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.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
And We Keep Goin' Round And Round, Again And Again
Does anyone really, the Geek means really, rationally think that the Iranians are either: (a) not working on nuclear weapons, or (b) are willing to negotiate an end to the current impasse?
If anyone has so concluded after sober analysis of all the relevant factors, they are in desperate need of getting a grip on the unpleasant beast called reality.
The Iranian regime has been convinced that only the possession of a demonstrable nuclear capacity will both provide a high measure of security against a future existential threat equalling or surpassing that presented by Iraq during the war of the Eighties and give Tehran necessary diplomatic leverage in its desire to be a global player on behalf of militant Islam.
While the options of chemical and biological weapons have been pursued since at least the mid-Eighties, neither of these has the pure appeal of a nuclear capability. The mullahocracy would have been convinced of this by the example of Pakistan. Pakistan without nuclear weapons would have been a relatively negligible factor in global politics.
With nuclear weapons Pakistan has been taken seriously by the United States and other major powers. The proof of this contention is no further away than a glance at the military aid provided by the US to Pakistan under the rubric of mutual counter-terrorism interest. By any other name a bribe remains a bribe.
The Iranian rulership must have made the collective conclusion that if it had a demonstrated nuclear capacity including delivery systems as well as payloads, it could speak quite loudly in the councils of the Muslim states. Louder than Pakistan has because, unlike Pakistan, Iran possesses an ongoing religious revolutionary fervor.
Without nuclear weapons Iran might not be a negligible quantity given its capacity and will to support groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, but it would be covered with the metaphorical fleas from these canine bedmates. In short, by simply sponsoring groups with a known will and ability to use terror tactics, Iran would become a larger and more obnoxious form of Taliban dominated Afghanistan begging to be the object of regime change.
With nuclear systems Iran has a chance of effectively deterring any future Israeli action. The loud shouts from Tehran cover the sound of knees that quake and shake when contemplating the potential of an Israeli air strike either with or without US direct support.
At the very least a nuclear capacity makes Iran a regional power, safe from immediate Israeli (or any other country's) attack. Without the nuke at the hip, Iran could become one more has-been revolutionary power.
Beyond those considerations, take a dekko at the vast political capital the mullahocracy has staked on keeping their uranium enrichment program going. In a very real sense the enrichment activity along with its collaterals have become the bedrock of the government's claim to legitimacy as well as the primary source of national identity.
What government would be willing to toss aside both sets of considerations--future power and present existence-for a mess of diplomatic pottage?
The second guess doesn't count.
Now think about the essential nature of negotiations.
Negotiations work when both sides conclude that the probable results of such talks will be less-worse than the probable results of not talking. That necessary requirement is joined by some others including a willingness to compromise and the ability to bargain in good faith without reserving some demands as "non-negotiable."
To add some punch to these fundamentals, it is useful to recall that no substantial negotiations were possible between the European powers in the late summer of 1939 because one country's government--Germany--had no desire for them, no belief that the probable outcome of not negotiating--war--would be worse than the probable outcome of talking.
The only difference between Iran today and Germany sixty-nine years ago is that Iran sees a great virtue in talking. That's talking. Not negotiations. Tehran isn't at all interested in good faith bargaining leading to a compromise conclusion.
Tehran is interested in one thing and one thing only.
Tehran is interested, highly interested in buying time. Time is the most precious commodity imaginable in the collective minds of the mullahocracy.
Tehran believes, perhaps quite accurately, that time is on their side. The mullahs and their talking-heads in government don't even need much time. A few months, say nine or so, will be enough.
The Iranians have put their money on a bet which, from the perspective of recent history, seems a sure winner. The mullahocracy is wagering that We the American People are so totally sick of war after the long uphill slog in Iraq and the still ambiguous yomp in Afghanistan that there is zero political will for another armed adventure even one without a ground intervention.
The mullahs are also betting that the Democratic Party, the loudly anti-war party, will gain power in November not only winning the Presidency but overwhelming control of Congress. This victory would make Iran more secure in pursuit of its nuclear and other agendas.
The European Union is not a factor in the current Iranian thinking as the assorted countries of the EU have already shown themselves to be quite accommodating of Iranian needs regardless of words and sanctions. Germany, Italy and France have been important and on-going sources of assistance to the badly overstretched and sanction-weakened Iranian economy.
Tehran knows it has a pair of powerful albeit commitment limited supporters in Russia and the Peoples Republic of China. While the Russians can blow either for or against Iran depending on their own national interests, China needs oil. And, the PRC will take risks to assure a full flow of it since so much rides on the availability of plentiful, cheap energy in that country.
Given that the current US administration has gone above and beyond the bounds of rationality in treating Russia as a-less-than--great power, it will take the next administration serious effort to wean Moscow from its current less-than-fully-cooperative global stance.
It's not as if Tehran is hiding its strategy. Consider how the Iranian state-controlled press have praised the Russians for any (presumed) plan to base nuclear capable bombers in Latin America. Consider how mildly the same press criticised Senator Obama for his pledge of unqualified support for Israel. Consider how the Iranian noise machine responds to every presumed "threat" emanating from Washington.
Of course the Mighty Wurlitzer of Tehran plays primarily for the benefit of the Iranian people. It gives those folks, laboring under very high inflation, rolling blackouts, shortages and deferred paychecks a focus for their discontent. It gives a sizable percentage of the public, the young, the alienated, the zealous, an object to hate.
Tehran is playing the same tune and even the same lyrics as did Baghdad during the long years of sanctions following the Gulf War. With more success.
Talk, talk and more talk. The refrain for the outside world is tedious and mendacious. The Iranians blew off the last P5+1 offer. Even after the current administration unbent enough to send a high level representative to the talks last weekend.
The two page officially unofficial response to the P5+1 proposal filled with misspellings and very ambiguous wording calls for more talks with Javier Solana to be followed by a series of meetings at the ForMin level. As the Geek looks at the calender, the proposed conflabs would eat up the rest of this year.
Importantly, in quite unambiguous language, the Iranian side ruled out of consideration any subject upon which the parties disagreed as such might stall the conversations.
Let's see. We all can talk about whatever is so unimportant that we won't really, really disagree. That doesn't leave much room for negotiation, does it?
But as long as the talk goes on, the Iranians reckon, there is no possibility of attack. Their position is based upon the Western faith in talking solves problems and talking is better than shooting.
The Geek agrees. Talking is better than shooting. Talking between nations is better than bombing. But--and this is the big but--saving the present is not worth risking the future.
The Iranians are, in essence, of the view that the West, particularly the US, is so deeply, so desperately, so totally involved in the present that none give thought to the future.
Maybe that's true. The Geek remembers the dictum of the Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years just before the outbreak of World War I. Alois Aehrenthal said, "My policy is for the present. Let the future take care of itself."
Words to remember. More words to die by.
If anyone has so concluded after sober analysis of all the relevant factors, they are in desperate need of getting a grip on the unpleasant beast called reality.
The Iranian regime has been convinced that only the possession of a demonstrable nuclear capacity will both provide a high measure of security against a future existential threat equalling or surpassing that presented by Iraq during the war of the Eighties and give Tehran necessary diplomatic leverage in its desire to be a global player on behalf of militant Islam.
While the options of chemical and biological weapons have been pursued since at least the mid-Eighties, neither of these has the pure appeal of a nuclear capability. The mullahocracy would have been convinced of this by the example of Pakistan. Pakistan without nuclear weapons would have been a relatively negligible factor in global politics.
With nuclear weapons Pakistan has been taken seriously by the United States and other major powers. The proof of this contention is no further away than a glance at the military aid provided by the US to Pakistan under the rubric of mutual counter-terrorism interest. By any other name a bribe remains a bribe.
The Iranian rulership must have made the collective conclusion that if it had a demonstrated nuclear capacity including delivery systems as well as payloads, it could speak quite loudly in the councils of the Muslim states. Louder than Pakistan has because, unlike Pakistan, Iran possesses an ongoing religious revolutionary fervor.
Without nuclear weapons Iran might not be a negligible quantity given its capacity and will to support groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, but it would be covered with the metaphorical fleas from these canine bedmates. In short, by simply sponsoring groups with a known will and ability to use terror tactics, Iran would become a larger and more obnoxious form of Taliban dominated Afghanistan begging to be the object of regime change.
With nuclear systems Iran has a chance of effectively deterring any future Israeli action. The loud shouts from Tehran cover the sound of knees that quake and shake when contemplating the potential of an Israeli air strike either with or without US direct support.
