Bad Analogies Equal Bad Results

There are a lot of people--including senior decision makers, even heads of state--who think by association.  You know it, the this-reminds-me-of-that approach to assessments and deciding.  It is this mental characteristic which results in the often used and frequently quite misleading reasoning by analogy.

Foreign policy, even matters of war and peace, are quite susceptible to reasoning by analogy.  A complex current situation is understood and explained by use of an overly simplified, normally highly inapposite analogy.

So it was during the Vietnam War when criticism of the war was typically rebuffed by use of the Munich analogy.  "Anything less than total commitment to stopping Ho Chi Minh is appeasement."  During the run up to the Gulf War twenty years ago, President George H.W. Bush constantly used Hitler as an analogy for Saddam Hussein--a comparison which was unfair to both men.

During the weeks preceding the more recent invasion of Iraq, the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, and many others assured each other and the American public that the invading troops would be greeted by cheering multitudes, bouquets of flowers, and general rejoicing in a manner identical with the reception given the American, British, and Canadian forces during the days following the landings in Normandy.  It was a heartwarming picture, easily reinforced by ancient black and white footage of joyously delirious French crowds waving American and other flags.  The idea like the grainy images were so appealing, so easy to believe, so seductive, so---

Wrong.  Utterly, absolutely, totally wrong.  The analogy used with such abandon by the planners and decision makers right up to the Decider Guy in the Oval equating the warmth purportedly extended to the Allied "liberators" in France with what would be expected in Iraq was tragically, disastrously wrong.  The tragedy and disaster alike came from the fact that planning for the day after was based upon an analogy which was not only indescribably wrong for the Iraqi context but was without basis in the reality of the days following 6 June 1944.

Wait one, Geek!  The old newsreels did show crowds of French and Belgian citizens kissing the GIs, the Tommies, tossing flowers, waving bottles of wine and champaign.  That was the truth.  All contemporary films, news reports, letters, even private diaries attest to that.

You bettcha, bucko.  The crowds, the cheers, the kisses were all genuine.  But, none came from the actual combat zone.  All happened after the breakout from the beachhead and the drive across France was in full sway with the Germans beating feet in all out retreat.

In the combat zones, in the areas surrounding the landing zones, the picture was completely different.  Different and not so encouraging.  Where the fighting occurred, there were no cheers, no kisses, no flowers, no joy.  The diaries, the letters, the censored and therefore never published dispatches, the intelligence reports all agree.  At best, the local folk, the French who cowered in fear as the bombs fell and the shells exploded, as their cities, towns, and villages were ground to dust by the white hot plow of war, were at best sullen, withdrawn, and anything but kindly predisposed to their "liberators."

The only reasons that armed resistance did not break out from the wells of local hostility were the lack of effective organization and, more importantly, the very high density of Allied personnel on the ground--some two million just before the breakout nearly two months after D-day.  Still, the anti-Allied sentiments were clear in attitudes and behavior alike across the ruins of Normandy.  The intelligence and civil affairs documents of the day make that obvious.

The joy of liberation sprang forth only in those areas of France and Belgium where there was no, or, at worst, minimal combat operations and concomitant damage and death.  Good feelings were directly proportionate to the lack of dead bodies and broken buildings.

Whether from pure ignorance or volitional misinterpretation, the Bush-Cheney neocon crew used a false analogy so neither the administration nor the military nor the American and world public were prepared for the instant outbreak of violence in the wake of the invasion.  There were no cheers.  No flowers tossed at the onrushing tanks.  No plethora of kissing.  There was a lot of looting.  A lot of shooting.  A lot of resistance both silently sullen and noisily hyperactive.

There was also a lot of local settling of old scores.  This aspect of the invasion and its aftermath could and should have been predicted on the basis of the World War II in France analogy.  The settling of assorted political scores, debts, vendettas poured swaths of blood the length and breadth of France.  This sanguinary effusion was well known at the time as it is by later generations of historians.  Only the Bush/Cheney crew seemed unaware of it with the result there were insufficient men and resources to deal quickly with the problems of "liberation."  The results of that are well known by all of us.

Bad analogy brought bad results.

But all the use of bad analogy does not exist on the American side of the hill.  It resides as well, for example, in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad commented during his recent Great American Tour that the US had never been involved in a "real war."  He opined that not even World War II, generally considered to be an excellent example of the breed, constituted a "real war."  The Ahmadinejad view of history and war has been echoed repeatedly by senior Iranian governmental and military officials over the past several years.  The constant refrain of Iranian military supremacy and an equivalent lack of American competence in the field can be amusing or infuriating in its unrealistic appraisals.  However, it is based on reasoning by analogy.

The prevalent Iranian understanding of war is predicated quite unsurprisingly on the Iraq-Iran War, which started thirty years ago.  To the Iranians, particularly those of Ahmadinejad's generation, this singularly bloody and inconclusive multi-year conflict is the paradigm of modern war.  The Iranians have produced a narrative of the war which celebrates their steadfastness, bravery, willingness to die, ability to accept fatalities unequalled since the brutal combat on the Eastern Front during World War II.  The narrative always concludes that the ability of Iranians to die in windrows and keep on fighting constitutes the strength of their nation and thus its ability to best the US or Israel or whoever.

The problem comes in that the analogy of the Iraq-Iran War is utterly, totally, and absolutely wrong.  The ground truth behind this evaluation is the simple fact that the war was not a modern war.  Rather it was a Medieval war fought with modern weapons.  This is a crucial distinction which renders the analogy fatally dangerous to the Iranian decision makers who rely upon it in making choices regarding the confrontation with the US and other Powers.

The Iraq-Iran War was Medieval in its essential nature.  There was no concept of strategy, operations, or tactics beyond that of hurling masses of poorly trained or completely untrained men in assaults on prepared positions.  In this respect the Iraq-Iran War was far below even the stereotyped and unsuccessful approaches to combat seen on the Western Front between November 1914 and early 1918.

Even the use of missiles during the so called "war of the cities" phase of the Iraq-Iran War did not differ from the use of trebuchets tossing corpses and incendiary payloads over the walls of fortified towns during Medieval campaigns.  There was no aspect of modern mobility, modern command, control, and communications, no correct coordination of movement and firepower.

In comparison, the battles of Crecy or Agincourt were modern.  At least these showed tactical and weapons employment features of a novel sort with the result the British won at low cost against a larger French force relying on outdated methods.

Ahmadinejad and company do not show any appreciation of the American way of war either in its classical sense as exhibited in World War II or even in Korea and Vietnam or in its more evolved form exhibited in both Iraq wars as well as in Afghanistan.  Ever since the mind altering experience of the War Between the States, the US has emphasized the expenditure of materiel over the sacrifice of American lives.

During World War II or Korea or even Vietnam, the US was willing and able to heave awesome amounts of lethal stuff down range if such would save American lives.  In these conflicts the US was relatively oblivious to collateral damage and civilian deaths--as the French in Normandy found out on and after 6 June 1944.  It was not that the US intentionally sought civilian collateral damage.  Rather, it was the technological limitations which precluded any true precision which might have spared lives and property.

The imperatives of changing international norms as well as realpolitik considerations in interventionary operations combined with a need to assure that every round fired had a maximum probability of scoring a first round kill to propel the development of ever more accurate weapons and munitions.  It is not that the US now wants to wage bloodless war, but the need to limit collateral damage while enhancing the potential of killing those in need of being killed have become preeminent.  The ideal weapon from the American perspective now is one which will kill the target first time, every time, without splattering any viscera on the "innocent" person standing at the target's shoulder.

The result is the capacity to inflict awesome devastation on a target.  Whatever must be hit will be hit.  And, if hit, will be obliterated (hopefully leaving enough DNA in the smear of protoplasm to allow identification).  Even hardened or mobile targets cannot escape engagement and obliteration.  A very great deal of money and brain power have been expended on assuring the ability to find, engage, and destroy even fleeting and intentionally elusive targets.  As much has been spent on developing means to penetrate hardened targets with non-nuclear munitions and pleasingly destructive effects.

Coupling this weapons and munitions approach with a highly evolved intelligence, command, control, and communication system gives the US a capacity to find, fix in place, and destroy targets which is hard to match and impossible to exceed.  This constellation along with the superb mobility and flexibility of US forces constitutes genuinely modern war.

While the Iranians may have progressed somewhat beyond the Tenth Century level of warfare, which constitutes their paradigmatic experience, there is no reason to assess their level of competence in modern war to be anywhere near that of the US or other civilized states.  As a result, any reasoning by analogy with the Iraq-Iran War will prove (literally) fatal to the Iranian regime.

Bad analogy brings bad results.  Or, should the Iranians insist on basing their calculus of defiance on their narrative, the results may as severe as the ending of Iran as a functioning state.

Oh, well, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of guys.

ADMIN NOTE: Ignore the frustrations of the anti-spam comments as the Geek invites, welcomes and will post all on topic comments.

How Many Guarantees Would Be Enough?

Of all the reasons to develop a good case of the knee-knocks over Pakistan, the nuclear stockpile and associated production facilities have to be at the top of the list. It is small wonder that the US government continues to seek additional "guarantees" from the Pakistani military and government as to the security of the nukes.

