The War Unseen
Back in 2009 analysts put a name to a style of warfare that has emerged in response to asymmetrical threats: they called it diffused warfare — “where small units fight independently over a large area. Higher headquarters largely stay out of the way, providing brigades and battalions all of the supporting intelligence, surveillance and indirect fire assets they need.”
RAND analyst and historian David Johnson … says leaders in the Israeli Defense Forces are pointing to “Operation Cast Lead,” that targeted Hamas in Gaza, as the new way to battle irregular enemies. …
Surprise Israeli precision air strikes took out hundreds of Hamas leaders and other high value targets in the operation’s early hours … drones, attack helicopters and fighter jets were assigned directly to the maneuver brigades, Johnson said, a key element that ensured close coordination and a very short sensor-to-shooter cycle. This was critical as Hamas fighters presented fleeting targets as they used civilians for cover and bounded between buildings.
Whatever you want to call it, this describes how slowly and then with gathering speed traditional warfare has changed from a contest between regular formations to a death match between government operators and non-state actors. The American Conservative notes that America is at “war” as never before — with an array of enemies against whom war has never been and probably never will be declared, using forces that coalesce and dissipate like a puff of smoke.
The face of American-style war-fighting is once again changing. Forget full-scale invasions and large-footprint occupations on the Eurasian mainland; instead, think: special operations forces working on their own but also training or fighting beside allied militaries (if not outright proxy armies) in hot spots around the world. And along with those special ops advisors, trainers, and commandos expect ever more funds and efforts to flow into the militarization of spying and intelligence, the use of drone aircraft, the launching of cyber-attacks, and joint Pentagon operations with increasingly militarized “civilian” government agencies.
Much of this has been noted in the media, but how it all fits together into what could be called the new global face of empire has escaped attention. And yet this represents nothing short of a new Obama doctrine, a six-point program for twenty-first-century war, American-style, that the administration is now carefully developing and honing. Its global scope is already breathtaking, if little recognized, and like Donald Rumsfeld’s military lite and David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency operations, it is evidently going to have its day in the sun–and like them, it will undoubtedly disappoint in ways that will surprise its creators. …
Take the American war in Pakistan–a poster-child for what might now be called the Obama formula, if not doctrine. Beginning as a highly-circumscribed drone assassination campaign backed by limited cross-border commando raids under the Bush administration, U.S. operations in Pakistan have expanded into something close to a full-scale robotic air war, complemented by cross-border helicopter attacks, CIA-funded “kill teams” of Afghan proxy forces, as well as boots-on-the-ground missions by elite special operations forces, including the SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Much of this new warfare is being waged in Africa. Right across the continent operators are offing threats and teaching others how to off them.
Last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; … a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, secret prisons, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders, operating in Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic (where U.S. Special Forces now have a new base) only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton might take note, if they at all recall from their educations, that the last time the Man had been so active in Africa was back in the day of Cecil Rhodes. If Bush had done a tenth of this, they would have raised the cry of genocide, but thank God it’s Barack Obama, so it’s OK. Still some niceties must be observed. Danger Room notes that the Pentagon may be asked to drop Uganda as a partner because of their unfriendly attitudes towards Lesbians, Gays and Transgenders.
In the past four years, the Pentagon and State Department have forged a close, and largely unreported, alliance with the Ugandan military. A force of 120 American advisers based in Uganda provides training, weapons and supplies — $100 million worth since 2011 — and in exchange Ugandan soldiers bear the brunt of the close fighting in Somalia, a stronghold for Islamic militants.
The Ugandans’ “superb” fighting ability “was directly responsible” for driving militants out of Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu this year, according to one American official close to the U.S. train-and-equip program. But there’s a ticking time bomb inside the outwardly strong alliance. Uganda’s escalating crackdown on its gays, lesbians and transgenders has the U.S. indicating that it might just cut off that military aid. “LGBT issues” are a “caveat on U.S. support,” says the official, who spoke to Danger Room on condition of anonymity.
Perhaps the best defense for Jihadis and bloodthirsty militias is to became gay and lesbian themselves, if possible both, as this scruple may not be breached.
Nothing has emphasized the paradigm shift as much as the high-priority conversion of an aging amphibious vessel, the USS Ponce, into a high-tech “mothership” for SEALs in the Persian Gulf. “Motherships” have long been associated with Somalian pirate operations. Now, in the confined waters of the Gulf, they will be paid back in their own coin from equivalents operating from the USS Ponce. It is the Gaza concept all over again: “where small units fight independently over a large area. Higher headquarters largely stay out of the way, providing brigades and battalions all of the supporting intelligence, surveillance and indirect fire assets they need.”
The “mothership” concept is officially known as the Afloat Forward Staging Base. Some of the modifications to the USS Ponce in its new role include:
Her flight deck will be altered and enlarged to handle up to four massive MH-53 Sea Dragon mine clearing helicopters at one time, or a ton of MH-6 “Little Birds” and other highly modified special operations helicopters. Further, the Ponce’s aviation and marine fueling systems will be upgraded, cranes will be added, command and control systems will be retrofitted, and berthing will be provided for an array of fast attack and stealthy small boats. What is not clear is what will happen to her well deck. Either it will be sealed and possibly turned into a hangar bay or it will be used for launching and recovering special operations craft. A menu of other modifications will be made as well, making the half century old marine transport ship tailored to it’s new special operations and mine-clearing mission …
Although the Sponce’s conversion into a missionized sea base seems like a novel idea, and may by default become a miniature proving ground for the Navy’s larger, farther reaching sea basing concept that will allow large scale forward operations in denied areas, it is actually an idea ripped from the American special operations playbook of decades past. In the 1980′s “Operation Prime Chance” was put into effect in an attempt to protect US flagged oil tankers and merchant ships from direct Iranian attack and sea mines during a conflict period known today as “The Tanker Wars.” This operation would see the initial use of a variety of USN frigates and the marine transport dock “LaSalle” as a staging area for special forces flying MH-6 and AH-6 Little Birds, at night. Their mission was to hunt for Iranian mine laying craft, to protect allied mine clearing vessels, and to escort vulnerable merchant ships traveling through Gulf. These operations, although relatively limited in scope, were so successful that the Navy leased two barges, the “Hercules” and the “Wimbrown,” and converted them into makeshift special operations mission platforms. These barges would be called Mobile Sea Bases or MSB’s for short by the USN and would work as forward deployed Navy SEAL operations nests, complete with supporting fast boat units, EOD teams, marine security forces to protect the platform itself, and bristling with AH-6 attack and MH-6 support Little Bird helicopters flown by the Army’s elite 160th SOAR.
“Shoot, a fella’ could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.”
Leon Trotsky once observed that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” He was wrong. The correct formulation is that “you may not be interested in war if the war is not interesting to you.”
Today’s military operations have become increasingly similar to high-tech hit jobs. The President has a list and people go out and cross the names off that list, whether those names are on a ship at sea, in the North African desert, in a Pakistani urban stew or in a cave in Afghanistan. Some drone, some group of men with green faces, some bullet discharged from long range will make sure of that. But because it doesn’t look like “Vietnam” nobody will notice. The conflict can rage all around us, but if it doesn’t affect the reception in our home entertainment centers, why should anyone care?
Of course, none of this could occur without information dominance. The invisible component of the new way of war is the information distortion and control. “The United States must frighten adversaries by displaying an arsenal of operational hacking weapons to fight cyber threats, said retired Gen. James E. Cartwright, who crafted the Pentagon’s current cyber policy before retiring last summer.”
