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.  

I love it when a strategy comes together...

Bashar al-Assad, President of rump Syria, thinks that the Americans don't know what they're doing in the region. That's not explicitly what he said, but that's what this amounts to:

Asked whether coalition airstrikes are helping him, Assad said that the bombardments -- the Obama administration's preferred military tactic in the fight against the Islamic State -- aren't enough. "Troops on the ground that know the land and can react are essential," Assad told journalist Régis Le Sommier. "That is why there haven't been any tangible results in the two months of strikes led by the coalition. It isn't true that the strikes are helpful. They would of course have helped had they been serious and efficient."

Despite the wishful thinking of some in the West when he came on the scene to replace his father, Hafez al-Assad of "Hama rules" fame, Bashar (Opthamologist by training) is a chip off the old despotic block. I suspect that's more nurture than nature, but he has in any event survived in an environment which would have exposed and destroyed him for any weakness. In fact, the entire region is like that.

The Baath regime in Syria as in Iraq is bad news, but it was (pretty much) equal-opportunity bad news. Christians, Alawis and other non-Sunni minority groups survived as well as anyone could in Syria until things came apart in 2011. Being an enemy of the State was what would get you tortured and killed, and as brutal as that is it's something you could avoid, i.e. you weren't born into it.

Enter Da'esh/IS/ISIL/Al Queda/etc. The decendants of the Moslem Brotherhood old Hafez decimated in Hama, they are rabidly intolerant Sunni militias, so intolerant that most Sunnis don't want to live under them either. The non-Sunnis who remain have been forced to side with Assad in sheer self-preservation. In that case the "enemy of their enemy" is their only hope.

Does that mean that we should work with him? Well, that depends. In an ideal world where we all love each other and some rare zombie virus makes people turn nasty, no. In the real world where things are a lot greyer than that you don't work with a murderous sadistc regime unless of course they are less distasteful than the alternatives.The question: is Assad sufficiently less off-putting than Da'esh/Al-Queda/Nusra to be worth propping up?

I won't pretend that this is a simple decision, but I'll zoom out enough to try to put it in perspective. Until 2003, Iraq and Syria were "stable". Not Parliamentary-Rule-of-Law stable, but most people could go about their daily lives with little chance of violence which counts as stability in most parts of the world. Once the Americans broke Iraq (that is neither ideological nor debatable at this point) the whole region began to creak. The eventual result was the so-called "Arab Spring" which succeeded only in the place it began, in Tunisia. Egypt got the government it thought it wanted in the Muslim Brotherhood, but quickly realized that having the military run things was not so bad after all. Syria tried to reform but that only exposed how brittle the power structure was and of course it shattered.

Shit gets tribal pretty quickly in situations like that (civil war) and the surviving enclaves are the Alawis (Assad's "tribe") and the Kurds. The Syrian Kurds' only chance of survival is to amalgamate with the Iraqi Kurds and I have said before this is where I think we should put our efforts. Erdrogan and the Turkish government; in his/their effots to re-create the Ottoman empire has/have placed themselves in opposition to NATO's interests and should be booted out of the alliance. I mention this because the Turks are the single biggest impediment to carving out a stable safe-haven for people fleeing Da'esh.

The Iranians also have Kurdish issues, but they are a bit more pragmatic and are actively supporting their militias fighting Da'esh. Should we co-operate with them? How I work it out is that worst-case scenario, Iran spreads its' (Shia) "Islamic Republic" to parts of Iraq; that is still less miserable than Daesh/Al Queda. This would defacto split off Iraqi Kurdistan to join up with Rojava. In case you wonder why I think we should support that, go read this.

Are the Kurds perfect? Not by a long shot, but as far as I can tell they are better than all regional alternatives. My information is not based on personal experience, but by all accounts their internal tribal issues don't turn into oppressing other people which is all that I can ask of a group. The real litmus test is "would I take a trip there [Iraqi Kudistan]?". The answer in this case is "yes" because even as in infidel Westerner I would be as safe there anywhere other than home. Their proposed constitution looks pretty Socialist (not surprising, Kurdish Workers' Party and all) but Disestablishmentarianism is the law of the land making it unique in the region since Turkey has purged Ataturk.

Coming back to Assad, the Social Contract of the Rojava Cantons (linked above) recognises the "territorial integrity of Syria" which brings it in line with the rump Baath state. This is potential common ground, but there is no way the Cantons would let Assad back in control. What I don't know is what the Iranians would think about cutting loose their link to Hezbollah, inevitable if the current power structure is dissolved.

That could be grounds for some old-school "sphere of influence" talks between the US, Saudis and Iranians. The tradeoff could be recognition of defacto Iranian expansion into Iraq, sans "Sunni Triangle" in exchange for cutting the Levant loose. The Saudis would have cause to dislike this, but it wouldn't change much on the groud so it might not be a deal breaker. Hezbollah has bled a great deal for the Assad regime (really for Iran) so it's unlikely Iran would cut ties, but they would gain more Shia in Iraq than they'd lose in Lebanon so who knows?

The region (and many others) has a preference for backing "the Strong Horse". Assad's Syria was that in the immediate area for many years; it is so no longer, but it can still do a lot of damage. The Alawis are a fairly despised minority in the ME, but so are the Kurds, Christians, Yazidis, etc. I see common cause there, but there are a lot of Great and Regional Power interests to overcome before the underdogs can band together. Get rid of Assad and the Baath Party and we could work with non IS Syria against Da'esh and in spite of Erdrogan. I deduce Iran as the lynchpin of this, with Russia having some say, maybe just as an extraction plan for the Baath ruling elite.

There's your angle Obama; you still have a chance to actually earn that Nobel Peace Prize. Fat chance the USA does anything this coherently thought-out with an understanding of the region and history, but the regional players understand these things. Somebody will do something but it probably won't be us.

A lot of drops will fill a bucket

At time of writing the Canadian government has voted to undertake the combat missions against Da'esh which we were at least partially doing already. Where this goes I don't know, but past practice from Afghanistan coupled with our current fiscal restraint suggests that this will remain at the level of low-rate airstrikes against painfully "safe" targets and some undisclosed Special Ops activity. Better than nothing, but unlikely to make a difference in the grand scheme.

Still, it's important to do something and we are at least doing that. What I draw more encouragement from is stories like this:

Dillon Hillier was working construction in Alberta when ISIS gunmen began their brutal push into Kurdish territory. A veteran of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, he decided he couldn’t just watch it happen.

