All Quiet on the Eastern Front
Militants believed to be linked to al-Qaeda or the Taliban have attacked a Pakistani naval base, killing several servicemen and taking foreign nationals, believed to be Chinese, hostage. Bill Roggio reports that “a large terrorist assault team, thought to be between 15 to 20 men strong, stormed Pakistani Naval Station Mehran Sunday night in a coordinated, complex attack. A Taliban spokesman claimed 22 fighters, who have enough provisions for three days, executed the assault.” There are some reports the attackers have taken hostages. The Los Angeles Times says it “was believed to be a revenge attack for the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.”
The attack was a heavy blow to the Pakistani navy. The assault team blew up 2 of Pakistan’s 3 P3-C Orion ASW aircraft, which donated only last year by the United States at an impressive ceremony on the very base under assault. The fires within the base were visible for miles around.
Live in fame or go down in flames ...
The BBC reported the attackers were holding hostages, including Chinese military personnel and that the attackers had enough food and ammunition to “fight and survive for three days”. Recently the Times of India reported that Pakistan was urging China to build a naval base in Baluchistan as “relations with Washington falter”
“We would be … grateful to the Chinese government if a naval base is … constructed at the site of Gwadar for Pakistan,” defence minister Ahmad Mukhtar said is a statement, referring to a deep-water port in Pakistan’s southwest. …
China invested $200 million in the first phase of the construction of the port, which was inaugurated in 2007.
The development, 70 km (45 miles) east of the Iranian border and on the doorstep of Gulf shipping lanes, was designed to handle transhipment traffic for the Gulf.
China recently delivered 50 combat aircraft to the Pakistani airforce, but may be about to learn that alliances with Pakistan can be somewhat complicated. Reuters says the attack on the naval base raised “fears about the safety of the country’s nuclear arsenal”. The weapons are stored in supposedly safe areas far from the Taliban heartland guarded by elite troops specially screened for reliability. “Pakistan maintains there is no chance of Islamist militants getting their hands on atomic weapons.”
Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world and in a decade could pass France as the fourth-largest nuclear power, so such brazen attacks on secure military establishments — militants also attacked the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi in 2009 — give Western leaders nightmares about militants acquiring nuclear materials, or worse, an entire weapon. …
President Barack Obama said in 2009 he was confident about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal although he was “gravely concerned” about the overall situation in Pakistan because of its weak government.
Despite that, there is a growing concern among U.S. officials that militants might try to snatch a nuclear weapon in transit or insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. …
Analysts say Pakistan is believed to have developed its own Permissive Action Link system, modeled on one used in the United States, to electronically lock nuclear weapons. It also relies on a range of other measures including physical security, separation of warheads from missiles and warheads from explosive devices.
Here is presentation of US nuclear control mechanisms from the year 1963. The Pakistanis probably have technical command tools far superior those of that distant age. But even then SAC’s control system emphasized removing, insofar as possible, the possibility of human error and malevolence in the use of nuclear weapons, a task made considerably harder by the fact that the warheads were deployed on strike platforms. If the Pakistani nuclear weapons are on any form of nuclear alert, it seems inevitable that some of the weapons are out of storage and forward deployed in a Pakistani air force — or naval — base. If one of these weapons were captured, it would be interesting to speculate whether the Pakistanis would admit it, or whether national pride and the desire to maintain the facade of Pakistani military invincibility would lead to its suppression.
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So playing in the kitchen results in burning a few fingers? Who’d have guessed? This is going to get a lot worse for some unfortunate souls before it gets better. And now Teh One sez he would go back into Pakistan again if another target is located. Wow! Maybe the Paki’s will start shooting at the Iranians to teach us a lesson.
The way it works is that you’ve got to kill somebody — anybody — to revenge yourself against America. If you can’t get at the SEALs, go after civilians. If you can’t go after American civilians, or foreign civilians, then Pakistanis will do. Failing that, maybe dogs, cats or roaches, anything you come across, will do.
It’s a quaint notion, but there’s a certain logic to it. By making yourself enough of a nuisance and venting your rage, which is always at the boiling point, on the first available victim you indirectly pressure everyone into giving you what you want. Strange as it may seem, the strategic goal of terrorism is become like a headache. Be so noisome that everyone just wants you to go away and will drink any draft, take any pill to make it happen.
This approach has come close to working with Gaza. Rejectionism and mischief work. Keep kicking the cat and eventually somebody will offer to pay you to stop.
The Left sometimes employs this tactic, but they are amateurs compared to the level achieved by radical Islamism. They have perfected the art of being offended, perpetually enraged, being an explosion waiting to happen. To remark on their shoes, to suggest they may be in an evil mood, in fact to observe that the sun is shining is to invite instant anger. In time you learn to address them in the most honorific terms, behave obsequiously and insofar as is possible, never to risk the slightest provocation.
One wag, remarking on the recent attacks by Pakistanis on themselves to revenge themselves for the humiliation received at America’s hands remarked that having run out of infidels to attack, the next victims up are Muslims because they are the only ones available.
It’s like prison-yard rules; except in this case the swaggering kingpins are really pitifully weak and unskilled and are trying to throw their weight around in compound full of really accomplished killers. All these bluffers they have is their unshakeable nastiness. And the problem with that approach is that if they make themselves a sufficient nuisance they will inevitably invoke an uncontrolled response from actors far more powerful than themselves. The knives will come out and they will have no defense. This is the great danger with Pakistan. They have to tame the monsters within their state or one day they’ll wind up losing a nuke to a maniac or getting in over their heads with China, India or the United States and then the fat will be in the fire.
The BBC is now reporting that “The troops are now said to be “mopping up” after the raid, which has left at least 12 soldiers dead.”
But it does not say how many “militants” were involved in this “raid,” nor how they were able to penetrate the bases’ defenses, which is in Karachi, nor did they mention what had happened to the Chinese military personnel taken hostage.
How much longer will the “major powers” deal with this disfuntional country coming apart, before securing the nuclear weapons and removing them from danger?
It’s always interesting to ponder things from a distance, and the passage of time has many lessons to teach. Watching those videos, it is amazing to think that those 1963 SAC gentlemen actually thought they had control of the situation with their (now obsolete) technology. But then again, they really did have a sort of control, just not for the reasons they thought they did. They had control because they were vigilant and did what they could. The technology, however sophisticated it was (or not), is just the concomitant of the care they decided to take about the matter. Our own comparatively advanced technology is probably just as useless, our vigilance certainly just as valuable. If we lose the latter, the former will not avail us.
Now what kind of light does that throw on the situation in Pakistan?
Technology is the expression of a society; its mirror. Of all things technology is the one thing that cannot be sustainably stolen. At the leading edge it is unquestionably original. When Pakistan envies American technology, they are actually envying America.
The concept of technology as the manifestation of the inner quality of a society is not comprehensible to Marxism and to certain radical Islamists. To them property, at least when owned by the unworthy, is always theft. In that viewpoint America “stole” the technology for somewhere. Marxists created the fiction of saying it was stolen in the form of surplus labor. Radical Islamists don’t even go that far, except to say that everything sprang from the golden age of Islam.
Truly stolen technology, or technology imported without understanding, is indistinguishable from magic. As such, it poses a danger to the unwary user, who like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, finds that it can easily turn on him.
Pakistan’s dream was to acquire the Islamic nuclear bomb. Let us hope it serves them and they do not become the victims of the spirits they have conjured.
It is one thing to play tribal politics with Taliban vs. Punjabi, but to play that game with the Chinese? Considering the pressures the Chinese leader ship is under and their willingness to put bullets into the back of the heads of men, women, and what I would consider children for thought crimes, not a group to be messing with.
I somewhat remember an off the cuff remark by a Chinese about the evaluations they had done of US Military performance in Iraq. He said it was impressive from a tactical view point but if his people had been in charge they would have killed all the Sunni to avoid the greater loss of life and coin. I believe the emphasis was on the loss of coin.
And I always thought that the Sherrif Bart hostage scene (from Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles”) was cheap parody.
When it turns out that all along it was insightful, biting, commentary on international relations…
So there you have it. Mel Brooks and George Kennan–two of America’s most prescient psycho-political personalities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upvZdVK913I
(start at 2:45)
The gun does not know who is pulling the trigger. In the fantasies of the Muslims and Oliver Stone everything that happens is controlled by some super competent American British Communist Mossad Capitalist Conspiracy. This brings three, OK make it four, observations to the present scene.
1. If only it was true that the CIA or Indian R&AW had arranged this.
2. The belief in the hyper-puissiance of others puts the god of Islam in rather a poor light.
3. The Truth may not be “out there” but far simpler. There is a reason that failure is endemic in a place.
4. As they said in Chicago, “Don’t back no losers.” China is not as strong as our fears make her. Have hope.
I can just imagine a scene in a Pakistani command center:
Pakistani President: “General, I thought the Human Reliability programs we put in place ensured that this sort of thing would not happen.”
Pakistani General: “Turns out that we could not have a human reliability program Mr. President. We had not enough reliable humans. What we have is technology. And it appears that the computer in charge has exceeded its authority.”
Pakistani President: “Well, we need to call the Americans and explain to them that the attack is not our fault.”
Pakistani General: “I already tried that Mr. President. And I got routed to a call center in India. Do you have a different number for the Pentagon? Preferably one that does not give you a recording that starts, ‘Please listen carefully because our options have changed…”
“Let us hope it serves them and they do not become the victims of the spirits they have conjured.”
