By popular demand:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0707/p09s02-coop.html
Pat Lang
RSS- The Wondrous Oak
- Three Seas Summit: Vilnius 2024
- Tit for tat until it all goes boom
- Deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain detected on mainland Antarctica
- “BYD is launching its next-gen Blade EV battery soon with more range and even lower cost”
- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
- Declaration “Dignitas Infinita” on Human Dignity
- The situation and some possible courses of action … A Pat Lang post reposted from 26 February 2022
More FYI. On “arresting” the fall of the Nation. Not for posting. Emphasis in {brackets}. Also note that at the time this article was written the order of succession for the Pentagon in time of national emergencies was changed for the first time in years and the head of DHS was added.http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05363/629401.stm
Cheers,
Mike Adams
Lessons Learned from the American Expedition to Iraq
By Fabius Maximus
December 29, 2005
The mainstream media remains focused on assigning blame for the war, with occasional reports on current events and discussions of exit strategies.
Let’s attempt to see the bigger picture. Defeat seems the appropriate description for the American expedition to Iraq. Consider the cost!
Hundreds of billions of dollars spent, all in effect borrowed from Asia.
Thousands of Coalition soldiers dead, tens of thousands wounded. And, of course, uncounted thousands of Iraq civilian killed and wounded.
For what?
To establish some form of Kurdish state? The Turkish Government, among our stronger allies, will not thank us for this.
To establish Islamic State(s) in the Arab regions of Iraq? Probably difficult to sell this to the American people as “victory.”
Certainly an odd aspect of our “War on Terror.”
To establish a Shiite State in southern Iraq? Good news for Iran, a charter member of the “Axis of Evil.” Bad news for Iraq’s southern neighbor, Saudi Arabia, most of whose oil fields lie in Shiite tribal areas.
Perhaps we can redeem ourselves by learning lessons of sufficient value.
Lessons learned #1:
Avoid Third World colonial wars.
Circulating on the Net are letters from soldiers in Iraq. Many are quite sad.
Here’s an especially noteworthy example:
(2 soldiers) “died surrounded by food, school supplies, toys and candy that they had brought in to brighten the lives of the impoverished children …”
This sounds similar to a story from the French Algerian war. Two Algerian pre-teen boys killed a French boy (a settler’s child), whom they had grown up with as a playmate. When asked why, they replied “Because he was our friend.” (From David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest)
Avoiding third-world wars was said at the time to be the #1 lesson from the Korean War (as in “no more Asian land wars”). And a lesson from the Viet Nam War. And now, perhaps, a lesson from the Iraq War.
Our elites worship Multiculturalism and Diversity. Let’s encourage them to practice what they preach, and recognize that the inner lives of other peoples remain largely mysterious to us.
Efforts to help them become like us can have unpleasant consequences for both sides. Let’s not interfere unless asked by either the people affected or a large majority of the world’s nations.
Lessons learned #2:
{The necessity for courage and integrity in our officers}
The German General staff was as perfect a system as we can ever devise, but it could not compensate for the moral flaws of the officers who comprised it.
{By 1943 Hitler’s insanity was obvious. Germany’s senior officers should have drawn straws, with the loser to walk up and shoot Hitler. After which would follow his trial and execution for murder and treason. A bad end for him, but the salvation of the Wehrmacht and Germany.}
Instead, the small minority that had the will to act undertook assassination attempts suitable only for comic opera. All, of course, were unsuccessful.
{The Wehrmacht and Germany were almost destroyed by the cowardliness of the Army’s leaders, the inexcusable flaw in an officer.}
Scharnhorst and von Moltke the Elder would have despaired to see their descendents’ failure.
{I hope our officers prove of higher quality when our time of testing comes.}
Considering the physical power wielded by the US military, the rest of the world should also pray for this.
The run-up to the Iraq war gave hints of what we can expect – for good and for ill.
On a small scale, we should applaud LtGen Paul Van Riper (U.S. Marine Corps-Ret.), who refused to continue with an obviously rigged war game in preparation for the Iraq War.
