Sic Semper Tyrannis

#Divisions in the ranks of the Syrian army are getting confirmed - Antonin Gregoire

"Last week, Gen. Abdo Khodr Tellawi from Homs was killed with his two sons and a nephew. The Syrian state-run SANA news agency claimed that “armed criminal gangs … killed them in cold blood.” But opposition activists say that the Syrian intelligence services executed them because they were showing signs of sympathy for the protesters, reports the Christian Science Monitor

The concept of “armed criminal gangs” operating in Syria is very hard to believe, Syria has one of the most powerful intelligence service in the world, nothing can happen in the country without the regime knowing it.

Other officers killed in the past two weeks include two Christian colonels, Samir Kashour and Whaib Issa, and Gen. Ayad Harfoush, who, like Tellawi, was an Alawite."

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There are those who think my "simplistic" views on Syria are incorrect because I do not understand the power and viciousness of the Syrian police services and armed forces. 

In fact, those forces are badly flawed in their inner divisions along regional and ethno-sectarian lines.  If they are stressed long enough and hard enough they will come apart.  The process has already begun. 

What will happen then?  Will Israelstand by and watch?  pl

http://www.iloubnan.info/politics/actualite/id/60774/titre/Divisions-in-the-ranks-of-the-Syrian-army-are-getting-confirmed

#Israeli leaders reject Palestinian unity deal - Al Jazeera

 
"In an interview with Israeli military radio, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, said the Palestinian deal had "crossed a red line" for Israel.

The comments come a day after Hamas and Fatah reached an initial unity deal in Cairo to end a four-year-old dispute that left Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza. The Palestinians claim both territories for a future independent state.

The Egyptian-brokered deal, which took many by surprise, has revived hopes of ending bitter infighting that weakened the Palestinians politically and killed dozens in violent clashes and crackdowns."  Al-Jazeera

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Israel does not want to make peace with the Palestinians except on the basis of the creation of a 'bantustan' that is neither a competitor economically nor a conceivable threat of any kind.  In pursuit of that "end state" they want a Palestinian leadership that is compliant and "biddable" and that will not control the borders of its possible "state."  Neither may such a "state" have any armed forces. 

Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as a permanent feature of the Middle East. Hamas has indicated its willingness to conclude a religiously binding truce with Israel for ten years.  Such truces are indefinitely renewable, but that is not good enough for Israel. They want Palesinian acknowledgement of the permanent loss of part of their national homeland.

Bottom Line:  These will be no peace in the Holy Land. 

Interestingly, the Egyptian military junta brokered this deal.  They did it in the certain knowledge that Israel would not accept a relationship with the resulting Palestinian union.  If the Egyptian Army did this, what will the elected government do about the peace treaty with Israel and the gas pipeline to Israel?

Guess.  pl

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/04/201142817747522257.html

A Clarification on Some Thoughts on the Kandahar Jailbreak

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

I wanted to clarify something from my previous post that has come up in a couple of comments.  I think I wasn't exactly clear in either what I wrote or how I wrote it pertaining to both the efforts of TF 134 under Maj. Gen. Stone or Ashour's research on the de-radicalization of jihadis.  The two are not, and were not in the previous post, intended to be linked in a way that implied that TF 134 was engaging the de-radicalization that Dr. Ashour has researched and written about.  Ashour's work focuses on both Egyptian and Algerian Islamic movements that have become either radicalized or reactionized and utilized violence to achieve their ends and how they either did or did not give up the use of violence to achieve their goals.  The process involves the movements and the state authorities -military, civilian, law enforcement, and intelligence services - interacting to produce the process he delineates and the outcomes he describes.

#Persepolis; Renaissance; Waltz with Bashir - Reviews by Alan Farrell

 
Animated Triptych (kinda like a picture in three parts, only--you know--classy): Persepolis; Renaissance; Waltz with Bashir.

The French call it B.D. (pronounced “boo-yah-bayss”) for bande dessinée, that is, not “comic strip” but “drawn strip.” These days it’s anything but comic. The Spanish for their part say “Cimoc,” that is “comic” backwards or stood upon its head, not funny at any rate. The Boc I mean Germans prefer their collocation Bildgeschichte (“picturestoryshamepleasureworldvisiondevelopmentnovel”). Then of course we gots animé, expropriated by the Japanese (translation: “little girls with big gringo eyes and big gringo umph umphs in little gringo Catholic school skirts and maryjanes,” everybody’s dream). Cartouche, carton ( > cartoon). All the familiar mechanics of the comic as we know: the standard box within which the action takes place (case), the thought or speech balloon (bulle), the strip or string of boxes (planche) in linear disposition (left to right, up to down), the movement lines, the tortured perspective, the onomatopoeia (pan! plouf! flatch! baf! vlan! and on and on). All this we take for granted when we see drawn images leap from a page, drawn images flash across a screen. We used to could identify the quality of animation by the number of cels (individual images) per minute and thus distinguish between the glorious Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and the ugly, assembly-line Hanna-Barbera or stiff, bird-like Rankin-Bass stuff of later vintage.

