Rudderless
Noah Schactman at Wired argues that the real national security choices that Barack Obama has made over his tenure have been largely misunderstood. They are not between competing models of security but are driven by something else. To make his point, Schactman cites a Reuters article quoting counterterrorism officials as saying that the executive order to close Guantanamo Bay has made it necessary to drone-kill more militants because “there’s nowhere to put them.”
Killing wanted militants is simply “easier” than capturing them, said an official, who like most interviewed for this story support the stepped-up program and asked not to be identified. Another official added: “It is increasingly the preferred option.” …
By some accounts, the growing reliance on drone strikes is partly a result of the Obama administration’s bid to repair the damage to America’s image abroad in the wake of Bush-era allegations of torture and secret detentions. …
Some current and former counterterrorism officials say an unintended consequence of these decisions may be that capturing wanted militants has become a less viable option. As one official said: “There is nowhere to put them.”
But by relying on offstage attacks to keep his humanitarian image squeaky-clean, President Obama has embarked on a scale of attacks that raise risks in themselves. Schachtman writes: “the real swap here isn’t secret jails for drone attacks. It’s counterterrorism for undeclared war.” What kind of trade in risks is this, why would anyone do it?
Because, if you believe Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, the real swap is strategic models for political convenience. That’s how decisions are made in the current White House. Commenting on the replacement of Dennis Blair, Hoekstra said: “Blair’s resignation is the result of the Obama administration’s rampant politicization of national security and outright disregard for congressional intelligence oversight. Blair’s resignation is disturbing and unfortunate. The concerns I have come from how the Obama administration conducts national security, not over the director of national intelligence, who they never allowed to do it.”
Congressional Republicans we will be watching closely who the president plans to name as a successor. Right now, the Obama administration’s national security apparatus is broken, dysfunctional and in disarray. Dennis Blair was the one person you could count on for rationality among Holder, Napolitano and Brennan—and he’s the one the president let go.
Even allowing for partisan hyperbole, it is an extraordinary accusation. The official story as told through the a variety of MSM outlets is exemplified by the NYT‘s account: Blair was not a good team player. He got in Panetta’s way. He mishandled the underwear bomber incident — not Napolitano. He opposed the drone hits in Afghanistan. He had lost the president’s confidence. But in a roundabout sort of way the official story squares with Hoekstra’s accusation: “the Obama administration’s national security apparatus is broken, dysfunctional and in disarray.” The only difference in their accounts is that Hoekstra lays the blame at the feet of Obama, while the official story hangs the rap on Blair.
It’s easy to believe the dysfunction is real. Faced by the linked yet separate crises in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia the Obama administration is acting like it was shot through the central nervous system, acting in uncoordinated jerks. The alliances with Korea and Japan and the special relationships with Israel and Britain lie almost forgotten like neglected toys on the floor of a spoiled child distracted by his latest bauble. Gone are the heady prospects of Grand Bargains with the Muslim world kicked off by dramatic speeches in Cairo. Gone is the idea of a swift drawdown from Iraq; or of a comprehensive solution in the Middle East. Gone is the promise of catching Osama Bin Laden. Gone is the notion that Europe, which once hated America because of George Bush, would turn like a blossoming rose to Obama. In their place are half-finished begun threads without closure: a growing Hezbollah menace in Lebanon; a defiant Iran; a belligerent North Korea; a buffoonish but menacing Chavez; a drug war on the southern border; an Eastern Europe with the shadow of the Russian bear growing ever longer across it.
The long delay in Obama’s meeting with General McChrystal in Afghanistan was once explained by Andrew Sullivan’s claim that “we have a President” whose strange actions meant that he was too thoughtful, too brilliant, too scholarly to be easily understood by a doltish public. Sullivan wrote:
The news that Obama has refused to sign off on any of the four major options presented to him in Afghanistan reminds me of why he was elected president. This critical decision – arguably the most critical of his young presidency – is one that will not be rushed the way such decisions often are. His insistence that the civilian branch truly control policy there and that empire not be passively accepted as a fait accompli are real signs of strength in the struggle to recalibrate American foreign policy. Can you imagine Bush ever holding out like this on the military?
Maybe Sullivan has a better grasp of the president’s hidden thoughts, but the situation he described would be outwardly indistinguishable from Hoekstra’s claim that “the Obama admnistration’s national security apparatus is broken, dysfunctioal and in disarray.”Maybe it’s not true; maybe it’s just Hoekstra’s political posturing, but it’s not entirely implausible that he’s right and the Obama administration has simply lost it. That in place of rational strategies there are only competing political agendas that have advanced, with a mad and narrow rationality so that the grotesque success exemplified by the increase in drone attacks compensates for the closure of Guantanamo. ‘We killed them so that we would not be accused of violating their human rights.’ If so the next few months promise to be even more exciting than the last, but not in a way that inspires optimism. There are a lot of smoldering fires lit everywhere and the potential for a cascading crisis is manifestly present.
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Every time I see it I blink: why in God’s name is Leon Pannetta DCI!? Political scum should not be in charge of strategic spear-point operations against our enemies. Maybe we should change to the British model, where the identity of the head of intelligence is secret.
It is amateur hour where U.S. foreign policy, economic policy and national security are concerned. I have no doubt that Rep. Hoekstra is right on target. We are in deep doo doo and everyone who counts on us is as well.
A “place to put them” is not needed. I suggest Snatch, interview, release, follow then drone.
When I deployed to Afghanistan in ’02, my father said jokingly, “Don’t feel you have to capture Bin Laden alive.”
We both knew the anti-war folks would raise a ruckus if we did and perhaps AQ would try some sort of terror operation to get him back. The peaceniks eventually did with Saddam and his sons, but even they couldn’t cast those dudes in a sympathetic light.
So at the cost of quiet in the press, San Francisco and New York, we trade immediate harm to the enemy for intelligence on future activity by the enemy.
We are broadcasting that the AQ are dying like flies, but do we really know? Perhaps the psychological effect on the enemy is worth it, but against terrorists intelligence is everything.
The self-hobbling never ends. Now there’s this concern about us taking out an American born traitor with a UAV. Unconstitutuional, unAmerican. Oh the agony.
The Obama admin’s security policy is not at all “broken, dysfunctional and in disarray.” It is working perfectly according to the plan, which is to weaken America as much as possible in order to create a massive flash point they can use to grab domestic power permanently.
The only part of Hoekstra’s comments that I disagree with are when he attempts to build Blair up into something he was not. Blair was ridiculously incompetent from Day 1; his incompetence finally became so overwhelming that even his fellow incompetents couldn’t afford to put up with it anymore.
Ironically, kill instead of capture is not a policy I have much of a problem with.
We–which is to say Obama, which is to say, us–wouldn’t be in this box, or not quite so well and truly boxed, were it not for the dems, lefties, libs, Islamophiles and other America haters in this country exaggerating, playing up and manufacturing stories of torture.
The foreign libs, lefties, Islamophobes, and other America haters would do that, in any case, but our guys reinforced it, making it seem more certain.
Obama’s people were part of this.
Didn’t they think…?
1. dan
Heard Krautheimer say on fox that Panetta spends a lot of his time in Monterrey these days.
What we lose with the Obama method is the intelligence that could have been gained by interrogation. As always the true costs are opportunity costs. To the fantasists this is not a bug but a feature. With less information they have a cleaner set of data to consider so to them the system looks more functional, until it fails catastrophically. This is like the Seaman who changes the range on the radar repeater from 6 miles to 1 without telling anybody. Things sure do look cleaner and easier to understand until a contact does show up, real big and close.
Bro Ken, Dys Funk Shen-al and Dis Ari Ray sound like the new Kitchen Cabinet.
wws,
Concur, Blair was responsible for attempting to install the anti-Semite Chas Freeman as his aide. That episode in rattling the Israeli cage might have been all he was intended for.
This will end badly. As a data point, consider that loon apologizing to the Chinese about human rights abuses in Arizona. If this exemplifies mature thoughtful national strategy advanced by smart diplomacy we are in a world of doo doo. Based on this example, why would anyone assume that competent implementation of sound strategy exists anywhere in this administration?
Anyway, gotta run – need to pick up some more canned goods and ammo.
Mr. Aubrey:
“…were it not for the dems, lefties, libs, Islamophiles and other America haters in this country exaggerating, playing up and manufacturing stories of torture.
The foreign libs, lefties, Islamophobes, and other America haters would do that, in any case, but our guys reinforced it, making it seem more certain”
More and more I’m beginning to be persuaded that the domestic Left and the foreign Left is a distinction without a difference.
In fact, I suspect that this has more or less always been so, and that the good folks at the John Birch Society, (among others), have been trying to alert us to this all along.
