Who defends everything, defends nothing

The big international news of the day is the investigation into the crash of Germanwings flight 4U 9525 into the French Alps this Tuesday past. Current evidence from the voice recorder and the profile of the flight supports the idea that the co-pilot locked the pilot out and then deliberately plowed the plane into the mountainside.  It is a reflection of our times that there is a fair bit said about the co-pilot’s religion or lack of it, and we all know what religion it is they’re tiptoeing around.

We may never know why this guy murdered everyone on board, but that’s life sometimes.  We have a whole bunch of murderous buggers whose intent is clearly announced to us, and there should not be a lot of debate about what we need to do about that.  Certainly debate about “how”, but nobody who can be bothered to know what is going on can honestly suggest that there is any other (useful) solution to these Da’esh etc. Salafists than a bullet in the head apiece.

And yet what have we in Canada’s House of Commons? (Legislative branch of Canada’s govt’t in case you didn’t know) There we see members of the opposition parties splitting hairs about whether Canada has “UN authorization” to bomb Da’esh targets over the now-notional Iraq/Syria border.

The Prime Minister has mocked them pretty effectively (says I; and they say Harper doesn’t have a sense of humour) but the mendacious and clueless tripe being spewed by Mulcair (who’s smart enough to know better) and Trudeau (who, well, doesn’t appear to be) won’t cut much ice with the general public.  Most people see enough of what’s happening over there to know that something has to be done about it.

The idea that this seems to be moving toward is a (cursory) examination of why we would intervene here as opposed to any number of other places.  One comment I saw was about how it must be oil since people are constantly being slaughtered in Africa and we don’t get involved there.  Yes, we get some oil from the general region, but we will not roll in there and pump the place dry due to our military action.  If everything was “about oil” we wouldn’t have an embargo against Iran, and in any event we could get by without ME oil.  If we did, however, the same people bleating here would be braying that we’re extracting our “dirty” oil sands (and building pipelines for it) to replace the light, cleaner stuff our east coast refineries get from Saudi and Algeria. 

As for Africa, there is plenty of stuff we’d like from Africa, far rarer than oil.  Economic motivations are insufficient for Canada to commit armed force; that much we just won’t do.  Millions of people are slaughtered in Africa (by other Africans), but they aren’t proclaiming a world-wide empire and declaring war on us (Boko Haram’s declaration for IS aside) so no, we don’t have pressing interest in their insoluble problems.

One reason, sufficient in itself I’d say, is that we simply can’t help out everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we should sit idly by and do nothing.  Rwanda should be enough evidence to the chattering classes that having the UN’s approval for being somewhere is not equivalent with doing what needs to be done; the opposite is more likely as far as I’m concerned.

We could do much more for the Kurds et al than we are, and our troops would think it worth doing.  This won’t happen, but a Battlegroup such as we had in Kandahar would make a massive difference in stabilizing that area.  We’d lose some people, but soldiers are paid for those sorts of risks, and in this case it’s not a lost cause (as opposed to Afghanistan), at least as long as you circumscribe the mission appropriately.  More of our boots (and tracks) on the ground would make short work of any IS forces who tried to come at us (or got in our way) while the nastiest city fighting could be left to the indigenous troops; it’s their fight at the end of the day.  This provides worthwhile and much appreciated support while not putting our troops and equipment through a meat grinder like Mosul or Tikrit.

We could probably do other things too.  We could help the French (more than we already have) in the Sahel, we could sort out South Sudan (maybe) or, my own pet project; a change of regime in Zimbabwe.  Bad things are happening to one degree or another in all of these places and many more, but intervention in any of them is neither easily practical nor sufficiently critical to our National Interest (remember that, anyone?) to justify us being there. 

So, where’s the line for intervention?  What are the criteria?  This is an art, not a science, so it’s not easy to quantify these things; what’s worth fighting for, more importantly what worth dying for, is extremely subjective.  In the case of Kurdistan, there are people there who a) want our help, b) need our help, and even more importantly c) will appreciate it.  I’ve said all of this before, but it’s worth saying again.  It occurs to me to put it into a rough equation for determining where we should help out (where L=locals):

 
[(LWant + LNeed + LAttitude + Probabillity of Mission Success) x National Interest] > [Risk + Expense] = Intervention  

 An algorithm/flow chart would do this better, but you get the idea.  Weighting of factors is fraught, but if I were to apply this to our post-2002 involvement in Afghanistan, it would not have passed, mainly due to the PoMS and NI factors being essentially nil.  If anyone with more math than me wants to refine this, go for it.  It won't change anything, but I think it visualizes the thought/risk analysis process pretty well.  I'd be interested to see a representation of the thought process of people who know what I know yet still think we shouldn't be helping in Iraq/Syria, especially in light of the assembled coalition.  Doubt I could make sense of it though. 

All against all, or at least some.

I’ve let the blog languish again, as happens when I can’t be bothered to write what I’m thinking about things.  Often that happens because it’s the same shit, often even the same pile, over and over again.  Today I am inspired enough by my prescience to comment upon a particular shit show.

