Sic Semper Tyrannis

IS is still moving forward...

"Islamic State fighters seized two towns in western Iraq, after besieging hundreds of soldiers, according to a regional official.

The militant group has captured Albu Etha and al-Hamdhiya, Faleh al-Issawi, deputy head of Anbar provincial council, said by phone today. He said some Iraqi troops were killed and others deserted their posts, without giving details.

Earlier the head of the Anbar council, Sabah Karhout, had said that at least two battalions of the Iraqi army, or 260 men, were trapped near Albu Etha, and that efforts were being made to send reinforcements and enable them to break the siege.

The clashes are taking place in a region where U.S.-led airstrikes are seeking to roll back the insurgents’ advance. Karhout and al-Issawi said that Islamic State controls at least half of the city of Ramadi, the provincial capital, though they said that elsewhere in Anbar the airstrikes have enabled security forces to recapture territory."  Bloomberg

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These two garrisons were only fifty miles or so from the western side of Baghdad.  Evidently the surrounded units made repeated attempts to obtain relief and reinforcements from the capital but to no avail. When they ran out of ammunition they fled.  It is clear that the Iraqi government is no more able to deal with IS now than they were a few months ago.  IS continues to clear its rear areas of pockets of government forces like these. Once they finish that they will have a freer hand to move on with whatever it is they intend to do next.  pl 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-29/iraqi-troops-trapped-by-islamic-state-as-fighting-rages-in-west.html

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 "Shells continued to fall on Kobane on Monday afternoon as the Islamic State sustained its attack, two days after the U.S-led coalition struck militant positions near the city in an attempt to weaken their offensive. Some of those shells fell in Turkish territory Monday, drawing attention to Turkey’s hands-off approach to the militants’ advance. Turkish authorities have prevented Turkish Kurds from entering Syria to fight alongside their brethren."  Washpost

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The Turks are letting Kurdish refugees from Kobane enter their country  but are using water cannons and tear gas to prevent Kurdish reinforcements from farther east entering Kobane from the Turkish side of the border.  In other words they are assisting IS in its efforts to take the town.  At the same time they have moved armor to their side of the border in what seems to be a PR demonstration of resistance to any IS effort to pursue into Turkey.  IMO this is merely a gesture because there is no infantry with these tanks.  The soldiers here will tell you all that tanks do not operate alone if you expect to fight.  Tanks alone are very vulnerable to infantry armed with things like RPGs.  US air attacks on this IS force at Kobane does not seem to have had much effect.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/residents-of-kobane-syria-flee-to-turkish-border-after-islamic-state-attacks/2014/09/29/3fa17f08-47f6-11e4-a046-120a8a855cca_story.html

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 "A senior source in the Kurdish Peshmerga said troops had entered the town of Rabia on the border with Syria, after seizing the villages of Al Saudiyah and Mahmudiyah.

“Ground troops are now fighting in the centre of Rabia,” which lies about 100kms northwest of Mosul. 

He said Peshmerga forces, backed by artillery and warplanes, were also attacking Zumar, about 60kms northwest of the city, near the reservoir of Iraq’s largest dam, which has been a key battleground between the Kurds and the militants.

Both Rabia and Zumar were areas which the Peshmerga seized in the chaos that followed the militants’ capture of Mosul in a lightning offensive in early June."  Gulfnews

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Ah, some good news!  I don't quite understand why the PM are re-taking Rabia if they captured it in June.  The PM have never had much experience with tanks and artillery and are not yet trained to use these weapons. They have some captured equipment but not a lot in running condition.  Where did they get this support and who is operating the equipment? The Iranians played a major role in re-taking the Mosul Dam, perhaps they are involved again.  pl 

http://gulfnews.com/news/region/iraq/kurd-troops-attack-daesh-on-three-fronts-1.1392315

"Hardly...Universal Truths" Eliot

Col. Lang, I spent my early years at a skeptical boarding school in New England. They taught us that faith was an artifact of a more primitive time. It was to be humored but never to be taken seriously. Man had moved on, or at least that culture in New England had moved on, to better things. These were modern men with modern answers. They no longer needed the prophets to guide their lives. I have to laugh, now, when I think of that. Obamas words are a testament to that culture and how my classmates thought. We were infused with purpose, and we were intent on redeeming the world. In our own right, as his language suggests, we were no less religious than the dour pilgrims before us. Our faith was a secular one, but it was no less dogmatic. We had lost our god, but we had not lost Winthrop's creed. We were so convinced of modernism though. Our answers, unlike those who came before, were both right and universal. Indeed, we believed that backward beliefs and the shackles of primitive religions were the only obstacles to our mission. We were missionaries, but we couldn't understand that. Obama suffers from that, as do many in his circle. They do not understand the peculiar nature of their values. They do not understand that their values are the product of their culture, and can hardly be considered universal truths. They do not understand that the primitive and backwards peoples of the world will resist them, and forcefully so. - Eliot

Obama as neocon convert

"America leads. We are the indispensable nation. We have capacity no one else has. Our military is the best in the history of the world. And when trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don't call Beijing. They don't call Moscow. They call us. ... when there's a typhoon in the Philippines, take a look at who's helping the Philippines deal with that situation. When there's an earthquake in Haiti, take a look at who's leading the charge and making sure Haiti can rebuild. That's how we roll. And that's what makes this America."  Obama

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Oh for god's sake , could there be a clearer declaration of the neocon Jacobin creed?  We are the indispensable nation?  We are the world's gendarmerie?  We are the world's first responders for natural disaster? If that is so, then the world needs to start paying us for our services, and as "protection money."  The resentful and the marxists already believe that we are looting the world.  If Obama's newfound creed is accepted by the American people "the world" will learn what real looting is like. 

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/09/28/ron-fournier-summarizes-obamas-60-minutes-interview-i-me-my-its-their

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 "As of Friday, the coalition had carried out more than 200 strikes in Iraq and 43 in Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters. The United States had done the lion's share of the bombing, although Arab states have contributed significantly. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan all participated in last week's strikes in Syria. France carried out an airstrike in Iraq earlier this month.

The American-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq grew by four on Friday -- including Belgium, Britain and Denmark.

The U.S. got a major boost when Prime Minster David Cameron of Britain won approval from Parliament, after describing the militants as "psychopathic terrorists who want to kill us.""  CNN

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The UAE, Jordan  and Saudi Arabia have a lot of aircraft and a considerable number of "stick and rudder"capable pilots, but virtually no staff planning capability for planning missions, doing bomb damage assessments, campaign planning and the like.  If supported by the US air planning center in Qatar they can be useful.

Thus far, the program of bombing raids against IS has been a nuisance to them but it shows no sign of progress against IS occupation of the lands.

Unfortunately, the GCC countries have no significant ground forces that could be engaged anywhere other than on their own soil  In the military trade it would be said that they have no "power projection" capability.  This is mainly a question of logistics.  Jordan has small but capable ground forces but also needs to protect its homeland against both internal and external Islamist threats. 

All of these princely or royal states are considered by IS and other Islamists to be abominations.  In the  opinion of salafist groups all these countries should be incorporated into a purely theocratic entity ruled by a Caliph whose authority is god given and based on their version of Islamic law.

Many of the inhabitants of the princely and royal states sympathize with that point of view.  In many ways the princely states have nurtured such potentially disloyal "citizens."  They have done this by funding and authorizing teaching institutions that preach salafism.

Saudi Arabia is the most extreme example of this but there are others.

The truth is that Turkey and the US are the only countries that can play a significant role against IS.  The Turks show no sign of wishing to do so.  Syrian Iran are potential partners for the anti-IS war but US policy precludes a meaninful role for either.

That leaves the US alone in the field.  pl

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/29/politics/isis-coalition/

 

Afghanistan, Iraq and the Reverend Al

The Reverend Al (Tawana) Sharpton is helping Obama choose a new AG.  I expect that there will be a recess appointment that will carry through to the end of Obama's term.  IMO the woman AG of Calfornia would be Obama's first choice.  She is far enough to the left for his taste and that of Michele.

The Afghan government is dead flat broke.  This is to be expected since the government has little in the way of "organic" home grown income.  The huge armed forces and police are 90% funded by direct US government subventions.  The Afghan government is yet another ghostly apparition masquerading as a real government.  It will either disappear when the US stops funding it or find another sponsor, China, maybe?

At the same time the Afghan government is losing ground steadily to the Taliban in both eastern Afghanistan and SW of the capital.  There are now fighters carrying IS's flag.  They have beheaded quite a few captives to demonstrate their fealty to the Caliph Ibrahim.  Tell me again what it is that we think we are doing in Afghanistan.

In Iraq there are no incumbents for the posts of Minister for Defense and Interior (police).  Farid Zakariya had guts enough today to say that the meme recited by the Children's Crusade that there is now an inclusive government is simply a lie.  He is correct.  He should be careful.  Someone is hunting his scalp in Washington and New York.  pl 

http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2014/september/sep262014.html#a7

In Praise of Walrus (1) By Richard Sale

“I believe, as a general rule, Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives. I hesitate to call it a unique universal law and there may also be other formulations.” This masterly formulation by Walrus is by and large true, I think.

I kept thinking of familiar predicaments, the Iraq Invasion of 2003, the Vietnam War, the Great Depression of 1932, etc., but one figure and one country seem to be to embody the dictum of Walrus, and that would be  Germany and its leader, Adolph Hitler.

The 1919 peace agreement at Versailles saddled Germany with the blame for the war, wrecked its economy, humiliated its citizens, and formed the festering resentment that for years sat in the national soul.  The British maintained its economic blockade of Germany for a year after the armistice, causing the deaths of thousands of Germans by starvation. A more generous policy would have been the best course, but Germany’s foreign opponents were greedy, cruel, exploitative, and oppressive and enjoyed inflicting pain on their defeated enemy.

