Go Ahead, Kick Iran While It's Down

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY in Geneva. Tomorrow the P5+1 meet with the representatives of Iran. So far the Obama administration--and the President himself--seem all too willing to schmooze rather than confront the mullahs and their frontmen.

All too many times over the past several months--even after the debacle of the June elections and their aftermath--the President and his people seem convinced that Iran is a monolith, a giant which must be approached with great care and only after the performance of required rituals designed to placate the menace.

The truth is that Iran--or at least the Dreadful Duo of Ayatollah Khemenei and the wooden dummy on his lap, Ahmedinejad--are clinging to power only by the threat of force. Senior clerics have faced down the "Supreme Guide" even on such matters as the end date of Ramadan. The opposition continues to flourish even under the guns and clubs of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basiji.

The fault planes which have shown their existence before have shifted with much greater force and duration. The shift is to the disadvantage of the regime.

The Iranians have stated they desire a broad ranging discussion of numerous issues. The goal, according to Ahmedinejad, is to test the political good will of the US. Fine. Take them at their word--but make the agenda one of our own creation.

Start off with an examination of Iran's human rights record in recent weeks, months, and years. Go over it chapter and verse--and go public with all the details. The Iranians have not been overly successful in hiding their capacity for internal brutality, so the sordid facts are available even without a Burn-Before-Reading level security clearance.

Then, go on with a detailed examination of Iran's contribution to world or regional peace. It is worth taking a close and lingering look at Iran's peacemaking role with such noble humanitarian organizations as Hezbollah and Hamas. Or, as an additional feature, the efforts made by Tehran to establish peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, including their foreign aid efforts such as the provision of explosives, weapons, explosively formed penetrators, and other goodies to assorted gunslinging jihadists in both countries.

Of course, even the stooges from Tehran must admit that the whole arena of nuclear weapons proliferation is part of the big picture they say they must discuss in order to test American good faith and will. While it might be necessary for the Great Satan to take a backseat to the more robust French and Germans, the name of the game remains: Iran is an outlaw state.

Sure, the Russians and, even more, the Chinese will protest such a harsh characterization. Still, it remains the accurate and honest characterization of the mullahocracy. And, it will remain such as long as the Dreadful Duo remain in charge.

It might not be out of the question to hint at the potential of regime change. Sure, the Iranians will howl like a collection of stuck pigs and China may well join in the chorus. So what? The opposition Green Movement has made it clear that it shares the concerns of the civilized world regarding the Iranian "Mahdi Bomb." The Green Movement does have a shot at replacing the deeply discredited current regime--and deserves Western assistance in so doing.

The test for the Dreadful Duo is whether they will do anything to stay in power. So far, as long as the "anything" that needs be done is restricted to coercion, suppression, violence, and show trials, they have done just that. The nitty-gritty is whether or not they are willing finally to capitulate to Western demands on the nuclear matter in order to avoid Western support for regime change.

The risk is not that great. If the regime in Tehran decides that even veiled hints of regime change, of Western assistance to the Green Movement, are no more than bluff and calls it, the result is no more fraught with peril than is allowing the Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons.

Real sanctions might work. Who knows, they have yet to be tried. Real sanctions will hurt both the regime and the Iranian people. The net effect, though, given the events of the post-stolen election period, will be a strengthening of the opposition and a further erosion of the regime's perceived legitimacy. The sanctions alone might put the regime so far on the ropes that only an eleventh hour agreement to the terms dictated by the West will save their slipping hold on power.

The US and the far more realistic and tough-minded French and--who would have thought--Germans have two goals in the Geneva talks. The overriding one is the ending of the emerging nuclear threat. The other, and far more important in the longer run, is regime change.

Rather than acting as if we are afraid of the Big, Bad Mullahs, we should go ahead and kick the regime right where it hurts. The Dreadful Duo is down--but not quite out. The task is that of finishing them for once and all as the blot on humanity--and Islam--which they are.

A Personal Note To Vice-President Biden

According to the Los Angeles Times, you have a "visceral" feel for the casualties suffered by the US in the Vietnam War. So does the Geek. Perhaps more visceral and far more personal than you.

The Geek was not able to use the student deferment ploy that kept you from the maw of the draft from 1963 to 1968 following which the Selective Service System classified you 4-F as a result of teenage asthma. As a result the Geek had to see war quite up close and in full living--and dying--color.

Like most of those who belong to the universal fraternity of Them Whats Been Shot At, the Geek abhors war in whatsoever form. As a student of military history specializing in interventionary operations, he has become overly well acquainted with the nature and character of this form of war. A form which is particularly difficult to wage successfully and in which, as shown by the US War in Vietnam, all too easily ended by a self-inflicted defeat.

Afghanistan is not a "good" war. Neither is it a "bad" one as was the invasion of Iraq. It is, however, a war which will be difficult for the US to "win" in any meaningful way. The mission leap of the previous administration, which caused the focus of our effort to shift from a simple, straightforward punitive expedition to one of chasing the chimera of "nation-building" assured that success would remain elusive.

The decision by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld troika to wage the Afghanistan operation on the cheap simply compounded the error. The "economy of force" (as Admiral Mike Mullen put it both delicately and erroneously) approach seemed almost carefully designed to assure that Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other Islamist jihadist groups in the country or right across the border in Pakistan's FATA would be back bigger, badder, and bolder than ever.

The US and its allies are at the point where push has come most definitely to shove. The choice is simply between utter, unmistakable defeat at the hands of the Islamist jihadists or "not-losing."

"Not-losing" in the context of Afghanistan means that the US and its allies are able to finally so squash the assorted Islamist jihadist groups that they present no threat to the civilized world. To "not-lose" does not require keeping the Karzai regime in power. It does not imply the need to turn Afghanistan into some sort of simulacrum of a modern Western nation-state.

It does require taking the war to the Islamist jihadists in the country (and adjacent border areas) so as to disrupt, demoralize, and so discourage the Islamist jihadists that they come in from the heat so to speak. It does require putting our and our allies' troops in harm's way so as to protect the uncommitted majority of the Afghani civilians from war's desolation.

The history of interventionary operations demonstrates that this approach is the one which works with lowest cost to bring the maximum feasible return. And, in an interventionary operation, the maximum feasible return is lowering the level of violence to the degree that the self-organizing capacities of the local population can come into effective play first to terminate hostilities and eventually to assure a degree of conflict resolution.

In short, the most the US and its allies can hope for is lowering the noise level sufficiently for local political and social dynamics to come into effective play. This does not mean all violence will end. It won't, at least for some time after the foreign forces have left.

What it does mean is that no Islamist jihadist group, now or into the future will be able to claim as have Osama bin Laden and others regarding the Soviet Union's ill-fated excursion into Afghanistan, that the forces of Islam defeated the infidel invader. It will mean as well that no future government in Kabul will emulate the actions of the Taliban in offering "Islamic" hospitality to a terror group.

You see, Mr Vice-President, the enemy is not simply al-Qaeda. Nor is it Taliban per se. The enemy is all the self-organizing groups of Islamist jihadists throughout the world. Should the US be seen as having tossed in the sponge in Afghanistan, these hostile entities will proliferate like desert flowers after the first rain. This is the point you obviously miss.

The Geek even more than you, Mr Biden, would like to see the war waged without any American losses. Without any Americans running the risks of combat. Without any Americans spending years wrestling with the consequences of wounds either physical or psychological.

If a few Special Forces A Teams on the ground, a handful or two of CIA pilot teams, and a bunch of Predators and Reapers in the sky over the FATA and Afghanistan would do the job, the Geek would be cheering you on. Wishing you all the success possible in the administration's debate over whither Afghanistan.

But the idea you have propounded with such passion is simply wrong. Wrong as a soup sandwich. It is an idea that assures ultimate defeat for the US. Ultimate victory for the Islamist jihadists.

Your idea means one other thing as well. Think back to Vietnam, when the Democrats in Congress who had endorsed the war with a whoop and a hollar a few years earlier turned against the war and forced withdrawal of our troops. Remember it? The Geek is sure you do. He does.

This action and the consequences which followed sent a message to America. The message was as simple as it was brutal. The act told America that the sixty thousand who were killed in country, the tens of thousands who bore the scars of war, the tens of thousands who would struggle with inner demons for decades, "Tough shit!"

Tossing Vietnam off like yesterday's bad news dishonored those who fought, were wounded, died. Defeats are like that. It's a big tough shit for the people who sweated, bled, and died.

Now, your proposal would do the same for the men and women who have done their country's duty, served our presumed national interest in Afghanistan. Defeats are like that. Tough shit.

Mr Biden, is that really, really what your viscera tell you is right?

Oil Spots Will Get You Killed

The Nice Young Man From Chicago appears to have a propensity to split the difference, to make both ends of the spectrum equally unhappy. While this may be an unobjectionable approach to domestic issues, it is bound to fail with foreign matters--such as Afghanistan and the unpleasant little war we and our allies are fighting there.

