Sic Semper Tyrannis

Anthro on Logic

"Let's look at the logic of the "Hegelian compromise" vs. "Zero-sum" game - particularly it's history. In both cases, the point of diplomacy is to investigate the results of direct application of power (ultimately violence), and then come to that settlement without having to actually take the losses of violence. It's like rams butting heads - they can discover which one would win an all out fight while avoiding that fight. Now, in cultures derived primarily from imperial Rome, like the Eastern Christian world and the Muslim world, there's an assumption that the world is composed of a singular hierarchy, where equality is equality of submission to a higher entity. Negotiations would then obviously be negotiations of surrender once it was ascertained who would "naturally" win an all-out battle. This come from the experience of millenia under unified empires. In the West where centuries of competing hierarchies and anarchy held sway, the heathen Greek idea of Dike survived. A balance of power is understood to be a natural state, where equality is one of a dynamic tension between two parties which can not destroy the other without mutual annihilation. So diplomacy is often, but not always, "Hegelian" because both parties understand that neither can win, and no third party can dominate both of them. What does this mean about Cheney and his ilk? They are monotheists in a political sense. They assume that all fights have a winner and a loser - that stalemates only come about due to a lack of will. If that's true, democracy makes no sense: it's simply a utopian delusion with no grounding in the hard reality of power and war. At best, it's a useful tool to quiet the herd. Their approach to science reflects this, their approach to diplomacy reflects this, their approach to war reflects this. We're not so different - what differs is a lynch-pin understanding of how politics naturally settles out. History says that both understandings are stable, if a critical mass of players agree on the nature of reality. Sumeria survived for millenia as a "Heathen" system, and so did Rome as a "Monotheistic" system. We may be on the cusps of a change here. Cheney and his fellow travellers have created a zero-sum reality in American politics. They have played hard-ball with the civil service and the military. The opposition will have a difficult time not acting as if we are under a winner-takes-all system. If they fail to do that, the professional employees who have been completely replaced by ideological players will undermine them; but if they do clean house, the imperial pattern will become entrenched. Something similar may happen on the international front. Since we've abandoned the post-WWII idea of building up our defeated adversaries, it would be foolish for our adversaries, once they have us down, not to try to finish us off. The idea that international politics is multilateral will be sorely damaged if Cheney gets his chance to push his "advantage" to the hilt. Even Buchanan fears this in a recent op-ed piece!" Anthro

Dowd on Cheney and Iran

"VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Good morning, Tim.

RUSSERT: How close are we to war with Iran?

CHENEY: Well, I think we are in the final stages of diplomacy, obviously. We have done virtually everything we can with respect to carrots, if you will. It’s time for squash. Not to mention mushrooms, clouds of them.

RUSSERT: But you squashed Iraq and that didn’t work out so well.

CHENEY: Iraq will be fine, Tim. It just needs a firmer hand. We learned that lesson. We’re not going to get hung up on democracy this time. (Expletive) purple thumbs.

RUSSERT: Isn’t Secretary Rice still pushing carrots for Iran?

CHENEY: The more carrots Condi feeds ’em, the better they’ll be able to see the bombs coming."  Maureen Dowd

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People keep asking me - what's wrong with the vice president?  That's an important question.  Some who have known him a long time still express surprise at the emergence in 2000 of a "new man," a man seemingly indifferent to the opinions of others, a man who did not feel others' pain well and who sought to "game" all encounters as if they were "zero-sum" routines in a business school rather than as a search for the consensus needed in a democratically ruled state.

Some have told me that he must have had some awful experience with Muslims to make him so hostile and indifferent to their right to lead their own lives unmolested.  9/11?  It is hard for me to believe that a resolution to change others that seems so complete and fell was not in him before this opportunity to express the deed.

His evident contempt for; the two "competing" branches of the federal government, the states and citizen opinion are so clear that any expressions on his part of a desire to compromise with anyone are suspect.  Dowd has captured that well.  "Diplomacy?" Cheney?  It seems to me that he has adopted the traditional view of "diplomacy" as it is understood in the Middle East.  There, diplomacy is, in fact, usually not the Hegelian bargaining that we imagine.  No, it is actually the process of arranging the terms of a surrender.  That is surely the "diplomacy" that we are offering the Iranians.

When Cheney or his spiritual clone talk of diplomacy you can be fairly sure that something other than a compromise solution is envisioned.