The world as we know it will cease in a billionth of a second when a Pak nuke goes off somewhere. I believe this is inevitable, unless we take drastic measures to get those nukes out of their hands ASAP. I don’t see that ever happening, so back to the inevitable… Given the schizophrenia of Muslim Pakistan, I think it is already extremely likely that some portion of nuclear materials, including the most lethal components, are now in the hands of Muslim psychos slouching their way towards Bethlehem, if only figuratively.
The illusion concocted by the Paks and American presidents of nuclear safety is demented in this crap-holiest of Islamic crap-holes. America spent billions on securing the technologies and protection systems involving our nukes. We are (or were once) a rich country. Pakistan is a feculent Muslim ghetto, and it is impossible to imagine that this squalid nation has expended more than the smallest inadequacy of their shoestring nuclear budget on genuine security for their “Islamic bomb”. BTW, if anyone doubts how the Paks imagine the purpose, nature, and essence of their heinous weapon, the words “Islamic Bomb” were actually painted on the nuclear missiles (or effigies) which they paraded before the world when they joined the nuclear club.
Finally, after the world changes and we look back in stupid astonishment on the wanton incineration of our way of life, the notion of storming Pakistan and any othe Muslim bunghole to deprive these enemies of nukes won’t look so drastic. We will rue the day our thinking was so constricted by a our feckless, useless Western leadership. They will have failed to see the name the menace staring them in the face, and will have failed to act. They will be understood as complicit in our destruction, along with every apologist and explainer-away of the cancer of Islam and the Muslims that serve as Islam’s vectors of destruction.
If you think TSA patdowns are unpleasant, just wait until every Western citizen is treated like a potential Muslim nuclear terrorist. Wait until our economies falter so utterly, wait until property prices plummet in every metropolis on earth, wait until nations topple and the worst in he world thrive in the ensuing chaos, and we yearn for something so innocuous as a “Great Depression”. I fear the apocalypse is at hand, and there will be no messiah
Wretchard’s Three Conjectures are still in play:
Conjecture 2: “. . . . Even if Islam killed every non-Muslim on earth they would almost certainly continue to kill each other with their new-found weaponry. Revenge bombings between rival groups and wars between different Islamic factions are the recurring theme of history. Long before 3,000 New Yorkers died on September 11, Iraq and Iran killed 500,000 Muslims between them. The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.
Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the ‘Golden Hour’ — the final chance
It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat. While American arms have proven irresistible, much of Europe, as well as moderates in the Islamic world, remain blind to the danger and indeed increase it. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad recently “told an international conference of young Muslim leaders … (that) … Muslims must acquire skills and technology so they can create modern weapons and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies”. Fecklessness and gunpowder are a lethal combination. The terrible ifs accumulate.”
Mr Fernandez as addresses the Contingencies involved in the detonation of an “islamic” Bomb. I think the Pak govt. understands them. I dont think the islams do. Which is the real scary part.
BFTP @ 8, your Numbers 2 and 3. It is intuitively obvious to the untrained observer that something aint working in that part of humanity. In God’s Battalions (http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Battalions-Crusades-Rodney-Stark/dp/0061582603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306159062&sr=8-1) the author makes the point that the great “flowering of muslim civilization” lasted only as long as it took for the islams to become dominant over the previous regimes. In other words, when the Greek Christian civilization in Turkey became dominated by the Caliphate the slide to third world status was sealed.
I am constantly struck by the inability of this allah spirit to stand up this monstrous human conspiracy devoted to its humiliation. To be so all powerful, there aint much grit there.
The Pakistanis will not admit to the loss of one or more nukes, the Taliban/Al Q will not admit to having one or more Paki nukes, To do so would invite an atomic strike from at least two countries on the site the weapons are held, possibly on the entire Paki military.
India for one will hit them and if the Chinese are smart they would hit the paki’s also.
To have one is to have a target painted on your head.
Pakistan is an example of why isolationism and disengagement in the Middle East will only compound the problems and enable the worst elements to take charge.
We cannot afford to leave the AfPak theater. We need men and equipment there who can act in a timely fashion to secure or destroy the nuclear arsenal. It is tempting to leave the Pakis to their own ‘devices’, but by keeping our relationship with them we at least know who the players are in their mil and ISI. While tech and surveillance can help, we need to know which generals have the keys to the nukes and where they keep them, and we need to keep talking to them to keep our knowledge base up to date.
Richard,
The first use of a Pakistani nuke will almost certainly be in Pakistan. My current guess is that it will be detonated in Abottadad.
During the Raj, the Indian Army recruited good regiments from what is now Pakistan.
The world view of illiterate Muslim young men was tempered, controlled, and possibly improved by British officers.
I suppose that suggests it’s possible, again, but that requires that civilized people be in complete control. Not sure that’s on the horizon.
Respect Pakistan.
Oh wait, that’s someone else’s line.
Questions: Which is the most dangerous, the weak nation or the strong nation?
If a strong nation perceives itself as weak or getting weaker will it withdraw and hunker down or will it throw the dice and go for a first and fatal strike?
“Toward the end of the war we had the better tanks and the better aircraft, however we didn’t have enough of them, we didn’t use what we had correctly, and too many of the men who could have used them correctly were dead. We were defeated by men not magic weapons.”
AlMoh mobilizes.
…-
“Mali seeks up to 75,000 anti-terrorism fighters in Sahel
Mali called Friday for a regional push to train up to 75,000 troops within the next 18 months to combat militants in the Sahel desert region, home to Al-Qaeda’s north African offshoot.
“In the next 18 months our countries should train and mobilise 25,000 to 75,000 men in the fight against terrorism and transnational crime,” Mali’s Foreign Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga told regional counterparts.
He was addressing the opening of a regional meeting between Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Algeria in Bamako to discuss terrorism and transnational crime in the Sahel.
“More than ever our people and our countries are exposed to the threat of terrorism, heavy weapons in circulation, drug trafficking and hostage-taking,” said Maiga.
He said it was vital the four countries, which share a military base in Algeria, acted together against terrorism…”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2723746/posts
#16. Richard Aubrey: “The world view of illiterate Muslim young men was tempered, controlled, and possibly improved by British officers.”
It is also critical to understand that Islam was in severe decline during the Raj, having looted and squandered the treasures of several superior civilizations with little prospect for more. Jihad was dying for lack of fuel and means. Muslims sat atop the garbage dump of their own creation and posed little threat. Those that were already captured and owned by Islam at that point remained debased slaves, lacking fuel for renewed Jihad, Islam was no longer feared, Muslims were no longer reviled for being the carriers of the disease of destruction that Islam embodied. For this reason, little remained in the West of a cultural memory which saw Islam as a raper, plundered, and destroyer of civilizations.
A new romantic began to grow up about exotic Islam, and the human catastrophe we see playing out before our eyes was set to follow it’s course. Enter the discovery of oil under their ignorant stone-age feet and the coffers of Jihad began to refill. Jump ahead 70 years to today, and see how the trillions which flowed into their coffers has reinvigorated the old monster.
That is where we stand today. Feasting like maggots on a huge carcass, Islam has gorges itself on the unearned trillions from oil. Surplus populations have again begun to flow into neighboring lands – mosques spring up like poisonous mushrooms, imams are paid by sinister spiders hiding in redoubts like Saidi Arabia, UAE, and other Arab fortresses. Unless we begin to think better on the matter, I think Islam cannot be stopped until again it has looted all the available gold and foodstuffs of the civilized world. It has successfully obliterated many other advanced and superior civilizations before, why should we be any different. As W states above, terrorism works, and Islam is terror made sacred.
Wretchard at #5 writes: “Technology is the expression of a society; its mirror. Of all things technology is the one thing that cannot be sustainably stolen. At the leading edge it is unquestionably original. When Pakistan envies American technology, they are actually envying America. The concept of technology as the manifestation of the inner quality of a society is not comprehensible to Marxism and to certain radical Islamists.”
Yes, technology is an expression of society. And as a mirror, technology is seldom a reliable reflection, and is more like a fun-house distortion. Enchanted by our own image, we are rushing headlong to a future that seems to be featuring a big bang. Islamists envy this technology and therefore hate its makers. They seem not particularly interested in the consequences of total destruction as much as remedying the shame of being Muslim and envious of non-Muslims. Israel is the preferred scapegoat, but other targets will suffice also.
“On War and Apocalypse,” René Girard (First Things,Aug/Sept 2009) [a summary of new Girard's new book on Clausewitz] provides interesting insight into the situation:
“. . . I have the impression that this religion [Islam] has used the Bible as a support to rebuild an archaic religion that is more powerful than all the others. It threatens to become an apocalyptic tool, the new face of the escalation to extremes. Even though there are no longer any archaic religions, it is as if a new one had arisen built on the back of the Bible, a slightly transformed Bible. It would be an archaic religion strengthened by aspects of the Bible and Christianity. Archaic religion collapsed in the face of Judeo-Christian revelation, but Islam resists. While Christianity eliminates sacrifice wherever it gains a foothold, Islam seems in many respects to situate itself prior to that rejection.
. . . .
“Today’s terrorism is new, even from an Islamic point of view. It is a modern effort to counter the most powerful and refined tool of the Western world: technology. It counters technology in a way that we do not understand and that classical Islam may not understand either.
. . . .
“Clausewitz is easier to integrate into a historical development. He gives us the intellectual tools to understand the violent escalation. But where do we find such ideas in Islam? . . . .
. . . .
