The NYT summarizes the testmony of General Petraeus and Michele Flournoy of the DOD.
WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander for Iraq and Afghanistan, warned a Senate panel on Wednesday that militant extremists in Pakistan “could literally take down their state” if left unchallenged, as he and two other top officials presented a grim picture of growing dangers in the region. …
Under sharp questioning from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Ms. Flournoy, the under secretary of defense for policy, acknowledged the administration’s concerns about a wing of the ISI, which American intelligence officials say is providing money and military assistance to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan.
Advertisement“I think ISI is a — or parts of ISI — are certainly a problem to be dealt with,” Ms. Flournoy said. …
“How does this end?” asked Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, echoing comments that General Petraeus once made when he was the commander in Iraq.
Ms. Flournoy responded that “a key point of defining success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”
General Petraeus said that he would “echo” Ms. Flournoy and that “the task will be for them to shoulder the responsibilities of their own security.”
American involvement in a foreign political and military struggle creates effects in two directions. On the one hand it empowers the the side which it assists with training, financial aid, intelligence support and a variety of force multipliers, up to an including direct military action. On the other hand, US presence can also pull in geopolitical enemies, serve as a rallying point to unite nationalist forces and mobilize the not-inconsiderable anti-American forces of the Left. American involvement is an accelerant of violence. It is also the primary force against the same violence. Effects in the positive direction flow directly from the application of real physical resources. The negative effects largely stem from the symbolism of American involvement. Since downsides to American involvement are a “fixed” cost, the net effect of US intervention is a function of how many real resources are committed to the fight. A large symbolic American commitment without a correspondingly substantial effort of force is the worst of all possible worlds. If the US goes into this fight, it should make up its mind to see it through. In this case, Napoleon’s advice still rings true. “If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna.”
John McCain’s questioning of Flournoy subsequently touched on the question of whether, having talked the talk, there was the will in Washington to walk the walk. McCain seemed to believe that one indicator of seriousness were the troop levels the administration was prepared to agree to.
Mr. McCain, an early proponent of the buildup of American forces in Iraq, also questioned whether the United States now had enough troops in Afghanistan. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the commander of NATO and American forces in Afghanistan, has asked for 30,000 more American troops, and Mr. Obama has so far committed about 21,000 of those. The president will make a decision this fall on whether 10,000 or so more troops will be sent.
“I think it would be far, far better to announce that we will have the additional 10,000 troops dispatched and they will clearly be needed,” Mr. McCain told Ms. Flournoy. He added: “It’s a big country. We know that was a vital element to our success in Iraq. To dribble out these decisions, I think, can create an impression of incrementalism.”
Ms. Flournoy did not react immediately to Mr. McCain’s comment, but much later in the hearing she said that “I would never have used the phrase incrementalism” to describe what she called a “very strong commitment” of American troops that are to increase to 68,000 from 38,000 by the end of this year.
However that may be, the troop strength numbers in this theater also operate in two directions. Given that the administration has ruled out using American troops in Pakistan, the bigger the force on the ground the more effective it will be on the Afghan side of Pashtunistan but the more logistically vulnerable it will be to setbacks on the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan. Every man more in Afghanistan is another man that needs to be supplied, largely through Pakistan. Perhaps the DOD is staging its buildup to see how much weight the current logistical arrangements can support before pressing down too hard on the boards. More troops mean more combat power in Afghanistan. It also means more men out on a limb if, as General Petraeus said, militant extremists “literally take down their state”. The administration should now draw breath before plunging into the tunnel. Nobody knows how far down this one goes.
The militant extremists can “literally take down their state”. The unanswered question is whether or not there are enough Pakistanis committed to seeing that does not happen. If so, let them declare it. And if not, well, we know exactly where this is going even before we get started. Don’t we?
I am confused… if the “militant extremists” DO take down their state, what is to prevent the US from discarding the fiction of a Pakistan state, and establishing a defended GLOC through the southwest portion of the state formerly known as Pakistan?
I get so ticked when our own agencies leak sensitive information to the press and in doing so, to our enemies. I wonder how much worse are we really from an ISI giving ammunition to our enemies. Lie detectors and cattle prods. How do you vet out those who pray to a hostile god?
I think we’ve seen this one before
Let me think now, just which war
Was ended when the guys on the high ground
Surrounded those encamped below
And pressed them till they hollered whoa
As guns up in the hills threw round ‘pon round
Of course it’s happened many times
In many years and many climes
That armies get cut off and then they die
But that won’t happen to our guys
Our civvie leaders are too wise
And we must never ask the reason why
We have secure lines of supply
Another reason I know why
Our guys are safe in far Pashtunistan
Our leaders simply would not dare
To leave our guys defenseless there
Adrift, surrounded in some foreign land
The Paki guys in ISI
Are operating on the sly
To see the Taliban and all that crew
Take Pakistan and all their nukes
They care not all for our rebukes
They’ll take the land and have Sharia too
And then they all will turn on us
Egged on by the Chinese and Russ
And then some big decisions will be made
Do we pull out and wash our hands
Or do we take out all the Stans
Whichever, there’s a price that must be paid
A price that’s paid in blood right now
Or later paid no matter how
Much spinning out the truth our leaders spin
To take Vienna we must be
Prepared to fight to victory
‘Cause once you start to fight you better win
“Can Do” doesn’t necessarily equal Should Do. There are many whose service I greatly respect and with whom I am generally sympathetic who are too emotionally involved in making sure that the buddies they lost in Afghanistan did not die in vain to objectively weigh the value of “success” against the price we will pay for it. The limits of global hegemony have been reached.
Talk is cheap, until the butcher’s bill comes due. The top of the chain of command has said things that sound good to ears desperate for reasons to be optimistic, but few of those ears are attached to heads that voted for him. A lot of us know what should be done. We also know with almost absolute certainty that what should be done is not what is actually going to get done because it is too politically incorrect, too culturally insensitive, too expensive, too bloody-mindedly Old School for the voters back home to stomach.
Who is confident that Obama will endeavor to persevere when his base turns on him?
I would be curious about how the DoD has gamed its response to a collapse of Pakistan. This is something that the U.S. and India must have thought about and have consulted anyone who could lend a hand. Has anyone, even think-tank types, gone on record to “think about the unthinkable” as Herman Kahn used to say?
