0230 GMT May 31, 2007
A slow news day.
UN Approves Lebanon Tribunal The UN Security Council voted 10-0 with five abstentions to set up a tribunal to try the killers of former Prime Minister and presidential candidate Rafiq Harari. The move is expected to shore up international support for the current government, but also to increase tensions in Lebanon. Syria is believed to be behind the killing: Mr. Harari was pro-west and anti-Syria. While from the west's viewpoint reducing/eliminating Syria's influence in Lebanon is an imperative, a large number of Lebanese see the Syrians as protectors. Consequently, the Lebanese government/parliament/presidency is deadlocked on the matter of a trial for the suspected killers.
We are of two minds on the UN decision. Anything that smacks Syria is welcome to us. The country is an anti-American dictatorship that is very seriously interfering in Iraq. On the other hand, the tribunal is a major expansion of UN power. It says, in effect, that since a democratically elected government can reach no decision on an important issue, the UN must step in to help one faction against the other. Today that faction happens to be pro-west. Tomorrow, in another country and an another situation, that faction could be anti-western,
Like it or not, Syria has interests in Lebanon. These have been squeezed; Syria has responded in various ways, among these the aiding of anti-US insurgents in Iraq. As western influence in Lebanon grows, Iran is also stepping up its intervention in Lebanon as a counter. Lebanon always has been a fragile multi-ethnic/multi-religious state. The fall-out from the Arab-Israeli conflict has destroyed it once before. In our opinion, the nation cannot survive if it continues to rapidly develop into a new battlefield for the US versus anti-US nations in the Middle East.
We are concerned that the US may be adding to Lebanon's demise. The US is vastly overextended in the GWOT because of the mindless battle for Iraq. The west has already taken a body blow in Lebanon, the rise of Hezbollah. True it previously gave a body blow of its own, by forcing Syrian troops out of Lebanon. But the west in general and US in particular has proved unable to fight terror, which is rapidly growing worldwide. Iran and Syria will respond with terror. The results will not be to the west's advantage.
Turkey Reinforcing Kurdistan Border Normally not a big deal, because this is a summer routine, this being the time of the year Turkey attacks Kurd rebels. This time it may develop into a big deal because Turkey is openly threatening to invade Iraq, ostensibly to clear out Kurd rebels from the mountains, actually to forestall the growing independence of Iraqi Kurds.
In response the US is doing a strange and pathetic dance, flopping around with flapping hands imploring Turkey not to cross the border. No discussion of the unpleasant reality that if Turkey does cross, it's called Aggression. Even the mighty US sought UN cover for its 2001 invasion of Iraq; failing to get general approval, it used the fig leaf of previous UN resolutions. Turkey has not gone through any such process. If it attacks, it will be defending its security interests. But it will be doing so unilaterally in a country the US happens to occupy.
If Turkey gets away with it - and right now the US seems to have no good answers - this will be another blow to US prestige worldwide.
0230 GMT May 30, 2007
A slow news day.
[1230 GMT] CNN says fighting at the refugee camp in Tripoli, Lebanon has resumed as the government expressed impatience with the standoff between Fatah Islam and the Lebanese Army.
Goodbye, Cindy Sheehan The anti-war protester has decided to call it a day. She is going home to bring up her remaining children as best as she can. She is disillusioned because Americans care more about American Idol than about the Iraq War. She is also disillusioned because she insisted on holding the Democratic Party to the same standard she held the GOP, and the Democratic Party failed her. She says she has failed her son whose death in Iraq motivated her to become an anti-war protestor. The Iraq War also failed her, because it's a meaningless war. Her son's death was meaningless, she says.
America, you are sooooooo bad to have failed Ms. Sheehan on every count. Was there ever a society more useless?
Ms. Sheehan's problem from the start was that she thought the thing was about her, and that because she was opposed, we all have to drop everything in life and join her. Talk about self-centered. Most of the country opposes the Iraq War, and while we have not seen figures, we suspect that like us, many people oppose it AND oppose Ms. Sheehan's attempt to capitalize on her son's death.
Regarding her saying her son's death was meaningless, dare we break the sad news to Ms. Sheehan? Most "unnatural" deaths are meaningless - if you really want to be brutal, most deaths, natural or unnatural, are pointless. The God of War specializes in meaningless death. A few soldiers die as heroes. 99.9% die because they happen to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It really is not more complicated than that, for all that we want the death in war of a spouse, child, or parent to mean something. There are very few wars as clean cut as World War II. Vietnam was a pointless war; so was World War I, according to us. Countries have fought pointless wars from when countries first appeared. Iraq is just another pointless war. Why should it have meaning just because Ms. Sheehan's son died?
Thousands of other families have seen their loved one die in Iraq. They feel as much grief as Ms. Sheehan. But they make the death not about themselves, but about their soldier. The most dignified eulogies for those killed in Iraq are the most frequent: "S/he always wanted to serve her/his country by serving in the military; s/he died while doing what s/he loved." We don't know if that was the case with Ms. Sheehan's son. But personally, we think that's a heck of a more meaningful way to die than most ways.
Mr. Putin, Russia, and US ABM Defense Mr. Putin says the US's plans to deploy an ABM missile battery in Central Europe is making Europe into a powder keg. So attempting to defend yourself against offensive weapons makes a situation unstable? We know the mad hatters of the Golden Age of Nuclear Deterrence thought so. Their strategy for buying peace was for both side's to leave themselves vulnerable to the other side's killing blow, thus assuring that if one side started a war, both would die. Therefore neither side would start a war.
What's remarkable, it seems to us, is not that the US jettisoned this astonishingly stupid and suicidal doctrine. It's that Mr. Putin, one of the most coldly logical leaders the modern world has scene is trying to use threats to block the US deployment of a European missile shield.
It's true Russia does not at this time have the money to put up its own shield. It's also true that once deployed, the US ABM system will keep getting better, so that in theory at least it could one day reach the point it could defeat a Russian missile attack, undercutting Russia's strategic nuclear force, and it's main claim to be superpower.
The solution, however, is not to use rhetoric, because this is simply making the US yawn. A person as logical as Mr. Putin should realize that the US is worried about rouge nuclear states and that a start on missile defense is imperative. HE should extend his logic and take the US at its word, and accept its invitation to work with Russia on joint ABM defenses.
We are tempted to make fun of Mr. Putin by noting that each time the issue is raised, the Russians say: "It's all futile, because our latest ICBMs will get through any defenses." Okay, so let's accept the Russian position. Then why should they get worried about the US missile shield? They should, in fact, be encouraging the US to waste money on a pointless defense.
But we like Mr. Putin, despite his anti-democratic ways, and we are not going to make fun of him. We are going to ask him to stop making an idiot of himself on ABM defense.
Of course, our smart readers will say the issue is not one little bit about ABM defense. It is about the expansion of US influence into a sphere of vital import to Russia. True enough.
In that case may we suggest that Mr. Putin offer Central/West Europe alternatives to the US shield, such as a Russian shield? Russia doesn't have the money, at this point. It could, however, do other things to seduce Europe away from the American shield. One might be to work with the US to eliminate Iran's N-weapons program. No Iranian program, no need for the Europe to have the US ABM shield. The Europeans will be happy to tell the US "No".
Frightening people to death by threatening all kinds of dire consequences if they don't behave is counterproductive. The Russians specialize in this gamut. And surely they can see that it has failed them, big time, once already - a big reason the USSR disintegrated.
0230 GMT May 29, 2007
A slow news day.
Israeli Army Gets Gaza Green Light to deal with Hamas's rocket attacks but says no large scale incursion is planned. Just as well, because Israel has not been able to stop terror attacks with incursions large or small.
Despite several days of air strikes - usually one sortie at a time targeting a particular Hamas house or car - and despite some claims that the strikes are forcing Hamas to lay low, 17 missiles were launched into Israel Monday.
Israel has also been arresting - or kidnapping, depending on your viewpoint - Hamas leaders and legislators. This strategy too does not work, Israel has tens of thousand of Palestinians in long-term detention which extend to years and in some cases to decades, with no stoppage of terror attacks. While many were quite wroth at Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli solders, few in the US talk about the huge number of Palestinians in Israeli jails, many of whom were kidnapped.
The danger in going after Hamas's leadership is that Israel will be too successful. That will make it difficult for moderates in Hamas and other Palestinian factions to support peace with Israel, and it will remove men who can control Hamas cells from more rash acts against Israel.
No doubt it is a very difficult situation for the Israelis. We see no solutions. Before anyone writes in to object, we are perfectly aware that the Israelis have dome things which make a solution impossible. We never have, and certainly are not now, blamed the Palestinians for all or even most of their problems.
US Must Pay 44% Of $50-billion Global Warming Annual Bill: Oxfam As President Reagan might say, there they go again. It's unfair to expect poor countries to pay for the mess the developed countries have made, says Oxfam.
Lets back off a minute here, kids. Let's assume that current global warming is due to human activity. That seems a reasonable proposition, but it leaves out the troubling historical record, which shows huge temperature fluctuations beyond what global warming scientists are predicting for the next hundred years at times when humans, if they were around, were the cause of nothing because they were just a bunch of savages trying to stay alive. We suppose the argument of whether we are headed for global warming or global cooling will start getting settled around 2016, when some scientists say the sun's activity will result in less heat reaching us. Lets also assume that global warming is a uniformly bad thing.
The inconvenient truth, however, is that whatever the US has done in the past, China is about to overtake the US as chief global warmer, and because of its complete reliance on coal for power generation, will continue to increase its lead. India will be following, but at a slower rate because India uses power per unit of GDP more efficiently than China. Some have estimated that within a few years China/India will undo all the effort of Kyoto - if the US was inclined to accept Kyoto. That it is not, the China/India scenario being one of the main reasons.
So will Oxfam from next year want China to start paying it's proportionate share to reduce global warming? Of course not, silly. The west - read the white countries - are responsible for every ill that afflicts the world. If you are not white, by definition of some you are not responsible for anything.
If Oxfam wants to be taken seriously, and not just drip anti-American vitriol because it is oh-so-fash in European "liberal" - think Austin Powers - circles, it needs to redo its global warming index. Right now that index puts all the blame on the developed countries, at a time China is commissioning one thermal power plant every 100 hours, is another pointless exercise.
Oxfam's position reminds us of a discussion we had with an American of Indian origin who is intimately versed in the nuances of skin color. The American was criticizing American racism. We interjected that Indians are just as racist as Americans, and probably among the worst offenders the world has ever know if one speaks not of race, but of caste. We added that a great many African-Americans are second-to-none when it comes to racism.
Hardly an original argument, we thought. The American looked at us kindly, much as a teacher might look at a mentally retarded child, or - as President Bush might say - as Queen Elizabeth looked at him when he almost slipped to say she had last visited America 200 years ago. "You as an Indian are a person-of-color," the American patiently explained. "As such you cannot be racist. You are a victim of racism."
We didn't bother replying that we - and about 100-million other persons of color - got to the US only because white men decided that US immigration policy was immoral. Till President Kennedy changed the law in 1963, it was near impossible for non- Europeans to come legally to America. Of course memory can fail when one reaches our advanced age, but we seem to remember the President, his advisors, and the Congress who voted for immigration reform were white. The Reagan Amnesty, which led to the huge and expanding flood of illegal Hispanic immigration, was the work of people who were almost entirely white. The current amnesty, which will legalize perhaps up to 12-million illegals, the vast majority of whom are Hispanics, is the work of men and women who by a large majority are white. By 2050, whites will be a minority in the US, thanks to actions taken by whites who wanted to be fair.
Terribly racist, these whites.
10 Billion Trillion Solar Systems Possible In Our Universe A new estimate says that 10% of the suns in the universe may have solar systems. We did a quick/dirty calculation. We took the upper limit for galaxies in our universe, one trillion. We took sort-of-a-modest estimate for suns per galaxy, 100-billion, and voila...
As far as we know, none of the 236 extra-solar systems detected so far feature planets in circular orbits, ensuring radiation is constant - a prerequisite for life. But if - say 1 in a 1000 or even 1 in 10,000 have circular orbits, that's still a million trillion solar systems. What's a few zeroes between friends?
And of course, "universe" means "observable universe". The real universe is likely to be much, much bigger.
So at one end you could have billions of civilizations in the known universe. At the other end, the worst case, for a number of reasons you could have exactly one.
So we know many of our readers will root for just one - no chance then that there are other President Bushes out there. We are rooting for the better case - somewhere there has to be an editor of Orbat.com who is good-looking, intelligent, rich, and with many girl-friends.
Do you want an exact figure of at-worst how far away the nearest Mr. Bush is? MIT's Prof. T. Tegmark has an estimate. Its 10^10^29 meters away. That's the nearest Mr. Bush doing the same things at the same time as the current Mr. Bush - and as the current you.
Sounds like practically next door, no? No need to sound the alarm: it's not.
0230 GMT May 28, 2007
Lebanese Army Will Not Storm Camp it says, preferring to rely on negotiation to get Fatah Islam out. Why this sudden peace and love toward and enemy the Army was threatening to wipe out just the other day? It could be out of concern for civilians, but these are not Lebanese civilians, and concern was evident by its absence in the first round of fighting. It could also be the government does not want to inflame Palestinians by breaking the 1969 agreement not to enter the camps.
It might be the Lebanese Army does not want to take the serious casualties storming would entail. Simple firepower tends to aid the defender as you get serious rubble behind which to fight, blocked roads and so on. So obviously we are not about to criticize anyone for not wanting to take casualties, everyone wants to live, right?
Last night both sides exchanged fire when insurgents used heavy weapons. AFP says the Lebanese Army responded with anti-tank fire. Well, since Fatah Islam has no tanks, and we doubt the Army wants to use $40,000-a-shot TOWs or something like that, we assume AFP means the Army responded with tank fire. See above on concern for civilians.
The UN relief agency, UNRWA, says 3-8000 civilians are left in the camp and that some aid managed to get through. Lately its been the militants firing on anything that moves.
Ukraine Crisis Over For Now The pro-Russia Prime Minister tepidly agreed to early elections on September 30, something the pro-West President wants. The President accuses Parliament of usurping his power and dissolved the legislative body in April. The President, however, has not had things all his own way: the September date was sought by the pro-Prime Minister lot.
Remember, Ukraine was part of Russia for 400 years: the Eastern part of the former province is Russian majority. Now that the old USSR is gone, maybe it's time to realign national boundaries. The Russians in various former Soviet Union states have rights too. It's 62 years since the Second World War ended, 80% or more of these Russians had no responsibility for the wrongs done to ethnic populations of states like Ukraine. You can't just expel them, they have ancestral rights as much as anyone else.
0230 GMT May 27, 2007
Hezbollah Threatens Lebanese Government warning it not to storm the Tripoli refugee camp where Fatah Islam is holding out. Hezbollah also criticized Fatah Islam for its role in the crisis.
Between 10-18,000refuges remain in the camp - lower figures given by Lebanese government, higher by UN. Relief supplies are being delivered there as well as to another camp nearby where at least 12,000 refugees have fled.
Yesterday 6 US and 3 Arab aircraft brought military supplies to Lebanon; today more US sorties arrived. Fatah Islam says the deliveries include nerve gas and cluster bombs. We suppose you could call riot control gas "nerve gas", but we don't see how Fatah Islam could have any clue as to what has been sent.
Fatah Islam has been firing on civilians seeking to fleet in an attempt to keep the camp populated and thus deter the Army. Lebanon, on its side, lavishly used heavy weapons including artillery - in at least one case 155mm - tank cannon, and heavy machine guns in the first three days of fighting, without regard to the civilians inside the camp.
The Australian has a short article on how Fatah Islam infiltrated the camp by pretending to be part of a Palestinian group. Only five militants are actual Palestinians, say the camp residents.
Trouble In Kiev as the President dissolves the dissident parliament and sends "thousands" of paramilitary troops to the capital. Few, however, have reached because the deputy Interior minister supporters the prime minister. The president has taken over direct command of Interior troops.
BBC says the troops are carrying riot gear only.