At the very least a nuclear capacity makes Iran a regional power, safe from immediate Israeli (or any other country's) attack. Without the nuke at the hip, Iran could become one more has-been revolutionary power.
Beyond those considerations, take a dekko at the vast political capital the mullahocracy has staked on keeping their uranium enrichment program going. In a very real sense the enrichment activity along with its collaterals have become the bedrock of the government's claim to legitimacy as well as the primary source of national identity.
What government would be willing to toss aside both sets of considerations--future power and present existence-for a mess of diplomatic pottage?
The second guess doesn't count.
Now think about the essential nature of negotiations.
Negotiations work when both sides conclude that the probable results of such talks will be less-worse than the probable results of not talking. That necessary requirement is joined by some others including a willingness to compromise and the ability to bargain in good faith without reserving some demands as "non-negotiable."
To add some punch to these fundamentals, it is useful to recall that no substantial negotiations were possible between the European powers in the late summer of 1939 because one country's government--Germany--had no desire for them, no belief that the probable outcome of not negotiating--war--would be worse than the probable outcome of talking.
The only difference between Iran today and Germany sixty-nine years ago is that Iran sees a great virtue in talking. That's talking. Not negotiations. Tehran isn't at all interested in good faith bargaining leading to a compromise conclusion.
Tehran is interested in one thing and one thing only.
Tehran is interested, highly interested in buying time. Time is the most precious commodity imaginable in the collective minds of the mullahocracy.
Tehran believes, perhaps quite accurately, that time is on their side. The mullahs and their talking-heads in government don't even need much time. A few months, say nine or so, will be enough.
The Iranians have put their money on a bet which, from the perspective of recent history, seems a sure winner. The mullahocracy is wagering that We the American People are so totally sick of war after the long uphill slog in Iraq and the still ambiguous yomp in Afghanistan that there is zero political will for another armed adventure even one without a ground intervention.
The mullahs are also betting that the Democratic Party, the loudly anti-war party, will gain power in November not only winning the Presidency but overwhelming control of Congress. This victory would make Iran more secure in pursuit of its nuclear and other agendas.
The European Union is not a factor in the current Iranian thinking as the assorted countries of the EU have already shown themselves to be quite accommodating of Iranian needs regardless of words and sanctions. Germany, Italy and France have been important and on-going sources of assistance to the badly overstretched and sanction-weakened Iranian economy.
Tehran knows it has a pair of powerful albeit commitment limited supporters in Russia and the Peoples Republic of China. While the Russians can blow either for or against Iran depending on their own national interests, China needs oil. And, the PRC will take risks to assure a full flow of it since so much rides on the availability of plentiful, cheap energy in that country.
Given that the current US administration has gone above and beyond the bounds of rationality in treating Russia as a-less-than--great power, it will take the next administration serious effort to wean Moscow from its current less-than-fully-cooperative global stance.
It's not as if Tehran is hiding its strategy. Consider how the Iranian state-controlled press have praised the Russians for any (presumed) plan to base nuclear capable bombers in Latin America. Consider how mildly the same press criticised Senator Obama for his pledge of unqualified support for Israel. Consider how the Iranian noise machine responds to every presumed "threat" emanating from Washington.
Of course the Mighty Wurlitzer of Tehran plays primarily for the benefit of the Iranian people. It gives those folks, laboring under very high inflation, rolling blackouts, shortages and deferred paychecks a focus for their discontent. It gives a sizable percentage of the public, the young, the alienated, the zealous, an object to hate.
Tehran is playing the same tune and even the same lyrics as did Baghdad during the long years of sanctions following the Gulf War. With more success.
Talk, talk and more talk. The refrain for the outside world is tedious and mendacious. The Iranians blew off the last P5+1 offer. Even after the current administration unbent enough to send a high level representative to the talks last weekend.
The two page officially unofficial response to the P5+1 proposal filled with misspellings and very ambiguous wording calls for more talks with Javier Solana to be followed by a series of meetings at the ForMin level. As the Geek looks at the calender, the proposed conflabs would eat up the rest of this year.
Importantly, in quite unambiguous language, the Iranian side ruled out of consideration any subject upon which the parties disagreed as such might stall the conversations.
Let's see. We all can talk about whatever is so unimportant that we won't really, really disagree. That doesn't leave much room for negotiation, does it?
But as long as the talk goes on, the Iranians reckon, there is no possibility of attack. Their position is based upon the Western faith in talking solves problems and talking is better than shooting.
The Geek agrees. Talking is better than shooting. Talking between nations is better than bombing. But--and this is the big but--saving the present is not worth risking the future.
The Iranians are, in essence, of the view that the West, particularly the US, is so deeply, so desperately, so totally involved in the present that none give thought to the future.
Maybe that's true. The Geek remembers the dictum of the Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years just before the outbreak of World War I. Alois Aehrenthal said, "My policy is for the present. Let the future take care of itself."
Words to remember. More words to die by.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Interventions Really Suck!
The Geek has spent nearly his entire post-pubescent life either practicing or studying interventionary war. He's lectured on it. He's written on it. He's taught it. He's read it. And, he's fought it.
His conclusion?
Interventionary operations are a bad idea. Outside of a few, well delineated situations, military interventions are as bad a concept as tossing down a botulism cocktail.
Our two current adventures in intervention prove the case for the limited applicability of this mode of war. Even though the battlefield situation has improved in Iraq to the extent that one can say with a high level of confidence that there is little chance of the US not achieving the minimum necessary goal of not losing, there can be no justification for the intervention in the first place.
In Afghanistan where the potential for the US to lose the war on the ground still exists, the same conclusion of non-necessity is easily justified.
The original goal of the Afghanistan invasion was two fold: Topple Taliban. Capture or kill Osama bin Ladin and others of the al-Qaeda leadership cell.
Had the original goal been kept firmly in mind during the short duration planning phase leading up to the invasion, the intervention might have been both justifiable and successful. But, as is so often the case in interventions the phenomenon of mission creep was at work even before the first American Special Forces and Marine boots were on the ground.
One good reason for intervention is the ruthless pursuit of a narrowly defined national interest. In Afghanistan that narrow national interest was not only to kill or capture the al-Qaeda leadership cell, but to show governments who harbored killers of Americans that there would be severe negative consequences involved.
One of the worst, if not the worst, reason for intervention is epitomised by the statement of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson making reference to the landing of Marines in the Mexican city of Vera Cruz. "I shall teach the Mexicans to elect good men."
The siren song of Wilsonian morality played loud and clear in the ears of the current administration as they looked at Afghanistan. It would not be enough to seek the heads of Osama et al, or to topple enough Taliban occupied mudhuts. It would not be enough to kill a sufficient number of Taliban and al-Qaeda personnel quickly and cleanly so as to inflict condign punishment upon the organisations.
No.
The neocon reincarnations of the every-so-progressive Wilson (Doesn't the irony tickle your innards? It does the Geek's.) concluded that the US must mount a crusade for democracy, pluralism and equal rights in a society which had no historical experience with any and no seeming desire to enjoy the benefits of American style democracy and free enterprise.
This conflation of a realpolitik approach and the fantasy of implanting US approved institutions by force made damn sure that the intervention in Afghanistan would not only be endless miles of bad road but would ultimately come a cropper.
The confusion between fantasy and the legitimate ends of showing that support of outfits like al-Qaeda doesn't pay in the long run assured that our planning and execution of the endeavor were both fatally flawed.
The planning was flawed because it was impossible to focus on an achievable goal--neutralising al-Qaeda's leadership cell and slapping Taliban hard enough so that no hostile government could fail to catch the message. The demands of the Wilsonian mission creep combined with the political need for rapid action and the limitations on forces which could be readily and quickly employed assured we would have an incomplete success at best,
A very incomplete success as the last several years generally and the past eight months in particular have shown.
True, Taliban fell as a government. But that was all that happened. Taliban lived on as an evil incubus waiting to grow again battening on the blood and devotion of human shaped empty shells wanting to filled with the ecstatic brew of True Belief. So it has happened. Safe in the mountains of Pakistan's FATA and aided by factions within the Pakistani ISI and military, Taliban has grown in numbers and military competence.
And, of course, the US did not capture or kill Osama bin Ladin even though other key personnel of the leadership cell have been removed from the board by either death or capture over the past several years. Al-Qaeda did not die. If anything it grew.