 

 

The Da’esh debacle in Syria/Iraq continues, and although they have been (mostly) contained and in some places pushed back, a decisive victory over them, even if one could define what that was, remains out of the question.

 

 

I proposed a viable strategy for the situation some months ago, specifically to bolster the Kurds and with them the terrorized religious minorities (Christians, Yazidis specifically) in the area.  While “our side” may not have anything I can recognize as an active strategy, the other players in the neighbourhood certainly know their interests and act, as much as they can, in those interests.

To situate things, here are the major power/interest blocs according to me:
 

·         Iran/Damascus/Hezbollah/Baghdad: Iran is the underpinning and sole hope of victory for the Shia factions in the region.  Assad gets some support from Russia, but without Tehran he would have been out of business a long time ago.  Iranian Quds Force have trained and supported Assad’s troops, as they have done the same for Iraq’s Shia militias.  Without Iran. Da’esh would have run roughshod over the rest of Iraq and taken Bagdad and who knows what else.

·         House of Saud/Jordan/non-Da’esh Iraqi Sunnis/Lebanon (minus Hezbollah)/Israel: if nothing else points out how tangled this gets, this grouping does.  I say the Saudi royal family instead of Saudi Arabia proper, as I’m certain that Da’esh has some significant support in the hoi-polloi; not a majority to be sure, but support is there.  I don’t know what proportion of Sunni tribes in the “Sunni Triangle” have held out against Da’esh, but any that have likely had support from Saudi.   Jordan was on the fence until Da’esh burned their pilot alive, but now they’re bombing the shit out of them (“the shit” is assumed; I have no BDA).  The Lebanese Army has skirmished with Da’esh (and likely al-Nusra as well) but they are not known as a formidable fighting force.  However, due to the severity of the threat to the country as a whole, Saudi is paying for $3Bn worth of armaments (from France) to boost up the Army’s capacity.  As for Israel, they’re low on Da’esh’s priority list (Hezbollah is higher) but they left to their own devices would be a problem for Israel eventually.

·         “Kurdistan”/anyone who isn’t a Da’esh compatible Sunni (includes religious minorities): This is the group without any major patronage, but also the only group(s) I think we should be directly helping.  The Kurds are pretty secular, socialist in some cases, and despite their internal divisions they are the best bet for a functional country out of that entire mess.

·         Sidelines/Wildcards: Turkey is the biggest question mark here.  They have tense relations with the Kurds (improving, but still fraught) and have been accused to helping or at least turning a blind eye to Da’esh recruiting and logistics.  I think they are letting Da’esh bleed the Kurds to weaken them, but with Erdrogan’s Islamic proclivities (e.g. support for Hamas) I’m not certain that’s all that’s going on.  Russia is keeping an oar in too, basically to put that oar in “our” spokes by keeping the region unstable.   

 

If one is being as objective as possible, few countries outside of the region have any real interest in what happens, but the nature of this is that the affected area will spread, and in fact hat is happening.  I could add to the above groups Egypt, as our brilliant intervention in Libya a few years back has allowed Da’esh to take root there.  Libya makes Da’esh a direct threat to Europe as well as much of Africa, and if Al Queda in Yemen decides to switch over and gains traction, that’s the Arabian peninsula and East Africa. 

Most of these regions have indigenous Salafist groups (Boko Haram, AQIM, Al-Shabab) so in some ways this just puts a different name on an existing problem, but it’s a whole lot of moles to whack. I’d say it’s time to sort out some spheres of influence with players like Iran, but TELL them what they will be and enforce it. 

Specifically, Iraq as a country is history, much the same can be said for Syria.  The Saudis are concerned about a “Shia Crescent” from Iran to Lebanon, but exactly what they can do about it is questionable.  I could suggest that Saudi and Jordan act together to redraw their borders to take in the Sunni areas of western Iraq, but I’m sure there are many practical reasons not to do that, and a lot of them likely tribal.

All we can (and should) do is to help establish a viable Kurdistan, one that can stand against all comers.  This will piss off the Turks, but they aren’t our allies anymore in anything more than name so I’m not inclined to care.  I would go so far as to say that it’s in Turkey’s interest to shed some Kurdish territory to this end, but of course that will never happen.  Iran will likely have some issues with this too, but I’m even less inclined to worry about that. 

How much blood and treasure Western countries should put into keeping Da’esh down is difficult to answer.  Obviously the people directly affected should be doing the heavy lifting, but how much and what kind of help should we provide?  I would say more than we are now, and more importantly WE MUST HAVE A COHERENT PLAN for whatever we commit.  A sound strategy, the right force mix, and the Saudis paying the bills are the keys to our optimal (realistic) end state.   

 

On the current trajectory the big winners are Assad, Iran and Hezbollah.  That group alone should cause sensible people on the West to want to engineer a better (for us) outcome. Not going to happen of course, so I guess we'll just watch and see what does.