Sound … Fury … Significance?
While the administration hasn’t ruled out an American intervention in Syria it acts as though it might. And if it does, there’s at least an outside chance it won’t consult Congress. “Reuters reports this morning that White House Senior Counter-Terroism Adviser John Brennan ‘did not rule out on Wednesday the eventual creation of a no-fly zone over a patch of Syria.’”
Ward Carrol describes the Administration’s warmaking strategy: fight everywhere and never ask permission from anyone but the United Nations. “The Obama administration’s defense strategy has emerged de facto as one with three major prongs: The first has been a continuation of the Bush 43-era COIN-esque wars in the Middle East. The second has been the high-viz attempt at a pivot to the Pacific Rim. The third has been the prosecution of “proxy wars” — hostilities under banners of things other than declared war. Drone strikes in places like Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan fall into this catagory. And, the largest scale example of a proxy war on Obama’s watch was the no-fly zone over Libya — officially tagged ‘Odyssey Dawn.’”
Will that scenario be repeated in Syria? Ward thinks it might.
As I wrote in a Huffington Post blog piece last fall, from a political point of view, the beauty of these sorts of no-fly zones is in the optics. Fly the NATO flag over the operation and give the lead to a British guy. (Nothing to see here, Fourth Estate.)
Then start the no-fly zone flight ops — defensive in nature, right? Let the opposition make the first move and react. … the Syrian IAD is more robust than the Libyan one, so you can expect a similar rollback strategy this go ’round (if it happens).
The problem with that Ward’s scenario is that both China and Russia have so far show no inclination to go along in the Security Council. As for Congress, well what about Congress? John Brennan, the Administration’s counterterrorism chief described the undeclared war in Yemen as part of a “broader strategy” — one which included more cybersecurity — and said that if Congress won’t back it, then President Obama will simply do it via an executive order.
Among other issues, Brennan said Obama will use executive powers to implement some of the measures contained in cybersecurity legislation that died after a filibuster by Senate Republicans last week.
“If Congress is not going to act on something like this, then the president wants to make sure that we’re doing everything possible,” Brennan said. “Believe me, the critical infrastructure of this country is under threat.” He did not specify the actions the White House might take.
Brennan also said that recent leaks of national security information had been “devastating.” He would not discuss specific examples.
Maybe he ought to know about the seriousness of leaks from the White House. But the urgency evinced by the administration is extraordinary. To paraphrase Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in war, but maybe someone else is. The New York Times reports that the administration is creating a missile defense shield around the Gulf States.
WASHINGTON — The United States and its Arab allies are knitting together a regional missile defense system across the Persian Gulf to protect cities, oil refineries, pipelines and military bases from an Iranian attack, according to government officials and public documents …
That would include deploying radars to increase the range of early warning coverage across the Persian Gulf, as well as introducing command, control and communications systems that could exchange that information with missile interceptors whose triggers are held by individual countries.
For that purpose, the Pentagon late last year announced a contract for the sale of two advanced missile defense radars to the United Arab Emirates. And early this year, officials disclosed that a similar high-resolution, X-band missile defense radar would be located in Qatar, as well …
Three weeks ago the Pentagon announced the newest addition to Persian Gulf missile defense systems, informing Congress of a plan to sell Kuwait $4.2 billion in weaponry, including 60 Patriot Advanced Capability missiles, 20 launching platforms and 4 radars. This will be in addition to Kuwait’s arsenal of 350 Patriot missiles bought between 2007 and 2010.
The United Arab Emirates acquired more than $12 billion in missile defense systems in the past four years, documents show. In December, the Pentagon announced a contract to provide the Emirates with two advanced missile defense launchers for a system called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, valued at about $2 billion, including radars and command systems. An accompanying contract to supply an arsenal of interceptor missiles for the system was valued at another $2 billion, according to Pentagon documents.
Saudi Arabia also has bought a significant arsenal of Patriot systems, the latest being $1.7 billion in upgrades last year.
The United States’ own military forces provide a core capability for ballistic missile defenses in the Persian Gulf, in particular the American Navy vessels with advanced tracking radars and interceptor missiles. According to Navy officials, these Aegis missile defense systems, carried aboard both cruisers and destroyers, are in the region on continuous deployments.
And the United States has deployed a number of land-based missile defense systems to defend specific American military facilities located around the gulf.
We have come a long way from the days when President Obama talked about abolishing unproven missile defense systems. Today they are acting like they can’t get enough of it — though not for Europe, but for the oil states.
Meanwhile the cyberwar that Brennan talked about is going full blast, at least in the Middle East. Thinking about online banking? Thinkg about Gauss.
Russia-based security firm Kaspersky Lab, which discovered the malware in June … dubbed Gauss after a name found in one of its main files, also has a module that targets bank accounts in order to capture login credentials. The malware targets accounts at several banks in Lebanon, including the Bank of Beirut, EBLF, BlomBank, ByblosBank, FransaBank and Credit Libanais. It also targets customers of Citibank and PayPal.” With that kind of threat on the loose why not turn over more of the Internet to the administration’s watchdogs. And if you don’t agree, they may do it by executive order anyway.
Even though the administration denied there was any war going in Yemen, nobody said anything about elsewhere. The New York Times quotes American and Israeli sources which say that the shadow war is back.
BERLIN — A magnetic bomb detonated on a diplomatic car in New Delhi. The police uncovered a cache of explosives at a golf course in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed in an attack outside the airport in the Black Sea coastal city of Burgas.
These were just a few of what some Israeli and American intelligence officials say were nearly a dozen plots that form the backbone of a continuing offensive by Iran and Hezbollah against Israel and its allies abroad. But the links seem tenuous at times, the tactics variable, the targets scattered across the globe, from the Caucasus to Southeast Asia to the Mediterranean.
“This is not a spy thriller that necessarily has a plot readers can follow from page to page,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Iran and Hezbollah both thrive on reasonable deniability.”
Like the the tagline in the Bourne movie. “There was never just one”. All this comes at a time when the Administration is doing its level best to downsize the US military. AOL says cuts are slowly driving the Air Force “out of business”. The Army is being given hollowed-out reconnaissance units: more flags and fewer drones. These all go by the name of “sequestration”.
The Administration’s actions have all the appearance of a strategy, if only one knew what it was. No two aspects of them seem to fit. On the one hand we are seeing preparations for a wider war in the Middle East. On the other hand the administration is cutting back the Armed Forces and marooning large parts of it in Afghanistan. On the one hand the administration talks about a comprehensive war on al-Qaeda, on the other hand it is hardly even speaking to Congress about it.
You would expect at the least that if the President were going to face some huge crisis, that he would try to create a bipartisan government of unity, not accuse Mitt Romney of murder and felony and launch political ads showing Allen West punching white women.
What gives? The situation superficially resembles 1940, but without a Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan to confront. Jerome O’Connor, writing for the US Naval Institute, described Roosevelt’s “undeclared war”. Back in the day, FDR, like a tongue-tied suitor, was working up to the punch line. What he wanted to say was that America was in for it. And so he beat and beat and beat around the bush.
On the day of the 29 December 1940 “fireside chat,” the world waited in anticipation of what the President of the United States would say about national security. Unknown to the public was that months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy was secretly hunting German and Italian warships in the North Atlantic …
In the White House at 2130 on 29 December 1940, an audience of twenty sits expectantly on wobbly, gilt wooden chairs before a desk drilled with holes for the wires of seven microphones. On the desk are two sharpened pencils, a blank notepad, two glasses of water and an opened pack of Camels. Among the invited guests are matinee idol Clark Gable with his wife, blonde Carole Lombard. She wears a “simple black afternoon dress” and a funnel-shaped black hat and veil. Sixty-nine year-old Secretary of State Cordell Hull, fingers his pince-nez ribbon. Print and broadcast reporters casually smoke. And in the first row, dressed in a gray-blue evening gown, Sara Roosevelt awaits her son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States.