Perhaps it did not grow in direct institutional size. It did grow in mythic power. It may not be a global terror machine as some "experts" would have us believe in the sense of exercising direct command and control over tactical actions. Al-Qaeda did increase greatly in its ability to seize the imagination and the commitment of empty shells of men seeking fulfillment and completion through Belief. More accurately, completion through action emerging from Belief.
Now the US has only two viable options, (The Geek considers an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan to be a viable course of action.) One option is simply to leave. The other is to deploy enough forces on the ground along with taking necessary actions into the sanctuaries of FATA to assure that we do not lose the shooting war.
Neither option is good. The first is disastrous. The short and long term effects of withdrawing might not be predictable in detail, but the general outline is dismal at best and catastrophic at worst.
The second option would allow the US to achieve, at best, a stalemate in the armed conflict which would allow retraction from the theater without necessarily horrible consequences. (Yes, this implies that even under the best circumstances, the outcome will be far worse than if the Wilsonian mission creep had been strictly eschewed.)
There was no justification for the Iraq operation. The Geek isn't even willing to put that war into the category of interventionary operation. Sure, there were anti-Saddam elements in country as well as Kurds who were quite happy to see American tanks on the ground and fighter-bombers overhead. Even more there were any number of expat groups eagerly pawing the ground in hopes that the US would do something.
None of these make the invasion an intervention. They make the invasion an invasion, an act of aggressive war thinly covered by UN Resolutions.
Later operations on the ground in Iraq were counterinsurgent, and counterinsurgency is a primary form of interventionary warfare. It should be noted that insurgency is the expectable consequence of an exercise in regime change. The fact that the US was not prepared either in its military or civilian plans either to preclude or to mitigate the possibility of insurgency shows that there was little, if any, realistic understanding of the nature and character of interventionary warfare.
Or, if there was some appreciation somewhere within the massive bureaucracies of the national security community (as the Geek knows there was), these were overridden by the winds of Wilsonian hallucinations in the heads of the neocons.
Interventions can work effectively. Interventions can be justified by both results and motives. The landing of the Marines in Lebanon in 1957 shows that as do some of the operations in the wreckage of the Wilsonian policy artifact once called Yugoslavia.
To work, to be justifiable, interventions must meet two criteria. The goal must be limited. The goal must be kept firmly in mind at all times of planning and execution by all hands at all levels from the White House to the grunts.
Most of all the Ghost of Wilson must be left in the crypt of bad ideas.
His conclusion?
Interventionary operations are a bad idea. Outside of a few, well delineated situations, military interventions are as bad a concept as tossing down a botulism cocktail.
Our two current adventures in intervention prove the case for the limited applicability of this mode of war. Even though the battlefield situation has improved in Iraq to the extent that one can say with a high level of confidence that there is little chance of the US not achieving the minimum necessary goal of not losing, there can be no justification for the intervention in the first place.
In Afghanistan where the potential for the US to lose the war on the ground still exists, the same conclusion of non-necessity is easily justified.
The original goal of the Afghanistan invasion was two fold: Topple Taliban. Capture or kill Osama bin Ladin and others of the al-Qaeda leadership cell.
Had the original goal been kept firmly in mind during the short duration planning phase leading up to the invasion, the intervention might have been both justifiable and successful. But, as is so often the case in interventions the phenomenon of mission creep was at work even before the first American Special Forces and Marine boots were on the ground.
One good reason for intervention is the ruthless pursuit of a narrowly defined national interest. In Afghanistan that narrow national interest was not only to kill or capture the al-Qaeda leadership cell, but to show governments who harbored killers of Americans that there would be severe negative consequences involved.
One of the worst, if not the worst, reason for intervention is epitomised by the statement of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson making reference to the landing of Marines in the Mexican city of Vera Cruz. "I shall teach the Mexicans to elect good men."
The siren song of Wilsonian morality played loud and clear in the ears of the current administration as they looked at Afghanistan. It would not be enough to seek the heads of Osama et al, or to topple enough Taliban occupied mudhuts. It would not be enough to kill a sufficient number of Taliban and al-Qaeda personnel quickly and cleanly so as to inflict condign punishment upon the organisations.
No.
The neocon reincarnations of the every-so-progressive Wilson (Doesn't the irony tickle your innards? It does the Geek's.) concluded that the US must mount a crusade for democracy, pluralism and equal rights in a society which had no historical experience with any and no seeming desire to enjoy the benefits of American style democracy and free enterprise.
This conflation of a realpolitik approach and the fantasy of implanting US approved institutions by force made damn sure that the intervention in Afghanistan would not only be endless miles of bad road but would ultimately come a cropper.
The confusion between fantasy and the legitimate ends of showing that support of outfits like al-Qaeda doesn't pay in the long run assured that our planning and execution of the endeavor were both fatally flawed.
The planning was flawed because it was impossible to focus on an achievable goal--neutralising al-Qaeda's leadership cell and slapping Taliban hard enough so that no hostile government could fail to catch the message. The demands of the Wilsonian mission creep combined with the political need for rapid action and the limitations on forces which could be readily and quickly employed assured we would have an incomplete success at best,
A very incomplete success as the last several years generally and the past eight months in particular have shown.
True, Taliban fell as a government. But that was all that happened. Taliban lived on as an evil incubus waiting to grow again battening on the blood and devotion of human shaped empty shells wanting to filled with the ecstatic brew of True Belief. So it has happened. Safe in the mountains of Pakistan's FATA and aided by factions within the Pakistani ISI and military, Taliban has grown in numbers and military competence.
And, of course, the US did not capture or kill Osama bin Ladin even though other key personnel of the leadership cell have been removed from the board by either death or capture over the past several years. Al-Qaeda did not die. If anything it grew.
Perhaps it did not grow in direct institutional size. It did grow in mythic power. It may not be a global terror machine as some "experts" would have us believe in the sense of exercising direct command and control over tactical actions. Al-Qaeda did increase greatly in its ability to seize the imagination and the commitment of empty shells of men seeking fulfillment and completion through Belief. More accurately, completion through action emerging from Belief.
Now the US has only two viable options, (The Geek considers an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan to be a viable course of action.) One option is simply to leave. The other is to deploy enough forces on the ground along with taking necessary actions into the sanctuaries of FATA to assure that we do not lose the shooting war.
Neither option is good. The first is disastrous. The short and long term effects of withdrawing might not be predictable in detail, but the general outline is dismal at best and catastrophic at worst.
The second option would allow the US to achieve, at best, a stalemate in the armed conflict which would allow retraction from the theater without necessarily horrible consequences. (Yes, this implies that even under the best circumstances, the outcome will be far worse than if the Wilsonian mission creep had been strictly eschewed.)
There was no justification for the Iraq operation. The Geek isn't even willing to put that war into the category of interventionary operation. Sure, there were anti-Saddam elements in country as well as Kurds who were quite happy to see American tanks on the ground and fighter-bombers overhead. Even more there were any number of expat groups eagerly pawing the ground in hopes that the US would do something.
None of these make the invasion an intervention. They make the invasion an invasion, an act of aggressive war thinly covered by UN Resolutions.
Later operations on the ground in Iraq were counterinsurgent, and counterinsurgency is a primary form of interventionary warfare. It should be noted that insurgency is the expectable consequence of an exercise in regime change. The fact that the US was not prepared either in its military or civilian plans either to preclude or to mitigate the possibility of insurgency shows that there was little, if any, realistic understanding of the nature and character of interventionary warfare.
Or, if there was some appreciation somewhere within the massive bureaucracies of the national security community (as the Geek knows there was), these were overridden by the winds of Wilsonian hallucinations in the heads of the neocons.
Interventions can work effectively. Interventions can be justified by both results and motives. The landing of the Marines in Lebanon in 1957 shows that as do some of the operations in the wreckage of the Wilsonian policy artifact once called Yugoslavia.
To work, to be justifiable, interventions must meet two criteria. The goal must be limited. The goal must be kept firmly in mind at all times of planning and execution by all hands at all levels from the White House to the grunts.
Most of all the Ghost of Wilson must be left in the crypt of bad ideas.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Fellow Travellers In Illusion--Al Gore And The Pope
This is a highly personal sort of rant so anyone who expects the usual cooly reasoned, tightly argued piece of analysis won't find it here today. No. This time its personal.
Al Gore has long sojourned in the land of illusion. His travelogues based on his ventures in the horror filled territory of global warming replete with dead lands and brackish water, littered with the corpses of polar bears and assorted amphibians have brought him fame, fortune and the cachet of a Nobel Prize.