As information (and speculation) fizzle around the edges of the Great Compound Inside the Beltway, there seem to be two antipodal positions on the troop increase request from General McChrystal.

One pole is inhabited by General McChrystal, the JCS, super-diplomat Richard Holbrook, and Secretary of State Clinton. These folks want to put more boots on the ground and definitively "win" over the Taliban and other Islamist jihadist groups.

The other extreme contains, among others, Vice President Biden, Senator Levin, and a host of "progressive" Democrats. In one way or another these folks want to restrict the mission of American forces to that of liquidating al-Qaeda and, for at least some, providing training to the Afghan National Forces.

As of yesterday, Secretary of Defense Gates seemed to be leaning toward the expansionist side of the continuum. That is about as surprising as finding the sun rises in the east.

One detects an emerging argument which is akin, indeed, almost identical to the "oil spot" operational doctrine during the Vietnam War. Back then and again today the thinking is as follows.

US troops would clear and hold a piece of real estate previously dominated by the enemy. When the indigenous security forces had developed sufficiently to take over the job, the Americans would move on to take, clear, and hold the next bit of enemy territory. The analogy with the spreading movement of a drop of oil on water was borrowed by American planners in the early Sixties from their predecessors in Vietnam, the French.

It had not worked for the French. It did not work for the Americans and South Vietnamese when it was reattempted. It will not work if applied in Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the "oil spot" approach will have substantial appeal for a consensus minded president and even many in Congress. It would involve no major increase in US troop strength. It puts the ultimate burden on the Afghans where it properly resides. Best of all, it will reduce American casualties.

What Senator Levin, VP Biden, and others of the less-is-best school do not seem to realize is the time necessary to adequately train, equip, organize, create command and control, and accomplish the manifold other necessities which turn an armed mob into an effective, disciplined, coherent combat force. And, make no mistake about it, whatever the name--army, police, constabulary--the new Afghan force(s) must be combat formations first and foremost.

While the limited strength US and allied forces sit around holding the land they have cleared waiting for the Afghans to take over both security and governmental functions, what is the enemy doing?

That's right, bucko. The Taliban and others are using the vast amount of uncleared, unheld territory for their own purposes. Purposes which might be perturbed to some degree by UAV and manned platform air strikes, but will continue to assure that they maintain both the initiative and momentum.

Considering that we have yet to "clear and hold" Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, and the surrounding territory to say nothing of other vast sweeps of less populated terrain, Taliban and the others have a lot of human and physical terrain on which to work. They have ample human material and terrain expanse to use as launching pads for attacks on either the foreign forces or the Afghan national government.

This means the defeat by a thousand cuts will continue. Americans and other outsiders will continue to die from roadside bombs, suicide VBIED attacks, snipers, and all the other nasty features of this type of conflict. The deaths without success in sight will further enervate the political will of We the People to continue the effort.

The bottom line reads: Any "oil spot" or similar split-the-difference approach merely prolongs the agony of losing. It amps the body count while ramping down to zero any potential of actually prevailing over the Islamist jihadists, let alone building a nation in the country. Anything other than a maximum effort will be too little to assure success in stopping the Islamist jihadists.

The only viable alternative to a full scale commitment, which means meeting the maximum request by General McChrystal (roughly 40,000 additional personnel), is a collapse of our effort to an enhanced "counter-terrorism" program revolving around Special Forces teams on the ground along with their CIA pilot teams and Predators or Reapers in the air.

We might burnish the appearances by stationing some training and advisory personnel as well as logistics and other support types. We could make a show of supporting Kabul while acknowledging that no matter what the short-term effect might be, Afghanistan would return in the fullness of time to internal war between the minorities of the north and the majority Pushtu elsewhere. It would be simply one more turn of the ever rolling wheel of internal Afghan relations.

The US and the rest of the world would be back to where we were on 10 September 2001 albeit without an intact al-Qaeda. Not as if that matters anymore. Al-Qaeda's best role is as a symbol, an emblem of the memes which underpin Islamist jihadism around the world.

Of course, that means we (or somebody) will have to fight the war against Islamist jihadism all over again at some future date. Worse, even the slightest, barely plausible hint that we and our allies had been driven out by the Warriors of Allah would hype the cause everywhere from now until some date in the haze of the far future.

This is not a time and a matter on which half way measures are applicable. This is not a time for compromise, for splitting differences, for hemming and hawing over fine points. It is a time for decisive leadership.

Unfortunately, to date, President Obama has not shown much skill, or even interest, in this sort of thing. It's a pity for him. And a tragedy in the making for all the rest of us.

It's About Time For An Obama Foreign Policy

The (to use one of the Geek's favorite old Soviet phrases) correlation of forces is pushing the president and his administration into belatedly doing something they should have done right out of the box--crafting a coherent schemata of foreign relations based on a realistic view of the type of world the US can flourish in and what we can do to bring that vision into existence.

So far what passes for foreign policy in the current administration seems to be composed in equal measure of "We ain't the same as those Bush guys," and "Gee, we sure are sorry about _____." In addition the Obama simulacrum of foreign policy consists of bootless pressure against states with which the US is allied or which are very much on the periphery of policy concerns.

Proclaiming a desire to see the world free of nuclear weapons is a fine exercise in frothy high mindedness but it does not constitute a policy, a basis for diplomacy. Neither is repeating the assertion, "give peace a chance."

Foreign policy and military affairs are areas of governance which are not amenable to pure oratory. No one is impressed at all by the capacity to speak softly or well while holding either a very small stick or none at all.

While Secretary of Defense Gates is undoubtedly well aware of the vast gulf between words and the deeds which make the words real--and effective--there is little evidence that this has penetrated either the President or his Secretary of State. It must since the combination of Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor cannot formulate let alone execute the totality of American foreign policy.

At one time the US could afford the luxury of not having a foreign policy. Calvin Coolidge didn't bother with much beyond the borders of the US. Neither did Herbert Hoover.

Arguably, after the hash the idealistic (that sounds nicer than ideologically blinded) Woodrow Wilson made at Versailles, the US was better off without a foreign policy. However, that luxury did not extend past the first administration of FDR--a reality he dimly glimpsed even though We the People did not.

From 1937 on through the end of the Cold War, the US faced a series of existential threats--or at the least perceived this to be the case. The cold forces of global circumstances compelled us to abandon the long decades of American Splendid Isolation, much as the same had done to England during the Edwardian period. Whether We the People liked the idea or not (and in the main we didn't) the realities of world politics made us a Great Power.

We conducted World War II as a Great Power (in the Pacific as the one and only Great Power). The US responded to the (mis)perception of Soviet ambitions at war's end as the only non-Communist Great Power standing. The costs in both life and treasure of this involuntary and increasingly far from universally approved Great Power period were not insignificant.

The end of the Cold War was met with a great sigh of relief by many in the US as it seemed certain that now we could stop behaving as a Great Power. That we could now lay down the never really desired burden of leadership, enjoy the "peace benefit," and generally stop and smell the roses of a good life, la dolce vita, American style.

History shows that a country has never resigned Great Power status. Great Powerdom may be lost, taken away, even frittered away in meaningless exercises in coercion, but never has it been voluntarily abandoned. In the years following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, the rest of the world did not let the US quit the field as the one and only Great Power around.

Bill Clinton must have wished otherwise. But even he had to respond to the challenges of the day. Sure, he responded poorly, ineptly. His neo-liberal focus on globalization was filled with foreseeable but ignored invocations of the Law of Unintended Consequences for both the US and the globe generally. His opening of "free trade" with China may have benefited the American consumer's love of a bargain, but it gave undue muscle to a country inherently hostile to much which the US wants to see in the world. And, his bootless responses to the provocations of al-Qaeda and other Islamist jihadist crews did much to assure that they would only strengthen.

The "New American Century" of George W. Bush's unilateralism was not the correct way to exercise our Great Power status. It was too crude, too blunt, too unconcerned with the national egos of other powers such as Russia. The Bush/Cheney approach to foreign relations might have made the neocons of the country feel buff as all get out, but it made the cliched bull in a china shop look both mild mannered and nondestructive in comparison.

Admittedly, the Great Recession has put an inevitable crimp in the possibilities for American foreign policy as has the pervasive war weariness of the American public. But, neither imply that the best road to American leadership as a Great Power--arguably the Greatest Power given the unique mixture of hard and soft power tools at our possession--is paved by cringing genuflections before the alter of multi-lateralism, the UN, the EU, or the congeries of sand dune ridden oil sheikdoms, and other Arab despotates.

Consultation with allies is fine. It is necessary. It can lead to much better policy decisions and implementations. We should have consulting modalities as a centrality to the policy process at both the front and back ends. But, we must not make a fetish of it. Inevitably there will be times--such as the Iranian Question--where complete, effective consensus is not possible considering the vastly differing national interests in play.

