Small Straws In A Stiff Wind

There are weeks when the Geek has regretted his lifelong interest in matters of war, diplomacy, and the shadow lands of covert/clandestine affairs.  The past month of so has been one of those periods.  It is not that the world has suddenly been infected by a fulminating virus of peace and love.  Quite the contrary.  Rather the intellectual languor has been promoted by the combination of events having unfolded in a drearily predictable factor and the lack of imagination exhibited by the Deep Thinkers and Bold Actors on all sides of all the many conflicts, armed and otherwise.

A useful example of both predictability and the lack of imagination is presented by the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.  The energetic dismantlement of the New Mexican borne cleric is both welcome and long overdue.  The fact that he was accompanied on his trip to paradise by the one time resident of North Carolina, Samir Khan, rendered the event all the more pleasurable.

Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the UAV campaign in the FATA and the building of a base convenient to Yemen from which Agency operated Predators might make their lethal flights well understood that Awlaki's days were numbered, and that the number was small.  The violent death of the genius of Internet (and personal) radicalization became as certain as sunrise when he was placed on the "kill or capture" list last year.  Despite the inevitable wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by the ACLU and other advocates of human rights above the dictates of real life, and regardless of the equally certain condemnations of "extrajudicial execution" already resounding around the world, the Obama administration by it's listing of the imam let it be known that the governing considerations were those of war--a war in which Awlaki had voluntarily enlisted and waged with ever growing success.

With the failure a few months ago to capture Awlaki by a force of Yemeni personnel backed by USSOCOM assets, the only option was killing, and the only practical tool was provided by a Predator launched Hellfire.  The only time limits were imposed by the requirements for constructing an operational base and gaining from both Yemeni and national technical means sufficient actionable intelligence.  When fractured open source reports out of Yemen a couple of weeks ago indicated a diminishing of drone traffic over the area of Yemen in which Awlaki's tribe holds sway with a ramping up over territory to the country's north, it became evident that the endgame for the preacher was underway.

The removal of Awlaki and Khan from the board is good.  But, it is drearily predictable that it is not much more than that.  The strike in no way lessens the nature or effectiveness of the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).  Had the reported inclusion of AQAP's chief bombmaker in the body count not been later retracted, the Hellfire would have well and truly hurt the group.  As it is, the most that can be said is the killing has had a marginal beneficial impact by reducing AQAP's capacity to use Internet radicalization with the same effect in the future that it has in the past.

Neither the killings nor the knee trembling on the part of human and civil rights lawyers and groups will change the nature of the ongoing war between advocates of violent political Islam and the civilized states and people of the world.  The bad guys will keep on being bad actors.  The administration and any future one as well will use whatever means are necessary within the broad limits of proportionality to defend the country and its allies against attacks of whatsoever nature.

If there is any alteration in the future, it will be in the direction of placing increased reliance upon UAVs and other means of long range, low signature, low cost of commitment war fighting.  The use of special forces teams and UAVs has been both tested and proven in the harsh laboratory of the FATA as well as the one next door in Pakistan.  Both capabilities can be of great assistance in countering the potential threats resident in AQAP, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.)  Both may be required urgently against the latter threat if AQIM demonstrates greater capability as the result of having tapped into the arms stream flowing from the looted arsenals of Libya.

A greater use of UAVs will provoke an enormous consternation on the part of the usual suspects--the NGOs involved with human and legal rights as well as the apologists for countries which wish ill to the US but cannot match the American technological capacities.  There will be more and more political strange bedfellows both domestic and international as the US leans more heavily upon the impersonal, remotely controlled deliverers of death from above.  There will be demands beyond count for new conventions to bar such devices as Predator.  There will be calls for a moratorium on the use of these infernal machines until the law can catch up with the new technologies.

The only reply to those who believe the Predator and its tribe are inhuman and inhumane is,"Phooey!"  It is far better for a single Awlaki to die downrange than to see real war with its effects, unpredictable in detail but certain to include hundreds if not thousands of dead--most of whom will be civilians.

The Predators will continue to fly over Libya even long after NATO's warplanes have packed up and gone home.  They will be overhead to observe not only the intended targets of weapons being smuggled or saboteurs preparing but also the probable agony of protracted internal war as the joy of liberation turns into the pain of political disagreements of a very fundamental nature.

Libya (and its neighbors, Tunisia and Egypt) is also drearily predictable.  Much of the reason for this observation is found in a remark made by a Salifist Tunisian, 23 years old and holder of a degree in engineering who, when interviewed, opined, "We Salifists are the majority.  Democracy is rule of the majority.  Why should we allow the minority (secular oriented Tunisians as well as their non-Salifist fellow countrymen) dictate how we should live?"