#Syria will self destruct?

 
"An additional 203 members of Syria's ruling Baath party quit on Wednesday, protesting a deadly crackdown on anti-government demonstrations that have gripped the country. It brings the total number of resignations to 233."  France 24

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IMO Syria is the most potentially destructive of all these countries in play.  They are allied to Iran, support Hizbullah and Hamas, are treated as pariahs by the US, and are thought by the Israeli government as very nearly a province of Iran.

The country is complex in demography; Sunni Arabs, Druze Arabs (a heretical sect), Alawi Arabs (another heretical sect), Christians and a few more odds and ends.

The Syrian Army is divided between Alawis and Sunnis as is the Baath Party.  The Syrians are good killers, not so good as fighters, but good enough.

The Israeli/AIPAC apparat is spreading the rumor that the Iranian IRGC is fighting alongside the Syrian Army.  I don't believe it.  What is the evidence?  Intercepts of people speaking Persian?  If not, what?  Perhaps the Israelis are working themselves up to an intervention in Syria?  But, who would they support?  They have reviled Bashar Assad.  They fear what might come next.  Perhaps they could form a combined task force with Saudi Arabia and Iran to keep the status quo in power.  (Irony Alert)  pl

http://www.france24.com/en/20110427-hundreds-resign-from-syria-ruling-baath-party-protest-against-crackdown

#Panetta as the man with the knife.

 
"...finding more places to cut the budget would be one of the top items on Panetta's agenda when he arrives at the Pentagon on July 1."  Reuters

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Well, bless him if he can manage that. 

It will take a major change in foreign policy to make that possible.  At the same time the flags who have grown fat at the trough in the last decade have no historic memory and will insist that such cuts in acquisitions, operations and maintenance are "disloyal."

Such a change in foreign policy does not necessarily mean isolationism.  What it really would mean is an abandonment of the "American Exceptionalism" imperial meme.  The Navy and Air force look like good "bets" in this environment.

No more culture wars overseas.  pl

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/27/us-usa-pentagon-industry-analysis-idUSTRE73Q8E120110427

#National Journal 26 April 2011

 
Col. W. Patrick Lang Responds to Where Is the U.S. Relationship With Pakistan Heading??.

pl

#Egyptians don't like America. What a surprise!

 
Ken Hoop.  Whatever that is, wishes me to be "instructed" by this.  Did we think Egyptians liked us?  Did anyone see the Egyptian woman on the Daily show last night?  She said that she learned to make revolution in a course at AUC.  Stewart asked her how it was that a tyrant would allow such a course to be taught.  That missed her altogether.  Ah, well they will hang Mubarak if he does not die soon, or perhaps this gal could stab him in his bath.  pl

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/26/egypt/index.html

#John Batchelor show- 25 April 2011

 
http://wabcradio.com/FlashPlayer/default.asp?SPID=33447&ID=2170115

11 minutes in.  Syria this time.  pl

#Some Thoughts on the Kandahar Jailbreak, De-radicalization, & Detainee Operations

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

I wanted to just take a minute and follow up on COL Lang's post and comments regarding the jailbreak in Kandahar.  While the CSM report does not go into great detail about how the detainee operations were conducted, it does make clear that criminal and political prisoners were separated.  What it does not specify, however, is how the political prisoners were treated.  And by treated I mean not just were they give three meals a day, exercise time, prayer time, access to reading material, health care, etc, but if their incarceration included attempts to de-radicalize them, disaggregate them from the insurgency, and eventually be able to release them back into their communities.  The latter two aspects of detainee operations were successfully established and used in Iraq by Task Force 134.  Initially conceived and laid out under the command of Maj. Gen. Stone, the idea was to move beyond a crime control process of just getting the insurgents off the street and holding them were they could not do any more damage to actively trying to identify who the detainees were (extremist, non-extremist, religious, non-religious, reconcilable, non-reconcilable) and then utilize appropriate rehabilitation (for lack of a better term) methods to achieve these goals.  Essentially the detainee operations were a version of COIN applied within the detention facility.  TF 134 had some real success with this approach and it appears that it was copied in Parwan, Afghanistan.  Whether this was being used in the Kandahar prison is not determinable from the CSM article on the jail break.