Sic Semper Tyrannis

"Death Piled Hard" Now Available.

My second novel in the "Devereux" series is now available for purchase at; iUniverse, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.  The cover painting, "The Fifes and Drums" is by Keith Rocco.  pl

Independence Day - 4 July, 2009

Harper on Ross, Clinton et al

Dennis Ross: Goodbye and Good riddance. After much fussing around, and consulting with a wide range of Washington types, I am now convinced that we can lift our glasses and toast Dennis Ross' departure from his desk outside the principal's office at the State Department. I am told, by several people, whose access to the corridors of power at Foggy Bottom are unasailable, that Ross was, to put it in straightforward lingo, dumped, fired, kicked the hell out. He did something that clearly crossed the line, and was working at cross-purposes to Secretary of State Clinton and special envoy Mitchell. Maybe he also crossed Richard Holbrooke. I hope to get more of the inside details soon, but for now, I am convinced by these sources, that Ross was dumped, and that it was the AIPAC/WINEP crowd that had to be somewhat appeased, by giving Ross a desk at the National Security Council, somewhat equivalent to a cell with a view at one of those old Soviet gulags.

"Setting the Attack Record Straight" Murray

"Lo and behold, it was not the Egyptians attacking Liberty. It was our allies, the Israelis. Liberty was flying the largest American flag I had ever seen in my 26 years of service and her name was clearly visible on the stern.

As the flight leader, I flew over the burning ship at less than 100 feet and observed many wounded or dead sailors on the decks. There were many holes throughout the ship as a result of the attack.

Our attack was aborted because Israel transmitted to American authorities that they thought Liberty was an Egyptian ship. They had made a mistake. This was not a mistake. The unarmed Liberty was monitoring electronic signals and steaming in international waters. This was an attempt to curtail information on Six Day War progress to our leadership.

The day following the dastardly attack on Liberty, America pulled alongside, extinguished fires, provided aid to the wounded and recovered 37 American bodies for proper disposition."  Gordon L. Murray, Captain, USN, (Ret.)

Highlander

Regretfully, I have come to the conclusion that "Highlander" is a propagandist provocateur and therefore he is banned.  They can send in their next agent to join the ones already here.

I don't have time for this nonsense.  pl

General Jones delivers the mail

"National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously approved strategy of increased economic development, improved governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in the conflict."  

"The day before in Kabul, Jones delivered the same message to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new overall commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal has undertaken a 60-day review designed to address all the issues in the war. In addition, Jones has told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that they should focus on implementing the current strategy, completing the review and getting more Afghan forces involved in the fight before requesting additional U.S. troops for Afghanistan.

The question of the force level for Afghanistan, however, is not settled and will probably be hotly debated over the next year. One senior military officer said privately that the United States would have to deploy a force of more than 100,000 to execute the counterinsurgency strategy of holding areas and towns after clearing out the Taliban insurgents. That is at least 32,000 more than the 68,000 currently authorized. "  Woodward

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Jones appears to be the "flavor of the week."  He was on the "Newshour" a few nights ago for a major interview.  Now he appears in this story by Woodward highlighting his role.  Some of this "attention" is defensive and intended to fend off "log-rolling" by the usual people seeking to cause his departure from the NSC.  He is suspected of insufficient devotion to Israel and so we have had stories planted here and there about a lack of warmth between him and the president, etc.  This is a bit of a corrective.

At the same time, Jones (in Woodward's story) gives firm guidance to the military chain of command in the matter of Afghanistan.  The message is clear.  Afghanistan will be an "economy of force" theater of operations.  McChrystal will not get a lot more troops than his 70,000 odd.   He is to concentrate on disruption of groups actually hostile to the US.  Obama (and Jones) do not want to reproduce Iraq/Vietnam in Afghanistan.  The wondrous wonderfulness of Counterinsurgency (COIN) as a panacea appeals greatly to today's officers.  Military officers are always looking to get promoted.   They climb onto any "bandwagon" rolling in the right direction.  Today the "bandwagon" has "COIN" painted on the side.  Tomorrow?  Who knows what fell beast of brooding is slouching toward the dawn of some new doctrinal "revolution."  While McChrystal is occupied with this limited task, an emphasis will be placed on economic development under the aegis of an international consortium of donors.  The theory is that properity will reduce the attractiveness of Islamic zealotry.  Will it?  Perhaps..