BBC says talks between the president and prime minister continue without result. The president is pro-west and the prime minister is pro-Russia; this is the cause of the current crisis.
UK, US Forces Battle Mahadi Militia In Basra two days ago the British killed a wanted Mahadi Army commander as he left the local al-Sadr office. The British say the Iraqi Army, with whom they were working, did the deed and they merely provided cover and blocks. Anticipating revenge attacks, the British vacated Basra's streets, and yesterday the attacks came. The British responded with a single fighter sortie. Sadrites say 8 were killed.
In Baghdad, the US attacked a high value Mahadi Army individual responsible for bring EFP road-side bombs from Iran. Nine men were killed in a US airstrike.
Meanwhile, sectarian killings bearing the Shia militias' trademarks are on the rise again, with Baghdad alone topping the all-Iraq total of April.
We are unsurprised at this development because after the surge began the Sunnis stepped up mass bombings of Shias and it was just a matter of time before the latter began retaliating.
A White House spokesperson thinks that al-Sadr has a positive role to play in national reconciliation. Unless the US has cut a deal with him - which may be one explanation of why he surfaced after hiding from the Americans since the surge start - we wouldn't make any assumptions about his helpfulness or his new-found sincerity regarding protecting Sunnis. This is a very, very bad man with more blood on his hands than anyone in post-Saddam Iraq. His militia continues to plant road-side bombs and to kill Americans. He needs to be shot down like the rabid dog he is, not made part of US diplomacy in its haste to exit Iraq.
0230 GMT May 26, 2007
Al-Sadr The Opportunist Resurfaces for Friday prayers at Kufa, near Najaf. He now speaks of brotherly love with the Sunnis, and is said to be trying to curb extremist elements in his militia. You are not to fight our Iraqi brothers, he says, meaning avoid conflict with the Iraqi Army. And don't give the Americans an excuse to continue their occupation.
Gee. Al-Sadr a moderate? Hardly. He's just trying to keep the Americans off his back, and he figures the sooner the surge works, the sooner the Americans will go home.
Anbar Anti-AQ Leaders Complain One of the fondest and stupidest reasons given by the Administration for staying in Iraq is that Al Qaeda will get a base. It would be nice if the Administration would also say: "But for our invasion AQ would never have gotten into Iraq". It so happens, however - and we've said so before - US presence is actually hindering the Iraqis from taking care of AQ.
The Americans want us to follow the law 100%, complains one chief to the Washington Post, and of course, we don't need WashPo to tell us that, because the Americans are constantly concerned to see that people they are associated with - troops, police, militia, whatever - must obey human rights regulations.
The truth is, if the Americans would just get out of the way, the Sunnis of Anbar would get rid of AQ in short order, simply by killing any one they suspect of being AQ or a supporter. The Sunnis allowed AQ to get a foothold because after Saddam's fall they were powerless against the Americans, and then became victims of the revenge-minded Shia majority - which also runs the government and military. Pretty soon, however, AQ overreached and started telling the Sunnis that they were not true Muslims and that they, AQ, would kill them if they did not comply with AQ's version of Islam. Caught in a 3-way fight - Americans, Baghdad, and AQ on one side, Sunnis on the other, the Sunnis took a beating. Then the Americans enlisted the Sunnis to kill AQ.
Now - at least so the US military claims - AQ has been driven out of Anbar's population centers. Doesn't mean Anbaris greet US troops with roses and kissies, they hate the Americans third only to AQ and the Shias. It does mean the Sunnis are quite capable of taking care of AQ. US doesn't even have to give arms and money - Saudi and Jordan are doing the needful to begin with.
US needs to get out of Anbar and leave the Sunnis to their own devices. The Shias will get out of Anbar too if they don't have the Americans doing most of the work for them. In any case, the Shias have no interest in Anbar.
Take out the five or so brigades deployed to Anbar, and you simplify the American military's problems hugely. US Army keeps talking about the need for innovative solutions in Iraq. We've given one.
8 US, 1 Gulf Cargo Aircraft Deliver Lebanon Army Supplies No details are available, but presumably the shipments consist of ammunition and spare parts.
The true at the besieged refugee camp in Tripoli is still holding. AFP says Palestinian negotiators are likely involved in talks to resolve the standoff peacefully, but so far there is no indication the militants are willing to surrender.
Lebanese Government says it will take control of all 12 Palestinian refugee camps.
Zimbabwe Out Of Money To Feed Troops And Militia says Times London Inflation is running at 3700%, so that an Army private who got 50 Sterling/month in pay in February, now finds it worth 4 Sterling - about $8.
Letter From Walter E. Wallis On US Change Of Iraq Strategy As soon as a plan becomes apparent an enemy will adjust to it. Armies are harder to adjust than cells. Ultimately Jihad needs to be detrimental to Islam. That means that ultimately we need to learn that diplomacy is not just being nice. More of the burden needs to be transferred to Islam in the form of limited movement and limited opportunity. Nations that encourage or allow anti-US rants in the street and come calling the next day for visas need to be politely shown the door. One emigrant acting in criminal manner and the quota is flushed. One embassy bombing and shut down at both ends.
Letter From James P. Freemon On Gas At $3.25 ONLY?!? That price peak, due to the OPEC oil embargo, was extremely painful for those of us driving then. There were long lines at gas pumps and the maximum speed limit on US highways was 55 mph. It sparked the oil patch and housing boom... and eventual bust in Oklahoma and Texas. It also caused a downsizing and increased efficiency of American built cars. Nothing changed in Oklahoma as fast as the names of the banks.
0230 GMT May 25, 2007
Oil Expected To Return To $80/bbl because of OPEC cuts, Nigerian instability, and tensions with Iran once again growing with Iran.
Nonetheless, some analysts say that in order for increases to psychologically impact on people the way they did in 2006, oil would have to increase to $105/bbl because people have now adjusted to higher prices.
$3/gallon Gas Proves NOT To Be The Breakpoint Back in the day we used to think when US gasoline prices reached $3/gallon, Americans would start to freak out and get serious about energy independence. Ha ha. We were so naive.
That figure was not pulled from the air; it's what the energy companies used as a break point. Turns out, according to Washington Post, that the energy companies have recalculated and the new breakpoint is $4.35, and perhaps even $5/gallon. Why?
First, at $3.25 or so we are paying only what we paid in 1981, inflation adjusted. Second, gasoline as a percentage of our budgets has fallen because the national income has doubled since 1981. So we can afford to pay more. Third, even at $3.25 Americans do not consider driving a discretionary activity. It is still regarded as a necessity, and those who feel they must drive are simply spending less on other items. Gasoline usage is up 2.6% over last year; so much for $3.25/gallon gas.
Of course, none of these prices are true prices. Americans as a whole, regardless of how much they drive or if at all, are subsidizing the price of oil because no one counts the money spent on protecting US overseas oil interests. That is spent under the rubric of defense and foreign aid. We think the US is already paying $120/bbl. But our argument is far too arcane for the public's understanding or concern.
Back To The Refinery Problem We sometimes wonder why Americans can no longer debate an issue from all points of view, and why everyone seems to lie to make their cases stronger than they might otherwise be.
Case in point is the energy companies' insistence that environmental factors prevent new refinery construction.
We bought that, after all, opposition to any project be it a road or a port or a power plant or whatever is intense.
Turns out it's a half truth. We now learn the Bush Administration offered federal land for new refineries; the environmental clearance process can be speed up in these cases and the feds are not as vulnerable to the NIMBY syndrome as local governments and so on.
Well, there may be many other sensible reasons why new refineries are not being built. But when the energy companies lie on one point, so blatantly, they merely destroy their credibility, so that no one wants to listen to the other reasons, no matter how sensible they may be.
The best reason we know of is that energy companies constantly worry oil prices will fall to as low as $40/bbl - there have been huge drops before, causing big losses for companies that invested assuming some version of the current price. Refineries cost billions of dollars and investors have to be reasonably sure of a return before they will invest.
This looks to be a case where the private sector approach - supply/demand and all that - may not be applicable, and it may be time to think about having the government build refineries. There is a big strategic dimension to the refinery problem. The private model cannot cover those aspects. It's bad enough the US is already so dependent on crude oil imports. Does the country now really want its refineries to be increasingly built overseas, providing yet another point of strategic vulnerability.
1530 GMT May 24, 2007
Lebanon Army Still Hesitating to begin final assault against Fatah Islam, and understandably. The Army admits to losing 30 men in the first three days of fighting on the refugee camp's outskirts; that was a picnic compared to going into the camp with its warren of narrow alleys and crowded houses. The government is considering the use of other Lebanese militias to do the fighting, saying they will have a better idea the camp's layout.
The government has spent the last two days issuing ultimatums and trying to get other Palestinians to talk to the militants, but Fatah Islam says it will fight to the end. At least the lull has brought time for half the camp's civilians to leave; the last information was that the other half is staying put, possibly because they have no means of leaving. Orbat.com readers are asked to imagine that they must immediately leave their homes with their dependents on foot, and that they have very little cash and nowhere to go. Probably a lot more than half might decide to stay regardless of the danger.
More details on Fatah Islam are available, possibly from refugees. The group arrived about a year ago and began intimidating camp residents, saying the resident were not true Muslims. They number about 300, and only 10% are Palestinians. The rest are from other countries, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. They are very unpopular in the camp, but there was nothing the residents felt they could do.
Opinion
If you are a fanatic Muslim, accusing Palestinians of not being true Muslims is easy. The Palestinians tend to be more secular and better educated than most Muslims. Ironically, Israel for years has focused on damaging this people, opening the way for fundamentalist Hamas and other useless fanatics to gain increasing influence. This process seems to have reached a logical culmination in Fatah Islam: composed 90% of non-Palestinians, it has taken over a Palestinian camp with a 1 fighter to 100 resident ratio, and is speaking in their name.
The Punjab insurgency in India was maintained by 20,000 militants who intimidated a population of 20-million. It is most unlikely the militants were actively supported by more than 1% of the population both from belief or from coercion. Some of the militants had sanctuary in Pakistan. Relatively small sums of money were available from overseas Sikhs and from Pakistan; an abundance of small arms was available from Pakistan.
It took the Indians ten years and somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 police, paramilitary, and troops to crush the insurgency. The figures for government forces fluctuated as the insurgency flourished or declined. Because the judicial/law enforcement institutions of the Indian nation are absolutely not equipped to stand up to violent opposition, it was easy for the militants to target police, judges, and witnesses, and made it impossible to deal with the militants under the normal process of criminal law, something that western human rights organizations never understood.
The militants were ruthless in their sectarian terror - and terror was the only weapon they had, because 99% of the people absolutely opposed their goals. Iraqis are becoming mental cases because a few hundred a month are murdered in sectarian violence. In the Punjab, months where the death toll of poor Hindus pulled off public transport buses and gunned down reached 1000 were quite normal.
The half-millenia of ties between Hindus and Sikhs were so strong that except for the massacre of 3000 Sikhs all over India after the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi the Hindus did not retaliate - and even in that case very few Sikhs died in the Punjab or Haryana.
Despite all this, the insurgency was crushed only by means as brutal and gruesome as those employed by the militants. Captured militants, and male supporters captured along with them, were simply executed on the spot by the police.
Please note that the Punjab was at the time India's most prosperous state. Sikhs were, and are, highly respected in India for their courage and hard work, are welcome in any part of India, and because of this, were/are made welcome in the basic state institutions like the military out of all proportion to their tiny numbers in a country of 1.1-billion. They were the most upwardly mobile of Indian ethnic groups. And they were participants in the most vibrant democracy of the post-colonial era.
Now look at Islamic militants Most Muslims live in improvised autocratic states. They have little chance of economic and political advancement. The future holds nothing for them, and the wonder is not that so many look to the past, but that so many do not.
Their basic conditions of life are what makes fundamentalist Muslims so dangerous. We are dealing not with a state or a coalition of states, but a pool of 1-billion potential recruits who work together disregarding national origin. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia alone together have half-a-billion people who have little economic hope of a decent life. In a rapidly modernizing world the only power these people have is the power of killing under the banner of religion.
We can sit around and debate if the Bush Administration's policies to defeat Islamic fundamentalism are the right way till the cows come home and die of old age. But to downplay the fundamentalist threat, and to downplay the degree to which Muslims - wrongly - blame the west for their condition, and to do this in the name of liberal humanism, is for the west to lay the foundation of its own destruction.
Fundamentalist Muslims willing to kill and to die currently number in the low 100,000s. And currently they seem quite preoccupied mainly in killing each other. Nonetheless, despite their tiny numbers in a world population of 6-billion+, they are increasingly holding large parts of the world hostage.
If nothing is done, the numbers may soon reach the low millions. Then the real fun will begin.
A last word on the Sikhs We find it ironic that some Americans think Sikhs are Muslims. That error is due entirely to the Sikh religious retirement to keep their hair long and their beards unshaved. Muslims may or may not have facial hair, but the hair on their heads is cut. We cannot blame some Americans who may not know this and certainly do not know the difference between a Sikh turban and an Arab one.
The irony, however, comes from this. In the five centuries since Sikhism was founded, there has been no more implacable enemy of Islam anywhere in the world.
This has come about because the Sikhs, who began as a peaceful reform sect of Hinduism - the first 4 of 10 Gurus were Hindus, before the succession became hereditary - were brutally persecuted from the first by India's Muslims. Two were exposed to unspeakable tortures before death; the last guru saw his whole family with the exception of his wife killed by the Mughuls, and he himself was assassinated on the orders of a Mughul governor. From the start the Sikhs fought the Mughuls simply to survive and became Islam's most formidable enemy.
[Even though the Sikhs were persecuted from the start, the first three Mughul emperors, who were - by the standards of the day - tolerant to other religions, did not command a mass persecution of this sect. The last three emperors systematically sought to eradicate Sikhism, in the process making it stronger and progressively more militant.]
0230 GMT May 23, 2007
[0930 GMT] Tripoli Cease Fire Holding as Lebanese Army continues reinforcing its positions. There is no update on casualties after the second day of fighting. Residents speak of many bodies buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
Orbat.com's Request To Washington: Please Stop Doing Drugs How else to account for the fallback plan since the surge isn't working? The elements of this plan are being "trial ballooned" in various forums. And since the surge was Plan F or G or whatever, the fallback will be Plan G or H or whatever. Does anyone care anymore how many plans we've gone through? More to the point, the chance of the new fallback plan working is also zip, zero, zilch.
An analysis by the UK Guardian's Simon Tisdall nicely summarizes, in one place, the fallback plan.
(a) Give a bigger role the UN. Ha ha. The UN ran from Iraq the moment after a single attack on its HQ. By design it is a soft international organization and in no way is it equipped to increase its role in Iraq - as if any UN member wants to take up where the US has failed, to begin with. This is a non-starter, everyone but Washington knows this.
(b) Rely more on France's new president to help the US out in Iraq. Ha ha ha. The new president may be pro-American, that doesn't automatically mean he's an idiot. His own public is irrevocably opposed to any association with the US over Iraq, and France has neither the leverage, the means, or the intent to get involved in another Mideast cesspool. In case the Bushies haven't heard, France has it's hands full with Lebanon and Syria.
(c) Mobilize regional neighbors to help more, including possibly a Muslim peacekeeping force. Ha ha ha ha. Message from Globular Cluster CG409, which is obviously controlling the Bush administration's Iraq policy by beaming all the dumb things the administration is doing/thinking of doing: please absolutely forget that the regional states are Sunni, and that they have no interest at all in stabilizing Iraq so that the Shias can kill the Sunnis better, or in helping Iran create a Shia ascendancy in the Arab world, reversing the Sunni supremacy of 1300 years.
Here's the direct quote on the above: "Internally, the plan is for US forces to help isolate takfirists (fundamentalist Salafi jihadis), peel off Sunnis from the insurgency, contain hardcore elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, and halt Iranian and trans-Syrian infiltration of troops and materiel."