In the world of cyberwarfare, there will probably be no ‘cyber Pearl Harbor’. That would make war visible to the public Instead “different segments of the population experience” different levels of information attack. While your new Google Goggles may lead you to a friend, in the case others it will take them direct to a meeting with people like Enrique “Ricky” Prado, a man with mob connections who some authors say became “senior manager inside the CIA’s Bin Laden Issue Station, before the Al-Qaida mastermind was a well-known name. Two years later, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania elevated Prado to become the chief of operations inside the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, headed by then-chief Cofer Black”. And since meeting Ricky Prado is probably not the same as having a date with Mila Kunis the same set of Google Goggles might lead different people to radically divergent experiences.
Although the public might feel some apprehension over the ongoing conversion of military operations from combats between armies to nocturnal battles between shadowy figures, it is hard to deny the fact that bad guys all over the world — Jihadists, neo-Nazis and organized crime — have been engaged in their own alliance building. Recently a Mexican drug cartel took a page out of al-Qaeda’s book and decapitated five rival gang members on video. “The video, which was posted on the cartel-tracking blog Mundonarco.com, shows masked members of the Gulf cartel standing behind five shirtless members of the Zetas cartel, who have black ‘Zs’ painted on their chests.”
The camera then shows three of the men start the grizzly, slow process of beheading them as they hack and saw at their necks with the machetes.
As the men plead for mercy, the man shooting the video says: ‘This is how all your filthy people are going to end.’
Forces are battling all around us, like biplanes turning and twisting above the clouds, but we don’t have to notice, if we don’t want to. The world, led by a liberal African-American President, has moved away from the model of war so despised by the left-wing to a more or less permanent campaign of assassination in every corner of the world. The great advantage of this new style of warfare is that it doesn’t exist, insofar as any peace lobby is concerned; and hence they will never care about it. It’s a lie of course, but to paraphrase CS Lewis nobody notices the existence of a lie once we accept the impossibility of telling the truth. Human beings don’t see with their eyes. They see with their minds.
And the truth has had a bad week. One of the more recent news developments wa a Supreme Court decision, ignored in the wake over the Obamacare finding, holding that it is not a crime to claim that you have received a military decoration.
Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurred with Kennedy’s opinion that the Stolen Valor Act was unconstitutional.
Breyer wrote the Stolen Valor Act was not akin to laws against fraud, defamation, perjury, impersonation and even trademark infringement, all of which are likely to produce “tangible harm to others.”
While this list is not exhaustive, it is sufficient to show that few statutes, if any, simply prohibit without limitation the telling of a lie, even a lie about one particular matter. Instead, in virtually all these instances limitations of context, requirements of proof of injury, and the like, narrow the statute to a subset of lies where specific harm is more likely to occur. The limitations help to make certain that the statute does not allow its threat of liability or criminal punishment to roam at large, discouraging or forbidding the telling of the lie in contexts where harm is unlikely or the need for the prohibition is small. The statute before us lacks any such limiting features.
The San Francisco–based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 ruled that, if it were to uphold the law, “then there would be no constitutional bar to criminalizing lying about one’s height, weight, age, or financial status on Match.com or Facebook, or falsely representing to one’s mother that one does not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, is a virgin, or has not exceeded the speed limit while driving on the freeway.”
So my friends, let me take the opportunity to modestly confess that I am the holder of two Medals of Honor, a Victoria Cross and am also a Hero of the Soviet Union. And on those laurels I will rest forever. It’s a lie, you say? There is no such thing. Eric Holder already knows that falsehood doesn’t exist. “Lying,” he said, “has to do with yours state of mind.” Or your political affiliation.
For the first time in centuries man is on the verge of doing away with war. The word, but not the condition.
Belmont Commenters
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The real war is the war of the Capitol zone against America. Everything else is trivial. The only Muslim threat to our lives, our liberty, and our sacred honor is the Muslim in the White House.
So this is peace, huh? No wonder things seemed to be going so well.
The thing that bothers me most about the Supreme Court decision about stolen valor is the way people interpret “freedom of speech” to mean anything they want it to regardless of how someone else might feel. I seriously doubt the founding fathers thought it would be taken that way. They must be weeping to see that it now protects those who lie about being “war heroes.” Especially when they don’t have a clue about what that even means or the sacrifices it takes to be a true hero.
What we see is an administration that has bestowed upon itself unlimited power. Unlimited power to wage war anywhere in the world for any reason without congressional approval, which is to say, not even the thinnest pretext of public support. Not a government of the people.
The AFSB is another name for Sea Float operations in Viet Nam ca 1970.
http://www.warboats.org/images/jpg/StonerPics/stoner3.jpg
As far as stolen valor is concern… I am afraid that those who might be insulted the most by this have ways of solving these kinds of problems in the dark of the night. It will happen you can be sure.
Like I have tried to explain before. Shouting “I’m gay” means you can be a jerk and never have to say you are sorry. They have captured the government and along with illegal aliens have successfully conferred special rights upon themselves. (did you hear that the fines for not paying for your ObamaCare death panel benefits explicitly exclude illegal aliens from having to pay? Gangster life is the only life. Being a solid citizen is being a sucker)
The lawlessness of the cartels is what we’d expect from criminals. When the AG himself says; “Documents? You don’t need no stinking documents!”, then sooner rather than later we must not ask who the drone drones for, it drones for you.
Looks like our Left are protecting their Somali shipping pirate network from attack. Those guys are getting transit plans from shipping spies all over the world.
Like drugwar, market shorting timebombs, and money-laundering, this global industry is controlled and coordinated with our enemies by…. guess which Party?
This is not a new form of warfare. This is a return to the tactics used against the plains Indians in the post Civil War era. do not confuse the shiny new toys of war with the conduct of war.
But since the administration is not only incompetent but so divorced from reality as to be entirely preoccupied with what people like to do with their genitals, that begs the question. Who is masterminding this highly successful enterprise?
“The world, led by a liberal African-American President, has moved away from the model of war so despised by the left-wing to a more or less permanent campaign of assassination in every corner of the world.”
It is possible to identify the assasins by style of killing.
This week a mid-level Hamas operative,Kamal Ranaja was killed in Damascus. Blame of course immediatly went to the Mossad. After learning the manner of his death however Hamas officials were able to point the finger at Syrian security.
From Ynet:
According to the report, assassins broke into his apartment, interrogated him under torture and the murdered him. The assassins then cut off his head, placed the severed body parts in a closet and set the apartment on fire – not forgetting to take away with them some secret documents.
“The Mossad would have killed him differently, this was not its MO,” said Mohamed Hifawi, a member of the Local Coordination Committees (LLC) in Syria on behalf of Hamas. “Israeli assassins would have done it quicker and cleaner and would not have wasted time needlessly abusing the body.”
“The way the body was mutilated and the attempt to burn the house are all methods that point to the involvement of the (Syrian) security forces,” he told AFP.
So CIA does not break into houses and hotshoot people. They do drones and military ops. Mossad does but when they do it is clean, professional and makes sense, etc. Everyone has their rulebook to follow.
Even in this style of war it is mostly psychological. You must create a legend to strike fear into the hearts of your foes. You must be seen as able to walk through walls and vanish in a puff of smoke. The drones do this in one way and Mossad in another but it is all the same.
The world, led by a liberal African-American President, has moved away from the model of war so despised by the left-wing to a more or less permanent campaign of assassination in every corner of the world. The great advantage of this new style of warfare is that it doesn’t exist, insofar as any peace lobby is concerned; and hence they will never care about it.
This bothers me. I have traditionally thought of the President of the United States as the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, fighting a war against those who would attack us. In a war, soldiers can kill people. Yet, we the government claims we are not fighting a war and claims we are really at peace, what exactly is going on?
I approve of the military strike that killed Osama bin Laden. I regard that as essentially an act of war. However, if that was not an act of war, armed conflict, or armed struggle, what was it? Law enforcement? The advantage of fighting a war is that, in a war, there is legal justification for killing the enemy; during peacetime, it is usually called murder.
