American Ethics And American War

The Geek wrote this post last August.  Somehow it never got published.  Admittedly there is a reference in the next paragraph which is dated but the overall subject is still timely considering the accusations which have been made regarding the infliction of civilian casualties during Operation Odyssey Dawn.  The agenda driven and the poorly informed as well as the opportunistic and gullible always either peddle or buy the line holding Americans are as kill crazy as a ferret in the chicken house.

Frankly the accusations by Amnesty International to the effect that the US has violated international law and the ethics of warfare by its actions in Yemen (see immediately preceding post) rankle the Geek no end. This short take is a personal note to the tender hearted, high minded, lofty thinking, and historically ignorant lawyerly types at Amnesty International as well as other, similarly inclined NGOs and their sympathizers at the UN.

Just over sixty-five years ago President Franklin Roosevelt was briefed on the planned invasion of Iwo Jima. He was told the island was heavily defended by a large, well dug in defensive force with orders to hold until the last man. The goal of the defenders was to inflict a maximum number of casualties on the American forces with the larger intent of weakening American political will so as to allow an end to the war on terms very favorable to the Japanese.

The president was also told that there were no people on the island other than members of the Imperial Japanese armed forces. No civilians. No dragooned Korean laborers. No "comfort women." It was a pure military target with only soldiers, sailors, and airmen present. Killing them was well within the laws of warfare.

Finally, the president was advised that American fatalities would be very high. Higher even than the hectatombs of Tarawa or Peleliu. The US military high command unanimously held that the best means of attack would be standing off and drenching the island with chemical munitions, particularly the most potent one we had in our arsenal, mustard agent. There was no danger of retaliation. The Japanese had no means and the Germans were effectively defeated at this point.

FDR was told bluntly that using chemical weapons would save thousands of American lives and would not cost one Japanese life more than would be the case with a conventional invasion.

Faced with this stark choice the president said, "No." He would not cross the ethical Rubicon of being the first to use chemical weapons in WW II. (This despite the well documented use of both chemical and biological munitions by the Japanese in China.)

The ethically (or morally) based decision of FDR condemned more than six thousand US Marines to death.

The invasion of Iwo Jima constituted a tribute to human courage and endurance which will reflect glory on the Marines and the country which produced them for generations to come as well as the most famed photograph of World War II for Americans. But, there is no doubt that the men who died as well as their families, friends, indeed, the nation as a whole, would have cheerfully exchanged glory for the lives of those who were killed in the black sands of Iwo Jima.

Mr Roosevelt preserved his moral purity. He, perhaps, protected the ethical integrity of the US. To the president and many others later, during peacetime, with the luxury of considering both ethics and their cost in human lives, the decision was the correct one. And, arguably it was; it did establish a limit during the closing days of a war in which all previous limits had been not only transcended but obliterated.

The Geek has seen no signs that later presidents became any less conscious of ethics as a limiting factor in war. Presidents have made grave mistakes in deciding where and against whom and with what means war must be waged. However, the mistakes have been far more often than not on the side of caution, conservatism, on the side of limiting both the scope of war and the lethality of the means employed.

Get a grip on this, Amnesty: The US is not given to using disproportionate means. It is not given to employing weapons with undue breadth of effect. It is not in the habit of using too much. It is far more common to use too little.

Even though those of Amnesty International love to hate America. Even though they are all members of the Blame America First club, the historical realty, the ground truth, is the US attempts (often without success to be sure) to fight with the least force possible, to kill as few as feasible, to take all due, and many undue precautions to exempt civilians and non-combatants from harm.

Hey, AI, you all may not like it, but that is the nature of history. Get over your chronic inability to see affairs as they actually have been and are.

And, Now, It's Yemen Again

Either or both CIA and the WaPo have determined Yemen is tomorrow's news. Baying along is Amnesty International, once more ever-so-concerned that somehow, someone may be killed by an American munition without benefit of arrest, trial, appeal, and the other features of justice.

