Suite: 15

Almost didn't post this year. (Still counts if I haven't slept, yah?)

This was the first time since That Tuesday that I've actually been in New York on 9/11. Went up alone this weekend to help out my mom, in my childhood home.

As I drove back to my present home tonight, on the Belt Parkway, I could see --for the first time with my own eyes-- those twin pillars of light, tracing their starward trajectories opposite those described by the Towers whose memories they evanescently embody each year.

Zero-Seven hushed from the speakers. Late-night traffic was sparse. The Moon serenely choreographed its silvery swarms on the estuary.

I was Sad.

Still am.

This has been a year replete with Losses: Bowie, Rickman, Wilder, Schandling, Marshall, Vigoda, Finkel, Baker, Formerly-Formerly-Known-As, etc., etc.

And other Losses, FAR more personal. Losses of the kind that BAMPF the marrow from your bones, suck the mitochondria out of each and every cell, leave you gasping for joy like a COPD sufferer on Everest's summit. One of them I associate inextricably with New York (I fear seriously for my equilibrium and my breath, when next I set foot in Lincoln Center...or in pretty much any Irish pub...).

So, awash in the howling winds of all those vortices (and yet VERY consciously Mindful of one I've thus far been spared [Kenahorah-Poo-Poo-Poo]), revisiting That Other One seemed a bit much.


So, I almost didn't post.

It was the lights, done me in.

Photons, fired from the very site of such ruin were striking mine own retinae at just under vacuum-C, in real-time. 

Whatthefrak was I supposed to do with that??

As I've said before, I watched those Towers go up. From my sixth to my thirty-fifth years, they lived....and then they died.

And they were anything but alone.

Alas, it made me think of the status of the zeitgeist that lurched its charnel-fanged maw to our throats on That Day.

And that did nothing for the Sadness.

The three --variously-quixotic-- contenders for the Oval Orifice do not inspire.

One, whose tenure as SecState offered up a dreary litany of squandered opportunities (Green Revolution, Al-Maliki's Electile Dysfunction, Ukraine incursions, Arab Spring, "'Reset' Buttons" [Staples irregulars?]...), and a prickly, imperious tone that frosted every interface. It was dismal to a degree that rivals even that of her sodden successor at Foggy Bottom.

And another: notoriously mercurial, viciously thin-skinned, exuberantly-unburdened by any discernible capacity for critical, strategic thought...nor much in the way of raw material for such thought.

And, of course, the Upstart: affable, experienced, idealistic, congruent (at times to the point of unprecedented --and very refreshing-- self-deprecation)....but possessing his party's characteristic Achilles...well...LEG of a breathtakingly naïve conception of geopolitical realities.


So....Yah. Not sanguine.

Neither volatile bellicosity, reptilian manipulation, nor ostrich imitations stand even a Truth's chance on social media of bending the orbit of such Malevolent Clarity by so much as an arc-millisecond.

"Spectacle" attacks like the one having its Quinzeañera today seem to have fallen out of vogue (cf. Yiddish utterance, above), having been succeeded by Lone (/Known) Wolf, and platoon-level soft-target wetwork.

Decisively draining the political, ideological, and economic feeder streams of such "democratized" mayhem would require a multifarious deployment of subtle, nimble, attuned, toothy (with baked-in face-saving compromises), FOCUSED foreign policy, a global Counterinsurgency approach whose likelihood of arising from the daily briefings of any of these Misfit Toys' tenures on Pennsylvania Avenue is....well...


Let's just say that, amid everything else, I was aware of being rather ignominiously discomfited at the fact that I was in New York today.




And that Pisses Me OFF.




Troofer-Dipshit Half-Wit Mental Gymnastics aside, it's plain to any reasonably-informed, rational thinker from the pic below that the Towers' structural support system was exceptionally well-conceived...save for a low-probability but devastatingly exploitable vulnerability.

Alas that the same might be said for the security of the Republic and of its citizenry.




Damned lights.

There's Just No Appeasing Some People

Ran into this story in the CSM which, okay, I'll have to admit it, schaded my freude something fierce.

Remember those hapless American hikers who were scooped up last year on the Iraqi-Iranian border, and remain in Iranian custody on suspicion of espionage? Well, it seems the Iranians have a pretty shoddy way of treating their useful idiots:

In an ironic twist, Iran appears to have arrested a trio of passionate young Americans who espouse some of the same causes as Iran itself, particularly taking a stand against United States and Israeli aggression.

Mr. Bauer, an Arabic-speaking journalist, had previously exposed pitfalls in the US strategy in Iraq. His fiancée Sarah Shourd was teaching Iraqi refugee children in Syria, where an estimated 2 million Iraqis fled during the US-led war in their country. And their college friend Josh Fattal had fought to get military recruiters off United States campuses.

Kinda conjures images of scorpions and frogs, no?

Well, at least they'll be well-prepared for their captivity by all the time they've spent as political prisoners in the US for their...oh...wait.


Perhaps the most frustrating part of all this is the near-certainty that when these imbeciles finally are released, they will just turn around and blame it all on the Americo-Zionists' misdeeds making the wise and beneficent Iranians all crotchety.


Here's hoping the Iranians are not clever enough to be making use of this prison term for the purpose of turning mere addle-brained adolescents into actual operatives....

On Open Hands and Closed-Fisting

Needless to say, November has not been a banner month for posting this year. Tonight won't be making any significant dents in that.

However, I didn't want to let this post from Commentary magazine's blog, "Contentions" go un-linked. In it , Max Boot reflects on the altogether ineffectual approach of the Obama administration (the phrase still makes me cringe) toward the Mullahs of Iran, viz their nuclear program.