There is equally little surprise to the Pakistani response. Everything is secure, they croon over and over. Everything is secure; don't worry. Everything is secure; there is no cause for alarm.

What else could they say? Is it credible that Zardiri or any Pak general would up and announce, "Well, for the moment it looks as if our toys are all accounted for, but who knows about tomorrow? That's up to Allah."

Of course the weapons are only a small part of the problem. Even if the stockpile is under the full, firm and resolute control of the government, that doesn't remove all grounds for anxiety.

The Pakistani nuclear materials production system is large--and getting larger. For example, there is one plutonium production reactor operating with two more under construction on the edge of the FATA. In addition to plutonium, the operating reactor makes a great deal of high level radioactive waste. After the desired plutonium is extracted chemically, the rest of the radwaste is still around.

In and of itself the radwaste is an attractive target for theft. This brew from hell would be sought as the prime component of a radiological weapon--the much feared "dirty bomb." All that is needed in addition to the radwaste is an explosive charge to distribute it at the target location.

Oh, yeah, and someone willing to deliver the dirty bomb. This, obviously, would not be a job for the faint at heart.

As the seeking after martyrdom is a job requirement for the jihadist, it is to be presumed that Taliban and akin groups are full of suitable candidates. The same sort of candidate would be appropriate for the task of knocking over a radwaste storage site.

While JCS Chairman, Admiral Mullens, is "comfortable" regarding the current state of security for the Pakistani nuclear weapons, can he say the same about the glow-in-the-dark trash heap adjacent to the plutonium separation plant and its production reactor? The Admiral would probably agree that the task of providing leak proof security to the radwaste dump or the processing facilities generally is a far more difficult task than keeping the weapons out of hostile hands.

A kilo or so of assorted long lived radionuclides would be sufficient to ruin a sizable part of a city. It would be more than sufficient to generate a level of public anxiety far surpassing that generated by the recent A,H1N1 non-pandemic.

It wouldn't matter what city was attacked. It need not be in the US or Europe. Whacking Mumbai, for example, would have a suitably dramatic effect upon the world--to say nothing of Indo-Pakistani relations.

As the attack on Mumbai a little while back showed, the problem of getting from Pakistan to the target does not present any particular problem. Nor does it take that much time.

If an entity were willing to accept a few fatalities from exposure to radioactivity, the lag between a theft of glowing trash in Northwest Pakistan and the detonation of a dirty bomb in Mumbai would not exceed four or five days. In short, the payoff could take place before the Islamabad government had acknowledged the breech of security.

A close examination of the satellite imagery posted over the past few years by the Institute for Science and International Security gives no indication of rigorous security systems in place at the Khushab facility (or any others for that matter.) The Khusab complex southwest of Islamabad is conveniently close to territory in which Taliban operates openly and freely. There is no reason to believe that a strike across the few dozen kilometers separating the plant from Taliban country is beyond the capacities of the jihadists.

The "miscreants" (to use the latest fashionable term in the Islamabad vocabulary) have the capacity to launch a breaking and entering raid on the plutonium production reactor at any time. The capability of the Pakistani army to prevent this is debatable at best. Which brings us back to the question: How many guarantees will be enough?

General Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor, has been quoted recently as again saying more guarantees of nuke security are necessary. As has been the case previously General Jones did not specify the nature of the "pledge" required to assuage American anxieties.

That isn't surprising. No amount of "guarantee" will be sufficient. None can be sufficient. Anything less than the direct involvement of US troops in the guarding of the weapons dumps, production reactors, processing facilities and trash heaps will be insufficient.

And, that will not happen. Not now. Not ever.

Even in the worst case situation of a Taliban takeover, the most the US can hope to accomplish is the armed seizure of some, but, realistically, not all of the actual weapons and stockpile(s) of fissile materials. Beyond that the US would be able to impair the production facilities.

We would not be able to destroy the reactors, separation facilities or radwaste depositories. Any attempt to do this would, perforce, release quantities, perhaps enormous in size, of radioactivity to the environment. Such a giga-curie release would wreak great harm on the Pakistani population, and, depending on several variables, the populations of other countries as well. This would not be an acceptable option.

Sure looks bleak, doesn't it?

That's the problem with nuclear proliferation. Like so much else in international affairs, it involves the Law of Unintended Consequences. Way back when, when the Pakistanis started their quest for an Islamic bomb, the US did not oppose the effort. Well, the opposition wasn't all that serious.

Pakistan was important to us. It was a Cold War thing. We needed Islamabad's cooperation in countering the Soviet gambit in Afghanistan. We needed Pakistan as a counter to India's pronounced and protracted leftward tilt in foreign affairs.

Anyway, the Pakistani military regime looked stable, pro-West and capable of behaving in a responsible, adult fashion. And, the bloody Indians were going full-tilt after their own bomb. So, all things considered, it was nothing to lose sleep over. Thus our opposition, such as it was, ran more along the lines of the pro forma than the serious.

The shaky logic of the decision(s) back then was apparent even at the time. Also apparent was the Islamist tendencies within the military and intelligence services of Pakistan. But, in the finest don't-think-long-term fashion of governments generally, we ignored the danger signs and acquiesced.

Now the Law of Unintended Consequences has caught up with us. Now high anxiety reigns. Now, no level of guarantee will or can be enough.

Ain't foreign policy fun?

Countries Without A Reason For Existing

The question for the day is this: What do Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and large sections of Pakistan have in common--other than a surfeit of turban-topped thugs with an AK in one hand, a Koran in the other and a ready-to-wear suicide bomb rig close at hand?

To make it simpler, the Geek stipulates that each and every of these places is noted for poverty, low educational levels, short-life expectancy, and a generally reactionary view of life. However it may pain the High Minded and Lofty Thinking, these don't have genuine significance.

There are factors at work in all these areas which prime them particularly for the role of seedbeds of Islamism and its armed twin, jihadism. Unless these factors are recognised, their power correctly estimated, and their impact properly measured with the results taken into account, no effective policy to counter Islamism/jihadism can be formulated.

The basic reality for all of these places is simply that none has an organic, authentic reason to exist as more than a geographic expression. Despite the appearances, appurtenances, and niceties of international convention, none of these so-called "countries" is a nation-state as such is generally understood. Nor does any of them have a real probability of becoming even a simulacrum of a nation-state in the foreseeable future.

All are creations of international politics, of both colonialism and the post-colonial rush to nationhood which characterised the decades following World War II. None arose naturally from shared history, common language, the centripetal effects of culture, social structure and universal defining mythology.

Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and, yes, even Pakistan are fundamentally pre-national. Their social structure is tribal. Primary loyalties are to the family, and beyond that to the assemblage of families, the tribe.

None have an economic reason to exist as national entities. All have, at most, an economic context which allows for subsistence level existence by a limited population. None have the actual or potential capacity for effective, full participation in a regional, let alone the global economy. (It should be noted that without the oil deposits below the sand, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf sheikdoms would be in the same category.)

Historically the several listed places have never had more than episodes of coherent, centralised government. Typically these periods have been marked by the emergence of a temporary strongman at the center in response to a transient external threat. Rarely has the duration of the central regime lasted more than a few years, a generation at most. There has been, in short, no evolutionary trajectory of an all-inclusive central government in a dynamic relationship with subsidiary governments and the people as a whole.

We who live in nation-states which represent the end product of centuries of often bloody evolution of political theories and institutions tend to forget just how long and difficult the road to the present has been. And, how littered with dead bodies the route has been. We also forget that we are still in the process of trying to perfect the nation-states in which we live.

(One of the more ironic features of intellectual life today is that while we demand that non-states such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and a host of others leap from the pre-national to the national, Western elites are pushing for the abandonment of the nation-state as the root of most, if not all, evil so as to embrace the post-national future.)

The only apparent unifying factor within the peoples of the listed "countries" is Islam. However, even this unity is far more apparent than real. Even in principle there is no one, uniform brand of Islam. Not only are there the Four Schools of the Sunni, there is the Shi'a form. And, there are variants such as that represented by the Sufi. Additionally, there are forms of interpretation within the Four Schools such as Wahhibism.

In practice there are even more divisions, more factions, more invitations to disunity within the Community of the Faithful. The non-hierarchical nature of Islam along with the relative absence of synods with the capacity to assure doctrinal compliance gives every cleric the opportunity and impetus to form his own understanding and promulgate it with the view of gaining adherents.

Beyond these inherent divisions there is another. Just as Christianity has "Sunday only" Christians and Judaism its "High Holy Days only" Jews, so also does Islam have its own In-The-Mosque only" Muslims.

The follower of Islam can exist anywhere along a continuum from a point of nominal membership to one of pro forma devotion to one of extreme commitment. Most Muslims are observant, follow the Five Pillars, join the community in prayers without embracing the demands of political Islam, the war whoops of Islamism and jihadism.

From all indications the Muslims of the non-states fall somewhere on the continuum. Some are Islamists. Most are observant. Some are nominalists. There is no unity in the religion any more than there is in other features of the polity and society.

The rub comes from the often demonstrated reality that the True Believers, the Islamists, the jihadists, are most willing to use force to assure their ascendancy. The others, the majority, the observant Muslims, are not nearly so eager to kill and die. Unless and until there is a species of Thermidor, the Islamist jihadists will be able to kill their way to power. On the up side, events in Iraq have shown that the Thermidor eventually comes even if incompletely.