All over the country, unnecessary activity comes to a halt as millions of families gather in their living rooms next to bulky, polished-wood Philco, RCA, and Emerson radio consoles. Five minutes before the broadcast, attired in a dark blue serge suit and black bow tie, the President glides into the oval Diplomatic Reception Room on the rubber tires of a small wheelchair, amiably greets guests and clears his throat. Ready to deliver one of the most important speeches in his political career and in the lives of 132 million fellow citizens, FDR begins his 16th fireside chat, entitled “On National Security.” “Never before…has our American civilization been in such danger as now,” he says in the familiar rolling resonance. “By an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together…that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three nations – a program aimed at world control – they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.”
The obvious problem with this historical analogy is the absence of a titanic threat facing the United States. But there is a gigantic threat facing Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Muslim world. They are in a crisis, but not except indirectly, are American interests involved.
Either the dimensions of the true threat to America have not been been forthrightly described by National Command Authority, or the administration is essentially engaging in extraordinary prosecution of a conflict whose importance has so far been downplayed.
If events in the Middle East are as well in hand as described, what’s the rush? But if they are not well in hand, then what is the truth? Probably the worst aspect of the administration’s policy regime has been the opacity which has descended on everything. The Diplomad, authored by a former staffer at the State Department describes the problem succinctly.
As noted before, I began my career in the Foreign Service during the Carter presidency, and ended it during the Obama presidency: two horrific bookends.
Jimmy Carter should not have been president. He was incompetent beyond belief; angry about America’s success in the world; wanted us to get our comeuppance; and was and is a mean, reptilian and graceless little man …
We now are saddled with another abomination as president: one worse than Carter. The damage Obama has done to our economy and global standing, while immense, can be relatively easily fixed. The real damage he has done is more pernicious and perhaps permanent. He has participated fully and deliberately in undermining the essence of what it means to be an American. Let me explain.
Anybody remotely interested could know Carter, what he had done with his life, and what he advocated. He had an easily accessible public record. Obama, of course, is the most secretive and closed off president we have ever had. Only after years of badgering did he even release his birth certificate. We are not allowed to know about his education except that, like the absurd Elena Ceausescu, he is “brilliant.” How did this self-admittedly mediocre high school student, from a relatively modest background, growing up in remote Hawaii and Indonesia as part of an apparently very dysfunctional family, manage to get into three expensive and “elite” universities? How did he come to their attention? Who vouched for him? Who paid? Did he claim to be a foreign student? What were his courses and grades? Who were his friends and teachers? In a celebrity obsessed world where we know everything about Tom Cruise and Britney Spears, we know next to nothing about the man who encumbers our presidency.
His political rise is shrouded in mystery. After Harvard, he suddenly moves to Chicago. Why? He becomes a “community organizer” there, and rapidly rises in the corrupt and crony-filled Democratic machine. He becomes the darling of gangsters such as Rezko, close friends with known terrorists and hate-mongers, and presto he is taking down opponents right and left and soon is in the White House. We can’t ask anything about it all. To do so risks charges of racism. His ascendency is a liberal Hollywood fable and it must remain unquestioned and unexamined. He is our anointed leader. He is our Athena. …
Obama has become the incarnation of a troubling trend in our country that has accelerated over the past 40 or so years. He has become the head of what passes for modern progressivism: the alliance between tax-supported university faculties, lawyers, government bureaucrats, journalists, NGO “activists,” and Hollywood. This alliance has promoted the politics of envy and resentment, and launched a sustained attack on traditional American values. Our country is now filled with the half-educated idiots who emerge from our universities with no real knowledge but with feelings of entitlement and resentment. We should stand in awe of people with PhDs regardless of whether what they say corresponds to the reality we see, because they know what’s good for us. They are the “experts.”
We are in the hands of the experts, and they can’t explain why they’re doing things.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
How do the Democrats get away with these things? The only reason I can find is the lack of media coverage. Are we really that far gone that the president can bypass Congress and everyone just looks the other way? This should be hammered publicly with a threat- remember this when the president changes. We, the opposition, will no longer be getting permission to shut down any agency not specified by the Constitution. We can shut down welfare and Social Security (phase it out via the Ryan plan) and we will not be going to Congress. We will privatize education, let the states run it without interference from the federal level. We will require voter id, again, Congressional support is not needed. Executive Order. Elections have consequences, eh, Mr.Obama?
My apologies to Wretchard for going off-topic so early in the thread. The following link concerning HFT is extremely interesting. Watch the animation to the very end. IMHO this animation provides solid evidence that the financial system is very close to melt down:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/08/06/chart-of-the-day-hft-edition/
If this animation were of alpha waves from a human brain, I’d say the person was going into an epileptic seizure.
The economic system is being kept alive with computer driven deceptions that are becoming much more difficult to maintain. Soon even clever algorithms running on big computer clusters will be insufficient to maintain the deception.
1. SpeakEasy said, “How do the Democrats get away with these things?”
Easy. It’s the “come and get me” strategy. The only weapons Congress have are a Contempt of Congress resolution (who will enforce that?) and impeachment of executive branch officials. This is more difficult because anything that is done will be greeted with cries of raaaaacism.
Here is an article on why DC is terminally corrupt.
Diplomad is a treasure. It is wonderful to have him back. In his first incarnation, his discourse on the loathing of a certain central American “Coronel” regarding our military’s move to the 9mm Beretta over the classic 1911 is one of my favorite posts ever.
I hope we all get a chance to drink the refreshing nectar dispensed today by Paul Rahe. His gut tells him that the 2012 election will be a rerun of 2010. He is also very aware that this hardly gets us out of the woods. It’s just so very much better than the nightmare we would live under four more years of this. I believe that Obama will only enter this conflict if he thinks it is the only way he can win the election. I also think that if Romney picks someone other than Rubio as a running mate, it means that he knows that Florida is in the bag.
If America asks for four more years of this, we’ll get it, and we’ll get it good and hard. When Mencken was right, he was right.
se@1, why blame the media? We used to call it apathy. Now it is the ‘net’ that is catching and draining everyone. I have been traveling around the last month and I am dismayed at how people are sucked into spending every second on their internet connection. It is in grocery stores, waiting lines, airports, gas stations, etcetera. No sign of willingness to interact with others nearby. Family and business gatherings are hushed as everyone attends their personal eletronic ball and chain. Babies are being ignored, not unfed, but not involved either. “Getting away with it” is not such a big task for the bad guys. Putting it all back together someday will be for the good guys. At least the atheletes have a physically demanding task to clear their heads. Maybe that is why there are only 23 out of 10,000 Olympians that say they are homosexual.
wretchard i think your analogy to 1940 is off by 80 or so years- the 1850′s and the buchanan? administration is more likely. incompetence and complicity. big question- did MAD theory really refer to nukes or ideas ?
TW @ 5: Now it is the ‘net’ that is catching and draining everyone.
The new dopium of the masses.
You can stay in your selected echo chamber no matter where you go.
If we’re going to do anything in Syria, I hope it involves seizing thousand square-mile chunks and letting Americans homestead.
“but not except indirectly, are American interests involved.”
Indirectly can kill you. Read the “Strategy of the Indirect approach” by B.H. Liddel-Hart.
Even a blind squirrel will find an acorn every now and then.
R2P is the hand maiden to Human Rights. You cannot accept the Bill of Rights and that “All men are created equal” without embracing the duty to protect those human rights. That is R2P.
The Clown Posse is right on this one.
The Islamic crescent has shattered. The Arab spring is sweeping the table. The USA cannot put it back together. What we can do is kill the tyrants, despots and dictators that try and fill the power vacuum. If they understand that the road to power is through the ballot box, Democracy can and will flourish.
egg @ 2: All that noise is a great cover for TPTB to put a trillion dollars of fed money into the market to move the Dow to 13k when it should be at 9k.