By this question as well as similar content expressions by legions of Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians, and their supporters in the West, the young man demonstrated just why the "Arab Spring" will turn into a Winter, a most harsh and bitter Winter.  The promoters of democracy show they well understand democracy in and of itself but fail to see the necessary corollary: Democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Unless properly constrained within the firm dikes of a representational republic and held in check by dams formed by both division of powers and an independent judicial system, democracy is tyranny pure and simple in which the rights of the minorities are either non-existent or tenuous at best.  In the rush to embrace democracy without the time necessary to build the essential dikes and dams, no citizen is secure, no rights and liberties are permanent, nothing is safe from the fads and fantasies of public opinion and the winds generated by demagogues.

Libya, unlike Egypt or Tunisia, but quite like Yemen and Afghanistan or other Islamic states, has the additional burden of tribalism.  This is not to say tribalism is bad.  It isn't.  Tribal identity is predominant in several states to the point that they are not real, integrated nation-states but rather collections of tribes sharing a flag.

The attempt to force tribal based societies and polities to pretend they are Western nation-states is doomed to fail.  Don't believe?  Take a look at Somalia.  It is not a failed state because it never was a real state.  Rather it was an artifact created by Western diplomats who used the only model making sense to them--the nation-state.  The same is true of Afghanistan.  Much of the inherent instability there results from ignoring the tribal nature of the human terrain in order to pretend we can make it into a Western style state.

When looking at Libya or Yemen or, to a lesser extent, Syria, the same dynamic is present--tribes forced to act as if their members owed a higher loyalty to the state.  The example of Iraq is instructive here.  As long as we outsiders insist on democracy and the nation-state as the touchstone of legitimacy, we are helping to doom the targets to a long, harsh Winter.

Even if tribalism of the usual sort is absent as it is in Egypt and Tunisia, there is a functional equivalent at work. That is the existence of differing interpretations of Islam and thus the relation of the faith to the state.  The ground truth is Islam carries the seeds of its own failure as a foundation of state.  This actuality has been shown in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  People may think they want to live in a Shariah based system until they are actually in one.  The proponents of austere Islam have and will find that their vision of life is totally unattractive to most people.  Then, they must (as do the austere Islamists of Iran) rely upon naked force to oppress their way to continued power.

Put together, the two forms of tribalism, traditional and religious, along with unchecked democracy point to a long, bitter Winter of pronounced discontents.  This, in turn, implies a high possibility of protracted or episodic internal war in all its manifold and evil forms.  Such is the result of ill-advised exercises in "nation-building" or regime change or support of the "peoples' will.

Coming full circle, the several downsides of either intervention or unthinking support are circumvented completely by using Predators or even special forces units.  These approaches to defending against hostile intents and acts minimize the probability of unintended consequences.  Predators do not engage in "nation-building," neither do they change regimes.  They kill people in serious need of being killed.

To this end, the killing of Awlaki is one important small straw in the very stiff winds of the coming Arab Winter.

The End Of The Big Battalions

Ten years ago the concept of unmanned combat systems (UCS) existed more in the pages of science fiction yarns than on the battlefields of the real world.  As the ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq rolled along, the UCS intruded more and more into the plans and actions of the American military.  The evolution of both aerial and terrestrial UCS has been rapid.  It will become more so in the next few years.

Arguably, the UCS in all its many forms--air, land, and on as well as under the water--have the potential to change human conflict at least as much as did the arrival of gunpowder weapons nearly a thousand years ago.  There can be no doubt that the UCS far outstrips such game changers as the aircraft carrier, armored combat vehicle, submarine, and high speed aircraft in its impact on the nature and character of military operations.  The high probability that the majority of warfare in the near- to mid-term will be of the asymmetrical sort increases the impact of the UCS all the more.

The UCS fits perfectly with the American way of war as such has existed and evolved since the horrifying joint losses of the War Between the States.  Ever since then, the US has been willing to expend any amount of materiel, money, and technology in order to save American lives.  All of our wars have been materiel and technology heavy--and casualty light.  In the context of the counterinsurgent operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, this strong imperative of saving American lives gave an additional impetus to the development and deployment of UCS.

The use of such systems--whether UAVs like the Predator, the Reaper, and their smaller tactical kindred or the various ground systems suitable for bomb neutralizing or entering fortified structures ahead of the troops--has proven successful beyond even the most optimistic initial projections.  The success has served to breed more UCS research, development, and deployment.

One cannot help but have noticed the proliferation of posts dealing with the ethics and legality of UCS employment.  The assorted ethical arguments against the UCS are specious.  There is nothing unethical in employing UCS when there is a human operator in the loop.  The presence of the human in the loop makes the system no more "robotic" than a tank or artillery piece or manned bomber.  True, the operator of a UCS is quite out of range, immune to the dangers which might exist for the tanker, the artilleryman, the pilot, but the absence of risk does not make a weapon system somehow ethically suspect.