Last weekend, the 26-year-old infantryman left Calgary and flew to northeastern Iraq to help Kurdish fighters fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. “I just felt it was the right thing to do since they’re facing some pretty tough times,” he said in an interview.

Unlike the radicalized youths who have flocked to Syria and Iraq, Mr. Hillier is a military veteran and he is siding with ISIS’s most formidable enemy, the Peshmerga. Mr. Hillier said he expected to be joined over the coming weeks by volunteers from Canada, the United States and Sweden.

To help Canadians eager to fight ISIS, an Ottawa military veteran recently formed the 1st North American Expeditionary Force. Ian Bradbury said former Canadian Forces members had launched the non-profit group to provide financial and logistical support to friends who felt compelled to volunteer.

The Kurds are the only group over there who both have ability to resist Da'esh (and equivalents) and a tolerant and reasonably progressive mindset as a culture. In short, they are worth supporting against the alternatives, and not merely as the lesser of available evils. They also appreciate the help, a rare trait in that part of the world.

Experience has shown that supporting most Arab groups is a waste of time as they're never happy whatever you do or don't do. Largely anecdotal, but we don't need peer-reviewed studies to tell us that if Iraq was a tar baby Syria would be the same.

It's not just the Arabs of course, there are a lot of other groups just as opportunistic (Afghans leap to mind) but we have proven Nation-Building to be a failed model, expensive in blood and treasure. The Kurds have built their own; it's still under construction but they'll do it themselves with some support from us, as it should be. They have a chance to be the beacon of "democracy" tolerance and freedom in the Middle East that Bush II and the NeoCons thought they could fashion post-Saddam Iraq into.

Young men have been trickling in from Western countries to bolster the Kurds, and by extension the displaced Christians, Yazidis and civilized Sunni Muslims of northern (nominal) Iraq. I wonder if anyone has thought of approaching the Saudis to grubstake these guys.  Infidels of course, but along with that they are a pretty safe bet to not boomerang on the House of Saud like the Sunni proxies they usually use. The cost effectiveness of supporting Western volunteers in Kurdistan could be very high. Here's the pitch:

End State: Kurdish autonomous area secured and displaced persons returned to their homes in contiguous areas.

How: Support to Kurdish forces and creation of a support system for volunteer replacements from other countries.

Salient features:

• Hub created in theatre with money from Gulf and Western governments
• Ground organization consisting of recruitment, supply and medical facilities
• Employs mostly locals
• Tickets home are part of the supply arrangements

I envision a small staff to liaise with applicants, pick them up from the airport, issue them with weapons, body armour, ammo, first aid kit and a local cell phone. From there link them up with the Peshmerga for employment and hope that the field hospital you've set up doesn't see them for anything worse than top-up inoculations.

An actual International Brigade is a bad idea, but a dedicated support organization for the individuals, especially the supply and medical resources, will encourage more guys to go. As mentioned in the linked National Post article, ad hoc support groups have been forming in home countries, but things remain sketchy on the receiving end.  With "allies" like this, the Kurds and the people they're sheltering need all the help we can give them.

Draw the correct lessons from Ottawa

Last week in Canada generated world-wide headlines for the dramatic attack on an honour guard soldier at our national war memorial and subsequent armed attack on our House of Parliament (seat of the Federal government in Canada).  Twenty-four-year-old Corporal Nathan Cirillo of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Hamilton ON) was shot from behind and killed as he stood with an unloaded rifle at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a security guard (again unarmed) at the doors of the Centre Block was wounded trying to deflect the gunman as he charged into the building.

This was pretty crazy for Ottawa, but it was in fact the second attack on a member of Canada’s Armed Forces by a Canadian Muslim convert in that one week; see my previous post. This was another act of terrorism, and we have Sgt-at-Arms Kevin Vickers (head of Parliamentary security) to thank for putting the Ottawa shooter out of our misery.  We also still have PM Stephen Harper to thank for calling it the Islamist terrorism that it is.  There seems to be some opportunistic bill jamming-through, but I’ll leave that out of this.

Can we expect more of this sort of thing?  I would say “yes”, and it’s good that a lone-wolf (who could easily have done much more damage) was the first attack, to shake up security arrangements.  The vehicular attack on Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent earlier that week is the sort of thing you can’t really prepare for, except by paying more attention to your surroundings. I stayed away from this until the dust settled a bit, and now I have some observations.

Firstly, more preventative detention of people who express an interest in “jihad” is in order.  It’s all very nice to make lists of potential bad apples, but when they start killing people that practice is obviously deficient.  You “like” Islamic State on Facebook?  Go to jail for 10+ years for terrorism/sedition.  Yes, sure it might “drive them underground” (too many quotes in this paragraph already) but if you’re not going to stop them when they are operating out in the open that hardly makes a difference. 

Secondly, our security needs some tweaking but mostly on the enforcement side.  Canada is not completely clueless (at the pointy end at least) about the threats we face, but there must be political will to do something about it, and I must say from a domestic political standpoint, the current party/leader combination is the only one which looks like it might have the stones for that.   The Guards at Buckingham Palace carry loaded weapons and there has been talk of arming our sentries, but that won’t happen here due to jurisdictional issues. I have thought about this a bit over that last several days, and on balance it’s better it stays that way provided that the local police will guard them, as is happening now. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Now we know.  If I were running things I would give the sentries a loaded mag so that they are not helpless, but still leave the cops as the first line of response.

Thirdly, media and public reactions.  This implies no conspiracy, but I am going to very cynically say that these attacks are timed very well for the Canadian Armed Forces.  The years in Afghanistan are behind us and the military was largely losing relevance to the public, dissipating the high regard in which they were held.  Defence funding was slashed back to levels not seen since the “peace dividend” Decade of Darkness of the 1990s and it was obvious that even the supposedly CAF-friendly Conservative government had lost sight of the necessity to maintain what you have.  The Canadian public has rallied around Cpl Cirillo in particular, (WO Vincents’s murder was far less telegenic) and two attacks in short order have brought the home-grown jihadi problem into focus a bit more.  I have no illusions that forceful direct action will result from this, but it’s better than nothing.

