Category Archives: Uncategorized

October 11, 2014 · 6:30 am

Another half-baked cakewalk

At National Review today there’s a piece by Matthew Continetti, “Accept No Substitutions“, pounding the same old neocon drum for more military adventurism in the Mid-East.  Like many with no military experience, Continetti falls prey to the Kagans overly simplistic strategic posturing:

“If only. A future president — and with the way Obama is handling the Middle East, we will be dealing with the Islamic State and other hazards for many years indeed — needs to take a look at the strategic plan devised by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and Kimberly Kagan and Jessica Lewis of the Institute for the Study of War.

“U.S. forces need to play the role of honest broker once again, as they did in 2007 and 2008,” the Kagans wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times. “But they can only play that role if they are present.” The Kagans say 25,000 troops are necessary to reverse enemy gains.”

I posted the first comment there, under my other alias, “mhere”, rambling on rather longish, giving my two cents worth:

“American ground troops most certainly can provide a winning “military” strategy against ISIS, but herein lies the same dilemma we’ve faced since removing the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Gadaffi from power – there is no political solution in sight to insure stability in the aftermath. The Kagans and their neocon friends brought us the “cakewalk” in the Iraq prognostications and recently penned a power point plan in the Weekly Standard, http://www.weeklystandard.com/….”

“A year ago, Frederick Kagan wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/…, urging arming the ever elusive Syrian “moderates”. Both Kagans are supposed military “experts”, but his concern in this piece was the flagging morale of the Syrian rebels, not the morale of our American troops. Both failed to address the more important strategic dilemma in Syria, which ISIS now glaringly highlights – removing odious secular autocrats in the Mid-East isn’t a challenge for US military might. However, leaving gaping power vacuums only exacerbates the “providing safe havens for terrorists”, which rests as a real threat to our national security. Here’s the rub, that no one talks about – Assad posed no real threat to American national security. Certainly he does Iran’s bidding, but he wasn’t making pronouncements inciting “Death to America”. Our President lied about the WMD intelligence in 2012, assigning blame to Assad before an investigation was even conducted and reporters beyond Seymour Hersh should be asking, “Whose Sarin?” (google his article by that title and then research that one).”

“Unless our “strategic thinking” moves beyond simplistic power point presentations, such as the Kagans plan, we will remain mired in Mid-East quagmires. Our military abilities far exceed our long-range strategic thinking and defeating a foe is far easier than “preserving states”, so perhaps we need to think more about the end goals. Military occupations unto perpetuity will only fuel the jihadist movement.

If we sit back and let ISIS run its course, then those Shia and Sunni power-brokers in the neighborhood will be forced to act. We should secure our borders, work toward energy independence, rebuild our military, which suffers from over a decade of wear and tear, and work on some long-range strategic-brainstorming. I don’t want America to be the “mercenary” air force for either side in the larger Sunni-Shia battle, which is what is happening now. In the current configuration, we’ve switched sides and are providing air support to help Assad regain ground in Syria, because he has “boots on the ground” ready to capitalize on our air strikes against ISIS. The mullahs in Iran probably are sitting there laughing at how easily we’ve been drawn in by ISIS propaganda videos.”

“Our troops deserve better strategic-thinking than the Kagans simplistic power point presentations and war by disingenuous slogans. No more cakewalks, shock and awe, winning the hearts and minds, please!”

Another commenter, verity, followed my comment with this much shorter, but very succinct insight:

“Look, when something like ISIS happens;

– You first send out a scout to the region to sound out the Arabs.
– Your scout comes back and says to your POTUS: “No life in these guys, forget it.”
– You gracefully bow out, and announce to the whole world that the Arabs don’t intend to do anything.
– Then the Arabs either start to shriek their denial, or they continue to comfortably sit on their $hit.
– If you collect some serious shrieks, you subscribe them to your coalition -and not on easy terms.

Then, you have something going. Your POTUS goes up there and says: “The Arabs have a strategy, we decided to help.””

Let’s deal with the glaringly obvious problem with President Obama’s air war, the problem is not a lack of “boots on the ground”; the problem is a lack of a coherent strategy.  We need a better plan that includes both little picture and big picture strategic-planning, not more overly simplistic neoconservative power point presentations.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, General Interest, Islam, Military, Politics, Uncategorized

October 3, 2014 · 5:42 am

You can’t fool Mother Nature

Nature doesn’t play politics.  Watch closely as politicians, dubious experts and sycophants in the media lead us on a semantical wild goose chase, while ebola follows its natural progression.  “Containment” is the elusive goal in the three African countries with significant outbreaks.  We started with one case and reported 18 other people exposed.  That story shifted to possibly 100 people exposed in less than 24 hours, demonstrating clearly that statements of “fact” will change dramatically and all the White House narratives in the world will not be able to contain ebola – only stringent, prompt containment efforts can do that.