I think that when Obama said he would “fundamentally restructure the U.S.” he meant it.
It’s like this: You decide to fundamentally restructure your life. Get rid of that stogey old reliable Camrey and buy a new high tech plug-in hybrid car. It gets so much better gas mileage that you can move to the beach. Its Blue Tooth and other features means that you can work and listen to classical music during the much longer commute, which will cost you no more in gasoline because of the new car’s 100 MPG. And at your new place at the beach you can transition into a new career making salt water taffy in your kitchen and selling it along your paintings of dogs playing poker on the weekend. Eventually you can quit your stupid $100K job at Merryl Lynch and just do want you want.
But as you wait delivery of the new car the specs keep being revised – downward. When it finally arrives it is a rusty 1976 Plymouth Volare with a CB radio instead of Blue Tooth, a scratchy AM radio and an 8 track tapedeck. It gets 100 mpg – of oil.
So the move to the beach becomes problematic. And then you find out that no one eats salt water taffy any more and the dog paintings are not nearly as popular as you thought. Not that it matters because the old Volare won’t make it to and from the beach. And that job at Merryl Lynch you want to quit, well, turns out that won’t be a problem…
Obama was taking what we like to call a “Systems Approach.” Fix the international situation by being Mr. Nice Guy and that goes away as an issue. That in turns let you divert funding to domestic concerns, and that lets you take over companies and that lets you transform the tax structure and that lets you…
Turns out he bought a Volare. The rest of the house of cards is not even that well along.
And dammit, there is almost no classical music on 8 track….
As a regular reader of Bill Roggio’s Long War Journal I have followed the drone attacks closely. He covers each one and it is clear that the frequency has increased dramatically under Obama – he has the breakdowns on the site. That said, I keep finding myself thinking that there are obvious advantages to combining drones with special forces operations to seize or kill high value targets in the Tribal Territories. That would seem the obvious course if the Obama administration and Democrats generally were serious about criticizing the Bush administration for failing to capture or kill bin Laden. Personally, I think they were serious and I think the criticism was reasonable – and I still half expect the Obama administration to press that sort of action home. It would have huge political advantages for them. (And obvious disadvantages if the special forces got tangled up with the Pakistani Army or simply failed in some public way.)
However, having read about all the contending forces within the Bush administration seriously damaging its efforts to prosecute the war on terror I am quite willing to believe that the Obama administration is also in disarray. (I found Doug Feith’s much ignored War and Decision particularly helpful to understanding Bush’s problems.) I think there are ideological divisions within the Obama administration too and there may be many reasons to explain the increased attacks. They really are a game changer in asymmetric warfare. For example, al Qaeda cannot inflict politically damaging human casualties on unmanned drones. Moreover, the drones restore a certain symmetry. We can’t stop them driving SUVs full of fertilizer into Times Square and they can’t stop us turning Muj meetings in North Wazirastan into moments of absolute terror and death. I might doubt Obama’s sang froid to use drones as a replacement for Guantanamo except that he just publicly passed a death sentence on a terrorist who is a US citizen. (Don’t we have secret presidential findings for that?) At the same time we have Holder’s refusal to say the M word in congressional testimony which at least ties St Peter’s record for denial. Disarray? Very possibly, and with it the serious danger of cascading events getting inside the Administration’s OODA loop.
RWE,
Volare
Dino before the dinosaurs any day.
If the Republicans run a platform of restoring Romance then maybe they can win back whiskey’s women.
Left wing politicians in the West are priests of a religion. Their belief system simply can’t cope with the idea that certain people just hate us, and a round of apologies won’t at least make a big step in the right direction. They appreciate they have to do something to protect the nation because they are in power, hence the drone strikes, but it’s out of a sense of complete helplessness. There’s nothing else they can do.
I can only imagine the great sigh of relief from state sponsors of terrorism. Their campaign contributions were well worth it. No wonder Iran feels so much more emboldened by this administration. All this wonderful deniability handed to them on a platter. Connect us with Hizbollah, Hammas, or AQ, we dare you.
If your know for a fact all the terrorists you set in motion will never finger you or be turned against you you can proceed with so much less risk.
Doesn’t anyone watch Jack Bauer? The last few shows have Jack in a mood for vengence “exposing” but really concealing a Russian plot to stir up trouble in the Middle East. Jack keeps bumping off the bad guys who can attest to the Russian involvement. The audience buys into to this because Jack’s style of interrogation would not hold up in court so I guess no one can ever point the finger at Russia…in court. Oh well, I digress…
Does Dennis Blair’s change in employment have anything to do with his dislike of the plan to deploy many of our aircraft carriers close to Iran?
7. Richard Aubrey.
No. They’re ivy-leaguers, and not required to.
49er
Everybody thinks, at least if your definition includes– an idea occurs to them.
If you’re an Ivy, I guess that’s all the further you think you need to go.
At least, that’s what the Ivy experience tells you.
Recall Redford in The Candidate: “Now what?” And, if I recall correctly, he wasn’t going to be competing with his own campaign.
RWE I watched this video several months ago and have been trying to understand just how much is true and how much is hype. Obama is a major actor in this video but the video is about much, much more.
I present it to BC for your consideration. It is quite long so you may want to watch it in installments over the weekend.
“The Obama Deception”
I myself have much to do with my girls if weather permits and I need to give my mind and soul a break from this madness.
Papa Ray
North Korea commits an act of war and says, you censure us, we are all in.
Iran says we are going to destroy Israel,…for starters.
Russia is arming Venezuela with weapons against mutual enemies (guess who).
Taliban has made multiple strikes against the USA homeland (only God has kept it from being effective).
Individual states are having to provide for their own defense.
Unemployment continues to rise.
Stock market continues to crash.
Hezbollah has Scuds.
Hamas has rockets.
Oil is still pouring into the ocean.
Price of oil and gas is going up.
Food prices are going up.
Now, if there are any Democrats that read this blog, will you kindly tell me how things are much better since the recent election has turned our government over to you?
Edit note: Have I missed anything?
uncoordinated jerks
That’s the Obamanation in brief.
Here’s the thing about Obambus’ greatly increased use of drone attacks – it’s a case of him having lurched into exactly the right action. If you want “proportional” response to terrorism, that’s it. Show the bastids how it’s done. Now, me, I don’t believe in that kind of proportion, it’s letting the enemy set the agenda and the game plan. Maybe they like it, even if they lose 10x what we do. I’m afraid that’s just the case. I believe the moral, ethical, and pragmatic answer to terrorism is B-52s full of iron bombs. For starters. But drone strike terrorism for terrorism is a winning play, on a small and poetic scale.
As for Blair … he does seem a bit of a wild hare, and who is going to be able to do any better job, in the Obamanation? Nobody. Well, almost nobody. One guy comes to mind.
Bob Gates.
He seems to have the ability to keep Obambus’ attention and credibility, in the service of intelligent action. Gates is a good ol’ public servant in those regards, in my humble opinon. Somehow there just aren’t many around like him anymore, when we used to have bipartisan cabinets full of them, back … a couple of generations.
One more thought from the Means and Ends Thread
Just as the speech about moral courage at westpoint was unintelligible/rudderless because it made no reference to God–from whom moral courage comes…..so too the Heart of Darkness is unintelligible/rudderless–without reference to the human sacrifice that inspired the novel.
Why do I say this?
There is a problem with the money quotes of the Heart of Darkness “The Horror The Horror” and “Exterminate the brutes”.
The problem is this.
We don’t really see anything that’s so horrible and consequently the conclusion “Exterminate the brutes” doesn’t make sense. What we see are some indian settler type skirmishes. and some scary nights, a dastardly deed or two and some unhappy people hung out to dry in the torrid zone by their life’s gambit.
According to this review:
…….
— Marlow reports seeing what appeared at first to be round balls atop Kurtz’ fenceposts, but which later turn out to be impaled human heads — but what troubles Marlow even more is Kurtz’ fascination with dark primitive rites. We are never told precisely what these rites entail; Conrad leaves that to the morbidity of our own imaginations. But we are assured that Kurtz’ participation in them is utterly depraved.
………..
Morbidity? So somewhere offscreen something really bad happened and it wasn’t the natives who did it. and however bad it was depends on the state of our conscious
Horror makes no sense until you read the back story. The human sacrifice in Benin that inspired The Heart of Darkness. Then the biz makes sense. But the the story itself? nah.Here read the short cliff notes of The Heart of Darkness
Horror makes sense when people are confronted by sacrificed corpses stuck on trees in increasing quantity as the british were as they approached the city of Benin in 1897 in present day Nigeria.
