Hiatus Alert, again.

I"ll be out of Internet range for the rest of this month and all of May, so my readers are forewarned.

I didn't see to much this past week that inspired a rant, but that's not because nothing happened. The Virginia Tech Massacre alone was pretty nasty, but it's one of those things that will happen. The on-again debate about gun control in the US promises to be unpleasant, but in a country where there is a viable lobby encouraging MORE guns for honest citizens, it's at least a balanced fight.

This is one of those things that I'm pretty ambivalent about; yes, one student with a concealed handgun on campus that day could have made a big (positive) difference, but that puts a lot more guns into situations that on any other day, would have no guns in them. That at least is the argument I make against having Air Marshals with guns on flights, as that guarantees there will be a gun on the plane. After 9/11 airline restrictions, I challenge anyone to take over a plane with what they can get on board. I'm not actually challenging you to try that of course...

Guns are a very polarizing topic, and since I almost never get any comments on this (and I know who leaves the few that I get) I won't bother trying to stir up any debate. Insane people are like acts of nature, and they will happen to some degree or another regardless of the laws already passed, let alone those that will be rammed through in a panic after something like this. Or like the Dawson College rampage last year; that was in Canada, which has pretty restrictive gun laws which were broken by the freak who perpetrated it.

On a less controversial (perhaps) note, I've started using Firefox for most of my web browsing. I find that accessing this site is vastly smoother with it, and I think a lot of other pages are loading faster than with IE 7. Now that I've taken my life in my hands with that declaration, I'm off. See you in June, end of May if I'm lucky.

Punching above our weight

Well, call up the army, it looks like another Canadian citizen has been unfairly persecuted by the totalitarian Chinese horde!

Oh, wait; Husyein Celil comes from there, was arrested there on terrorism charges and escaped to Canada? He just got his Canadian citizenship in 2005, 5 years after escaping from a Chinese jail? He's associated with people who have been executed by the Chinese government for supporting separatist forces? And he was caught by the Chinese back in their neighbourhood after he fled to and was granted a safe home in Canada?

"Well, maybe we should mind our own business", is my response to reading the facts of the case. The Chinese, rightly to my mind, do NOT recognize his Canadian citizenship-of-convenience and are treating him as a Chinese citizen. In fact, he's lucky not to be executed.

The Canadian government has predictably freaked out and is making all sorts of "tsk-tsk" noises at the Chinese, who are just as predictably telling them to shut it. As you might guess I have a lack of patience for Canada defending doughheads who manage to fetch up on our shores after pissing off some less soft-and-fuzzy country. I don't want most of them here in the first place (we grow our own criminals, thank you), and then they go back to whatever dismal place they "escaped" from in the first place.

Well, this does nothing for us. This guy got away once, and the Chinese won't let him do it again. Canada can just bleat and look lame, achieving nothing. I have to ask, do we really want guys like this bailed out? If we get him back, maybe he can hang out with the Khadr family...

Istanbul, not Constantinople

The perennial quest of Turkey to join the EU leads to a lot of gyrations on the part of its' government, but there are other factors at work too. I for one am relieved to see that the idea of a secular Turkey is being defended in relatively large numbers, but I wonder if it'll be enough.

'A sea of flag-waving demonstrators poured into the streets of Ankara Saturday to protest a possible presidential run by the pro-Islamist prime minister, whose party has been eroding secular Turks' longtime grip on power.

A crowd estimated at more than 300,00 chanted 'We don't want an imam as president!' at a rally in Ankara, Turkey on Saturday.
Associated Press

With a crowd estimated at more than 300,000, the protest was one of the nation's largest in decades. Red Turkish flags hung from balconies and windows and fluttered in the hands of protesters, who chanted, "We don't want an imam as president!" and "Turkey is secular and will remain secular!"' (CBC)

The Islamist nonsense continues, and Turkey could easily fall were it a standard democracy. People get the government they deserve for the most part, and whether or not the bulk of the populace there wants to live under sharia, were I the Europeans I'd not be too keen on another enemy of Western civilization being entrenched in a powerful neighbour. I wonder how many people in Turkey really wonder why they'll never be admitted to the EU?

"Never" is a big word, and I shouldn't use it very much. The choice seems to be between democratically elected Islamist fundamentalists or a secular society supported by military coups. Maybe "never" is the right word here; the Islamists scare Europe (with good reason) and the use of the Army to defend human rights is a concept they don't seem capable of getting behind.

Back to the Democracy hobbyhorse again. Lots of crappy governments get in by being elected, so the argument for it as a prerequisite for good order and governance is not so airtight as many would have us believe. We'll see if they take the hint (from the Army) in Turkey or if there will be another putsch. The third option is a NATO country with a government that wants to subjugate the rest of us to their repressive ideology, and I don't like that option much, as "democratic" as it may be.

