The devil you know
The UK Times says a top French counterterrorism judge has concluded from his investigations that the Pakistani intelligence had until at least until recently close relationships with the Lashkar-e-Taiba with the knowledge of the CIA. However, his sources implied that the Pakistanis were reneging on their agreement not to train foreigners by moving them around during CIA inspections. This implies that while the US was long aware of Pakistani clandestine activities, they had accepted them to some extent but wanted assurances that their targets would be limited. In the event, they were not limited enough.
Jean-Louis Bruguière, who retired in 2007 after 15 years as chief investigating judge for counter-terrorism, reached this conclusion after interrogating a French militant who had been trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and arrested in Australia in 2003. … Willy Brigitte, the suspect, told Mr Bruguière, that the Pakistani military were running the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp where he spent 2½ months in 2001-02. Along with two Britons and two Americans, Brigitte was driven in a 4×4 through army roadblocks to the high-altitude camp where more than 2,000 men were being trained by Pakistani regular army officers, he said.
“When the camp was resupplied, all the materiel was dropped off by Pakistani army helicopters. And there were regular inspections by the Pakistani Army and the CIA.”
The US agency carried out spot checks to ensure that Pakistan was sticking to an agreement not to train any foreigners at the militant organisation, the judge said. “After 9/11, the Americans put pressure on the Pakistani Government to put more effective controls on the activities of the Islamic organisations linked to al-Qaeda,” he said. Mr Brigitte, originally from the French West Indies, and other foreign personnel were moved out to another camp when the CIA was due to visit, Mr Bruguière said. (Emphasis mine)
The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) was primarily directed against India and Kashmir. Despite attempts to keep them in the bottle, like irrepressible genies they kept leaking out. As late as 2008, the NYT reported that the Pakistani Army was still providing support for it; as investigations on the attack on Mumbai re-surfaced the hand of Pakistani intelligence. Nor was this all. The NYT also reported it to be active against Indian targets in Afghanistan. Clearly the LET’s ambitions were global in character. Wikipedia entry reports that computer records seized after the attack on Mumbai surfaced a list of 320 targets which were suitable for attacks worldwide. Only 20 were in India.
American intelligence officials say they believe that links remain between Lashkar and the ISI, and that the spy agency has helped support the militant group for the past several years by sharing intelligence and providing protection. But American officials say they also believe that the spy agency has become more careful to mask its ties with militants since this summer, when American officials accused the spy agency of involvement in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan.
“Careful to mask” is not the same as “careful to stop”. But can any more be done? One of the oldest approaches to dangerous behavior has been to regulate, rather than proscribe it. Prohibition showed the difficulties involved in preventing alcohol consumption. Now drinks are simply regulated. Since enforcing sexual abstinence among young people is deemed to be impractical, condoms are distributed. “If you can’t be good, be careful.” The same strategy is often applied to in foreign affairs. Allies with frightening proclivities are simply told to curb, not stop their activities. So if Iran can’t be stopped from having nuclear power at least they can be asked to promise not to acquire nuclear weapons. If Pakistan must operate terrorist training camps, at least they can undertake not to train agents aimed at non-Indian targets. But what happens when they cheat? What happens if they are “careful to mask”, but not careful stop? Why then you try and limit their cheating, that’s what, because the West has already admitted by its “engagement” that diplomacy is the game it will play.
And that is a consequence of limits. The West’s diplomatic and military budgets can only supprt a strategy of incrementalism. Politics prevents anything more forceful. That means that since bad trends in the world often cannot be reversed by the means available, they must be palliated. But the disease continues beneath the surface. Countries like Pakistan are like ships slowly settling in the water from a multitude of leaks, but since the wherewithal for rebuilding it in drydock will never become available, the patchwork of bailing pumps which slows its subsidence might at some pont fail. In the meantime there is nothing to do but wait.
Michael Totten, writing in Commentary, describes how the same bailing process is going on in the Middle East where the nth rerun of the ‘Peace Show’ is underway. Nobody knows what the plot is. Nobody knows if there is a plot. They are just watching it out of habit in case something interesting turns up.
This week the Israeli government announced it will resume negotiations with Syria without preconditions, and the Syrians responded in kind.
Peace talks, if they ever actually start, aren’t going anywhere, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows it. He’s going through the motions so Western diplomats don’t throw him and his country out in the cold. Syria’s Bashar Assad knows it too. He’s going through the motions so that he and his country can come in from the cold.
It has been years since I spoke to a single person in the Middle East who thinks the Arab-Israeli conflict will be resolved any time soon. Last time I visited Jerusalem with a half-dozen American colleagues, Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh bluntly told us to stop asking “What’s the solution?”
“I don’t see a real peace emerging over here,” he said. “We should stop talking about it.”
But the ‘Peace Show’ cast may have nothing else to do, so it goes on. According to the French foreign minister, everyone ought to keep talking about because someday everyone might just surprise themselves and watch it happen. “French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner can’t see the difference between Israeli disillusionment about the prospects for peace and an abandonment of the desire for peace in the abstract.” Totten argues that the time and energy can be spent elsewhere.
The Middle East will stop performing its “peace process” theater as soon as we stop demanding it. And as soon as we stop demanding it, time, resources, and energy can be spent on something that might be slightly productive. The conflict isn’t resolvable now, but it’s manageable. Even in the Middle East, there is such a thing as damage control.
Under these circumstances two things are possible and even likely: 1) that a crisis will erupt eventually and 2) the crisis will provide at least a momentary increase in the available diplomatic and military resources available to deal with the sinking ship. Rahm Emmanuel argued that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. That is the Gospel according to the opportunist. Well-laid plans to exploit a crisis are probably among the most useful tools available to policy makers who know they will otherwise have the resources to fix a problem from the current account. They spend their days waiting for the moment when an emergency appropriatiation will be available. In the context of terrorism, this implies that while nobody would wish for such a thing to happen, it might be useful to build bipartisan consensus and do contingency planning in the event of an unforseeable but possible event, such as another mass casualty attack on the US or somewhere else in the West. It is clear that nobody is eliminating the monster, only caging it. The question of what to do if it escapes is always a relevant one.
Answering the question may itself provide benefits. Perhaps one of the reasons why the Third World War never occurred was that strategists disciplined themselves to Think about the Unthinkable. The consequence was that everyone knew what would happen if the central nuclear war monster escaped. And that very knowledge and those very plans may have materially prevented the monster from getting loose. Perhaps the best way to anticipate another outrage from Pakistan or an Iranian nuclear breakout is to anticipate it, at least in a dry and academic way.
The alternative is to leave things to the man who gets the 3 AM call or the emotions of the moment. This may result in an over or under-reaction; a resort to mass hysteria or vigilanteeism or paralysis. But a calm and pre-settled national policy removes a lot of the variance. It morally binds the office-holder to a well thought out plan; it creates the necessary staff work; but most importantly it communicates to the authors of mischief just exactly what happens if they do what they might be thinking. Spelling out if A then B is a useful thing to say. Will Pakistan ever stop supporting terrorism? Will Iran stop building the bomb? Will Israel and its neighbors ever make peace? Maybe. What will America do if a bad thing happens? Maybe that deserves some articulation too.
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The West’s diplomatic and military budgets can only supprt a strategy of incrementalism. Politics prevents anything more forceful.
wretchard, I think it’s stronger than that, it’s more like an iron law. If you were emperor of the US and could order anything at your slightest whim – what would you do today about Pakistan?
Or, if I were emperor? I dunno, and that’s the truth.
(though my thoughts are towards a much more bellicose position with the entire dar al-Islam, starting with rhetoric, which of course is cheap enough)
Of course, we expect the CIA is well aware of the double-shuffle – that is, we hope and pray that it is well-aware, as it SHOULD be, but is sadly naive far too often in recent years. And we hope there are contingency plans on the table, if and when bad things happen. And, the 3:00AM decision still will still have to choose between them, in the event, and could go wrong in all the ways you mention. Such is life.
I think that this came up in a previous comment a while back, that we should publish a list of responses that will automatically go into effect if a mass-casualty attack hits the US (or any of a short list of other targets). This would put the world on notice, it would also help with self-policing. I am sure the Saudi’s and Nork’s would be far less enthusiastic in their support of the Talis and AQ if they were on the list to fry. Others might be a little more helpful regarding intel matters if they were going to get nuked because a loony neighbor misbehaved.
What I doubt is the will to carry through. The current Administration certainly lacks it and our allies (possible exception the Aussies) never did have it.
The reason MAD worked was it was simply so utterly terrifying to contemplate; the end of life on our planet. Terrorism works on a different level, it’s no good to scare people if they all end up dead. It is trying to condition behavior not eliminate existance.
Now, certain whacky people talking to the guy in the well might have other ideas about this sort of plan. In fact, it may make them work all the harder.
I vote vigilanteeism. Our promise to use mass casualty weapons in response to mass casualty attacks is a paper tiger and correctly viewed as such under this current management. It’s been too long since this willpower was demonstrated.
So when the next 3 a.m. call comes, it’s time for those who will do something (on all levels) to roll up their sleeves and shoulder aside the ditherers. We missed and wasted one of those “good” crisis events, back when there was dancing in the streets and candy being handed out. Pity, it would have saved all much grief and made for some memorable moments, creating the sort of memories that span generations and become fables to warn away future misbehaviors.
Thanks,
I was worried there for a while that some of the big money we borrow from China and send to Pakistan might be used to wage jihad against us. We would not let that happen. Just like we would not send stimulus money to congressional districts that do not exist.
Does the sand have to get hot enough to make glass before folks try to extract their collective heads?
So is the calculation then that we cannot simply eradicated these camps as they pop up – via air assets, discovered through drones, satellites, and human intel – because (1) Pak is a sovereign nation, and (2) the ISI/Pak Army would turn its assets against us more directly?
This partial imperfect picture as selectively published in the press provides grade-A pretexts to use in domestic political combat, all redounding to the Useful Idiots. This is exactly the set of circumstances in which a populace’s – or its governing opinion organ, the MSM – lack of a common sense picture of the barbarous East is absolutely counterproductive.