A “permanent campaign of assassination in every corner of the world” sounds an awful lot like a “gangsta in chief” who orders bands of human and robot assassins to execute people from a carefully prepared “death list”. It may be “cool”. It may be “pimp”. It may be “bad-ass”. Now, if the “peace lobby” is happy, we are all supposed to be happy. Somehow, I’m not happy about this.
I find it elegantly weird that war fighting of the highly centralized state mimics almost exactly the institutional structure of centuries old Catholic social doctrine. Operational authority and decision making at the lowest possible unit level supported by strategic allocation and positioning at the command level.
Maybe some day some particularly enlightened member of the plutocracy will actually catch on that putting decision making at the lowest unit level is the best way to accomplish other kinds of missions. The thousands of soldiers and sailors who will pass through the system over the next several years will almost certainly catch on.
Who knew that 20th Century Mexico was a willing and eager competitor for the Stalin-Mao prize for most atrocities per capita by a socialist regime? I read a movie review of For Greater Glory and had no clue that the Mexican government murdered hundreds of thousands of Catholic parishioners and priests just for being Catholic.
Apparently you don’t have to try too hard to keep war out of the public consciousness. Just keeping it on page 33 or not at all works just fine.
But since the administration is not only incompetent but so divorced from reality as to be entirely preoccupied with what people like to do with their genitals, that begs the question. Who is masterminding this highly successful enterprise?
Whoever sold this program to the President understood him well. Talking about “centers of gravity” or God forbid, logistics would have made his eyes glaze over. That is gobbledygook. An intellectual thingamajig. It is a subject that corpse-men, you know those Navy medics in the Marines, can understand. It is stuff that they teach at West Points. But to present warfare as nothing but the “Chicago Way” writ large, now that is an act of genius. That he can understand.
I remember when he spoke of “going after Bin Laden” as if it were an act of military importance. Later I began to realize that he really thought in these terms. The President may not understand military strategy as such, but he probably understands gang operations quite well, probably from his extensive reading.
The unit of action is the “fix”. You “fix the papers”. You make the inconvenient people disappear or “persuade” them with money or with other more forceful means. You “spread the wealth” as a result of operations.
In many ways the President may understand terrorist operations better than any graduate of a military academy. Whether that is a good or bad thing is a question of the ends to which such knowledge is put. History, if it still exists in 50 years, will make that call.
“It’s not a lie, if you believe that it’s true.”
– George Costanza
So: “War” is not war, but can still be fought, and a tax is not a tax, but can still be levied.
Does anyone else remember when Orwell’s 1984 was viewed as a cautionary tale (which was the intent), and not as a “how-to” manual on governance?
Old style wars, for all their horror, had a few advantages over the current methods. First of all, while the list contained classes of people, the list itself was out in the open. The enemy in World War 2 listed German, Japanese, Italian. If you were not on the list, like Switzerland or Costa Rica, it passed you by
Second, people fought it out in definite costumes. The ones worn by SS were designed by professional fashion artists. Those used by the US Army were designed by the lowest bidder. Still everybody had an outfit.
Third and most important was that wars ended. Something called “Victory” happened through which the Germans, Japanese and Italians became friends. In fact every single one of them became postwar Allies. And once they became friends you treated them like friends.
Today, in our enlightened age, the list of who is to be killed is no longer published. You may be on it. How would you know? Oh you can’t be on it because you’re an American citizen, or British citizen or an Australian citizen and never convicted by a court? Wrong. You can be on it all the same if President Obama wants you on it. Assuming there’s a list, and assuming he has reason for putting people on that list. Or maybe there’s no list and there’s a big powerball number picker somewhere in the Pentagon and targets are assigned by lottery.
Also, people don’t fight in costume any more. They mingle with crowds, the better to induce “collateral damage”
Lastly and worse, there’s no such thing as Victory any more. Conflicts more or less go on and on and on.
The question that is most interesting is this: with the disappearance of “enemy” as a overt dictionary object, what is the meaning of “friend”? How can Congress exercise oversight over war when there is no war? What are we talking about when Congress no longer declares hostilities and therefore voters never really decide who gets on the hit list?
So: “War” is not war, but can still be fought, and a tax is not a tax, but can still be levied.
Yes, that’s what happens when the terms under which an event takes place are written by lawyers.
The weel-practiced ability of our government to efficiently do these acts of war against people in other countries makes me uncomfortable about their ability to to the same to domestic enemies, given the will.
How can Congress exercise oversight over war when there is no war?
What is oversight? Congress doesn’t even pass budgets anymore. The better to spend as much as you want on whatever you want, I suppose.
My, how things have changed.
Wretchard said:
“Nothing has emphasized the paradigm shift as much as the high-priority conversion of an aging amphibious vessel, the USS Ponce, into a high-tech “mothership” for SEALs in the Persian Gulf.”
Along this line, Ohio class submarines have been converted from platforms carrying Trident SLBMs armed with thermonuclear warheads into conventional warhead Tomahawk cruise missile platforms augmented with the capability of delivering and recovering SEAL strike teams, refer to:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/secret-subs-rescue-ospreys-mil-tech-gets-remixed-for-libya/
The USS Florida had all of its useless Cold War relic thermonuclear missiles replaced with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Supposedly the USS Florida played a role in bringing down the Qadaffi regime. I heard some hallway gossip that a prime motivation in converting these Cold War boomers into Tomahawk/SEAL platforms was to make life difficult for the Ayatollas running Iran. Based upon Wikipedia, the following Ohio class boomers have been converted into cruise missile carriers:
Ohio
Michigan
Florida
Georgia
If the US decided to dance with the Ayatollas over their nuclear weapons program, these old boomers could deliver 616 cruise missiles against Iranian targets. Of course the $64,000 question: Can a Tomahawk cruise missile deliver an effective punch against a hardened underground uranium isotope enrichment facility?
Another interesting tidbit: The Israelis have been positioning themselves to take out the Iranian nuclear weapon’s capability with their own submarine launched cruise missiles. If cruise missiles started raining down on the Iranian nuclear facilities, how would one be able to tell if the weapons came from American boomers versus Israeli Dolphin class submarines?
‘Rainbow Six’ writ large with an amoral CIC.
#8 This week a mid-level Hamas operative,Kamal Ranaja was killed in Damascus. Blame of course immediatly went to the Mossad. After learning the manner of his death however Hamas officials were able to point the finger at Syrian security.
#17 If cruise missiles started raining down on the Iranian nuclear facilities, how would one be able to tell if the weapons came from American boomers versus Israeli Dolphin class submarines?
Well who did Mumbai? And who killed Mugniyeh? And supposing, Allah forbid, a 9/11 attack hit Karachi or Riyadh, or suppose that a dirty nuke went off in Damascus? Who did it no one or ten different groups claim responsibility?
It is interesting to note that Hamas officials knew that the Syrians were behind it because the Kamal Ranaja was killed in too brutal a manner to have been the work of Jews. It must have been … well I’ll stop before venturing into the land of political incorrectness.
I have remarked elsewhere that the fundamental flaw in believing that Islamists could forever engage in deniable attacks lay in the possibility that Jews, Norwegians, North Koreans or their rival Islamic sects could do the same thing. We live in a world where most everything is deniable. Nothing to see here, move along.
If a faculty room of Pakistani nuclear scientists could privately conjure up a nuke imagine how comparatively easy it would be for a rogue Israeli set of academics to do the same thing. Maybe they are up to it now.