The action reaction The Horror Exterminate the brutes is just the way Cortez and his men reacted to Aztecs homosexual priests and their human sacrifices. The spanish figured pretty much figured they were God’s arm. So really. The Spanish put the Aztecs to the sword.
Nor was this the first time such a reaction occurred. When Moses and Joshua were confronted with the abominations of Caanan what did God tell them to do? Yeah you got it. Exterminate them.
Now there is a breath taking arrogance/confidence/certainty to men who are rewriting the genetic code/language/culture for a land.
Think that’s now gone?
Nope. It ain’t.
You just have to look for it someplace else. Consider:
A step toward artificial life; man-made DNA powers cell
These guys are writing the genetic code. They’re no longer just reading it. Now reed’in is one thing but rite’in is quite another.
Within a day of this announcement–this AP story came out.
Church warns cell scientists not to play God
(Ventor’s group is interested in making resilient blue green algae that they can milk for an abundance of oil–but of course the technology could one day put to other strange purposes. They might make minotaurs, centaurs or elephant men to infest the grounds of kings.)
Remember Jesus is union of God and mortal man. His substitutionary sacrifice for our sins is sufficient to enable us individually one by one to enter into the presence of God from whom comes such blessings as grace mercy and moral courage.
Response to President Calderon
“an Eastern Europe with the shadow of the Russian bear growing ever longer across it.”
I do have to ask what our host means by ‘the shadow of the Russian bear’. If he means that Russia is going to acquire more influence in Europe than the U.S., well to a certain extent once the Russians began to acquire a modern economy that was inevitable. 170 million of them (throw in Belarus, which basically is just a buffer state between Russia and Poland and the Russophone Moldovans, Crimeans and Kazahks) closer at hand versus 300 million Americans an ocean away. The real question is if Russia is now going to use gas and investments to achieve geopolitical aims, what has Germany been doing with the EU for the last fifteen years while Washington (until those euroskeptic Bushies came along) cheered? Why is the former great and the latter eeeeevul?
Given the looming failure of the Euro if not the EU as a whole, and the well-documented links between the German corporate and political elites with Muscovy, Berlin doubles down. They solve the Ukraine-Russia bickering by inviting Russia AND Ukraine into the Union at the same time over the fierce objections of the other old core and New Europe members. This way Ukraine, 70% of which wants closer relations with Russia, also gets the EU (but not NATO) membership the people want (i.e. no more need for Schengen visas for Ukrainians wanting to work in Europe – THAT is what EU membership means to Ivan Kyev). Russians in Latvia start suing under EU rules for discrimination against their language and culture. The NY Post’s Ralph Peters starts quoting hysterical Poles saying it’s the Second Molotov Ribbentropp/Rapallo Berlin-Moscow axis and the UK Sun publishes articles about how EU visa free travel means London will become Londongrad riddled with FSB plants. A few old Germans with money start buying more property in Konigsberg – er Kaliningrad. Etc etc etc.
These are not exactly difficult predictions to make, given Europe’s desperation for [non-Muslim, cough cough] labor, Russian elites love of all things German (has any BCer other than myself been to Moscow and seen all those shiny black bumers? Unlike in SoCal when you see them in Moscow they’ve usually been bought with cash and double the U.S. price with import duties).
Lastly, to those BCers who will object that Russia is demographically doomed quoting the latest Mark Steyn piece, I would remind them that Russia is still more demographically and economically robust than much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
http://trueslant.com/markadomanis/2010/05/11/newsflash-post-communist-countries-are-experiencing-severe-economic-problems/
I have to confess that I’m not too bothered about Islamic fascists being drone killed. Yeah, I guess there’s some tactical advantage to capturing them and then hauling them off to Jordan or Egypt for interrogation. However I suspect most of the intelligence harvested from captured terrorists was stale before it could be put to effective use. Then there is the fuss and bother of shipping the terrorists off to Gitmo for cold storage. It’s much better to simply kill them and be done with it. Of course this does not justify what Obama is doing. He wants to shutdown Gitmo to please his moonbat base (got to have that warm and fuzzy feeling) and doesn’t give two hoots about the national security implications of letting monsters loose. I might add that’s another advantage to killing Islamic fascists on the battlefield, i.e. it doesn’t enable the moonbats to release the bastards later on.
I have no problem with offing terrorists–although getting actionable intel first is preferable. What I find interesting is how no mention, none at all, is made about the humanity of drone strikes. Instead of snatching someone and putting them up at Hotel Gitmo, we launch a surgical strike that takes out their family. Surely there is more collateral damage from dramatically stepped up drone strikes than from snatch and grabs.
It seems to me the problem with killing bad guys because Obama wants to preserve his humanitarian image is less of an issue right now than it will be in the near to middle future. When Iran attacks Israel, Venezuela attacks Colombia, and the Norks attack Seoul, what will our our humanitarian-in-chief do then? That’s the really scary scenario. F
Um, because Russia *is* evil? Duh?
Mr. X, how much does the SVR pay for internet trolling? I’m genuinely curious.
Arguing against Combat Driods is like King Knut (Canute) and the tide.
They are here, they work and they will proliferate.
http://www.bctmod.army.mil/systems/arval/index.html
We are less then a decade from building and fielding the T-1000 of Terminator fame. The politicians won’t fund any sort of Cylons ( unless they are allowed to vote and programmed to vote Democratic), but so long as there is a human in the loop and that human is safe here in the USA, Warbots or combat droids are ideal from a politicians perspective. No grieving widows writing letters, no crying orphans or wack job moms hanging around the office.
Few politicians have problems killing furreners, since they can’t vote. Plus if the factory is in your state, you get good jobs for the voters. So long as there are no bible quotes on the missiles.
Targeted assassination is the answer to asymmetrical warfare. It reduces collateral damage and gets the men on white horses before they can do real harm. Once we have enough UACV’s to start going after the Mullahs that preach Jihad, this war is over.
When it comes to the drone attacks, there is something that has been bothering me. The selection of targets requires intelligence (in the military sense of the word). The gathering of intelligence is greatly improved by actually capturing people. Therefore, Obama’s “strategy” is marked by a very callous version of the law of diminishing returns. With such poor intel, the targets will get more and more random over time. Therefore, they will kill fewer terrorists, more civilians, and lose their efficacy (and morality) for both reasons.
Would someone with actual expertise confirm for me if that is a valid analysis?
AzA @ 33 said:
“When it comes to the drone attacks, there is something that has been bothering me. The selection of targets requires intelligence (in the military sense of the word).”
And there’s the $64,000 question: How do they know where the bad guys are when they target the Predators? Is al Qaeda and the Taliban already so interlaced with traitors that we don’t need to capture any of them for interrogation or are we simply targeting bad guys at random and then lying about the targets being top level bad guys?
Wretchard – “…the potential for a cascading crisis is manifestly present.”
CASCADES
The snow-peaked Cascades loom afar
Horizon bonded, chained
They wander not, immoveable
Majestic, God explained
But other cascades loom anear
Unchained by graft and greed
Let loose by ideology
And long time leftist creed
They threaten now to cascade down
The mountains that we’ve made
To bury us in snow and ice
Man made, snow peaked, cascade
Agree with Dan re: Mr. X. Great writing job – Vlad couldn’t have done better. Russia is the world’s best-honed Mafia state. Nor does it intend to ‘peacefully coexist’ with anyone, just bloody whoever is within reach, and disdain decent countries.
Eggplant,
According to the government, the drone attacks are moving down the chain of command. Wretchard made a point of why this happens, instead of going up the chain, which in isolation would seem to make more sense.
So, we’re not insisting that every bad guy snuffed is a O6 or up.
Additionally, I understand there are behavior metrics which are said to indicate badguyism, as distinct from merely being an illiterate ridge runner with an easily-offended sense of honor and too much ammo.
Hope so.
When it comes to the drone attacks, there is something that has been bothering me. The selection of targets requires intelligence (in the military sense of the word). The gathering of intelligence is greatly improved by actually capturing people.
Capturing people is not the point, getting them to talk is the point, and we’re apparently more interested in reading them their Miranda rights than in getting them to answer questions.
Anyway, the point of terrorism is to terrorize, and you don’t really need precise information if that’s the goal. In fact, maybe we don’t even want to ask.
dan @ 31 asked
“Mr. X, how much does the SVR pay for internet trolling?”
Don’t you think it’s just an ordinary civil servant’s wage, i.e. not great but has excellent job security. When not trolling blogs, they’re writing spam or programming spambots. It’s a 9-5 government job that provides a good pension with early retirement.
A friend gave me this analogy of the Executive branch. He said think about the movie the Godfather and what would have happened if Fredo had taken over the Corleone family.
Yet another wrinkle to the whole Party of Death thing.