Media response was well handled overall, but I feel that the hand-wringing about 22 October being “the day that changed everything in Ottawa” was overdone.  That day was in fact September 11^th 2001, and it changed everywhere else in the Western world that day too; a sense of perspective is in order here.  It’s now the week after and things are going back to modified normal just as they should be.  It’s time to stop reacting and start acting against the threats within our borders.  If these fucks want to go to Syria to get killed, let them go and cancel their passports as soon as they clear a European airport.  Pressure on them will push some in that direction, and if they don’t leave they go to jail.  I don’t give a shit if you were born here or not; if Canada isn’t good enough for you get out and don’t come back.

We'll hold 'em, you hit 'em

I've said for some time that the Saudis should be directly involved in the mess they helped create with Daesh in Syria/Iraq, and their planes are a good start. So far there has been no official commitment to sending the Royal Saudi Army in to get dirty, but it's apparently not completely off the table. They certainly have the resources to make an impact regionally, and I imagine getting some more combat experience for their troops would be a plan also.

The concern comes from various quarters about the incursion of Saudi troops to hit Daesh and Assad (as they would want to) on the basis of Iran and the Shia in general getting bent out of shape. If there was in fact some June 1914-syle delicate balance of power in the region this would have some merit, but as things stand the Saudis don't give a flying about Iran as long as America has the House of Saud's back, nor are "we" too fussed about keeping Tehran happy.

The feared Sunni-Shia "civil war" is already happening so the Saudis doing the dirty work of removing Assad would cut the Gordian knot of disturbing the power balance which most seem to fear messing with. Reports also have airstrikes on al-Nusra, another slightly-less bloodthirsty Salafist outfit and no more a friend to us than Daesh is.

There is always the problem of the power vacuum, and hitting all of the players might seem a good idea. The only problem I see with hitting Assad is that he represents the only remaining protection (besides the Kurdish areas) for religious minorities in Syria. The Alawi sect that the Assads hail from is adjudged heretical by "proper" Muslims and they won't last a week if the Baath party goes down completely, likewise the remaining Christians and garden-variety Shia.

In the meantime the squeeze is being put on the money-making and administrative soft underbelly of Daesh, which has them scrambling to adjust. Strikes on Daesh forces besieging Kurdish etc. villages in Syria have taken some pressure off, and a further degrading of the materiel Daesh scored from the Iraqi and Syrian armies will degrade their advantage. The tanks, APCs and artillery they took from Mosul are hard to hide and useless to you if you do manage it. That is a lesson the Germans on the Normandy front in WW2 learned the hard way, and that was without smart bombs.

A random though along that track; A-10s have been deployed to theatre, but what is ideal for killing vehicles and even easier to base are AH-64D (or better) Apaches, especially "Longbow" ones. Base a few of those close behind the friendly lines and you'll be able to break up any vehicular attack in minutes.

That's tactics, but also public relations. Already the US is making some more friends as it saves them from Daesh, and confidence that the lines will hold will take the humanitarian pressure off as people stay put or return to their homes. Putting hardware where the locals can see it, making them feel like it's "theirs" has an intangible but very real morale effect.

I'm not holding my breath to see Saudi M1A2s sweeping to Damascus, but you never know. Latest I've heard of the Iraqi Army is that it's as useless as it was in Mosul so SOMEBODY has to pick up the slack.

Kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse.

(It will be noted that the phrase I have used for the title didn't work out too well for the guy who originally said it, but I have more confidence in my prescriptions here.  We do this time know exactly who and what we're fighting.)

As the USA gears up at a glacial pace to do something about ISIL, Boko Haram has taken inspiration from ISIL's success of late and declared a caliphate of their own in northern Nigeria. This at first glance is alarming, (and certainly it is at the pointy end) but a closer examination of the circumstances of each shows much vulnerability for each group.

The irony of their success is that they have by acquiring property and infrastructure tied themselves down and made them easier to find and kill. Looking at the origin of these two caliphates, the essential ingredients in the constitution (making of, not document) of each is instability, diversity and incompetence.

Instability pretty much speaks for itself, as power of some sort will always fill a vacuum. Diversity was a factor as they both play on differences, mostly in religion to sow discord and divide to conquer. Incompetence is related to instability, but a competent military force can hold things together against insurgents even against a background of political instability, NATO forces in Afghanistan and French forces in Mali as recent examples.

Of possible options to salvage Nigeria, the only plausible one I see right now is a military coup. Ideal would be some sort of replacement of the current corrupt government with something else, but that's called colonialism and it's apparently a bad idea. The Nigerian Army has been starved for resources by a government (not unrealistically) afraid of letting it get too powerful. The irony of an armed takeover of much of a country which weakens its' army to prevent a military coup is not lost on me, but they may not be seeing it in that light right now.

So, the real challenge with either of these situations is not crippling the respective caliphates; that is tactically dangerous for the operators and troops, but we know how to break things. The trap is the nation-building that was tried in Afghanistan and Iraq. Northern Iraq gives us the Kurds, who are this iteration's "Northern Alliance" and if we stay in long enough to remove the existential threat to them we'll have done enough, barring some residual SOF presence to help them with flare-ups.

Nigeria is another matter. They have all of the resources (natural, financial and human) to sort this themselves so I don't see a pressing need to put our guys on the line there. It occurs to me that this is an ideal situation for mercenaries. As stated, the Nigerians have a problem which requires a military solution, but are loathe to give the military the resources necessary, thus threatening the state. Executive Outcomes isn't around anymore, but I'm sure there's someone(s) else to fill that role for the government in Abuja if the latter are willing to pay.

By Christmas the Islamic State will be a thing of the past [update 14 Oct 14: maybe not], but of course the residue will remain troublesome. Boko Haram is more complex for the simple reason that less influential (powerful) parties care enough to get involved, leaving out the attitude of the Nigerian government and Armed Forces to foreigners doing the dirty work in their country. Regardless, three weeks of professional military operations with air support and intel could bring that caliphate crashing down too. It's just a question of "who" and "when".

Symptoms of the Diseased Body Politic

With the Global Whack-a-Mole on Terror sputtering along again in Iraq, the issue of "foreign fighters” is at the fore once more. The UK has announced an intention to do something half-assed about non-citizen passport holders who go off on jihad. While some may take this as "finally someone's doing something", I personally see it as a sign of the rot and weakness which will be the end of Western Civilization.

