So, Gen. Stanley McCrystal is out over the comments he made about Obama's Advisory team to, of all things, Rolling Stone magazine. His replacement is Gen. David Petraeus, the man who led the successful (against my predictions I'll admit) surge in Iraq to keep the lid on the place long enough for the US to get out.
Fired or resigned, he should be gone, because to talk that way to the press about your boss is both insubordinate and phenomenally bad judgement. That said, I don't know that this will make much difference on the ground. If Petraeus has extracted changes in the RoE as his price for filling the gap we might see some results. Stop playing all nice with the Taliban and smash them in conjunction with the Pakistanis and you'll still be able to leave in a year or so. The place will still be screwed, but you might manage to hand all of the newly confirmed mineral wealth over to the Chinese with the insurgency under some sort of control.
Cynical? That can't possibly be a shocker around here, but just as the Americans have been shut out of oil development in Iraq since the effective end of hostilities there, they will be the last ones to capitalize on the lithium, copper, etc. that are apparently there in abundance.
Since a time limit has been placed on the NATO deployment, if we want to make a difference in the place it's now a race to kill as many bomb makers, financiers, drug kingpins and garden variety terrorists as we can before we go. This doesn't mean carpet bomb the villages (although if the civvies have all fled...) but it means a hell of a lot more stick and not a lot else, because we won't be around to give out the carrots.
Pakistan wants more money and gear to continue the drive against the Taliban on their side of the Durand Line, and in this case I agree with them. The interests of the West, India, (Northern Alliance) Afghanistan and Pakistan all align with beating the Taliban et al back, so it's the smartest place to put your resources. The "perfect storm" for the Taliban would be if the Americans take the gloves off inside Afghanistan at the same time the Pakistani Army gears back up.
This isn't a magical solution to the problem, it just would allow a chance that at least part of Afghanistan could be salvaged. Perhaps not for the people who poured all of the blood and treasure into it, but that apparently (generic leftish protesters notwithstanding) is how the West does business these days. I don't approve of exploiting people, (China is doing a fine job of that in Africa these days) but a bit of quid pro quo seems reasonable.
It's an Augean stable of a country for sure, but let's see what the new brooms can do.
As an end note, I will mention another American soldier who ran afoul of his chain of command in an unpopular war, the late Col. David Hackworth. "Hack" however complained about the conduct of the Vietnam war, instead of adolescent trashing of personalities in the administration so the situations can't be directly compared. If McCrystal had complained about the conduct of the war he might at least have accomplished something on his way out, but no such luck.
Thursday 24 June 2010
Monday 21 June 2010
If you build it, will they come?
A lot of electrons are being re-arranged about the G8/G20 summits in Huntsville and Toronto ON this month, and I have to say we're spending an awfully large amount of money ($1.1B current estimate) on a huge waste of time. Yes I came out and said it: the Summits have no clothes.
Certainly I'm not alone in this, but most of what you read is about our incipient Police State or how much the "fake lake" cost. These are all worthy subtexts to the whole thing, but I have two much cheaper alternatives, and one that won't bother as many people.
The first is to tell our international "friends" that we're not wasting our tax money and disrupting people and transportation for these dog and pony shows, and that if they want to the "prestige" of hosting them they're welcome to it. I've heard that it's "our turn" but this is a bullshit photo op and nothing more; we can replace this with video conferencing at a tiny fraction of the cost of all this. The second money-saving idea is to pare security back to the bare minimum for VIPs and tell all those "Black Bloc" fuckers that they'll be shot on sight as soon as the first brick or Molotov is thrown. Really, all the fences, removal of mailboxes, etc. is to deal with a few thousand traveling thugs who show up to break things for fun. Shooting them would deter the fellow travelers and cut down on recidivism from the hard cases.
Obviously my second proposal won't fly in this country, but try that kind of shit in China and see how far you get. That brings me to my final proposal if you really insist on running these meetings. This has the added (partial intentional) effect of exposing the hypocrisy of the political classes that like their junkets: build a permanent G Summit facility somewhere that protesters will have a hell of a time getting to because of distance, isolation and/or forbidding terrain. I have two suggestions for location, but you can use your imagination.
