Sic Semper Tyrannis

"A Note on Democracy"

I would simply like to go on record as having serious objections to the Bush administration's policy of encouraging and supporting the growth of democratic institutions in the Middle East and around the world.
There is little historical evidence that democracy is the natural state, or the foremost form of political association among human beings. Historially, its origin in terms of time and location is very limited. Democracy began mainly in the 17th and 18th centuries in countries that bordered the North Sea or the English Channel.  From there it extended into central Europe and North America, brought to the later by peoples of northeastern Europe. In other words, democracy is hardly a univeral phenomenon.

For a great many of the world's peoples, personal freedom has been far less of a concern than physical and economic security or material prosperity. Often, to secure these, peoples have looked to more authoriitarian forms of government. George Kennan once pointed out that in some cases authoritarian governments had been able to introduce measures and reforms that have acted to better the lot of their people more effectively than if their governments had been more democratic and theefore more diffuse. Kennan named China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, and Portugal under Salazar. Even if one doesnt agree with these examples, they are worth examination.

The Bush admiinistration's unthinking advocacy of democracy without fully understanding the cultureal and poliitical traiditions where democracy is being attempted seems to be another species of the delusion that we know with certainty what other people want, a self conceit that evades any honest evaluation to determine if our own beliefs, values and habits are relevent to people and institutions very different from ourselves.

The idea that every victim of oppression is at heart a liberal democrat is one of the most persistent of American illusions. It simply won't die. It has the persistence of bacteria.

America is, at bottom, only a country, not some glorious cause. Like any other country, we have our shameful episodes like the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, the occupation of the Philippines, etc. In other words, there are times when we are are noble, other times where we are greedy and squalid, some times when we are selfless, and others where our avarice is truly shameful.
We have less to offer than we think, and what we need, it seems to be, is to bring into closer alighment our actual capababilities and the obstacles confronting them, and thus produce a more sober menu of ambitions.

Richard Sale

CSM Article on Iran

"In the meantime, debate rages over how far Tehran may be from getting the bomb - something the regime continues to insist it has no designs on acquiring. "If it's true the Iranians want a nuclear capacity for energy, then why these long-range missiles they are developing?" says Patrick Lang, a Middle East specialist and former Defense Intelligence Agency officer.

Some experts believe the Iranians could be within a year of perfecting the nuclear fuel cycle, but still at least five years from possessing a deliverable weapon."  La Franchi

http://csmonitor.com/2006/0328/p02s01-usfp.html

"U.S. Limited In Iran War Options"

U.S. Limited In Iran War Options: Experts by Katherine Gypson Mar 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2006 (UPI) -- The Iranian nuclear crisis has become a hot and cold guessing game of hysteria and euphoria, experts say.

In the past two weeks, President George W. Bush has said that the United States would show Iran "what's right or wrong about their activities in Iraq," prompting Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to approve of the talks but warn that Iran will not be "bullied" into backing down on the development of nuclear materials.

The latest issue of The National Interest, from the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank, looks at the concurrent euphoria and hysteria of the Iranian crisis from several different perspectives and asks how the United States can develop an effective strategy in response.

Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations and author of the upcoming book "Hidden Iran; Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic," told a Nixon Center panel Thursday that Iran viewed relations with the United States just as it would approach "any other pernicious, intrusive imperial country." He attributed this attitude to the rise to power of the war generation, those who grew up during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and who now view the United States with a mixture of distrust and passivity.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "curious" approach to diplomacy must be viewed in the context of the United States' central position in Iranian political narratives and the national imagination, Takeyh said.

The 1953 CIA coup which overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq was the starting point for a system of beliefs that continued until the 1980s, when the stalemate of the Iraq-Iran war led many Iranians to believe that "outside superpowers were propping up Saddam (Hussein)'s regime."

There is a certain "stylistic formation" to many of Ahmadinejad's public statements, giving the sense that the issue of uranium enrichment is merely a vehicle for asserting Iran's regional ambitions in opposition to the European powers and the United States, Takeyh said.

"There are issues where they will negotiate but not acquiesce. If the purpose of the Security Council negotiations is to stop the fuel cycle, then you are not going to get it," he said.