On another tack, I've been reading Bill Whittle's essays at Eject! Eject! Eject! and there's some good stuff in there. He defends the invasion and occupation of Iraq more than I do (i.e. I have always thought it was a losing proposition, he does not), and they're pretty lengthy, but there's some quality ranting to be had. Of course it's very American, but I'll be interested to hear what any of you think about his "Seeing the Unseen", so let me know.

Bleeding to Bankruptcy? How about "not".

The idea is fairly obvious if you think about it, but first you have to be thinking about these sorts of things. That said, this Janes article is well developed, and now that I’ve found a link accessible to those on the web, I’ve provided it here. (You have to access it from that Ft Leavenworth page, but it's there.) At 3500 words it’s a bit of a chunk to paste into the blog, and despite this generating zero income I don’t want to infringe peoples’ copyrights. I think I can make enough enemies without doing that…

Essentially, Bin Laden has come out and said that one of “their” dollars is as effective as one million American ones. Accordingly, says he, attack things that they value, and more importantly, scare them into reacting willy-nilly and the economic damage will compound itself. Ok, maybe not that bit about compounding, but that’s the effect.

I have for a while been advocating a more detached, quick-in-and-out approach to dealing with his sort, and the fact that Al-Qaeda and their ilk are PLANNING on our panicking and lashing out in all directions seems to support my concept. The idea of emplacing democracy where it obviously doesn’t belong (at least not yet) is not playing out all that well, and is VERY expensive. What are our priorities, really, and is there a better way to get there?

A lot of ink has been spilled (and bits forcibly arranged) about the “security theatre” to be found in a lot of places, particularly the US. One of my favourites, I think Jerry Pournelle said it, was that we are permitting ourselves to be treated like criminals (searched, etc.) just to get on a plane. In other words, the price of this “security” is not just economic.

Here’s another of my brainwaves: how about we just tell the public the truth, and set a good example of not soiling ourselves over some low-probability terrorist plot. Make sure that no-one can get a (real) weapon on a plane (elementary screening of passengers with metal-detectors and X-ray machines does this), but dispense with the BS about nail clippers and hair gel.

Generally, the populace is only scared if their leaders are, or more importantly if they look to be. A bit more evidence of the work our security forces do (we’re watching this group, be busted this up, etc) within the bounds of OPSEC, and generally, pound into people that these clowns could be dangerous, but so is getting hit by lightning, and that’s a lot more likely.

Attitude, it’s all about attitude. Give a big middle finger salute to the jihadi fuckers in the media, all the time. We’re generally getting our asses handed to us in the media wars, and the local media is complicit in that. It’s not just Al-Jazeera it’s the European and North American outlets too. Too lazy, intimidated, or just self-loathing and longing for the collapse of Western civilization; I have no idea, but many of them don’t know what side their bread is buttered on.

So, governments and media, here’s my challenge: make us believe that we’re strong and free, and that a bunch of disgruntled Muslims with a shoestring budget won’t be able to “bleed us to death”.

What exactly happened here?

So, my blood-thirsty “bomb the boats, feed the fish” ranting has been deflated by Iran forking over their British hostages with little further ado (other than some propaganda points for appearing to be in the driver’s seat) and making some conciliatory noises.

Before I flagellate myself excessively for over-reacting (not that I’ll do that anyway) let’s have a look at the big picture and see why all of this happened so relatively quickly. I cannot imagine that the same people who stage such a planned and co-ordinated operation would quit playing the game until they:

get what they wanted, or
have had their arms twisted pretty hard, if not in fact broken.

A lot has been said in the media about the increasing isolation of Iran on the world stage, and this whole episode did nothing to help them. There is the other possibility, that this was indeed a planned operation, but only at a certain level, and it was not in the “big picture” of the government in the first place. Add these two ingredients, stir, and you have the current outcome.

There are of course other possibilities. The Americans have a LOT of firepower in the area, and the Iranians have to know they’re just looking for an excuse to use it. This doesn’t need to be mentioned explicitly, but I for one am certain it played a role. The BBC today had this from Tony Blair:

The prime minister said the government had pursued a "dual-track strategy" of remaining open to dialogue with Iran, while "mobilising international support and pressure".
"In my view it would be utterly naive to believe that our personnel would have been released unless both elements of the strategy had been present."

It has to be taken into account that whatever I say is limited to what I know, or can logically infer from what I know. I maintain that the British military and government did NOT project very well out of this whole thing. Whether they have (re) learned anything from this remains to be seen, and will be shown by the reactions of their troops the next time somebody tries a stunt like this.