Obama’s efforts at glad-handing have been interpreted, correctly, as evidence of American weakness and a further spur to nuclear development. Khameini and Ahmadinejad & Co. aren’t even bothering to be polite as they brush aside offers, such as the one to export their uranium for enrichment abroad. They wear their contempt for the West quite openly because they are not afraid of suffering any repercussions.

Boot argues that the naive and toothless approach of this administration toward the Iranian threat has --as Liberal Utopian fantasies so consistently do-- only served to increase the probability of armed conflict by emboldening those for whom polite conversation offers nothing so much as the opportunity to arm for a chance at the dominance which they see as having been unilaterally ceded. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, When you take force off the table, you invite others to take the table by force.

It is a lesson which this administration seems hell-bent on learning the very, very hard way.

Oh, About That 2007 NIE...

From Hot Air comes this post on a WSJ report indicating that the CIA had full knowledge of the secret uranium enrichment facility near Qom, Iran, when it released its National Intelligence Estimate in 2007. You know, the one which claimed (in contradiction to the information coming from just about everyone else's intelligence agencies) that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weaponization programs. Yes, that one: the one which knocked the wind out of the Bush administration's efforts to apply credible pressure on Tehran to disclose and discontinue its quest for the Bomb.

Quoth Ed Morrissey:

This cannot be explained merely by incompetence.  The facility at Qom had not been declared by Iran as part of its “peaceful” nuclear program in 2007 when the NIE was written.  It is, as the Journal notes, too small for commercial purposes, but perfectly suited for military purposes, which is probably why the elite Revolutionary Guard secures it to this day.  No one with this information could possibly have concluded anything except that the Iranians had hidden its military applications of uranium enrichment in Qom.

I've frequently been astonished at the degree to which many of my Liberal friends are under the impression that the CIA under Bush had been some sort of hawkish, Conservative (or gasp Neoconservative) tool of the Bush Agenda. What I have tried, patiently, to explain is that the CIA is a government agency, staffed primarily by career bureaucrats who stay on across various administrations, and are generally of an academic (read: Liberal) bent. Being in a bit of a rush at the moment (welcome, if exhaustingly full client load today), I'm not able to drop many links (and there are many) which show that the CIA was actively engaged in trying to undermine the Bush administration. Perhaps I'll be able to back-fill that in comments (or maybe Mr Hengist can lend a hand). Suffice to say, this is a particularly glaring example of how the politicization of intelligence has been alive and well...just not in the ways which are likely to find much play on the pages of The Nation.

This is a dangerous disgrace, and I hope that the heads which, in a just world, would roll for this will not come from bodies with too much blood on their hands.

Pawns, Beware

The estimable Victor Davis Hanson gives a tour de force at Pajamas Media, drawing connections to the inevitable-in-retrospect but far-from obvious at the time messages one can draw from WW2. It is through this lens that he examines the Obama Administration's erratic and perilously unserious approach to foreign policy, specifically viz Russia and Iran. Here's a sample:

Consider Russian calculation: A nuclear Iran causes the U.S. all sorts of headaches, along with its Sunni Arab allies. There is money to be made in arms and nuclear sales. Nuclear Iran–or the efforts to stop it– will cause havoc in the oil-exporting region, and such uncertainty can only help raise the price of oil for what is now the world’s largest oil exporter (7.4 million Putin barrels sold per day abroad).

In other words, Iran is a win/win/win deal for a Russian dictatorship, always was and probably will be. We wonder why is Putin causing trouble, or why did Bush offend him? The only proper question is why not cause trouble without much risk if you’re an ex-KGB thug?

Trouble means lucrative trade, with rogue oil states that want to buy blow ‘em up stuff from Russia.

Trouble shuts up the self-important, moralizing Western Europeans.

Trouble sends a message to former subjects.

Trouble means the U.S. is tied down with a nuclear power threatening Israel and the pro-US Arabs.

Trouble means billions of dollars in new oil profits as global prices soar.

Trouble means showing the world’s onlookers that the Obama hope and change rhetoric is a good way to get yourself in a lot of trouble, and reminds others that Russia is a dependable if not thuggish regime to have on your side. (When the Wehrmacht approached Moscow in late 1941, “civilized” European neutrals like Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Spain and Portugal all started to horse-trade with the sure winner Hitler, angling for trade, cash, borderland, the clearing of old grudges, etc—without a whit of care that he was killing millions of Russian civilians and murdering on sight the Jews of Poland and the Ukraine.[By late 1944 these same “civilized” states were damning Hitler and now angling with the allies]). So yes, the past is helpful.

Obama's foreign policy has not been without successes. Where they have occurred, I have marked them with ungrudging satisfaction. That is not the point. I have been a fairly competent chess player from a piece-by-piece perspective. However, as Mr. Hengist could tell you, I never developed my game to the point where I was especially good at setting up a campaign culminating in check-mate for my opponent. Consequently, I would not place any wagers on myself in a game with Kasparov. Obama, being a bright fellow, has shown an ability to score tactical victories. But his strategic vision is cloudy and incoherent, and he is matched up against some very hefty chessmasters, whom one can imagine chortling with astonished glee at the gift which the American electorate has bestowed upon them. It would be hard to sit in the Kremlin, watching Obama deal haphazardly and distractedly with one vital geopolitical issue after another before returning his attention to the task of remaking the US into a model of Western Europe (while the latter seems to be straining in the opposite direction!), and not take heart at the opportunity before them.

It would be hard to sit in Warsaw or Tblisi, or Tel Aviv, (not to mention Tegucigalpa) scanning the horizontal and the vertical (and the diagonal), and not experience the uncomfortable sensation of seeing unopposed rooks and bishops all around.

