re: "Iraqi Irony"

Prof. Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers provided the longer perspective of the historian.

Money quote(s):

"Amid all the stories about the ongoing violence in Syria, the most disturbing is the possibility that President Bashar Assad could either deploy the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons that his government claims it has, or provide it to terrorists.

There are suggestions that at least some of Assad’s supposed stockpile may have come from Saddam Hussein’s frantic, eleventh-hour efforts in 2002 to hide his own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in neighboring Syria. Various retired Iraqi military officers have alleged as much. Although the story was met with general neglect or scorn from the American media, the present US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, long ago asserted his belief in such a weapons transfer."

Weapons of mass destruction = WMD

That classification, borrowed from former Soviet terminology rather than having a Western provenance, can include what Europeans used to call ABC (atomic-biological-chemical), the U.S. used to call NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical), and which are now more commonly expanded to CBRN (chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear) weapons.

In other words, WMD was never just about nukes.

"The Bush administration fixated on WMD in justifying the invasion of Iraq while largely ignoring more than 20 other writs to remove Saddam, as authorized by Congress in October 2002. That obsession would come back to haunt George W. Bush when stockpiles of deployable WMD failed to turn up in postwar Iraq. By 2006, “Bush lied; thousands died,” was the serial charge of the antiwar Left. But before long, such depots may finally turn up in Syria."

There were 23 writs, but more than one of them had to do with WMD.

"Many Americans understandably questioned how civilian and military leaders allowed a brilliant three-week victory over Saddam to degenerate into a disastrous five-year war before the surge finally salvaged Iraq. That fighting and reconstruction anywhere in the Middle East are difficult under any circumstances was forgotten. The press preferred instead to charge that the singular incompetence or malfeasance of Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld led to the unnecessary costs in American blood and treasure."

CAA would have to be numbered among those "Many Americans." But no matter how good a plan we might have developed (which we didn't), in any events Iraq turned into at least three different wars, some of them over-lapping in time and space, with some former enemies morphing into allies.

"George W. Bush’s problems in conducting difficult wars in the Middle East were inherent in the vast differences between cultures"

True that. None of the countries in that region are going to look like post-reconstruction Germany or Japan no matter how long we stay there.

"For all the biases and incompetence of Nouri al-Maliki’s elected government in Iraq, the Middle East’s worst dictatorship now seems to have become the region’s most stable constitutional government. Given Iraq’s elections, the country was relatively untouched by the mass “Arab Spring” uprisings. And despite sometimes deadly Sunni-Shiite terrorist violence and the resurgence of al Qaeda, Iraq’s economy, compared with those of some of other nations in the Middle East, is stable and expanding."

&

"The moral of the story is that history cannot be written as it unfolds. In the case of Iraq, we still don’t know the full story of Saddam’s WMD, the grand strategic effects of the Iraq War, the ripples from the creation of the Iraqi republic, or the relative degree of incompetence of any American administration at war in the Middle East — and we won’t for many years to come."

8/1

re: "The Responsibilities of Civilian Policy Advocates: Syria, R2P, and the Obligation of Honesty"

Peter J. Munson at the Small Wars Journal blog ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") deconstructs some of the Syrian fantastists.

Money quote(s):

"My views on the responsibility to protect concept and its advocates cavalier promotion of their cavalierly acronymed (R2P) construct previously boiled over into a debate on civil-military relations. When I rhetorically asked on Twitter if they were ready to head down to the recruiting station to back up their convictions, I was accused of stepping afoul of the dictates of civilian control of the military. I had no such intentions, as I subsequently stated. Instead, I was asserting that R2Pers' moral certitudes were not backed up by a sufficient and sober counting of the costs. Thinking of the "sacrifice" in the sterile terms that have accompanied a decade's worth of airport thank-yous and sporting events kickoffs is not the same as the heart-rending, gut-wrenching feeling of losing someone close to you; the flesh-tearing, life-changing pain of being maimed or killed by war; or the numbing, mind-altering experience of searching for parts of bodies, pulling dead children from rubble, and the like. These are not a prerequisite for policy prescription, however the very terrible realities of war should not be glossed over in an attempt to sell lethal policy. The advocates will state that these things are on-going in Syria, that they have contemplated them, and that we have a responsibility to stop it. They will also state that the military has signed up for such things and that it must stand ready to make such sacrifices." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Stating that such attitudes make my blood boil greatly overestimates my capacity for understatement.

