Time is the Great Killer

Retired Army Major General Robert Scales notes in this part 3 of an interview about his new book that force protection measures that limit exposure of American troops on the theory that this is the best way to avoid friendly casualties in fact leads to more casualties because it will likely extend the war. And time is the biggest killer of friendlies by giving your enemy more opportunities to kill your soldiers.

That's what I wrote back in 1997 in a Land Warfare Paper on lessons from the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980:

Our soldiers' lives are indeed valuable, and our country's insistence that we minimize risks to them is laudable (as well as being necessary due to the small size of the Army). Undue concern, however, is false compassion and, as was the case for Iraq in 1980, could result in even greater casualties in a prolonged war should we refuse--because of the prospects of battle deaths--to seize an opportunity for early victory.

Sorry. The paper is not available online, not even at the ghost site I linked to in that post.

When deciding to go to war, the first thing you should do is determine how you win rather than figuring out how to keep daily friendly casualties down to a level that won't disturb the evening dinner of Americans as they watch the news.

And in the end, winning as soon as you can will reduce casualties.

The Battle for Iraq Will Last Longer

Strategypage looks at Iraq. The Islamic State will be defeated long before Iran is defeated.

The battle for Mosul seems to be going better than media reports indicate, which focus on Iraqi casualties. A lot of jihadis have died so far trying to hold Mosul. The slow pace is to keep coalition air and Iraqi ground forces in sync to counter ISIL suicide bombers. Civilian casualties appear to have been kept down. And the question of whether jihadis will fight to the death will depend on the quality of ISIL frontline leadership--many of whom already left the city.

The Iraqis might yet defeat ISIL in Mosul this year--which would be different than completely clearing jihadis who may go underground. But ISIL would be denied Mosul which would pass to government control.

The most disturbing aspect of the campaign against ISIL is Iran's growing influence in Iraq:

[Iranian Pasdaran (aka Revolutionary Guards) General Qassem] Suleimani was described as arriving in Iraq on June 10th 2014 and then bringing in thousands of Iranian and Lebanese (Hezbollah) advisers, experts and combat commanders to organize an effective response to the ISIL offensive. ... Suleimani belongs to IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) and commands the Quds Force (similar to the U.S. Special Forces, but which specializes in supporting Islamic terrorists not fighting them). It was Quds that helped form Hezbollah in the 1980s and built that Shia militia into a major force within Lebanon. Iraqis now fear Quds will try and do the same thing in Iraq and even many Iraqi Shia don’t want that.

Recall that a major reason I wanted to stay in Iraq after 2011 was to help Iraq resist Iranian pressure to do what Iran wants. Without us on the ground to help with that, the Iraqi government undermined their officer corps by selecting men loyal to the government without regard to competence. That alienating Sunni Arabs as well.

The result was that ISIL rose with the support of Sunni Arabs in the first half of 2014, the ability of the Iraqi military to defeat ISIL dropped dangerously low, and Iran entered Iraq in some strength to pursue their policy of pressuring Iraq to be compliant with Iranian wishes.

America is reportedly committed to staying in Iraq after Mosul is liberated, but we have a lot more work to do than if we'd just been there the last 5 years.

They Can Always Just Eat More Pie

Seapower Envy

The Russians seem to believe that they must have a globe-spanning blue water navy to be a great power. Priorities, people, priorities.

Really, Russia?

The latest Russian national security documents take the nation’s great power status for granted and expect the Russian Federation Navy (RFN) to rival the U.S. Navy around the world. The Soviet Union collapsed, however, while pursuing unsustainable strategies. The realities of Russia’s underdeveloped maritime sector make it clear that the big talk is unrealistic. The aspiration to be a first-rate maritime power is beyond Russia's maritime potential and industrial capacity, and Russia’s ambitions in the world’s oceans are out of reach.

Yes, being a first-rate naval power is out of Russia's reach if it doesn't prioritize the conventional defense of its extensive land borders.

The notion that Russia needs a blue water navy rests on a Cold War objectives of contesting the North Atlantic to interfere with American and Canadian reinforcements for NATO in the face of a massive Soviet lunge to the Rhine River.

Russia needs a coast guard plus ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), and ships and subs to defend submarine bastions for the SSBNs. After that, a few long-endurance ships for diplomatic purposes could be considered.

So if Russia wants to aim for a blue water navy? No. Stop. Don't. Come back.

Update that Broken Arrow Scenario

I'm seriously worried about Afghanistan.

I've written numerous times over the years that getting a feel for the Afghanistan war is tough given that information comes out slowly and gives competing narratives. During the height of the Iraq War, despite the poor quality of much of the reporting analysis, it was possible to get a feel for the war. Which is why I never panicked in blogging about the military campaign.

Lately, I've started to shift to having a bad feeling about the trends in Afghanistan.

This does not make me feel better:

U.S.-trained Afghan commandos and U.S. Special Forces are bearing the brunt of efforts to prevent the Taliban from seizing major cities such as Kunduz. They face an increasingly dangerous foe that is threatening to overrun a substantial part of the country.

As many as six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces are in danger of falling to the militants, according to Afghan and coalition officials. At least three provinces—Kunduz, Helmand and Farah—would probably have been lost already had it not been for the deployment of U.S. Special Forces to their capitals to support Afghan commandos with additional firepower and airstrikes, coalition officials say.

As a result, the U.S. is expected to face an unappealing choice: either escalate its involvement in the Afghan conflict—by sending in more troops or increasing the tempo of airstrikes and Special Forces operations—or risk allowing the Taliban to capture several Afghan provinces next year.

The geographic spread of the threat is disturbing:



But the Afghan forces seem to lack the heart to fight:

The Taliban’s gains signal a crumbling of state control across Afghanistan—one that the U.S. military has been hard-pressed to reverse since it withdrew most of its forces and left the Afghan government in charge of the war, alongside local forces that are often reluctant to fight.

As I noted earlier, relying on Afghan special forces to shuttle around as super effective infantry to make up for poor quality line army and police forces will burn out the special forces without providing ultimate victory.

Every highly trained Afghan special forces trooper who dies will only be replaced years later given the training and experience required. Every 100 Taliban cannon fodder who dies will be replace next week by eager young men with drug money in their pockets and motivated by a tradition of picking up a weapon and going off for glory and loot.

Is the problem that the Afghan troops are reluctant to fight for the national government?

Recall that before the two surges that President Obama ordered, my hope for the post-surge Afghanistan was not one of state-building. Afghanistan is no nation-state and attempts to make Afghanistan a functioning state governed from Kabul when there is local opposition motivated to fight for their local reasons (and funded by drug money) will fail.

This is what I wanted:

The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.

And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).

Hopefully our military surge recedes by the end of 2011 and we can get down to a single combat brigade plus air power that function as a fire brigade and a hammer for the central government should a local difficulty exceed Afghan military capabilities.

Perhaps our efforts to pull Afghan troops away from exposed outposts in order to gather mobile forces to both react to Taliban attacks on other outposts and to go on the offensive into Taliban territory will pay off in the new year. We are not blind to the problems in Afghanistan, it is clear.

If so, the trend lines will reverse and perhaps I will have a better feel for the war.

But I'd feel much better if we adapted our strategy to support a decentralized Afghanistan where Kabul reigns but does not try to rule people with little eagerness to fight for a distant (in Kabul) ruler.

Unfortunately, the timing couldn't be worse for defeating a real challenge in Afghanistan, what with Trump replacing Obama as president. We will have to face the threat after the repeal of the "good war" status of the Afghanistan campaign by our left and the scheduled resurrection of dissent as the highest form of patriotism for the new year.

But for now, I've got a bad feeling about this, and I hope our plans (we do have such plans, I assume) to consolidate American and allied troops and civilians in Bagram air base where our air support can sustain them until they can be airlifted out are all up to date.

Otherwise it's roll to your rifle and blow out your brains time.