American, particularly CIA, neutralization efforts have taken the fun out of being an al-Qaeda heavyweight either in Afghanistan or the FATA of Pakistan. The ever present Predators have proven spectacularly successful at what is politely referred to as "organizational disruption" in both venues. The result, as intended, has been the lowering of both the will and ability of al-Qaeda to mount offensive operations on its own.

One result has been the redirection of al-Qaeda personnel and efforts from direct leadership to behind the scenes training, planning, and advising. The small number of al-Qaeda (fifty to one hundred) remaining in Afghanistan still represent a significant but indirect threat as they use their experience to gin up the locals, to churn out more effective Taliban and Haqqani network tactical commanders, more competent bomb makers, more industrious and able recruiters. In this role al-Qaeda can hope to serve as a potent force multiplier.

Another, equally predictable result of the increased US pressure both on the ground in Afghanistan and in the air over the FATA has been horizontal escalation. The Geek has posted many times on the potentials for geographic spread by al-Qaeda. The most likely venues for such horizontal escalation have been North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. Of these alternatives, the one having the most threat enhancing potential is the last, the Arabian Peninsula.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been in existence for well over a decade. Osama bin Laden launched his war against the US and the West from the wide sands of the Peninsula. His motive was the perceived "infidel" occupation of the Peninsula, particularly Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden's goal was and is the forced ejection of the American "infidels" and the local "apostates" from the Kingdom of the Two Mosques. His "declaration of war against the American people" of fifteen or so years ago made both motive and goal explicit.

Yemen has been a preferred center of operations for bin Laden and his organization from its earliest days. The country has been a collection of nations in contest for statehood. Tribal in nature, contentious in politics, feudal in loyalties, divided in all essential respects for the past half century, the barren, impoverished dry mountains and parched deserts of Yemen are inherently ungovernable.

The Yemeni are also given to deep religious enthusiasm, which is not surprising given the economic, social, cultural nature of the place. Insofar as there is a glue which might bind Yemenis together across the chasms of family, clan, tribe, region, relative poverty, or political affiliation, it is found in religion. The Yemeni have taken their Islam hot, black, and strong since the days of the Houthi overthrow.

The message of bin Laden as well as the ascetic personality of the messenger himself have struck a deep and resonate chord with many in Yemen, a chord which resounds all the stronger as Osama is a local boy who has made good, very good. This reality has made Osama bin Laden a very real actor in Yemeni politics since before the suicide bombing of the USS Cole linked Yemen, al-Qaeda, and terrorism at the shoulder and hip.

The government of president Ali Abdullah Saleh has played a very delicate, not to say duplicitous game over the past decade, balancing its precarious hold on what passes for central power domestically with the demands of the US or Saudi Arabia. This means the Saleh regime has tacked violently and unpredictably between apparent cooperation with the US and Saudi Arabia on one course and seeming agreement with the stance of al-Qaeda on the other.

The Yemeni government is not only fighting a recurrent defensive insurgency in the south (Always have to remember that Yemen was two countries for the best part of a half century, and the relation between North Yemen and the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen was not peaceful.) but also a renewed offensive insurgency waged by the recrudescent Houthis in the mountains of the far north. In this setting AQAP has a measure of power far greater than might be expected given its current manpower is in the three to five hundred range.

It is not going too far to assert that AQAP can be the kingmaker, or, to err on the side of accuracy, the regicide if pushed too far by either the Sanaa government or the outsiders. If the Saleh regime were to fall, AQAP has both the will and ability to take over either directly (unlikely) or as the force in the backroom (likely) with the Houthi rebels as the stooges in front.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Yemen is a far better base for a violent political Islam advocacy group than is either Afghanistan or the FATA. Geographically, Yemen is in the center of things, well, the important things that is. It is coterminous with Saudi Arabia. It fronts the Gulf of Aden and the (very) narrow strait connecting the Gulf with the Red Sea and thus the southern approach to the Suez Canal. Right across the way is the failed state of Somalia and the less than stable Eritrea.

That's not a pretty picture.

