be sure to alarm neighboring Turkey, which fears a growing Kurdish sway in Syria is fuelling separatism among its own minority Kurds.

Unless the Turks send in a couple corps of ground troops to march on Damascus (risking war with Russia) and install a non-Assad nominally national government to eventually exercise control over all of Syria, just what does Turkey expect their opposition accomplish?

Monumental Nuclear Folly

It cracks me up that the Left argued that our destruction of the Saddam regime just told thug dictators that they need nuclear weapons to avoid an American regime-change attack. What about Ukraine?

While the Left may be right in theory about thug rulers needing nukes to deter an American regime-change attack--the Leftist Defined Bush Rule--this should not be considered a justification for thug rulers to have nukes to maintain their oppressive and/or aggressive regimes.

Funny enough, thug ruler Khadaffi of Libya took the opposite lesson that a thug regime pursuing nukes is what actually puts the target on a thug dictator's back. He gave up his nukes after the Iraq War sent Saddam into hiding, capture, trial, and execution. Given that we tolerate lots of thug regimes around the world all the time who are no threat to us, I think this is the proper lesson of Iraq rather than the one that the Left maintains to attack Bush. Thug rulers who pursue WMD risk American regime change to protect ourselves is the Actual Bush Rule.

This "who provokes what" game gets really funny when you consider that President Obama then did exactly what the Left accused Bush of being responsible for under the Leftist Defined Bush Rule. By attacking a thug dictator in Libya who had already given up his nukes to the West under the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (people from their own government), President Obama proved that Khadaffi really did need nukes to deter an American regime-change attack even though Khadaffi posed no threat at all to America. The Obama Rule looks suspiciously like the Leftist Defined Bush Rule, you must admit.

Now let's bounce the rubble on President Obama's effects on nuclear proliferation--remember, he won a Nobel Peace Prize based on his potential for advancing nuclear non-proliferation--by noting Ukraine.

No, President Obama did not invade Ukraine. But Ukraine agreed to give up their inherited Soviet nukes for a paper agreement that America backed (the Budapest Memorandum) to preserve Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity.

And then Russia went and invaded Ukraine in 2014. This was not done because Ukraine was an aggressive or bloodthirsty thug regime. No, Russia invaded simply because the Ukrainian government was not sufficiently subservient to Russia and because Russia wanted Ukrainian territory (all of it if they had the military power, but some of it for now).

We have not been able to do more than increase the economic pain on Russia without really helping Ukraine fight back to reclaim their lost territory. We seem more interested in getting Ukraine to accept the losses and at best prevent Russia from easily taking more of Ukraine.

This should concern those who worry about nuclear proliferation:

Yet, if the injustices of Vladimir Putin’s slow-motion assault on Ukraine leave them somewhat cold, there is one dimension of the conflict that should bring the “crisis” home to Europeans: the concrete, written commitments made by Russia and other UN Security Council member states in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While the author complains that the West is ignoring this proliferation angle, I noted it on March 1, 2014.

Granted, this nuclear angle for deterring attack is really the Putin Corollary to the Obama Rule on WMD. But the failure of the Obama administration to defend the paper nuclear disarmament agreement in regard to Ukraine is an important Obama "Flexibility" Proviso of the Putin Corollary to the Obama Rule, you must admit.

So to recap. Under the Actual Bush Rule, aggressive thug dictators who pursue WMD draw our attention and risk their regimes; under the Obama Rule/Leftist Defined Bush Rule, thug dictators without WMD draw our ire and risk their regimes; and under the Putin Corollary to the Obama Rule with an assist by the Obama Proviso, governments that are not aggressive and not bloodthirsty need nukes rather than diplomatic agreements to maintain their independence and territorial integrity.

And don't even get me started on that farcical nuclear deal with the aggressive and thug Islamist (Shia flavor) regime of Iran which needs nukes under the Leftist Defined Bush/Obama Rule.

Indeed, it makes sense for Iran to conclude a real nuclear deal only if the Actual Bush Rule applies because a truly reformed responsible regional power that Iran is supposed to become would have nothing to fear under that rule. How can Iran know they are safe without nukes under the Leftist Defined Bush Rule/Obama Rule?

Or safe under the Putin Corollary with the Obama Proviso, really, in an uncertain future when you consider that Iran is an empire with lots of non-Persians with brethren in neighboring territory who might claim their allegiance as Putin has done with ethnic Russians in Ukraine?