Primary location, The Falkland Islands; access only by plane or ship, and I mean ship, not boat. No kayak-borne infiltrators will paddle over from Argentina to crash your party, and the British garrison is all the security you'll need. It'd be good for the local economy and give everyone there (garrison included) something to do. Yes, they're nasty cold, wet, windswept rocks in the middle of the south Atlantic but you're there on important business so what does that matter? You'd have one-time costs to build the necessary facilities and then relatively minor maintenance expenses. The whole thing might cost as much as one of these fiascoes anywhere else, and you'd have a permanent site with an "indigenous" security force.
Secondary proposal is Churchill, Manitoba. Not as isolated as the Falklands as it has permanent rail and air links, but isolating it is merely an issue of shutting those links down to passengers during the summit, and as it gets no cruise ships it's arguably easier to secure. Facilities would have to be built, and in order for it to not cripple the fall Polar Bear tourist season you'd schedule the meetings for the spring or summer. Again, the climate sucks (not to put too fine a point on it) but there's about as much to do in Churchill as in the Falklands.
Something "out of the way" was probably what was envisioned for Huntsville, but it's another example of governments coddling themselves at public expense. If they were serious about doing this sort of thing and not disrupting everyone for the sake a a few malcontents, they'd go somewhere like Churchill and not to the cottage/resort capital of eastern North America. $1B would go a long way in a place like that and have some lasting benefit to the community. Chain link fences and Jersey barriers don't leave that sort of legacy, but at least the swollen political entourages will be comfy while they're here.
Certainly I'm not alone in this, but most of what you read is about our incipient Police State or how much the "fake lake" cost. These are all worthy subtexts to the whole thing, but I have two much cheaper alternatives, and one that won't bother as many people.
The first is to tell our international "friends" that we're not wasting our tax money and disrupting people and transportation for these dog and pony shows, and that if they want to the "prestige" of hosting them they're welcome to it. I've heard that it's "our turn" but this is a bullshit photo op and nothing more; we can replace this with video conferencing at a tiny fraction of the cost of all this. The second money-saving idea is to pare security back to the bare minimum for VIPs and tell all those "Black Bloc" fuckers that they'll be shot on sight as soon as the first brick or Molotov is thrown. Really, all the fences, removal of mailboxes, etc. is to deal with a few thousand traveling thugs who show up to break things for fun. Shooting them would deter the fellow travelers and cut down on recidivism from the hard cases.
Obviously my second proposal won't fly in this country, but try that kind of shit in China and see how far you get. That brings me to my final proposal if you really insist on running these meetings. This has the added (partial intentional) effect of exposing the hypocrisy of the political classes that like their junkets: build a permanent G Summit facility somewhere that protesters will have a hell of a time getting to because of distance, isolation and/or forbidding terrain. I have two suggestions for location, but you can use your imagination.
Primary location, The Falkland Islands; access only by plane or ship, and I mean ship, not boat. No kayak-borne infiltrators will paddle over from Argentina to crash your party, and the British garrison is all the security you'll need. It'd be good for the local economy and give everyone there (garrison included) something to do. Yes, they're nasty cold, wet, windswept rocks in the middle of the south Atlantic but you're there on important business so what does that matter? You'd have one-time costs to build the necessary facilities and then relatively minor maintenance expenses. The whole thing might cost as much as one of these fiascoes anywhere else, and you'd have a permanent site with an "indigenous" security force.
Secondary proposal is Churchill, Manitoba. Not as isolated as the Falklands as it has permanent rail and air links, but isolating it is merely an issue of shutting those links down to passengers during the summit, and as it gets no cruise ships it's arguably easier to secure. Facilities would have to be built, and in order for it to not cripple the fall Polar Bear tourist season you'd schedule the meetings for the spring or summer. Again, the climate sucks (not to put too fine a point on it) but there's about as much to do in Churchill as in the Falklands.