Those without "skin in the game" are always eager for someone else to make the "necessary" sacrifices.

A pox on their house!

"They also believe, against the weight of recent experience and longer historical example, that this will somehow be different. That nifty technology will somehow make it easier, cleaner. That aseptic corridors will be acceded to by a dictator determined not to find his end in a roadside ditch under the blows of his once-subjects, a gunshot, and the slow bleed, in great pain, during which he knows he is dying. This image is undoubtedly seared into Assad's mind and that of his coterie. But, surely, he will play fair with us."

This time will be different. Just like socialism imposed from the top down, this time, will work and not cause a society to implode into an abattoir.

Pay no attention to every single time we've intervened with high-minded motives rather than those selfish sorts of national interest-y ones which would cause us to stick around and finish the job.

"They do not see that their desire for a limited and humane intervention faces the vote of a determined enemy that will want to draw us into the quagmire, will want our precision-guided munitions to fall into the ambiguous targets of war, where cameras capture the wreckage of children, bright clothes smeared with blood and dusted with the gray remnants of a home collapsed upon them."

No, it'll the those red-stater baby-killers who had, after all, "signed up for such things" with the actual blood on their hands, rather than the R2P folks upon whom the guilt will morally reside.

"We will stand, the lines now vanished, trampled by the movement of patrols into the ambiguity, not wanting to press beyond our conception of a limited intervention, but unable to leave. The R2Pers will not be in the midst of this. They will be writing from their study, incredulous that military and civilian officials could have botched such a simple mission once again. Wondering why we hadn't learned all the lessons of the better wars we could throw.

Surely, it cannot be as bad as all that, you might say. True. It may not be as bad as I say, but it will surely be more messy than the glib op-ed that Anne-Marie Slaughter threw together for the New York Times last week. CNN reports that the military is looking at using as many as 75,000 troops just to secure potential Syrian chemical weapons sites. The realities of a Syrian intervention are far messy than Dr. Slaughter is willing to countenance in her infantile fantasy masquerading as policy prescription. Therein lies the rub. Dr. Slaughter is a respected policy elite and people take her ideas seriously. Therefore, she has a responsibility to be honest and open in her advocacy with regard to the risks and complexities of her proposal." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Happily, Prof. Slaughter has left her high-ranking position at State Dept. so at least she won't be able to directly screw things up for us anymore.

"Slaughter states that simply arming the opposition would lead to destabilizing civil war. However, arming the Free Syrian Army to create "no-kill zones," that is enabling the FSA to control swathes of territory just within the sovereign borders of Syria would somehow bring an end to the butchery. Not mentioned is how the FSA would take or hold this territory against the likely violent disagreement of the regime. We are talking about battle here. Not potshots against regime forces, but the taking and holding of territory. This is not just glossed over in the Slaughter plan, but completely ignored. She speaks blithely of the use of special forces to enable the FSA, and how they could enable the FSA to cordon population centers and rid them of snipers. What you don't see here is the bloody battle and likely airstrikes needed to push the bulk of the regime forces away from these population centers to be cordoned. Nor does it discuss the brutal and psychologically exhausting game of counter-sniper operations.

Slaughter next discusses locating tank and artillery units. What she does not discuss is what is to be done once they are located. Will they be showered with leaflets? Or will she expect us to neutralize them? That is a clean term. It involves using aircraft, which means destroying an extremely capable integrated air defense system (IADS). While there has been commentary to the contrary, this is much different than slipping through once or twice on raids as the Israelis have done. Rest assured, any use of air in Syria will require an elaborate take-down of the IADS that will shock the bleeding hearts in our midst. Even with the use of new technology to electronically disable the system temporarily, any attacker will use bombs to take them out permanently. Also, no matter how precise the weapons, whether used against IADS, tanks, or artillery, the amount of explosive and shards of metal required to destroy such targets creates a deadly bloom that extends well beyond their intended target. When missiles, artillery pieces, or tanks are located in and amongst civilian structures, collateral damage (as described above far more messily) will occur."

Mr. Munson went into some considerable detail pointing out the absolute idiocy of Prof. Slaughter's concept of operations for Syria.