I guess it makes sense. Once the murder of innocent children becomes the most sacrosanct plank in your political platform, pretty much all moral decay would have to get normalized, by necessity.
With the exception of the drone strikes, which are probably at partially or mostly Pakistani-driven, the Big O doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a plan. We’ll know the Paks are tired of the drone strikes when the Reapers blow up a couple of schools or clinics in a row, all the ISI has to do is poison the target list that way and our ability to conduct drone strikes will be heavily compromised. Of course, if drone strikes were meant to be a really effective means of “Confronting Violent Extremists” or whatever the mealy-word is this week, we’d be seeing a lot more drone hits in Yemen, where the bad guys seem to be active. I don’t believe that BHO is really a fan of extrajudicial execution by drone, it’s just what he needs to do to keep the Paks on side.
Domestically, the Obama Plan seems to come down to CYA. This is operative at many level. We can almost take it as read that intelligence is not going to find the jihadists before they act. Therefore, the “First Responders” are Fort Hood police officers, a Dutchman sitting in coach, and a T-shirt vendor. They are the people who are Cing your A, and their own in the process. We are all on our own. If there is a Mumbai or Beslan-style attack, it’s up to the people on the scene to work it out. My lesson from this: pay attention, be armed to the fullest extent of local law and prepared to act, and go about your business otherwise.
The CYA strategy also applies after the event is complete. BHO is Cing his own A by throwing Blair under the bus. The media are the only ones who don’t C their own A, they C Obama’s A.
The only advantage of this system is that it is cheap. It’s funny that in economics BHO is apparently allergic to the systematic application of each person following their own enlightened self-interest, but when it comes to security by design or by default our domestic terrorism response system at the pointy end of the spear is a form of capitalism.
“Lastly, to those BCers who will object that Russia is demographically doomed quoting the latest Mark Steyn piece, I would remind them that Russia is still more demographically and economically robust than much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans.”
That’s like saying that the man with mid-stage terminal cancer is still better off than the man with congestive heart failure. I’ll bet all of you are in better shape than the Byzantine Empire – so what?
Just because your associates are going to die before you do doesn’t mean that you get to survive. It just dictates in what order your headstones need to be carved.
For your enjoyment – produced in 1981, and worth your watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGfN3WRA0Vc
Obama might have stumbled into an acceptable short term approach to the problem of terrorists in the Pakistan-Afghanistan theater of operations, but this strategy has serious problems for the long term, and raises serious questions, at least for me.
1. To what extent, if any, are the drone attacks reducing the number of terrorists? That is, are we killing more terrorists than the Madrassas and training camps are turning out? Drones and missiles are expensive, after all, and terrorists, as the old saying goes, can be churned out in vast numbers with unskilled labor.
2. Whom, exactly, are we killing? Trained cadre, bomb-makers, planners, and the like? Or cannon-fodder recruited because they want to die for Allah and know how to shoot an AK-47?
3. To what extent is the kill not capture policy sacrificing long-term information for short term attrition? When will this reach the point of diminishing returns?
4. And perhaps most important of all, how does this policy deter future terrorist attacks? Are we more likely to deter by killing than by imprisonment in Gitmo? (note this may actually be a point in Obama’s favor – maybe the drone attacks do deter, at least to some extent).
Wretchard, your thoughts?
Darren at #42 Yep; CYA summarizes about everything The Big Zero is up to.
My main concern with these drone strikes is that they are “wasting ammunition”.
To illustrate: Was it proper to send out a flight of P38s to kill Admiral Yammamoto? Of course. His demise
measurably weakened Japanese naval capabilities. Even if the mission had failed and the planes failed to return, the effort was certainly worth making.
But do you mount the same kind of mission with the same kind of risk to knock off a Japanese Chief Petty Officer who is a holy terror to prisoners under his charge? No you do not. As much as he needs killing and as much as you would like to succor the unfortunates, the fact remains that this mission does nothing to reduce enemy capabilities including the ability to torture prisoners with a replacement.
Same principle applies to those being targeted by the drones. I fear that we have run out of targets who recruit, organize, train and deploy. Instead we are concentrating on those who are recruited, (sorta) organized and (sorta) trained and (sorta) deployed.
And the problem may well be compounded by diverting Predators from their primary mission of gathering intelligence thereby depriving the grunts of gathering
threats to their civic action efforts.
Now cruising at Pucker FActor 1.25, Captain.
In the demolition business, the folks who know how to use the wrecking ball have a plan, and they execute it with precision. But the Executive branch of our republic is not supposed to operate within the guidelines of the demolition business.
Mindless damage always opens the question of whether it is the outcome of pure incompetence, or pure malevolence, or some devilish combination of both. Either way, it’s distressing, because this administration has planted the seeds of trouble, within, and elsewhere.
Dave,
Guess the theory is that if you keep cutting the heads off the hydra, eventually they’ll stop coming out simply due to loss of mass. The muj learned to not engage US ground forces on equal terms in Iraq, perhaps their logistical tail will figure out that some other means of aggregation will keep them alive, even if it is less effective. This is, as you point out, a diminshing-returns kind of operation, but if the guy training bomb-makers is the fifth-best guy, maybe that’s a good thing. And if the sixth-best has to take over, so much the better. There is also the “who talked?” aspect, by now the muj know that Hellfires are going to come slamming down and their operational issue is to try and figure out how they were found. Paranoia isn’t such a bad thing when it’s your enemies that cannot trust each other.
There is also the issue that we are probably eliminating the ISI’s “Least Favorites In The Tribal Areas” list, which may be to short-term benefit in terms of keeping operational nukes in the hands of a frenemy political system but is spreading seeds just like kicking dandelions. Downstream, if those nukes fall into the hands of people whose family members were zapped from on high by a Reaper, do you think they will balk at lobbing an IRBM at a US target? Me neither, not if they think they can get away with it.
I don’t know if its even accurate to say that Obama has any real policies foreign or domestic unless you count mouthing progressive platitudes as being policies. Its like a poor person saying “I want to be rich.” Unless you have a game plan (however flawed) to get from rags to riches it isn’t much different than writing a letter to Santa Claus asking him to bring you two tons of gold for Christmas.
The only strategy or tactics he has ever employed or has any knowledge of is geared towards attaining positions he is not qualified to hold. Other than that he is clueless.
I think people give him too much credit for being behind the recent legislative monstrosities like Obamacare. He was glad to go along with it and take the credit (if you can call it that), but in reality I don’t think he could or would have authored a bill that would have put such a structure in place anymore than he ever bothered to write a law review article when he was at Harvard. And–how many bills did he originate when he was in Congress? Do I hear the sound of crickets chirping?
Its more the Congress and the Powers that lurk behind them that are responsible but the One is glad to aid them.
He doesn’t really have policies or strategies at all–just cliches to drag out when he needs to exhibit his own delusional self image of moral superiority.
Pyramids brings up a good point. Remember just a few years ago how all we heard was the “we’re creating more terrorists than we are killing” thing. Doesn’t that meme fit Buraq’s Afghan/Pak approach to a T. Indiscriminate killing of people we kinda sorta think are terrorists, but aren’t really sure- could be a good rallying cry against us for those Pakis not so inclined to the Taliban or AQ, but nationalistic nonetheless. Where does this policy in the end lead us?
No place we really want to go I’m sure.
The knock on Bush was that he didn’t ever explain or defend his policies. Buraq on the other hand, will defend his actions with nasty glib put downs, but he has never had a coherent explanation for what we are doing because he has no coherent policy. Except for the Blair defense, the Hoekstra comment rings true; everything by Buraq is done on the fly for political expedience with little effort or thought, without ever considering the ultimate consequences. Partying down with the brothers or looking good for the media is what’s really important to our arrogant sicko CIC.
The world is going up in flames while Nero fiddles.
To me the major issue is that we have a large group of inexperienced academics in the White House. Few if any of them have a grasp of the real world, having never worked in it. They have only theory and too often theory and reality simply do not coexist. They had in Blair a real world guy who understood intelligence. The problem is that academics simply do not want to hear facts that contradict their theories and a marked tendency to ignore any fact which does not support what they think they know.
And so we have the current situation. The Obama administration is trying to downplay and act of war off South Korean waters. The South Koreans are not prepared to act, having no certainty we will back their play, and our enemies once again see us acting weak.
Make no mistake, Kim Jong Il, Achmedinajad, Chavez et. al. are like an yother predator, weakness is to be exploited and attacked. This is the image we portray to the rest of the world — a wounded animal blundering about waiting to be finished off.
pyramids @ 45: 1. To what extent, if any, are the drone attacks reducing the number of terrorists? That is, are we killing more terrorists than the Madrassas and training camps are turning out? Drones and missiles are expensive, after all, and terrorists, as the old saying goes, can be churned out in vast numbers with unskilled labor.