The human in the loop also defeats objections from a lawerly perspective.  The operator and his command structure are just as responsible to the strictures of the laws of land warfare as any other military institution.  The same criminal liability exists when operating a Predator as when flying an F-16.

Ethical and legal objections might have some validity if and when UCS are capable of operating totally autonomously with no human in the loop.  The rapid evolution of the necessary technology will allow for autonomous operation in the very near future, but the probability of allowing more than routine, non-contact environment, autonomous operation is slight at the present time.  Operating agencies will demand a good deal of experience with any given UCS before risking autonomous operation in a combat environment.  When that happens, the question will (or should) be straightforward: Does the autonomous UCS resemble a landmine or not?  That is, does it represent a danger for civilians who happen upon it by accident after active combat has ceased in a given area?  Or, does the presence of an autonomously operating UCS represent a clear and unacceptably high degree of threat to any civilian who finds himself wandering around a combat zone during periods of active combat?

The expense of a system as sophisticated as a UCS capable of autonomous operation militates against the system being left behind after combat has ceased.  It is not a fire-and-forget device like a cluster munition.  Nor is it a plant-and-forget expendable like the landmine.  Programming solutions exist for the challenge presented by the apparent civilian found in an active combat zone.  Presumably pattern recognition software coupled with contingent algorithm based decision making could prevent instant lethal action while permitting either non-lethal detention or the summoning of a human to the loop.  In either broad case, the ethical and legal questions can be addressed fully and effectively.

The loudest and most vociferous denunciations of UCS will come as they have already not simply from civilian organizations dedicated to the most extreme understandings of civilian immunity but from those countries which are and will be inferior in the development and fielding of UCS.  It is to be expected that states hostile to the US in particular will take the lead in seeking international conventions prohibiting the use of UCS.  The historical record shows the pervasive but ultimately unsuccessful deep rooted desire of have-not states to shackle the have states to the lowest level.

The most silly objection to the further development and deployment of UCS is that these systems will make war not only more "thinkable" but far more likely.  There are two, mutually incompatible components to this idea.  One is the removal of the threat to friendly forces by providing the bravery of being out of range removes a powerful inhibition to the resort to war on the part of states such as the US.  The other is the reduction in collateral civilian losses reduces the horror of war to the party inflicting the damage.

There is no doubt that reduction of friendly losses is critical to decision making in the US and other civilized states.  War does become a bit less repulsive when there is little if any chance of soldiers coming home either in body bags or on stretchers.  But other potent inhibitory factors are not removed by the use of UCS.  Some of these, particularly diplomatic complications and the enhancement of enemy political will, can actually be enhanced by the employment of UCS.  This has already been seen in the Predator strikes in the FATA of Pakistan.

The reduction of collateral civilian deaths and physical destruction made possible by the further development of UCS should be welcomed by human rights organizations.  Increased accuracy in the delivery of lethal munitions allows the use of lower potency ordnance.  There is no need to use a Hellfire missile with its impressively large bang down range if one can accurately deliver a "smart spike" which puts a large hole in the intended target without disturbing the dandruff of the person standing next to him.  As has been demonstrated most recently in Libya, the concrete bomb can obliterate an antiaircraft gun mounted in a small courtyard without even breaking windows a couple of meters away.  Evolution to greater accuracy has been and will continue to be rapid with life saving effects increasing accordingly.

The UCS operated by a man under no pressure of combat aided by technology oriented toward the utmost of precision can kill the person in need of killing without any collateral damage.  The lofty thinking and tender hearted must remember that the purpose of war is to gain political dominance over an enemy in order to establish a better state of peace.  This means there are people who need to be killed.  The concept of the operation is to kill those who must be killed and not kill or injure anyone else.  The UCS provides a much better means of doing this.

Another objection that has been raised in opposition to the UCS is the capacity resident in such systems to vastly expand the area of combat operations.  This is one more risible example of a totally specious objection.  While some military operations can be confined to a tidily defined geographic area, others, such as the neutralizing of groups practicing violent political Islam, cannot.  Such groups by their very nature are diffuse in location and critical nodes of command and control.  The practitioners of violent political Islam have defined their area of operations to be regional at the least and global at the most.  The UCS provides the capacity to attack the noxious practitioner wherever he exists.  The choice has been his, and the response is not a voluntary expansion of the military theater of operations but a realistic appreciation of the enemy's nature, character, and intentions.

While the UCS has much to recommend it and will have even more in the years to come, there is no way that the UCS can by itself win wars, that is impose one's political will upon the other.  The UCS is and will remain a force multiplier, a way of doing much more with fewer active combatants involved in theater.  There will be fewer boots on the ground, but those fewer boots will be all the more important.

There are several reasons why the boots will be there and be important in their presence.

One reason is purely psychological: Only human presence is truly intimidating.  Being there, being in the enemy's face nearly every time he turns around, has the effect over time of undercutting his will to continue.  Importantly, the surveillance capabilities provided by UCS allow the forces on the ground to be deployed more effectively, to be in the enemy's face more efficiently, and thus to undercut his will to resist faster with less actual blood being shed in the process.

