Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008

Overflight Clearance for an Israeli strike at Natanz

"The exercise involved Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots, the newspaper reported.

The helicopters and refuelling tankers flew more than 1,400km (870 miles), roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

The New York Times reported that Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said the air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel". "  BBC

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We went over this once before in a study of what Israeli routes would likely be in an attack on Natanz.  Rick Francona has looked at this on his blog.  He is a skilled and experienced air force officer and I trust his judgment as I always did.

My thoughts on the overflight clearance issue:

"Overflight Clearance" is the granting of permission for one country's military or civilian aircraft to fly over and through the air space of another sovereign political entity.  For one country to overfly the territory of another without permission is a clear violation of international law which invites engagement by air defense forces of the country overflown or any country that has effective authority to grant or deny overflight permission.

"could be used to rescue downed pilots"  Really?  Where?  Routes to and from Natanz would have to cross some combination of the territories of Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

Jordan and Saudi Arabia are extremely unlikely to grant overflight clearance for this purpose.  Presumably this would include Search-Air Rescue (SAR) missions over their territory as well as the strike itself.  Egress from Iran after a strike might well involve Israeli aircraft with combat damage or mechanical problems.  Downed aviators in Jordan, Iraq or Saudi Arabia would be a distinct possibility.  Are the Israelis envisioning fighting their way into and out of these countries on SAR missions?  Would the United States, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or Iraq allow damaged Israeli aircraft to land on airfields in Iraq or these other countries?

Is Turkey going to grant Israel overflight clearance for a routing of the strike or SAR that would enter Turkey at its Mediterranean coast near Iskendurun, turn east to reach Iranian kurdistan, then south to Natnz and return by same route?  Opinions?

Is a Syrian route a realistic possibility?  Certainly the Syrians are not going to grant such overflight permission.  Was the "celebrated" Israeli mission in Syria a while back a test to see how difficult it would be to use Syrian airspace?

Finally, there is the issue of whether or not the Israelis would have overflight clearance for Iraqi airspace at all.  At present, the US exercizes airspace control for Iraqi airspace under the authority it has from the UN for the coalition's operations.  This authority from the UN is to expire soon.  Because of this (and other reasons), the US is seeking acceptance from the Iraqi government for two agreements. One is a SOFA agreement and the other amounts to a mutual defense and cooperation pact.  Among the things the US wants under these agreements is a continuation of its authority over Iraqi airspace.  The Iraqis are reluctant to concede this as well as a number of other points.

I wonder why.  pl

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7465170.stm

"Colonialism or Counterinsurgency"

Download afghanistan_colonialism_or_counterinsurgency.doc

"These converts to the new US doctrine of "modern counterinsurgency" are reading Victorian era guidebooks, consulting "battlefield anthropologists"

(aka Human Terrain Specialists !), and striving to achieve the "developmental asymptote".

What they seem to ignore is that the Afghans (really the Pakhtuns) have been

dealing with invaders for thousands of years. They ambush and kill them when

they can; they make nice and take their money when they must; then turn around and slit their throats when they can again. What they never do is adopt the "civilization" of the invaders, or accept them as masters.

The British ruled (and partly anglicized) the variegated peoples of India, but they failed to overcome the Pakhtuns (in Afghanistan and India's borderlands). That is why they left them alone, and paid good tribute to ensure reciprocal treatment.

The French commander said it best about using counterinsurgency : It means the entire population become the subject of your war, and you either will have to stay there forever or you have lost. Some US officers in Afghanistan

(and, probably, Iraq, too) seem to be quite prepared to stay there forever.

Instead of reading Victorian guidebooks, perhaps they should read the newspapers from back home."

Brigadier (Ret.) Farrukh B Ali"

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Our friend FB Ali has given us this article from the Toronto Globe and Mail. In spite of its formulaic Yankee bashing there are things in the piece that are "food for thought." pl

David Killcullen and his Power Point Show

Killcullen is all the rage these days in the trendy counterinsurgency set.  A friend at RAND sent me this PP show of his.  It was presented at a trendy conference in Washington.  I leave the content to your judgment without comment although I must say that his "cheek" in putting his picture on the same page as that of Bernard Fall is disturbing. pl

Download kilcullen_rand_insurgency_board_presentation_8_may_2008.ppt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kilcullen

4th Generation Warfare? What about 5th and 6th Generation?

"In unusually strong language, Gates warned against what he described as a tendency in the Pentagon to fall back on Cold War mentalities and said he feared that lessons from the U.S. struggle against insurgencies in Iraq could fade unless military commanders understand that today's enemies are the foes of the future.