If the problem remains within its present bounds it can probably be managed. It’s reasonable to conjecture that the diplomatic “engagements” the administration is embarked upon are aimed, in part, at putting firebreaks in. But I am not so sure that things can be so neatly managed simply because the enemy gets to vote in the proceedings and also because Murphy is at large. Yet in situations of this type there is always the “unknown unknown” lurking somewhere.
The danger is that because of the logistical difficulties of the theater, the fragile political support in the left for any war and the economic crisis — because of all these — the design margins in case Murphy shows up will be small. If the problem really jumps the bounds or becomes unbounded, will there be the available combat power and political will to call Murphy if he ups the ante? George Bush going into Iraq had a few things going for him: the memory of 9/11; a naturally supportive conservative base; the absence of a palpable economic crisis; the absence of nuclear weapons in the theater. Yet the events of the recent past need not be recounted: he squeaked through.
Obama may get lucky. But he can’t count on it.
In Iraq the surge arrived when the Iraq army was ready to take part. The IA had just reached the point where it could partner with GIs and acquire combat experience and military professionalism. I did not hear General Kelly (“winning in Afghanistan”) say much about the Afghan Army. After seven years of training, you’d think they’d be a little further along than the Iraqis were at the start of their surge in 2007.
If this surge can help the Afghan army significantly, it might be worth doing. But I have little enthusiasm because I am not sure about the guy at the top on our end. He is in the process of politicizing the entire US economy and may soon find he is riding a tiger. He will need to stoke “class warfare” to stay on top of the beast he is creating. If he alienates the Democrats big money men by treating them as expendable, he might end up splitting the Party. Then he will really need the left wing.
So I don’t see President Obama sticking this “surge” out — though in the end he may need a war to unite the country he is now busy dividing. Either development would not be good.
Resident obama has run up debt in his seventy days in office greater than all previous administration combined.
How are we going to pay for all this war?
The Fed releasing new currency – created out of thin air – to buy up Treasury debt. Wherever ‘monetizing debt’ has been tried before in history the outcome is the destruction of the social fabric . The result would be ruinous at every level and would lead straight to the second terrible force: social upheaval brought on by the conversion of economic problems into political turbulence.
How are we going to pay for all this war?
the process of the Fed releasing new currency – created out of thin air – to buy up Treasury debt. He comments: “It would be sententious to explain how this destroys currencies, but wherever ‘monetizing debt’ has been tried before in history, that is the outcome. The result would be ruinous at every level and would lead straight to the second terrible force: social upheaval brought on by the conversion of economic problems into political turbulence.”
The things that are going on in the U.S. economy are not sustainable.
How are we going to pay for all this war?
the Obama economic policy assumes that someone out there will still buy U.S. Treasury paper. But will that happen? The best customers for U.S. debt are distinctly unenthusiastic about adding to their holdings.
The Chinese already own a trillion dollars or so in Treasury bills that are depreciating in value. Besides, China needs a continent full of new infrastructure, plus social spending for 1.3 billion people. And don’t forget the new navy China is planning, with which to police its interests from Africa to the central Pacific Ocean and onto South America. All of this will sop up funds China once used to buy U.S. securities.
How are we going to pay for all this war?
Ignore the question but it is not going away. Fiat money will eventually defeat us. It has to every country that has attempted what we are now doing.
If we third world ourselves now, when China finishes using it’s abudant slave labor and is THE world superpower, then what? That is the regnant question.
Very OT horror story:
The federal government and the Federal Reserve have committed $12.8 trillion in spending so far to bailouts and “stimulus” packages – an amount nearly equal to the value of everything produced in the U.S. in 2008. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. And it is not over yet.
I wanna barf. This is so sick and insane that words fail me.
@ 9. Habu
I see I was not that much OT.
1:15 AM ..BEDTIME
The general tendency is that societies modernize. Literacy, information and knowledge spread. People in retarded societies learn about advanced societies.
The fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan who are burning down schools are fighting against a social tide that eventually will overwhelm them. They are resorting to terror because they cannot advance their cause with rational arguments.
Pakistan’s population is about 178 million. This enormous population will not be dominated by a bunch of hillbilly drug smugglers who are able to manipulate some religious adolescents into blowing themselves up in crowded places in order to terrorize people.
Step back and look at the big picture. Practically all the terrorism is happening in a remote, rural, lightly populated corner of Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of the population is not involved.
The terrorists can kill and massacre citizens anywhere in Pakistan at any time. They have religious zombies who will go anywhere and murder innocent people.
But the terrorists cannot seize control over Pakistan’s population, society and government. They can terrorize, but they cannot rule.
Eh, why not, everyone is getting on the bandwagon, right?
Microsoft requested on Tuesday some $20 billion in bailout funds from the federal government, claiming that as the company controlling an overwhelming share of the OS market, it is too big to fail. The company said low adoption rates for Windows Vista, the ensuing ad campaign trying to convince people that they really do like Vista, and the increased need for development resources to rush Windows 7 to market to make people forget about Vista have necessitated the bailout.
“We control an overwhelming share of the vertical and the horizontal, don’tya dare someone else come up with something better than winblows!”
Sheesh. This is getting rather lame.
@ 13. Mike Sylwester
Mike, I wish I had your certainities. But it wouldn’t be the first time a bunch of lunatics took over and created an asylum according to their image.
* attribution for the paragragph where “He” is mentioned goes to James Kunstler, a longtime Democrat. Apologies for the oversight and lack of decorum.
The question is one I am sure many citizens are asking.
13. Mike Sylwester
“This enormous population will not be dominated by a bunch of hillbilly drug smugglers who are able to manipulate…..”
Mike, the Romans felt the same way until the
Visigothic army under Alaric the 1st moved into Italy and sacked Rome in 410.
Two Radical Arab Terrorists boarded a flight out of London. One took a window seat and the other sat next to him in the middle seat…
Just before takeoff, a U.S. Marine sat down in the aisle
seat. After takeoff, the Marine kicked his shoes off, wiggled
his toes and was settling in when the Arab in the window
seat said, “I need to get up and get a coke. Don’t
get up,” said the Marine, “I’m in the aisle seat, I’ll get it
for you.”
As soon as he left, one of the Arabs picked up the Marines shoe and spat in it.
When the Marine returned with the coke, the other Arab said, “That
looks good, I’d really like one too.”