Something "out of the way" was probably what was envisioned for Huntsville, but it's another example of governments coddling themselves at public expense. If they were serious about doing this sort of thing and not disrupting everyone for the sake a a few malcontents, they'd go somewhere like Churchill and not to the cottage/resort capital of eastern North America. $1B would go a long way in a place like that and have some lasting benefit to the community. Chain link fences and Jersey barriers don't leave that sort of legacy, but at least the swollen political entourages will be comfy while they're here.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
Captain Kick-Ass vs. the 24 Hr News Cycle!
I don't think there were a lot of people who would have predicted that Obama would start making G.W. Bush look good, but that day has come. This not being a political blog per se this is not really my concern, except for what it represents to the big picture. Obama's regime is shamblingly alienating most of America's allies while trying (ineffectually, thank God) to make nice with the old "Axis of Evil".
Perhaps "ineffectually" isn't precise: in effect it has shown America as weak and something that can be ignored or worked around. This will only get worse for them the longer he or someone like him stays in power. Impeachment is unlikely (to date) so we have a couple more years of this to look forward to. If the current Marxist administration succeeds in cratering the American economy in that time, things will get a lot worse before they get better.
It is a common axiom of warfare that the worst course of action is to fail to choose one. Note that choosing to do nothing is a decision; waffling or being paralysed is quite different. Even less contentious than this is the universal axiom "Talk is Cheap". Saying you'll put your "boot on their neck" or convene a council of experts to determine "whose ass to kick" doesn't seem to have accomplished a whole lot. Hell, that's hedging: he has DONE nothing, and done it in the most muddled bureaucratic fashion imaginable. "Talk minus Action equals Zero" was on a shirt I once had, and a 0 looks a lot like an O.
The problem for anyone in the public eye these days is that you can't escape the media. You can make arrangements with the papers and traditional media outlets up to a certain point, but the internet never sleeps and it never forgets. Every thing you ever say or do (or fail to do) is there for the zealots who will run it to ground and post it on their blogs. From there it makes it to other places, and increasingly back into the major media outlets. The majors are owned by people, and people have positions or agendas they want advanced. That limits the sort of thing you will find on Fox, Al-Jazeera, CNN, etc. There is no limit to the variety of viewpoints that the internet ant hill will hold, and thanks to search engines it's all accessible and nearly impossible to suppress.
I stalled on this for several days as it went off track (now two separate posts), and in that time NOTHING HAS HAPPENED with Obama and the Gulf oil spill. There has been more talk, photo ops, and this afternoon there will be an address from the Oval Office, but nothing has actually been done. There is an increasing hum on the internet about Obama and what he's all about. It was always there, of course, but it's starting to take shape and become more coherent. This is an excellent example:
A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
Were I a religious type I'd say he was the Anti-Christ, as he fits the bill within that paradigm. I don't believe it's anything as profound as that, merely another sign (groan) of the forces within our societies that want to destroy what we've built. I highly recommend that you read Ms Rabinovich's entire article. They do everything bigger in the US, and I don't see much evidence of a significant political force in Canada that can do what the current manifestation of the Democratic Party is trying to do to the U.S.A. The NDP are most closely equivalent in Socialist mentality, but they are a spent force whose platform has largely been appropriated in pieces by successive centrist governments.
Back on topic, the picture that emerges is of the President of the United States of America who can't actually do anything. Of course there are mechanisms to keep the chief executive from running amok, but the image of a man who got where he is due largely to his demagoguery being exposed as an ineffective elitist by the very media that he manipulated to get there is pretty ironic.
Perhaps "ineffectually" isn't precise: in effect it has shown America as weak and something that can be ignored or worked around. This will only get worse for them the longer he or someone like him stays in power. Impeachment is unlikely (to date) so we have a couple more years of this to look forward to. If the current Marxist administration succeeds in cratering the American economy in that time, things will get a lot worse before they get better.
It is a common axiom of warfare that the worst course of action is to fail to choose one. Note that choosing to do nothing is a decision; waffling or being paralysed is quite different. Even less contentious than this is the universal axiom "Talk is Cheap". Saying you'll put your "boot on their neck" or convene a council of experts to determine "whose ass to kick" doesn't seem to have accomplished a whole lot. Hell, that's hedging: he has DONE nothing, and done it in the most muddled bureaucratic fashion imaginable. "Talk minus Action equals Zero" was on a shirt I once had, and a 0 looks a lot like an O.