He concluded:

"I do not believe that only those with military experience are qualified to advocate military intervention. Nor do I object to the primacy of civilian control over the military. I do object to policy advocation so simplistic and incorrect as to be deliberately misleading. War and military force is a brutal and imprecise instrument. It is ugly, destructive, wasteful, and stupid. It makes no clean cuts, creates no neat solutions. Sometimes it is the only option and sometimes the terrible horrors of war are required to prevent catastrophe. We must be brutally honest and circumspect, however, in our advocacy of policy. If the benefits truly outweigh the costs, let us discuss and air the best estimates and make an informed decision. Advocacy like that of Anne-Marie Slaughter, however, is so disingenuous and so powerful with the pulpit that she commands as to be its own sort of evil. It is an evil that I hope she corrects."

3/4

re: "In Other News: Brits Now Helping to Dispose of Iraqi WMDs that Never Existed in the First Place"

Emperor Misha I at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler ("HQ of the Rottweiler Empire. An Affiliate of the VRWC.") noted a change in the accepted wisdom that caused nary a ripple.

Money quote(s):

"On a related, but rarely explored (by the DNCMedia) note, we keep hearing concerns about Assad using WMDs against the rebels, concerns based on him threatening to do so himself, yet we somehow barely ever hear about anybody wondering where on Earth he got those WMDs from. It’s as if they just popped into existence caused by an Expert Level “Create WMD” spell or something.

Which reminds His Imperial Viciousness of something that a lot of us “fundamentally unserious” conservatives were harping on about years and years ago rather than just accepting the leftist memes like good “pragmatic conservatives” are supposed to do lest we be branded Visigoths or something, namely that satellite surveillance showed a strange and rather large number of convoys traveling from Iraq into Syria’s Bekaa Valley for no apparent reason during Bush’s 18 month “rush” to war against poor innocent brown people." (Emphasis in original post. - CAA.)

This is something that has bothered CAA for years. WMDs (which chemical weapons most certainly are) don't just conjure themselves into being.

And to see the swift metamorpheses of Assad from axis-of-evil to reliable-partner and back to WMD-equipped-despot evokes echoes of Saddam's similar transmogrifications. WTF?

7/31

re: "The Muslim Brotherhood's American Defenders"

Caroline Glick re-posted her Jerusalem Post article at CarolineGlick.Com ("the most prominent woman in Israel"), regarding America's current mis-comprehension of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Money quote(s):

"On Wednesday, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah's massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week."

&

"Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel's understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism.

Brennan's outlook on this subject was revealed in a speech he gave two years ago in Washington. In that talk, Brennan spoke dreamily about Hezbollah. As he put it, "Hezbollah is a very interesting organization."

He claimed it had evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" to a militia and then into an organization with members in Lebanon's parliament and serving in Lebanon's cabinet."

This is what comes of having a "war on terrorism" and "violent extremism" rather than responding directly to the organizations and movements which have employed those tactics against us.

Namely the MB and her sister- and daughter-organizations like Hezbollah.

"Brennan's amazing characterization of Hezbollah's hostile takeover of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration's view of Islamic jihadists generally.

If there are "moderate elements," in Hezbollah, from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah's Sunni jihadist counterpart - the Muslim Brotherhood - is downright friendly."

&

"On February 10, 2011, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made this position clear in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper's testimony was given the day before then Egyptian president and longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from office. Mubarak's coerced resignation owed largely to the Obama administration's decision to end US support for his regime and openly demand his immediate abdication of power. As Israel warned, Mubarak's ouster paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood's ascendance to power in Egypt.

In his testimony Clapper said, "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc."

Watching Clapper's testimony in Israel, the sense across the political spectrum, shared by experts and casual observers alike was that the US had taken leave of its senses."

DNI Clapper is not a working-level intelligence analyst. He has to function in the political realm and that can be expected to color his public remarks.

One does have to wonder what the non-public recommendations and assessments look like.

(CAA has no direct experience regarding the DNI but there are people CAA respects who have, and they respect him.)

"The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope."

How could such a high-level US official claim that such an organization is "largely secular"?

Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the US. For instance, in a sermon from October 2010, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the US."

One can always blame bad policy decisions on bad advice, but you then have to shoulder the blame for choosing bad advisors.

"The obliviousness of Brennan and Clapper to the essential nature of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are symptoms of the overarching ignorance informing the Obama administration's approach to Middle Eastern realities."

&

"(I)n October 2011, according to the Beirut-based Arabic news portal al Nashra, Dalia Mogahed, Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. According to al Nashra, Mogahed canceled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt.