Again, the Marine obligingly went to fetch it.
While he was gone the other Arab picked up the Marines other
shoe and spat in it.
When the Marine returned, they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.
As the plane was landing, the Marine slipped his feet into his shoes
and knew immediately what had happened.
He leaned over and asked his Arab neighbors, “Why does it have to be this way? How long must this go on, this fighting between our nations?
This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and pissing in
cokes?”
The Few. The Proud. The Marines.
Semper Fi
MS(#13), Wishful thinking “The general tendency is that societies modernize. Literacy, information and knowledge spread. People in retarded societies learn about advanced societies.” that only applies when there is a controlling super power to lead (enable) and expect (spread) the modernization, otherwise the general tendency is for societies to fall backward not move forward or at best stagnate.
14. twobyfour: Did you check to see if that was an April First Funny?
…what was the source?
—
Washington Polling Games
It has become almost amusing, watching how the so-called “news” media are manipulating their own polls to keep the political weather sunny for their hero.
The Washington Post kicked off President Barack Obama’s European trip with the headline
“Blame For Downturn Not Fixed on Obama.”
Of course,
what was “fixed” was the poll itself.
They did the usual tricks for a more liberal sample of “public opinion”
– they polled on the weekend and oversampled Democrats
(36 percent Democrat, 25 percent Republican).
By themselves, these things are shameless – but expected.
And still that wasn’t enough of a slant.
Check out the way this question was asked by the Post pollsters…
“….more effective it will be on the Afghan side of Pashtunistan but the more logistically vulnerable it will be to setbacks on the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan…”
Yes, but even more importantly, downtown, outside of the bloomin’ outback regions, the presence of our troops will be viewed in opposite terms. In Kabul they likely will be glad we are there – and especially out there in the badlands. In Pershawa and Islamabad they will not be happy we are even only out there in the badlands.
Such a presence puts both internal and external pressure on the nominally friendly govt of Pakistan. It makes it harder for them to be our friends.
I think it far more likely that the Pakistani govt being too accommodating to us will result in the country falling into chaos than the chance that their version of the Beverly Hillbillies will take over the place. Pakistan has an educated and potentially useful middle class – we should not risk driving them into the arms of the Islamic radicals – or into their graves – just to kill some nuts in the hills.
“If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna.”
It sounds clever and I do not dispute that once you have committed to your fixed costs it is foolish to refocus on secondary objectives. Napoleon however did not always calculate his objectives reasonably. So try this on, “If you are going to take Moscow, think again and then take Kiev and hold it, the next campaign season take Smolensk and hold it, the next campaign season take St. Petersburg and hold it, the next campaign season take Moscow and then hold all of them.” A more pithy formulation would be “Focus up front but watch your six.” Mother said, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew.”
So if we want to hold Pashtunistan we need to first hold Baluchistan and them hold the Punjab and then hold the Hazara regions and then hold the Tadzhik regions and then hold the Pashtuns. It makes sense to me that we at least consider redrawing boundaries to reward our allies. Why not unite the Tadzhik regions with Tadzhikistan? Why not unite the Uzbek regions with Uzbekistan? Why not unite the Punjab under Indian control? Why not create an independent Baluchistan? The Pashtuns have gambled big and should be convinced that they have lost, as the Brigadier from Oz indicated on yesterdays thread. A rump Pushtunistan centered on Quetta, or what might be left of it, could be viable between there and Kandahar.
To achieve this requires five things.
1. Eliminating the threat of Pakistan’s nukes.
2. Forestalling intervention by China and Russia.
3. Determining if Iran might need to be dealt with first on the road to Moscow or might come later.
4. Sufficient forces, probably 300,000 to start, and a sustained commitment.
5. Leadership.
Now that we can see what the problem is and where the plan is most likely to fail we have to fall back to sustained air interdiction, chasing 2 AM “wedding parties” with million dollar weapons until NYC and DC go boom.
“a key point of defining success is when both the Afghans and the Pakistanis have both the capability and the will to deal with the remaining threat themselves.”
Desire has to precede will
LOM @ 23. As I opined in the old BC over two years ago…to restate your premise, what is so sacred about the existing borders, especially since they were created by the British Raj in order to manage their empire.
The only fault I can find is our constant avoidance of the first step. Take on Islam now, up front, with all the media savvy we can deploy. Heck, drop battery radios and TV’s all over the place and restock the batteries. It is relitively inexpensive. Further, leadership amoungest our foes is thin and comingled with the clergy. The clergy portion will then have to spend time responding. Sometimes publically (and targetably)
The ultimate issue is the will to fight.
Tora, Tora, Tora.
spelling issues exist (bad fingers!)
Annoy Mouse:
I hope you don’t mind if I reply here to your comment from the last thread.
Alexis, you have help to answer the question that I have been asking myself lately… exactly why do we give a damn about Afghanistan again?
Afghanistan is part of a larger theater; if we limit our selves to “running the Taliban out of Afghanistan”, we set our selves up for a perpetual stalemate. The idea behind industrializing the central highlands of Afghanistan was to ensure a locally based supply line for troops fighting the Taliban. Without local supplies, the United States would be forced to rely upon expensive airborne (or Pakistani or Russian) logistics.
Recent developments make economic development of central Afghanistan unlikely. With the latest family law passed for the Hazara, the window for the plans I have outlined is closing. The latest Shi’ite family law signed by Hamid Karzai effectively legalizes marital rape and has outraged westerners in the last few days. Apparently, the main Hazara political party desires to make it manifestly obvious that central Afghanistan has become an Iranian satrapy. Worse, this law vastly undermines Karzai’s credibility in the West to such an extent that most European military forces will probably leave simply in reaction to this law.
In my estimation, if the United States cannot secure the Hazara highlands as a base of operation, we cannot regard the Afghan theater as winnable. We need shorter supply lines. We desperately need shorter supply lines. If we let the central highlands fall into the hands of our worst enemies (and it seems that we may very well have), we have lost the high ground of the entire region and the most feasible location from which to project power throughout Afghanistan, and even into Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province.
Alexis at 27. (and Annoy Mouse by extension) To amplify. China, having no compunctions, could be very tempted to push west in Afg. What a coup. One step closer to Mid East oil, within reach of tactical weaponry. under the Russian belly and further limiting Indian access to the Eurasian continent. Neat. Tidy.