Gates said there must be a balance between meeting today's demands and tomorrow's contingencies, but he expressed concern that the defense establishment is not concentrating hard enough on what might be needed in future conflicts. He said the armed services and their corporate counterparts should steer technology and resources toward battling insurgencies. "  Washpost

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With respect for the opinion of my colleagues who count Gates among their close friends, (or at least close associates) this is not very profound.

Yes, it is true that the military would prefer to deal with enemies whose vagaries are more easily perceived and estimated in mechanistic sensor driven and applied mathematical kinds of ways.

The US Army did turn away from what it learned in the counterinsurgency wars of the 20th Century.  That was a bad thing.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that there is not some sort of evolutionary development in the nature of war.  There never was such a thing.  War is war.  It has always existed in many forms and usually simultaneously.  The metaphor of generational development in warfare is essentially flawed.  This image was created in the last decade or two to provide existing military leadership with a psychological crutch that enabled them to say that they had not been so woefully ignorant of history as to not know that irregular warfare had always been a major factor in conflict.  No.  The "4th Generation" label allowed the generals to tell each other that something new had appeared on the world scene - guerrilla war.  They could not be expected to have anticipated this new thing, guerrilla war, could they?

Now, Mr. Gates, who seems to be a sensible man, is espousing the idea that the armed forces should configure themselves to fight guerrillas as the main kind of enemy. Such an idea is superficially attractive, but not a viable solution for doctrinal thought and force structure design. 

The future is not really knowable.  It is, in fact, the undiscovered country.  History gives us a ghostly image of what people have done over the millennia.  Will people do the same things in the future? Perhaps they will not, but the record of the past is the only real indication we have of what mankind tends to do.

War remains a social activity which relies on basic attributes of the evolved human beast.  Weapons change but people do not in any time scale that is useful for contemplation.

The record of the past indicates that future wars will be fought in many different forms and often in many different forms within the same war.

Let us be careful that we do not prepare to fight only one of the many forms of war.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/13/AR2008051301265.html

PTSD and the combat soldier.

"To enhance care for soldiers suffering from PTSD, Gates announced that a security clearance form used throughout the U.S. government would be changed to free troops from an obligation to acknowledge combat-related mental-health care.

That change follows numerous studies that found troops suffering from post-traumatic stress after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan believed their security clearances, critical to their jobs, would be at risk if they sought care.

Question 21, which Gates called "infamous," asks applicants whether they have consulted a mental health professional in the past seven years. If the answer is "Yes," they must list details.

"It now is clear to people who answer that question that they can answer 'No' if they have sought help to deal with their combat stress in general terms," Gates told a news conference.

The form, known as the Questionnaire for National Security Positions, is used throughout the U.S. government, but the change initially affects only troops and the Pentagon's civilian workforce.

RAND Corp estimated that 300,000 troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from symptoms of PTSD or depression. Military studies have seen similar results. The Army in February said 17.9 percent of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan experienced acute stress, depression or anxiety in 2007."  Reuters

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I guess we should ask what "in general terms" means.  Does that mean that if you felt like doing something specific about your inability to think or act like the civilians around you then you would have to report it?  You know, something like fighting in bars, or driving fast enough to forget where you are, or are not.  You know what I mean, something like that.  Like most people who know the green machine well, I am suspicious of such benevolent attitudes.  Why?  It is because the combat forces of the military, especially the ground combat forces exist to kill people and destroy things.  In the process of doing that the green machine uses soldiers up and makes them into "used people."  We all know that, don't we fellahs?  Therefore this level of deep concern sounds strangely mommy-like.  The machine does not really like its broken parts.

Is the policy announced a good one?  Certainly.  Let's see how it works in practise.  How many rising NCOs or officers headed upward on the fast track are going to risk what they have for Bob Gates' opinion?  He will be gone soon, but the green machine will still be there, grinding along relentlessly.

On the other hand, it will be a problem if career soldiers are taught by the doctors and civilians that they are necessarily victims of PTSD and impaired by their experience of combat.  What will be the result of implying to professional sodiers that their metier automatically deforms them as human beings?  What are we going to do, put everyone returning from combat into therapy?

