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America’s way of war: from shock-and-awe to forewarn-and-irritate

by Mojambo ( 151 Comments › )
Filed under Iraq, Russia, Syria, Weapons at September 11th, 2013 - 12:00 pm

A more incompetent and clownish administration has not been seen by the world since the bad old days of Jimmy Carter. We knew we were in trouble in 2009 when we realized that the best case scenario was going to be a replay of the Carter administration.

by Bret Stephens

So much for John Kerry‘s “global test,” circa 2004. So much for Barack Obama slamming the Bush administration for dismissing “European reservations about the wisdom and necessity of the Iraq war,” circa 2007. So much for belittling foreign leaders who side with the administration as “poodles.” So much for the U.N. stamp of legitimacy. So much for the “lie/die” rhyme popular with Democrats when they were accusing George W. Bush of fiddling with the WMD intelligence.

Say what you will about the prospect of a U.S. strike on Syria, it has already performed one useful service: exposing the low dishonesty, the partisan opportunism, the intellectual flabbiness, the two-bit histrionics and the dumb hysteria that was the standard Democratic attack on the Bush administration’s diplomatic handling of the war in Iraq.

In politics as in life, you lie in the bed you make. The president and his secretary of state are now lying in theirs. So are we.

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Charles Dharapak/Associated PressThe State of the Union address, Feb. 12, 2013.

And then some. All Americans are reduced when Mr. Kerry, attempting to distinguish an attack on Syria with the war in Iraq, described the former as “unbelievably small.” Does the secretary propose to stigmatize the use of chemical weapons by bombarding Bashar Assad, evil tyrant, with popcorn? When did the American way of war go from shock-and-awe to forewarn-and-irritate?

Americans are reduced, also, when an off-the-cuff remark by Mr. Kerry becomes the basis of a Russian diplomatic initiative—immediately seized by an Assad regime that knows a sucker’s game when it sees one—to hand over Syria’s stocks of chemical weapons to international control. So now we’re supposed to embark on months of negotiation, mediated by our friends the Russians, to get Assad to relinquish a chemical arsenal he used to deny having, now denies using, and will soon deny secretly maintaining?

One of the favorite Democratic attack lines against the Bush administration was that it was “incompetent.”  [………]

[……..]

The administration also touts the support of 24 countries—Albania and Honduras are on board!—who have signed a letter condemning Assad’s use of chemical weapons “in the strongest terms,” though none of them, except maybe France, are contemplating military action. Yet Mr. Bush assembled a coalition of 40 countries who were willing to deploy troops to Iraq—a coalition Mr. Kerry mocked as inadequate and illegitimate when he ran for president in 2004.

Then there’s the intel. In London the other day, Mr. Kerry invited the public to examine the administration’s evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons, posted on whitehouse.gov. The “dossier” consists of a 1,455-word document heavy on blanket assertions such as “we assess with high confidence” and “we have a body of information,” and “we have identified one hundred videos.”

By contrast, the Bush administration made a highly detailed case on Iraqi WMD, including show-and-tells by Colin Powell at the Security Council. It also relied on the testimony of U.N. inspectors like Hans Blix, who reported in January 2003 that “there are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared,” that his inspectors had found “indications that the [nerve agent VX] was weaponized,” and that Iraq had “circumvented the restrictions” on the import of missile parts.

The case the Bush administration assembled on Iraqi WMD was far stronger than what the Obama administration has offered on Syria. And while I have few doubts that the case against Assad is solid, it shouldn’t shock Democrats that the White House’s “trust us” approach isn’t winning converts. When you’ve spent years peddling the libel that the Bush administration lied about Iraq, don’t be shocked when your goose gets cooked in the same foul sauce.

So what should President Obama say when he addresses the country Tuesday night? He could start by apologizing to President Bush for years of cheap slander. He won’t. He could dispense with the talk of “global norms” about chemical weapons and instead talk about the American interest in punishing Assad. He might. [……..]

In the meantime, Republicans should ponder what their own political posturing on Syria might mean for the future. When a Republican president, faced with a Democratic House, feels compelled to take action against some other rogue regime, will they rue their past insistence on congressional approval?

Read the rest – The bed Obama and Kerry made

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Posted in Iraq, Russia, Syria, Weapons | 151 Comments »

Syrian rebels take strategic town in Aleppo; If we target Syria, then we must kill Assad; and “Islamophilia: How the Left really fears Islam”

by Phantom Ace ( 82 Comments › )
Filed under Al Qaeda, Hezballah, Islamists, Syria at August 27th, 2013 - 7:00 am

The media keeps lying about the Syrian War by making claims that Assad is winning. He is not winning, although he’s had some success in Homs province, the Syrian rebels composed of the Free Syrians Army, al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (al-Qaeda) are winning elsewhere. Today they captured the town of Khanasir in Aleppo province. This cuts off units of the Syrian Army and Hezbollah operating in Aleppo.