Apparently the global crusader for greener living feels overlooked of late as the US economy sputters, in part because of escalating food prices--prices driven to some unquantifiable extent by the Gore promoted fad for biofuels. But, you can't keep a good mouth down for long.
He's back with a headline grabbing call for the US to replace all fossil fuel electrical generation by earth-friendly technologies such as solar, wind and (unspecified) other forms of production within ten years. Notably, Gore did not mention nuclear power as an alternative.
Get a grip, Mr Gore!
The Geek knows a thing or two about alternative energy production. He has been living off the grid for ten years now. All his electricity comes from the sun--when there is sun.
Aye, that's one of the rubs. Solar power works when there is sun. Wind power works when there is wind. At night, those of us who use the sun must depend upon batteries. The few folks who live somewhere near the Geek who use the wind as their main energy prime mover must rely upon either a backup system or batteries.
The batteries are the weak point in the system. Until there is a new form of battery technology which insures longer life and greater storage capacity per pound of battery weight, there will be significant built-in limits to solar energy in particular.
Then there are the greens, particularly the deep greens who should be the loudest singers in the pro-Gore choir. Where are they?
After being significant players in the counter productive campaign for biofuels which not only hike the price of food, lower the energy potential of vehicle fuel and wreak environmental havoc in their own right, the Deep Greens, the True Believers of the environmental movement have been part of the problem. They should like solar-thermal electrical generation, right?
Wrong!
Even though the vast watelands which constitute large portions of southeastern California, southern Arizona and Nevada seem ideal for the construction of large solar powered generation facilities, the DGs are against them. The huge arrays of either mirrors or photovoltaic panels might somehow interfere with desert dwelling lizards and small mammals. Can't let that happen in the rampant human quest for energy, can we?
Wind power. The DGs ought to like that too. They don't. Spinning blades might interfere with the birdies. That's a Greeno No-No. (There's actually a practical objection to wind farms at sea as has been proposed by the New Jersey Governor among others--the radar systems used by ships can't see through the chaff-type interference caused by the blades as they revolve.)
Gore overlooked the first two sets of problems. He overlooked a third set as well. Planning, gaining approval for and constructing a large, base-load plant takes longer than ten years even with well-established, well-proven fossil fuel technology. How much longer will it take to design, gain all the legally required stamps of approval and build a base-load replacement plant using an emerging technology?
Then, what does the country do for electricity while the inevitable bugs are beaten out of the new systems?
Gore uses the analogy of the man-to-the-moon program of the Sixties. It is a totally specious analogy in both method and scope. The space program was a single thrust effort. Replacing coal and oil fired base load generation plants would be a multi-thrust effort requiring the development, integration and construction of diverse technologies welded into a single system.
In short, Gore is retailing another illusion hoping to hook his cause onto the myth of the Sixties. Get over it, Mr Gore. The Geek is also a product of the Sixties. He knows that myths and happy dreams don't buy a cup of coffee in the real world. Don't you, Al?
Now for Pope Benedict, the other person who has shown himself over the past twenty-four hours to have little or any connection to the real world.
The Pope is in Australia for World Youth Day or some such affair. Sidney is flat full of young and enthusiastic sorts. Just awaiting for the Pope to give them, not hell, but heaven.
Of course the road to heaven is paved with strict abjurations. His Popeness is willing to lay them out. It seems that Benedict thinks that the human race is ruining the globe by virtue of its collective "insatiable consumption."
It is fashionable to bash "consumption" and "consumerism." The Geek would like to join in on the fun, but his sense of intellectual integrity to say nothing of his keen appreciation of reality prevents him from so doing.
In any event the Pope has it wrong. The problem is not consumption, "insatiable" or otherwise.
No. The problem is simply that there are too many people alive and consuming. Too many people needing everything from the most basic of necessities to the most useless and frivolous of luxuries.
Consider the US. The population of the US has slightly more than doubled during the Geek's lifetime (or Al Gore's for that matter.) That's an increase from slightly less than one hundred fifty million people to some 305 million.
The US has been an also-ran in the Great Global Baby Race compared to dozens of other countries. From relatively prosperous "emerging" societies such as those in the PRC or India to countries at the bottom of the survival list, more than doubling the population in slightly more than fifty years has been the norm.
Now, Pope Benedict, that is the real problem. The questions for you and the global enterprise of which you are CEO are these: what have you done about it? What will you do about it?
The answers to both are simple. Nothing. And nothing. The response of your institution has been and, in greatest probability, will continue to be: level down the global standard of living. Take away from those who have and give to those who have not until everybody has nearly nothing.
This is the sort of human destroying logic that is expectable from a theoretically responsible adult occupying a leadership role in a very large, politically potent organisation that calls upon people to put "religion" first in their public and private lives.
That is the sort of logic that gave Europe the deepest gloom of the Dark Ages as the early Medieval Period has been correctly dubbed. That is the kind of logic that your institution showed centuries ago when it insisted on repressing thought, inquiry and expression--to say nothing of torturing and killing those who dared to question.
Your logic is the functional and ethical equivalent of the logic employed by the death oriented mullahs who issue fatwas calling for mass killing.
Pope Benedict, when you make a false parsing between "subjective" feelings and faith as you did in your speech today in Sidney, not only do you show a disastrous misunderstanding of faith which must be inherently subjective, but you substitute obedience to a specific religious dogma for faith. That, in the Geek's reading of the Message of Jesus, runs antipodal to the teachings of that wandering sage and healer.
Get a grip, Pope Benedict. It is not the secular thinkers who fail to appreciate either the nature of the problems that confront the world and its people today as well as the necessary and necessarily painful and unfair solutions to them.
It is you.
Al Gore has long sojourned in the land of illusion. His travelogues based on his ventures in the horror filled territory of global warming replete with dead lands and brackish water, littered with the corpses of polar bears and assorted amphibians have brought him fame, fortune and the cachet of a Nobel Prize.
Apparently the global crusader for greener living feels overlooked of late as the US economy sputters, in part because of escalating food prices--prices driven to some unquantifiable extent by the Gore promoted fad for biofuels. But, you can't keep a good mouth down for long.
He's back with a headline grabbing call for the US to replace all fossil fuel electrical generation by earth-friendly technologies such as solar, wind and (unspecified) other forms of production within ten years. Notably, Gore did not mention nuclear power as an alternative.
Get a grip, Mr Gore!
The Geek knows a thing or two about alternative energy production. He has been living off the grid for ten years now. All his electricity comes from the sun--when there is sun.
Aye, that's one of the rubs. Solar power works when there is sun. Wind power works when there is wind. At night, those of us who use the sun must depend upon batteries. The few folks who live somewhere near the Geek who use the wind as their main energy prime mover must rely upon either a backup system or batteries.
The batteries are the weak point in the system. Until there is a new form of battery technology which insures longer life and greater storage capacity per pound of battery weight, there will be significant built-in limits to solar energy in particular.
Then there are the greens, particularly the deep greens who should be the loudest singers in the pro-Gore choir. Where are they?
After being significant players in the counter productive campaign for biofuels which not only hike the price of food, lower the energy potential of vehicle fuel and wreak environmental havoc in their own right, the Deep Greens, the True Believers of the environmental movement have been part of the problem. They should like solar-thermal electrical generation, right?
Wrong!
Even though the vast watelands which constitute large portions of southeastern California, southern Arizona and Nevada seem ideal for the construction of large solar powered generation facilities, the DGs are against them. The huge arrays of either mirrors or photovoltaic panels might somehow interfere with desert dwelling lizards and small mammals. Can't let that happen in the rampant human quest for energy, can we?
Wind power. The DGs ought to like that too. They don't. Spinning blades might interfere with the birdies. That's a Greeno No-No. (There's actually a practical objection to wind farms at sea as has been proposed by the New Jersey Governor among others--the radar systems used by ships can't see through the chaff-type interference caused by the blades as they revolve.)
Gore overlooked the first two sets of problems. He overlooked a third set as well. Planning, gaining approval for and constructing a large, base-load plant takes longer than ten years even with well-established, well-proven fossil fuel technology. How much longer will it take to design, gain all the legally required stamps of approval and build a base-load replacement plant using an emerging technology?
Then, what does the country do for electricity while the inevitable bugs are beaten out of the new systems?
