Comments on The Belmont Club,"Sitting in darkness"

On the WSJ designation of "Holbrooke of South Asia"
TE Lawrence, as Aircraftman Shaw, served in the wilds of British India.

What is needed is a mechanism that connects the cocooned elites to the realities of life. That is one reason that I believe in 6 months of universal military training after the 17th birthday.

-------
steveaz (who wants to send young children to the 3rd world for 6 months),
You mean like sending young Barry Soetero to Indonesia?
Sure, that worked out OK.

My scheme is elegant on several levels. It recreates the distinction between childhood and adulthood that was a bright line in the West until after WW-I. It builds equality and teamwork as well as independence. It inculcates knowledge of the limits of collective organization and bureaucracy. It also allows for education in basic knowledge needed for citizenship and homeland defense survivability skills. Finally it permits the offer of further service via the Regular, Reserve or Guard forces with all benefits tied to service performed. Minimal service grants the right to vote, serve on a jury and serve as a poll inspector. Greater service to provide greater benefits, such scholarships (all to be administered through local Reserve centers or Armories), health care and Social Security.

-------
Habu (who stressed the need to induce fear and force choices on savage enemies),
In fairness to F (who pointed out that a diplomat is not there to feel their pain but is there to deliver a message and learn what is needed to reach an agreement) a good diplomat has no problem with being the velvet glove on a mailed fist. Sometimes he might want the answer to his question “we hear you, now what’ll it take for you to stop killing us?” to be "All that it will take kind Sir is for you to make the big planes stop dropping bombs and make the silent men stop killing our people." If that is what you want then you send a diplomat in to smile and say ""Wonderful, now you understand we must be sure that you really mean it?" Absolutely the credibility of the threat of force must underlay the diplomat's craft. Unfortunately the left have so degraded the credibility of our threats that now more people have to die before the diplomat can restore peace with honeyed words.

-------
steveaz (who was said my plan "would engorge diverse local groups"),
To be clear I do not believe in a two year "alternative service" program. That is just another form of involuntary servitude and an extremely inefficient tax scheme. I would have a single point of entry, with the bare minimum of variation needed to accommodate the physically handicapped. Any exemption from combat readiness training granted because of documented Conscientious Objection status should only apply to those limited modules that include firearms and hand to hand combat familiarization. That time should be used for tasks that are more demanding and less pleasant than the training that being missed. Only persons who complete the course should be eligible for any benefits. Exposure to recruitment opportunities by non-profits could certainly be part of the course, after exposure to the offers by the military and Homeland Security organization training. The later should include instruction on the role of FEMA and the Red Cross in event of disaster. Presentations by other groups that do community service would be appropriate. The Armories should become Community Centers, used to conduct training and support community groups on an ongoing basis. It would make sense to colocate them on or next to college campuses, especially Community Colleges.

-------
Habu (who spoke of the CIA's frustration at the State Department over Vietnam),
Back around 1980 I was taking a Diplomatic History class with Akira Iriye. Two older gentlemen were in the class. One was MGEN Michael D. Healy, who was then commanding 5th Army at Fort Sheriden. To this day I count him as a friend. The other was a gentleman who's name escapes me but who had been a provincial officer in the central highlands during Tet. It was a very live part of my life, I knew the people and places we discussed but I was not there. You can forgive another for failing you but you can never forgive yourself for failing them. The knowledge that we had won the war and threw it away, betraying decent people who believed in us when we stopped believing in ourselves, is the cause of a sickness that eats away, driving the partisans of defeat to ever greater betrayals.

-------
wretchard,
Your point about the cultural changes wrought by education in international relations has synergy with my scheme seeking the benefits of a targeted education program for domestic citizenship. The problem that I focused on was how to achieve the basic citizenship and skill training that should be done in the public schools but can not be due to the unions and government administration. Nothing would do Pakistan more good than 10,000 real sincere Social Workers and Guidance Counselors and committed liberal elementary school teachers, backed by hard men with guns. We should insist on their presence and also insist on free passage for missionaries from a dozen different faiths to go anywhere, but not just to clean up and heal, to actually preach their beliefs as freely as Muslims are allowed to preach.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Commandos free hostages in Somalia but …"

Give the French their due. They have always been cynical hypocrites about the use of force. Whether it was sinking the Greenpeace ship or staging commando raids in Africa, when faced with a national interest and an opportunity they have acted. Insulting Americans was merely the cheap coin paid to the Press to ensure that they were left alone. Like Obama’s pandering to the fetishes of the chattering class it has worked well and been rewarded by the memory hole swallowing a multitude of what in another party would be counted as sins. The French are understandably surprised that anyone else gets annoyed and they are completely oblivious of the idea that there could be larger issues of order and principle at stake when they impede the capacity of Anglo-Saxons to behave as the French do or act as the French would do if they had the capacity.