What is the VP about?  After long contemplation I have regretfully come to the conclusion that he just does not like our present form of government.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?em&ex=1193716800&en=9760f169dbded406&ei=5087%0A

"Who Loveth Best" Alan Farrell

I put this on once before but there are now so many new Farrell "Groupies" that I thought I should give you another chance to contemplate the deep symbolism of this neo-Kafkaesque gem.  pl

Download who_loveth_best.pdf

Open Thread - Any Subject

I will be occupied with something for a few days.  pl

"A Purple Heart and A Dime" Alan Farrell

I thought about writing something today about the looming menace of Iranian ICBMs (quoting the commander guy here) or the irony of the thought that we might bomb Kurds because they are an unruly pain in the tail.  Yes I know.  The PKK are really screwing things up, but it would, nevertheless be an irony perceptible for those who are condemned to ironic contemplation.  Then there is the Syrian boondoggle of the Israeli Air Force.  Why has there been secrecy about the strike?  The Israelis wanted it that way.  Simple.  Occam, Sherlock and the duck rule strike again. (Look it up or someone here will explain it to you)  Not today, folks.

A lot of you wanted to read more of Alan Farrell's musings.  This appeared in "Arion." Have at it.  I have mostly quit expressing Alan's level of skepticism of professional "NAMVETS."  I found that such thoughts are not tolerated by many.  In particular I remember a retired diplomat who said that my lack of "compassion" told him that although I had been near combat I had never actually fought.  He told me that although he had never served in the military, his trauma was a burden.  You never know...  pl

Download arion_odysseus.doc

"Pakistan on the Brink" by FB Ali

Farrukh B. Ali has written us a perceptive essay on the parlous state of Pakistan today.  pl

Download pakistan_on_the_brink.doc

Zuckerman on Iranian Intentions

Sunday mornings I devote to watching the newsy talkies.  Sad, but necessary.  The terriers get me up by 0730 anyway.  Good coffee helps to bolster spirits for the experience.  One of the weeklies that I watch is the McLaughlin thing.  In spite of the yelling and rudeness, the views of some of these people are worth knowing, if only for the influence they have and the money they spread around among the merely "officed."

Mort Zuckerman is one such.  A billionaire press baron on the model of Beaverbrook or the "dirty digger," (a British epithet), Zuckerman never misses a chance to push his world wide agenda.

Today, he said (if I heard right) that the mere possession by Iran of a cascading centrifuge setup for uranium enrichment is "proof" of Iranian intention to produce nuclear weapons.

Now, I am no "nucular" engineer, but if I read the available materials right, it is necessary to enrich uranium somewhat to produce fuel for nuclear electricity plants.  A further enrichment is necessary to produce weapons grade enriched uranium. 

Iran claims that it wants nuclear generated electricity.  There is a plausible case for that.  Iran has a lot of gas and oil deposits, but they are not infinite and they are pretty much the country's only economic resource other than caviar, carpets and pistachio nuts.  The Iranians say they want to exchange the petroleum for foreign exchange rather than burn it for electricity.

The IAEA says that they have not found proof of Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons.

Mortimer Zuckerman thinks otherwise.

Does this sound like the Iraq farce to anyone but me?  pl

Inexcusable Negligence at Minot AFB

"Air Force weapons officers assigned to secure nuclear warheads failed on five occasions to examine a bundle of cruise missiles headed to a B-52 bomber in North Dakota, leading the plane's crew to unknowingly fly six nuclear-armed missiles across the country.

That August flight, the first known incident in which the military lost track of its nuclear weapons since the dawn of the atomic age, lasted nearly three hours, until the bomber landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in northern Louisiana.

But according to an Air Force investigation presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Friday, the nuclear weapons sat on a plane on the runway at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota for nearly 24 hours without ground crews noticing the warheads had been moved out of a secured shelter.

"This was an unacceptable mistake," said Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne at a Pentagon news conference. "We would really like to ensure it never happens again.""  Spiegel in the LA Times

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Let's say that during the three hour flight from North Dakota to Louisiana there had occurred an in flight emergency, perhaps a loss of some number of engines.  Let us say that the aircraft commander decided in such an emergency to lighten the load by jettisoning things that were not permanently attached to the airplane.  Presumably the first to go would have been things that did not have rocket motors or explosives attached.  After that....  Well ,in the midst of an emergency, losing power and altitude would the aircraft CO not have considered "dumping" these cruise missiles over what - Kansas, maybe?  After all, he did not know that these were nuclear weapons..

