Sic Semper Tyrannis

The Islamists control the Egyptian parliament.

"The People’s Assembly speaker Mohamed Saad El-Katatni has declared the results of the internal elections for the parliamentary committees on Tuesday, in the eighth session of the new parliament. So far, the results for 10 parliamentary committees have been announced, dominated by the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood"  Ahram

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The MB party will run the new parliament.  "Nur," the slafist party will run the education committee.  Is there any real doubt as to where this is headed? 

What sort of constitutution do you thiunk these "squirrels" are going to write?

The president to come had better have a very big ego and want this a lot.  They need someone like Romney.  Ah!  Amre Moussa.  pl

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/33333/Egypt/Politics-/Freedom-and-Justice-Party-heads-most-of-Egypts-par.aspx

Iraqi VP sees chaos ahead, or...

 "... he said he did not understand how U.S. President Barack Obama is able to characterize Iraq as a free, stable and democratic country.

"What sort of Iraq we are talking about?" he asked. "How the Americans will feel proud? How the American administration is going to justify to the taxpayer the billion of dollars that has been spent and at the end of the day the American saying, 'Sorry, we have no leverage even to put things in order in Iraq'?"

Though Iraq's instability may not affect this year's election campaign in the United States, "it is going to affect the American interest in the region, and they should be very much concern about that," al-Hashimi said. "The future of Iraq is grim."" CNN

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The neocons seek to spin this mess that they created into victory in Egypt, etc.  Spin away.  Spin away!  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/30/world/meast/iraq-al-hashimi/index.html?eref=igoogledmn_topstories

Try to send the right people.

"Then, in October 2010, the CIA released results of the agency’s internal investigation into the Khost attack, fueling another round of stories that Matthews was partially responsible. Matthews and her team, the report concluded, failed to follow the agency’s procedures for vetting informants. One of Matthews’s severest critics was her uncle, Dave Matthews, a retired CIA official who had helped inspire his niece to join the agency."  Washpost

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Evidently this woman was not qualified by training to deal with clandestine espionage operations in the field.   She was also not qualified by experience.  She was an analyst.  That means that she was a kind of research scholar.  She was evidently selected for this extremely dangerous post in the field because she was a woman and because she wanted the job for the purpose of advancing her career in CIA.  The career had shown signs of slowing up in its progress toward "nirvana" on the top floor at Langley.  Four year tours of duty in London as a liaison are not career builders, however pleasant they may be.  There are analysts who are also good field HUMINT people, but not many.

She was a "church lady," whose husband seems to say that he and she believed that the US Army and God would protect her from the heathen.  The Army could prevent Taliban or AQ capture of the outpost within which her "base" (a term of art) was sheltered but it could not keep her from trusting this recruited asset so much that she lined her staff up to welcome  him as a "colleague."  As for God, he appears to have been playing on a different team that day.

Some of the best and most tough minded field operatives I have known were women.  I did my best to foster their careers.  They contrasted starkly with the kind of staff "princesses" who generally get ahead fast in such organizations.

CIA sent a person who seems to have been ill suited by temperament, talent or experience for this important job.  Men and women died for that error.  One of them is reported to have counseled her to be less trusting.

What sort of persons are needed for this kind of work?

"Hard hearted empaths"  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-cia-family-a-deadly-suicide-bombing-leads-to-painful-divisions/2012/01/20/gIQAyJGVYQ_story.html?hpid=z6

Canada is not Afghanistan

"A Canadian jury Sunday convicted three members of a family of Afghan immigrants of the "honor" murders of four female relatives whose bodies were found in an Ontario canal.

Mohammed Shafia, 58; his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 42; and their son, Hamed, 21, were found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Shafia's three teenage daughters and his first wife in his polygamous marriage. Sunday's verdicts followed a three-month trial, in which jurors heard wiretaps of Shafia referring to his daughters as "whores" and ranting about their behavior."  CNN

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Canadians should be proud of this defense of human rights and particularly those of women.  Did this man (the father) really think that he could behave this way in Canada?