The Streets of Tehran

I've not blogged on the goings-on in Tehran, both out of life-business, but also out of a numb fascination which has daily chased the words right out of me. The best I could manage was to change the colors of my blog to the green of solidarity with the protesters. I watched as the outrageously clumsy and transparent election-rigging took its course. I looked on as the Iranian people took to the streets, at grave personal risk (and, in numbers which are proving impossible to tally, at the cost of their very lives). I took stock of the mettle of Mousavi, the unlikely lighting-rod of this popular uprising (since he can hardly be seen as a 'reformer' in any sense that would be meaningful in the West). I have watched the increasingly brutal repression perpetrated by the regime's thugs on people crying out for justice and freedom and self-expression.

I have waited through the Obama Administration's timid and timorous declamations for something approximating an honorable statement of support for the Iranian people with whose dictators it has shown such baffling eagerness to "engage."

To be clear, I do not think that it is appropriate for the American President to comment on the results of Iran's election; that is an internal matter to Iran, and staking out a strong position on it would indeed constitute "meddling." Still, although the Head of State could not come out thus, the Legislature quite laudably stepped up with a clear statement of condemnation for the crackdown on dissent (with the tediously predictable exception of Ron Paul, of course). There is merit to the argument that too strong a position by the Executive in support of the opposition to the regime in Tehran would feed into the propaganda of US Imperialism (though it can hardly be seen as needing much additional fuel).

However, the Obama Administration waited altogether too long, and its statements have been entirely too "measured" for my tastes, in the matter of stating support for free expression of dissent without fear of violent repression. We need not have endorsed Mousavi, nor offered speculations (however well-grounded) on the mechanics of Iranian electoral procedures to have stood strongly behind those who sought to have their voices heard. The failure to have done so right from the outset is an enduring shame on our Nation and the ideals for which it purportedly stands.

I have no idea how all this will turn out. I do not pretend to be able to prognosticate about what form the Iranian regime will ultimately take in the wake of all this. I do know that this situation has revealed and amplified some very deep fissures within the Iranian power structure, and probably irrevocably damaged the veneer of infallibility which the clerical body at the top has at least nominally enjoyed since 1979. It is likely that some sorts of accommodations will have to take place, lest the Mullahs be forced to set up the sort of frank dictatorship which they have worked so hard to conceal under the guise of a wafer-thin "Republic."

Michael Ledeen sums up the situation ably:

Those who think they can foresee the outcome of this revolutionary war have greater confidence in their prophetic powers than I. I don’t think Mousavi or Khamenei has any such confidence; they are fighting it out, as they must. Victory or defeat can come about slowly or rapidly, the result of cunning, courage or accident, and most likely a combination of all three. One thing seems certain: the Iranian people were right when they realized that nobody in the outside world would help them. They’re on their own.

Which is indeed a great pity, and a terrible stain on our national virtue.

Indeed. And may the gods save them...and us all.

Axis and Ye Shall Receive

Scary stuff about what was once quaintly referred to as the "Axis of Evil," via Bret Stephens at the WSJ Opinion Page:

Another noteworthy detail: According to a 2003 report in the L.A. Times, "So many North Koreans are working on nuclear and missile projects in Iran that a resort on the Caspian coast is set aside for their exclusive use."

Now the North seems to be gearing up for yet another test of its long-range Taepodong missile, and it's a safe bet Iranians will again be on the receiving end of the flight data. Nothing prevents them from sharing nuclear-weapons material or data, either, and the thought occurs that the North's second bomb test last week might also have been Iran's first. If so, the only thing between Iran and a bomb is a long-range cargo plane.

...

There are still good reasons why Japan would not want to go nuclear: Above all, it doesn't want to simultaneously antagonize China and the U.S. But the U.S. has even better reasons not to want to tempt Japan in that direction. Transparently feckless and time-consuming U.S. diplomacy with North Korea is one such temptation. Refusing to modernize our degraded stockpile of nuclear weapons while seeking radical cuts in the overall arsenal through a deal with Russia is another.

This, however, is the course the Obama administration has set for itself. Allies and enemies alike will draw their own conclusions.

Not that there's anything new about Pyonyang ponying up the plutonium party favors to assorted unsavory customers, mind you. What's noteworthy is the amount of activity along what was supposed, in these newly enlightened times, to be an Ex-Axis. It is understandable, then, that a host of actors will be watching very closely to judge the extent to which the US will act to counterbalance that activity. Will the US wait for the Security Council to obtain permission from Russia and China to issue a strongly-worded letter of concern, or will it take some more direct diplomatic and economic action? And if this fails to prompt the Norks to reconsider their behaviors?

So, now can we call it a Global War on Terror again?

Tehran Changing Course in Iraq?

Today's Examiner reports that the number of the deadly roadside ambush bombs known as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) has lately been decreasing sharply in Iraq. These sophisticated and lethal devices, it is widely accepted, have been supplied by Iran (likely through its Quds Force) for years, and have been responsible for many coalition and Iraqi deaths. Their progressive disappearance from the battlespace might signal a strategic shift in the policy of the Mullahcracy toward its neighbor:

Iran is no longer actively supplying Iraqi militias with a particularly lethal kind of roadside bomb, a decision that suggests a strategic shift by the Iranian leadership, U.S. and Iraqi authorities said Thursday. Use of the armor-piercing explosives - known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs - has dwindled sharply in recent months, said Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, head of the Pentagon office created to counter roadside bombs in Iran and Afghanistan.

Metz estimated that U.S. forces find between 12 and 20 of the devices in Iraq each month, down from 60 to 80 earlier this year.

"Someone ... has made the decision to bring them down," Metz told reporters.

Asked if the elite Iranian Republican Guard Corps has made a deliberate choice to limit use of EFPs, Metz nodded: "I think you could draw that inference from the data."