I’m all for more friction, transaction charge, and also synchronous trading at fixed intervals of – I dunno, greater than one second, probably one minute is optimal, but I wouldn’t greatly care if it were once a day or once a week.
The problem is try to do any of these and the trades will all go off-market or into fifty other forms of proxy, unless very VERY strictly regulated, which the Republicans would oppose out of ignorance and the Democrats would fail to understand but would probably favor because it’s regulation.
These are wild times.
I think Russia keeps the US out of Syria unless as I have said before Assad does something really stooopid, like engage turkey, even then once the Russian marines are “in country” it’s gonna be hard for BH0 to do much… I pray BH0 is tossed by a tidal wave and Harry and Nancy gets theirs too! I just have very depressing feeling that by hook or crook BH0 gets his coup de grace and finishes Capitalism and the American way once and for all. Mitt best have a stellar plan in place because BH0 is going to go out trashing everything he can to get back at the raaaaacit gun clinger’s and idiots who can’t see his (BH0) greatness. I just don’t have faith Mitt is up for the challenges that will face him both at Home and abroad, they are going to monstrous to say the least.
What happens when the Arab World uses it’s newfound elections to elect Tyranny?
#11 cellec
same as germany – minus the industrial base and minus the prussian officers.
5. TomW “why blame the media?”
They abuse their power too much. Reporters lie without consequence, whereas my blog is honest without readers.
“Now it is the ‘net’ that is catching and draining everyone…”
This is true, and social media hasn’t equalized voices. It has only restricted people to “liking” whatever junk gets posted and limited views to Liberal, Very liberal, or Wrong. If you believe in other things then people defriend you.
6. reg “big question- did MAD theory really refer to nukes or ideas ?”
Arms and ideas aren’t quite the same, but perhaps they should be treated equally.
Example: people can barely keep 2nd Amendment rights beyond simply owning a gun. Still, most people agree there are size limits to weaponry. 1st Amendment rights don’t have those restrictions… but maybe they should, since limiting market monopolies hasn’t worked. I propose journalists not be allowed to posses what are practically atom bombs in their arsenal. They can still lie all they want, only not with a bullhorn like we hear on the news channels.
Seeing as this idea is unworkable, I don’t know what can be done.
1. SpeakEasy IIRC it was P.T. Barnum that said you would never go broke betting on the stupidity of the average American. Don’t think so? Get on YouTube and search on “epic fail”.
All Obama has done is raise the bar on stupid.
Youse guys need to hold on to your knickers. 4 more years of Obama WILL NOT end America.
11. cellec, it is rare that someone gets the Gold on the first try. One thing the Arab Spring has proven is that despots can be ran out of office by the mobs. Libya showed that if the despot murders his citizens in wholesale numbers, R2P can level the playing field.
You CANNOT force democracy on a people. You can kill the despots. If the people vote in a tyrant (look up the word, you might be surprised by what it means) they can remove him without as much trouble as a murderous dictator.
Egypt and Libya are not done yet. Another despot will take over in Lybia. A tyrant already has in Egypt.
That doesn’t matter. If the new leader does a good job and takes care of his people, they don’t riot. That is consensual government, of a sort. It’s not your daddy’s Buick, but it gets where we are going. Jordan is a Constitutional Monarchy. Leaning toward the monarchy side. The King has a very good Army. Small, but powerful and up to date. He doesn’t use it on rioters. He has some well trained riot police. The key to protests is meeting them without using deadly force. Then it becomes just another melee, not very different from a post fotbol celebration.
As long as nobody is using machine guns, riots can be fun.
Charlie don’t surf.
Stoicheon #8:
Utter nonsense!
“All men are created equal and are endowed…” is from the Declaration of Independence. And the Declaration, while one of the most beautiful and stirring statements of philosophy ever written, is NOT the operating instructions for the United States of America; that document is the Constitution.
And the Bill of Rights is meant to make clear that certain rights are guaranteed In Spite Of the United States Federal Government, lest that government decide to redefine American freedom. Neither the Bill of Rights, nor any other part of the Constitution, is meant to apply in any way outside of the USA!
If we claim jurisdiction over other countries and apply the Constitution to them based not on upholding and defending our country but on a philosophy – well, that way lies only utter madness, an American Reich.
It is there to be seen, but no one wants to see it. The actions of the regime do not seem to make sense and fit together. Yet they seem to be deliberate. May I submit that there is another perspective where it all comes together?
What is the end goal? To you and to me; we have an a built in assumption that any deliberate strategy by the US government has at its goal the aggrandizement of the US and its interests. There may be disagreement as to which interests should be favored, but the assumption is that the end goal is the benefit of the United States or some part of it.
What if we are dead wrong? Toss out the assumptions, and look at the facts that we know. Always the facts. Granting that we may not have all of them, and as more information comes in our evaluation will perforce have to be modified to account for them; but the only thing that we know are the facts. Our assumptions and conclusions have to account for them, or be filed under fiction.
One: On the one hand we are seeing preparations for a wider war in the Middle East.
Two: On the other hand the administration is cutting back the Armed Forces and marooning large parts of it in Afghanistan.
Three:
Put them together. We are going to be at war. It is going to be done without approval outside the White House. We are going to war with an armed forces that is deliberately weakened and out of position. And we are doing so in such a way as to guarantee that the nation will be as fractured and divided as possible. All of this just as a presidential election is taking place.
Every military analyst has at least one favorite military theorist they fall back on. Frequently more than one. Pick your favorite. Clausewitz? check. Napoleon? check. Sun Tzu? check? Liddell-Hart? Mahan? Mao? Giap? Run our situation through whatever list of theorems and axioms from them that you choose. Wo3 de5 ma1 he2 ta1 de5 feng1kuang2 de5 wai4sheng5 dou1. I don’t know what your analysis comes out as, but mine is sure defeat for the United States.
Keep in mind, this is a deliberate strategy. The facts that we know show that the regime wants an absolute American defeat just as we go to the polls. Or at least at the time we are scheduled to go to the polls. Would you not say that such a defeat was not “a grave national emergency”? Maybe one that would justify a “continuity” of command until the emergency was over?
There is no need for puzzlement, if you judge what the regime is doing, and not the framework that you choose to place around it.
We have rehearsed the actions outside the law and the Constitution that this regime has committed, and still commits. We are being ruled by decree; on both domestic and foreign affairs. The Congress has no input [and to be honest that is as much because the "leaders" of the "opposition" fear to oppose as much as anything else], no controls, no budgeting power, and no ability or desire to call anyone to account for their actions. The Courts have abandoned their role, and spend all their effort avoiding decisions. The “Roberts Doctrine” laid out by Chief Justice John Roberts, that the government can impose unconstitutional mandates on the people so long as some lawyer somewhere can hallucinate it as a tax, means that they have withdrawn from the fight with the power of the State.
This fight does have 3 branches. Instead of Executive, Legislative, and Judicial; the reality is that it is the all-encompassing STATE -vs- the people, with the Military being the deciding factor.
My dearest wish, in the interesting times to come, is that the Armed Forces; our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, in some cases our parents who remain in the Homeland will remember that their Oath is to the Constitution above all, and not to any STATE or Regime.
Subotai Bahadur
#13 baobo
i didn’t mean the media in particular, but the KGB’s disinformation campaign in general(1930′s to the 1990′s)and its progeny(the grandchildren of the true believers).
and launch political ads showing Allen West punching white women.
I forgot to mention the grillz. If you watch the ad, not only is West punching old white ladies, he does so with a diamond gleaming in his teeth. It’s almost worth watching for that alone.