Western Civilization has had a rough go for sure and is far from perfect, but it has produced most of what makes modern life comfortable and reasonably long. Scientific Method, germ theory of disease, immunization and advances in horticulture and chemistry have all come from "us", immeasurably improving lives the world over and the only things which make our current population remotely sustainable. This doesn't even include the advances in materials sciences and computers which keep everything moving.

It's not about colour or race, it's about culture. Anybody can be "western" if they want to, and there was a time when it was the thing to aspire to. Two World Wars accelerated the collapse of the British Empire as well as that of the French, but not before both had left their modernizing and linguistic impressions across the globe. The ideas were loose but so were some others, specifically Communism and Islamism. It could of course be argued that Communism is a Western development, but despite its' geographical origin it fails the "keep moving forward" test. There was a time when that was about unrestrained development, but it moved past that (for most people) to be about doing things better than before, not just bigger.

That still exists, but it is increasingly opposed by limiting philosophies. Foremost in my estimation is the "Climate Change" lobby. If you actually look at who is doing what you'll notice two distinct groups. First are the profiteers, the ones pushing carbon trading scams schemes, the Solyndras and wind farm subsidy-seekers, and of course the "scientists" who have sold out for the grants. They are bad and dangerous, but their motivations are venal and easily understood. The real menace are the Luddite (watermelon) Greens.

EVERY proposal to limit greenhouse gases (they could start, simply by ceasing to breathe) would destroy advanced technological societies by wrecking their economies. The partial success they've had in North America has driven up electricity rates and decreased reliability of supply, a mere shadow of what they would like to do. See the UK for the next step from where we are.

All of this is to say that the seeds of the downfall of Western Civilization are sown from within, and we are proving ourselves "unfit" in the evolutionary biological sense by the death-wish we have as a society. Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory are the key tools to take us down from within. When Moral Relativism is your guiding philosophy the outcome seems to be that everything else is judged superior to your own culture.

I like Rule of Law and having a decent chance of surviving walking the streets at night; it may surprise you but the two things are not actually related. They are in fact a historically exceptionally (vanishingly) rare combination even in the imperfect form we find them today in our First World countries. The harsh truth is that if you hate your heritage so much that you'd deluge your country with "Diversity" the basic institutions created in that First World will be replaced by the Third World which you have imported. Think of India, but where it's too cold to live in a shack, but that's the best case going down that road.

Which brings us back to the intro paragraph. Thousands of Saudis flocking to al Qaeda and now ISIS is no surprise. What is more of surprise on the face of it is recent Muslim converts of European extraction doing the same. Scratch the surface a bit and it starts to make sense. If you think of these Salafist groups as both "a Cause" and as gangs, you will see the appeal to overlapping personality types.

The simplest type is the adventurer. Young men have been from time immemorial headed out on raids and general mayhem, and these find expression in gangs, pirates, drug cartels, etc. I'm sure you would find that many in ISIS' current ranks aren't "true believers" but more opportunistic criminals and psychopaths with a gloss of religion to make it look good to the group. The next group need to belong to something, and jihad is the most dynamic something going today. A sub-set of them are the types who hate Western society as decadent and overly permissive and find the intolerance and rigidity of Wahhabi-style Islam the perfect antidote.

If the Arabs hate us, big deal, we've been fighting them since Roman times at least. When our own people turn against us to join them we really need to think about root causes. The simplest way to look at this is as osmosis or as Nature abhorring a vacuum.

Our confidence in the way we do things has declined, and with it our confidence and assertiveness as a culture. People in most parts of the world like to be on the winning side, and right now that doesn't look like us. We need something to believe in, but the common culture we once had (even between British and French in Canada it wasn't fundamentally different) has been systematically dismantled and blackballed as the worst thing ever.

There's your vacuum. Something needs to take the place of the Iliad and Odyssey, Horatius at the Bridge, Charles Martel, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Vimy Ridge, the flag raising on Iwo Jima, etc. If you don't have passing familiarity with at least 5 of the above, well, you're not alone these days.

The past is treacherous territory, but at some point you have to choose something to believe in. It could be where you come from (dangerous to outsiders) religion (ditto) or whatever else, but if you don't stake out something as the Line Which Shall Not Be Crossed you'll have no anchor and no standards for how things should be. We can do better than the old days, but we need something for people of diverse backgrounds to rally to. The current Canadian government is bucking the trend and trying to bring our history back, but they won't last forever. As long as we can't give our people something worth dying for, radical Islam will be ready to fill that void.

Reaping the Wahhabi Whirlwind

Where do I even start with this?

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The king of Saudi Arabia has warned that extremists could attack Europe and the U.S. if there is not a strong international response to terrorism after the Islamic State group seized a wide territory across Iraq and Syria.
While not mentioning any terrorist groups by name, King Abdullah's statement appeared aimed at drawing Washington and NATO forces into a wider fight against the Islamic State group and its supporters in the region. Saudi Arabia openly backs rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is concerned that the breakaway al Qaeda group could also turn those very same weapons on the kingdom.
"If neglected, I am certain that after a month they will reach Europe and, after another month, America," he said at a reception for foreign ambassadors Friday.

The Saudi royal family has done more than any other agency in the world to spread the Islamic vision (Wahhabi) which brainwashes and spawns tens of thousands of jihadi head-choppers the world over, so this is pretty rich, coming from them.  For any who don't know how this works, Saudi money pays for the Wahabbi missionaries and madrassas (religious boys' schools) to spread the fundamentalist strain of Arabian Islam to the corners of the planet.    

Things are pretty dire in the region  still, but it looks like we are now in a combined rollback ("our side") and consolidation (IS).  This is a bit of good news, as taking key infrastructure back from IS, especially revenue generating stuff like oilfields and refineries, is vital to any kind of a coherent strategy to smash them and limit their ability to hurt people.

Too bad the Americans don't have a strategy.  The question of how much blood and treasure to devote to this conflict is not a simple one, but it is mostly a question of materiel (mostly JDAMs and Hellfires) which as I mentioned earlier you can get the Saudis to pay for, likewise fuel costs and maintenance.   As for the rest of it, I have a strategy for dealing with this as I'm sure the Planning elements in the Pentagon do, so this is just political incompetence. Obama's mantra for his second term seems to be "No, We Can't."

Of course they may also be distracted by the widening war in eastern Ukraine, but really that's Europe's problem.  The NATO side of it (i.e. existing members) is getting attention to tell the Russians unequivocally where the buck stops, but Putin is exploiting the EU grey area that is Ukraine.  It's a stretch to say that IS and the proxy (and increasingly direct) war for "Novorossiya" are connected, but the IS situation is certainly a distraction to the US and to some extent for NATO.