Indeed, the only effective base for foreign policy is a rigorous definition of American national and strategic interests. Everything arises from this soil. All countries great and small play the Game of Nations with this rule uppermost in mind. The Obama administration had best get this straight--US national and strategic interests first, foremost, and forever.

It is the understanding of core national and strategic interests which provide the schemata from which compelling issues can be addressed effectively. What purely American interest is at play in Iran? Afghanistan and Pakistan? The Mideast? Mexico? What purely American interests are in play regarding US relations with China? Russia? The European Union states? Latin America?

How would core American national and strategic interests be advanced or retarded by proposed policies in energy, global economic reform, anthropogenic climate change? Would US interests be harmed or helped by the ending of the dollar as the reserve currency? Can the global warming pseudo-crisis be employed to use an "oil weapon" in reverse? Would, for example, a crash program on alternative energy, carbon capture from coal fired plants, the construction of standard design risk reduction designed nuclear weapons enhance our leverage on Mideast and other oil producing states?

How can the US best employ its innovations in the new technologies, including biotechnologies, as a soft power tool? An economic asset? What about the role of our first rank educational and research institutions? Are they being used to the maximum in the "battle for minds?"

What about the "war on drugs?" Is its continued pursuit to our national advantage or not? Would controlled legalization help or hurt our relations with other states? Could the foreign aid provided under its cover be better employed in other ways? The manpower?

More immediately, can the US survive? Flourish? Accept? Adjust to? a world in which Iran has a nuclear weapon arsenal? How about North Korea? If the answer is "no," what can? should? we do when and if the combination of diplomatic negotiations and sanctions fails? Try the nuclear deterrent ploy? Launch a full scale war? Kick the can down the road?

None of these core matters have been addressed to date by the Obama administration. Or so it appears to a reasonably well-informed observer. Since resignation from Great Power status is not a viable option much as the "progressives" behind the "Transformational Agenda" might wish, we have to answer these questions and others. Quickly.

Diplomacy and foreign relations are like time chess. The clock never stops. There is no time for long contemplation, no room for naval gazing, no allowance for inexperience.

The Nice Young Man From Chicago is a lawyer. It is long overdue for him and his lawyer Secretary of State to recall a phrase much loved by lawyers, "Time is of the essence."

The Road To Victory

Well, bucko, how about a little bit of historically derived military theory? You know, strategy and all that. It might be rooted in the past, but the implications for today are as obvious as a hippo in the bathroom.

As the coach said, "We gotta get back to the basics!"

There is nothing more basic than understanding the four ways by which military strategy has sought victory during the long and very bloody history of the human race. While most of the examples referenced are drawn from Western experience, trust ole Doc Geek, war and the four avenues to victory have existed everywhere wars have been waged.

The most basic avenue to victory is that of annihilation. The target of military operations is the enemy's forces in the field. The goal is the total destruction of these forces in one climatic battle, or as an alternative, a short series of battles.

Back when armies were small and combat was always face-to-face, the battle of annihilation was quite possible. The most often used examples of the battle of annihilation were those of Hannibal against the Romans during the Punic War. Not once but twice Hannibal encircled and obliterated the hapless Roman legions, thus establishing the paradigm of what has been the general's wet dream ever since.

The growth of mass armies and industrialized warfare seemed to spell the end of annihilation as a viable avenue to victory. But, when a massive asymmetry exists in firepower, mobility as well as the integrity and efficiency of command and control systems, the battle of annihilation can still be brought to pass. This was demonstrated dramatically during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Now for the bad news. Annihilation does not bring victory in the sense of successful hostilities termination. What happened to Hannibal following his two splendid little victories? Yep, that's right, nothing. He and his small army wandered around Italy for awhile, went home, and eventually his successors were destroyed by a Rome which had never lost its political will even when its legions were gone.

You see the parallel with Iraq, right? No victory parade regardless of "Mission Accomplished" banners and presidential grins. The political will of those Iraqis who feared, loathed, or hated the US and other foreign interlopers made their position plain. Sectarian rivals (which really means political opponents) did the same. The result was no hostilities termination let alone conflict resolution. (That's right, the two terms are not identical with implications which will come later.)

Although the term got a bad rep during World War I and an even worse one in the course of the American War In Vietnam, attrition is a perfectly valid and often employed avenue to victory. Once again the target of military operations is the enemy's forces in the field. The goal is the progressive reduction of these forces over a relatively long time. This implies the winning side can kill its opponents faster than they can be replaced--and faster than the opponent can do the same to the eventual winner.

It is important to note that while the strategy of attrition is valid, it has never been responsible in and of itself for victory. Attrition has always looped into one of the next two avenues.

The third route to victory is erosion. Implementing the erosion strategy requires the target be the enemy's material capacity to wage war. This means destroying or disrupting the enemy's factories, agricultural base, transportation infrastructure, and other facilities critical to the continuation of the war. In the process, the enemy's forces in the field are attacked only in so far as doing such serves to overstretch and eventually break the lines of supply and the goodies fed into those lines.

The Anaconda Plan developed by Winfield Scott for defeating the Confederacy was primarily one of victory through erosion. The strategic bombing campaign of World War II, particularly in Europe, also sought victory by emphasizing erosion. The enormous resilience of industrial states with a large infrastructure and a population which can be mobilized effectively for the war effort can successfully resist erosion. This remains true even when it is multiplied in effect by attrition of the forces in the field.

What is remarkable about World War II in Europe is not that Germany was defeated. What is remarkable is the amount of time, effort, and blood the job required.

Parsed closely all three avenues outlined point to the supremacy of the final route to winning--enervation. Enervation, the progressive reduction of the enemy's political will to continue the war--is the most effective of the several alternative approaches. It is also the least well understood by military and governmental decision makers and planners. It is also the avenue least likely to be consciously chosen.

Even though the American War of Independence was won because the British elite lost the will to continue, Americans refused to accept the reality that it was not the Americans winning but the British losing which brought independence in its wake. Nonetheless, it was an American, William Sherman, who first implemented the strategy of enervation with deliberate premeditation.

Sherman, who had lived and worked in the south, understood the conflict of loyalties which could be created in the mind of Confederate troops if their homeland seemed wide open to Yankee threat. He conceived his March to the Sea as being the mechanism which would cause the collapse of morale in the Confederate forces as well as the will to continue the war in the minds of civilians generally.

The immense success of General Sherman's concept can be seen in several ways. One of the easiest is to look at one surrender. No, not the famous one of Lee to Grant. Rather the surrender to Sherman of Johnston's army, which at the time it surrendered was intact, under arms, well ordered, and securely ensconced in the mountains of North Carolina from which it could have waged guerrilla war for years. But, all hands saw no point in the exercise after the great sweeps of the March to the Sea and its successor, the March Upcountry.

Centralized, authoritarian regimes are both more and less able to resist enervation than democratic, decentralized ones. This can be seen in World War II.

The Germans never lost political will. Not until the Russian tanks and Mongolian infantry were in Berlin and the Anglo-American forces in Western and Southern Germany did the Nazi remnants toss in the sponge. Mass surrenders by German troops did not occur until the last few weeks of the war when the prospect of being taken captive by the Russians served as the stimulus to call out "Kamerad" as the Yanks or Brits drew near.

The Soviet central regime showed the same characteristic as their Nazi opponents. Once Stalin recovered his nerve a few days into the invasion, the Soviets never lost their will to resist and re-conquer. (Even if the Americans always feared the separate peace and based too much policy on this self-generated delusion.)

The story in Imperial Japan was quite different. Here the High Command, both civilian and military, was, in the main, in favor of fighting on even in the face of probable defeat. The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima did not alter the views of these men. The mushrooms over Japan did change the mind of one man--the emperor. Hirohito made the call, "we must bear the unbearable, endure the unendurable."

On occasion enervation may occur without intent. This is what happened in August 1918 at the battle of Amiens. The British breakthrough so unnerved the war lords, Hindenburg and Ludendorf, that they advised the Kaiser the war must be ended as they could no longer guarantee the capacity of the Army to continue.

The German army had a lot of fight left in it as was shown in the aftermath of Amiens. The German population was suffering under the twin scourges of the "famine blockade" and the coming of the great flu pandemic, but the army could have kept on keeping on just as the Americans and the Allies expected. But, nerve once lost, political will once abandoned, cannot be regained. The road to Allied victory was paved by the weak knees of the German High Command.

The US lost its war in Vietnam through a case of self-inflicted enervation. This does not excuse nor ignore the raw fact that the US military fought the war in the wrong way so as to hand the political will advantage to the North Vietnamese. Nor were the antiwar protesters in and of themselves particularly responsible for the loss of political will stateside.

