Warre to the Knife

As 2008 closes the big news (after the Mumbai attacks and the global economic slump, both of which will be affecting things for a while yet) is Israel putting the boot in to the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, the media death toll stands at 375 dead Gazans with a thousand or so wounded.
There is the usual handwringing about civilians and children killed, how war never solved anything, and of course the “Muslim world” is (in some cases literally) up-in-arms about “Israeli aggression". The UN has condemned both sides and demanded a cease-fire, so you can expect more of their vigorous non-action in the days and weeks to come.

By any objective measure from the Israeli side, this is long overdue. The Israeli people are as sick of war and security crises as anyone, but Hamas has made it clear that ignoring them will NOT make them go away.

The Israeli government is stating that this is “all-out war” but I rather doubt it. Sure, it’ll look like that to a lot of people when the tanks, APCs and armoured bulldozers roll over the border after the mini “shock and awe” period is over, but I for one will be only actually shocked if the IDF does what is actually necessary to put Hamas, Al-Qaeda, etc. out of business in the Strip.
Back to the title of this post; the opposition will have to be ferreted out, root and branch and that will mean a LOT of bodies on both sides and levelling the Gaza Strip. Hamas will not stand out in the open and say “here, shoot me”, and will of course hide behind the civilians to make the Israelis look as bad as possible in the Press. Israel will only achieve their aim of knocking their opposition out if they are willing to kill a shitload of people, many of them not active combatants.

Ugly? Damned straight, but as per my favourite line from Pournelle/Niven’s Burning City, “Never start half a war.” When fighting someone whose stated aim is your extermination you hoist the old red flag (NOT the Communist one, the older one) and keep killing enemies until you can’t find any more. Quarter neither asked nor given.

Again, unlikely and really not my immediate problem. You will note that I have taken sides here, but I never claimed this blog was politically correct or impartial. The Israelis have their problems, but I’d far rather see them on top over there than, well, anyone else in the neighbourhood. My prediction is that the Americans will apply pressure to Israel to stop when the Yanks think the job is done. History since 1945 doesn’t suggest that the Americans have any idea any more when that point actually is, rather when international and/or domestic opinion becomes sufficiently outraged.

I am no strategic or geopolitical genius, so I’m sure there are a lot of people over there (‘tho less in the U.S.) who know this as well as I do, but of them, it’s only the groups that oppose us that are prepared to put it into action. Of course they’d first take out or take over the media, then start liquidating. Today it’s not all of the lawyers you have to kill if you want to do the dirty work. The IDF will of course not do that, but they can keep most of the media out. The BBC page I linked to is obviously also not impartial, proving the necessity of this.

Total blackout is of course impossible in the era of camera smart phones, etc., but I’ll be interested to see how this unspools.

Onward to 2009

I've been pondering the future of this space for some time. It being free and all means I lose nothing by leaving it fallow, "fallow" being hopefully the right word. I have stuff to say, but it seems increasingly like the same stuff, or close variations thereof which is less than motivating.

2008 has also on a personal level been not my best, but it being an anonymous blog even that isn't grist for the writing mill. In a small breach of that protocol, I did at least want to mention the passing today of my cat. Yes, my cat. She was with me for over 16 years, so her death (euthanized before she died of slow malnutrition due to diabetes, etc.) marks some sort of transition. Buggered if I know what, but it's a long time and deserves some more lasting mention than just telling people.

One thing I have hoped of this spot was to generate some discussion, but there was little or none of that. That isn't the end of the world, but even I get tired of listening to myself, so it's been tough to keep it going.

Things look like they may be stabilizing a bit for me in the new year (at least for a while), but either way I'll leave AotF up as long as Blogger will. I did some good stuff, and even my half-arsed pieces are worth reading, if only to note the deliberate logical lapses and other lazy things I do to try to get a rise out of "my" public. There may be more to come; in fact probably, but that requires spare time, Internet access and stuff that gets my goat.

The latter is abundant, but I really need all three to indulge this particular vanity/fancy. Don't hold your breath (sounds familiar; I think I've used it) but keep this spot in your peripheral vision, or at least the rear view mirror, 'cause it's not dead just yet.

Working for the Clampdown

A telco with one of my friends (and probably the biggest fan of this blog) today reminded me that I've not been on top of this thing, so just something off-the-cuff to keep from falling way behind.

The big stuff recently has been the complete meltdown in the U.S. mortgage markets, and the economic chaos that we are still in the middle of. What this means to me personally at this point is a shrinking of my long-term investments, and more immediately the price of gas is back to something reasonable ($o.85/L today). It's a good time to not be in manufacturing for sure.

Where do I see all this going? I don't know any more than the high-priced help (e.g. "experts") but I will say that I think things for us in North America will get (at least slightly) better if McCain wins, and worse if Obama does. McCain will at least not impose more socialism and big government on the U.S., the last things that country, and by extension those of us in it's economic fallout zone, need.

That election is almost here (finally) so that will be settled one way or the other. The recent Canadian election was unspectacular, so we stay the course on Afghanistan and whatever else it is that we're doing these days. Maybe when we're finally done with that mess we can deploy the troops into Toronto and sort those drive-by-shooting gangbangers out Panjwai-style.

A B-1 strike on Jane and Finch? Perhaps a bit much, but something has to be done, and more talk or banning guns that are already being used illegally is NOT it. I invite you to draw your own conclusions, but if you gave me command of the Battlegroup and access to Toronto Police intel, I'd solve most of this indiscriminate shooting bullshit in less than three months. You'd want to stay off the streets until I was done, but it would be safe to walk them again afterward.

No links, no research, but there is the state of my thinking at this juncture. I'll as always try to come back with some of my "usual" level of writing, but I'm very busy in my real life, so it'll be sparse for a while yet.

Better late than never

Now the PM has come out and said we will end our mission in Afghanistan in 2011, full-stop. Of course there will still be some of our people on the ground as mentors, likely Special Forces (JTF2, CSOR) as long as NATO remains there, but the Battle Group will be no more after 2011.

I couldn't find anything more current than the Decima poll done last November about the public's opinion on the war in Afghanistan, but I imagine it hasn't changed a whole lot since then. At that time, 60% in the poll disapproved of us being there to a greater or lesser extent, and only 15% of respondents thought it was even a priority to be there.

Mr. Davis in this article has said, well, here's what he said:

Jim Davis, whose son Cpl. Paul Davis died when his light armoured vehicle rolled over during a patrol in Kandahar in March 2006, said he was shocked by Harper's comments.

"I couldn't believe he would say something so irresponsible as that," Davis told CTV's Canada AM on Thursday.

Davis said it would be ideal to have Canadian soldiers home by 2011 but setting a deadline "undermines the work our soldiers are doing and it undermines the mission."

He said the deadline makes it difficult for Canadian soldiers to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people if they know troops will be gone in two years.

"I would never want to see another soldier go in harm's way so I can justify my son's death," said Davis. "But at the same time if we pull up stakes and come home when we're not ready to -- when the mission is not complete -- if we did that then my son died in vain."

There is a good deal of merit to Mr. Davis' statements, but with such an open-ended"mission" as this I honestly don't think it matters whether we put a date on it or not. It can't go forever, and in this day and age of technology and instantaneous communications there is no way to keep things secret for any length of time.

Therefore I think that the PM might as well have set a date which will let our allies realize that we aren't willing to support this sort of thing blindly and without end. There is very little prospect of any sort of happy ending in Afghanistan, so wasting more blood and treasure there to that end is just that, a waste. However, there is (as I've said previously) more to our decision to stick around and give more notice to leave than our progress.

The people of Canada don't really care, and the PM said that the military is starting to lose enthusiasm for the deployment in Afghanistan. The latter statement caught me slightly by surprise, but the spade is still a spade and I know a lot of people who have no have no interest in going back, so I'd say that both statements are on the money.