-------
Habu (who commented on the need to instill fear in our enemies),
Not so much a disagreement as an elaboration lest we mix apples and oranges. Let us consider four possible situations.
1. You wish to find out the annual consumption of Khat in Puntland
2. You wish to find out how many pirates there are and their tribal
     affiliations.
3. You wish to find out where the Ambassador's kidnapped daughter is,
     after a severed finger is delivered.
4. You wish to make sure that 50 years from now mothers in
     Puntland teach their sons never to touch a weapon.

In case number one you do not use force, except for implied blackmail, reliable technical information that is not critically time sensitive is best obtained through the craft of intelligence. The vast bulk of what we collect, either by technical or human means falls within this category.

In case number two it is unlikely that the use of force could be justified. Doing so usually shows a lack of skill and will get inaccurate results. While some time pressure may be felt to get tactically useful knowledge, like what bar the bad guys hang out in, a good intelligence service should be trying to build up that background information long in advance. Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance and a failure to plan in advance is revealed by sloppy measures under pressure. In fairness though, it is a very big world and we have shockingly few intelligence collectors and analysts. If only the Beast was as large and all knowing as the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.

In case number three you may want to convince the subject being interrogated that cooperation is their only option. That could be by shooting a corpse, as in the untouchables, or convincing them that you are targeting their family, or waterboarding them, or threatening to disgrace their memory. In the end you may feel compelled to go for an eye for an eye but first you have to ask yourself some questions. First what will break them? Unless you are a sexual sadist what you want is an answer. If they seek martyrdom then don't give them what they want. Study what you know about them and work with the shrinks if you can. Second consider the damage to yourself and weigh this against the value of the information. Maybe the Ambassador's daughter is worth it. Maybe she is really Jane Fonda and you offer the bad guy a beer. Maybe that trick works.

Situation number four is easy and what you focused on. In the long term if you want to change their culture kill some of them, and convince the rest that far from being fat paper tigers we really are as dangerous as the members of the junior faculty commons room at University claimed we were, and then give them Lifetime TV.

Comment on Theo Spark,"Caption Time ...."

What's this, laying down on the job? Your work space is a disgrace soldier. Just look at all this dirt and is that trash I see over there? Pick it up man, go ahead pick it up. I'm coming back in thirty minutes and this place had better be inspection ready. How do you expect to win this war if you can't get the respect of the natives? Impress them man, impress them.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Teach the free man how to praise"

Wretchard nails it regarding the hypocrisy of the self proclaimed Aristos. As noted on the Doppelganger thread they are those who identify with the enemies of law and progress against the productive middle class. Historically a strong executive has allied with the middle class against the elites.

-------
jerryofva (who praised how Giuliani reduced crime in NYC),
Rudy's NY Way is the same as The Untouchables Chicago Way. Both are better than Obama's Chicago Way.

The sticking point for the NY Times and others who are tying themselves into knots to prevent the time honored and effective response to the 4,000 year old problem of piracy is that making a distinction between pirates and regular criminal defendants, who are now allowed like juveniles to argue that their deprived conditions are mitigating if not exculpatory, admits the historical veracity of the distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants that underlay the Bush/Cheney policy in the Global War on Terror. Given that the first and over-riding priority is the political cause of invalidating all works of Bush/Cheney McChimpyhalliburton small issues like real world life and death and the freedom of commerce on which our liberties and prosperity depend pale in significance.

-------
buckets (who wants the US to do less until others "step up" to do more),
You are wrong on this one. For one thing there really is a common interest at sea. All sailors of any nationality have two absolute obligations, one is to assist anyone in distress at sea and the other, a related subset really, is to aide in the suppression of piracy. At the nastiest moments of the Cold War if a Soviet sailor had fallen overboard the U.S. navy would have rescued him and there was no doubt in our minds that if one of us fell overboard a Russian ship would render assistance. On one occasion it is said that an American carrier ordered a Soviet shadow to assume rescue destroyer station during flight operations. Ivan reportedly did so and much mirth and some grief followed. "It's not our problem" is never the answer at sea.