In a straight-up fight the Brits can’t take on the Iranians in the latter’s backyard, but they should be able to win any skirmish, and with the help of their allies (read: the USA) lay a serious hurt on something the Iranian government would value.

The bottom line, my war mongering ranting aside, is that we, the West, cannot afford to look weak. We are not, on paper, but that changes if we aren’t prepared to use what we have. The Brits lost MAJOR face on this one according to me, and I’m as big a supporter of them as you’re going to find outside of the UK. Bigger than a lot of people within it as well, I might add…
So, if I think they came out of this looking bad (though the “rapid” resolution mitigates that somewhat), what does our opposition, and more importantly, those sitting on the fence, think? Nothing favourable, and I’ll stand by that statement too.

Nuke 'em 'til they glow

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but if I’m going to do so, of course I will watch something like “24”. There is a whole lot about it that is completely ridiculous, but other parts are not so far-fetched, and others that at least make you think, if you’re so inclined…

The episode last night involved (spoiler alert) the launch of a nuclear weapon against a fictional Middle-Eastern country. As of the end of the show it hadn’t impacted, but the choice of target, etc. seems to me wrong.

The chosen impact point was in some scarcely inhabited patch of desert, and this was supposed to be a “show of force” in retaliation for terrorists from that country setting off a tactical (suitcase) nuke in Los Angeles.

Assuming you think it’s appropriate to attack a country in retaliation for something perpetrated by some of its’ nationals (in which case, why didn’t the US bomb Saudi Arabia after 9/11?), there is a question of how to go about it. To my way of thinking, nuking someone’s desert province and “only” killing a few thousand people is like throwing rocks at a hornet’s nest.

It was a move designed to demonstrate resolve, and that the US wouldn’t take it any more (mad as hell, etc.). I think that if you really wanted to show you’d dropped the gloves, you pound at least one, if not all, of their major cities. They already know you have the bloody things, and they assume that they work; hitting the desert only proves that. If you want to teach them something they don’t know, kill a whole lot of them and make it clear that the same fate attends anyone else who messes with you.

Yes, it’s only a show, but it raises an important point about the REAL use of force, as opposed to Rules of Engagement. If you start throwing nukes around, particularly at people who can’t really respond in kind, RoEs are pretty foolish. Nukes aren’t supposed to be used really, but if you start, you don’t stop until the threat is destroyed.

There are maybe two countries in the world who could do some real damage to the US, and that’s giving China a lot of credit at this point. The rest of them really could be knocked back to the 19th Century with a tiny fraction of the US nuclear arsenal, with no chance to retaliate in any meaningful way. If you think the Iranians want a bomb now, they’ll go hell-for-leather for one if one of their neighbours ever gets nuked.

We’re talking real “Fear of God”-type use of force. The Americans tried to do that with the whole “Shock and Awe” thing in Iraq in 2003. That sure did the job, didn’t it? If we take the current situation in Iraq, hands up those who think that Iran (or Syria for that matter) would stop what they’re doing if the US dropped a nuke in the Salt Desert of Iran? They already deny it, and they obviously don’t care that the Americans could turn most of Iran into radioactive glass. They, and the rest of the non-democratic world are concerned about what you WILL do, not what you could do.

Britain has been shown this week or so to be weak and gutless at the political level, precisely because of the lack of retaliation for their troops being seized. I’ve said it before, but what is there to stop anyone from doing this sort of thing to them again? The same country that carried on after taking 60,000 casualties in one day on the Somme in 1916 is now crapping their pants about getting 15 of their people back unharmed.

Of course I don’t view members of the Armed Forces as expendable, but I argue that the “de-escalatory” RoE that British troops were under when they were ignominiously captured suggests that their bosses are more concerned with optics than the safety of their people on the scene. Had those Marines been under orders to defend themselves, the Iranians would have had a fight on their hands, and moreover, they would have known it.

This risk of escalation works in the Brits’ favour, as they know, or at least should, that The Americans are more than happy to back them up should the Iranians come knocking. Besides, if one British Frigate couldn’t dispatch a handful of Iranian coastal defence boats, they’re not good for much.

So, although this seems a digression from my initial direction, it’s all the same principal. I linked to this before, but an excerpt is in order here:


They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below -
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris -
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man's head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.


Guess who. These days a white man’s head isn’t worth a lot; less, I’d argue than any others. Many things have changed since Kipling’s early days, but other things have not, and never will.

Well, lessons are learned and then forgotten. The Romans knew how to deal with their mortal enemies, and I wonder if the West will remember what we knew 60 years ago. Even the bad-ass guys on “24” (except Jack Bauer, of course) are pulling their punches, so it seems it’s a way off yet.