On the other hand, there are those who feel that putting a date on our exit is playing into the enemy's hands. In a very strict OPSEC way they are correct, but in the long term it will make no difference. It's another 3 years, so the Taliban shouldn't start celebrating just yet. That gives the Afghan government that much time with our help, and it will be by the end almost as long as we spent in both world wars.

This is the Americans' baby now. NATO has proven itself useless as an organization, as good as many of the (mostly smaller) constituent parts have proven to be. The Yanks will be doing their own "surge" into the 'Stan (and possibly Pakistan...) and we'll be there to help with that. If that can't be done in another 3 years, I say screw it and get out. If I had infallible prescience and knew we'd be no further ahead, I'd say get out now. No sense throwing good money after bad if you KNOW that's what's happening.

We are NOT the world's policemen, and I don't feel like being sucked into a never-ending security nightmare on the other side of the world. Canada has it's own interests, increasingly in our north, and we need to be in a position to do something there. Money that goes to Afghanistan is money we need for our Forces to be ready to more aggressively patrol the N.W.T. archipelago.

Besides, this way we are still keeping our word, and then some. We were supposed to be out in 2009, and we extended things until 2011. Plenty of time to fix what can be fixed, and now the troops and their families can have some hope that the Afghanistan treadmill will eventually end.

Too late for some, but you take the Queen's shilling and you know what the risks are. Our fallen and wounded are not diminished by the fact that it may be a lost cause, because at least they tried to do something and they put themselves on the line for it.

It's a post for another day, but go here and have a look at how whitebread the bulk of our casualties are. A cursory look shows six guys who'd be classified as "visible minorities", which doesn't really surprise me, but I was struck today by just how over-represented the much-maligned white European male is in our casualty lists.

It is a window on the Army (at least) and I do wonder if there is any way to make more-recent immigrants more engaged in their citizenship. A big can of worms indeed, but it's a political season so why not?

The ice man goeth? We'll see...

More doom and gloom from the global warming brigade. Obviously the Arctic sea ice coverage is less than it (recently) has been, but there is a lot of talk of "tipping points" and feedback loops.

(CTV) And with several weeks left in the melt season, 2008 could still surpass September 2007 for the lowest amount of sea ice since satellite measurements were first taken in 1979.

At last measure on Aug. 26, Arctic sea ice coverage was at 5.26 million square kilometers -- a decline of 2.06 million square kilometres from the beginning of August.

In September of last year, a record low was recorded, with 5.69 million square kilometres of sea ice recorded.

It's not a benchmark that Stroeve is proud of, but she's also not surprised by the chilling picture the numbers provide.

"I guess the main thing people should understand is this is just a continuation of that long term downward trend. I think whether or not we break the record it's just the continuation of what we've been seeing since 2002, where every year we're losing ice and we're not recovering at all," she said.

How a scientist can claim to be "proud" or otherwise about data I fail to understand. Information is information unless you were the one who created the data; built a big mirror in space and melted all the Arctic ice your own self, mayhap.

And again with the drowning polar bears:

Observers from the U.S. federal government doing a whale survey in mid August reported seeing nine polar bears swimming off Alaska's northwest coast.

The bears were between 20 and 100 kilometres from shore. Some were swimming north, apparently trying to reach the polar ice shelf, which was more than 600 kilometres distant.

While polar bears have been known to swim 100 kilometres, but can often become dangerously weak from the ordeal.

Stroeve said she has also heard reports of seals being spotted further north than ever before as they travel further and further north to find ice.

"It's scary. It's such a huge change that's happening very quickly and it makes me very sad because I just can't see how the species that rely on the ice can survive this," Stroeve said.

They survived the last time this happened, and unless we kill them off (more likely) they probably will again. If a bear is capable of swimming 100 km, it suggests that it has evolved in an environment where that can be necessary. The way to be sure is to throw a Grizzly in the ocean and see how it does, but somehow I don't see that happening, so we may never know. I will also point out that these observers have no idea why these bears are doing what they're doing; more speculation. As for seals, there are lots of them where there isn't any year-round ice so they may decline, but the little buggers were pretty good swimmers last I heard, and quite capable of pulling up on a beach.

I am not claiming that this is not happening, just suggesting that the hyperbole is well, hyperbole. Things are cyclic, and because things are trending one way does NOT mean it will necessarily keep going that way. It's been getting colder in the Antarctic at the same time it's melting up north, but the data is scarce and this part goes back and forth. A key thing though is that I've not seen anything creditable showing me that Greenland is melting like the pack ice, so there's still a big chunk of high albedo surface up there year-round.

I'm quite tired of hearing what "could" happen. All sorts of stuff could happen, but the chicken littles who keep warning of catastrophic sea level rise have yet to be even partly vindicated. If the NW Passage opens up that's a geopolitical problem, especially for us, but otherwise a slightly warmer northern hemisphere is the sort of thing that both we and the animaux can adapt to.

Sometimes I hate HTML

The last post seems to me a bit disjointed, but that is partially due to the technical problems I had with editing/posting it, derailing my train of thought.

To attempt to clear things up, for myself at least, this will serve as a bit of an addendum. I'd just edit the other one, but that gave me such a headache yesterday that I don't want to touch it again.

I feel that we've passed the point of diminishing returns in Afghanistan, see here. I have recovered (mostly) from the funk I was in when that was written, but the conclusions remain.
Our mission there(in my mind) is no longer really about fixing Afghanistan, as I don't think that's do-able by us or by anyone else. Afghanistan is the sort of marginal, faultline-of-empires kinds of place that will always be screwed up.

The current upswing in enemy activity in Afghanistan may or may not be sustainable, but it is a big mistake to rush to conclusions based on a few bad weeks or months. If they keep it up over the next year as well then it's time to reconsider.

Getting back to point two, the mission began as and has reverted to containment and damage control. Al-Qaeda took a pasting in Iraq and the survivors and wanna-be martyrs are turning to Afghanistan for another kick at the can. It might be necessary to maintain some sort of military/intelligence presence in Afghanistan long-term just to keep things from spilling outside of the current sphere.

How important that last objective is to us in North America is a matter of some debate, with myself falling on the "too bad for them, let them stew" part of the spectrum most of the time. All things being equal, I'd scale back our forces there and use it as a live-fire training scheme for our Special and highly motivated Regular forces on an all-volunteer basis. Piggyback on the American logistics and combat support system (more than we do now) and provide our best troops to respond to specific missions.

NATO is obsolete, but it remains important to stand by our real friends, and that sure doesn't include the Germans. THAT is the real mission for us now, although no politician would ever say that in public.

I sure as hell don't know how many dead or maimed Canadians Afghanistan is worth ("zero" comes to mind), but foreign policy doesn't have a price list. If you want my honest gut feeling on the matter, it's none of the public's fucking business how many of us get killed if they only use that information to grind whatever policy axes they may have. Ours is an all-volunteer Army, and no-one who feels that the risk is too high/not worth it can be forced to go. The Canadian Army is at war, but the country itself is not.

We'll get out eventually, but on the scale of our involment/comittment, it won't be at a point that is "too late". There is limited potential for disaster there, at least on the scale of the National Interest. Under no probable circumstances can we lose even a significant proprtion of our in-theatre forces. Even if the unthinkable happened and there was a repeat of the retreat from Kabul, 1842-style, Canada's geopolitical position would remain unchanged. The harsh truth is that our Armed Forces are already woefully inadequate to physically defend the country, so even losing 1/3 of our front-line soldiers and equipment would change little if anything in the event it was necessary to try.

I'll leave this on that cheery note. I'm not sure this clears up a whole lot as much as it opens more cans of wigglier worms, but I'm not getting paid for it, so what the hell? There are some other things going on, so I should see what else I can come up with. Not today though.