Equally unpretty is the nature of the terrain of Yemen itself. Most of the place rather resembles a mating of the backside of the moon and the uplands of Hell. It makes the FATA and most of Afghanistan look like Iowa in comparison. This means it is a fine place for a small guerrilla force provided the troops and leaders are well motivated. Equally it makes the physical geography a counterinsurgent's worst nightmare.

The long (1,450 klicks) border with Saudi is unsealable. So is the border with Oman, a country with little credible military capacity. The road network makes that of Afghanistan look like it is covered by an Interstate highway system. (Only ten percent of the seventy thousand klicks of tracks is paved.) You get the picture.

The long and short of reality is simply this: Even if the US had the political will to take on yet one more ground conflict, the physical terrain of Yemen militates against the American way of war, even the "new" one of light, lean, and mean.

Nor is the human terrain any less unpromising. The Yemeni population is as experienced with unending war as that of Afghanistan. If anything, more Yemenis have a direct contact with the physical and psychological realities of protracted and asymmetrical conflict than the folks of Afghanistan. (It is hard to find twelve consecutive months of Yemeni history since 1960 when the bullets were not flying somewhere in the country.)

While Yemen has not had a Taliban of its own, there is a strong current of intense and severe Salifist Islam. Exacerbating the tendency for religiously based true belief is the very young population--the median age is not quite eighteen years. Strong religious identification plus youth equals "extremism."

Nor is the "extremist" propensity modified by the high level of illiteracy (fifty percent for the total population, thirty percent for men) and an equally high level of unemployment. The wealth of the country is highly maldistributed and employment opportunities at home nearly zilch.

Worsening the domestic economic situation is the rapid depletion of the minimal oil reserves of Yemen. The same applies to water. Water has always been scarce (the place is a desert after all), but population growth and urbanization have made the situation far worse. Water is lacking; economic diversification has been a flop; agricultural yields are slipping.

Really looking good, isn't it?

The central government is corrupt, inefficient, filled with cronies, timeservers, inept graduates of pathetic post-secondary educational institutions. The army is no better being poorly equipped, very poorly officered, lacking any real capacities in such features as logistics, transportation, intelligence, heavy weapons, and aviation. Neither army nor government is up to the task of defeating AQAP or the Houthis or the southern insurgents even if political will to do any of these existed in more than fits and starts.

The US has only recently restarted its defensive efforts in Yemen. The Agency's capabilities in country are minimal given the degree of threat. The Predators have been absent for years with the result that when it was necessary to attempt a hit on a senior AQAP command center late last year the only available option was a cruise missile strike. The result was negative to say the least.

The December strike killed forty-one people including a provincial official seeking to negotiate a cease fire and a passel of children. Worse, the raid had no plausible deniability as cluster bomb unit sub-munitions were found and easily identified as American in origin. Leaving aside the issue of covertness, cruise missiles have been proven repeatedly to be a bad choice for this type of mission. They arrive too late, are not subject to terminal maneuver, spread death over too wide an area, inflict too many collateral casualties, and cannot be called off at the last moment should new information make such desirable.

And, the footprint cruise missiles leave invite the rancorous attention of international do-gooder outfits such as Amnesty International . Amnesty International and similar organizations do not have an accurate understanding of the type of war fought by AQAP and others of the violent political Islamic sort. They simply don't get the fact that entities such as AQAP or the original al-Qaeda do not observe tidy geographically defined "war zones."

Nor does Amnesty International and the other high minded, lofty thinking folks of other NGOs or the UN really grok on the reality that the proponents of violent political Islam choose the place, methods, and means of waging their idea of war on the states and peoples who have been declared enemies of Islam. In this dynamic the US and other states who find themselves in the impact zone have no realistic option except to fight the attackers where they are. Responsible, reactive governments have no choice beyond that of using means and munitions which will kill or otherwise neutralize the attackers at the lowest cost in either collateral casualties or third government destabilization.

Predators, ground commands of special forces, covert and clandestine intelligence operators all constitute appropriate, low signature, low footprint means. All are effective in identifying, killing or otherwise removing bad actors from the board, perturbing hostile organizations. All are good ways to do the job at the lowest cost in unwanted and counterproductive "side effects."