 

"The myth of religious violence " by Karen Armstrong

"Despite the valiant attempts by Barack Obama and David Cameron to insist that the lawless violence of Isis has nothing to do with Islam, many will disagree. They may also feel exasperated. In the west, we learned from bitter experience that the fanatical bigotry which religion seems always to unleash can only be contained by the creation of a liberal state that separates politics and religion. Never again, we believed, would these intolerant passions be allowed to intrude on political life. But why, oh why, have Muslims found it impossible to arrive at this logical solution to their current problems? Why do they cling with perverse obstinacy to the obviously bad idea of theocracy? Why, in short, have they been unable to enter the modern world? The answer must surely lie in their primitive and atavistic religion."  Karen Armstrong 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/-sp-karen-armstrong-religious-violence-myth-secular

Zero Sum Game - republished 9/27/2014

(originally published 2005)

"Gaza, a 25-mile-long, 6-mile-wide strip of land, was part of Mandatory Palestine, which was ruled by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was never part of the Zionist state intended by the United Nations partition plan that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. At that point, five Arab nations immediately attacked the new nation, but Gaza wasn't even part of the territory Israel got in signing truces in 1949. It became the home of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israel, and Israel's armistice with Egypt in 1949 put it under Egyptian rule. In the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, Israel captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, along with the West Bank (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt after making peace, but kept control of Gaza. A second agreement called for negotiating eventual Palestinian autonomy there.?"  NY Times

What a miserable place the Holy Land is!  The climate is wonderful, (something like Santa Barbara).  There is a delightful quality to the countryside.  The amber light shining on the city of Jerusalem in the afternoon is a sight never forgotten.  People on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli gap are often warm hearted and welcoming and the holiest places in the world are there, waiting for all.  If a quiet life there were really possible I would be living at least part time in Jerusalem in what could easily be thought of as the Center of the World.

Alas... Not possible.  The two nations contesting for the land between the Jordan and the sea see the contest essentially as a tribal struggle for control of scarce resources.  These are land and water.  Both groups are filled with the kind of exclusivist nationalism that regards all other groups as "the other," and sees its relationship to "the other" in terms of a zero sum game.  I would recommend Elie Kheddourie's old book, "Nationalism" as a source for understanding the destructive potential of "Nationalism" as opposed to "Patriotism.'  As Kheddourie would have it, Patriotism is love of your own group.  Nationalism is love of your own group at  the expense of someone else's group.  In other words, in a Nationalist paradigm, if your group wins something then my group must have lost something.  This is the traditional mindset in the ME.  It probably became the normative pattern of thought over millennia under the influence of a scarcity of arable land as a result of the scarcity of dependable sources of water. 

 

The US Government and "Afghan Man." republished 9/27/2014

 ""The point is that Afghanistan has got to figure out how to get along as a nation, and there have been a lot of steps toward nation building," he said. "A lot of local warlord-type leaders have been marginalized - not all of them completely."

Mr. Boucher, who is assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, also attributed some of the chatter to political jockeying ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in Afghanistan late next year.

"That's bringing out a little more these days - resentments and alliances between groups and talk about ethnic politics, but I think there is a stronger movement toward creating a sense of nation."

The Northern Alliance was founded by mostly Uzbek and Tajik warlords and took power after the Soviet pullout in 1989. The Taliban was formed later as a Pashtun resistance to the alliance and seized control of most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Bush administration relied on the Northern Alliance to capture northern Afghanistan in 2002.  Washtimes

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This kind of policy formulation is derived from an excessive exposure to political science (PS) professors at an impressionable age.

PS sells the idea that human society is evolving towards higher forms.  The creed in this secular religion holds that human behavior is universal in nature in all important aspects and that apparent differences are fated to disappear as mankind and its societies develop toward higher and more general forms.  The form sought by the more practical is that of national states.  Some of the more visionary seek the emergence of a globalized world culture and state.  PS is an idea system, that originated in the age of cultural, literary and scholarly romanticism of the 19th Century.  European scholars like Durkheim and Weber reflected the same set of ideas that created romantic nationalism, marxism (a very romantic idea), belief in the "Golden Ages" of various peoples, Germans, Italians, Jews, etc.  For minority group scholars like Durkheim and Weber, the notion of redefining societies within a new paradigm is always attractive.  The Arab World was late to the European "Romantic Age" so the creation of paradigms like Baathism, Phalangism or the Syrian Social Party came along a bit later than the European copies of this phenomenon.  For the minority member, a new paradigm that does not recognize the old one that considered you to be marginal is clearly a good thing.

These State Department types are soaked in PS.  It permeates their thinking as much as it does that of the Jacobins.  The Defense Department is also infested with this kind of thinking since so many military area specialists and civilian policy people have been sent to graduate school in PS and/or International Relations, a related disorder and delusion.

 

War without end.

"An increasing number of lawmakers have raised concern about the administration’s elastic interpretations of the AUMF and have introduced bills designed to address that measure’s perceived flaws.

A measure sponsored by Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) would repeal the 2002 Iraq authorization and approve action against the Islamic State for one year only, with limitations on ground troops and on applicability to any other so-called “associated forces.”

“Ultimately, this is about a precedent for the future,” Kaine said in a speech Tuesday at the Center for American Progress. “If Congress allows this president to begin this campaign against ISIL . . . we will have created a horrible precedent that future presidents will no doubt use.”

In the House, a bill introduced by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) would repeal the Iraq AUMF. It would pass a new authorization narrowly allowing action against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and sunset that measure, along with the 2001 authorization, after 18 months."   Washpost

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What the president and his friends, people like TOLFSC, McCain, Peter King and the like, are asserting is that the constitutional right and power of the Congress to declare the country to be at war is a nullity and void of meaning.  They assert this to be true because the president is also commander in chief of the armed forces and they believe he can order the armed forces to do whatever he pleases.

It was understood by the framers of the constitution that the the commander in chief power did not extend to taking the country to war without the consent of Congress.  In his Federalist Papers writing on the subject (#25 et al) Hamilton writes at some length to justify the existence of a standing army and navy.  It is clear from his thinking that those forces that might be maintained would be for the purpose of frontier defense and protection of maritime commerce in time of peace and that the assent of Congress would be needed for wartime expansion of those forces and mobilization of the state militia.  What is claimed now is an unlimited power for the president to make war as he wishes.

At the same time there is interest in writing a new AUMF while letting the old ones lapse.  The text of a new AUMF should be looked at very carefully.  There are many parochial agendas in Washington.  Not the least of these is the CIA desire to regain its lost powers through control of the DNI office and the "kneecapping" of defense intelligence.  Those goals could be served in a new AUMF.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-syria-obama-stretches-legal-and-policy-constraints-he-created-for-counterterrorism/2014/09/23/79fdaf44-4339-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html

The space elevator revisited

http://www.ideacityonline.com/video/space-elevator-dr-bradley-edwards/

One of our folks sent this.  pl 

A Few Points - 23 September 2014

(This map is somewhat inaccurate.  IS holds a lot more of Anbar Province than is shown as well as a group of towns SOUTH of Baghdad astride the roads to Kuwait)

Points:

- How much local "coalition air" actually participated in last night's well planned attacks in Syria?  Which targets did Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Bahrein and Saudi Arabia attack and with what?

- Egypt obviously declined an invitation to participate.  Why?

- France and Britain were absent from the night's festivities.  Why?

- The Syrian government was informed in advance and the Director of Operations (J-3) of the Joint Staff described Syrian air defense radar as "passive," i.e., unresisting, during the operation.  The Children's Crusade (NSC and State staffs) continues to insist that there was no coordination with the SAG.  Well, boys and girls, what occurred is called "de-confliction" among the adults and that is undoubtedly coordination.  Semantic BS does not change reality.  It just makes you look childish.

- The J-3 showed pictures that demonstrated that multi-million dollar air weapons can put a missile or bomb into a pickle barrel if that is desired, but, to what effect?  His pictures ahowed that very minimal damage had actually been inflicted in the effort to completely avoid civilian casualties.  That is commendable but the truth is that weapons can become so accurate that they are not impressive to the enemy, especially to an enemy like IS who WANT TO DIE.  IMO, IS will simply move on in adapting to the reality of US air attacks that seek to limit damage and casualties.  They have already been doing that by hiding their black flags and dispersing their assets among the civilian population.  Yes, I know, they are using "human shields."  So what?  

- Turkey remains an enormous problem for the Children's Crusade. They declined an invitation to participate in air attacks against IS. They continue to deny the US their air bases, but they are also blocking Turkish Kurds from entering the fight against IS and are complicit in marketing IS oil.

- Christiane Amanpour served up the Assad/IS alliance meme on CNN today.  This is absurd.  IS, Nusra Front and all the other opposition groups are the SAG's deadly enemies.  Buying the enemy's goods across the lines does not make you their ally.  In the American War Between the States, the Union Government authorized the purchase of the Confederacy's cotton across the lines under license from the US Government.  Why?  The North needed the cotton to make uniforms and tents for the Union Army.  Similarly Syria needs that oil to have a functioning economy.  That is quite different from Turkey's role in helping IS market its oil at home and abroad.  Turkey also continues to facilitate the flow of IS people in and out of Syria.

- An IO campaign is being waged against the American people.  The major media are complicit in this.  My sources in the CT community tell me that the Khorassan group is not a new phenomenon at all.  Its existence has been well known.  The targets have been long designated, but now at the moment in which the president's authority to wage unrestricted war is questioned this fear generating meme of imminent attacks in the United States is trundled out so that the media can whip up more war fever.

- The Iraqi Army and its Shia militia allies have been defeated once again.  In Anbar Province west of Baghdad the Iraqi Army lost over a hundred men killed or captured yesterday as well as an army fortified position.  In this process of defeat yet more American made equipment was captured by IS.  An army spokesman whined on in Baghdad about the poor training provided by the US. Pathetic.

If we Americans don't start learning to deal with realities rather than childish dreams we are going to have a very rought time in this war against IS, the Nusra Front, and eventuall against the thoroughly Islamist infiltrated FSA.  Grow up Obama and recognize the simple truth that the SAG is a de facto co-belligerent.  pl 

Turkey, Lion of NATO's SE wing.

The Turks have now let 100,000 plus Syrian Kurds into their country as they flee the IS headchoppers. Good for them!

At the same time Turkish police have shown up at the border north of the city of Kobane which is under IS attack for the purpose of preventing Turkish Kurds from crossimg the border to fight alongside their ethnic kinsmen. Many of those who want to cross are Turkish Army and Jandarma veterans who are well trained.

Erdogan's police are using water cannons and tear gas to prevent their crossing.  Why wuould Erdogan do that?

 IMO, Erdogan, who has always supported IS has made a deal in which he will continue to deny NATO the use of facilities and will continue to support IS sub rosa (sort of).  In this case he is helping IS cut its way to the Turkish border where logistical and other support will be easier to provide.  At the same time this allows IS to clear up yet another space in its rear area before moving on to other matters.  