The first challenge for US policy is that of acknowledging the limits of pretense.

In some cases, such as Pakistan, it may be utterly crucial to pretend that Pakistan is a genuine nation-state and not simply the creation of a handful of scared and ambitious Muslims sixty plus years ago which has been kept in existence by the repeated and timely interjection of military rule. In the case of Pakistan the pretense of nation-state status has been continued with such vigor for so long and with results such that the fraud must be continued in the hopes it will become a reality before the country slips into the hands of the Islamists.

Afghanistan has become our little Frankenstein's monster. We have so over committed to the (spurious) notion that the place is a nation-state that we cannot simply kill as many Taliban as possible in the next few months, declare victory and get out. As the recent controversy over Article 132 of the draft law demonstrated, the US and its allies are all for democracy as long as it gives results which meet our approval. There is every probability that the national elections in August will see an Islamist tilting government come to power via the ballot box.

This probability becomes almost a certainty if Taliban were to follow the recent advice of the UN's Man in Kabul. He called for the gunslinging martyrdom seekers to come in from the cold and join in the election process. Should Taliban under whatsoever cover do so, there is a better than excellent chance it would gain a plurality if not an outright majority of the votes.

This would present a pretty problem for the Obama administration. It is highly unlikely that the vox populi would be acceptable if it turns out to be the vox dei of the Islamist persuasion. Karzai will go whatever theological route is marked, "This Way To Power." Taliban, like the Nazis more than seventy-five years ago, will have come to power through democratic means. In essence the US and its partners will be voted out by the very methods we demanded be put in place.

Should this scenario come to pass it will be irony of the most delicious sort.

With respect to Somalia, the US and other Western countries had best accept reality. There is no way in which outside powers can transmute the dross which is Somalia today into some sort of democratic solid gold. The best which can be accomplished is to restrain the bloody chaos from spreading to Kenya or other coterminous states. It is time to recognise that Somalia is not so much a failed state as a state that never was.

Yemen seems condemned to go the same direction as Somalia. Yemen, like its counterpart across the narrow Gulf of Aden, is a state that never really was. Through most of the past forty plus years Yemen was officially two countries constantly at war with each other. The two were also the pawns of regional powers and very minor proxies in the Cold War contest at the margins. Subsequent to the consolidation of the two into one, there has been sporadic insurgency in the north. Al-Qaeda has been active in the south. Tribalism is rife. The central government is virtually powerless--even in the capital itself.

If Yemen slips down the tubes of Islamism the strategic problem for the US is far from insignificant.

As the impact of the pirates of Puntland has demonstrated, it does not take much in the way of resolutely applied armed force to pose a grave challenge to the global economy and the governments that desire to assure freedom of navigation. While the collective naval force available could, if properly employed, immunise the shipping against pirate attack, there is not yet any consensually accepted course of action available to deal with captured pirates. Nor is there any consensus on the necessity of pirates being killed. Unless and until these two lacks are addressed, the joining of Yemen based raiders to those of Somalia will be a very significant threat to global trade.

Yemen is a perfect base for the training, equipping and mounting of attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Islamist jihadists would undoubtedly greatly increase their use of the venue with results which could be very embarrassing to the West generally. It is debatable whether or not the Saudi armed forces would be able to interdict the movement of jihadists to and from bases in Yemen. It is even more debatable whether or not a foreign interventionary force would be able to "pacify" the territory of Yemen.

The current government of Yemen, like its counterpart in Somalia, wants money. The pretense from Saana is that with oodles and gobs of money, the present regime can purchase sufficient support to stay in power and extend stability throughout the country. The same lyrics are sung by the Somali Transitional Federal Authority.

While there is a measure of truth in the claims of both let's-pretend governments, it is small. Money in these geographic expressions is like payments to a blackmailer. They both buy peace. But the peace is short and the demands never ending.

No amount of outside money can create a nation-state from a geographic expression. No amount of outside money can maintain a state which lacks any reason to exist. No amount of outside money, aid, advice, or good intentions can can transform a state that never was into one which has an existence both now and into the future.

We have to get a grip on that.

Time For A Change--Pirates And Somalia

The US has floated a new proposal at the UN Security Council. Under its provisions foreign forces would be allowed rights of hot pursuit right past the high tide line and onto Somalian territory. Such rights would, of course, be attendant upon the permission of the UN sponsored Transitional National Government. (No mention was made of the fact that the Somalian central regime is highly transient, not at all national and a government only by courtesy.)

The effrontery of the American proposal apparently rankled the African Union, which made any number of unkind comments regarding the "wealthy" nations being ready to use force against a handful of hardscrabble fishermen trying to eek out a living through seizing ships while being "indifferent" to the fate of Somalia and the Somali people. There was a subtext of implication. An implication that the same"wealthy" nations had promoted the collapse of Somalia nearly twenty years ago.

The fine folks at the African Union might want to refresh their acquaintance with history. The history of their own continent. Specifically, the history of Somalia during the last couple of decades. The US undertook to protect the humanitarian operations of the UN in the early Nineties. The mission was well intended but failed as a result of High Minded aspirations of "nation building." The US effort was ably backed and humanitarian aid offered by any number of the so-called "wealthy" nations.

(It might be recalled as well that during the time of the US intervention in Somalia, the African Union as well as the governments and media of several member states including Kenya severely reamed out the US for practicing both "neocolonialism" and "genocide." Say what!)

The ultimate failure of this first effort at nation building was the responsibility of Somalian leaders. The rise of the Union of Islamic Courts was also a product marked "Made in Somalia."

The overthrow of the Union of Islamic Courts occurred, not because the US wanted it to (although no tears were shed over the corpse of an Islamist/jihadist entity in Washington,) but because exiled Somalis and assorted member states of the African Union wanted this eventuality to occur. They did it through the agency of the Ethiopian Army which, while receiving a certain level of gratuity from the US for the effort, represents a government which is a member in good standing of the African Union.

The subsequent failure of the Transitional National Government is the responsibility of the Somalis and the African Union. The AU has an up close and personal interest in Somalian stability. This is a far more direct interest than the US has with regard to the place. Our anxiety, which is well-rooted, revolves around the viability of Somalia as a terrorist training and basing site.

The states bordering that geographical expression called Somalia should exercise the most direct involvement. Kenya along with Ethiopia have the greatest interest in providing stability in Somalia. Kenya perhaps more than Ethiopia since the majority of refugees find heading south to join the already large Somalian population in Kenya both easier and more attractive than crossing the wastes of the Ogaden to find sanctuary in Ethiopia.

The African Union along with any number of High Minded but evidently gripless groups and individuals seem to think that the pirate problem in the waters off Somalia can not be abated unless and until the simple fisherfolk turned pirate can return to steady jobs at a good income in a peaceful pursuit.

Get a grip!

Some of the pirates early on in the game might have been unemployed fishermen in search of a (dis)honest couple of bucks. But those days, if they ever existed, are long in the past. Piracy is a big money maker for all concerned. The parties include not only the trigger pullers in the skiffs or the crews of the motherships, they include Somali clans and tribes scattered throughout the refugee communities of Europe. The parties include as well terrorist groups. Given the profits from this year alone--in excess of 100 million dollars of ransom, there is money enough for all and then some.

The US and other maritime nations, wealthy or not, have a direct national interest at stake in the Gulf of Aden. Piracy drives up the costs of shipping. Piracy delays cargos. Piracy costs, in short, both time and money. This means countries heavily involved in maritime commerce have national interests in play.

Here is a ground truth which the AU might not find palatable. Right now the US and other maritime nations have no national interests in play in Somalia. Somalia is not worth anyone's effort because no one has a vital national interest at risk there. Nobody that is except Kenya and to a lesser extent, Ethiopia.

So far (with the laudable exception of the French and British) the nations represented in the waters off Somalia have been long on speeches, advice, and having pretty boats drive around the blue waters but have been very short on direct action against the pirates. Many fine words have been expended upon the need of an appropriate court in which to try "alleged" pirates. Somber faces have propounded questions regarding international law, its limits and exceptions.

Speeches, advice, and questions of international law are fine--in their place and time. Noble and High Minded expressions of sentiment regarding the need for a stable government in Somalia and well-paying jobs for Somali fishermen are good for filling space in the media both old and new--but massively irrelevant to the needs of the real world.

It is time for a change. The change must have two components.

The first is short, simple, and unpleasant. Start killing pirates. Accept the inevitable errors and the equally predictable wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by the High Minded over the terrible catastrophe of pirates becoming fish food. Over the vast sweep of history from the expeditions of a young Julius Cesar to the closing days of the Nineteenth Century, the only way in which piracy has been stopped is through the shedding of large quantities of pirate blood.

The second choice is not simple or short. It is unpleasant. The African Union and the UN have two choices. Here they are.

One is to allow the Transitional National Pseudo-government to walk the plank when the Ethiopians withdraw their forces. The most militant of the tripartite Islamist/jihadist movement, the Shahab, constantly state that during the period of the Union of Islamic Courts there was no piracy. OK. Put them to the test. They are going to take over Somalia if and when the Ethiopians leave. No doubt about that. Somalia will become, as the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warns, a center for jihadist activities. The US will have to do something robust when that happens. It will be in our national interest.