Let me get this straight. Our Dear Leader doesn’t want to protect Europe with Missile Defense, and to my dim knowledge hasn’t really pushed forward any Missile Defense plans to protect America, but is now all hot to trot to protect the Muslim Gulf States with our missile defense capability.
It’s not like any really sophisticated system will be in place to stop Iran’s missiles over the next few months.
Syria is a problem that could grow much worse. But giving missile defense protection to the Gulf States may not prove to be in our interests at all, and if those missiles or other sensitive components, fall into the wrong hands ( not inconceivable in a second Buraq administration), we could be in a real fix. Also, there could come a time in the not too distant future, where we are the ones who may want to attack the Gulf States. They are, after all, financiers of many terror groups around the world.
It just seems to me that Buraq’s Muslim sympathies are rearing their ugly head again.
stoicheion Islam does not believe that all men are created equal, or if it does it believes it in a different way. You cannot protect the rights of people who do not believe that those rights exist. You may, on an absolute level be correct but on a practical level, in an Islamic country they are always going to vote for a tyrant in the name of Allah. To intervene in Syria is a fools errand, and a bloody one at that. Neither side really likes the US and actually consider it to be an apostate, ungodly place that needs to be conquered by Islam. They feel the same way about the Russians. They simply use the unbelievers as tools to their own ends. Let the Russians garner the hatred of the Syrian masses. Let the Russians spend their blood and treasure. Do nothing. Let them kill each other. They can’t be helped until cease to believe that the Qur’an is LITERALLY the final word of law.
The comparisons to WW1 are instructive. If Britain, France, Russia and the Turks had let the Austrians settle the matter with the Serbians rather than following a policy of “Intervention” a horrible war would have been avoided. Would that have avoided WW2? Who knows, I don’t but the intervention made things worse not better.
Would it have been a good thing for the European powers to intervene in the US Civil War? No. An armistice is never as good as a surrender. The only time there is true peace is when one side does actually win. For it is only when one side has experienced actual, total defeat that it can face the realization that it was wrong.
Let the Syrians fight their own civil war. Sell weapons to one or both sides if you want and say: “We’ll deal with whoever wins if we can.”
Do not intervene.
Stoichen…how very generous you are with the lives of other peoples children. The enemy of concern is not overseas but right here at home. In order to counteract that enemy my kids are going to stay right here and learn the constitition the proper use of firearms and make lots and lots of fat American babies. I question why you are so eager to drip the blood of our best and brightest into the eternally thirsty sands of the middle east. We need those young men and women and their energy and commitment right here at home. Not with their guts blown out by an ied in some godforsaken desert hell hole.
A pedantic note wretchard. In your first sentence “it acts as though it might” appears grammatically to refer back to the preceding clause “the administration hasn’t ruled out an American intervention in Syria” when it is clear that your intent was to refer to the following passage with the opposite meaning.
Are the land based missile defense systems and US naval Aegis platforms intended to prevent an Iranian attack on the Sunnis or an Israeli attack on the Iranians?
Where is our Turkish correspondent’s enconium on the wonderful benefits to America of selling more military equipment, we must have no use for, to our good friends the Saudis. BTW, does anybody who attacked us on 9/11? Was there a movie about that? Was it the Mormons who did it?
15. RWE
America is an idea, not a piece of paper. If that idea isn’t defended, it does not matter what is written on the paper. You are being penny wise and pound foolish.
Subotai Bahadur,
America is an idea. How do you shoot an idea? How do you lock up an idea? How do you handcuff an idea?
Ideas can only be defeated by a better idea. That is why 0bama will never and can never win. Being retired military, I might have too much faith in the US Military. I have absolutely no doubt that if push came to shove, the Navy and Airforce would be able to get the Army out of the ‘stan;
http://www.globalfirepower.com/active-military-manpower.asp
The US Military has 1,477,896 members as of 2011.
In June there were 101,000 active duty personal in Afghanistan;
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/story/2011-11-29/Afghanistan-US-Troops-war/51453988/1
That is what, 8-9 percent?
Active duty Army is about 500,000. The Marines have about 15,000 in the ‘stan so we are still looking at a VERY small portion of the US military being out on a limb in the ‘stan.
Military age males works out to about 27 million. So if the Demonrats restart the draft, with females (not sure that will fly. I think we should just draft females, since that will send the volunteer male numbers through the roof) we could get to 50 million without a problem.
I doubt that the 0bumbler is foolish enough to start a world war. Mainly because it won’t get him elected again. It won’t gain him a single vote and it will lose him the anti-war vote. On the other hand, America against Islam is both winnable and a job creator.
I honestly don’t think he has the ‘nads to declare an emergency and cancel the elections. Congress will not go along with that. I’m hoping that the polls stay close until election day, then the Tea Party and Chick-a-fil voters blow him out of the water.
Haji can’t shoot.
Wretchard:
1. Obama’s missile defense moves can be explained as an attempt to keep Israel quiet,at least until after the election – when he can trade Israel to Iran for the promise of peace in his time. Selling weapons to gulf Arab states sounds nice and will help defense workers (voters). The ships can be withdrawn later, and I doubt the land based missiles will be of much help when US troops are withdrawn.
2. Obama’s priorities can be shown where he puts the governments money: Billions for crony capitalism and “green jobs” that will benefit Democratic constituencies, defense cuts for an America that in Obama’s eyes should be no more powerful than Sweden, if that. A hollowed out military weaker than it was in 1916 is the desired result of Obamas policies – as long as he can buy votes at home that is all that matters. Keeping the military out of position in Afghanistan is part and parcel of this. Obams does NOT want to win in Afghanistan – merely give the illusion of doing something until the election is safely over.
3. Obama will not intervene in Syria – because he will not want to risk a domestic backlash that may cost him votes. Though he may try to give the impression he will to impress voters. His budget cuts ensure the armed forces will not be capable of such an intervention even if he changes his mind. Of course, he could try to bribe the Saudis and other gulf states into setting up no fly zones on their own, which they and the Turks might be able to do.
4. As for the wisdom of intervention in Syria – there is none that I can see. The choices are not between a dictator and some Athenian or Jeffersonian democrats. The choices are Assad and his relatively secular fascism, or the Muslum Brotherhood and their Islamic Fascism. There will be no democratic revolution, just a struggle for power, which the best organized and most ruthless will win. Our best strategy then, is to play Cardinal Richelieu and let then fight. If Assad is winning, help the brotherhood, if the Brotherhood is winning, help Assad. In that manner keep the Syrian pot boiling and let Sunnis and Alawites kill each other. This is not a humanitarian strategy, granted, but it serves US national security interests and has the virtue of being a strategy we can afford in the era of Obama.
5. As for humanitarian intervention, well, it would be nice if we could afford it. We cannot. The money is not there, the will to win is not there, the ability to intervene is less than what it was and decreases with every cut to defense. It is not a kindness to create a sense of false hope where none can exist. China and Russia are firmly on the side of Assad. As the British learned at Suez in 1956, a debtor nation cannot undertake military action that its creditors dissaprove of. And even if we could intervene, why does it have to be the US? The Turks, the Saudis, the other gulf states, the Jordanians – surely they could intervene. And if they needed extra help they could ask Israel. Why, exactly, should the US be more Muslum than Syrias brother Muslums when it comes to humanitarian intervention in a Muslum state?
“Are the land based missile defense systems and US naval Aegis platforms intended to prevent an Iranian attack on the Sunnis or an Israeli attack on the Iranians?”
Iranian attack on KSA or the Gulf States. My nephew gets out of the Army in March. He is doing that because he is a Sgt. in a Patriot battery and was recruited to go work there. He doesn’t know which country yet. If it’s KSA he isn’t going to take his wife and kids. She exercises her 2nd amendment rights and would not hesitate to cap the first religious police to complain about her wearing shorts. It is easier to just avoid that sort of trouble.
America is an idea, not a piece of paper. If that idea isn’t defended, it does not matter what is written on the paper.
