The Raw Deal

Much of life is based on compromises and balancing acts. In the safety industry, we balance the gain life expectancy and reduced incidence of health problems associated with eliminating a problem chemical with the negative effects of eliminating a chemical. It is the same in national security. There is a tradeoff between allowing our national security professionals access to communications without tipping our hand to terrorists, and keeping the government out of our private life. Ever since 9-11 changed how I look at terrorism, I have leaned toward national security. I have no interest in surrendering to Islamic Supremacists, and I am willing to let the military and spies fight the war to win it.

What if the government isn't interested in fighting the war? What if the administration likes the powers that were granted to achieve victory, but views Islamic Supremacism as a distraction from its agenda? I had been planning to make this argument here, but David French got it precisely with his most recent columns. Intelligence assets and military might are only useful as long as the leadership has the will to use them:

Those of us in the “national-security Right” (to borrow Mr. McCarthy’s excellent phrase) seek a national defense that is both constitutional and effective, but a defense establishment that lacks the strength of will to act even on the best of intelligence will be utterly ineffective no matter the metadata.

Read the whole thing.

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China: A uniter, not a divider

Witnessing the outbreak of protests against China's treatment of the people of Tibet is an interesting experience. It is striking just how much diversity there is among the protesters. Citizen photojournalist Zombie documents just how many different groups joined together to protest the Torch rally in San Francisco. I have to say I would normally be opposed to the protest, as I dislike protesting in general, but it seems to be a valid cause. After all, the point of the torch ceremony is to give public support for the Olympics, and what better time to remind people of the darker side of China? This points to a deeper issue.


How many of those protesters would be at each others throats on another day? The hard Left would likely have a problem with the South Vietnamese flags, as they are an unpleasant reminder of their past failures. The march even brought out 9/11 conspiracy nuts, who don't get along with any sane person. Conservatives are lining up behind this cause alongside hippies. This doesn't happen often, save in fiction. In fiction, the various enemies unite against a common foe so often it is a cliché. Usually, this foes is such a terrifying threat and menacing evil that it is in the best interests of all to unite.

Has China achieved that status? Perhaps it has. It is a post-Communist state that has kept the repression of Maoism while unleashing laissez-faire capitalism to line their pocketbooks. China has no use for petty regulations concerning clean air, drinkable water, worker safety, or even copyrights. Chinese spies regularly attempts to steal both state and corporate secrets, particularly from the United States. It is a state that annexes land for their own use. From a certain perspective, the usual caricature of the United States as a brazen imperialist capitalist authoritarian regime fits China awfully well.

The real question is why irhabi terrorists and Islamic supremacists have not united the civilized world against them. Their brutality is well documented, as is their hatred of gays, blacks, Jews, and just about every other victim group. Women are treated as intrinsically evil. They openly mimic the Nazi regime and have declared war on all countries that do not submit to them. How is it that a group of thugs with a level of evilness that would be unbelievable in a fictional work is unable to get people stand together against them?

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Solidarity

Cartoons are not worth killing over. Ever. Until Muslims learn that free speech applies to their religious figures, they will be unable to live in our societies. I pray the you remain safe, Mr. Westergaard.

The estimable Captain Ed of Captain's Quarters has a list of solidarity bloggers, which will hopefully include your humble author.

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A man I'm happy to see dead

The Hezbollah terrorist mastermind Imad Mughniyah has reportedly bit the dust by a car bomb. (I sense some irony) If he is actually dead, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the people who took him out, probably the Mossad. I first read about at Pajamas Media where I came across a link to a bombshell.

It was listed as an "Alternate view", but is strangely no longer present. The link is from Jane's, hardly a disreputable source. It is dated 9/19/2001, and it alleges that Imad and Dr. Zawahiri were behind the attacks, sponsored by - Iraq. If this still held as an opinion it changes the entire national security debate. I am attempting to investigate this. (Update after the jump)

I sent this to Andrew Cochran , founder of the Counter-Terrorism Blog an email asking if this was the current thought among CT professionals. Here is his response:

No - and this article forgot that Al Qaeda was behind Ramzi Yousef's 1995 Bojinka Plot to bomb 11 US jetliners, and that KSM had already planned a second 9/11-type attack, which OBL iced. See http://counterterrorismblog.org/2006/08/london_the_latest_in_a_string.php. Certainly Mughniyeh was more experienced as of 2001, but OBL and Zawahiri were brilliant pupils.

I'd also imagine the Iraq connection also did not fair well with time. I have read elsewhere that Imad was an inspiration to Al Qaeda. That, and and the blood countless innocents on his hands, is more than enought reason to celebrate his death.

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Alternative Energy: Also good for cutting terror funding

One of the beneficial side effects of reducing our oil demand is that we reduce the income of major oil producing nations. (It's the simple result of the law of supply and demand) This is especially apparent in the Arab world, where the majority of their GNP is derived from oil. When you consider the backing many of these states provide for terrorism and insurgencies, it makes sense to deny them excessive funding. Israeli writer Yair Lapin lay it out here.