It’s hard to tell since people don’t wear costumes any more. And if they win medals while wearing costumes, the honor bestowed thereby can be claimed by anyone. Anyone at all. It’s not like you were claiming copyright or something. It’s just a lousy Silver Star you got awarded fighting for something you call a country. Get over it.
And states don’t retaliate against states any more, as India forgave Pakistan for Mubai and American forgave Pakistan for 911; the religion of peace and all that. Or say rather that they forgive the state but wreak their vengeance on the individual.
I guess that’s ok if you’re not in the way. Too bad if you are unlucky or the wrong database stored procedure puts you on the wrong list. Maybe Congress can do oversight, you know, like over Fast and Furious. But on second thought, that’s insensitive.
“So since these honorary awards have no other value than this, that few people enjoy them, in order to annihilate them we have only to be lavish with them.”
-Of honorary awards
Montaigne
In Book III of The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides said, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defense.”
In “1984″ Orwell said, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Chief Justice Roberts said, “A mandate and a penalty are really a tax.”
Justice Breyer said that a lie is really not a lie. So did Eric Holder.
Our host reports that today, “For the first time in centuries man is on the verge of doing away with war. The word, but not the condition.”
When words lose their meaning civilization and culture lose their coherence.
‘when words lose their meaning civilization and culture lose their coherence.’
—
Illegal immigrant – how can an ‘immigrant’ be illegal – they are really space invaders [pun intended].
Actions have consequences. But in our brave new world, we should never be concerned about consequences, only the advantage gained by political expediency. Or so we are told.
Rules of Engagement, Protocols, Laws, Understandings, Etiquette, Ethics, inalienable rights granted by Constitutions, and all those societal structures created to build and maintain a productive, civil society, need to be shoved aside simply for the purpose of staying on the good side of our Ruling Betters. We must not under any circumstances rock the boat, or our betters would get their knickers in a bunch. Perish the thought.
The thing I don’t get is that after all those Rules, et al, have been shoved aside , how in the uncontrollable, unpredictable, violent chaos that surely will ensue, do the Ruling Elite think they are going to remain on top and keep a grip on all that power? Me thinks that all this new style of warfare has made the old fashioned brutal dictatorship model that much harder to sustain and not nimble enough to endure.
“…from his extensive reading.” Sarcasm, shame.
Wretchard, said “It’s a lie, you say? There is no such thing. Eric Holder already knows that falsehood doesn’t exist. “Lying,” he said, “has to do with yours state of mind.” Or your political affiliation.”
I personal like “evolving truth”! All Hope is gone, for to lie and then make statements like these and not be howled out of town by everyone surely shows there are no longer any lines left to cross…
The lie is preferred to the truth and the truth is treated as a lie, evil is in every mans thoughts, we are in the days of Noah and no one even understands it…
Eggy;
Can a Tomahawk cruise missile deliver an effective punch against a hardened underground uranium isotope enrichment facility?
http://www.nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W80.html
Might have to hit it twice but that’s doable. Anybody that thinks putting any sort of factory underground will protect it is not very bright. To enrich that Uranium. it has to get into that hardened underground facility. Once enriched, it has to be shipped out.
All that inning and outing requires a door. Blow the door in and collapse the tunnel or elevator shaft going down and that hardened underground uranium isotope enrichment facility is just an expensive hole in the ground.
“how would one be able to tell if the weapons came from American boomers versus Israeli Dolphin class submarines?”
Parts left over after the explosion. Of course the W-80 doesn’t have that problem.
17. Eggplant: If the US decided to dance with the Ayatollas over their nuclear weapons program, these old boomers could deliver 616 cruise missiles against Iranian targets. Of course the $64,000 question: Can a Tomahawk cruise missile deliver an effective punch against a hardened underground uranium isotope enrichment facility?
No, the warhead is only a thousand pounds of HE and not hardened to penetrate earth, which makes sense, because a cruise missile has to cruise, not drop. It’s used for surprise in the early stages of a conflict before you have mastery of the airspace over the theater. Operation Whack-a-Mullah probably won’t be an extended operation like Iraq or Libya, maybe about the scale of Operation Desert Fox (1998) so you’ll have a massive TLAM barrage as a feint while you take out the nuke sites with stuff dropped from B-2s flying directly from CONUS. Carrier-based planes will be used in the inevitable blowback when Iran tries to shut down the Strait.
From above:
from the link:
Xavier Alvarez was a Democratic politician, though this detail is omitted in most of the coverage.
It turns out the Melissa Campbell was an actual former Marine, who then exposed Alvarez, because she felt the imposture degraded her Corps. She has since been fired from her job. The article implies it was for exposing Alvarez.
The thing about Alvarez’s First Amendment protected lies is that they are a species of fraud. He lied for consideration, in this instance, to get preferential treatment with regard to the service of snacks. Did he use this lie to enhance his political career? Did he use it to gild his honor? To emphasize his bravery? To underscore his manliness? We know this: he pretended to the “Congressional Medal of Honor” to get bag of potato chips or a chicken sandwich or a bag of Doritos with fawning service.
I guess that sums up Alvarez the man. As to Alvarez the hero, I wonder: did he get the Croix de Guerre? The Legion of Merit? The Grand Baton of the Ever Loving Order of Spiderman? Well we are not permitted to impugn him, lest we filch his honor.
I’ve often argued that President is not the cause of the problem. He is the symptom of some far great malaise. We poisoned our store of facts. The elite has lied to the point where it no longer knows what the truth is. Either about finances, or security, or even about itself. Maybe the cultural elite should just save themselves the trouble and hand out the real Medals of Honor in boxes of crackerjacks. If they are not worth defending from lies, then they are worth what?
So who’s on that kill list? And if they told you, would you believe it?
I wonder if the big 0′s list bears any resemblance to the one the imperial japanese navy had handed down to them from high command? Arizona…Oklahoma….
I say Holder strolls into congress and literally dares the House to arrest him!
There isn’t going to be any attack on Iran, Iran is now a Chinese protectorate… Obama just proved it the other day by exempting China from any restriction in the Iranian (BS) embargo. Which just goes to point out even more the fact that a lie is preferred over the truth, i.e. the Lie that there is an actual embargo except maybe against every tiny itsy bitsy country and our own few companies that didn’t get their own waivers… it’s all a façade, an illusion of words and 15 second sound bites only meant for the zombies, otherwise they know the few that see thru the charade are few indeed and never enough anymore to make any difference…
The first amendment might protect Xavier Alvarez’s right to be a cheap lying pos,but there isn’t a law or statute possible that will ever allow him to stand on level ground with genuine heroes. Someone claiming honor that can only be purchased by blood and sacrifice is a disgusting pig which should suit him well in left wing politics.
This is a very nice and appropriate point in our continuing war against Muslim/Islamist infiltration and subversion of our America right now, in 2012, originating in it’s most open form on that horrible morning in September of 2001:
“6 tdiinva
This is not a new form of warfare. This is a return to the tactics used against the plains Indians in the post Civil War era. do not confuse the shiny new toys of war with the conduct of war.”
We run the risk, right now, of allowing our civilian selves becoming too isolated and remote from our own young American Military volunteers who are fighting the current war against open Islamic aggression in West/Central Asia…instead of fighting Muslim/Islamist subversion and infiltration openly more often here at home……and in not openly supporting such domestic-urban civilian defensive/protective agencies as the NYPD.
We need an an acute awareness of “Lawfare” and rampant alleged “victimhood” using our systems against us.
Right now, we don’t have a Home Front as we did during World War II. Any readers here remember that?
It seems now that we’re inside our separate electronic cocoons. We close our ears and eyes to West/Central Asia’s problems at our peril….and, they are indeed our immediate problems.
[If "tdi" is in fact in Virginia, he/she'll be aware of Saudi financed madrassas and mosques......right now massaging the mindsets of impressionable male adolescents.]