Col. Patrick Lang, former director of Middle East Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. "Unless there a lot of bargaining carrots, Iran will feel as though they are abandoning an essential part of themselves," he said.

Such an attitude has left the United States bereft of bargaining options for use with Iranians. The Bush administration has bet millions of dollars on overseas broadcasting, hoping to foment a regime change from within Iran.

"There is opposition sentiment within Iran but no viable opposition force,"

Takeyh said. "There is this assumption that the Iranian public is apathetic because it is information starved. It's not -- it's just apathetic." Takeyh mentioned a variety of factors for Iranian public sentiment, among them economic factors and lack of political freedoms. "More broadcasting pumped into the country may give them more information but it will not lead to revolution," he said.

Lang analyzed the United States' military options by laying out several scenarios. The insertion of a major ground force invasion of Iran, he said, was made "unthinkable," due to domestic American political considerations and the strain on an overburdened U.S. military. It was also ruled out because the geographic reality of Iran would make it a logistical nightmare.

"No real army can be sustained on air transportation," Lang said.

The idea of a large commando operation has been floated as a military option but Lang dismissed "the idea that a bunch of guys with machine guns and a bunch of planes" could affect the desired degree of damage on the Iranian nuclear program as "just silly."

Lang said that the Israelis lacked the military equipment needed to undertake the best of the options -- an air campaign against possible uranium enrichment sites. "The United States is the only country in the world that has capability of carrying out the estimated thousand strike sorties needed to destroy the Iran's nuclear program," he said.

"The objective has to be not to destroy the program, but to set it back a desired number of years," Lang said.

Redundancy programs and decoys were cost-prohibitive and the United States must assume that Iran was assuming that there would be an air strike and is taking these precautions, he said.

Lang said that even if the air strikes were successful, the attacks would become a galvanizing force for both Shia and Sunni terrorist groups. "Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terror," he said. "There is no reason to think that they would not respond."

Takeyh said the negotiations over nuclear enrichments had worked to Ahmadinejad's advantage, changing an issue of contention with the West into a matter of Iranian nationalistic pride.

"If the nuclear threat becomes even more serious then I think you will see U.S. and Israeli diplomacy get even more creative," he said.

"I don't think that this is a program that they are developing in order to give it up for deals," he said."

Katherine Gypson is a UPI Correspondent

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

"The World's Fastest Indian" A Review

Download worlds_fastest_indian.doc

by Alan Farrell

"Insurgency" vs. "Sectarian Violence"

There is an attempt being made at present to distinguish between the two terms in the title of this post.

Without clarifying the difference it is simply asserted that Shia-Sunni fighting is one thing one thing and that the "insurgency" is another.   This is an assertion of a distinction without a difference. 

The "insurgencies"  in Iraq are variously:

-international jihadis who are all Sunni Muslims.

-local Iraqi Islamists (all Sunni Arabs)

-Tribals (Sunni Arabs)

-De-mobilized soldiers (overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs)

-Nationalists and Baathists (some Sunni Arabs and some secular Shia)

What are all these groups fighting for?  With the exception of the "Nationalists and Baathists"  who want to see the restoration of a secular and unitary state, the rest of them want to see the maintenance of the previous (a thousand years) disproportionate political power of Sunni Arab Muslims in Iraq.  The international jihadis would express this as a desire for Sunni Muslim control without a focus on the Arab part of the identity.

What is different in the present "sectarian violence?"  The Shia have now reciprocated in doing violence to their sectarian enemies.

That is the difference.

Pat Lang

Permanent Bases? - A Bad Idea

This is the base swimming pool at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad.  The MSNBC article cited here suggests that this pool and the permanent buildings in the background are "evidence" of an intent to maintain permanent basing in Iraq.  I sure do hope that the US government does not have such an intention.  There is a long history in the ME of the local peoples fiercely resisting what they see as the re-colonizing of their countries.  Permanent basing in Iraq would be a certain and inevitable cause for un-ending armed resistance to our presence.