In short, Turkey is now both a member of NATO (lapsed) and part of the Sunni salafi coalition headed by IS. Turkey should be required to choose which role it wants for itself and should be held to that choice.  pl  

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29294656

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/21/the-turks-to-isis-let-s-make-a-deal.html

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29306088

Open Thread - 21 September 2014

Have a good day.  I like the painting.  pl 

Clapper's Floating Corpse

 

(I decided to revert to this picture on advice of the committee.)

“What we didn’t do was predict the will to fight. That’s always a problem. We didn’t do it in Vietnam. We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese. In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army. . . .I didn’t see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming. I didn’t see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable.”

Intelligence officials haven’t publicly discussed the prospects for success of President Obama’s small-footprint strategy for combating the Islamic State through a coalition of nations, without directly committing U.S. combat troops. But some officials appear wary.  Ignatius in the Washpost

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The Afghans have a modismo (a saying) that runs something like  "All that is necessary for true satisfaction is to sit by the side of the river until the body of your enemy floats by."

I have a long standing and personal problem with Jimmy Clapper, and I am still waiting for the "float by" of the body.  The man perjured himself before the senate last year.  Obama protected him from prosecution.  Clapper still refuses to acknowledge his crime.

He has always been an incompetent intelligence officer.  He really is a bureaucratic, scheming politician who happens to be embedded in the intelligence business.   

Now he admits this disastrous failure on his watch.  "We" did this and "We" did that?  Did he listen to the analysts?  Did he?  Did he advocate their positions?

He seems puzzled that the US keeps overestimating the ability of "friendly" forces.  In many years of participation in this process, I have always seen the same thing.  We overestimate the friendlies because the policy people who are the masters of government punish those who insist on saying that "the friendlies" are a pile of crap. They do that because they feel that "the friendlies" are their guys, the existence of whom is the product of the policy peoples' wisdom and they therefore resent criticism of "the friendlies."  Since Jimmy and those like him are walking masses of unrestrained ambition they are careful not to displease the mighty.

Why is the man not gone?  pl  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-we-underestimated-the-islamic-state-james-clapper-says/2014/09/18/f0f17072-3f6f-11e4-9587-5dafd96295f0_story.html

Will the UK become a federated state?

"... the question of England, specifically a political quandary known as the West Lothian Question that has long bedeviled Britain since Scotland, along with Wales and Northern Ireland, began going down a road of decentralization several decades ago. They established their own legislative assemblies and already enjoy varying control over a broad array of domestic policy, including education, transport and environmental matters.

In England however, Scottish, Welsh and Irish members of Parliament still have a say in how England is run, an arrangement that irks many conservatives.

“There's a public concern out there,” said Alan Trench, a constitutional researcher at University College London. “The English think they're being mistreated.”  LA Times

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A lot of people will find the idea of the English being mistreated to be ironically funny,  But, as we say in "the land of the free and the home of the brave," that's history.  Not many Americans know any history.  That is why we mouth nonsensical, dismissive inanities of that kind.  A recent poll indicated that many US citizens cannot name the three co-equal branches of the federal government. Many think that the president is absolutely in control and are therefore puzzled when he/she/it cannot make sweeping changes to reflect their own taste.  I have been watching the Kenburnsian revision of history now being screened as "The Roosevelts, an Intimate History."  It is an excellent production that reflects Burns' left wing convictions.  The series implicitly argues for governance by a disinterested "progressive" elite "to the manor born."  I doubt that the people who need to watch this not too subtle exposition do so. I may be wrong.  Perhaps they contemplate such matters during the commercial messages broadcast during NFL games.

"Will the UK become a federated state?"  It seems inevitable to me considering the renewal of "the '45," Welsh restlessness and the angst of the English, but, then, I know more history than is good for me.  A better question might be, why should the UK not become a federated state? What would be lost in such an evolution of form of government?  The monarchy would presumably be continued.  The English could have regional parliaments somewhat like US state legislatures.  In such a system the Scots, Welsh and Ulstermen might be content at least for a while.  Perhaps a written constitution arrived at with the sovereign's consent might contain a Bill of Rights that forbade laws like the Official Secrets Act and the methods by which the press is blocked from publication of unpleasant things.

I say that while aware of the sad slide toward federal government supremacy happening in the US.  Yesterday a madman climbed over the fence in front of the White House, rushed up to the front door and went in before apprehended.  He was lucky that he was not shot before he reached the door.  I applaud the restraint of the Secret Service uniformed branch, but today the media are criticising them for not having killed this man.  Their adequacy for the job of presidential security is questioned.  The thought that a prudent judgment about the threat actually posed by him was a good thing is absent from public commentary.  Instead, the questions raised are all about further "hardening" the White House as bunker.

How would England be divided into regions?  I do not know enough about the country to have an opinion.  Literature, the "Hinterland" series on Welsh TV and an endless required exposure to UK TV at my house are not a sufficient basis for judgment, but I would like to learn what people here think of the question?  pl  

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-scottish-independence-leader-resigns-20140919-story.html#page=1

http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/britains-war-press-freedom/

All Ingratitude and Petulance? -Origin

"What will Barack Obama do? This is the question posed by everyone. What will he do in Iraq? What will he do in Syria? How does he intend to address Russian-Iranian opposition? How will he wage a war that requires Sunnis in Iraq to be ground soldiers, when they are asking for clarity "before" and not "after" military action? How will he reassure his partners in the alliance that he is truly serious on Syria?

The US president may decide in the end that this is not his war, and that it is best to return to his country to fortify it against terrorism, and let ISIS unleash itself on everyone until it commits suicide or until it is slayed eventually. This is perhaps the course he might choose if it appears to him that all those who want him to fight their wars on their behalf will meet his war with ingratitude and petulance."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raghida-dergham/the-gulf-isis-in-return-f_b_5849928.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

 

 

ME Diary - 19 September 2014

"... on Friday IS had seized three more villages near Kobani, bringing to 24 the number it had taken.

Esmat al-Sheikh, head of the Kurdish forces defending Kobani, said fierce clashes continued to the east, west and south of the city, which is bordered by Turkey to the north. IS fighters armed with rockets, artillery, tanks and armored vehicles seized from the Iraqi army in Mosul had advanced to within 20 km (12 miles) of Kobani, he told Reuters by telephone.

"The whole world is silent," he said. "Every day we hear there is going to be an attack on ISIS. But where is it? ... Will it come after everyone is already dead?"

The attack prompted a Kurdish militant call to the youth of Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast to join the fight against IS, whose offensive began on Tuesday after the U.S. military said Syrian moderates would probably need the Syrian Kurds’ help to defeat Islamic State, along with the help of Turkey and Jordan."  Reuters

------------------

So much for those who have claimed recently that IS is a spent force that will disintegrate from internal contradictions,  They are now on the offensive again

 "Rockets, artillery, tanks, armored vehicles," I guess that answers the question of whether or not IS can use relatively modern weapons.  If they capture or buy on the international markets some fairly effective AAA weapons they will truly be a menace to a modern force.

BTW, I was informed yesterday that in the Mosul Dam operation the principal ground forces on the "friendly side were Al-Quds Iranian troops not Pesh Merga and they had the benefit of adjusted US CAS.  pl 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/19/us-syria-crisis-turkey-idUSKBN0HE0RR20140919

****************

"... an apparent call for attacks not only on the ruling family and Westerners in Saudi Arabia, but also on the kingdom's senior Muslim scholars who have denounced ISIS, Jazrawi said:

"It is time to say 'we will expel the disbelievers from the Arabian Peninsula'. The fire begins with a small spark. That spark will ignite an explosive fire directed at the Saud Family and to their rabbis and priests."

He called on self-declared Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to lead the advance on the birthplace of Islam.

Saudi Arabia's top religious council, the only body in the country authorized to issue fatwas or Islamic legal opinions, declared Wednesday that "terrorism is a heinous crime," in the most comprehensive attack the kingdom's conservative council have made so far on Islamic radicalism and ISIS.

-------------------

As I wrote here before, SA with its large potential 5th Column is the only logical primary objective for IS.  pl 

Read more: http://dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-18/271099-isis-fighter-urges-jihad-in-saudi-arabia-site.ashx#ixzz3Dmjifffq  

 

Culloden

"Now's the time, and now's the hour"   Robert Burns

The Langs of my family were a Jacobite sept of Macdonald of Glencoe.  They left Scotland for Louth and Meath fifty years before Culloden after Killiecrankie and the Glencoe Massacre.  They hoped to avoid taking the oath of Allegiance to King William.

pl

NASA Selects Commercial Crew Developers by Rocketpreneur

[Note: I asked Pat for permission to do a post about this announcement this afternoon, I figured it was good to have an occasional reminder that we are actually in the 21st century, and not all news is depressing news. -- Jon Goff]

Today NASA announced that it would be awarding contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to complete development of vehicles for carrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. These contracts (up to $4.2B in the case of Boeing, and up to $2.6B in the case of SpaceX) cover not only the remainder of development and certification tasks needed by both providers to enable the first manned demo flights of their respective to ISS in late 2017, but also covers up to 6 crew transfer flights to ISS after that. These awards were "firm fixed-price" FAR contracts, which means that the companies get paid the fixed amount they bid, broken up over a series of technical milestones--if they don't complete a given milestone, they don't get paid, and if things cost more than expected, the companies themselves eat the difference.

For those wondering why Boeing got more than SpaceX, it is simply that they proposed a higher price for completing the same milestones. NASA wanted to have two providers, to make sure that they don't get stuck in a situation where they cannot access their $100B space station in case one vendor has issues with their vehicle or the launcher that boosts it to orbit. There was a third developer, Sierra Nevada Corporation, who was not selected for contract award, presumably because NASA felt that their vehicle was either more risky, or more expensive than those proposed by SpaceX or Boeing.

 

A Strategy of Hopes and Dreams

 

 

(Sean Connery and what's his name in "The Man Who Would be King.)

Marty and Chuck were up on the Hill today before the Senate "Committee On The Conduct Of The War" (oops, wrong war) to explain the modalities of the US led coalition's coming degradation and then destruction of IS at the hands of the "Coalition of the Feeble Arabs."  Their pleadings matched up well with my post of a few days ago entitled "Too Many Moving Parts, Too Many."

Chuck called him Marty on TV today, so I will also.  Sorry, general.  I thought you were the professional head of the US armed forces but your boss thinks you are "Marty."  I suppose that his squadmates always called him Chuck.

