Time for US to Butt Out

Yemen Intervention Would be a Fool's Errand
Marc Lynch, who is no conservative, has written an excellent article on Yemen that I wholeheartedly agree with.  Unlike the thumb-sucking bedwetters at the Guardian, he provides reasons for his opposition to any US intervention in that Hell's half acre at the ass-end of the Arabian peninsula.

No Easy Answers
There are no easy answers to the problems infesting our globe's many intractable hot spots.  Yemen looks like another situation where an oppressive, decrepit regime will invite us in to do its dirty work, while we think we're fighting for freedom.  They paint their enemies as "terrorists" and unleash the awesome American firepower against them.  

Lynch warns against both military intervention and development assistance.  The former would be a quagmire and the latter would be sucked up by greedy, corrupt officials.  He posits that no realistic option offers even an outside chance of success, so we should simply manage the situation as it suits our national interests. 

Marc Lynch's Conclusion:

It's never as satisfying as a morally pure call to battle, but the administration shouldn't over-react or under-react.

Be patient, build intelligence and CT assets, strike against clearly AQ targets when available but only where the civilian costs will be minimal and the rewards high, search out local partners... the usual.

But the administration shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking it must "do something" to fend off political harping from the right and end up over-committing... or taking steps which ultimately make the situation worse.

Amen!  And ditto for Iran   
I pray we are covertly funneling millions to the Iranian opposition, but we should not send one American soldier or bomb.

Bring Iraq to a good end (and they are on their way in a land where Saudi Arabia or Turkey is considered "good").  Bring Afghanistan to an acceptable end, and assiduously avoid future "big footprint" operations like the money-wasting plagues that they are. 

Middle East:  The World's Nuthouse
These people have been bombing, shooting and stabbing and stoning one another since time immemorial, what makes us think that we can change them?  If we merely stay out of the way, they will start attacking each other over ancient, still simmering feuds instead of going after us.  Remember the charnel house that was the 10-year Iran-Iraq War?


Europe, Saudi and the rest of you who no longer share our values, you're on your own!

And while we're at it, we need to fold up the Western European security umbrella as well.  Time for our cousins across the pond to man up and learn to live without the bossy hyperpower on their backs all the time.

Sounds isolationist, but I'm not.  We just need to pick our battles wisely.  Too often we've been suckered into petty parochial struggles where the craftiest side was able to demonize the other, wrongly rousing Uncle Sam's sense of righteousness, always with unintended consequences.  Israel is the only country in that region worth fighting for, and they can take care of themselves.

No Happy Endings
Everything can't be tied up neatly with a nice bow on top.  Poverty and violence abound in most of the world (what Thomas P.M. Barnett calls The Gap).  Some societies do not cohere well because of the nature of the people, the terrain, lack of resources, whatever.  These fractious conditions spawn congenitally weak governments...

"... where every man is Enemy to every man... And the life of man [is], solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  -- Thomas Hobbes

Real Conservatives Heed Washington's Admonition Against Foreign Entanglements

A forgotten component of traditional conservatism is wariness towards foreign entanglements.  That doesn't mean withdraw from the world; it means don't get suckered into the internal affairs of other countries, and don't get sucked into fights between warring factions.

And this isn't a "be nice so the bed people will start liking us" argument.  Bad people will always hate us because we stand for good.  We should reserve the right to unapologetically smack them at the time and place of our choosing based on our national interests, not some foreign power.

Afghanistan: Patriotic Dissent

There are no easy answers in the Afghanistan Debate

"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said.

"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."

Matthew Poh, a former Marine Captain and combat vet, resigned his position heading up reconstruction for the State Department in Afghanistan.  He says he can no longer support the war.  

You don't have to agree with his conclusions, but we'd be foolish to ignore the observations of a man with so much in-country experience as we contemplate the way forward.  


Patriotic Americans should hear well-reasoned arguments from all sides

Here's an excerpt from a reader Q & A hosted by WaPo. 

This isn't WWII and there shouldn't be a comparison. No one can kill better in this world than the US military, however, if killing was the means to victory we would have "won" this years ago. This is primarily a political fight.

For more reasoned dissent, see TNR - Bacevich and NY Post - Ralph Peters

Strategic Drift
Poh, Bacevich and Peters, patriots all, point to a strategic drift that started in the Bush administration.  We went in to kill bad guys.  Now what?  Obama exaggerated that drift by appointing a man of action, General McChrystal, and then criticizing him when he took action.  The President's scholarly and leisurely pace isn't helping matters any.  