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh agreed Iran has curtailed its activity inside Iraq. He said he thinks Iran has concluded that a new security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq poses no threat to Iran. Iran opposed the agreement as a blessing for foreign forces to remain in Iraq, and encouraged Iraq's democratic government to reject it.

It is doubtful that the regime in Tehran has actually concluded that a peaceful, prosperous, US-Aligned Iraq on its border "poses no threat." Even if the Iranian fear that the US would station large numbers of troops in Iraq has decreased (allayed by the language of the SOFA with respect to American withdrawal plans), the presence of such a State would arguably pose a larger strategic threat to the Repressive Persian regime by embodying an alternative to its theocratic stranglehold on the Iranian people.

More likely, the devastating effects upon the Iranian economy of low petroleum prices on global markets have prompted a recalibration of Iranian tactics in its near-abroad. The costs of international adventurism (in the form of support for Hezbollah and Hamas, for example) must be starting to sting right about now, and the fait accompli represented by the SOFA , along with the diminishing clout of Iran-aligned Shiite militias in Iraq would all argue strongly for a change of approach between the two Middle Eastern states. It may be that the Mullahs have opted to vie for a less nakedly bellicose stance with regard to Iraq, in favor of a longer game of more insidious seduction and division.

Be that as it may, anything which leads to an improved security situation ahead of provincial elections in Iraq next month is a welcome development. More importantly, these terrifying weapons' disappearance from the streets of Iraq will be good news to our valorous troops and their families.

Actionable Intelligence

Last week, shortly after his slim but historic victory in the US Presidential election, Barack Obama finally got a chance to peek beneath the veil. He has begun to receive classified intelligence briefings about the full range of the threats arrayed against the US and its interests at home and abroad, and about the responses to those threats which he will presently be entrusted to oversee. This is information which would not have been available to him as a senator and a candidate, and it appears to have been a sobering experience for him.

Obama can hardly be blamed for seeming a bit less ebullient as the full weight of the responsibilities he must bear begins to settle on his shoulders. In characteristically irresponsible fashion, the New York Times has reported (again!) on a portion of the covert operations which were authorized by the Bush Administration to pursue and harry al Qaeda across the globe. Depending on your orientation, this story reads like a Bush-Derangement fantasy of Imperial overreach, or as a sobering account of the hitherto (and appropriately!) unseen portions of the Long War in its far-ranging and valiant campaign to keep us safe from the murderous ideologues who would slaughter our children for the sake of piety. Either way, it is part of Obama's world now.

The full scope of the threat landscape in which our President-Elect must immerse himself is daunting in the extreme. However much he has staked his claim on the notion that the US must withdraw from Iraq with all possible speed, I strongly suspect that his access to the Full Story will (hopefully!!) act to stay his hand (no doubt to the considerable annoyance of his supporters):

Iran would cheer a quick American withdrawal, but as soon as the US leaves Iran will use its Shia proxies in Baghdad to create an Iraqi government manipulated like a puppet by strings that stretch to Tehran’s mullahs.

Iraqi Sunni and Kurdish minorities will feel disenfranchised by a quick withdrawal because they expect the Shia majority will then manipulate Baghdad’s government to deny them opportunities and resources. That could ignite a real civil war.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, al Qaeda’s [fictional] Iraq leader, offered President-elect Obama a truce in exchange for removal of all forces from the region. But American intelligence officials caution any step that could be perceived as a victory for al Qaeda, like pulling troops out of Iraq before the country stabilizes, would only strengthen the terror group’s ability to recruit.

A precipitous US withdrawal is opposed by important allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis fear that Tehran might take advantage of an early withdrawal to seize oil fields in the Shia dominated eastern Arabian Peninsula. Israel, which says it faces an existential threat from a nuclear Iran, wants the US to remain in Iraq in order to keep Tehran in check and hopefully deal with the mullah’s atomic weapons program.

To his credit, Obama has stuck by the theme that a nuclear-armed Iran is "Unacceptable." Indeed, it is. However, the path which he must walk to prevent this is far less than clear. Iran has gamed the international system most adroitly, and has scoffed at all attempts to rein in its nuclear ambitions. There is no reason to believe that this will cease as a result of Obama's much-vaunted willingness to engage in diplomacy with the Mullahcracy. Indeed, on its face, that willingness would seem to play right into the Persians' hands, offering the opportunity to play for time while its centrifuges spin inexorably toward the unacceptable. I expect that the most current intelligence estimates of Iran's capabilities and intentions have now become available to Obama. What will he do with them?

Much has been made of Obama's ill-advisedly public though essentially correct intention to violate Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of al Qaeda Prime. Indeed, he has made it a cornerstone of his war plan to address the as-yet unfinished business in the shadow of the Hindu Kush. But I have long felt that he has glossed very badly over the complexities of the Af-Pak theater, and so painted himself into a perilously untenable corner:

Recently, Obama’s staff was briefed that the situation in Afghanistan is getting worse – American casualties are up and the Taliban militias are gaining strength and now control large swaths of that country. That’s why the Bush administration told Obama’s people that they must come to office with a battle plan that addresses troops, Pakistan’s safe havens area (where as many as one million Islamic radicals have refuge) and whether to negotiate with the enemy.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan must be part of a winning strategy. But US forces are overstretched globally and that’s why Obama must ask NATO allies to provide more forces. Even though Europeans overwhelmingly endorsed Obama’s presidential bid they have no desire to increase their Afghan role. In fact, the Taliban’s recent campaign of violence has shaken European will to contribute any troops much less more to NATO’s Afghan mission.

Obama’s Afghan war plan must also address the politically sensitive issue of aggressively pursuing Taliban militias and al Qaeda terrorists that are taking refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In 2007, Obama promised that “…if we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan and that government “won’t act, we will.”