The Rest is here …, http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_forecasts_dec_2005.htm
Bush Changes, Politicizes Pentagon Succession
by SusanG
Thu Dec 29, 2005 at 12:05:22 AM PDT
From AP:
WASHINGTON — The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration’s doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s inner circle.
A little-noticed holiday week executive order from President Bush moved the Pentagon’s intelligence chief to the No. 3 spot in the succession hierarchy behind Mr. Rumsfeld. The second spot would be the deputy secretary of defense, but that position currently is vacant. The Army chief, which long held the No. 3 spot, was dropped to sixth.
The changes, announced last week, are the second in six months and mirror the administration’s new emphasis on intelligence gathering versus combat in 21st century warfighting.
Technically, the line of succession is assigned to specific positions, rather than the current individuals holding those jobs. But in its current incarnation, the doomsday plan moves to near the top three undersecretaries who are Rumsfeld loyalists and who previously worked for Vice President Dick Cheney when he was defense secretary.
Apparently, it’s not just liberals who sense a stinking political motive in this “little-noticed holiday executive order.”
Thomas Donnelly, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said the changes make it easier for the administration to assert political control and could lead to more narrow-minded decisions.
“It continues to devalue the services as institutions,” said Mr. Donnelly.
Seriously, if the AEI is calling a Republican president out for asserting political control, you’ve not just spent your political capital, you’re in serious political debt.•
Tags: Pentagon succession, Pentagon, executive order, Dicktator, King George IV (all tags)
Full Article •http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05363/629401.stm ::
Colonel
In your judgment how easy/hard would it be to turn an hardcore Al-Quaida member?
It would obviously take an understanding of culture and motivation that I suspect is missing today. But in my mind the best early warning system of any terrorist attack would be a network of spies in and around the different terrorist groups. A billion or two spent correctly would probably be a better investment than a new carrier group.
Thank you for putting this back up for us, Col.
One thing that seems to be missing from the excellent posts that you have been putting up about interrogation is the relegious element (perhaps because our previous enemies have lacked that particular component?)
The first person a Islamicist captive should see is an Imam; one capable of engaging the prisoner in a discussion of the flaws in the version of Islam that the prisoner has absorbed. The relevation of the utterly un-Islamic nature of Al Qaeda’s ideology and belief system would soften up a prisoner for interragation far better than torture.
Jay’s comment is worth re-posting:
If Sy Hersh was right and the Lebanon war was a prelude to an attack on Iran, then persuading the American people that Israel won is an important step on the path to war.
I would only add the nuance that Israel was, at least theoretically, capable of mounting a sustained land offensive in Lebanon. We are not capable of doing that in Iran.
Iran is one of the twenty largest countries on earth. It is nearly as big as Mexico. By contrast, Iraq is geographically considerably smaller than France and slightly smaller than Morocco.
Iran’s population contains 40,000,000 more people than Iraq, 8,000,000 more than France.
One wonders how many troops Abizaid thinks would be necessary to pacify Iran.
But all of this is magic kingdom stuff. A ground invasion of Iran is simply not in the cards. At the very least, Pakistan’s Satrap would fall. After all, they share a border with Iran, and we have seen how much good the Satrap is in the war in Afghanistan.
So bombing is all that is left. And, of course, the big thing about the Israeli bombing of Lebanon is to put out of the public mind all those pictures of dead children in the arms of their parents, killed by Israeli precision weapons.
More and more I guess I guess I come to the conclusion that Don and Dick and George don’t really care if they succeed as long as they are in the headlines and pushing people around. They just want to be tough guys, so bombing Iran with conventional weapons is just fine.
The Xtian Science Monitor fills a unique niche. Its articles are irreplaceable.
here’s one in the same vein
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html
” from the February 04, 2005 edition
Koranic duels ease terror
By James Brandon | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
SANAA, YEMEN – When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen’s Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.
Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland. ”
We had two former NVA scouts with us on the DMZ. One we didn’t trust, the other one we loved. I remember he always referred to his wife in Quang Tri as “wifey.” I’ve often wondered what happened to him.
Best Wishes
Wombat, http://www.strategypage.com had a story that Saudi Arabia used religious help in interrogating islami radicals with good results of bringing around the suspects.