Request to Administration from Orbat.com Editor: While we're making these wish lists, can we please throw in a wish from the Editor? Can you magically transform him into a beautiful female green-eyed Irish redhead, age 20, dimensions 35-23-35, 5' 8", weight 130, with an IQ of say 300? The Editor has been make plans every night to take over the world, every night for the last fifty years, and each has failed. This is his fallback plan: he is sure if recreated in the above form he will take over the world. Realistically, folks, his plan has a better chance of working than the nonsense the Administration is coming up with.
(d) Work with the Terrorist al-Sadr if all else fails, to secure an "orderly transaction". This means enlist America's deadliest enemy in Iraq for a ceasefire that will get the US out of Iraq without having to stage a fighting retreat. You are waiting for us to go Ha ha ha ha ha. Actually, this is the only part of the plan that will work - we should say the Plan After The Plan That Comes after The Surge. al-Sadr will be only too delighted to protect US troops on their way out. Vice President Cheney is said to favor this plan.
Thing is, if US decides to exit Iraq, it doesn't need al-Sadr's goodwill or anyone's goodwill. We know people in Washington have this paranoia that everyone and his brother will be attacking the withdrawing forces. So do they mean to say they have full confidence the US military can fight and win against those elements, but that it cannot cannot protect itself during a withdrawal? In any case, no one will attack US troops. everyone will be busy rejoicing that they can now get down to the real business of killing each other without US interference.
Tripoli Fighting In 3rd Day There was a very brief lull during which 2000 refugees managed to escape the camp, but they were fired on by unidentified snipers and the fighting soon resumed. Several UN aid trucks entered the refugee camp and got stuck; later they managed to get away. So at least some relief supplies arrived; nonetheless, the situation continues to deteriorate with doctors operating in the street and without blood.
The Lebanese Army is leveling any house from which it receives fire. On the one hand, we don't blame the Army: it has lost a number of its men and firepower is one way of minimizing your own losses. On the other hand, this is not a good policy because there is no way of telling if the civilians inside a house are willingly cooperating with gunmen or if the house has been forcibly occupied. When you start obliterating houses in a densely populated refugee camp, you are going to have a lot of civilians killed. All this assumes that in each case the Army can tell from precisely which house it is receiving fire: with houses right on top of each other this is not an easy proposition.
Of course, the refugees are not Lebanese. We are not making judgments, but we wish there was a better way of dealing with the militants.
Meanwhile, this incident is typical of the militants resolve. A single militant fought a six-hour battle with the Army. When they finally took over the house, he blew himself up rather than surrender.
Iran Revolutionary Guards Arming Taliban says Jang of Pakistan quoting an unnamed British officer. The report is likely lifted without attribution from a western news agency. Two convoys, one in April and one in May, were detected.
More Proof Of Water On Mars Okay, so this has nothing to do with the GWOT, but once in a while it's a good thing to remind oneself that there are matters that are more important than our everyday concerns.
Mars Rover Spirit has found a patch of 90% silica, and this material can be formed only through interaction with water. There's already good proof of water held as ice at the poles, and indications that subsurface water held as ice may be all over the planet. This adds up to the possibility that Mars was once wet.
The reason for excitement over the new field is the possibility the silica was formed in geothermal wells: on Earth these teem with all kinds of life, some quite exotic. So there might be evidence of past life to be found - or even the Holy Grail of modern exobiology, present life.
0230 GMT May 22, 2007
[1430 GMT] Fighting continues; the latest casualty report from Reuters is the same 85 as we reported at 0230 GMT. Since the refugee camp where the militants are located is sealed off, no one knows the actual militant and civilian dead. The Lebanese Government says it has blocked the camp to prevent the militants from escaping, but as a result no aid is reaching the refugees, estimated variously as 30-40,000. They are without power or medical aid, and food is running out.
The Palestinians largely back the Lebanese Government's action: Fatah Islam is unpopular among the refugees. And, as is being said, these new splinter groups have their own agendas, the welfare of the Palestinian people not necessarily being the top priority. There is a concern, nonetheless, that unless the Lebanese Government acts to ameliorate the situation in the camp, there could be backlash.
In our opinion, this would not have significant impact on the government as the latter is determined to assert its control over the camp. The 12 camps in the country house perhaps 300,000 refugees and by agreement the government does not enter them.
This arrangement would seem to have outlived its utility. It remains to be seen if the government will use the Tripoli camp fighting to change the policy. The government says it is taking unspecified measures to prevent trouble at other camps.
A Lebanese Army source says that the militants do not surrender. They are either killed or withdraw. They seem to be well-trained, equipped, and motivated. We note these are not characteristics usually associated with Palestinian forces of any ilk. Doubtless the Lebanese Army will prevail, but the militants willingness to die augers ill for any hope the matter will be settled without many further casualties.
Tripoli Fighting Toll Now 85 says Reuters, with 32 soldiers, 20 militants, and 27 civilians believed dead. The Lebanese government has ordered the Army to wipe out Fatah Islam. A ceasefire was reported yesterday afternoon Lebanon time but was breached almost immediately, making it impossible for relief agencies to get aid to the beleaguered refugee camp where the militants are based.
President Bush has stopped short of blaming Syria for the fighting, saying he will wait for more information.
It seems to us if Syria is indeed behind Fatah Islam's starting a confrontation with the the Lebanese Government, as is widely assumed, the matter is a bit more complicated than eliminating a few hundred militants. If Syria is signaling the Lebanese Government that pushing ahead with the UN tribunal concerning the Harari murder is a bad idea, surely Syria did not think that unleashing such a small force would achieve anything. Moreover, given the Lebanese prime minister is counting on western support to protect hi,/his government, the government is unlikely to back down just because there is fighting in one refugee camp in the country.
We suspect, then, that this is merely a signal to the Lebanese government and the west that Syria is prepared to escalate. Remember that large segments of Lebanon look to Syria as their protector. Syria suffered a major defeat when the west forced it to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, but that hardly ended Syria's self-assumed role as final arbiter of Lebanon's destiny, or reconciled its Lebanese supporters to a Syria-less future.
Other purely speculative explanations are possible. One is that Syria wanted to test the Lebanese government. Having made its point, Damascus will now tell Fatah Islam to disperse, or to pull back to Syria. Another might be that for its own reasons Syria has decided the group is expendable in the cause of testing the government. Yet another could be that the group's hand was forced by an actual or perceived impending crackdown.
First Israeli Fatality In Hamas Rocket Attacks By yesterday the total rockets launched by Hamas over the last 4-5 days went up to 150, and one Israeli was killed. Israel continued its attacks on Hamas; we do not have a figure for the total dead on its side, but it is likely approaching 20.
Prime Minister Olmert is under increasing pressure from members of his own coalition for an all-out retaliation. In our opinion this will solve nothing except make the Israelis feel good. Israel either occupies all of Palestine and pays the price, or it continues with its futile periodic invasions and pays that price, or it does nothing and pays the price.
All of Israel's choices are bad. We don't know what the Israelis could have done differently over the last 40 years because we believe that no matter what concessions the Israelis made/make, only the elimination of Israel will satisfy the Arabs. The original mistake was creating Israel in the Middle East against the opposition of the Arabs, who at the time were so weak and so powerless that no one in the west gave them a moment's thought. That mistake cannot be undone, and the Arabs are no longer without power, so the current no-win situation must continue until one side or the other accumulates the power for a final solution.
Seeing as the Arabs outnumber the Israelis 50 to 1, we do not see how the final solution will favor Israel. Thanks to the Editor's American upbringing, he finds it galling there is no neat solution to the Arab-Israeli problem. It is the same with the India-Pakistan situation, now starting its 7th decade. Pakistan may self-destruct and give India the chance for a solution: after all, India is six times the size in terms of numbers and GDP. The Israelis do not enjoy that advantage vis-a-vis the Arabs.
Oddly, even Debka.com is advising against a conventional Israeli operation, which it believes will be defeated. We do not agree with Debka, which consistently overestimates the Palestinians and the ability of Iran to stiffen their resistance. Hamas is not Hezbollah. Our concern is, Israel bashes the Palestinians for the umpteenth time, and then what?
Debka says "Unorthodox strategic and tactical thinking is needed, say the experts, not an effort to fight the Lebanon War anew in Gaza. The clock cannot be turned back to the days before 2005, when former PM Ariel Sharon supported by Olmert pulled Israel out of the Gaza Strip and the strategic Philadelphi border route - or when Olmert after becoming prime minister let Hamas win the Palestinian general election in 2006 with FM Tzipi Livni’s support. Israelis have defeated Arab terror before. In the 1930s, The English military genius Orde Wingate taught Jewish paramilitary defenders his Special Night Squads tactics for turning Arab guerrilla methods against them. Nothing much has changed in 71 years, except for the fact that today, Israel has a strong army of its own, and does not need British or other international force to defend its sovereign territory. All that is needed is a government with resolve that lets the military do its job." (Debka.com, May 22, 2007).
You don't have to be any kind of expert to read that and understand that even Debka, for all its self-vaunted military connections, has even less of a clue as to what's to be done than we do. And we have clue at all.
Afghan-Bound Coalition Fuel Trucks Attacked For 2nd Time says Xinhua of China, quoting a not-terribly-reliable private news agency called NNI. In the first incident, 8 fuel trucks were destroyed when hit by "missiles" in the Landi Kotal area of the Khyber Agency in Pakistan's North West Frontier region. This new attack resulted in the destruction of 10 fuel trucks near the Torkhum border crossing in the NWFP. Two "missiles" were fired. We are going Austin Powers with the "missiles" because more likely they were rockets; there is seldom any precision in language when reporting from the region is concerned.
0230 May 21, 2007
[1330 GMT] Lebanon Fighting Continues into second day. Reuters says 65 now dead, including 27 soldiers, 15 militia, and 15 civilians. Sources say Fatah Islam has 300 fighters; we'd quoted London times to say there were 100. Both the Lebanese Army and Fatah Islam were reinforcing Tripoli.
Up To 50 Dead In Lebanon Factional Fighting The Lebanese Army Sunday engaged in fighting with a small Sunni militia group called Fatah Islam, losing 22 of its men for a claimed toll of 17 militants. Several civilians are also dead.
Fatah Islam is a splinter group from another militant group, and came up possibly in the fall of 2006. Times London says it has 100 fighters. Some say it is linked to Al-Qaeda others say it is a Syrian front group. The Syria theory group link the trouble for the call by the Lebanese Prime Minister for a UN tribunal to try the killers of Mr. Harari. He was anti-Syria and there seems to be good evidence Damascus engineered his death. The Lebanese President and a substantial part of parliament are opposed to any UN tribunal, so this is a hot-button issue in Lebanon.
The immediate provocation was a bomb blast Saturday killing one civilian and wounding several. The Lebanese Army arrived to raid a Fatah Islam office and was ambushed at least twice. It then attacked a house believed to contain the militants, using tanks and infantry.
This is the worst episode of sectarian violence in Lebanon for about 15 years.
Hezbollah Taunts Israel by flying its flag near the Sheba Farms and by posting large pictures of Israel's two kidnapped soldiers on the border so as to be visible from Israel's side. The kidnapping set off the 2006 fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, now referred to as the Second Lebanon War.
Meanwhile, Gaza Battles Continue In the first instance we have the continuing fighting between Hamas and Fatah, though the umpteenth ceasefire was announced Sunday.
In the second instance the Israeli Air Force flew seven strikes Sunday against Hamas targets, killing 10. This included perhaps as many as as seven family members of a top Hamas leader. He, however, escaped death. These attacks were followed by the usual Hamas vows for revenge.
In the third instance, Hamas launched 14 rockets against Israel by Sunday afternoon, according to Debka.com
Iran's Intentions The Big Unknown There is a growing sense in the Mideast that the region is heading for another war this summer. In our opinion, it all depends on Iran. If Iran unleashes its proxies, there is going to be a war.
So what are Iran's intentions? We'd suggest to readers they draw no comfort from the step-up of diplomatic activity between Iran and the US. Both sides are smiling at each other, but the smiles are really displays of fangs. US continues to hold an Iran attack as an option, and Iran is as determined as it was before the diplomatic activity to (a) bleed the US in Iraq, (b) attack Israel, and (c) destabilize Lebanon, removing it from its western alliance.
Iran is shooting for nothing less than dominancy in the Arab world, and believes it is on a roll. The Sunni powers and the US are working to weaken Iran. The Iranians are said to be canny tacticians, but the truth is we think they're quite reckless, a bad thing to be for a high stakes gambler. Also, there is the matter of internal Iranian politics. The current prime minister initially seemed to have engineered a take-over of Iran by the Revolutionary Guard, but it seems a variety of different interests are fighting back. The prime minister may soon start running up against a time constraint and has every incentive to keep escalating in the Middle East, creating a situation in which he can get rid of his enemies at home.
On the other side you have Mr. Bush, who has very skillfully used the War On Terror to railroad the American people and governing institutions into supporting his power grab in the US. Mr. Bush has run out of time, the opposition to his policies grows every day. Obviously we don't think Mr. Bush can be compared to Iran's prime minister in anything more than the superficial context we mention above, but there are a great many people even among America's traditional allies and friends who are very worried he may attack Iran.
So basically we have a bad, bad, bad situation brewing. The last thing the US needs is an expansion of the current Mideast war into new arenas. The US has no ground troops left, it's diplomacy worldwide is in shambles, and the strain of the Global War On Terror is incredibly high. The Iranian prime minister believes - according to us - that the US is weakening and he can win.
That may be as may be. Perhaps he is even right. He has to remember one thing, though. The US has the ability, despite all its problems, of sending Iran back to the pre-industrial age and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, he or anyone in the world can stop the US if it feels it is being overwhelmed by Iran in the Middle East. If he believes that a destroyed and mortally wounded country is an acceptable price for continuing his reckless drive for dominance in the Middle East, and if he thinks he can checkmate the US by threatening an expansion of his terrorism, well, all we can say is he's going to be in for some nasty surprises.
We are reminded, in a distant but still valid sort of way, of Hitler's misassessment of the US. He knew perfectly well American was a very powerful country. But he thought that because it was a racially mixed capitalist society it was degenerate and could not stand up to the combination of Japan and Germany. That is why he opportunistically declared war on the US after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It was by no means his last mistake. But it was by far his greatest. Iran should think twice before fatally provoking the US. Americans may oppose the Iraq War. That doesn't mean they're going to sit back and watch Iran take over the Mideast.
0230 May 20, 2007
Good Bye, Tony Blair We are still waiting to see, in the media, some understanding that even if Mr. Blair had not joined Mr. Bush in Iraq, he probably would have been on his way out. He has been prime minister for 10 years, and the British - unlike the Indians - do not believe in the indispensable leader theory.
For the first 43 years of independent India, it was ruled for all but 6 by three generations of Nehru. Two of the three died in office. And if the Congress Party would put Priyanka Gandhi instead of her brother, the amiable duffer Rahul Gandhi, forward as the next head of the party, we could soon see a 4th generation of Nehrus.
You have only to remember what the Brits did to Winston Churchill, their greatest prime minister of the 20th Century. With the Second World War won, they forcibly retired him after just five years. This was the man a British poll once voted the greatest ever Briton. Our choice would have been Elizabeth I, but no matter. Churchill did make a 4-year comeback as prime minister; still that's nine years total.
Yes, you can say that but for Iraq Mr. Blair would probably have served out his current term, making it to 12 years versus 11 for the very formidable Mrs. Thatcher. William Pitt the Younger was PM for 20 years in various cabinets. We don't count Robert Walpole's 21 years 1721-1742 because though he was PM in fact, he did not have the title.
The media nowadays has the habit of instant, intellectually lazy analysis. So you will see again and again shallow analyses of Mr. Blair's downfall as due to Iraq. We feel that even absent Iraq, 2008 likely would have seen a new British prime minister. People want change, and even the best leaders run out of steam at some point.