UPDATE: Strategypage has more on Afghanistan, including the problem of "national" politics in this pre-modern region, as well as on Pakistan.

Weekend Data Dump

I'm hoping to limit my complaints about the media and domestic politics to the Weekend Data Dump after an uptick in Landfill posts sparked by the election campaign and the post-election tantrum.

Good Lord: "At least 83 Nigerian soldiers are missing in action since Boko Haram Islamic extremists attacked a remote military base in the northeast, Nigeria's Premium Times newspaper reported, quoting senior army officers." Corruption was the problem, with troops getting one meal per day and their commander stole their "allowances." (Their pay?) Keep this up and Boko Haram will be back to controlling territory and kidnapping girls at will.

Lena Dunham, who says--without any complaints against her from the Left--that she would welcome the extinction of white men, attacked white women Trump voters for being “inoculated with hate for themselves” and “unable to look past their violent privilege” may be projecting a bit. After all, she demonstrated violent privilege with her openly expressed eliminationist rhetoric about white men. Perhaps she has hate for herself, too. Which would be understandable on so many levels. Trump may prove that anyone in America can grow up to be president; but Dunham proves anyone can become famous. Not since Carrot Top has anyone with so few redeeming qualities risen so high in the entertainment world.

The Colombians have a new deal with the rebels after the people justifiably rejected in a referendum the past deal that, among other things, guaranteed the communists a number of seats in parliament and paid for radio stations to get out their views away from the battlefield, which seemed too much for me. The former problem was ended, among other changes. What about the latter?

The new F-35B-capable amphibious warfare ship USS Wasp will be stationed in Japan next year.

The American Navy was tasked to help New Zealand respond to their earthquake. Which is standard operating procedure for our military.

It is silly to claim that Hillary Clinton really won the election because she had more votes than Trump. We do not elect based on popular vote so you can't say that a non-measurement of victory should count as the measure of victory. If the election had been based on the popular vote the campaign would have been carried out very differently and people would have voted differently. With 4% voting for the Libertarians and 1% voting for the Greens, in a popular vote scenario they would likely have voted for Trump or Clinton, respectively, rather than waste a protest vote. As I noted in this blog, my vote--whether protest for Johnson or for Trump rested on my view on whether my vote would be wasted in an effort to deny Clinton the win. Certainly we can debate the victory criteria issue. I think electoral voting is superior (and here's an article defending it), but it is certainly legitimate to debate how we vote for president. I just don't understand why the Democrats were happy with super delegates violating the one person/one vote rule in their primaries while getting all angry about the Electoral College.

Will Turkey replace China as Pakistan's top supplier of advanced weapons? (And we're not the top supplier?) Commercial and political advantages for Turkey if they have regional dominance ambitions would follow.

I assume all the liberals upset about money in politics are thrilled that Trump won despite spending half of what Clinton spent; and are happy that far more of Trump's donations were under $200.00.

Moldova elected a pro-Russian president. That won't help.

The NATO secretary general says that the European Union defense ambitions will complement NATO efforts rather than duplicate or take away from NATO. Hogwash. In what alternate Europe where Europeans spend too little on defense will money spent on non-NATO capabilities not harm NATO capabilities? Absent--God forbid--political integration, military integration is pointlessly wasteful.

If the mass crying fits of Hillary supporters was just about processing an unexpected loss, I'd be more inclined to just let it pass. But the ridiculous wailing and gnashing of teeth at its heart is about delegitimizing Trump voters. So I'll let Conan reply to this embarrassing spectacle:



Yes, the Russians are fighting in Ukraine.

Early in the primaries when it looked like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush would be the candidates, I lamented the notion that these two families are dynasties.  In a nation of 320 million people, we can find no others? Sure, Jeb seemed fine and I liked the other Bush presidents, but enough is enough! So we've got that going for us. Funny enough, Trump took down both families by defeating Bush in the primaries and Clinton in the election. I think that is healthy for our country.

Oh goodie, another region threatens to blow up in renewed war.

Self-driving cars will brake for jerks? Duh. And it is worse than that. You don't need an engineering degree to see that one coming.

The Maldives Islands are sending a lot of jihadis to Syria and Iraq--per capita-wise. Which shows why letting ISIL live for so long is a problem. With jihadi feelings awakened, when ISIL's caliphate is finally destroyed will these jihadi recruits head to India to kill for their vision of Islam?

Speaker Ryan should crush for good any rumblings of bringing back appropriations earmarks that allow spending without specific Congressional votes on that spending to benefit the district of the earmark's author. This is why I say that the real cure is making the federal government smaller rather than battling over who controls the federal government.

France has declared the end of their military mission in the Central African Republic. France successfully tamped down threats of large-scale killings, but the UN mission there seems unlikely to be able to continue that interruption of violence.

As the Trump presidency goes forward, I don't think I will face the problem of reflexively defending him because he is unfairly attacked by the Left. I know I will oppose many of his foreign and domestic issues, while backing some--hopefully ones I value the most. I really don't believe I've reflexively opposed President Obama because I generally disagree with him. I was not in that position with the Bush 43 administration because during his era, I worked in the state legislature and so did not comment on domestic policies where I was more likely to oppose his spending problem. But we'll see and you'll judge, I suppose.

Here's another defense of the electoral college system, with the added value of noting that to truly have a national election by popular vote, every state needs to have the same voting conditions--in standards and process--and even weather, really. I hadn't thought of those factors.

With combat experience against a Malaysian civilian airliner under their belt, the Russians have a new and improved Buk M3 surface-to-air missile system!

Canadian troops are engaged in direct combat in Iraq. I will say that Bush 43 never managed to get Canada to do that (although Canada did a lot of fighting in Afghanistan, with my gratitude). So Kudos to the Obama administration's new coalition of the willing for that.

So what's with the F-35 program? (I have a small amount of Lockheed Martind stock, for full disclosure.)

I'm reasonably sure that when the heavily left-leaning media analyzes how fair they were to Donald Trump, they will calculate that they were biased for him during the Republican primaries (when that served to help Democrats) and that they were biased against him during the election (when that served to help Democrats), and so on average they were really balanced in their coverage!

Does Pluto have a subsurface ocean?

Advice for the next president (tip to Mad Minerva). Supporting friends and opposing foes is as good a summation as anything.

This whole Republican "voter suppression" explanation for Hillary's loss confuses me. What model explains how suppression of Democratic voters failed in 2006 and 2008, worked in 2010, failed in 2012, worked in 2014 and then worked again in 2016.

A tour of some Iranian activities from Strategypage. Of note are some numbers: over 400 Iranian troops have died fighting for Assad in Syria, Iran controls a 12,000-strong Shia "foreign legion" in Syria, and Iran controls 13,000 local Syrian militiamen. UPDATE: It seems that Iran admits that over 1,000 of their people have died fighting in Syria.

Oh goodie, China is forging closer military ties with Iran.

Did Russia have a little green men plot in Montenegro?

The Saudis are trying to have a short humanitarian ceasefire in Yemen. Saudi intervention prevented a Shia victory in the civil war and pushed the Iran-backed Shia back. The Saudi side has not won yet, but it is in the stronger position. We may not be able to halt large-scale slaughter in Syria, but we sure can try to limit casualties inflicted on a far lower rate and with less evil intent by pressuring our allies. With a bonus compassion-theater factor reality that by prolonging the war we only increase the final body count.

I'm not going to say that there weren't those on the fringe right who claimed President Obama was a secret Moslem out to do ... something secretly and horribly bad. I don't know the details. But the over-the-top fear mongering of those on the left over Trump's win is far more broadly entrenched. Trump is a clown and crude, with little experience (although recall that President Obama's experience was so slim that he included his running of his election campaign as executive experience). But he is not a fascist or whatever other trait from your basket you want to pull out. In time, assuming the left's overheated rhetoric (I remember when that was bad!) doesn't lead to (another) assassination attempt, you will likely be embarrassed about and regret your hateful panic (enjoy the absurdity) that led you to wrongly paint Trump as a Nazi and therefore condemn all of Trump's supporters (and not just half as Hillary Clinton did) as irredeemable deplorables. Remember, in a time long, long ago, a lot of liberals had a lot of good things to say about Trump.