Watching the circus that passes for an “official government response” should assure you – they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.  The Last Refuge blog posted updated reports with photos from around the web yesterday, so mosey on over there and scroll down through the posts.  Geesh, here’s an excellent NY Times report with a photo of health  officials leaving the unsanitized home of the four family members under quarantine – no protective clothing in sight, despite reports of vomit, etc. in the home from the ebola-striken man.  Now, I work in a  store and we’re supposed to don personal protective clothing for everything from spilled bleach to bodily fluid messes, yet health officials walked in unprotected.  I’ll bet there were political discussions internally about not wanting to create a panic with showing up in protective clothing.  Political posturing won’t protect us from a spread – ONLY stringent containment efforts will do that and they must be done quickly, because once the spread begins, all their political powwow medicine won’t matter one bit.  Ebola doesn’t follow poll numbers or play politics – it’s an equal opportunity killer.

Aside from spreading, the other real concern, just like in flu outbreaks, lies in the fact that the more the virus spreads, the faster it mutates.  This doesn’t require a doctorate in epidemiology to understand. If ebola goes airborne in transmission, we’ve got a monumental crisis quickly and the ditherer-in-chief will become irrelevant, as states will need to act quickly to protect lives.  A huge part of being able to contain disasters is being willing to sit back and think about worst case scenarios and plan ways to avoid that from happening.  This isn’t a partisan political gotcha game – it’s potentially millions of American lives at risk.  That’s not fear-mongering – that’s fact.

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Filed under General Interest, Politics, The Media, Uncategorized

September 28, 2014 · 12:22 pm

Marching into battle without foot soldiers….

If you live in leftist lalaland and rely on the Obama administration to explain unfolding current events around the globe, the world appears to be a frightening, unpredictable, mysterious swirl of sudden storms of new threats breaking on the horizon.  Semantics carries more weight in leftist circles than substance, with political considerations tipping the scales on proclaiming and enforcing the speech code in America.  Decades of experience with this tyrannical policing of our language from hyphenated American nomenclature, to more devious castigating former soldiers as potential terrorists, to designating a real terrorist attack on American soil merely a mundane case of workplace violence conditioned Americans to accept parsing to advance the Left’s political agenda.  The political right writes scathing commentary about politically correct speech, but the political left controls the media and academia to such an extent that these battles always end with the new politically correct terminology becoming the approved version in American public life.

In Syria, this reclassification process followed President Obama’s fluctuating stance on the ongoing civil war there.  As you may recall, President Bashar al Assad went from being Hillary Clinton’s “reformer” in Syria to President Obama’s persona non grata, after declaring Assad used chemical weapons against his own people (before actual investigations were even completed).  Thus we went from Kerry flying to Syria in 2009 to meet with his “dear friend”  Assad to  a rebranded Assad,  a threat to humanity in the vein of Hitler, if you listen to Obama spokespeople.  In the midst of this Syria policy flip-flop, a cadre of neoconservative mouthpieces, Syrian rebel advocacy lobbyists and Obama sycophants took on the task of selling the solution to the Forlorn Hope that is the Syrian civil war, yes, we were introduced to the Syrian “moderates”, explained to us by Syrian expert par excellence, Elizabeth O’Bagy, who provided both the American public and the Obama White House with her detailed maps of Syrian forces and her smiling assertions that Syrian “moderates” made up the bulk of the Syrian resistance (see LB archives: here, here, here, here).

President Obama makes declarations on world affairs based on personal political expediency, totally devoid of facts and reality,  where his minions refer to their “narratives” and worry over the “optics”, like OCD little stage managers in a junior high school play (to go along with junior varsity terrorist threats).  Not ones to rest on their laurels, the Obama administration now introduced us to The Khorosan Group in Syria, a brand spanking new terrorist entity.  Andrew McCarthy put the kibosh on this latest Obama administration fabrication, bluntly calling the White House on their deception.  Mr. McCarthy in “The Khorosan Group Does Not Exist” writes:

“There is a reason that no one had heard of such a group until a nanosecond ago, when the “Khorosan Group” suddenly went from anonymity to the “imminent threat” that became the rationale for an emergency air war there was supposedly no time to ask Congress to authorize.