When the going gets tough, the tough stay put.

As a rule I don’t tend to share Mr. Trudeau’s politics, but I have to say I’ve no fundamental dispute with him here on our net results in Afghanistan, although I do have some problems with his overall view:

MONTREAL - Canada's "aggressive" war in Afghanistan is all about "teaching lessons with weapons" and will leave nothing behind "except the blood we've lost there," the journalist son of late prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau said yesterday.
"Our aggressive military activities in Afghanistan are foolish and wrong," said Alexandre (Sacha) Trudeau, 34.
"The Pashtun [people] have extremely different values than ours, values we may not agree with in any case, but it's not our business to try and teach them lessons with weapons," Mr. Trudeau told Canwest News Service. "Because, in fact, they'll be the ones teaching us lessons.
"We're going to have to leave the place or there'll be nothing left of us or of whatever we've done, except the blood we've lost there after we leave. So it's better we leave now."

Politically of course it is a disaster if we leave now, as we’d be letting down the few reliable allies we have. It does seem, and I’m looking at this is objectively as possible, that the situation is in fact deteriorating like a lot of analysts say.

ISAF has lost any tactical initiative that it may have once had, and I don’t see any prospect of that changing with the force levels we have in there presently. If the Americans send in a lot of the drawdown from Iraq, that will stabilize things, but that just means bringing the level of control back to that of the last couple of years. We are reacting to the opposition, and that is a sure sign that things are not going our way.

It will be interesting to see if in the wake of that big ambush the French suffered a few days ago if they step up and join the war with the rest of us. Sarkozy said the right things when he was there:

"The best way of remaining faithful to your comrades is to continue the work, to lift your heads, to be professional," Sarkozy told French troops at a base on the outskirts of Kabul. "I don't have any doubt about that. We have to be here. … We are not here against the Afghans. We are with the Afghans so as not to leave them alone in the face of barbarism."

I haven’t seen our PM fly into Kandahar at any time after we’ve taken a particularly hard knock, so good on Sarkozy for coming out, but (talk - action) = zero.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: Afghanistan is a civil war and we have taken sides. Our intentions (once the understandable vengeance was out of the way post 9/11) are good, but ‘Sacha’ makes part of a good point about the values thing. The average villager in Panjwai, etc. is not so far removed from the ideals of the Taliban. This isn’t a warm and fuzzy factoid for domestic consumption, but it’s not a secret, and certainly no mystery to anyone who has spent any significant time ‘outside the wire’. If the locals have the choice of siding with their slightly more brutal cousins who are there for the duration, or the foreigners who rotate in and out and will eventually leave, which side do you think their bread is buttered on?

I simplify that greatly, but the details aren’t terribly important from this distance, as the end result will be the same. The Taliban will kill them ON PURPOSE if they don’t play ball, whereas we might kill them by accident while trying to get the Taliban. Who would you be more afraid of and consequently more likely to listen to in matters of life and death? Of course, with guys like the Taliban, everything is a matter of life and death (for you) and they will torture and kill you for co-operating with the infidels in any way shape or form.

This Taliban “surge” does ping my radar however. The fact that they have started this major offensive looks impressive to the layperson, heats things up for and unfortunately kills more of our people, but I doubt it’s sustainable at that level. The assaulting NATO outposts in particular is quite brazen, but it has to be said, expensive for the opposition. Lobbing a few rockets/mortar bombs, etc. is more their style because those leave a good chance to run away to fight again. A large scale assault on anything with even one soldier left with a radio means a lot of dead baddies.

The exchange ratio on this sort of thing is with few exceptions always heavily in our favour. To take out one Police Sub-Station ( arguably our most exposed posts) means not just killing all the ANP there (lamentably easy, historically) but all the NATO mentors as well, and quickly enough that they can’t call for help. If I had to do it with the resources the Taliban have, I’d want at least 50 guys, and I’d expect to lose most of them even if it went well.

So, tactically, things are pretty difficult this summer. The lull in the winter season may be enough for the OpFor to rebuild from whatever damage they do to themselves while hurting us. We just can’t kill enough of the bad guys quickly enough without taking too many ‘’civilians’’ with them. That is the Arithmetic on this Frontier, and it doesn’t work out in our favour.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.

This is where the tactical becomes the strategic. Even our successes at the tactical level can’t change the fact that even a Pyrrhic victory is a real one when all of your dead go to paradise and the infidel is forced by his weak-stomached public opinion to pull out.

History quiz time, Tet, 1968; who won? The Americans and A.R.V.N. DESTROYED the Viet Cong and brutalized the N.V.A. units that tried to exploit the uprising. Looks like an American victory doesn’t it? Without TV it probably would have been as big a strategic triumph as it was a tactical one, but it was perceived by the public as an American defeat because of the upsurge in casualties, the highly-publicized temporary reverses they suffered, etc.

Not directly comparable to our current quagmire in Afghanistan, sure, but sound at all familiar? The Canadian Army is in fact learning the ‘’lessons with weapons’’ from Afghanistan at a moderate price in blood and treasure. The blood is lamentable but, to put it coldly, sustainable, and the treasure is replaceable. I do not think we are ‘’foolish and wrong’’ to use force there, it’s the only thing that has a chance of working, but I really can’t come up with a happy ending for Afghanistan. Refer to my earlier posts for my realpolitik proposals re: the problem of Afghanistan; I stand by them, but they will create new problems, albeit ones that I think we can handle better.

“Leave or there’ll be nothing left of us or what we did” is pretty dramatic, but even I don’t think things are that dire. Ultimately futile? Probably, but life is a struggle that inevitably ends in death, so you could make that argument for pretty much anything we do. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but while we’re walking it we’re trying to help, keeping faith with our friends, and (hopefully) learning a lot. There are usually a lot of reasons for doing/not doing something, and the fact that we won’t achieve our goals is rarely a politically decisive one.

What if THIS homeowner had a loaded gun handy?

Following on the case where a Laval, QC man was acquitted of murder for killing a police officer whom he mistook for a home invader, we have this from Maryland:


Without bothering to alert Berwyn Heights police, sheriff's deputies moved into position. Posing as a deliveryman, a deputy took the package to the family's door. After Mr. Calvo's mother-in-law initially refused to sign for it, the package was finally taken into the home, where it sat, unopened, on the living room floor. Whereupon the deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos' two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor [Mr. Calvo] -- in his briefs -- and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.

Within an hour, it seems, the police concluded that something was seriously wrong and that there was at least a strong possibility that the Calvos -- whose home contained not the slightest evidence of involvement in the drug trade -- were unsuspecting victims. The deputies left without making arrests.

For exactly why the (county, not local) police were doing this, read the article (it's short). In brief, it was about a package of marijuiana addressed to Mr. Calvo's wife, hardly the kind of threat to world peace that should accompany this sort of action. The man is the Mayor of his small town, and as a public figure, the cops should have been able to walk up to the door and serve a warrant in a civilized fashion without assuming Mr. Clavo is Scarface or something. And they were Labradors, not fucking Rotweillers or even Alsatians; arguably the least threatening (non-puntable) dogs I know of.

The most alarming thing about this (it's a later development than this article) is that nobody in any authority is doing anything about it as of this writing. The State Attorney General should be kicking some ass, but not a peep.

Some of you will remember Waco from a few years ago, and although it's yet more heavy-handed, trigger-happy US law-enforcement action, at least the Branch Dividians were armed. Still, I haven't seen anything that makes me think they were a threat to anyone else, which brings it in line with the current story.

If these tactical squad guys want so badly to shoot at people, join the US Army and ask to go to Afghanistan. There isn't a lot of this in Canada because neither the public nor (more importantly) the government would stand for it. In fact, in that incident in Laval, the cops didn't shoot even when tactically, at least, they should have.