That’s very Soviet sounding, yet even the USSR wasn’t crazy enough to go around the world warmongering. Even their interventions close to home were for ‘reasons of state’ rather than crazed idealism.
America is an idea. How do you shoot an idea?
Your precious idea is failing at home.
24. BattleofthePyramids
History will prove you wrong.
As for why the USA, technology. Military technology to be precise.
Yes, Turkey, Jordan or Israel could walk right over Syria. Syria has NEVER won a war. They haven’t won a battle since the Crusaders marched through. The issue is that any of those countries or any combination of those countries would have to use a LOT of troops. Americans have been spoiled by seeing their military annihilate other militaries much larger.
The other available nations don’t have the tech advantage needed to do that. So they will need numbers as well. If Turkey sends in 100,000 men Iran will send in 150,000 men.
That is to be avoided. The USA can use 1 or 2 Carriers and a A-10 wing as well as an Apache Squadron and just mop up the Syrians. If Iran wants to send more targets, good.
The ONLY reason NATO was able to do Libya was because the US took down the Libyan AD (air defence). Syrian AD is more numerous but no more advanced. AD is not really about numbers. Cruise missiles take out the fixed SAM sites and B-2′s take out the mobile sites.
The Wild Weasels clean up what is left.
As far as cost, defund the EPA at 15 billion and the State Department at 51 billion. That is 66 billion. At 1 billion a day, that is 66 days, which will be enough to find and kill Assad. Then we let them work it out. Destroy all the heavy weapons and let the winner know that we still have LOTS of bombs and he needs to play nice.
I’d place my money on blocking the Israelis.
As always, the Iranian position is 100% bluster on the public stage and black ops.
No way do they want to go Hitler until they have not only the bomb – - but quite a few.
It is only for the American electorate that the issue is shaped as a counter Iranian op.
Actually, from a purely military position, a close up deployment is suicide. We could lose multiple fleets in moments when the atomic surprise pops.
Like Imperial Japan, Tehran’s policies are always hostage to the most radical faction of islamists.
That’s why they can’t fall back to any Plan B — for internal political reasons ANYONE advocating a softer posture is shut down in Iran,
16. Subotai Bahadur
Thank you.
I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve heard so-called Americans -high and low and everything in between- express their utter contempt and dishonestly couched hatred for the foundational principles of this Republic – even the couple-few they’ve condescended to claim to even know squat about. These geniuses and the sea of enablers upon whose backs they float have no f’n idea what it took in blood, sweat, tears, and treasure to build and maintain everything that insulates them from care…From the tumult of hardships and savagery they seem to lust for the Republican ship of state which revolutionized (however imperfectly in its humanity) the pursuit of happiness and justice for its citizens.
The nearly deprecated word Evil is just about all I can come up with to describe the nihilistic motive force behind this opaque fog of self-destructive insanity we are witnessing descend upon the brains of an apparent plurality of the polity. The studiously maintained enigma currently called 0bama is but a symptom – Their new fundamentally transformative American progressive Idol; an artificially lit reflection of the darkest corners of these people’s hearts. Yet the shameful won the election for their golden calf. They won…In America.
And we the people kvetch in either bewilderment or blinkered adoration as our codified and God-given liberties alike are being cut to shreds in an unending tsunami propagating outward from the Potomac, saturated through and through with spinning whirling buzz saws of power-edifying edicts, the basest of heavy-handed distractions, casual big lies, and arrogant intolerable actions against which our termite ridden system of “checks and balances” is apparently powerless. Where is the authoritative systemic resistance to the daily onslaught of outrages that are drowning us? Where is the codified justice that had floated us above the mire?
I guess we will discover soon enough if there are still means by which a [true] minority may escape the tyranny of the current carnival of the masses with hope for a redressing of grievances.
29 @monkeyfan
The professional left figured out the big secret to undercutting the foundations of a prosperous, free nation many years ago: incrementalism. They started the Long March ~100 years ago, but it didn’t really take off in the US until post-WWII, when we were at our most prosperous. We’ve been fat & happy for 60-some-odd years now, and very few people notice the little erosions of our liberty that have been slowly implemented. Those that do notice have been mostly derided as conspiratorial crackpots. And almost no one, save the insane and those who feel that have nothing left to lose, would do anything to rock the boat, lest they destroy their own relatively comfortable lives (I fully admit that I’m one of those who do not wish to put my family in a place where it could lose it all). So the encroachments continue on at a steadily accelerating pace, as those in power become more and more secure in their lockdown.
The problem, as Richard has mentioned, is that the design margin is running out. Lots of people are now waking up to how desperately bad things are today. Now the power players are faced with a choice: keep going at the same rate and hope that enough people don’t wake up before they get to the goal or make a mad dash to the goal line, consequences be damned. I wasn’t sure what move they were going to make, but it now seems to be leaning towards “mad dash to the finish”. Especially with Obama coming out today to float the trial balloon of nationalizing all large industry in the US (I remember some dudes trying that in Europe, mid 20th Century…what was the word for that again?). Not to mention all of the military moves which might be strangely inconsistent for a command structure with America’s best interest at heart, but might not be for those with other goals.
If I see us get our forces in Afghanistan stranded in a fighting retreat or a carrier in the Straits of Hormuz get sunk, I think that will pretty much seal the deal for me, and Subotai’s scenario will be the obvious path of disaster for us.
Could it be that the missile defense shield being constructed around the middle east is going to be used to thwart the Isrealis from using “the Sampson Option”? (Just throwin that out for discussion.)
27. stoicheion
I think the real question you should be asking, is why should we even get involved? Why should the US be spending money killing people on the far side of the world?
You talk about Universal Human Rights, but by going into a country and killing it’s head, and a substantial part of it’s people, are you not depriving them of their ability to find their own path?
It comes down to this. If you say, “That guy’s doing something I don’t approve of, I’m going to stop him!” You’re not defending rights, you’re being a slaver.
Do as I say, or die. Nice guy, aren’t you?
China and Russia are protecting Asad for the same reason Germany and France tried to protect Saddam Hussein: They want to save a valued customer.
So the Russians and Chinese are to Syria what the Main Stream Media is to Barack Obama?
27. Stoichelon
Yes, Turkey, Jordan or Israel could walk right over Syria. Syria has NEVER won a war. ”
Do not underestimate them.
In the Golan Heights there is a place near Mt. Hermon known to Israelis as The Valley of Tears. When the Syrians attacked with over 1000 tanks it was the last line of defense for the Israeli defenders. By the end of that battle there were only 12 of 100 Israeli tanks remaining. The Syrians lost over 600. When the Syrians finally retreated the Israeli soldiers wept at the devastation.
By every account I have read the Israelis were amazed at the tenacity and courage of the Syrians who continued to advance under heavy losses.
It is not winning but never think the enemy will not fight if they have the will.
Tenacity and courage? With a ratio of >1000:100 I’m not surprised they were willing to fight. What surprised me is you say it was still ~400:12 at the end.
If they quit still having odds like that it doesn’t seem very tenacious to me.
I suspect the Israelis were mostly weeping at their own devastation.
Dworkin Barimen @30
My greatest concern is that my family and I may yet be made to suffer through the consequences of a time when the strategies of the emergent faceless State become the tactical…On a very personal Hobbesian level. Recent events that can best be ascribed to either [precedented] calculated deliberation and/or an unprecedentedly wide conspiracy of incompetence -along with a long train of uncannily convenient ‘slips of rhetorical tongues’ and release of “trial balloons”- do not bode well.
Regardless of whether the newest era of interesting times be the result of deliberate calculations, or the unintended consequences of a Teredo-crippled ship of fools, it hardly matters to those who will find no space in any lifeboat…Neither publicly socialized with a lofty pyramid of promises, or otherwise managed for them in absentia by credentialed private experts.