You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan — the –Iranian–​Afghan border region — had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.

The “Khorosan Group” is al-Qaeda. It is simply a faction within the global terror network’s Syrian franchise, “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Its leader, Mushin al-Fadhli (believed to have been killed in this week’s U.S.-led air strikes), was an intimate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the emir of al-Qaeda who dispatched him to the jihad in Syria. Except that if you listen to administration officials long enough, you come away thinking that Zawahiri is not really al-Qaeda, either. Instead, he’s something the administration is at pains to call “core al-Qaeda.””

Now, I want to digress back to the point where Assad went from Hillary’s reformer to Obama’s enemy #1 in Syria.  To that end the Obama administration decided that the way forward was to pick a winner in the Syrian civil war, their illusive Syrian “moderates”.   Accusations against the Assad regime over chemical weapons attacks hit the news and President Obama publicly declared Assad’s forces as the perpetrator before an actual investigation was conducted.   Media hysteria ensued,  Obama’s version became the de facto ground truth of the matter, a UN investigation concluded chemical weapons were used, but hedged on assigning blame, but the Obama administration ignored some very serious facts.  The following is a list of Nightwatch links for 2012 on the chemical attack reporting and status of fact-finding:

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000185.aspx

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000186.aspx

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000189.aspx

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000195.aspx

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000198.aspx

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000199.aspx – read this one carefully!

http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_13000200.aspx – another important report

Thanks to JK’s careful compilations of links, because I am an amateur, with no training in intelligence analysis, but here’s the trend I see in the Nightwatch approach vs the Obama administration – Nightwatch posts information and carefully partitions comments and suppositions from facts.  The Obama administration relies on creating “narratives”, then making up lies to bolster the narrative.  In these Nightwatch reports it becomes clear that the UN investigation encountered a tampered with site to investigate in 2012 and they found a 330mm rocket body, which the Syrian Army does not use.  Here’s a link which does show a country which has a 330mm missile in its arsenal.    By 2013, Global Reseach, an independent research and media company in Canada, reported: “Syria: UN Mission Report Confirms that “Opposition” Rebels Used Chemical Weapons against Civilians and Government Forces”. 
Seymour Hersh wrote a piece aptly titled, “Whose Sarin?“, stating:

“Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.”

At the same time the president was selling us the “moderates” trope put forth by O’Bagy as the Syrian resistance mouthpiece, other reports were painting a very different picture of the Syrian resistance, “Syria: nearly half rebel fighters are jihadists or hardline Islamists, says IHS Jane’s report”.  O’Bagy vs IHS Jane’s, humm, well since I have been trusting Jane’s for decades and O’Bagy was serving as the State Department Syria subject matter expert at the same time she was serving as the political director for a pro-Syrian resistance lobbying group, all while pretending to possess a doctorate from Georgetown University, let’s see, tough choice on whose intelligence to believe, right?  The disturbing reports that some Syrian rebels (definitely not “moderates”) had mastered creating sarin  never got picked up by our docile, distinctly incurious, journalists, who rely on White House narratives and dutifully report, but rarely investigate or fact-check.

Other alarming reports surfaced of less than moderate Syrian rebels, like the viral video of the rebel commander cutting the heart from the chest of a fallen foe and eating it, but alas that too raised no alarm bells at the White House.  A BBC reporter, Paul Wood,  interviewed the commander, Abu  Sakkar, and relates the commander’s bio as a former Free Syrian Army commander, who broke away and started his own battalion.  The reporter interviewed the chief of staff of the Free Syrian Army, Salim Adris, on this incident and rather than condemnation he stated:

“We condemn what he did,” said the general. “But why do our friends in the West focus on this when thousands are dying? We are a revolution not a structured army. If we were, we would have expelled Abu Sakkar. But he commands his own battalion, which he raised with his own money. Is the West asking me now to fight Abu Sakkar and force him out of the revolution? I beg for some understanding here.””