The American born clerical advocate of violent political Islam, Anwar al-Awlaki is a declared enemy of the US. He has been directly, substantially, and materially connected to armed attacks on the US. He is an effective recruiter, motivator, trainer, and superintendent of armed attacks on US territory and citizens. He is in Yemen.

In a perfect world it would be possible to convince the Yemeni government to arrest al-Awlaki and extradite him to the US for trial. In this same world, a world where unicorns frolic and lions do recline with lambs, Awlaki could have a full, fair, transparent trial, file appeals endlessly, and finally, perhaps, reside in a not frightfully uncomfortable federal slammer.

In the imperfect world any and all of these are either impossible or very unlikely. Even if the Yemeni government could be motivated to find and arrest the radical cleric, the political realities of the place would demand that Awlaki be tried in Yemen and, if convicted, be jailed there until he either "escaped" or was given amnesty. He would be out of prison and back on the internet faster than a camel can spit.

This means that if the US government, (which is to say the Obama administration) desires to secure the US against further, future harm from Awlaki, it must either apprehend or kill the man. As the probability of quietly arresting Awlaki is slim to none, the option of killing him looms large.

Of course, dispatching ole Anwar with a Hellfire launched from a Predator does constitute, at least in the estimate of Amnesty International and other citizens of Unicorn Land, an "extra-judicial killing." As the Geek is not a lawyer, for which he thanks the mercies of the universe, he is not prepared to dispute the point. He is, however, prepared to assert that a dead Awlaki constitutes little threat to any American.

Coming from Apache ancestry, the Geek is aware of the dangers of a mentality such as that epitomized by the old cliche, "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." At the same time he is aware from both personal and vicarious experience that the decision to kill a specific, named enemy is not taken lightly even during a declared war. (Recall that the decision to kill Admiral Yamamoto during WW II as he flew between Japanese bases far from the frontline was made at the highest levels of government after a lengthy debate within the senior circle of the FDR administration.)

There is no reason to believe that the standards, the strictures, or the processes of review are any less stringent today. There is no reason to assume as Amnesty International apparently has that the US government, or its covert service, or its military has stooped to the level of the enemy or has adopted the arrogance without either rules or limits which characterize the way in which Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, Taliban, al-Qaeda, or AQAP wage war.

The realties of Yemen, the realities of American political will, the realities of violent political Islam demand that the US use covert or clandestine means to defend our country and its citizens, our allies, and our interests. This means we must do things, use means, employ weapons or methods which some of tender hearts and high minded sentiments find disturbing, even repugnant.

But, these easily offended sensitive souls have to get a firm grip on the situation in Yemen and elsewhere. We are under attack. We cannot fight back using either conventional or tidy, open, and transparent methods. But, we can and must fight effectively without compromising our basic values.

This is what we have been doing. And, must do more of.

ADMIN NOTE: Because Get a Grip has been victimized by spammers it is necessary to take defensive measures including moderation and the anti-spam verification. The Geek apologizes for the inevitable, unavoidable inconvenience.

Iran And The Ghost Of Democracy

It has been a year since the government officials counting the vote in Iran reelected Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term as the country's president. This exercise in creative accounting not only proved famed political philosopher Joseph Stalin correct when he pontificated that the people casting ballots elected no one, that was done by the folks counting ballots, but also initiated a period of protest and repression which was longer than expected but not bloodier.

Amnesty International has released a comprehensive report on the repression portion of the protest-repression dyad. It makes for searing reading. It also constitutes a severe indictment of the Iranian regime and its bully boys. In addition, in the Amnesty International methodical documentation of the human consequences of the Iranian exercise in regime maintenance exists a charge of moral cowardice directed against the US and other Western governments.