Alexis is very correct to think Globally.
@ 13:
“The fanatics in Pakistan and Afghanistan who are burning down schools are fighting against a social tide that eventually will overwhelm them. They are resorting to terror because they cannot advance their cause with rational arguments.”
Over what time scale will the “social tide” you speak of do its overwhelming? Similarly, would you care to describe the “delta” (delta < 0?) in Pakistan/Afghanistan barbarism due to interactions with “advanced societies” to date? That is, just how much more work does the aforementioned social tide need to do?
And are you really so sure that some folks “resort” to terror after failing to make their case via rational arguments? Maybe, just maybe, some folks feel that terror is the best argument. Maybe what you meant to say is that, at present and for whatever reason (tribal culture, Islam, etc.), the fanatics are only able to employ violence to achieve their goals, but it sure looks you’re describing the following:
Mullah Omar: Damn, we’ve talked until we’re blue in the face trying to
convince our brethren that Sharia law is the way to go,
but not so many takers so far – what to do?
Some other fanatic: How about we burn down some schools?!?
Mullah Omar: Why not?!!? Can’t be any less effective than rational
arguments!!!
Yeah, I’m being a little bit facetious, but still …
Concerning the Hazara highlands, we should consider that our foray into Iraq may pay dividends. For one thing, with the renaissance of Najaf as the international city of Shi’ism, the Iranian state’s power within Shi’ism has become greatly diminished. In many respects, the liberation of Najaf could be considered to be a greater strategic victory than the liberation of Baghdad. Progressive Shi’ite clerics could conceivably move to Afghanistan. For that matter, various Iranian resistance forces could congregate in Afghanistan. For the time being at least, what I am effectively proposing is a proxy war against Iran in Afghanistan to chip away at Iran’s de facto eastern frontier (which is well inside the formal frontiers of Afghanistan).
If Iran is supporting monsters such as Hekmatyar against us, we should be willing to use Afghanistan as a theater of operations to undermine Iran. I am sure that Hamid Karzai would not approve of undermining Iran’s influence in Afghanistan; he has called for better relations between Iran and the United States, after all. Still, it would not be wise to rely upon the sufferance of Iran to fight the Taliban.
The United States should explore means to secure the Hazara highlands so they can become a solid fortress and supply center for our war effort against the Taliban.
wretchard writes: “George Bush going into Iraq had a few things going for him . . . .”
Indeed GWB could rely on a base of support that supported him, not least because GWB believed in what he was saying and doing. Eventually victories in Iraq vindicated him (at least in the short run we’re in now), and nothing generates support, especially in the military, like success.
I sense the air going out of the tires in regard of public support for Afghanistan. I have little enthusiasm for following Obama in any regard, even if he is trying to do the right thing in Afghanistan. I don’t trust him.
GWB ran deficits to finance a war. To get his financing, he had to let Congress have its way in other kinds of spending and programs. That was the choice that GWB had to make.
Obama has no intention of making hard choices regarding financing a GWOT. He’s too busy spending, as Habu notes above, in areas that are more important to him, and these spendings weaken the overall US economic, and therefore strategic, position.
As for the overall results of Obama’s spending, I agree with twobyfour, above: “I wanna barf.”
Alexis,
That is a well thought out argument you have there. If we had secured Damascus and the Levant in 2002 and seriously confronted Iran in 2004, when we could have much easier than it would be now, this war would be effectively over with a US strategic victory. Bush should have called for doubling the armed forces in his address to Congress immediately after 9-11. Instead he told everyone to go shopping and promised that we could fight a war on the cheap.
And I wonder how the Pakistani interest in joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which it is currently an Observer, fits into this picture?
I wonder if anything can be learned from the experience of East Pakistan -> Bangladesh, if the “rogue ISI” has anything to do with cooperation with China and/or Russia?
Presuming the ISI, or a wing of the ISI, is indeed fundamentalist or rogue, and that it wants to topple the Pakistani state, what then? Are we to presume the Taliban-ISI rogue connection is so mature that this alliance believes it can then co-opt the state, perhaps with Sharif as its figurehead? (Sharif recently said his resistance of house arrest was a “prelude to a revolution.”) And what is former ISI chief Gul doing these days?
I think the description of the actors in this crisis is entirely too vague. We need much more information. It’s not as though there’s this vaporous cloud of calamity simply drifting over the Kush.
And one question I’d like a real answer to is this: who, exactly, is mullah Omar? Is he really just some madrassah graduate? How do we know he’s even Afghan? Or, if he is Afghan, how do we know he is who is presented to be in the media, with only one foggy black and white picture to corroborate the image?
And so on.
My expectation is that in 4 years we will be down to 7 carriers, meaning one deployed in the Pacific and One in the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf not covered by sea power. Our nuclear arsenal will be unilaterally reduced, with all tactical special weapons eliminated, to the point that it will not be a a credible war fighting component but at best a retaliatory response to an enemy counter value first strike. We will in other words become another France. The problem is that such forces are vulnerable to a decapitating first strike and actually destabilize the situation in a crisis. Our SSBN fleet will however provide sufficient survivability that we can hope to get past this period if China and Russia do not read the US as so weak that they simply ignore the prospect of our response and press forward violating our vital interests without initiating a strategic exchange. By 2016 our airlift and refueling capabilities will have degraded to the point where we will no longer be able to project power as we have done and our tactical airpower will have been reduced in numbers and will lack the technical advantage that we now possess.
“how do we know he is who is presented to be in the media”
—
How could it be otherwise?
Cynicism is a corrosive, negative, thought process.
Freedom is Slavery.
Lifeof:
Gerst is reporting on a Chi-com weapon designed to take out our carriers:
A ballistic missile with a super-accurate, guided payload.
dan,
The Shanghai Cooperation Council could add Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia and rename itself.
All Hail The Greater East, South and Central Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Obama will stop short of decimating our SSBN fleet?
Doug,
I know, we aired that bad news on the Afpak thread. I went on about Counter Force and Counter Value targeting theory.