What came through strongly to me in this day's work, was the unreality of the whole thing.  It was largely an expression of various planning goals and hopes assembled by people who still do not understand the peoples of the region, Islam, etc. as well as the fact that those peoples have their own agendas which usually include the desired goal of making fools out of the ifranj, the poor, trusting ifranj.  Someone reminded me recently that when I first briefed at the WH during Desert Storm, one of the leading lights there said to me, "you mean there are two kinds of Islam?"  We have gotten a little past that but not much.

THE PLAN hinges on the willing cooperation of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Gulflets, Egypt and a fleeting, ephemeral, will of the wisp group called the "Fake Syrian Army" (FSA).  Oops! Make that the "Free Syrian Army."  

Marty said a couple of times today that the situation in Syria is that all the Sunni Arabs are combined together against Assad's handful of Alawis and a few others.

Where did he get that idea?  DIA is a competent organization and they work for him.  With that notion in mind Marty expects that we will be able to recruit 5,400 previously untrained Syrians from refugee camps, send them to a year's military training in Saudi Arabia, organize them and maybe a few more contingents in later cohorts into "brigades" and then send them into Syria where they will defeat both IS and the SAG.

A major flaw in this scheme is the simple truth that many, many Sunni Arabs in Syria adhere to the Syrian government because they are in abject terror of IS, the Nusra Front and similar bands of medieval lunatics.  The Syrian Army is now thought to be around 130,000 in number.  30% of that is Sunni Arabs.  In addition there are 100,000 odd Shabiha pro-government militia.  God knows how many IS there will be by then.  Marty thinks they will have melted away, afeered of US air power.

McCain and his consort, the OLFSC, asked a few good questions today:

- Are we going to send this analog of the "Bay of Pigs Brigade" into combat against all there might be by then in Syria without benefit of air cover and CAS?  The answer seemed to be yes in the expectaion that the people of Cuba, err, Syria will rise to strike down all malefactors. and thus eliminate the need to grasp uncomfortable nettles.

- What happens if the Brigadistas are defeated by the bad people? asked McCain.  Ah, they won't be, seemed to be the answer from Marty.

- But what if they are, pressed the OLFSC?  Numb silence at the thought ensued.

- What would you do if this PLAN failed asked McCain?  Marty replied that all plans are based on assumptions (true) and that if the "Plateau of Sheep" PLAN fails, then his assumption (that it would succeed) would have been proven wrong and there would have to be ANOTHER PLAN.  The atmosphere was then laden with the implication that ANOTHER PLAN would mean that the US would take over the war and fight it with its own forces.

Well, boys and girls, IMO that would mean several more years of COINista baloney in Syria AFTER we conquer the country, and then a long, long occupation by us.

I will not dwell at length on Turkey's feckless abandonment of NATO, Iraq's general fecklessness, Saudi Arabia's untrustworthiness and all the rest.  Maybe we will do that some other time.  pl  

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/transcript-hagel-testifies-to-the-senate-armed-services-committee-on-the-islamic-state/2014/09/16/a4909e26-3dab-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/110914/World/Region/Whos-who-on-the-IraqSyria-battleground.aspx

Should Br'er Bear be takin a tear in the bri'rpatch wit Br'er Rabbit? - Origin

Right now, we are Brother Bear facing Brother Rabbit who is enticing us to jump into the briar patch.  We have already been fully suckered by AQ, http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2013/11/download-part-i-understanding-syria.html   We should not permit ourselves to be so suckered again.

In earlier discussions on this blog, I have taken the position that a new, true state is forming.  Many of you disagreed with me.  The recent rejection of Obama’s overtures throughout the region and the continuing trajectory of Turkey only reinforce my impression of a synthesizing state.  Initially, I thought that the real founders of the new state, whatever its name ultimately turns out to be, were the Sunni tribes and their leaders in Iraq.  My vision was too narrow.  Instead, it appears there will be multiple competing threads seeking control and a charter membership, including some in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and KSA.  Every new competitor for a founder status just increases the likelihood that a Caliphate will soon emerge as a real state with all of the functional features of a “Westphalian” state except for agreed-upon borders because the Caliphate meme extends to a dream of worldwide Islamic domination. 

The meme of the Caliphate is just too basic and fundamental within Islamic history, memory, and thought for it to be dismissed and to be “contained”, “degraded”, and “defeated” within the present historical context. 

Current western policy expressed by Obama in his ISIS speech is simply wrong, historically and practically.  Obama bases his policy upon these false assumptions:

“Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria's civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way. when he preached,”

Transcript of President's ISIL Statement

The statement that “No religion condones the killing of innocents,” is laughable.  If history teaches any lesson, it is that one of the fundamental features of nearly all religions is that they repeatedly kill innocents.   A very large swath of western history is the history of various religious sects killing innocents.  Likewise, similar killings under the cloak of “religion” make up the history of most of the rest of the world.

The argument that ISIL is merely a terrorist organization and thus cannot be a state is equally fallacious.  For now, but not perhaps later, ISIL is the standard bearing manifestation of the meme of the Sunni Islamic Caliphate over which there appear which many contenders for control.  Even in the most recent history, Obama neglects to remember that Israel started as a terrorist movement and, in many ways, continues to be a terrorist state as it continues to use terrorism against its Palestinian and other opponents.

Increasingly, Turkey is on a trajectory to emerge as a province, if not the capitol, of the emerging state.  The Caliphate is now formed, yet still emerging.  Ultimately, in some form or another, it will probably encompass all of Turkey, Sunni Iraq, most of Syria, Jordan, and most likely at lease the regions containing Jidda and Mecca, if not all of the Sunni regions of the KSA.

No western policy or strategy will be able to stop this process because the idea has reached maturity within the mental genes of too many young Sunnis to be derailed.  Western policy should be fashioned to treat the problem as a problem of balances of power between the competing regional powers and to reap whatever advantages that can be obtained by playing the competitors against each other, while staying out of the heart of the conflict as much as possible.

As I see it, the only policy that may be viewed 25 years hence as a wise and successful one will be a policy where the west stands back and lets the Islamic players slug it out among themselves.  If the West continues its current R2P policies, when we look back from 2040 (if the human race survives that long) the current western policy will be seen simply as stupid and suicidal.

Somehow, the language of the western meme covering this thing needs to be modified to permit US to step back and watch the upcoming gory show without wading in too deep into the sucking  quicksand. 

How can we help US "get real" with the new meme and stop wanting to tear around in the briar patch only to be wounded with thousands of thorns?

The Turkey Trot

 

"... after issuing plenty of tough talk earlier this week, the White House has continued to remain adamant that no major deployment of U.S. combat troops will be used against the radical Sunni militants on the ground.

Instead, the Administration hopes to recruit and bolster Sunni proxy forces in the Middle East, including opposition groups currently fighting inside Syria.

“Ultimately, to destroy [ISIS], we do need to have a force, an anvil against which they will be pushed, ideally Sunni forces,”  McDonagh

http://time.com/3376670/france-syria-iraq-isis-obama-cameron/

*******************

 "A U.S. official on Friday acknowledged that NATO ally Turkey had complicated efforts to build a moderate Syrian rebel force by coordinating with groups, including al Qaida’s Nusra Front, that were considered off limits by the Obama administration.

 

Regarding the Coalition Provisional Authority Regulations

Adam L Silverman, PhD*

Barry, Brigadier General Ali, and Confused Ponderer have all asked if I have misread the CPA's rules, specifically in terms of how long they were intended to be in force. Overall, I would say I did and the error is my own. I have gone back and corrected, with strikethrough and an "Updated: Correction" label the original post. For a really good discussion of why the CPA orders, rules, and regulations can be confusing, please give this a look. There were problems with dating, posting, promulgating, and wording throughout the CPA regulation process.

Since I am a big fan of marking beliefs to market as the economists, specifically Professor Delong, like's to say I wanted to make sure I get this clarified, specifically as to why I was confused. Basically, I missed/misread the transition order while focusing on the wording of specific orders. My basic source of confusion is the way that actual individual CPA regulations are worded. For instance, in Section 4 of Order 7, titled Income Tax Rates for Future Years, states: "The highest individual and corporate income tax rates for 2004 and subsequent years shall not exceed 15 percent." While I recognize that their is a CPA order dealing with the Iraqi ability to adjust CPA rules after transfer of full sovereignty, there is no ambiguity in this regulation - a regulation written before the what could happen after we leave reg. Similarly the de-Baathification order, which is CPA Order 1, is equally ambiguous regarding how long this is in effect for. Specifically the wording of Section 1: 1. 

* Adam L. Silverman most recently served as a civilian subject matter expert with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue and US Army Europe. Prior to that he was the Cultural Advisor at the US Army War College from JUL 2010 through JUN 2014. He was deployed in Iraq as the Cultural Advisor for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division in 2008.

Mozgovoi, Strelkov, Putin and the Great White Sharks - TTG

Over the last week, there were several eye opening statements concerning the civil war in Ukraine. On 4 September, Alexei Mozgovoi spoke out against the ceasefire as a betrayal of Novorossiya and vowed to fight on. He repeated this in his manifesto on 8 September and called on his countrymen “to create an honest, decent, fair society” free of the oligarchs and corruption… a socialist paradise if you will. Then on 11 September, Igor Ivanovich Strelkov gave a press briefing in Moscow. He declared “We will not allow for Russia to be Ripped Asunder and ruined.” He identified the enemies who “are preparing to fight Russia for a long time and in earnest. The West and the Fifth Column make virtually no secret of their plans to overthrow President Putin; and subsequently to completely dismantle Russia.“   

Men like Mozgovoi are focused on the establishment of a free and independent Novorossiya extending from Kharkov to Odessa and the destruction of the junta in Kiev. The primary means to achieve these goals is armed struggle. Anything beyond these goals and means is secondary at best. Strelkov was among these men when he was dodging rocket and artillery fire in Slavyansk and Donetsk. He led these men and spoke for them. He still stands with them, but he does not wear blinders. He knows Putin has more things to worry about than just the independence of Novorossiya or even the welfare of Russian expatriates. As Strelkov sees it, the oligarchs and their allies in Russia, Ukraine and the rest of the West are dead set on destroying a Russia in ascendence and securing their own hegemony. Strelkov assessed his primary duty now to be in resisting the fifth column in Russia while still supporting the aspirations of Novorossiya. 