A second reason is political.  The presence of men on the ground is an easily understood signal of political will.  Since all wars, but the asymmetrical form in particular, are contests of political will, the presence of boots on the ground is essential if the enemy is to be convinced that the US, for example, has the political will to fight on until victory.  The UCS plays a role here.  The casualty reducing capacities of the UCS assures that American political will remains intact for a longer period of time.  Even the frustrating war in Afghanistan retained support for years in largest measure because so few US personnel were killed there.

A third reason is found in the intelligence area.  Contact between friendly and hostile forces constitutes an important source of intelligence.  Only contact and the resulting firefight can give a useful indicator regarding the enemy's will to combat as well as on his capacity to make good his losses in manpower and equipment.  Perhaps the most important indicator of enemy morale, of his will to fight, is found in how eagerly he seeks contact, how he reacts to contact, how well he fights, and how prolonged is his resistance.  This is an area, a very important area, in which the UCS is of little or no assistance.  There are and will be some things in war which only humans can do.

The progress in the development of UCS has been revolutionary.  Absent a real shooting war, the future evolution of the systems will be slower, more hesitant, and liable to interruption due to budgetary or political concerns.  On the upside, we can be quite sure the believers in violent political Islam will make every effort to keep the war going.  As the war goes on, so also will the development of the UCS.  And, that, bucko, is a very fine thing.

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.

The Drones Are Coming! The Drones Are Coming!

There is a guy named Philip Alston. He has a very, very important job. Mr Alston is the Special Rapporteur On Extrajudicial Executions for the UN Human Rights Council. In his official capacity he has (with the help of a female attorney and a duo of equally feminine research assistants) written a twenty-nine page report on the general subject of "targeted killings" or, what were called in the old days, "assassinations."

Mr Alston does not like anything to do with the use of "targeted killings." He likes the US employment of UAVs in the role of mechanical killer even less. He likes the use of drones so little that he appears to be sincerely convinced that the US has let some evil incubus out of the laboratory, and the result will be a form of blood drenched international chaos as state after state rushes to get their own drones in the air with the intent of killing as many people as they can under the dubious rubric of "fighting terror" by killing "terrorists." What makes this dystopian vision most alarming in the mind of Mr Alston is the simple reality that drones, in principle at least, can kill anyone, anywhere, thus making the entire globe a potential combat zone rather than having the killing restricted to tight little hygienic areas of battle.

To zero in a bit tighter on the target of Mr Alston's distaste for UAVs in the role of Controlled Killer In Faraway Lands, is the American tendency to treat the machines as being clandestine in nature and thus under the operational fingers of the US clandestine service, CIA. Somehow Mr Alston has convinced himself that UAVs operated by military personnel in uniform are somehow less distasteful than the same machines run by civilians wearing whatever. Apparently this distaste is rooted in Mr Alston's belief that the military services of the US are more accountable, more transparent, and more responsible than the spooks of the clandestine service, who, by the very nature of their task, work in the deepest of plausibly deniable shadows.

Reading the report, or at least the interminable sections focusing on the Sins of Uncle Sam, one gets the impression that Mr Alston and his lady associates have formed a strange view of how the American version of Assassinate A Terrorist is played. Mr Alston must be of the view that the spooks of CIA sit around idly choosing somebody, anybody, to put in the sights of one of their far off Predators or Reapers. Not only that, but Mr Alston has apparently concluded that the bloody spooks are totally unconcerned about their distant machines wreaking havoc among the civilians, or at least the non-combatant civilians down range.

These conclusions, to say nothing of the nightmare scenario constructed upon them, violate reality in numerous ways. The processes by which individuals are selected for the attention of the remotely operated vehicles are known in outline and appear replete with safeguards, reviews, and internal accountability of a high order. Further, the operators of the American programs are as aware as General McChrystal of the counterproductive effect of killing non-combatants, with the result that the strikes are more carefully planned and the munitions delivered have been made smaller in their lethal radii.

Mr Alston might be forgiven for his exaggerations were they not so underscored by numerous internal contradictions in his report. (Take a dekko yourself, bucko, as the Geek gets bored doing all the keystrokes necessary to import block quotes.) Mr Alston is not so easily forgiven for omitting the contextual reality that the spooks would much rather capture the targeted subject, because a corpse, particularly one which has been tastelessly spread over the landscape, is of no real intelligence value.

Killing bad guys is justified by the simple fact that doing so perturbs the organizational integrity and thus the operational effectiveness of groups dedicated to killing Americans and other people including the folks in whose midst the bad guys, the jihadists, exist, often without local permission other than that extorted by fear. A bad guy merits killing by his position in the hostile entity--and that liability is in no way compromised by his being remote from the scene of combat operations.