“In my 1972 book Violence and the Sacred, I borrowed the idea from the Qur’an that the ram that saved Isaac from being sacrificed was the same one that was sent to Abel so that he would not have to kill his brother: proof that in the Qur’an sacrifice is also interpreted as a means of combating violence. From this, we can draw the conclusion that the Qur’an contains understanding of things that secular mentality cannot fathom: that sacrifice prevents vengeance, for example. Yet, this topic has disappeared from Islam, just as it has disappeared in Western thought. The paradox that we thus have to deal with is that Islam is closer to us today than to the world of Homer. Clausewitz allowed us to glimpse this, through what we have called his warlike religion, in which we have seen the emergence of something both very new and very primitive. Islamism, likewise, is a kind of event internal to the development of technology. We have to be able to think about both Islamism and the escalation to extremes at the same time; we need to understand the complex relations between these two realities.”
Morton Doodslag @ 20 said:
“It is also critical to understand that Islam was in severe decline during the Raj, having looted and squandered the treasures of several superior civilizations with little prospect for more. Jihad was dying for lack of fuel and means. Muslims sat atop the garbage dump of their own creation and posed little threat. … Enter the discovery of oil under their ignorant stone-age feet and the coffers of Jihad began to refill. Jump ahead 70 years to today, and see how the trillions which flowed into their coffers has reinvigorated the old monster.”
I agree with this analysis. However I would also point out that the Islamic world is depleting their petroleum economic windfall and have no fall-back option except nuclear extortion. Ultimately, nuclear extortion will trigger Wretchard’s 2nd Conjecture, i.e. attaining WMDs will destroy Islam. The Islamic world will destroy itself if it does not reform. The western world needs to recognize that the Islamic world is on the verge of self destruction and prepare accordingly.
I wonder if there are any US facilities that could stand against an attacking force of 22 well-armed terrorists.
Shall I cry a little tear that the P3′s are destroyed and that the Chinese adjacent to them were kidnapped? Or, on the other hand, um, well, just a stray thought, nevermind.
I have an idea how to help safeguard the nukes – don’t shield the radiation. Heh. As for Pakistan being a nuclear power comparable to France, I sincerely doubt it. Not clear they can get the warheads up to 1kt, nor deliver them on anything better than muleback, shipping container, or very nearly unguided rocket. Presume France can do much better on both points. OTOH I suppose there are US targets they might approach closely enough, by dhow or bullock cart, that a 0.1kt nuke would be sufficient.
a @ 21: I like litcrit pomo as well as the next guy, but I can make no sense at all out of your quotes from Girard.
e @ 22: attaining WMDs will destroy Islam? only indirectly. just as indirectly it is their liturgical hatred and cultural ignorance that destroys them. we can speculate as what agency will directly destroy Islam.
Morton Doodslag @ 10: “I fear the apocalypse is at hand, and there will be no messiah”
I agree with your analysis — but would urge us all not to fear the coming apocalypse. In an ideal world, we would choose smarter leaders, avoid the coming problems, and restart building a better future. But this is not an ideal world.
The current path is unsustainable. Not in the brain-dead Politically Correct sense, but in the true sense. Societies can’t survive by regulating their jobs out of existence and running up ever-larger government debts. Unsustainable!
Yet getting back onto a sustainable path to technologically-driven growth is not going to be possible without a major revolution. If that apocalypse has to happen, let it happen sooner rather than later — since all of our assets are wasting. Once we have put our Western house in order, dealing with the likes of Pakistan will be straightforward.
Josh @24 Yes, WMDs will destroy Islam, as HEP-T alludes, possession will trigger pre-emptive strikes. The Pakistan nukes are just barely tolerated as is.
The problem with being the mean dog in the neighborhood with a hair-temper is, eventually someone will decide that is it safer to just shoot you, rather than throw you bones.
With food growing too expensive in the ME, the feral dogs will turn and rend one another.
If you think TSA patdowns are unpleasant, just wait until every Western citizen is treated like a potential Muslim nuclear terrorist.
Check the details of Teh Won’s demands for extra security while visiting Ireland and the UK, from an article on his Beast, Dublin-downed by a lowly speed bump:
“The moves to increase the First Couple’s safety come in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden three weeks ago. . . . The President’s security team have raised eyebrows at Buckingham Palace after they insisted on bringing their own bottled water.White House staff told the Queen’s household that they could not risk Mr Obama touching a drop of London tap water – or even the palace’s own bottled mineral water.
According to sources, when one staff member asked why, they were told that ‘they didn’t want to risk a change in water in case it gave Mr President a stomach upset’
The Mail revealed yesterday that White House staff have brought along their own portable double-glazing style glass to cover up the 1820s glazed windows in his bedroom in case of a mortar attack.
Staff have also revealed that they have been barred from using their mobile phones while the president is in residence due to the communication hardware his security team have brought with them.
And all servants have been subject to a criminal record check, even if one has been carried out already.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390080/Bet-didnt-coming-President-Obamas-armour-plated-car-The-Beast-scuppered-ramp.html
Video of the “terror-proof” Beast in distress here: http://minx.cc/?post=316567
Another interesting detail from the article: Teh Won has an Irish ancestor from a place that rejoices in the name of County Offaly. The jokes write themselves.
May 13, 2011 · “Internationally, we’ve gone through a Teutonic shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come,” he said.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=teutonic+shift&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
Them offaly teutonics
#10 Morton Doodslag
“Strewth!”
The world as we know it will cease in a billionth of a second when a Pak nuke goes off somewhere. I believe this is inevitable, unless we take drastic measures to get those nukes out of their hands ASAP. …. Finally, after the world changes and we look back in stupid astonishment on the wanton incineration of our way of life, the notion of storming Pakistan and any othe Muslim bunghole to deprive these enemies of nukes won’t look so drastic.
In the Western popular version of strategic thought, the one thing that is forbidden is for the West to actually use its strategic arsenal to defend itself. This is a meme that everything else flows from. After all, we don’t want to be seen as being bullies, colonialists, or having some bourgeois (sp?) prejudice to the effect that if death is going to be inflicted on a population; it is better that it be inflicted on those posing a threat to us rather than ourselves.
Let us go back to the Three Conjectures. It is impossible to reach an agreement with, or even surrender to, Islamic forces armed with nuclear weapons. Just as we have been discussing; they totally lack the command and control, what we refer to as “positive control”, over their nuclear arsenals and infrastructure. Any Islamic country with nuclear weapons lacks the internal cohesiveness and stability to maintain such, and they are always moments away from a massive Broken Arrow event. If they have them, they will be used, and amongst those uses will be attacks against us. I refer everyone to the math in the Three Conjectures.
I also note that the “Golden Hour” postulated, is over. We tried, in our own divided way with at least half of our body politic objectively working for the enemy. We have failed. Which throws us back on the math.
I agree that it is a matter of our national survival that Pakistan [and by extension any Islamic country] be “deprived” of nuclear weapons and the ability to make them. I take issue with the meme that the way to do that is to send in SpecOps teams to physically go in and seize them. I am second to none in my admiration of the skills and abilities of our SpecOps forces. But that crosses the border into magical thinking.
The task would demand that we reliably have close to real time intelligence on the precise physical location and security arrangements of every Pakistani warhead, the ability to insert sufficient forces to both overcome those security arrangements, physically secure and defend them from a counterattack that is going to be overwhelming in numbers, firepower, and willpower, and then physically move all these items [not large, but definitely heavy with non-trivial transport requirements] safely out of the country in the face of an opposition that has nothing to lose. All of this has to be done without fail for every warhead and bomb, and in passing we would have to disable their nuclear infrastructure so that they could not make more; including completion of whatever is in the pipeline and ready for near immediate use.
We are good. We ain’t that good.
The only fallback is to ensure the physical destruction beyond possibility of reconstitution. Doing that by conventional means encounters most of the same barriers listed above.
And admittedly, with this National Command Authority and chain of command being as functional as a football bat; the problems involved are at least an order of magnitude greater. Half of our body politic, as noted above, would cheer an Islamic nuclear strike on the US as a form of justice, so long as the Political Class was safe.
Given that, the only remaining resource that can prevent a nuclear detonation aimed at the US and its interests is our own nuclear arsenal.
This would be doable.
We know which depots store the Pakistani warheads and missiles. We know which units, where, are nuclear capable. We know where their nuclear production and fabrication facilities are.
Except when on alert, the Pakistanis keep most of their deterrent in non-nuclear hardened central depots. Given the multi-lateral struggle for power between that which is pleased to call itself the Pakistani government, the Pakistani military, the ISI, and yes Al Quada/Taliban; they themselves know that keeping them dispersed in the field is an invitation to losing them in penny-packets. An American nuclear strike, involving 8-10 warheads would destroy their nuclear strike capability; weapons, means of delivery, and means of production. Any warheads that survived somehow would not be intact. Nuclear devices have to be triggered in precise ways, or they do not go bang. Those surviving Pakistanis [And yes, it would mean millions of casualties. If I have to choose between millions of Pakistanis dying, or millions of Americans; I will vote for the Pakistanis to do the dying every time] will be preoccupied and in fact would not be able to recognize the remnants of a nuclear device if they saw it. And over time, without maintenance nuclear devices decay.
The sequalae of such a strike would disrupt their society sufficiently that nuclear reconstitution would neither be on their list of priorities, or possible.
Will this happen? No, it will not. But discussion of the real situation cuts through the BS; and leaves us facing reality. Either we take out their nuclear capabilities, or eventually they will be used against us. Mutual Assured Destruction theory breaks down in a multi-polar situation anyway; and it requires a shared sense of rationality [i.e. all parties have to have the same survival priorities, clearly communicated.]. If one or more parties have priorities that may outweigh survival as individuals or nation-states; then “deterrence” is a self-deception that will inevitably end in a nuclear strike.