Gore uses the analogy of the man-to-the-moon program of the Sixties. It is a totally specious analogy in both method and scope. The space program was a single thrust effort. Replacing coal and oil fired base load generation plants would be a multi-thrust effort requiring the development, integration and construction of diverse technologies welded into a single system.
In short, Gore is retailing another illusion hoping to hook his cause onto the myth of the Sixties. Get over it, Mr Gore. The Geek is also a product of the Sixties. He knows that myths and happy dreams don't buy a cup of coffee in the real world. Don't you, Al?
Now for Pope Benedict, the other person who has shown himself over the past twenty-four hours to have little or any connection to the real world.
The Pope is in Australia for World Youth Day or some such affair. Sidney is flat full of young and enthusiastic sorts. Just awaiting for the Pope to give them, not hell, but heaven.
Of course the road to heaven is paved with strict abjurations. His Popeness is willing to lay them out. It seems that Benedict thinks that the human race is ruining the globe by virtue of its collective "insatiable consumption."
It is fashionable to bash "consumption" and "consumerism." The Geek would like to join in on the fun, but his sense of intellectual integrity to say nothing of his keen appreciation of reality prevents him from so doing.
In any event the Pope has it wrong. The problem is not consumption, "insatiable" or otherwise.
No. The problem is simply that there are too many people alive and consuming. Too many people needing everything from the most basic of necessities to the most useless and frivolous of luxuries.
Consider the US. The population of the US has slightly more than doubled during the Geek's lifetime (or Al Gore's for that matter.) That's an increase from slightly less than one hundred fifty million people to some 305 million.
The US has been an also-ran in the Great Global Baby Race compared to dozens of other countries. From relatively prosperous "emerging" societies such as those in the PRC or India to countries at the bottom of the survival list, more than doubling the population in slightly more than fifty years has been the norm.
Now, Pope Benedict, that is the real problem. The questions for you and the global enterprise of which you are CEO are these: what have you done about it? What will you do about it?
The answers to both are simple. Nothing. And nothing. The response of your institution has been and, in greatest probability, will continue to be: level down the global standard of living. Take away from those who have and give to those who have not until everybody has nearly nothing.
This is the sort of human destroying logic that is expectable from a theoretically responsible adult occupying a leadership role in a very large, politically potent organisation that calls upon people to put "religion" first in their public and private lives.
That is the sort of logic that gave Europe the deepest gloom of the Dark Ages as the early Medieval Period has been correctly dubbed. That is the kind of logic that your institution showed centuries ago when it insisted on repressing thought, inquiry and expression--to say nothing of torturing and killing those who dared to question.
Your logic is the functional and ethical equivalent of the logic employed by the death oriented mullahs who issue fatwas calling for mass killing.
Pope Benedict, when you make a false parsing between "subjective" feelings and faith as you did in your speech today in Sidney, not only do you show a disastrous misunderstanding of faith which must be inherently subjective, but you substitute obedience to a specific religious dogma for faith. That, in the Geek's reading of the Message of Jesus, runs antipodal to the teachings of that wandering sage and healer.
Get a grip, Pope Benedict. It is not the secular thinkers who fail to appreciate either the nature of the problems that confront the world and its people today as well as the necessary and necessarily painful and unfair solutions to them.
It is you.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Sanctions Feel Good--But Do They Work?
Americans and (at least some of the time) Europeans have a love affair with economic sanctions. There seems to be some sort of deep rooted genetic belief that somehow economic sanctions will prove to be the sovereign remedy for all sorts of international contretemps. It's as if we are all a passel of Marxists, certain that economic man will prevail.
The Geek would like to think that, regardless of reality and wilfully ignoring historical experience, this time sanctions will prove effective. When that happens he has to slap his face and shout, "Get a grip!"
Sanctions can inflict economic discomfort on a state. They can hurt people. They can make life for a government marginally more difficult.
At the same time sanctions serve as a propaganda focus assuring popular discontent is aimed at the Outsider instead of being directed at the government and its offensive conduct. Sanctions can increase the political will and drive of the government to continue the actions which have led to sanctions. Sanctions can make a government and society more creative in finding effective means of neutralising the sanctions and continuing the decried behavior.
To have even the slightest chance of success several realities have to exist. The target government must be effectively isolated globally. The target society must have a politically significant middle class. The target government must be ineffectively repressive. The target government must lack a significant internal propaganda capacity. Smuggling and other sanction evading mechanisms must be susceptible to total and prolonged interdiction.
Ask yourself, "How often are these criteria met?" (Met, that is, in the real world, not some fantasyland of policy makers or the High Minded.)
Yeah, that's right. Zero percent of the time.
Now, ask yourself, "When was the last time in US history that economic sanctions accomplished a positive policy outcome?"
That will take you awhile. And, you've got to remember that the operative word is "positive."
(Sound of the Geek drumming his fingers as he waits for an answer.)
Try the Stamp Act Crisis. The Colonies did gain a retraction of the Stamp Act after embargoing all trade with England. The embargo wasn't leak proof but it was complete enough to inflict real distress on the merchant interests of England which in turn put the right screws on Parliament. Of course the seeming victory was undercut by Parliament's simultaneous declaration that it could pass any law any time binding on the Colonies. It was a way station on the road to war.
If you're old enough you might remember Operation Just Cause conducted by George H.W. Bush. This operation turned the US military into the world's largest SWAT team kicking in the doors of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega.
The invasion was quick, low cost and eventually saw the crater faced dictator hauled off in handcuffs, shackles, and disgrace to a US slammer. But, why was it necessary?
Because sanctions failed. Even though Panama had a large and vocal, pan-banging middle class and even used the Yankee dollar as its circulating mechanism, the sanctions were not leak proof enough to put sufficient pressure on the Panamanian National Guard to evict the jefe grande.
If you're a bit younger you no doubt recall the decade of sanctions imposed by the UN on Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War. These sanctions hurt the Iraqi population quite a bit, crippled the country's infrastructure and did other undesirable things to the people and nation alike.
They also introduced corruption on a massive scale. Made a great deal of money for smugglers, financial thaumaturges and relatives of the then UN Secretary General.
The sanctions did not cause the Iraqi army to rise up and cast out the demons of the Saddam Hussein regime. That took a war--and its years of aftermath. And, a lot of dead bodies both Iraqi and foreign.
More often than not sanctions have been what they were back in the days of the Stamp Act. A way station to war.
Sanctions are the means of choice right now with respect to Zimbabwe and Iran. In either case sanctions have not and will not bring about a positive policy outcome.
Zimbabwe's Thug-in-Chief For Life, Robert Mugabe knows all about sanctions. Sanctions applied in the wake of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence were widely supposed to have the power to bring the White minority regime to its knees--quickly and bloodlessly.
The global sanctions did have some effect over the next twenty years. They were a minor factor in the final collapse of political will on the part of Ian Smith and his government. But, the sanctions never undercut the Rhodesian economy. Never ruined the White middle class. Never drove the export oriented White farmers from their large and profitable holdings.
Never destroyed the Rhodesian economy.
No. Robert Mugabe did that all on his own little lonesome in a fit of political-economic stupidity that ranks high on the list of all time blunders.
Today, Zimbabwe has no export oriented agriculture, no middle class and no economy. (It does have an inflation rate that threatens to top that of Wiemar Germany at its worst.)
What's left to hurt? What's left to sanction? Putting pressure on Mugabe and his supporters by sanctions ranks with the egotism of a dog thinking he can raise sea level by lifting his leg.
Then there is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The sanctions have been in place for quite awhile now. They have been "toughened." They have failed in the intent of ending the presumed Iranian nuclear weapons program even though the effect of the economic squeeze has hurt the Iranian economy, hurt many Iranians and made life ever so slightly more difficult for the Iranian government.
Why?
Easy. The sanction regime has been leakier than the Titanic after kissing the iceberg. Not just the usual Global Bad Boy, China, but presumed allies in the cause led by Germany and Italy have busted the sanctions time and time again. All the soothing mood music from Berlin, Rome or, for that matter, Paris doesn't change the reality.
On top of that smuggling, remittances and financial legerdemain have abounded with great benefit for the mullahocracy and its visions of nuclear backed potency. Human ingenuity knows no limits when self-interest and state interest (to say nothing of religious interest) coincide.
"But wait," you object, "one of our guys is going to meet face-to-face with their chief nuclear negotiator."
"So bloody what?" replies the Geek.
There is always time for one more round of diplomacy before the bombs start falling. The Iranians have already--well before the scheduled meeting date--made their position clear. The centrifuges will keep spinning.