The government will always assure the public in incidents like this that the weapon could not detonate.   It is certainly unlikely, but the vagaries of impact of such a machine on the earth makes that less than totally reassuring.  At the very least, the fissile material in the weapons could be spread around in a dangerous way, and then, there is the possibility of a less than full yield detonation in a variety of ways.

The USAF and Navy kept a tight grip on these instruments of the devil for all the period of the Cold War.  This awful example of neglect of duty and inattention to detail is appalling in its illustration of the dangers of complacency.  pl

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuke20oct20,1,2808037.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

This is the warhead involved.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/w80.htm

The description of the warhead assures that the possibility of a nuclear detonation in an accident is "minimal."

"The Butcher's Cleaver" Now for Sale

Please visit the web site for my first novel "The Butcher's Cleaver."   It is now for sale on-line at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and iUniverse.com

pl

www.rosemontbooks.com

For sale at these lnks:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-0278800-4247125?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=The+Butcher%27s+cleaver&x=11&y=11

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=The+Butcher%27s+Cleaver&z=y

http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-47476-4

In the UK the book can be bought on-line at "Foyles" and at "WHSmith."  In Australia and New Zealand "Fishpond.com" carries the book.

A review of the book recently appeared in the Defense Intelligence Agency newspaper:

Download DIAReview.pdf

What are the odds on Bhutto?

There were three suicide bombers on foot in the crowd and someone fired several shots that hit the bullet resistant glass where she was supposed to be sitting.

Musharraf has been the target of a number of assassination plots but this set of attacks on Benazir Bhutto just after she descended from the aircraft that brought her home raises once again the question of the future of Pakistan, a country that possesses deliverable nuclear weapons and aircraft configured to do the job.

The Pakistani military is thoroughly infiltrated by men of doubtful loyalty to a Western alliance.  Without the past help or passive acceptance of such men the Taliban and al-Qaeda would never have become the menace that they still are.

No.  The US did not sponsor either group.  We  sponsored other groups. Look it up.

Nevertheless, the situation in Pakistan remains largely a question of the survival of a handful of people like Musharraf and Bhutto.  Perhaps next time the plotters will have better luck.  If they do then, a sudden reversal in Pakistan which produces a government committed to an Islamist course is distinctly possible.

The threat of Iranian nuclear weapons is distant and still inconclusive.  The threat that would be posed by Pakistani weapons would be immediate.  pl

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2696680.ece

"Cortez in Darien" Alan Farrell

"The Greeks. The Greeks. In our A-Camp stood, among the weapons racks and jungle plane antenna cables and duty rosters, a biiiiiiiiiiiiig white Kelvinator refrigerator, packed with unrationed Cokes kept cold by an eternally-running 10-KW generator whose cycle-setting (the gauge had been shattered by a mortar fragment one night) we adjusted using a tape-recorder and a Frank Sinatra tape. When Frank's "myyyyyyyyyyyyyy-eyyyyyye waaaaaaaaaaaay" sounded about right, we figured we were on 60 cycles and let it go. One day, shuffling in off sandbag detail with my montagnards to snatch a Coke, I took the grease pencil we tied to the fridge with a string and used to keep track of drinks drunk to write across the upper door of the thing: Andra moi ennepe, Mousa . . . First line of Homer's Odyssey : "Sing to me the man, O Muse..." That evening when I got back from LP and went after yet another Coke, I discovered that someone had written with the same grease pencil in bold black characters beneath my inscription this: . . . polutropon hos mala pola plangthe , ". . . full of ruse and who suffered many woes," the last part of the same first verse of the Odyssey. I spent the remaining months of my tour and the intervening years trying to figure out which of my buddies on that 12-man A Detachment knew Homeric Greek and pierced my vanity. Of course no one would own up to it. Yet, there was another schoolboy there with me. And that shared experience is a debt I owe to the dozens of Unrats and Chippings and Gradgrinds who filled my head with the stuff that saw me through.

Clinton's Foreign Policy Manifesto

"We must withdraw from Iraq in a way that brings our troops home safely, begins to restore stability to the region, and replaces military force with a new diplomatic initiative to engage countries around the world in securing Iraq's future. To that end, as president, I will convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council and direct them to draw up a clear, viable plan to bring our troops home, starting within the first 60 days of my administration.