-------
peterike (who wishes we had seized the oil),
The Colonial powers did not give up their empires out of a sense of misplaced guilt, although some polemicists certainly advocated for that reason. The vacuous fools of sixty year ago were no smarter but possibly less influential than self important blowhards like Frank Rich or the tenured radicals of today. They gave up and withdrew because they were bankrupt after two world wars and America did not want to pay for their imperial adventures while we were facing the looming Cold War. In 1847 India was seen as an asset to England but in the world of fixed Bretton Woods exchange rates and free trade that was taking shape in 1947 the Raj was considered a net loss. Without India, the Dominions having been spun off in 1931, there was no reason for the British to hold on to all of the colonies. Similar conditions pushed for the withdrawal of the French and the Dutch. Some wanted to hang on, for prestige or for control of resources, but few argued that it was more economically beneficial to garrison and govern than to allow the bankers to work their magic and simply buy whatever the places produced.

Remember how the Arabs raised the price of oil 35 years ago? After a short sharp shock the Western banks absorbed the transfered money. What else could the oil sheiks do with it? A passing inflationary episode ensured that little real wealth was seen as sticking to the Arabs and the real losers turned out to be the poor countries of sub-saharan Africa. The rise in petroleum prices killed the Green Revolution. Unfortunately the Arabs and the Chinese learned the lesson and spent the last few decades learning how to handle money. The growth of Sovereign Wealth Funds is a way that they have transfered real wealth and power away from the West.

Would Britain be better off if she had tried to hold on to India? Maybe but India is probably wealthier and more likely to be our friend now as an independent country. Maybe we would have been better off if when the Move On crowd had chanted "It's a war for oil" we had replied, "Hell yes" and broken OPEC. Remember the locals who live where the oil is found are almost never the same ethnic and religious groups that control the governments and profit from the oil trade.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"At Sea"

Pirate ships converge on US hostage at sea. This is not a movie. This is proof that you get what you pay for. As RaviT said on the Yo-ho-ho thread, pirates are hostis humani generis, The Enemies of All Mankind. We are always in a state of war with pirates. Their homes should be leveled by carpet bombing and naval gunfire. The duty of the government is first to protect the rule of law and the inviolability of the Constitution. While every effort should be made to rescue the hostages safely the fact is that the life of any individual is not more important than the destruction of the pirates.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Sadr City"

Wretchard has linked to a fine example of Journalism by Michael Totten.

Reuters has its response ready, AP has a similar article.
Six years on, huge protest marks Baghdad's fall

By Mohammed Abbas and Aseel Kami – Thu Apr 9, 5:49 am ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of followers of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr thronged Baghdad on Thursday to mark the sixth anniversary of the city's fall to U.S. troops, and to demand they leave immediately.

"Down, down USA," the demonstrators chanted as a Ali al-Marwani, a Sadrist official, denounced the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began with the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square.
The crowds of Sadr supporters stretched from the giant Sadr City slum in northeast Baghdad to the square around 5 km (3 miles) away.

Protesters burned an effigy featuring the face of former U.S. President George W. Bush, who ordered the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and also the face of Saddam.

The enemies of Bush and the war simply will refuse to accept victory. They want defeat and they will keep pushing until they get it.

-------
Iran is patient but they have lined up many chess pieces. In ten years we may get reports about how close they were to collapsing, such reports came out of Vietnam after America gave up. Now they can smell victory and the pawns are starting to move.

-------
Nahncee (who asked how Iran can afford to cause all this trouble),
That is why they need Obama’s insane efforts to raise the price of energy. He is acting in their interest. Also they have struck deals with both China, for the natural gas fields, and with Russia, to make life hell for America. As I said above they must be near the brink, if Obama had lost the Mullahs would be just about looking for jobs in Western colleges by now.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Doppelganger"

whiskey,
You have a point about the alliance of elites and outsiders against the working class. The Roman Emperors from Augustus on employed the Equestrian class against the Senatorial class and championed the cause of the Plebeians. Caesar was a leader of the Populares. Successful English Kings allied with the Commons against the Lords.

-------
Both George Bush and John McCain expended enormous political capital seeking to build an alliance with hispanics. Certainly in McCain’s case that effort was wasted and he has expressed some feeling of bitterness. It will demand enormous discipline, not their salient feature recently, for the Republicans to assert that they are both for immigration and for the rule of law. The hypocrisy that has allowed loopholes to be created, or enforcement to be curtailed, for commercial interests must be stopped. At the same time real resources must be devoted to doing the level of investigation needed to verify an applicants eligibility for a visa. Right now our system is so broken that it is often irrational for a legitimate applicant to apply within the system as compared to a person who would in the normal course of business be rejected but who stands a better chance of gaining permanent residence by entering illegally and then establishing a presence such as a family.