Now we have pretend  “moderates” conniving to receive American arms, then immediately recanting their “moderate” status upon receiving American arms and training.  This is the situation in Syria, home base of Obama’s new enemy #1 – ISIL/ISIS/IS (rebranding confusion for the former al Qaeda in Iraq group).  Where are the Syrian “moderates”, well, in this increasingly brutal civil war, “moderates” either fled the country or are dead is my best guess.  So, along with the psychopaths and terrorists, we now have ISIL/ISIS/IS, who purportedly is even a little too radical for what the Obama administration rebranded “core al Qaeda”, not to be confused with the al Qaeda terrorist entity they proclaimed decimated.  President Obama wants these elusive Syrian “moderates” to be the boots on the ground in his war against ISIL/ISIS/IS.   Where he will find them one can safely guess – not in Syria.  Lies and rebranding run amok, just to sell  the American public a make-believe narrative, because of their complete and total failure to read intelligence reports thoroughly and listen to real intelligence expertise before deciding on grave American foreign policy matters.  College campus radicals running a war brings to mind Sun Tzu warnings (yes, I just love my Sun Tzu):

12. There are three ways in which a ruler can bring misfortune upon his army:–

13. (1) By commanding the army to advance or to retreat, being ignorant of the fact that it cannot obey. This is called hobbling the army.

14. (2) By attempting to govern an army in the same way as he administers a kingdom, being ignorant of the conditions which obtain in an army. This causes restlessness in the soldier’s minds.

15. (3) By employing the officers of his army without discrimination, through ignorance of the military principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the soldiers.

16. But when the army is restless and distrustful, trouble is sure to come from the other feudal princes. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army, and flinging victory away.

17. Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. (4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. (5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

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September 26, 2014 · 6:07 am

Convenient optics of war

Ideas abound on how to fight ISIS and one of the oddest ones came from Bill O’Reilly this week.  He proposes we form an international mercenary army to be the “boots on the ground” to bolster President Obama’s comprehensive strategy to destroy ISIS and wage the long war against terrorism..  He envisions American military personnel commanding this force, while other countries and the US provide funding.  So, while President Obama guts our already trained force, Bill O’Reilly wants to embark on this “well-paid international force”, yes, well, okay,  it’s time for one of those boring LB personal stories.

Long ago, when I was a young soldier stationed in Germany, my soon to be husband decided we should fly back to the States to get married.   We got married in my little country church in the mountains of PA and then headed back to Germany.  We had a little German apartment and a lot of my kitchen accessories came from a sergeant who sold the whole shebang real cheap, because he was in a hurry to leave.  My memory is a little hazy on the exact details, but the story went something like this sergeant had taken leave to go back to the States too, except he was attending the funeral of his brother, I believe.  His brother had been shot by some other guy.  This sergeant shot the guy who shot his brother and flew back to Germany and quickly left.  He told my husband he was going to try to join the French Foreign Legion.  Of course, the other person we’ve recently heard about trying to join the French Foreign Legion was Bowe Bergdahl.  Rumors swirled about the sergeant we knew and most of the rumors said he was accepted.  From Bergdahl’s saga we learned he was turned down.  One can only wonder what experience O’Reilly has with mercenary forces and aside from that, one can only wonder if he has followed the controversy of US forces training foreign soldiers, like the School of the Americas,  but even more recently, the quite lackluster results of our efforts to train the Afghan and Iraqi security forces.  The last thing the US military needs to do is command an international mercenary force – good grief!  American credibility is already at an all-time low and trying to outsource national defense to some mercenary force sure won’t help restore our national honor.

Since only political calculations move President Obama to act, it’s obvious that the only thing motivating him to use military force against ISIS is the upcoming elections. Retired US Marine Corps Commandant, James Conway stated,“I don’t think the president’s plan has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding,” which pretty succinctly assesses the plan as described by Obama political flunkies.

If history is prelude, then Afghanistan should clue us in on how President Obama wages war.  In Afghanistan he blathered on proclaiming that the “good war”.  He came up with a strategy, ostensibly, to win that war too.  That plan involved an ambitious winning the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan, ramped up counterinsurgency activity, and a surge modeled after the successful Iraqi surge.  Of course, as with all military matters in Obama world, the advice of the top generals was disregarded, in lieu of White House politicos, with their vast (*laugh*) knowledge on military affairs.  Alas, he never delivered on  the full-troop strength promised for that surge and he pulled the plug on that plan, declared an end to the war with a change in rhetorical flourish – “end this war responsibly”, a definite new vision,where we pack up our military and leave the battlefield, thus ending the war………. leaving the enemy still there fighting.