From events, it seems that the Taliban and/or Al Quada have managed to penetrate and hold a Pakistani naval base for a period of hours to days; destroying high value targets. Given the nature of the political situation in Pakistan, it is far from unthinkable to posit that they had help from sympathizers amongst the base security forces. It claims to be a small force less than 2 dozen, although that is yet to be determined.
Given that, one must consider the possibility of a larger, more organized, strike with help from the security forces on one of the nuclear sub-depots subsidiary to the Central Ammunition Depot under the aegis of PAFB
Sargodha. Even if the attack is “beaten off” according to reports, what level of confidence can we have that their inventory is not off one or more warheads?
We are engaging in self-deception as to the life or death seriousness of the situation. No matter how many Foggy Bottom diplomats dance on the head of a pin, it does not change the facts on the ground, the risks, or the limited options for mitigating those risks.
With our supply lines to our expeditionary force in Afghanistan being subject to a Pakistani stranglehold; our situation is now untenable there anyway. Withdrawal of our forces and equipment is now mandatory. Once they are no longer hostage, we will have the capability to deal with the Pakistani threat with a freer hand.
And, as I noted above, the strategic parameters apply to any Islamic state or movement with nuclear capabilities. There are more than a few with ambitions along those lines. Including at least one NATO member.
Subotai Bahadur
29. Subotai Bahadur @ 29 said:
“Given that, the only remaining resource that can prevent a nuclear detonation aimed at the US and its interests is our own nuclear arsenal.”
Another option is to convince the Indians to take out the Pakistani nuclear capability. The Indians are certainly in greater peril than ourselves from Islamic nukes. Obama won’t do it but the next President needs to be making winks-and-nods at the Indians to launch a preemptive strike against Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.
This is entirely conspiracy theory on my part, but I had a few thoughts about the reports I’ve seen on this attack:
1. If the reports are true, the capabilities displayed during this attack are beyond most, if not all non-ISI trained/supported terrorist groups in Pakistan.
2. In the same vein, if you believe as I do that all terrorist organizations in Pakistan receive some sort of support from the ISI/other Pakistani government entities, isn’t it strange that they would choose to take CHINESE personnel hostage?
3. If India and Pakistan ever went at it again in a “hot” war, both their navies would play a huge part in the conflict, especially their subs. I seem to recall that India has both nuclear-capable submarines AND would require a lot of subs to blockade Karachi, making it interesting (if it’s true) that the P-3′s were specifically targeted in this attack.
4. My point in all of this is, might India not be paying back Pakistan a bit for Mumbai and a number of other recent terrorist attacks? Plus, twisting the tails of their Chinese rivals for good measure?
“Pakistan maintains there is no chance of Islamist militants getting their hands on atomic weapons.”
Translation: It is certain to happen.
21. Aardvark, Clausewitz is a good read on certain aspects of war( kinetic conflict resolution) but he far behind most “great thinkers” in the military arts. His expertise is limited to the tactical aspects of the horse and musket era. His “ON War” adds nothing to the study of warfare. His biggest claim to fame is that he was European.
The Orient was WAY ahead of Europe as far as study of the military arts. Europe ruled the known world because they had better technology. The Asian junk was a sound ship design, it just would not sail as close to the wind as a Square rigged sailing ship, much less a Fore and aft rigged ship. That is why Europeans went to China instead of the Chinese going to Europe. Plus, when the Europeans got there, they had cannons on their ships. The Chinese didn’t.
The Silk Road was a conduit for ideas and technology as well as goods. Ships replaced caravans because they had an economic advantage. With wind as a power source and less then 100 men to feed (from the sea, mostly) plus the time advantage, caravans couldn’t compete and died out. It takes around 2,000 camels to fill one small sailing ship. It took years to get those 2,000 or more camels down the Silk Road. They had to be fed and watered EVERY day. They had to be guarded also. Most of America’s current enemies got their start as caravan raiding tribes.
Richard is correct about technology being the measure of civilisation. Those with a different opinion operate from a lack of data. Maybe they don’t know what the word means;
http://www.engr.sjsu.edu/pabacker/history/introduction.htm
Having debated this subject before, I found that few people distinguish between Technology and Science. There is a real difference.
29. Subotai Bahadur
‘Including at least one NATO member. ‘
Considering our feckless leaderships’ refusal to do anything that will effectively stop Iran and the tap-dance it’s doing with the rest of the muslim world, what to you reasonably expect the outcome vis a vis US survivability to be in the foreseeable future?
As a practical matter the West will never employ a First Strike. Even during the beginnings of the Cold War, when the USA had a practical nuclear monopoly or at least a near monopoly on deliverable nuclear weapons, a First Strike was politically out of the question.
And so it remains today. I will leave aside the questions of morality or desirability and simply argue that No First Strike is a political given.
But is an overwhelming Second Strike also out the question? This is territory nobody has gone into yet. But we can create a thought experiment. If Japan had a deliverable atomic weapon in 1945 would they have used it against America after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I think the odds are that they would.
Implicit in the Three Conjectures idea is the notion that the West would initially react with a limited proportional response. New York dies, well so does Karachi. London dies, then so does Islamabad. But if it didn’t stop there — and why would it — it wouldn’t work that way long. The elites would die in such huge numbers it would make them irrational, or rather “rational” in the sense of Curtis LeMay. Pressure would grow, after absorbing a First Strike, to find something more comprehensive than proportionate response. They will not see Karachi as “a fair swap” for London or Paris or New York. Those elites will demand that the military stop the attacks. Completely and permanently. Now how do you do that? That will be the deadliest moral conundrum the human race has ever faced since its inception.
Personally, I think the strategic arguments are all for preventing the question from arising in the first place, because once that mission is posed: “stop nuclear attacks from the Islamic world by any means necessary” there is no happy answer. But that’s not how the elites have thought. And I don’t think they will be all that rational when their lives and precious possessions are at stake. Or rather, they will be “rational” in the coldest cost-benefit sense.
Perhaps a small nuclear strike on the West will be enough to motivate what September 11 should have motivated and allow for an effective response without resort to horrible and unthinkable measures. But the Western ramparts are manned to such a large extent by men who have risen through lies, expedience, betrayal and narrow vision, I do not think they can rise the moral occasion. They will do the easy thing. They will turn to their military chiefs and say, “make it stop now. Just don’t tell anyone that I told you to do it.”
The major leaders in World War 2 were quite willing to kill millions. What people will do under the pressure of mortal fear has to be experienced to be believed.
“Catching up with the West is doable but surpassing it is much more difficult.”
Not entirely on topic to the main thrust of this series but still relevant in that it tackles the problem of original thinking in a non Western society.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/05/tiger_mother_burning_bright.html
While countries like Japan, S.Korea, China, and etc. are at least aware of the problems of developing innovative, creative thinkers and are taking steps, the Islamic nations don’t seem to be producing anything. My anecdotal, just my opinion view, is that most of the original stuff coming out of East Asia is in the arts and entertainment field. Japan is doing some new stuff in the tech area.
10. Morton, 29. Subotai, 34. Wretchard:
Thank you for your highly informative postings. You gentlemen are in fine form today. In fact, this entire thread and all the comments are particularly vintage. Almost enough to make me prescind from the weighty matters at hand.
To wit:
9/11 precipitated an immense “Crisis of Truth.” The official response to the terrorist attacks was muddy and unfocused even on the part of the “patriots,” while the fifth-column liberals refused to accept the proffered explanations at all. When a wildcat nuclear device detonates somewhere in America — as I’m sure it will before the decade is out — the crisis of truth will rise to cataclysmic proportions. It will quite literally be the end of the world as we know it; not because the devastation will be total (it won’t), but simply because all preexisting narratives will fail. Nothing we now do or think, nothing we are, can possibly digest the event. We have no organ for such meats. Like a very small child who’s family is being evicted from their home, we cannot possibly absorb the significance of the proceedings. The child knows only that the adults around him are embroiled in some dark, unpleasant business. He can’t understand what’s happening but he senses that his immediate needs have become suddenly unimportant or tiresome; so he plays a game, retreats into his imagination, or goes to sleep. Events beyond his reckoning are transforming his life. He will wake up tomorrow in a new place, and memories of his first home will fade with his dreams.
The nuclear terror will force us to rewrite the canons of established reality. Nothing that now exists will pass through the crisis untransformed; it must either die or be born again. This is what fin de seicle means. That 9/11 failed to produce such a change is evidence of its untimeliness. The imputation known as “business as usual” did not break down, had too much momentum to stop. It will take more internal weakening for that to happen — the retirement and passing of the Boomers, the default of the debt, global capital flows bypassing America like an oxbow like, the end of cheap energy — and then a nuclear device will blow the whole house of cards away. Our age of the earth will be over.
Seldom has any age had the consciousness to foresee its own end so clearly. Our subsequent inability to avert the end or in anywise change it seems to render the value of such clarity dubious, except that it may leadeth to repentence. We ought to take the gift, as it will likely be the last one we ever get.
“Now how do you do that? That will be the deadliest moral conundrum the human race has ever faced since its inception.”
To pose the question is to know the answer.
“Inter arma enim silent leges”
or, if you prefer:
“existence – survival must cancel out programming. THAT was the equation!!!
toadold…
The ummah is so inbred it’s a fright; only one factor contributing to a mean IQ of 83ish — or less — in most MENA populations.
Such a dull pool of humanity is critically short of Smart Fraction ™ individuals. Even without the Neolithic game rules of islam ( it’s a pagan system about 20,000 years old ) it’s not possible for the ummah to replicate China, Europe or America.
—
The mission creep in AfPak is a fright. We’ve morphed a clean campaign to get after the bad boys into nation building.