2. Whom, exactly, are we killing? Trained cadre, bomb-makers, planners, and the like? Or cannon-fodder recruited because they want to die for Allah and know how to shoot an AK-47?
3. To what extent is the kill not capture policy sacrificing long-term information for short term attrition? When will this reach the point of diminishing returns?
4. And perhaps most important of all, how does this policy deter future terrorist attacks? Are we more likely to deter by killing than by imprisonment in Gitmo? (note this may actually be a point in Obama’s favor – maybe the drone attacks do deter, at least to some extent).
1. Let’s assume no real net effect, madrasas probably turn out 100k/year and we’re probably killing less than 10k/year. But that’s not the point. The point is to have SOME pushback. The point is, if there is anybody there with a brain, that they consider the cost of jihad as being raised. Drones and missiles are very cheap, by our standards. And get cheaper when produced and used in volume!
2. Don’t care. Terrorism is killing random people. That puts us in control of events, and not the jihadis. Cold? Yes.
3. Much, much easier to blow up a guy, then capture him intact when he’s hundreds of miles inside enemy territory. Even less objectionable politically, in many ways.
4. Indefinite detention in Gitmo is not my idea of productive or deterent.
First and foremost, Obama and his people do not care. They don’t care about being incompetent. Never had any intention of being competent, and never bothered to learn what that meant. They are interested in things well beyond terrorism, could care less about the United States and its national security, and are more like a gang modeled on Leopold and Loeb with heavy Left politics folded in matched to evanescent desires for something essentially outside of reality. But it always boils down to the exercise of power, just so long as it’s not for the good benefit of this country. That’s about the dimension of who these people are.
That’s what you get when you elect someone crazy enough to sit listening to Jeremiah Wright for twenty years. No one does that much time anywhere without wanting and loving the vision.
So, don’t dig too deep trying to figure this thing out. It’s right there in front of you and always has been. That the national media snatched the premise away and put it out of bounds should have made everyone even more suspicious. Instead, nearly everyone looked elsewhere and tacitly bought into “I just went to the Klan rallies because my uncle ran them; I never lit any of the crosses.”
You’re looking at something outside of the normative terms of American political discourse. This time the Emperor really doesn’t have any clothes and didn’t from his first step onto the national stage when he posed as a racial reconciliationist while regularly attending a viciously racist church.
I think probably the decisive consideration was that the Anti-Boosh Narrative had never really adopted an anti-drone theme. In retrospect one wonders whether that was an intentional omission, considering death-by-hellfire is probably more brutal than waterboarding. Perhaps the Narrative had already achieved its end by the time of widespread drone publicity, and anyway it wasn’t easy to get photographic or audio evidence of the drones, their targets, or – presumably – their operators. So when Obama comes in and must maintain that make some gesture re that annoying Commander-in-Chief facet of his conventional role to facilitate his Great Helmsman of Perestroika USA operation, he just said “F_ck it, bomb them, who cares. They’ve done their job anyway; I am Presidente. Give the brutes their virgins.” I exaggerate slightly but I don’t think Obama maintains any military operations outside CONUS except by political necessity. He may even have said to the CIA “I don’t want to hear about this unless you hit Zardari or Karzai, so don’t. Otherwise, have at it.”
Not unrelatedly, I wonder when the “if we disarm/disclose state secrets to our enemies, they will do the same” justification is going to wear off with the reality-tv and porn addicts in this country.
In 1936 Winston Churchill made one of his most famous speeches concerning the British government’s inability to respond to the growing Nazi threat. A government minister (I think it was Sir Thomas Inskip) said that all options were being studied and that the situation was “fluid.” Churchill pounced….”So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”
A better description of the Obama foreign policy would be hard to find. It is obvious that Mr. Obama expected his famous “charisma” to wow foreign governments so much that they would automatically adopt policies that would, in some magical manner, make everything better. That has not happened and rather like the MacDonald/Baldwin government of 1936 they simply do not know what to do. Theirs is the Micawberish view that “something will turn up” and, in the meantime, foreign policy is a bore anyway that does not translate into Democratic votes at home. The only solution is to keep doing what the Bush administration did and depend on the protection of the MSM kulturesmog to prevent anyone from noticing.
I seem to recall an uptick in drone attacks around the time of the 2008 election while Bush was still in there. The reason given was that elements in the Taliban were planning attacks on the US. I suspect one faction was informing on another because they disagreed with the strategy. Or because they wanted to take over the movement. At some point we could have got caught up in tribal conflicts that are not too closely related to terrorism.
Even before he took office I opined that Obama and his mates would want “peace abroad” while they consolidated “power at home.” In their mind that would come with Nationalized Health Care, Taking over the Financial Sector, passing Cap n’ Trade, and “comprehensive immigration reform.” The patronage systems, the trillion dollar budgets, the sweeping regulatory power — all would cement him and the left in office. His goal is not “peace abroad,” but rather power at home. Right now, foreign conflict would be too much of a distraction.
It is taking longer then he had hoped but he is well on his way to achieving “power at home.” At some point “conflict abroad” will help him push his power agenda. At that point we will have “conflict abroad.” I doubt if they will be able to contain it.
As Lorenz Gude@13 commented:
Disarray? Very possibly, and with it the serious danger of cascading events getting inside the Administration’s OODA loop.
I’m not sure they have an OODA loop. It seems more like a loopy OODA.
Obama and his people do not care. They don’t care about being incompetent… They are interested in things well beyond terrorism.
I’ve been working through “Rousseau and Romanticism,” a brilliant take down of the Romantic movement written by Irving Babbit in 1919. Again and again, he describes those personalities, all birthed from the sick mind of Rousseau, that continue to reverberate down through the ages.
Is this not perfect for the crowd in DC?
He is ready to shatter all the forms of civilized life in favor of something that never existed, of a state of nature that is only the projection of his own temperament and its dominant desires upon the void. His programme amounts in practice to the indulgence of infinite indeterminate desire, to an endless and aimless vagabondage of the emotions.
Rousseau’s children continue carving their aimless paths of destruction through the world. And never have they had control of the power they have today.
Meanwhile, their exact emotional opposites are at work in Russia and in China, no doubt stunned daily by the absurdity of the Romantic lunatics, but knowing full well the opportunity it affords.
The 3/S solution updated to 21 st century.
1.Shoot.
2.Shovel.
3.Shut up about it.
MM @ 53: First and foremost, Obama and his people do not care. They don’t care about being incompetent. Never had any intention of being competent, and never bothered to learn what that meant.
Yes. But “his people” include the infamous Pelosi and Reid, among others. Who are these people, and how are they in office?
I’m afraid it’s a generational thing. Gen-X still had some ideas of competence. Gen-Y did not. Gen-Z just stares dumbly if you even try to discuss the issue.
No doubt this is how the Roman empire fell, there is nothing new under the sun. But in our over-educated, literate, info-age world, wouldn’t we expect better? We’d better get going again on AI, better artificial intelligence than none at all.
(I think Asimov covered this about fifty years ago, btw)
Russia is going to help the “euro” through IFM loans
“The euro crosses a difficult path. Though I think it will survive and tha tEurope, helped with other key countries, like Russia, will overcome its existing problems”
Arkadi Dvorkovitch (President Medvedev concillor)
http://fr.rian.ru/world/20100520/186729724.html
a sign ?
while:
http://tinyurl.com/29xtpng Congress blocks indiscriminate IMF aid for Europe
Unsk, thank you. Positive feedback is like catnip!
Josh: Thank you for replying, let’s see:
1. Some pushback is a good thing. Absolutely! However, are drone attacks the best way? If we wanted to send a message that Jihad is not risk-free, we could pick out a few terror madrassas and carpet-bomb them off the map.
I would also point out that as good as the drone attacks are, the very premise of “precision attacks with no collateral damage” is a serious drawback because it grants the enemy safe places to rest, train, arm and recruit to the extent we make some places off limits or call the drones off if we see children parked (tied to?) the targets.
2. OK, fair enough. However, our resources are limited and in the age of Obama will become more so. Getting rid of a charismatic Mullah, experienced trainer or IED maker is more important than getting rid of some 15 year old raw recruits.
3. I grant your point. However, the administration has said they are killing partly because there is “no place to put them” which to me implies they could take them and put them – someplace.
4. Well, Gitmo might have been a deterrent when it was unde the control of Bush the Terrible, and according to the left to be sent to Gitmo was to be sent to a combination of the Inquisition and the Bastille under the command of the Marquis De Sade.
A larger question for Wretchard and everyone: How DO we deter people who consider death a promotion? The only answer I can think of is to go after the things they value, whatever those may be.
pyramids @ 61: How DO we deter people who consider death a promotion? The only answer I can think of is to go after the things they value, whatever those may be.