Accompanying the statements of Mozgovoi and Strelkov, we have an excellent analysis by the Saker, “Strelkov: from swimming with Piranhas to swimming with Great White sharks,” from which I brazenly borrowed the title for this post. In his essay, he opines that Strelkov is going from fighting the junta in Kiev to taking on the Atlantic Integrationist Fifth Column whose “main political goal is to fully integrate Russia into the AngloZionist international system on a financial, political, economic and cultural levels.” Saker concludes that “the struggle for Russia is really a struggle for the future of the planet.” This is an interesting thesis. Whether we call them the oligarchs, the Atlantic Integrationists or the one percenters, is Putin leading the global fight against the new bourgeoisie? Putin’s success in chipping away at the petrodollar is surely an alarming development to the West. The ever tightening sanctions meant to beat Russia back into submission are being used by Putin in a judo move to hasten the creation of an alternate international economic coalition. And he had the audacity to reclaim Crimea as an integral part of Russia. He is certainly a far more formidable adversary than the entire Occupy Wall Street Movement.

The civil war in Ukraine is a microcosm of this global struggle. Or is it the front line of this struggle? The unchecked oligarchs have hollowed out Ukraine without mercy. Now they are allied with what were once fringe groups of hate filled neo-nazis nurtured by the US and the EU to become the junta in Kiev. This unholy amalgamation is bent on the destruction of people of east Ukraine who dare to defy the oligarchs and create the honest, fair and decent society imagined by Mozgovoi. The chocolate tycoon, Poroshenko, is doing his damnedest to widen this civil war into a world war.   

I lack the expertise in economics and politics to fully develop the many nuances and interconnections present in these speeches and the commentaries that followed. And I certainly don't know how the events in the MidEast play into this scenario, if at all, but I’m sure the “workers collective” of SST can do a bang up job. I will leave you all, once again, with these lyrics from “Man of La Mancha” which I find appropriate as Mozgovoi, Strelkov and Putin gird for battle. Let’s hope they can also save us all from nuclear annihilation.

Hear me now                                                                             Oh thou bleak and unbearable world,                                         Thou art base and debauched as can be;                                   And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled                   Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee! 

TTG

ME Diary - 14 September 2014

 

Summoned to the battle

It should be clear by now that IS is inviting the US to return its forces to the ME.  That is one of the main purposes of their  media operations and most especially the beheadings recorded for all to see.  Why, one might ask would a nascent state with 30,000 odd fighters want to directly engage a military power as destructive as the United States? 

IMO there are two reasons for this seemingly irrational behavior:

- If you accept the idea that the psychological impact of the horrible videos is deliberate, then it must be said that this tactic has been effective.  American popular interest in seeking the destruction of IS has soared with the progressive revelation of mass murder of prisoners, many of whom were really not opponents of IS.  These deaths prepared the way for the three beheading rituals staged thus far.  BTW, has anyone here watched these videos in their entirety?  I have not and will not.  Do they actually show the head cutting?  It is difficult to cut a man's head off with a knife that size.  There is all that muscle, tendon, windpipe and spine to get through.  There would be an awful lot of blood since the heart continues to pump throughout the process.  In any event, the effect of the campaign of media horror has been to focus the US, French, UK and Australian governments on the matter.  It appears to me that IS wants the US to come fight them.   They may well believe that the US and its Western allies will collapse under the stress as Bin Laden believed we would.

-Secondly, these are mightily potent weapons in the struggle for control of the collective Sunni mind.  The gesture of defiance explicit in the deeds appeals greatly to people who seek an absolutist answer to the riddle of existence.  Fighters and money seem to be joining the cause and the horror of IS actions contributes to that achievement.

The "Coalition"

Kerry is blowing smoke up our collective fundaments.

-  With their diplomatc hostages in IS hands, the Turks have a perfect excuse to avoid active participation.  With this in play, they can simply refuse to allow their airfields to be used for strikes against IS.  The use of Incerlik for surveillance drone operations is a minimum sop to NATO. Erdogan is playing with fire and he may well be burned before this ends.

- Marwan Mo'asher, a former foreign minister of Jordan said today that his country will not use its ground forces in this matter.  He would not say that if the palace disagreed.

- The Gulf States want us to go fight for them and to that end will put money in the game and in SA's case let their big sandbox be used for training "moderate" Syrians.

- Egypt will take our money and that is about all they will do.

- Iraq.  A laughable idea.

What coalition?

 Abadi

He has yet to name a Defense or Interior (police) minister.  He has now ordered the Iraq Air Force to stop hitting targets in populated areas.  That is exactly what IS wants him to do and why they are increasingly positioning themselves in populated areas.  He will soon tell the US to desist from air operations in populated areas.  That will be a very tough thing to overcome.

The Good Guys (FSA)

Some parts of the Free Syrian Army have now made agreements with IS that will call a halt to fighting between them so that the FSA can concentrate on fighting Assad's forces.  The Nusra Front (AQ) brokered the deals.  US delivery of weapons to the FSA will be just a way station in delivering this materiel to IS. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/iraq-pm-orders-halt-to-air-strikes-of-civilian-areas/article20592975/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/world/middleeast/kerry-visits-egypt-seeking-aid-in-isis-fight.html?_r=0

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2014/Sep-12/270497-syria-rebels-isis-in-non-aggression-pact-near-damascus.ashx#axzz3DIJZXxym

 

Governments Achieve The Reverse Of Their Stated Objectives - Walrus.

I believe, as a general rule, Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives. I hesitate to call it a unique universal law and there may also be other formulations. I first observed this in watching Governments at work in Australia. The Socialist, reformist Whitlam Federal Government did more to enrich the already wealthy and further impoverish the poor despite this being the reverse of its stated intentions. Similarly I noticed that the working man was better off under an avowedly conservative right of center administration while the wealthy marked time.

I then realised that what I was observing was not simple corruption, although there is still plenty of that, it is human fallibility. The actors I watched were honest striving believers. I know, but have  not researched, the works of Isiah Berlin who perhaps among others observed that even good ends, diligently pursued, by their very nature preclude other good ends - good ends conflict.

International examples of this putative law are not hard to find. The desire of the British and French for "peace at any price" emboldened Hitler, resulting in the exact reverse of the stated intentions. Our recent attempts at establishing a purple fingered democracy in Iraq have resulted in the creation of a situation where at least some of us are longing for the relative peace and quiet of Saddam Hussiens Government. I am sure you can find even better examples.

This apparent law of nature seems entirely unknown in foreign policy circles in Washington, Canberra, Ottawa, London and other Western capitals. "Destroying ISIS" and "The Freedom of the Ukraine" are the stated goals and under that banner we embark on yet another crusade in the Middle East while simaltaneously poking the Russian Bear. What could possibly go wrong?

If we apply our new law, it is not hard to speculate that attacking ISIS does a number of things that are not in our interests:

1) It dignifies and recognises ISIS as a serious player in international affairs - A state with borders, leaders, spokesmen and institutions. By calling on other muslim states to participate in its destruction we risk internal destabilisation of those states themselves.

2) It makes ISIS a rallying point for every disaffected male muslim teenager and young adult in the entire world, not to mention the older and perhaps wealthier muslims who have had to put up with the thirteen years of injustice, discrimination and abuse dealt out to them by the West since 911.

Applying the law suggests the consequences of attacking ISIS will be to make it stronger, spawn associated radical muslim factions in Western countries and completely destabilize the Persian Gulf - the exact reverse of our stated intentions.

Similarly our efforts to confront Russia should actuallly strengthen its voice in international affairs, drive it closer to China and the other BRICS nations and weaken NATO and the European economy.

Not only do we need "hard hearted empaths" in Government, we need cynical well educated old men who understand:

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities.  Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted

And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions

That the giving famishes the craving.  Gives too late

What’s not believed in, or is still believed,

In memory only, reconsidered passion.  Gives too soon

Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with

Till the refusal propagates a fear.  Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us.  Unnatural vices

Are fathered by our heroism.  Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree." 

The coming multi-sided war in Syria

"... Earnest, speaking at the White House briefing, said that was yet another reason why the Free Syrian Amy may be able to defy expectations.

“Based on the decision that the president announced last night, these Syrian opposition fighters will now be operating with the backing of the United States military,” he said. “That is to say, these opposition fighters will have American aircraft taking airstrikes in support of their ground operations. There is no doubt that will significantly enhance their capability on the battlefield.”"  Washpost

----------------------------

"May be able to defy expectations," that means expectations are actually low.  For US Tacair to be vectored there will have to be SF men on the ground to designate targets.  This means that we will inevitably lose people and some of them may be captured by IS, Nusra or some other group.  It also means that we will end by vectoring air onto SAG targets.

The Syrian foreign ministy announced today to a CNN stringer that a lack of de-confliction between Syrian air defences and US+ air missions may result in engagements.  He said that the SAG wishes to make some arrangement to avoid that.  The stringer looked at him speechless, finally got the idea and then tried to explain it to a CNN anchor who had a very difficult time trying to grasp the concept.  pl  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-emergence-of-arm-and-train-approach-one-measure-of-islamic-states-rapid-rise/2014/09/11/2e162cc4-39e7-11e4-bdfb-de4104544a37_story.html

***********************

 "His foreign ministry warned that if President Obama proceeds with a plan for air strikes in Syria against ISIS, it would violate international law.

“This step, in the absence of a UN Security Council decision, would be an act of aggression,” ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said, according to Interfax news agency.

Can this admonition really be delivered with a straight face?

Set aside for a moment the substantive issue of whether American military action in Syria does or should require United Nations Security Council authorization."  NY Times

-----------------------------

 Once again the people who cannot grasp the idea of escalation leading to war between the US+ and Russia, ridicule Russian seriousness about their policy.  

Russia has recently tested new submarine launched ICBMs with a range of 5,000 miles.  Hello! Is anyone home in the NSC?  

Referring back to the bit about US Air conducting uncoordinated, un-deconflicted air attacks inside Syria, consider a future in which Russian forces in Syria engage US+ aircraft.  Consider it.  pl 

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/russia-scolds-the-u-s-over-syria/?_php=true&_type=blogs&src=twr&_r=0

***************** 

"... the concept of the Free Syrian Army as a unified force with an effective command structure is a myth.

Whatever force the United States can muster, it will face a jihadist army that has surged in size. Todd Ebitz, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, said Thursday that the agency now believes ISIS has between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria, an increase from a previous assessment of more than 10,000 fighters.

“This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate,” said Mr. Ebitz.