While working to stabilize Iraq as our forces withdraw, I will focus U.S. aid on helping Iraqis, not propping up the Iraqi government. Financial resources will go only where they will be used properly, rather than to government ministries or ministers that hoard, steal, or waste them.

As we leave Iraq militarily, I will replace our military force with an intensive diplomatic initiative in the region. The Bush administration has belatedly begun to engage Iran and Syria in talks about the future of Iraq. This is a step in the right direction, but much more must be done. As president, I will convene a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all the states bordering Iraq. Working with the newly appointed UN special representative for Iraq, the group will be charged with developing and implementing a strategy for achieving a stable Iraq that provides incentives for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey to stay out of the civil war.

Finally, we need to engage the world in a global humanitarian effort to confront the human costs of this war. We must address the plight of the two million Iraqis who have fled their country and the two million more who have been displaced internally. This will require a multibillion-dollar international effort under the direction of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Meanwhile, the United States, along with governments in Europe and the Middle East, must agree to accept asylum seekers and help them return to Iraq when it is safe for them to do so.""  HR Clinton

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Yes.  I know.  It was written by a committee in the course of a political campaign.  Nevertheless, it is a clear statement intent with regard to foreign and military policy and a detailed statement at that.

"As president, I will convene a regional stabilization group composed of key allies, other global powers, and all the states bordering Iraq. Working with the newly appointed UN special representative for Iraq, the group will be charged with developing and implementing a strategy for achieving a stable Iraq that provides incentives for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey to stay out of the civil war."

I can distantly hear the string section tuning up.

I can find nothing in this document that I disagree with and a lot that I would enthusiastically support.

She is likely to be president.  What is the alternative, Giuliani? Hah!

I think this document deserves a thorough discussion by you all.  pl

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86601-p0/hillary-rodham-clinton/security-and-opportunity-for-the-twenty-first-century.html

The Spirit of Bremerism Still Lives in Basra

"The growing strength of the (Islamist) parties in the south has weakened some secular tribal leaders and excluded them from power structures, a source of patronage and revenues.

"Some say the Shi'ites are lucky because they are now ruling Iraq, but that is wrong. It is the Islamist Shi'ites who are ruling Iraq. Their victory was a curse for us," said one sheikh.

The sheikhs blamed Washington for giving Shi'ite Islamists a free hand in the south. U.S. forces are concentrated to the north, focused mainly on Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants and so-called rogue Mehdi Army groups.

Washington has thrown its weight behind Baghdad's Islamist- led government despite misgivings about its failure to push ahead with national reconciliation and the close ties between some parties and Iran, the United States' long-time foe.

SIIC and the Sadrists are seen by the sheikhs as importing a conservative brand of Shi'ism from neighboring Iran, which U.S. officials accuse of arming Shi'ite militias to use as proxies to enforce their influence in the south.

"We are suffering from two occupations -- America and Iran. We have told American officials this and we have met some of them, but they are not listening to us," one sheikh complained.

Some tribes were talking about taking up arms against the Islamist parties, but the tribal leaders said they feared this would unleash a bloodbath that would destabilize the south.

"The tribes do not want violence ... but at the same time we want to see a change that preserves the rights of all Iraqis, so that we are really free," said one sheikh."  Yahoo News

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"we have met some of them, but they are not listening to us.."  Excuse me?  Not listening to Shia tribal sheikhs?   If this true, one must hope that the "unhearing ones" are leftovers from the great era of democratization in Iraq, "L'Epoque Bremer" it is destined to be known.

Lets see, the Brits are momentarily holding the Basra airport until "a decent internal" for complete withdrawal arrives.  The Islamist Shia parties are squabbling over the loot of the south and working on imposing their own version(s) of Sharia on the populace.  The Turks are brooding over insults and mumbling to themselves their favorite word, "yasak," (forbidden).  Meanwhile, across northern Iraq, the old are repeating folklore concerning Ottoman tax collection methods. (nizam al-khathou - translation omitted)

Now it sounds like the Shia tribes could be used against the zealots, and official Americans are not listening to Shia tribal sheikhs in the south?  It's a mad-cap world.  John Stewart could have fun with this.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/wl_nm/iraq_shiites_tribes_dc