I guess it would be too much to ask that the various regions sort their own issues out, at least as long as the USA retains the global capability it still has.  This "multipolar" world still have one pole that sticks up more than the others, but it could stand a bit taller still under (sensible) decisive leadership, though that also appears too much to ask. 

Kill 'em all

I don't feel that yesterday's post was particularly coherent, a result of distractions and trying to fit it to the catchy title I came up with. This time I'll do what I usually do and write the title to fit the post. OK, cleverness failed me, but this one at least is to the point.

Western leaders are making dire pronouncements about doing something to ISIL/Islamic State, so something will happen, but two questions leap to mind. The first is "what"; the second is "how". There is already concern about mission creep, and the mission hasn't even been defined yet. The follows is my thumbnail sketch of the strategic problem posed by those assholes.

They are smack in the middle of the Middle East, straddling the increasingly irrelevant border between two failed or failing states. Their pernicious medieval nihilism, rated by at least one local resident as "worse than Genghis Khan" (who was at least religiously tolerant) is also drawing in like-minded psychopaths from around the world, like the one (apparently a Brit) who executed James Foley, constantly swelling the ranks.

I have heard the terms "counter-terrorism" and "counter-insurgency" in peoples' attempts to put a name on what needs to be done, but I have a simpler word: War. The self-proclaimed "Islamic State" is setting itself up for failure, a victim of its' own success. By making a functioning state, with its' own economy and services, you give us things that we can attack. So far it's been artillery positions, vehicles and checkpoints, but with an expansion of effort it can be a whole lot more.

In the global view, it's an ideology, really a nihilistic death cult and as an idea you can never eliminate it. Some form of Islamic violence has been around for centuries and it will continue, the issue is to minimize the damage it can do. We need to kill them in heaps and the only way to do that is when they bunch together, like they are now. We also need to limit their resources, so follow the money.

Apparently for some time now ISIL has been selling oil from seized oil fields to the rump Syria controlled by Assad. This represents the first thing I'd take away from them, even before liberating territory. You then pump that oil and sell it to finance your operations, but I can't imagine Obama'd have the stones to do that when even Bush II didn't. Concurrent with that wreck every bit of military hardware and transport you can see to weaken them militarily. Give reliable local auxiliaries (read: the Kurds, possibly Jordan) whatever they need by way of armament and logistic support. The Iraqis have Iran to backstop them, so they can sink or swim.

Osama bin Laden's grand plan was to "bleed to bankruptcy" the USA, and he did a fair job of it, but it wasn't fatal. Knocking the current set of idiots in ISIL back to a manageable local menace will require a large investment, but as opposed to Operation Iraqi Freedom there is a clear and undisputed reason to pitch in for this job. I'd be leaning on the Saudis to underwrite a lot of this and use self-interested local troops to minimize your boots on the ground.

Even in decline, the USA remains the only power capable of driving this bus, mostly due to the airpower requirements. Whoever is coordinating operations, there has to be a coherent plan, and mine already represents the 70% solution. You'll never actually kill them all but they need a serious culling and disrupting, so bring on the A-10s and Apaches, and keep the weapons and ammo flowing to Erbil.

Make a desert and call it peace

The IDF is hip-deep in Gaza again, and just like last time there is no real end in sight:

The bitter fighting in the Shejaiya neighbourhood in the eastern part of Gaza City, which has caused heavy civilian casualties and the deaths of some 13 Israeli soldiers, could mark a turning point in this crisis.

That, sadly, does not necessarily mean that the conflict has reached its peak.

The Israeli military still believes that it has more of its mission to complete.

Indeed, Hamas fighters may be emboldened by their ability to inflict pain on the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and they too may not want an immediate halt.

But the fact that the battle has moved into a heavily-populated urban area with reports in some cases of house-to-house fighting means that the civilian death toll will rise markedly.

With it will come added pressure from outside to end the operation once and for all.

The "pull back to the 1967 borders" two-state solution is the default position of the UN, but the current fighting is an example of what Israel has to look forward to if they do that. Gaza was vacated by Israel in 2005, and the reward for that has been constant terrorism from the "liberated" territory.

I 100% guarantee that if the Palestinians stopped trying to kill them and behaved like civilized neighbours (see Jordan for an example) public opinion in Israel would swing away from the ultra-Zionist settlers and find compromise on territorial issues. 1967 borders aren't going to happen (Syria ain't getting the Golan back and East Jerusalem probably isn't going anywhere) but trade would normalize and some permanent borders could be agreed on.

"[E]nd the operation once and for all" huh? There is only one way that would happen, and the current term for that is a choice between "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide". In any other age if a more powerful nation had a neighbour like Hamas, the entire population would be put to the sword to remove an existential threat. That's the only way to solve a problem like this, as Ender Wiggen could tell you.

As the linked article states, there are a lot of differences between this operation and the last one (Cast Lead) in 2009. Hamas' weaponry has upgraded across the board, from longer range rockets which can reach pretty much all of Israel to cutting-edge anti-armour weapons in the street fighting. The former is unacceptable, the latter a tactical problem which will increase Israeli casualties, and might under other circumstances have curtailed what is essentially a punitive raid.

What completely changes the game are the infiltration tunnels radiating out from Gaza. The purpose of these is as sally ports to run attack and kidnap groups out into Israel. The blatantly murderous intent these display is something no government could ignore (and expect to survive), and Netanyahu has a real challenge on his hands.

If relations with Egypt were actually good (although they aren't terrible at present) Israel could co-ordinate with them for a set of huge transient camps, and push the entire population out of Gaza long enough to search and destroy any jihadi/Hamas types who really want to fight (read: die) and more importantly, the entire arsenal and all of the tunnels. If you're not allowed to kill them all, you can certainly cripple their ability to hurt you, it's just a question of how much of the latter the IDF can accomplish this time around.

International, especially UN, pressure to cease operations is unlikely to sway the Israeli government (or people) as Israel has few friends there and those friends still have their back. Any slackening of pressure strengthens Hamas' position, so now we wait and see who blinks first. Whatever happens, it won't be "once and for all".