The second choice is to insist that the African Union clean up the mess in Somalia. This will not be easy. It will be expensive in lives, money, and time. Taking military action will carry with it the risk of blow back to those countries with a sizable Islamic population. The outcome may well be ambiguous enough to assure the long-term probability of an Islamist/jihadist threat remaining in Somalia for years and years to come.

The African Union will demand the assistance and support of the UN and the "wealthy" nations of the world. This support and assistance should be forthcoming. It will be in the collective interest of the world.

The problem(s) presented by the failed state of Somalia are difficult to settle and impossible to predict as to final outcome. This is not a reason to resist making the tough choices.

The time for dithering, talking, excusing, justifying, and ignoring the pirates of Somalia or the land which gave them birth and gives them sanctuary is past. It is time for a change.

The incoming Obama Administration has to get a grip on the reality and take a leadership role in at least the matter of killing pirates so the sealanes will be safe. That is the minimum necessary strategic interest of this country.

As the old Nike ad put it, "Just do it!"

Time For A Change--Declare Defeat

For some time now the US has been waging a war. We have fought long and hard. It has always been a war without a real strategic purpose or goal. And, it is a war we have lost. Get a grip on this: The time has come for a real change. Reality demands the US admit defeat.

No. The Geek isn't talking about Afghanistan, let alone Iraq.

Nor is he referring to one of those metaphorical wars like the War on Poverty.

The Geek is favoring an admission of defeat in a real war. A war where guns are shot. Lives are lost. Landscape is devastated. He is referring to the longest war in American history. One of the most expensive, perhaps even the most expensive ever. It has been a pointless war. An unnecessary war. A war which was lost on the day it was declared.

The war?

The "War on Drugs, of course. Declared by President Richard Nixon with the wide support of Congress and We the People some thirty-nine years ago, this particular war has been waged globally from the streets of American cities, towns and rural counties to countries as far from us as Afghanistan, Thailand and Burma and as close to us as Columbia, Bolivia and Mexico.

The Nixon war was embraced eagerly by each and every one of his successors. Congress after congress has appropriated dollars in numbers so large as to be appreciated only by those of a Carl Sagan orientation. POW camps on the order of that at Gitmo have been built by the score. Lives have been left blasted ruins along with entire communities. The take-no-prisoners mentality of the anti-drug warriors and their political enablers have ripped the guts out of more than a few American civil liberties.

Beyond that, and arguably (at least from the Geek's perspective) the ever-distorting monster of the "War on Drugs" has warped American foreign relations, alienated foreign governments, harmed core US national and strategic interests, and fostered insurgent and pseudo-insurgent combat in various countries. The "War on Drugs" has fed our enemies and is currently prolonging and complicating our nasty little war in Afghanistan.

So what have we won for nearly two generations of waging war on the desire of people, American people in particular, to alter their state of consciousness?

Nada. Nothing. Zip. The big zero. Using a combination of purity and price in constant dollars, drugs ranging from pot to smack are cheaper per effective dose today than they were at the Nixon giddy-up. While the number of people arrested for pot possession has climbed to nearly one hundred per hour, the potency of marijuana has increased while its constant dollar price has dropped. The same sort of dreary numbers can be offered with respect to other drugs.

According to free market theory--and, make no mistake about it, black markets are free markets where supply, demand and risk set the price--the enormous effort by the US police forces and military services should have raised the effective price. Even after well neigh onto forty years of trying, perfecting technology, arresting, convicting, imprisoning, propagandizing, limiting freedoms, disrupting foreign governments and societies, the US has failed. Miserably failed.

All we have succeeded in doing is ending a lot of lives, ruining a lot more, and making the controllers of the drug trade both more wealthy and powerful. That, my friends, is a hell of a piss poor way to fight, let alone win, a war.

The next question is why are we fighting this counterproductive war, this exercise in recurrent and recurrently obvious failure?

A number of reasons for keeping Americans drug-free whether they want to be or not have been advanced. Not surprisingly one of the favorites is the health consequences of usage.

There are two objections to this.

The first is the historical record of drug usage both here and in other countries. With the exception of a few drugs of recent vintage such as injectable methamphetamine, PCP and crack cocaine, the impact of drugs upon the human mind and body is not dramatic in its ill-effects. This is not to imply that drug usage is without negative effects but rather to assert that the record over time suggests powerfully that they are neither more dramatic nor greater in morbidity than exposure to a multitude of environmental risks.

The second objection zeros in on the impact of drug use on the collective health care costs of a community. The health care cost containment argument overlooks the reason that we live in communities or obtain health insurance. Communal life, like the purchasing of insurance is a means of reducing risk to the individual by distributing it widely. To single out drugs as a target for cost containment is no more legitimate than singling out any other behavior, or all behaviors for that matter.

The second popular argument supporting the continuation of the lost war is a false equation: drugs equal crime. The equation is correct only so far as the illegality of drugs raises costs far above those of normal supply and distribution costs. Beyond that, the equation does not apply as any crime committed in whole or in part because of drug use is a crime whether any demon drug runs through the veins of the criminal. You shoot someone while stoned thinking that someone is the devil or Dick Nixon reincarnate, you get tried for homicide with the drug use being either an aggravating or mitigating factor.

Get a grip on it. A crime is a crime is a crime with or without a chemical presence. And, drug caused crime per se is the result of the market distorting effects of illegality.

The Geek's favorite justification for continuing the shock-and-awe, give-no-quarter war is the fiction of "lost productivity." Whenever some crusader is pushed hard on why keep on keeping on in the endless war, the crusader will more often than not fall back on some enormous dollar figure caused by "lost productivity," which somehow translates into an American economic death through some sort of production anemia.

"Lost productivity" is even more of a fiction than Marx's notion of "surplus value." It is apparently based on the curious concept that we owe the national economy a set amount of labor value per day. As far as the Geek sees the matter, that odd idea transforms each and every one of us into slaves of, if not the state, then the economy. Bah. Humbug!

In any event the concept of lost productivity is not borne out historically. In the Very Bad Old Days when heroin was available over-the-counter and Coca-Cola was well and truly the "pause that refreshes," there were no outcries that drugs were making American workers less productive or somehow inefficient on the job. The complaint was made about drinking booze with some very real justification, but never about drug use.

While hard data do not exist so it is impossible to say with certainty what percentage of Americans used drugs historically, the highest order probability puts the percentage larger, perhaps much larger than is the case today. Ironically, way back then, in the last quarter of the 19th Century, in a time when Americans were stoned a good percentage of the time, drunk almost all the time, our economy cruised by those of England and Germany, becoming in 1885 the world's largest. We've only been threatened in that position as we became a nation of pure-in-mind-and-body health Nazis.

But, the Geek digresses

There is and always has been only one authentic, accept-no-substitutes reason for the "War on Drugs." That reason is morality. Drug use is seen as immoral. Period.

That posture is recent in its origin. Go back to the famed seaport of Nantucket in the early and mid portions of the 19th Century. It was a time and place where most men spent most of their time at sea. The ladies of the town ran the businesses, took care of the families, handled financial matters. The town also imported truly awesome numbers of one kilogram "chests" of opium. The records show the opium arrived but never left for destinations further afield. The Ladies of Nantucket smoked a heck of a lot of opium but no one ever accused these fine descendants of the Puritans of lacking morals.

Not until drug use was tied to non-Caucasian races in the opening days of the 20th Century was a linkage made between drug use and the absence of a stern, Christian morality. The linkage was strengthened by Nixon and his famed "Silent Majority," as they looked disdainfully at the anti-war protesters, the hippies, and similar outrageous totems of an eventful decade.

More recently the statist oriented members of both parties, but particularly the Republican social conservatives, have dilated at length about the immoral roots of drug usage. Since the counter-drug war aggregates power to the government and no government has ever discovered an increase in its authority not to its liking, governing elites and statist politics have stroked each other for mutual benefit.

Since Nixon declared war on drugs (which, when you think of it is as out-to-lunch as the much more recent declaration of a war on terrorism) combating drugs has become a major industry in the US. Not just the cops, the judges, the prison guards, but the therapists, the educators and the researchers have found long-term, very remunerative employment. The line from Blazing Saddles comes to mind. Mel Brooks gave it in his role as governor.

"You realise, this could mean our phony baloney jobs!"

It sure could. The Geek hopes it does. He wants to declare defeat in the preposterous "War on Drugs." The foreign policy benefits alone will be well worth capitulating to reality.

It's time for a change.

Sometimes The British Are So Annoying

Dame Stella Remington the former head of the Security Service (MI 5 for those who like spooky numbers instead of bureaucratic names) has gone on record lambasting the US for "overreacting" to the attacks of 9/11. In her considered opinion we should have sent a bobby or two to arrest the miscreants rather than announce a "War on Terrorism."

In her interview with the Guardian she took the position that the mass killings of 11 September 01 were just one more terrorist act, not unlike the many, many to which the British public had been exposed to during the long years of tumult and violence emanating from Northern Ireland;

Our "huge overreaction" and consequent treatment of the event as an act of war rather than one more boringly familiar challenge for law enforcement "wrong footed" the entire effort to counter the acts of terror. Her stance was echoed by Sir Ken MacDonald, the country's top prosecutor.