In any event, I think that the policy in Afghanistan reiterated by Jones is the wisest available.  Will it be possible to resist the temptation to increase the size of the force there?  Perhaps.  The generals will make endless pleas for more people.  They always do.  pl

The Sanford Affair

The man has a mistress with whom he is in love.  From the point of view of his wife this is much worse than Clintonesque prowling, much worse.   Actually, recovery from this ailment is unlikely.  All of them are suffering.  Does this mean that he is A BAD MAN and beyond redemption?  I suppose that depends on whether or not you believe in the possibility of redemption or if you believe that one's character is revealed by one's actions and that this is the whole story.  I am not a Calvinist so I come down on the side of contrition and redemption.  The problem for Sanford is that it may well be that he really is not contrite.  His wife will know.  Perhaps she already does know.

Will South Carolina forgive him?  I have always thought that the state is basically divided into two cultural zones.  In the Highlands, the Presbyterian, Baptist and generally evangelical spirit of Appalachia seems to prevail.   A lot of those people are not going to forgive him.

In the coastal Low Country a much more laid back atmosphere is very visible.  My bet would be that he will be largely forgiven in the Low Country.

In any case, he is finished in national politics.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/30/AR2009063001581.html?hpid=moreheadlines

"Judicious investment" in oil

"Downgrading the forecast, IEA said the oil demand would rise 0.6% or 540,000 barrels per day on average during 2008-2014. In its latest Medium-Term Oil Market Report, the Paris based agency said the oil demand would rise to 89 million barrels per day in 2014."

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OK.  Crude prices declined to around 32 dollars per barrel and now are back up around 70 dollars.

Why?

There is no short term shortage of crude.  Oil producers and traders are impounding the stuff all over the world, holding it in waiting for the steadily rising price to come to the level they want.  Speculation?  The "S" word?  OK.  Let's call it "judicious investment."

Demand is down just about everywhere at the moment, so more and more oil has to be withheld from the markets to keep the price going up.  This is very "judicious investment."

How high will the price of crude go this summer?  That depends on the skill of the producers and investors.  pl

 

An Immodest Proposal - Mexamerica

Some time ago I posted something called "An Un-Muddled but Perhaps Addled Stand" on the subject of US relations with Mexico.  In that piece I advocated separation of the issues of citizenship, ownership and residence in the relationships of the two countries.  Reaction was mixed with some people on the left insisting that to even thnk of such arrangements was a confession of regression to colonialism.  I thought that was nonsense then and do now.  How can economic opportunity for the masses of Mexican people be imperialism?

The border and illegal immigration problems grow ever more severe.  The US border states are growing increasingly desperate in their efforts to control the cross border effects of the rampant organized crime of the Mexican border states.  Poverty is still driving armies of Mexicans and Central Americans across our southern border.  We are fitfully building physical barriers, enlarging the Border Petrol and moving slowly, regretfully toward deployment of; first National guard troops and eventually, inevitably, federal troops to that border.  At the same time, Americans who live in parts of the country where large numbers of Latino migrants, both legal and illegal exist, know that a very large majority of these people are hard working, decent, and family oriented folk who make an important contribution to the work force in many jobs that US born Americans no longer want.  It seems unlikely that the US Congress will pass any law that can "solve" a problem of mass migration.

What to do?

Perhaps we should make the two countries into one.  Perhaps the two governments should enter into negotiations for eventual merger.

One country with one citizenship?  One country with one code of federal laws, one federal judiciary, merged armed forces, national police forces, corporate law, ownership standards, taxes, electoral laws, one constitution.

Why not?  The two "peoples" are too different?  That increasingly seems implausible.  Racial differences?  Religious differences?  Educational differences?  Who will stand up here to argue that?

Jonathan Swift suggested a "Modest Proposal" for the Irish Problem.  He had no more expectation of the adoption of his proposal than I have of mine.  My purpose is to have a freewheeling discussion of what can be done about the "Illegals Problem."   pl

Al-Maliki is celebrating victory over the American invader.

"A great deal of Mr. Maliki’s political support rests on the fact that violence has declined since the carnage of 2006 and 2007, that he has rebuilt the security forces, that he has presided over the beginning of the end of the American war. He rarely mentions any American role in the improved security in Iraq — though 130,000 American troops remain in the country.

“We will not ask them to intervene in combat operations related to maintaining public order,” he said in an interview with Le Monde published last week. “It is finished.”"  NY Times

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Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the neocon scum will be held accountable somewhere, someday for their crimes against the American soldier.