In Kenya, army recruits with fake enlistment letters have been arrested. While this appears to be a job-related scam for people who want to get in the military, this seems like a potential way for jihadis to get military training, no? I guess it depends on how quickly such scams are discovered.

I don't understand why Democrats are outraged at the possibility of Jeff Sessions being the Attorney General when he once said a bad word relative to race. Haven't Democrats spent the last 3 months saying that Trump himself is a Nazi? Isn't being a mere racist a step up from Nazism? Is that statement non-operative, now? Oh, and one more thing: Robert Byrd, the long-serving Democratic Senator from West Virginia who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and who seems to have every other bridge and road in that state named after him. If Democrats forgave that baggage ... But oh yeah, about Sessions.

China has a new light-weight tank, the VT5. While highlighted as an export tank, against a real main battle tank it would have a hard time with its 105mm gun and lighter protection. It would be more useful for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan because of its weight.

I seriously doubt that a UN effort to unify Cyprus is "closer than ever" is anything of the sort unless you really dim the lights and squint to take into account Turkey's interests there.

This deployment of our sea-based X-band radar off of South Korea is surely over by now, but it is interesting that to use it we really depend on naval and air superiority to use it, eh? (Yes, my email inbox is dangerously filled up)

Hong Kong keeps running up against Chinese efforts to weaken democracy even during the 50-year period that the locals are supposed to be able to run their own affairs before China's autocratic rule crushes all sparks of democracy.

The American government is concerned that a husband-wife team won an election to run the executive branch--in Nicaragua, not America, of course.

Fighting in eastern Mosul with the Iraqi Counter-Terrosim Service in the lead seems odd to me. The CTS was a good force back in June 2014. While it is true that our 2-year training effort in Iraq has resulted in a CTS that is triple the size it was in 2014, if memory serves me, where are the other trained brigades? I continue to think that the CTS is the red flag being waved at ISIL as it commits to holding off the eastern thrust, and that trained regular Iraqi army brigades coming up from the south will swing in to hammer ISIL from the south and west against the CTS anvil. That's what I'd want to do, anyway, as I've said before.

Was I Too Optimistic?

I found an old post of mine that wondered if liberal acquiescence to President Obama's war decisions would broaden the base of support for the war on Islamist terrorism which had dangerously narrowed as liberals protested anything that Bush 43 touched.

I forgot about this one from May 2009 (and forgive my lengthy quote of myself):

It is clear that domestic issues take priority with this president. To be fair, President Bush initially thought the same thing. But 9/11 made Bush a war president and that is how he governed. Which makes it hardly surprising that President Obama seems to barely notice we are at war. It is a distraction. So our president makes cosmetic changes trumpeted by fine speechifying to hide the insignificance of his changes that make "bad" national security policies "good," in order to get on with his aggressive domestic agenda.

In one sense, this slight of hand is bound to be frustrating for many on the right. Surely it would be more satisfying to see President Obama really smash the Bush security and defense policies so he could bear clear responsibility for failing to defend us. Then the call to replace the president in four years would be clear, based on narrow-minded partisan stupidity.

Under the current circumstances, it is also frustrating to see a tamed press corps that trumpeted all of the Bush policies as shredding our Constitution now not say a word against the newly "good" old policies.

All this is frustrating, to be sure. But given the threats we face, I'll settle for a president who is a hypocrite over our defense and security policies rather than stupid. And I'll take a press corps that will back our policies now, regardless of the hypocrisy of their mental gymnastics. Would we really be happy if our president refused to fight our war in deed as well as words? Would we really like it if our press corps elites continued to hammer our war effort?

For me, the answer is easy. No. I'd rather have a president who I didn't vote for wage war rather than have a president who in deed and word justifies my vote against him. This is America's war and not just Obama's war, no more than it was just Bush's war. I want to win. I may be distressed that large segments of the opposition did not feel that way under Bush, but acting as they did under Bush would be dishonorable. I may not expect much from them, but I expect more from my side.

Remember, much of our Obama-friendly press will die off from failing to keep readers (and not all of them can get jobs in the Obama administration); and our president will eventually leave office, in 4 to 8 years. But the Long War will remain to be fought. The Left will always oppose that fight, but both parties now have the history of being on board the fight.

Still, our president does not take the war seriously. He goes through the motions by closely following many past policies, but his heart isn't in it. And this will be communicated to those who must fight the war. Many will not risk being thrown under the bus for being too aggressive in defending us. Perhaps not enough to spell disaster, but over time how can any relaxation of effort fail to be exploited by our jihadi enemies?

I wonder what horrifying event will make President Obama a war president.

No event made President Obama a war president in the sense of seeming to take that role seriously (and no, unleashing the James Taylor doesn't count). But President Obama sure will be the first president to be at war through two full terms of office. And the "no endless war" crowd was fine with that.

I was wrong about bringing the left into the war as the result of this record, however, given that the hard Left has already announced anti-war protests for the new year.

Yeah, this attitude will end.

Bust out the giant puppets!

All the News Print to Fit

The New York Times highlighted the judgment of a number of "experts" who defended the Iran nuclear deal in the face of a potential Trump administration's decision to walk away from the (highly flawed) deal. Behold the details not reported.

The so-called report backed by both parties was written by what is essentially mullah-run Iran's lobbying group in America and signed by the usual suspects of lefties with a few people who at one time in the past were Republicans (like Lawrence "I once worked for Reagan" Korb--I swear that is his legal middle name) but who are now lefties who use their past as camouflage useful to the left.

Is it any wonder that the mullahs are firmly convinced that god is on their side?

The Lies Continue

ISIL is producing crude chemical weapons:

Jihadists belonging to the so-called Islamic State group may have manufactured sulphur mustard gas used in attacks in Syria and Iraq themselves, the head of a global watchdog told AFP Friday.

Right.... Just another case of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons lied, people died.

Really, this is hardly a new revelation considering that ISIL has a lot of Saddam's boys working with them.

But with the ISIL proto-state making chemical weapons and Syria's Assad still using chemical weapons despite a deal that "disarmed" him, it is pure fabrication to have believed Saddam was a WMD threat before we invaded in 2003.

Life is funny.

Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg

Yeah, this is a problem as we celebrate diversity a tad too enthusiastically:

It’s increasingly unfashionable to celebrate those who made this republic and established its core values. On college campuses, the media and, increasingly, in corporate circles, the embrace of “diversity” extends to demeaning the founding designers who arose from a white population that was 80 percent British. ...

But what ties most Americans to the founders is not race, but our embrace of a political and legal culture based on distinctly Anglo-Saxon ideas about due process, representative government, property rights and free speech. These proved infinitely superior to the divine right of czars, kaisers, emperors and other hereditary autocrats for generations of non-Anglo-Americans.

This system, always capable of amendment, has allowed waves of traditional outsider groups — African Americans, Latinos, women, Mormons, Jews and Muslims — to join the economic, political and cultural mainstream. In some cases, as in the case of President Obama, they have also secured the highest reaches in the national firmament.

America is a nation of ideas and not of blood and soil. So anybody can--and many have over the centuries--become Americans by adopting our ideas of freedom, rule of law, and individual rights.

But when we celebrate "diversity" to the point of promoting Balkanization instead of assimilation where people treasure their heritage while adopting American ideas of citizenship, we destroy the very qualities that allowed us to bring new Americans into our country.

Right now the party of factions--the Democrats, who call their factions "interest groups"--welcomes new Americans to join their factions. But if  the Democrats succeed in fully Balkanizing America, their factions will split, too, as some factions perceive the imported factions as hostile to their interests.