We should be openly calling the Muslim spade a spade. They are the urban scalpers of today….figuratively……so far.
Tribes of chimps live in everlasting warfare with each other.
Welcome to the jungle we’ve got fun and games
We got everything you want honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find whatever you may need
If you got the money honey we got your disease
[Chorus]
In the jungle, welcome to the jungle
Watch it bring you to your knnn knne knees, knees
“Subjectively, I claimed that I was supporting the growth of Soviet industry by building more railroad spurs. However, objectively I was engaging in wrecking activity and economic sabotage by diverting steel and other resources from tractors needed for the collectivization of agriculture and the forming of machine tractor stations, thereby harming agricultural production and undermining the five-year plan.”
- Standard component of confessions during the Stalin show trials.
It almost took me decades, but once I understood this little crimethink/goodthink dichotomy, much of the history of the last 90 years or so made much more sense.
I feel very bad for Melissa Campbell, but if you are in public relations (which she seems to have been) you will not last long if you rat on the customers (water districts consume a lot of electricity in California, pumping all of that water uphill). That is an unfortunate reality which probably pre-dates our current problems with truthfulness.
In retrospect, the printing press exposed the lies and foolishness of kings and bishops rather than making them liars and fools. I’m not convinced that we are lying more. I just think that another mask has fallen away from the perjurers and pretenders. Perhaps the shade of your average 16th century prince or holy man spends eternity muttering curses on the printing press.
People know that valor can be faked, but they overlook phony shame and even the thieves’ non-existence. The Navy once played like SEAL Team 6 was a farce (which it probably was), while spreading powerful myths to the contrary. Lord knows whether it ever became real or not… Anyways, it’s less lying heroes we need worry about compared to the fake villains in service – the David Dukes, fascist Elmos, Konys, Bretts, and other Pulitzer-worthy stories floated about.
“If a faculty room of Pakistani nuclear scientists could privately conjure up a nuke imagine how comparatively easy it would be for a rogue Israeli set of academics to do the same thing. Maybe they are up to it now.”
There are theories as to why Saudi Arabia is all sand. Something about an ancient catastrophe that may not have been natural…
Regarding Alvarez and Stolen Valor, in a monarchy the Sovereign is the “Fount of Honour” and such an impersonation is considered an offense because it is a theft from the Crown. The awarding of titles is forbidden in the American Constitution but there is no prohibition on the President, as either Head of State or Head of Government from awarding medals and recognizing meritorious service. Doing so can be considered an essential component of their job as Commander in Chief. Medals are granted to ensure future service by others. The same could be said as to why the government must regularly pay the troops with sound currency. By falsely claiming to have such an award Alvarez engages in a form of counterfeiting and impedes the delivery of a lawful government function. Should any veteran feel that Alvarez has debased the value of their service or awards and wish to discuss the matter with him they should take care to do so in a jurisdiction where there is a reasonable expectation of jury nullification should authorities disagree with their judgment.
In their romantic dreams as portrayed in fiction guerrillas are like Mao’s fish that swim in the people’s sea. Noble and poor they defeat the mechanized Storm Troopers of Da Man with slingshots and snarky web hackery. There is a cottage industry in promoting the Palestinians using such images. It is almost completely false. A few primitives have fought alone with young men drifting in and out of the civilian population. Native American tribes fought that way as their families were corralled onto the reservations. They were doomed from the start and lost. Real unconventional forces are almost always dependent on outside support. That support has to come from or at least be tolerated by a state actor. That is to say that behind the Palestinian Intifada or the Iraqi Insurgency or the Taliban is a sponsor government. The Nation State is not obsolete. If we bleed ourselves out playing whack-a-mole when there is a real government, North Vietnam in the case of the Viet Cong or Pakistan in the case of the Taliban or Iran in the case of the Iraqi IED placers, then that is our choice. In WW-II we carpet bombed German and Japanese cities, killing more with conventional bombs in a night than we did with atomics. We were right to do so. We need to make a clear statement that crying to the UN about how beastly the Americans are will get you exactly nothing but grief. We own the UN and it is time that they were reminded of it. If Iran supports enemies of the US and gets our people and friends killed then we should chose an Iranian city and carpet bomb it. We should then go back and repeat the exercise every day for ten days. If some Dutch judge threatens us we should send in a team and arrest him and then offer to return him, slightly used, to his government. Doing so would save millions of lives. Our motto should be “No better friend, no worse enemy.”
Hmmm, many Jihadis may have the LGBT beat down. After all, they say birds fly circles in Pakistan to keep their butt holes covered up from Batanis and the Batanis themselves say girls are for babies but boys are for fun.
My days in the Emirates I learned to say I was married to the Taxi drivers lest the fall for myself and another saying we had was trust your $ with the Gulf Arabs and your boys with the Egyptians but never ever get that mixed up.
This will continue until American politicians become targets. At that point our leaders will discover the charms of the Genevia Conventions
PB @ 10: Who knew that 20th Century Mexico was a willing and eager competitor for the Stalin-Mao prize for most atrocities per capita by a socialist regime? I read a movie review of For Greater Glory and had no clue that the Mexican government murdered hundreds of thousands of Catholic parishioners and priests just for being Catholic.
Yes, and among other reactions to this persecution, there was a huge protest march in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles in 1934 on the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Dec 8). The march drew 40,000 people, many of them Mexican immigrants and their families, who were joined in solidarity by Italian, Japanese, and Polish Catholics, Boy Scout troops, and marching bands. It was, at that time, the largest demonstration of any kind in the history of Los Angeles. (The procession in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe was an annual event in L.A. drawing many thousands. But the 1934 march became a protest march against the Mexican government’s violence against and persecution of Catholics.)
The Tidings, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, at the time denounced the Mexican government for “vicious socialism” and accused the govt of trying to turn Mexico into an atheist country.
Is history starting to stutter, I wonder …?
As a thought experiment, consider the scenario where an enemy like Al Queda, for instance, successfully undertakes a “decapitation” attack against our government. DC and everything within a 20 mile radius (including me) becomes a smoking crater.
Then what?
Would we be worse off for lack of a central government to admininister Obamacare, prevent Florida from purging its voter rolls of the dead and felonious, and monitoring EEOC compliance, etc, etc, or better off?
What would the day after be like? The stock market might go down 4000 points (or even close for a week). But after a while, would the rest of you come out of your spider holes and go to work to earn a living and provide for your families without someone to tell you what you should think?
Maybe a decentralized military command capable of wreaking the obligatory vengeance on such an enemy after a decapitation strike represents a threat to our central government.
Would we all be as ready to rally behind the flag as we were in 2001, if such a thing were to occur again?
Actions have consequences…
Indeed they do. But our forefathers beqeathed us such immense design margins that we forgot about consequences because the surplus we inhereted soaked them all up, like layers of ablative armor in a sci-fi starship absorbing the steady burn of a high-powered enemy laser. But that armor’s pretty much all ablatted away now, and the laser is still locked on target, heating the hull now. Burn through expected in T-minus 30 seconds Captain…
Our government denizens have no money left, no respect, no social capital, no real negotiating ability, communication skills useful only for hoodwinking the gullible…
It turns out the Melissa Campbell was an actual former Marine, who then exposed Alvarez, because she felt the imposture degraded her Corps. She has since been fired from her job. The article implies it was for exposing Alvarez.
Ah, the cosmic hash that Democrats always make of fairness and justice. Alvarez cannot be punished for telling a lie, but Campbell is punished for telling the truth.
How would the Prez and the Left react to a revelation that some conservative had been running around getting sex, free drinks, gifts, and hiring preferences by claiming to be the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama?