The White House canceled the meeting days after Rai visited with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. During that meeting Rai angered the French Foreign Ministry when he warned that it would be a disaster for Syria's Christian minority, and for Christians throughout the region, if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown. Rai based this claim on his assessment that Assad would be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood- dominated Islamist regime.

And nine months later it is obvious that he was right. With Syria's civil war still raging throughout the country, the world media is rife with reports about Syria's Christians fleeing their towns and villages en masse as Islamists from the Syrian opposition target them with death, extortion and kidnapping."

See my comment above about choosing bad advisors.

"Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere?

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, and perhaps to cause the administration to rethink its policies, a group of US lawmakers, members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees led by Rep. Michele Bachmann sent letters to the inspectors-general of the State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice departments as well as to the inspector-general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In those letters, Bachmann and her colleagues asked the Inspectors General to investigate possible penetration of the US government by Muslim Brotherhood operatives."

Silly idea, right? Because of course none of America's enemies has ever tried to infiltrate our government for purposes of influence and espionage before.

(Well, not if you don't consider World War I, World War II, the Cold War..... )

"(T)he lawmakers made clear that when they spoke of governmental penetration, they were referring to the central role that Muslim groups, identified by the US government in Federal Court as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, play in shaping the Obama administration's perception of and policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied movements in the US and throughout the world.

That these front groups, including the unindicted terror funding co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), play a key role in shaping the Obama administration's agenda is beyond dispute."

Do I really have to link to the Holy Land Foundation trial documents again?

I guess so.

"There is an ample body of evidence that suggests that the administration's decision to side with the hostile Muslim Brotherhood against its allies owes to a significant degree to the influence these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their operatives wield in the Obama administration.

To take just one example, last October the Obama administration agreed to purge training materials used by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies and eliminate all materials that contained references to Islam that US Muslim groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood had claimed were offensive. The administration has also fired counterterrorism trainers and lecturers employed by US security agencies and defense academies that taught their pupils about the doctrines of jihadist Islam. The administration also appointed representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned US Muslim groups to oversee the approval of training materials about Islam for US federal agencies."

She concluded:

"It is clear that the insidious notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate and friendly force has taken hold in US policy circles. And it is apparent that US policymaking in the Middle East is increasingly rooted in this false and dangerous assessment.

In spearheading an initiative to investigate and change this state of affairs, Bachmann and her colleagues should be congratulated, not condemned. And their courageous efforts to ask the relevant questions about the nature of Muslim Brotherhood influence over US policymakers should be joined, not spurned by their colleagues in Washington, by the media and by all concerned citizens in America and throughout the free world."

7/27

re: "Taking Out Dictators"

Victor Davis Hanson at Private Papers ("victor davis hanson on the web") deduced the rules for U.S. intervention.

Money quote(s):

"In the past 40 years, the United States has intervened to go after autocrats in Afghanistan, Grenada, Haiti, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Somalia, and Serbia. We have attacked by air, by land, and by a combination of both. In the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War era, are there any rules to guide us about any action envisioned against Syria or Iran — patterns known equally to our enemies?"

Prof. Hanson outlined 15 rules.

"(W)e can make two general observations about Syria and Iran. In Syria, the US, on proper humanitarian grounds, could easily intervene through air power alone — without either congressional or UN sanction — to so weaken the non-nuclear Assad regime that, as happened in Serbia and Libya, it would surely and quickly implode. That said, we probably will not, given that such action would offend China and Russia, would not ensure quiet or stability in the aftermath, be soon criticized by those pundits who originally urged us to go in, and in six months be either unappreciated or overtly criticized by nations that had initially demanded that we do something to stop the slaughter.

As far as Iran goes, based on past precedents, there is zero chance that the United States would ever intervene to change the government, either on the ground or by an extended bombing campaign — and only a slight chance we will preempt by bombing suspected Iranian nuclear facilities."

3/2

re: "What You Need to Know About the CIA Getting Rolled Up in Lebanon. That, and Larry Munson."

Andrew Exum at Abu Muquwama examined a major intelligence setback in Lebanon.

Money quote(s):

"As some of you may or may not already know, Hizballah, together with the Lebanese government, has rolled up what is believed to be the vast majority of the assets of the Central Intelligence Agency in Lebanon."