Prospects in Iraq

"The deployment of more U.S. and Iraqi forces into AQI strongholds in Anbar Province and the Baghdad area, as well as the recruitment of Sunni tribal fighters to combat AQI operatives in those locations, has helped to deprive the militants of a secure base of operations, U.S. military officials said. "They are less and less coordinated, more and more fragmented," LTG Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently. Describing frayed support structures and supply lines, Odierno estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year. "  Ricks and De Young

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As I said in my recent talk at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, it seems likely to me that the sun is setting on AQ in Iraq.  There are three main reasons for that in this order of importance:

1- The Sunni Iraqi hostility to AQI which has emerged since Autumn, 2006.  I have discussed the reasons for this operationalized hostility in the talk mentioned above as well as in this space.  This development seems exportable to many parts of Sunni Iraq.  An underground irregular warfare organization still depends on its support in the population of its potential adherents.  Mao's dictum on this subject concerning the fish and the sea remains as true as ever.  A modicum of accommodation on the part of the Shia run central government and the command of US forces should keep this phenomenon growing.  This is a death threat for the takfiri jihadis in Iraq.

2- The increase in US forces known popularly as "the surge" is serving to clear space in the cities for subsequent assertion of government control by Iraqi forces.  This is working rather well in the short term but long term success will be dependent on the ability of Iraqi forces to "take over' responsibility for cleared zones and permanently exert government authority.

3- Continuing operations of US and Iraqi Special Operations counter-terrorist commandos against AQI cadres.  This activity is productive but, in and of itself, would never defeat AQI because the organization would simply continue to re-build itself from internal and external reinforcement if the political support of the Sunni Arab population did not come to an end.

If this tri-partite pattern of activity continues, then it is likely that the leadership of the international movement (in all its decentralised manifestations) will decide to "cut its losses," reduce commitments in Iraq and concentrate on other, seemingly more attractive fields of endeavor. 

Will that "solve" the Question of Iraq?  No.  It will not.  The mislabeled "political" problem of ethno-religious communal reconciliation will remain.  It will wait for a willingness on the part of the communities to share power and resources among them.  In addition, the inherent contest among the Shia factions will have to come to some end for true stability to emerge.

The Kurds?  Well, they watch and wait for US and Turkish action or inaction on their fate.

Iran will continue to play a delicate game, playing off the different Shia groups against each other in order to increase its own leverage, while keeping communications and minimal support ties with the Sunni Arab resistance.  Iran does not want to see a Sunni Arab resurgence in power but in the time honored Middle Eastern tradition of intrigue is quite willing to use Sunni fighters to keep pressure on both the Iraqi government and coalition forces.  All the while Iran waits for the Americans to decide that their position in all this can be greatly improved by serious bargaining over roles and relationships in the region.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401245.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

The Turkish/US Crisis

"Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday relations between Turkey and the United States are in danger over a resolution branding as genocide massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One.

Referring to ties with the United States and the Armenian bill, Erdogan, with a Turkish idiom used to describe relations, said: "Where the rope is worn thin, may it break off."

The crowd of supporters broke into applause.

Ankara is a crucial ally in the region for Washington, which relies on Turkey as a logistical base for the war in Iraq. But U.S. popularity has hit rock bottom in Turkey because of the war and perceptions that the United States is failing to stop Turkish Kurdish rebels using north Iraq as a base from which to attack Turkey.

"This is as much about domestic politics in Turkey as it is in the United States," Turkish commentator Semih Idiz said."  Reuters

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The present Republic of Turkey was founded in the '20s as a specific repudiation of the policies and practices of the Ottoman Empire.  That empire was a multi-cultural, multi-national conglomeration welded together by the Ottoman Turks out of the wreckage of the previous multi-cultural and multi-national empire that had existed on the same ground.  That was the Eastern Roman Empire usually known as the Byzantine Empire.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a former Ottoman officer created modern Turkey to form a "homeland" for the Turkish speakers of the Ottoman state.  The victorious Allied powers seem to have intended to carve Anatolia and Thrace up into colonial enclaves just as they carved up the Mesopotamian and Levantine parts of the Ottoman state.  Ataturk prevented that by raising a nationalist army and using it to drive Greek and other Allied forces out of what is now Turkey.  The republic that he formed said that all its residents were Turks, and insisted on that identity.  Most of the inhabitants of the new Turkey were ethnic Turks, but there were enough Greeks and Kurds (in the east) to cause a permanent problem.  Most of the Greeks left under an exchange of populations agreement with Greek Prime minister Venizelos, but the Kurdish problem lingers on to bedevil the Turkish state.  American sponsorship of near independence for the Iraqi Kurdish north has created an opportunity for anti-Turkish Kurdish guerrilla action against Turkey from bases in northern Iraq.  The Turks are understandably unhappy about this and are likely to enter Iraqi Kurdistan to suppress the Kurdish PKK guerrillas.  There is little that the US can do that will dissuade the Turks from this any more than the US could be dissuaded from entering Mexico if Mexican guerrillas were conducting analogous raids in the Southwestern US.  Hmmm.  That sounds familiar.