The problem for anyone in the public eye these days is that you can't escape the media. You can make arrangements with the papers and traditional media outlets up to a certain point, but the internet never sleeps and it never forgets. Every thing you ever say or do (or fail to do) is there for the zealots who will run it to ground and post it on their blogs. From there it makes it to other places, and increasingly back into the major media outlets. The majors are owned by people, and people have positions or agendas they want advanced. That limits the sort of thing you will find on Fox, Al-Jazeera, CNN, etc. There is no limit to the variety of viewpoints that the internet ant hill will hold, and thanks to search engines it's all accessible and nearly impossible to suppress.
I stalled on this for several days as it went off track (now two separate posts), and in that time NOTHING HAS HAPPENED with Obama and the Gulf oil spill. There has been more talk, photo ops, and this afternoon there will be an address from the Oval Office, but nothing has actually been done. There is an increasing hum on the internet about Obama and what he's all about. It was always there, of course, but it's starting to take shape and become more coherent. This is an excellent example:
A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
Were I a religious type I'd say he was the Anti-Christ, as he fits the bill within that paradigm. I don't believe it's anything as profound as that, merely another sign (groan) of the forces within our societies that want to destroy what we've built. I highly recommend that you read Ms Rabinovich's entire article. They do everything bigger in the US, and I don't see much evidence of a significant political force in Canada that can do what the current manifestation of the Democratic Party is trying to do to the U.S.A. The NDP are most closely equivalent in Socialist mentality, but they are a spent force whose platform has largely been appropriated in pieces by successive centrist governments.
Back on topic, the picture that emerges is of the President of the United States of America who can't actually do anything. Of course there are mechanisms to keep the chief executive from running amok, but the image of a man who got where he is due largely to his demagoguery being exposed as an ineffective elitist by the very media that he manipulated to get there is pretty ironic.
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Info Ops and Fallout Boys
As is obvious from my output here, I don't do "breaking" stories, but some I like to get to while they're still roiling. The IDF and the blockade runners fiasco which is playing out presently is still not 100% settled (what ever is?) but what we know could be used to write a manual on how to play the lefty media for sympathy.
First the legality of stopping and boarding vessels in international waters: this is the official Israeli position, but I have no doubt that what they are saying about the legality of their action is correct. You can either accept or flout the laws of any jurisdiction, but you defy them at your risk anywhere in the world. Israel is well-known to enforce its laws and borders, and to proceed as if you expect anything else is either malice or insanity. I like this for insanity:
INSANITY, med. jur. A continued impetuosity of thought, which, for the time being, totally unfits a man for judging and acting in relation to the matter in question, with the composure requisite for the maintenance of the social relations of life.
As there were too many people on those boats for them all to be insane, malice (or more charitably, "calculation") it is. Contrary to its reputation, Israel doesn't empty a magazine into every protest situation they run into, and they have a LOT of experience with this sort of thing, at least on land. The change of venue put them off their game, but it looks like they tried the non-lethal playbook first. The video that shows all of these "protesters" bleeding also shows them violently attacking the IDF commandos who boarded the ships. YouTube cuts both ways, but Israel can't win the PR battle with the truth no matter if it exonerates them; with Obama throwing the one true democracy in the Middle East to the encircling wolves, Israel doesn't have a lot of friends left.
Info ops, formerly known as propaganda, is all about making yourself look good at the other guy's expense. This was masterful in that regard, but it doesn't take much to make the IDF look bad to the sorts who make all the noise. The persistent use of the word "humanitarian" is a big feature, as is the word "protesters" There were some of those on board to be sure, the professional useful idiots from the West who tag onto repressive Islamic causes, but there were at least as many provocateurs.
The Israelis were certainly ambushed and attacked when they boarded; that fact is non-negotiable. People will argue provocation, piracy, whatever they want, but the bulk of international maritime and naval conventions are in line with the escalation the IDF took. Again regardless of the restraint the troops displayed (yes, I said restraint, and I meant it!) this is now in the international news cycle and a black eye for Israel is the least harmful likely outcome.