Wanna Make $340,000/Year? Apply To Abraxas Corporation The Washington Post says that's what the Washington, DC area company founded by ex-CIA people was offering as its top-of-the-grade salary for intelligence analysts - human and signal - to work in Fallujah, Iran. Keep in mind that if the company is paying that amount, it's possible it's billing the US Government $1-million/year for filling one top slot. A rule-of-thumb for companies is: salary 1/3rd, overhead 1/3rd, gross profit 1/3rd. This obviously may not apply in the case of such high-paying jobs.
Still, if you wonder where your Iraq money is going, look no further. The same analyst, working as a government employee for the CIA, would likely not get more than $80,000 - we are guessing here as we don't know the details of the job, but that's about what a 15-year employee would get.
The problem is, of course, that the CIA doesn't have anywhere near the number of personnel it requires, thanks to the gutting cuts of the 1990s. If a person works for the CIA or the military, you can order her/him where you want. If you're calling for volunteers from the open market, you have to pay open market price. Cent wise, dollar foolish as the adage goes.
We Have A Minor Story Concerning Abraxas The Editor founded Orbat.com on the premise that military intelligence, that most sacred of government insider functions, could be, and should be, outsourced. As usual, he can claim with unbecoming modesty to be ahead of his time. One day he saw an advert for political and military analyst types in the newspaper. So he called Abraxas and offered Orbat.com's services.
He received in reply a nice message asking how he, the Editor, had gotten the name of the person for whom he left a message, and a polite email request for a URL so the person could check out "General Data". The Editor sent the General Data URL, which intentionally says precisely nothing, and some publicity material. Being a great Counter of Chickens Before They Are Hatched, your Editor thoughtfully wondered if this might be the Break he had sought for many years.
You've guessed the ending: he heard nothing further from Abraxas. One clue to the likely outcome was the putting of General Data in Austin Powers' quotation marks. Well, we can't help the company is called General Data, because that is what the Editor still hopes it will become, but obviously the Abraxas person thought it was some kind of cover name.
Now, at the time, the editor had no clue Abraxas was ex-CIA. That shows just how informed he is these days. ["Warning: Being forced to earn a living in an irrelevant field is hazardous to your standing as a spy".] When he did find out, several likely explanations of the cold shoulder became obvious. The most likely is that since Abraxas is an insiders company, and the Editor is not an insider on anything anywhere, he could not give the metaphorical secret handshake and was automatically rejected. A less likely but still possible explanation is that the person did a database search and the inevitable "Avoid This Crazed Person" popped out.
"Yes, yes," you will say, "but you haven't told how you got the name of the right officer. We know Abraxas, it's a high security operation, and it doesn't have a nice website that says: "If you are an ex-spy with Iraq experience apply to Ms. Jane Jones" and so on." Well, the thing is, your Editor wouldn't be much of a spy if he couldn't even find out who to address his enquiries to, now would he?
The thing with the intel business is that it is the ultimate insider's club. Who you are is more important by a factor of 10 than your competence. Its a very compartmentalized and - oyxmoron alert - secretive business. People have no way of evaluating the material you are offering without going through a complicated process. So they go by who you are. If you are no one, you don't get past first gate. Your material will never have a chance of getting to the right person who can say: "Hmmm. Looks like this person knows what he is about. Let's talk to him."
When the Editor created Orbat.com, he knew that. But he thought - wrongly - that the worth of Orbat.com's material - the stuff we keep to sell, not the stuff you can buy from us for $75 - would be so obvious he could circumvent all that. Sadly, it a'int so. The reality is that an intelligence agency would really rather spend a half-million dollars a year to keep a spy in the field than to get the same information from us for $500. The brand name counts for everything, the quality for nothing. And obviously we don't have the brand name.
0230 May 19, 2007
Afghan Troops Gathering For Border Fight With Pakistan in the border district of Ali Kheyl in Eastern Afghanistan. Please read the Times of London article at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1811094.ece
The background is complicated, but the current crisis comes from escalating border clashes between Pakistan and Afghan troops. Times says soldiers from Afghan 203rd Corps, who should be fighting the Taliban, are gathering and waiting to fight back the next time the Pakistanis open fire.
The Pakistanis say they are simply trying to protect their border. The Afghans say they don't recognize the border. They are also angry because of Pakistan's support of the Taliban.
We found nothing on the border crisis in the E-version of the Daily Jang, a leading Pakistani paper. There was also nothing in the Frontier Post; unfortunately aside from the headlines, the Afghanistan news page was not working. We also saw nothing in Press Trust of India, Times of India, and BBC.
Hamas-Israel: Back To The Same Old Debka.com says Hamas has fired 120 Kassem rockets in the last four days. In retaliation, Israel has been launching air strikes and ground attacks against suspected launch positions and Hamas operatives; 9 Palestinians were killed in two strikes yesterday evening.
Hamas says it will not stop firing rockets. Israel says it will keep retaliating. Israeli sources say a prolonged ground operation/occupation is unlikely. Unfortunately, that is the only way to stop the rockets. Their range has been doubled to 16-km, so now the territory needing occupation will have to be that much greater. At which point Hamas will develop 25-km rockets or Iran will give them, and Israel will need to occupy more territory. Any occupation not just increases Palestinian resistance, it also brutalizes the Israelis, something the latter quite understand, to give them credit.
Meanwhile, Fatah-Hamas fighting continues; the toll in the latest round is 55, mostly Fatah fighters. For reasons not known to us they usually seem to get the worst in these clashes.
It's The Bad Old Refineries Again II Business Week writes, in an article on Exxon, that the company is not investing in refineries because it believes gasoline demand will level off as automobile engine efficiencies increase, and because alternatives like ethanol will reduce demand.
In a conclusion bound to gladden the hearts of conspiracy theorists, however, BW says that contrary to the assumption that increased prices lead to increased production, in the case of oil companies this may not be so, particularly for Exxon. The company is under investing in new exploration and instead is using its profits to buy back its shares, boosting value to the shareholders at the expense of consumers.
Letter From Rohit Vats On Indian Army Pay Increase Even though you have argued for the pay increase, you haven't highlighted the flaws in the article which has been written without any research what so ever. Take for example, the argument about Army having 100,000 Orderlies & drivers. He goes to argue that even in USA, only the senior most people have drivers allotted to them while others drive to work. As per authors convoluted logic, India is pampering it's officer corp and Army can rationalize it's structure by not having these "Luxuries". I hope you know that Army does not recruit Jawans or drivers because it wants to pamper it's officers. These are men who fill one role or other (generally from General Duty 'GD' category, to which most Jawans belong) and in war time would be fighting with their Regiments. Same for the drivers. These men are there to man a Regiment's transport. You know better that the Army is short of Officers, so even by authors completely nonsensical logic, if per officer there were to be 2 orderlies, the figure does not add up. There is yet another argument which says that Army's 'Teeth to Tail' ratio is way lopsided and has resulted in a large standing Army.
Also, before asking for pay increase, Army first needs to get it's house in order by way better force structure. He is again mixing two completely different issues here. What's Army's Teeth to Tail ratio got to do with salaries and attracting talent to join the Army.
This article is another example of media shooting off it's mouth on matters it simply does not understand. But the biggest tragedy is that they don't even make any effort to do so. No one knows who gives okay to go ahead and publish such rubbish which for a moment would not stand scrutiny. II hope hence forth you'll be more observant before quoting from articles written by such people or at least present a balanced view.
Editor's reply Mr. Vats is correct to the separate the issue of misuse of Indian Army manpower for non-essential purposes from the issue of teeth-to-tail ratio. The Indian Army's "tail" has been cut so much that the Army cannot sustain a war beyond a few weeks. Even in those weeks there is a severe shortage of engineer and transport regiments. For example, Indian armored formations once deployed cannot be redeployed without considerable lapse of time because of a shortage of tracked-vehicle transporters. Of course, Indian railheads are close to the border in most cases, but the shortage creates many constraints.
In 1962, before the China War, the Indian Army maintained the equivalent of perhaps 13 divisions on a 550,000 man base. Today, even excluding the specialized counter-insurgency force, it maintains 45 division-equivalents on a base a bit more than twice as large. And these are standard-size divisions, not Soviet-size. While no one will dispute the 1962 organization was wasteful of manpower, today the trend has gone in the other direction.
Incidentally, when counting the US tail in Iraq, don't forget there may be as many as 125-150,000 contractor personnel, giving about 50,000 personnel per division-equivalent. This is the same figure as the US Army used as a division-slice for an overseas-deployed division for half-a-century.
So, someone will say, doesn't that bring the US troop total to 275-300,000 by the standard of past wars, and if so what is the fuss about the US not having enough troops? Well, the fuss is that however you count it, the US has perhaps 60 battalions in Iraq - someone better informed can correct us. Anbar and Baghdad eat up perhaps 2/3rds of that, so the rest of the country is going to heck and beyond. If the US is going to stay, it is also going to have to pick up the British sector. It's not a question of a single brigade, because the British were very badly short of troops even when they had their overstrength brigade. What the US really needs to be doing instead of forming a handful of new brigades - and that too at a pace that would make an advancing glacier look like a 100-meter sprinter - is to add two companies per battalion for a total of six, and add more battalions to bring the total up to the equivalent of at least 100 standard-pattern battalions. This is a fast way to expand and the proportionate tail increase will be much less than that required with new brigades. Of course, none of this is going to happen, one of many reasons we, among others, maintain the war is as good as lost.
0230 May 18, 2007
We wrongly had "May 15" as the date for the May 16 and 17 updates. we hope readers are reassured they are not reliving Groundhog Day - the movie.
It's The Bad Old Refineries Again Last year, readers will recall, oil was at $79/barrel and gasoline at $3.03/gallon average US. This year oil is at $65/barrel and gasoline prices are $3.07. Jettison the sinister explanation of cartels and cabals. It's the Bad Old Refineries again. There's oil aplenty, but as happened last year, refineries are the choke-point.
They are running at 90% capacity. Again, we have to go easy on conspiracy theories about refineries always going down for maintenance when the summer driving season hits: 90% is very high for industrial plant.
US refineries have been expanding at existing sites rather than building new ones, but the expansion does not suffice because Americans keep driving more - and of course, there are more Americans each year because of immigration, mainly illegal, and a birth rate that is high for a western nation. The US is importing increasing quantities of gasoline.
Two factors influence refiners. One is the "Not In My Back Yard" syndrome. The other is that new refineries cost big gigabucks. Right now refineries are making good profits, but if oil prices fall - and oil is a cyclical business - the refiners are going to get whacked.
Meanwhile, much to OPEC's relief, almost 1-million barrels/day of Nigerian oil remains off the market. That amount, if produced, would probably drop prices to near $60.
Tata Steel Aims At No. 2 By 2012 with 40-million tons of capacity. It has 26-million tons now, and will add the rest That would make Indians No. 1 and 2 in steel - the largest is Mr. Mittal. So a lot of our Indian readers (okay, 3 of 5 we have) are going to shrug their shoulders and say: "So what's the big deal?"
The thing is, if you'd grown up in India in the 1940s and 1950s, and then gone back for the 1970s and 1980s, as is the editor's case, that Indians could be No. 1 and 2 in the world in anything except for population and rhetorical yap, leave alone something as fundamental as steel - is completely mind-boggling.
[The Press Trust of India study may contain a misprint: it says Tata Steel is planning three greenfield plants of 23-million; also, according to its website, the company is doubling one plant to 10-million tons. Those works alone would raise its output to 55-million tons.]
BBC Has A Nice Article On US Army where its correspondents note that American soldiers " seem brighter, stronger and more committed" than their British counterparts. They are impressed with the US Army's can do spirit even as America is "staring failure in the face". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6663513.stm
French Cabinet Has 7 Women Among 15 Members President Sakrozy has started his promised revolution in the way France is governed with a bang. He has cut the cabinet to 15 from 30 to reduce government costs, appointed 7 women, making this possibly the most gender-equal cabinet in a major country, and made a pro-American his foreign minister. Bernard Kouchner is better known to Americans as the founder of Doctors Without Borders and may be known to some Americans as one of the few politicians to support the US for Gulf II.
0230 May 17, 2007
India Joint Chiefs of Staff Proposes 5-fold Pay Increase for officers, Sandeep Unnithan tells us in an article he wrote for India Today and kindly forwarded. A battalion commander would, for example, get $30,000/year. This is not unreasonable given that thanks to India's continued economic growth, civil sector salaries have shot up to the point a military career - always unattractive because of the hardship - is a non-starter for most qualified applicants. People want to serve their country, but they need to also look after their families and themselves.
The Indian Army, which at a sanctioned strength of 40,000 officers for a manpower that exceeds 1.2-million, is already the most "under-officered" army in the world. And that says nothing about the reality that the Army is far below its sanctioned officer strength. It's common for fighting battalions to have half the number allocated.
The JCS says - again correctly, in our opinion - that you cannot maintain the third largest military force in the world on the 2% or so of GDP allocated for defense.
The critics say that the Indian Army in particular should reduce manpower and put the savings into equipment modernization and presumably pay increases. They say, for example, that the number of orderlies and drivers assigned to officers is 100,000.
Critics have a point. At the same time, the Indian Army is also right when it says that the high-tech model is fine, look what's happened to the US in Iraq. Gulf II was brilliantly won using high-tech, as was Gulf I. Now the US is busy losing the war because it lacks manpower.
In his younger days, the editor was a great believer in high-tech. But later he began to understand that there really is no substitute for numbers. And we are not even looking at the unique conditions under which the Indian Army operates. For example, the Army deploys about 27-28 divisions against Pakistan in wartime. Doubtless a high-tech force of 18 divisions would be much more powerful - in theory. In reality, Pakistan has ways of offsetting India's potential high-tech edge with a much smaller investment because of the geostrategical conditions that prevail on the border.
In 1991 the US Army had both high-tech and numbers. It can be reasonably argued that this was also the case in Second Indochina and the Second World War. In 2004-present it keeps increasing its high-tech margin over other armies. But it's losing its current war.
We feel the correct solution is to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP, not to cut manpower. The current 2% has not been seen since the period 1947-62 when Jawaharlal Nehru deliberately starved the military of funds for political reasons, and we saw the results in 1962. Given the economy is so much larger, and that it continues to expand at 8-9% a year, there is money for both guns and butter.
Umpteenth Ceasefire In Gaza We've been ignoring Palestine as it's been Same Old Same Old. Perhaps 40 have been killed in the last few days in fighting between Fatah and Hamas, and yet another ceasefire has been called. The only news of interest is that some days ago 450 Fatah fighters crossed over into Gaza from Egypt, after receiving training in that country.
Meanwhile, the Israelis continue to threaten "harsh" punishment in response to the firecrackers fired from Gaza into Israel - they're grandly called Kassem rockets. This being the Mideast, and the Israelis - however white and western they may think they are - being part and parcel of Arab culture, we suppose it's no point telling them that their rhetoric has become tiresome. The Palestinians remain defiant despite decades of oppression and harsh punishment.
If anyone should know that once you push people beyond a certain point, even their lives mean nothing to them, it is the Jewish people, who suffered - and survived - some of the harshest "punishment" seen in the 20th Century. Why do the Israelis, now that they are the punishers, think the Palestinians cannot, or will not take, any punishment the Israelis can hand out? Short of killing all Palestinians, or ethnically cleansing them all, how do the Israelis propose to stop them from attacking Israel?
From James Freemon On The Unscented Toiletries given to a terrorist prisoner in jail and his subsequent complaint. The letter puts a new angle on the matter and forces us to concede may be said terrorist had a legitimate gripe.
0230 May 16, 2007
US Most Brutal Nation In The Known Universe (and likely also in the Unknown Universe). (Maybe even in ALL universes.) Sorry, we digress as usual. Story from NPR, delivered by the radio newsreader with a straight face. (We couldn't see his face, but his voice said a lot.)
So here's one of the 15 high-value terrorist prisoners in US custody, a Pakistani. He's been put in front of a tribunal. He says he was beaten and deprived of sleep. We keep saying: put these terrorists into a nice US prison like Angola and they'll think Gitmo is the Waldorf Astoria and 4 Seasons combined. But no one listen to us.