The sapping of American political will came from a complex of reasons poorly understood at the time and not deeply investigated by historians through the present. Basically, the combination of the draft, high American body counts, and the absence of any particular likelihood of anything approximating success were responsible for the steady loss of political will. Americans were used to "crusades" against an identifiable "evil" enemy against which we would muster all our strength and see "good" prevail in short order. We were not particularly enthused with limited wars in support of policy as the Korean War had shown a few years earlier.

Political will is a tough critter to target. This is particularly true when the enemy is a set of self-organizing groups bound together by nothing more tangible than a series of religiously rooted beliefs. In comparison to the motley and ever changing assemblage of Islamist jihadist groups and their individual members, the US is a soft target for enervation.

Absent the spur of an attack upon us or strong, decisive leadership capable of articulating a compelling reason for continuing a seemingly endless war with no prospect of anything approaching a "victory," American political will is fragile, easily enervated.

It is not surprising that support for the war in Afghanistan is slowly dropping. The surprise is that it lasted this long.

The US will not win against the Islamist jihadists whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere by enervating their political will--at least not in the foreseeable future. We can, however, defeat ourselves by losing our political will.

The real foreign policy challenge for President Obama and the others in his administration is not the specifics of a strategy for Afghanistan where success will remain quite elusive if one wants success to be defined by a Taliban surrender or the creation of a fully functioning state governed from Kabul. The real challenge is maintaining the political will of We the People lest we travel the avenue to victory called "enervation"--a victory for the jihadists.

Then There Is (Always) Hugo Chavez

It's hard to know whether to see the humor in Hugo (Mouth of the South) Chavez or not.

On the one hand, the man's gift for verbosity, which was exhibited in all its varied moods not only at the UN General Assembly but in his one-on-one interview with Larry King, provides much ground for amusement.

On the other, this self-anointed successor to Fidel Castro and single-handed inventor of the latest gimcrack form of "socialism" dubbed "Bolivarianism," has shown a definite propensity for authoritarianism, suppression, and regional troublemaking.

His anti-Americanism is rather much standard issue and nothing to be particularly concerned over. His Yankee bashing plays well with his base and helps divert attention from the decaying economy. There is no surprise that Chavez has blamed that on the US as if the US alone has caused the global decline in oil prices, a reality which has hit Venezuela hard.

Chavez needs the myth of the US-as-Empire in order to keep his hands on the levers of power. This is why he has pumped the recent not-quite-finalized agreement between the US and Columbia to allow US drug enforcement efforts including those of the military to be based on seven Columbian military installations into a full-fledged invasion threat.

Without the scary Americans, questions might be asked even among Venezuela's poorest people--Chavez' base--about why he is spending a couple of billion scarce bucks on Russian arms rather than on them. A Latin American dictator has historically possessed two choices if he wanted to stay in power. The first was to proclaim his wedding to the anti-Communist status quo and get the unquestioning support of American administrations one after the other. The second option was to announce often and loudly that "The Yankees are coming! The Marines are landing! The CIA is trying to kill me!"

Chavez took the second route even though the Clinton administration treated him with the kindest of kid gloves and the Obama administration is doing likewise. The man in the middle, George W. Bush, did not and that was a mistake. The animus held by the Bush/Cheney administration for any anti-American leftist with a large mouth provided Chavez with all the material he needed to play repression as self-defense against the empire.

Probably more through preoccupation with matters of larger import than the coming of the Hugo Chavez Bolivarian Revolution, the Clinton White House and State Department rather ignored Venezuela. This was the best course to take. It should have been followed by the Bush/Cheney crew as well, but, blinded as always by neocon ideology, they took the Mouth of the South seriously. By doing so they transformed Chavez from an irrelevancy to a problem.

During the years of Bush/Cheney, Chavez not only tied himself to the aging "socialists" of Cuba and Nicaragua, but to a pair of ideological companions, Ewo Morales, the elected Los Indios jefe grande of Bolivia and Rafael Correa, the US educated economist turned Ecuadorian president. The "Bolivarian Revolution" had two bloodless conquests and now had to be taken seriously as a political force in South America.

The "Bolivarian" movement promises "Socialism For the Twenty-First Century" but so far seems to be the same old sort of destroy-the-bourgeois-raise-the-proletariat approach to economic, social, and political life. The "Bolivarian" version does have the add-on of oil and natural gas which should provide the "socialists" of all three countries with the means to alleviate poverty, end illiteracy, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and generally bring the paradise on Earth which"socialism" always promises those on the bottom of the heap.

In the past the advent of a socialist regime has generally meant the enhancement of government power, the increasing restrictions of customary rights and immunities enjoyed by citizens, a hike in "defense" expenditures, and breathless "revolutionary" oratory in all the official media. This pattern has been followed by all three members of the Chavez headed "Bolivarian" movement.

Social unrest, middle-class flight, and the other usual accessories of a socialist takeover have also been observed in all three countries with Venezuela exhibiting them to the greatest degree. How any of this has benefited the "wretched" of each is unclear. Perhaps saying, "Well, he is one of us, one of the poor, a man of the masses," makes up for continued inequalities of economic and political power and social status. Perhaps it even provides comfort when stores lack milk or other basic commodities. (No, Hugo, the US didn't do that either.)

The US and other Western countries have much to answer for in South America given the overall impact of "globalization" and "de-regulation" on the people in a number of South American countries. The rush to globalization, which started in the Clinton administration and continued with some acceleration under its successors, did much damage to those least able to absorb it throughout much of South America.

It is not surprising that many accepted that change, radical change, was called for in the wake of "privatization" and its handmaiden "globalization." It is unfortunate, and for the US a potentially major problem that the radical change taken brought ambitious strongmen typified by Hugo Chavez to power.

Chavez has established relations with both Iran and its proxy Hezbollah so as to establish outposts of state sponsored Islamist jihadism in the Western Hemisphere--which is a threat compared to which the supposed threat posed by Communist Cuba pales into deserved insignificance. He has clear ambitions of becoming some sort of leader in the global South.

The recently concluded Second South America-Africa Summit held in Venezuela and graced by such as Colonel Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is a fine demonstration of this. It is easy, quite tempting really, to toss off this grandiose meeting as being irrelevant.

The easy temptation must be resisted. There is quite a bit of barely concealed frustration, pent up hostility, resident in both South America and Africa. The totem of victim status is waved quickly, easily, and with great effect by leaders from these regions. The message of both Chavez and Gaddafi that the "imperial nations" owe compensation for the presumed exploitation of their colonial adventures has wide appeal. The increasing populations and decreasing prices for agricultural and extracted commodities have combined to generate increasing poverty and its concomitants, resentment and envy in many places in both continents.

Hugo Chavez has shown a real ability at exploiting and capitalizing upon latent resentments, unsuppressed envy, and hardly covert hatred. He is young, ambitious beyond measure, and highly able. He is more of a regional politician than Fidel Castro ever was. His internal politics and external diplomacy shows that.

Managing the problems and mitigating the potential threat presented by Chavez is a genuine challenge for the Obama administration and State Department. Benign neglect will no longer suffice as it did in the days of Bill Clinton. The opposition of the Bush/Cheney period would be counterproductive. What remains is the middle path of accepting Chavez as a fact on the ground while letting him know politely but unmistakably that there are lines he cannot cross without severe consequences.

Hugo Chavez said both at the UNGA and on the Larry King broadcast that he wants to be treated with respect, the respect of an equal. Take him at his word. Let him know there are limits and what the limits are. Let him know what the consequences will be if he violates the limits.

After all, friends treat friends with honesty, Hugo.

The Proof Is In The Plots

As has been the case through human history, today's confrontation between the American and other governments and the Islamist jihadists of the world is a battle between central authority and self-organizing groups. In this contest, the advantage, or at least the initiative, rests with the self-organizing entities.

Less abstractly, the recent Islamist jihadist terror plots show that the enemy is not, as Joe Biden and President Obama would have it, simply al-Qaeda. Nor is the enemy solely the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan, important as those areas are as places of training and indoctrination.

The enemy facing the US, and much of the rest of the world as well, is Islamist jihadism. The enemy is intangible but real. It is, at root an idea. But, ideas must exist first if action is to come later.

There have been a few attempts to link the individuals arrested in New York, Colorado, Illinois, Texas, and North Carolina by means of socio-economic speculations. People excluded from the American dream according to one CNN "expert" yesterday serves as one example of the species.

While the Jordanian illegal alien arrested in Texas and the American prison convert to Islam popped in the second of two sting operations might fairly be seen as marginal members of American life and society, the same cannot be written of the men arrested in Colorado and New York. It is beyond the realm of fact to claim the North Carolina men arrested last month were among the wretched of the Earth.

As has been argued so many times, by so many people, in so many fora, the socio-economic explanations for adherence to the ideas behind Islamist jihadism simply do not work. They do not accurately nor completely address the skein of motivations behind the wannabe martyr.