Towards that end we’ve sent females over on Peace Corps style cultural re-programming. Shades of “The Ugly American.” Neolithic societies are hyper-patriarchal. It has been the height of folly to change such an orientation.
All attempts at educating girls blow back as assassinations and ‘mini-Beslans.’
Only very late in the game has America wised-up and started educating adult males. Hard to believe that this critical segment had been neglected from 2001 thru 2009! That’s right, education for the youngsters ( including girls ) while men in their prime were left un-schooled!
——-
I’m amazed that we’ve provided P-3 Orion sub-hunters to Pakistan. I regard that as completely destabilizing. It gives Islamabad — and Beijing — practice in sub-hunting. What a terrible idea.
Further, it gives Pakistan the illusion that they can go toe to toe with India.
The Golden Chain is giving Pakistan a nervous breakdown.
Pakistani paranoia is so great that it’s hard to picture ANY covert Indian / RAW op in Pakistan.
( Got to love that word-play. )
My own formulation of “Inter arma enim silent leges” was “in total combat only the laws of physics are obeyed”. Too bad I can’t render that in Latin. In sinking subs, crashing airplanes, or situations where you fight for your life exertions are only limited by possibility.
In order to restore humanity to the battlefield you must restore the Design Margin as well, that surplus of power which allows scope for human pity or morality. In a world of complete necessity freedom is likewise absent. “Arms silence freedom”. The reason Pacifism was so deadly in the 1930s was that it destroyed the Design Margin. Once it was gone people went overnight from swearing never again to fight for King and Country to bombing the living daylights out of German civilians if it would keep them from the firing squad and the concentration camp. When you have no choice, you have no choice.
That is why attempts to portray the current crisis as a “law enforcement problem” or worse, nonexistent, is so dishonest and dangerous. It will guarantee that we are ultimately are thrown to the brink and upon coming to our senses, find ourselves hanging by the fingernails above a thousand food drop. And in that situation, you will do anything — anything — to regain a place of safety.
The world needs two things above all: strength and clarity of purpose. From these will flow humanity and good-will. It likewise has two supreme enemies: dishonesty and fecklessness. From these will come desperation and suboptimal decisions. Given a choice, most politicians will choose dishonesty.
This raid is Blue On Blue. It’s like watching a man leg-wrestle with his own other leg.
Concerning Clausewitz, maybe I’m stating what’s common knowledge; nevertheless, it’s important to grasp that Clausewitz meant in his writings to be descriptive not prescriptive. He stated this explicitly and never intended for his views to be formulated as models for action. He meant to describe war and warfare and various associated aspects thereof, and let others draw their conclusions accordingly. Hence it’s somewhat unfair to Clausewitz to say he saw “this-and-this” clearly but was not so insightful with respect to “this-and-that.” He was trying to understand and describe the nature of war and warfare in his own time, with the experience of war in the Western world as his points of reference. Overall, I think, he did rather well in that regard; perhaps better than even he realized.
I remember thinking, as I wrote the Three Conjectures offhand, that “someone should start thinking about the unthinkable”. That ability played a crucial part in humanity surviving the Cold War. Years after Hiroshima passed before a real doctrine for employing nuclear weapons was devised.
Until deterrence was well developed as doctrine people thought of nukes as some kind of artillery, only bigger. As H-bombs were developed, the potential for catastrophe made it vital to create a reliable, transparent and definite set of rules for the use of nukes. To what extent the deterrence doctrine made it possible to cross the Cold War Valley of Death is imponderable. But my guess is that it contributed something.
Today we have a different question and it needs a different answer. How should we think about the proliferation of WMDs in a world where such technology can no longer be contained among groups some of whom aim at death? SAC was an expression of the deterrence doctrine, the concrete manifestation of an idea. Arguably it worked because the idea worked; and perhaps we are still here to read this blog post because it worked. Is there an equivalent way to think about the problem going forward so that everyone one earth can safely say, “they thought about the problem the right way back then”.
Someone, I do not remember who, said “war is an affair of the mind”. Doctrine spells the difference between seeing the ocean as an obstacle or as a road; between perceiving tanks as pillboxes or elements of maneuver or regarding B-52s armed with thermonuclear weapons as bigger B-17s or something else. SAC’s motto “Peace is our profession but war is our business” really says B-52s are not B-17s. They are something else.
I think the main obstacle to developing a new doctrine which effectively preserves peace and humanity is political correctness. Political correctness is obligatory dishonesty. Today we have accepted dishonesty as a valid mode of thinking. We are told to regard certain things as sacred, as too big to fail, too horrible to happen. They are not for discussion.
If War is an Affair of the Mind, castastrophe is also. The elephants that will stomp on us will be those we have ignored in our living rooms. Perhaps the men of the 1940s and 50s lacked computers and Iphones, but they understood that nothing was too horrible to happen, and therefore thought about preventing these bad things. In the 21st century we have every means to say something and yet have nothing to say.
–love needs respect, and some of respect is fear. When the formula goes awry, you have the giant Pillsbury doughboy from Ghostbusters –currently striding around Libya almost unconsciously flattening the necessities of native life, for no reasons but Newton’s Laws of momentum, as far as i can tell. Meanwhile we have an army in central Asia surrounded by three varyingly-hostile Asiatic powers any two of which in concert would bring in the third, and could pinch off this army in less time than it took to pinch off Corregidor and probably the Cho-Sin reservoir too –putting us in a major land war in Asia, the cherry on the cupcake of what our smilin’ happy-days-are-here-again fifth column is trying to accomplish while it can.
SAC’s motto was merely “Peace is Our Profession”. Joke amongst us alert facility dwellers was the addendum: “War is Our Hobby”.
John Samford #32
“Having debated this subject before, I found that few people distinguish between Technology and Science.”
Let me use my favorite quote (and only one I can think of) from the late James P. Hogan:
“There is no such thing as Science. There is only that which quickly becomes practical engineering and there is unfounded speculation.”
Wretchard #34:
An issue no one seems to have considered is what happens if Iran or Pakistan or someone attempts to use a nuke on Israel or the US and we shoot it down or otherwise intercept it. Aside from yelling “Yippee!” a lot and praising Ronald Reagan a great deal, what do we do next?
Will it be “Okay, now it’s our turn. One of y’all hold my beer while I show how missiles and nukes are supposed to work.” Or instead will there be sober calls for greater sanctions and improved access by international inspection agencies along with the usual entreaties that All Men Are Brothers?
When we were studying conventionally armed ICBMs back in the 90’s it was assumed that the countdown would be broadcast, the launch televised, and the target country well known. Among other things, that approach tends to allay fears by the Russians and Chinese that we are shooting at them as well as giving the target country notice that they have 33 minutes and 14 seconds and counting to agree to our demands. Of course what will those demands be? More wishy washy stuff or something more effective and permanent?
#33 impeach obama, #34 wretchard, and #36 Matt
Of course, we will not perform a first strike, as I said. The West in general, and the United States in particular, are deeply enmeshed in the delusion that bad things will never happen to them. We have been shielded from the harsh reality of the world for far too long. Reality and Darwin will not yield forever to wishful thinking.
I believe that we are in for what the Russians called Смутное время, the Time of Troubles; famine, uprisings, usurpers. Our problems will include economic collapse, a loss of legitimacy of the government, and a self-caused energy shortage. But returning to the specific question in hand, that of nuclear terrorism; yeah we are in for it.
Some time within the next couple of years we are going to have terrorist attacks here. Some of them are going to involve nuclear materials; either as contaminants or as an actual explosive device. Our Political Class, of both parties, is not capable of handling this. Especially in conjunction with all the other Troubles.
Let us say that we are struck. In a blinding flash, an American city ceases to exist, and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Americans cease to exist.
The first question is, who do we retaliate against? Russia? China? France? Britain? India? Israel? Pakistan? Iran? North Korea? A terrorist group that could be covertly connected with any of them? Remember what I said about deterrent theory breaking down in a multi-polar world?
Thus, in the absence of an immediately credible target claiming responsibility [and we have to consider that even the most apparent attribution may well be a ruse, Maskirova, to direct an American retaliation to a third party.] there will be delay and hesitation. And as time passes, the situation will become murkier and less certain.
Yes, we can identify the source of fissile materials from isotope ratios … with enough time. And who would accept it? Whoever is named will deny it, and their great power sponsors will stand behind them [in the case of Pakistan, they are actively courting China as we speak,]. The UN will deny the validity of any such analysis, and the notoriously “unbiased” and “impartial” IAEA will continue their prime function of creating an Islamic nuclear strike force and claim that whoever is named is innocent. And for that matter, one can be sure that there will be voices raised in the White House demanding that the crisis not be allowed to go to waste, and that Israel be named as the perpetrator.
In France, fortunes will be made writing books claiming that the United States struck itself so as to justify imposing its nefarious will on the innocent world. By the time any resolution is made, it will be too late. There will be no retaliation, and the perpetrator will have motivation and a belief in the safety of repeating the attack.
And that attack will face the same quandaries and denials.
The only thing that would provoke an immediate response would be if one of the Left’s sacred cities were hit. DC, New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, or Seattle. That would cause an immediate [and probably inaccurate] counter-attack by the administration. One interesting point. It may be because there is a limited reality testing in California, but they seem to think that their immunity from all other aspects of the real world extends to Al Quada. When you consider that American entertainment that Al Quada considers offensive to Al-whatshisname comes from LA, that the porn industry is centered not far from there, and that San Francisco prides itself on offending everyone’s morality; one would think that they would have a greater concern about nuclear terrorism. But they are sure that it will come in Flyover Country.