We digress again. Among the complaints were two of such stupefying brutality that we still haven't recovered from the laughter - the next door neighbor was about to call 911 when we explained we were laughing and not having a terminal brain fit.
First, our terrorist complains there were no weight machines available. As everyone knows, in terrorist camps the first thing they put in is an LA Sports franchise gym, so depriving our terrorist of these necessities is indeed gratuitous mistreatment.
Second - can you imagine the horror? - he was given cheap, unscented soap and shampoo!
Doubtless he remained unmoved by the waterboarding and the US country music, the half-naked female MPs lasciviously rubbing themselves against him, the forced dressing up in Victoria's Secret latest fashions, and the crushing information that Victoria's Secret is that she is - um - not attracted to men but to - um - you know what we're saying here, and as such is unavailable to personally insult the religious mores of our terrorist, etc etc.
No. What broke him was the cheap, unscented soap and shampoo!
We have news for you, bub. The US is doing you a favor by giving you the stuff because if you happen to be allergic to perfume - as is your editor - bad things can happen to you. Further, bug (a slip of the pen is no slip of the mind), consider this: you're an enemy of America and you get this stuff FREE, courtesy of the Editor's taxes. The Editor is a friend of America and HE has to PAY huge prices for the unscented stuff.
Where's the justice in that, people? Why has America gone so wrong?
President Musharraf On Iraq Dear President/General Musarraf: we are glad that every now and then you show your true origins as a South Asian politician when you periodically plant a rather large boot in your mouth. India and Pakistan may have gone their separate ways as nations, but we're still blood brothers, aren't we, at least in this foot-in-mouth respect. It makes us feel so cozy, so close to you!
Sorry - forgot to mention that President Musharraf says there is so much bloodshed and killing in Iraq, a Muslim peacekeeping force must be sent.
Pause for respectful silence as we digest this stunningly brilliant idea. Followed by a:
Bwahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Um, don't you think the US has tried everything to get Muslim troops into Iraq, with no success? Forget the Muslim nations, is there one single nation willing to get involved in Iraq? The Coalition of the Heavily Sat Upon By The US - aka Coalition of the Willing - has fallen apart. Not even Washington's threats and inducements can get anyone to send troops to Iraq; those already in against their better judgment just want to get out ASAP. Is there anyone with better than an 8th Grade education who doesn't know this?
So where is this force going to come from? Turkey? Haha. The Kurds are not terrorists, you send the Turks to Iraq and you'll add yet another dimension to a very complicated insurgency because the Kurds will start attacking the Turks. Saudi? Great idea! Lets send 3 Saudi brigades to Baghdad. That will put them closer to the Shias they want to kill. Jordan? Sunnis, aside from the problem Jordan needs every brigade of its small army to protect against the crushing instability that has engulfed the region. Indonesia? That's a thought: hello, Indonesia, what do you think about sending troops to Iraq? Hint: that silence on the phone line does not mean the line is out of order. It means the Indonesians are a polite lot and don't want to insult anyone by saying what they really think of that idea.
Oh, wait! We forgot Pakistan! Pakistan has about 10 divisions as reserves for its holding troops. Surely the US can assure that India tries nothing while those 10 divisions are sent to keep the peace in Iraq. Great idea. Let's forget Pakistan is primarily a Sunni nation and the Government of Iraq will greet the Pakistani peacekeepers with the same enthusiasm as the Iranian government will greet US troops sent to keep the peace the peace between the government and its ethnic minorities.
But may we suggest, Sir, that you NOT bring this idea to the attention of your corps commanders? They will become convinced you've lost your mind and need to be deposed for your own safety
Bye Bye Wolfie, It Was Real when push came to shove, the pushers shoved and the US Administration found itself with just one ally, the Japanese. Particularly since no one is any longer suggesting that the next World Bank president be non-American, the Administration really has no particular stake in fighting for Mr. Wolfowitz. He is not a Friend of Mr. Bush, and reasonably, why should Mr. Bush expend political capital on someone he owes nothing to.
Be that as it may, for us the issue is not the World Bank and its shenanigans. Yesterday, for the first time, some sordid details emerged about Mr. Wolfowitz's partner. That too thanks not to the press, which has managed to make absolutely no headway in getting details, but to Mr. Wolfowitz via his defense of himself to the Bank's directors.
It turns out that Mr. Wolfowitz's partner was most put put when told she would have to leave the Bank consequent on his impending appointment. Whereupon the lady went ballistic, threatening to sue the pants off everyone for discriminating against her as a woman and a Muslim. Mr. Wolfowitz says the Bank could not deal with her, and told him to do so. He did as best he could; the job at State and the huge increase in salary were the price. Mr. W. says the Bank, after approving everything, is now pretending they knew nothing about the deal and are shocked, shocked. Okay, that's between him and the Bank, we could care less about the argument a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats have between themselves.
Our issue is the partner, who seems to suffer not just from a massive sense of entitlement, but a bloated sense of her importance, and who will sink to any low to get her way.
Let's reverse the situation. Mr. W. is the career employee; his partner comes as head. Mr. W. threatens to sue everyone because he has to leave, on the grounds he is a male and Jewish and is being discriminated against. Would anyone at the Bank put up with this for a second? Would anyone have anything except derision for him? We don't think so.
Yes, Ma'am, discrimination is alive and well, because you as a woman expect to be treated differently from the way any man would have been treated.
As for the Muslim bit. Now, please first understand we are not judging you. But by bringing your religion into it, you've made yourself a fair target. So please tell us, how was the Bank discriminating against you as a Muslim? Are you indeed a Muslim in anything but name? And can you tell us where it says in Islam that it is fine for a Muslim - of either sex - to have a long-term, adulterous relationship with someone else? It doesn't look like Mrs. W. bothered to divorce Mr. W.
If the partner really cared so much about her job, she should have quit Mr. W. But in these times, people want everything with the minimum inconvenience and sacrifice. She wanted her job, she wanted her relationship, and she saw a grand opportunity to jump her salary near 50%. By the way, if Mr. W was to be given a second term, she would get another set of raises.
Shame on the Bank for its corruption.
0230 May 15, 2007
African Union Dafur Force On Verge Of Collapse because financial support promised by richer countries has not materialized, says Washington Post quoting UN officials. Salaries are in arrears and equipment/supplies needed are unavailable.
Adding to the problem is that several countries that have pledged troops or equipment have not come through. Egypt, which was to send 36 APCs, is just one of many defaulters.
And if this wasn't enough, Norway and Sweden, the only two European countries willing to send troops, albeit just 250 military engineers, are now hesitating because (1) they say they will not serve under AU command, and (2) they want to send 250 combat troops to protect the engineers. Sudan is unlikely to agree to this.
We often bash the WashPo, but the paper does do a reasonable job on stories such as the above. Doubtless the paper thinks it does a great job, but it dumbs down material and skimps on facts and figures with a vengeance. Better than nothing. Which is close to damning with faint praise.
US Soldier Killed at Pakistan Border Meeting when an Afghan/US group arrived at the Kurram Agency to discuss recent transborder clashes between Afghan and Pakistani forces that have left 13 dead. The Afghans say the meeting became heated and a Pakistani officer opened fire on the group, who returned fire, killing one or more Pakistanis.
The Pakistan government says none of its personnel opened fire, and that the attack was conducted by militants.
We've used the London Times as our primary source, and also used BBC and Jang of Pakistan. About all that seems certain is that one US and one Pakistani soldier are dead.
London Times On The US Surge's Progress We feel it's a balanced article, but since we have a very strong position on the surge and the continued US commitment to Iraq. readers might want to read it and make their own judgments.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article1790347.ece
Mr. Wolfowitz And His Partner We aren't particular interested in the World Bank, but we are rather struck by an assumption that neither than Bank nor its critics seems to have questioned.
Mr. Wolfowitz's partner was employed by the WB when he was appointed as head. Since this created a conflict of interest, she was given a job at the US State Department, and a big raise to offset the loss of opportunity at the bank. The raise made her more highly paid than the US Secretary of State, and more so because she draws her salary from the WB and so gets it tax-free.
The reason Mr. Wolfowitz is in trouble is that he got involved in the salary negotiations. We aren't going to comment on that.
What we'd like to know is, where does this gentleman's partner get off with her sense of entitlement, and where does the Bank get off in indulging it? Why should she be compensated in any way, and why is the World Bank paying her salary? Helping her get another job, at State, is fine if State pays her salary. But it was her choice to continue her relationship with Mr. Wolfowitz after he was nominated for the Bank. The consequences of the choice should be hers, and others should not be made responsible to maintain her career path.
Look at it this way. When Mr. Clinton became President of the US, his wife's career path as a lawyer came to an end - it may already have ended when he became governor of Alabama, but honestly we don't know that much about the Clintons pre-Washington. His wife had a career as much as Mr. Wolfowitz's partner has a career. Why should Mrs. Clinton have to suffer because her boo became the Prez? But no one suggested the World Bank employ Mrs. Clinton as compensation.
This is how we see it: Mr. Wolfowitz and his partner had three choices when he was nominated. He could have said no because he didn't want to harm her career. She could have quietly resigned, gone to another job, and taken whatever damage that entailed. Or the two could have ended their relationship if their careers were so important to them that neither was ready to sacrifice for the other.
What we are suggesting is not outrageous, it is the reality for millions of couples who make career compromises of various kinds for the sake of their relationship.
We hold no brief for Mr. Wolfowitz. We believe he, and the entire lot of decision-makers who got us into the Iraq mess should be tried by tribunal. Those who were purely incompetent can be jailed for life. Those who profited by even one US dollar from Iraq should be hanged. We'd leave it to the tribunal to decide in which category Mr. Wolfowitz falls.
That said, however, if the Bank is going to punish Mr. Wolfowitz for favoring his girlfriend, the entire executive board should also be punished. First for agreeing to pay his partner from bank funds, and second for agreeing to the raise and then turning against Mr. Wolfowitz.
Fair is fair. Condemn the man for whatever he's done wrong. But others at the Bank have done wrong right along with him. If he has to go, so do they.
0230 May 14, 2007
Top Taliban Commander For South Afghanistan Killed He was targeted thanks to intelligence gained after he left his hideout. Mullah Dadullah has been wrongly reported killed before, but this time the Afghan government had his body and it was identified by many people.
Two versions of his death are circulating. One, he was killed by an airstrike. Two, he was killed in a firefight. Those supporting the second version say he had a head injury but the body was intact, which would not be the case if an airstrike hit him.
Of course, we have no way of knowing what happened, but when high-value targets are identified an airstrike is the usual way of dealing with them because they are liable to be somewhere else by the time ground troops are brought in, even if they use helicopters. Further, it is not neccessary for bodies to be blown to bits in an airstrike. People are killed also by shrapnel and by overpressure.
Other sources say he had 3 bullet wounds to the head and stomach - which would imply an ambush. The ambush version has two sub-versions: one, that he was surrounded in a house at a particular location, two, that he was in a car at a completely different location.
We give these details to remind readers that truth remains an elusive commodity both in the Afghan and the Iraq War. Even high officials give contradictory reports about the same incident.
Either way, the loss of this experienced commander will hurt the Taliban. Yet one should keep in mind that commanders are lost all the time. This is not the 15th Century, when the death of a commander could mean defeat. Modern organizations produce replacements. The trick is to kill the replacement before he gets up to speed.
Taliban Offensive Failing says London Times. It seemed to us this is what was happening. Readers will recall we'd said NATO would preempt the Taliban offensive and that has been the case. This appears to have disrupted the Taliban, though one has to remember that most of what it says it will do is mere boasting, so perhaps the offensive was not going to be anywhere near as big as the Taliban claimed.
NATO, the Afghan military, and the US have been intensely attacking Taliban strongholds that have not seen any government presence all these years. The step-up in operations has led to the increase in civilian casualties that we talked about the other day.
It is sometimes very difficult for commanders wanting to avoid civilian losses to make the right choices. In one case, a special forces unit which we think - but are not sure - was American was trapped in a village. It fought it's way out to a river. The sequence of events in unclear, but in order to help it escape, an airstrike was ordered and a number of civilians were killed. Based on the very limited information made public, we don't see the commander had any choice but to order the airstrike.
In a second case, however, a NATO or US unit was attacked in a village where insurgents fought from within the civilian population. No one disputes that the insurgents were there. But along with some insurgents killed there were perhaps 4 civilians killed, and the local population went into a complete anti-NATO/US mode. Perhaps this is a case in which the British "softly softly" approach might have worked better, even though the insurgents were the ones to attack first.
Incidentally, if anyone feels a British doctrine is something no patriotic American can accept, we can change the terminology and refer to the Petraeus Doctrine. The American general makes the point many times that you have to be willing to hold fire even when you are under attack because you don't want to kill civilians.
Kurd Government Reinforces Iran Border Reader Marcopetroni tells us that the Kurds have sent 1000 peshmerga to reinforce the Iran border in an attempt to reduce infiltration. Recently a spate of bombings has hit Kurdistan, which has remained peaceful at a time the rest of Iraq is descending into complete chaos. While some of the violence can likely be traced to Sunni insurgents displaced from other battlefields, some may be the responsibility of Turkish supported groups and most is likely caused by Iran and Iran-allied groups.
0230 May 13, 2007
We did not update the news on May 12, 2007.
Quetta Increasingly "Talibanized" says CNN. The police say there are no-go areas in which the Taliban live. Meanwhile, increasingly men sport long beards and women are clothed from head-to-toe. The city is provincial capital for Baluchistan in Pakistan. The province is the scene for a low-level insurgency for independence, something the locals have been trying to gain since the birth of Pakistan 60 years ago.
The Baluchistan governor denies the existence of any organized Taliban activity in his province; alas, report after report details how the Taliban operate openly in the city, their capita in exile, and how easily they cross the border to mount/support operations in Afghanistan.
The Red Mosque Issue Their Guidance on social norms to be adopted by the Pakistani people and the expected correct relationship between the Mosque and the government.
The Red Mosque is a hard fundamentalist movement that has sprung up, not in the backward tribal areas west of the Indus River, but to the east, in two of Pakistan's three most progressive and modern cities, Lahore and Islamabad. Karachi is the third city and as yet does not seem to be affected by the Red Mosque.
Social norms are in line with strict Sharia law, and as for the government, the Mosque says officials should be trained to handle situations with the Mosque correctly. In other words, at best carry out the Mosque agenda, and worst stay out of its way.
Diyala Province, Iraq: For want Of A Nail The province is just another place that the US pacified and that went to the dogs went troops were sent elsewhere. Now it is in even worse shape, security-wise, because insurgents pushed out of Baghdad are making life for what remains of the government miserable.
What a huge surprise! Who could have imagined that as the US focused on Baghdad the rest of the country would fall apart?
Actually, we need to rephrase the question. Was there anyone outside of the La-La Administration who imagined this would NOT happen?
So after the surge the US sent one battalion to reinforce Diyala, where a heavily overworked brigade of the 25th Division is trying to restore some order. So now the division's commander says he has to have to more troops or the province is going to get out of control. The Army is trying to figure out how to get another battalion to him.
Is there any understanding, in the Administration, of the irony of the situation? Here is the US, third most populous nation, $13-trillion GNP, able to destroy the world in 30 minutes with just its remaining N-weapons which are down from 40,000 or so to 6000 or so, capable of wiping out mighty armies within days entirely from the air, and what is the reinforcement for Diyala that people are trying to find? One battalion. 800 soldiers, say 1500 including their share of in-theatre support.
And what will one battalion more do, even if it can be found? The Iraqi forces have proved themselves, for the umpteenth time, incapable of doing anything to protect their own country. Retraining of Iraqi forces began more than 3 years ago and the result is? Zip, Baby, Zip.
Venezuelan Oil Continues Mainly to US Despite our favorite dictator's hot rhetoric about striking blows against the American empire by nationalizing oil and selling instead to PRC, Venezuela's oil exports to the US amount to 60%, a bigger percentage than ever says Washington Post. Meanwhile, Venezuela has fallen to 5th place in US oil imports, after Nigeria. Canada is the largest source of US oil imports.