The only thing in common, the only bind between the men arrested in the US over the past month, is True Belief in one particular interpretation of Islam. This is also the only thing held in common by the Islamist jihadists of 9/11, of 7/7, of Madrid, of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, al-Shaabab in Somalia, the assorted terror groups in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere around the world.

Islamist jihadism is the idea around which individuals and groups organize. It is the central, the critical axis without which the terror could not, would not exist.

It is important to understand that the terror tactics employed by Islamist jihadists are rooted in soil fundamentally unlike that which has given rise to previous practitioners of the dark arts of terror. Whether the anarchists of a century and more ago or the more recent traditional terrorists of the assorted Palestinian entities such as Fatah, the motivation was purely political, and the goal was the removal of a particular regime or set of regimes.

Classic terror groups were quite secular.

Classic terror groups self-organized around a specific political ideology and pursued a specific political goal. Even the anarchists who walked a very bloody path for a couple of decades had a particular goal in mind: the removal of governments. Other groups best typified by those which organized in the wake of the Six Day War had a very limited (if equally impossible) goal: the ejection of Israel from the occupied territories.

At the beginning, even al-Qaeda was more secular than religious in its stated goals. Taking Osama bin Laden at his word, the goals of al-Qaeda in the mid-Nineties were limited to the ejection of the US from the Land of the Two Mosques, ending US support for Israel, and ending the "apostate" rule of Saudi Arabia. Religion per se played only a supporting role in the early days of bin Laden's war against the US and its "puppets" in the Mideast.

These rather abstract goals were mighty thin gruel on which to nourish an organization which called upon its adherents to die. As the months and then the years went by, the religious focus of the al-Qaeda message went front and center. No longer were the goals confined to the merely political, the mundanely secular.

Now the name of the game was Furthering The True Faith. No longer was it sufficient that the US take its forces out of Saudi Arabia or even toss Israel to the Arab wolves. Now it was necessary for the US and all those who lived there to sincerely repent, and, (drum roll, please) convert to Islam. The American eagle must exalt the One True Faith.

The putting of Islam at the center of the message allowed further self-organizing even when al-Qaeda was reduced to fugitive status seeking shelter in the FATA. Being a totalistic belief system in which there can be no distinction between faith and politics, faith and the individual, faith and the community, Islam lends itself quite well to the needs of an incomplete personality.

Putting it simply, an incomplete personality is one which has no sound, well-defined sense of personal identity. The incomplete personality seeks completion, seeks the establishment of a powerful sense of personal identity in some idea existing outside himself. Islam, particularly that of the Wahhibist or Salifist sort, is particularly attractive to the incomplete personality as it promises a degree of certitude, a sense of completion, and a totality of identity that cannot be equaled by any other belief or ideology.

Beneath the surface differences, the men arrested in the US over the past month have something very basic in common not only with each other but with the Islamist jihadists everywhere. They are incomplete personalities who discovered a compelling and fulfilling sense of personal identity and worth through becoming True Believers. True Believers in not simply Islam, but that particularly demanding form of Islam--Islamist jihadism.

None of these men needed to be recruited let alone directed by some central authority. They did not need to shake hands with a recruiter for al-Qaeda. They needed only exposure to the ideas comprising Islamist jihadism.

The same is true of the Islamist jihadist groups which jointly are dubbed "Taliban." It has been well understood for some time that there was no single, monolithic entity behind the name but rather an assemblage of groups having different goals in detail, following different local leaders, pursuing different tactics, but all united by the belief in Islamist jihadism.

Only the idea is necessary to create the appearance of joint action by many controlled by a central authority. We need to get a grip on a couple of ground truths here.

The first is that Islam in and of itself, common, everyday Islam has a very real power for many people around the world. It gives a sense of community, a feeling of belonging to something far larger than the mere individual which is not surpassed by any other religion and equaled by few. The totalistic nature of Islam assures that people know their roles in life and are comfortable with that knowledge. It's emphasis on justice (at least rhetorically) reassures those who see themselves as the victims of injustice.

Islamist jihadism adds to this powerful mix a message of self-sacrifice for the greatest of Great Causes--the defense and advancement of Islam. It also promises eternal reward for that sacrifice which is no small matter given the fear of eternal hell which is so much a part of Islam's preaching.

Humanity has long been marked by a willingness, even eagerness, on the part of individuals to die in the service of a great, compelling, and totalistic idea. Islamist jihadism simply continues the pattern with a particular focus on dieing in the process of killing the enemies of Islam.

The pervasiveness and power of the ideas constituting Islamist jihadism render the existence of a central command and control authority both unnecessary, and, arguably, undesirable. The ideas of Islamist jihadism are both quite powerful and highly personal. They provide for ready volunteers but not sheep commanded to the slaughter. Each jihadi makes his own decision, keeps his own council, joins associates as a purely volitional action. He does not need a commander. At most he needs only a local leader. More generally he needs only a symbol.

Osama bin Laden is such a symbol. That is and has been his only role for years now. Even if he were to be killed or, worse, captured, his value as a symbol would not be decreased. It would only be enhanced. This is why specifically targeting him is conterproductive: When we place value on the symbol it benefits only the symbol.

The power of the ideas underlying the term Islamist jihadism has been shown with undeniable drama since they emerged from the shadows of Islam a couple of decades ago. These ideas are not either countered or destroyed easily.

This means the self-organizing Islamist jihadist group or adherent is particularly difficult to defeat. Each one must be neutralized in a retail way. And, for each neutralized, at least in the short- to mid-term, others will emerge.

Only persistence of the most extreme sort will do the job. However, persistence alone is not enough. The US and other governments must learn and acknowledge as must We the People that ideas, even ones such as those underlying Islamist jihadism which are repugnant to us, are possessed of a terrific amount of power and appeal.

Islamist jihadism and its violent excrescences will be with us a long, very long time. Not until their appeal is so undercut by failure that they disappear on their own will we be rid of the incomplete personality who seeks True Belief driven completion by dropping a skyscraper, destroying a subway, or flying an airliner into the side of a building.

Hey! Who ever said life would be a pleasant walk in the sunshine of a forever Spring.

Stand By For More Vietnam Comparisons

The long awaited request from General Stanley McChrystal for more troops has (sort of) arrived. At least it has been presented to JCS Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen in Germany. The Voice of America report states that General McChrystal has requested as many as forty thousand more pairs of boots on the ground. The WaPo gives no precise figure.

If customary practice has been followed, the request will contain several different force packages so that the risks and benefits of each can be assessed up the chain of command. In any event, the requested force would be on top of the sixty-eight thousand scheduled to be in-country by the end of the year. Thus, even at the maximum, the total number of American military personnel in Afghanistan would be 108,000. This is well below the maximum in Iraq and a mere fraction--roughly a fifth of the maximum deployed in Vietnam.

It is inevitable that comparisons with Vietnam will be made by the historically illiterate in Congress and within the chattering and academic classes (including journalists not even born by the time of the infamous Tet Offensive.) Most of these comparisons will ring in the combination of the Tet Offensive and the Westmoreland request for an additional 100,000 men, which was denied by President Johnson.

It is important to recall that the Tet Offensive gained its political and psychological power because it came soon after the highly positive "Report to the Nation" offered by the top US military commander in the theater, General William Westmoreland. His statements both in Congressional testimony and on a wall-to-wall media blitz were both optimistic and unjustified as the now declassified intelligence materials of the day show.

When the Viet Cong staged simultaneous attacks in all of South Vietnam's major cities including a tour d' theatre by penetrating the US embassy in Saigon, these were seen through the prism of Westmoreland's jolly, upbeat assessment. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that the VC were not only defeated by US and South Vietnamese forces but virtually obliterated as a viable military force.

When General Westmoreland requested another 100,000 men, he properly emphasized that this augmentation would allow more dramatic and successful offensive operations against the North Vietnamese army while continuing the counter-Viet Cong campaign and necessary defensive deployments. Whether the granting of the requested augmentation would have changed the endgame of the US wars in Vietnam is a question hotly debated by historians of the war. Suffice it to say that there is no rewind function in the great tape recorder of history.

The validity of the Vietnam analogy is called into question immediately by the vast gulf separating the grimly realistic assessment of the war offered by General McChrystal and that offered by General Westmoreland. There is no false or unsupported optimism in the McChrystal view. There is no reason to conclude that there is a light at the end of the tunnel absent the requested augmentation.

Another factor vitiating the analogy is the lack (so far) of a Taliban version of the Tet Offensive. Nor is one really in the cards. Taliban might be able to stage a mediagenic series of suicide bomb attacks directed at soft or semi-soft targets, but it cannot pull off what the much larger, much better equipped and combat competent Viet Cong sapper teams did at Tet. Another reason for arguing against a Taliban Tet is simply that intelligence is better employed, less polluted by commander's desires, and far more comprehensive than that which existed in Vietnam on the eve of Tet.