Actually, Iran is probably operating under the Clinton Escape Clause, which describes the nuclear deal with North Korea that merely pretended to halt North Korea's nuclear weapons ambition long enough for the president to get on the lucrative paid speech circuit and leave the nuclear problem to future presidents to solve/cope with.

Soon, not only our foes but our allies who once counted on our nuclear deterrent and our ability to keep their enemies from getting nukes (I'm thinking Iran and North Korea here) will decide that they need nuclear weapons, too.

Perhaps we need an Obama Doctrine framework to provide the umbrella for the fact that everyone--whether an enemy that doesn't fear us or a friend that can't rely on us--thinks they need nuclear weapons after 7 years of hope and change and potential to advance nuclear non-proliferation.

Ah yes, get your chisels out to update Mount Rushmore! Because ... legacy!

UPDATE: This is what we need to build rather than a monument to folly.

Souvenirs

I recently noticed that I have a small amount of blank ammunition for M-16s and M-60s in my possession. It dates from my time in the Army National Guard.

I have no idea why I have it. Souvenirs, I suppose. But in case the police ever raid my home, that gives them the opportunity to say I had military-grade ammunition in my "arsenal."

Not that I have any reason to anticipate such a raid. I'm just saying. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, after all.

I should probably get rid of it (safely) just in case!

Shoot On Sight, Shoot First, Shoot To Kill, Keep Shooting

Iraqi forces are pushing forward in Iraq's Anbar province. Why isn't ISIL fighting hammer and tong?

This is interesting:

"Daesh (IS) has completely pulled out of Rutba and gone towards Al-Qaim," a major general told AFP, referring to a jihadist bastion on the border with Syria, further north in Anbar.

"Daesh's armed men started pulling out last night and completed their withdrawal this morning," the senior officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Rutba is now free of Daesh."

The Iraqis are pushing toward Hit, where the jihadis may have just left behind a rear guard to cover their retreat.

The implications of this jihadi retreat trend should not be minimized by over-emphasizing a deep and cunning plan by the enemy:

"It cannot be ruled out however that Daesh is pulling out to try to lure out sleeper cells among the population cooperating with the security forces," the mayor said.

Even if ISIL is leaving sleeper cells behind, this is a victory by forcing ISIL down the escalation ladder. ISIL wants an Islamic state--which means they have to control the territory and people. If ISIL can't hold the territory, they drop down to insurgency and terrorism.

That alone is a victory.

The article wonders why ISIL is pulling out rather than fighting.

I suspect it is because ISIL in Iraq is ripe for a major defeat if we just push the Iraqis forward:

I think we have to consider whether ISIL morale is shaken enough for the Iraqi ground forces (with our air power in direct support) to shatter ISIL's forces with a sharp offensive on the ground in Iraq that makes dramatic territorial gains, rather than the slow clawing back we've seen over the last year and a half.

Will we exploit this apparent enemy problem? Will we even recognize it if it is true?

Part of pushing the Iraqis forward needs to be stepping up our logistics support:

Iraq's military is once again trying to dislodge Islamic State group fighters from the vast Samarra desert, which stretches between newly recaptured territory in Anbar province and the IS-held northern city of Mosul. Yet, as operations move further away from the capital, government forces are increasingly plagued by logistical shortcomings. ...

The U.S.-led coalition agreed that supplying the front with ammunition and food will continue to be a "challenge" for the Iraqi military, but spokesman Col. Steve Warren said he's confident coalition advisers and training will be able to bridge the current gaps.

It isn't just our firepower and combat training that the Iraqis need.

This logistics weakness is a problem but should not be a damning indictment of the Iraqis when you consider that American logistics capabilities were essential to keep our European allies going in the 2011 Libya War despite that being a small virtually one-dimensional war against a minor state wracked by civil war.

For many states whose militaries operate within their borders or close by, logistics can seem like a useless expense.

For America, which must have superb logistics just to move our military overseas even before you think of what we must do to sustain it in combat, logistics is part of our military DNA.

But a lot of people here don't really appreciate what it takes to do what is really quite extraordinary.

Let's make sure that we get the Iraqi offensive rolling soon to take advantage of the apparent ISIL morale problem.

And make sure that when the Iraqi army starts rolling, we help the Iraqis kill the enemy and keep on killing them as long as it takes to crack ISIL in Iraq for good and send them fleeing in terror.

Tip to Strategypage for the title.