The Geek is no fan of the current administration's Great Global War on Terror for many reasons all of which have been adduced in previous posts. He does agree with the decision by the denizens of the Oval and adjacent regions to consider the attack by manned (and involuntarily crewed) cruise missiles on targets in two American cities to have constituted an act of war committed by foreign actors with a foreign base.

When foreigners mount an armed attack resulting in thousands of American deaths, it does not matter if the attackers are called the Imperial Japanese Navy or al-Qaeda. It does not matter if their home base is the Empire of Japan or Afghanistan.

It would have been no more proper to send J. Edgar Hoover and a posse of Feebs to arrest Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese Emperor in December 1941 than to dispatch the cops to arrest Osama and Omar nearly sixty years later.

Get a grip on the real world, Dame Stella: Armed attacks by foreign actors constitute an act of war under international law as well as in the pages of history.

When terror attacks have been executed by individuals resident in or native to the US the Federal law enforcement and judicial authorities have a good record. Just in case you were preoccupied by such matters as dealing with the Provos or planning the beginnings of the most surveiled society outside of Singapore, Dame Stella, allow the Geek to remind you of the aftermath of the first attack on the World Trade Center or what happened following the truck bombing of the Federal Center in Oklahoma City.

Dame Stella, Sir Ken, please note that in those cases and many of similar nature the requirements of due process were followed closely and carefully. Police and prosecutors acted with utter professionalism and propriety. No rights were violated. No shortcuts in appeals were taken.

The Geek agrees that the current administration erred and erred badly with secret detentions, intensive interrogation authorization, the construction of the micro-Gulag at Gitmo and the repugnant Military Commission approach to dispensing justice. He is also of the view that the British surveillance society is violative of basic rights--most importantly the right to privacy, which means the right to be left alone.

The Geek also recalls that the British security forces both civilian and military were less than jealous protectors of rights, due process and psychic equanimity when dealing with the far less lethal even if more pervasive terrorist acts in Northern Ireland. It sticks in the Geek's memory that there was little to choose between today's Gitmo and HM Maze Prison twenty-five or so years ago. He also is reminded that many of the intensive interrogation methods were employed in North Ireland by HM security and military personnel including sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme environmental stressors.

Let's cut to the chase, Dame Stella, Sir Ken. If the US had not committed the Mother of All Blunders of invading Iraq so that the Afghanistan operation could have been conducted as a quick and relatively clean punitive expedition, you would not be casting stones today.

Casting stones while forgetting that your country's recent history demonstrates that you both live in a glass house.

A Brit Tells It Like It Is

Brig Mark Carleton-Smith, the British force commander in Afghanistan shows a firm grip on reality. He spoke a hard, blunt truth when he took the position that there is no way a military victory can be achieved in Afghanistan.

He accompanied that voyage to Realityland with the equally accurate observation that a political solution must be achieved as it has been in all successful counterinsurgent efforts.

This position has not made the Brigadier popular either with his own government or the Current Administration in Washington.

Popularity doesn't matter. The truth does. The weight of history is on the Brigadier's side. The best that can be hoped for from military counterinsurgent operations is, in the Geek's term, "not-losing."

There are very few counterinsurgent campaigns that have resulted in a clear military victory. The American War Between the States stands almost alone in this category although a strong argument can be made for the proposition that finally the Southern political will collapsed not under the weight of Grant's offensive(s) in northern Virginia but with the slash of Sherman's March to the Sea and its sequel, the March Up Country.

The US and its allies had no chance in hell of achieving a purely military victory in Afghanistan from the very start. Had the invading force focused on the task of destroying through death or capture the two target groups, al-Qaeda and the Taliban government of the country, a purely military success would have been possible. At least in principle.

The shift in focus from punitive to nation building assured that the likelihood of military victory slipped down the pole from slim to none. In a nation building, counterinsurgency effort, particularly when the announced political goal is the construction of a liberal, pluralistic, secular democracy in human terrain where all these are either unknown or unacceptable, there is no chance the military effort can achieve more than "not-losing."

Even not-losing has become problematical in recent months and years. The black turbans have grown in numbers and confidence even though their primary tactics still include suicide bombings directed against soft civilian targets. The sanctuary of the FATA coupled with years of Pakistani ineptitude exacerbated by pro-Islamist sentiments within the Pakistani population and critical governmental components such as Inter-Services Intelligence have given the Taliban and its ilk a mega-dose of growth hormone.

While Taliban capo Omar has rejected categorically Karzai's invitation to talks and has engaged in the standard issue bluster regarding the decline of the US, this is inherently meaningless. Taliban is not a monolith. Afghans are increasingly sick and tired of the war. This includes members of Taliban's leadership echelon.

No matter how much one might be comfortable with martyrdom, no matter how much meaning one might seek by one's death, the notion of a Predator having its cross hairs on your back gets tedious. Constant anxiety is a great eroder of morale.

Military pressure--the great and terrible hammer--must continue to be applied to the black turbans on both sides of the porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Predators and Pakistani military operations, cross-border raids by US and NATO specialist forces and never ending combat patrols and ambushes must continue.

While applying the hammer(s) relentlessly and, when necessary, ruthlessly, the US and its allies must never forget the other absolutely essential tool of counterinsurgency--the wrench. Wrenches are great, they are used to turn things, like people's minds. The wrench kit includes, must include, power sharing. It must included negotiations. It must include the recognition and accommodation of people's needs. Even those which sit poorly with Americans such as Sharia.

This is what Brigadier Carleton-Smith was getting at. He has done what any knowledgeable and honest commander must do. He has recognised and admitted publicly that the most the military can do is prevent the other side from winning.

The military can assure that we do not lose.

The wrenches of politics, negotiation, compromise and other distasteful accommodations to the reality of the Afghan human terrain alone can assure victory. Even then it will be an Afghan victory. Not a NATO victory. And, most assuredly, not an American victory.

We the People as well as the current administration (and its successor) better take a firm grip on that. In Afghanistan as in Iraq any victory will be achieved only by the people who live there. The people who will have to keep on living there.

Terror? Call The Cops?

The Geek has always objected to the current administration's Great Global War on Terrorism. As the Geek and numerous others have pointed out ad nauseum, the idea of declaring war on a specific tactic of war is absurd at the least, and flat out counterproductive at worst.

Comes now the famed think tank by the sea in Santa Monica, Rand Corp, to say in a prolix and almost well based study that using military force against terror employing groups is not justified by historical experience. (Go to the following and click on through for the entire pdf document http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html )

The conclusion of the political science types is simply that the majority of terror employing groups have ended their campaigns due to either political or police measures taken by their opponent. The researchers note pointedly that military action (narrowly defined adds the Geek) has been successful in defeating terror employing groups only seven per cent of the time,

None of this is either objectionable or surprising. Provided that the term "military action" is defined to include the use of special operations forces in tightly targeted missions, the employment of military units in a constabulary role and the use of military reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence assets to support both police and political actions.

The employment of heavy, conventional military units in a "counterterrorist" or "anti-terrorist" role is not justifiable on an historical basis. The Geek is tempted to go further than did the lads at Rand. He is willing to go to the extreme and assert that the batting average for conventional forces in either role is zero. Maggie's drawers. Zip. The big goose egg.

In making this assertion the Geek parses between the use of infantry units in a constabulary role emphasizing presence, limited killing and an orientation toward psychological enervation of the adversary and more traditional military operations. The pressure of constant harassing presence by security forces not only severs connections between a terror employing group and the surrounding population. The constabulary also introduces operation-impairing friction between the component cells of the blackhats.

Think of it as a cop-on-the-beat approach on steroids.

Realise also that it is a mission that can rarely--if ever--be effectively performed by US troops. Cops, regardless of what they are called, must be familiar with the geographic and human terrain of their area of responsibility. This means that US forces are inappropriate outside of the United States.

The inappropriateness of employing US military assets for this purpose within the US can pass by without comment as being self-evident except under exceedingly rare conditions unlikely to occur outside of a Dick Cheney nightmare.

The use by the United States of stand-off weapons such as Tomahawk missiles that were so beloved by the Clinton Administration is also unjustified by the historical experience. Even when target intelligence has been both timely and accurate, the reaction time has been too lengthy to provide for useful results.

While it is true that the reaction loop time can be diminished by the National Command Authority giving prior approval to forces in the area to launch and further reduced when the next generation of supersonic missiles comes on line, the use of such advanced technology is unlikely to prove successful in ending or even diminishing a terrorist oriented group's will or ability to continue.

"Get real, Geek!" You object.

"Get a grip on this," replies the Geekmo.

The cultural matrix which has been producing terror employing groups and is most likely to do so in the future is unimpressed by death per se. It is most unimpressed by death coming from a cowardly distance. So the use of stand-off weapons in and of itself is counterproductive.

(The Geek suggests to the deep thinkers out in Santa Monica that they take a close look at this hypothesis. The results might be useful albeit disturbing to the Air Force hand that feeds them.)

Even the Predator fired Hellfire missiles which have proven delightfully useful in killing assorted black turbans from Yemen to Pakistan suffers from the drawback of being seen down range as the weapon of a coward. The crux here is simple: To win it is necessary to out macho the opposition. To make them afraid of you--up close and personal.