The Syrian rebels are a scattered archipelago of mostly local forces with ideologies that range from nationalist to jihadist. Their rank-and-file fighters are largely from the rural underclass, with few having clear political visions beyond a general interest in greater rights or the dream of an Islamic state.

Most have no effective links to the exile Syrian National Coalition, meaning they have no political body to represent their cause. And the coalition’s Supreme Military Council, which was intended to unite the moderate rebel forces, has all but collapsed."  NY Times

-----------------------

Supposedly there are 1200 separate rebel groups in Syria.  IMO delivering weapons to the "moderates" is simply making a delivery of materiel that will eventually end in the hands of jihadists.  

The fortunate final recipients will use this equipment to fight until they are destroyed by some of the bigger groups or merged into others, probably jihadist.

Let us say for moment that some constellation among the galaxy of rebel groups succeeds in destroying the SAG.  What we will then see, IMO, is more genocide.  This time it will be against Alawis, Shia and Christians and a focus will emerge on Lebanon and Jordan.

The neocons started this juggernaut rolling with their insistence on attacking Iraq.  Will they be pleased when jihadis sit on Israel's NE frontier?  pl  

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/middleeast/us-pins-hope-on-syrian-rebels-with-loyalties-all-over-the-map.html?_r=0

A viable plan - BTH

"A goal of marginal containment through direct support to regional players combined with periodic retaliatory strikes might be the maximum realistic scope possible against the IS Sunni state-let. Arm and train the Kurds positioning for independence to press IS on the east particularly around Kirkuk.Focus on small territorial gains and border consolidation. Form an alliance of convenience with Iran; also with Assad where mutually beneficial in the west. Assist the Shia Iraqis to train and fight with air support from the southeast, support Jordan heavily on the southwest of IS and make plain to Saudi, Kuwait and Turkey that they could be mangled by the IS monster they created. The chance to destroy IS is gone. Targeting economic sites - gasoline refineries, small oil fields, bootleg pipelines, electric grids, plus pre-emptive strikes on any military concentrations might work but better to buy off the Sunni tribes slowly with Saudi money. US public support for boots on the ground in the US is weak. US public support for covert and indirect methods is probable. NATO allied support is meaningless. Let them focus on their own eastern problems.... Does Obama have the support of the military and I'm not referring to the officers - but the enlisted? I don't see the trust. Does Congress have the will to fund more war? Even air wars are expensive. I doubt the political will exists. Past this Nov. election it will be budget gamesmanship all the way to the 2016 presidential." BTH on SST

Too many moving parts, too many

It is axiomatic in the planning "bidness" that a good plan is as simple as possible.  Any well done plan is set within a "universe" of assumptions concerning the situation in which the plan is viable or even needed.  For that reason there must exist among the planners a clear and valid understanding of the environment in which the plan will be executed.  I do not see that lucidity of thought in the Obama government

The various tasks assigned by a plan must be capable of accomplishment and they must not be mutually interfering, i.e., they must not block each other as they are performed.  The tasks in a plan are colloquially referred to by planners as "moving parts." Another planning axiom holds that the more moving parts there are in a plan, the more probable is failure in execution.  

Obama appears to have a mass of moving parts in his campaign plan:

- The plan assumes that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey can be made into active supporters of an anti-IS "war."  Qatar and Saudi Arabia were the only Wahhabi dominated states until IS proclaimed its caliphal status.  These two countries are deeply sympathetic to IS' goals if not its methods.  Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia were instrumental in the early stages of development of IS as it morphed from AQ Iraq, into the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and then to a final glory as IS.  Do we really think it will be easy to enlist Qatar and Saudi Arabia in this fight?  Do we really think that these deeply Sunni states are going to support continued Shia governance from Baghdad?

 

One Possible Way Ahead Against ISIL: Updated with Correction*

Adam L Silverman, PhD**

Colonel Lang in his post presidential speech remarks indicated that one thing that would need to be done to isolate ISIL within Iraq would be to entice the Sunni tribes away from them. This followed his assessment of the difficulty that the new Iraqi unity government will have when trying to appoint the new leadership for the Ministries of Defense and Interior. One thing that would go a long way to assisting with actually building both a unity government and reorienting the Sunni tribes back towards Iraq would be the repeal of the Iraqi de-Baathification Law of 2010*** and the rescinding of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) de-Baathification Edict of 2003. The latter would be easier than the former, but equally as important. Per the CPA's own edicts, any rule, regulation, edict, etc that they promulgated could never be undone by any future Iraqi government. So the US which imposed these rules on all future variants of Iraq will have to rescind this rule in addition to any action the Iraqi government would take. The best thing that the US could do on this front is for the President to issue an executive order rescinding this particular CPA order , Order #1, while having his representatives in Baghdad attempt to influence the new Iraqi government to repeal their own de-Baathification Law as one of the first orders of business of the new Iraqi Parliament.

The reason this is important is that it removes one of the grievances that provided the opening for former Saddam era Iraqi military and intelligence personnel to support ISIL. As long as the de-Baathification laws and edicts stand, members of the al Douris, of the Sufi Naqshbandi order, and significant and often very senior members of both Sunni and Shi'a tribes are prohibited from being full members of their own state and society. They are prohibited from assisting in its defense and its government. De-Baathification has negatively effected the honor of many Iraqis whose only crime was serving the Iraqi government or military while Saddam Hussein was in power. We did not prohibit every German, Italian, or Vichy French from the life of their states after World War II as we knew it would engender resentment, hostility, and impact post Nazi, post Mussolini, or post Vichy Germany, Italian, and/or French society. In many cases we kept whole agencies, units, and/or bureacracies in place as we needed the knowledge base for continuity. This is how, for instance, the German BND grew out of one the Nazi's intel agencies. Repeal and repudiation will not be a panacea, but if part of the theater strategy is to reorient the tribes towards the government and against ISIL as an indigenous force multiplier, providing relief from this internal ostracism is absolutely necessary. It would also increase the pool of qualified candidates to run the Ministries of Defense and Interior.

* Please see this post for explanation of the correction.

** Adam L. Silverman most recently served as a civilian subject matter expert with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue and US Army Europe. Prior to that he was the Cultural Advisor at the US Army War College from JUL 2010 through JUN 2014. He was deployed in Iraq as the Cultural Advisor for the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division in 2008.

---- Minor Update--- 

(I forgot the second footnote...)

** This law was pushed for passage by Ahmed Chalabi. It was ultimately waived for the 2010 national elections, but has not, as far as I can find in reporting, been formally repealed.

Transcript of the President's Statement on ISIL

Adam L. Silverman, PhD

For those who did not want to watch, were not able to watch, or want to be able to go back and refer to the President's remarks on ISIL, the transcript can be found below the jump:

"Whims of Iron" By Richard Sale

These remarks are follow-on to my essay about Chatterers. The responses on Pat’s site were so intelligent and pointed that they inspired me to think about minds I had learned the most from growing up. French writers had often acted as ideals for achieving mental integrity, and one writer I treasured was Jean Bruyer who died in the 17 century. 

I loved the masterpieces of the French literature because they were lucid, piercing, ingenious, clever and straightforward. The French never resorted to using awkward or ostentatious phases unlike their English contemporaries.  Bruyer’s book was called, “Characters,” and in reading it, I discovered that Bruyer was a wonderful philosopher and aphorist. I read his book so often in the Penguin paperback that it finally fell to pieces. But the radiant light of Bruyere never dimmed, never faded, and never became usual. 

His essays are free on the web. 

Bruyer is unique because he sees the personalities that he studies steadily, accurately, and in detail. Many annoy him, some outrage him, but all were of interest to him. He can be scornful, but not venomous.  He dislikes, but he doesn’t hate. He disdains, but he doesn’t damage. He has none of the vitriolic bitterness of Swift, for example.

  My love of French literature carried ne to unusual places. In 1967, I read a history of the French novel beginning with the Princess of Cleves and ending with six volumes of Proust, and it took more than a year to do and it led me to an interesting character. I once got an interview with a French man, Paul Mus who was in exile and teaching at Yale. It was only my third day at LIFE Magazine, and I had to take a tour in the Text Department, and a writer from, the Text Department kept grumbling about being forced to do an interview with “some god dam Frenchman.” He had to take train on a Friday night to interview him, and he was out of sorts, and he grumbled so much that I finally volunteered. I had just been hired as the Entertainment Reporter, even though I had applied to be a war correspondent. 

Paul Mus was “the goddam Frenchman and he was the first man of genius I had ever met.  He was squat, block faced silver haired, and with a presence that smote you like a physical force. He boasted that during World War II, while riding on the Metro, he had razored off the gold buttons of the German officers, an offense punishable by death. 

It was clear to me that no one had stood up to him for a number of years; by habit, he was used intimidating and being obeyed and admired. But I was there to get a story, and when he told me he wouldn’t talk to me because he hated Life Magazine’s publisher, Henry Luce, I worked up my courage and told him that Henry Luce had been death 18 months, and while I didn’t mean to be rude, but I thought his remark obtuse. 

Silence fell. He eyed me coldly.  He asked me what I knew about France, and I briefly told him. He then said, out of all the French literature you’ve read what did you like best? I replied, Baudelaire’s notebooks.  That was not entirely true, but we were in duel of wits, and he said “What about them?” and I said that Baudelaire hated the Belgians because he thought they were a people born to think in unison.  I said I feared that the Americans would end up very much like the Belgians. He stared at me as I had been an elephant who had just sung a soprano aria in an opera.

 

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Ceasefire! - TTG

The purple assed mandrill of peace has been spotted among the sunflowers on the steppes of eastern Ukraine… or Novorossiya. There have been only fleeting glimpses so far and no one with open eyes and a clear mind thinks a breeding population will be established anytime soon. 

On the plus side, the current ceasefire has seen a significant reduction of the bombardment of Donetsk and Lugansk. The people of Lugansk are starting to clean up their neighborhoods and rebuild. Electricity, water and communication services are beginning to be reestablished. Refugees are returning to their homes. However, neither side sees this truce as a prelude to peace, just a lull before the fighting resumes. The Ukies are using the truce to regroup and redeploy their battered forces. They needed this respite badly. That is what they have done in every other truce they have called. Separatist militia leaders Alexei Mozgovoi and Igor Bezler have noted this and decided to stay on the offensive. Bezler said, “Ukraine’s criminal authorities resumed military operations. Now there is no way back for us. There is a long road ahead – to Kiev!” That is the general opinion of the separatist fighters. 