FWIW, I notice that worm resistant boats of sufficient capability on our local Craigslist are pretty damn plentiful and cheap since the last time I participated in the market; back in the days when I first discovered that the farther away from the helping hand of government I got, the freer I was.
Dear Lord, please let me not be that guy who is said to have sought to escape the storm clouds of the second great European [world] war of state consolidation and “co-prosperity” by resettling on Bougainville.
FILE UNDER: Not-So-Great Escapes.
@30: The professional left figured out the big secret to undercutting the foundations of a prosperous, free nation many years ago: incrementalism. They started the Long March ~100 years ago, but it didn’t really take off in the US until post-WWII, when we were at our most prosperous. We’ve been fat & happy for 60-some-odd years now, and very few people notice the little erosions of our liberty that have been slowly implemented. Those that do notice have been mostly derided as conspiratorial crackpots.
That 60 years of “fat & happy” prosperity have come to an end is beyond dispute.
But to add the ideological qualifier of Progressive to incrementalism (and yes, thank you Jerry Bowyer and Glen Beck, let’s give it a name and damn everyone who works in government as a Fabian Socialist) is an intellectually disingenuous and a factually dishonest oversimplification in the service of an agenda of questionable integrity.
What about:
The incrementalism of the Bush-Saudi relationship prior to the terrorist attack of 9-11 that literally changed the course of history? Fabian Conservatives?
The incrementalism of funding a war on three fronts in the ME for over a decade? Fabian Militarists?
The incrementalism of the Fed under Greenspan who intentionally kept interest rates low, feeding a housing bubble and supporting a derivatives-dominated stock market that collapsed smack in the middle of a power transfer between the then-hated Bush and the now-hated Obama? Fabian Feds?
The incrementalism of Wall St lobbyists that systematically dismantled the regulatory control of investment and banking that had effectively served the industry for over half a century. Fabian Investors?
I could go on but I won’t. No use when you’re this angry. Read the news. No prosecution for Goldman Sachs. Banks making billions in profit by holding mortgage rates high. The rumors that Romney hasn’t paid taxes in ten years. For you people to reduce everything from hangnails and hemlines to some stale ideological debate is why the Independents are starting to turn, and probably the one reason why Obama gets a second term. He’s not loved, but next to Republicans, he’s at least from the home planet. Fabian my @ss.
Art:
I noticed that Dworkin Barimen never mentioned “Fabian”, but if his personal observations and descriptions of the continuum of incremental [creative] self-destruction by those who most recently have taken to self-identifying as “progressives”, makes you feel less than comfortable, try Gramscian praxis on for size.
I think I’m over posted but I hate running from a fight. Even if it’s verbal and I might lose.
21. elizabeth An IED is no threat to an F-18B dropping a PGM from 20,000 feet (7 kilometers or so). BTW, the 2nd amendment is completely useless against modern firepower. A week or so ago some one here posted that deer hunters in Wisconsin were the worlds 4th largest Army. I laughed because the fool has no idea what an army is. I handle his 800,000 or so deer hunters by dropping napalm upwind in those forests. Then I use gunships to kill any that escape the flames.
32. Simon. Might makes right. People seldom go to court because they want to. They go because the judge is nearly always more reasonable then the SWAT team. Strong nations have been dictating to weak nations since the nation/state idea was created. Nothing wrong with that, so long as we keep it simple.
Mr. Despot orders his army to murder civilians and we put out a contract on him. As simple as it gets. The dictators understand that might makes right. That is how they obtained power in the first place. So the dictator hires a training contractor and starts training riot police. Cool. The USA isn’t dictating anything to the citizens. The USA is just establishing a principal that if the military turns it’s weapons (weapons more powerful then available to civilians) on the population at the order of a despot, dictator, tyrant, etc. The USA will make it a point to kill said despot, dictator, tyrant, whatever. Everybody understands and will play by the rules AFTER America kills enough men on white horses. Sort of like training a puppy.
Spindoc, There won’t be any fighting as you think of it. A B-1 with 4 BDU’s (Bomb Dispersal Units) will fly over your 1,000 MBT’s ( Main Battle Tank) at about 45,000 feet. Way above the max range of AAA. Any SAMS will be taken out by SEAD at the start of the air campaign. The B-1 drops 2 BDU’s. AT about 10,000 feet they clamshell open and each one dispenses 211 (or 217, I forget exactly) IED’s. The B-1 paints the kill box with it’s radar. Each of those cluster bombs has a radar receiver in it that works with a microprocessor and control fins to find the commanders hatch on the turret top of a MBT. it then guides itself to that hatch and sets off an EFP (explosive formed projectile) or what the media calls an IED. No more MBT commander, sometimes no more MBT.
No, there will not be any fighting, unless you consider crouching in a hole waiting to see if the Americans are going to kill you fighting.
The Taliban didn’t , which is why they took off running in 2001. The US went back into the ‘stan because the Army high command are self serving, freckless cowards.
The thing is that the USA can kill dictators wherever they are with little loss of life fairly cheaply. The only real hard part is finding the target. State and the CIA need to be able to give the location in GPS numbers at any given moment. IF they can’t they are not doing their job and need to be replaced. The only dangerous part is SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defences). Nobody does that better then the USA Navy, except maybe the US Air Force. The Brits are a very distant 3rd. It isn’t war, it’s murder.
You never give the enemy a break. Getting down in the dirt to fight is STOOOOOPID.
You only put boots on the ground if you plan on adding that nation to yours. Since the USA isn’t an Empire that isn’t an issue. The American people won’t allow it for one thing. For another, our military is designed to do enormous amounts of damage in a short period of time. Playing cowboys and indians in mudholestan is not what the US military was designed and built to do.
Wretchard, sorry about the overposting. I think I’m correct about this and just wish I had the eloquence to express myself so that other people will understand. When they repeat back to me and say I’m advocating the very things I’m saying NOT to do, it is frustrating.
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
Art, 38: the rest was easy enough to glaze over as it simply made no sense, but there at the end I simply must call troll shenanigans. Rumors of Romney on taxes? My good man, how about rumors of Obama on foreign passports? On deans’ lists unlike the usual kind? On Rezko? On Vera Baker? On certain bathhouses where, it is said, he was less inclined to give than to receive? On FEMA camps for dissidents doing nasty things like support the Constitution?
Rumors? That’s all you’ve got? Really?
Sadly there will be no long knives, no purges root and branch, of our corrupted institutions, after Obama is defeated. So you really needn’t fear justice. Stoicheion, or whoever is preaching purity, there may come a time when you should avert your gaze for just a little while. Then again probably not, we lack the stomach for it:
“Don’t tell Betsy about the knife work in the swamp. She would not understand.”
s @ 35: By every account I have read the Israelis were amazed at the tenacity and courage of the Syrians who continued to advance under heavy losses.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell tenacity and courage from suicidal stupidity or blindness, so you need to bring plenty of ammo.
The inverse of this was pretty much Dubya’s biggest mistake in Iraq, “shock and awe” which in this case meant dropping big bombs outside the city as a demonstration, failed utterly. The official military doctrine of “shock and awe” would have dropped those bombs on military targets, and would have been much more successful.
We should not expect folks to be up front about their goals and intentions when they only know how to “lead” wielding “smart power” from behind….way behind. Lets wait to see who the losers are and attack them.
@40: Sort of like training a puppy….I think I’m correct about this and just wish I had the eloquence to express myself so that other people will understand.
Puppy training. You’re all pillow talk, aren’t you? The only reason to agree is nuclear weapons proliferation. I trust ME leaders about as far as I can spit. The “blood and treasure” objections are correct IMO. (Where is the money to treat the wounded who return?) Moving the engagement out of “the mud” and into the control room is appropriate.
Playing cowboys and indians in mudholestan is not what the US military was designed and built to do.