Know Your Enemy

I don't have anything really to add to this, but this is a particularly thorough (short-form) explanation of what makes modern political Islam particularly dangerous to what we consider civilization.  The irony is that it is most dangerous to those who consider themselves Muslims.

They call themselves the Army of God (Jund Allah) and claim to be fighting to unite mankind under the banner of Islam as “the only true faith.” To achieve that goal, they believe they should revive the Islamic Caliphate, the theocratic empire developed after the death of Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD.

An image from a propaganda video uploaded on June 8th shows ISIL militants firing near the Iraqi city of Tikrit.Photo: Getty Images

 Adepts of the caliphate movement are present throughout the world, including the United States, under different labels. In many places, from the Philippines to Nigeria, passing by Thailand, India, Afghanistan and Syria, they have taken up arms to capture a chunk of territory as the embryo of their dream empire.

 This is worth the 5-10 minutes it'll take you to read it.

Legion Etranger a louer?

The world (e.g. mainstream media) has finally figured out that Boko Haram is an unpleasant organisation.  Think of them as Al-Queda of the sub-Sahara and you get the idea; they've been running amok in Nigeria for a few years now, so everyone posting "Bring Back our Girls" to Facebook are both behind the times and useless to the actual situation.

As is my wont, I don't simply enumerate problems, I propose practical solutions.  Knee-jerk response is for Nigeria to get its' head out of its' ass and send the entire army on a search and destroy mission to wipe BH from the face of the earth.  Rank corruption and incompetence make that impractical or it would have happened already, so something else then.

The French have shown the way in Africa (Mali and most recently Central African Republic), and as un-PC as it is, it's 1st-World armies to solve 3rd-World problems.  In my world, if it's locals causing the problem, opposed locals should be able to solve it with minimal assistance.  People on Facebook seem to think this is America's responsibility, a default option with surprisingly racist undertones if you think about it.  Normal media racism is directed solely against whites (damn all that privilege!) but when you assume that Western armies are the only ones capable of dealing with African problems, that's a flat-out colonial attitude.  What's worse is that it's demonstrably true (Rwanda's RPF in 1994 an exception).

The key to an effective military is professionalism, something that the anarchy and crony despotism of most African states doesn't produce a lot of.  I'm reminded of a report I saw from the mess in South Sudan earlier this year.  In an army column sent to rout some rebels there was one young Sandhurst-trained Lt who appeared to know his business, but the rest of them were hopeless.  Individual platoon commanders led by crony generals don't get much done, however.

So Nigeria needs western troops to do the job right, but the West is broke, tired and overstretched, not likely to jump into things.  The necessary ingredients for a successful intervention are:

1. Competent, motivated troops;
2. Political will, and;
3. Money.  

"We" have 1, Nigeria has 3 (pay us in oil if need be), and as long as Nigeria has 2 as well, we can make something work.

I think this was the origin of "Hammer's Slammers" but using our trained volunteer troops as mercenaries is as close to an optimal solution to this problem as we are likely to see.  There is no shortage of type-A adrenalin junkies in Western armies to volunteer for a unit like this and putting an English-speaking international Brigade Group together is feasible, however unlikely it may be. 

Failing that, maybe it's time to bring "Mad" Mike Hoare out of retirement.  He's a bit past it of course, but he and the other Congo Mercenaries showed how it could be done.  Nigeria is unlikely to hire a bunch of primarily white mercs for this job, but I wonder how close we are to the point where the government and the populace will countenance anything that will get the job done?  As things stand, the government is the problem so I don't hold out much hope for improvement in the near term.

Update: the Yanks are sending people to help out at the request of the Nigerian government, so we'll see if they provide the nucleus of a force to wipe Boko Haram off the map. I'm willing to be surprised.

That (Big) Bird has Flown

I have been quite remiss in keeping this up-to-date, but you get what you pay for as always and I'm back, so let the rejoicing begin. With that out of the way, I have not managed to whip up a sense of righteous indignation/outrage about anything of late but I do have some observations on recent events and these follow, maybe (no promises) even in some coherent fashion.

At this point it has been universally recognized that Mitt Romney clobbered "The One" in the first candidates debate last week, and I really wish I didn't understand why so many people were surprised by this.  Take a look at Romney's accomplishments vs Obama's and you'll see the difference between someone who gets (real) stuff done and someone who talks a good game.  At least, until the latter doesn't when faced with someone as smart as him (surprise!) who has an actual plan, or at least direction.

Some online poll says that I agree with Romney's positions about 85% versus something like 12% for Obama so full disclosure on which way I'm leaning on the faint chance that it wasn't blindingly obvious.  Also irrelevant since I don't live there and won't be voting for anyone, but I will say it here (and I'm not alone) that America needs to dump Obama's crew if they are to have any chance to get back on their feet.  There is no magic bullet that will do it, but the axe has to swing around the bureaucracy quite a bit, and PBS is but the leading edge of it.

If domestic issues bore you (though they shouldn't, since you live "there") we have vast room for foreign policy improvement from the last 10 years.  I use 10 years to encompass not getting out of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion and occupation of Iraq (for no material or geopolitical gain) from 2003, not to mention the mess Obama made to compound all of that.  Following the "triage" approach I advocated in the last blog entry one needs to know one's enemies, and no amount of ignoring people who want you dead will change how they feel; just ask Lara Logan, she should know.

Apparently the current US administration's assertions that the assault on the Benghazi consulate was "spontaneous" never convinced many people (and none who paid any attention).  This, especially including the murder of the US Ambassador and other US nationals on what is under international law US soil, is grounds for some major payback; indeed wars have been started for less in a less pussy-footing age.  What has Obama done?  Sent the FBI who spent less than a day investigating, and no time at all running the terrorist fucks to ground and killing them with smart bombs and Spec Ops guys.

I have always asserted that there is no point having a big stick unless people believe that you will use it.  The way to make them believe is use said stick to kill people who mess with you.  This will make your enemies think twice and your friends multiply when they see that you both can and WILL protect them.  Instead, the Obama legacy to America's already dismal foreign policy is to lose what influence they had, even a year ago, in the Middle East.  Just ask Hosni Mubarak; oh wait...