Having said that, it is nevertheless true that this pool proves nothing.  Balad was the site of the Iraqi Air Force Academy and that is the academy's swimming pool.  The buildings are the academy's buildings.  They were there before 2003.                                                                                                          

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11072377/

This "Burger King" at Asad base in the west is another supposed "evidence" of permanence.  I don't "buy" this argument.  The US  military is a volunteer force recruited from a population that expects a certain standard of living.  The military has to retain highly trained and motivated people.  They know that protracted hardship in living conditions will aggravate retention problems.  US bases everywhere, including in the US, have fast food restaurants all over them.  It is a sign of the times, a sign of the present state of our culture.  Ever since WW2 we have fed and supplied our armed forces with a lavishness that is astonishing.  This is nothing new.  It is just the way we do things.  Big American bases in VN were just as lavish as this.

The truth is that there is a lot of money available and commanders are making their people as comfortable as they can.  The USAF brigadier general in this article who says that the ultimate intention of the US Government will govern their disposition has it exactly right.  The military do not make such decisions, and they should not.

Pat Lang

Peace? What Peace?

Ambassador Dennis Ross, the architect of Camp David Two and the chief diplomat of the United States in the Peace Process, pronounced himself the other day to be of the opinion that if the new Hamas government of the PA does not not change itself to accept Israel's existence, then it will have to be destroyed.

There is a certain logic in this.  Ross made an effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians and it came to less than naught.  He is understandably distraught at the failure of his hopes.  As a follow up to that failure he became an executive of an organization that seeks to advance the interests of Jewish people in what I think of as the Holy Land.  He said that the reason he did so was that he is Jewish.

Now, the PA will form a government drawn in its membership from its own leadership, none of whom have accepted Israel's existence.  Nor are they likely to do so in the future.  The Hamasniks justify their actions to themselves and everyone else on the basis of their identity as Muslims.

To put the issue simply, it is war "to the knife" between these two peoples.

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"After other Palestinian factions refused to join a coalition, the victorious Islamist group nominated a Cabinet whose senior members have all been jailed, deported and escaped Israeli assassination. Chief among Prime Minister-designate Ismail Haniya’s 24 ministers are Dr Mahmoud al-Zahar, a hardliner, as Foreign Minister, and Said Siyam as Interior Minister. Most others are Hamas, with some pro-Islamist independents and technocrats, one woman and one Christian.

President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to approve them but may try to delay the decision until after the Israeli general election on March 28. However, Shaul Mofaz, Israel’s Defence Minister, said that if President Abbas accepted the line-up he would “officially turn the Palestinian Authority into a terror entity”. Hamas faces a cash crisis, as EU foreign ministers met in Brussels yesterday to consider how to continue providing aid to Palestinians without endorsing what is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the EU and US. "  London Times

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I will repeat my earlier estimate.  After the Israeli election, a campaign to eliminate the Hamas/PA leadership will accelerate and if that does not succeed in eliminating the Hamas government, then Israel will begin to re-occupy the territories.

Pat Lang

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2095266,00.html

Alternative Realities

This interview by Tim Russert illustrates something that has become increasingly evident, and that is that the senior leaders of the US armed forces have constructed a separate reality for themselves which insulates them from unpleasant and perhaps insoluble difficulties in Iraq.  It is easy to do this if Washington tells you continuously that you are making progress and that over-riding voice becomes the outer boundary of your "planning guidance."  In the military most people accept guidance from above as the basis on which they plan, and then enforce that reality on subordinates.

It takes real character and something of genius to do otherwise in a hierarchical situation in which career destruction is risked by firmly disagreeing with a superior.  Patton, Truscott, Sheridan, and TJ Jackson, were men who could and did do that, but it was a different time and we were a different people, or peoples in some cases.

In the present system, staff officers, subordinate commanders. providers of intelligence, etc. all know that they are implicitly expected to agree with the boss, and they do.  This provides wonderful reinforcement to the group think underway among the seniors and pretty soon a closed system emrges in which any and all evidence can be and is interpreted to confirm whatever nonsense the bosses want to believe.

"There is light at the end of the tunnel."  Westy said that.  I remember it well.  He wasn't lying.  He believed it completely.  Everyone on his staff believed it in spite of the mountain of intelligence reports pouring into headquarters in Saigon that said the enemy was preparing for a major effort.

A month after he made this statement the 1968 Tet offensive began.