It’s also obvious that in this twilight world-war we are at distinct disadvantage. We have no way of playing this game effectively. Pakistan, just for example, has absolutely no asset other than its ability to cause regional and geopolitical trouble. And in order to retain even the partial loyalty of governments that barely govern, it is necessary we give billions in cash and armaments, in which relationship we gain enough information to become effectively complicit in the operations of these nasty idiots yet can do nothing about it except beg for agreements no one expects to be enforced.
If the true purpose of 9/11 was to demonstrate the limits of “superpower” I’d say that’s been done. Plus I can’t help but believe that the Central Asian “intelligence services” go much deeper than even this article suggests. I wonder how much the CIA really knows.
wretchard,
Some editing, shouldn’t it read, policy makers who know they will otherwise not have the resources?
One way to look at the problem is what can you measure? It is hard to determine what Iran is building in an underground plant. It is impossible to determine whether it is planning to launch an attack if it has a weapon. It was difficult to determine if the Soviets or Russians were on Alert status. It is impossible to know if they are telling the truth when they say the missiles have been retargeted. The reliability of information about intentions, a highly subjective subject, must be considered also.
On balance the policy of negotiating arms control agreements with the Russians, based upon a reasonable level of assurance that they were hostile but rational actors, can be defended but can also be disputed on specifics. The policy of treating the Iranians as an equivalent case is based entirely on wishful thinking. Since we have absolutely no reason to take their word on anything, including the targeting or intent to use pre-emptively any weapons they acquire, and since we have no way of verifying what they are building in concealed facilities, and since the very act of going to the expense of building shielded underground plants is more consistent with an aggressive weapons program than any peaceful project, we must stop them from conducting any activities that could contribute to hostile activities. That means that the burden must be on Iran to prove that it is not dangerous and the US and anyone else threatened should issue an Ultimatum and destroy the underground facilities and anything that would support the production of WMD unless they are made completely and unconditionally transparent within a period of no more than 72 hours.
If the Iranian regime went to all this expense and trouble to build underground aspirin factories and teddy bear storage in order to prove how bad the Americans and Zionists are by precipitating an attack that destroys Iran then the responsibility for the suffering caused will rest on them. It is the responsibility of the Iranian people to evaluate the risk and remove the regime that places in danger by engaging in reckless provocation.
In Pakistan we can not take their word that the gun will not be pointed at us. In addition we have no reason to want the gun pointed at India, which is a better friend and a more useful trade partner now. Therefor our policy should also be focused there on identifying what we can measure, if there is a training camp at all, and not what we can’t measure, who is in it and what they are going to attack. We should then focus on shutting down the camps and getting the Pakistanis to devote their resources to more worthwhile projects. Those would include building law, order, secular education, and infrastructure.
Here’s the thing, this kind of gradualism and understatement is popular – because it works. Every day that goes by without another 9/11, is evidence that we are doing things right. Of course, it has its costs, so maybe that “right” needs be qualified. Maybe some entirely different strategy would also prevent another 9/11 at much lower cost in blood and treasure. But, we can never know the real effectiveness of plans never executed.
So, we choose a path, execute it for a while, and if it appears to work at all we stay with it, even with all its faults, the devil we know. The problem comes when it finally fails – ok, if it finally fails – and we do have another 9/11, or much worse. And then we still don’t really know the might-have-beens.
Bad analogy; drugs, booze and sex (“vices”) are inherently different from militant aggression. Vices have the goal of self-pleasure and only harm the people who willingly get involved in them. We regulate the behavior to avoid harm from spreading to others (STDs, drug wars, Al Capone, etc.). Militant aggression is all about harming other people. That’s its goal. There’s no way to regulate violence in a way that makes it safe for bystanders; you can only stomp on it.
All true. Too bad the current Administration doesn’t seem to believe in cause and effect in the same way I do. They seem to believe that repeating the mistakes of FDR won’t get you Depression II; that repeating the mistakes of Carter won’t get you Iran Crisis II; that repeating the mistakes of the National Health Service Act 1946 won’t get you NHS II; etc.
What I’m getting at is that any plan BHO devises trying to Spell Out “if A, then B” is likely to have completely irrational relationships between A and B, and will most likely cause other parties to do C. I call those “unintended but foreseeable consequences”, but the current Administration calls them “the unavoidable costs of our noble intentions.”
MAD worked because it was developed by people with non-Marxist (aka, “correct”) beliefs about human nature. But GIGO, as they say.
Bad idea. Consider:
Hindu Nationalist: “Wait, you mean if we successfully attack an American city, they’ll destroy Pakistan for us?”
British Tourist: “Mecca too.”
Hindu Nationalist: “Bonus!”
MAD is stable with two players. SAD (single assured destruction) is unstable with multiple players. The best strategy is to keep all your options on the table while maintaining a position of strength and tactical flexibility. Fighting terrorism is like playing Whack-A-Mole; you have to be willing and able to whack moles wherever you may find them, without committing to any particular course of action ahead of time.
That said, there are many Saudi moles (aka, Imams and financiers) that need whacking.
“peace show”, “political shows”, all it’s all about “shows”, since a few decades.
“truth is elsewhere”, it’s like in a novel with different aftermaths, that you can choose au hazard, (if you’re not the author), or according to your tastes, but the scenarist blurs the signs and prints !
You have to be good on personalities psychology, on sociological history, to guess who are the “scenarists”, and it’s getting more complicated as the news or rumors travel quicker through the net, and reach much more persons
One of the things which led to World War 1 was a set of locked down responses which caused cascading effects after the alliances formed themselves into groups in response to the Balkan crisis. Here the “definiteness” led to a self-fulfilling prophecy — and tragedy.
But on the other hand, a sufficiently nebulous situation can create room for an aggressor to take advantage of the ambiguity. Arguably this is what is happening in Israel and rocket range increases and frog is being slowly boiled.
The messages minefields send are “don’t go here” and/ or “go here at your own risk”.
When we mined Haiphong, many of the mines were timed to detonate randomly, reminding the North Vietnamesse that they were there. The field was also reseeded from time to time (Big splash from the sky). It was never challenged.
The human response in SW Asia would be no different.
Mine fields are probably not the best tactic, but a sure response to proscribed actions, with occasional random demonstrations, has the same effect.
IIRC, part of Guiliani’s clean up of New York was based on a concept called Normal Policing. (The book and it author escape me, but is well cited as the source of the idea). The basic concept was that all humans step over the line. Like the 5 extra mph for speed limits. The trick is where to draw the line. In NYC is was crack down on squeegy men and panhandlers and petty stuff. Enough that the ambitios criminal was willing to take only so much risk, and that was to a low level infraction.
In Pak, I suggest a non-attributable raid or two a year, etc.
My impression of the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been of a time-lapse movie of a war. An all-out conflict would last no more than a week, so we have the equivalent in casualties of one artillery shell per suicide bomber, and one infantry platoon or even a company per Israeli incursion into Palestinian-dominated areas. The Lebanon actions of 1982 and 2006 have been the only large-scale kinetic assaults in the last 30 years.
There is no real end because the burdens of the conflict are bearable, if just barely, and the costs of true kinetic conflict are too awful for either side to follow through with. The Israelis apparently don’t want to push the Palestinians into the sea or Jordan, and the Palestinians seem to believe if they kidnap a soldier now and then or destroy a Sbarro the Israelis might just walk there. There is a lot of treatment of the symptoms of the conflict, but no ability or willingness to address the disease.
Terrorism is war at a walking pace. A few hundred in a train station, a few thousand in three buildings — those are the faster parts as far as terrorism goes. Mostly it’s a few dozen to just a few here or there. The attempts to regulate terrorism, though, presuppose its validity. I think this is a major mistake.
We wouldn’t have to regulate sex, drugs or alcohol if the effects of either were immediate and deadly. Because the effects are pernicious and not immediately recognizable to those who use those three agents to adjust their brain chemistry to the desired level, some degree of regulation is reasonable. It is possible to use all three of those in a responsible manner.
The difference is that there is no ‘responsible terrorism’ in countries that are representative democracies, where the avenues for policy change are clear and well-defined and available to all. Regulation of terrorism, as the Israelis regulate it with regard to the Palestinian conflict, allows it space to live and multiply, and the occasional success (e.g., the Spanish elections, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip) is all that is necessary to convince adherents that the cost is worth the burden.
The job of countries able to do so is to convince the world that the cost is not worth it by eliminating terrorists without pause or mercy. The center of gravity is not the terrorists themselves, it’s everybody who wants change and might be thinking that the point of a gun is going to get it. The terrorists become targets in a shoot-house, in killing others to change government policy that could be changed by other means that is what they have made themselves.
I doubt the President sees the world this way. And so we’ll continue to deal with the effects of terrorism until we change our minds and stop tolerating it. Military commissions are a perfectly legitimate means to try terrorists who see themselves as warriors. KSM is not a coward. Anyone who takes more than one waterboarding session (and yes I know 183 pours does not mean 183 sessions) to break is not a coward. Whether he sees himself as a warrior or not is irrelevant within seconds after the echoes of the firing squad fall silent, or the last of the potassium enters his veins.
Work to make governments democratic, open and transparent around the world. Support people trying to make their governments more open and less corrupt. But give no mercy, quarter or shelter to terrorists whether it’s your fight or not, and no ear to those who say different. War at a walking pace is still war — treat it as such.
Brock,
any plan BHO devises trying to Spell Out “if A, then B” … completely irrational relationships between A and B,
We need to stop trying to reinvent the wheel. We had a doctrine that worked.
Here it is laid out by John Foster Dulles. The key phrase is
This is completely at variance with the legalist model that Obama and Holder are devoted to.
There are multiple aspects of this problem, and none of them are good.
Trying to invoke a variant of MAD before we are attacked fails on two points. First of all, it is now a bedrock assumption in international politics as strong as the assumption that gravity works consistently; that Buraq Hussein Obama will not order the use of US military force in the interests of the United States, with a reinforcing corollary that he would rather order a nuclear attack on a US city than attack any of the states of the Ummah. Especially, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or any other Muslim state that directly threatens the US or what few allies he has not driven off. Further, he will not order the use of force against the interests of the states that he both admires and fears; Russia and China.
Any pre-emptive promises of retaliation for the deaths of Americans or those aligned with Americans from him are of less weight than the electrons that flow across the Teleprompter of the United States.