BEIRUT – Rebel forces took control of a strategic town in northern Syria on Monday, killing more than 50 pro-government fighters and cutting off government forces’ only supply route out of the city of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based Observatory also said it had obtained a photograph showing the execution of Alawite cleric Badr Ghazal by hardline Islamist rebels, highlighting the growing sectarian bloodshed of the 2-1/2-year conflict In Aleppo, rebels led by Islamist militant groups captured Khanasir, a town that sits on the government supply route connecting the northern province to the central city of Hama.

The rebel gain will leave government forces besieged in Aleppo province, according to the Observatory, which opposes President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. The move hampers Assad’s forces options for counterattack against the large swathes of rebel held territory in northern Syria along the Turkish border.

Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Observatory, told Reuters dozens of fighters from the paramilitary National Defence Forces (NDF) were killed. He said activists had so far counted 53 bodies, including that of the leader of the NDF’s Aleppo-based forces.

The media is lying about the Syrian War to trick people into supporting intervention. Obama will gfo to war without Congressional approval and our media will say anything. Congress will do nothing as both parties support nation building. The American people do not have any say in matters of war.

Speranza Addedum:

Not only Assad but his brother Maher and all his family which can claim the government. When we  invaded Iraq we had a list of people to take out and on top was “Chemical Ali” as well as Uday and Qusay Hussein. Bashar Assad is a mere puppet of Iran but he needs to be killed as does hopefully one day soon Iran’s puppet in Lebanon, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

by Bret Stephens

Should President Obama decide to order a military strike against Syria, his main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad. Also, Bashar’s brother and principal henchman, Maher. Also, everyone else in the Assad family with a claim on political power. Also, all of the political symbols of the Assad family’s power, including all of their official or unofficial residences. The use of chemical weapons against one’s own citizens plumbs depths of barbarity matched in recent history only by Saddam Hussein. A civilized world cannot tolerate it. It must demonstrate that the penalty for it will be acutely personal and inescapably fatal.

Maybe this strikes some readers as bloody-minded. But I don’t see how a president who ran for his second term boasting about how he “got” Osama bin Laden—one bullet to the head and another to the heart—has any grounds to quarrel with the concept.

As it is, a strike directed straight at the Syrian dictator and his family is the only military option that will not run afoul of the only red line Mr. Obama is adamant about: not getting drawn into a protracted Syrian conflict. And it is the one option that has a chance to pay strategic dividends from what will inevitably be a symbolic action.

[……]

AFP/Getty ImagesCruel duo: Syrian President Bashar Assad (right) and his brother Maher.

One option is to target the Syrian army’s stores of chemical weapons, estimated at over 1,000 tons. Last week the Times of Israel reported that “the embattled [Assad] regime has concentrated its vast stocks of chemical weapons in just two or three locations . . . under the control of Syrian Air Force Intelligence.” If that’s right, there’s a chance some large portion of Assad’s stockpile could be wiped out of existence using “agent-defeat” bombs that first shred chemical storage containers in a rain of metal darts, and then incinerate the chemicals with white phosphorus, preventing them from going airborne.

Still, it’s unlikely that airstrikes could destroy all of the regime’s chemical stores, which are probably now being moved in anticipation of a strike, and which could always be replenished by Bashar’s friends in North Korea and Iran. More to the point, a strike on chemical weapons stocks, while salutary in its own right, does little to hurt the men who ordered their use. [……]

Another option would be a strike on the headquarters, air bases and arms depots of the regime’s elite Republican Guard, and particularly Maher Assad’s Fourth Armored Division, which reportedly carried out last week’s attack. But here the problem of asset dispersion becomes that much greater, as fewer tanks, helicopters or jets can be destroyed by a single cruise missile (unit cost: $1.5 million).

[…….]

Then there is the “Desert Fox” option—Bill Clinton’s scattershot, three-day bombing campaign of Iraq in December 1998, on the eve of his impeachment. The operation hit 97 targets in an effort to “degrade” Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and make a political statement. But it did nothing to damage Saddam’s regime and even increased international sympathy for him. Reprising that feckless exercise in “doing something” is the worst thing the U.S. could do in Syria. Sadly, it’s probably what we’ll wind up doing.

And so to the Kill Assad option. On Monday John Kerry spoke with remarkable passion about the “moral obscenity” of using chemical weapons, and about the need to enforce “accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.” Amen, Mr. Secretary, especially considering that you used to be Bashar’s best friend in Washington.

But now those words must be made to mean something, lest they become a piece of that other moral obscenity: the West’s hitherto bland indifference to Syria’s suffering. Condemnation can no longer suffice. It recalls the international reaction to Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia, captured by the magazine Punch:

“We don’t want you to fight/but by jingo if you do/We will probably issue a joint memorandum/Suggesting a mild disapproval of you.” Mussolini went on to conquer the country—using chemical weapons.