Pat Lang

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11823851/

Operation "Swarmer"

"Operation Swarmer began early today with more than 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, about 200 tactical vehicles and more than 50 helicopters, the U.S. military said in a statement e-mailed from Baghdad. Samarra is about 80 miles (125 kilometers) north of the Iraqi capital on the Tigris River.

The goal of the raid is to ``clear a suspected insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra,'' the military said. The assault may last for several days while a search of the area is conducted, it said. "  Bloomberg

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Hey, folks, this is a small operation.  It sounds like a battalion of infantry (maybe two battalions) from the 101st Airborne Division and some Iraqi police troops.  In Vietnam this operation would have been too small to have been given a name.  It would have just been, "what you were doing tomorrow."

"Air Assault" means that the infantry is delivered by helicopter, that's all.  The 101st is an airmobile division.  That means that they are very light, have a lot of helicopters, and do not have enough trucks to deliver the infantry to the objective in a reasonable time.  they also are looking to use helicopters for this kind of thing from the fear that they will go out of fashion.

I understand that there were NO air strikes in this, no bombs dropped, etc.

The only thing interesting about this operation is the fact that Casey is not going to let the insurgents build another redoubt in Samarra like the one they built in Fallujah.

Pat Lang

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a_tyeTZzl1hk&refer=top_world_news

Ignatius on Optimism in Iraq

"Khalilzad told me in an interview in his office after Wednesday's session that the talks had produced tentative agreement on two basic points: First, the parties endorsed the idea of a unity government that would include all the major factions. Second, they agreed that this government should have a top-level "national security commission" that would include representatives of all the major political parties. Operating by consensus, this body would frame the broad outlines of policy, subject to the Iraqi constitution."  Ignatius

"One seeming obstacle to unity has been fear about the role of Iran. To finesse that issue, Hakim said he is urging Iran to talk with the United States about Iraq's political future. Khalilzad himself has been quietly exploring what he calls the "modalities" for such U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq."  Ignatius

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David Ignatius has a lot of access to government figures.  Maybe that is not always a good thing.

The civil war among the various ethno-religious and political communities has prevented the creation of a government of unity for the last several months.  The reason for that is clear.   These people don't feel unified.  Community interests still prevail and so the process of allocating power through cabinet positions is seen in Iraq as a definition of who will rule in Iraq and who will be prosperous.

Khalilzad is "stuck" with the problem of squaring the circle in this desperate situation.  In the column above, Khalilzad tells Ignatius that to overcome the inability of Iraqi leaders to share power within the framework of the Iraqi constitution, he is advocating the creation of an un-elected "junta" of the leaders of the very factions that have been unable to agree on power sharing legally.  This "National Security Commission" would set policy for the government by consensus (ijma').  In effect, the "junta" would rule the country.  This kind of rule by consensus of an oligarchy of factional leaders is a familiar pattern in the Islamic World.  In many places, the legal constitutional forms are a "Potemkin Village" covering over the actual political and economic rule of the "notables" (ayaan).  The members of such "nomenklatura" groups can be business men, military officers, religious figures, etc.  Sometimes, one of the "notable" manages to seize enough power to make himself THE ruler but behind him there is always the oligarchic group sustaining him in power and sharing in the loot.  "The more things change, the more they remain the same."  Will such a "junta" be able to bring a halt to the fighting?  It would be interesting to find out.

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And then there is this business of US-Iranian negotiations over Iraq.  Does this mean that we are admitting that the major contest in the region is really between us and the Iranians over the body of Iraq?  What happened to the administration policy position that Iran is the "main enemy?"

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/15/AR2006031502180.html

Eschatology? - Wow!

As you know, I love "intellectual" arguments.  I particularly like them if there is not a real war to fight somewhere.

Nevertheless, I find this "briefing" now circulating in the armed forces to be worrisome.  In the "bad old days" we had a lot of "younger sons," and members of the heredity military caste (like me) in the officer corps of our armed forces.   They were a lot less concerned with "solemnity" and more concerned with "seriousness."

Now a "sea change" has occurred and officers are more solemn about eschatology and such like that than the the leaders of our beloved "ruffians" of yesteryear were likely to be. Such things as this briefing seem to be more likely to be thought of as a challenge these days than intelligence on the eccentricities of the enemy.