Understanding this key feature of the human terrain points to a critical mission for military assets. This is the use of special operations personnel for targeted operations based on actionable intelligence against key members of the terror employing group. The goal is simply neutralization. (That term is employed to cover all the possibilities from arrest to killing to simply assuring that the target(s) disappear from human ken.)

Having said that the Geek is of the view that one of the best uses of American intelligence capacities is to support the efforts of friendly foreign governments in counter- and ant-terrorist operations. Only in the event that the foreign government proves unable or unwilling to act upon US provided intelligence in a timely and effective manner should US assets be employed operationally.

It should go without saying that the highest priority of US intelligence should be the detection of threats directed at the US or its citizens overseas. The connections between overseas and domestic intelligence as well as between the entire intelligence community and American domestic law enforcement have been improved since 9/11. They need to be improved more as is indicated in the sub-text of the Rand study.

At home we are only as safe from the actions of a terror employing group or individual as the local police. The Geek notes with interest a large number of terror oriented groups, individuals and actions that were not investigated by the Randies but which occurred within the United States. In the overwhelming majority of these--dating back to the 1880s--local police either thwarted the threat or detected and arrested the perpetrators.

Ultimately a terror act by a non-state actor is not an act of war. It is a violation of the law, a breach of the peace. Cops exist to prevent breaches of the peace and arrest law breakers. The Randies are correct in underscoring this. We should all do the same.

The boys by Santa Monica Bay might also have demonstrated from their study of nearly a thousand terror oriented groups and their actions one salient fact. It's a fact that should make all of us feel better about life.

History shows that most terrorists are even more stupid than most crooks. If we trust the cops to deal with the second groups, we can trust them to do more about the first.

Terror? It's a crime. Not a war.

Shakin' And Quakin' And Headin' For The Valium

The Geek just returned from a regular trip to the land of the occupationally paranoid. Well, to err on the side of accuracy, he didn't actually visit the place, simply read an industry travelogue. You can check it out yourself, http://hstoday.us/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=26.

Even this sort of exposure to the weird land of the vocationally fruitcake is enough to cause the Geek's knees to go weak, his stomach to churn and his flight/fight response go into overload. Then, he slaps his face and shouts to the canyon outside, "Get a grip!"

The reality is simple. In Year Seven of the Age of the Terrorist, we are not neck deep in anthrax. We are not dodging buildings brought down by bombs. We are not wearing Geiger counters as the latest fashion statement (and protection against the aftermath of a "dirty bomb.")

As Year Seven of the Age of the Terrorist comes near its end, shopping malls are not disappearing in clouds of debris. School buses are not being hijacked by Hamas. Aircraft are threatened only by bankruptcy courts.

What gives???

Is all this quiet the result of the fearless and effective efforts of Secretary Chertoff and the dedicated "warriors on the home front" of the Department of Homeland Security?

Or is it something simpler (and far cheaper)?

Such as reality. A reality that will not be found in the plethora of writing by counter terrorist "experts." The reality that the vast majority of wannabe terrorist, both foreign origin and "home grown" are inept even flat out stupid.

Consider the case of Timothy McVeigh. Yes, with the minimal assistance of Terry Nichols, the failed applicant for the Army Special Forces who lacked any specific training in improvised munitions was able to construct a large ammonium nitrate and diesel oil truck bomb and detonate it with a stolen fuse. The explosion did kill a large number of people in the Oklahoma City Federal Building.

But what happened next? The bomber got caught. Easily. Quickly. Why? Because, the ever-so-clever dude had taken the license plate off his pre-stashed get away car and had forgotten to replace it. That was like hanging a sign on the car saying, "Arrest me!" And, he was.

Or take a quick look back at the first attack on the World Trade Center. Yes, the VBIED went off in the garage. It killed a few. Injured a lot. Put a bloody big crater in the parking deck.

And then?

The master terrorists went back to the Ryder truck rental agency to reclaim their deposit. That was all it took to hook names with the VIN recovered from the truck's axle and other parts by the forensic technicians. The rest, as they say. is history.

Not enough proof?

The plotters and executors of the 7/07 attacks on the London transit system made bombs that went off. Bombs that maimed and killed. Then, two weeks later another attack was attempted. It had been in the planning and development stage since long before the 7/07 strike.

The boys (and, in an appropriately supporting roll, girls) went after the same target constellation, the London transit system. This time results were different. The bombs didn't explode. The detonating compound was too weak according to British experts.

Everyone went to jail. Most for a very long time.

Let's face it: it's easy to dream of being a world class terrorist. It's easy to make plans, to have ideas. It's darn tough to turn the ideas, the plans into reality.

Even the big league heavies of al-Qaeda have their problems. Just recall the little accident in a Manila apartment that ended the grand design of ten or more American airliners exploding over the Pacific.

The Geek could go on. He could look at the Liberty City Seven and all the others like that motley assembly including the Fort Dix gang but his fingers are getting tired.

The point of the exercise is simply that there are very few individuals who can, like Mohammad Atta, work effectively at the tactical level of terrorism. There are very few people with the right mix of skills, tradecraft and personality who can assemble a team, keep the team members focused on the mission and lead the mission personally.

Without the rare Mohammad Atta, Osama bin Ladin and his lieutenants are operational nullities. Without a Mohammad Atta, wannabe terrorists are far more likely to be a danger to themselves than to the rest of us.

A danger to themselves? You ask.

Yes. The record shows clearly that absent effective leadership such as that provided by Atta, groups planning an act of terror talk too much, too indiscriminately so that any half awake security or intelligence organisation will get the word fast and accurate. Experience over the past half century at the least show that terror oriented cells whether foreign origin or domestic lack necessary tradecraft--or even the mindset of good career criminals. It shows a consistent pattern of almost wilful exposure of that which should never be exposed to the outsider.

They are a danger to themselves because they set themselves up to be busted. Pure stupidity plus an overabundance of ego kills them figuratively, if not literally.

Of course they kill themselves literally. Making bombs is dangerous. Ask the bloody body parts strewn across the front yards of several Washington officials back in 1919. Or the fragments of the bomb making Weathermen in Greenwich Village in '69.

The Geek agrees that terror directed against the US is a real threat. But it is a threat that can be and has been managed effectively by the old standards of the American intelligence and law enforcement communities from CIA and NSA through the FBI to exemplar police forces such as the NYPD.

If Chertoff and his monstrous legion would focus on securing the border, protecting the gaps in our ports and provide some real as opposed to simply annoying and expensive aircraft security, our actual security at home would increase geometrically at least.

Better yet, Congress should simply redefine the DHS as the Department of border, airline and port security. It would also be a good idea for Congress to take away the porkish grants and awards that DHS has strewn across the landscape without consideration of real threats and genuine risks--to say nothing of actual terrorist capabilities.

It would also be a very good idea if the more monstrous brigade of terrorism "experts" took a good large dose of their favorite trank and went to sleep for a few months. The world would be much better off without their constant nattering.

John Bolton And North Korea

John Bolton is a man with whom the Geek rarely agrees. At the moment regarding US policy toward North Korea, we are in tandem. The provocation for this rare moment of congruence is found in the WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121478274355214441.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

Getting rid of the Yongbyon plutonium production reactor is a good idea. But, in and of itself the decommissioning of the reactor does not solve the major questions regarding the isolated autocracy's nuclear weapons program. Nor does it turn the overly aggressive Soviet era enclave into an outpost of peaceloving good nature.

Be that as it may, the US is rewarding the petulant paranoids of the North Korean regime for its current semi-bad behavior as well as its previous record as an international rogue.

The current administration may be doing the end zone victory high-five, but behind the smoke and mirrors of victory being celebrated without having been achieved lurk the big unknowns.

Unknown number one. Neither the fourteen month late Declaration nor earlier accounts under the 1994 Agreed Framework provide hard data on precisely how much plutonium was produced, extracted, made into weapons or remains somewhere on a shelf deep underground waiting fabrication.

Unknown number two. A similar state of ignorance exists regarding the availability in North Korea of warhead designs such as those found on the A.Q Khan network computer in Switzerland. The existence of designs based on tested and refined weapons both simplifies the fabrication process and nullifies the need for tests. Of course, better designs stretch a limited Pu-239 budget further.

Unknown number three. With the exception of the Yongbyon clone under construction in Syria, the full extent of North Korea's proliferation related activities is lost in the diplomatic fog.

Now for some knowns.

Known number one. North Korea is and always has been a secretive militaristic state given to selling weapons technology to states hostile to US interests.

Known number two. The North Korean clandestine service has engaged directly in acts of terror (albeit not recently) and the regime has given no credible evidence of having renounced this means of warfare,

Known number three. North Korea is an economic disaster area. Starvation looms for many North Koreans.

The US is sending food. Overall a half million tons of US grown food will be sent. The first thirty six thousand tons have arrived already.

The current administration stated that no linkage exists between the humanitarian relief effort and the issuance of the nuclear declaration. As an old spookworld saying has it, "Thank God for coincidence."

(It is passingly interesting to note that the North Korean regime rejected the South Korean offer of corn. Not the kind of response one would expect from a government dealing with massive food shortages.)

There was a clear, direct and open linkage between the North Korean (partial) fulfillment of its obligations and the US removing the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. In that North Korea remains under a series of other sanctions both unilateral and multi-lateral, the practical implications of this reward are limited.