Second point is that while this country has deliberately forgotten how to use the MAD doctrine credibly; Russia and China have not. Keep in mind that every sponsored anti-American movement in the world throughout the Cold War operated under the implied and sometimes expressed protection of the threat of a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union and/or China if we fought back too hard.
Every one of our enemies now, those that are posing threats to our existence [*], operates under the sponsorship and with the support of Russia or China. If we make a pre-emptive threat, it will be easily and immediately countered with a declaration of a “Putin/Hu Doctrine”: to the effect that they will not stand idly by while the United States ‘wantonly attacks innocents’ in the absence of proof of complicity in any attacks accepted by the UN Security Council [where Russia, China, France, and Britain all have a veto, for now]. If they then declare that they will retaliate for any such ‘illegal’ attack; the first order of business for the White House will be to hire Mike Rowe of the TV series “Dirty Jobs”, because everyone in the Executive Office of the President is going to need their knickers changed immediately. The second will be to brainstorm new and inventive ways to grovel.
The rational response, by the way, for American Patriots who live in major metropolitan areas would be to move to more sparsely inhabited parts of the country; because the US will be a nuclear free fire zone for as long as Buraq is in power. The only redeeming feature is that TWANLOC, whose faith in ‘Teh Lightworker’ and his vision will stay in the target areas as a matter of both devotion and of their detachment from reality.
In the aftermath of an attack on the United States, assuming that we have a National Command Authority viewed to have the interests of the United States at heart, there will likely be a reprise of what happened at 9/11. Russia and China were taken by surprise by the attack, the EU less so. I was given to understand that Russia and China sent word that they had nothing to do with it, and that they would not interfere if we retaliated against the attackers so long as it did not mean an attack on their countries or their existential national interests. They did not know just how crazy we were, and they did not want to be hit. Having a president who is not viewed as being easily mugged is a good thing.
The situation has already deteriorated beyond the point where we can avoid a nuclear strike on our country by one or another segment of the Ummah. The pieces are already in motion. Wretchard’s “Three Conjectures” are in play, just that as long as our current regime is in power, the number of iterations will surely be >1.
[*]- deliberate phrasing. The EU is an enemy of the US, however they are also on a number of target lists. They lack the will to defend themselves from any of their own existential threats, and therefore to do more than diplomatically support our real enemies. They rate more as a sharp pain in the gluteal musculature than as an existential threat.
If I may offer a thought to Wretchard; there are about to be some major changes in the status of the member states of the EU that have international and strategic implications for the US. As soon as the final implementation of the EU Treaty/Constitution takes effect in weeks, our relationship is going to change drastically. Might I offer that as a topic for a piece by you here? I have some ideas on the subject, but I could not do it near the justice you could.
Subotai Bahadur
“Will America do A if B happens?”
Is there even an America that transcends party politics, anymore? Could be a function of post-Soviet fuzzed focus, but it seems we’re voting for a new idea of what is wrong and how to fix it every couple of years. We keep changing our attention-deficit and responsibility-stressed electorate mind as to what constitutes threat and what to do about it. Incumbency seems less effective these days at keeping our worldview/ self-view and, hence, foreign policy consistent over a span of even two administrations. Our “pro” cadre of Fed crats resets its focus acc to party politics with each election, as is somewhat usual, but increasingly doing so without much of an overarching in-for-the-long-haul agenda. The tension between national principle and long-term national self-interest in formulating policy seems to have been replaced with flaccid choices between partisan expediency and personal ambition. Will allow that the imperfect Bush admin probably acted in the national interest, or thought it did, although not without a corruption of ways and means to get things done or to reward themselves and friends
Lots of unsupported statements above, but them’s my impressions. Don’t believe as a nation we’re much capable of agreeing, for even a decade, upon (an amendable) threat scenario, consequences, and reprisals. To be fair, neither can the rest of the world, except for Green-Islamo-Transnatties who KNOW the threat is us/ US. We used to lead with a purr and powerful paw, and now what state or free-lance bad actor has been beguiled or made fearful for a meaningful period of time?
Subotai Bahadur,
The only redeeming feature is that TWANLOC … will stay in the target areas
Who will target Vail? You know I hate the TWANLOC construct. Don’t you think that Putin is quaking, or is it quacking?, at the prospect of a unified EU army? OT, Rush is on a roll today.
Darren,
Nicely done.
Rasmussen has BHO down to -14.
Joe Lieberman on Hasan “… connect the dots.” Wonderful 9-11 echo. Almost asked “What did X know and when did he know it?” echoes Watergate.
Lawrence @ 16,
Interesting observation. I find myself thinking “Does it really matter what Obama chooses to do in this/that particular circumstance? It’s not as if people who are ACTUALLY concerned with the general welfare of the U.S. have any say in the matter.” I think I have, probably like many Americans, devalued and written off his presidency already. We are living in two Americas.
# 16 Lawrence
Actually, your statements are spot on. We are not one country anymore, at least as we present ourselves to the outer world. It has been so for at least a generation. Think back to the late 1950′s, early 1960′s. The phrase was that politics stopped at the water’s edge. Between our two major parties, there may have been differences in approaches, but neither party was willing to collaborate with foreigners who had hostile intent.
Beginning in the mid-1960′s we began to see Democrat politicians and candidates going overseas and attempting to conduct their own foreign policy separate from the official US policy. The Logan Act makes such actions illegal, but when was the last time that the law was applied consistently and evenly against those who are politically connected. There was a regular stream of Democrat politicians meeting with North Vietnamese diplomats throughout the war, undermining the US effort. We have the actual letters from Congressman Ron Dellums promising support for the Cuban sponsored New Jewel Party coup in Grenada before they took Americans hostage. We have the letters from Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill to Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, promising that the Democrats in Congress would protect him from the evil Reagan if he would just downplay his Communist background. We have Democratic Congressmen going to Baghdad before both Gulf Wars offering support to Saddam Hussein.
And those are just the cases that one can come up with in a moment’s thought. For close to half a century, American politicians of the Left have been trying to use hostile foreign powers as leverage against the government of the US. But diplomacy and the darker related arts are a two way street. Those same foreign powers have been using our politicians against us too.
For those who are familiar with Tradecraft, once you have compromised an agent, they are yours. The question is which side has the power to enforce its will. Who owns who?
I am fairly sure that I am not the only BC-er interested in history. I will offer as a topic for personal research the concept of what happens to a nation/kingdom/empire etc. when internal political factions turn to foreign powers to try to gain power in that nation/kingdom/empire. I will open with the fact that Cortez’ army against the Aztecs was primarily composed of Mexican native tribes opposed to Aztec rule, led by a limited number of Spaniards.
I will follow up with the concept for discussion that one of the direst errors made by G.W. Bush was a failure to put his own people into place in the Federal bureaucracy. There are hundreds of leadership positions that are NOT civil service and who “serve at the pleasure of the president”. He failed to replace the Democrats that he was legally allowed to and expected to. Thus, our Federal bureaucracy, including our intelligence agencies, are divided and politicized largely for one party. If there is a change at the top politically appointed levels when administrations change, the bureaucracies do not fall under the exclusive control of single political party.
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai -
The first thing that comes to mind is Carter’s secret overtures to the USSR – “Comrades, do you really want that Reagan guy in office? He will actually take a hard line against you! Give me something to work with, some concessions, so we can keep that Republican nutjob from the presidency!”
At least we haven’t been cursed with a George Galloway. Yet.
The military will plan for the eventual breakout of war; meanwhile, the diplomatic corps will always be shown with their hand on the pump in case peace breaks out so they could bask in the glory of reasoned pacifism. In this Mexican standoff of sorts the only people voting are those who make the game their own and usually this is done in extreme measure by small groups and individual actors. Peace used to be a normal end condition when one side spent out the last gasp of resistance. Victory was the prize. Now peace is the prize and all of the actors know it so there shall be none.
Regarding trips by Dems to other countries, I wonder how much the Soviet’s really got to them? How many seats in Congress did they control? Do they still control?
In a story that seems to have raised zero interest in the US, revelations from the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev show how incredibly far in bed the British Labour Party and organized labor were with the Soviets.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225637/How-Kremlin-hijacked-Labour-Diary-Kremlin-insider-reveals-hold-Soviets-Labour-politicians.html
Why should we believe anything less was going on in the US? And for that matter, continues to go on?
Annoy Mouse,
I agree, but I also suggest that part of the reason that peace is not achieved is that the cessations of hostilities forced by outside powers is continually premature, to the point where ideologies that should have been tried and found wanting are never allowed to be completely defeated.
People and their ideologies ‘fight’ these days with all the peril of a West Side Story choreographed duel. The only real kinetic engagements are in Afghanistan, the rest is brushfire stuff that occasionally flares up before the rest of the world can intervene, and stop a process that might lead to a conclusion.
If you look at the undignified end of the Tamil Tigers, that was due in large part to the Sri Lankans not really giving a flip about achieving a Security Council-mandated Peace(TM), but instead choosing to pursue peace of the more traditional kind — the absence of enemies.
War sucks, but it does change things. The peace that transnationalists want, the postwar exhalation after the last of the Germans and Japanese gave it up, will not come by keeping ‘little wars’ from becoming big wars. It will come by letting the chips fall.
Great Day….POTUS needs a news anchor to warn him to watch what he says…..
from The Corner:
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
More Obamateur Hour [Andy McCarthy]
In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be “convicted” and had “the death penalty applied to him” . . . and then said he wasn’t “pre-judging” the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC’s Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the president’s interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn’t his intention. I’m sure it wasn’t — he’s trying to contain the political damage caused by his decision — but that won’t matter. He has given the defense its first motion that the executive branch, indeed the president himself, is tainting the jury pool. Nice work.
11/18 10:03 AMShare
buckets: Very likely you’re right,
, but don’t you think our gleaming city on the hill has become, in post Nam apology/ prosperity and present illusional post-domestic terror times, more a bivouac of many tents? The two Americas that come to my mind are those who do the multi-splintered tribe thing and the many individual others who parse … Guilty I yam!
Subotai Bahadur:
Thank you for supplying the specifics wrt freelance meddling-wheeling-dealing overseas that undercut official policy and also for your comments re our esteemed civil servants and political appointees. I believe you’re right about the Bush v. Blueracracy struggle (due to W’s pass), but this was my first attempt to comment without specifying Democrat sin and betrayal. Perhaps because there’s no getting around Republican Zin and derail-all.