Recently, the US increased cross-border raids and drone missile attacks against enemy forces inside Pakistan. Those assaults have angered Pakistani officials such as Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s military chief, who promised to defend his borders at “all costs.” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said US attacks were “…counterproductive and difficult to explain by a democratically elected government.”

Obama must now confront the reality of a precariously unstable Pakistan's domestically unpopular alliance with the West, the extensive infiltration of its military and intelligence services by Islamist radicals, the fractiously feudal composition of the populations along its border with Afghanistan, and --perhaps most poignantly-- the likely intransigence and apathy of our so-called "traditional allies" in Europe, whose military capabilities are only slightly more limited than their willingness to use them. He must thread multiple needles, with the growing knowledge that many lives will be lost if he should so much as drop a stitch.

Already, Russian puppet-president Medvedev (for the record, pronounced med-VYED-yev) has wasted no time in throwing down the gauntlet before the untried POTUS-to-be. Puppet-master Putin is banking on Obama's previous statements expressing skepticism about the effectiveness and desirability of missile interceptor batteries stationed in Eastern Europe, and, as usual, has masterfully scoped the table before playing his hand:

Medvedev said he holds no animus for Americans and hopes “…the US administration, will make a choice in favor of full-fledged relations with Russia.” But he didn’t backdown [sic] on any front to include expanding Moscow’s military activities in the Middle East, Northern Africa and the Caribbean where Russian bombers and warships recently visited Cuba and Venezuela.

President-elect Obama will need all the political savvy he can muster and allies to deal with a belligerent Kremlin. But he shouldn’t expect help from Europe because Russian energy markets tend to be European-based and Moscow will leverage them to make the European Union squirm.

That last point deserves special mention: the degree to which the Russian economy is based on its ability to leverage its considerable energy supplies to gain geopolitical advantage cannot be overestimated. A sharp drop in the cost of oil and natural gas on the global markets would be devastating to Russia (as indeed it would be for a host of our adversaries). Obama's laudable but ill-conceived reluctance to develop domestic hydrocarbon energy supplies in favor of renewable sources which are just entering a very long pipeline (if you will pardon the pun) indicates a degree of naivete of which I hope he is presently cured. The global economic contraction which has accompanied the recent financial crisis has already precipitated a steep reduction in demand (and thus a concomitant drop in price) for petroleum. If this opportunity were maximized through aggressive pursuit of additional supplies, it could signal a perfect storm for the economies (and accompanying capacity for global mischief) of our various foes.

It is entirely possible that Obama's recent briefings will apprise him of the manifold ways in which these multiple threads wind round each other and form the fabric of the geopolitical veil-dance which George W Bush has doggedly (if often clumsily) executed during these last seven-plus years. It is still my belief that history will vindicate the Presidency of George Bush, but that is out of my hands (maybe the Li'l Cyte will write a thesis on the subject someday...). It is no secret that Obama was not My Guy...but he will presently be my President. As such, I wish him well, and would be more than happy to research the best ways to prepare a hearty dish of crow.

In the meantime, Senator Obama has tasted of the unexpurgated menu whose aroma outsiders like myself can discern only through a probably-unhealthily obsessive daily sniff. I have little doubt that it has seared his taste buds something fierce. I can only Hope that the experience will help him to Change his mind about how he deals with the kitchen staff. It could happen; he is a very smart man. But as with Intelligence, intelligence is only as good as what you do with it.

SOF Raid Into Syria: Multitasking in Mesopotamia

Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal reports that today's raid 5 miles into Syrian territory from Iraq was an unprecedented operation whose purpose was apparently the capture of a very high value target:

The US military incursion into Syria was aimed at the senior leader of al Qaeda's extensive network that funnels foreign fighters, weapons, and cash from Syria into Iraq, a senior intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

US special operations hunter-killer teams entered Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda leader who has been in charge of the Syrian network since 2005. US intelligence analysts identified Ghadiya as the leader of the Syrian network, The Washington Post reported in July. Ghadiya was identified as a “major target” by the US military in February 2008.

When I first heard that Special Forces had actually infiltrated and dismounted from their gunships for this raid, my first thought was that we had received some extremely credible intel on the location of some very important AQI figure, possibly even AQI leader Abu Ayyub al Masri himself. There was simply no other explanation for not just launching a hellfire or five down a chimney. This post from the invaluable FormerSpook at "In From The Cold" echoed my suspicions.

Excellent as it would have been to capture or kill al Masri, this is just about as good. Capturing or eliminating someone like Ghadiya, while he was strolling free and unworried on Syrian soil would accomplish several ends at once.

First, it would deal a severe blow to the organizational and command structure of what remains of AQI. You can rightly make the "Hydra-head" argument here, but it would only go so far; the capacity for an embattled organization like AQI to continually replenish its senior-most commanders and facilitators is finite. The loss of organizational memory and continuity which such merciless attrition inflicts will have a cumulative effect on an organization's ability to integrate its activities and stay anywhere near inside the decision cycle of its enemies. Its activities will fragment, its operational security will degrade (yielding more actionable intelligence, and thus accelerating the cycle), and the degree to which it is able to attract recruits will erode in much the way that the oft-quoted character from The Sun Also Rises went broke..."gradually, and then suddenly."

Next, a raid into Syrian territory would send a message to Syrian president Assad that there are costs associated with continuing his policy of winking at the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. Although that flow has slowed to a relative trickle over the last year or so (but don't say the Surge worked!), it is a particularly toxic trickle. The tacit (?) complicity of the Damascus regime in the continued flow of terroristic Jihadis into northwestern Iraq had greatly complicated the pacification and reconstruction of that region, and it is high time that it encountered consequences. For, despite the predictable plume of propaganda which rises from any such bold action, the fact is that such a highly politically dangerous operation --which would have had to be approved at a very high level-- would not have been undertaken unless there were rock-solid intel which supported the taking of such risk. Much like last September's Israeli strike on what is generally believed to have been an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor site, this operation is a signal to Assad that others are, indeed, paying attention to his actions, and that there are limits to how far he can push without experiencing push-back. Given the renowned Syrian penchant for gamesmanship, such firm limits are absolutely essential.