Time will tell on this one, but I might expect this sort of thing (and more to the point, the lack of legal redress) in China or Russia, not "the land of the free".

Blood in the water

Although I haven’t heard much of it in awhile, (probably `cause I’m not looking) this article seems to put a real dent in the ‘pull out the troops, send in CIDA’ plan. I particularly like that this is written by someone with a vested personal interest in delivering aid to the Afghans.

The place is not safe, full stop. It is marginally (ok, a lot) safer if you’re heavily armed and travelling in armoured vehicles, albeit you are then a really obvious target. If you are in any way obviously a Westerner you are a target, not only from the Taliban but any criminal, etc. groups. The latter types don’t screw with the Army because they’re in it for the money, not to meet Allah in person, but they will certainly take out soft targets, usually for ransom. Painting a big Red Cross, etc. on your stuff just marks you as a soft target.

At that point the Taliban will kill you (although capturing and torturing first aren’t out of the question) and the plain crooks will try to find some way to make money off of you. The only things even slowing any of this down are the security forces; it’s obvious this year that they aren’t stopping it.

So what happens if Jack Layton and his ilk get their way? To this point it’s been: ‘stop the combat operations and focus on reconstruction!’ I have never believed that that would work, but I seem to have a lot more company these days. There is the equivalent to a good-sized (bigger than ours) army in Afghanistan trying to secure the place and it’s just getting worse.

Some will say that this is the symptom of the fighting; if you start talking instead all the nastiness will end. It’ll end alright; under the boot of the Taliban taking the place back to the Stone Age like it did a decade ago. It seems we went in to stop that, and the same bleeding hearts who don’t like us beating on the Islamist idiots are the ones who deplored the state of women (in particular) under the same Taliban.

If things were going our way, more dead Taliban would be an actual advance for us. We can, it seems, keep wasting them and an inexhaustible supply pours over the border from Pakistan and elsewhere; ergo, no net advantage.

Pakistan is trying to take the fight back into the Tribal areas of the NW Frontier, but with limited success. They have gotten kicked (due to plan leaks to the opposition) several times, but if they can find a quiet way to co-ordinate with the Americans, maybe we can kill enough bad guys to make a difference.

Should we stay or should we go? If we stay it will be trouble, and if we leave it will be double (or reverse that, I have no real idea), but the root of the solution involves killing them faster, in larger numbers, without taking a pile of non-combatants with them. Driving around in well marked aid agency vehicles is just a good way to get killed, etc. until we manage to do that. The Taliban know their business, and it’s a simple, nasty one; kill enough people and they’ll be too scared to keep trying to fix the place. The Taliban like it broken, it keeps the people in their place: ignorant and poor.

So leave the troops in and they at least have someone who can fight back, or pull them out and leave all the soft targets completely to their own devices. Yes, Jack and company, that will help all concerned, and we’re seeing the proof of that now. We’ve proved that killing aid workers will do more, at less risk to the bad guys, to undermine our objectives and our will to continue than killing soldiers can.

The key to being effective (as opposed to nice) is doing what works best, and killing defenceless aid workers works brilliantly against western governments and populations. Expect to see more of this.

The Guns of August, or, Back to the USSR

Ok, so the Olympics may still be on (really only begun), but I’m not noticing that as news. What is news, and it’s hard to overstate the disaster potential which remains in it, is Russia’s serious smackdown of Georgia.

As of today, the Russians have claimed to have stopped pursuit operations into Georgia, but they’re not in a hurry to pull back out. I suspect they are looking for any excuse (and they don’t need much of one) to pound the Georgians, specifically the army.

This is a message to the Georgians, all former ‘Soviet Republics’ and to the West as well that Russia is back and it makes the rules in its’ back yard. For a long time the Russians only had economic means to bend satellite countries to its will; those (read: natural gas and oil) remain, but the Red army is back, baby.

This is no surprise to any who have been following things in that part of the world, but a lot of people have these fuzzy memories of the Russians getting shot to hell in Grozny the first time around. The second time (1999-2000) was a far different story, and marked the return of the Russian Army as a serious force.

Georgia has been angling for NATO membership, and we can all be thankful that they weren’t let in. This is nothing against Georgia, but they are in Russia’s sphere, and major wars have started over a lot less than the current goings-on. If they were full members of NATO, we would be obliged to HELP THEM FIGHT THE RUSSIANS. I emphasized that to ensure you were as alarmed by that prospect as you should be...

Culturally and politically we have a lot more in common with Georgia than with Russia, but we can’t help them. If NATO decided to start WWIII over this (II started over Poland, and WWI over Serbia, of all places) Georgia would be flattened before the first NATO troops rolled onto Russian soil, and eastern Europe (e.g. Ukraine, Byelorussia) would revert to the Soviet/Russian glacis that it used to be as the Russians pushed into it to pre-empt them joining us or being used against them.

It gets better. I personally have no use for Kosovo (I think we backed the wrong side), but the Serbs like the Russians and vice-versa. All it would take is for some ‘ultranationalists’ to take over in Belgrade while NATO`s hands are tied with the full might of the Russian armed forces (they have a navy and an air force too!), and Kosovo would be southern Serbia again.

Are our sailors still trained to a high pitch to find and destroy Russian subs? I doubt it. I’m not even seriously considering a nuclear exchange, but let’s remember who we’re talking about here.

Sure, the combined forces of Europe and the US could beat the Russians, but at what cost, and really, to what purpose? If (imperfect example) Mexico decided to take Arizona back, what would the US do? The Yanks would probably stop at the Rio Grande, but they aren’t the Russians. Militarily the Russians did this right, putting the hurt on the opposition and leaving them no sanctuary. It looks ugly on TV but war is hell, even the small, local ones.

It also has to be said that Georgia, allowing for the fact that it was provoked (repeatedly), did start this by attacking in South Ossetia. That was a big mistake, but I imagine this will be the last time Georgia assumes that the Bear is still hibernating.

Hold off on that Hydrogen-powered car...

First off, I've not been very productive here, and I'll be amazed if anyone is still paying attention. That said, I slogged through this paper on Hydrogen as a fuel source, and I think it's required reading for anyone to understand why you won't be pulling up to the pump at the local gas station to fill up your hydrogen powered car.

Your car will run on H2 with little modification; the stuff explodes just fine. The things I didn't know were the energy required to separate it and near impossibility to transport it any significant distance in any economic or useful quantity.

I did see a really good article about some engineer in the US who got grants to convert his house and car to H2. He electrolyses it himself from rainwater using electricity generated by his solar array, and the H2 he doesn't need during the summer is stored in bulk tanks and is topped up by whatever he can generate during the low solar periods and is used to run things until the sun is out enough to make it unnecessary again.

That has potential, but it's a major investment (c. $250K for your house) and not likely to be economical any time soon. Maybe some sort of planned community thing? It will work on a neighbourhood scale and may make sense there before anywhere else, but I'm not in that racket.

I won't summarize it more than that. It's a bit dry but it's only 15 pages, and those of you math-challenged like myself can skim the equations and get the gist from the graphs. We have to come up with some new ways of doing things, and there are some useful suggestions in this paper even if I don't agree with all of their assumptions about global warming.

Who pays for this again?

First the background:

VANCOUVER -- Immigrants with HIV account for a large portion of new infections of the disease in Canada and they're slipping between the health-care cracks, warns a recent report.

Although Citizenship and Immigration Canada is considering making HIV a reportable disease, currently it is not,meaning it is not considered a public health risk and it is not mandatory to report infections to public health officials.

The recent report by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control found that about 16 per cent of all new infections in Canada are linked to people from countries where HIV is prevalent, yet they make up only 1.5 per cent of the Canadian population.