As Dr. Exum implies, Hizballah and the Lebanese government are sufficiently interpenetrated as to be considered unitary at this point. I suppose a Venn Diagram might show the Lebanese government as comprising two overlapping circles: the circle belonging to Syria, the circle belonging to Hizballah, and a mutual zone which serves two masters.

"I know about as much about clandestine operations and running agents as I do about playing linebacker in the NFL, but I do know a little about Lebanon, and I also know something about what my boss John Nagl likes to refer to as "learning organizations," a concept I believe to be relevant here. I first heard about this story from a journalist over lunch last week, and I'll relate to you what I told him and some of what he told me.

1. As many of you know, Hizballah and Lebanese intelligence have been quite good at rolling up Israeli intelligence assets since 2006. (Contrary to what I would have thought, Israel managed to keep a pretty good human intelligence network alive in Lebanon after its withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.) Our intelligence assets were vulnerable to the same counter-intelligence methods that did in the Israelis, but we apparently blew off the warnings."

Be sure to read the rebuttal comment as to what the CIA did or didn't manage to do.

"2. Given that negligence, if I am a member of the U.S. Congress, I am going to ask if it is really true that the station chief in Beirut was subsequently promoted within the ranks of the CIA. If told this is in fact true, I am going to ask who, if anyone, is being held accountable.

3. I am also, if I am a member of the U.S. Congress, going to be asking whether or not CIA tradecraft has eroded over the past decade as the agency has chased the bright shiny ball we'll call "drone-strikes-in-Pakistan". (A question that, quite frankly, needed to be asked afterthe 2009 bombing in Khost.) It's great to have an intelligence agency with a knife in its teeth, but the primary mission of an intelligence organization is to gather and analyze intelligence, not to thwack bad guys. If you fail in that primary mission, questions have to be asked as to why you are failing."

Sometimes you lose. Consider that in an environment like Lebanon, you're not just running an intelligence operation. You're simultaneously trying to run intelligence operations, counter-intelligence operations to protect your intelligence operations, and counter-counterintelligence operations (against your targets counterintelligence) as well.

And it only gets worse from there. Lebanon is a hostile, if not actually completely denied area for U.S. intelligence.

"In the same way that the U.S. Army has an institutional interest in convincing policy makers that every general officer is equal to another, the CIA has an interest in convincing outsiders that external evaluation will compromise valuable tactics, techniques and procedures and will endanger operational security. (This is not a good recipe for an organization that learns from its mistakes and solicits external criticism in an effort to be more effective.) All organizations resist criticism, but intelligence organizations resist criticism and then wrap themselves in the cloak of all-important operational security to avoid it."

Intelligence organizations, for reasons good and prudent, find it abhorant to "solicit external criticism."

(Frankly, "external criticism" is not much in short supply, particularly that of the uninformed variety.)

Now, CAA is perfectly aware of a tendancy towards over-classification on that part of those who would wish to shield themselves from the criticism which they are due, but that's as much a trait of political leadership as it is of the professional intelligence cadre.

"(T)hat's what it really comes down to: poor tradecraft. This is not a matter of some Lebanese Karla lurking out there, out-smarting us. This is our premier intelligence agency getting sloppy, resulting in the death or incarceration of some brave U.S. allies."

Might could be. Or they simply were better or luckier, on their home turf, than we were with our away game.

A commenter rebuttal included the following:

"1. Your statement that the CIA "apparently blew off the (counter-intelligence) warnings" is overly harsh. CI penetrations emanate from multiple vectors - whether from poor trade-craft or an asset that is posing as a double agent - and the problem is augmented when attempting to infiltrate a highly secretive and closed organization such as Hizballah. Rightfully, in a scenario such as this, the maximum amount of defensive CI measures should be implemented in order to thwart the efforts by the hostile intelligence services. Because of the "cloak of security," we will most likely not be privy to the efforts (if any) that were taken to mitigate the CI threat and protect the assets."

11/21

re: "Abdicating Iraq"

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") waxed pessimistic about U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

Money quote(s):

"(W)hat do you call cutting and running from victory before it has solidified?"

"Abdication" works for me.

It also represents the creation of our second-largest potential hostage situation.

"Iran is our biggest enemy in the Middle East and this naive and misguided action leaves the playing field to them and they will certainly take advantage. We could have a good friend and ally on the free country of Iraq, a la Japan or Germany or Korea."