On yet another geopolitical level, an action like today's raid puts a prominent punctuation mark on efforts to drive a wedge between Damascus and Tehran. There are definite carrots dangling before Assad's eyes (the potential return of the Golan Heights, via some sort of negotiated settlement with Israel, for example). But the sticks which would drop on his head if he should be less than comprehensive in his divorce from the Mullahcracy do bear emphasizing. One of the Iranian regime's most potent weapons (given how "tiny" a country it is...) is its ability to forward-deploy Hezbollah operatives into a variety of theaters. Since Hezbollah is very much a creature of Lebanon and Syria (though nurtured and funded from Tehran), a schism between Syria and Iran would drain much of the mojo from that organization in its capacity as unconventional forces of the Islamic Republic.

Finally, this action further emphasizes the fundamental continuity between the various theaters of operation within the Long War. Reading about the raid into Syria, I was reminded of nothing else so much as the various similar raids and strikes into Pakistani territory, in an effort to attack AQ Prime and its Taliban lapdogs. At the most fundamental level, the two areas of operation are as contiguous on a strategic level as they are distant on the tactical. This last is a reality which is, alas, all-too often obscured to score political points, amid much nonsense about where the "Real Enemy" resides. The Real Enemy resides wherever the ideology of Radical Islamism takes up arms to expand its purchase in the world. The task of our generation is to beat it back wherever it so asserts itself.

I fear the time may soon come when we will look back wistfully on the days when we lived in a Nation which would take bold risks such as these to protect our allies and ourselves. As of this writing, there is still just a bit of time to weigh the real risks, to decisively reject the pious pontifications of addle-headed amnesiacs, and to keep us on the offensive against the evil (there, I said it!) arrayed against us.

(UPDATED to airbrush several small but irksome spelling and minor structural errors from wee-hours blogging)

Totten on the GWOT

And isn't that just a fun title? Say it a few times.

No time to blog long-and-thinky-like tonight. The Li'l 'Cyte turned three (!!) yesterday, and today was dominated by a wonderful little shindig at the local firehouse (images of the wee hobbit in the cab of an enormous fire engine, firmly and resolutely gripping the wheel, while scanning the gauges. Makes a body plotz).

I found this article by Michael Totten, which is just about the most cogent summary of the scope and nature of the Long War as I've found. Really a must-read. The fact that it also highlights the shallowness of the Obama campaign's comprehension (or at least articulation) of that conflict will be as bitter a pill to some as it was savory gravy to me.

Here's a taste:

If Afghanistan were miraculously transformed into the Switzerland of Central Asia, every last one of the Middle East’s rogues gallery of terrorist groups would still exist. The ideology that spawned them would endure. Their grievances, such as they are, would not be salved. The political culture that produced them, and continues to produce more just like them, would hardly be scathed. Al Qaedism is the most radical wing of an extreme movement which was born in the Middle East and exists now in many parts of the world. Afghanistan is not the root or the source.

And it just gets better from there. Totten is a well-traveled and incisive thinker, and his words should carry weight with anyone who seeks a comprehensive understanding of these matters. This article is a gem, mined from a very rich deposit. Worth your time.

Caucasus Belli (Part Two)

A little loopy on cold meds right now, so I beg the reader's forbearance for any graceless language which may emerge from the fog. Cooped up with me in the fuselage of that small jet this past week-end, it seems, was a virus with my name on it.

Last month, I wrote about Michael Totten's interview with two experts on Georgia, who convincingly argued that it was not Georgia which had struck first in South Ossetia, as is commonly believed. Instead, the contention is that it was Russia which had provoked a Georgian response, then used that response as the occasion to overrun and subdue its uppity neighbor to the south, and to thumb its nose at an international "community" which discovered --belatedly-- that it was powerless to do a thing about it.

In today's Examiner I found a piece in which the Georgian government has released recordings of intercepted phone calls from border guards near the mouth of the Roki Tunnel connecting Russian-controlled North and nominally Georgian South Ossetias.

The recordings released Tuesday, if authentic, will not cut through the fog of the final hours when escalating tensions burst into war. But President Mikhail Saakashvili hopes they will help dispel a dominant narrative that says his country was on the attack. He said they prove Russian tanks and troops entered South Ossetia many hours before Georgia began its offensive against separatist forces.

"Evidence in the form of telephone intercepts and information that we have from numerous eyewitnesses conclusively prove that Russian tanks and armored columns invaded our territory before the conflict began," Saakashvili told reporters.

Naturally, the Russians are bitterly disputing the authenticity of the recordings, and they may yet prove right to do so. Gods know, the situation in that part of the world does not lend itself to tidy narratives, and neither side can exactly claim objectivity.

Still, it is another data point among many which suggests that Putin's Russia is playing hard ball, and more than willing to exploit weaknesses where it sees them.

Witness also the willingness which the Kremlin has shown to align itself with even the most unhinged of Americas foes, and to play a very dangerous and short-sighted game of nuclear brinksmanship by proxy with the Mad Mullahs of Tehran. What emerges is a Russia which is calculating every opportunity to leverage whatever resources it can to thwart American interests abroad, and to position itself as a major player on the world stage. Using its energy resources as a strategic weapon, Moscow seeks to cement its ability to seduce and intimidate its potential competitors abroad, as well as its increasingly centralized and anti-democratic hegemony at home.