A lot of the attiudes taking hold in the USA on this subject originated in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) where it is practically an article of faith that even short periods of combat cause trauma requiring therapy.  I have discussed this with IDF veterans.  They generally agree that the circumstances of historic combat in the IDF are very different from those of US forces.  Most importantly, Israel has never fought a war in which sustained intensive combat over a long period of time has been the experience.  The sole exception might be said to be their war of independence.  They also do not fight far away from their homeland in expeditionary operations.  Lastly, they are a militia army, made up in the main of reservists.  These are civilians in uniform.  The IDF is more like the US Army National Guard than they are like what the US Army now calls "the active force" (Regular Army)

Sometimes our wars have, of necessity, required (and will continue to require) men and now women to accept protracted experience so utterly different from that of most civilians that we should be careful about making facile comparisons between the psychology of soldiers and those whom they guard.  pl

http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSN01474597

People who can't shoot - anything.

For most of my life I have listened to people who "bitched" that they could not hit anything with the M1911A1 .45 caliber US automatic pistol.  I always shot "expert" with that gun.  So many people "bitched" about the .45 that the military got rid of it and replaced it at considerable expense with a fancy-dancy Italian designed Beretta 9 mm. I don't know, but I would bet that the same kind of people can't hit anything with that either.  Now, commercial manufacturers across the world are making all kinds of variants of the M1911A1 .45.  People who can shoot love them.  The picture, "Knocking out the Moros" is about the "birth" of the Army .45.

For most of my life I have listened to people "bitch" about the M16 rifle and now its lineal descendant the M4.  It's a "toy," it jams, it breaks, etc.  Guess what.  You have to clean it.  A soldier in combat who has not cleaned his rifle today is a slacker.  I always shot "expert" with the M16 also.

What's next? Laser rifles?  The same kind of people will "bitch" about them.  Some people just can't shoot and they are not all in the Air Force.

That reminds me.  I need to buy another gun just to make myself feel good.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/26/AR2008042601753.html?tid=informbox

"you mean more soldiers." Dick Cavett

"It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

I find it painful to watch this team of two straight men, straining on the potty of language. Only to deliver such . . . what? Such knobbed and lumpy artifacts of superfluous verbiage? (Sorry, now I’m doing it…)

But I must hand it to his generalship. He did say something quite clearly and admirably and I am grateful for his frankness. He told us that our gains are largely imaginary: that our alleged “progress” is “fragile and reversible.” (Quite an accomplishment in our sixth year of war.) This provides, of course, a bit of pre-emptive covering of the general’s hindquarters next time that, true to Murphy’s Law, things turn sour again."  Cavett

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These two gents certainly were adrift in a semantical whitewater rafting expedition.

A lot of generals have learned to speak a specialized dialect in which they utter broken, incomplete, sentences, stumble over words and never fully express an answer to whatever it was they were asked.  This is a technique, acquired I suppose, from observing others who have "made it" to high rank.  If you talk that way, it is impossible to analyze transcripts or memory and assign blame for a trip "south" in whatever process the general may be engaged.

State Department guys do not usually resort to such rhetorical devices, preferring to express whatever it is, in a preppy imitation of actual culture and learning.  Crocker has spent a lot of time around the military and I believe he has family connections to the soldiery.  So, his style is a blend of the two.  In private he can be quite pointed and nasty.  Somehow all the duhs, uhs, etc. disappear on such occasions.

At a conference I was moderating a few months ago, I grew weary of listening to this kind of "burospeek"  and asked one man if by "kinetic exhaustion" he meant "tired of fighting."  He admitted that he did.  pl

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/memo-to-petraeus-crocker-more-laughs-please/?em&ex=1208404800&en=4fae4715616aa912&ei=5087%0A

"A Paradigm Shift: How Hizbollah Won the War" Alam

"If the Hizbollah can extend these advantages, if it can add shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to its arsenal and bring down a few Israeli helicopters and jets, Israel could quickly lose its unchallenged control over Lebanese skies. Israel’s daily and wanton violations of Lebanese airspace would also come to an end.

The Hizbollah offers Israel a new kind of asymmetric warfare: it combines low-tech guerilla tactics with sophisticated missile and communications technology. Understandably, the Israelis find these Hizbollah achievements hard to digest. What the world witnessed in Lebanon in July 2006 were events that contain the potential for shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Earlier, the Iraqi insurgents had demonstrated that they can make an occupation – even by the world’s greatest power – very costly. Now, the Hizbollah had shown that a disciplined guerilla force, with access to advanced missiles, can repel the most powerful invading army. "  Alam

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See my talk at the Miller Center on September 11, 2006.  I would differ with Professor Alam only in his description of the force that fought the Israelis in 2006 as "a guerrilla army."  A "guerrilla army" employs guerrilla tactics, that is, it fights a war of the "ants against the elephant."  It seeks to inflict long term physical and spiritual attrition on a conventional enemy through ambush, raiding and similar operations.  It nearly always seeks to avoid becoming decisively engaged.