Given the vast quantity of political investment the mullahocracy has made so publicly regarding the nuclear project over the past months, backing down now would take the direct, open intervention of the Hidden Imam himself. This is unlikely. The mullahocracy has invested the totality of its Revolutionary Islamic legitimacy in keeping the centrifuges spinning.
We can always hope for a peaceful solution to the problem. We can even pray for one if we are of such an inclination. We can hope for some time buying exercise that will push the final decision into the haze of the future.
But, we have to remember that, more often than not, economic sanctions have been but a way station on the road to war.
The Geek would like to think that, regardless of reality and wilfully ignoring historical experience, this time sanctions will prove effective. When that happens he has to slap his face and shout, "Get a grip!"
Sanctions can inflict economic discomfort on a state. They can hurt people. They can make life for a government marginally more difficult.
At the same time sanctions serve as a propaganda focus assuring popular discontent is aimed at the Outsider instead of being directed at the government and its offensive conduct. Sanctions can increase the political will and drive of the government to continue the actions which have led to sanctions. Sanctions can make a government and society more creative in finding effective means of neutralising the sanctions and continuing the decried behavior.
To have even the slightest chance of success several realities have to exist. The target government must be effectively isolated globally. The target society must have a politically significant middle class. The target government must be ineffectively repressive. The target government must lack a significant internal propaganda capacity. Smuggling and other sanction evading mechanisms must be susceptible to total and prolonged interdiction.
Ask yourself, "How often are these criteria met?" (Met, that is, in the real world, not some fantasyland of policy makers or the High Minded.)
Yeah, that's right. Zero percent of the time.
Now, ask yourself, "When was the last time in US history that economic sanctions accomplished a positive policy outcome?"
That will take you awhile. And, you've got to remember that the operative word is "positive."
(Sound of the Geek drumming his fingers as he waits for an answer.)
Try the Stamp Act Crisis. The Colonies did gain a retraction of the Stamp Act after embargoing all trade with England. The embargo wasn't leak proof but it was complete enough to inflict real distress on the merchant interests of England which in turn put the right screws on Parliament. Of course the seeming victory was undercut by Parliament's simultaneous declaration that it could pass any law any time binding on the Colonies. It was a way station on the road to war.
If you're old enough you might remember Operation Just Cause conducted by George H.W. Bush. This operation turned the US military into the world's largest SWAT team kicking in the doors of Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega.
The invasion was quick, low cost and eventually saw the crater faced dictator hauled off in handcuffs, shackles, and disgrace to a US slammer. But, why was it necessary?
Because sanctions failed. Even though Panama had a large and vocal, pan-banging middle class and even used the Yankee dollar as its circulating mechanism, the sanctions were not leak proof enough to put sufficient pressure on the Panamanian National Guard to evict the jefe grande.
If you're a bit younger you no doubt recall the decade of sanctions imposed by the UN on Iraq in the wake of the Gulf War. These sanctions hurt the Iraqi population quite a bit, crippled the country's infrastructure and did other undesirable things to the people and nation alike.
They also introduced corruption on a massive scale. Made a great deal of money for smugglers, financial thaumaturges and relatives of the then UN Secretary General.
The sanctions did not cause the Iraqi army to rise up and cast out the demons of the Saddam Hussein regime. That took a war--and its years of aftermath. And, a lot of dead bodies both Iraqi and foreign.
More often than not sanctions have been what they were back in the days of the Stamp Act. A way station to war.
Sanctions are the means of choice right now with respect to Zimbabwe and Iran. In either case sanctions have not and will not bring about a positive policy outcome.
Zimbabwe's Thug-in-Chief For Life, Robert Mugabe knows all about sanctions. Sanctions applied in the wake of Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence were widely supposed to have the power to bring the White minority regime to its knees--quickly and bloodlessly.
The global sanctions did have some effect over the next twenty years. They were a minor factor in the final collapse of political will on the part of Ian Smith and his government. But, the sanctions never undercut the Rhodesian economy. Never ruined the White middle class. Never drove the export oriented White farmers from their large and profitable holdings.
Never destroyed the Rhodesian economy.
No. Robert Mugabe did that all on his own little lonesome in a fit of political-economic stupidity that ranks high on the list of all time blunders.
Today, Zimbabwe has no export oriented agriculture, no middle class and no economy. (It does have an inflation rate that threatens to top that of Wiemar Germany at its worst.)
What's left to hurt? What's left to sanction? Putting pressure on Mugabe and his supporters by sanctions ranks with the egotism of a dog thinking he can raise sea level by lifting his leg.
Then there is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The sanctions have been in place for quite awhile now. They have been "toughened." They have failed in the intent of ending the presumed Iranian nuclear weapons program even though the effect of the economic squeeze has hurt the Iranian economy, hurt many Iranians and made life ever so slightly more difficult for the Iranian government.
Why?
Easy. The sanction regime has been leakier than the Titanic after kissing the iceberg. Not just the usual Global Bad Boy, China, but presumed allies in the cause led by Germany and Italy have busted the sanctions time and time again. All the soothing mood music from Berlin, Rome or, for that matter, Paris doesn't change the reality.
On top of that smuggling, remittances and financial legerdemain have abounded with great benefit for the mullahocracy and its visions of nuclear backed potency. Human ingenuity knows no limits when self-interest and state interest (to say nothing of religious interest) coincide.
"But wait," you object, "one of our guys is going to meet face-to-face with their chief nuclear negotiator."
"So bloody what?" replies the Geek.
There is always time for one more round of diplomacy before the bombs start falling. The Iranians have already--well before the scheduled meeting date--made their position clear. The centrifuges will keep spinning.
Given the vast quantity of political investment the mullahocracy has made so publicly regarding the nuclear project over the past months, backing down now would take the direct, open intervention of the Hidden Imam himself. This is unlikely. The mullahocracy has invested the totality of its Revolutionary Islamic legitimacy in keeping the centrifuges spinning.
We can always hope for a peaceful solution to the problem. We can even pray for one if we are of such an inclination. We can hope for some time buying exercise that will push the final decision into the haze of the future.
But, we have to remember that, more often than not, economic sanctions have been but a way station on the road to war.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The US, China and the OIC--Strange Bed Buddies
The decision by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to seek an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, has made for a surprising and awkward joining of interests between the US, the PRC and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
OK, perhaps not so much a juncture of interests as an intersection of anxiety. The crossing is marked by the ICC. The Chinese don't like it at all. The US is uncomfortable with it. Many member states of the OIC are afraid of it.
The Geek has to admit he is not thrilled by this monument to international High Mindedness either. It strikes him as another example of an emotion driven, feel-good reaction to the atrocious behavior of a small number of zealots and True Believers in leadership positions.
The 1998 Rome Statute which created the ICC conferred an ambiguously broad jurisdiction on the court charging it with authority to try and convict individuals regardless of status for a portmanteau of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. As a result of the breadth of jurisdiction and the grave potential for abuse of a politically or ideologically based nature, the current administration withdrew the assent granted to the Rome Statute by President Clinton in 2000. As a result the Statute has never been presented to the Senate for ratification.
Despite the fact that the US is not a party to the court, the current administration is loath to take any action which might be seen as granting any legitimacy to the ICC. As a result the W. Bush Administration has been, at best, ambivalent in its response to the widely applauded decision of prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to seek the arrest warrant. To get the skinny, go to the AP http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jPO0qnku-2vJhJuBSUT5B8Qc61AAD91U5QC80.
The PRC, not unlike fellow Security Council member, Russia, opposes the ICC as it does all attempts by international entities to involve themselves in matters which are arguably of a purely internal nature. While Beijing officials aren't about to go on TV making so blunt a statement (particularly with the Olympic Games days away), there is not a shred of doubt regarding the government's position. The last thing China wants given its own record on suppressing internal political dissent is the potential for outside judgement.
(For the full Chinese position on the ICC arrest effort see the official news dispatch
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2394265&title=China_Expresses_Serious.html)
The same is true with respect to Russia. (Can we say, "Chechnya?")
Thus there is a good to excellent chance that the UN Security Council will interdict the prosecutor's efforts to see Omar in the slam. Any Security Council blockage will be suitably camouflaged and concealed, lest the High Minded of the world take umbrage.
And, umbrage will be taken. If not by governments, then by high profile non-governmental organisations. One has already given notice in an interview with Voice of America. The Save Darfur Coalition Policy Director Amjad Atallah, gave notice that his vocal group expects the Security Council to meet the same high standards as the ICC prosecutor. VOA has the interview http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-07-15-voa43.cfm.