Well, granting them their wish is fine with me. Death is a great deterent, and after all, they asked for it.
As you suggest, going after other things they value is also a good answer, in that then that’s OUR game and not theirs. Indeed, in the tribal cultures these come from, going after the tribe is the accepted answer, it is the legal answer in sharia-inspired Pakistani law and I don’t know how many others. If we do NOT go after their tribal leaders and/or their entire tribes – we do not deserve their mercy or forbearance, we have not earned it.
As Clint Eastwood says in “Gran Torino” – “I finish things, it’s what I do.” If we do what we do, we should seek to finish things. WWII is the model, which I expect would work well again. Destroy big chunks, be charitable with what remains. Everyone’s positions having been made clear, there is a basis for real friendship.
What bothers me is that Islam seeks endless war, and we seem to be accepting it, playing their game. I have no desire to play their game, and less desire to play it badly.
Mr. X @ 27: “If he means that Russia is going to acquire more influence in Europe than the U.S., well to a certain extent once the Russians began to acquire a modern economy that was inevitable.”
Interesting, the “discussion” between Mr. X and others. Mr. X put out a reasonable proposition for discussion, and was met with several Ad Hominems. So who is the Soviet plant here? Mr. X, or the ones who are so keen to squash discussion of the topic that they go straight to personal attacks?
The issue of Russia is germane to this thread. The US is rudderless in some very stormy seas. While the Obaminations toy with blowing up random foreigners, other foreigners have their own designs. Some of them don’t involve the US, but others might.
Russia has a disarmed Europe over a barrel. Literally. The EU prefers to report statistics country by country to hide the facts — the EU is by far the world’s largest fossil fuel importer. They import as much oil as the US, and a lot more gas and coal. Russia exports the oil & gas the EU needs to survive. And Russia sends nuclear bombers buzzing down the coasts of Britain & Norway, just to remind the Europeans of Plan B. How long before an Obama who has already cancelled missile defense and the F-22 decides that the US can no longer afford to have troops in Germany?
China is using limited resources (which could help shore up the regime elsewhere) to build a Blue Water navy. China has already tested anti-satellite systems. Are we really so sure that China did not put the North Koreans up to torpedoing a South Korean warship in South Korean waters just as a way to hasten the day when Obama decides the US can no longer afford to keep troops in South Korea? And Japan, while he is at it?
Chavez in charge in oil-supplying Venezuela. Mexico in chaos, with its oil exports dropping rapidly. Iran. If every Muslim jihadist converted to Christianity today, became a Cistercian monk, and retired to the Cloister, the international situation facing the US would still be grim.
Rudderless indeed!
I don’t really buy the idea that the Obama people are launching drone attacks to get out of dealing with the problem of what to do with detainees. The two things seem really distinct to me. Someone who can be killed by a drone strike that he doesn’t know is coming isn’t necessarily someone who could just as easily be captured by an on-the-ground effort since these people are usually in a foreign country (Pakistan) or out in the middle of nowhere (Afghanistan) and by the time we got there up close and personal they’d be gone or it could get really messy with the locals around or whatever. They’re using drone strikes because it’s more reliable than trying to capture alive. Simple as that.
What’s more interesting is why some people think the drone strikes have to be justified as some politically viable alternative to detention in Gitmo. Justifiable for what audience? It doesn’t sell on the left because it’s obviously not more acceptable to kill people without trial than it is to detain them without one, nobody on the right gives a crap about drone strikes OR Gitmo and the people in the middle don’t want to have to deal with thinking about it either way. Maybe the Obama people just can’t stand any sort of military power and so they have to dream up bizarre reasons for why they’re doing this war-fighting thing.
I have not forgotten:
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
You will note the order in which they are arranged.
duplicate expunged.
“Would someone with actual expertise confirm for me if that is a valid analysis?”
It’s not an issue. You see, all the dead ones are terrorists. That is because the mission is to kill terrorists, so any dead were terrorists.
You need to read “Catch 22″.
Good evening, Marie Claude! Haven’t seen you commenting for a bit. I must give credit to the French and Sarkozy in particular; in the EU negotiations you seem to have been beating the Deutschers like red-headed stepchildren lately.
Everybody here predicted this. The clear consensus was that if we had to extend US Constitutional rights to enemy combatants than the path of least resistance for commanders in the field would be to simply take no prisoners. This faux-concern for human rights would lead without fail to the policy of “just kill ‘em”.
We didn’t come to this early realization because we so smart and hot-to-trot. The outcome was obvious from a mile off. The irony is deep about the Geneva Conventions, which were a codification of war rules based upon the collective experience of Europe, the most warring continent ever without parallel. In no small way the Geneva Conventions represented the received, collective wisdom regarding how to conduct such wild things as war, and it was wisdom gained the hard way. Nope, to the leftist mind, all that is crap to be re-arranged for situational advantage. With such facility they squandered that wisdom, as they do whenever they encounter received wisdom! Who could blame them? They are armed with “studies”!
Of course, when leftist idealism encounters reality and gets straightaway torpedoed they bury that fact. That’s why Obama will never get called on his use of drones no matter how much he goes cowboy or medieval with it.
Furthermore, the Obamites correctly perceive that whatever happens in Afghanistan or in Iraq has no bearing on anything. Yes, they might owe their own elections to public discontent over war policy, but they will never be held to any standard of scrutiny regarding their own continuance of those very same war policies. They can always blame where we are now with the war on Bush, and complain about inherited messes. Yes, we’re coming up on the two year mark on that and there ought to be some expiration on that, but there isn’t. They’ll blame Bush for the war, and all foreign policy, for the next 10 years and they will get away with it. The miracle is that we are still involved in Iraq and Afghanistan at all. He could, and for craven political purposes he probably should, pull out of all of these areas by sunlight this morning.
He’s too chicken to make such a move, and he lacks enough vision to box himself out the problem by other means. He is truly rudderless, simply buying time for some distant hope.
Obama’s bad mojo, he’s a captive and reactive president, and he really doesn’t have much to say when things don’t pan out according to his plan; except to order, “Double down!”
“Would someone with actual expertise confirm for me if that is a valid analysis?”
No.
Such an answer leads directly to revealing sources and methods.
Much of Wretchard’s earlier post a few weeks ago is close enough to the truth for any Jihadi symps who may read this blog.
To those of you who have no problem with extensive collateral damage in drone and GBU attacks that use extensive drone ISR for targeting, but who are opposed to just sterilizing Pashtunistan thermonuclearly, why?
How do you justify your position?
jsallison @65:
I like this one better:
I, [name], do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
50. Unsk
Pyramids brings up a good point. Remember just a few years ago how all we heard was the “we’re creating more terrorists than we are killing” thing. Doesn’t that meme fit Buraq’s Afghan/Pak approach to a T. Indiscriminate killing of people we kinda sorta think are terrorists, but aren’t really sure- could be a good rallying cry against us for those Pakis not so inclined to the Taliban or AQ, but nationalistic nonetheless. Where does this policy in the end lead us?
Collateral damage masquerading as mission.
65. jsallison
I have not forgotten:
I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.
You will note the order in which they are arranged.
I also noted the difference from the one you posted, and the one I took at my commissioning:
“I, JSTRM, (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Navy of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of Ensign, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.”
Mine makes no reference to the President – only the Constitution. Perhaps that also raises the stakes of honor in choosing whether the President needs to be followed if he willy nilly DIS-obeys his own oath to the Constituion.
Interesting, ain’t it?
71. Armageddon Rex
Appologies, ER, I didn’t see yours before I showed you mine!
I know most of you absolutely get all cognitive dissonant with the notion that Obama is still having to deal with cleaning up the mess that Bush and his people (and no, they weren’t just “allegations”), but….
The post 9/11 reshuffling of the responsibilities of the intelligence agencies was, like all of Bush’s little decisions, a major, long term clusterf*ck. Absolutely nothing good has come of it.
wws, I was on “the Economist” blogs, crossing swords with Germans, and I defended bravously my country !
the funny thing, was that a few american guis were supporting me
http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/109581/are-german-banks-short-the-euro
“Observers continue to question Merkel’s motives. It could be argued that the collapse of the Eurozone partnership would strengthen Germany’s financial system because it could go back to its own currency, but the country would then have to deal with significant fallout, some of which is not obvious.
Some financial experts believe that Merkel is acting in the interest of German banks which hold billions of dollars in sovereign paper in Eurozone paper. Defaults could swamp the balance sheets of those banks.
But, the real reasons behind Merkel actions may be more complex and sinister. There is a great deal of evidence that some of Germany’s large banks have bet against both the euro and sovereign debt in the weakest nations in the region. If so, these banks, like other speculators, probably made billions of dollars on such deals.