Which sounds vaguely supportive of the Obama administration’s strategy as summarized by Ward Carroll in the headline essay:
“The Obama administration’s defense strategy has emerged de facto as one with three major prongs: The first has been a continuation of the Bush 43-era COIN-esque wars in the Middle East. The second has been the high-viz attempt at a pivot to the Pacific Rim. The third has been the prosecution of “proxy wars” — hostilities under banners of things other than declared war. Drone strikes in places like Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan fall into this catagory. And, the largest scale example of a proxy war on Obama’s watch was the no-fly zone over Libya — officially tagged ‘Odyssey Dawn.’”
=======
@14: Youse guys need to hold on to your knickers. 4 more years of Obama WILL NOT end America.
No. It will not. Sheesh. Anymore than the 9-11 terrorist attack was even remotely sufficient to “end America” as intended by bin Laden and his supporters.
If Romney wins don’t expect much “Change” Washington will just be the Washington it was before BH0, America needs so much more, Washington needs massive liposuction, the kind no American doctor would attempt… That roar we are hearing is the sucking sound of the bottom of the whirl pool, BH0 is going to crash us in to it and there is little to nothing we can do…
I can’t remember where I found this link today but if I stole it from one of you please forgive me, it is well worth a watch! Especially starting at the 7 minute mark… It is frightening to see something from 1948 depict exactly what is happening today!!!
http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html
One underlying issue to me is that the Obama administration is taking ownership of America’s military. The 2008 election was meant to be a conquest: as far as Obama and his cronies are concerned, America belongs to them.
Stoicheon:
I am delighted that you agree with the proposal to invade the Sudetenland to in order to further our responsibility to protect the ethnic German population there. The Fuhrer will be pleased.
Today R2P Europe! Tomorrow R2P the world!
When I see a progressive screech so loudly and incoherently, it’s usually a good tell that I’ve hit the mark. Thanks.
Psssst…I heard another rumor that Romney used his Mormon Cancer Ray to strike down the wife of a good, honest worker that he terminated with extreme prejudice two years after he left Bain. Pass it on
45. CharlesWhite “I can’t remember where I found this link today but if I stole it from one of you…”
Charles – no apology necessary for helping to spread the word. Please keep up the good work. BTW – I keep imagining Obama’s face phtoshopped onto the snake oil salesman in the video.
stoicheion: (sorry for the delay in responding,but sleep and work called).
Now: In Syria we are not dealing with 2 conventional armies. We are dealing with one conventional army, (Assads), backed up by its own guerilla style militias, and a second army consisting entirely of guerilla style units with whatever heavy weapons they can capture. All the guerilla units can, and do, “live off the land” in the sense that they recruit from, are based in, and get supplies from, the general civilian population around them. Both sides fight among and hide among the larger civilian population.
Suppose, for arguements sake, that as far as the capability to intervene is concerned you are entirely right and I am entirely wrong. Very well. The US armed forces intervene as you suggest, they destroy or suppress Assads air defense system, destroy his planes, tanks, long range missiles, artillery and chemical weapon depots. They do all this without loss of American life. The net effect of all that is simply to empower the Muslum Brotherhood. What will stop the various Brotherhood guerillas small units and cells from ethnically cleansing and/or killing every Alawite, Christian, Druse, and other syrian they dont like? There will be no single leader giving orders, no single individual you can deter with the threat of death, just lots and lots of men with guns administering Islamic Justice as they see fit.
We are not facing an Army in the open. We are facing nations-in-arms. Air strikes from 40,000 feet are fine for killing conventional military units. Unless you are willing to level the villages that support the guerillas you cannot destroy them from the air. The problem with your idea of humanitarian intervention is that doing it from the air will not work. If we have a responsibility to protect, then we would have to separate the tribes and nations in arms from each other. I do not see how you can do that with air power alone.
Battle #50, I have something for that, perhaps not very good…enclaves, like in Bosnia. Loudspeakers, pamphlets, social media, whatever, go tell all the Christians to convoy up and gather, here, here, there. All the Druze, go there, there, here. All the whoevers you care about, have them join up and head to such and such base camp. Said base camp having been established by a four-man team with lots of air on call. Establish a perimeter, vet everyone who enters, defense the perimeter. Airdrop supplies, wait till some sort of help can arrive overland, or form them up and evacuate them to safety elsewhere, the border, the sea.
Don’t use the Dutch.
That’s all I got on that one. Don’t worry, it’s free.
@39: Dworkin Barimen never mentioned “Fabian” … try Gramscian praxis on for size.
Don’t be coy. The “code speak,” refined to an art form by political junkies of all persuasions, placed the subject front and center.
Gramsci and Bezmenov? Sooo last decade.
Sorry, Art, he thought you were being sincere.
Silly rabbit.
I do agree communication is futile when one is as angry as you-I barely recognize you as speaking in human tongue.
stoicheion:
Ok, understand, I agree that Might does make Right, at least as far as being able to do anything about it. The US can destroy whatever country it likes, and very few can even slow them down, that’s true. Not, however, my point.
Why should the US even be involved, I ask? What do the US get out of it? Yes, you can kill whoever, but WHY SHOULD YOU?!?
If people want to fight, even have a civil war, who are you to tell them otherwise? Are their lives more important than their decisions? “You can live, if you make the decisions we like!”
People die. Bad things happen. Within the US, the Govenment, and the citizens, are ENTITLED to act. To make things better, within limits. But….
When you go to the far side of the world, to a land that has no immidiate value to the US, and start telling them what to do, they WILL react as if you are a slaver, because you ARE.
I know you’re having problems with what I’m saying, and this isn’t an insult. But, understand, any and all Rights issues are about saying that you have somethings, BUT ONLY WHAT WE SAY YOU CAN!
You can live, because we say so, and allow it. You get legal support, because we say so, and allow it. You get the Right to Bear Arms, because we can’t get rid of it entirely. And, so it goes on.
I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong. I’m just pointing out, your entire reason for doing anything is, or could be seen as an attempt at enslaving a Nation.
That’s my point.
(PS, I can see I’m getting a bit Philosophical. I’ll stop now.)
54 Simon
Right, you are confused, let me clear that up for you:
Foreigners have no rights.
My cousin is a very leftish ex-Congresscritter who made that very clear to me shortly after 9/11. Less in the sense that now we could go kill them, than in the sense that W shoulda shut down all the wahhabi mosques in the 8 months he’d had in office.
My cousin’s views are usually disturbing but this time pleased me because it seemed to show a mutual realization that the benefits of America are really only meant for Americans. I’m not being ironic, I always thought that was rather obvious. Just as Britain’s benefits package is for Brits, France’s for Frenchmen, etc. If we are supposed, obliged, to bring the Bill of Rights to every benighted sand-dweller, stop the world, I want to get off. What’s even the point? How about diversity? They have their points. I love the idea of cutting off criminals’ hands. I absolutely think they should do that if they want.
Let them do what they want JUST AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT INCONVENIENCE US. Then we have to deal with them. Then as far as their rights? “Allah says we should do this.” “That’s not important. What’s important is that the United States says we should not do this.” See, that’s how you win wars. You change the other guy’s priorities, so that what you want is more important than whatever it is he thought he wanted back when the shooting started.
And its not like we’re MAKING anybody do anything. Japan voluntarily surrendered after we killed only five or ten percent of their population-Germany slightly higher IIRC-then they were like Sure, ixnay on the fascist world conquest stuff, no problemo. If the Islamofascists are tougher, which I categorically refuse to believe, and they have to go to 10%, 25%, 90%, 99%, higher casualties, okay by me. They aren’t going to take over the world because we haven’t got the stomach to stop them.