The symbolic significance should not be overlooked. Removing this onus from Pyongyang will make it easier for the regime to receive aid, international institutional assistance and financing and other necessities of survival. Even the provision of food alone helps remove unpleasant burdens from the regime. If others are feeding its population; if others provide material and financial assistance, the regime will be free to focus its energies and resources upon the military and akin structures.

North Korea will be able to continue its sixty year old role as a regional thug as well as its more recent one of global troublemaker. The legitimacy provided Pyongyang by de-listing will free its hands for more mischief.

Regardless of what diplomats, past and present, might aver, this is no policy success. The diplomats along with the current administration might wish it to be such--they have so much political and personal ego invested in the process, but wishing does not make it so.

Smooth words and mood music regarding "verification" and continued sanctions as well as "engagement" do not cover the corpse of failure.

Neither do plaints regarding the "starving millions" of the North Korean peasants. For all the fond hopes and warm feelings of High Minded Humanitarians, the feeding of the multitudes is counterproductive. Full bellies will not bring smiles of peace.

The US did not win. John Bolton is right. The North Korean regime did.

Words, Words and More Words--About Words

Question 1. A jihadist is not a jihadist if--
A.) he is dead
B.) the fatwa authorizing his jihad is cancelled by clerical authority
C.) the clicker on his vest/vehicle/roadside bomb fails
D.) the National Counterterrorism Center and Department of Homeland Security
pronounce that the word must never be used except in a peaceful way
E.) none of the above.

Question 2. An Islamist is--
A.) an adherent of Islam
B.) a student of the foundations and tenets of Islam
C.) a political radical seeking the imposition of Islamic law on a people
D.) a believer in the necessity, desirability and inevitability of the global caliphate
E.) a figment of the fevered minds of Islamophobes

Question 3. A moderate Muslim is--
A.) a member of the silent Islamic majority who may or may not support terror
B.) a Muslim who rises in indignant opposition to those who pilfer Islam in the
cause of killing women, children and other civilians
C.) the target audience for US public diplomacy
D.) a Muslim the US must not risk offending lest he join the black hats
E,) nonexistent given the radical political nature of Islam from a Western
perspective

Question 4. Which statements are true
A.) Muslim terrorist is an oxymoron
B.) Jihad refers to peaceful internal struggle
C.) Jihad refers to peaceful struggle against human enemies such as poverty and
racism
D.) Calling suicide bombers "jihadists" or "mujahideen" confers legitimacy on
them
E.) According to the US Government, all of the above.

(If you answered 1-E, 2-E, 3-C and 4-E you are a US Government approved Sensitive Person. You have also had your visa to the Republic of Reality cancelled.)

The United States is not engaged in a Great Global War on Terror. We are haphazardly skirmishing with a specific and easily defined transnational group including both non-governmental actors and States which espouse the supremacy of Islam and pursue a political agenda which is hoped will lead to the establishment of a global caliphate and the universal application of Islamic law and principles.

What's hard to understand in that?

Islamism and jihadism have been around a long while. Since the purported receipt of the Word From On High by the Prophet Mohammad. Nothing hard to grasp there.

Nothing inherently wrong with the idea either. Islamists are welcome to have their beliefs. They are welcome to hope, pray and even argue that their desired end goal will come to fruition.

Islamists and their more action oriented kin, the jihadist, must not be permitted to use force, the threat of force or subversion to impose their vision upon individuals and nations that do not wish to live in an Islamic Paradise. (Or go there post-mortem.)

Drawing and defending that line is or should be the focus of the United States and kindred spirit countries. It is no more and certainly no less than what we did with respect to expansionist oriented, Soviet Union powered Communism during the Cold War.

Yes, the Geek readily acknowledges that the US government engaged in infuriating excesses of thought policing during the Cold War. As a historian he can cite chapter, verse and line about those excesses both foreign and domestic.

The Geek is quite well aware that the US often committed the fatal blunder of confusing short-term order under a repressive dictator with long term stability within a foreign nation. He knows the US often, all-too-often tried to put the brakes on change within another society and culture with long-term disastrous results for both them and us.

Recognising all of this it is still necessary to state unequivocally that during the Cold War the US understood the nature and character of the threat--the enemy, if you'll permit the Geek to use a harsh, blunt word.

More, the US understood the nature, character and appeal of its values, beliefs and institutions--warts, scars and all. We knew ourselves as we were and showed it to the world even if many were unwilling or unable to accept us as we presented ourselves.

The knowledge of ourselves and our adversaries served us well. It was a (perhaps the) key to understanding the final outcome of the Cold War.

Now it appears that we have thrown all that aside. Our government is unwilling or unable to define who the enemy is and where the threat originates.

Worse, our government--at least the current administration--seems to be gripless regarding just who or what we are and how best to present that to the world. Particularly that portion of the world covered by the word, Muslim.

The effort by the National Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security joined by the State Department to become the Word Police has been given wide currency over the Internet. There is no need for the Geek to summarize the NCTC-DHS dictat.

Wrong headed attempts to assuage the ever-so-sensitive feelings of some American resident Muslims might be warm and fuzzy, but they are ultimately counterproductive in a world filled with cold sharpies.

The last time the US government tried such an exercise in the softening of terms was in 1948 and 1949 when members of the Truman Administration referred to the Chinese Communists of Mao as being "agrarian reformers."

Islamists and jihadists wear the label with pride. They know what they want. They know who they are. There is no reason for the government not to use the same terms.

If some non-Islamist, non-jihadist Muslims take unwarranted offense, that is their problem and the government need take no responsibility for it. There are more than enough multi-cultural oriented academics to wring their hands and view with dismay. The government and the rest of us don't have to join in the circle of tears.

More importantly, the US would be best served not by tender ministration to easily bruised sensitivity but by a robust declaration of what we stand for and why we stand for it.

Unlike the death worshiping Islamists/jihadists, the people of the United States are life oriented, life-affirming. We see both the risks and, more, the opportunities of life. We pursue life and all it has to offer with very few of us casting glances at some presumed pit of hell waiting to swallow our souls.

Unlike fear ridden, eager-to-submit to Higher Authority Islamists and jihadists, We the People are willing, even eager, to stand tall and proud, meeting authority on our terms--not its. We can admit our collective mistakes, the "sins" of our ancestors, rectify the wrongs and seek a better collective future.

Yes, we may take our individualism too far. Yes, we may be a messy people given to too much consumption (at least in the eyes of some). But, in our boisterous and often too exploitative way, we have been living up to that long ago vision of John Winthrop of establishing a "shining city."

Instead of playing the role of the politically correct English Department, the US government should speak of our adversaries bluntly and directly, calling them what they are. More, We the People best demand of the next administration that it get on with the task of letting all those "moderate" Muslims of the Islamic Silent Majority know just what we are and why we are that way.

Perhaps, just maybe, then the Silent Muslim Majority will find its collective voice and drown the demands of the Islamist for more martyrdom in a chorus of "No!"

Israel Did--Did Not--Take Out a Syrian Nuclear Plant

You gotta love the news. Israeli sources gleefully report an alleged Syrian confirmation that the target struck by IAF aircraft last month was a nuclear facility. The word came from all the usual suspects. See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3460769,00.html or http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380576317&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull or http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123944.

The Syrians instantly denied the reports. This unsurprising development moved fast and far. See http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h44iqu-AVtbml4EBgaBy7kkKduGQD8SAVJ180 or http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hOfeiWXFOZ5v8QIeW2dWejDFVzpg or, covering both the denial and the initial report http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/913902.html.

Mideast politics as usual, isn't it?

Where in the fog of claims, denials, and silence might the truth exist?

The whole story from the day of the Israeli attack on has reminded the Geek of an old Sherlock Holmes' yarn. The one where the critical clue in the Great Sleuth's view was the dog which didn't bark in the night.

The silence from Mideast governments generally was the most significant indicator. If the IAF had hit a standard issue sort of target, say, a shipment of goodies for Hezbollah, the screams of outrage would have been audible at several thousand klicks. Even a strike on a chemical weapons depot or missile farm would have caused shrieks from Damascus, if nowhere else.

Nukes are a different matter altogether.

No government in the region is comfortable with the idea of Syria having even the slightest chance of acquiring nuclear weapons. The same conviction exists regarding any Iranian progress in the same direction.

The difference between the two countries is simple. Iran has travelled a fair distance along the road to possible nuclear power status. Syria was in the opening stages. The first is a relatively speaking hard target. The second constitutes a species of slam dunk.

The biggest question is what was the nature of the more-or-less confirmed Syrian facility. It is unlikely that the target was anything other than a nuclear reactor in the early stages of construction. Even with the assistance of Iran and behind that the Pakistani proliferation firm of A.Q Khan, there is no way that Syria could have obtained either nuclear weapons or weapons grade feedstock.

(This surmise is confirmed by the absence of any reports indicating atmospheric presence of the inevitable radioactive isotopes that would have been scattered by conventional munitions.)

This leaves two categories of facility. One would be an enrichment or plutonium separation plant. The second would be a reactor capable of producing plutonium.

It is impossible to rule out the slight chance of the target having been a uranium enrichment plant using the gas centrifuge technology developed by A.Q Khan and employed by the Iranians among others. To (dis)confirm this hypothesis would necessitate access to classified information.