And if that trend explodes, Republicans too will start to behave as factions. Not as many as Democrats, and not all, but  factions will start to form. When you are attacked repeatedly, eventually you react and close ranks.

It is insanity to try this sort of hard "diversity" that recreates the Old World blood and soil "diversity" that led to so many wars over there. And it won't end well here.

If we want to reduce the factionalism, we really need--as I've droned on about a lot--to restore federalism where only a few things are a federal issue. While that may seem like Balkanization, too, it is not. Balkanization is by blood tribe. Federalism is by artificial borders and includes anyone of any race, gender, or religion living within those borders.

Sure, factionalism can infect a state, but at least that stops at the state border.

I don't care if California wants to waste its money on policies I consider lunacy. People should be free to be stupid and waste money. What angers me is when people from elsewhere want to enforce their lunacy on me under the guise of making do things for my own good.

God help us all, but there are too many people that enjoy bossing other people around on even the smallest (dare I say "micro?") issue.

And who knows? Perhaps what I think is lunacy is actually pretty smart. I like to think I can learn.

And if I can't? Well, I'm free to live in a state where I can be free to be stupid and waste money.

That's what that whole "states are the laboratories of democracy" saying came from. That isn't possible when the federal government mandates every damn thing.

NOTE: I wrote this before the election but delayed scheduled posting to make room for events within my attempts to keep my posts to under 100 per month (no need to seem too obsessed with blogging, eh?), although at least one link might be post-election to illustrate what I wrote earlier.

Perhaps the thought of a Trump presidency with power centralized in his hands will persuade Democrats that federalism is a good thing after all.

UPDATE: Yes, minority identity politics rely on the majority not acting the same way:

The intellectual historian Mark Lilla has a must-read essay in today’s New York Times explaining how the academic and media fixation on identity politics doomed the center-Left this election cycle. One of his key points: The Democratic Party’s decision build its coalition around race and gender differences, and emphasize those differences in order to mobilize its base, predictably produced a parallel response from the identity groups that were not included[.]

Tip to Instapundit.

I'm not so sure that this white identify politics point was true this election given that Trump seems to have gotten more minority support than Romney and about the same support of white votes.

But I warned of exactly this problem back in July:

[If] we abandon a policy of promoting assimilation in favor of multiculturalism that rejects assimilation, our country will Balkanize and tribalize--including at least parts of the existing white population that will revert to tribal politics in reaction.

And this in August:

So it is with great concern to see how successfully Democrats have revived tribalism and corruption in our democracy. Oh, it is called interest group politics, but it is tribalism.

Through it all, this strategy to mobilize tribal loyalties relied on the majority to maintain a democracy based on rule of law to enable newly awakened tribes to gain ground.

If the majority as a tribe, too, the majority tribe could corruptly slap down the minority tribes, eh? [emphasis added]

If this is what Trump represents despite the lack of evidence that voters voted that way (and I did worry about this prematurely in the August post), our liberal brethren share a lot of the blame for his rise by writing the rules he could use.

It will come true in time if we don't stop. Don't go there.

That's Not Good

I mentioned this before when details were sketchy, but the killing of three American servicemen in Jordan appears to be the result of a deliberate attack:

U.S. officials say the security camera video shows several American vehicles stopped in broad daylight at the entrance to the Jordanian air field where the Green Berets were based. The first was allowed to pass through the gate, but then a guard suddenly opened fire on the second vehicle, killing both Americans inside. The Americans in the third and fourth vehicles jumped out and started returning fire. The Jordanian guard shot and killed one of them before he was wounded by the other.

This is not to say that it was a jihadi attack. Who knows, perhaps one of the Americans dated the Jordanian guard's sister, or something.

Jordan would be tight-lipped regardless just to avoid the publicity of hosting so many foreign troops who are battling ISIL and Assad in Syria by providing support to various armed groups.

And having a jihadi sympathizer would be really bad. Jordan, while a solid American ally these days, is sort of a minority-based government, after all. The once-nomadic Bedouin who are perhaps 40% of the population are considered the monarchy's base of support. They are Arab, like most of the country, but different.

And Jordan is sensitive to the influence of forces from outside of the country that could threaten the monarchy.

And I will say again that the ridiculous amount of time it has taken for us to deal with ISIL forging a proto-state in Iraq and Syria is giving our enemies time to do us harm. If this time we've granted ISIL is destabilizing Jordan by allowing ISIL-style jihadis to gain recruits in Jordan, we could well suffer a big loss despite the prospects of finally capturing Mosul and ending the caliphate (although not sub-state terrorism) in Iraq sometime within the next several months.

So I imagine we are walking on eggs as we try to figure out how this happened--and how to prevent it from happening again. As well as how widespread such influence could be.

Let's hope somebody's sister was involved.

Battlefield Internet

The Army will introduce a VICTORY system to streamline the networking of our combat vehicles:

The Army is integrating sensors, weapons, computers, communications gear and display screens into its tactical and combat vehicles to lighten the load, streamline otherwise disconnected technologies and strengthen an ability to launch electronic attacks, service officials said.

The new “open architecture” on board the vehicles uses Ethernet technology to connect C4ISRsystems including targeting, weapons and electronic attack applications.

A secure tactical internet will allow the Army to operate more effectively. As long as it is hack-proof, this will be a huge asset.

Come On, Fourth String!

American military operations continue over Libya with USS San Antonio ready to launch helicopter gunship sorties against ISIL targets there. Because, it floats and it can carry helicopters.

We're watching ISIL forces outside of Sirte, where our air strikes were important in helping local forces defeat ISIL there:

U.S. Africa Command is tracking Islamic State fighters who have fled the battle in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte, a possible prelude to more expansive U.S. airstrikes in the country, the top U.S. general for Africa said.

“We have to continue to develop those targets and have certainty of who we are seeing and what the activities are,” AFRICOM’s Gen. Thomas Waldhauser said in an interview with Stars and Stripes late Wednesday. “We just need to have that level of certainty if we decide to strike outside the limits of Sirte.”

The article itself doesn't mention the major naval asset we have there, but the picture caption does:

U.S. Marines with 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit prepare an AH-1W Super Cobra for flight aboard the amphibious transport dock ship USS San Antonio on Nov. 8, 2016. The 22nd MEU is conducting precision air strikes against Islamic State targets in Sirte, Libya, as part of Operation Odyssey Lightning.

San Antonio is a class of amphibious warfare ship (LPD) with a fairly small flight deck at the rear capable of handling rotary wing aircraft (helicopters and V-22s). She is mostly to carry Marines and get them to shore with rotary wing aircraft. Normally 4 helicopters or 2 V-22s can be operated.

San Antonio is there because a full deck amphibious warfare ship that formerly conducted strikes with Harrier jets and helicopters was moved elsewhere.

A full-deck amphibious warfare ship was used because our full-scale super carriers are few in number and tasked with much higher priority tasks in Central Command and Pacific Command.

So AFRICOM has the third string in sea-based air power.

And AFRICOM is lucky to have that given that we have so little naval power in the Mediterranean other than ships transiting the sea going to and from higher priority missions.

So I will ask again, couldn't AFRICOM put together a modularized auxiliary cruiser using a leased container ship and systems housed in deck-mounted shipping containers to arm it --which I called The AFRICOM Queen--to conduct air strikes and other missions off the coast of Libya that won't be yanked by the Navy for other missions that always seem to rank higher on priority lists from other combatant commands?

UPDATE: While some ISIL forces are fighting to the death in Sirte as Libyan forces squeeze their area of control down to buildings, many more have fled. This is surely a lesson for the ongoing fight for Mosul, Iraq. Some ISIL defenders will die in place and some will flee.

That's not too shocking. The questions are how many of each; and how will our superior quality troops, firepower, and surveillance more effectively kill ISIL forces in Mosul who stand and fight or those who flee.