The 2005 figure means the infection rate was almost 13 times greater for immigrants - or those connected to them - from HIV-endemic countries than for Canadians.

It's not the Black Death or anything, but I think we can all agree that HIV leads (in most cases) to AIDS, and that is both terminal, transmissible and a drain on our health care system. For the record, there is some dispute about the inevitability of the HIV-AIDS link but I include that only in the interest of balance. HIV remains a reliable predictor of AIDS, if nothing else.

The article continues:

Michael Battista, a Toronto lawyer who focuses on immigration and refugee law, said people are counselled about the dangers of spreading the disease.

"Citizenship and Immigration Canada wisely decided that people with HIV do not pose a danger to public health or safety," Battista said.

"And so I think it's on that basis that Citizenship and Immigration Canada doesn't have a strong connection to provincial health authorities in terms of reporting newcomers with HIV."

Battista believes the follow up from provincial health officials is an intrusion.

"I think there are huge privacy concerns that are raised when people with HIV go through the system, particularly given the fact that HIV is not something that is easily spread," said Battista.

Between 2002 and 2006 there were 2,567 immigration applicants who tested positive for HIV during their medical examinations among the 1.2 million immigrants to Canada accepted during the same period.

Of those HIV-positive applicants, 89 per cent were determined to be medically admissible to the country.

A person with HIV has an added burden compared to other Canadian immigrants getting into the country.A person with HIV is not inadmissable outright, but it is very difficult for HIV-positive immigrants or refugees to gain admission.

That last bit first. With the volume of people who would like into Canada, I see no reason to admit people with any serious disease, hard to get or otherwise. As well, 89% is MOST of those who try, suggesting to me that it's not as hard for them to get in as that last sentence would have us believe.

I don't personally think that anyone not a Canadian citizen has any entitlement to our health care system, and I certainly don't want waves of medical refugees fetching up on our shores, but the numbers don't seem to suggest that is happening. I am also not so concerned with privacy issues as they relate to would-be immigrants carrying a deadly infectious disease. Then again, I'm not a lawyer who makes his money from those people, so I would like to think my position is hardly surprising.

This is not all about level of physical risk from a given disease; there are financial costs associated with treatment of any of these things, and people who haven't paid into the system are an undue drain upon it. It's very nice for Citizenship and Immigration Canada to "wisely" decide who is entitled to our taxpayer money, but last I checked those bureaucrats hadn't been elected. And there is the law on the matter as well:

A foreign national can be considered inadmissible on health grounds if they're likely to be a danger to public health or safety or could be expected to cause excessive demands on health or social services.

I was reading something yesterday about the reality of the costs of things and the dangers of deciding that those costs don't exist or are irrelevant. The Gods of the Copybook Headings will tell you "If you don't work you die." but it seems that a passing familiarity with the basic economics of the world, let alone our taxpayer-funded system are of little import to our "elites".

He got one thing right at least.

When the agent accuses Khadr of crying to avoid interrogation, Khadr tells the agent between gasping sobs, "You don't care about me."

Damned straight I don't. I wonder if he was this much of a cry-baby in Taliban camp in Pakistan but somehow I doubt it. The solution to this would have been a third bullet, since the first two were inadequate for the job; now we'll never be rid of this guy.

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

I like to think that this is a victory for some kind of sense in this country, but it's flawed for sure.

The father of two testified he thought his family was being attacked by home invaders when a police team swarmed his house on March 2, 2007.

Nine police officers smashed down the front door of Parasiris's home with a battering ram in the pre-dawn raid.

Tessier and his colleagues ran upstairs to the master bedroom with their weapons drawn.

Parasiris testified his only thoughts during the chaos were to protect his wife and children.

He grabbed his .357 Magnum and was confronted by Tessier, who was dressed in dark colours with nothing indicating he was a police officer, according to testimony in the trial.

I take only the most obvious facts into account in making my appraisal of this being a good result, that is some guy waking up disoriented in the wee hours of the morning with a bunch of guys in ninja/SWAT gear thumping up his stairs waving guns and yelling.

Apparently the cops were yelling "Police, warrant" or some such, which is all well and good, but a) buddy had to hear that, b) he had to register it (he was rudely awakened after all) and c) he had to believe it.

A jury of his peers have already ruled that his action was reasonable in the circumstances, and I for one agree. He's most certainly going to be charged (and convicted) for not following the safe storage laws mandated for restricted firearms, which is definitely what happened here. He would not have been in any position to wake up and shoot some intruder otherwise. It's also highly questionable that he kept loaded firearms in a house with children, but these matters are before the courts as I write this so 'nuff said on that.

For the record, I share his appraisal of the .357 revolver as the ideal CQB weapon for countering home invasions. It will stop anyone in their tracks, is more manageable than a .44 for follow-up shots, and as a revolver you can keep it loaded forever with no poxy magazine-spring fatigue to cramp your style.

No; in case you suspected sarcasm, I'm quite serious. It is very much against Canadian law to be prepared to defend yourself effectively so I will not suggest you rush out (to wait months or more) to get a permit to buy said pistol. You do however know, in case it's ever relevant, that a .357 Magnum is capable of taking down a fully-equipped SWAT trooper at close quarters, and your average punk home invader would be a much softer target, dusted/cracked out or not.

It is a tragedy for the family and friends of Officer Tessier that he lost his life in this manner, but it's a dangerous job and we take our chances. There are hopefully some questions being asked of the Laval PD that will avoid a repeat of this event. From a professional standpoint, it was an operational failure that this guy got the drop on him and was not neutralized as soon as he presented a weapon.

If you talk the talk, you had better be able to walk the walk; what I mean by that is if you're going to go charging in SAS style you are presumably expecting to need that sort of kinetic, lethal action, and you'd better be bloody well ready to use your training to the full. A guy swinging a gun at you certainly warrants a lethal response, and I note that Officer Tessier's fireteam partner (or whatever the cops call them) didn't empty a magazine into Mr. Parasiris, the tactically correct response to one of your buddies getting capped.

So, to sum up:

• a very unfortunate loss of a police officer in the line of duty
• an excellent precedent to reaffirm our legal right to use up to lethal force to defend ourselves and our families from home invasion, etc.
• an expose of the questionable choice of targets by the local PD
• some serious questions could be asked about all these SWAT-type officers and why they are parading around with all this kit and doing these assault operations if they aren't either properly trained for that sort of thing or not prepared to use their training when circumstances warrant.

I doubt that anyone at the trial was thinking about this the way I did, but this is after all MY blog, and I'm special as we all know...

Now THIS is somewhere we could intervene...

Zimbabwe surprises me only in that it continues to get worse, long past the point that I'd thought it had bottomed out. I have pretty much given up on Afghanistan as you may have noticed, and I'm not alone, but I think there is a case to be made for going in hard into Zimbabwe and taking out the trash.

There is no longer even a pretense of a democratic process there, and the African countries have no interest in sorting this mess out, so perhaps it's time to get "neo-colonialist" on their asses.

It wouldn't be colonialist, as I have no intention of planting colonists nor exploiting the place for advantageous trade arrangements. A bit of Regime Change is, however, exactly what the doctor ordered.

Mugabe keeps trotting out his "war veterans", but there are lot of the old Rhodesian Army alumni around who could be cadre-d with western forces to kick Mugabe's ass, destroy his powerbase, and provide some muscle for a new government centred around the MDC. They did, after all WIN the election despite widespread manipulation of the results, so I think they represent the legitimate will of the majority.

Under competent management Zimbabwe could again be the breadbasket of southern Africa, and unlike Afghanistan (and perhaps Iraq, etc.) it is not such a basket case that it can't be put back on its' feet. The neighbours can't/won't do the job, but we can, and it would be a worthwhile thing to do with a reasonable timeline and obvious exit strategy.