Merkel may have to deal with the accusation, probably an accurate one, that Germany allowed its banks to take sides against the euro as the government helped drive its value down. How would it look if Germany then left the Eurozone and its banks became, under a set of circumstances helped by Merkel, rich in the process?”
from an American commenter
“Well, well, well. I am hearing some sinister stories about German banks from my ex-colleagues who work at German banks. German banks made massive bets against the Euro and against Greece bonds during this entire downturn in Europe. Effectively German banks are the speculators who Merkel has been protecting all along with this ban annouced this week. This will all come out in the news soon. Merkel has been colluding with the banks all along while watching the Euro dream go down.”
“but for Merkel to come out and say (repeatedly) that these so-called specualtors sending down the currency and that foreign banks (e.g. GS) were to blame when it is so obvious now that she has just been protecting her own banks who were taking these massive trades as she knew exactly what they did and were doing”
so Germany was lying all along
The problem is that even the “high level” people are really low level operatives of the Global Jihad.
As long as wealthy oil sheiks continue to finance terrorists (look up Golden Chain on wiki as a starting point of research) and as long as radical imams are financed by those same sheiks to indoctrinate followers in the way of Jihad, there will be an endless supply of Jihadis.
If we are going to effectively deal with the Global Jihad, then we must address the source of it, the people who finance and motivate the Jihadis.
How can we as a country fight and win against an enemy that our president, attorney general, secretary of state, head of our cia, fbi and our in power politicians will not even call it by name, islamic terrorism. Unfortunately all the Military Personal we have lost in the middle east have died for nothing just like Vietnam. If this country had the will, we could end that war over there in about 15 minutes. We could all so protect our borders and end the drug problem but look at the money that would be lost if we actually stop these things. It breaks my heart to watch all our Military Personal we lose every day. I am 60 years old and have watched this insanity my entire life. I would like to thank all who have severed all in our military, especially those who gave the ultimate, their LIVES.
75 BC
“he post 9/11 reshuffling of the responsibilities of the intelligence agencies was, like all of Bush’s little decisions, a major, long term clusterf*ck. Absolutely nothing good has come of it.”
Remind me about how the commission to “investigate” 9/11 didn’t really happen and it was all Bush? Remind me how all the changes made didn’t go through committee after committee in our Congress before being implemented?
Tell us how Bush had any real input into how those changes were initially implemented? Other than saying just do it. And he sure wasn’t responsible for the screwed up way it was done.
Nor was he responsible for the CIA’s perverted politics.
Tell us all your version of history, I’m sure everybody would like to hear it. And please supply links.
skip gainer They are not trying to win. They are trying to disengage. They need the money our Military is spending by the millions per hour for their nefarious plans and ideas.
The draw down of the DOD budget started this year, but just barely. You haven’t seen anything yet. Gates is trying to warn everyone, but it seems nobody wants to believe that Obama is going to cut our Military off at the knees.
Papa Ray
63. Kinuachdrach, it certainly does appear we have no shortage of challenges awaiting.
As one who has previously recommended downsizing or even eliminating our presence in Germany and Korea, (offered in part as a reaction to perceived ingratitude,) I broach the subject gingerly. The world seems suddenly to have become more complex and difficult, for not even Okinawa, Jack Murtha notwithstanding, is the safe refuge for American power it was once assumed to be.
The thing is, though, I can understand some of the objections of the people who live in close proximity to our foreign-based forces. I also think they would soon miss us should we leave. On the other hand, our absence might cause them to take a greater part in defending their own interests. And that might be good for them and us both.
But I have little to no confidence that our present Administration is looking at these issues with an eye towards developing a more cogent and practicable defense. We are in a reactionary mode to forces that seemingly reveal themselves day to day. Today it’s Greece or a S. Korean warship imploding; tomorrow it will be something else, perhaps related to and likely–by extension of the initial threat–even worse.
I think you are correct in suggesting the reactionary Islamists pale in terms of threat compared to the Russians and Chinese. (Though I’m cancelling all bets once Iran gets the bomb or Pakistan falls.) Not the Russian and Chinese people themselves, of course, but their governmental leadership, which is, in different ways, as deficient as ours–as is our ability to demand better.
…like all of Bush’s little decisions, a major, long term clusterf*ck. Absolutely nothing good has come of it.
Well, at least one of Bush’s little decisions seems to have worked out.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/658dwgrn.asp
81. sirus_sir The threat of the “reactionary Islamists” is something to worry about but even more so concerning Islam is the so called moderates that are coming into America by the millions and have already carved out their non-assimilating communities.
Of course the big deals like where they want to build a giant Mosque right next to the destroyed twin towers is one thing:
“Do you want a Mosque at Ground Zero?”
But there are many, many other things that never make the news. Like the many areas in the U.S. where Muslims are undergoing military training (and who knows what other training) and things like what is exposed in this video, that seem to happen more and more.:
The Next 10 Years of Free Speech in 10 Minutes”
Or witnessed here:
Sharia comes to Dearborn
CAIR is the front for many – (but not the front for the Muslim Brotherhood, they keep a low profile). CAIR not only has a free hand in America but is assisted by the democrats and socialists and other left wing groups.
All that is the real danger even before you consider Russia or China. Not withstanding Iran or NK or Pakistan doing something destructive and stupid even before that.
All in my Texas humble opinion of course.
And no, I still don’t have enough ammo.
Papa Ray
VDH covers the same topic in a recent post. Seems the hard working German citizens are waking up. Hopefully all they do is turn their backs on the parasites (v. ask for their property back.. be it territory or loans). Maybe they’ll decide they’ve finally paid enough in reparations.
Papa Ray, I share your concerns regarding the non-assimilating (and perhaps secretively if not overtly hostile) communities. I know of at least one such community here in NY State where Muslims have set themselves up in a secretive militaristic commune setting; I don’t think they are back to the landers or throwback hippies. But an honest appraisal will reveal the problem extends beyond the Muslim community. We have non-assimilating, openly hostile Mexicans expecting, if not demanding, that a large swath of the south-west U.S. be returned to its supposedly rightful owners. That situation too is ripe for violent riot, revolt, and rebellion.
But of course, you would know that better than me.
Just to be fair, I will include whatever militia-type, supposedly white-supremacist, and nominally Christian, groups there are wanting to violently overthrow the existing order.
My expectation: one or more of these groups will take things a little too far and then there will be a kind of hell to pay as those of us who like the idea of a United States of America the way it was founded, and fought for, defend it in kind. Hopefully it will not come to that, but if it does, many will learn or rediscover that violence, when well directed, can be an amazingly effective winnowing agent. I suspect then there will be many militia-type, supposedly white-supremacist, nominally Christian groups fighting united with like-minded Muslims and legal American immigrants of Mexican extraction to preserve this country and what it represents in toto. If not, there WILL be hell to pay, and surely every one of us will pay dearly, no matter our race, creed, religion, or ideological inclination.
sirius_sir @ 85: “there will be a kind of hell to pay as those of us who like the idea of a United States of America the way it was founded”
I have heard it said that, when the US fought the War of Independence, about 1/3 of the population of the Colonies supported the idea of the “US”, about 1/3 remained loyal to the King, and about 1/3 just kept their heads down and wished the whole thing would go away. If it had not been for the finger of the friendly French on the scales, the concept of the “US” might have died there and then.
Foudning the US was not easy in the 18th Century. Keeping it is not going to be easy now. But we live in interesting times, whether we are ready for it or not.
86. Kinuachdrach, yes, I’ve heard/read similar. If not for the French and the brave committed men upon which we bestow the honorific ‘Patriot’ the American experiment likely would have turned out much differently.
Let’s hope we have enough men and women today worthy of being called American Patriot. For good measure, let’s hope the French are still with us. I’ve a sneaking suspicion we’ll need all the help we can get.
@hdgreene
Yes, perhaps the OODA loop is loopy. For me, part of the problem is not the very real differences in ideology between the this administration and the previous one – it is that our government is in disarray and that there isn’t a central nexus – ie the president – that has a functioning OODA loop. The executive branch is made up of factions that are separate bureaucracies – State, Defense, CIA – playing a power game with each other, At a simple level the Peter Principle applies – more and more energy goes into that game and less into fulfillment of their central purpose. Having a functioning OODA loop in relation to our enemies is part of the mission, not the game.
I just want to add that I don’t see the drone attacks as a panacea because the terrorists will learn to hide better over time and the attacks will produce more collateral damage – and yes, yield less intelligence. I would prefer the US to mix it up more. Use special forces with drones. Or take out entire training camps with some serious use of stealth bombers and precision munitions. Whatever…..the strategy being to force the enemy to defend against a variety of direct attacks.