UPDATE: No word if the Lewis B. Puller (the first Expeditionary Sea Base) will go to AFRICOM's area of responsibility in 2017.

UPDATE: Why yes, we might want a more persistent presence off the shores of North Africa than transiting warships can provide:

A new report, the most extensive on illicit weapon flows in the Sahel in several years, confirms arms looted from huge Libyan stockpiles after the ouster of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi have fueled Islamist insurgencies in North and West Africa since 2012.

But jihadists and Tuareg fighters have diversified their supply chains and have added new sources as the outflow from Libya has decreased, due partly to interdiction efforts and a rising internal demand in Libya for weapons as the conflict there looks set to escalate.

Armed chaos on southern Europe's southern door step is not a good thing, to say the least. Do we really need added problems in NATO when the Russians are probing NATO from Norway to Turkey?

UPDATE: The second string is being tested with F-35Bs and V-22s:

Currently, onboard the USS America, the USN-USMC team is validating the proof of concept of the Lightning Carrier, i.e., a large deck amphibious ship with combined F-35B and Osprey assault capabilities.

The capability to insert ground forces and to support them with a 360 degree combat system overhead will prove to be significant in a wide range of contingencies.

A pressing one is to change the attack calculus against ISIS to provide for a very flexible, and unpredictable strike capability against ISIS without operating from ground or land-based air bases.

I mentioned this capability potential 9 years ago. Do not forget that America is not a carrier and so is not an alternative to a carrier.

And while a Modularized Auxiliary Carrier configured for troop and aviation assets would not even be a large deck amphibious ship, it would add to the ability to strike from unpredictable directions.

Collateral Damage?

I don't think I can be accused of being anti-Moslem. Oh, I'm clearly anti-Islamist, anti-jihadi, and anti-terrorism, but I've always distinguished between Moslems and jihadis. Does my use of the term "Moslem" rather than "Muslim" insult those in the Islamic faith? Is it a "dog whistle" signal of hostility to Moslems/Muslims? Let me explore.

I ask because a friend from college who peruses my blog on occasion wrote to express his concern that not using "Muslim" insults those in the Islamic faith and makes it seem like my posts are bigoted. I have no doubt his concern is sincere. And I credit him for reading my blog given that we have little in common politically. (And yes, I regret not making annual college get togethers for football games the last several years--parental duties call and take priority!)

But should I use the term "Muslim?" 

Let me start with the basics, I do not consider Moslems to be enemies. Here's a post from this year that even quotes an article I wrote within a few days of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, but failed to get published. I felt at war then. I still do, if not with the intensity of that moment in time. Yet I did not rage at all Moslems for the acts of the al Qaeda terrorists, even at that stressful time. Tell me if I'm a raging Islamophobe--or whatever the current term of art is--after reading those items.

I believe I have been clear that our enemies are jihadis, and that the majority of Moslems who don't go along with that view of Islam are the main victims of the jihad. I want us to help Moslems win their civil war that is raging over who gets to define what "real" Islam is.

But again, is my use of the word "Moslem" an insult to our allies within the Islamic world in this war?

I am a history and political science major. Throughout my education, the use of either term was really a matter of transliteration--of writing a language that does not use our alphabet. The terms were considered interchangeable. I settled on "Moslem" early in this blog, I guess. It was a background thing made with no political angle. For all I know, in my pre-blog days I may have used "Moslem" or "Muslim" interchangeably depending on the sources I used. I really don't recall. Why would I? It was a matter of different spelling for the same word.

Behold the historical record of hatred at the New York Times, for example. Forgive me, I was in college then, where I could be exposed to hateful material like the Times as I did research.

Yet at some point (after 9/11?), it seems, the use of the term "Muslim" became required in certain circles. I've noted over the years that many used "Muslim," but styles change and I honestly didn't pay much attention to it. If I read "Moslem" or "Muslim," I read the same word in my mind.

It strikes me that saying that those who are anti-Islamic settled on "Moslem"--and therefore I am tainted by that word choice--is no more relevant than saying that those who oppose a war against jihadis--either from a genuine fear it will wrongly become a war on Islam or because they are actually convinced we are in the wrong to fight the jihadis (remember the "why do they (jihadis) hate us?" talk that assumed America deserved to be attacked at some level?)--tend to choose "Muslim."

Yet I use the term "African American" even though I think "Black" is fine and respectful. Why hurt feelings needlessly? Nor do I write "White" in protest of having "Black" capitalized. The latter is very mildly annoying as a matter of pure spelling fairness, but not enough for me to adapt that and associate with white supremacists.

Isn't the use of "Muslim" consistent with that thinking? Quite possibly, I suppose. But I don't visit white- or Christian-supremacist web sites. So that is not my motivation. White supremacists drink milk like I do, for all I know. I like milk. That's it.

And the use of the term "African American" and earlier changes are a matter of self-identification and not an issue of how to render a word into the English language's alphabet. "African American" is not a change to the translation of an African word for people originating from that region that is an improvement over the term "Black" for the same word of origin. So the use of that comparison isn't valid as a defense of "Muslim" over "Moslem."

As I said, this was long a transliteration issue. Note the many spellings of "Khadaffi." Which one of those English versions is verboten and which is sensitive enough to use?

So I looked around a bit.

First:

According to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies,"Moslem and Muslim are basically two different spellings for the same word." But the seemingly arbitrary choice of spellings is a sensitive subject for many followers of Islam. Whereas for most English speakers, the two words are synonymous in meaning, the Arabic roots of the two words are very different. A Muslim in Arabic means"one who gives himself to God," and is by definition, someone who adheres to Islam. By contrast, a Moslem in Arabic means"one who is evil and unjust" when the word is pronounced, as it is in English, Mozlem with a z.

For others, this spelling differentiation is merely a linguistic matter, with the two spellings a result of variation in transliteration methods. Both Moslem and Muslim are used as nouns. But some writers use Moslem when the word is employed as an adjective.

Journalists switched to Muslim from Moslem in recent years under pressure from Islamic groups.

Here is more:

Technically speaking, "Muslim" is right and "Moslem" is wrong. This is because Arabic contains only the sound "u" and not the softer "o". But basically it shouldn't make that much of a difference. I personally dislike hearing "Moslem" a lot. First because it sounds off, and second because it has been used by some politicians and public figures as a derogatory term. Or at least it felt like it. But: many people take offence at "Moslem"; they think it means something else entirely different in Arabic, like "tyrant", or "unjust person". That's not true at all. The word they are thinking of is "Muthlim" which means "dark". The word for unjust man is "thalim", which is completely different. So "Moslem" doesn't mean anything, or anything offensive, in Arabic.

I can accept that "Muslim" as a pronunciation is more accurate in rendering Arabic. But so what? I say "Paris" and not "Paree." I say "Moscow" and not "Moskva." I say "Rome" and not "Roma." I say "Peking" and not "Beijing." I'm with the general on this issue (funny, my memory was that it was about Nancy)

And let's not get me started on "offence." What's with the "c?"

But let's examine the insult angle. First, saying "Muslim" is proper while "Moslem" is insulting displays an interesting bias. Even if the word "Moslem" is too close to an insulting word in Arabic, Islam is not the same as the Arab world.

Ponder that of nations with the most Moslems, you have to go down to 8th place to get to an actual Arab country! Above Egypt which is in that 8th place in Moslem population are (in ascending order) Turkey, Iran, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Those are not Arab countries.

So even if "Moslem" is insulting to Arab Moslems, Arab Moslems are not the universe of Moslems. Fewer than 15% of Moslems are Arab. And let me tell you, the attitude among Arab Moslems based on the origin of Islam on the Arabian peninsula of being first among equals--at least--grates on non-Arab Moslems. So Western liberals are laying down their marker to defend that bigoted way of thinking? Fascinating.