Since everyone (whose opinion matters) likes a plan versus mere complaints, here's what I think the US has to do to get back on its feet:

1. Cut all aid to countries which are not actively helpful to US/Western interests;
2. Pull all major ground forces out of everywhere in Asia and the Middle East;
3. Leave a "trip wire" in startegic areas; intel-gathering locations with robust defence and enough offensive punch to punish anyone who whacks the hive. Back this up with Carrier Task Forces, weighted toward the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
4. More work for these Carrier groups, keep Chinese territorial aggrandizement in check, particularly in relation to the legitimate territorial claims of China's neighbors.  The second-biggest (but the biggest practical one) stick in the arsenal had better be good for something other than hoovering up taxpayer dollars.
5. At home, chop, de-fund and repeal as necessary to trim the bureaucracy and cut red tape which holds  back economic progress and energy security.

Practically I see the establishments on either side of the US political landscape keeping any useful changes from being made, the proliferation of special-interest and NIMBY groups having made any decisions on the simplest of projects virtually impossible.  I see Romney as a better choice than four more years of Obama (and it increasingly looks like O sees it that way too!) but I'm not so naive as to think there's a magic bullet.  Well, "enlightened despot" has the best chance, but that's the rarest of beasts, and not on the menu in the States anytime soon. 

BFFs no more, Pakistan

First I have to laugh at the ironic black humour of this:

One of the participants of the rally, Abdullah Ismail, passed away after he was taken to Mayo Hospital. Witnesses said he had complained of feeling unwell from the smoke from US flags burnt at the rally.

That's out of sequence in the linked article with the below, but ya gotta lead with something like that. The "meat" follows:

Hafiz Saeed alleged that the film, Innocence of Muslims, had been produced with the backing of US establishment. He said the director, the producer and all those involved in the production and release of the movie must be hanged publicly. “The US must make a law against blasphemy – or we will not let the US consulates in Pakistan function,” he said.

As dismal as we are at responding to the threat of Islam, I don't see that happening any time soon. Also, as things are at the moment (protests and embassy assaults all over the "Muslim" world) I think this is an easy "either/or" choice.

He said a resolution condemning the movie in the parliament was not enough. Instead, President Asif Ali Zardari must announce jihad against countries like the US that supported attacks on Islam. The Organisation of Islamic Countries Conference should announce a boycott of US goods. Ijazul Haq, the PML-Z chief, said the people had shown their loyalty to Islam. He said the government leader’s silence was shameful. He said no one had dared commit blasphemy during his father Ziaul Haq’s rule.

There we are (emphasis mine), the "j" word which useful idiots in the West refuse to understand. My response to that: "Fucking bring it, assholes." I encourage everyone in Pakistan who isn't an idiot to get the hell out if you can before these guys get their way, because I don't see things improving even if all of us infidels pack up and let the region fall (completely) apart.

It's late, but nonetheless still diplomatic triage/cost-benefit time. Afghanistan: FUBAR, leave now. Pakistan: circling the drain, leave soonest. Egypt: c. 70M people who don't like us, tread carefully with essential staff only. Libya: either "you broke it you bought it" or (my advice) write it off after busting the heads of the people who killed the US Ambassador. Tunisia: we can and should help them smack down the Salafists as there are enough people there who don't want them.

For that small sample we're 1 for 5 and I could keep going but things don't get a lot brighter with the trouble spots of Asia and the Mid East. The upshot is that "we" have limited resources and should spend them defending our actual interests and friends (e.g. Israel, Tunisia) and let the rest of them do whatever they want within their own borders, much as is happening in Syria right now.

Some people wring their hands (when they are actually paying attention) and think we should intervene there a la Libya. I say: take a look at how well that's worked out (and Iraq, and Afghanistan) and tell me again that we should take sides in this thing. Turkey, Iran and Saudi are all players in that region, I say leave them to it. Hell, those three are players in Iraq too so leave them to it. Afghanistan has China, Iran, India, Pakistan and Russia to tug at it, so why are we dragging things out.

When I was in Afghanistan five years ago these "Green on Blue" killings were essentially unheard of, now there's at least one a month. When it's at the point when you suspend training with the host nation because you're afraid they'll kill your trainers you're long past doing any good.

Back to Pakistan, where I began this. While there are elements of Pakistani society which are not inimical to our own, if we have to choose between them and, say, their great rival India, we can and should work with the latter. India is a bulwark against both radical Islam and China growing unchecked, both of which are in our interests.

Undoubtedly the Chinese would see this differently, but China shares the first problem, so all of us getting along is a plan if we can swing it. I encourage you to read "The Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel Huntington if you haven't already for a bit more in-depth realpolitik than you will get in a few posts here. There is both the original article from 1993 and the book, both worth your time.

Speaking of threats to Consular staff...

Some disaffected Copt in the US has made some anti-Islam video (I can totally see where this came from) and people are dying again:

The US ambassador to Libya is among four Americans killed in an attack on the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, President Barack Obama has confirmed.
Unidentified armed men stormed the grounds on Tuesday night in a protest over a US-produced film that is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.

I can't say this is a big surprise; the "democracy" we've enabled in Libya is an armed free-for-all. You will note the lack of embassy attacks while Qaddafi was running the place. I'm so glad we helped bring things to this point; I guess we can hope that it gets better, but things are looking pretty Mad Max for the near future.

Egypt has done a similarly ineffective job of defending the US embassy, thankfully without lethal result, and the Muslim Brotherhood (in its' English Twitter feed at least) has condemned the attack. The problem as always is with hard-case Muslims, of which there is a nigh-inexhaustible supply in places like Egypt. The offending video was put on the Internet (what isn't?) and it's not like it was beamed from space onto the sides of the Pyramids and to the mobile phone and TV of every Muslim in the world. Even if it was, that is merely a nuisance not exactly "eye for an eye" stuff.

Canada cut ties to Iran for a bunch of reasons, but one of them was a belief (based on the storming of the UK embassy late last year) that Iran was not serious about protecting consular territory and staff. It looks like we can put a few other places in that category, although to be fair these things sometimes catch host governments by surprise. I won't give Iran the benefit of that doubt, as they have a bit of a track record of storming embassies...

Particularly disgusting in this case is the declaration of the US Embassy in Cairo apologizing for "the abuse of freedom of speech". The inside dhimmi threat of "our" people kowtowing to "radical" (read: observant) Muslims is FAR more dangerous than any number of rioting protesters in foreign lands, even armed ones. The loss of an embassy and/or staff is a tactical loss, but at least serves as a litmus test of who our friends really are. When Western governments start apologizing for violence against THEM, that is a disaster.