Iraq followed a similar decision-making trajectory, where against the advice of his top military commanders, President Obama declared Iraq stable and its security forces able to stand alone.  Out came American forces, political instability ensued, the security forces weren’t able to stand alone and along came a determined terrorist army to capitalize on the power vacuum.  Of course, I could throw in the debacle that is Libya, which thanks to President Obama’s disastrous regime change strategy there, it now joins the growing list of failed states and hospitable safe havens for terrorists.  Every military decision he has made was short-sighted, was not in America’s national interest,  was based on completely skewed understanding of the historical realities, the present realities on the ground and utilized cherry-picked intelligence. The political left shrieked for years about President Bush lying about Saddam Hussein’s WMD as a pretext to invade Iraq, but their silence is deafening on President Obama’s chronic lies about intelligence data and willful disregard of intelligence that doesn’t bolster his politics.

The air campaign, as sold to us, won’t work.  Long ago, in Iraq we won a decisive military victory over Saddam Hussein, but the decision was made not to go on to Baghdad and remove him from power.  What ensued was a long, attempt to keep Saddam boxed in using American air power, with periodic escalations, and a domestic political propaganda here at home, assuring us this policy was working.  Administrations changed and President Clinton, humanitarian-in-chief, felt the military approach was hurting Iraqi civilians, leading to his promoting the UN oil-for-food program, to relieve the suffering.  As with all these UN programs, Saddam quickly corrupted this program, the Iraqi civilians still suffered and we maintained the “no-fly zones”.  Our air approach never really weakened Saddam’s power in Iraq.

We could also take a look at President Clinton’s air campaign in Kosovo – another dubious American military adventure, where we were sold a whole lot of half-baked “facts” about Serbian atrocities, we began aiding the KLA (radical Islamists with ties to Al Qaeda), made decisions based on political motivations rather than fact-based intelligence estimates and there again was another American President stating, “no American boots on the ground!”, choosing to rely on air power alone for political reasons, NOT militarily sound judgment.  Aside from all the lies about the political realities amongst the various indigenous factions in the Balkans, the air approach demonstrated that we quickly run out of strategic targets and the forces on the ground remain impervious to air attacks.  They adapt and learn to work around American air power.

You can fast forward to post 9/11 uses of air power and the same reality hits us in the face – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya, back to Iraq and now into Syria.  Air power as part of a comprehensive strategic use of military force that includes American troops on the ground can achieve real military successes; air power alone can’t.  These lessons learned are so obvious that even your average American news viewer should have gleaned this.

President Obama’s hesitant, wobbly start of an air war, where he chose to rely on political consultants rather than trained warfighters sent the message to the world and especially to ISIS that he is not serious about this fight.  His plan provides political theater for the November elections, just convenient optics of war to fit his narrative about being tough on fighting ISIS.  A responsible CINC would have gone to Congress and begged to put the military draw-down on hold, in light of being faced with a gravely unstable Middle East.  A responsible CINC would have looked to America itself and recognized that securing our borders heads the list of steps necessary to provide security for Americans here at home.  All the other tracking efforts internally to locate potential terrorists and plots seems ludicrous if he deliberately leaves the doors open on the border. Energy independence ranks high up on the national security list too and there again, this president prefers to rely on low-wattage ideas and tilting at windmills as our future.  He really did mean war.

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September 24, 2014 · 12:27 pm

President Obama Cites White House Legal Authority for War (Public Law 107-40) Which He Asked For Repeal Two Months Ago…

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September 19, 2014 · 12:19 am

Pentagon: “If we like our war plan, can we keep it?”

Truly, is anyone surprised that President Obama’s battle plan roll-out makes the many glitches with his Affordable Care Act look trivial in comparison?  Perhaps, the top brass need to start asking the White House, “if we like our war plan, can we keep it?”   Today we learn that the Obama administration reached all the way back to LBJ and picking bombing targets from the White House, as the way to run his air campaign in Syria.  The Last Refuge did a good summary of events, with links to the news sources (here).    Let’s hope the senior administration official who thinks Saudi Arabia shares a long border with Syria isn’t part of the inner-circle planning bombing targets.

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September 16, 2014 · 5:15 am

President Obama Sending 3,000 U.S. Ground Troops To Battle Ebola – CDC Announcement Expected Today…

The link in this reblogged piece takes you to the yahoo news story.

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September 14, 2014 · 12:06 pm

Lost in Arabia and other Obama tales

“Yet Another U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group Makes Peace with ISIS” – Patrick Poole over at PJ Media reports another vetted Syrian “moderate” rebel group turned on the US, by striking a ceasefire with ISIS.   Poole reports the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) requested heavy weapons to include TOW anti-aircraft missiles from the US earlier this year.  Upon receipt of these weapons and US training, the group’s leader switched sides to ISIS. Check out Mr. Poole’s links in the story, like this March 2014 Foreign Policy magazine glossy piece, “The Frontman vs. al Qaeda”,on SRF commander, Jamal Maarouf, then the State Department’s fully vetted moderate best hope….  Who on earth is vetting these Syrian moderates???