Let's go a step farther with our friend Mr. Google.

I'd doing this as I write, basically, so let's both see what translating "Moslem" and "Muslim" into various languages on that top 8 list of Moslem-populated countries yields. I once had to start a college paper over well into the paper (in the age of typewriters, no less) when my analysis led me to contradict my thesis. I hated that. But I did it. And got an "A." But we'll see.

Let's start with Egypt where Arabic is the language.

Let's start with the translation of "Muslim" to Arabic. Go listen to it. That sounds an awfully lot like "Moose-lee-mon." Which is too close to the archaic Mussulman to be okey dokey sensitivity-wise.

Now let's try translating "Moslem" in Arabic. Huh. Exactly the same pronunciation. If there is a word similar to "Moslem" that is insulting to Arabic speakers, it sure isn't the exact translation of "Moslem."

And neither translation reflects what I am being told is the culturally appropriate way of saying the word--"Moo-slim."  Why aren't the the people worked up about saying "Moo-slim" instead of "Moslem" (with a hint of z) saying "Moose-lee-mon?"

Let's move up the list to Turkey by translating "Muslim."  Uh oh: Müslüman. And yes, the translation of "Moslem" gets us to the same destination. 

Let's move on to Iran. Translating "Muslim" to Farsi gets us. Okay, Google calls it "Persian" and there is no transliteration into our alphabet or audio. But both give us a choice of Muslim, Moslem, Saracen, Mohammedan, or Mussulman as definitions. [Oops, I forgot links--sorry. I don't feel like going back. You can find it, I'm sure.]

Now to Nigeria. I suspect this will be tough since tribal divisions will have different languages. But let's stick with Hausa, Fulani, and Kanuri in the north where Islam dominates.

We've got Hausa, so let's start with "Muslim" which gives us "musulmi." "Moslem" gives us "Musulmin." Pretty darned similar, although the latter sounds more like the Turkish word. Perhaps the insult is a fine distinction.

The other two northern languages aren't on the list but let's do Yoruba, from the region where some Moslems are located in significant numbers. "Muslim" gives us "musulumi." For "Moslem" we get "moslem." That's odd. I guess it doesn't translate. Which at least means it is not an insult.

On to Bangladesh, where Bengali translates "Muslim." They give it a "moose" beginning that seems consistent with the English version. Give it a listen. "Moslem" is different, sounding more like "Mussulman."

Urdu for Indian Moslems is different from "Muslim" to "Moslem," by my eye, but they are listed as synonyms of each other. Nothing seems inherently insulting.

In Pakistan, Punjabi is the biggest language group. For "Muslim" we get this. Whoa. No audio and the wrong alphabet. Can I eyeball the translation of "Moslem?" You bet I can. Apparently it does not translate. So no insult in Punjabi.

Pashto is the next biggest, but much smaller, language in Pakistan. Let's do that and stop in Pakistan. "Muslim" gives us this. I'll have to eyeball this compared to "Moslem" which gives a different word. But I can draw no further conclusion.

And for Indonesia, "Muslim" provides no translation. Nor does "Moslem." Although both provide an audio translation as "Muslim." Confused about the largest concentration of Moslems, I found this translation for "Muslim:" orang islam, muslim.So I guess the translation for both is "Muslim."

So there you go from the world of Google. I'm just not seeing the language of hate here.

The claim is that "Moslem" is insulting to Moslems because in Arabic it is close to an insult doesn't seem compelling to me since the actual competing English words seem to translate to the same word in Arabic (with a different pronunciation than the one the pro-"Muslim" group insists on using), supporting a transliteration issue as the basis of this "controversy.".

Some Arabic speakers on that second site I quote seem to think it is a transliteration issue, too; although bad connotations may be present (which would be the fault of those complaining about the word "Moslem" when prior to those complaints it was not a problem, you must admit), while languages for the other 85% of non-Arab Moslems don't seem to provide a basis for saying there is an insult by saying "Moslem."

As I said, I don't believe I am anti-Islamic nor do I think my posts display such bias. It would be odd if my posts did indicate that bias because I don't believe I am hostile to Moslems.

I'm very hostile to jihadis. I've made no secret of my view that the only good jihadi is a dead jihadi (well, that's hyperbole--captured live ones to provide information in order to kill even more jihadis are okay).

I've also made it clear that our war has to be waged carefully, focused on killing the jihadis and not just turning the Islamic world into a free-fire zone that kills non-jihadi Moslems. The vast majority of the Islamic world is our ally, after all, with even more reason than we in the West have to destroy the jihadis and erase their way of thinking.

Yet if some readers suffer brain lock when they come to the word "Moslem" in a post I wrote rather than judge the content of my posts, is that my problem? No thank you. I decline the burden. I do not carry bad baggage or bad intent or bad thoughts when I use the word "Moslem." And if some readers think that your gracious host at The Dignified Rant is reflecting views expressed on white- or Christian-supremacist web sites (or Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist sites, I suppose), you grossly over-estimate the amount of time I spend on them. Which is zero.

Nor am I on the mailing list for the weekly update on changes in the acceptable and unacceptable word list.

Come on! If there are bigots out there using the word "Moslem," isn't the actual issue that they are bigots and not that they say "Moslem"? I bet they use lots of English words. Would they be any less bigoted if they used "Muslim?"

Heck, I don't judge people as terrorist supporters for using the term "Muslim." I read the word all the time. You will see that word a lot in my blog where I've quoted an article. My brain did not lock up when I read that word.

So must I alter the spellings for the Koran, Mohammed, and whatever else is deemed offensive because there are alternatives using "u" and "q"?

Must I preface the name Mohammed with "the prophet" when he is not my prophet and when I don't insist Moslems (or anyone else) describe Jesus as "lord and savior?" Do I have to add "pbuh" after their prophet's name, as is their practice?

Heck, maybe I just subconsciously like the sound of "O" more than "U."

And although my friend denies this is just PC stuff, isn't this really all just social signaling the way adopting a Spanish accent when saying "Nicaragua" was a symbol of the speaker's support for the communist Sandinistas in the 1980s? (Saturday Night Live had a hilarious skit of reporters ordering Mexican food with that kind of speaking style.)

And recall that in 1990, left-wing opponents of the looming Persian Gulf War criticized Bush 41 for using a different emphasis on Saddam Hussein's first name which made it sound like an insult in Arabic.

Yet the Obama administration uses the word "Daesh" for the Islamic State (ISIL/ISIS), which is explicitly an insulting term in Arabic. But there is a sound of crickets from the left on this pronunciation issue.

Just who has the keys to the Outrage Machine?

If it makes you feel better, some years ago I remember reading some liberal writer saying that conservatives used "Usama bin Laden" while liberals used "Osama bin Laden." I have always used the latter.

Again with my micro-aggression bias against "U."

Seriously, however, for many radical Moslems and those who side with them, just criticizing Islam is considered blasphemy that should be forbidden and punished by the state--even in the free West and even when non-adherents to their faith speak. No other religion gets to argue for that exception to freedom of speech without strong unified resistance.

Given that issue alone, aside from my inquiry into the language, I'm not inclined to making what seems like a harmless change to a new dominant form of spelling just because so many have made that change.

So when jihadis are demonstrating their bloodthirsty nature every damn day, in a gruesome fashion that defies humanity's norms, I'm in no mood to go down that path on this blog. Is anybody still Charlie today?

You have to know that I'm not one to just bend to what "everyone else" is doing. I'd never have made it out of Detroit if that is how I behaved. And as another friend once remarked, living in Ann Arbor all these decades has had amazingly little impact on me!

Honestly, I think I can guarantee that if people who are genuinely hostile to Moslems started using "Muslim," a new term of generally approved usage would arise from the left. Perhaps we'd be taught new-found respect for the historical origins of the term "Mussulman" from the glorious caliphate of the Ottoman Empire (hey, another "O" word!).