The World War II "targeted killing" of Admiral Yammamoto stretched American technology to its (literal) limits. But had the architect of Pearl Harbor been in Tokyo or even, hypothetically, some neutral nation's capital, killing him would have been just as appropriate and just as important as a means of undercutting the combat capability of Imperial Japan.

So it is with the non-uniformed, non-state actors of al-Qaeda, Taliban, or any other group engaged in hostile operations of whatsoever sort against the US. If a heavyweight or even a middleweight member of a jihadist group is taken out anywhere in the world whether by a UAV or more traditional means, say, a knife in the back, the result is to diminish the capacity of the hostile entity to operate against us or our allies.

This may strike the lofty thinking as an example of that dreaded ethic, the ethic of means being justified by ends. And, so it is. There is nothing inherently evil in this sort of ethical approach and there never has been.

The US government is not in the business of wholesale slaughter. Nor is it in the better interests of the US to appear to be so. Neither is it in the higher, better national interests of the US to encourage any and all comers to emulate our technological means. There is no better example of this contention than the continued American refusal to furnish Predator type UAVs to Pakistan despite repeated requests from Islamabad to do so.

The question that Mr Alston and his ilk in the Human Rights Council should be addressing is far removed from the use of UAVs by the US in so-called "extrajudicial killings." That question is how should the civilized states of the world work most effectively to stop the expression of political Islam through the violence, the indiscriminate, civilian slaughtering violence so common to the type of mind behind 9/11, 7/7, the Mumbai Raid, or the literally hundreds of suicide and roadside bomb attacks on civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Somalia, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, and other places.

That, Mr Alston, should have your sole and undivided attention for that is extrajudicial killing at its greatest body count.

Looking For The "Perfect Weapon"

In a perfect world we would fight "perfect wars" using "perfect weapons." A "perfect weapon" would be one which killed only hostile combatants while not inflicting any collateral damage on civilians or civilian property. A "perfect weapon" would have a combination of accuracy and constrained lethality so as to assure that only those in need of killing received its attentions.

As an added benefit the hypothetical "perfect weapon" could be employed without putting a single friendly soldier in harm's way. It would protect the "good guys" while terminating with the most extreme prejudice each and every "bad guy" until the survivors within the second group gave up the war as a very bad idea.

The US has pursued the still elusive "perfect weapon" with a high degree of persistence over the years. And, its persistence has paid off--to an extent.

The closest approximation to the "perfect weapon" we possess currently is found in the often maligned unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) typified by the Predator and Reaper craft. These systems can and do kill specific, targeted individuals of high value within the ranks of the Islamist jihadist ranks without extreme collateral damage. And, without risk to the Americans operating the systems.

It is the latter reality--the absence of risk to Americans--which has aroused the ire of Code Pink and similar anti-war organizations. While one might think that reducing the body count in war would be a goal agreeable to those opposed to even the most legitimate of wars, it is not. Code Pink and company have engaged in a campaign of great vitriol and little realism to end the use of armed UAVs in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

This campaign has been enhanced by the position taken by the UN Special Rapporteur on miscellaneous asininities connected with wars undertaken by the US. (OK, that isn't the man's actual job title, but it conveys the flavor of his position.) This worthy has hinted darkly that the use of UAVs might constitute a species of war crime. Why this might be the case is at best murky and leaves unexamined why dropping iron bombs on a village containing armed combatants along with civilians would not be a "crime" as well.

There is no doubt but that the use of armed UAVs in both Afghanistan and Pakistan have been effective. The Long War Journal keeps very close track on the UAV employment in the AfPak region and parses the claims of civilian as opposed to combatant fatalities and injuries very carefully. A quick perusal of the record over the past two years shows that fifteen senior and sixteen mid-level al-Qaeda personnel have been taken off the board by UAVs. The numbers concerning Taliban are equally good.

The UAVs not only perturb the organizational integrity of the Islamist jihad groups by eliminating key personnel, they disrupt movement, enervate morale, lower combat efficiency of the hostile trigger pullers and bomb makers generally. The various statements by Taliban figures in particular as well as the results of interrogations show the overall effectiveness of the Predator and Reaper attacks cannot be overstated easily.

Perhaps the chief limitation on the possibility of the UAVs being considered "perfect weapons" is the size, lethality, and radius of destruction of the munitions they deliver. Neither the Hellfire missile (initially developed and deployed over thirty years ago as an air delivered anti-armor weapon) nor five hundred pound precision guided bombs can be considered constrained lethality devices. The size of the bursting charge as well as the nature of the fragments created combine to assure that these weapons are more area than point in their effect.

Either Hellfire or the five hundred pound bomb will and have destroyed vehicles, structures, or sizable open air assemblies. This state of affairs is fine provided all of those downrange are sure enough combatants. In this context it must be noted carefully that neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban nor any other groups of this ilk are notably scrupulous about separating civilians including women and children from the combatant types.