Observers discount Mr. Chavez's hopes of selling his oil to PRC instead of US. First, please keep in mind it doesn't matter if Mr. Chavez sells his oil to Tahiti: whoever buys his oil will buy less elsewhere, freeing up an equal amount of oil for the US.
Second, there is tanker transit time: 3 months round-trip to China versus 5 days to the US - we are unsure if this is a one-way or a round-trip time. Since PRC is going to pay market price for oil, the extra cost of shipping oil there has to be made up by Venezuela reducing its selling price. There is also the matter of interest on the money tied up in the oil cargo for 45 days: unlikely China will pay that.
Third, and more important, Venezuela produces heavy oil with a high sulfur content. Only US refineries are equipped to handle it. No other refinery is being built anywhere to handle that oil, and certainly not in PRC.
Please note that the standard oil price mentioned in the daily news is for the highest quality crudes such as Saudi sweet/light, Brent, and West Texas. Heavy/high-sulfur oil sells for less. In March 2007, for example, Maya crude - Venezuela oil - was selling at an $14/barrel discount to Brent.
Other Oil Snippets Iraq is either producing 2-300,000 barrels/day less than it says, or an equivalent amount of oil is being stolen say analysts who have been trying to match oil arriving on the market to stated production figures.
Nigeria is now down 650,000 barrels/day of production due to troubles in its Delta oil region. People worry about Iran mining Hormuz - a move that will plunge Iran itself into an economic collapse - whereas they should be worrying about the loss of Nigerian production.
Iran says it cannot confirm an Indian oil company's claim that it has located 1 billion barrels of oil and 10 trillion cft of gas in an Iran block being explored by India. Iran says the Indians have not handed over any data concerning the find. Iran at almost 1000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, has the world's second largest gas reserves, after Russia, which has 1800 trillion cubic feet. world consumption is 100 trillion cubic feet annually.
0230 May 11, 2007
Iraq Funding Compromise? Democrats dropped their demand for timelines in approving a House bill to fund Iraq operations for two more months. Instead they want benchmarks and want to evaluate progress before approving the next 60-days worth of funds.
President Bush says he will also veto this bill, and for once we have to agree with him. Either the Dems should vote to get out of Iraq, or if they feel the US should stay, then 60-day funding approvals are about as bad an idea as anyone has come up with.
On the other side of the Hill, however, President Bush now says he will accept benchmarks. So he's dropping his demand for unilateral authority to continue the war as he feels best.
So the outlines of a deal seem to be emerging.
Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch The Iraq parliament wants benchmarks too, and it wants a cap on the surge. Readers may know that the Iraqi assembly did not agree to the surge in the first place, but anyway, who cares about the assembly. As far as the US concerned, Iraq is about America, not about Iraq. Please note we are not passing judgment on this stance; there is something to be said for both sides.
Also Back On The Ranch Metaphorically this would be the President's ranch: 11 moderate GOP Congresspersons told the President his Iraq policy was assuring defeat for the Republican party in 2008. They indicated they could give the President till September, but no longer, to show results. Else they would vote for a pull-out.
This is actually quite a serious development from one point of view, because a revolt in the GOP could see anti-Iraq bills passing with a veto-proof majority. As for September, whereas we believe there will be nothing to show in September 2008 or 2009 or 2010, just about every military expert agrees that results by September 2007 are impossible.
From another point of view, Mr. Bush has already indicated he could care less about the Republican party: by refusing to talk compromise before the 2006 elections, he ensured the Republican defeat in Congress.
There is a third viewpoint: if Congress passes veto-proof anti-Iraq bills, Mr. Bush has his out: he can throw up his hands and say by law he has to pull out or whatever, and it's now his party's fault.
Incidentally, Mr. Bush's approval rating is now 28%. We doubt it bothers him unduly; he is a man of strong convictions which can be good and bad. Definitely bad in the case of Iraq.
Also Back At The Ranch In Tikrit Vice President Dick Cheney made what we consider a wholly gratuitous and hypocritical speech to US troops in this Iraqi city, where he said the nation appreciates the sacrifice the troops are making, particularly in reference to the extended tours.
We don't see the Vice President or his ilk making any sacrifices of any sort, and the Administration has repeatedly proven it could care less about the military, the members of which are being sacrificed in a stupid war with no objectives except "staying the course".
Oil In Anbar? We saw a curious report somewhere or the other saying that West Iraq could hold 100-billion barrels of oil. It looks like the report is from the same company that posted new estimates of Iraq's total reserves.
Now, to us West Iraq includes Anbar, and if there is indeed oil there, to say nothing of this magnitude of oil, then you could see a very major strategic shift in the Mideast. The Sunnis would have every reason to accept a breakup of Iraq because that oil would be theirs, and it is a lot of oil for 5 million people. The US would have a serious incentive to protect the new state. And the Saudis would have a serious incentive to torpedo the new state, even though that means going against Sunnis, because a new country with that level of oil could completely disrupt Saudi control of the oil markets.
Please note that if the oil exists, the Iraq civil war could end tomorrow. If the Sunnis agree to a split, that's the end of the insurgency. Of course, there are many different insurgencies in Iraq, but then the US could leave the Shias to sort out their lives themselves. The Shias, incidentally, at this point, at least, are not particularly concerned if the Kurds go their own way because South Iraq has plenty of oil - and it's
0230 May 10, 2007
Differences On Surge Between Military and Pentagon Already Emerge Day before yesterday a top US commander in Iraq said it is going to be April before any clear indication emerges if the surge is working. If it is, the US can think about redeploying troops. If not, there will be need for a new strategy.
Yesterday the US Secretary for Defense says that the US may be able to start redeploying as of September.
So what's going on?
Very simple. The military is simply speaking the truth. Any new CI strategy takes times to implement, and the odds against the success of this strategy are so high that it's wise to plan for alternatives - if your objective is to continue the war.
But that is not the way the surge was sold to the American public. The public was told if progress is not evident by September, the US will consider a major change in strategy, leading to a drawdown. Of course, there were ample "possiblies", "maybes", "couldbes" and such like, so that you could not bring a charge of deliberate deception against the administration. Nonetheless, it was the administration's choice to encourage wishful thinking.
The public, of course, was being lied to by the politicians. Had the surge been presented for what it has developed into, just one more strategy that will likely fail on top of several failures, and that yet more time and yet more money will be needed to try out yet another strategy that might or might not work, the public would have said: "Forgetaboutit."
First, let's look at the irony of this new difference in perspective. The President has been telling the Democrats: "The generals will decide what is needed in Iraq, not Congress". Now the generals are saying plainly they envisage an open-ended commitment, and Secretary Gates rushes in the very next day to go back to the rosy-hues.
So clearly the President is not the least bit interested in what the generals think - enough of them told him the surge was not going to work.
By the way, we firmly believe that while the President must consult with his generals, he has every right to overrule them. If you left wars to generals, they would never be sufficiently ready to start the war, and they would never have enough resources to continue it, and they would never say when they could win it.
We've said many times before: war is politics by other means. There is no such thing as a purely military decision. For example, when General Westmoreland wanted 200,000 more troops - after having wrangled several escalations - President Johnson said no. The troops were needed in purely military terms. But war objectives have to be aligned with what the nation can and will do, and there was no way the nation was going to quietly accept a further escalation, and one of such magnitude.
Similarly, military logic dictated the US cross the Euphrates in Gulf I. The politicals said "absolutely not". And they were right. Had the US gone for Baghdad, right now we would be talking about Year 16 of the Iraq insurgency, not Year 5.
All we are objecting to is Mr. Bush's hypocrisy. Roosevelt and Churchill were completely honest about the sacrifices that were required to win, and not fought a war with inadequate resources, shifting the cost to future generations, and fought a war with no clear, achievable objectives. If Mr. Bush thinks the people will not support the Iraq war if there are told the true costs, then he needs to get out of Iraq, and not keep saying he leaves things to the generals.
By the way: irrelevant, but we cannot resist. One place the politicals made a very, very big boo-boo was in stopping Patton's drive to Berlin. Interestingly, however, Patton was not thinking in purely military terms. He fully understood the real nature of the Soviet Union, and he very correctly feared that following the defeat of Germany a far worse war with the Soviets would begin. He knew his geopolitics. (BTW, remember the A-Bomb was secret: had a war with the Soviets begun, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki the next two bombs, available perhaps in 1946, would have dropped over Russia. Also BTW, for those who claim the US was racist in bombing Japan and would never have A-bombed Germany, we say "you have no clue what you are talking about." If Germany was not so obviously on the verge of defeat when the bombs were ready, the US would have bombed Germany first and then Japan. Americans are very impartial in their killing.) Of course, even if no war with the Soviets would have lasted long, stopping Patton laid the foundation for a very long war anyway - the 45-year Cold War.
Our second point - we know readers are saying: "when is this editor going to get to the point?" - concerns the senior US commander's saying that if by April the surge is not working the US will need to work out a new strategy.
To this we say: "Look, mate. You have had zero luck with every strategy you've followed so far. Part of the problem is you never had enough troops. Part is your commander-in-chief and his cohorts made every mistake possible. But lets get real. You can't just go on saying "this didn't work let's try that" because people are getting killed and huge money is being spent. Moreover, you are not now, not ever going to get the troops you need. And still moreover, no matter what the government, Democratic or Republican, the politicals will continue making horrific mistakes because you have leaders who can't tell the front end of a horse from the back end. They persist in talking to the back end, and get surprised when they are repeatedly covered in horse poop. What you really need to do, as generals whose first loyalty should be to their troops, not to the idiocies of Washington, is to forthrightedly tell the President this is not a winnable war without many, many more troops and many, many more years. Leave it to him to decide if this is politically acceptable. If he says it's not, you need to tell him you need to leave. if he orders you to stay, you need to resign."
Is that so very complicated? We fear that for American generals, who are largely complicit in the extreme stupidity that has led us into this war and keeps us there, it is really very complicated.
0230 May 9, 2007
Hezbollah Fully Recovered From Lebanon War say various sources. UNIFIL II has managed to prevent Hezbollah from overt demonstrations of its presence in the buffer zone, but it has not been able to stop arms shipments from Syria, mainly because it is not deployed athwart the smuggling routes. When we say "smuggling routes", don't think trucks waiting for darkness to make a dash across the border in some remote location. Think major checkposts between Syria and Lebanon where either due to bribes or to border guards turning a blind eye, entire convoys enter Lebanon.
Hezbollah says it has learned from the war and is ready to fight another. The consensus is that Hezbollah will not start anything. But should the US attack Iran, Hezbollah will be unleashed against Israel.
Strangely - we are being ironic here - that was Hezbollah's role in the first place. It's widely agreed that Hezb did not anticipate Israel would launch a full-scale war in retaliation for the kidnapping of two IDFsoldiers. So Israel essentially forced Iran's hand, because once it was attacked, Hezb could hardly just sit back even if the intent of its Iranian masters encompassed larger strategic purposes.
If Hezb did not read Israel correctly, Israel made an identical mistake in its turn. It thought Hezb would simply roll over. While both sides learned their lesson, the clear winner in the lesson game was Hezbollah.
If the US does decide to attack Iran - an increasingly unlikely prospect, Israel is going to have its hands full with the new Hezbollah.
In the meantime, of course, Iran is pushing for a separate Shia state in Lebanon. This will mean the breakup of Lebanon and the end of a bulwark of Western influence in the Mideast. Of course, no one in Washington has time to worry about such matters, obsessed as the Administration is with Iraq.
Goodbye, Mr. Olmert Israeli politics being complex beyond the understanding of non-specialists, it's best for readers to check out this article for themselves http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/857312.html Haartez, at least, believes the end is near for the beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister.
Israelis don't like losers. Used to be that was an American trait. Mr. Bush is lucky things have changed in America.
King Herod's Tomb Found in Jerusalem. This news is likely to be of greater interest to many than the drivel we reported above.
India To Step Up Air, Naval Surveillance Against Possible LTTE Air Attack reports Press Trust of India.
First, we must congratulate the Indians. Their attitude toward almost every security problem is reactive. We are surprised, pleased, and impressed that India is being pro-active, and that too solely on a warning by the Sri Lankan government, which is hardly a neutral party. It is to Colombo's advantage to get the Indians worked up. Still, till now the term "Indian strategic/military decision-making" was a bit of an oxymoron. It is great that India has decided to take a potential threat seriously.
The concern is the LTTE may attack an Indian N-reactor. We don't think this is likely. For one thing the light aircraft that the LTTE has can carry only a very limited payload. For another, it is not to the LTTE's advantage to get India worked up to the point that India again commits troops to help the Sri Lankan government.
The last intervention, in the late 1980s, was a bit of a fiasco. But that was because India thought it was on a peacekeeping mission, and the LTTE, after all, was nurtured, trained, and equipped by India. This led to considerable confusion on strategic aims. Combined with India's well known ad hocism, trouble was inevitable. Next time around would be different and could well spell the LTTE's end. Presumably the LTTE understands this and will not provoke India by something as foolish as an air attack.
0230 May 8, 2007
Governor Sebelius, We Respectfully Disagree The Kansas governor says that because of her state's National Guard deployment to Iraq, rescue/recovery efforts after the Greenburg tornado have been hampered. The state's top emergency official says that Kansas has had to hire contractors for the cleanup.
Let's go back to what the National Guard is supposed to do. It is primarily a warfighting component of the US Army. It's domestic role comes second. The Kansas National Guard site says: "The Army National Guard is an elite group of warriors who dedicate a portion of their time to serving their nation." You don't need warriors to perform rescue/cleanup in Greensburg, KS. Indeed, as of time of writing, the governor has mobilized just 110 Guard members for the recovery effort. Moreover, she has available to her the Guard from other states. She has not so far requested any such assistance.
No situation has arisen in Greensburg that requires soldiers. Doubtless it would be nice to have them. But there is no breakdown of law and order, and no further imminent danger. This is not New Orleans 2005, when the military was very much required.
We don't understand why anti-war groups have seized on this emergency to push their agenda on Iraq. Surely it is not their case that the Guard has to be kept ready to meet local emergencies first and deploy for the national defense second. If that was the case, we wouldn't need a National Guard in the form it is maintained. We could do better with emergency rescue battalions such as are maintained by some European countries.
Now, as far as we know, the Kansas National Guard is, at this time, also deployed to Afghanistan and Kosovo, and the Kansas Air Guard has finished a deployment to the Mexico border. We don't hear the good governor of Kansas getting upset about these deployments. After all, they too have taken Kansas troops away from home and made them unavailable for Greensburg.
We learn that 20% of the Guard's Humvees and 15 of its 19 helicopters are unavailable due to the Iraq deployment. Hmmmm. That means that 80% of Humvees are available. As for helicopters, these can be made available from other states within hours. In case the good governor has forgotten, she can get help from Ft. Riley any time she wants. True, much of Ft. Riley is either overseas, or preparing to deploy, or returning. But how many troops does the governor need? Apparently just a handful.
The cleanup effort will be prolonged. It is, then, best left to civilian contractors.
There are any number of good reasons not to be in Iraq. But the governor has not given any reason at all. As such, her statement is pure politics, nothing more.
Don't Expect Too Much Amity From President Sarkozy Of France He is well-known to be a friend and admirer of America. But do not think he can change much in the one aspect of the US-French relationship that is the most contentious, and that is France's attitude toward the Iraq war in particular, and some aspects of the GWOT in general. France's opposition to Gulf II arose not because President Chirac hates America. All he was doing is representing French interests. On Iraq American and French interests diverge. In Lebanon Iran, and Afghanistan there is considerable convergence. So President Chirac has been working with the Americans.
Insofar as diplomacy is a matter of style as much as objective factors, President Sarkozy's assumption of the French helm will undoubtedly help to tone down some anti-American rhetoric. At the same time, the French are not going to stop being the French. They are not going to fall in love with President Bush. Along with most of the rest of the world, they despise him. President Chirac's dislike of Mr. Bush and therefore of many of his policies is not something he invented. He only represented what the French felt. And President Sarkozy will have to do the same.