"In and out clever" was the old term (I think I've used it here before), and is my pragmatic approach. High intensity, medium-risk operations with clear and attainable objectives. Fix things that CAN be fixed, and/or damage our enemies badly enough to set them back. Nobody is rushing to help Zimbabwe because of a lack of pressing geopolitical reasons, overstretch in various Asian quagmires and any number of logistical and political hurdles, but it doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile thing to do.

If the support of South Africa can be secured for the logistics of an operation (in their interest, after all) it can be done. By whom and with what I have no idea at present, but I use this as an example of what we can do if we feel the need to do this sort of thing. The locals are not inherently antagonistic to us and our way of life, making the place a good candidate for nation re-building. The same cannot be said for a lot of other parts of the world.

Carbon Feet of Clay

I must be feeling a bit better, as my outrage at patent stupidity is returning to near-normal levels, restoring the sense of purpose which led to me start this blog in the first place. I have had a lot of stuff on here about the Global Warming hoax/panic, and the political set are jockeying to punish us financially just as many (myself included) predicted.

The Honourable Mr. Dion is currently staking all of his political marbles on this "Green Shift" taxation scheme. I'll get more to the nuts and bolts of that in a minute, but an aside first.

There is mounting evidence that whatever warming there was was a) minor and b) over several years ago. I have documented that elsewhere so I won't re-hash it here, but I wanted to point out what I find worrisome about the recent rash of Cap-and-Trade, Carbon Tax, etc. initiatives from various governments. It's pretty simple: their very existence under the current circumstances.

We just had one of the longest, snowiest winters in living memory, temperatures were below average over much of the Northern Hemisphere (at least), evidence is abundant that all of Al Gore's eyewash is exactly that, AND oil prices are at an all-time high. This is the time politicians choose to try to hammer us with a Carbon Tax?

That this seems contra-indicated by economic factors alone is the most obvious point, and one which is not lost on the population, currently being punished on every level by ridiculous prices for oil. A tax on "Carbon" (does this include BBQ charcoal? My exhalations?) is a Tax on EVERYTHING, because it doesn't walk to get to you.

I linked this from a particular CTV article, and the comments section is revealing in the preponderance of comments hostile to this as a plan. There are of course many ways to explain that, but I will invoke Occam's Razor on this one; people are taxed enough, are paying punishingly high prices for gas, seeing the price of everything else go relentlessly up, and foresee even more of all the above if a carbon tax is added to the mix.

I think that such a thing should be voluntary; if you really believe that the whole thing will be "revenue neutral" for you, you sign up for it. The 90% of the population not stupid or Utopian enough to fall for it will happily let you, as long as they don't have to as well. Should tell you all you need to know about how good an idea it is...

The PM, in my opinion, had the pulse of the country in response to this idea when he said:

"(The carbon tax plan) is like the national energy program in the sense that the national energy program was designed to screw the West and really damage the energy sector -- and this will do those things. ... This is different in that this will actually screw everybody across the country."

Those of more delicate disposition have proffessed to have taken exception to his language, but personally I think he nailed it on the head.

Oh perish the use of the four-letter words
Whose meanings are never obscure;
The Angles and Saxons, those bawdy old birds,
Were vulgar obscene and impure.
But cherish the use of the weaseling phrase
That never quite says what you mean.
You had better be known for your hypocrite ways
Than as vulgar, impure and obscene.
Let your morals be loose as an Alderman's vest
If your language is always obscure.
Today, not the act, but the word is the test
Of vulgar obscene and impure.

Old (and anonymous, so no apologies if I've not the right version exactly) but a spade is still a small shovel and I will always respect someone more for being straight with me than for their oratorical skills in dancing around something.

"Shift out of luck" is as close as the government could actually come to telling us what we'd be if this "Green Shift" is implemented. The only "Green Shift" I see out of this is the shift of more of my "green" (and red, and brownish, and blue, etc) to the taxman and to businesses for our necessities and luxuries alike.

Lessons Learned; now perhaps some recess?

I'm still not back in peak form for this sort of thing, but I just can't leave my poor blog to languish for too long if I can physically access it and have time to do so. Those two criteria being met, just a short post about Afghanistan and stuff.

With the recent jailbreak in Kandahar and the short-lived Taliban "take-over" of the Argandab there is a lot of focus on the place again. Things seem to be going largely our way for the moment (no NATO and few ANA casualties vs several dozen bad guys) but my view of the big picture, long term, what-have-you has not changed.

Pakistan (source of many of the recent Taliban casualties, apparently) is still a basket case as an "ally" and could get worse with very little warning. This is the dreaded sanctuary with which any insurgency is unbeatable. Add in external interference from meddlesome third parties (e.g. Iran) and the ambivalence of the Pashtun population of Afghanistan, and I really don't see a lot of hope for the place.

Don't hold me to this, as my mind may change later, but at this time after doing a tour there I have no interest in doing so again. There are many ways to die and or be maimed for life, but having rolled the dice once on a hopeless cause I feel no urgency to do so again.

I am, as much as I am of anything in particular, of the realist school of foreign relations. We kicked the Taliban's ass in 2001-2002, and at any other time they've been stupid enough to stand and fight us. This can continue indefinitely and what is the net gain to Canada's security? We're well past the point of diminishing returns and run the risk of ruining our Army in the process if we continue for too long.

As an institution we have learned everything useful that we can from our time in Afghanistan. Some may dispute that, but we have re-established the supremacy of firepower (artillery and close-air as well as direct fire from tanks), the necessity for armour, shown the fallacy that wheeled vehicles can do anything that tracks can, and by our lack of it, the need for battlefield helicopters for mobility in an IED environment.

We have re-learned a lot of things that we shouldn't have forgotten, like that the original purpose of a tank was to help Infantry overcome strong points, NOT to fight other tanks, and (although I'm not so sure this one is really absorbed) that the maximum load an average soldier can carry and fight with all day is about 60lbs.

I saw a good article today about all of our high-tech stuff and the reality of wearing it on operations, so all is not lost, but I think we need another enforced break from international adventures so that we can rebuild the army, both in hardware and personnel. Apply our lessons learned, but not lose sight of fighting a conventional war or keep the pesky Danes and Russians from poaching our Arctic territory.

I'm out of sorts so I'm not as gung-ho as I could be, but I've lost what little motivation I ever had to get myself killed (or worse) over Afghanistan. I don't seek to dissuade others from doing their job, and anyone who could be/has been in the line of fire can disagree with me and I won't argue against you. Anyone who is NOT willing to put their ass on the line at all has no basis whatsoever to give me any opinion on my position and I will ignore yours accordingly.

There are lots of things I am still prepared to do in service of my country, but I'll feel more up to it when I can see the correlation between my risk and the security of my family. Not the official line by a long shot, but as always only my opinion, although I'm sure I'm not alone.

A bit of a break, maybe.

I have noticed that my writing isn't up to my usual standards. As this is an outlet for my rants, that might not be critical to others, it bothers me.

Accordingly, (if anyone is still looking here) I'm going to wait for things in my life to get back to the point where I can concentrate on my vanity projects before I embarrass myself further. I am however pretty sure I'll be back.

Slippery Rollercoaster

I'm not even sure how I feel about this, but it's dangerous territory for debate. Naturally, I want to stir that up a bit...

British MPs ... blocked a bill which would have banned the creation of inter-species embryos by a vote of 336 to 176.

Critics had argued that creating human-animal embryos would be a "step too far" and ethically questionable -- some going so far as to brand the technique "Frankenstein science."

But Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a British newspaper that such cutting edge research could "bring new cures and treatments to millions of people."

I am in favour of most forms of actual progress (as opposed to plain "development" or expansion), but this stuff is a big can of worms. The inconsistencies in my personality are revealed very effectively by my responses on this topic.