Now we have the ludicrous spectacle of the House of Representatives voting "symbolically" to declare that the genocide conducted under the rule of the Ottoman "Young Turk" government nearly a hundred years ago was what everyone knows it was (probably today's Turks most of all).  For today's Turks this was a crime committed by a government that no longer exists, a government that their present republic itself specifically rejected in its foundation documents.  The Turks are not of a mind to accept the responsibility for this crime.  They believe, correctly I think, that if they accept the term "genocide" applied to this crime, then the Republic of Turkey will become a target of increasing demands including reparations.  The Germans of today may want to do penance over the Holocaust but the Armenian Genocide is not something that Turkey accepts as its fault.

Practical effect?  Most supply into Iraq goes in overland, but some portion goes in by air.  The airbase at Incirlik, Turkey (Adana) and the use of Turkish airspace are important to that flow of traffic.  There has also been some talk of late of using a land route through Turkey out of Iraq if necessary. 

Perhaps the "all politics is local" crowd in Congress should think about unintended consequences before it votes on bills.  pl

http://uk.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUKL1247614820071012?pageNumber=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Republic#Republican_era

A French View of the Iranian Situation

I recently asked a Retired French flag officer who is an old friend to give us his thoughts on French policy toward Iran.  He has been kind enough to send us the following paper.  pl

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Download iran_for_pl.doc

Hotrod Speaks (on the Draft, etc.)

Hotrod is a self described National Guard soldier.   I will say the following to him (her or it),  You win the prize.  (so far)  This is great stuff.  Someone else has remembered that MacGragor was mentioned in depatches by Ricks or Gordon as having recommended an invasion with a few hundred armored vehicles.   Seems like we should be humming a few bars of the "Panzer Lied" at the thought.  pl

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"MacGregor seems like a smart guy. I read Breaking the Phalanx, and have the other one sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting. That said, I never quite know what to make of him. One second he'll be pushing some really clever idea re reorging the brigade into battlegroups, then the next he's being used by Rumsfeld\Gingrich (an anecdote from either Fiasco or Cobra II) to justify a small force in Iraq. I'm not insisting that he pigeonhole himself - but I'm not sure he's good at consistently advocating his views. FCS - as a junior, reserve component officer, I'm not particularly experienced on the military side of the house - but on the civilian side I'm a pretty good, pretty experienced, technology guy. The following is sometimes hard to communicate, but I feel like I need to try, so here I go - It would be difficult to overstate how much the pitch for FCS sounds and smells like the pitch for a large scale, massively complex software implementation (think ERP) that everyone knows is doomed to failure, but for different reasons (to different people), won't be cancelled until it absolutely blows up in everybody's face. - The Army is honorably concerned about recapitalizing the force, and somewhat less honorably concerned about keeping it's slice of the pie. So the Army came up with ideas it couldn't implement, manage, or even fully understand, and they hired Boeing. Boeing has done it's part for the shareholders and the triangle. Congress will eventually pull the plug, though probably in the form of a restructuring - and everyone got rich in the meantime. The shame of it is - the Army went for the Air Force school of procurement, "system of systems" instead of incremental ideas that help troopers and commanders at every level. They did the incremental thing too - but hastily, tacked on, and thrown in downrange. FCS has a lot of really clever, doable individual ideas - but Big Army insists that it adds up to some sort of video game vision of warfare.

Should We Return to a Military Draft?