&

"Iraq is free to choose its own path in a dangerous region and that is a good thing. But they do not act in a vacuum. Iran and Syria and others attempt to influence them and not in ways that are good for peace-loving people. We sacrificed the lives of thousands of US troops to allow millions of Iraqis to taste freedom."

10/18

re: "The GOP's new love for Amb. to Syria Robert Ford"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") noted where a diplomat did well out of doing good.

Money quote(s):

"Ford has actively engaged with Syrian opposition groups and has put himself at personal risk by attending meetings of opposition leaders and funerals of Syrian activists. These efforts have convinced a large portion of the GOP, which stymied his confirmation last year, that his presence in Damascus is a useful way of confronting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and not a concession to the brutal dictator."

Every few years we see an ambassador like this, who rocks the boat on behalf of the United States or speaks uncomfortable truths to power.

"Ford said he still meets with Syrian Foreign Ministry officials, as has as recently as last week, but only about routine diplomatic business and not about the regime or overall U.S. policy. "There really is not a lot that we need to say to the Syrian government," Ford said. "We don't need to discuss their reform initiative because we don't take it seriously."

Ford said he is definitely not trying to get himself kicked out of Damascus, as some in Washington believe. He is also meeting frequently with Syrians who are "on the fence," and could be turned against the Assad regime, such as business leaders, government employees, Christians, and the Allawite community, which has until recently been loyal to Assad.

Amid discord between various opposition groups inside and outside Syria, Ford's message to the Syrian opposition is that it should unite and put together a plan for transitioning to a new government. "Otherwise it's just going to be very bloody and bad later," he said. He is also urging them to keep the protests peaceful in order to maintain international sympathy.

There has been some discussion in Washington about why Ford doesn't announce his activities in Syria or post about them on his Facebook page, which he has used to criticize the Assad regime. Ford said his activities are well-covered in Syria and around the region by the Arab language press.

"I'm thinking much more about my audience here in Syria; I'm not so worried about the Washington repercussions," he said."

9/23

re: "The Republican Debate; Assassinations; and more"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook.") spoke of the shadow world.

Money quote(s):

"They’re not calling it an assassination yet, but it sure looks like one. The son of an important Iranian official has been found dead in a Dubai hotel. It’s all remarkably similar to what happened to a Hamas official not all that long ago. It’s possible that this wasn’t a strike by Mossad, but I sure wouldn’t bet much money on it.

Note that this happens as there is news of explosions in Iran at bases connected with the Iranian nuclear program."

Not that high energy physics or explosive-related facilities or bases might not have a tendancy to go 'splody all one their own, but this seems to go beyond the normal distribution curve, even when factoring in for the Third World.

"As to what’s going on:

Iran has long had a policy of providing strong incentives – positive and negative – to its smartest kids to study nuclear engineering and go into the Iranian nuclear program. It has long been thought that one way to make sure there is no nuclear program is make sure there aren’t any really bright nuclear engineers.

This rather drastic policy has been applied in the past, and neither Syria nor Iraq ever got nuclear weapons. Note that hostility toward Iran having nuclear weapons is universal in the Arab world with the single exception of Syria. The obvious author of the Iranian explosions and the death of the smart young man in a Dubai hotel is Mossad, but Israel is not the only country happy with these recent events, nor is Mossad the only intelligence agency capable of using these techniques. Welcome to the shadow world."

When look for those with motive, the operative question must always "come from the Latin." To wit: cui bono or "to whose benefit?" Dr. Pournelle gives a nice precis, although he thoughtfully omits the U.S. from those who might have a claim check in this particular dead pool.

11/13

re: "Libya, Iowa, and F22 View 20110814"

Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog and Daybook") is good at looking at some big picture and on-the-horizon issues, at the same time.

Money quote(s):

"Libya and Syria

According to Aquinas, it is just to go to war to defend the innocent. There are restrictions, but this is not an unfair statement. Presumably that is why Obama considers it just to continue to break things and kill people in Libya. And recently Qaddaffi used helicopters, which once again put him in violation of the UN resolution, and thus required that the US kill some more Libyans and break some more Libyan property in the name of NATO acting for the UN." (Emphasis in original text heading. - CAA.)

Obviously, this linkery and quite have been idling awhile in my queue, waiting for my limited time and attention to get a "round tueit."

But the point still stands with regards to just war theory.