Anyone who Enters Without Inspection (EWI) should be banned from ever gaining citizenship. No child of an EWI should be granted citizenship. The only exception to that should be if that child was conceived by an American mother as a result of an act of nonconsensual sex, that is to say a rape, that has been reported and certified in a legal proceeding. Customs and Border Protection Officers have less than 30 seconds to evaluate an applicant who does report for inspection at an entry port. Fraud such as providing false information at that point should invalidate the entry and subject the alien to immediate removal and a permanent bar on reentry.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"2012"

Barack Obama explains to Ann Coulter that at his command, the rains came. http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=208672


-------
Scientists know that this climate hysteria is bad science but they also know that it opens the funding spigot. This is what we get because adults who knew better saw a cash cow amble by and decided to grab some milk when they should have testified to have the Producers of "The Day After Tomorrow" locked up for child endangerment and later they should have helped send Al Gore away for fraud. Remember D.A.T., where the earth freezes because of Dick Cheney? The intelligentsia ooze contempt for the Boobs in Levittown America. The problem is that when there is a need to justify the deference granted to professionals they fail miserably.

One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one.
- Marcus Licinius Crassus in Spartacus

Comment on The Belmont Club,"Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum"

We have allowed the lawyers to create a series of conditions in which people in combat situations will have strong incentives not to take prisoners. The taking of prisoners is something to encourage for several obvious reasons. Taking them provides intelligence, it encourage others to surrender, it strengthens the chain of command, and it permits Justice to be exercised in public by the formal organs that are vested with a dignity and formality that can be displayed to good effect.

Obama's magical mystery tour was an exercise in assuring the entire planet, formally our Nato allies but effectively everyone who can find a microphone, that they get a vote now on any use or threat of force by the United States. That is in fact nonsense on stilts. Obama had the bad taste when in England to ridicule the memory of our alliance with the old empire again when he disparaged the time when Roosevelt and Churchill could solve the world's problems over a brandy. There were good reasons for the special relationship and they had little to do with Jenny Churchill's parentage. First the world is an essentially lawless and violent place and no act of will can over-ride the basic differences between law within a sovereign civil society, and the use of precepts and codes to regulate conduct between states in the larger world, and finally the use of force by a state or states in response to actions by players where there is no legal remedy available. Specifically there is not a level playing field in the international arena, not all players are in fact fully in possession of a monopoly on the use of force within their territories and not all actors are equally legitimate or can be considered reliably as subscribing to the basic principles that any legal order depends on. Therefor there is no good reason to give free riders a veto over the use of power by those actors who both subscribe to the legal and moral principles desired and who have the physical capacity to act. There are still, indeed there may be growing, places on this planet that are simply not covered by a functioning legal and moral structure that would permit violence to be responded to by domestic forces.

This means that despite all the post modern preening and conferencing and shuffling of papers by well groomed advocates of inclusiveness the old system existed for good reasons in response to real world conditions and we have not improved on it. Pirates are "Against All Flags" and once their status is confirmed they should be executed. "Unlawful Combatants" are not the same as Prisoners of War and can be treated more peremptorily. Bush and Cheney were correct.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Thought experiments"

Charles @ 28,
The big Christian heresy of the modern era has been Arianism–that holds that Jesus is fully man but not really God. ... Gnosticism was around when St Paul was writing. According to this heresy Jesus was Fully God but not really a man. According to this heresy all flesh is evil.

Very interesting points you make here. There is at least an intellectual ressonance between Arianism and Islam, the former holding that Jesus had a divine nature separate from the human and the later simply dispensing with his divinity. Mohammed was influenced by the widespread presence of Nestorian Christians in the Arabian peninsula. Nestorianism is a distinct heretical movement concerning the nature of the Christ that was more influential in the East, as Arianism was in the West.

Gnosticism can be seen as leading to the Albegensian Cathars and to other mystical rejections of orthodox Jewish or Christian doctrines. Eventually this can lead to Neopaganism and Gaia worship or even Satanism. Gnostic movements, such as Manichaeism were explicitly opposed to Jewish theology and practice and by stressing a division between God and the material world they set the stage for Islam's abstract and arbitrary deity.

-------
markb (who explained that US nuke plants are not vulnerable to hackers),
Long ago and far away a bubblehead told me that Hyman Rickover made sure that all the controls on the nuclear plants he supervised were analog and in fact outside of the reactor itself the interfaces in one of his submarines remained right out of the 1940s. The reason was that people are good at responding to changes in an information flow they are interacting with but lousy at observing and reacting to a rare event in a digital display. No Homer Simpsons were wanted in the nuclear Navy.