Here is a partial list of my accusations.  It will be argued that some of these things are not technically "crimes."  I think that irrelevant. These specifically apply to Iraq.  You may add your own and I may comment further:

- "Planning and waging aggressive war.." Keitel and Jodl were executed for this.  In this case the "aggressive war was against Iraq, a country that, however ill governed, had not attacked the United States and that did not have WMD weapons any longer.  This latter point was in the process of being proven by the UN's inspectors when the miscreants under dicussion succeeded, with the help of White House staff still in the public square, of deliberately propagandizing the American people by making a false case against Iraq in the public media.  By carrying out these actions those charged involved the United States in a senseless war in which many thousands of American military personnel were killed or mutilated.

-  Those charged directly intervened in the operational planning of the invasion of Iraq in such a way as to risk defeat in detail in many smaller actions.  They did this by denying to the ground component commander (Mckiernan) the forces that he reasonably and prudently requested and by "nickel and diming" him endlessly in such a way that the forces involved were still minimal and barely adequate.  The success of these forces is not an indication of whether or not the force was adequate in strength.  The additional risk assumed by fielding too small a force placed the troops involved at risk.

- Those charged insisted on assuming in pre-invasion planning that Iraqi resistance would be minimal and that the coalition invasion force would be met with "open arms" rather than IEDs by the Iraqi populace.  This foolish and willfully blind assumption caused the death or wounding of many American soldiers.  Many experts tried to tell the accused that their assumption was wrong but they would not listen.

- Those charged insisted on disestablishing the public institutions of Iraq; the army, the police, the civil service, etc.  These actions were taken against the advice of US Army and USMC senior officers on the ground who were in the process of sorting out which units and commanders could be used to re-establish public order.  Considerable progress had been made.  These disestablishments drove many Iraqi officers and men into the various insurgent groups where they formed a hard core of competence that killed and wounded many American soldiers.

- Those charged refused to accept the plain and abundant evidence present in the first two years of the war that what was faced by the coalition was nothing less than a full-blown national resistance insurgency.  By so refusing, they caused US forces to operate in an inadequate planning environment that exposed US soldiers to much greater risks than might otherwise have been the case.

- Those accused encouraged the use of brutal and illegal methods of interrogation of prisoners.  This was done in spite of US doctrine and law that specifically forbade such conduct.  Was this not a crime against the souls of the junior soldiers encouraged and pressured to do such things?

I will stop at this point and wait for your comments.  pl

Why all the bombings in Iraq?

"Thousands of U.S. combat troops will remain at a handful of bases in Baghdad and on the outskirts of other restive cities, such as Mosul and Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, past the June 30 deadline. But U.S. troops say their ability to respond quickly to thwart attacks could erode significantly because Iraqi officials will have unprecedented authority over their mobility and missions in urban areas.

"We won't be providing the same level of security for ourselves and Iraqis," said 2nd Lt. Jason Henke, a military police platoon leader who will remain at one of the few inner-city bases in Baghdad. "With only a small window of time that we are allowed to operate in, it's going to be easier to target U.S. forces when we are outside the wire."

Henke's concerns were heightened this week by a string of powerful roadside bombings near his base, Joint Security Station Loyalty, in central Baghdad.

On Tuesday, one of his squadrons was attacked with an armor-piercing bomb that struck the passenger side of a mine-resistant armored vehicle, igniting the fuel line. His platoon lost another truck Thursday in a similar attack."  Washpost 

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The most important component of the policy package shorthanded as "The Surge" was not the increased US combat presence, however helpful that was.  The most important thing was the successful effort to woo Sunni insurgents away from active or tacit support of the takfiri jihadis and into the "friendly" category.  We did that, and well.  They were not wholeheartedly converted "born again" friends of Brother Dave Petraeus?   What a surprise!  We used money to bring them to our side?  How terrible!  Does that mean that their hearts were not pure!!  Ah, the world is a sad place and this kind of work is always like herding cats.

Now the Americans are clearly leaving.  Power is steadily shifting towards the Shia dominated government that the Americans created.  That Shia government does not seem inclined to honor the variety of overt and implied "promises" that the Americans made to the "Sons of Iraq," etc.  The government's actions toward their Sunni "brothers" surely indicate that this is true.

In that situation it is to be expected that Sunni Arab hostility to the takfiri jihadis will wane and it is waning.  That is why it is possible for there to be more and more suicide bombings.  Get the message?

There are two ways to avoid further difficulty - 1.  The government should understand that bloody minded oppression of the Sunni Arabs will mean unending low level warfare in Iraq, and 2.  Someone should keep paying off the Sunnis sub rosa.  pl