We have too many now in our armed forces who are looking for this challenge.  They will find deep satisfaction in it.

So far as I can see, this document is in the public domain.  If this is not so, I will withdraw it.

Pat Lang

Download iranian_briefing_vollmer.pdf

"Arab Cultural Awareness" by TRADOC

This little book has recently been published by the US Army.

This is a "pocket" guide for junior soldiers.  It is intended that small groups of soldiers should use this as a reference and in conducting small unit (squad/platoon) training.

On the whole I think it is a useful primer on the Arabs and Muslims.  It contains a few "typos" and minor errors, but this is to be expected.  The guide is properly cautious about the generalizations that must be made to make a book like this useful.

Most importantly, it addresses these populations on the bases of their shared thought and traditions.  This is a major step forward for an army that prefers to think of people, all people, as inter-changeable "parts."

Green Berets, some psychological operations and some intelligence people rise above that kind of de-humanizing thought, but they are an exception in an army that all too often would rather deal with machines.

I congratulate Training and Doctrine Command on this project.

Pat Lang

Download arabculture.pdf

The Gate of Ijtihad

""The practice of ijtihad," stresses the report compiled with the participation of several respected Muslim scholars, "must be revived."
    Ijtihad -- or hermeneutics -- refers to the institutionalized practice of interpreting Islamic law (sharia) to take into account changing historical circumstances and, therefore, different views.
    Ijtihad is the independent or original interpretation of problems not covered by the Koran (Islam's holy book), the Hadith (traditions concerning the Prophet's life and utterances), and ijma' (scholarly consensus). In the early days of the Muslim community, every adequately qualified jurist had the right to exercise such original thinking.
    Fearing too much change would weaken their political clout, religious scholars closed the gates of ijtihad to Sunni Muslims about 500 years ago. From then on, scholars and jurists were to rely only on the original meaning and earlier interpretations of the Koran and the Hadith. However, there now is a growing movement among scholars and intellectuals to revive the practice of ijtihad. "  Salhani
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All of the above applies only to Sunni Islam because the "Gate of Ijtihad" never closed in Shia Islam.  The certified religious scholars known as "Ayatollahs" are by definition "Mujtahids."  (those who practice Ijtihad)

The prospect of the re-opening of the Gate of Ijtihad is incredibly important to both the Sunni World and to the West.  The specifics of religious law upon which the Jihadis base their justification of unrelenting war against the West are presently held to be effectively immutable by Sunni scholars because of the closure of the Gate of Ijtihad long ago.  A re-opening of the gate would make basic and transformative re-interpretations of the "Roots of the Law" possible in Sunni Islam. 

The prospects could be breathtaking.  Considering the degree of pressure now being exerted on the strategic position of the Islamic peoples, there would be a good chance that the main centers of Sunni Islamic learning could reach a consensus that provided all Sunni Muslims with a convincing refutation of the Jihadis insistence on the religious necessity of armed jihad against the West.

In addition, a cultural and historic bias against innovation, which has long hampered the economic and political development of the Islamic World might be affected in a positive way throughout the Sunni world.

Is any of this certain?  No.  The Shia have never been deprived of the benefits of Ijtihad and they still have produced a society which elects people like Ahmadinejad.

Nevertheless the possibilities are fascinating.

Pat Lang

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20060311-102357-7196r.htm

Iraq and Genocide

This interesting comment was made by one of our regular correspondents who asked for my opinion on this subject.

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"Given the many reports describing the discovery of groups of Sunni men found dead with execution-style wounds and torture wounds -- and also the stories about Sunni men being taken away by Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry police and other government forces, never to be seen again -- it strikes me that the U.S. effort to train and equip Iraqi police and military personnel may turn out to be, or is already turning out to be, an organized campaign to prepare a genocide, albeit unintentionally. It's becoming increasingly easy to picture an Iraqi version of the Interhamwe cleaning up the sectarian composition of the country, or to picture a dozen Srebrenicas. (The other scenario that comes to mind is something like the 1965 purge of Indonesian communists, after some version of the Untung coup.)