While there will be targeting errors regardless of the layers of review and approval, the primary responsibility for collateral damage rests with the Islamist jihadis. As long as these Glorious And (Self) Righteous Goons of the One True Faith are unwilling or unable to sequester their martyrdom seeking trigger pullers, bomb makers, and the like from non-combatants, collateral damage will occur.

(A parenthetical thought: Quite possibly, given the belief system of the good Muslims who constitute the jihadist groups, it is believed that a favor is being done for the women, children, and other non-combatants in that should the Hellfire hit, all hands will go to Paradise.)

In time technology will produce the necessary refinements that will result in lower area lethality without impairing the capacity of the UAV delivered munitions to kill selected individuals. The Israelis have been making strides in this direction with the development and deployment of ever smaller but still highly accurate air-delivered munitions which kill the target but, absent a secondary explosion from the target's own explosives, leave those standing around unhurt. As senior US commanders well appreciate the need to reduce the perception of collateral damage among civilians, one can be reasonably sure the US is proceeding in the same direction as the Israelis.

A "perfect weapon" might also be characterized by an absence of diplomatic complaints over its usage. By this standard the Predator and Reaper are most imperfect weapons. The government and military of Pakistan as well as any number of Pakistani journalists, academics, and "strategic thinkers" have made many mighty moans over the dire consequences which will necessarily attend the use of UAVs. With tones and words suitable to an announcement of the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, these Pakistani patriots warn that the UAVs are driving an infinite number of peaceful people into the camp and arms of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Associates.

The Greek chorus of Islamabad also thunders against the horrid violations of that most precious of commodities--Pakistani sovereignty. Of course the great claque of opposition from Pakistani politicians and generals is not motivated by fear over the actual effect of the UAVs (except in so far as they hurt the Islamist jihadis supported by the Pakistani Army, Inter-Services Intelligence, or members of the political structure.)

Rather the Pakistanis see the UAVs as a "perfect enough weapon" that they want to possess it themselves. Not for service in the air over the FATA but for duty on the only "frontline" which matters--the common border with India.

It is safe to put the self-serving whines of the Pakistanis in the same category as the hopelessly misguided simpering of Code Pink. Both are irrelevant to the continued successful employment of Predators and Reapers in theater. Both are testaments of a backhanded sort.

The sniveling of Code Pink and the plaints of Islamabad are both actually powerful attestations to the fact that the US is coming ever closer to the development of the "perfect weapon."

Well, bucko, we can be grateful for that. And, we can only hope that we get closer to perfection very, very soon.

The Geek's Praise And Pan For The Week

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finally stepped out of the shadows this week--twice really, but one of these rare appearances has already been covered. The real praise for the often invisible SecState is for her honesty in Pakistan.

She had the guts to bring the rhino in the john front and center as she quite properly accused the government of Pakistan for having had the knowledge necessary to get Osama bin Laden and his number two guy, Zawahiri, at any time over the past nine years. As an exercise in "fence-mending," her approach is noteworthy in its unconventionality. But, public honesty in this matter is long overdue--and still incomplete.

The government of Pakistan or at the very, very least, its Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has known where the top men of al-Qaeda have been all along the way. The many, many stories of bin Laden's having traipsed around the country, including stays in military hospitals, have been too numerous, too consistent, and from too many diverse sources over the years to be the creation of fabricators and other pitfalls in the wacky world of intelligence.

Further, when the intimate relationship between ISI and the Taliban of Afghanistan is factored into consideration, it becomes even more unlikely that the al-Qaeda pandjandrums' whereabouts is unknown to the Boys of Islamabad. They may have experienced the embarrassment of having their creation, Taliban, turn against its creators, but that doesn't imply the ISI has lost its ability to collect what is known as "actionable intelligence."

They have. They know it. We know it. They know that we know. So, there is no excuse to pussy-foot around the issue. And, to her credit, Ms Clinton hasn't kept on the artful dodging that typified the Bush/Cheney years. Presumably, some of the credit must go to President Obama for allowing the sharp and amazingly public change in policy.

Pakistan, in a way which resembles the old French policy of placating terrorist groups but which has taken it to much, much greater extremes, has sought to buy its peace from terror attacks by both permitting "foreign" groups to operate from its soil and protecting them from other "foreign" antagonists. The government and military of Pakistan sat back, hands folded on their collective laps, until it had become explosively evident that Taliban had slipped its ISI leash and unilaterally cancelled the old deal.

The US would have acted quickly and (hopefully) effectively had the government of Pakistan, the Pakistani military, or ISI given notice of bin Laden's or Zawihiri's address. Not only did the phone call never come, the Pakistani organs publicly (and privately) maintained they were completely mystified and baffled as to where any of the terrorist heavyweights might be. They often added that the wanted men must still be in Afghanistan.