#38 octa bright
Ah, you beat me to one of my points! One has to consider what the reaction of Buraq Hussein would be if parties unknown but presumed to be foreign started taking out his regime’s political C² nodes and the “made men” working for him? Drones, random explosive charges, less than accidental car accidents.
I suspect that there would be fewer vacations out at Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons. And if there were, he would be watching every passing seagull and thinking drone. And there is a rather wide range of suspects to be considered. There are, of course, the successors of those who have encountered American drones. And there are other adversaries who might be convinced that the chaos induced would be to their benefit. Then there are the traditional [and former] allies of this country who may be tired of being micturated upon and told that it is raining. Then there are other powers who are not open enemies of the United States, but who definitely have their own interests that would be promoted if the President, his staff and operatives, and his cabinet were hiding under their beds instead of taking care of business. Finally, there are non-nation state organizations that could be based on religion, commercial enterprises [both legal and illegal], or ideology; that have the resources to play that game.
Yes, he would probably gain an appreciation of the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and may even develop a mild fondness for the United States Military, at least temporarily while they were between him and any threat.
Staffing for his regime might become somewhat more difficult if his minions both inside and outside the Federal government found themselves regularly in proximity to exothermic reactions or high kinetic energy fragments. Being a minion of a tyrant can be a good gig as long as you are not eligible for hazardous duty pay. For that matter, a minion’s social life might not be too hot either, as people try to avoid becoming collateral damage.
I am not of the Judeo-Christian persuasion; but I find myself reminded of Hosea 8:7.
Wretchard, not quite everybody. Those kinds of toys take a culture with a technological turn of mind. Which brings me to the next derivative of the equation, if only because I have a twisted turn of mind. This may border on something that you may not want here in your parlor. If so, feel free to delete.
Mention is made of our government’s use of drones overseas to cross names off of lists. Those drones do not just fly overseas.
The government is preparing to use hundreds, if not thousands MORE drones for “surveillance” in this country.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/14/lawmakers-erect-challenges-to-drones-in-us-airspace/
Inside the article above, there is a link to 60 drone bases already operational inside the US.
Normally, that might not be too much of a worry. But we have a government that has largely abandoned the rule of law. The Constitution was shredded Thurday. The president has been arrogating to himself powers not in the Constitution and ignoring the other branches. The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security seems to have law abiding Americans more in their sights than any criminal organizations or actual threats to the country.
These are not normal times. I suspect that the object receding rapidly from our view is the Mandate of Heaven.
Combine a lawless regime, technology that is at least useful for targeting, and has proven of use to cross names off of lists, and a domestic political opposition loyal to the shredded Constitution and not the regime. Does that suggest anything?
OK, go back up to the quote about the weekend in Vegas. And the technological turn of mind.
The government already is flying drones over the US. And not without a certain risk.
http://rt.com/usa/news/texas-1000-us-government-906/
Students from the University of Texas hacked into and took over a drone in response to a dare from the Department of Homeland Security. It cost under $1000 for the equipment to do so.
So let us posit the combination above and the question about suggestions. I suspect that if the state of the art is out there enough so that some college students can hack into a drone and take control of it; fabrication of their own is also within the realm of possibility, albeit of far lesser sophistication. So if the regime should try a domestic use for the toys they are using overseas; it may not remain a one sided battle for long. See the discussion sparked by #38 octo bright.
1) The same confusion as to source from a foreign power could be compounded by multiple possible domestic sources, some of which would have foreign connections.
2) The domestic equivalents of the Geneva and Hague Conventions are the Constitution and the Rule of Law, both of which are somewhat worse for wear since 2009.
Just a Gedankenexperiment.
Subotai Bahadur
#14 wretchard
Calling war ‘peace’ is certainly a big lie.
But as for the tactics, what alternatives do you suggest? There is a war waged by your enemies on you where these enemies don’t wear uniform, embed themselves among their own civilians and target their attacks mostly or exclusively on your civilians. Do you think you can fight this war – waged on you, not started by you – with a conventional army and with yesterday’s tactics?
I think many Americans and other Westerners still don’t understand the nature of the thing you’re dealing with. Indeed there are no uniforms, civilians on both sides are used since terrorism is primarilly psychological warfare where death is used to devastate you psychologically rather than physically, instill constant terror in your hearts and isolate you by manipulating your allies to see you as murderers, as a prelude to physical conquest and extermination when you’re too broken down to defend yourselves anymore, and indeed there is no victory, not any time soon anyway. This can go on and on for as long as your weaker enemies hold the desire to eliminate you. This is the reality you’re facing. Do you think you can fight this kind of enemy with the brute force of a regular army and conventional methods when there is no regular army fighting you on the other side?
Try to think of it this way: There’s a guy who is arranging the transfer of Fajr rockets (Iranian rockets capable of reahing central Israel, where the majority of Israelis live, from Gaza) from Iran to Gaza. Which of the following alternatives is preferable in your opinion?:
1. Let the guy complete the transfer, resulting in barrages of rockets hitting Tel Aviv and the surrounding cities, killing and wounding unknown number of people, having the entire population running for shelter 2, 3, 6, 15 times a day, property destroyed, fires breaking out, some businesses closing down for the duration of the attacks, kids stay home, which means one parent must stay home with them and not go to work, deadlines not met, shippings delayed, half the adult population and all of the children developing PTSD symptoms, rockets hitting Ben Guryon airport, the only international airport, forcing it to close down for repairs, rockets possibly hitting some other strategic targets causing mass death and destruction, all resulting in dead, wounded, paralyzation of all normal activities, severe economic damage, overload on the health system and various emergency and security systems. This is inevitably followed by a large scale operation in Gaza to stop the rocket attacks, and since the terrorist embed themselves within civilian population 300 civilians are killed alongside the 800 terrorists (the Western media reports 1,100 civilians dead, of course).
2. Kill the one guy who arranges the transfer plus, perhaps, a few other key guys who make it possible, thereby preventing the above scenario. Of course, this will only delay it until they appoint other guys, but it will take time until the other guys develop the same level of skills and then you repeat same with the new guys. In the end some Fajr rockets do get in through the holes in your net, but not the unlimited number of rockets that would be smuggled in without a net.
So maybe you, as a matter of principle, would prefer the mass civilian death and destruction of option 1 to targetting one person (is that really the most moral choice of the two?), but maybe you’d think differently after living 60 years with terrorism and experiencing the death and destruction time and again on a regular basis, beacuse then you have to face the reality that this kind of foe presents you with and all the hallucinations and fantasies of being able to fight it the way you fought conventional wars in the past fly out the window. Defeating a state’s regular army, invading the country and forcing it to recreate itself in your image through “nation building” and become your ally don’t really work with this foe, do they? And this is a real enemy you must fight in the real world, not an imaginary enemy in a movie. If you don’t fight back you’ll get hurt very badly and will eventually be defeated and destroyed. You didn’t choose to fight this war, it is forced of you by this enemy that has a different nature and different tactics from what you’re used to. So if you face this reality, what practical ways do you suggest to fight this enemy and its very different tactics?
As for the selection of targets, the head of state doesn’t do the initial selection – he/she may authorize or not the targets presented to him/her, after they have been selected by the various security apparatuses – intelligence agancies, the military. They are normally discussed in a special ministrial cabinet. The chances the head of state could slip in the names of opposition members without anyone noticing it and leaking it are about zero. Besides, there were always covert operations, also in the days in conventional warfare, so the head of state could have done so in the past to the same degree. He could have also arranged arrests for spying, a conspiracy to commit terror or some such (see Turkey for details), or for conventional crimes. It shouldn’t be all that difficult to plant some evidence in the “undesirable”‘s house or office and then have him “commit suicide” or “escape the country” so successfuly that he’s never found again. In fact, it wouldn’t be so difficult for a regular citizen to arrange something like that.