Still another reason for decrying the Vietnam analogy is the reality of the US forces fighting in Afghanistan. Unlike Vietnam, the men and women in Afghanistan today are volunteers, not draftees. A major mistake of the planners of Vietnam was the use of draftees, but none saw the consequences of relying on the same mechanism which served so well in World War II and Korea. A final reason for rejecting the Vietnam analogy is simply that the US losses over the eight years of war are far, far below those incurred in Vietnam over the same period, barely one percent of the Vietnam butcher's bill through today.

While historians both professional and amateur can debate the consequences of LBJ not providing the augmentation desired by Westmoreland, there is little, if any, reason to doubt General McChrystal's conclusion that without the additional combat forces, there is a high probability of the US and its allies suffering a military defeat at the hands of Taliban and the other Islamist jihadists in Afghanistan.

There. The Geek has laid the Vietnam analogy to rest before the quackers have brought it forward. He will have nothing more to say on that particular subject. That ought to make you happy.

The "Quito Declaration" Has Implications For US

An important conference happed earlier this week in Quito, Ecuador (the home turf of Rafael Correa, a stalwart of the "Bolivarian" movement headed by Hugo Chavez.) It was not covered by the MSM. It should have been. It was important.

The event was the Ninth Annual South American Conference on Migration. At the end of the proceedings, the delegates approved the Quito Declaration.

In principle, the Declaration provides for a single integrated citizenship for all those living in the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR.) The stated intent is that the provisions of the Declaration will extend to all of Latin America.

A Bolivian delegate stated that the Declaration was essential "to face the nations of the north." The US is one of those nations. Perhaps the most important if one is a Latin American seeking a better future.

Certainly, this is the view of Central American governments from Mexico on south. The demands that the US liberalize its immigration policies--not requests, not suggestions, not diplomatic hints: demands--have been coming from that direction for a long time now. From the perspective of these governments, the US is the safety valve on the local pressure cookers.

As violent crime flourishes beyond all past experience throughout Central America, driven in large part by the expansion of the Mexican narco-trafficking cartels into new geographic areas and new forms of criminal enterprise, the need for a safety valve has been seen as growing by the day. Delegations of Central American legislators have joined with their countries' diplomats in seeking fast action on the immigration reform effort by either or both Congress and President Obama.

The Quito Declaration will be an important part of the immigration reform effort as the unnamed Bolivian delegate made plain. The view from down South is simply that open borders are a good idea--for the US. It is a clear fact that Mexico and other Central and South American countries deal with illegal aliens far more expeditiously (and harshly) than does the US. Even the Quito Declaration is unlikely to change this in practice no matter how lofty the sentiments expressed in the document might read.

Governments sitting on pressure cookers look to their own protection first, foremost, and always. Inevitably, the result will be actions which protect to the maximum extent possible the local status quo, economically, socially, and, most importantly, politically. This is why the notion of open borders as the ultimate goal of immigration reform in the US is so attractive. And, why they will not exist in the near future anywhere in Central and South America, the Quito Declaration to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Quito Declaration will be brought to the Third Global Forum On Migration in Athens. It has already been endorsed by the International Organization For Migration's Deputy Director General, Laura Thompson. The International Organization For Migration (IOM) has been around since 1951 and has been the leading international outfit promoting freedom of migration.

The IOM has done a lot of good for migrants over the years. It does, however, have one important drawback. The IOM has never met an immigration control or limitation statute which it likes.

A fundamental, arguably, the fundamental requirement of national sovereignty is control of borders. This brings with it the right and authority to control who crosses the borders and for what reason and with what degree of legality. Unless a state can control both its borders and the nature of citizenship, it has no meaningful degree of sovereignty.

In a real but usually overlooked sense, the conquest of the native Americans by the interloping Europeans was a record of what happens when a nation has no concept of statehood--statehood with definable and enforced borders. Regardless of any other achievement, the inhabitants of what is now the United States had no concept of land belonging to one particular nation. No concept of borders. No concept that borders defined the sweep of authority, the sweep of right belonging to a people.

The Native Americans lacked the experience based moxie to demand that the passengers of the Mayflower show their visas, take out citizenship papers and become landed immigrants. The Europeans already knew that borders mattered. They knew the relation between sovereignty and borders. That was why they fought so many wars--seeking to redraw the map, redefine the borders.

The notion of open borders or even that of easy routes to citizenship for those who have violated borders is antithetical to the sovereign existence of a state. It condemns the nation-state to retreat to the status of nation alone, or, to put it bluntly, a tribe.

The same speciously attractive notion overturns the long standing political compact between a citizenry and a government, which holds that government is responsible for protecting the lives, property, and, by extension in recent decades, the future economic and social security of the citizen. By easing paths to citizenship for those who have entered the US illegally, or by failure to adequately protect the borders against illegal incursion, the Federal government fails in one of its primary duties.

To the governments of Central or South America with the pressure cooker boiling beneath them, the duty of the US government to its citizens is of no import whatsoever. Their primary duties are to themselves and, perhaps secondarily, their citizens. Thus the Quito Declaration is far more likely to be honored in the breech in the land(s) of its birth than to be a weapon ultimately directed against the United States.

It is of little or no importance to the governments of Latin America or the idealists of globalization including the IOM that the US or Western Europe for that matter cannot absorb all those who might wish to find an allegedly better future here. The days of seemingly unlimited employment in the ever-expanding economies of the North--including the US--are over. Dead.

Killed by the combination of global population growth, exportation of jobs overseas, technological transformation, and, most recently, the lingering effects of the Great Recession. Even employers in the American service and construction sectors will have to acknowledge this new reality and seek employees from sources other than illegal immigrants.

This means the governments sitting on the assorted pressure cookers of Latin America will have to look to themselves--and foreign investment--to address the underlying problems which produce the heat under the pot. They will have to address the inherent inequalities of economy, society, and polity rather than hope to force the US into adopting an open border policy under whatsoever guise.

The new realities of life also dictate that the "progressives" of the American chattering, academic, and political elite will have to abandon their notions regarding the need for open borders--or anything approximating that idea. If nothing else, these worthies would be well advised to consider the recent arrest of an illegal immigrant from Jordan who was beavering away in the effort to blow up a sixty story building in Dallas.

Borders are real. They exist for real purposes. They define a nation and the state that nation created to advance and defend its collective interests. They are not mere lines on a map or in the sand of the Southwest. Borders are us, We the People. They are the perimeter by which We the People, our hopes and fears, loves and hates are defined.

That is why they must be defended--even against the Quito Declaration.

The Rush To Come (Sort Of) Clean By Iran

The Iranian government, after having determined that the jig was up, finally came clean to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding their long suspected second centrifuge facility. Of course, the mullahocracy only spilled the beans because they hoped to benefit from this exercise in preemptive honesty.

Lost in the brouhaha which has surrounded both the Iranian effort at long delayed honesty and the Presidential statement accusing Iran of having suffered a deficiency in candor is the underlying fact that Islam, particularly that of the Shia flavor, is unique among monotheistic faiths by endorsing the practice of lying in order to advance the interests of the belief or protect the believer. More than most states, the semi-theocracy of Iran has a firm justification for lying. And, they act on that justification with both skill and inventiveness.

The Iranians have also shown an unexpected bit of creativity in their request that the US (or presumably some other member of the P5+1) sell them a bit of moderately enriched uranium for their elderly US furnished research reactor. The aging machine has used all the stockpile of twenty percent enriched uranium and needs a refill.

This request presents the Obama administration with a pretty conundrum. Providing the moderately enriched uranium would, of course, violate the current sanction regime--all the more so given the Security Council passage the other day of the tougher add-on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT.) But not providing the stuff justifies the Iranians taking some of their current stockpile of low enriched uranium and spinning it up to the higher concentration--or beyond.

The impasse over the twenty percent solution will give the P5+1 little, if any additional leverage in the upcoming talks with Iran. Whatever additional leverage is provided to the anti-nuclear group comes from the acknowledgement by Iran of its second enrichment plant.

This pleasant fact has already manifested itself with Russia. The long-time diplomatic protector of Iran and its ambitions has been sidling a bit closer to the additional sanction position espoused by the US, Britain, and France. The Kremlin now proclaims itself, in the manner of the French police commander in the movie Casablanca, to be "shocked, shocked," at the revelations.

This development implies that China might sit on its hands and abstain in the Security Council if and when a vote on additional sanctions is taken. An abstention would make Beijing appear to be somewhat on the side of the anti-Iran nuclear forces while not actually requiring it to abide by the sanctions.

The Russian position is that while sanctions don't work, they might be necessary in the present case. This finely nuanced view takes proper account of reality. The present triple whammy of sanctions would have put excruciating pressure on Iran had the countries of the European Union actually enforced them.