Considering the largess spread by the US Congress and administrations both past and present, a largess which will be paid by our descendants on to the fifth generation, the Clinton Bluntness Gambit is well justified. Now, both the administration and the congress must back her play. The challenge, the glove cast before Islamabad, must be renewed--and expanded. It is all well and good to praise the Pakistanis for finally having taken some sort of more or less effective action against the Islamist jihadists, but that is not enough.

It is not enough to justify all the money we have and will spend on the Lads of Islamabad. It is not enough that they have finally decided that they have to do something or lose their heads to the swords of what they like to call "miscreants."

To not only justify the money we have lavished upon their regime and its assorted military goodies, they must now show they really have joined the side of civilization in opposition to the barbaric forces of the Islamist jihadists. To do this they must hand us the head of Osama bin Laden, with or without the rest of his body. Ditto, al-Zawihiri.

It may have been a thumbs-up for Secretary Clinton. But, it is the back of the Geek's hand to the UN Human Rights Council. Well, to err on the side of specificity, its Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Philip Alston.

Mr Alston is all het up over the use of Predators and Reapers in the FATA of Pakistan. He is reportedly even more exercised over the unwillingness of the US, specifically CIA, to supply the family jewels on how targets are determined and engaged. The Special Rapporteur used language in his press conference the other day which echoed very well the approach taken by Justice Goldstone regarding the IDF.

He hinted darkly that the US "may" be committing war crimes in its use of UAVs. He can't be sure of this, however, unless the US provides all the relevant and requested information.

There is no doubt that Mr Alston would like to know the details of UAV missions and the supporting targeting systems. So would the targets. And their supporters around the world, many of which are represented on the Human Rights Council.

When not engaged in absurdities such as the widely decried hang wringing over the probable abuse of the human rights of transgendered persons as was the case with the UNHRC in-house "expert" on counterterrorism, the august body undertakes travesties such as its perversion of the already malformed Goldstone Panel Report. Now, the Council wants to drag the US into the same mire as it has Israel.

Recently the Jerusalem Post quoted a critic as terming the Goldstone effort as "a Magna Carta for terrorists." Mr Alston seems to be doing his best to augment the Goldstone effort.

While there is no debating the unfortunate fact that non-combatants have died from the Predator attacks, there is also no debating that this was not the desired effect of the attacks. US decision makers and those who execute the decisions are quite well aware of the ground truth that the killing of uninvolved civilians is counterproductive to say the least.

The gold (not Goldstone) standard for adjudicating an action during war as a crime is that of intent. The law of land warfare in the US and everywhere for that matter is intent pure and simple. It has been acknowledged for decades, centuries, perhaps longer, that in war civilians will be killed. It is unavoidable. Inescapable. So, showing a commonsense usually lacking in the area of jurisprudence, the standard of intent was evolved long times past.

Mr Alston needs to get a grip. The collateral loss of civilian life is an unfortunate reality of war whether carried out by UAVs or undertaken in a very up close and personal fashion. And, intent cannot be proven or disproven from an examination of the protocols and procedures for targeting and servicing the targets chosen.

Not unless someone, somewhere, at sometime, deep inside the Beltway wrote an order saying in effect," It is our intent that civilians be intentionally targeted." Sooner whales will fly than that sort of order would surface--or even exist. Not even Dick (Kill-'em-All-And-Let-Hell-Sort-It-Out) Cheney was that stupid.

Predators--The High Tech Knife In The Back

The American public is either supportive of or indifferent to the use of the Predator and Reaper UAVs in the war against Islamist jihadists. But, the indication given a few weeks back by the wave of indignation over the never employed CIA program to kill the same targets up close and personal using human operatives shows the same public would not accept assassinations of the more traditional sort.

A thoughtful--and thought provoking piece from the New Yorker has been posted on Cryptome.

The issues raised by this article are important and deserve wide consideration. Of particular importance is the ethical distinctions between the usual form of killing which requires some close connection between killer and target and the new, stand-off means provided by the UAV.

Assassination, or if you prefer the more sanitary term, targeted killing, is never pleasant. No matter how much the victim may merit this most extreme of sanctions and no matter how much the trigger-puller or knife-wielder agrees with the necessity of the operation, there is always a moment, at least a brief flashing instant, of trepidation before the trigger is pulled or the knife implanted. Or, there is a time afterwards, perhaps long afterwards, after extraction or exfiltration, after debriefing, after the celebratory drink that the pang of regret probes deep and hard in the mind, the heart, the soul. It passes, but its occurrence has the salvation of proving the contact between killer and the killed was fundamentally human in nature.

Of course, it must also be remembered that the killer, again regardless of training and experience, regardless of equipment and support, must take a risk, a very real risk of somehow losing as the encounter occurs. The target may not go willingly and quickly to his death. The sheep may turn into a lion when the ultimate moment comes. Or, his security people may be more alert--or lucky--than anticipated or planned for. Or, something, some little damn thing, goes wrong. Assassination, like war itself, rarely goes perfectly as planned.