JK sent along this link to Obama’s outsourced war-planning, “Instead of Boots on the Ground, US seeks Iraq Contractors” – military contractors to fill the need for US boots on the ground.  Yes, of course, a civilian job plan for these active duty troops he’s cutting – hooray, he’s looking after veterans at the expense of sound operational planning, because I can assure you (watching the contractor reliance blossom) contractors take a lot of riffraff and aren’t nearly as selective or particular in their hiring or training as active duty commanders.  Oh, and contractors can quit at any time, making them about as reliable as the “fully vetted  Syrian moderates”.  At least these American contractors should be able to speak English and be semi-literate, which is a big plus over dealing with indigenous rebel bands, I suppose.

The Obama foreign policy team consists of many Lee Hamilton acolytes (Ed Lasky covered in 2009 here and in 2010 here).  Now, ever since Grenada, my confidence in the Pentagon map situation evaporated, but really we have the most technologically advanced geospatial capabilities in the world and yet we have “senior administration officials” without even a basic understanding of the geography of the region they’re discussing US military operations planning.  These dunces aren’t competent enough, and yes that includes the 58 states CINC, for the grave responsibilities their offices require.  Lasky reported yesterday, “Somebody get these guys in the White House a map”:

“They view it as an existential threat to them. Saudi Arabia has an extensive border with Syria. The Jordanians are experiencing a destabilizing impact of over a million refugees from the Syrian conflict, and are profoundly concerned that ISIL, who has stated that their ambitions are not confined to Iraq and Syria, but rather to expand to the broader region.”

In this story is a link to the original report by T. Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner,“In the best of hands: Senior Obama official makes terrible geography error”, providing a map of Syria and its next-door neighbors (hint, not Saudi Arabia).  From heroics of bygone days like “Lawrence in Arabia” to America’s dumbed-down version, “lost in Arabia”……. Now, back to Lee Hamilton and his foreign policy influence in the Obama administration, kick up your feet, because I’m going to paste  from the Hamilton/Baker 2006, “The Iraq Study Group Report”:

B. Consequences of Continued Decline in Iraq

“If the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe for Iraq, the United States, the region, and the world.(pg. 27)

Continuing violence could lead toward greater chaos, and inflict greater suffering upon the Iraqi people. A collapse of Iraq’s government and economy would further cripple a country already unable to meet its people’s needs. Iraq’s security forces could split along sectarian lines. A humanitarian catastrophe could follow as more refugees are forced to relocate across the country and the region. Ethnic cleansing could escalate. The Iraqi people could be subjected to another strongman who flexes the political and military muscle required to impose order amid anarchy. Freedoms could be lost.(pg. 28)

Other countries in the region fear significant violence crossing their borders. Chaos in Iraq could lead those countries to intervene to protect their own interests, thereby perhaps sparking a broader regional war. Turkey could send troops into northern Iraq to prevent Kurdistan from declaring independence. Iran could send in troops to restore stability in southern Iraq and perhaps gain control of oil fields. The regional influence of Iran could rise at a time when that country is on a path to producing nuclear weapons. (pg. 28)

Ambassadors from neighboring countries told us that they fear the distinct possibility of Sunni-Shia clashes across the Islamic world. Many expressed a fear of Shia insurrections— perhaps fomented by Iran—in Sunni-ruled states. Such a broader sectarian conflict could open a Pandora’s box of problems—including the radicalization of populations, mass movements of populations, and regime changes—that might take decades to play out. If the instability in Iraq spreads to the other Gulf States, a drop in oil production and exports could lead to a sharp increase in the price of oil and thus could harm the global economy. (pg.28)

Terrorism could grow. As one Iraqi official told us, “Al Qaeda is now a franchise in Iraq, like McDonald’s.” Left unchecked, al Qaeda in Iraq could continue to incite violence between Sunnis and Shia. A chaotic Iraq could provide a still stronger base of operations for terrorists who seek to act regionally or even globally. Al Qaeda will portray any failure by the United States in Iraq as a significant victory that will be featured prominently as they recruit for their cause in the region and around the world. Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to Osama bin Laden, has declared Iraq a focus for al Qaeda: they will seek to expel the Americans and then spread “the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq.” A senior European official told us that failure in Iraq could incite terrorist attacks within his country. (pg. 28)