Initially I planned to sell myself an immediate holiday. Why should I bother the Israeli public with something that even I think is boring? Then I thought about it a little more and a little more and after two weeks I had an answer. I am a little reluctant here because honestly it’s not politically correct. The only way to sell environmental protection to the Israeli public is to explain the one advantage:

It’s a way of screwing the Arabs.

I want to make it clear I am not including in this, God forbid, those peace-loving Arabs who believe in coexistence with the State of Israel. I am talking about the other billion and a half or so for whom the whole issue of environmental protection was created in order to screw them. The only reason this has not been presented to you before is that most of the people who deal with Green activism are well meaning lefties and people who wear round glasses who have no desire to screw anyone. They prefer a quiet clean world where everyone wears white and listens to folk music. That’s very nice but it will never work in Israel. We’re not programmed that way. If we can’t screw someone then we are not interested.

But it is possible because in the larger context, environmental protection includes a subject no less important called "alternative sources of energy". Green activists will be happy to explain the details to you, but the bottom line is that burning oil releases soot and heat, contributes to the melting of the icebergs in Antarctica and sends pollution into the atmosphere of this wonderful planet of ours.

Crap, I fell asleep again.

For example, I would create a much more original environmental start up. I would carve up the Antarctica into shot-glass size ice cubes. The real reason we need to find alternative sources of energy is not the troubled environment but the fact that it's Arabs who sell most of the oil to the rest of the world. The sad outcome of this is that they have lot of money and we know where this money goes: To Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as well as to the funding of terror worldwide much of which is directed at us.

It’s aggravating to think that every time we get into the car we are giving money to Hamas, and that is something we Israelis needs to seriously think about. Sixty percent of the country’s oil consumption goes to our vehicles. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were the first to use cars which don’t run on petrol. (The technology exists. It just keeps getting stonewalled by the big oil and automotive interests.) We have everything going for us: We’re smart, technologically savvy and when money is involved we’re pretty industrious. Besides, we are small enough for trials that could be carried out by the entire population and we are big enough to export the technology to the entire world. The Jewish intellect has changed the world in the past and there is no reason it can’t do it again in the future.

Fire up the nuclear reactors, crank out the biofuels, and conserve some oil. It's time to do our part in shutting down the money supply for Al Qaeda and IEDs. I'm ready for the new propaganda posters - "When you drive alone, you drive with Osama!"

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How goes the battle?

This is probably the best summary of what the surge is trying to accomplish. Dr. Kilcullen is a State Department expert on counter-insurgency whose doctoral dissertation focused on the nature of insurgencies. He also is one of the architects of the current plan, and is thus supremely qualified to explain it.

For regular updates on progress in Iraq, I suggest Bill Roggio or Michael Yon

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Al Qaeda Capitol Seized

Generally, when you take an enemy's capitol, you have seized the initiative and are winning the war. There are exceptions to this, of course: The USA had its capital burned and yet it achieved a stalemate in the War of 1812. Napoleon reached Moscow, and found it empty, the Russians having used scorched earth tactics. The key is to build on the success and expand on it.

In the Long War, I hardly thought we could take a capitol city of Al Qaeda. In fact, this has been used as an example of the difference between this war and others. Imagine my surprise when I read of a Hugh Hewitt interview of Michael Yon in which the self-proclaimed worldwide capitol of Al Qaeda was taken.

HH: Now Michael Yon, a lot of people don’t know the significance of Baquba. And so can you explain what peace in Baquba means for the larger war effort?

MY: Well, it’s huge, because al Qaeda had claimed Baquba as their capitol, their worldwide capitol. And you might recall one of the things that kind of upsets people about my reporting is I said Iraq was in a civil war, and I said that way back in February of 2005, and I continue to do so. But when I first wrote that, I was in Baquba, in 2005, and I spent two or three months here. And it was just total…you could see it, and you could see al Qaeda was trying to foment that civil war, because that’s their underlying strategy, is to do that. And so getting, fracturing al Qaeda here, and al Qaeda alienating so many Iraqis, it’s helping us to put a damper on the civil war.

This is a significant victory for the Coalition forces. Apparently, the Democratic party was busy talking about surrender while the military was planning to take control of the enemy capitol. As for Michael Yon's view of this attitude:

HH: Now yesterday, Harry Reid said on the floor of the Senate that the surge has failed. Do you think there’s any factual basis for making that assertion, Michael Yon, from what you’ve seen in Iraq over the last many months?

MY: He’s wrong, he’s wrong. It has absolutely not failed, and in fact, I’m finally willing to say it in public. I feel like it’s starting to succeed. And you know, I’m kind of stretching a little bit, because we haven’t gone too far into it, but I can see it from my travels around, for instance, in Anbar and out here in Diyala Province as well. Baghdad’s still very problematic. But there’s other areas where you can clearly see that there is a positive effect. And the first and foremost thing we have to do is knock down al Qaeda. And with them alienating so many Iraqis, I mean, they’re almost doing it for us. I mean, yeah, it takes military might to finally like wipe them out of Baquba, but it’s working. I mean, I sense that the surge is working. Reid is just wrong.