If Mrs. Clinton becomes president, things may change because the French love Mr. Clinton and for his sake they may even put up with his wife. Ditto most of the rest of the world. By the way, as is true almost everywhere in the world, regarding Mr. Clinton Indians just want to hug him and squeeze him and make him theirs forever. They think he's the cutest thing since JFK. Mr. Bush has very few fans in India. [We're saying "very few" to make Mr. Bush feel better. We're exaggerating.]
The Commander Guy Part II Apparently what Mr. Bush really said was "I'm a commander guy," NOT "I'm Commander Guy". Translation for those of our readers who are Bushspeak challenged: "I support my commanders". This has led to further derisive comments about Mr. Bush, because he listens to his commanders when they agree with him, and doesn't listen to them when they disagree with him.
Your editor suggested to Mrs. Rikhye and the youngster that perhaps he, the Editor, should volunteer to translate for Mr. Bush as he, the Editor, has no trouble understanding the President. The youngster was completely amazed that anyone would want to waste their time explaining what the president means, but he simply shrugged his shoulders and said "Sure, Dad, sure you must volunteer" in the same tone he uses when the Editor tells him stories about our life on Mars before we came to Earth - "Sure, Dad, life on Mars sounds terribly exciting." As for Mrs. Rikhye, she said only: "You really do love Mr. Bush, don't you?" in exactly the same tone of voice she uses to keep her third graders in line.
What does it take to get some respect from one's family? Mr. Bush, we feel your pain. Apparently his whole family thinks he's retarded, just as the Editor's family thinks he's retarded (Mr. Bush as well as the Editor). Apparently it's so bad that when Mrs. Bush wants him to do something, like wear the right tie, she calls Secretary Rice to talk to the President. Apparently he listens to Secretary Rice.
0230 May 7, 2007
Why We Do Not Report US Casualties
A reader asks why we do not report US casualties in the Iraq and Afghan wars. The reason for our long-standing policy is:
We have come to oppose the war for purely military reasons. Nevertheless, we have no interest in playing politics. Tragic as each loss is for the families, the reality is that in the larger scheme of things, 1000 dead a year for a country of 300-million is of no significance.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have to be judged on their merits, not on casualties. If the objectives were worthwhile, much higher casualties would be acceptable. We are sorry if this formulation offends/upsets anyone, but the purpose of soldiers is to fight, and if as a consequence they die, that is the nature of the job.
Casualties become relevant when the cost becomes too high. In truth, the US has never been in such a situation. The only time when America came close to casualties being too high was in 1861-64: Somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 men died, two-thirds due to disease, on a population base of about 30-million. We lack the precise demographic data, but it is likely during those four years something like 300,000 males a year reached the age of military service. The loss rate was probably not sustainable, but nonetheless was not catastrophic. The Second World War comes next for total losses. In 3 1/2 years the US lost about half as many soldiers as in the US Civil War - but the population in 1940 was 132-million, four times greater, so the percentage loss in terms of population was 8 times less. Near 60,000 died in Second Indochina, mostly in the period 1966-70. But the 1968 population was 200-million, so compared to the Civil War the loss was 60 times less acute.
We do mention casualties when major battles like Fallujah take place. Losses are then relevant within the context of the story.
The formulation "even one dead is too many" that some opposed to the Iraq war might at times use is an emotional, not a rational response. American society every day makes judgments about the worth of a human life. For examples, for the sake of personal freedom Americans accept the highest firearm death rate in the developed world. In the 4 years of the Iraq war something like 150,000 Americans have died due to firearms: murders, suicides, and accidents. This is 40 times more than have died in the Iraq and Afghan wars. Yet, we do not see the Washington Post - just as an example - keeping a daily list of Americans who die as a consequence of firearms.
Also because of personal freedom we do not ban alcohol, and in that period tens of thousands more people have died due to driving impaired, or killing others due to driving impaired.
Then there are deaths because 1/5th of the country is not insured, and many of the rest are insufficiently insured. These deaths are seldom dramatic, because in extremis medical care is available to anyone. If I fall off my ladder while painting my house, insured or not, the hospital will give me treatment. What this hides is the number of people who die prematurely for lack of medical care or inadequate care. But we oppose socialized medicine, so we willingly accept this death toll. The list could be extended, but the examples suffice to make our point.
The WashPo, of course, keeps the war tally for many reasons. One is "We must never forget their sacrifice." Fair enough. But the WashPo does not keep a list of the police, firemen, and workers who die in the line of duty. These people too sacrifice their lives for the rest of us, be it done obviously, as is the case for police and firemen, or less obviously, as is the case for - say - miners, steel workers, truck drivers and the like.
We suspect that one reasons Americans get so maudlin about Iraq and Afghan war dead is guilt: 99.9% of us are not risking even a hangnail to defend the country. So what the WashPo is really doing with its daily toll and its frequent lists with pictures of those killed is absolving itself, and the rest of us, of any feeling we owe the country something. It washes away our guilt. We may not be sacrificing anything for America but, my goodness, we certainly feel for those who are.
This is rancid hypocrisy and Orbat.com does not want any part of it.
0230 May 6, 2007
Flash [Reuters] 2000 May 6: Sarkozy wins French presidency; Royal concedes within minutes of poll closing. Pollsters estimate winner got 53% of the vote.
Goodbye Axis Of Evil Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the US administration's foreign/military policy better than the 3 defeats it has suffered at the hands of the Axis of Evil.
After vowing it would never negotiate with DPRK, a truly frightening dictatorship guilty of causing the deaths of up to a fourth of its population, the US has not just negotiated, it has essentially agreed not to attack the country and to deal with it in normal fashion.
Then there was Syria. Less said the better, but negotiations with Syria via a number of channels are now on.
Last there is Iran. The shenanigans of the Iran foreign minister at the recent regional meet on Iraq notwithstanding, the US is also negotiating with Iran via a variety of channels.
The White House should pull down the US flag that flies over it, because its actions are a disgrace to the flag. Instead, a special yellow flag with the slogan "We vow to surrender before the war even starts" should be raised.
The reason, of course, that the US is now eating not just crow, but stinking dead vultures as well can be summed up in one four-letter word. Hint: this word contains the letters i, r, a, and q.
Thanks to the Iraq defeat, the US has no military options left in dealing with the Axis of Evil, or indeed with anyone - unless airpower alone is to be used. Instead of getting out of Iraq and regrouping to fight again, the US is committing itself to an endless stay in Iraq.
The really abhorrent aspect of all this is that Mr. Bush and his lackeys in Congress actually maintain that those of us who want a withdrawal to regroup are traitors, and they, who have surrendered everywhere, are the patriots. Even Red Russia was never as adept at making black into white and white black as is this administration.
So powerful is this administration's ability to spin, that it has the temerity to say we are winning in Iraq because several Sunni tribes are fighting Al-Qaeda. Anyone in the administration care to note that before the US went to Iraq in 2003 there was NO Al-Qaeda in Iraq? This is a victory?
Goodbye, Obama? A Washington insider scoffed at our thought that Senator Obama has a good chance to become the next president. "Wait till the Clinton Machine gets after him," says the insider, "they will chew him up and spit him out like fine-grain sand."
Hang on, we said. The Clinton Machine failed at its attempt to smear Obama when it "leaked" the "news" that he had been educated at a religious Islamic school. Turned out he was then just a child attending an Indonesian school because his father was working in the country, and the school wasn't any kind of religious, leave alone Islamic. Clinton Machine, if it exists, stands exposed as stupid
Our insider gave a hollow laugh. "That was simply both a trial balloon and a shot across Obama's bow. Right now every Clinton Machine operative is working overtime to dig up dirt on Obama. When the time comes, they'll bury him in his own sewage. This is a very, very focused and efficient machine - always was, by the way."
Wait a minute we said. Obama is new to politics. He's young. He's clean. How can the Clinton Machine find dirt when none exists.
No hollow laugh this time from our insider. Just muffled peals of laughter at our colossal naiveté. When the insider got her/his breath back, this was the response: "Obama is part of Chicago/Illinois politics. There will be enough dirt to fill several dump trucks. Wait and see."
Okay, so frankly we can't judge as we nothing about Obama background or about Chicago politics. But we thought we'd pass the information along. Our insider says that Mrs. Hilary Clinton is going to be next president, like it or not, and if we think Bush Times are bad, wait till we get Hilary Times.
We Pat Ourselves On The Back Right after Mr. Bush announced the surge, we told our readers the surge was not temporary, and nor was it tied to benchmarks the Iraqi government had to meet. We said these were merely cover stories for Mr. Bush's decision to stay in Iraq as long as he is in office, and for his plan to leave the mess to the next president to sort out.
We just wanted to remind readers we said it first.
We Are Now In Plan G We mentioned to someone else the other day that we found the statement by the top US Marine commander that the Marines have no Plan B, implying they fight to win and defeat is no option, to be touchingly sweet and completely out of touch with reality. Every successful commander has a Plan B.
Whereupon this person launched in a mind-numbing exposition of how the Surge was actually Plan G: the US administration has fielded six plans previously, and each one has ended in defeat, as will Plan G. This person berated us for not understanding - and as a consequence misleading our readers - about what has been happening in Iraq. "It is people like you that have contributed to the idea that the US has been winning in Iraq, whereas after the fall of Baghdad it has just been one defeat after another."
We apologized and said we have now realized what has been happening, but the person did not accept our apology. "If you can't devote the time to accurate analysis, your usual excuse, and if you lack the resources for accurate analysis, your second usual excuse, you should not have been analyzing anything. Under the guise of analysis, you have provided propaganda for this administration for six years."
Rebuke accepted and we are thinking seriously on his point.
In the meantime, we regret to say we were not keeping notes on what constituted Plan A, B, C, D, E, and F and the argument was so complicated we hesitate to put down our recollection because we don't want to mislead our readers.
We have not been able to contact our person for clarification. Your editor knows many, many very interesting people on the front lines, but they come and go as they want and are not easy to get a hold of. Also, these people usually work for the US government, and while they may unburden themselves once in a blue moon, they are not inclined to speak freely more than once or twice.
Your editor does not run a secure operation: anyone with modest resources can easily find out who he has been talking to, and these people are right not to keep in regular touch.
In case you're wondering: this person is a staunch conservative and jokes he will migrate to Australia if Mrs. Clinton becomes president. At least we assume he is joking.
Someone else we know said that they thought www.military.com had recently carried an article on the various plans and their impression was the surge was Plan F. We did a quick search but could not find such an article.
It really is true: we lack the time and resources for proper analysis. Your editor works full time, goes to college half-time, does this blog, tries to keep the core of Orbat.com alive, has to maintain his house, and while has no friends he has to spend time with, his family is in the area and obviously time must be made for them. Not to mention the 2 mandatory hours a day spent in exercise and travel to and from the gym, 3 miles down the road. Doctor's orders. Your editor does not mind dropping dead - we all die, sooner or later. But he really would like to leave something more for his children than his debts, however little there may be before he goes four-paws up in the air.
0230 May 5, 2007
Iraq Bans Doctor Emigration Since we look at the Iraq war from the US viewpoint, we miss a great deal of how the war looks from the viewpoint of Iraqis. An article in the Washington Post gives one indicator of Iraq's dismal reality: as it did under Saddam, Iraq has banned the emigration of doctors. The method is to forbid the issuance of transcripts and certificates, essential documents for any doctor to prove his credentials.
The Iraq Medical Association estimates one-third of the country's 40,000 doctors have already left; several hundred more leave every month.
Lack of security is mentioned as the main cause. Doctors, academics, and other professionals are favorite insurgent targets. And, of course, a doctor can fairly much get a job anywhere in the world.
Note On US Figures For Iraq Wounded Those unfamiliar with the US ratio of killed to wounded sometimes do wonder how come the ratio is so high: its running 1:8 in Iraq. In India and Pakistan it usually runs 1:2, that is 1 dead for every 2 wounded.
There are two reasons: one is the accounting method, the other is the level of medical care.
In India, at least, casualties that are not evacuated from the Regimental Aid Post are not counted. If you deduct US casualties returned to their units within 72-hours, the American ratio declines to 1:4.
The level of medical care also needs to be taken into account. The US military has the best shock-trauma system in the world. Indeed, one of the few good things to emerge from Second Indochina was the system pioneered there was replicated at home. The system is built on two components: the best possible care at the place the soldier is wounded, followed by the most rapid evacuation possible as far back as needed.
The trick, medical people say, is to get the wounded into at least a field hospital within an hour. Humans are amazingly resilient: if not killed outright, even a horrifically wounded soldier has a good chance of survival if he gets to a hospital within an hour.
Once in a field hospital, the casualty can be evacuated to a base hospital within hours for the best possible care.
The grisly reality is that men who in other armies would simply die because the system falls short of what the Americans achieve, gets to live in the American military.
This very seriously distorts the US killed:wounded ratio - and obviously pulls down the US war killed rate as compared to other countries.
For example, one estimate we've seen is that had US military care been at the same level as in World War II, the US would have lost 80,000 killed in Second Indochina. Incidentally, that's about one quarter of what the US lost in all of World War 2. And considering the US had only 10 divisions engaged, and that there were negligible air and naval casualties - no bomber offensive, no naval battles - that is a huge loss indicating how intense the war really was.
We have seen no figures on how much medical care has improved in the three decades since Second Indochina. But it's a fair guess US dead in Iraq would be in the 5000 range instead of the 3500 range.
Also incidentally, the US civilian shock-trauma system very seriously reduces the US murder rate as compared to other countries. Its common for wounded to be inside a major hospital within 30-minutes. So it's very common for people to be shot five, six, eight times to survive whereas in most of the world they'd have absolutely no chance.
From what we know of India, were the US to have the same level of shock-trauma care as India, and given the high-powered, rapid-fire weapons commonly used in US homicides, the US murder rate would likely be 3 times higher than the usual 8-10 per 100,000.
Notes On Energy Security
Germany Leads In Solar Power [Thanks to Washington Post for the alert; we did our own research.] On the face of it, this seems odd because Germany lies in northerly latitudes and is notorious for its cloud cover. But of course, if you recall your Elementary Solar Power 101, solar cells work even in cloud and rain, though efficiency falls to a quarter.
The EU as of last year had 3.4 Gigawatts of installed solar power, almost all of it in Germany. The country added 1.15 Gigawatts last year, and the figure is expected to increase each year, helping the EU reach possibly 10-GW by 2010.
One gigawatt is a good reference size to use for a baseload power plant, and a very rough rule of thumb is that such a plant uses 10,000-tons of coal a day.
We do need to note that like the rest of the EU, Germany is assuring what by US standards are very high prices for solar electricity: all the way up to 55 eurocents a kilowatt/hour, or roughly 75 US cents per kwh. This is about 9 times the price US residential customers pay. At the same time, the US cost per unit of solar power will be much lower than Germany's: the US has vast areas of sunny land which are also well south of Germany latitudes, so the output is considerably higher.
Update On Carbon Sequestration For China, India, and the US coal will continue to be the main fuel for electricity generation out to 2050. We've mentioned carbon sequestration as a way of continuing to use coal while cutting global warming. The process works by capturing carbon produced when coal is burned and injecting it into storage. Abandoned underground coal mines and depleted oil wells are a favored storage place because they are already excavated.
For the US we've pushed non-oil alternatives to ensure energy security because energy needs very seriously distort US foreign/military policy.
We need to mention that while all the components for carbon sequestration exist, the process is still experimental: no coal plant in the world actually uses the process as such. This is used by opponents of coal to say that we need to push other sources. We do need to push all sources, but we also need to realize that two technologies favored by anti-coal people have their own problems. Wind power is unreliable and environmentally ugly, and solar power is very expensive. The correct way to go is to speed up commercialization of carbon sequestration. And we do need to add that while "green power" efforts in the West are needed and welcome, unless something is done whereby India and China can reduce their carbon emissions, all the West's efforts will be overwhelmed by just a few years worth of new Indian and Chinese coal plants.