Being non-religious (technical term for my position is "agnostic") my morality is my own, not out of anyone's books. That does not, for the record make things simpler but rather more complex since I have no assurance that I'm right past what my gut tells me. My gut is by far the smartest part of me, and even it has problems here.

One thing I am categorically opposed to is raising another child for the sole reason of providing a tissue or organ bank for a sibling. It's one thing to know that you were a surprise or an accident, but there are pleasant surprises and happy accidents, so that's not the end of it all. Being put up for adoption because you weren't part of the plan is a selfish act by your parents OR in your best interest, depending on the circumstances, so again a hard thing to generalize about.

I cannot see how a child who was born just for that purpose would feel about it. The first thing that I think is that it seems the well-being of the first child is more important to you than that of the "saviour" one. The term "saviour" is a bit loaded too; coming from a Christian-based culture it suggests suffering for the greater good. Maybe I'm reading to much into that, but it fits pretty well.

In all of this a line has to be drawn somewhere, and for me personally an embryo is just a bunch of cells until it's formed into something that at least looks like a person, and even then until it's capable of surviving on its' own it's not really child to me either. Those are my (blurry) lines, and others can feel free to have their own.

Based on that, pretty much anything you want to do to a bunch of cells is fine with me as long as that is as far as those cells will develop. The slope for me appears with how far along you allow the development of these hybrids to develop. Science has no morality of its' own, and coupled with capitalism, if left unfettered anything can and will happen.

We have laws for this reason, and so far Britain is being fairly progressive but not in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" territory just yet. Parting one kid out for your other kid(s) will remain repugnant for me whatever they say. There are other things that can be done which don't (I feel) necessarily push things over the edge.

The creation of life is a crapshoot, and loading the dice a bit in your favour isn't out of the question as far as I'm concerned. For that reason I have no fundamental objection to a bit of genetic engineering, but I really don't know if we can figure out what you can safely take out/put in without a lot of experimentation. It is the human results of that experimentation that I would not be prepared to face, as I couldn't justify what I had done on the basis of necessity.

What is necessity? Your only child will die unless they get an exact tissue match? At this point you should ask yourself why you're having children in the first place, and I won't even try to answer that for you. There is a certain amount of risk in life; the Nanny State would like to remove as much of it as possible but I think this separates us too much from whatever laws of nature govern our reproduction and survival.

While on that note, I think there are far too many of us. Unlike some people I don't propose to fix that myself, but I strongly feel that something will eventually arrive to cut us back. Yes I just finished re-reading "The Stand" but that is merely co-incidental. There are enough influenzas, Ebolas, etc. of various sorts to do the job without some sort of man-made disaster stemming from genetic engineering, so I don't worry about that as an existential threat.

Not too coherent but I'm not being marked on it, I'm just venting. Whatever the UK government comes up with now, that won't be the end of it even if somebody spawns the Queen of the Harpies out of this animal embryo thing. Buggered if I know all the hidden laws and the balance of Nature, so I'll just go with my gut and play the hand that's dealt me as best I can. I will however think about it as I do so.

If it was obvious to me...

Another lost opportunity, quel surprise. That said, at least it was recognized in time by one of the major players, unfortunately not the one on the ground to do the job:

Israel’s Missed Boat in Lebanon

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

May 18, 2008

Sunday night, May 11, the Israeli army was poised to strike Hizballah. The Shiite militia was winding up its takeover of West Beirut and battling pro-government forces in the North. When he opened the regular cabinet meeting Sunday, May 11, prime minister Ehud Olmert had already received the go-ahead from Washington for a military strike to halt the Hizballah advance. The message said that President George W. Bush would not call off his visit to Israel to attend its 60th anniversary celebrations and would arrive as planned Wednesday, May 14 - even if the Israeli army was still fighting in Lebanon and Hizballah struck back against Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport.

American intelligence estimated that Hizballah was capable of retaliating against northern Israel at the rate of 600 missiles a day.

Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Lvini, the only ministers in the picture, decided not to intervene in Lebanon’s civil conflict. Iran’s surrogate army consequently waltzed unchecked to its second victory in two years over the United States and Israel.

I really can't say much other than that. As I mentioned a week or so back (see: "Here We Go Again, Lebanon") this was a golden opportunity to further "Western" interests (including those of most of the Lebanese population), and I was not alone in thinking so.

The one scintilla of comfort I can take from this is that the Americans seem (again, unconfirmed reports and all) to have been prepared to back Israel while it did the dirty work it will eventually need to do anyway.

There has been a lot of talk about the future of Israel on its' 60th anniversary. To me, Israel only made it as far as it did by being prepared to put the smack-down on its' enemies, and this recent (last 10 years or so) softening of resolve doesn't bode well for another 60 years.

A drop in the ocean

The idea that China needs the 200-strong DART to help them out is quite frankly laughable, and a sign that whoever came up with that plan is really out of touch. China is not some failed third-world state; it is a powerful global economic and cultural force with massive armed forces.

DART could definitely help somewhere like Burma, but it's unlikely they will get the chance. That is no reason to try to cook up things for them to do elsewhere in the region; one country that doesn't want them should be enough for the moment. This story kicked up a lot of comments, but most if not all of them missed the fact that China has no interest in DART at all.

The head of the Chinese Canadian National Council can say whatever she wants, but China doesn't need us or want us so I can't see our government pushing it unless they've completely lost their collective mind.

I thought I had a lot more to say about that, but sometimes less is more I guess.

The first thing we'll do, let's ignore all the lawyers!

I've not really a lot to say about this, except that if a group of lawyers is arguing for or against something, I'm inclined to do the opposite of whatever they present:

Lawyers' group urges Tories to kill immigration bill

Updated Mon. May. 12 2008 11:08 AM ET

The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Bar Association is urging Parliament to discard amendments to immigration legislation, calling them "a major step backwards in the evolution of Canadian immigration law.''

The association's Stephen Green says Bill C-50 would return Canada to a time when visas were given out on a discretionary basis, without sufficient objective criteria.

The changes would fast-track highly coveted immigrants -- such as doctors and other skilled labourers -- while others would be forced to wait behind them in the queue.

They would also allow government to set annual limits on the number of applications processed.

The bar association acknowledges the backlog of immigration applications and labour shortages are critical but it suggests the proposed measures are overkill.

Anybody else share my reaction to that headline? I maintain that I see nothing at all unreasonable about the government's interest in exercising some discretion and control over immigration to this country. I also doubt that a pile of lawyers got together against it concerned only with the greater good.

As always just my knee-jerk, reactionary personal opinions.

Calling a spade a shovel

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker on Thursday defended comments he made to a national newspaper regarding Canada's Muslim population.

Alan Baker told The Globe and Mail he is concerned Canada's burgeoning Muslim population is shifting this country's policies in the Middle East. The Globe interview appears on the same day Israel celebrates its 60th year of independence.

Baker told CTV's Mike Duffy Live that Muslim communities have impacted foreign policy in countries like Britain, France and Scandanavia -- and that he "fears" Canada might follow.

For one thing, I 'm happy that he's backing up what he said because it has to be said, and not only for Israel's sake. Any kind of external self-interested group is a threat to what precious little we can still call the "Canadian way" and Muslims are no exception to that.

In this country the church and state are supposed to be completely separated, and there is a worldwide Islamic movement to impose their order. It's not very strong in absolute terms, but it is sneaky. I can't imagine that any other religious grouping with an axe to grind would have the sort of impact that Muslim groups are having in the theoretically non-Muslim, secular West.

Again, not a big problem in Canada yet, but it does bear watching both here and elsewhere, and not just for Israeli interests. The point that the Ambassador makes about being shouted down at or just plain shut out of speaking engagements in this country shows that there is a problem. There is supposed to be a spirit of debate or at least freedom of expression here, and intimidation and threats are a threat to that.