Our only hope of avoiding this will be to strike first. And that will not happen, even if we did not have Buraq Hussein Obama as NCA.
IF we survive to election day in 2012, and IF there are elections, and IF the vote is both fair and honestly counted; any successor to Buraq is going to have to be immensely strong to guide us on a better path. Something to consider when choosing candidates. The weak, the conventional, the get-along, go-along politician will not lead us to survival, let alone a bright future.
Subotai Bahadur
wretchard, i think you’re right about that PC poison being cumulatively lethal to a nation. Back in the 60s we marveled briefly at how tv sitcoms from southern California were flattening the nation’s regional dialects and creating a national accdent that had no regional base –the American accent. A few thinkers remarked on this –McLuhan and the several ‘gray-flannel-suit’ critics –and then moved on, leaving unrecognized a great invisible electrode attached to the heart of the culture, transmitting literally “whatever”, everywhere at once, making ‘fashion’ itself the fashion, making celebrity famous for being famous. What could be the antidote to the derived cynicism? Why, nothing but wide-eyed, earnest, Sunday-go-to-meetin’ Political Correctness –”we are NOT useless, we are making the world socially just!” A pose, and the First Lie of Postmodernism.
My mom, bless her soul, born in 1924, saw it all happening, and would say “this country needs another Depression.” I should’ve asked her for more detail on that thought, instead of laughing, “Oh, mom!”
#39 wretchard
How about: “In toto proelio solum leges physicae sunt paruit” for “in total combat only the laws of physics are obeyed”?
#45. RWE
An issue no one seems to have considered is what happens if Iran or Pakistan or someone attempts to use a nuke on Israel or the US and we shoot it down or otherwise intercept it. Aside from yelling “Yippee!” a lot and praising Ronald Reagan a great deal, what do we do next?
This is a question that I hope the other BC’ers will take up. I myself believe that the media and Political Class will stifle any praise of Reagan or SDI, because it would make their past cupidity at best, wholly apparent.
My personal view is that the target should at the very least launch a counterstrike that would gut the aggressor’s ability to attack anyone, ever again. The initial attack that was blocked is by any definition a Casus Belli under international law. If someone shoots at you and misses, it does not mean you are best friends. But as you note, the same PC blindness we have been discussing will be involved.
Subotai Bahadur
36. Matt: Pretty pessimistic viewpoint and absolutely wrong IMHO. The pendulum never stops swinging. During the Revolutionary War (ours) it was ungentlemanly to (sneer) fire from behind trees! In WWII we were burning Japanese snipers out of caves with flame throwers. Today there are calls to read terrorists their Miranda Rights on the battlefield. But let a nuke go off in Times Square and we will be slaughtering Muslims like KFC fills a bucket of chicken, and whistling while we work. No fetal positions for us. Well, most of us; University Profs will still be saying we had it coming until they get a nice, warm cup of shut the F**k up to the noggin. I guess I’m a glass half-full kind of guy.
The “good news” is that Pakistan’s nuke technology is old. From the mid-1970′s. And, you just saw what happened in Japan with the old technology, didn’t ya?
If there’s no momentum in the newsprint (or TV media), the story is a waste of time. These people kill each other every day. And, not just in Pakistan! They’ve very tribal.
Watching these stories is like watching Obama’s limosine get stuck on a bump in Ireland, on American Embassy property. Did you see how long it took the Secret Service just to move a big car bus in front? (The car had to be towed.) The Obama’s then left out the back door.
Man plans and God laughs.
war seems like the necessary catalyst to jump start human societies out of stasis (and decline). imo, any successful nuclear or wmd attack on an American city will lead to the left being swept out of power at all levels, and lawyers put in uniform and given a gun — so that they can for once in their lives do something useful. if the attack is particularly destructive, it might even cause the country to go “full Roman”…
Wretchard, in your comment @42 you wrote ” Doctrine spells the difference between seeing the ocean as an obstacle or as a road”. General Spears, personal representative from prime minister Winston Churchill to the French government in May of ’39, later wrote:
“I had become convinced that Wegand and the French generally were intent upon holding the country round the harbour [Dunkirk] and defending it as a beleaguered fortress. This was completely contrary to the British conception, and was absurd. The garrison would be reduced by starvation and lack of ammunition in a very short time. It would be a new Metz, with but two differences: the siege would be shorter and the responsible Bazaine would not be amongst the besieged.”
“I suddenly realized with a clarity that had never before been vouchsafed me in all the long years I had worked with the French army, that to them the sea was much the same thing as an abyss of boiling pitch and brimstone, an insurmountable obstacle no army could venture upon unless they were specially organized colonial expeditions endowed with incomprehensible powers… To fall back to Dunkirk represented retiring into a fortress, which might be supplied by sea, but from which there was no retreat.”
“BEYOND THE HARBOURS LAY GOD’S OWN HIGHWAY, THE GREATEST, WIDEST HIGHWAY IN THE WORLD, ONE THAT LED EVERYWHERE; IF THE TROOPS COULD GET ON TO SHIPS THEY WOULD SOON BE IN THE LINE ELSEWHERE.”
These quotes are from “Sixty Days that Shook the West” by Jacques Benoist-Mechin, which I am currently reading.
If we are attacked by missile, our ‘eye in the sky’ tech will see and be able to stop/retaliate by plotting launch locations. My concern is the use of home grown/madrassa inculcated ‘freedom fighters’ using imported nuclear weaponry.
Determining the source of such attacks will not be easy, especially if no claims of responsibility.
RWE 45,
If Israel intercepts an Iranian nuclear armed MRBM we can expect the UN to spring into action and condemn Israel for showering radioactive pollution on Jordan.
42) and 52) w and devid boggs,
“seeing the ocean as an obstacle or as a road; between perceiving tanks as pillboxes or elements of maneuver ”
” To fall back to Dunkirk represented retiring into a fortress, which might be supplied by sea, but from which there was no retreat”
The same mindset gave them the Maginot Line and what the French version of Dunkirk would have been.
To the British, the Army was “a proectile to be fired by the Navy”. A Filipino Annapolis graduate who was the gunnery officer of Philippine Navy destroyer escort in the early 70s drolly told me, “where the Army sees a water obstacle the Navy sees a road.”
Although he actually fought his ship in combat in Sulu Sea Frontier to great effect with all the fire contol systems inoperable and rusted away, he cringed at the thought of giving his former classmates a tour of the vessel. He would hide from when they were in town.
“How could I show them that pile of junk?” he asked.
It finally sank at quayside during one of the many typhoons, bashed against the concrete pier. Nobody died. I think he said he was actually glad to see it on the bottom where it would embarrass no one any further. But it had served his purpose.
In the Bridges of To-ko-ri, Brubaker unsuccessfully tries to clear his Panther over the last crest before reaching the sea. The sea was safety. It was feet wet, the blessed property of the USN. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the sea played that role for Britain. Admiral Jarvis, when asked if Napoleon would invade Britain answered, “I do not know, my lords, if Napoleon will come. I only know he will not come by sea.”
This idea of the sea as Britain’s one-way road was immortalized by Alfred Thayer Mahan who summarized the Napoleonic wars thus, “Those far distant, storm-beaten ships upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.”
SpeakEasy,
Your criticism at 49 seems so unrelated to anything I actually wrote that I’m not sure a sensible reply to you exists. However, I may partially bear the blame for that. Perhaps I was too elliptical in my original presentation. So, in the interests of making everything perfectly clear, let me restate the matter without the rhetoric.
Changes above a certain magnitude—say, a nuclear weapon incinerating NYC—have the result of obviating old polarities and rendering old arrangements null. You know, force majeure and all that. People’s priorities are likely to change. When enough people’s priorities change, their society changes along with them, even to the point of discontinuity. This is how the past becomes the past. This is why Union and Confederate troops are not still duking it out at Gettysburg, or why we are not burning Japanese businessmen out of their cubicles in 2011. At a certain point, old narratives stop and new ones begin. These moments are pretty clearly associated with the beginnings and endings of wars, the rising and falling of nations.
The passing of the age has very little to do with anyone’s theoretical willingness to kill Muslims—or not. Muslims are certain to die in large numbers no matter what course history takes; and by the time America’s hand is forced, nobody will even think it necessary to justify the expedient. The passing of the age has to do with old arrangements becoming unsustainable. Now which of America’s current arrangements, from our inverted demographics to our hyperbolic deficit spending to our outsourced manufacturing, do you think is likely to survive an all-out war with Islam? In fact, the more “all-out” the war becomes, the greater will be the necessity of jettisoning the garbage, of nullifying the old agreements; in which case, ipso facto, the age itself will have passed.
But these crisis moments are like singularities. The known order breaks down at their approach and nobody can see what lies on the other side. No country, no individual, no arrangement has a guaranteed pass to emerge unscathed from the vortex. The one thing we know for true is that many old shibboleths and standing stones will be cast down. But anybody who is optimistic about America’s future surely hasn’t been paying attention to the general trend of events. A geopolitical cataclysm of Napoleonic proportions is about to reshuffle the board and change the shapes of all lands. America has neither the numbers, the wealth, nor the esprit to repel this tide by main force. We will have to change. We no longer have any choice in the matter.
The last time an Orion was in the news it had been forced down by the Chinese, who have a reason to fear them. Am I missing something? The Orion is more a target of a nation state isn’t it? Or of the nation state on whose behalf the ‘terrorists are acting?
Odd that took Chinese as hostages
China is building a port in Pak–ostensibly to service its anti-piracy missions
We will monitor that— for sure.
Britannia Ruled the Waves–to protect its trade and colonial wealth.