I’ll start by stating an irrefutable truth. islam and Christianity are immiscible. There will never be a lasting peace between the two. All other positions are simply farts in the wind.
Now let me move to a quick review of how this thread was presented, keeping in mind the old Hollywood premise, which works just as well in politics, that if you buy the premise you buy the bit.
Let’s review;
* “Jean-Louis Bruguière, who retired….” This really says he’s out of the loop by two years, a lifetime in intelligence gathering.
*”reached this conclusion after interrogating a French militant who had been….” So a retired guy reaches a conclusion predicated on the weight he gives ONE source.
*”As late as 2008, the NYT reported that the Pakistani Army was still providing support for it;”…….The NYT…please, The NYT..geez
*”Wikipedia entry reports” ……….Wikipedia, complete with its “too easy to manipulate history”
Ok, retired judge, one source,then the New York Times and finally Wikipedia.
How does one buy into a bit that begins with that foundation? Only under general anaesthetic.
I found it too difficult to continue.
Darren @ 13: extremely well-said.
To amplify your terrorism = war equation…
The Arab-Israeli conflict not only gives the impression of a war, I contend that the war never stopped. This is not just a rhetorical description, but “facts on the ground” for legal purposes. Thus, the phrasing of — it is UN 242? — about it not being licit to acquire territory in war takes on a different aspect if one considers that the war is not really over, and that the defender (Israel) is entitled to take or relinquish territory as it needs to in order to fight the war.
Israel’s enemies literally refuse peace. Thus, the notion of “peace process” is puzzling to say the least. It’s like calling the American healthcare reform effort, “the fiscal reponsibility process”.
“Spelling out if A then B is a useful thing to say.”
It is true that under our current circumstances saying we will vaporize a given set of Lat-Long coordinates of Obama wakes up one morning and the bluebirds are not singing on his windowsill is difficult at best and a bad idea at worst.
But in Thinking About The Unthinkable, we clearly described an overall strategy that gave out adversaries something to think about. Specifically we went for Counter Value – we would Launch Under Attack (not just Launch On Warning) at the other guy’s cities, not at his strategic forces. So the Soviets knew that we would not do a pre-emptive strike that would destroy their ability to respond but rather take out his cities. They thought we were nuts to do that in their own context – since they viewed our cities as the prize in the war. But they knew that our official doctrine was not oriented toward a First Strike, even if we attained the capability. Their early warning and spacetrack capabilities reflected this recognition – they were pitiful by our standards.
The Bush Doctrine essentially avowed a Launch On Warning Pre-Emptive Strike Counter-Force strategy for the WOT. The Left screamed bloody murder about this approach, but even Obama recognizes that failing to pre-empt an identified terrorist attack is at best political suicide for the Democratic Party and at worst a personal trip to the gallows. So while the Administration officially presents such Bush Cowboy Barbarism as distasteful they know they may have to do it and everyone knows that it is likely as well.
So the next thing to do is to state that following either a successful or failed application of the Bush Doctrine that a Counter Value strategy will be used. State clearly that we will act deliberately to destroy the culture and institutions of the states, people, and organizations that carried out or attempted such an attack. That means let slip the dogs of war. That probably means genocide, with either a small or large G.. That means I will see your destruction of the WTC and raise you a few Hiroshimas.
For the War on Terror we need a stated policy that embraces both Counter Value and Counter Force, that embraces not only Preemption but Massive Retaliation. We must use Herman Kahn’s whole bag of tricks.
The thing about planning to take advantage of a crisis is that you had better have near perfect intelligence about what is going on in the world and that it is not being filtered through the minds of an ideologues. For instance what if a crisis that you weren’t expecting hits about the same time as the crisis you were planning for. Two could cascade and create a third. John Ringo call your office.
So the next thing to do is to state that following either a successful or failed application of the Bush Doctrine that a Counter Value strategy will be used. State clearly that we will act deliberately to destroy the culture and institutions of the states, people, and organizations that carried out or attempted such an attack. That means let slip the dogs of war. That probably means genocide, with either a small or large G.. That means I will see your destruction of the WTC and raise you a few Hiroshimas.
For the War on Terror we need a stated policy that embraces both Counter Value and Counter Force, that embraces not only Preemption but Massive Retaliation. We must use Herman Kahn’s whole bag of tricks.
The nice thing about the Cold War, if one can say that, is that there was little question who They were. But if a crude nuke should hit NYC, even if one were sure to .999999999 (nine ninths) it was ___ there would still be those who would argue it was a mistake. After all, there are those who claim, perhaps the President among them, that Hiroshima itself was a mistake when the Japanese were Them to 1.0 certainty.
That .0000000001 possibility of a mistake is what makes the politics of this so difficult, when you are talking about large numbers of lives. This is the reason why it may be better to take out bad guys in their ones and twos who we believe are guilty to .99 rather than go for countervalue at a certainty of .999999999
So in a way maybe all we can do is plug along and hope for the best.
RWE:
“Specifically we went for Counter Value – we would Launch Under Attack (not just Launch On Warning) at the other guy’s cities, not at his strategic forces. So the Soviets knew that we would not do a pre-emptive strike that would destroy their ability to respond but rather take out his cities. They thought we were nuts to do that in their own context – since they viewed our cities as the prize in the war. But they knew that our official doctrine was not oriented toward a First Strike, even if we attained the capability.”
Back in the late 1970s, the McDonnell Douglas Corp. developed the Advanced Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle (AMaRV). They built four prototype vehicles and tested three of them. I’ve been told that the tests were successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. However after the test flights, the AMaRV project was cancelled. I’ve asked different people about why AMaRV was cancelled and received two different answers. One answer was the hydraulic system used for AMaRV’s yaw and body flaps took up too much volume (no room for actual payload). The other explanation was that AMaRV was politically destabilizing and would have triggered World War III.
Any thoughts about that last explanation? Is it credible that a successful military technology would have been abandoned because it was too effective? I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would have shown such restraint.
O/T but concrete. permission requested.
A moving graphic entitled, The Decline: The Geography of a Recession. Very interesting. takes about 30 seconds to watch.
http://tinyurl.com/yjvndyk
RWE,
para 2. we went for Counter Value – we would Launch Under Attack (the McNamara Doctrine.
para 3. Bush Doctrine essentially avowed a Launch On Warning Pre-Emptive Strike Counter-Force strategy
para 4. a successful or failed application of the Bush Doctrine that a Counter Value strategy will be used
Not quite following you here. After a successful Counter-Force First Strike you intend to follow up with Counter-Value? A little unclear how that works. If we intercept a jihadi plot would you then destroy the Aswan High Dam and kill several million Copts? Personally I am surprised the bad guys haven’t done that themselves.
Part of the problem is in defining what the Force in their structure is for us to target. Is it only the personnel who swore a personal blood oath the Osama bin Laden? That would fir with a narrow legalist view of the struggle. Is it the membership of the network of affiliates like the Taliban, the TeL, the MILF? That appears to be current DoD doctrine. Does it include the personnel and weapons labs of regimes, such as Iran, Sudan and Syria, that construct a plausible deniability screen and act through proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah to attack US interests? That I think approximates the Bush Doctrine. Should we push it out another ring to include Russia and China or the Special Rapporteurs of the EU and the UN? Are the Saudi and Gulf bankers and arms merchants and their funded Mullahs who promote violence and teach hate not as much part of the Force, the actual weapons systems to be targeted as the guy digging a hole for a 155 shell by the side of a road? Is not the entire belief system that endures through a faith in the inviolability of the Kabaa and the invincibility of the Ummah part of the Force arrayed against us that must be broken or at least demonstrated to be inferior?
My point is that these distinctions are useful but they are constructs. If we hunt down every tool in the enemies arsenal there will be precious little Value for us to hit with a followup Counter-Value strike. If we reach the existential point of having to kick over the board, or call Four No Trump to end the game then we can all have a chuckle after at the concerns of the AGW crowd. Hopefully we can strip away the Forces at the enemies disposal on a steady basis. Kinetic encounters should deal with some threats and social and economic tools may over time attenuate others. All of our tools depend on the health and strength of our Forces and the Value base behind them.
Unfortunately any response strategy Counter-Force or Counter-Value depends on us have the tools to do the job. Obama is systematically stripping away our ability to respond effectively under any strategic doctrine. His diplomatic, economic and social policies are so crippling America that we will be unable to attract loyalty as a superior alternative through social and economic power. Oddly enough the advocates of “Soft Power” have made it less likely that such tools can be effective. His military initiatives, in particular his plan to radically reduce the size, robustness and flexibility of the United States strategic deterrent means that that the possibility of an overwhelming Counter-Value follow on to an enemy Counter-Force attack, the US Second Strike will be lost. This makes it more likely that we will face both increased terrorism at the low end and nuclear blackmail.
For those unclear what calling Four No Trump means.
To be blogged under the title “Counter-Force or Counter-Value?”
Call me foolish enough to believe in moral absolutes ,but the thought of some CIA joker reviewing state sponsored terrorist training and chiding them to just kill Indians is appalling. As well it shows the cluelessness of intelligence operatives and their political masters to think these Islamist nihilists won’t turn around and bite them as well as the Indians. Is it realpolitik or inexcusable stupidity to try to play nice with the ISI and their killers? Why do we still have the CIA anyway? It seems they have nothing to do but miss real threats, plan palace intrigues against domestic politicians and leak classified information.
Well there’s no fool like an old fool. I’ve read the comments and this is a damn interesting thread. And I really don’t drink but I must say I’ve been getting some things grossly incorrect lately.
I think I’ll just stay on the bench until I can contribute something up to the caliber of the group. (OMG, am I now infected with obama apologia syndrome?)
Any thoughts about that last explanation? Is it credible that a successful military technology would have been abandoned because it was too effective? I find it hard to believe that the Soviets would have shown such restraint.
The Soviets’ inheritors have not shown such restraint.
Then again, things are different. Their nuke subs are tied up at the pier, ours are on patrol. We have a credible if limited NMD system that is enough to impress them, if not enough to impress our own Democrats. Our nuclear deterrent is slightly diminished in number compared to the Cold War era, but likely no less in effectiveness. I think even they wonder about their own systems, which is why the keep trying to find a modern SLBM that works, and keep announcing things like their maneuverable RVs.