Honor killings are an abomination, and not accepted by most Muslims.   The vast majority of Muslim jurisprudents would say that to do such a thing is to place oneself outside Islam.  This is tribal law behavior.  This should be a warning for those who think their familial honor demands such barbarity.  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/29/world/americas/canada-honor-murder/index.html

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

"While Lincoln insisted that the Declaration of Independence applied to all, he also descended into bigotry, acknowledging the “physical difference” between whites and blacks. In the fourth debate, he went further.

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he declared in Charleston, Ill., to robust cheers, “nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people.” It was not the future emancipator’s finest hour."  Abraham Lincoln

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Not his finest hour?  It was not, but Romney supporters can take heart from these words that so many wish Lincon had not uttered.   Campaign speeches are not to be believed.  They are sculpted by the ambitious to appeal to the tastes of audiences.  Those audiences were in Illinois where there were no slaves.  BTW, these words are not "lost."  They have been in plain view but ignored by those who wish to think "Mistuh Lincum" a secular saint.  No, actually most of the people who want that have never thought about anything.

I think Lincoln was always against slavery, and especially against letting it expand into the federally held lands which the North owned jointly with the South.  At the same time I don't think Lincoln as president would have done anything to abolish slavery in the states where it was allowed until South Carolina foolishly forced his hand.  The holocaust of the war changed his willingness to act on slavery as the butcher's bill became so high that it had to be justified by something more elevated in tone than forced re-integration of the seceded states.  Would you want to die or have your son die to force South Carilona back into a Union where 150 years later the "natives"could still act like the charming but incendiary rascals that they remain?

In the course of writing my novel (3 volumes) "Strike the Tent," I have come to like Father Abraham as a man.  He tried to work out a negotiated peace until well into 1865.  It is unfortunate that the people of his time seem to have had no more common sense than those of our own.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-lincoln-douglas-debates-werent-as-great-as-gingrich-thinks/2012/01/25/gIQABwX1VQ_story.html?hpid=z7

An Excellent Idea

Forward basing to support particular operations is always a problem.  The farther you are from home, the biggerthe problem.  They should do a few more of these so that land basing for small ops and heaquarters is not so needed in littoral operations.  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ponce_(LPD-15)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-wants-commando-mother-ship/2012/01/27/gIQA66rGWQ_story.html

 

New Archaeology Post on TA

Maureen has put up a new science post on The Athenaeum. pl

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/2012/01/archaeology-news-january-2012-.html

"The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest on Fire Tattoo" a review by Alan Farrell

The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest on Fire Tattoo.  Directed by:  David Fincher.  Starring:  Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer, Stellaan Skaarsgaard (onliest practicing Squareh that is Scandinavian ac-toor in the business and go-to guy for Norsitude… also evilosity so be warned), cameo by Barbra Streisand (as the fjord).

So… this is what comes of Socialism!  The Swedes call their particular brand  “erection to resurrection”:  cradle to grave.  The State assures you a good life by denying you the opportunity for any other kind… and assigns you a name at birth by the way ( it’s “Lars” if you’re a male) or cheekbones that’ll stop a clock (if you’re fee-male).  Howsomever, it does lead in the end to fat cat corporate Trimalchios who fancy themselves privileged, ill-bred young women insistent upon illicit sex and pierced flesh, sanctimonious journalists with the time on their hands to poke into other people’s affairs… oh… oh… we already gots that right here in the U.S. and A.?  Well, okay.  Looks as if the trains run on time, though, so there’s evidently an upside (and we ain’t not got that).  Snow-swaddled landscapes, sunless vistas, faceless urbanity, soulless shadows prowling the oh-so-clean streets, industrial detritus testimony to… oh… oh… we gots that, too?  Well, hell.  How about islands where purring, gouty, avuncular plutocrats keep family secrets locked up along with generations of folly and fascism and intemperate dreams?  Manhattan, you say?  Well, jeeez, then… why don’t we just go ahead, make our own depressing and tedious chiaroscuro (variously pronounced and just as variously spelt) flicks instead of steal them from the Squareheads?  Might check out the remake of Insomnia with Al Pacino (attached, maybe) or the remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal with Steven Segal [S(t)even Se(g)al… think about it!] as Death Walking on the Beach, Angelina Jolie (in leather catsuit unzipped down to here) as the Crusader, and Barbra Streisand as the plague  for a better shot at this kind of cinéma dérivé (French for “piracy”).