It seems to me that the time has come for a frank and thorough discussion of both the positive and negative features of a possible return to conscription in the United States.  I therefore solicit essays from the readers of this site on this subject.  Depending on their length and contributory value I will post them either as separate but clearly connected pieces or as comments.  Submissions should address such aspects of the subject as; domestic political effect, effect on the military, structure of the draft, universality or the lack of it, etc.  pl

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

Tomorrow's US Army?

Here are a few interesting pieces of business to give you some idea of where the US Army may be going in the next years. 

Colonel MacGregor is an interesting thinker but it is reported (to me)that he advised the Bush Administration (OVP) in 2002 that the US invasion force could be sized at two armored brigades.  (I am willing to be told that this is not true)

The family of vehicles planned in "Future Combat Systems" is a long way off in any "timeline."  As MacGregor implies, the idea that the future will be filled with more 4th generation wars of counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism is a debatable analysis.  To gamble all on a force structure made up of light forces and commandos is a big, big gamble.

This week in Washington, The Association of the US Army (AUSA) held its convention.  At that convention the Chief of Staff said that 20 years of conflict are anticipated by the Army.  That is bad news for an army that is still wedded to the concept of soldiers as middle class married men with young families.  A succession of pious, middle class uniformed leaders created that ideal for America's army after the Vietnam War.  People in today's army are expected to conduct themselves socially like small town Americans.  Drinking, smoking, sexual adventure are all severely sanctioned even in combat zones.  Where is the "safety valve" for these guys?  A set of mores of that type is not feasible in an army that lives at war in far flung places with often repeated and protracted combat tours.  My active duty friends tell me that the "middle class" army is already breaking down as a form.   Divorce, family dissolution and other symptoms abound.  A different kind of army will emerge from the meat grinder.  The marines?  I know nothing of them.

The Chief of Staff also said that the National Guard and Army Reserve must be maintained as vital parts of the structure.  I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to comment on that before I give my view.  pl

http://www.army.mil/fcs/

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/10/2865287

http://www.ausa.org/

Walrus the logistician.

"Frank Durkee, I'll try and answer your question about what logistics and withdrawal means in an effort to save the Col's blood pressure. You said: "Perhaps the simplest close in analogy for we non-military types is emptying a house when moving so that you can have sleep and breakfast on the day of the move and haves upper and sleep when you get to the new abode." You are right, leaving Iraq is several orders of magnitude more complicated. For a start, your new house is several countries away, and there is no friendly shipper to make the arrangements, in fact there is no friendly anyone. You make all the arrangements yourself, including detailing the routes and instructing your hired truck drivers what roads to use, where to fill up, maybe even providing fuel yourself. Every time you try and load a truck somebody tries to steal your goods. Meanwhile, somebody is trying to set fire to your house and kill you as well. You get no sleep or supper as you try and keep your goods away from thieves, stop others from burning down your house, and keep from getting killed by yet more bad guys. Do you get the picture? To put it another way, imagine you have agreed to organise a reunion in some park for a hundred of your closest friends and relatives. All have different dietary needs. They will be coming from all over the country, some by road, by air and by rail and at differing times. You must organise transport for all of them. Some of them have medical conditions, others have disabilities. The park where you are meeting is frequented by bears... you get the drift? Have you ever had to organise and move a football team? It is a highly complex difficult and time consuming operation even if there is no enemy action to complicate matters. As I said before, think of the relatively straightforward task of providing fuel to the vehicles. Then think of the logistics of moving the sick and wounded."  Walrus

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Excellent.  Supply, transport, maintenance, medical, rations, what else?  Nothing works at all unless thse factors are "gotten right."  Even a guerilla commander has to think about where he will find these things to keep his forces in being and operating.

While this difficult and complex process is considered one must remember as Walrus says that the parks are full of bears and someone is trying to rob the house that you are leaving.  pl

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

http://www.bestlogisticsguide.com/army-logistics.html

"Iraq exit logistics" de Borchgrave

"Watching them drive by at 30 miles per hour, would take 75 days. Bumper-to-bumper, they would stretch from New York City to Denver. That's how U.S. Air Force logistical expert Lenny Richoux described the number of vehicles that would have to be shipped back from Iraq when the current deployment is over. These include, among others, 10,000 flatbed trucks, 1,000 tanks and 20,000 Humvees.Even in an emergency, said Col. Richoux in DefenseNews, the evacuation of 162,000 troops in 23 ground combat brigades and millions of tons of equipment would take some 20 months. Military shipping containers, end to end, would stretch from New York City to the gates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The main resupply route for convoys that runs 344 miles from Kuwait (skirts Basra to the north) to Baghdad is already under the constant threat of hit-and-run insurgency attacks, including improvised explosive devices. Driving empty, on their way back to pick up another load in Kuwait, convoys are just as vulnerable.  Arnaud de Borchgrave