We need 15 big deck carriers so that we can always have 5 deployed and surge another 3. We need far more naval ABM development and we need space based interceptors. We need to triple the armed forces. We need to have started on all this 8 years ago.
imho they ought to get some bug to kill the afghan poppies. then offer a wheat growing program. and buy the wheat. Algae oil will scale from 1 million gallons@year to 1million gallons a day very very quickly–12-18 months imho. they can grow the algae in afghanistan. Here’s a big break through in production costs Tests have already shown that algae oil works as jet fuel. There’ll be a congressional hearing in the next month that will likely shift coal plant carbon absorbtion practices from underground injection to algae. Every coal plant will be surrounded by 400 acres of algae greenhouses. Along the coasts coal plants will have desalination plants that can produce desalinized water for 450-550@acre foot. That’s half current costs. But with permitting problems and red tape it wll be years before these types of desalination plants get into operation.
LOM at 39. Not to mention sealift and amphibs.
Note to all. It takes 7 pounds of fuel to move one pound of payload (logistic or weapon) to the mideast from conus by airlift. It takes fractions of an ounce of fuel to sealift.
Airlift is meant to buy the 40 to 45 days for the first ship to arrive.
More logisitic data…a US Armoured Division consumes something on the order of a million gallons per combat day, not including fuel for thin skinned transport. There ain’t that much airlift in the inventory.
A single medium sized tanker (30 million gallons or more) is good for a month (plus tranker truck fuel)
National policy has been and under Obama will remain, to fight “over there”. That means expeditionary forces and ships at sea.
Military Sealift Command needs USNS transports because our civilian merchant fleet has been unioned out of business.
Afghanistan is a “Tar Baby” into which we can become endlessly mired, as long as bad guys have sanctuaries in Iran and Pakistan into which they can retreat to rest, recruit, and resupply.
The real next targets should be to:
(1) Eliminate Iran as a source of money and manpower for terrorism, and
(2) Eliminate Islamic terrorism’s funding sources within Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and elsewhere.
Saudi is the biggest source of terrorism, through wealthy individual (but highly prominent and untouchable) Saudis funding radical madrassahs, radical clerics, and actual terrorist groups (wiki “Golden Chain” organization for details).
Charles,
With luck in 20 years the residual oil possessed by the islamist arabs and persians (as well as by the russians) will be a useful but non-critical industrial resource. Their money and influence will be gone and we will have the dirty work of cleaning out the cancers that their episodic moment left behind.
michael hoskins,
Very well put. Have you seen the work being done on small sealed nuclear power plants?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
http://criepi.denken.or.jp/en/e_publication/a2004/04kiban18.pdf
I can envisage a new generation of nuclear powered merchant ships. If properly designed these should be both safe to operate and pose no risk of seizure and diversion of the fuel by terrorists. It would however make sense for us to revive the concept of the “Armed Merchant” that current international maritime law discourages. The Q-ships worked in WW-II. It would make sense to mount 20 mm guns on merchants, and station occasional small detachments of five or six Gunners Mates under a Chief or Chief Warrant Officer or Lt (jg) for piracy suppression.
yes part of the real work is defunding the bad guys. just as the bad guys are working hard to defund us.
Lets just send them more money…How is that investigation regarding the murder of Benazir Bhutto (Shaheed) going anyway?
Papabear:
Okay. Exactly how do you propose to counteract the power of the pro-Iranian and pro-Saudi lobbies in Washington? They are powerful and have the ability to steer media coverage and distract policy makers from overthrowing their sponsors. Remember what happened to Laurent Murawiec at the RAND Corporation?
Now that the Obama administration seems to have made a strategic decision to abandon Iraq, Afghanistan is one of the few points of friction we have against our enemies. While our enemies seek to wear us down, we must find ways to wear them down even faster. More fronts would be better if America’s material resources and political will permit us. If.
Let us see if I can sneak this past the WordPress moderation hell, since it is 2:30 AM in Oz and wretchard is unlikely to release the first try for hours. I lopped the hypertext code off the urls.
michael hoskins,
Very well put. Have you seen the work being done on small sealed nuclear power plants?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
criepi.denken.or.jp/en/e_publication/a2004/04kiban18.pdf
I can envisage a new generation of nuclear powered merchant ships. If properly designed these should be both safe to operate and pose no risk of seizure and diversion of the fuel by terrorists. It would however make sense for us to revive the concept of the “Armed Merchant” that current international maritime law discourages. The Q-ships worked in WW-II. It would make sense to mount 20 mm guns on merchants, and station occasional small detachments of five or six Gunners Mates under a Chief or Chief Warrant Officer or Lt (jg) for piracy suppression.
OK the 2nd attempt did not work either.
et us see if I can sneak this past the WordPress moderation hell, since it is 2:30 AM in Oz and wretchard is unlikely to release the first try for hours. I lopped the hypertext code off the urls and made dot into dots.
michael hoskins,
Very well put. Have you seen the work being done on small sealed nuclear power plants?
www dot world-nuclear dot org/info/inf33 dot html
criepi dot denken dot or dot jp/en/e_publication/a2004/04kiban18 dot pdf
I can envisage a new generation of nuclear powered merchant ships. If properly designed these should be both safe to operate and pose no risk of seizure and diversion of the fuel by terrorists. It would however make sense for us to revive the concept of the “Armed Merchant” that current international maritime law discourages. The Q-ships worked in WW-II. It would make sense to mount 20 mm guns on merchants, and station occasional small detachments of five or six Gunners Mates under a Chief or Chief Warrant Officer or Lt (jg) for piracy suppression.
My apologies but I wanted to test the WordPress moderation demon. Hope that Wretchard can delete my two first attempts from the list.
Alexis,
In the short run your If is a hill to high for us to climb. In the long run we are all dead.
But be of good cheer; as I pointed out up at #43, in the medium term time is on our side.
In the near-near, the middle-near, and the far-near THE US no longer has the resources to carry forward any of the proposed tasks discussed in this and the last thread.
What is happening with obamas consent to more troops is that he knows he must at this moment or become so vulnerable in the mid terms that a catastrophy would make him impotent to engage in his aggressive drive to big nanny state.
His natural Zeitgeist is antimilitary while our MAJOR enemies, the Soviets,Islam, and China are not so disposed. Technically the Chinese are committing an act of war by assaulting on a daily basis our communications. Likewise the Soviets have shown they can blow up our satellites at will.
Folks, we’re financially bankrupt and for as long as anyone can see that is the plan … print money,spend,tax..well, that works for a very short time.