The global standing of the United States could suffer if Iraq descends further into chaos. Iraq is a major test of, and strain on, U.S. military, diplomatic, and financial capacities. Perceived failure there could diminish America’s credibility and influence in a region that is the center of the Islamic world and vital to the world’s energy supply. This loss would reduce America’s global influence at a time when pressing issues in North Korea, Iran, and elsewhere demand our full attention and strong U.S. leadership of international alliances. And the longer that U.S. political and military resources are tied down in Iraq, the more the chances for American failure in Afghanistan increase. (pg. 28)

Continued problems in Iraq could lead to greater polarization within the United States. Sixty-six percent of Americans disapprove of the government’s handling of the war, and more than 60 percent feel that there is no clear plan for moving forward. The November elections were largely viewed as a referendum on the progress in Iraq. Arguments about continuing to provide security and assistance to Iraq will fall on deaf ears if Americans become disillusioned with the government that the United States invested so much to create. U.S. foreign policy cannot be successfully sustained without the broad support of the American people. (pg. 28)

Continued problems in Iraq could also lead to greater Iraqi opposition to the United States. Recent polling indicates that only 36 percent of Iraqis feel their country is heading in the right direction, and 79 percent of Iraqis have a “mostly negative” view of the influence that the United States has in their country. Sixty-one percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces. If Iraqis continue to perceive Americans as representing an occupying force, the United States could become its own worst enemy in a land it liberated from tyranny. (pg. 29)

These and other predictions of dire consequences in Iraq and the region are by no means a certainty. Iraq has taken several positive steps since Saddam Hussein was overthrown: Iraqis restored full sovereignty, conducted open national elections, drafted a permanent constitution, ratified that constitution, and elected a new government pursuant to that constitution. Iraqis may become so sobered by the prospect of an unfolding civil war and intervention by their regional neighbors that they take the steps necessary to avert catastrophe. But at the moment, such a scenario seems implausible because the Iraqi people and their leaders have been slow to demonstrate the capacity or will to act. (pg. 29)”

Perhaps, Obama’s Hamiltonian foreign policy crew should go back and review their mentor’s full report.

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September 7, 2014 · 3:15 pm

President Obama on Meet The Press – Full Interview

34:51 minutes lonnnnnnnnnnng.

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August 31, 2014 · 6:22 am

More “experts”, please

Whenever some event breaks through the DC echo chamber,  there’s a stampede of uninformed, sadly misinformed, or totally clueless nincompoop politicians, who rush to the nearest microphone to blather on with their “sources within the Pentagon  state” or “intelligence reports state” or even, “our group has done research on this”, on and on and on.  Mixed in the herd you’ll hear a bunch of braying asses, from various think tanks, former government flunkies and retired generals.

We’re back to a retread of the old  Syrian “moderates” mantra, except this time the same crew  (General Jack Keane and his ISW, John McCain, Lindsay Graham)  selling this strategy want us to arm these “moderates” to defeat IS, instead of Assad.  General Keane was on FOX News assuring us that they have been vetting these “moderates” and I can only wonder who has vetted them???  John McCain is for and against the various ME leaders, with more frequent changes of heart than John Kerry.  Lindsay Graham just follows blindly along, wherever John McCain leads.  Here’s a link from The Last Refuge blog with photos, of John McCain on his “fact-finding” trip to Syria last year.  He was hosted by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, whose political director, Elizabeth O’Bagy,  was the ISW”s Syria expert – lobbying for US aid to arm Syrian rebels.  One of McCain’s friendly hosts on that trip morphed into ISIS’s press officer, Abu Mosa, and he’s standing right next to McCain in the picture.  Mosa was recently killed in an airstrike.  One can only wonder who vetted McCain’s chaperones, the ISW or O’Bagy’s Syrian Emergency Task Force?  And just as a reminder, when O’Bagy ended up fired from the ISW for lying about possessing a doctorate degree, none other than John McCain rushed to her rescue and hired her as a staffer.  Why does anyone take these people’s advice seriously and why does the media rush to use John McCain as the voice of the GOP?

When it comes to President Obama’s failures as President, the glaring truth hits you that this man, unlike his adoring followers believed, does not walk on water.  Hell, he doesn’t even tread water very well.  Let’s state the truth, without his teleprompter and prepared speeches to read it’s obvious he was way oversold as an intellectual and beyond an easy familiarity with hot-button domestic partisan political issues, he doesn’t understand foreign affairs and assuredly ranks as a total dunce on history nor has he shown any inclination to study intelligence reports or seek to expand his knowledge.  He consistently chooses a side to back in ME power struggles, whose politics run counter to American values and whose aims harm our only democratic ally in the region, Israel.   In the current flashpoint with IS, he must face some tough choices if we are to destroy IS.