Finally the OIC has rung in with a statement by its General Secretary to the effect that the attempt to seek the arrest of Bashir represents a "double standard." The OIC jefe clearly means that if Omar the Butcher ends up in the hoosegow in the Hague, OIC demands that he be joined in durance vile by any number of Israeli political and military figures. You can check the Geek's interpretation at http://www.oic-oci.org/oicnew/topic_detail.asp?t_id=1226.
Omar and his regime are not nice. The Sudanese government both under Omar and his predecessors has shown a remarkable appetite for bloodshed and an amazing willingness to see large numbers of Sudanese (particularly those who are Black and non-Muslim) die as a result of starvation caused by government action as well as more active measures. In principle, bringing the entire thuggish crew of mass killers to trial is a fine idea.
But we must remember the yawning gap between principle and practice. That gap serves to define the universe of unintended consequences which may well ensue. In Sudan these consequences might well entail further suffering and death.
Beyond the Sudan the consequences which may very well result from the precedent established by an arrest warrant bearing the name Omar al-Bashir could spread very wide. Politics and ideology permeate the air of High Minded international entities such as the ICC. Much as the Geek is uncomfortable with having a position which coincides with that of the current administration (let alone the PRC), he has to agree that the ICC is a field of landmines and one must walk very, very softly and slowly in such an area.
OK, perhaps not so much a juncture of interests as an intersection of anxiety. The crossing is marked by the ICC. The Chinese don't like it at all. The US is uncomfortable with it. Many member states of the OIC are afraid of it.
The Geek has to admit he is not thrilled by this monument to international High Mindedness either. It strikes him as another example of an emotion driven, feel-good reaction to the atrocious behavior of a small number of zealots and True Believers in leadership positions.
The 1998 Rome Statute which created the ICC conferred an ambiguously broad jurisdiction on the court charging it with authority to try and convict individuals regardless of status for a portmanteau of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. As a result of the breadth of jurisdiction and the grave potential for abuse of a politically or ideologically based nature, the current administration withdrew the assent granted to the Rome Statute by President Clinton in 2000. As a result the Statute has never been presented to the Senate for ratification.
Despite the fact that the US is not a party to the court, the current administration is loath to take any action which might be seen as granting any legitimacy to the ICC. As a result the W. Bush Administration has been, at best, ambivalent in its response to the widely applauded decision of prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to seek the arrest warrant. To get the skinny, go to the AP http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jPO0qnku-2vJhJuBSUT5B8Qc61AAD91U5QC80.
The PRC, not unlike fellow Security Council member, Russia, opposes the ICC as it does all attempts by international entities to involve themselves in matters which are arguably of a purely internal nature. While Beijing officials aren't about to go on TV making so blunt a statement (particularly with the Olympic Games days away), there is not a shred of doubt regarding the government's position. The last thing China wants given its own record on suppressing internal political dissent is the potential for outside judgement.
(For the full Chinese position on the ICC arrest effort see the official news dispatch
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2394265&title=China_Expresses_Serious.html)
The same is true with respect to Russia. (Can we say, "Chechnya?")
Thus there is a good to excellent chance that the UN Security Council will interdict the prosecutor's efforts to see Omar in the slam. Any Security Council blockage will be suitably camouflaged and concealed, lest the High Minded of the world take umbrage.
And, umbrage will be taken. If not by governments, then by high profile non-governmental organisations. One has already given notice in an interview with Voice of America. The Save Darfur Coalition Policy Director Amjad Atallah, gave notice that his vocal group expects the Security Council to meet the same high standards as the ICC prosecutor. VOA has the interview http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2008-07-15-voa43.cfm.
Finally the OIC has rung in with a statement by its General Secretary to the effect that the attempt to seek the arrest of Bashir represents a "double standard." The OIC jefe clearly means that if Omar the Butcher ends up in the hoosegow in the Hague, OIC demands that he be joined in durance vile by any number of Israeli political and military figures. You can check the Geek's interpretation at http://www.oic-oci.org/oicnew/topic_detail.asp?t_id=1226.
Omar and his regime are not nice. The Sudanese government both under Omar and his predecessors has shown a remarkable appetite for bloodshed and an amazing willingness to see large numbers of Sudanese (particularly those who are Black and non-Muslim) die as a result of starvation caused by government action as well as more active measures. In principle, bringing the entire thuggish crew of mass killers to trial is a fine idea.
But we must remember the yawning gap between principle and practice. That gap serves to define the universe of unintended consequences which may well ensue. In Sudan these consequences might well entail further suffering and death.
Beyond the Sudan the consequences which may very well result from the precedent established by an arrest warrant bearing the name Omar al-Bashir could spread very wide. Politics and ideology permeate the air of High Minded international entities such as the ICC. Much as the Geek is uncomfortable with having a position which coincides with that of the current administration (let alone the PRC), he has to agree that the ICC is a field of landmines and one must walk very, very softly and slowly in such an area.
The Sky Is Falling! Nine US Troops Killed!
The usual crowd of situationally unenlightened, chronically concerned alarmists are in full throat again, bloviating this time on how the US is losing in Afghanistan. They are right.
But, and get a grip on this, for the wrong reasons.
The focus this time is on the penetration of a joint US-Afghan National Forces (ANF) combat outpost which was hit by an estimated two hundred Taliban type fighters. The incomplete defenses were penetrated and after a four hour close combat firefight, the attackers were repelled with a loss of nine Americans killed and a further fifteen wounded. Four (or more) AFN personnel were also wounded.
Hostile losses are undetermined but presumed high, particularly since the retreating personnel received the attention of air delivered fire.
This type of incident litters the landscape of all interventionary and counterinsurgent campaigns. It deserves on its merits a brief reference buried deep inside any real world newspaper. During the Vietnam War an affray of this magnitude would have been ignored by the NYT, the WaPo and the networks.
The trouble is this. We ain't living in the real world. Consider this not atypical lede from the Los Angeles Times--"Some wonder whether the insurgency is gaining, rather than losing, momentum nearly seven years after the U.S. helped oust the Taliban regime." Quote from: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/mideastemail/la-fg-afghan15-2008jul15,0,19594.story?track=newslettertext.
The article never identifies just who the "some" might be, but the Geek is waiting for the Get-Out-Now! bunch in Congress and elsewhere to start shrieking the usual cry of "We've lost the war!" Although the Times accurately describes the penetration of the combat outpost as a "raid," the framing of the attack and its aftermath connotes doom of the greatest sort.
Crap!
Before the surge in Iraq had taken hold, the Geek posted that the best the US could hope for when the full weight of the extra American boots on the ground was felt by the assorted black turbans in that country was not losing. Now, in Iraq after the surge bought time and breathing space for the Iraqi government (such as it is), the Geek can say with a straight face that the US has accomplished the minimum necessary goal. We are not losing and, in highest probability, will not lose the war in Iraq.
Any winning of that war must be left up to the Iraqis and the government they install.
The same pre-surge contention is applicable to Afghanistan. Right now, as has been the case for several years, the US can lose. Our minimum necessary goal is the same today in that country that it was a year ago in Iraq--not losing.
To achieve that goal the US must put more boots on the ground. As the Geek has harped on repeatedly, the most labor intensive form of war in counterinsurgency. There is no way around that.
Even with the greatest possible technological assistance such as UAVs and the most deadly firepower conceivable, counterinsurgency remains what it always has been, a matter of men on the ground.
The key to successful counterinsurgency is contained in three words. Presence. Persistence. Patience.
Presence means quite simply that there must be sufficient troops on the ground to effectively carry the war to the enemy. Enough troops on the ground to deter the enemy from seeking soft targets--which is not easy when the hostiles use suicide bombers directing their efforts against the softest civilian targets. Enough troops on the ground to limit the need for stand off weapons including airpower which are likely (as we have seen time after bloody time) to inflict unacceptable numbers of civilian casualties. Enough troops on the ground to provide the appearance as well as the reality of security to the uncommitted majority of the population, which constitutes the most important battlefield in this type of war.
Presence means that the troops have to be there long enough. Long enough to undercut the political will of those who support the enemy combatants. Long enough to kill the hardest of the hard core hostile fighters and long enough to demoralise those who are less willing to bare the hardships and risks of active combat. These requirements indicate that the effort in Afghanistan may last for years yet.