The Obama administration generally and the president specifically have maintained a discrete distance from the dance of protest and suppression. This detached approach has been justified on a number of grounds. A firm stance in support of the pro-democracy factions would be counterproductive in that it would bolster the regime's claims that the opponents of Ahmadinejad and the mullahs were foreign puppets. Any measures taken against the Iranian regime would hurt the people we intended to assist. The US had to stay on message, had to focus on stopping the Iranian nuclear program regardless of any other consideration no matter how worthy.

All of these reasons (leaving aside any consideration of the lack of internal consistency) are superficially plausible. All make sense of a sort.

But the real deal exists on a more fundamental level. Any effective support of the pro-democracy elements of Iranian society (which, it must be noted includes members of the clerical ruling class) would automatically violate the imperatives of cultural relativism. This is not an inconsiderable fact given that Mr Obama and many of his "team" are strong adherents of the notion that no one cultural, social, political, or economic system is preferable to another. The president and others of his inner circle really believe that all political, social, economic, and cultural systems are ethically equivalent, and any value judgement which holds one to be "better" than another is the product of insensitivity, chauvinism, or xenophobia.

To take on the mullahs and their frontmen would demand that the US, as a matter of policy, declare that secular, pluralistic democracy is ethically superior to clerical rule, subverted elections, and the wholesale violation of human rights by the government of Iran. Any open, effective support for the dissidents in Iran would require that the US, as a matter of policy, hold that states and institutions produced by the European Enlightenment are inherently superior, hold a moral high ground in comparison to states and institutions produced by the Prophet and his successors.

That sort of thing has been, is, and will remain a definite no-no to people such as Mr Obama for whom cultural relativism is a species of revealed Truth. The only correct course of action open to a person who is a True Believer in the dictates of cultural relativism is expressing a sort of vague distaste for the violence associated with repression surrounded by a preternatural detachment which refuses all value judgments as unacceptable "privileging" of a specific outside political position.

So people die in Iran. So people scream in the torture cellars of Evan prison. So, even the graves of those murdered by the Thugs of the Koran are desecrated. Memories besmirched. Lives destroyed. Bodies mutilated.

Through it all the US, the current administration turns the other way, eyes carefully averted as if we were some thwacking great maiden aunt suddenly confronting a vulgar drunk on the steps of the church. Averting our collective vision not for any real world concern, any realpolitik goal, but simply due to the dictates of an intellectual fad of the moment.

A similar dynamic from the same root is at work in the refusal of Team Obama to name properly the enemy we confront daily not only in distant places but here at home. It is cultural relativism which denies us the right to name the threat which confronts us, the gangsters who menace us.

To call the enemy political Islam is to explicitly exalt other monotheistic religions over Islam. To call the people who try to kill us in Afghanistan or in Times Square, Muslims, is to contravene the requirements of cultural relativism as to do so holds Muslims as occupying an ethical niche inferior to those people who do not follow the strictures of Islam.

There is only one cause for the spineless American posture regarding the Iranian election. It is the same cause as underlies the gutless and brainless refusal to call the threat facing us and the rest of the West by its real name.

The cause is not, as is often alleged, "political correctness." That is simply one more convenient excuse for avoiding the truth.

The truth is simply that at the head of this nation there is a president afflicted by a very dangerous, even fatal mental virus. Other Americans of high rank or office have the same affliction. So do many in the elites of the media and academia. The president and all the others who think as he does have caught the same mind destroying disease.

The name of the disease is cultural relativism.

Unless and until the US government can get out from under the dead hand of cultural relativism the US will continue to fail to protect not only its own core interests but also the ambitions and goals of others who would be as we are--citizens of a republic who are still more free than not. In turn this means the US has surrendered its ancient and quite honorable calling to be the "city on a hill," a shining beacon of hope for all humankind.

The High Minded Are Out To Lunch--Again

The recent self-examination of the Israeli Defense Force by the Israeli Defense Force was (hang on to your seat, bucko) self-exculpatory. But, self-exculpatory does not equal either a whitewash or a mass of crass tergiversation.

While stopping short of calling the IDF effort a blatant crock of caca, Amnesty International showing its typical partiality strongly implied that conclusion in its response to the IDF report. The group's press briefing referred to the report as "lacking credibility" and branded it as failing to account for either the totality of all (purported) civilian casualties or the observations made on the spot by Amnesty International sources.