The endless fear-mongering about the danger IS poses to the region, the US and the whole world escalates and the drumbeat for military action beats faster, but no one has articulated a big picture strategy or any sort of multilateral consensus on long-term strategic objectives nor even short-range objectives, beyond “IS must be eliminated!”.  So far there are mumblings about the Iraqi government needs to come together and hopes the Iraqi military, per Obama State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, “but the Iraqis also have to stand up, they have to pull themselves together”.   Beyond these vague hoped for changes, the Obama administration doesn’t, as the President stated, “we don’t have a strategy yet”.

Let’s kill two birds with one stone, both Bush and Obama have made huge strategic blunders in the the Muslim world.  Both have followed bad advice from “experts”, chosen many less-than reliable partners to work with and generally left us more disliked and viewed as part of the problem than the solution.  American influence, rather than being a force for good, now carries a taint of foreboding, even among our allies.  Rather than argue which had the worst policies, let’s face up to the fact that in the eyes of the world, they aren’t dissecting between Republican and Democrat, but Americans and therein lies the single most destructive force in America.

We can’t formulate an American policy to deal with the massive instability in the ME until we lay out some objectives and above all else we should assess potential partners in the fight against IS and the awful Islamist ideology on first determining if they are rational actors or batshit crazy Islamist-friendly ideologues.  Some former British officials suggest we must work with Assad, but Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s Deputy National Security adviser has discounted that suggestion.  Why?  To act militarily in Syria will require dealing with air assets and loyal Assad forces still operating on the ground.  Assad may be a despot, but we and the British possess plenty of conduits to open secret talks with Assad and form some sort of understanding on an international military operation in Syria to destroy IS.  This must be done to successfully confront IS.   McCain and Graham hit the NY Times editorial page with their “moderates” plea again and they state:

“Such a plan would seek to strengthen partners who are already resisting ISIS: the Kurdish pesh merga, Sunni tribes, moderate forces in Syria, and effective units of Iraq’s security forces. Our partners are the boots on the ground, and the United States should provide them directly with arms, intelligence and other military assistance. This does not, however, mean supporting Iranian military forces, whose presence only exacerbates sectarian tensions that empower ISIS.”

and further state

“Whether or not Mr. Obama listens to us, he should listen to leaders with a record of success in combating groups like ISIS, especially John R. Allen, Ryan C. Crocker, Jack Keane and David H. Petraeus, among others. He should consult with military and diplomatic experts like these, just as President George W. Bush did when rethinking the war in Iraq.”

Rather than ramble on about this list of luminaries in our wonderful desert adventures thus far, let me just state, perhaps we need to expand our vision and options, both in strategic-thinking and seeking “expert” advice.  Instead of buying into a hard sell on retreading this arm the “moderates” plan, which would mean we’d also be fighting Assad forces too, maybe, we need to think a bit more, seek out more intelligence, talk to more allies in the region and  even talk to some of our adversaries in the region.  And yes, we need to talk to Iran too.

Of course, the Obama White House should read Henry Kissenger’s excellent WSJ piece for a fuller understanding of the big picture stakes in our disastrously short-sighted strategic vision and answer the questions:

“To play a responsible role in the evolution of a 21st-century world order, the U.S. must be prepared to answer a number of questions for itself: What do we seek to prevent, no matter how it happens, and if necessary alone? What do we seek to achieve, even if not supported by any multilateral effort? What do we seek to achieve, or prevent, only if supported by an alliance? What should we not engage in, even if urged on by a multilateral group or an alliance? What is the nature of the values that we seek to advance? And how much does the application of these values depend on circumstance?”

Personally, I wonder what an honest intelligence assessment can tell us about the “Syrian moderates”, who vetted them, and the brutality of all players in the Syrian civil war, because ruling out Assad in favor of listening to John McCain (vet his chaperones for his Syria fact-finding trip, please) or Keane’s ISW’s track record on Syria (foisting the fraud, Elizabeth O’Bagy on the American public to sell us a pack lies) leaves me feeling like we’re being sold a lemon at a used car lot.  I’d like to hear more from the former British Army chief.  Surely, there are more “experts” we can consult than the ones who played such a crucial role in getting us where we’re at presently.

 

 

 

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