Doing all the grand planning to save Afghan and Paki should be done in New Delhi or some other place.
So far NO ONE has outlined how we are going to PAY for all this or for that matter get ourselves out from under the mountain of debt and deficits that are increasing minute by minute. Until someone can outline a funding source for all this it seems this is simply mental master——.
PapaBear at least identifies the nexus of the problem but we don’t even have the will to back up an Isreali strike on Iran.
While we still are widely respected, or at a minimum tolerated, the Taliban is widely hated, but make no mistake – year by year, they grow stronger. We can kill thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters per year while alienating more Afghans with increased kinetic operations. Time is a critical factor in this war: The longer we spend dragging this out, the more unwelcome we will become. Time and terrain are among the two biggest advantages belonging mostly to the enemy. — Michael Yon
Oh yeah. obama is downsizing the military, cutting funding for DARPA and in every possible way making us militarily weaker. It’s not going unnoticed by our enemies. It also makes doing the tasks impossible unless we’re setting up for our own Gallipoli.
Anodyne (@29)
Over what time scale will the “social tide” you speak of do its overwhelming? Similarly, would you care to describe the “delta” (delta < 0?) in Pakistan/Afghanistan barbarism due to interactions with “advanced societies” to date? That is, just how much more work does the aforementioned social tide need to do?
I don’t know the time scale. Gradually, though, the tide of modernization will overwhelm the primitive religious fanatics, whose only economic activity is smuggling opium.
The religious fanatics are similar to the Mafia, which in the USA at the beginning of the 1900s was a terrorist organization, assassinating politicians and exploding bombs. Of course, the problem is larger in Pakistan now than it was in the USA then, but the essential similarity is that the organizational is criminal, terroristic, parasitical and incapable of governing the larger society.
There is no way that these hillbillies will take over Pakistan’s society or will tear Pakistan apart. All these hillbillies can do is assassinate and murder. Their religious and ideological pretensions are ludicrous.
Habu said:
“So far NO ONE has outlined how we are going to PAY for all this or for that matter get ourselves out from under the mountain of debt and deficits that are increasing minute by minute.”
That’s the bad news. The good/bad news is the economies of Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia are dependent upon expensive petroleum and they’re dying. Unfortunately, the “goodness” of this news is ambiguous because the Iranians are essentially cornered rats and will feel compelled to do “something” to save themselves.
India’s economy is relatively intact. The Indians will deal with Pakistan/Afghanistan after it becomes a sufficient threat to their national security (almost there now). To some extent our actions in Afghanistan are almost irrelevant because India will eventually dominate that theater. Again, our big worries are Iran/Israel and black swans, e.g. surprises from the Norks and al Qaeda.
O/T, Denninger seems to think that a failure in the bond market is almost a sure thing. He’s predicting that the Fed will be forced to dramatically raise the offered T-bill coupon rates and this will implode what’s left of our economy.
Mike Sylwester,
Yes they are ludicrous but that does not make them less dangerous. Remember the thread from two days ago about Brazil? It is possible to be destroyed by an Unthinking Horror. We should estimate them highly enough not to ignore them. We should consider them dangerous enough that we make the effort to destroy them. Our greatest strength should be our flexibility and adaptability. Obama weakens us not only in the obvious sense by reducing our financial and physical resources, by cutting our forces and wasting our money, but he weakens us by centralizing and controlling and bureaucratizing and regulating all of our endeavors. The Indians failed to respond to Mumbai in time because the government rapid reaction force proved to be anything but rapid. India has become a dynamic capitalist society over the last two decades. They can fix that problem. The United States is going in the other direction. We do need to be modern and spread the virus of modernity among the backwards heathens. What we must fight against, as individuals and as communities, are the forces of retrograde collectivism like Obama that sap our capacity to innovate and our will to respond to a ludicrous threat.
Pardon me, in the previous post I should have said “T-note” rather than “T-bill”.
53. Eggplant
“Denninger seems to think that a failure in the bond market is almost a sure thing. He’s predicting that the Fed will be forced to dramatically raise the offered T-bill coupon rates and this will implode what’s left of our economy.”
Thank you. A thirty year bond yield won’t beat inlation right now. Just wait til inflation really hits. Can we all say Zimbabwe? One of the several financial avenues with blinking red light that say “under repair”. Lately the unfunded benefits guaranteed by the US are gaining some traction as another mess. Many Americans will be asked by obama to “sacrifice” 25% of their retirement to help us all.
First tell me where the TARP money went …some foreign nations I understand greatly benefitted.
And your points on the Soviet and Chinese economies are well taken. In the past they have addressed these problems by warring or killing large segments of their own population. We don’t do that, we send in emergency supplies of plasma TV’s, beer and pizza.
Habu,
How to raise the money?
Here’s one idea. March an army into Riyadh and round up the entire House of Saud. Weigh them and extract $1,000,000 for every pound that the King and his thousand senior Princes weigh over the average weight of the imported slave labor in their medieval fantasy kingdom. Then, after extracting an indemnity of one trillion dollars for past wrongs they have perpetrated, let them live provided they pump the current volume of oil at the price of $15/barrel and ten thousand foreign missionaries a year are admitted in perfect safety with permission to travelanywhere. Of course all foreign missionary activity on their part will have to stop and all foreign exchange transfers by them will have to be approved by the US government. That should do it.
Here is the US answer imho to providing the ways and means and vision for the 21st century. You need water to make power. You need energy to make clean water.
We have Obama’s answer to my suggestion. Here is the photo of him bowing to the Saudi King.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_L6pDyjqqsvY/SdTLBNX2-DI/AAAAAAAAa5Y/in3YhB50RTA/s1600-h/saudi+king.JPG
LOM>
You warm my heart. Nuke merchants are for practical purposes, impossible. No way to control the material when Out Conus. However, nuke USNS ships work. Note also the submarine plants are already pretty small. (Neat technical trick here…the horsepower required to move a ship is, largely, a function of the length of the water line. A submerged submarine does not have a water line. Ton for ton, horsepower for a sub is less than a surface ship.)
More to the point of this thread. As mentioned in previous threads, what use power not used? If we are always accused of being big bully, go for it. Create a land bridge, about 100 miles wide, to Afg. Attack Islam.
The idea is to create turmoil in their back yard, then let them deal with it. We cover our own interests and watch what happens.