The ethical objections raised to the use of UAVs in lieu of the traditional man-in-black seem to focus on the detached, sanitary, inhuman nature of the act. Likewise, the emotional reaction against the use of the tried-and-(Usually) True methods of targeted killing seems to focus on the fact that the act is uniquely human. That it demands one person in a calculated, planned, most cold blooded way take the life of another.

It is ironic to say the least that both proponents and opponents of the UAV in the sky, Hellfires at the ready, emphasize the (in)humanity of the act of killing. The proponent argues that the distance, the remote nature of the button pusher from his target makes the action both more controllable and less risky. The opponent contends that the lack of risk and the remoteness of the killer combine to denature the act of killing from any of the virtues normally associated with men at war such as courage, initiative, determination, and the willingness to place one's life at hazard in the pursuit of national goals.

Another school of argument against the use of UAVs takes a more abstract view. Yet it is still a view anchored in the reality that warfare is a fundamentally human endeavor. This more rarefied argument holds that the lack of risk, the absence of casualties, allows, even encourages a government to use lethal means in support of policy in a hidden way which evades the normal controls and constraints on a president's ability to wage war without let or hinder on the part of the public or congress.

Proponents of the Predator way of war answer that the lack of friendly losses serves to liberate the necessary conduct of policy from artificial limitations imposed by the fear of friendly losses. The UAV is a safe way to neutralize individuals whose existence necessarily presents a clear threat to US national and strategic interests without high cost to the country either in lives or prestige.

There is much merit in this contention. The UAV option does allow the removal of obnoxious personalities without the high visibility of manned air operations or even relatively low signature special forces or black ops. A well conducted UAV strike or campaign of multiple strikes can be conducted without a high profile which automatically invests national prestige with potentially disastrous effects.

The counter is self-evident. A UAV hit is not invisible to the people on the downrange end of it. Since very few such strikes kill only people in real need of killing, the excess deaths will attract attention--and opposition. The UAV is just as likely as a manned airstrike or a misdirected artillery round to create more people hostile to the US than it removes from the game.

Another purely human based argument against the UAV and its attendant bravery of being out of range comes from the cultural reality that it is seen, particularly in tribal and similar societies, as being singularly "unmanly," and thus it rouses more contempt than it generates fear within the recipient population. The result of the bootless cruise missile attacks so beloved by the Clinton administration are illustrative of this contention. They aroused a certainty within the Islamist jihadists of Taliban and al-Qaeda that the Americans were so afraid of dying that they could be defeated by terror.

The cruise missiles were used in order to both punish and deter the Islamist jihadists. That they failed in both missions is obvious. The record to date on the Predators and Reapers is not so clear cut. At least not yet.

The strikes have killed genuine bad guys. There is no doubt but their existence has served to lessen both combat efficiency and morale of the Islamist jihadists to some extent. But, counter measures have already been devised--and posted--by the jihadists. And, the loss of even a major figure such as Baitullah Mehsud had no lasting effect on either the political will or will to combat of the Islamist jihadists.

At the same time there can be no denying that the UAV attacks have killed non-combatants. The figures are soft and contradictory, but at least three hundred civilians have been killed so far this year by Predator strikes in Pakistan. There can be no denying that these unintended deaths have brought with them a swelling of pro-Islamist jihadist sentiments which are real albeit exaggerated by the Pakistan government for its own reasons.

In short, lethal Predator attacks have a utility, a limited one, but quite real. They are a useful tool but no more than that. The same may be said of the traditional approach to carefully targeted killing. Assassination is a tool, a useful one, but limited.

From the perspective of ethics there is no real choice between the two methods. Both have a tinge of distastefulness to the ethically tender. Both reduce war to a form of single combat. In that respect both are preferable to the mass encounter of armed men.

Properly conducted, either method can allow a president to pursue necessary national and strategic interests in a low visibility way which limits but does not eliminate the possibility of invoking national prestige to an undesirable extent. The most essential difference comes in the effects upon the collective mentality of the recipient population.

If the use of UAVs has a counterproductive effect in the way the Clinton administration's cruise missile attacks demonstrated, then the bravery-of-being-out-of-range option must be eschewed no matter how gee whiz attractive it may be. After all, the purpose of assassination either up close and personal or from a distance is to have a positive effect upon the enemy, to cause him to bend to our political will.

The tool has to be matched to the task. As one does not use a sledgehammer to pound in a tack, one does not use a method which produces more enemies than it kills. That is the real criterion for assessing the use of Predators and Reapers in Pakistan or Afghanistan--or anywhere.

The crux of decision making is not which will give a sanitary distance to killing, or which will give the president more options and greater deniability. It is which will have the greater probability of bending the enemy to our political will.