America Rules the Air, Space, the Cybersphere, Finance-etc
Cisco, Face Book, Google, Yahoo, MSFT, Apple, Oracle, IBM, HP, Att, Verizon, NYSE, PwC– etc
Are American national security strategic assets.
– to protect American fundamental interests.
c.h @ 50: The “good news” is that Pakistan’s nuke technology is old. From the mid-1970′s. And, you just saw what happened in Japan with the old technology, didn’t ya?
+1
W @ 56: Your discussion of British Navy reminds me of “The Armada” by Garrett Mattingly which, while a little O/T, is simply a must-read. On the thread topic, I only hope Matt is too pessimistic. But he has evidence to support his view; I have only wishful thinking. The threads of History are winding toward a singularity, a knot so tight and snarled that we can’t undo it, only cut our way through it.
Blast #54:
Would be just terrible if it fell on Syria, wouldn’t it?
m @ 57: America has neither the numbers, the wealth, nor the esprit to repel this tide by main force. We will have to change. We no longer have any choice in the matter.
Lack the esprit, perhaps.
But we have the numbers, the wealth, and the technology to take on pretty much the rest of the planet, if we were so inclined. Of course we might have to actually drop bombs on them, instead of outside the city limits to try to scare them into surrender. Might have to crank up munitions manufacture and a lot land, air, and sea transport.
Do not underestimate our existing destructive power, nor how we could multiply it in very short order, if we were so inclined.
But on the esprit … well, table that until the end of 2012.
Way back in the 1970′s after the draft was ended the US Army was in pretty bad shape. One old time NCO was reported as saying, “If we go to war I’m going to shoot the SOB next to me to keep him from getting me killed.” So I’m thinking that though the PC crowd will never learn or deviate in their way of thinking the non-PC crowd will lose all tolerance for them and remove them from the controls. It will be something like the expulsion of the Royalists at the end of the Revolutionary War.
oMan.
wrt “The Armada”. Great history. Great writing. Struck particularly by the point that the Spanish fleet couldn’t get in close, due to shallows, to protect Parma’s barges, leaving the troops vulnerable to the Sea Beggars in their manuverable, shallow-draft ships.
IOW, it was a no-go from the get-go.
Details, details….
In the subject currently under discussion, the important detail is national will, not anything as banal as material facts.
The Spanish planners missed something quite obvious if they’d looked–or asked, Mattingly thinks Parma may not have done more than pretend cooperation with the Enterprise because he already knew about the shallow seas and their results–but today, national will is considerably harder to discern.
And if the Spanish can miss or ignore or blow off such things which are obvious and just go ahead, what can be said about our enemies’ view of our national will? Considering that believing the convenient is so easy and the evidence so intangible and mixed.
Re #42, “I remember thinking, as I wrote the Three Conjectures offhand, that “someone should start thinking about the unthinkable”.
Someone already did. It was, of course, the brilliant Rand Corp futurist and game theorist Herman Kahn who first and most extensively thought about the unthinkable and wrote about it in “On Thermonuclear War” and “On Thermonuclear War in the 1980s.” Wikipedia has a pretty good article about him.
The nukes are safe
They’re in good hands
In bunkers built
On shifting sands
Al Qaeda knows
Just where they are
They’ve friends who’ll leave
The door ajar
And late some night
And very soon
Lighted dimly
By the moon
A band of men
Of bristled beard
Will do what we
Have always feared
Ah well we had
The warning signs
The whispered sighs
Amid the pines
That told of things
That might go boom
When we leave Paks
To guard that room
toadold @ 64 said:
“So I’m thinking that though the PC crowd will never learn or deviate in their way of thinking the non-PC crowd will lose all tolerance for them and remove them from the controls. It will be something like the expulsion of the Royalists at the end of the Revolutionary War.”
Josh @ 63 said:
“But we have the numbers, the wealth, and the technology to take on pretty much the rest of the planet, if we were so inclined. … Do not underestimate our existing destructive power, nor how we could multiply it in very short order, if we were so inclined.”
Toadold and Josh just described the two-step process where the United States transitions from a decaying democracy to a classical imperial power. Naked imperialism maybe our only survival option. Unfortunately this is like summoning a daemon without knowing the spell of dismissal. Then again, dying upright while holding a sword maybe a better end than kneeling before an Islamic fascist and begging for mercy.
Matt, Don’t be so sensitive,I disagreed with you, I did not criticize. My point is America can mobilize like no other nation when we finally face the reality of our own possible extinction. We lose our way when everything is going well and forget what we really know about human nature- especially less-civilized human natures. It really is not that hard to solve even our worst problems, we just need the will to do the hard things. Like I said, I’m an optimist.
As constructive criticism, try speaking more clearly and concisely and I am more likely to understand your point.
I have nothing to contribute to this thread, except to say it is a great pleasure to read the different comments and to see such an interesting and remarkable discussion.
SpeakEasy,
I may have been too harsh. I thought my position was being mischaracterized, so I tried to clarify it vigorously. Perhaps too vigorously. I apologize if I have overreacted. Thanks for reading and commenting.
There is a time element, based on technological advance, built into this problem too. The Conjectures talk of nukes. But there are even worse horrors on the horizon; much worse, and much more difficult to defend against – designer bugs and nanotech weapons, which will be in the hands of anyone who wants them in maybe 30 years.
How many uncontrolled replicating nanoassemblers does it take to depopulate the Earth of all protoplasmic life, down to the bottoms of the seas and the entire land surface of the planet?
One.
We need to end the 1389-year war. NOW.
Twice in Israel’s history was Israel at a technological disadvantage. The second time was during the roman period. The first was during the time of the philistines and the period covered by the book of Judges.
The situation between Israel and its neighbors nowhere near resembles this. Quite the opposite.
The Left sometimes employs this tactic, but they are amateurs compared to the level achieved by radical Islamism. They have perfected the art of being offended, perpetually enraged, being an explosion waiting to happen. To remark on their shoes, to suggest they may be in an evil mood, in fact to observe that the sun is shining is to invite instant anger. In time you learn to address them in the most honorific terms, behave obsequiously and insofar as is possible, never to risk the slightest provocation.
That describes abuse. Wife-beaters. Child-beaters. People who get a kick out of bullying other people. Given that Islam permits wife beating, this mentality is handed down from generation to generation. The problem with allowing a child to act like a spoiled brat is that the behavior invariably gets worse over time. The problem with Danegeld is that the Dane always comes back.
It is not easy to stand up to bullies, but it must be done.
They will not see Karachi as “a fair swap” for London or Paris or New York.
That is because it isn’t.
A “tit for tat” response of destroying cities is far from the most hideous response a terrorist nuke. One particularly vicious response is to systematically destroy enemy villages, then destroy enemy towns, then…
One response that seems to fall short of using nukes would be to declare the property rights of people within enemy territory to be void. Not only would this allow anybody to take property in enemy territory with impunity, but it would invalidate land ownership and home ownership. Every house and every piece of land would be given to a new owner, and the previous owners would be evicted.
Giving Pushtun land over to Hazaras or Tajiks or Uzbeks would be much more effective than annihilating Peshewar or Kandahar. Systematic confiscation of rebel property was highly effective for Henry VII of England. On noble estates, sons could plot revenge against their dead fathers. When a son had a living father but no estate, he lacked the means to plot his revenge – he had to work for a living instead.
Declaring enemy property rights to be void effectively legalizes city sacking. Putting enemy cities to the sack is quite different than turning them into burnt offerings, but it should not be seen as any less cruel.
Diagnosing the origin of fissile materials may be doable. First question: Who would accept the conclusion? Second question: Does it tell us who got hold of the device and delivered it? Third question: Did the originator of the device provide it willingly or was it lost, strayed, or stolen? Fourth question: Were the fissile materials in a different form when they went “missing” (see Clancy, Sum of All Fears)?
It has been said that the British Empire was acquired “in a fit of absent-mindedness”. Could be. The Russian Empire was acquired–and part of the reason for Rome’s expansion as well–due to lack of defensible borders. Wherever you were, the barbarians, the raiders, the enemy states, were just…over there. The only reasonable defense was to push the continuously contested land further and further from the center.
Given that Islam is stateless and modern technology ends defensible borders, perhaps endlessly expanding imperialism will come back into fashion.
Alexis 74,
Islam is the codified value system of a primitive steppe tribal society in which wealth is not created but is extracted from neighbors. The hyper-patriarchal mores including the control of women were designed to ensure that property stayed in the family. The sexual abuse and emotional damages came second as a positive feedback element the system generated. These initially proved to be a useful feature because they provided for producing the masses of frustrated emotionally stunted young men that the Ummah needed to expand and take in new victims to exploit and extract property from. Dispossessing the holders of wealth and female education are the best ways to break the tribal structure. Doing so is sure to produce more violence and should be entered into only as part of an intentional campaign to break the foundations of Islam.
The desire of a premodern aristocratic society to control the distribution of wealth and women is natural. Consider what happened during the feudal period in Europe. Primogenture and elaborate patterns of female control, such as inbreeding, were developed. These would lead to a concentration of landed wealth and also provided spare sons for adventure tourism. In Christendom however these were seen as secular patterns that the religious system was largely in conflict with. The Church condemned consanguinity and on occasion invalidated noble marriages. Rules of monogamy were enforced and popular culture repeated memes, such as courtly love and the triumph of younger sons, that ran counter to the restrictive desires of the tribal elders. The very efficiency of the feudal warriors in killing each other combined with the devastation of the plague and the multiplicity of migrating national and cultural units to ensure that property was widely redistributed.