The world can ill-afford a reprise of the 1930s, when the barbarians were given free rein by a West that had lost its will to enforce global order. Yes, a Tomahawk aimed at Assad could miss, just as the missiles aimed at Saddam did. But there’s also a chance it could hit and hasten the end of the civil war. And there’s both a moral and deterrent value in putting Bashar and Maher on the same list that once contained the names of bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.

[…….]

Read the rest – Target Assad

I downloaded a new e-book by Douglas Murray  (only 57 pages)  called Islamophlia: A Very Metropolitan Entity” only $6.99. You will enjoy reading it.

Watch this video on YouTube.

 

 

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Posted in Al Qaeda, Hezballah, Islamists, Syria | 82 Comments »

A policy on Egypt— support General al-Sisi

by Mojambo ( 271 Comments › )
Filed under Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Syria at August 25th, 2013 - 12:37 pm

The choice is so obvious, and as Mr. Stephens writes, this is a zero-sum game. It is either the military or the Brotherhood. Lindsey Graham and John McCain are two disgraces.

by Bret Stephens

On the subject of Egypt: Is it the U.S. government’s purpose merely to cop an attitude? Or does it also intend to have a policy?

An attitude “deplores the violence” and postpones a military exercise, as President Obama did from Martha’s Vineyard the other day. An attitude sternly informs the Egyptian military, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) did, that it is “taking Egypt down a dark path, one that the United States cannot and should not travel with them.” An attitude calls for the suspension of U.S. aid to Egypt, as everyone from Rand Paul (R., Ky.) to Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) has.

An attitude is a gorgeous thing. It is a vanity accountable to a conscience. But an attitude has no answer for what the U.S. does with or about Egypt once the finger has been wagged and the aid withdrawn. When Egypt decides to purchase Su-35s from Russia (financed by Saudi Arabia) and offers itself as another client to Vladimir Putin because the Obama administration has halted deliveries of F-16s, will Mr. Graham wag a second finger at Moscow?

Perhaps he will. Our diminished influence in Egypt may soon be reduced to nil, but at least our hands will be clean.

[……..]

Releasing deposed President Mohammed Morsi and other detained Brotherhood leaders may be realistic, but it is not desirable—unless you think Aleksandr Kerensky was smart to release the imprisoned Bolsheviks after their abortive July 1917 uprising.

Restoring the dictatorship-in-the-making that was Mr. Morsi’s elected government is neither desirable nor realistic—at least if the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets in June and July to demand his ouster have anything to do with it.

Bringing the Brotherhood into some kind of inclusive coalition government in which it accepts a reduced political role in exchange for calling off its sit-ins and demonstrations may be desirable, but it is about as realistic as getting a mongoose and a cobra to work together for the good of the mice.

What’s realistic and desirable is for the military to succeed in its confrontation with the Brotherhood as quickly and convincingly as possible. Victory permits magnanimity. It gives ordinary Egyptians the opportunity to return to normal life.  [……..]

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Days of rage in Cairo.

And it beats the alternatives. Alternative No. 1: A continued slide into outright civil war resembling Algeria’s in the 1990s. Alternative No. 2: Victory by a vengeful Muslim Brotherhood, which will repay its political enemies richly for the injuries that were done to it. That goes not just for military supremo Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and his lieutenants, but for every editor, parliamentarian, religious leader, businessman or policeman who made himself known as an opponent of the Brotherhood.

Question for Messrs. Graham, Leahy and Paul: Just how would American, Egyptian, regional or humanitarian interests be advanced in either of those scenarios? The other day Sen. Paul stopped by the Journal’s offices in New York and stressed his opposition to any U.S. policy in Syria that runs contrary to the interests of that country’s Christians. What does he suppose would happen to Egypt’s Copts, who have been in open sympathy with Gen. Sisi, if the Brotherhood wins?

Of course there’s the argument that brute repression by the military energizes the Brotherhood. Maybe. Also possible is that a policy of restraint emboldens the Brotherhood. The military judged the second possibility more likely. That might be mistaken, but at least it’s based on a keener understanding of the way Egyptians think than the usual Western clichés about violence always begetting violence.

There’s also an argument that since our $1.3 billion in military aid hasn’t gotten Gen. Sisi to take our advice, we may as well withdraw it. But why should we expect him to take bad advice? Politics in Egypt today is a zero-sum game: Either the military wins, or the Brotherhood does. If the U.S. wants influence, it needs to hold its nose and take a side.

As it is, the people who now are most convinced that Mr. Obama is a secret Muslim aren’t tea party mama grizzlies. They’re Egyptian secularists. To persuade them otherwise, the president might consider taking steps to help a government the secularists rightly consider an instrument of their salvation.  […….]