Indeed, this exercise has led me to ask why "Mussulman" is widely considered verboten. I certainly never used it, thinking it archaic and possibly insulting. But that's an Arab-centric reason, isn't it? Why isn't the Turkish word considered okay? Isn't it insulting to Turks to deny the validity of their usage? Are they Islamophobic?

Heck, recall that the Arabic audio translation sounds darned similar to the Turkish spelling that in English we rule out as insensitive. Doesn't this evidence actually suggest that "Muslim" is just as bad if people really just want a better transliteration and pronunciation?

My spelling choice is trivial. And it will continue to be trivial while we are at war with murderous thugs and when the parallel war of words seems like just a minor front trying to undermine victory--victory for the West which is collateral damage in this fight and for the Islamic world that is fighting a civil war over how to define Islam itself rather than how to transliterate the Arabic word for their religion's people.

And given that this is really a transliteration issue and possibly a pronunciation issue, as far as I'm concerned, when someone reads "Moslem" here (which is included in just 6.1% of my 17,000+ posts on Blogger; compare that to 12.1% with the word "Russia" for example) they are free to pronounce it "Moose-lim," Moose-lee-mon," or even "Debbie" in their minds for all I care if it makes them feel better. I don't write "Moslem" with a sneer and a wish for their deaths.

If someone chooses to read it that way after they've read all this, that's their problem. I do not use the word "Moslem" for reasons that some of ill intent have chosen, and those people would not find this blog a friendly site for their views. I reject any connection to them and do not consent to have my motives tied to their motives.

While this may surprise you, I've never gotten an email from a white supremacist congratulating me on my efforts for the race and notifying me I've been nominated for an Iron Cross.

I have no doubt that my friend is sincere in his desire to avoid giving offense to Moslems. Indeed, if it was on an interpersonal level and a Moslem (or Muslim) friend or colleague was genuinely offended, I'd make an effort to conform to their sensitivities when one-on-one. Sometimes it is just a matter of politeness. But again, how far am I expected to go in altering my words? Or thoughts? Would that person be expected to conform their words to my beliefs, too?

Yet I will ponder this issue going forward. I might even change my terminology as a result, one day. As I said, I'm not trying to offend. It was always a transliteration issue. I just never gave a damn if I did offend the Easily Offended. And I'm just not convinced that what I use is offensive based on evidence. The non-issue seems to be a convenient PC way of beating down different thinking on issues.

Also, keep in mind that I never got worked up about Bush 43's "war on terror" terminology in the face of critics on the right who objected that terror is a tactic and not an enemy. President Bush waged war on Islamist terrorists. No doubt. So his terminology was just part of keeping the war as one between America and our allies--including Moslem allies--against jihadis who want to define Islam in their image.

So if I think making that change to "Muslim" contributes to victory, I am willing. We shall see.

For now, however, "Moslem" stays. Judge my writing on what I write, is all I've ever asked.

After another email exchange (on personal stuff) with my friend after I wrote this post (but prior to publication), I suspect my friend will no longer read my blog much because I did not agree to make the change.

That's a pity. He's a good guy. I didn't hold his liberalism against him! And I won't hold his decision against him. Politics oozes into too much these days and wrecks them, sadly enough. I miss the days when music choice was more important in judging peers. But that's his choice and is not my problem.

I still hope to catch up with him on those college reunions one of these days. And even discuss the issues we disagree on over a beer or two.

Sorry I went on so long. In a Twitter world this is War and Peace. But I thought my friend deserved a serious response. And I thought it would be of interest in the wider world.

UPDATE: Somewhat related from the New York Times:

Iraqis have endured years of Islam being used to justify mass killing, and some see Mr. Trump as a truth-teller in calling out Islam — or a certain brand of it — as the problem. ...

“We have no concerns about the policy of Trump because he is against extremism,” said Saad al-Hadithi, the spokesman for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. “We think we are facing one enemy, and that is fighting ISIS. Therefore, I do not think there are fears or concerns about a new American policy.”

Well, that had to come as a surprise to the Times reporters and editors.

I'm guessing the Iraqis also don't care how I spell "Moslem." They might value far more my longstanding support for their liberation from Saddam's tyranny.

UPDATE: A very late update with an older clip when I belatedly noticed in 2018 that Trump uses the pronunciation "Muslim." Please update your language of hate dictionary. Grant me that this is funny.

Is Technology Catching Up With My Worries?

Huh:

For about $50, you can get a smartphone with a high-definition display, fast data service and, according to security contractors, a secret feature: a backdoor that sends all your text messages to China every 72 hours.

Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence.

I know a carrier would be at sea and so far from cell towers needed to communicate, but would it be possible to transmit location data through the carrier's communications systems or design a receiver that would boost even weak signals from a great distance for the purpose of getting even general location information from a smart phone or other electronic device that could be taken on to a carrier by an American sailor?

Or are crews forbidden from taking any devices on board a carrier for the duration of the deployment. And if they are stopped from doing that at the start, is it really impossible to keep a sailor on shore leave from picking up a disposable phone from a friendly retailer at the docks who gets his phones from China?

Am I really off base to worry that China might not need a complicated targeting infrastructure to build a kill chain to knock out our aircraft carriers?

A Safer World on Paper

After the glorious chemical weapons deal that disarmed Assad of chemical weapons under our super genius Secretary of State Kerry, our government has decided not to punish Assad for using chemical weapons. Oh well, the signing ceremony was still spectacular! And this is just the Mini-Me version of the Iran nuclear deal fiasco.

Get. Out!

The Obama administration has throttled back its diplomatic push to make Syria destroy all of its stockpiles of chlorine and barrel bombs on the premise that the Syrian regime used them in attacks against opposition-controlled towns, according to diplomatic sources.

The Russians (of course!) and "developing countries" (countries developing what, their own WMD?) resisted our desire to punish Assad and we backed off.

But I'm sure the far more glorious Iran nuclear deal (aka, the JCPOA), with a far more celebratory signing ceremony, and even more support from Russia and "developing countries" will work much better!

Wait. What?

U.S. intelligence agencies and their international partners are seeing a flurry of inquiries by Iran about importing potentially sensitive technologies controlled by last year’s nuclear deal – but outside of channels specifically set up to vet these goods, according to officials and experts.

Despite the activity by Iranian nationals — some of them identified as smugglers — in the nearly ten months since the agreement began implementation, not a single sales proposal is known to have gone through the nuclear deal’s Joint Commission and its Procurement Working Group, as the deal requires. It’s eerily quiet.

The Iran nuclear deal set up provisions for Iran to openly import legitimate nuclear items (as flawed as that program likely would be), yet Iran prefers to keep their smuggling and sanctions-breaking pipelines active. Fancy that.

The Iran deal is not a treaty. So yes, it can be negated by President Trump despite the obvious panic of those who prefer to appease Iran and pretend the deal is the highest form of diplomacy.

The deal is multilateral in that many countries negotiated the deal and the UN Security Council ratified it, but President Obama was the multilateral partner here rather than America itself because the deal is not a treaty ratified by our Senate to make America the partner in this deal. When President Obama leaves office, Iran's multilateral partner here is gone. Perhaps as a private citizen former president Obama will be bound by the deal, but so what?

And truth be told, this glorious "multilateral" deal isn't even legally binding on Iran!

What we have is a multilateral deal among Western states who negotiated with us and Iran, President Obama, and Iran's mullahs--blessed by the UN Security Council which gives Russia a veto to freeze the farcical deal in place--to pretend we stopped Iran from advancing down the nuclear weapons path.

Remember that Iran doesn't even admit that the JCPOA is a deal to keep them from getting nuclear weapons because to this day they deny that they want nukes or have ever in any way had any nuclear weapons programs!

The problem is that our super genius chief diplomat, Kerry, negotiated an awful deal that front-loaded the chief benefits of the deal to Iran while we can only get our limited benefit if Iran does not cheat or go around the deal during the period of the deal.