What is the Mission?
I have faith in General McChrystal.  What I want is to hear a stated goal from our elected officials.  Where will be be in 10 years?  What's the end game?  What does "success" look like?  

Freeing Pashtun women from their shackles sounds nice, but is it in our national interest?

I am not against the Afghan war.  I was there (in a non-combat role) and I believe our efforts have been heroic and noble.  It is important that our government clearly spell out the mission, embrace it, and explain it to the American people.  They owe it to the good men and women who are giving it all they've got over there.
 
WaPo - Matthew Poh
WaPo - Poh Q & A
NY Post - Ralph Peters
David Shribman
TNR - Bacevich

UN Protests "Summary Execution" Death by Drone

Philip Alston, UN Lord High Poobah and Ratpoopoour of Special Meddling, has demaaanded that the US stop killing terrorists and those who harbor them.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – US drone strikes against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan could be breaking international laws against summary executions, the UN's top investigator of such crimes said as he whined and pissed down his leg while trying to strike an arrogant, sanctimonious pose.

Stop!  Or we'll say stop again! 
He's presenting the matter to the assembled murderers, slave-holders, tyrants and snot-nosed pricks at the UN General Assembly:

"The onus is really on the United States government to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary extrajudicial executions aren't in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons," he added, removing his thumb from his rectum.

"the really problematic bottom line that the CIA is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws," Alston said, placing his thumb in his mouth.

No, the onus is on you to STFU, jackass! 
Go back to skimming money off of food aid programs and abusing third-world women and little boys!  The International House of Scandal and Corruption is depending on you. Go talk to Human Rights Council Members Saudi Arabia and Cuba about international law.  Jackass!

Disclaimer:  I am a humongous fan of Predator drones and the death they visit upon  7th century, goat violating, BO stinking, America haters.  My retirement flag flew on a Predator mission.

Yahoo - UN Funnies

Lessons from 20th Century Wars: Go Big or Go Home

There is no such thing as a humane war. Indulging in such fantasies, with CNN enforcing the rules, has made the world a more dangerous place.

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition. (Source: Jonathan Landay, a real battlefield reporter for McClatchy)

David Warren, trenchant thinker and writer from Canada, observes that "The Second World War was the unfinished business of the First World War."

Germans were left with the possibility of believing that they hadn't really lost the war, that they had been somehow cheated at Versailles, that in the upshot of their military aggression they were somehow victims not perpetrators...
This is precisely what made the Hitler phenomenon possible in Germany. And it was the bitter experience of 1945 -- the unconditional surrender of Germany, in the ruins of Berlin -- that ultimately cleansed the German nation of militarist ambitions.

Is is no longer possible to just go in and completely wipe somebody out in a fiery, bloody carnage. Gotta protect their dignity, can't kill any "innocent" civilians whose skirts the "brave fighters" are hiding behind. Nobody gets their ass beat anymore, and that's the problem.

We rained down fiery hell on Germany and Japan, followed up by an allied land invasion, full occupation, and execution of the guilty. Look at them now... They don't wanna fight no more.

War is Hell
That's how you take the fight out of people. A little inhumanity up front saves a whole lot of it down the road.

That is what General Tecumseh Sherman meant when he said "War is hell." He believed it should be hell in order to teach the belligerents a harsh, bloody lesson that would make them think twice before starting something again.

Ralph Peters explains:

It isn't just that war is hell. It's that war must be hell, otherwise why would the enemy ever quit?

We are no longer permitted to visit hell upon our enemies. They can take us on and live to fight (and brag about it) another day. We had better learn to pick our fights: Go big or go home. Otherwise, we're just wasting peoples' lives.

Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell, lone survivor of Operation Redwing, said it best:

If you don't want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
-- Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal, from Lone Survivor, p. 313

Further Reading:
Newsweek - McChrystal
WaPo - Rajiv Chandrasekaran
NY Post - Amir Taheri
David Warren
Byron York - Afghanistan

A Tortured Charade

We are not safer, and the President's Guantanamo posturing, along with the release of the "torture memos" only puts us more in danger.