It would be nice to live in a world in which we could conduct a foreign policy that aims at the realization of our dreams—peace in the Holy Land, a world without nuclear weapons, liberal democracy in the Arab world. A better foreign policy would be conducted to keep our nightmares at bay: stopping Iran’s nuclear bid, preventing Syria’s chemical weapons from falling into terrorist hands, and keeping the Brotherhood out of power in Egypt. But that would require an administration that knew the difference between an attitude and a policy.

Read the rest – A policy on Egypt – support al-Sisi

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Posted in Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Syria | 271 Comments »

The Hruska defense of mediocrity

by Mojambo ( 130 Comments › )
Filed under Iran, Israel, Russia at February 7th, 2013 - 7:00 am

A mediocre Defense Secretary to join up with a mediocre Secretary of State, a mediocre C.I.A. Director all under the nominal tutelage of a less then mediocre President of the Untied States.

by Bret Stephens

Once upon a time, a Republican senator from Nebraska spoke up for the right of mediocrities to occupy eminent positions of public trust.

“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” said Sen. Roman Hruska in 1970 as a defense of G. Harrold Carswell, Richard Nixon’s ill-fated nominee to the Supreme Court. “They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”

Right. And at the Pentagon, we can’t have all Stimsons, Forrestals and Marshalls. Which is why America needs another senator from Nebraska to vindicate the cause of the mediocre man.That man is Chuck Hagel.

Until his confirmation hearing last week, Mr. Hagel was touted as a courageous tribune of the hard but necessary truth. His nomination, according to one sycophant, “may prove to be the most consequential foreign-policy appointment of [ Barack Obama‘s] presidency.” He was hailed as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower, a military hero mindful of the appropriate limits of U.S. power, a real American bold enough to tell the chicken-hawk neocon pretenders where they could stick it.As for his claim about the Jewish lobby intimidating people, it was no more than a gaffe in the sense of accidentally telling the naked truth. “I am certain,” said another prominent Hagel defender, “that the vast majority of U.S. senators and policy makers quietly believe exactly what Hagel believes on Israel.”  […….]

After the hearings, what’s left of that defense?

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Chuck Hagel at his Senate confirmation hearing last week.

Courageous Chuck is done for. He simply folded in the face of questions about his previous positions on Israel, Iran, nuclear Global Zero, Pentagon overspending and so on. […….]If he’s insincere, then he’s little more than a dissembler trying to advance his career.

Deep-thinking Chuck is no more, either. His befuddlement on Obama administration policy toward Iran—the flubbed remark about containment, the passed note, the re-flub, the coaching from committee Chairman Carl Levin—was almost the least of it.  […….]

Chuck-in-Charge is also not in the cards. “I won’t be in a policy-making position,” he said, astonishingly, to a question from West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. To be the secretary of defense, you see, is a bit like being the grand marshal at an Independence Day parade: You wear a sash, you hold a baton, you say a few words, you smile, wave and walk the route.

It says something about the political state of play that Mr. Hagel’s defenders are now whispering that he just won’t matter all that much. Serious defense policy will be run by the grown-ups in the White House, people like Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Denis McDonough and, of course, the president. That’s reassuring.It also says something about the political moment that Republicans seem prepared to let Mr. Hagel through now that they have drawn a bit of blood. Nebraska’s Mike Johanns and Mississippi’s Thad Cochran have declared their support for Mr. Hagel. John McCain opposes a filibuster on the grounds that the president deserves an up-or-down vote on his nominee. […….] But a political party that can’t press a political advantage when it has one is a loser. And who wants an opposition that thinks its honor lies in losing honorably?

In the meantime, it will come as a comfort to America’s enemies to know what they’ll be getting in a second Obama term.One is a cabinet without a single hawk or even semi-hawk, whereas only a year ago there were three: Leon Panetta, David Petraeus and even Hillary Clinton. Another is a secretary of defense with an unsteady grasp of a department that may, within a month, be facing a historic and blunt reduction in its budgets. A third is a vice president who has just agreed to yet another round of negotiations with Tehran. And finally there’s a president whose second inaugural address was entirely devoted to calling America home for the collective tasks he believes lie ahead.

Ask yourself how Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei and Bashar Assad are likely to feel about all of that. Shouldn’t America have at least one officer of cabinet rank who scares the daylights out of these people?

If Mr. Hagel had a sense of the seriousness of the office he is now likely to enter, he would withdraw his name from consideration. But the essential characteristic of mediocre people is that they are the last to recognize mediocrity, either in themselves or in others. That our legislators in their wisdom may soon make this man secretary of defense says as much about them as it does about him. Truly, it’s a Roman Senate.

Read the rest – Hagel’s Hruska Defense

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Posted in Iran, Israel, Russia | 130 Comments »

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