Even France, whose president, Nicholas Sarkozy has become famous for lambasting the Iranians and their newly "re-elected" Orator-in-Chief, has viewed sanctions so dimly that the businesses of the country do well over a billion bucks a year in sales to the mullahs and their henchmen. The same is true with Germany--which pronounced itself "disturbed" by the Iranian revelations but is the charter member and biggest profiteer in the "Billion Dollar Club" of those trading with Iran.

It can be argued effortlessly that should the members of the EU cease all investment in Iran, this would place crippling pressure on the regime and its industrial base--including the local version of the "military-industrial complex." However, the hoary Lenin Doctrine--"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we hang them"--continues to apply without exception.

Beyond even the barest hint of a shadow of doubt, the Iranians will continue their so far successful approach of very limited concessions, endless palaver, and boasts of "cutting off the hands of any who would attack," while the centrifuges spin first to five percent and then, who knows, to twenty percent and far beyond. Absent truly crushing sanctions including the total cessation of investment and trade by the West, there will be no realistic probability of diplomatic engagement bearing useful results.

The pervasive fear in the Obama administration--and elsewhere in the West--is that actual, painful, long-term sanctions will rally the Iranian people behind the mullahs and their "democratically" elected stooges. There is a real ground historically for this fear.

This fear has been attenuated at least somewhat by the continuing internal dissent ignited by the blatantly hijacked presidential election. The pain of genuine sanctions, perhaps even including foodstuffs (from which the US benefited last year to the tune of more than eight hundred million dollars) would have just as much likelihood of strengthening the dissidents as solidifying the public behind Ahmedinejad and Khamenei. It is a fact that nuclear weapons are not edible--nor do they serve as motor vehicle fuel, and national pride does not compensate for the lack of jobs.

Iran has given the rest of the world--or at least that part which agrees with President Obama's statement that "a nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable"--very little in the option department. The imposition of an end of the year deadline means that the time when push comes to shove is very, very close. This means that the US, France, Britain, and other nations must reach a consensus soon on the choice between what would amount to a full blockade of Iran and what is euphemistically termed "the military option."

Of course, recent history shows that resorting to the former does not obviate the latter. The US imposed the financial equivalent of a physical blockade of Imperial Japan in the early Fall of 1941. Roughly three months later the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor.

No one in the US sought war with Japan on that long ago day. It came uninvited but clearly foreseeably as a direct result of the choice our sanctions placed before the Imperial Japanese government--a humiliating capitulation to American policy demands or war with a superior power. The Japanese hoped that the US was so preoccupied with affairs in Europe that it would accept an accomplished feat in the Pacific. They were wrong.

Really tough sanctions, the equivalent of a physical blockade, would provide Tehran with the same set of choices. Quite possibly the mullahs and their frontmen would conclude that the US and others were so preoccupied with affairs in the Mideast, Afghanistan, and in the recovery from the Great Recession that even relatively minor responses to the "blockade" such as a cranking up of the assorted terror specialists would preclude a genuine military effort by the US and others.

Sometimes a appeal to the gods of war is preferable to the appearance and consequences of a humiliating surrender to the dictates of outsiders.

Maybe this is the foreign policy challenge, Joe Biden warned us about.

Whatever Happened To "Comprehensive Peace?"

After all the hoopla, all the hype, all the No More Settlements! declarations, after all the pressure, what is going on with the Obama administration's quest for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Mideast? The short answer is, nothing.

The President and his foreign policy crew have shown remarkable naivete regarding the relations of Israel, the "Palestinians," and the rest of the Arab states. Perhaps it is unfair to characterize the Nice Young Man From Chicago and the Not So Nice Older Woman From New York as "naive." It would be more apropos to describe them as having accepted the post-Intifada new narrative of Israel-as-bully.

Admittedly, the new narrative crafted by an interesting assortment of liberals and cultural relativists has more than a small grain of truth. The grain grows to almost boulder size when considering the territories occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six Day War.

It is important to recall two important facts regarding the Six Day War and its aftermath. They are critical in understanding both the old narrative, Israel-as-victim and the new one, Israel-as-bully.

The administration of Lyndon Johnson knew the war was coming months, even years before the Israeli government took advantage of the precipitant actions of Egyptian dictator Nasser to justify a "defensive" preemptive war. The Johnson administration had been warned within the context of the Israeli request for long-range fighter/bombers and main battle tanks in 1964 by both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA that the Israeli Defense Forces would launch an attack against the Arab "frontline" states as soon as the equipment was fully integrated.

(The JCS recommended substituting shorter range jets and tanks which would have met Israeli defense needs but lacked the ranges necessary for offensive operations. The administration ignored the suggestion.)

The Johnson administration also knew (or should have known) from CIA and State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research reports that the government of Israel was of the habit of creating "facts on the ground" which served to render negotiations nugatory. The implication was simple: If sufficient time elapsed between the taking of land and the end stage of negotiations, the government of Israel would assure the creation of facts on the ground which had the effect of nullifying the results of diplomacy.

There was no legitimate reason for the Johnson administration to have been taken by surprise by the commencement of the Six Day War or by the unwillingness of the government of Israel to respond positively to either UN resolutions or the importuning of the administration that land be exchanged for peace. The IDF acted as predicted during the war. The government of Israel acted as predicted during both the runup to the war and its aftermath.

The Israeli position regarding the West Bank and the Golan Heights at the time and for all the weary talk-filled decades subsequently was that the territory taken and occupied was utterly essential for the physical security of Israel. The military technology of the time certainly provided a plausible justification for the Israeli refusal to surrender the land in exchange for anything other than an enforceable comprehensive peace.

All the while, particularly after the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government created facts on the ground in both the West Bank and Golan Heights. The "settlements" as these new urban centers were charmingly entitled as if they were small, temporary frontier shantytowns, were crafted with both military and diplomatic imperatives in mind.

Militarily, they provided means of both local defense and canalization of presumed armored thrusts from Jordan into pre-arranged killing zones. Diplomatically, the investment in the "settlements" provided a means of assuring that negotiations would never provide for the return of the previously sparsely or unoccupied real estate to either Jordan or some hypothetical "Palestinian" state.

Yitzhak Shamir made his long career as Israeli Prime Minister on the basis of talking-while-building. Benjamin Netanyahu studied at the master's feet. Talk, talk and build. Build worked then--and now, as the Obama administration has found out to its discomfort and dismay.

The brutal reality is that Israel contemplated expansionist war, prepared for it, and, when a proper, plausible pretext arrived, waged it. The Six Day War was a land grabbing deal. Period.

Had the US been in a position to back the UN resolutions with pressure of its own before facts were planted all over the occupied territories, there is reason to believe that a comprehensive Mideast peace might have been worked out. Not a lot of reasons, to be sure, but some.

Domestic political considerations including the wavering support for the already seemingly endless Vietnam War nudged the Johnson administration and its follow-on, the Nixon Gang, to lean only very, very lightly on Israel. Encouraged by the constant US support, the government of Israel stopped talking in a meaningful way about retreating from the occupied territories and kept on building.

The same combination of domestic political considerations and Israeli genius for talking only to undercut any potential benefit from the talks by building operated throughout the next two decades. Sure, Israel did return the Sinai in return for the cold peace it has had with Egypt, but the notion of keeping the Sinai in perpetuity never crossed the Israeli governments' collective minds. And, it gave a nice gloss to the notion that Israel really wanted peace with its neighbors.

Throughout these years the American (and to a major extent, European) liberal constituency accepted the Israel-as-victim narrative. The sea change in view started with the dramatic imagery coming from the First Intifada. Coming as they did after the controversial Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its concomitants including the refugee camp massacres and the exposure of American troops to terrorist bombs, the visuals from the First Intifada made thinking of Israel as the Seven Hundred Pound Gorilla permissible.

Had Arafat and his fellow Fatahmen been at all competent at the negotiation game in Oslo and elsewhere, they would have been able to get a better deal at the table--even offset some, but certainly not all, of the advantages gained by the Israeli "settlement" policy. They weren't. Indeed, Arafat and company set a record for sheer incompetence in negotiation which has never been equaled by the Bozos of the current Abbas directed Palestinian Authority.

Despite the sheer lack of Arab skills in the assorted rounds of talks from Madrid to Annapolis and regardless of the degree of external support offered by foreign interlocutors, the Arabs have been the continued beneficiaries of the new, post-First Intifada narrative, Israel-as-(intransigent) bully.

The Obama administration entered the fray with whoops and hollars, most notably the demand that Israel end the "settlement" construction. Worse, there has been a set of mixed messages coming from the mouth of the President personally, including ones delivered at the UN over the past twenty-four or so hours.

Is the US demanding a (temporary or permanent) end to "settlement" construction? Is it requiring a rollback of the several hundred thousand Israelis from the "settlements" erected on the (arguably) illegally occupied territory of the West Bank? If so, is the US taking the position that the buildings, the infrastructure, be turned over to the Palestinian Authority as a turn key proposition? With compensation or without? The hazy, even contradictory language used by Mr Obama and others in his administration leave all interpretations equally open--which is fatal to meaningful negotiations.