We certainly have the means. The very hardest part, aside from shutting up the whiners, of subjugating the whole Middle East, would be protecting those minorities mixed in that everybody seems to care about. I can make them say “Allah? Who dat?” if I have to. Just give me enough bullets. Or whatever the Turks used to run the Ottoman Empire. Arabs can be controlled, history shows this amply. Just not by Mr. Nice Guy.
Permission to revise and extend remarks-editor said I had run out of time when I clicked Save-
We certainly have the means. The very hardest part, aside from shutting up the whiners, of subjugating the whole Middle East, would be protecting those minorities mixed in that everybody seems to care about. I can make them say “Allah? Who dat?” if I have to. Like in that old Popeye toon, they can salami salami baloney me instead. Just give me enough bullets. Or whatever the Turks used to run the Ottoman Empire. Arabs can be controlled, history shows this amply. Just not by Mr. Nice Guy.
If your point is why should we help them, why have we the obligation to help them, sure. If your point is we haven’t the right to help them, aw nuts. As far as I am concerned we may kill them all and enslave the survivors to help us take their oil. Screw them and their evil civilization. We don’t do that, because we are Mr. Nice Guy. We buy their oil at market rates, stabilize the region a bit, protect the sea lanes, keep the Russians out.
Go there and HELP them? FIX them? At our expense with no quid pro quo? Without breaking anything? Are you nuts?
Because we have to?? Are you double nuts??
#4. Winchester RTB.
Oh and, General Powell, if Pottery Barn rules apply, you break it you bought it, and we bought Iraq, then with my share of the oil, I want to buy a pony.
Milos Forman (director “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) on socialism:
Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/obama-the-socialist-not-even-close.html?_r=2&hp
The Forman article was published in July 2012. The “intellectuals” have elected to stoke the flames of Fabian socialism in the wake of Forman’s withering critique. Keeping vibrant the flame of ideological discontent.
More here on the difference between The Czech Republic and USA.
57. Art
You are right. By definition economic Socialism is state ownership of the means of production.
Economic Fascism is private ownership of the means of production with government regulation and control.
(Fascism always follows the failure of Socialism)
These United States have had a fascist economy since at least FDR. I hope I am not cheapening the experience of Italians, Germans, Russians and Chinese who have/are living in fascist economies by stating the obvious.
56. nichevo
One. I agree with you. Nothing for nothing, I’m all for that.
Please note, I was trying to convince stoicheion that sticking the US’s nose in, like the World Police or something, was a stupid move. I’m a cynical prick, who beleves in Social Darwinism, amongst other things.
As such, I’m of the opinion that Rights are bullshit. Obivious crap, used by people who miss the fact that the Universe doesn’t care. Unfortunately, stoicheion doesn’t agree. His choice.
Art
Director/dictator/democrat/socialist/fascist/commie…Whatever. Different paint jobs on the same clapped-out ship of state.
YMMV but personally, I don’t give a fig for whatever some starry-eyed titanic intellectual presumes to [disingenuously] nitpick upon regarding the proper use of labels and brands that I can read for myself.
The time I have earned on planet earth has been far-flung and ‘diverse’ enough to have allowed me to learn that when a person or group with some hacked letter of marque presumes to agit-propagandize, plot, act upon, and implement -socially engineer- their glorious scientifical plan for the running/looting of my life for me -be it for my own good, the good of their magical perfect community of mutant skittle-pooping unicorns, or otherwise- they have identified themselves as an enemy to my Life, Liberty, and Happiness. As such, they represent a point on my continuum of known threats somewhere between incipient and “Honey, where’s my rifle?…No, not the sporting one.”. Their actions, not mine, threaten my family and peers in whatever community I choose to inhabit. NOTE: My chosen communities tend to indiscriminately avoid the company and influence of fools, thieves, lairs, and tyrants alike.
Anyway, I get to pick the label and the brand of any political, social, or economic product on the market for myself…And I suspect that I’m far from alone in taking that God-given right very seriously.
That sort of uppity bitter-clingery seems to really piss fascists, commies, democrats and rhinoceri off, but, with the exception of my Creator, ain’t nobody immanentizes my eschaton.
Coy enough?
;^)
@58: Economic Fascism is private ownership of the means of production with government regulation and control….These United States have had a fascist economy since at least FDR.
Is the USA economy fascist? The jury is still out:
Baker argues that there is an identifiable economic system in fascism that is distinct from those advocated by other ideologies, comprising essential characteristics that fascist nations shared.[1] Payne, Paxton, Sternhell, et al. argue that while fascist economies share some similarities, there is no distinctive form of fascist economic organization.[2] Feldman and Mason argue that fascism is distinguished by an absence of coherent economic ideology and an absence of serious economic thinking. They state that the decisions taken by fascist leaders can not be explained within a logical economic framework.[3]
Lew Rockwell however has made up his mind:
When people hear the word “fascism” they naturally think of its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and ’30s as “corporatism,” that was an essential ingredient of economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a “model” by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe. A version of economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 1930s and survives to this day. In the United States these policies were not called “fascism” but “planned capitalism.” The word fascism may no longer be politically acceptable, but its synonym “industrial policy” is as popular as ever.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo85.html
Which brings the subject full circle back to policy: Does America Need Manufacturing?
One challenge to moving in this direction may be that our banks, hedge funds and venture capitalists are geared toward investing in financial instruments and software companies. In such endeavors, even modest investments can yield extraordinarily quick and large returns. Financing brick-and-mortar factories, by contrast, is expensive and painstaking and offers far less potential for speedy returns. Berger maintains that for the economy to get “full value” from our laboratories’ ideas in energy or biotech — not just new company headquarters but industrial jobs too — we must aspire to a different business model than the one we have come to admire.
mf@60: Some see Statist vs Tea Party-ist. I see money-lenders as the next century’s villains, aligned against everyone. I also see increasing income disparity as more of a long-term and potentially destabilizing problem than SS benefits. And that is the full range of my eloquence. I’m not nearly as cute as you.
Art
Riffing along those lines; My take is that fedzilla.gov is the money-lender credentialer(?) and regulator of all things economic; be it inter and intra-state or international commerce, home loans, student loans, tyranny loans…You name it and the redistribution of units of other people’s labors is being ‘properly’ directed to ‘good causes’…Which usually have something to do with maintaining the regulators and redistributers in the privileged laps they have grown accustomed to.
Officially sanctioned money-lenders haven’t been able to fart without Uncle Sugar’s oversight and permission for donkey years and are made to jump through any and every social engineering hoop they are told to. Reality be damned.
Disturbingly .gov has of late taken to strong-arming its grubby-leviathan-self into being the chief lender of seized monies (they like to call it “revenues”, in the manner of top-hatted monopoly tycoons of pre-utopian times) to favored industries as well as final arbiter of appropriate production over all industry.
Hapless corporations of people deemed worthy of “public-private partnership” “help” are essentially made to pay their Danegeld in ownership shares and decision-making power until their debt, for the privilege of building things they haven’t really built, is discharged…Or they go bankrupt. Whichever comes first. And of course eternal loyalty to the latest iteration of the official party platform. Compliance is easy. Just keep hitting refresh on the DNC homepage and repeatedly hammer the appropriate ‘save our superpac a$$ here’ button on their various affiliate’s pages.
Is it any wonder that the most successful worm wranglers within the system have accepted the subservience of an unequal share of the [supposed] symbiosis in exchange for get out of jail free cards of conditional quality? Them mean old businessmen wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to their industries would they?
Anyway
One of those quotes is considered completely innocuous to most, and both are hailed as quite laudable by many, even as they are abhorrent to some…Yet therein is contained a traceable contextual lineage and a fleeting glimpse of the evolutionary rhetorical process at work amongst a certain breed of villains who always seem to proclaim the historic inevitability of their particular version of the grand unified socio-economic theory wherein all it takes to perfect mankind is the absolute success of their will to power over all competition. Work done for us will set you free…There are your villains for ya.