#38 octa bright
If you examine the matter closely you just might discover that terrorists don’t care that much about the Geneva Conventions. Targeting civilians and using civilians as a human shield are the greatest breaches of the Geneva Conventions you can commit. So I don’t think the Geneva Conventions would stop them from targeting Western leaders in any case. Maybe you remember that there was a fourth airplane flying in the direction of the White House?
Some time ago, ostensibly to make war impact all of US society and thus make it harder to go to war, Powell and Weinberger planned for the early use of Reserve and Guard units. So, instead of the Next of Kin being solely in Columbus and Fayetteville and Killeen, they’re all over the country.
Well, the math has been done. Presume, at an arbitrary level of disability, that 12,000 men and women have been killed or very seriously wounded in Iraq. Presume further that we had an average of 150,000 US troops in country for eight years. That’s 1.2 million man-years. IOW, one percent of the troops have been killed or very seriously wounded at the arbitrary level of “very seriously”. If you are not in a combat arms unit, and not in the MP, the chances are less.
Change the level of “seriously wounded” to include less horrible but still awful consequences of being insulted by munitions and we have 24,000 in the catgegory. IOW, 2%. Cut that in half by being in a non-combat unit and we’re back to one percent.
From time to time, driving across the country, you’ll pass in a small town a Reserve or Guard facility, with its vehicles lined up. They’re not as common as the big grain elevator next to the railroad tracks and half a mile from the stripped-down Walmart, but they’re there.
Deployment is “good money”, as several reports have quoted some guys, and I’ve heard, myself, a couple of guys talking over the math for themselves.
I’m sure this is an unintended consequence of the original plan. However, if you need a company of engineers to maintain a base in, say, Djibouti, or a water unit in Chad, or a transportation battalion at Vicenza, “just in case”, it is not, apparently, a political difficulty.
I suspect, given sufficient provocation, this can be scaled up pretty quickly and, as a matter of fact, it was. See Iraq and Afghanistan.
As has been said, here and elsewhere, the Westphalian model not only informs most of the laws of war, it is unconsciously in the background of almost all thinking about it. Since, with the exception of the West Bank and Gaza and Antarctica, every piece of dry land on Earth is part of a sovereign nation, we cannot deal with a non-state actor without “invading” another nation. This is considered by some to be illegal, while the actions of the non-staters provide so many complications that many of our western brethren choose to ignore the problem altogether, until somebody invades another nation to deal with it. Another aspect of assymetry.
Wretchard 19 – “Or say rather that they forgive the state but wreak their vengeance on the individual.
So the world government was quietly put in place in the form of transnational paramilitary action. It is operated not by a nation of laws but as an apparatus at the beck and call of the individual supreme in the form of a leftwing American president. This president is solely supported by the MSM and the elite. Any semblance of this kind of arrangement can be derailed if the glitterati choose to disenfranchise its leader as in the case of GWB. So it would be fair to say that anyone can be murdered by the ruling Oligarchy of the world whether they be Russian, Chinese, Pakistani, or gun runners from Chicago.
@45. Pnina
I have no illusions about the terrorists obeying the Geneva Conventions and under those Conventions they are unlawful combatants and may not be tourtured.
They may be summarily exicuted, they may be detained indefinately in conditions short of torture or almost anything else. Civillians near by become legitimate targets, as do civillian property used in hostilities or near military assets.
My objection is that the politicians are stirring a hornets nest without considering the possible results. They appear to be treating it as a super realistic video game that has no downside for them. Because it seems to be so safe they are using it much more freely than is probably prudent. Technology has a nasty habbit of spreading and fairly quickly at that so the tactic may not remain cost free. That is my point.
I use the Ghostery software to see who is tracking the site. (I learned about it on this site originally) As of this morning, there are 29 trackers. I have not blocked any of them, because I want to know how many, even if I don’t know who.
This number has about doubled in the last week or so. This is also the highest number of trackers that I have encountered on any other site. wikipedia has none, Drudge has 14 Real Clear Politics has 20, National Review has 17…why all the interest in this site?
I know why I like it, but “who are those guys?”.
octabright.
Not sure about the technology issue. Doesn’t take much to get a suicide bomber close to, at least, a number two or number three in the target hierarchy. Or broadcast sufficient inflammatory propaganda to generate a successon of lone wolf gunmen or bombers with no paper trail. The volume of paper looking for a paper trail, or any other kind of trail, behind Oswald is beyond comprehension. But JFK is still dead, irrespective of any conclusion or speculation, and if anything was followed up to the point of taking action, we haven’t heard about it.
And a model airplane with a stick of dynamite has been an available delivery system for at least fifty years.
So to extrapolate this decision to say that there are no lies anymore means that those that did actually obtain such valor on the field of combat can use any means necessary to redress the misuse of their valor. Claim to have received a purple heart and have the green face show up in your bedroom in the dead of night to make sure you earned it… Seems fair on the face of it.
From rule of law to lawlessness in less than a generation. Thank you, baby boomers. To see the boomer generation eviscerated by their suicidal decisions will be schadenfreude in the extreme. I only pause to lament the poisonous fruit foisted upon our progeny. May they not rise up and kill all the grups.
30. Charles White: There isn’t going to be any attack on Iran, Iran is now a Chinese protectorate… Obama just proved it the other day by exempting China from any restriction in the Iranian (BS) embargo.
The attack will be one weekly news cycle in October. The KSA is laying the groundwork for it by pumping oil like there’s no tomorrow. The Enterprise Strike Group arrived in the theater June 23rd for a seven month deployment, making three carrier groups on station with the 5th Fleet. Three BGs means war. The Navy also doubled up on minesweepers. But it still might not come to war. After all, why would Iran jeopardize the oil supply of their “protector” China?
Teresita. Sometimes there are battle groups with concurrent deployments and sometimes there are battle groups replacing one another with a couple of weeks’ training up before one leaves.
Doubling up on minesweepers in that neighborhood is a good idea even if peace were flowing like a river.
Why would Iran do anything? Maybe the practical guys are in charge this week or maybe the guys looking for the twelfth mullah got to work early.
I have read in a couple of places that the Norks went to war in 1950 piecemeal. IOW, somebody in charge of part of the military and/or paramilitary went south against the wishes of the others who, when they saw the SHTF, were, perforce dragged to war.
When your politics is a ratfight, such things are not entirely beyond possible.
Is it just me or does anyone else see a “terminator” world coming?
43 @Subotai
http://diydrones.com/
Subotai,
Let me play off your gedankenexperiment, with a bit of TomClancy-ite fantasy.
In late September there is a terrible tragedy, when the GOP challenger’s campaign bus is suddenly destroyed in a massive explosion, leaving only a few survivors from the accompanying convoy. Immediately credit is claimed by sveral never-before-heard-of Islamist groups, and some unknown purported Right Wing Christianists. However, a few survivors, before expiring, claim to have seen a fiery trace in the sly much like a homing missile.General consternation abounds and rumors are everywhere. A few days later another smaller tragedy passes almost unnoticed when an Air Force drone operator and his entire family perish when their all-electric house is destroyed in a natural gas explosion. By mid Octoberthe President has expressed his sorrow and declared that due to the domestic chaos, and the lack of any surviving credible opponent, he must cancel the election, and will rule by decree, under martial law until the situation is stabilized. He then begins to round up opponents who express skepticism.. I’m sure this is just a bad dream, the result of one too many kimchi tacos for supper.
#56 Rurik
As I suspect you well know, in intelligence work sometimes the smallest detail provides the key to what is really happening.
During the Clinton years, it was possible to tell that there was special activity afoot when the number of delivery pizzas increased.