With a chilling mixture of guile and naked force, the neo-tsarist elites of Russia present a very serious challenge to the internationalist, soft-power orientation of the EU (and of leading Democrats here in the US). They are the bully on the global playground, and must be confronted accordingly.

The New Yorker, thy name is Yankee Doodle

[by Mr.Hengist]

Think Progress has an EXCLUSIVE! Seymour Hersh wrote an article in The New Yorker in which he claims that VPOTUS Cheney considered a proposal to... No, wait, I won't spoil it, just read go read it after you've put down your beer. And, yes, this is so an EXCLUSIVE for Think Progress - they hit the web with it before The Nation, The Progressive, and Utne Reader could read the article for themselves and go squirrely. At any rate, it's The New Yorker which put a feather in it's cap (and called it Macaroni).

Doesn't it almost give you a wistful longing for the Cold War?

Hugo's Little Friend

The ever-invaluable Doug Farah has posted on some very unnerving (if uncomfortably unsurprising) evidence of Hugo Chavez' regime's insidious collaboration with Hezbollah. In this case, two travel agencies operated by Hezbollah supporters based in Venezuela were designated by the Department of the Treasury as providing cover for the passage of Hezbollah operatives into and out of the South American nation.

This is only the tip of a very disturbing iceberg. It is still further evidence that those who scoff at the global nature of this Long War are engaged in a very perilous form of denial. In fact, the evidence is quite daunting that the Shia contingent of the Islamist threat, emanating from Ahmadinejad's Iran, is actively seeking to position assets behind our "lines," waiting to become activated, for example, should all diplomatic and economic options be exhausted against Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and a regrettable but essential military action ensue. These forces are finding all-too willing facilitators among the criminal organizations and malignantly anti-American regimes in the region.

So, when I hear of interdiction efforts like the above-linked, and about increasingly aggressive and successful operations against guerilla outfits like the FARC, I am heartened. In this global counterinsurgency effort in which we are engaged, it is vital that we deny our foes the footholds they seek in hostile and/or lawless regions...particularly those which lie on our side of the Montroe Doctrine line.

If nothing else, news such as this should prompt Western apologists for Hugo Chavez' increasingly hideous parody of a Workers' Paradise to take a good, hard look at their brow-ridged Bolivar. He is keeping some decidedly unsavory company.

Small Change

And, from the "Utterly Unshocking" files: Jimmy Carter is endorsing the candidacy of Barack Obama for POTUS. If ever there were two individuals who deserved to be grouped together, it is this pair of rubes. The symmetry is simply delicious: One, through his incompetence and short-sightedness failed to prevent the rise of militant Islamism in Iran...then subsequently emboldened it through his humiliatingly flaccid response to its act of naked aggression against American citizens on sovereign American territory. The other, through his near-total failure to demonstrate even a rudimentary grasp of high-level diplomatic theory and geopolitical reality, is promising to further embolden and raise the prestige of the fanatical anti-Semitic and avowedly genocidal president of that selfsame aggressor nation by engaging in direct presidential talks (shall we then open another embassy in Tehran and go for twosies?).

Everything old is new again....and may the gods have mercy on our souls.

(Vid via Hot Air)

Osama Joins in the Goal-Post Moving

In yesterday's post, I talked about how Tehran, apparently chastened by the abrupt worsening of its fortunes in the Iraqi theater of its proxy war against the West, seems to have shifted its focus once again to Lebanon. By weakening the Lebanese government (aided by that government's craven capitulation to Hezbollah's latest challenge to its legitimacy) Iran and Syria have set the stage for a new round of combat, hard on the border with Israel.

Osama bin Laden's latest recorded rant is conspicuous in the near-absence of any mention of Iraq as the central front in al Qaeda's global jihad. Instead, he has taken the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding to hold forth on that State's illegitimacy and promise (yet again!) to bring about its demise. About a third of the recent messages from bin Laden and his head henchman Zawahiri have dealt primarily with Iraq, so it may be premature to posit a larger trend. However, given the recent fortunes of AQI, it would seem that any 'sensible' Salafist might be looking to massage the message around now.

The Israeli "occupation" has long served as a handy rationalization for assorted acts of barbaric xenophobia, and the sheer intractability of that situation all-but guarantees that it will remain so for the foreseeable future. Given such an inexhaustible well of grievance, it make sense that both al Qaeda and Iran should turn their attentions thence when things go ill elsewhere. Given the competition between Sunni al Qaeda and Shiite Iran to become the vanguards of global Islamist supremacy (despite the apparent tactical cooperation in which they will at times engage), it is also not unreasonable to speculate that AQ will strive to position itself as a counterweight to Tehran's jockeying for
dominance in Lebanon, and for a crack at the Jewish State. The Sunni population of Lebanon could very well find itself in some very dire straits if the machinations emanating from Tehran and Damascus should blow up as messily as it is looking an awful lot like they will (the Christians and Druze, it appears, will be on their own). Those Sunnis may well be looking for a strong horse in the months to come. I would not be at all surprised if intel of AQ 'redeployments' should begin leaking out of Lebanon in the relatively near future.

In principle, there are advantages to a scenario in which Sunni and Shiite extremists duke it out, to the detriment of both. However, the toll in human suffering will be devastating. One can only hope that, in relatively short order, the people of Lebanon awaken to true sources of their suffering and rise up against their foreign tormentors. Alas, it is far more likely that they will find some way to torture the facts so as to make it the fault of Israel and Bush.

Either way, the prospects for a "peace agreement" between the Israelis and 'Palestinians' are looking even more dim than usual these days.

Iran So Far Away?