But the separatists were not, as some have claimed, on the verge of major victory before the ceasefire was agreed to in Minsk. They also needed a respite to regroup and resupply, if not at 1800 GMT on 6 September, then within a few days of that.Their forces are not strong enough to defeat the entire Ukrainian army or make the run to Odessa to create greater Novorossiya. They are spread thin. The inability to quickly reduce the many pockets of Ukie units is evidence of this. Most of the separatist units operate as small saboteur-reconnaissance groups. This is how Mozgovoi described the evolving tactics employed by his Ghost Brigade: 

“Here are the outlines of a few situations in which my unit has participated. I will start with the failures – the defense of Lisichansk. To suppress our forces, Ukraine threw eleven thousand men at us. Our lack of success was characterized by the fact that we were still true to the original tactics – the tactics of a clean fight: creating a clear front, setting up checkpoints. That was a mistake. This war, constructed by Ukies, is built on deceit: from the news to the battlefield; and because we were expecting a clean fight, we suffered casualties. I feel the loss of my men, most severely. For me, a loss of even a few individuals is a painful blow. 

“Yes, we have won fights; we pushed the enemy and they have retreated, but they always returned, in greater numbers, with more weaponry. Here is a shining example of this pattern. They set up a checkpoint at Staraya Krasnyanka, between Kremennoye and Rybezhnoye. We worked it over ten times. One day we destroy it; the next morning it is already manned with new people. Today – destroy, tomorrow morning – new people. Ukies load up Kamaz trucks with corpses and straight away, bring in new personnel – new men destined to become corpses the following day.

“The tactics of the Ukrainian army can be summed up in this: they have placed the full weight of war upon the artillery and the rocket launchers. They commence an attack with a purge of territory, which they do using Grads and self-propelled artillery systems. 

“They call it targeted attacks but the outcomes of such attacks are huge areas, whole squares swept “clean”. Afterwards, the tanks arrive with means to destroy in case anyone is left alive somewhere. Finally, their armored personnel carriers follow, manned with soldiers to finish up. It seems like their tactics are unbeatable. That is the reason why we’ve changed our own tactics.

“Even though we have grown in numbers, I refuse to send men into the open. We prefer to work in saboteur-reconnaissance groups (“SRG”): they went, they saw, they worked, and they returned. That’s all. We work on their communications; we work on their distributions and their ammunition warehouses. If they don’t have ammo, they don’t have the ability to fire. 

“Only yesterday I was informed about the destruction of a column of 10 Urals trucks that were delivering the missiles for the Grads, which were headed toward Donetsk. What can be more effective? Even if they have the launchers, without the shells those are simply piles of scrap metal, ballast. We hit them with RPGs and “Shmels” grenade launchers. (Colonel Cassad) 

Mozgovoi, BTW, is not at all pleased with the Minsk agreement and the bogus ceasefire. Not only did he decide to remain on the offensive after Ukie forces opposing him violated the ceasefire, but he has called for the political leadership of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics to step down.

 

General Scales is Wrong about General McChrystal and ISIS by Larry Johnson

Let me state at the outset that I think Bob Scales, a retired Army major general and former commandant of the U.S. Army War College, is a good, honorable man. But he is wrong in his latest analysis suggesting that another recently retired Army General, Stanley McChrystal, is a "prophet." Another full disclosure re Stan McChrystal--I am a big fan. He does not know me, but I did work with him indirectly during his entire tenure with the Special Ops community. He and I passed each other at his base in Balad in May of 2006--he was headed to the JOC and I was searching for the latrine. We nodded gravely at each other.

I agree with General Scales that McChrystal is a genuine visionary who transformed the Special Operations community and its approach to terrorism. But the SOF approach will not defeat ISIS. 

Let's fist consider "http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-to-defeat-the-islamic-state/2014/09/05/4b2d7bd4-3459-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html"General Scales' position on the matter: 

Enter a new prophet, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Over the past 20 years, McChrystal and his teams have developed another uniquely American method of war by substituting skill, information and precision for mass, maneuver and weight of shell. We first watched the McChrystal method at work in Afghanistan following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when small Special Forces units and the Afghan Northern Alliance teamed to destroy the Taliban using precision strikes delivered from aircraft high overhead. 

 

Israel Preparing for war against Hizbullah - Times of Israel

 
 "The report said Hezbollah has an estimated 100,000 rockets — 10 times as many as were in the Hamas arsenal — and that its 5,000 long-range missiles, located in Beirut and other areas deep inside Lebanon, are capable of carrying large warheads (of up to 1 ton and more), with precision guidance systems, covering all of Israel.

Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system would not be able to cope with that kind of challenge, and thus the IDF would have to “maneuver fast” and act forcefully to prevail decisively in the conflict, Goldfus said."  Times of Israel

---------------------------

Israel was lucky that Hizbullah did not throw all that stuff at them during the Gaza unpleasantness.  Very lucky.  

This colonel is right.  Iron Dome would fail against the fire that Hisbullah can bring down on them and it would have failed even more catastrophically against an HB/Hamas combined effort.  

Nevertheless, Israel is unhappy that its goal of destroying Hamas in Gaza also failed.  Israel's rather primitive ideas in the area of "strategic" thought require that any and all potential enemies be intimidated and submissive.  That did not happen in Gaza.

Therefore, Israel is seeking another target for intimidation operations.  Hizbullah and Lebanon as a whole are the only available fields for this endeavor.

"In Beirut and other areas deep in Lebanon" telegraphs the IDF intention to ravage all of Lebanon in another air campaign designed to wreck Lebanese infrastructure and demonstrate the uncaring savagery implicit in nationalism run amock.  Someone said that a definition of insanity is a willingness to keep doing things again and again that do not work.  When did this level of savegery help Israel?

Colonel whathisname says that they will have to maneuver swiftly and decisively to prevent Hizbullah shooting up Israel.  I await that effort with interest.  pl

Read more: Israel preparing for 'very violent' war against Hezbollah, TV report says | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-preparing-for-very-violent-war-against-hezbollah-tv-report-says/#ixzz3ClA126mq 

 

There were no deaths from neglect at the Phoenix V.A. hospital.

"The OIG investigators did find, after reviewing the records of 3,409 patients from a variety of sources, 44 patients who died while on the electronic waiting list. But just because someone is on a waiting list when they died does not mean they died becausethey were on a waiting list.

In all, the OIG found 28 instances of “clinically significant delays in care associated with access to care or patient scheduling.” Of that group, six are deceased. It also found “17 care deficiencies that were unrelated to access or scheduling,” and of those, 14 are dead.

So, within the universe of more than 3,400 patients, only six patients died while experiencing significant delays in scheduling. But “while the case reviews in this report document poor quality of care, we are unable to conclusively assert that the absence of timely quality care caused the deaths of these veterans,” the OIG said."  Washpost Fact Checker

------------------------

Remember that the OIG of the Veteran's Administration was under great pressure from the WH and Congress to find wrong doing and this is all they could come up with.

Once again the American people's lemming-like drive to self deception based on sensationalism and logrolling in the 24/7 media is demonstrated.

Eric Shinseki was forced to resign because of this crap.  Eric Shinseki is a genuine American hero unlike many of the swine who brought him down.  In his time as Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, he greatly reduced time for registration of veterans for services and care and the availability of service across the country.  This was in spite of the large increase in the numbers of those asking for service.

A shame, this was a tragic shame.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/09/02/overblown-claims-of-deaths-and-waiting-times-at-the-va/

Deliberate destabilisation, and 'do as I say, not as I do' - by confusedponderer

Russia has been accused to have intentionally destabilised the East of Ukraine by supporting and training separatist forces and allowing in Russian volunteers. I think that this is by and large accurate, but far from the repeatedly alleged but strangely elusive invasions.

The Russian idea must be to inflict as much pain on Ukraine as possible without a greater escalation to force it to the negotiation table and to force it to pursue a policy that meets Russia's security interests.

♦ Legality of outside military support for a faction in a civil war

Legally, it can be argued that supporting from the outside a party in a civil war is a violation of that country's sovereignty. That is basically the Western position, and incidentally it is legally largely correct.

The relevant legal precedent here is the case of Nicaragua vs United States of America [PDF], in which the ICJ ruled *:

"... that the United States of America, by training, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another state."

It could hardly be put clearer. Arguably, Russian conduct in Ukraine meets the same criteria, and thus violates international law.

That having been said - so does US support for Rebels in Syria (and elsewhere).

IS and its enemies.

 

"... after the initial crackdown, the group began setting up services and institutions - stating clearly that it intended to stay and use the area as a base in its quest to eradicate national boundaries and establish an Islamic "state".

"We are a state," one emir, or commander, in the province told Reuters. "Things are great here because we are ruling based on God's law."

Some Sunni Muslims who worked for Assad's government stayed on after they pledged allegiance to the group.

"The civilians who do not have any political affiliations have adjusted to the presence of Islamic State, because people got tired and exhausted, and also, to be honest, because they are doing institutional work in Raqqa," one Raqqa resident opposed to Islamic State told Reuters.

Since then, the group "has restored and restructured all the institutions that are related to services," including a consumer protection office and the civil judiciary, the resident said."  Reuters

***************

 "Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the threat from IS 'requires us to work together and seek common solutions.' It (Iran)  has reached out to Saudi Arabia - the leading Sunni power and Iran's regional rival - and has turned a blind eye to US actions in Iraq, which it has historically opposed.

In Iraq, the Iranians themselves have played a key role in countering IS. Iranian Revolutionary Guards have advised Iraqi security forces, Iranian pilots have carried out air strikes, Iranian-backed Shia militia have mobilised, and Iran says it has been sending weapons and advisers to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Saving Charlie Tuna

I confess to the guilty pleasure of watching "Wicked Tuna" on the National Geographic Channel.  I once fished a bit, in my case for lobstah on the Maine coast.  "Wicked Tuna" and "The Deadliest Catch" about crab fishing in the Bering Sea, they speak to me.

But, "Wicked Tuna" IS a guilty pleasure.  These giant apex predators, as fast as racehorses are beng hunted to extinction in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to satisfy the gluttony of Japanese businessmen.  A big fish on the dock at Gloucester, Massachusetts can easily being a fishing crew of three a $10,000 price.  The fish are packed in ice and flown immediately to the Japanese raw fish market. Imagine what the price is in that market.  The US government is trying (along with other governments) to save the species through regulation of fishing but it is a hopeless task.  With prices so high why would working class fishermen desist from whatever frantic activity they can manage?