Read it all. Michael Yon notes that this is certainly not the end of combat. The leadership of Al Qaeda is trying to emulate (unconsciously, of course) the survival of the American leadership in 1812. However, the irhabists have lost a lot of popular support, and they may find they have few safe havens left. The reference to a massacre is from Yon's dispatch entitled Bless the Beasts and Children, whose title comes from a movie and its theme song. You read more about some of the controversial things that he has reported in this dispatch.

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Unconventional Insights on the Long War

Public perception of reality is far more important than reality itself. And who better to discuss public perception than a journalist? What color is your gator? Read it all, as is so often said. Counterinsurgency is a war of perceptions - is the government perceived as the lawful ruler and able to protect its citizens? If the government is perceived as a failure, it will fail in reality. By the way, Michael Yon is a excellent writer and probably the best war correspondent we have. His site is worth a prolonged visit.

The Mesopotamian, an Iraqi blogger, made an interesting point a few weeks back. Normally, we like to think of insurgencies as war on the cheap, but it isn't free. Even if the weaponry is less expensive, someone has to pay for it, and plastic explosive is hardly free. I don't know if I agree with his conclusions, (Iran has a lot of money, enough to build nuclear weaponry, after all) but we would be foolish to neglect the flow of money to the insurgents - often provided by the thirsty gas tanks of our cars.

For all those feminists out there who think the war on terror is not worth winning, I suggest this article. Dressing like a sack of potatoes is not exactly liberating.

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Marshal(l) Corps?

John Edwards has posted an interesting idea for counter-terrorism. While much of it has been deservedly trashed on the blogosphere, I think he may have a point.

"Marshall Corps": Weak and failing states create hotbeds for terrorism and create regional instability that creates security dangers for the U.S. and our allies. As president, Edwards will create a "Marshall Corps" of 10,000 professionals, modeled on the Reserves systems, who will work on stabilization and humanitarian missions. He will also implement new training for future military leadership and create a undersecretary for stabilization and a new senior stabilization position within the Joint Staff.

I think the Marshall Corps could work, if it was well-administered. This would be a force of police, reconstruction specialists, and emergency response personnel. All of these people would receive training to prepare them for hostile, lawless landscapes like Iraq... or post-Katrina New Orleans. This unit would be a deployable, non-military force that could operate inside or outside of the United States. They would also cross-train with current contractors and military personnel who have reconstruction related roles.

I'd like to see him actually detail it further. If he neglects the security element, it would be a waste of time. Does he mean Marshall as in Marshall plan or as in US Marshals? The latter would be more useful.

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America loves Tony Blair

Tony Blair has always been an interesting character. He's from the Labor party, which is considerably more liberal than the Democrats here in the US, yet he is one of the most dedicated supporters of the war against Jihadism. He's proof that this is not a Left vs. Right issue. Honestly, you would expect the Left to be in favor of defeating an ideology that demands the subjugation of women, the execution of homosexuals, and the suppression of all four freedoms (I sometimes wonder if some democratic leader like Lieberman could have done a better job in keeping the country united.) He's an excellent communicator, and a man of considerable intelligence.

Take this, for example. His reflections on his tenure as prime minister show him to be the kind of intellectual and statesman we need right now. While I don't agree with all of his points, he makes an actual argument worth engaging. This is sadly rare on the Left. Wesley Clark, despite being anti-war, had this level of intellectual clarity.

Mr. Blair, you're welcome here in the States anytime.

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Impeach Bush!

I'm with the Anchoress (who is atypically ferocious here) Let's bring on the accusations, the cheap charges, the standard rants. Let's see them challenged in open court, under oath. Come on, you know you want to impeach him. Your base would love it... at least until all of their ideas suddenly sag under the weight of reality.

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Victory or Death

It seems Harry Reid, with his vast experience in matters of strategy and the Middle East geopolitical climate, has declared the war in Iraq is lost. Strangely, General David Petraeus, the current military commander for Iraq, has a different view. I think I'll just trust the counterinsurgency expert on this one.

Not everyone is on the popular new bandwagon stating that the war in Iraq is lost. In fact, some people are dedicated to victory in the War on Terror.

The Victory Caucus

Victory PAC

No End But Victory

On a side note, victory in the Long War also requires that we defeat Islamism, (aka Islamic Fundamentalism, aka Jihadism, aka radical Islam) the brutal ideology that fuels Al Qaeda. This is not impossible, and those of an astute mind can turn themselves around. Like this guy.

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A question of training

As all of the readers for this site likely know, Iran has released the British sailors it took hostage. Many people seem to be quite critical of their conduct, which was rather embarrassing. Not being an expert in such things, I turned to someone more with the subject: Former Spook He is formerly of military intelligence, and ascribes the matter to a lack of training. This is understandable - sailors aren't expected to face capture, just as pilots aren't expected to deal with a hull breach. At least, until now.

As for tactics, it might be helpful to keep a helocopter overhead, especially one with a nice chaingun on it, in order to deter future Persian pirates. Given how close this is to the mainland, a land-based ground attack aircraft might also work.

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