29. Subotai Bahadur
“I also note that the “Golden Hour” postulated, is over.”
Agreed, but I would say there is still a small chance – a ‘silver hour’ if you will, maybe bronze. But that would require the US to intervene in the ‘arab spring’ in a strong but clandestine way to protect the leaders most friendly to the US, depose our enemies, and then to empower the moderates and kneecap the muslim brotherhood types. So far the administration has done the exact opposite.
“Doing that by conventional means encounters most of the same barriers listed above.”
Disagree. We can insert choppers into the Pak equivalent of Fort Knox without them knowing. We could certainly hit the needed targets with B-2s and GBU-28s. Some targets are probably vulnerable to TLAM as well. As I mentioned in 14 the only compelling reason to keep friendly with the Pakis now is to keep tabs on who in their command structure has access to the nukes, and thereby keep track of the devices. We can still take their strategic weapons using our conventional forces. And India would be happy to help contain the Paki counterattack.
However, I agree any preemptive action to save American lives is impossible.
Recall Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review. He effectively said that if America is hit with WMD he will call his lawyers and they will investigate if the attacker was in compliance with the NPT.
He might reconsider if they hit DC or NY, but my guess is if the bad guys attack red states they will be safe from counter battery.
36. Matt
“When a wildcat nuclear device detonates somewhere in America — as I’m sure it will before the decade is out — the crisis of truth will rise to cataclysmic proportions.”
Ironically, America may save the world from total destruction even under nuclear attack…
If any other western nation is nuked by Islam, their choices are do nothing or nuke where they think the jihadis came from. All of the other nuclear powers are one trick ponies. They lack the ability to project adequate conventional forces to go over there, find the Muslims making or taking the weapons, and kill them. They have no option to limit their counter attack to the responsible party alone. So millions would surely die.
Only America retains the intelligence assets and conventional forces to destroy Islamic bombers without resorting to nuclear weapons. Also, our engagement with the enemy would allow us to target more selectively. We probably already have their fingerprints in our database, and we know where all of Pak’s warheads sleep. If we are hit but not badly we can still go after the responsible jihadis without vaporizing their cities.
Of course, this depends on the ruling class retaining some degree of sanity, which may vary depending on the target(s) the terrorists hit.
Obviously I hope it doesn’t come to it, but America is the only nation that can get nuked once and destroy our enemies without racking up a nuclear body count in the hundreds of millions.
“a shining city upon a hill” indeed.
After a couple day’s thought, what strikes me most about this raid is that it is so odd, and so out of character for what the Taliban has done previously. It’s easy to say it doesn’t make sense because the Taliban don’t make sense, but that might just be the easy way out. It wasn’t just the target – the fact that 6 men could make this kind of incursion and hold position for hours of destruction looks to me like this was an incredibly skilled and highly disciplined military team. This has *Not* been the Taliban’s M.O. before now. They typically rate high on anger but low on organization and detail, and they turn and run when things get hot. But not this bunch.
The weird thing about this is that America wasn’t hurt at all (after the Osama incident, who trusts Pakistan with high tech?) and that the only really big beneficiary was India.
Could this have been a disguised suicide team from India, sent to take revenge for Mumbai? Highly trained military men who had the dedication to go on a suicide mission for their country? Carrying enough faked documentation to “prove” that they were Taliban, with the goal of taking out Pakistan’s ASW assets while providing another humiliating blow to Pakistan’s military establishment?
If true, those men would be 6 of the greatest heroes India ever produced, *especially* because their names could never be mentioned or their deeds acknowledged.
The entire region from Med to India border and from the Indian ocean to Central Asia steppes is sliding into chaos. So far main beneficiaries are: Iran, China and Russia (in that order). I think that by rapidly accelerating this process rather than delaying it the US can deny the benefits to ICR and (may be) even shift the benefits flow toward itself. Unfortunately the US will never do such things, so we will limp along until the trend exhaust itself in a generation (or 2).
It struck me that there may be some honest, dedicated Paki soldiers, cops, and security guys. Consider senior NCOs or JOs. When something like this happens, six guys bust on to a base and don’t get hurt until the RF arrives…. When they get ordered to place X from place Y and, wouldn’t you know it, place Y gets hit….
When, sitting around a bottle of the forbidden Jack Daniels with some friends, they idly predict six of the next ten catastrophes which happen as if nobody else had thought to predict them, nobody much closer to the issue and possibly resonsible for it thought of this stuff….
A HVT is guarded by a unit known to be sad sacks….
What would they be thinking about such a state of affairs? And what would they conclude is their next step? Get aboard? Say something? What happened to the eager Lt. Sonny Fuzz who said something last year?
Somewhere, there must be some kind of ferment, but where it is going to blow is completely unpredictable.
Fletcher Christian @ 72 said:
“There is a time element, based on technological advance, built into this problem too. The Conjectures talk of nukes. But there are even worse horrors on the horizon; much worse, and much more difficult to defend against – designer bugs and nanotech weapons, which will be in the hands of anyone who wants them in maybe 30 years.”
Designer bugs are a genuine worry (nanotech is mostly hype). I can see some al Qaeda biotech laboratory appearing in the future staffed with PhD Egyptians, Pakistanis and Saudis trained in the United States and Europe. These guys would be Mohamed Atta types on steroids looking for the ultimate designer virus to wipe out the western world. Here’s a science fiction scenario: They design two viruses. One virus is a military virus based upon the common cold spliced into something like ebola. The disease is initially highly contagious but exhibits only common cold symptoms. It then goes dormant in the spinal column like a chicken pox virus, while counting down a timer. After the countdown is complete (say 6 months), the virus kicks into ebola mode and causes certain death. The second virus also spreads like a common cold but more slowly and gives full immunity against the military virus. The biotech terrorist first releases the immunity virus in Mecca during the Hajj. After a week or two, the military virus is released in a stadium during a world cup soccer game. There is almost no defense against what I’ve described. Also I see no way to prevent something like this from eventually happening.
“And the problem with that approach is that if they make themselves a sufficient nuisance they will inevitably invoke an uncontrolled response from actors far more powerful than themselves.”
Precisely, Some kind soul should remind the Pakistanis, “Remember the Germans? They’ve always been among the most civilized and technologically advanced people on earth. And that’s why historians are still trying to figure out why they started two wars in 30 years’ time that killed 40 million people–and they didn’t even have nukes. The veneer of the West is just that: veneer. Verstehen Sie?”
ra/81, so we need Lt. Sonny Fuzz, but we have no idea what happened to him, if anything. Like occupied Paris 1943 –was he Vichy? Is Vichy France?
buddy.
I risk telling you something you may know, but…here goes.
Lt. Sonny Fuzz is the eager-beaver LT in the Beetle Bailey comic strip which, with Sarge, has been mining the WW II view of WW II military. Sort of like Sgt Bilko did with the garrison state military.
Fuzz is full of ideas and is the bane of Gen. Halftrack with his screwy ideas for making great changes.
A Paki JO who thought it would be a good idea to inform higher, with copies to higher yet, that a particular HVT was guarded by a demonstrably sub-par unit might be seen as a Lt. Fuzz, except nobody knows what happened to him, so nobody else tries.
Hope this isn’t an insult and that I missed your point.
re/85, ah yes –now i recall –he had the double cowlick –i had thought you invented the name as the generic idealist patriot –but all else i was with you –the Vichy ref was just Lt. Fuzz vs the ‘unbearable lightness of being’ –poor kid, RIP.
wretchard
programmer
buddy larsen
buckets
Moniker
paul_unalaska
Docbill
Thanks for the positive waves so many months ago. Finally made it back to Afghanistan. Now at a FOB west of Kandahar City. Inshallah I can participate more frequently in the discussions here.
‘Inshallah?’ Not ‘God willing’ or even ‘kayn aynhoreh?’ Bless your heart but ‘inshallah’ kinda makes me feel like they’re winning, neh? Who is this ‘Allah’ I keep hearing about?
Or maybe it is dominant mil.tradition to borrow native expressions? like ‘gung ho?’
Just sayin’. You are at the pointy end, carry on and thanks.
79. wws
It’s an ISI / ‘deep state’ scam.
Our helicopter ( stealth ) and our anti-submarine electronics ( P-3 ) have been traded away to Beijing so as to receive 50 fighter jets — whose function is to stop any further SEAL ops.
The ‘intrusion’ somehow magically went straight for the Orions which were both destroyed. ( After suitable contents removal. ) At which point, the Pakis can cry tears of hurt — blaming Americans for their own op.
Sweet.
It also buttresses Pakistani pleas for the Red Chinese to amp up their naval presence in the Indian Ocean.
Whomever thought up the P-3 to Pakistan scheme ought to be spanked.
Somehow I figure it’s an Obamanation.
Good on ya, Cannoneer #4. If you write it we will read it, and carefully at that. First hand reports from old number four will be studied both head on and elliptically too –
Guys,
We are all uncertain about the future and that breeds anxiety.
One way to relieve that anxiety is to contemplate catastrophy – the spasm war that Herman Kahn writes about. Our uncertainty will be resolved when the enemy is clear and punishment is meted out using nuclear or biological weapons.
I don’t see such a clear emotional resolution. Like Bush warned us, the war on terrorist (Islamists) will be long, confusing, hidden, unclear. Our policy will be to continue business as usual as long and as much as we can – that is a source of our strength, the commercial world.
Our government will continue to fight a shadow war and will prevent a terrorist nuke – that might be wishful thinking but we should recognize our strengths and what our real public servants strive for.
I predict a long era of struggle and incertainty and risk. No Third Act emotional relief in sight.