It will be interesting to watch what the Arab countries do now. Not what they say, what they actually do. Saudi money drives a lot of what goes on, and Iran's runs most of the rest. Saudi would much rather keep Israel around as a bulwark against Iran, so they never push the Israelis too far. Egypt has had enough of fighting the IDF, and in any event doesn't want to try to digest the Palestinians. Iran is allied with Syria however, and they may smell an opportunity.
So, a repeat of Hezbollah-Israel this summer? If that happens I will go on record here (on my anonymous blog, yeah, I know) as saying that Israel will put the hurt on Syria too for sure, and Iran if they can manage it. Assad knows this, so he'll make a lot of noise, but not likely heat things up. Hezbollah knows that another war is not in their interest until the Israelis are about to be pushed into the sea, but Iran might think the time is now.
Israel is cornered, and I can't come up with a worse group to corner than a nuclear-armed people with a 5000-year old history of being slaughtered every time they weren't stronger or at least more agile than their neighbours. You can bet that whoever pushes them to the wall will be short a few cities before it's all over. There are c.7.5M people in Israel, and (for you Old Testament scholars) that's a LOT of eyes.
First the legality of stopping and boarding vessels in international waters: this is the official Israeli position, but I have no doubt that what they are saying about the legality of their action is correct. You can either accept or flout the laws of any jurisdiction, but you defy them at your risk anywhere in the world. Israel is well-known to enforce its laws and borders, and to proceed as if you expect anything else is either malice or insanity. I like this for insanity:
INSANITY, med. jur. A continued impetuosity of thought, which, for the time being, totally unfits a man for judging and acting in relation to the matter in question, with the composure requisite for the maintenance of the social relations of life.
As there were too many people on those boats for them all to be insane, malice (or more charitably, "calculation") it is. Contrary to its reputation, Israel doesn't empty a magazine into every protest situation they run into, and they have a LOT of experience with this sort of thing, at least on land. The change of venue put them off their game, but it looks like they tried the non-lethal playbook first. The video that shows all of these "protesters" bleeding also shows them violently attacking the IDF commandos who boarded the ships. YouTube cuts both ways, but Israel can't win the PR battle with the truth no matter if it exonerates them; with Obama throwing the one true democracy in the Middle East to the encircling wolves, Israel doesn't have a lot of friends left.
Info ops, formerly known as propaganda, is all about making yourself look good at the other guy's expense. This was masterful in that regard, but it doesn't take much to make the IDF look bad to the sorts who make all the noise. The persistent use of the word "humanitarian" is a big feature, as is the word "protesters" There were some of those on board to be sure, the professional useful idiots from the West who tag onto repressive Islamic causes, but there were at least as many provocateurs.
The Israelis were certainly ambushed and attacked when they boarded; that fact is non-negotiable. People will argue provocation, piracy, whatever they want, but the bulk of international maritime and naval conventions are in line with the escalation the IDF took. Again regardless of the restraint the troops displayed (yes, I said restraint, and I meant it!) this is now in the international news cycle and a black eye for Israel is the least harmful likely outcome.
It will be interesting to watch what the Arab countries do now. Not what they say, what they actually do. Saudi money drives a lot of what goes on, and Iran's runs most of the rest. Saudi would much rather keep Israel around as a bulwark against Iran, so they never push the Israelis too far. Egypt has had enough of fighting the IDF, and in any event doesn't want to try to digest the Palestinians. Iran is allied with Syria however, and they may smell an opportunity.
So, a repeat of Hezbollah-Israel this summer? If that happens I will go on record here (on my anonymous blog, yeah, I know) as saying that Israel will put the hurt on Syria too for sure, and Iran if they can manage it. Assad knows this, so he'll make a lot of noise, but not likely heat things up. Hezbollah knows that another war is not in their interest until the Israelis are about to be pushed into the sea, but Iran might think the time is now.
Israel is cornered, and I can't come up with a worse group to corner than a nuclear-armed people with a 5000-year old history of being slaughtered every time they weren't stronger or at least more agile than their neighbours. You can bet that whoever pushes them to the wall will be short a few cities before it's all over. There are c.7.5M people in Israel, and (for you Old Testament scholars) that's a LOT of eyes.
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