Hard cases--those where equal amounts of justice sit on both sides--make not only for bad law, they make for very bad policy. Forty years ago, even thirty, the idea of an Israeli rollback would have been both just and logical. Today, the concept of rollback is neither just nor logical. And, it is not practicable in that Israel is not about to either (forcibly) evacuate several hundred thousand of its citizens from the "settlements" or turn the physical plant over to the Palestinian Authority.

This means any sort of "return to the pre-1967 borders" is as likely as whales flying. It also implies that stopping the admittedly highly elastic "natural growth" of these "settlements" is not probable. The Obama administration was pursuing a red herring in this context.

A contiguous Palestinian Authority state can be created using the current "facts on the ground." It will not be all that the Palestinian Authority and its citizens might want, or even, from the perspective of abstract justice, they might deserve. But it would be better than the current situation of turbulence.

In return, the government of Israel might have to drop its demand that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a "Jewish State." It might even imply that the government of Israel drop its not illegitimate requirement that the new Palestinian Authority state be de-militarized, although that proviso is well justified by the reality seen in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It is not a perfect exchange, but it seems to be one which is good enough. In diplomacy more than most areas of human endeavor, the perfect is always the enemy of the good--or good enough.

In any event if the Obama administration is to have more effect than its predecessors on the endless "Mideast peace process," it must abandon both the old and new narratives. Israel--and the Palestinians--are neither bullies nor victims. One is a sovereign state. The other is a pretender to that status. This means that neither can be seen in stereotyped human terms.

Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have a single coinciding national interest. Both would live a lot better if they both lived in peace. Trading land for peace is the only way to get to that national interest in the real world. The Palestinian Authority will have to accept the "settlements" as facts on the ground and make the best territorial deal it can. Israel will have to drop the peripheral issues such as "Jewish state" and even de-militarization.

The Obama administration will have to stop pressuring Israel. And, not pressure the Abbas crowd. This is a time and place--unlike Burma--where engagement rather than coercion, where inducements, even bribery, is preferable if results are wanted rather than threats, sanctions, boycotts, or the other impedimenta of pressure.

And, the President should remember--and remind his people--this is a normal part of dealings in diplomacy, particularly diplomacy in the Mideast where the clocks sometimes seem to run in reverse.

Joe Biden! Get A Grip On Reality!

Former senator Joe Biden is once more exhibiting his ability to put forward policy options which are appealing, plausible, and dangerously superficial. As Vice President, Mr Biden is using his status as a foreign policy "expert" to oppose any escalation of the US force structure in Afghanistan. Instead, Mr Biden wants to focus on destroying al-Qaeda in the FATA of Pakistan.

Given the rapidly depleting American political will to continue the long war in Afghanistan and the strong need of the "progressives" within the Democratic Party to save money in the real world so as to spend it on the Great Agenda of Transformation, it is not surprising that Mr Biden has advanced his policy option. He is, after all, "progressive" to the core. He also has a finger constantly extended to the fickle winds of We the People.

The problem with the Biden Approach is that it misses the nature and character of the enemy. While al-Qaeda was the force behind the attacks of 9/11 and remains an icon for the Islamist jihadist movement around the world, it is not the main enemy. Nor has it ever had the status of being the only enemy of the US involved intimately in the attacks that bright and sunny September day.

The Taliban regime of Omar was equally culpable of the original offense against the US. The Taliban of Omar refused diplomatic requests that it turn over Osama bin Laden and others of the al-Qaeda leadership cadre. Omar and his associates made the refusal based upon their interpretation of the Islamic requirements that the "host" protect, aid, and comfort the "guest." In the view of Taliban, Osama and his coterie of jihadists were "guests" of the Taliban and thus merited full protection.

Joe Biden is a lawyer--as are so many of the Obama administration--and should know that the actions of Taliban, which were predicated upon advanced knowledge of the impending attack, constitute those necessary to meet the definitions of criminal conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and a bunch of other legal no-nos. As such, the Taliban is as much the main enemy as is al-Qaeda.

Beyond that sort of pettifogging detail, the real, the bona fide, the authentic enemy of the US is not simply al-Qaeda per se. Nor is it Taliban in and of itself. The enemy of the US--and most of the world as well--is the overall Islamist jihadist movement.

While the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden, Omar of the Taliban, and all the others would be both nice and necessary, the stakes in Afghanistan and the FATA of Pakistan run far beyond the personalities. The ultimate stake in the current war is whether or not the Islamist jihadists can with any shred of plausibility claim a victory over the US and its allies.

Should the worst case envisioned in General McChrystal's initial assessment come to pass, the consequences for the US--and many other countries as well--would be both disastrous in degree and very long term in duration. Even the slightest, barely plausible excuse for the declaration of a victory over the US and the other "crusader" states and their "apostate" allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan would have the effect of emboldening and encouraging the Islamist jihadist movement around the world.

Right now, as has been indicated in recent Pew assessments, the jihadists are and have been losing support within the Muslim communities around the globe. Apparently, the disgust and revulsion generated by both the methods and consequences of the Islamist jihadist way of war have undercut what was once almost monolithic support among Muslims from North Africa to the Indonesian archipelago.

To pack it in now in Afghanistan would be the answer to Islamist jihadist prayers. To pack it in now, to refuse to increase the number of trigger-pullers on the ground in Afghanistan, would be to hand the Islamist jihadists an unearned success. It would be an announcement to those in the Muslim states which wish the US ill that we do not have the stomach either to resist or strike back--particularly if the striking back took time and cost American lives.

Last month when President Obama stated to the veterans convention that the war in Afghanistan was "a war of necessity," he made one grave error. Now, Joe Biden is capitalizing on that error. The President maintained in Phoenix that the goal of the US in Afghanistan was the destruction of al-Qaeda.

Whether that statement of limitation was advertent or not, it was a grave error, perhaps a blunder. The limitation of the enemy to one group, and by implication, one individual, allows someone such as Mr Biden to argue that the US has no business going beyond that narrow target. It lays the foundation for a strategy and implementing tactics which allows the US to back off from the blood on the ground and revert to the sanitary approach so beloved by the Clinton administration--stand off attacks using long range missiles.

The experiences of the past two decades demonstrate persuasively that the clean and distant approach of using cruise missiles or UAVs might be able to kill people but cannot defeat the enemy, cannot destroy or deter the Islamist jihadists generally. The stand-off approach has a role to play to be sure, but it is not the way to achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not losing."

The Obama administration is playing the game of "reviewing strategy" before making a decision on the deployment of more US combat boots to the unfriendly ground of Afghanistan. There are good reasons for changing the failed strategic and operational doctrine of the Bush/Cheney days, but that should not be an excuse for tossing in the sponge just now, just as Muslim opinion is swinging against the Islamist jihadists.

In any event, General McChrystal's initial assessment provides a strategy in outline form. His emphasis upon using US and NATO forces to both carry the war to the enemy and protect the uncommitted civilian majority is a strategy. It implies an operational doctrine as well as the tactics necessary to implement both.

The fundamental nature of the McChrystal approach is to force the enemy to come to us. By interposing US and other foreign troops between the uncommitted civilian majority and the Islamist jihadists, the latter face a limited set of options. They can come to us--and get killed. They can attack soft civilian targets--and provoke more hostility from the uncommitted majority, thus facilitating the mobilization of support to the less than credible Karzai regime. Or they can stay in the hills awaiting either a Hellfire or a fatwa telling them to cool it.

Whichever option the Islamist jihadists take, it will be one which inevitably leads to defeat. That is the outcome the US must seek. There is no viable option for either us or other states similarly minded.

All of the other factors presumably entering the debate over strategy in Afghanistan are secondary. It does not matter if Afghanistan has any chance of becoming a modern Western style nation-state. It does not matter if Karzai was returned to office as a result of fraud on a wholesale level or not. It does not matter if Pakistan's government is really, really committed to ending the Islamist jihadist presence in the country.

None of these secondary matters or even the aggregate should divert the US leadership from the central reality. Either the US and its allies defeats the Islamist jihadists in a convincing manner or not.

If we do not convincingly defeat the jihadists, then we must be prepared for a future which will be clouded for years, even decades to come, by the specter of Islamist jihadism. We must be willing to accept ever greater and more repressive restrictions on our freedoms. We must be willing to face a degree of pervasive insecurity such as we have never experienced in the past. We might even have to face the possibility of a militant Islamism becoming the primary force in global politics.

It is doubtful in the extreme that Joe Biden has ever thought through the consequences of even the slightest hint of a vague appearance of an Islamist jihadist success in Afghanistan. If he had he never would have started fighting for an American defeat.

And, make no mistake in the matter, that is precisely what Mr Biden is doing--favoring an American defeat.