I guess it is a variation on Chaos Theory. Create the chaos. Look for the nice to have in the pieces and let the rest go. Heck, even if Pak goes nuke, it will be local. We would could morph “don’t waste a good crisis.” to “Create a good crisis (for someone else) and then don’t waste it.”
anyhow .58 is my post for the month.
Obama’s deepest dream, his greatest fantasy, is for the US forces in Afghanistan to get mostly wiped out after PakEEE-stan (as he calls it) falls to the Taliban, with the rest of the forces getting a Bataan Death March.
Then he can “negotiate” by releasing all the Guantanamo Prisoners, the sooner the better, and pledging various submission to Sharia, and the rest.
This would be his dream, his wildest fantasy come true. I mean, the man HATES HATES HATES Whites, America, and all the rest. He went out of his way to praise “Lula” (who proudly says he never read a book) after Lula blamed “blue eyed White Devils” for the global economic crisis, and claimed “black and brown” people were morally superior since they had no involvement in banking and finance.
Indeed Obama singled Lula out for praise at the G20. This was just a casual, non-thought out action. That shows the man and his views.
Yes, Obama is this stupid. And driven by racial hatred. It’s really his whole persona, his inner being.
Oh lord, now it’s algae in the Hind Kush.
I love reading about alternative energy futures and I am all for supporting research. In fact I think this stuff is so wonderful it could withstand a lot of skepticism. So allow me to provide some.
I can’t help but notice that the Feds are far better at spending billions on research than they are at producing useful products. In fact much of Global Warming and our alternative energy future fits the useful definition of a scam. You take something that is close to the truth, add distortion and deception, then collect money at the other end. So often “success” in alternative energy is viewed at getting additional funding for another decade of research.
Last week I watched Nova about melting glaciers. They often used the phrase “the last thirty years” when discussing the time frame of the “runaway melting.” This period corresponds roughly with the end of the last “solar minimum,” when the sun produces less warming rays, and the run up to the latest “solar maximum” — when the sun produces relatively more. From about 60 to 80 percent of the increased warming during that period was likely caused by the activity of the sun, not the activity of man. And yet this was never mentioned on the program. In other words, they — the producers at Nova — are working a Scam.
As far as alternatives go, it all requires $5 a gallon gasoline under the optimistic scenarios. It will require a huge boost in the cost of conventional energy, so the “new improved electricity” will become competitive. It will add thousands of dollars to the costs of necessities of life for the average American. And it will all have to be disguised. The media and our intellectual betters will be spreading misery throughout the land and they will be blaming who? For they are much better at fixing blame than fixing problems.
If this new stuff is cost effective in few years, then why not produce our own oil now? Why regulate coal plants out of existence?
Frankly, their dreams all start by putting their competitors out of business. To me that means their product sucks.
62. hdgreene
“the producers at Nova — are working a Scam.”
Agree 100%, but then when haven’t they? They have distorted more than one program I’ve watched. Disinformation, Inc.
hdgreene,
Didn’t Al G in the Hindu Kush chart on Billboard?
If the technology works costs will go down, if we have it coming we should import every drop we can and leave the current suppliers dry. McCain’s best moment was “Drill Here Drill Now Drill Everywhere We can do it al” When he took his eye off that ball and chased the squeeky toy of the economic crisis summit his campaign folded.
My post linking the photo of Obama bowing to the Saudi King went into moderation.
Returning momentarily to PapaBears righteous identification of Iran as the immediate problem, if they are allowed the bomb the entire world paradigm changes overnight. Every ME country will be building or buying nukes.
Once Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall, all the kings men …
So we can expect, if we take no action, that not only the ME will change but Germany,England,Holland,Belgium and others will demographically be Islam in 15 years.
This is not speculation. The City Council of Brussels is already a majority Islam.
We need another Charles Martel quickly.
“My post linking the photo of Obama bowing to the Saudi King went into moderation.”
—
Worse than anything that ever happened @Gitmo or abu, yet both the MSM and alt Media remain silent!
Is Soros secretly funding WordPress?
Doug,
Is Soros secretly funding WordPress?
Did not find a Soros connection in 5 minutes but the founder of WordPress is Matt Mullenweg. He is connected to various venture capital outfits and worked for CNET which is now part of Viacom. No reason to get excited, that end of technology is always tied into money and media with slippery political interests.
o/t, sorry –habu, your neighbor’s gone bird huntin’.
Seboriasis Makes Seven
Just Another Day of Unintentional Errrors in Paradise
Tax issues
During the vetting process for this position, in March 2009 she admitted to “unintentional errors” in tax returns and paid nearly $8,000 in back taxes[48][49].
She took too large of deductions in areas that included: charitable contributions, the sale of a home, and business expenses.
Sebelius is the the sixth senior Obama nominee to reveal tax problems.[50][51][52][53]
Says 6 there, my bad maybe, cause I heard seven.
Just to cover my bets:
“Seboriasis Makes Six”
56. Habu
We’ve been stuffing T-bills into the Social Security Trust fund for twenty-five years. As we repudiate the debt via inflation, I think we will have to take care of the sovereign wealth funds and the International banks or they might take care of US (and not in a good way). So perhaps we are not repudiating the debt, just the Social Security Trust fund. Of course the cost of living excalators, if allowed to function properly, will bankrupt it even sooner. Add to this slow economic growth that will lower future “contributions” to the system and we could be hitting the wall quite soon.
It was always going to require an increase in the national debt of ten to twenty trillion to get Social Security and Medicare over the baby bummer, I mean boomer, hump. Well, they should have got older quicker because we are spending the money now. But let’s not tell anyone.
I am as much in favor of pre-emptive action as any man here, but it ain’t gonna happen. I was in 7th grade on Dec 8, 1941, looking at the pictures of Pearl Harbor in the morning paper, and pictures of guys lined up outside the recruiting stations, but what kind of country was it on Dec 6? We were not at war, had no intention, as a people, of going to war, though we played at war in the Atlantic against the U-boats. It took Pearl Harbor to get us into that war, and if Pearl Harbor or its equivalent hadn’t happend we never would have entered the war. Experience since then has only confirmed my view that the country will countenance small wars, but not a big, all out WWII type war without something very serious happening to us first. I don’t know what that something serious will be, but it might take something as serious as losing a city.
more likely, afghanistan will give obama the cover for re-instating the draft. that will keep the little shits on campus from making too much noise about anything else he does (lest they be shipped over).
as for all the other fantasies about the u.s. actually acting decisively — what color is the sky, on your planet?