If the SM-3 was packing an EMP-capable nuke for terminal kill, then a maneuvering warhead matters less. We put our chips on hit-to-kill, but it strikes my non-engineer mind that something falling from a 700 mile apogee has a lot more KE available than something rising and near the top of its own apogee. A miss by a foot is still a miss.
I’m sure the US AMaRV was wicked good at what it did, and equally sure that the Russian AMaRV is a holdover from the Cold War that they dusted off to show potential allies that the Bear still has teeth. The difference is that we were going up against the Soviet ABM that did have big nasty nukes like our Sentinel ABMs, and surviving the EMP environment would have likely been a trick, hydraulics or no.
It might have been game-changing, and from a game theory standpoint it may have been a little too much for the other Prisoner to stand. The fact that the Russians have demonstrated an AMaRV is less of a big deal now, we’re not really playing that particular game anymore.
Why do we still have the CIA anyway?
We have the CIA to misinterpret and marginalize international threats.
We have the FBI to misinterpret and marginalize domestic threats.
It is an interlocking web of incompetence, powered by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of Political Correctness. For anyone wondering why the CIA can’t find Osama Bin Laden even though we believe he’s in a small portion of Pakistan, it is instructive to consider that the FBI couldn’t find Eric Rudolph and we knew which national forest he was hiding in.
The country’s in the best of hands, really.
Wretchard #30: Concur, and that is why the strategy will be developed in 12/8/41 or 9/12/01 fashion: screams, armpits, and assholes being much in evidence.
Eggplant #31: Relative to AMARV, from 1978 to 1981 I was the USAF Space Division program manager for a MDAC contract. Due to that job I found out that MDAC had, “overran the AMARV contract out the whazoo” I think the quote from a very good friend was, who also ended up managing a MDAC contract. I suspect that was what killed AMARV, more than anything. But don’t forget that the Peacekeeper FSD decision was made in that same time frame and that may have obviated the value of AMARV.
LifeofMind #33: Yes, I think that you would follow up either an attack, and intercepted attack, or our own counter-force preemption attack with a counter value strike. But the Aswan Dam would not be a suitable target, since, as you say, the terrorists would like that. For an attack by Iran it is easier, of course.
So what would be a Counter Value Target for the likes of Al Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood? The first thing to come to mind would be to deliver a list of officials and clerics, relatives, and pets to be turned over within 24 hours for summary execution or else all possible locations will be the subject of attacks that will absolutely ensure their thorough and instant demise. If that turns out to in effect to be genocide with a small “g”, well, them’s the breaks… So solly!
Any other suggestions as to what our enemies would consider a Counter Value strike on their precious assets?
India should be very angry at us, if this is true.
Maybe the CIA should pass on any information they get from the Pakistani camps to India…
RWE:
Mecca and Medina come to mind.
I am going to think about the unthinkable. There is no way, at all, that the current elites can or will do anything about Iran’s nukes or Pakistan’s. Moreover, no one in either country or power center (tribal/factional leaders) fears the US doing anything but apologizing and bowing if we get NYC nuked.
So it will be. Of course. And possibly another city (DC) and even another (Atlanta, Dallas, or Chicago) at the same time. Three nukes, at the same time, with some group in Pakistan or Iran claiming responsibility, either overtly or covertly, and demands or not to surrender to Islam.
What will Obama’s response be, or his Democratic Successors if he is dead in the attack, be?
Why, surrender and appeasement of course. Driven by the media, and the female base of the Democratic Party (men are disposable, women generally side with attackers and submit) rules out ANY retaliation or action. Instead the usual grief and “we deserve it” stuff, on the part of the ruling elites fearing loss of power in fighting back more than the enemy.
BUT, this nuking will be the blow that fractures the fragile cohesiveness of the West, and creates open political warfare. Since everyone in Salt Lake City, or Boisie, or St. Louis, or Miami, or Phoenix, will fear their city will be next (and it will be). Leading inevitably in my view to a military take-over led by regional Army commanders along with some Marine and Navy commanders. With basically the annihilation of both Pakistan and Iran as peoples following after.
Here is why the “monster will escape.” First, the tribal/factional leaders have been taught by more than thirty years of appeasement that the West is weak, easily beaten, and incapable of really killing all their peoples and making them not even a dusty memory. At worst a few impotent missile strikes for a few years, and then the West leaves, impotent and beaten. Did not AQ “defeat and destroy” the USSR? And the USSR was the “stronger enemy.”
The West lacks simple deterrence on the level it matters — the tribal and factional leaders who are capable of simply borrowing nukes if not making them themselves.
Next, the West EVEN AFTER IT IS NUKED will lack any resolve by the leadership because they would in fact, soon cease to be leaders. The analogy to Buchanon, who feared doing anything to stop the Civil War led right to it, in contrast to Jackson’s real threat to hang the entire Legislature of South Carolina (he meant it completely and was believed) comes to mind. No one is or can be afraid of Global Rock Star and Shaman Barack HUSSEIN Obama (who is rightly believed to “stand with the Muslims” in his own words) in any event. If he is gone in a vaporized DC, a Pelosi or Reid or Hillary or Holder would not be feared and would grovel and apologize like Buchanon impotently doing nothing because to fight back would lead to their loss of power anyway, replaced by an “Ike” or figure along those lines.
That is not supportable for long, given that most people would prefer to kill any and all possible suspects to deter further attacks than be “moral” and die in a nuclear blaze.
The late Roman Republic collapsed because the internal system could no longer produce small holders who formed its backbone. Instead professional soldiers and great landowners with slave labor produced a nasty set of brutal infighting that led to the Emperor system. Our own elites can no longer be depended on to prevent the nuking of random Western cities because they are too feminized, corrupt, and stupid. The only institutions that “work” are the military, and they will be the ones (tragically) to take over.
Incremental approaches to Pakistan and Iran are bound to fail because there is no deterrence to various mid-level guys who seek to be the Big Man themselves by attacking America with nukes through proxies, fearing no comeback. It is simple as that.
Darren,
Mecca and Medina come to mind.
Do you mean Yathrib? The distinction matters. Some things should rankle over time.
whiskey,
Salt Lake City, or Boisie, or St. Louis, or Miami, or Phoenix
So why would they not hit them in the first round? Your explication seems to beg an assumption here. Why would they bother with New York, even though it is full of hated Jews, if the real threat to them is in Salt Lake?
Pushed to far my analysis brings to mind Gary Larsen’s The Far Side.
Before I push this to far I hope Habu tells me to shut up and walk the dog.
# 38 RWE
Any other suggestions as to what our enemies would consider a Counter Value strike on their precious assets?
From a scenario [somewhat modified]:
———————————-
*Mecca centered on the Ka’aba
*Medina centered on the Mosque of the Prophet Mohammed
*The third great shrine is the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock, which is built on the site of the Jewish Temple. Its fate
would depend on whether Jerusalem remained in Israeli hands. If it was, then the Mosque could be seized and desecrated
from a Muslim point of view. If not, then it can go down with the rest of Islam and [redacted].
*the Plains of Arafat outside Mecca, the site of Mohammed’s final sermon.
*the Plain of Mina outside of Mecca, where Muslim pilgrims camp, and cast stones at pillars representing Satan.
See map below.
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/hajjmap/hajj1.gif
*Tunis, Tunesia centered on the Mosque of Qairawan
*Samarra, Iraq centered on the Great Mosque of al-Mutawakkil
[ item redacted]
*Najaf, Iraq centered on the Shrine of Imam Ali B. Abi Talib
*Karbala, Iraq centered on the Shrine of Imam Husayn
*Kadhmayn, Iraq centered on the Shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and Imam Muhammad al-Jawad
*Qom, Iran, said city being a holy city of Shia.
*Jamkaran Mosque 6 km. East of Qom, Iran on the slopes of Mt. Dobaradaran. This is where the Mahdi is scheduled
to emerge from the well.
It is noted that the strike on Mecca will destroy not only the Ka’aba, which is the center of Islam, but also other sacred
sites necessary to the Hajj; i.e. the Sacred Mosque, the Place of Abraham, the Well of ZamZam, and the Place of
Running. For both symbolic and practical reasons, the strikes on Mecca, Medina, the Plains of Arafat, and the Plain of
Mina should be struck with weapons formulated not only for blast effect, but also for long term radioactive contamination.
The goal is to make them ininhabited and uninhabitable for generations.
—————————————-
Islam is a religion that is based on fixed locales and specific rites/procedures. Of the 5 Pillars of Islam:
The Shahada
Alms
Prayer 5 times a day
The Haj
Observance of Ramadan
Of the five, three are Mecca dependent. Prayer is directed at the Ka’aba
The Haj is to Mecca and the sites listed.
Ramadan is not real until the moon is sighted and reported from Mecca, nor does it end similarly.
Religions which derive their legitimacy from specific shrines and rites are extremely vulnerable to their loss. I offer the example of the innumerable city states of the Mid-East, and elsewhere, whose faith in the local gods vanished with the destruction of their temples. Indeed the exception that proves the rule would be Judaism; which transformed from temple worship to Rabbinical study.
If Muslims destroyed the Vatican, Golgotha, and the Tomb of the Rock, Christianity has moved from a faith based in locations to a faith based in the heart and mind and ceremonies and rites that are independent of locale. Buddhism in its various forms has shrines, but exists independent of them. As does Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and other faiths. It is questionable if a faith based in obedience and abhorring inquiry such as Islam could make the transition. Even if they can, the transition would render them pre-occupied and less of a threat for a few generations. More likely, the results would be akin to the loss of cultural faith similar to what happened to Native Americans.
Further, it is an tenet of faith among many in Islam that their Holy Places are protected from attack by Infidels. A successful attack would have a shattering effect on some.
You asked. And as I have said before, I admit that I am not a nice person.
Subotai Bahadur
I like to make a list of what to nuke, too – but it may not be necessary, or especially desirable. The way to avoid it is like redirecting an asteroid away from hitting the earth – a small push early on, is better than the huge push needed later. Call this the King Hussein rule for the middle east – a simple artillery barrage wiping out an entire community of about 10,000 people, and voila, hudna for twenty-plus years. The problem is we have been too sickly to make that demonstration … or have we? Perhaps, for all of our squeamishness, our blundering about in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last eight years is enough to make the point. Look at Israel and Lebanon – Israel effectively “lost” the battle against Hizbullah in the last war, but made it so expensive to everyone in Lebanon that for better or worse peace (or something like it) has now prevailed for … what is it, six years?