Cheney and Obama went head-to-head a few weeks ago over the treatment of captured terrorsts, with the former VP administering a masterful schooling to the President. Gerald Seib sums the issue up quite succinctly in his definitive WSJ analysis:

He (Cheney) said the release "was flatly contrary to the national security interest of the United States," adding that it gave terrorists "a lengthy insert for their training manual."

Mr. Obama said releasing the memos in no way helped aspiring terrorists train against U.S. tactics, since the interrogation techniques were now banned by the White House.

Cheney is right. Obama is wrong. Here is how the memos help any terrorist going up against the US:

The memos reveal our medically-supervised, careful regard for human life and the law, what with the fake walls, anti-whiplash collars and whatnot. Oliver North said it best. I paraphrase from memory, with my own embellishments added in, so apologies to the Colonel:

These techniques were intended to scare the crap out of the scraggly bearded rabble we scooped up off the battlefield. Killing and torturing is against our values, so we cannot do those things; but we sure as hell can make captured combatants think that we will torture or kill them. So we scare the crap out of them hoping they will spill the beans. We crafted a deliberately well-thought out plan intended to put mortal fear into them, but the cat's out of the bag now.

What's the lesson?

Imagine the following advice being dispensed in a thick Arabic accent to a young jihadi: Americans are weak. They can't even bring themselves to kill their mortal enemies. If you're captured, take the fifth, ask for your ACLU lawyer and an International Red Cross representative. You can ride out whatever they throw at you while reclining at table eating halal. Accuse them of Koran abuse while you're at it. They will not kill you, they will not harm you. They will only try to scare you with threats that we now know are empty.

That's it folks. The Obama administration has emptied the toolbag. Feel safer now?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124291383880043289.html
WSJ - No Middle Ground - Gerald Seib

Bring The GWOT Home

I was stunned when I read the USA Today Headline:

Gangs Behind Up To 80% of US Crime

Think about that for a minute... 4 out of every 5 crimes are due to gang activity.

Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials.

Last year, 58% of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions, up from 45% in 2004.

So 0.33% of the population (one of every 300 of us) holds the rest of us hostage. Safety and security are the most basic needs, the lack of which quickly leads to societal dysfunction. We see it on our streets and in our schools.

Blowing tax dollars on pie-in-the-sky community development and dubious education giveaways is futile if we don't eradicate the crime that undermines our safety and security. If you don't take care of the crime first, you're building a house on a rotten foundation.

Time to Bring the GWOT to North America.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm

Friendly GWOT Criticism

Roger Cohen features the opinion of Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Store in a recent column.

The Norwegians are our friends and fellow NATO allies, but they have a different opinion on the Global War on Terrorism. I don't agree with Foreign Minister Store, but I respect his opinion because it is a cogent and charitable critique our strategy. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Norway’s message to the United States is blunt: the next administration, whether headed by Barack Obama or John McCain, should pronounce the war on terror over. Because it has tended to isolate the United States, polarize the world, inflate the enemy, conflate diverse movements and limit scope for dialogue, its time has passed.

Engaging, he insisted, does not mean lowering of requirements. It can be a means to set yardsticks, hold interlocutors accountable, and probe their thinking while surrendering nothing.

“Part of this ideology of the war on terror has been the United States doing things by themselves,” he said. “Now we in Europe and Norway must expect to be more actively engaged by Washington.” That will bring demands as well as opportunities.

I wish our childish politicians in this country could express their disagreements like Mr. Store does.

GWOT Platitudes

George Monbiot, in the Guardian, says Guantánamo Makes Us All Less Safe
Which leads me to ask: Would you feel safer if we released them all into your back yard?
I don't think I'll be getting an answer anytime soon.

This is predictable America-hating claptrap disguised as concern for human rights. Concerned world citizens don't trust the Bush administration, but invest complete credulity in every nutball who "accidentally" stumbled onto a battlefield with a bazooka in his hands.
Alan Dershowitz provides a nice counterpoint to the soft-headed critics. He points not to right or wrong, but to gaps in current law that responsible governments need to cooperate on closing if we are going to deal with international terrorism in a humane fashion. Unfortunately, too many people would rather engage in America bashing.

Given the scope of our operations since 9/11, it is inevitable that some abuses have occurred, and each one is a shame. But misfortunes are bound to happen when you're forced to go it alone because your feckless friends have abandoned you or are secretly sabotaging your efforts.