Amnesty International holds the conceit that its observers are so Noble and High Minded that there is no way any of their spot reports could reflect any sort or semblance of agenda beyond a Lofty Thinking concern for the well-being of innocents caught in harm's way. This dubious assumption goes unquestioned by those who rely on the same High Minded notions as the fine folk at Amnesty.

The real problem of Amnesty International's critique is the group's failure to consider the culpability attendant upon Hamas' choice of battlefield. Amnesty must be aware, at least dimly, that Hamas acts under the color of government in the Gaza Strip. After all, they shot their way to power fair and square so the best trigger men won the election of blood. This means that Hamas had the responsibility to act in a way which protected the people living under their sway.

This responsibility was not only abdicated, it was tossed in the trash heap. Hamas made no effort to restrain those of its membership or those aligned with other armed factions to fire rockets against Israeli civilian targets. It did nothing to halt or even slow the flow of munitions and weapons to men dedicated to kill Israelis even if they died in the effort.

Beyond that, Hamas elected to place defensive positions in civilian structures. Hamas made the decision to allow the emplacement of offensive missiles in or near mosques, schools (including those operated by the UN) and residential areas. Hamas allowed, even encouraged the intermixing of civilians and armed personnel so as to assure that the IDF would have no option other than the killing of civilians in the effort to neutralise Hamas gun and bomb slingers.

It is quite true that there is an obligation, a duty, laid upon military forces to restrict to the greatest practical extent the harming of unarmed people including wounded combatants as well as non-combatants. There are those within the Legion of the High Minded who argue that a military must be willing to accept higher levels of casualties in order to assure that not a single civilian hair be harmed.

The duty placed upon military commanders and those under their command to refrain from inflicting harm on civilians is balanced by a long recognised duty that the defending forces and government take all necessary measures to protect their non-combatants. While the IDF may have been less, much less than ideally scrupulous in avoiding unnecessary damage and loss of life to civilians, Hamas was even more guilty of having taken no measures to protect those under their authority and, logically, protection.

The record of history is filled with excesses of civilian death during time of war. The days of Frederick the Great who sought to wage war so that neither the peasant in his field or the merchant in his counting house would notice its presence are long gone. Changes in the technology of war are the minor factor in this death of "civilized" or at least, civilian-free war.

The greater responsibility lies with governments. Governments, whether the offender or the defender, have proven increasingly willing to place civilians at the same or even greater risk as the front line grunt.

Hamas has taken this tendency to its logical (albeit criminal) extreme of actively choosing to fight a war in the most heavily populated portion of its mini-state. Hamas made the cynical and cold-blooded decision to assure maximal civilian loss of life and property in the hopes of winning the battle for international sympathy and support. Hamas knowingly and with calculated aforethought sought to place the IDF in a position where it would either have to bear the international onus of killing civilians or lose an unacceptably high number of its own soldiers.

Hamas well understood, indeed, counted upon the unfortunate democratic weakness which afflicts not only Israel but the US and other countries. The political unacceptability of too many body bags.

The US could not accept the number of bags coming home from Vietnam. This lesson was not lost upon others.

It was not lost on countries and pretenders such as Hamas who seek to wage a war of political will against a democratic adversary. Hamas bet its collective butt on the proposition that the IDF would both kill civilians and end the operation before it became or could become conclusive.

Right now, Amnesty International, whether its leadership knows it or not, is willing to acknowledge it or not, is acting according to the Hamas authored script. It is a propaganda arm of an admitted terrorist organisation pretending to the role but not the responsibilities of a legitimate government: Hamas.

What the IDF did with its report was self-justification. What Hamas did to provoke the necessity of the report was frankly criminal. What Amnesty International and others of the High Minded and Lofty Thinking sort are doing is not criminal, but it is facilitating the success of criminals.

It is regrettable that Amnesty International lacks the intelligence necessary to assure that its sentiments are not perverted by a gang of True Believing thugs.