0230 May 4, 2007
Street Protests May Topple Israeli PM Israelis are angry at their prime minister after he, his defense minister, and the Israeli Defense Forces head are squarely blamed for the Lebanon 2006 fiasco. Unlike many Americans, the Israelis don't consider attacking their war leader and his failed policy unpatriotic. Guess Americans need to teach the Israelis what patriotism is about, huh?
Mr. Ehud Olmert is doing an impersonation of the Rock of Gibraltar: silent and unmoving, as is the way of rocks. He figures if he stays quiet the fuss will go away.
Meanwhile, Ms. Tzipi Livni, his foreign minister and likely successor as party head, joins in the resignation chorus but says she stands by her man if he won't resign. Ms. Livni is obviously a student of our own Senator John McCain, a man who we consider a true patriot. He opposes just about everything his president does, but says he remains loyal to that august person.
Yesterday's protest, in Tel Aviv, drew perhaps 100,000 marchers, a big crowd for Israel which, after all, has perhaps 6-million people, about a sixth of whom being Arabs don't have much interest in these matters. Apparently Mr. Olmert's supporters believe the street protests, if they continue/escalate, could force his resignation.
Republican Presidential Candidates Vow To Win Iraq War but criticize their Commander-in-Chief's handling of the war. This is so sweet. True patriots all, obviously, if your definition of patriotism is to get the other guy to shed his blood for the country.
Reality Check Alert: and just how do these candidates propose to win the war? You can attack Mr. Bush for bungling - we certainly do. But isn't it a bit unfair to attack him when you yourself have no clue as to how you "win"? The politicians who say the war is unwinable are at least being more honest.
The Commander Guy The sneering Chatterati are having a field day with new Bushisms, including his shift from being the Decider to becoming the Commander Guy. Bushisms are supposed to prove the president is an imbecile. See, they say, he can't even talk in a way that makes sense, what an imbecile. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post says the President's imprecision of speech shows the imprecision of his mind.
Oddly, your editor has never had the least difficulty understanding what Mr. Bush says. Okay, so you can say that's because the editor too is an imbecile. But it's a little more than that. The editor is dyslexic in his speech: it is well known that the only ones who can follow what he says without any difficulty are his students, and as his years of teaching increase and his students grow older, he is starting to note that the Plateau of Understanding seems to be about age 14, after which the same students find him increasing incomprehensible. At the same time, the editor does not suffer from imprecision of the mind.
We've said this before: we think Mr. Bush is also dyslexic in his speech. Dyslexia is labeled a disability and perhaps it is - personally your editor considers it a gift. But let's just stick to the conventional belief. Americans are supposed to be big on treating disabled persons the same as those who are not disabled. Would they make fun of Mr. Bush if he was lame, as was President F.D. Roosevelt? Obviously not, as making fun of a physically disabled person is considered vile. So why make fun of a person for a verbal disability?
If the ability to speak well were the hallmark of a precise mind, Ms. Hilary Clinton would be a genius - she is about the most precise speaker the editor has ever heard. No doubt that Ms. Clinton is very, very smart in an academic sense. But anyone who thinks that makes her a genius or that proves she has a brilliant mind needs professional help. Don't confuse school grades and great speech for intelligence.
None of which changes what even the editor must gloomily concede, that Mr. Bush will probably be remembered at America's most ineffective president in its first 230 years. This may seem a hard sell, but really truly, his performance has nothing to do with the way he speaks.
0230 May 3, 2007
Democrats Back Down On Iraq The compromise with President Bush that the Democrats said they want to discuss turns out to be an abject surrender. They will drop their insistence on a timeline for withdrawal, essentially giving the President the blank check he has insisted on for every aspect of the GWOT and Iraq since the start.
The Democrats say they have made their point. Let's applaud with one hand. The truth is Congress does not want to end this war. The President is congenitally unable to admit he has made a mistake on Iraq, and has convinced himself that blind stubbornness equates to a principled stand. He has a one point strategy: keep fighting and let the next administration deal with the mess.
For their part, the Democrats also have a one point strategy: keep verbally opposing the war without taking the responsibility for ending it by refusing money. This way they can continue to blame Mr. Bush.
Both sides ignore three small matters. First, the military has been committed to an unwinable war and subjected to a repeatedly-failed strategy. But who cares if a 1000 or 1500 Americans a year continue to die, to say nothing of the thousands more who return each year with horrific wounds that cripple them for life. Second, huge sums of money are being wasted, helping to reduce the economic strength on which depends American hegemony. Third, and most important, few seem to care that the insane and inane focus on Iraq is crippling the US ability to take on other threats that are far worse than that ever posed by Saddam. Afghanistan, Iran and Syria are just the main examples.
In Afghan War So Far, British Concepts Seem To Be The Winner We've unfavorably commented often about the British "softly-softly" approach to CI versus the American approach of "seek-and-destroy".
Because Orbat.com's job is not to push an ideological agenda but to judge what works and what doesn't, we are forced to say that in light of the most recent developments in Afghanistan the British approach seems to be winning.
Now, we are talking theory here. Unlike Iraq, the British do not have a sector that is solely their responsibility. So it is not possible to point to a province/provinces and say definitively that British approach is proved better than the American.
Nonetheless, rising civilian casualties allegedly caused by the Coalition are becoming a a focal point of opposition to the Coalition, to the point the Afghan government has repeatedly asked for a change of tactics. In the latest case, it is being alleged that 51 civilians have been killed by US air strikes.
We are saying "allegedly" and "alleged" because there is no evidence whatsoever, beyond the word of the locals, that the losses are primarily civilian. The Coalition is now fighting deep in Taliban country, where the locals are hand in glove with the Taliban to protect their illegal activities, the "civilians" part becomes suspect.
The latest incident is in Herat province, the home base of a renegade warlord who is on the run. He is no friend either of Kabul, which wants to assert its control over the whole country - he ran Herat as his own country - or of the west.
But whatever the reality - and we are sure SOME civilians are getting killed by the hard US approach - we have to acknowledge a point the British make. This is the reality is not important, the perception is. Civilians are going to get killed. But you have to take extreme steps to ensure they don't, thus minimizing the ability of insurgents to create a rallying point against the Blue forces.
We don't think the situation regarding civilian casualties has reached tipping point in Afghanistan. But the more the Coalition hurts the Taliban, the more strident the insurgents become.
Now, it is a reality that the Taliban is causing far more civilian casualties - by an order of magnitude - than the Coalition. But it is the nature of people that they consider casualties caused by foreigners, especially white foreigners, far more serious than caused by their own people.
The Americans, with their overriding desire to win, say that civilian casualties must be accepted. Interestingly, they do not accept them at home: whenever a "civilian" is believed unlawfully killed by the police - collateral damage, if you will, in the "war" to keep the peace, there is an incredible hue and cry. But we digress. The British, with their "hearts and minds" framework, say that civilian casualties are unacceptable. Thus the toll of 3 British soldiers and in addition police dead for every terrorist killed. We believe the British would agree that anything approaching that toll in a foreign war would be unacceptable to their public. But that obviously does not bear on the issue of which is better, the British or the American approach to CI.
How bad are things in Afghanistan? We'd have to say they're bad. We can't say more civilians are dying now at the hands of the Coalition than was the case in - say - 2001-2005. We can say the perception of Afghans has changed. For example, the recent deaths of 8 civilians at the hands of a US Marine convoy has become a huge liability for the Afghan government.
This despite the prompt action the Americans have taken to investigate and to fix the blame. In doing so, the Americans are acknowledging that acceptance of collateral damage has its limits - the Marines had come under attack and were responding, as US Marines are trained to do, with maximum lethality.
But to us another incident is far more serious. This is the point being made by the NATO command that NATO does not do counter-terror, it does counter-insurgency. If the reader goes "Huh?" we will not blame her/him, but recall that in Afghanistan there are two chains of command and two sets of operations. One is NATO, one is American.
The big outcry seems to come when the US pulls one of its Special Ops/airpower deals: terrorists/insurgents are tracked to a particular place and a couple of smart bombs/missiles are sent as an additional course to the dinner they are enjoying. The Herat case seems to be one of these. By contrast, when NATO uses airpower, it is in the tactical support of infantry engaged in close fighting with insurgents.
On the one hand, this type of operation is at the heart of US military transformation and hugely, hugely, appeals to the Americans. They go bananas with glee - and we do too - each time the baddies are obliterated precisely when they think they are safe.
On the other hand, you are going to kill civilians when you do this. When fighters congregate in a village, there are going to be non-fighters, old men, women, and children all over the place.
When your allies are disassociating themselves from your strategy, it's fair to say there is a problem. A Big Problem.
0230 May 2, 2007
We save most of our space today for letters.
Al-Qaeda In Iraq Head Killed in fighting with Sunni militants, reports Iraq Ministry of Interior. Ministry adds it has not identified a body as the engagement did not involve Iraqi or US forces.
This is good news, but Iraqi MOI correctly notes it expects no let up in violence.
Some time ago we gave our view that, since Iraqis are just about the most xenophobic people on earth, they would turn against Al Qaeda because AQ are foreigners. The problem for the US is this does not help US in the long run: the Sunnis who are fighting AQ on their own, as well as those fighting with US/Iraqi help, will again turn against Baghdad and US once AQ is eliminated or diminished. AQ in Iraq has from the start behaved with extreme stupidity in trying to establish its own state. Whereas the Sunnis were at first willing to get help from anyone against Baghdad and the US, it was just a matter of time before AQ's heavy-handedness made it unwelcome even among Sunnis. None of that means the Sunnis are now in love with Baghdad and or/America.
Israeli Lebanon War Reports Blasts Prime Minister We have to hand it to the Israelis. They are right up on top of the "my country right or wrong" list and their patriotism is of a particularly savage kind that permits this otherwise civilized country to treat enemies and perceived enemies with great brutality - as happened in Lebanon 2006.
Yet, none of this has stopped them from taking blame all the way to the top. To the Israelis, patriotism does not mean they have to bow and scrape and refrain from criticizing their leader. He messed up, and he has been squarely blamed. This is healthy for democracy.
US President Vetoes Iraq Spending Bill as expected because it contains withdrawal deadlines. Mr. Bush says he is open to compromise, and the Democrats have said they will talk to him. But unless one side or the other completely reverses course, there is nothing to talk about.
Still, this being Washington DC its not a good idea to assume the statements of politicians are as immutable as the Commandments.
From Guy Dampier On Prof. Crevald I read your views on Mr. William Lind's article on Northern Ireland (May 1st). Whilst I agree totally that there is a world of difference between Iraq, Northern Ireland and even Malaya I believe the article does hold several truths. For instance the following quote:
Currently the United States' goal (wish, really) for Iraq is for the Iraqis to form a strong central government which will provide internal security to the nation through a national police force and national army. We are assuming the Iraqi peoples (plural) will live together peacefully if only Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Baathist Party can be beaten into submission.
The United States should help with reconstruction of the country only after all fighting stops.
We should disengage our military, pull back our forces, and only secure the borders of Iraq to prevent outside interference until the Army of Iraq can provide that function. This may include a temporary garrison in the Kurdish State during the transition, to prevent a land grab by Iran or Turkey.
0230 May 1, 2007
Al-Malaki Government Removing Commanders Who Act Against Al-Sadr Militia says Washington Post, quoting US and Iraqi officers. There is an office headed by a woman in charge of ensuring ideological compliance, and she apparently has the authority to fire any commander. Sunnis have been disproportionately fired, but Shias who act impartially against Al-Sadr's militia are also being removed.
Should anyone be surprised this is happening?
A WashPo reader with a son in the military writes an outraged letter to the newspaper on learning the Iraqi Parliament is to take a 2-month vacation while American soldiers are having their tours extended. We are not sure why she expects the Iraqi Parliament to forgo its vacation. Does any Iraqi MP care about America's sacrifices? Besides which, parliament will not/cannot do any meaningful work. Meaningful in the sense of resolving some of Iraq's problems.
For example, reversing course the Americans now want an end to Debaathification and got the Al-Malaki government's "agreement" - think Austin Powers here. But now Grand Ayatollah Sistani has said the policy of excluding Baathists will continue.
In Iraq, as under the communists, to get any job meant being a party member. With supreme stupidity the American political command fired party members from their posts after the 2003 invasion, and thus fuelled the present intractable insurgency. Well, the Shias are in charge now. Have the American politicals who are dictating Iraq policy come up with any logical reason why the Shias should allow the Sunnis back into the power structure?
Every single American general has said that the solution to the Iraq insurgency is political, and only the Iraqis can do what needs to be done. To no one's surprise, the Iraqis ARE doing what needs to be done - but the doing is what THEY believe is needed, not what the Americans believe is needed. And the Shias believe they are well rid of the Sunnis. That should be the end of the matter, and America should take heed instead of thinking up new fantasies about how we will win the war.
William Lind On Iraq We don't know anything about Mr. Lind, because we read the website on which his column for the military news rather than for analysis. We did read his article on what the British military historian Prof. Martin Van Creveld suggests is the way to win insurgencies: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,133488,00.html
Now, Prof. Creveld we are quite familiar with, and he is a very fine historian who is a pleasure to read. You will always come away with a lot of food for thought reading him. Mr. Lind has taken what the professor says about how the British Army won in Northern Ireland and suggests the Americans need to learn from the British experience if we are to win in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You really should read the article for yourself, it is definitely worth your time. But we were struck by Mr. Lind's apparent approval of what a British officer said about British losses in Northern Ireland. Britain lost 1000 soldiers for 300 terrorists killed. That doesn't count the police dead, and since the 30-year war was as much a police operation as an army one, these must also have been considerable.
We do think anyone who espouses America learn from the British should first appreciate that in Iraq, the sector which the British controlled is in as much of a mess, if not more so, than the American sectors. Britain has been defeated in Iraq despite its vaunted CI powers.
We've said elsewhere we don't blame the British one bit: they went in even more undermanned than the Americans, and while the American public were till recently, at least, solidly behind the Iraq war, the British from the start were against it once the invasion was over. And of course the British have only a tiny fraction of America's financial resources.
Against that, the British sector has not experienced sectarian warfare: the south is almost entirely Shia. So compared to the Americans, the British had an easy job. And they still couldn't win. Sensibly they declared victory, are busy handing over to the Iraqis, and plan to leave as expeditiously as possible without getting the Americans terminally angry.
We don't think the Americans have much to learn from the British. The British earned their CI reputation in a different world. In Malaya, Aden Cyprus, Kenya and so on the enemy was pathetically weak compared to the British forces. There was no press looking over every move the soldiers made. There was a near total consensus at home. Moreover, the British were already the colonial power in occupation of the countries and territories for which they fought. They could afford the police first approach because they ran the darn territory to begin with.
Northern Ireland is a really, really bad comparison for any CI the Americans have undertaken. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. The British were fighting their own ethnic kin in their own country. You can bet your last boot that if the Americans had to fight an insurgency in Vermont, with half the population wanting to secede but half the population remaining staunch Americans, they would do things more like the British - eschew the heavy firepower, work ceaselessly for a political solution, rely first on the police and the army second, etc etc.
The thing with the British is that's is very easy to admire them. The average British official or academic or corporate chieftain you are likely to meet is a terribly impressive fellow (fellowe in case it's a lady). The British upper-class have a terrific education, amazing manners, that unbeatable accent, and that piddling trifle of 1000 years of continuity. But let's not go overboard in this matter of CI.
The Americans made a bad start in Iraq and they cannot recover because of the horrendous and continuing political mistakes. But within the limits they must work under, they have learned how to do CI impressively fast - and impressively well. The problem, of course, as we have noted, is that there are nowhere near enough Americans. They pacify one area, move to another, and the first falls apart - every single time. But that has nothing to do with their CI skills.
We are going to suggest something heretical. If you want to learn how to do CI right, study the American military in Iraq. Not the strategy, which is pathetically bad, but the tactics. You may be surprised.