Jeez, Walt, I was just a pup on the 7th, and I can’t remember my kids’ name.
And there you are pouring out that poetry.
How about another Shameless Plug to that writing prizefight for those who missed it, or like me, procrastinated, then forgot?
Lifeofthe mind #57 – Not bad. However, I have a better plan, that should have been implemented immediately after 9/11. Round up all the members of the House of Saud resident in the USA and shoot them, afterwards disposing of the bodies on the nearest convenient landfill site. Freeze and confiscate all Saudi assets held in US institutions or existing on US soil. Invade Saudi and permanently annex the oil-producing regions, arrest the royal family and shoot them too, treating the carcasses similarly. And turn the Grand Mosque in Mecca into a pig farm, having demolished the Kaaba.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, deport all persons resident in the USA and describing themselves as Moslem, and also ban halal slaughter and the publishing and sale of the Koran; both of which are easily justifiable under existing animal welfare and “hate crime” legislation. The Koran is hate speech from one cover to the other.
It didn’t happen. Why? Because the Bush family and others in the USA were and are in bed with said House. There was and is money to be made, and because of that somewhere between a few million and a billion people are going to die. But who cares? It won’t be reflected in the Bush family’s bank balance. Or in Exxon’s share price.
It’s even less likely to happen now, with a crypto-Moslem in the White House.
Said crypto-Moslem is not about to put up any roadblocks to Hez and MI-13 on the Suothern Flank, either.
Doug @74
I remember my kids’ names, but only because my wife pins notes to my shirt. As for the writing contest, the more I look into it the more it looks like outside (read Amazon customer) reviews are going to have much if any impact on the final result. The next stage, the semifinal 100, will be selected by Publisher’s Weekly. I think asking for customer reviews is Amazon’s way of getting people into Kindle, so I will forgo a plug. If I make it to the semis, I will be astonished, though pleased.
I’m looking forward to open source Kindles.
I’d rather have Whireled Peas, but that seems like a receding mirage.
I don’t think the commitment to not getting on the ground in Pak is meant to cover the possibility that the Taliban takes over the state.
Can you imagine the US allowing the TALIBAN to get a nuclear weapon? That would be the same as letting al=Qaeda get one.
Even the clueless Obama administration would have to do whatever it took…even raise a draft and invade with hundreds of thousands of soldiers…to stop that eventuality.
Fletcher Christian A 75.
Can you cite even one piece of solid evidence that what you say about the Bush family and the House of Saud is true? With all the times this charge has been made, I have yet to see even one. Do you have one?
GerryP –it’s a false meme, with the element of truth that relations have always been cordial between the Bush & Saud families. Why there’s such a widespread conspiracy theory about Bush/Saud conspiracy is perhaps that it plays to KGB agenda, and those guys place memes at will with plenty of ink and persererance behind them. There’s witness evidence that AQ’s #2 Zawahiri is KGB-trained (several articles at this site). That the 9/11 hijackers were all Saudis was supposed to make Americans turn on KSA. KSA is the target. Being the swing producer in OPEC makes it a bulwark against the Caspian Axis coming into control of OPEC pricing –and even soon enough, OPEC allocations, and then, with that, Russia the new and final hyperpower. Russia must control and defend the mideast soon or it will be too late. 130 mm Russians share borders with 1.3 bb Chinese.
and a generation of useful idiots sinking into geronition.
Afghanistan will be turned into another Vietnam quagmire by Obama and the dems because they want us to be losers. They want another generation of anti-war college students to carry the torch of surrender…Bush and OIF seemly ended the Vietnam syndrome. Now the dems and Obama will make a defeat in Afghanistan memorable. We have no money to fight wars, we have no money to fund social programs and we have no money to run the government…what we have is mountains of debt, an inflated fiat currency that will become worthless as soon as China pulls the pin. Get ready for major social upheaval and if the Jihadis sneak a nuke into NYC or DC it will be worse than the “night of the long knives”. We need our military back home to try to protect us from our own government.
65. Habu:
We need another Charles Martel quickly.
Agreed. But the civilization will have to return to christianity first. The nations of Europe are full of Jungle bunnies. Jungle bunnies have always been favored snacks for the moslems.
62. hdgreene:
Oh lord, now it’s algae in the Hind Kush.
…
Hey I don’t make this stuff up.
DARPA is one of the biggest investors in algae fuel. Tests have already been run to show that it can grow without sunlight and in cold weather. Recently tests showed that jets successfully ran on it.
Defense Department Program Aims to Create New Biodiesel Fuel
Airlines May Use Biofuels on Commercial Flights Within 5 Years
sigintel/43; We need our military back home to try to protect us from our own government
i have a feeling that the admin has its deep thinkers staying up late working on that problem.
Texas raised a good deal of its army to fight Santa Anna by promising 160 acres out of the Spanish Land Grants around the Nueces River. Sam Houston had to take it away from the then current Spanish/Mexican owners to make good. Winning the fight for independence was the only way to finally get that farm, for i’d guess two-thirds of the Texian soldiery. Some, like the New Orleans Grays, were in it for idealism & adventure, others for a foothold to raise a family on.
should’ve added, the Texians had far more legal cover than what i mentioned –Santa Anna had badly broken the Mexican Constitution of 1824, that had guaranteed civil rights the breach of which is what made Santa Anna a dictator and gave the Texians cause for revolt.
For decades we fought the Apache in the southwest from Texas through the New Mexico Territory [today Arizona and New Mexico]. The Apache would raid from Mexico and return. Decades of ‘diplomatic’ engagement did nothing to alter the situation. For Mexico City, it wasn’t their problem. The Army finally got enough resources to apply to the area [even post-Civil War Texas Democrats understood that all politics is local] and pressed the Apache hard with every new incursion [to include co-opting other Apaches into service, ie Apache Scouts]. Enough pressure as applied that the Apaches from Mexico found that it was easier to raid locally rather than cross north over the Rio Grande. That is when Mexico City finally paid attention to the problem. It then and only then that the depredations of the Apaches was finally addressed.
The Scalping of Josiah Wilbarger