"One necessary condition for a war to be just is that there is a reasonable expectation of success. Success is defined in many ways, but you might sum it up by saying that in the end there would be more justice in the world after the war ends than there would be if it never started.

If we continue the intervention in Libya, do we expect that when it is all over there will be more justice in North Africa than there is now? And if we intervene in Syria, is there a reasonable expectation that what comes after the end of the thugocracy in Syria will be better than before we went in? I ask this seriously. Iraq is certainly better off without Saddam and his thuggish sons, but there were probably better ways to accomplish that than a lengthy occupation.

Republics seldom do Imperialism with any great competence. Competent Empire requires long term commitments, and a number of subtleties including the use of silver bullets, puppet regimes, auxiliaries and foreign legions, and other devices that do not win popularity in free elections. Incompetent Empire can leave both patron and client worse off than before. Washington warned us not to become involved in the territorial disputes of Europe. It is not isolationism to understand that we don’t know how to achieve some otherwise desirable results; and it is unjust to go to war without a battle plan under which we can realistically expect the world to be better off after our intervention than it would be if we did not undertake it." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Part of strategic thinking (see the bolded passage above), involves knowing what sort of end state, what kind of strategic objective, you have in mind.

Now, I think the bar should be adjusted quite a bit when it comes to waging a defensive war, a war for national survival; since it's quite lofty thinking to expect national leaders to intellectually accept that because they have no "realistic" chance of success, they must not fight in self-defense.

"The Chinese have launched an aircraft carrier. Carriers are the force projection system par excellance. Viet Nam has reinstated conscription. Japan is considering expansion of its self-defence forces. Few others in the world are made joyful by the news. Taiwan announced a sale on missiles that can kill aircraft carriers."

The Chinese re-launced an aircraft carrier, the Varyag. The Kiev apparently did in fact become some sort of hotel/casino.

As Dr. Pournelle correctly states, aircraft carriers (and their associated battle groups) are the defining force projection systems of our time, along with ICBMs. One could make a similar argument in favor of amphibious or other long-ranch ground expeditionary capabilities.

CAA has, in writing, made the academic argument that the aircraft carrier, along with ICBMs, are the strategic military capabilities that make a superpower "super." That was CAA's essential thesis when writing a "one-hour essay" the first time taking the FSWE (back during the late pre-Cambrian period when the "written exam" involved actual writing.)

CAA stands by that argument, by the way.



8/14

re: "Hama Doesn’t Forget"

Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings asked a couple of fundamental questions.

Money quote(s):

"Are we going to do anything to people who kill Americans? Apparently not. The Bush administration never did — it would be pretty foolish to expect this gang to."

There are a lot of folks, individuals and organizations, out there in the great abroad who've made a sideline (or worse) in killing my fellow citizens.

And, if truth be told, the case can be made that we (the U.S.) have actively rewarded that behavior set as often as we've punished it.

"Iran is at war with us. Are we at war with Iran? In fact, they’ve been at war with us for over three decades, but we continue, administration in, administration out, to pretend otherwise."

Iran, like a lot of places, is a special case.

Persians, as people, generally are a relatively likeable lot. Iran, on the other hand, deserves at least a five-page essay just to scratch the surface.

The mullacracy that runs the joint can best be understood as a cabal of messianistic death-worshippers whose morals compare disadvantageously with The Sopranos and who are hag-ridden by both a civilizational inferiority complex and delusions of imperial grandeur.

U.S. policy regarding Iran evidences a major strain of wishful thinking and has for decades.

7/12

re: "Almost the Ultimate Carter Moment in Damascus."

Moe Lane (Diary) at RedState ("the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill") cautioned administration appointees:

"(I)f Syrian ‘loyalists’ follow up today’s attack against the US Embassy in Damascus…

…by actually seizing the embassy? If that happens, start updating your resumes. And don’t bother with sending them along to Democratic House Members (and any Democratic Senator up for re-election in 2012): we’ll be throwing them out of office, too."

Recent history only provides one example of the "if" side of this statement, but the "then" segment justifies 100 percent confidence in the political consequences.

7/11

re: "BREAKING: Government Backed Protesters Storm US Embassy Grounds In Damascus . UPDATE: US Says Embassy Grounds Cleared Of Attackers"

DrewM. at Ace of Spades HQ remarked on a purely-spontaneous-mob attack.