It seems like it would be especially easy for Iraq to move toward genocide in light of the fact that they've already headed that way before. There are plenty of people still walking around the country, I'm sure, who have already gassed Kurds or Iranian troops, and are comfortable with violence of that scale and variety. Of course, they no longer have the gas -- but the Hutus showed this sort of thing could be carried off with machetes, and there's no shortage of weapons in Iraq. I would think the trigger could be something like the Sunnis abandoning the political process and trying to recover power by force of arms, with the Shiites deciding to solve the problem once and for all. Not that easy to kill every Sunni Arab in Iraq, but it also wouldn't be that hard to cull men of military age, burn homes, and render individual mixed-population towns Sunni-free.

Do you view any of these scenarios as being really possible?"  CB

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Iraq has a consistent history of inter-communal struggle among the ethno-religious nations that inhabit the place, but these political and sometimes armed conflicts have been aimed at subduing the competing communities rather than annihilating them. Saddam Hussein's attacks on the Kurds and Shia were efforts to bring them into compliance with his vision of a unitary state under dynastic rule by his clan.  He sought in some parts of the country to re-settle large numbers of people in order to make the role of the Sunni Arabs dominant in all parts of the country and all sectors of the economy, but "ethnic cleansing" on the Balkan model does not seem to have been the practice.  Some may disagree on that point.  It would be good to hear their views.

In spite of this history, the present and future situation may be different.  The long period of sanctions followed by yet another defeat in war, followed by occupation by foreign armies have unsettled the country to such an extent that restraints on behaviors which were customary in the past may no longer inhibit murder as they once did.

The recent series of group murders with torture point to a degeneration of whatever sense of collective identity the Iraqis have had up until now.  If a process of retaliation for such murders sets in, it will almost inevitably lead to large scale fighting in areas with mixed populations.  It is easy to imagine that his kind of thing would lead to flight by minority populations into areas where their "own people" live.  This process would accelerate the disintegration of the state of Iraq.

Baghdad?  If this trend continues, the situation in the metropolis will get steadily worse, because there, the populations can not be segregated.

Pat Lang

"Blinded by the Light."

"And some kidnapped handicap was complainin' that he caught the clap from some mousetrap he bought last night, Well I unsnapped his skull cap and between his ears I saw a gap but figured he'd be all right
He was just blinded by the light
Cut loose like a deuce another runner in the night
Blinded by the light
Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun
Oh but mama that's where the fun is..."  Bruce Springsteen

A poet for our time.  PL

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""There's no doubt that the sectarian tensions are higher than we've seen, and it's a great concern to all of us," Abizaid told the Senate committee, adding that the situation in Iraq is "changing [in] nature from insurgency toward sectarian violence." Asked about that comment after the briefing, Abizaid said that "sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency.""  Tyson in Washpost.

Does Abizeid really believe this?  He is an intelligent man, and experienced in the Middle East.  He has been involved in the war in Iraq from the beginning.   It would be re-assuring to think that he is being disingenuous here and that this is just an attempt to be supportive of the administration's efforts in his theater of operations.  If he really believes this, then the implication is that he:

1- Thought/thinks that the rebels(insurgents) were/are a small band of holdouts and social nihilists who were likely to "die out."

2- That the self same small bands of "nihilist" criminals have/had no popular support.

3- That the religious component in the foreign and/or Iraqi components of the "nihilist" gangs are/were not genuine and that therefore the internal warfare that has plagued Iraq does not amount to either civil war or "sectarian violence."

Can it really be (rhetorical question) that Abizeid, Rummy, Rice, Pace et al are so "blinded by the light," by the luminescent and obvious truth of what faces us in Iraq that they actually do not understand the catastrophe approaching?

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030900280.html

Decline toward a fall?

Michael Singer is a friend who lives in the "deep north."  He and I come from different places politically.   We share a mutual interest in the events of the '60s and early '70s.  I am glad we met after all that "wonderfulness" was over, long over.  Maybe.

He wrote such an interesting comment on the "National Interest" article that I have posted it here (with his agreement).