85 sirus_sir
“My expectation: one or more of these groups will take things a little too far and then there will be a kind of hell to pay as those of us who like the idea of a United States of America the way it was founded, and fought for, defend it in kind.”
Could happen but I’m thinking it will come down somewhat like this. Another group of militia, who are actually nothing more than a cross section of Americans who like you said will defend not only themselves but this Republic, will be set up and ambushed in some manner much more violent than the last group was. There will be several deaths, maybe on both sides. I’m not sure who the other side will be. Maybe ATF, they are famous for raiding the wrong places and using way too much violence. Maybe the FBI or maybe some special group set up by Obama puppet in the Justice Dept. Anyway that altercation will bring on other incidents until it snowballs into serious territory.
Obama is right now recruiting and training various civilian forces. To what end I have no real idea, but I don’t believe the neat labels that have been applied to them tell the whole story. But I can remember his words saying that he was going to raise a civilian group that was going to be as powerful as our military.
That didn’t sound right then and it damn sure doesn’t now, not after everything he has done.
Yea, you don’t need to remind me about the Mexicans. But I will say I’ve never heard of a Mexican here in Texas say anything about taking Texas back. But even if there were a few, there are more legal, law abiding Mexicans here that would not put up with that nonsense because they are not only Texans, but Americans first, last and always.
Papa Ray
Papa Ray I think you miss understood what I was trying to say. To me you can not tell a Republican from a Democrat anymore. If you Papa Ray do not see how both parties are pushing for a 1 world government, than it is time to change your bong water. It is a disgrace to all our men and women in uniform to have an idiot like obama, as our president apologizing all over the world for this great country. Now obama, is apologizing from the White House and even helping other political leaders from other countries to bash America. Papa Ray if you are backing obama then you and I are diffidently on different sides and we will never agree on the path our politicians are taking us. What has obama really changed from what Bush was doing. Obama has not made 1 decision of his own since taking office, all obama does is blame everyone else for his mistakes. Oh that is right obama does not make mistakes, he just bullies our friends and kiss up to our enemies. Remember what Nostradamus predicted, the new city would be attacked but America would fail to respond too slowly to the attack. That is why we should end this war in 15 minutes, by taking our enemies out quickly, to bad America does not have the leadership or the will to protect this great country. I only pray that GOD sends someone to save and protect America now and it sure as hell is not an Islamic Inman for that job.
I’ve been wondering lately where that inexperienced political hack Panetta has been hiding.
There are a variety of reasons why high-level “intelligence” positions should not be handed out as political favors to supporters and old hacks. Janet Napolitano? I about fell over when I heard HER appointment. And Brennan? The guy is so incompetent he can’t even play CYA and convince anyone that he’s on top of things re: the very agencies he is supposed to run.
It’s time to clean house and let spooks do actual spycraft for a change.
~(Ä)~
The true test of whether the drone strategy is net positive must be the reaction of the people who would be counted as co-lateral damage. In one of Wretchard’s links, the fellow talks to college aged graduates of Madrasa’s, and appears genuinely surprised that the graduates of Madrasa’s don’t like the drones. Well, Duh! They are likely to be next weeks targets, but not co-lateral damage.
In another link a fellow goes on about how the Pakistani Army is cooperating with the drone program, but that the cooperation is tinged with an underlying jealousy over the drones doing the work the Pakistani Army cannot. I think that has got to be the most ridiculous argument presented. It was why the Pakistani’s including both civilian leaders and the Army
enrolled in the program in the first place.
Now I appreciate the concerns over not being able to nab certain high value targets and not having the opportunity to extract their high value knowledge, but given the options, I think it is a reasonable trade to our advantage, and an indicator that we are in fact winning the trust of the people of the NW Tribal territories earning the gratitude of the people in the Taliban’s back yard. The intelligence keeps on coming. even in targeting the lower level Al Taliban. If indeed that is where the intel is coming from, and nowhere is there any indication that it is not coming from those likely to become the co-lateral damage, the people of the North West Frontier Territories, then the effort is worthy and worthwhile. The effort in fact becomes truly theHand of Allah TM.
At some point however the Taliban will be seriously degraded enough to be less of a threat and giving the Pakistani Army the advantage. It will be at that point where the Madrasa Grads will be required by the people to undergo a real awakening, a grand re-vision of Koranic magnitude or suffer the consequences at Allah’s hand. Interesting dilemma, what will the answer be.
Lord Obama never said he had experience in the real world. He brought us his superior judgement. And now all you people are doubting him after a year and a half. Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day, or something like that. Fortunately, people with faith can go to Organizing for America and find out everything is coming up roses. They have really cool charts that like show how much worse unemployment was under Bush and cool stuff like that. Poetry, too. You just have to have faith.
63. Kinuachdrach – I started posting a long rant here about how my John Birch brothers Dan and Eggplant still refuse to connect the dots between Daddy Warbucks’ Soros leftist trasnationalist agitation in America (funding MoveOn.org) and bankrolling the political careers of such anti-Russian clients as Misha the Tie Eater and Viktor (SS collaborators are heroes) Yuschenko — but it got deleted. No posts here about the Open Society serving as a cut-out in the Eastern Bloc going back 26 years, to the first Internet connection between the USA and USSR in 1984. Nothing about how National Review and the Weekly Standard all maintain omerta on Soros activities abroad (Lowry and co at least get to play Blackford Oakes once in a while on those paid junkets to Tblisi)
But those dang NWO/Agency/Bildebergers deleted it!
So in the interests of saving everyone time, including myself, and aping the likes of TrueSlant Russia-blogger Mark Adomanis – I will just go ahead and confess. Yes, I am still waiting for my rubles to troll here comrades. But unfortunately the Putinist Novy Evil Empire propaganda apparat has stolen certain phrases right out from my inbox, and it is difficult to sue the Lubyanka webizens for damages.
Not content merely to read my GMail like every other security service in the world, they in fact stole the phrase ‘U.S.S.A’ (TM) for their latest propaganda screed from an email I sent to a friend worshipping my intellectual godfather, Igor Panarin.
As Whiskey and other veteran BCers can see, this latest dispatch deep from the infernal bowels of Lubyanka is designed to weaken the resolve of American manhood to continue coping with the Mancession plus bitchy wide-bodied American females grabbing all those Obamaklatura gub’mt jobs, while simultaneously solving the Russian babymaking problem. Truly diabolical! You know those Russians – they’re chess players who think ten steps ahead while our doltish leaders bask in their narcissistic crapulence!
From Moscow Craigslist:
So you see, they once appealed to the Internationale singing Left for 70 years – now it’s the Right’s turn to look to the Motherland for inspiration, 13% flat taxes, shutting down gay pride parades, regular interviews with Ron Paul, and….love? The only thing missing from the ads comrades was an offer from Mayor Luzhkov – 10k in baby-denghy for the first kid, and his wife Elena Baturana (the richest woman in Russia) can throw in an extra 10k for twins.
Signing off comrades. Keep fighting Les Boches, Marie Claude, and the 4th Reich…er EU.
Geez, where’s Whiskey when you need him? When can we ship him off to Transdniestr to find a woman that, so long as he pays the bills, will basically be the lady of his dreams?
What is moral courage. More precisely, how do you translate the word “moral courage” into something understood by christians. As I mentioned before moral courage comes from God. But that definition answers to the distinction between moral courage and physical courage where “moral” comes from God and “physical” comes from men and women.
But where does courage come from? And what is it exactly. I have argued that courage is what love faith and hope look like from the outside. That is if you have ever seen men competing for a woman–their efforts show courage to everyone else. But if they are both suitable suitors to the woman–then their exertions for her affections –to her– look like love faith and hope. That is love for her, faith that their efforts are not in vain and hope for the promise of her affections and all that entails.
Even so God is jealous for our love.
The bible defines three kinds of love.
Eros –love between a man and a woman.
Phileo friendship
Agape — Love for God.
Agape love is what translates in the Christian language most closely to moral courage.
Mr. X (94): “Geez, where’s Whiskey when you need him?”
I don’t know where Whiskey is, but at least #94 was pretty funny.
Charles #95: Well said sir!
MrX #94: Once again the Russians are tardy.
Didn’t you see where Uncle Ravi made Whiskey a better offer in India?
Course as soon as old Near Beer realizes that having a go at the wogs means that the wogs get to have a go at him, he may decide that Ye Olde Gulag ain’t so bad after all.
uh Mr X, ya know, they aren’t fighting the “boches”, but supporting them against the French, nothing new there, until the boches banksters will bankrupt the US banks, may-be then, someone in the chorus will give us the credit of the right resistance !