The presence of the van from Pyongyang Taquería in the driveway at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has now been explained.
“Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.”
Willard is not my choice, who herself is from more northerly climes. Nor is he my second, third, or fourth pick. But such as he is, and what he is is an Institutional and not a Conservative; he is the last hope of avoiding the ultimate form of argument and giving us a chance to save a constitutional order. Harm to him, from whatever source, will have to be imputed to Obama. Only the Great Blue Sky Tengri Nor knows what the result will be.
Subotai Bahadur
#25
…”evolving” truth!…
Indeed, but I believe the technical term (at least as used in the White House) is “kinetic” truth.
A fellow I know purchased a small laser shaped like a mouse (rodent, not computer bit) meant for the entertainment of monsieur le chat.
There are lasers in great profusion in the stores for the office supplies, and yet more used for construction tools, etc.
Some unruly citizens have been arrested and convicted for mis-using such lasers, pointing them at both civilian and military jets. This is a very bad thing, because it can blind pilots and crew, and do permanent damage in some cases to the viewers’ eyes. Furthermore, this irresponsible vandalism endangers people on the ground.
Drones presumably transcend many of the limitations of the human retina. But astronomical telescopes and satellites – any optic system which uses light amplifiers – have been damaged by just moonlight, which is of course, reflected light from the sun…
Our host has on many occasions initiated valuable discussions around all sorts of threats to civil and lawful human activities. In that vein, we ought to be able to justify spending a little bandwidth considering the relative merits and vulnerabilities of drones, in both military and civilian applications. Wouldn’t want to give aid to the enemy, whoever that turns out to be, so discretion is called for.
In addition, we might be able to identify a lot of benign and useful applications for the things.
Some miscellaneous thoughts on all the above:
Richard Aubrey @ 46: “the Westphalian model not only informs most of the laws of war, it is unconsciously in the background of almost all thinking about it.”
I think that touches on the US’ dilemma: we’re used to thinking about war in a Westphalian context, while our enemy (Islamic supremacism) is thinking outside that context.
This is why it’s more useful for the Palestinians to NOT stand up a separate nation. If they did, and some of their populace continued their attacks against Israel with the apparent tacit support of the Palestinian government (in that they didn’t actively stop it), Israel could then rightfully declare war and invade to remove the threat and/or replace the government. As long as the Palestinians remain an unformed (non-Westphalian) entity, they can get away with anything. An Israeli invasion would appear as illegitimate.
It would be most beneficial in the very long term if we could bring war back under the Westphalian model. But to do that, we’d have to admit that Islamic supremacism is the problem, and do something very very forceful (and very different from what we’re doing now) to eliminate that problem.
Finally, as Wretchard noted, “the last time the Man had been so active in Africa was back in the day of Cecil Rhodes. Since he brought up Africa: Could someone explain to me how Samantha Powers’ “Responsibility to Protect” is any different than “the White Man’s Burden” from Rhodes’ era? (Note that R2P doesn’t square with the Westphalian model, but becomes another excuse for an elite to impose their notion of orderliness at the trans-national level).
http://blog.usni.org/2012/05/16/thinking-about-general-cartwrights-cyber-war-theories/
re: (now retired) vice chair Cartwright’s talk.
Interesting glimpse behind the curtain. An off-the-cuff hour of observations that didn’t sound scripted.
I wonder if we are overly focused on the “we must improve security” of our automation in order to address these threats. What defense do we actually have against a mortar in flight, or worse, a “DC sniper?” Why should we expect our automation (in all its forms) to be any different?
re: Cartwright on worry less about defense (when difficult), rather focus on using offense to establish deterrence.
Is an observation that when the domain favors the offense, defense is deterrence thru regular demonstration, if not actual use of offensive capabilities. I believe this is (still) true in all other military domains, from the days of Maginot lines to today’s sometimes wishful thinking about missile defense (that it might be impenetrable, vice just casting doubt on a less than full-out offensive and nuclear blackmail). A challenge with demonstrating cyber “weapons” is often their use consumes them (i.e. an adversary diagnoses and mitigates the weakness).
Call it an opportunity for a new “Billy Mitchell” (or a Hap Arnold) – with equivalent service in-fighting and (likely personal and personnel) sacrifice required. Imagine a non-kinetic “boot on the neck” of an adversary leading to the desired political outcome. What if Cyber (or its earlier analog in (a declared intent to use) human covert/clandestine action) was able to deliver with significant confidence a declared political result? e.g. regime change, capitulation, or bringing say, North Vietnam to the table in its day. Arguably this is what we tried to do to the Sandinistas, and might have succeeded had Congress been willing to take a public stand and declare their intent to remove Soviet influence from South America vice support it like they did with the Boland amendment.
Perhaps then it turns out those with greatest deployment of a dual use technology are not only the most vulnerable, but the most able to quickly recover and reconfigure around attacks, as well as attack and dominate in this domain.
What if, say, the U.S. were to use the upcoming Iran sanctions to declare a cyber “tightening of a noose” policy on Iran? Congress passes an authorization that is a new form of War Declaration (that, unlike the existing law, doesn’t immediately require the DCI/DNI to report to and take direction from the SECDEF) that has defined phases, budgets, and red-lines (political/statecraft, followed by non-kinetic (cyber and covert human action), followed by kinetic). The pre-kinetic phase could be called a form of sanctions, an economic blockade.
And then the military week-by-week informs Iran (both leadership and populace) of what is going to stop working until they changed their behavior. Starting with water, light and communications in leadership areas, bank accounts for their 1% that get scrambled if not looted, shut down of air-traffic control and airport facilities, followed by general transportation mischief (scrambling shipment orders, putting perishables on un-air-conditioned trucks, etc.), traffic lights scrambled, followed by other infrastructure shutdowns, all of which when they attempt to turn back on, are re-scrambled or turned back off. And even when they disconnect networks, it doesn’t seem to make a difference (as various clandestine services and special operations forces establish, and re-establish access).
Part of the Congressional Authorization is authority for the military to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal that authorize anyone (after registration and posting a bond with the military and after declaring their goals, they receive specific help against their objectives including, say, lists of accounts and passwords, shipment schedules and manifests, whatever the U.S. has to help a competent pirate) to do mischief if not more to Iran’s 1%’s assets. Eventually the Iranian people are cold, in the dark and only able to hear, and perhaps see, U.S. military broadcasts and websites & services. And finally after a few weeks of declining food supplies we announce that since the existing leadership did not capitulate this will not stop until we see this list of heads-on-pikes. And if they go kinetic or use deadly force against us, we will respond kinetically, and the cyber fight moves from disruption to destruction, from preparing the battlefield to force protection and force projection.
And when the dust settles we have a new military service capable of using its offensive capability to both win wars and deter others – which is perhaps the only way forward given defense in this domain is likely to be asymmetrically disadvantaged for decades, perhaps forever (as we see in other weapons and defense against same). The Cyber threat to the free world declines to criminality and mischief as the pictures and videos of Iran’s 1% being guillotined by a hungry and angry populace circulate widely.
Then in 30 years we don’t remember a time without the (I know, we need a better name) Cyber Force (CF, AF, Army, Navy, Marines) – which has by then has graduated its 25th class from its service academy – located in the mountains overlooking Silicon Valley (3/4s of the way to Santa Cruz) and yet another military visionary has had his reputation restored and memorialized (like Billy Mitchell, a general took a risk, offended the other services, arguably violated legal guidelines, if not the law, yet succeeded and was court marshaled for it).
General Cartwright was not loved. He made many changes of which some are now being undone. Be interesting to see if he is eventually credited with being a Mitchell. Or perhaps a Rickover. His comments about lawyers, cyber, and war are telling. Wonder who will be Hap Arnold?