This does presume that the Islamists are rational, once hit by the old 2×4 between the eyes. And if I’m wrong, what the heck, get out the old nuke target list, and this time let’s get that shock and awe thing right.
And as I have said before, I admit that I am not a nice person.
Eh, I thought the same thing, just in less detail, and I’m a pretty nice guy.
Then again, one of my personal laws is the Law Of Horror Movie Situations: Never Leave An Enemy Alive Behind You. It is a corollary of sorts to ‘If it needs shooting, shoot it twice.’
Re: 46 Darren.
Or just double tap every bad guy as you go by:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap.
There was a 70s commercial (I know I date myself) for Mobil gasoline starring Ronnie Graham as Mr Dirt and the tagline was “You can pay me now or pay me later”. That’s where we are with Islam — we can deal with it now or deal with it later after millions of innocents are dead.
These jihadis evidently don’t know much about history or they would realize that western democracies are slow to anger, but once roused are terrible enemies. Ask the Japanese about our methodical fire bombing of their wooden cities even before we had the Big One.
We need to be clear on several points…
Who are we primarily fighting?
How do we measure victory?
Can we beat the islamists in a conventional war or a nuke war?
What are the real targets of this upcoming battle?
My answers are not endorsed by anyone but myself. In no way does the UN, State of Israel, the USA or any NATO government support my idea…..
Who are we primarily fighting?
I think we need to be clear, we are fighting jihadist islam, or as I like to say, NORMALITIVE ISLAM.
I like to say “there is only on group of radical moslems in the world, they live in the USA and preach tolerance, they are “radical” whereas the rest of the world that embraces Islam, embraces jihad.
How do we “MEASURE” victory?
I think the perfect way to “measure” victory would be watching about a billion moslems having to permanently change (an unchangeable) faith, seek forgiveness of the rest of the world and divest it’self with jihadist, elitist, and violent ways.
Tall task you speculate….
Not really…
Can we beat the islamists in a conventional war or a nuke war?
Sure but that will not accomplish anything. Islam and it’s followers could care less about human life, since any sincere moslem would tell you, they love death as we love life… we are weak, they do not fear death, they are more than willing to die for allah…
What are the real targets of this upcoming battle?
We must understand the enemy… The enemy REALLY believes that this thing called ALLAH is real, is watching and is ON THEIR SIDE. No one dares to seriously confront them THE WAY THEY CONFRONT OTHER RELIGIONS…..
Let me say this again….
THE WAY ISLAM CONFRONT OTHER RELIGIONS…..
The gouge out the eyes of pagan statues, blow up other faith’s meeting places.. Ask a Jew, Christian or Hindu….
It is time to visit on Islam the easy solution…
make Islam change forever…
Islam by definition is incapable of change, it’s codified…
so how do we change islam….
well, the 1st thing is to LEARN what islam is…
To keep it simple there are 5 pillars of islam…
Two concern themselves with the Kaaba and Mecca…
Nuke Mecca and the Kaaba…
Thus force change on Islam….
Humiliate them, destroy their holy sites…
This will impress to the that Allah has abandoned them…
Do not conventionally destroy these sites (and if they protest or get violent? draw up a list in size and importance of every other world wide mosque or symbol they hold dear) nuke em…
trust me this will work..
go ahead take out mecca & the kaaba, and if they give us flak, nuke the next 15 or 20 major sites on the list….
see if that doesnt kick them in the ass…
We need to be clear on several points…
Who are we primarily fighting?
How do we measure victory?
Can we beat the islamists in a conventional war or a nuke war?
What are the real targets of this upcoming battle?
My answers are not endorsed by anyone but myself. In no way does the UN, State of Israel, the USA or any NATO government support my idea…..
Who are we primarily fighting?
I think we need to be clear, we are fight jihadist islam, or as I like to say, NORMALITIVE ISLAM.
I like to say “there is only on group of radical moslems in the world, they live in the USA and preach tolerance, they are “radical” whereas the rest of the world that embraces Islam, embraces jihad.
How do we “MEASURE” victory?
I think the perfect way to “measure” victory would be watching about a billion moslems having to permanently change (an unchangeable) faith, seek forgiveness of the rest of the world and divest it’self with jihadist, elitist, and violent ways.
Tall task you speculate….
Not really…
Can we beat the islamists in a conventional war or a nuke war?
Sure but that will not accomplish anything. Islam and it’s followers could care less about human life, since any sincere moslem would tell you, they love death as we love life… we are weak, they do not fear death, they are more than willing to die for allah…
What are the real targets of this upcoming battle?
We must understand the enemy… The enemy REALLY believes that this thing called ALLAH is real, is watching and is ON THEIR SIDE. No one dares to seriously confront them THE WAY THEY CONFRONT OTHER RELIGIONS…..
Let me say this again….
THE WAY ISLAM CONFRONT OTHER RELIGIONS…..
The gouge out the eyes of pagan statues, blow up other faith’s meeting places.. Ask a Jew, Christian or Hindu….
It is time to visit on Islam the easy solution…
make Islam change forever…
Islam by definition is incapable of change, it’s codified…
so how do we change islam….
well, the 1st thing is to LEARN what islam is…
To keep it simple there are 5 pillars of islam…
Two concern themselves with the Kaaba and Mecca…
Nuke Mecca and the Kaaba…
Thus force change on Islam….
Humiliate them, destroy their holy sites…
This will impress to the that Allah has abandoned them…
Do not conventionally destroy these sites (and if they protest or get violent? draw up a list in size and importance of every other world wide mosque or symbol they hold dear) nuke em…
trust me this will work..
go ahead take out mecca & the kaaba, and if they give us flak, nuke the next 15 or 20 major sites on the list….
see if that doesnt kick them in the ass…
RWE #38 said:
“… I was the USAF Space Division program manager for a MDAC contract. Due to that job I found out that MDAC had, “overran the AMARV contract out the whazoo” I think the quote from a very good friend was, who also ended up managing a MDAC contract. I suspect that was what killed AMARV, more than anything. But don’t forget that the Peacekeeper FSD decision was made in that same time frame and that may have obviated the value of AMARV.”
I’m not surprised that it was expensive. AMaRV’s design was revolutionary. AMaRV served as the prototype for the DC-X (same design team at MDAC) and for that reason its aerodynamic model was declassified. I’ve flown AMaRV inside my trajectory code and it’s amazing what it can do. I presume that Peacekeeper removed AMaRV’s value because the Peacekeeper had such a small CEP. However Peacekeeper used conventional RVs which could have been shot down with an ABM. There’s no way a non-nuclear ABM could have shot down an AMaRV once it was within the atmosphere. Of course a dumb RV would have been much cheaper than an AMaRV. Maybe that was the compelling argument against AMaRV, i.e. just saturate any conceivable Soviet ABM by shooting zillions of RVs at it.
Funny thing about AMaRV: I’ve got the flight data based aerodynamics for it, it’s dimensions and mass but I’ve never seen a picture of it.
MC a la the show, I was wondering if the french title of the jurist’s upcoming book means ‘things I could not talk about’ or ‘things I could not prove’. there is a vernacular difference which distinction would make me know if the author of the book was serious about terror or just about his retirement fund.
It seems to me that the mess with Al Queda going nearly headless, was known and explained here shortly after engaging the Taliban the first time. The operatives would split and morph into other groups in other venues in short order, but the continued identification and decapitation of the various groups would (although challenging) degrade the experiential rigor of the next set of leaders on down the line. In Pakistan the effort seems to me to be a reversal of the degradation process, where the good guys are becoming more scarce with every loss of US face.
Eliminating the Red Mosque school in Islamabad was a big part of the effort to roll back the Islamists in Pakistani affairs. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto can be traced as a reaction to that crack down. It is easily twisted to be viewed as a victory by the Islamists in both instances.
Most Pakistani people just like most Afghani citizens want no part of the Taliban, or Islamist rule, in the same way most Americans do not want any part of Obama’s health care, Geitner’s Economic care, or any Pelosi-Ayers perversion of Child care.
I do not think it is time yet to give up on the Bush Doctrine, which allows the citizens of States caught in the act of supporting terror the opportunity to stop. But we ought to have real consequences at hand, in case they do not take advantage of that opportunity.
What believable consequences will be offered up by president Obama? What can the president say at this point in time that any world leader would take seriously? Even if it becomes eminently clear that preemptive strikes are the only means at our disposal to deter an enemy attack, would president Obama act in the interest of the United States? Is president Obama’s definition of the best interest actually the legally, morally or constitutionally legitimate version of the best interest?
If you were a leader in Pakistan, how would you react? India? Iran?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The 0bama administration: See meaning of insanity above
There two distinct strategies being developed within the ummah. One is being worked out by Muslim Brotherhood and another by Iran.
MB is likely to wait for two things taking place. One is the 0′s second term. They paid for the first one via proxies and it worked so well, so they may try to double it to guarantee the result. The goal is to reduce the US military substantially first so there is no credible element to mount a response.
The second aspect is getting nukes. No need to produce them when they can get them. If they patiently wait and work through the system, the nukes just may fall into their lap. And not just any nukes. UK nukes are not the unreliable Pak nukes.
These two components need to reach their conjunction. Meanwhile, pinprick attacks done by Hasans would provide a gauge of related factors. Or once or twice doing a Beslan/Mumbai multiple attack to misdirect attention, and if they can outsource them to AQ, the merrier. Their target date frame for a major nuke attack of the USA is 2015-2019.
Iran (BTW, MB is secretly hoping that Israel will pre-empt them), as long as the mahdists are in power would go for the whole enchilada. They want armageddon. Their first nukes would have a defensive purpose, their version of MAD. They know that nuking Israel would probably make not much of a ripple. They can always nuke it later. They need to be able to launch nukes from anywhere, so they need a decent fleet of subs and ICBM type of vehicle for delivery. Their goal is to make it appear that the missiles are coming from US/Russia/China and then just watch the fireworks. ETA about 2015-2019.