And if Iran goes nuclear after the deal expires, what have we really achieved? Do you really think Iran under the mullahs will become a responsible regional partner by the day the deal expires and the flimsy limits on Iran go away?

So canceling the deal in 2017 just leaves Iran with the benefits of the deal and ends our chance of getting even the small benefit of delaying Iran's nuclear arsenal.

Yet if we are going to fail to enforce the deal's meager provisions that put speed bumps on Iran's path to a nuclear arsenal, I'm all in favor of canceling the deal if it forces us to face the fact that Iran is pursuing nukes rather than let us stick our heads in the sand to pretend we have something of value.

I'm open to the possibility that rather than canceling the deal, Trump should seek to enforce every damn provision we have in the deal and constantly press Iran on every aspect of the deal, making their compliance a daily headache for Tehran's mullahs.

Perhaps this could work:

JCPOA implementation has been handicapped by Kerry’s ego and his fear that it might unravel if he is not obsequious to the Islamic Republic. ... On any number of issues—Iran’s illicit ballistic missile work, tolerance for Iran exceeding limits on its heavy water, interpretations of banking regulations, and Iran’s refusal to allow inspections of military bases—Kerry has deferred to Iran, often acting as its business agent and lawyer.

As flawed as the deal is, Trump should simply implement it as if his concern were putting American interests first rather than deferring to Iranian interests. Iran doesn’t want a military base inspected? Tough. Let Iran walk away from the deal if it objects. Iran is upset that its economy isn’t meeting its own expectations? Well, perhaps they should tackle their own corruption and lack of commercial law rather than expect a Western bailout. Iran violates restrictions on ballistic missile development and heavy water production? Then it is in violation and should suffer the full consequences. Flexibility is not an entitlement. Iran complains that sanctions leveled by individual US states on pension fund investments hurt its economy? Not only does agreeing to Tehran’s interpretation betray US democracy, but Tehran’s interpretation is tendentious.

Trump is right: The JCPOA is flawed and does little to restrain or prevent Iran’s military nuclear ambitions. But that does not mean he should walk away. Rather, he can interpret the deal with such inflexibility as to force Iran to walk away. ...

At the same time, he can move to undercut Iran’s ability to conduct terrorism by seizing accounts, restricting dollar access by reversing Obama’s tendentious Treasury Department interpretations, and ordering the US Navy to hold its ground rather than “depressurize the Persian Gulf,” as former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sought.

Can that work? The parts dealing with the nuclear deal itself might be a problem since we subcontracted enforcement of the deal itself to the International Atomic Energy Agency--which in turn allows Iran to self-inspect in crucial areas! How much can we push the IAEA to press Iran on compliance?

And as we know, "snap back" provisions to restore sanctions if Iran violates the deal are a mirage. Nothing will snap back, and Russia and "developing countries" will no doubt resist any efforts in the UN Security Council to reimpose international sanctions.

I'm willing to explore the idea that an American administration determined to stop Iran from going nuclear more than it is determined to justify their own stupid diplomatic face plant with Iran (and Syria, going back to the beginning of this long post) could pressure Iran through the deal.

But if that is not possible because the deal doesn't really allow us to press Iran significantly, I'm in favor of walking away from the deal to at least rip the blinders from our eyes and face the problem squarely rather than go on with a deal that rests on Iran pretending not to pursue nuclear weapons and America's ability to pretend to believe Iran.

UPDATE: Stratfor believes it will be too difficult for America to walk away from the deal.

Perhaps. In the short run as we send out diplomats to explore that option, I'll settle for strictly enforcing the deal terms and adding pressure outside of the deal.

Step One: Roads; Step Two: Bases; Step Three?

China is building a military presence close to northeastern North Korea:

The source in North Hamgyong Province said a large-scale military facility in the Chinese city of Longjing, in Jilin Province, has been under development.

The base faces the Sambong workers' zone in the North Korean county of Onsong.

This follows news from 2013 that a new Chinese highway in that area was oddly little-used. Well, it is odd if you don't think a logistics link is necessary for China to invade North Korea.

Note too Chinese efforts to span the Yalu in the west and Chinese help for road building inside North Korea.

Although the North Koreans seem to have woken up to the threat from the north by refusing to complete their side of the bridge in the west--which completes the road from China to North Korea's capital, Pyongyang.

And notice that the picture with the initial article shows Chinese troops practicing river crossing operations on the Yalu River which the Chinese would have to breach in order to invade North Korea.

China may or may not be planning to invade North Korea, but by building roads and bridges to supply an army and by building up actual military infrastructure in the region, China has made it possible to invade North Korea and make it a race to beat the South Koreans to key terrain.

I do believe we live in interesting times.

Is This What Blowback Looks Like?

Does Russia believe Trump is good for Russia, or not?

The notion peddled by Democrats, of all people, that Russia wanted Trump to be president because he would appease Russian aggression is nonsense. Here's a similar take:

The Kremlin and the Russian foreign policy establishment may not like Hillary Clinton, but unlike Trump, they saw her as predictable.

Putin and company expected her election, but they wanted her presidency to be hobbled from the start.

They wanted a messy and contested election result that would allow them to say American democracy is not as clean as it claims to be.

What they got instead was a clean, clear, unambiguous, and uncontested result.

Russia expected to get a crippled but predictable (made even more "predictable" by the Kremlin's possession of Clinton's secret emails that would have provided blackmail material) President Hillary Clinton.

And now the Russians have to deal with a President Trump who apparently can't be damaged by any revelation. That's gotta suck from the Kremlin's point of view.

And worse for Russia, rather than showing American-style democracy to be too difficult to carry out (and thus have less appeal to Russians should Putin's aura of success crack), we got a clear result with no constitutional crisis.

And even worse, our people elected the candidate that the national media waged war against. And our people voted even though the national elites and media tried to bully them through shame into passivity.

For Putin who relies on state media to prop him up and the power of the state to bully any opposition into passivity, our election must be profoundly disturbing.

So no, Putin should not be celebrating the election of Trump. If Putin truly expected much, he wouldn't openly welcome Trump's election when Putin knows that Putin does not rank highly in American esteem.

I will say that there is a chance that the Russians themselves are divided on this. If the Russians hold off on actions in Syria and Ukraine, then we can say that the Russians think they have a chance of a flexible reset America under Trump.

But if some belief Trump will be cooperative, some Russians seem to realize they may have miscalculated:

Russia expects Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict to stay in place despite Donald Trump winning the U.S. presidential election, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.

And there is this:

Moscow is skeptical about pre-election promises made by the U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to cooperate with Russia in Syria, a Russia's foreign ministry official said on Monday, Interfax news agency reported.

Yet at the same time the hope seems to be alive:

Russia is ready to work fast to repair relations with Washington now that Donald Trump has been elected U.S. president, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Monday by RIA news agency.

That kind of indecision works for us.

So perhaps the Wikileaks operation was a failed Russian information warfare campaign against America. Russia hoped to delegitimize our democracy and that failed. And the secondary question of whether Trump or Clinton (or neither) would be better for Russia may be under debate.

One thing for sure, there will be no Christmas bonuses over this FSB operation.

And my thanks to the American media for polling so badly that the Russians thought they could count on a Hillary Clinton win no matter what information they leaked to harm her and make our democratic process look weak. No bonuses over here, either.

Perhaps this apparent Russian indecision on what Trump means for Russia will carry us through a dangerous transition period as Russia decides to wait and see.

UPDATE: I think I can safely say that whatever debates the Russians have been having, they now do not consider Trump to be someone who will make Russia-American relations great again:

Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who has made caustic rhetoric and sarcastic social-media posts a staple of her public outreach, has an idea whom U.S. President-elect Donald Trump can thank for his stunning victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton: "the Jews."

So there you go.