Pat Lang

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"The National Interest piece is a great service. I wish it were required reading for the war planners working on Iran now for Rummy. The discussion about the piece has also been compelling except for one very important point.
What you and commenters have described is an America in the twilight of its hegemony, hemmed in by it's deficit, a military with hundred of billions to spend which cannot provide body and vehicle armour for its troops fighting in real time and a government run by men and women so profoundly inadequate to the tasks of making war, securing a peace and providing for the common defense-that being the job of "Katrina" Chertoff. What is lacking here is a perspective, a step-back-look at what is really happening here: There something profoundly sad about this America you describe in your piece...it seems right and it is an America in a box it has helped build itself, which it cannot get out of short of using nucs - which, as you point out, is irrational and yet it is the weapon on which we once built our security at an unfathomable cost.
What this situation cries out for is some new thinking about intelligence, diplomacy, non UN transnational cooperation, and other than violent tools to work toward a brake on our decline. This country's beginning was sheer genuis and it's short history(until recently) has so much that is good to offer the world. But our light, it seems, is slowly going out, maybe being put out by some conditions out of our control and with the help of our current leadership."  Michael Singer

AK-47

Download ak-47.wmv

Wish I had one of these in what some might call my "weapons cache."  In Virginia, it is called "Pat's guns" or "Marguerite's guns" depending on which ones we are talking about.

Some woman once asked me if I was not afraid that Marguerite might shoot me sometime when she is irritated with me.  "No," was the answer but if she did I would probably deserve it.

These things were made in every country in the Warsaw pact as well as China and North Korea.

We dropped hundreds of thousands of them into the South China Sea from sling loads under helicopters.  Someone will tell me how many millions have been made, I am sure.

Pat Lang

PS That's a hell of a price.  Sign me up for two.

Clausewitz on the Intelligence Process

Few people have ever really read Clausewitz masterpiece "On War," but a lot of people like to speak of him in a dismissive way.  He is often referred to as an advocate of the use of brute force involving mass conscripted armies, victory by attrition and many other concepts to which he was completely opposed.

In fact he was a humanist philosopher who had twenty years experience of war against Napoleon (the god of War).

He has left us this little chapter on what he called "Information in War" (intelligence).  The events of recent years and some of the remarks directed to this space indicate to me that we would all benefit by a close reading of his words here.

Pat Lang

Download chapter_vi.doc

"Contemplating the Ifs...."

The "National Interest" asked Johnson and me to write this.

Pat Lang

Download lang_johnson_tni_83.pdf

No Compromise, No Way...

"The moment of reckoning has arrived in post-Ba'athist Iraq and none of the major players shows a trace of the will to compromise that would be necessary to construct a genuine nation-state, in which diverse social groups have an overriding commitment to live together.

Even if civil war is averted in the short term and a government is formed, that government will not be a genuine national-unity administration, but an arena of conflict between contending power groups."  M. Weinstein

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Yup. Deja Vu all over again.  "Compromise,"  "Nation State," all of those things that we have been discussing here are highlighted by Weinstein.  Yes.  We are entering a stage at which everyone in the world except the president will know that we will be unable to accomplish his goal of making Iraq into West Texas.  Does that mean that our presence there will end soon.  No, It does not mean that.  There will be a long and messy step by step process of disengagement with Iran watching us for a chance to do some hurtful thing every step of the way.  Lang

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"The central interests of the Kurds are to maintain their effective independence and to gain control of Kirkuk and its surrounding region, which has large energy reserves and had been split off from the Kurdish provinces under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. The Kurds complain that the transitional government, in which the Shi'ites had the preponderant influence, did not facilitate the resettlement of Kurds who had been displaced from Kirkuk under Ba'athist rule, and that it failed to put into effect provisions of the Iraqi constitution and its subsidiary Law of Administration that require a census in and a referendum on the status of Kirkuk.

Already in late January the governor of Kirkuk, Abd al-Rahman Mustafa, had threatened to suspend oil exports to the rest of Iraq if the central government did not allocate funds for taking the census and holding the referendum. "  Weinstein

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The Kurds want Kirkuk.  The Talabani Kurds, some of whom are Shia live in eastern Kurdistan near the Iranian border.  Talabani, although a Sunni, has always been on friendly terms with whatever Iranian government was in power.  Jalal Talabani is familiar with thr rule that "you should go home with him who brought you to the dance."  The Barzanis in the west do not have that history and I continue to maintain that a deal is in the works between Ankara and Barzani over what we now like to call an "end state."  Lang

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HC02Ak02.html