Now as knocking out the pillars is concerned, it can be done on a shoestring ($150 million est.), without nukes (private enterprise) and make it appear like a natural (or better yet, supernatural) event. I have one specific, special date in mind.
Before someone asks… non-mahdist islamist Iranian elements just want to nuke Israel.
Darren @ 13: That was cogent, well thought out and spot on. Thanks. but, like you say, the current pResident Pantywaist will NOT do anything when that 3am call comes in. Just study it or something equally ineffective.
Habu @ 32: re: The Decline
I can see the lights going out across America. Which will bring me to what I want to say after I read the rest of the thread.
Josh @ 45:
This is called “Hama Rules” and coined by Michael Totten, I believe. Assad Senior found the local Palis troublesome so he surrounded them, isolated them, crushed and killed them all then salted the bulldozed earth of the town.
Okay, the “terrible if’s accumulate”, as it were.
1. We have the EU now meeting to take over their part of the globe. See the link below to a local PJM article. The Commintern won this round in Europe and is ready to put a totalitarian system in place. It took decades but what the heck.
Europeans Meet (Secretly) to Choose First-Ever EU President
2. The other bad actors are gathering their forces against the US. Why? That is a good question but the answers are not really what you might think. We have several things in North America, as a continent, that others may covet:
-Huge oil reserves in the heartland an off of the coasts.
-Huge natural gas reserves that have been drilled, logged and the wells capped for future use.
-Huge tracts of arable land capable of feeding the world. In fact we throttle back the farm capacity to not cripple the other places who are not as fortunate.
-Forests that are the envy of the world. Do you know that the Japanese buy the central beams from us for their shinto temples? Only we can grow them. Some of the tracts are on their 4th or 5th planting.
-Minerals that are fairly easy to get of all types. We have just crippled the extraction due to stupid environmental regs.
-Huge tracts of all types of coal, bitumen shales and tar sands near the surface.
3. So the bad guys nuke the cities and take the rest. OR
4. Maybe once the American system collapses The Won is positioning himself to arbiter of the sale of the resources to the highest bidder for he and his looter friends.
But the question is what would The Won do any different if he was trying to actively trying to destroy the Republic? My answer. No thing.
LOTM – I know you do not like Subotai’s construct of TWANLOC. But as a practical matter, who made it a reality? Subotai? No. Me? No. wretchard? No. The ones that made it real are the ones we are talking about. In reference see Napolitano’s DHS report about “right wing domestic terrorists”. The bad guys, the Trans-nationalists, are the ones who have declared us “Classical Liberals (read modern conservatives)” TWANLOC. The current regimeand it’s backers are the ones who have declared US ‘Ramen’ (those who we have not decided to kill, yet). Subotai has just described the phenomenon.
FWIW, I think the battle between Islam and the Christian West is quite similar to the one that Ender Wiggin finds himself the victor of. The Formics and Humanity have no way to communicate, until it is too late and the existential clash is already over.
Not so long ago, Putin announced that Russia successfully tested AMaRV. Not a prototype, but a real thing. He called it “hypersonic manoeurable re-entry vehicles”. He emphasized that they can penetrate multi-layered missile defence and have accuracy of dozen meters for ground targets.
RagnarD/55
Whtat’sa TWANLOC? Missed the definition somewhere earlier. Those Who Are Not Liberal Or Commies? (Guessing…)
But the question is what would The Won do any different if he was trying to actively trying to destroy the Republic? My answer. No thing.
Yes, that seems to be plainly in sight. Still, it is not as much 0ba Mao, being a front teleprompter man, as the puppeteers behind the curtains. The only contribution that is truly his is his gargantuan ego and the mirror on the wall. Though he puts his name on policies, they are generated by his “advisors” almost entirely.
So the bad guys nuke the cities and take the rest.
The first part, probably. The second part–won’t happen. Red Dawn would happen.
Maybe once the American system collapses The Won is positioning himself to arbiter of the sale of the resources to the highest bidder for he and his looter friends.
The Won is disposable. He would be gone before that point, exhausting his assigned purpose already.
Eggplant # 50: “I presume that Peacekeeper removed AMaRV’s value because the Peacekeeper had such a small CEP.”
Peacekeeper had so much more throw weight that it could carry a substantial penetration aids package (which were more or less tacked onto earlier boosters. Atlas strapped them to the tank) and also had a pretty substantial liquid fueled maneuvering upper stage that could drop off RVs in interesting ways.
By the way, while I was at the Pentagon the question came down from the USAF CSAF: “How much payload can a Peacekeeper put into orbit?” I called the ICBM guys and they replied “For a question like that you would have to talk to Dr. McCoy.” I just managed NOT to say, “Dr. McCoy is a doctor, not a rocket scientist. I would think Scotty would have a better handle on that kind of question.”
RE: Ragnar… Ender Wiggins, Xenocide. That’s an excellent analogy. Now see what you’ve done, I’m going to have to break Ender’s Game back out and read it yet again. Card’s incorporation of forgiveness to the xeno’s at the end was good, too. When they understood and sought peace they were accorded it.
The inevitable clash is not just between Islam and Christiandom. There’s also one coming between the transnationalists and those of us who percieve the freedom of self-determination as a gift given to all.
2×4… it’s a Subotai construct: Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.
The ISI’s work sounds like either a perpetual motion machine, or jobs for the boys.
WTF is the point of Pakistan
semi-deniably killing a few people in a nation of nearly a billion?
What is gained?
What are they thinking?
Start a war like the last half-dozen they’ve lost?
What?
I am inventing a new board game and I was wondering if the folks here would help me out with its design.
It’s called “Appropriate Response” and the object of the game is to devise the best counter-strategy to those who mean to take you out of the game, given a myriad of ways to do so.
First, of course, you are required to read and follow the rules. However, none of your opponents need do so. In fact, expect they won’t.
Second, by spinning a ballot card…wherever the hanging chad points…that person becomes a “partner” in the game who is assigned the title of “Commander in Chief” of your strategy. Upon his selection he will begin talking like Patton, but once the fur flies he will hit like Liberace.
He can, at his whim, choose to be (on your behalf) Churchill, Chamberlain or Chicken Little, and he has his own personal “reset” button which he is allowed to use…either openly or behind your back.
This automatically unwinds all your strategies and forces you to start over.
When you have completed your strategy and if you have not drawn the “attorney general” card from the deck (which eliminates your global strategy and reduces it to just one square on the board as a “local matter”), you then must submit your final option into the “message sorting machine”. The MSM randomly takes your ideas, your motives, your notions and your expression of them…and eliminates some words, changes phrases, attacks motives…and if your strategy survives these distortions…you win.
Otherwise, you are SOL and your opponents are given all your chips.
Wanna play?
Regarding Pakistan if the Pak military is running terrorist camps inside Pakistan then I don’t see how the US can defeat the terrorists inside Afghanistan. It was H Clinton who said that the situations on both sides of the Afghan/Pak border are interlocked. One can’t be solved without solving the other.
Regarding the Israel-Arab conflict I think we may be close to seeing the self-destruction of the PA and the Palestinian govt. While Obama’s mistakes in foreign policy may be the proximate cause of this, really all those mistakes have done is reveal the intrinsic weaknesses and contradictions within the Pal system. There is no central govt that controls all the Pal territory. There is no Pal leader (ruler) that is supported by the majority of the Pal people. There is no way that they can rule themselves. They have no firm commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Their rulers have never tried to prepare the Pal people for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. All of these things and more make a negotiated peace impossible, for now and maybe for ever. In reality there was probably nothing Obama could have done to fix these problems. The things he would needed to have done he would never agreed to have done. This would mainly include massive political pressure on the Arabs and the Pals to address these kinds of problems.
The basis of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Arabs is UN resolution 242. This is a very odd resolution. While it does say in its preamble that the acquisition of territory by force is not legitimate it doesn’t follow up on that idea at all. If the authors of that resolution really believed that Israel’s conquest of Arab territory was illegitimate why doesn’t it say this clearly. Why doesn’t it simply say: Israel Get Out? I think there are a few reasons why it doesn’t say that.
First, Israel conquered that territory in a defensive war. While it’s not the sort of thing the UN does, to legitimize the taking of territory by war, in this case Israel was completely supported by international law in taking and keeping that territory. I believe that the authors of the resolution knew this. They didn’t say it but they also didn’t contradict it either.
Also, when the resolution was written there had been three big wars between Israel and the Arabs in the previous 20 years. The authors’ objective was to devise a framework to solve the conflict, so there would be no more wars. Telling Israel to Get Out wouldn’t have solved that, and telling the Arabs that they couldn’t have their lands back also wouldn’t have solved the conflict. Instead they invented a completely new concept in international law: land for peace. This idea doesn’t exist anywhere else in international law and no other conflict has ever had this kind of a proposed solution. In reality either Israel had a right to the conquered territories according to intl law, or it didn’t. This Solomonic idea of land for peace doesn’t exist in intl law, before or since 242. In fact the minimal implication of 242 is that Israel has a right to the territories unless and until peace is negotiated.
The authors of the resolution believed that only a negotiated settlement between the sides would result in real peace, and I believe that that is the main reason that 242 was written the way it was. Let me say as an aside the 67 war was part of the cold war and the Soviet Union was a big part of the behind-the-scenes provocations that led to the war and was probably also an actor in the UN after the war.
In fact 242 has been partly successful. Israel has signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that although not perfect have led to a long period without major wars. However it may not be possible for 242 to work with the Syrians and the Pals without major changes in their viewpoints.
In the end I suspect a regional war will resolve things.
2×4 re: Red Dawn said:
And guess who wrote the definitive manual for fighting such insurgencies? Yup. Kinda smarts, doesn’t it?
Like was always pointed out to the Liberals screaming about “No blood for oil…” or whatever in Iraq. If we had wanted the oil and only the oil, we would have bypassed the cities and taken the oil fields, sucked them dry via Basra and moved on. There is not reason the same cannot be done in the NA area.
And as chaos reigns after the mushroom clouds clear, who is to say that they could not install some sort of puppet regime? And believe me, they will be not as nice in the battlespace as the US armed forces.