In the news this week is the heartening tale of the return to viable numbers of the "California Blue Whale."  Bravo!  Bis!

I call here for a total moritorium on the hunting of the Bluefin Tuna.  Let there be a 20 year ban in this fishery.  Let the governments help the fishermen transition to fisheries that are sustainable.

Let the Japaniese eat seaweed.  They like it.  pl 

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/3/6098277/bluefin-tuna-vanishing-NOAA-crackdown-longline-fishing

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

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/wicked-tuna-north-vs-south/?utm_source=MSN&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=Fishing&utm_campaign=B_Wicked_Tuna_S3_NB&utm_term=fishing%20apparel

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

 

"Mr. McDonnell’s disgrace is also Virginia’s" Washpost editorial board.

"Now it is up to Virginia lawmakers to shake themselves from their gauzy complacency and prove to Virginians that they have absorbed the lessons of the McDonnell debacle. If they fail to act, they will only compound Virginia’s disgrace."  Washpost editorial 5 September 2014

----------------------------

One of the enduring phenomena of the Washington scene with its Washington Post sub-culture is the newspaper's unending hostility to the Commonwealth of Virginia.  When I arrived here from the Deep North in 1958 this animosity quickly became apparent to me.  I  had never seen anything quite like it.  Washington sits across the river, the city built on a swamp.   It is now, as it has always been, bloated on federal government and lobbyist money and it looks with disdain to the south.

I was once on a plane making a southern approach on short final to Reagan National.  The Masonic Memorial to George Washington was visible out the window.  It looms over my Alexandria home.  The New York City female transplant to DC sitting by the window said, "I wonder what it's like out there..."  "Out there?" I responded.  "You know," she said, "among them." I am now one of "them," and that anecdote sums up rather well the kind of attitude toward Virginia, the South, and "them" that has infested the Washington Post for a long time.

These days the creatures who inhabit the Washington Post staff have an unending chance to preen on MSNBC while riding their favorite hobby horses.  The percentage of homosexual activists driving the choo choo train for "marriage rights" goes up and up on MSNBC as does the number of crazed feminists like Mika B, and the just flat crazy and ignorant like Chris Matthews and his buddy Mike Barnicle. The editorial staff and columnists of the Washington Post fit in just fine in that group.  Ah, yes, and now the Washpost has found its conscience about the Redskins.

If the McDonnells had been tried under state law they would never have been convicted.  You don't like that?  Well good for you, son, good for you.  pl 

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/the-mcdonnell-verdicts-lesson-politicians-beware-110620.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-mcdonnells-disgrace-is-also-virginias/2014/09/04/27f8fe66-3474-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html

"Strategery" and the jihadi phenomenon

I have been asked to start a discussion here on Strategy in the short and long term with regard to dealing with groups like IS, the Nusra Front, Hamas, Hizbullah the Taliban, etc.

I am not looking for long winded historical discussion of these groups.  Tell us how to deal with them.   I will abstain from commenting for a while in order to avoid "stunting' the discourse.  pl 

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

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

Drunken Chit Chat By Richard Sale

The worst drawback about not drinking heavily is to have to listen to people who do. 

The purpose of leisure, talking with each other, is clearly to enjoy the pleasure of affable company, and also to listen and become inspired by what we hear. But excessive drinking soon peels off the foil of civilization that we expected to enjoy.  A couple I know well hosted a small gathering, but one  of the members of the company showed up more than half drunk.  When the rest of the company saw this person, their hearts sank into their shoes. This half drunken person always lowers the tone of any group they go to.

Until advent of this person, the gathering was polite and friendly. But no sooner had this person sat down, not only did they not test the waters or try to discover what people had been saying, they instead began to bleat and bray noisily and disconcertingly, and, unfortunately this person was self centered uncouth, coarse, and the incessant drinking has hammered their wits flat. This person had no liveliness s of wit – it was all elephantine facetiousness.

 

Did Russia "annex" Crimea? - by confusedponderer

According to the established political and media narrative that Russia, no, Putin, Putin, and Putin again, annexed Crimea and in doing so violated international law.

These are weighty accusations and worth looking into.

Brief historical overview on Crimea

To make a long story short: Catherine the Great added Crimea as the Taurida Oblast to Russia by a decree on 2 February 1784. It has been Russian ever since, or would have been, if not, by fluke of history, Nikita Chruschev had signed it away to become part of Ukraine. That was at a time when it didn't matter what part of the USSR Crimea was in.

It started to matter when the USSR dissolved and Chruschev's decision saw Crimea over night becoming part of a foreign country when Ukraine declared independence.

On Crimea is located the strategically important warm water port of Sewastopol, a traditional Russian naval base, which Russia was keen on keeping since it allowed Russia access to the Mediterranean. Russia eventually negotiated a 'status of forces agreement' with Ukraine that allowed Russia to station up to 40.000 troops in Crimea and leased the Sevastopol naval base for a number of years.

Coming to terms

♦ Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the full right and power means of a state or a governing body to govern itself without any interference from outside sources or bodies.

♦ International law

International law is is the set of rules generally regarded and accepted as binding in relations between states and between nations. It differs from state-based legal systems in that it is primarily applicable to countries rather than to private citizens. The actors of international law have created international law in rather hardnosed pursuit of their interests.

♦ Self-determination

The Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Völker, or the right to self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law (jus cogens), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter’s norms. It states that nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and fair equality of opportunity have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no external compulsion or interference. The referendum on Scotish independence is a good example for this.

♦ Annexation

Annexation is is the forcible acquisition of a state's territory by another state. This violates the non-aggression principle in international law. It constitutes aggression, the most severe form of violations of the sovereignty of another state and thus, of international law.
The UN Charter's Chapter VII deals with such cases, and article 51 UN Charter entitles states to come to help without a UN mandate - severe consequences.

If Annexation is is the forcible acquisition of a state's territory by another state, then the conditions for this offence must be met. Each of them in turn:

• Crimea was part of Ukrainian territory.
• Russia is another state.
• Crimea is now part of Russia.
• So what remains to be considered is whether Russia acquired Crimea forcibly.

So, did Russia acquire Crimea forcibly?

The Obama Doctrine

"The protests in Ukraine on the Maidan were not led by neo-Nazis or fascists. They were led by ordinary Ukrainians, men and women, young and old who were fed up with a corrupt regime and who wanted to share in the progress and prosperity that they see in the rest of Europe. And they did not engage in an armed seizure of power.

After an agreement was brokered for constitutional reform, the former president then abandoned his office, and parliament endorsed new elections, so that today Ukrainians have a new democratically elected president. And I look forward to welcoming President Poroshenko to the Oval Office this month. He was chosen by the people of Ukraine. It was not the government of Kiev that destabilized eastern Ukraine. It’s been the pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia. And the Russian forces that have now moved into Ukraine are not on a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission. They are Russian combat forces with Russian weapons in Russian tanks.

 

The purple assed mandrill of peace

The purple assed mandrill of peace (TPAMOP)

""Putin has issued his own peace plan for eastern Ukraine, calling on the Russian-backed insurgents there to "stop advancing" and urging Ukraine to withdraw its troops from the region.

Putin, speaking in the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, said he came up with a 7-point peace plan on the plane trip there in which Kiev must withdraw its troops and stop its artillery strikes.

"The warring parties should immediately coordinate and do the following things together," Putin said in televised comments. "The first thing is for the armed forces and insurgents of the south-east of Ukraine to stop active advancing in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

"Second is for the Ukrainian military to withdraw their troops at a safe distance that will make artillery and other strikes on populated areas impossible," he added.""  Telegraph

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 Here it is, folks, the "off ramp" we all have been looking for.  TPAMOP is cautiously eyeing this new thing from his lair deep in the bush.  Why has the chocolate mogul agreed to this?  Simple - As I have written recently, the Ukie forces drove forward with great enthusiasm to their own doom and now are surrounded in pockets all over SE Ukraine.  Yes, the great Prussian Gerd's musings over "culminating points" have proven fruitful yet again.

Will the United States let the world "off the hook" by accepting this outcome?  Perhaps it will not.  The lure of the Children's Crusader vision of a future devoid of schoolyard bullies may prove too strong to ignore.  NATO exercizes are planned. Speeches have been made.  Grand posturing has taken place.   Obama wills it!   pl 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11071806/Ukraine-permanent-ceasefire-agreed-says-Petro-Poroshenko.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11071852/Ukraine-ceasefire-live.html

Afghanistan, IS and Israel diary - 2 September 2014

"One must look at the order of battle, organization and military tactics of the Islamic State, which can be best described as a semi-military, semi-political body that wants to translate its day-by-day military gains into a long-lasting political body. To that end, IS fields generally motorized companies of 80 to 100 men or battalions with 200 to 300 fighters, skilled in urban warfare, high mobile and capable of executing terrorist tactics such as improvised explosive device attacks and hit-and-run attacks, as well as conventional military tactics at the company and battalion levels. I don’t agree with the view that IS a new offspring of al-Qaeda. IS is a new breed that has caused much confusion to international actors who can’t decide what to do against IS. We are facing an organization and a modus operandi we are not at all familiar with.

 

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) - Letter To Angela Merkel Re: Ukraine. Posted by Walrus.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity have written to Angela Merkel, the Germqan Chancellor, regarding the Ukraine situation. Perhaps Col. Lang might like to comment on this matter.

My concern is that NATO is going to tread where angels fear. There was a signifigant body of thought prior to World War One that contended that the world economy was even then so integrated that rational considerations of "trade" would trump the warlike computations of the major powers. British Army uniforms were dyed with German aniline dyes and all that. I suspect that the Washingtonians subscribe to similar assumptions today.

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MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine and NATO

We the undersigned are longtime veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior to the NATO summit on September 4-5.

You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian "invasion" of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the "intelligence" seems to be of the same dubious, politically "fixed" kind used 12 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now. Twelve years ago, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, mindful of the flimsiness of the evidence on Iraqi WMD, refused to join in the attack on Iraq. In our view, you should be appropriately suspicions of charges made by the US State Department and NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

President Barack Obama tried yesterday to cool the rhetoric of his own senior diplomats and the corporate media, when he publicly described recent activity in the Ukraine, as "a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now … it’s not really a shift."

Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly, lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy. One year ago, hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on "intelligence" that was dubious, at best.