Money quote(s):

"I have to admit, I wasn't thrilled when Obama decided to send an ambassador to Syria after Bush had left the post vacant for a few years in protest of the Assad regimes behavior. Honestly though, I like the cut of Ambassador Ford's jib.

Ford took an unauthorized visit to the town of Hamma and then went on facebook (yes, sounds lame but that's where the anti-government activist types are) to call out the regime."

Credit where credit is due, even from consistent critics of the administration.

Damascus is one of those places (I'm sure you can think of at least one other, they tend to be police/counterintelligence states) where "spontaneous mobs" don't just assemble out of nowhere and overwhelm the ubiquitous host nation security forces that surround Western diplomatic missions.

Some years ago, OBO bureau (Overseas Buildings Operations) got tired of having to wait months to get replacement forced entry/ballistic (FE/BR) glazings for the mission's exterior doors and windows out to Damascus every time the Assad regime would be annoyed or bored enough to bus in a "spontaneous mob" to trash the place.

(The FE/BR glazings are quite robust and well up to prevent any "spontaneous mob" members from breaching through them into our buildings, but they can get pretty messed up in the attempts, which rather interferes with the whole transparency thing you expect from an actual window. Marvels of American technological know-how that they are, you can't exactly run down to the Tent Depot and walk out with a replacement. They have to be custom-built at one of a handful of manufacturing companies in the U.S.)

So rather than have to wait months for a set of replacements every time Assad's "spontaneous mob" would visit, OBO got approval (and funding) to simply procure, and store in Syria, a set of replacement window glazings. That way they just had to install them as soon as it was safe to do so and re-order the damaged part, so the next time there was a "spontaneous mob" attack, they'd be ready.

So far as I know, Damascus is the only place we've ever had to do that.

(An expensive hobby (for us), these "spontaneous mob" attacks seem to be.)



7/11

re: "War Powers hypocrisy plus incompetence equals..."

Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive ("the paratrooper of love") hasn't been impressed with much of what passes for strategic thinking in recent years.

Money quote(s):

"(I)t is entirely fair to note that the plan for the post-invasion phase was mind-numbingly foolish. And yes that blame lies squarely at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld. I skipped meeting him when he was pimping his book at the recent Milblog conference and I think he has failed to properly accept the fact that his idea of a central government in a tribal and honor culture was beyond naive absent a tyrant like Saddam to crush any dissent. That plus staffing the effort with a collection of country club wankers and the dumbass cousins of big Republican donors apporoaches criminality. And yes I am calling most of the folks who ran the immediate aftermath incompetent. If you happened to be one of them and don't think that describes you, then think of the two people on either side of you when you were there. Two of the three of you ought to have stayed home to entertain Buffy and Muffy and Tad."

Two points:

The first: I never did get the feeling that "Phase IV" was ever fleshed out beyond the initial PowerPoint (TM) slide that mentioned it. It was underwear-gnomes on steroids. Hope very definitely was the plan, with a side order of wishful thinking.

The second: even the language qualified folks whom State lent to the CPA ("Can't Produce Anything") really weren't the ones who should have been sent. Great guys, generally, some of whom I count as friends, but at that point in their careers they were simply too junior, and too inexperienced, to accomplish much more than not getting killed.

A decade on, and these same officers probably, knowing now what they didn't yet know then, would have made a huge difference. Strangely, the qualified and experienced officers then were not the ones who were sent. Odd, that.

For some reason, that reminds me of a phrase I had to invent to explain a lot of what I saw during OIF 1, i.e.,: "Resourced to fail."

"(W)e have a mission.... now entering its third month without the defining characteristic of a mission.....a freaking goal. We are bombing Libyan warships, its capital and trying to "accidentally" kill the damn tyrant we don't have the stones to publicly call out. All the while Syria slaughters its citizens, Iran builds away on the Islamic bomb and O rewards the Palestinians for forming a unity government that, apparently, still thinks those pesky Jooooos could use a bath in the sea."

Many's the time in the course of my military and governmental careers that I've had to perservere onward, and as a leader persuade others to do the same, in the hope that while certain decisions might not make sense at the ground level, the people making the decisions had a lot more information available to them than was available to us, the big picture as it were. Perhaps that was hoping against hope.

"I believe that the War Powers Act is likely un-constitutional, but I believed that when Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and even Obama were President. That is a principled stance"

So it is.