Going back to the “Enders Game” analogy:
SO the bad guys deploy their equivalent of the “Little Doctor” = Molecular Disruptor or MD – hence the name, and just wipe out the non-compliant. (BTW, that was the only way humanity could defeat the Formics, get close enough to the mother world and deploy the ultimate solution – MD = Xenocide) And since they have convinced the world that Americans are universally hated, there will not be much of a complaint from anyone. It also serves as a warning to those contemplating other insurgencies.
Utopia Parkway,
Regarding the wording of UN resolution 242 the story is even more complicated than you might think. The problem is that legally there was no border between Israel and any other entity within former Mandatory Palestine. There were borders between Palestine (as established by the British in the 1920′s) and other recognized international actors. Those were the French Mandates and their successor states of Syria and Lebanon to the North and Egypt to the South. There are minor disputes along the Syrian border, the Shaba’a Farms (that Hezbollah has tried to reassign to Lebanon to manufacture a casus belli and some question about the Galilee coastline but the fact that there is a true border that has standing in the law is not disputed. All other demarcations between assigned Jewish territories and other portions of the British Mandate were provisional and had no standing in International law. In 1948 Gaza was occupied by the Egyptian army and a Cease Fire was signed. The Jordanian army entered the West Bank and East Jerusalem and another Cease Fire was signed. Count Bernadotte also supervised agreements covering the North that closely followed the recognized borders. Those documents between the new State of Israel and Egypt or the KIngdom of Trans-jordan (as it was then known) did not create legal borders. That is why the territories are properly referred to as “Disputed” and not as “Occupied” by Israel. Egypt had no legal claim over Gaza as there is a proper border between the Strip and Sinai, which the Egyptians have always enforced. The Jordanians however themselves have a state within a portion of former British Palestine. The borders between two states within the Mandate can only be established by treaty. That happened when Israel signed a treaty with Jordan that fixed the Western border of Jordan at the river. That did not determine the status of territories between the river and Israel. There is not and never has been anything in International law that prevents Israel from annexing any or all of a stateless territory, as long as they deal properly with the inhabitants thereof. Israel would owe little to inhabitants of a territory that it determined not to include within it’s borders.
To be blogged under the title “Israel’s Borders.”
RWE #58:
“Peacekeeper had so much more throw weight that it could carry a substantial penetration aids package (which were more or less tacked onto earlier boosters.”
As a sort of hobby thing, I’ve studied the Titan-II and the Mk-6 RV. The Mk-6 was very important in the development of entry vehicles. The Mk-6 was such a large RV that the early development RVs were heavily instrumented and sometimes carried flight experiments. There was an extensive classified literature associated with the Mk-6 and some of it has been declassified.
When one studies the history of the Mk-6′s development, a couple weird things stick out:
First the Titan-II/Mk-6 as originally designed made extensive use of decoys. The adapter section behind the the Mk-6 had these launcher tubes for ejecting cleverly designed decoys. Also, it was clear from the literature that considerable effort went into developing these decoys. However when the Titan-II was actually deployed, the decoys were deleted, i.e. the Titan-II still had the decoy launcher tubes in its adapter section but the tubes were there for structural purposes only and did not carry decoys.
The other weird thing about the Mk-6 was its base cover. The original wind tunnel design of the Mk-6 called for a spherical section base cover. This makes good sense from the stand point of aerodynamic stability. However the deployed Mk-6 didn’t have a spherical section base cover. Instead it had a flat base made from a single sheet of TPS material, (nylon-phenolic?). From an RV dynamic stability standpoint, a flat base is the worst possible design and would have significantly degraded the accuracy of the Mk-6. General Electric at Valley Forge were the designers of the Mk-6 (they were good!) and would have immediately recognized the disadvantage of using a flat base for the Mk-6. Why did they degrade their design?
Eggplant: The question of why features designed into a system were not included operationally is one that gets asked a lot.
In the case of the C-5A, the ability to inflate and deflate the tires in flight to enable operation from both hard surfaced runways and forward airstrips was designed in from the outset and special bleed air powered compressors with some unique design features were built. But they never bought the hoses to enable the pumps to be hooked up and so the compressors remained on the shelf. One reason for this may have been that they realized that the few C-5As we had (the 2nd production run was scaled back greatly due to cost) were so rare and valuable that you would never risk them flying into a forward airfield where you could and normally would use a C-130.
Whatever the reason for the deletion of the penaids and the change in the aft section of the RV, it was probably quite mundane – like cost. Or maybe making the aft end of the RV spherical would have made it too hard to handle for the crews installing it.
LifeOfTheMind, actually the international border between Israel and Syria has been the main sticking point in all negotiations between those countries. It was the reason that negotiations broke down in 2000.
The border between Israel and Syria was earlier the border between the French and British mandates. In northern Israel there’s a large lake called the sea of Galilee. The French and British agreed to a border that put the Sea of Galilee completely inside the Palestine mandate even though the border between the two mandates runs close to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. In fact the border runs 50 meters from the Eastern shore of the lake. This was done to make sure that this major water source would be completely controlled by the population in the British mandate.
That border is simply not militarily defensible and the Syrians conquered the strip of land between what is known as the international border and the shore of the lake in 1948. They held this land, and access to the lake, until 1967 when Israel took it back along with the Golan heights, which are nearby.
In all negotiations the Syrians have demanded that the new border be along the shore of the lake and the Israelis have said that they will return to the international border only. Neither side has ever been willing to budge on this issue. Hafez Assad made remarks about swimming in the Sea of Galilee as a boy and preferred to walk away from negotiations than to give up that demand.
Regarding the west bank, all this talk of occupation and Palestinian territory is for the reason that I mentioned: it is believed that the only way to bring the conflict to a close is by negotiations. If the intl community were to say that Israel has a right to the entire west bank that would not help to solve any negotiations. There is a great dishonesty here and all dishonesties like this cause problems. Practically every country in the world is of the opinion that Israel is in violation of the fourth Geneva convention and ‘occupies’ Arab land, even though it’s not the case.
RWE #66 said:
“Whatever the reason for the deletion of the penaids and the change in the aft section of the RV, it was probably quite mundane – like cost. Or maybe making the aft end of the RV spherical would have made it too hard to handle for the crews installing it.”
I’m sure you’re right. Also group think along the lines of “too many cooks spoiling the broth” can lead to weird decisions. In a bungled aerospace project like X-33 it is typical that every single person is intelligent, competent and devoted to the project. However when group-think cuts in (the design team gets too large or is poorly managed), their collective IQ drops to the lowest common denominator. No doubt Norman Augustine has some law describing this.
Utopia Parkway,
We are not disputing the important facts here. The original Mandates were assigned by dividing up the Ottoman territory ruled from Damascus between the French and British. Messrs Sykes and Picot divided up the districts within the Damascus Vilyat. The boundaries within the Ottoman Empire were not surveyed or promulgated with all the formality of a demarcation between two tax districts in Germany. For the sake of argument I agree that the initial line as approved by the League of Nations would have been in the water of the Sea of Galilee (Kinneret) and it was shortly after moved East of the lake shore by an agreement between France and the UK. That agreement was in effect a binding treaty between two sovereigns and could establish a border in international law. Therefor the legal border between Mandatory Palestine and Syria was where Israel claims and that remains the border between their successor states, unless those states change it by a subsequent treaty.
Now the Arabs may claim that the actions of the Colonial powers were unjust. They may cry that reason, logic and the unswerving determination of billions cry out to undo the legacy of the League of Nations sponsored mandates and the successor Israeli settler state. None of that should matter or have any bearing in law. The standing and rights of the Arabs who contest Israel’s borders or presence are based in the same League of Nations, and earlier European initiated treaty, sponsored legal system that they would repudiate in this case. We could offer to return the French Mandated districts to the status quo ante 1880. That would entail giving entire region of the Levant back to the Turks, expelling most of the Shia from Lebanon West of the Bekaa valley, and dividing the remainder between the Druze and Christians and returning the descendants of the Sunni who migrated South. Somehow I do not think that is the deal they are looking for.
By the way one interesting point about the borders and occupation question happens in the case of Gaza. While for the Israelis the Gaza strip is a Disputed territory with no legal border between it and the State of Israel for the Egyptians it was an Occupied territory because they had to cross an international border to get there..
Habu, becuz Brugière is french, that adds pain in your A**, but take a good laxative , for this will really be more painful for your “ego” :
In 2006, Bruguiere went to the Pakistani port city of Karachi to investigate a suicide bombing that had killed 11 French naval contractors three years earlier. Pakistani security officials were uncooperative and hostile, he asserts.
“French officials in Pakistan were the target of threats and physical intimidation: a way of dissuading us from returning,” he writes.
The George W. Bush administration underestimated the threat in Pakistan largely because it was distracted by the war in Iraq, Bruguiere says. He says U.S.-French tensions over Iraq did not harm anti-terrorism cooperation, and he writes about his many friends and allies in U.S. law enforcement.
But Bruguiere says he warned U.S. officials that the war would worsen Islamic extremism. He dismisses former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as “men who did not understand the Arab world” and “felt invested with a quasi-divine sense of mission.”
At the same time, Bruguiere shares with U.S. conservatives a deep suspicion of Iran. Attacks by Iranian operatives in France and elsewhere show that Tehran’s security apparatus is the “real heart of power,” the book says.
Iran has used systematic deception to manipulate Western diplomats in talks about its nuclear program, while preparing a global terrorist infrastructure that could be used in a confrontation with the West, Bruguiere charges.
Iran also could strike in unexpected ways in remote places such as West Africa or Latin America, where Tehran’s longtime ally Hezbollah has an entrenched presence, Bruguiere warns.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-terror-judge4-2009nov04,0,3572513.story
MC a la the show, I was wondering if the french title of the jurist’s upcoming book means ‘things I could not talk about’ or ‘things I could not prove’. there is a vernacular difference which distinction would make me know if the author of the book was serious about terror or just about his retirement fund.
for those who don’t know who is Judge Brugière :
http://tinyurl.com/yhty25l
if you’d bad intentions toward our country, then better for you not to fall into Brugière’s nets !
He is the master position in France that could chase (even in foreign countries)and condamn “terrorists”, and also make some preventive arrestations.
Now ask you why we hadn’t major terrorist attacks in the past decades, when our neighbours had ! also why communitarism isn’t so effective by us… like in “anglo-saxon” “free countries !!!!!
that we were “right”, is difficult to swallow for your highnesses