The plutonium separation alternative can be dismissed. To separate plutonium, one must first have a source. The source is a nuclear reactor. Virtually all reactors produce at least some plutonium as an inevitable part of the uranium fission process. Some reactors are designed to produce plutonium at an accelerated rate from uranium 238.

It's like the old recipe for rabbit stew that started, "first catch your rabbit." In this case it's "first build your reactor."

This narrows the target list considerably.

There are a few other considerations--particularly where Syria would have obtained the resources and knowledge necessary to break ground and bend steel.

That's a no-brainer.

The technology and expertise could have come to Syria from either or both North Korea and Iran. The money would have been primarily Iranian.

The question that has the Geek scratching his head is this: Whatever gave the Syrians the idea that it would be possible to hide a nuclear reactor? The corollary question is: What fool in Damascus thought that Syria would be allowed to finish the blame thing?

It's about as easy to hide a nuclear reactor as it is to conceal an elephant under a beer mug. Did the deep thinking types in Damascus think that in an era where imaging satellites are common and other species of overhead platforms pollute the sky that no one would see their construction work in progress?

The Geek has to shake his head as he thinks, "Ahh, nothing like having misplaced faith in Russian air defense systems."

The latest Russian systems are good. No doubt about that. But, they have a weak point. They are systems. Countering air defenses has gone a long way past simply spoofing or blinding radars or perturbing on-board missile guidance equipment. Now the countermeasures are directed against the system itself, its connections, its nodes, its decision making centers.

The US and other countries have been beavering away for years on this aspect of the broad field called "information warfare." The Israeli attack shows that there has been a good measure of success in the process of defeating air defense systems.

Considering the reactor was a long way from completion, much further away than was the Iraqi equivalent taken out by the IAF over a quarter century ago, the question of timing is legitimate.

In part that question can be answered by asking another: "If not now--when?" The Syrian air defense system had barely been uncrated. It's a lot easier to counter an unassimulated system than one with which people have had experience and time to fully understand and debug. The target would get harder with time.

Another consideration to be factored in to answering the timing question is the current state of Israeli politics. Defense Minister (and one time PM) Barak is open about his desire to become Prime Minister again. To do this he has to live down the pacifist moment he experienced back in 2000 with the failed Camp David effort sponsored by President Clinton. What better way to do this then a large caliber shot across the bows of both Syria and Iran?

A third component of the timing issue is the United States. The current administration is a known quantity. It would and did smile on the attack. It served US interests in proving the value of some airborne electronic systems. It served the administration's interests in serving a reinforcing warning to the Iranians who use the same air defense systems as the Syrians.

On the downside, the success of the attack has given notice to the Russians that they better put their engineers back to work. This may provide complications if the US follows through with the current administration's bellicose rhetoric.

Rolling back the video tape, we should ask if the current (or any) administration could have stopped the Israeli attack. In principle, yes. To a significant but unknown extent the success of the strike depended upon American technology. Hypothetically, the US could have used that leverage to prohibit the airborne adventure.

In practice, the answer is unequivocal. NO! The Israelis have used US provided weapons for years in ways and at times that clearly contravened legal restrictions imposed by Congress. That didn't stop the Israelis. Neither did it result in any meaningful sanctions.

Not since the Suez War in 1956 has the US exercised a truly independent foreign policy course in the Mideast.

After the humiliating submission to US policy requirements at the end of the Great Israeli-French-British Exercise in Gunboat Diplomacy, the government of Israel took action to prevent any recurrence. Since then, the effective lobbying and political actions of the GOI and its sympathisers and supporters in the US have assured that the Israeli tail has effectively waved the American foreign policy dog.

That is a reality on which we have to get a grip. The GOI has done what every government should do--advance and protect its subjectively defined national interest.

We the People have to ask ourselves: Isn't it about time that our government do the same?

Is PM Maliki Throwing The War?

Two days ago very disturbing testimony was offered by the former chief of the anti-corruption effort established three years ago in Iraq. Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi made a very convincing appearance before Rep Henry Waxman's Committee on Oversight and Government Reform regarding the extreme methods employed (or at least countenanced) by the al-Maliki government to prevent effective investigation and prosecution of corruption by Iraqi officials at all levels including the most senior.

Reports of al-Radhi's allegations and its aftermath haven't exactly littered the electronic landscape but the WaPo gave good coverage http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/04/AR2007100401305.html. A non-US perspective of value is offered by http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22568.

History leads the Geek to accept al-Radhi's tale of corruption and gangland type murders to be accurate. History also compels the Geek to predict that without a rapid, robust, and effective US response to the endemic corruption in the Iraqi regime, all the security efforts to date will go down the drain.

In short, unless the stables in Baghdad are cleaned very well and very rapidly, all the military success, all the deaths and killing, will have meant zero, zip, nada.

Anyone aware of two facets of recent history could (and would) have predicted massive governmental corruption in the wake of the US invasion. The first historical trajectory is that of Iraq itself during the years following the Gulf War of 1991.

The years of the sanctions saw Iraq become a morass of corruption. Everyone who could put his hand in the pile, grabbed all he could and elbowed latecomers aside. This universal corruption was evident even from open sources. It should have been even more obvious to the current administration with its access to pan-source base intelligence.

The neocon ninnies within the current administration were so gripless that they must have believed unbridled theft was a species of free enterprise. That is the only charitable explanation for the US having invaded without any mechanisms in place to check the continued looting and plundering of the public trough by the men who came to power under our tutelage.

That the US did not and does not have the will or capacity to drain the Great Dismal Swamp presided over by the al-Maliki government was made manifest by the total absence of intellectual and moral courage exhibited by our State Department at the Friday hearings. The schmuck on the spot was a deputy secretary of state named Larry Butler.

Butler, presumably operating under instructions which he didn't desire to violate no matter how much the American national interest might benefit by his so doing, hid behind the ultimate cover of the scoundrel--National Security. Despite fulsome praise of al-Radhi's character and integrity, Butler refused to say anything that might be taken as supporting or agreeing with the ousted Judge's testimony.

Any such agreement could only take place, Butler repeatedly insisted, behind the guarded doors of an executive session of the committee. Of course, Butler, like anyone who has been around DC more than a couple of hours, knows that executive session testimony is leaked even before the transcript has been made.

But, leaks aren't "official." Leaks can be plausibly denied. At the worst, leaks become the sort of twisted, passive voiced "mistakes-have-been-made" non-explanation, non-apology.

This brings us to the second prong of history.

The US has been down this road before. Counterinsurgency and host government corruption seem to be the ham and eggs combo of violent politics.

Our first post-WW II adventures in counterinsurgency in Greece and the Philippines showed that unpleasant linkage between internal instability and hands reaching for the money stream. In both countries US personnel on the ground and in Washington had to make exceptional efforts to facilitate the growth of fiscal and political integrity within the regimes we were supporting. Our successes and the means by which we achieved them remain little more than an unexamined footnote to the two wars.

The US defeat in South Vietnam was in part, arguably in large part, the result of our inability to assure an increase in governmental and military integrity on the part of the South Vietnamese. Documents declassified over the past quarter century show again and again that we were aware of the miasma of corruption hanging over Saigon. They show that we were aware that the rottenness in Saigon was desperately imperilling our efforts against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese.

The documents also show that we were only willing and able to address the problem on a sporadic and ad hoc basis. The largest single reason for this was the absence of a South Vietnamese equivalent of al-Radhi.

Al-Radhi exists this time around. He and his documents give a chilling account of so much that is so rotten in Baghdad. He is a one man transparency project. He is a war winning asset.

But, only so long as We the People and our "representatives" have his story, his facts and figures, his naming of names out in the full light of open public testimony.

There is one more requirement if al-Radhi is going to be able to help us assure that all our efforts and losses will end with a better state of peace in Iraq. The State Department, which means the current administration, will have to match al-Radhi's openness.

The current administration has to take a firm grip on reality. It will take more political hits by admitting that it has not been able to do diddly to limit the epidemic of corruption in Baghdad. So what? The current administration screwed the pooch the moment the Commander Guy said, "OK" to the invasion.

The Geek is not so addicted to fantasy that he expects the current administration to own up to having made a world-class blunder with its "regime change" hallucination. No. What the Geek would like to see is the current administration follow the lead of the US military in recent months.

"How's that?" You ask.

The military has done something the Geek would never have really, really believed it could. It changed its doctrine for counterinsurgency. It has invited "human terrain" academic specialists to give direct, in-the-field assistance to its units. In short, the US military services, under the pressure of looming failure, woke up, smelled the coffee, and started to fight the right war in the right way.

The current administration owes it to those who have already been killed in pursuit of its hallucination of a liberal, pluralistic, democratic Iraq to match the military in intellectual and moral courage. No skulking around in executive session practicing government by leak and counter-leak. No nasty little personal attacks against outspoken bringers of unwanted bad news as was the case Friday. (The snideness was from Rep Dan (Brain-dead) Burton a Republican from Indiana.)

The State Department, the Secretary of State, and others in the loop have to match our military in getting a grip on reality. Not simply because it is the right thing to do.

No.

It must be done because our dead demand it. It must be done because our national future demands it.