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I guess it was to be expected that a journalist who flew into the airstrip at Dien Bien Phu the day the French paratroops seized the place would take an interest in the hard realities of military operations.  Nevertheless, I am gratified and grateful that he has written this very useful piece.  It tells the story so well that I am relieved of the burden of trying to write it myself.  As I said at the Miller Center last week, I was an intelligence officer but always was "logistics driven" in my thinking.

The Democrats who talk about leaving about leaving Iraq by the end of 2008 are as deluded as the Republicans who think that Iraq is South Korea. 

The United States can not afford to run helter skelter for the door in Kuwait.  There are a myriad of geo-political reasons why that is true, but looming alongside that set of reasons is the fact that we can not afford to depart militarily in other than an organized, rational, carefully planned way.  To do otherwise is to court a collapse of the internal situation into a chaos that would make present events seem mild.

And then there are "our things."  As De Borchgrave explains, there are a vast number of armored vehicles, trucks, Strykers, and aircraft in Iraq that the United States can not afford to lose.  These things need to be brought back to the US for factory re-build so that the taxpayer's money will not be wasted buying analogous equipment.  Pacifists will argue that it would be better to leave the equipment because we should "study war no more."  That concept is as unrelated to reality as the Jacobin flathead view of a homogeneous mankind.

The road out of Iraq will require several years for a safe passage. pl

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/COMMENTARY/110070005

"The Issue of God" FB Ali

We did offer the Trust to the skies and the earth and the mountains, but they were afraid to accept it. Human beings, however, undertook to bear it, but surely they have ignored it, and indeed they have failed to accord it its rightful due (33:72).

Download the_issue_of_god.doc

Furrukh B. Ali  2007

Miller Center Forum, 3 October, 2007

I was lucky enough to be asked to speak again at a Forum of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

The subject was originally "The Petraeus Report," but the disappearance of that event from public discourse resulted in a shift of topic.

This link will take you to the right page on the Miller Center website.  Click twice on the "screen."  Enjoy.  pl

http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/digitalarchive/forumDetail/3834

Out of Town

I will be at the Miller Center for Public Policy tomorrow for another Forum.  It might be on some sort of television or be streamed on their site.  pl

Webb/Clinton resolution on Iran.

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced that she is co-sponsoring legislation introduced by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) that prohibits the use of funds for military operations against Iran without explicit Congressional authorization (S. 759)."  Clinton Press Office

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This co-sponsorship marks a step in the creation of a congressional coalition intended to impede Bush Administration military action against Iran without congressional agreement.  This action does not preclude ANY military action against Iran, but it does demand compliance with the constitutionally implied requirement for a president to seek congressional sanction for undeclared war.

The last time the United States declared war was in December, 1941.  We have done a lot of fighting since then.

I think there is some chance of a Clinton/Webb ticket.  From my point of view that would be a good outcome.  This co-sponsorship places Senator Clinton squarely in the midst of all those Democratic Party forces which wish to deal with the Middle East on a rational basis, not yielding to anyone where actual American interests are involved but, also not pursuing the chimera of revolutionary social change either.  pl 

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=284618

Clinton position on Iran Resolution

"This resolution in no way authorizes or sanctions military action against Iran and instead seeks to end the Bush Administration's diplomatic inaction in the region."  Senator Hillary Clinton

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This clarification is an important part of the debate over what the US should do about Iran.  There is still a question as to whether or not Iran is actually seeking to build its own deliverable nuclear weapons.  The evidence observed so far by the IAEA does not support a conclusion that the Iranian nuclear program is a weapons program but the question is still open.  It  seems to me that Iran is probably about three years away from the ability to produce a nuclear explosion in a static test situation.  If that occurs then the realities of engineering and manufacturing a nuclear weapon that "mates" with a ballistic missile available to them would probably take five more years. 

There is a lot of "elbow room" in this process for diplomacy.

If, on the other hand, the beginning of strikes on Iran is to be justified on the basis of IRGC actions in Iraq, then anything is possible at any time.  pl

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=284561