Hizbullah, as it was in Lebanon in 2006, was not a "guerrilla army."  It was an army in the process of metamorphosis.  pl

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13690

Krauthammer's Solution for Israel

"It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran."   Charles Krauthammer's for American deterrance in protection of Israel.  (See his oped below.)

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"The president is out of options. He is going to hand over to his successor an Iran on the verge of going nuclear. This will deeply destabilize the Middle East, threaten the moderate Arabs with Iranian hegemony and leave Israel on hair-trigger alert. "  CK below.

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"This failure can, however, be mitigated. As there will apparently be no disarming of Iran by preemption or by sanctions, we shall have to rely on deterrence to prevent the mullahs, some of whom are apocalyptic and messianic, from using nuclear weapons.  CK below.

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"Every future president -- and every serious presidential candidate -- would have to publicly state whether or not the Holocaust Declaration remains the policy of the United States."  CK below.

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"..there can be no more pressing cause than preventing the nuclear annihilation of an allied democracy, the last refuge and hope of an ancient people openly threatened with the final Final Solution."  CK below.

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One hardly knows what to write.  I would like someone to explain if Doctor Krauthammer's "modest proposal" has the support of the Jewish community (He expresses it that way), as well as his Jacobin brethren of every form of consciousness.

This should be debated.  It may have merit if the virtual protectorate over Israel that he advocates would balance responsibility and authority.  In other words would a specific and effectively irrevocable American assumption of responsibility for Israel's survival in a nuclear world be matched with the ability to control actions which might lead to an Israeli/Iranian confrontation?  Any keen observer of the United States should have known that the US nuclear umbrella has been extended to cover Israel for a long, long time on a de facto basis.  That was adequate because ambiguity is the soul of deterrence.  Evidently that was not good enough for the doctor, and apparently not for others as well? 

The Ayatollahs are not "rational actors?"  This is a doubtful idea.  Opinions?  There seems to be someoone in Iran who controls military motorboats and who is not acting as a "rational actor."  That demonstration of folly should be met with appropriate force.

"the last refuge and hope of an ancient people "  Say what?   Where was he writing from?  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041003271.html

More on Basra, South Iraq and Iran

"..the damage has not only been to Britain's military reputation. It has also led to the most profound split between Britain and America since relations froze during the Suez crisis 50 years ago.

Shamefully for Britain, the White House is now considering sending its own forces to sort the mess that the British have left behind. Last week, one White House official acidly remarked: "American blood is going to have to buy off the British failure in Basra."

Already at the Basra air base, I can reveal, the British subsidiary of U.S. construction giant KBR is building four huge dining facilities - known to the American army as DFACs. These are capable of feeding 4,000 men and suggest that the U.S. Army is contemplating a massive deployment to southern Iraq - including a major presence inside Basra itself. "  Daily Mail

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In the context of British withdrawal from south Iraq, I wrote a while back that the US would inevitably have to fill the vacuum so created with its own forces.  That time is fast approaching.  KBR is not building these facilities for the Iraqis.  It sounds like a reinforced brigade combat team will go in there plus USAF on the base.

In the interest of not making things worse with our cousins across the sea, I will restrict my comment on the Daily Mail article to making a request, on behalf of the uniformed services people, that we not encounter further condescension from the British on the subject of the superiority of their knowledge, sophistication, methods, etc. with regard to COIN.  Enough.

I do not believe that Iran wants to go to war with the United States either in the maritime regions of the gulf and Arabian Sea or in Iraq itself.  Whatever initial "benefits" Iran might experience would be far outweighed by the eventual devastation wrought on Iranian infrastructure by American air and sea power.  They know that.

It has been argued in these pages that the flow of crude and LPG could be obstructed as a major economic "weapons system."  That is merely true.  In fact, an obstruction of the flow of oil out of the Gulf would require Iranian action to create the obstruction.  The United States and especially this administration would be eager to see that as a casus belli.  The Iranians surely know that as well.  I have watched the US Navy at work in situations like this before.  Any obstruction would not last long.  The price per barrel?  There would be a sizable "spike" before the obstruction were cleared but it would be limited in duration and the resulting retaliatory action against Iran would be catastrophic for them.

A major non-SOF American ground effort against Iran?  This is an absurd idea for all the reasons given here before.  I will leave it for you all to thrash that out.

Many of the readers here are greatly underestimating the potential of a guerrilla campaign against the Kuwait-Baghdad supply line.  Yes, the roads can be held open, but at what cost in diverted assets?  pl

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=548593&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=382