Earlier this month, I wrote about the backlash in Iraq against the increasingly brazen intervention of Tehran within its borders. With PM Maliki's courageous pushback against Sadr's Iranian-backed goons in and around Baghdad, and the increasing professionalism and nationalistic esprit de corps within the Iraqi Army, Iran shows every sign of having suffered a severely bloodied nose. Indeed the recently more conciliatory tone set by Iranian spokesmen on Iraq has the authentic look and feel of a tactical retreat. This would, of course, be a very significant strategic gain in our overarching goal of going into Iraq, which was and is to apply pressure on regional actors to change their behavior vis a vis fostering extremism and supporting terrorism.

However, it would be dangerously naive to assume that the Gamesters of Tehran are not running more than one table at a time. In an article for The Weekly Standard, Reuel Marc Gerecht writes at length about the recalibrations taking place within an Iranian government knocked off balance by the deterioration of its proxy campaign within Iraq. Among the more ominous avenues available to the Mullahs is that of fomenting mayhem in Lebanon:

Israel may soon be embroiled in an ugly war with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist movement supported spiritually and militarily by Tehran. This could turn into a two-front confrontation, as Hezbollah, revolutionary Iran's most faithful offspring, is demonstrating its willingness to use force to become the dominant player in Lebanon. Rearmed massively by Tehran since the 2006 summer war against Israel, Hezbollah could again let the missiles fly against northern Israel, while Hamas attacks from Gaza.

The recent and dishearteningly successful challenges of the Lebanese government by Hezbollah have set the board for a disturbingly promising gambit by Iran to regain its feet in the region. By so humiliatingly delegitimizing the Lebanese government, and revealing the Lebanese Army to be powerless/unwilling to defend the sovereignty of that ailing nation against its thuggish tactics, Hezbollah has shown itself once again to be a formidable shaft in Iran's quiver. Thus weakened, Lebanon teeters on the brink of dissolving into bloody wasteland of warring sectarian militias. Sunni, Druze, and Christian populations, now certain that the Army will not protect them from Tehran's Shiite shock troops, will look to their own, and enlist help where they can find it...including from groups such as al Qaeda. Into the ensuing maelstrom, Iran will stretch its arm (wrapped in its Syrian sock puppet) to graciously restore order...and so the last nail will have been driven into the pine box of the Cedar Revolution.

If this sounds unnervingly like what Iran has been trying to accomplish in Iraq, then you have been paying attention.

There are two main aspects of this situation which are especially worrisome. The first is the absence in Lebanon of a cohesive national identity like that which --for better or worse-- was forged (possibly in both senses of the word) by Saddam in Iraq over the course of the calamitous 1980-1988 war with Iran. That nationalistic impulse --animated by the primordial enmity between Persians and Arabs-- has arguably formed a basis for the unwillingness of the Iraqi people to allow Iran to impose its will on them, once its designs became so transparent. I fear that a similar pushback will be hard to come by in a Lebanese society which has long been more salad than melting pot. My second main concern is the fact that, unlike Iraq, Lebanon sits squarely on the border with Israel. In the midst of the turmoil which may soon overwhelm Lebanon, one of the few unifying threads among the various Islamist factions will be their blistering loathing of the Jewish State (or "Zionist Entity," if you must). Imagine a pressure cooker with one escape valve, bleeding live steam toward its neighbor to the south.

If there is in all of this one hopeful note --if it may be so termed-- it is the fact that Hezbollah has tipped its hand by effectively abandoning any pretense of being a Lebanese resistance movement with even a bissel of political legitimacy. Having once expelled Syrian forces from within its borders, it is conceivable that even the fractured populace of Lebanon will resist such a naked power grab by its erstwhile occupiers. I would, however, not bet the farm on this. More likely, the government of Ehud Olmert will [re]discover its vertebrae and "take steps" to interdict Syrian/Iranian aggression from its northern border...or finally fall for failing to do so. The likely result of this would be a repeat of the 2006 Summer War, with the gloves off.

Or, alternately, a show of resolve from the US, Israel, and a sufficient subset of the Lebanese people will push the Iranians into a corner where they must risk open warfare, something which, despite all of their eschatological bluster, they have been consistently circumspect about undertaking...at least until their "peaceful" nuclear program has borne its final fruits.

I judge it to be highly unlikely that full-on war with Iran is in the offing --the strident fantasies of the Left notwithstanding. However one should not mistake this for anything remotely resembling "peace," and those who hang their hopes on diplomacy and persuasion would do well to get a clue.

Iran Gets a Memo

From the Long War Journal comes this piece on a US Army precision strike on Saturday morning against an Iranian-backed Special Groups headquarters, located -- with characteristically callous disregard for the lives of civilians -- adjacent to a hospital in the Sadr City area of Baghdad. For anyone who is paying attention, The weapons utilized in this strike should serve to highlight the qualitative difference between our approach to this Conflict and that of our foes. Where our enemies routinely place their assets in civilian neighborhoods, places of worship, and hospitals, the US spends many millions or dollars on the development and deployment of ultra-high-precision weapons to pluck them from this mortal coil, while sparing, to the greatest extent possible, the innocent pawns they place in harm's way. This is a lesson which the residents of Beirut learned in the Summer of 2006, as Hezbollah terrorists placed rocket launchers in crowded apartment blocks, then plastered the tragic but unsurprising toll on Lebanese civilians all over the shamelessly 'handled' press.

Do devote a moment's thought to that, the next time someone tries the "moral equivalence" argument on you.

Meanwhile, having received incontrovertible evidence (care of recent action in and around Basra) of covert Iranian involvement in inciting and equipping illicit militant activity within its borders, the Iraqi government sent an envoy to Iran to serve notice. Naturally, the Iranian government denied any involvement...but it appears that the Maliki government is rapidly (if belatedly) losing patience with its meddlesome neighbor.

So much for the "anti-war" camp's memes that the new government of Iraq is A) a puppet of Tehran, and/or B) a stooge in the promulgation of disinformation to drum up support for war on Iran.