Fortunately in this case Hillary has come out strongly against the Cairo Embassy "statement" so things at least aren't any worse in the big picture than they were before the attacks. It is interesting to speculate on whether there would have been such a strong repudiation had the White House not been in the middle of an (actual) election campaign. As I write this I expect (as do many others) that the latest paroxysm of Islamic rage over something stupid is not yet spent.

Better the devil you know...

Completely and totally predictable, inevitable even:

"There were always Christians in Qusayr -- there were around 10,000 before the war," says Leila, the matriarch of the Khouri clan. Currently, 11 members of the clan are sharing two rooms. They include the grandmother, grandfather, three daughters, one husband and five children. "Despite the fact that many of our husbands had jobs in the civil service, we still got along well with the rebels during the first months of the insurgency." The rebels left the Christians alone. The Christians, meanwhile, were keen to preserve their neutrality in the escalating power struggle. But the situation began deteriorating last summer, Leila says, murmuring a bit more before going silent.

"We're too frightened to talk," her daughter Rim explained, before mustering the courage to continue. "Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners. They stirred the local rebels against us," she says. Soon, an outright campaign against the Christians in Qusayr took shape. "They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away," she says. "We were constantly accused of working for the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed."

This is about Syria of course, but it can be any Muslim-majority country anywhere in the world as soon as the non-Muslim minorities lose protection. Assad, being from a religious minority himself was the only protection the Christians, Alawis and Druze had from the influx of Salafist idiots who pop up like mushrooms as soon as repressive but stable regimes start falling. Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, now Syria are seeing the same pattern as al Queda and others rush to exploit the ensuing power vacuums resultant from the respective regime changes.

Solutions? Bullets and Hellfires again I'm afraid, as there is no reasoning with fanatics. The Americans will grease the skids for the jihadis as they have since Iran in 1979 with lamentably predictable results for anyone who doesn't want to live in a dystopian throwback to the imagined "golden age of Islam" of the 6-7th C; in practical terms "the Stone Age" as mentioned in the linked Spiegel article.

I previously suggested setting up border enclaves for the Christians and Druze, and the Golan Heights would serve this purpose well. If Israel will offer citizenship to any non-Muslims who want to re-settle there, they will have a chance to do-over the South Lebanon buffer zone to protect themselves from Hezbollah and whatever Syria metastasizes to post-Assad. It also would strengthen Israel's de-facto annexation of Golan, and in the zero-sum world of the Middle East that which makes Israel stronger makes worse groups (pretty much everyone in the immediate neighbourhood) weaker.

Of course I don't know anything about Muslims so it's all paranoid right-wing fantasy that they drive out everyone who won't knuckle under to them, right? Sorry Genie, the real world isn't what they teach in school these days (if it ever was, to be fair) and Anglo-Saxon males and/or the USA are not the authors of all the ills of the world.

And the Truth shall see you fired

First of all, unless I name somebody specifically I am talking in generalities about groups of people. Groups of people are stupid, and anything I say about them may not apply to individual members of those groups.

Secondly, I will not deny "inconvenient" truth and I will admit when I have been PROVEN wrong. I will not roll over to group think or political correctness, but the real world has ways of putting the screws to you to at least shut you up. With that intro I will wade into this "Wired" article about elements of the US armed forces and Islam.

FACT: "Islam" means "submission", in this case to the will of Allah as promulgated by a certain Mohammad in the 6th Century AD.

FACT: "People of the Book" e.g. Christians and Jews (ha!) have limited rights in Islamic society, such as being subject to the jizya, or poll tax and a proscription on building or even repairing churches or synagogues. All of these restrictions are calculated to make it more attractive for you to convert. If you're a straight-out "pagan" it's simply conversion, slavery or death.

It's in the book, I'm not making it up. If all of this sounds like how you'd like to live, feel free to move to some Muslim country and enjoy. You might want to look into the local interpretation of Sharia before you move though...

Another fact before I jump into the deep end here: most major religions contain all sorts of barbaric old-school ideas which have no place in a modern educated and advanced society. What sets Islam apart is the "mission from God" to make the entire world Submit to it. Again, in the book(s).

Old news of course and a well-trod path here at AotF. However there is an institutional policy in many Western governments to suppress the facts as they relate to Islam and its' (and by extension its' followers) intentions.

A threat can be defined by both intention and capability. If someone intends you harm but is a quadriplegic with no influence, they are not a threat. Intention with capability is always a threat, and 1.4 billion or so self-identified people who to some extent or another think that everyone else is wrong and should convert or else could indeed be considered a threat to, well, everyone else.

Of course, most people are not particularly hard-core about what they believe and Muslims are no exception. For this reason I consider that some of the tactics discussed are a bit extreme under present conditions, e.g. using Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki as historical precedents for dealing with Mecca and Medina.

This was of course within the context of an exercise specifically designed to get people talking about what's really out there instead of the "see-no-Islam" policy of the US government. It's not the first time I've seen the idea of nuking Mecca and it won't be the last. It's a fantastically bad idea under anything less than an apocalyptic Jihad-Gotterdammerung against everyone else, where you'd better be prepared to kill over 1 billion people to neutralize that threat.

The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance, and some simple immigration policy changes could defend SUPERIOR Western civilization (yes, I said it) against creeping Islamicization of our Protestant Work-Ethic-derived societies. It doesn't mean accept nobody from Muslim countries, just screen them effectively for their willingness and ability to adapt to the way we do things. For the record this precept applies to everyone else too; what we need to screen out are ALL of the extremists.

Islam as a religion, even more so as an ideology, is a threat to human progress. Hell, organized religion in general is, but nothing else is so violent about it these days. People don't critique Islam because idiots threaten to kill them for "heresy" (and these are not mere threats), or less lethally they can be fired or demoted by panicky PC types. I read through the .pdf I linked to and nothing there is untrue, as inflammatory as some of it may be. If your only defence against an idea is to suppress it, guess what; you're in the wrong, not the people stirring things up.

The only way to deal with "true believers" of any stripe is to kill them. Avoidably killing a lot of other people while doing it though is both morally unacceptable and counter-productive. Accordingly the current assassination-by-drone-and-Spec Ops squaddies is the best maintenance policy, keeping the leadership off-balance and surgically removing the most pressing problem children. No nukes required, and even bringing that up undermines your message, allowing you to be written off as a crank. On the other hand if it ever comes to that, well, at least somebody is thinking about how to do it.