Patience is required because there are no tidy phase lines in counterinsurgency as there are in conventional war between parity opponents. There are few indicators of winning and losing that are nearly as harsh, stark and easy to grasp as the sweeping arrows or lines of contact on a map such as typified World War II or even the conventional opening days of the American invasion of Iraq.
The commanders on the ground in Afghanistan are well aware of the crippling lack of troops in theater. That is why the demand for an additional three combat brigades over and above the Marine Expeditionary Brigade deployed a few weeks ago. (The presence of the Gyrenes in Helmand Province has made its self felt to the discomfiture of the black turbans.)
Three brigades should be seen as an optimistic minimum. Certainly the two brigades proposed by the Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator Obama, is too little. This offer shows that the NYMFC is situationally naive even as he attempts to capitalise on the fear and trembling produced by the Shootout at the Combat Outpost by declaring that Iraq is a dangerous "distraction" from the Afghan Front. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-campaign16- 2008jul16,0,703814.story or take a look at the somewhat more neutrally framed http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i93McMPYxNe5I5luHeUstklGV2RgD91TSB880.
If the current administration had not been so blind as to the nature of counterinsurgency as well as the reality that the genuine war in Afghanistan would start the day after Taliban was toppled in Kabul, and al-Qaeda as well as Taliban beat feet across the border to Pakistan along with their Pakistani advisers and hand-holders, the US wouldn't be in the fix it is today.
The idea of "shocking and aweing" our way to victory in Afghanistan is and was every bit as wrong as a cat barking. Along with the civilians topside in the Pentagon and over at the White House and Executive Office Building, the senior uniform leadership of our military must be held to have been responsible for the current near disaster.
The flag should have been obviously and publicly dropped on the play way back in late 2001. Oh, the Geek realises that We the People and our "representatives" as well as the administration were pawing the ground and eager to go after the killers of 9/11. But, going a few months later in sufficient force to do the job correctly would not have required either the political courage or the expenditure of blood and money that playing fix-up does.
Fix-up is the game we must play. And, get a grip on this, it will be a very tough game to play and win. Not only will it require a lot more grunts in-country, it will mean a lot more bodies coming home in boxes or in pieces needing a hell of a lot of rehabilitation and support.
Beyond that, the game of fix-up--if we are to meet the minimum goal of not losing--requires finally recognising the actual importance of Pakistan and its FATA. We will have to do something about the sanctuary, the land of R&R, the place of recruiting and training. It won't be as easy as Iraq.
That's the real irony of things. Afghanistan--the "good war" is also the one that is hardest. Compared to what is in the future, the past in Iraq has been just a little walk in the sun.
But, and get a grip on this, for the wrong reasons.
The focus this time is on the penetration of a joint US-Afghan National Forces (ANF) combat outpost which was hit by an estimated two hundred Taliban type fighters. The incomplete defenses were penetrated and after a four hour close combat firefight, the attackers were repelled with a loss of nine Americans killed and a further fifteen wounded. Four (or more) AFN personnel were also wounded.
Hostile losses are undetermined but presumed high, particularly since the retreating personnel received the attention of air delivered fire.
This type of incident litters the landscape of all interventionary and counterinsurgent campaigns. It deserves on its merits a brief reference buried deep inside any real world newspaper. During the Vietnam War an affray of this magnitude would have been ignored by the NYT, the WaPo and the networks.
The trouble is this. We ain't living in the real world. Consider this not atypical lede from the Los Angeles Times--"Some wonder whether the insurgency is gaining, rather than losing, momentum nearly seven years after the U.S. helped oust the Taliban regime." Quote from: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/mideastemail/la-fg-afghan15-2008jul15,0,19594.story?track=newslettertext.
The article never identifies just who the "some" might be, but the Geek is waiting for the Get-Out-Now! bunch in Congress and elsewhere to start shrieking the usual cry of "We've lost the war!" Although the Times accurately describes the penetration of the combat outpost as a "raid," the framing of the attack and its aftermath connotes doom of the greatest sort.
Crap!
Before the surge in Iraq had taken hold, the Geek posted that the best the US could hope for when the full weight of the extra American boots on the ground was felt by the assorted black turbans in that country was not losing. Now, in Iraq after the surge bought time and breathing space for the Iraqi government (such as it is), the Geek can say with a straight face that the US has accomplished the minimum necessary goal. We are not losing and, in highest probability, will not lose the war in Iraq.
Any winning of that war must be left up to the Iraqis and the government they install.
The same pre-surge contention is applicable to Afghanistan. Right now, as has been the case for several years, the US can lose. Our minimum necessary goal is the same today in that country that it was a year ago in Iraq--not losing.
To achieve that goal the US must put more boots on the ground. As the Geek has harped on repeatedly, the most labor intensive form of war in counterinsurgency. There is no way around that.
Even with the greatest possible technological assistance such as UAVs and the most deadly firepower conceivable, counterinsurgency remains what it always has been, a matter of men on the ground.
The key to successful counterinsurgency is contained in three words. Presence. Persistence. Patience.
Presence means quite simply that there must be sufficient troops on the ground to effectively carry the war to the enemy. Enough troops on the ground to deter the enemy from seeking soft targets--which is not easy when the hostiles use suicide bombers directing their efforts against the softest civilian targets. Enough troops on the ground to limit the need for stand off weapons including airpower which are likely (as we have seen time after bloody time) to inflict unacceptable numbers of civilian casualties. Enough troops on the ground to provide the appearance as well as the reality of security to the uncommitted majority of the population, which constitutes the most important battlefield in this type of war.
Presence means that the troops have to be there long enough. Long enough to undercut the political will of those who support the enemy combatants. Long enough to kill the hardest of the hard core hostile fighters and long enough to demoralise those who are less willing to bare the hardships and risks of active combat. These requirements indicate that the effort in Afghanistan may last for years yet.
Patience is required because there are no tidy phase lines in counterinsurgency as there are in conventional war between parity opponents. There are few indicators of winning and losing that are nearly as harsh, stark and easy to grasp as the sweeping arrows or lines of contact on a map such as typified World War II or even the conventional opening days of the American invasion of Iraq.
The commanders on the ground in Afghanistan are well aware of the crippling lack of troops in theater. That is why the demand for an additional three combat brigades over and above the Marine Expeditionary Brigade deployed a few weeks ago. (The presence of the Gyrenes in Helmand Province has made its self felt to the discomfiture of the black turbans.)
Three brigades should be seen as an optimistic minimum. Certainly the two brigades proposed by the Nice Young Man From Chicago, Senator Obama, is too little. This offer shows that the NYMFC is situationally naive even as he attempts to capitalise on the fear and trembling produced by the Shootout at the Combat Outpost by declaring that Iraq is a dangerous "distraction" from the Afghan Front. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-campaign16- 2008jul16,0,703814.story or take a look at the somewhat more neutrally framed http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i93McMPYxNe5I5luHeUstklGV2RgD91TSB880.
If the current administration had not been so blind as to the nature of counterinsurgency as well as the reality that the genuine war in Afghanistan would start the day after Taliban was toppled in Kabul, and al-Qaeda as well as Taliban beat feet across the border to Pakistan along with their Pakistani advisers and hand-holders, the US wouldn't be in the fix it is today.
The idea of "shocking and aweing" our way to victory in Afghanistan is and was every bit as wrong as a cat barking. Along with the civilians topside in the Pentagon and over at the White House and Executive Office Building, the senior uniform leadership of our military must be held to have been responsible for the current near disaster.
The flag should have been obviously and publicly dropped on the play way back in late 2001. Oh, the Geek realises that We the People and our "representatives" as well as the administration were pawing the ground and eager to go after the killers of 9/11. But, going a few months later in sufficient force to do the job correctly would not have required either the political courage or the expenditure of blood and money that playing fix-up does.
Fix-up is the game we must play. And, get a grip on this, it will be a very tough game to play and win. Not only will it require a lot more grunts in-country, it will mean a lot more bodies coming home in boxes or in pieces needing a hell of a lot of rehabilitation and support.
Beyond that, the game of fix-up--if we are to meet the minimum goal of not losing--requires finally recognising the actual importance of Pakistan and its FATA. We will have to do something about the sanctuary, the land of R&R, the place of recruiting and training. It won't be as easy as Iraq.
That's the real irony of things. Afghanistan--the "good war" is also the one that is hardest. Compared to what is in the future, the past in Iraq has been just a little walk in the sun.
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