Here we go again, Lebanon.

Lebanon is spinning out of what precarious control it was in (again). My apologies to my Leb friends, but your beautiful home country is a basket case and it’s going to get worse, far more likely than not. [note: since I wrote this initially, the army and the government of Lebanon have caved to most of Hezbollah's demands, so we'll see where it goes from there. (10 May)]

(The title link incidentally is to the main page of the "Debka File" an always interesting look at this part of the world from an Israeli perspective. I can't link to the particular stories, but they have interesting claims to inside information, especially to Iran.)

Ever since fighting the out-of-shape IDF to a stalemate in 2006, Hezbollah has been rebuilding its networks and arms caches, infiltrating every level of the Lebanese government and Army, and has not even been slowed down by the useless UNFIL troops vacationing in sunny south Lebanon.

While I can appreciate the delicate position the government and the army is in, it’s curious to see at what point these preparations for another crack at Israel/coup d’état were judged to have gone too far. This coms network can’t have been a secret to anyone, it was too damned big, and if Hezbollah is building it it’s not for the greater good. That whole fiasco at the Beirut airport with the cameras and the crooked head of security was also predictable in view of the importance of the airport for Iranian arms shipments.

Regardless, things have come to a head, and can rapidly get a lot worse. As I write this the Israelis haven’t directly involved themselves, but if I were running things over there they soon would. That said, this is where their poor treatment of those who should be their allies will work against them once again.

When the IDF pulled out of the buffer zone in south Lebanon in 200, they threw their allies in the South Lebanon Army to the wolves. Had the Israeli government supported the SLA after the pullout, there would be no Hezbollah fortress in the south of Lebanon, and they would have motivated allies who would be fighting on their own ground when push inevitably came to shove.

Well they didn’t so they don’t, and here we are. What would be the best strategic move for Israel right is to tactically hit Hezbollah in the south while it is distracted dealing with the government and other forces. You know the war is coming, (just like in 1967…) and hitting your sworn enemy while his other enemies are distracting him is a solid plan anytime.

This would also force Hez to divide their forces and conform to your initiative which is better than waiting for them to be ready to fight you. These are the basics from Sun Tzu on down, and they’re no less true now than when Sunny learned them himself. Subduing the enemy without fighting may be the acme of skill, but allowing them to defeat your potential/de facto allies in detail before they turn on you is the likely outcome if the Israelis were to try that here.

This could happen, but there is the matter of the UN. UNFIL troops have been quite ready to point things at the IDF planes, etc., while at the same time turning and running every time Hezbollah tells them to keep their collective nose out of things. This is pure speculation, but based on past IDF practice, if the French (for example) were to radar illuminate IDF planes on bombing runs, I can see those same planes going Wild Weasel on their ass.

It’s not a nice thing to say about theoretically allied nations, but if the UN troops there won’t do what they are supposed to do (e.g. prevent Hezbollah from re-militarizing the border zone) then they’d better get the hell out of the way if the shooting starts. If they’d had the cajones to prevent said buildup, there would be no shooting to avoid, but effective action is not what the UN is known for.

Allowing Hezbollah to have complete control of Lebanon is not in the interests of anyone besides Iran and Syria; neither is a country which am I anxious to see achieve their aims, nor should you be. This represents a good opportunity to give them a real bloody nose and I’ll be watching to see if any of the major "blue team" players (read: Israel and America) think so too.

On a purely personal note, this one is my 100th post on this blog, so a round-number milestone for "Arithmetic on the Frontier" for those keeping track.

Whatever works is right.

First off there’s the flap about our guys talking to the Taliban in the first place, about which much virtual ink has been spilled. I’m a big “means justifies the end” guy, although this presupposes that your ends are well chosen. Note that I don’t say “well-intentioned”; we all know what road is paved with those!

Somebody is in a fair bit of trouble for saying this to the media in the first place, but that’s their career not mine. On a certain level I respect them for being pragmatic and working around the box, but from a realistic perspective, that’s not the sort of thing you need to tell the media about. If it works, great, but it’s always easier to beg forgiveness (after it works) than to get permission to do something off the beaten path. Enter the current flap:

KABUL–Canadian soldiers, and their civilian associates, have no business pursuing parallel peace chats with the Taliban, no matter how low-level the probing for mediation.

That was the sharp rebuke yesterday from President Hamid Karzai's chief spokesperson, in an interview with the Toronto Star.

"There is an important principle here,'' said Hamayon Hamidzada. "All efforts to negotiate with the Taliban on this should come through the Afghan government, and we have been saying this for a long time. We are willing to negotiate. The president has made this clear. But it can only happen if the Taliban are prepared to lay down their arms and respect the constitution of Afghanistan. Without this, there can be no progress. So, no, we do not encourage separate negotiations by Canada or any other NATO country.''

Diplomatic rule #1 in any situation: never embarrass your boss/the host country. Karzai’s government has had no luck talking the Talibs down, and it’s debatable how interested they are in doing so as long as NATO sticks around. That rank speculation aside, our attempting such is going behind the Afghan government’s back, which probably explains the vehemence of the MoD’s reaction when the subject first surfaced.

I won’t get into whether the idea was sound or not past to say that even if it was kept on the down-low I feel nothing significant would have been achieved. What they (Taliban) want and what we want, or even would like to see and in fact what we are fighting for, is just too far apart. This brings us back to the non-Pashtu areas of the country:

Many here worry that, in a serpentine way, Karzai is offering the Taliban leadership political legitimacy – even as Omar demands control of 10 southern provinces, withdrawal of all foreign troops and release of every Taliban prisoner.

If anything approaching that scenario were to unfold, it's fair to ask what was the point, then, of ousting the militant Islamists in the first place? What was the point of the West sacrificing treasure and blood to stiffen the spine of a nascent central government with modest democratic values?

The non-Pashtun warlords won't have it anyway, a quasi-Taliban II in Kabul.

That way lies civil war, the sequel.

[As an aside, I have some news for this TorStar reporter; this is already a civil war, the same one it was before we showed up, and likely the same one that will flare up bigger and badder whenever we leave.]

Hmm, this is all looking a bit familiar. I have in the past foreseen this logjam, as I have a capacity to occasionally learn something from history and general human nature. My proposal was to set up some sort of “Talibanistan” in the areas the Northern government couldn’t hold, thus cutting our losses and (if you chose the border wisely) allowing the Kabul government and any foreign partners an easier job.

Those “10 southern provinces” are all (mostly) Pashtun, the sea in which the Taliban swim so freely. Cutting them loose is not the ideal; that would be denying them a sanctuary, but barring hiring the entire Chinese Army to cordon and search everything from Kabul to Islamabad, the ideal solution is physically and diplomatically out of reach.

Again, it won’t happen either way. What will happen is inevitably half-assed unless perhaps guys like “General” Dostum and the old Northern Alliance crew get hold of the government. As long as we (at least) support the Afghan government the Taliban will never retake Kabul, and Kabul is the only hope for any part of Afghanistan to ever again even resemble a progressive society.

This is really an ethnic/religious/ideological conflict with roots going back centuries if not millennia, about as miserable a combination as you can find. It’s the kind of thing that only ever ends when one side so completely dominates the other that then latter will never rise again, or if you can effectively separate them.

It’s all good for a mild rant at least, but there is a lot of inertia involved in this mission despite the screaming and hair-pulling that goes on about who’s willing to do what, where, and for how long. It is obvious to me that short of a time machine to somehow stop the USSR from invading (though they didn’t do it just for kicks even then), and possibly more importantly keep Charlie Wilson and the CIA from sowing the seeds of 9/11 and Afghanistan II, there is no clear exit strategy for NATO in Afghanistan.

“Pick your fights and if need be cut your losses” would be my advice, were I in a position to give any.