Fred Kagan's desired foreign policy

"Advocates of the president’s strategy say that we do not need that human capital or expertise in ground operations because we will never again fight wars that put large numbers of our soldiers at risk. Technology, they say, will make future wars precise, rapid and decisive. We have heard this argument many times since the Cold War ended, from George W. Bush as enthusiastically as Bill Clinton. Yet every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has ordered tens of thousands of troops into ground combat. Obama himself sent 70,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed abroad to wars or peacekeeping operations for 38 of the past 70 years — and nearly continuously since 1989. The argument that next time will be different is unpersuasive."  Fred Kagan

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Fred Kagan wants a foreign policy of aggressive overseas deployments and COIN wars like the ones he favored in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

In his oped piece cited here he uses absurd terms like "never again."  No one makes that claim.  The ral question has to do with "when" and "how big."  As for Obama's decision to send a lot more troops to Afghanistan, Kagan was a direct influence in that mistaken decision.

National strategy dictates foreign policy which dictates military strategy which dictates programming and budgeting.  Obama's newly announced military strategy is reflective of a new foreign policy, one that implictly rejects massive pacification projects (COIN wars) involving the large ground forces needed to hold the subject population down while COIN works its magic over some decades.

In the new strategy COIN is not dicarded.  It is merely reduced to a technique useful in small conflicts at reduced cost.

The other large purpose for big ground forces would be the prospect of conventional ground wars against big, capable armies.  Where are the enemies of this type that are likely to be adversaries for the United States.  Where?  Europe?  Asia? Africa?  This seems implausible.

Kagan says he wants us to have large ground forces that will serve as "incubators" for leadership for the big ground wars that we are unlikely to have.  His paradigm implies a continuing commitment to large scale combat situations.  His own logic rejects the idea that peacetime experience "grows" the kind of leadership that he wants to see.

Small ground acions are likely to continue around the peripheries of the oceans or in SOF situations but big ground wars are, for the US, a matter of choice, not necessity.

Kagan and his neocon "brothers" and their familiars are unhappy with the new strategy because it represent a foreign policy that rejects the neocon vision.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-military-strategy-should-focus-on-troops-not-technology/2012/01/13/gIQAYTXfTQ_story.html

"Insomnia" a review by Alan Farrell

Insomnia. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan.

We'd be tempted to call this flick "film noir" if it weren't for the waves of light that flood both landscape and dreamscape in the Land of Midnight Sun where hotshot Los Angeles detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino, looking like death on a soda cracker, world-weary and saggy-jowled) washes up pending an investigation of his irregular investigative procedures. Dormer, renowned for sniffing out killers and miscreants, appears to have cut corners to put the bad guys away, a dereliction for which he may have to pay not only by watching his career and reputation dissolve in disgrace but also by watching those very truants walk since his methods will have compromised their convictions. All this ferment weighs on Dormer as he and his low key dumbo of a partner (Martin Donovan) disembark in Nowhere, Alaska, visiting specialists called in to help a retired buddy take on the grizzly murder of a young woman. Sharp local cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank, trying to hold in her elegant cheekbones and look appropriately mousy for the role) worships the famous Dormer, has followed all his cases, cites him from his own voluminous writings, and tails him--a little too near--as he shambles halfheartedly through this investigation, his mind clearly on his own troubles back home.