Comment on Urban Infidel"Citi Political Street Art"

The bad news comes in fours.
1. They remain children themselves.
2. The consumers of bad art, and this is bad art, are in charge.
3. They are locked into a culture of Death that is
     defenseless to our enemies.
4. Whereas 100 years ago public education was seen as part of the democratic mission to uplift the common citizenry we are now at the end of an extended project that has denied the mass of the citizenry contact with the cultural vocabulary of Western Civilization.

Comment on Belmont Club"Strategic debt"

Pakistan's Zardari asks for "Trust" that he can not offer himself. The problem is that within Islam there is a level of trust absolutely mandated that makes it a given that a crime committed against an insider is worse than a crime committed against a non-Moslem and therefore it is always permissible on some level to view the outsider as more likely to hold you to an Unfair or purely logical standard. Indeed the earthly standards of logic and proof are inherently profane and less worthy than the inclusive web of trust that exist for, and only for, members of the Ummah. Justice, the holding of people to standards, is exercised by God and his representatives. Ordinary Moslems do not have that authority over other Moslems but they do have authority over unbelievers, and any putative Moslem who can be shown to be a heretic is by definition fair game. This creates a system in which everyone who thinks that he his a good Moslem has no obligations to non-Moslems and every Moslem feels that they can arrogate unto themselves almost God like authority over unbelievers and heretics.

We in the outside, that is to say the civilized, world assume with our arrogance that a system of standards and proofs, accountability and performance, are natural givens. The entire 3,000 year process of trial and error by which this complicated edifice was built is simply assumed away as if it boils down to a simply matter of technique or a set of calculations and parlor game tricks that can be taught to anyone in four semesters at an engineering or business school.

-------
In response to a Kremlin apologist.
For 8 months I have worried about our visitors from the Lubyanka. Are they doing OK, still employed, doing the same shift changes? When they left us after the Georgian War without even saying goodbye I was hurt.

-------
Triton'sPolarTiger (who replied to my comment on Russian disinformation agents),
Possibly this could be a leading indicator that something big is planned to happen. My WAG prediction is that the Ukraine goes down in July and at the same time there is a serious challenge to US Navy transit through the Straits of Hormuz.

Habu,
Truth is the best propaganda.

Comments on Belmont Club"Dystopia"

ron hardin,
The national debt is also owed to the young, who inherit the bonds necessary to pay off the debt along with the debt.

You frighten me.

What you rob, you spend, and what you spend goes back to the people, so where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books.
- Muriel Angelus as Catherine McGinty

That book should be in every home.
- William Demerast as Skeeters
in The Great McGinty

-------
The only good news that I can offer is that the Justices of the Supreme Court most likely to retire are Ginsburg (age 76 and unwell) and Stevens (age 88). Someplace I heard a rumor the Souter is ready to retire, he always having been among the most retiring of men. They will all be replaced by hard left partisans but as they are already of the left that does not change the balance on the Court. Roberts, Alito and Thomas should be good for years. That leaves Breyer on the left, Scalia on the right and Kennedy who appears to enjoy the center. Our greatest risk is if Scalia at age 73 has to retire. Does anyone have any crystal ball that would tell them what Anthony Kennedy thinks of Obama's new post constitutional order?

Comments on Belmont Club"We are gremlins from the Kremlin"

There are possibilities as to why the satellite failed to achieve orbit.
1. Design flaw (likely)
2. Design feature (really just testing to prove they can target Guam, Taiwan,
     possibly Hawaii)
3. KInetic kill (impossible, couldn't have been kept secret)
4. Non-kinetic kill (telemetry interference, or bad data inserted into the
     programming)

Some threads back I pointed out that our muscular responses would have to start with pre-positioning supplies sufficient to feed millions of people for months. If we did that noisily and publicly there is the possibility that the NorK army would break and run for the cheese. Joshua is correct, South Korea looked at the burdens that Germany assumed when the DDR imploded and decided that they really don't like their poor suffering cousins so much that they want to pay to rehabilitate them. East Germany was a far more functional society with a more productive population than North Korea is.

-------
michael hoskins,
When trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

A quick search on that ditty confirmed that Heinlein used it and that he probably heard it in the Navy. He did some engineering work during WW-II and also knew L. Ron Hubbard, who had a brief career as a Junior Officer. One theory is that since the Colregs (Regulations for Preventing Collision at Sea) require ships to pass port to port for safety the safest thing to do to avoid collision is to point your bow to the starboard.

The story I heard, that isn't on any source I saw in 5 minutes, is that since WW-II aircraft had no onboard radar but did have a radio, when lost they could use the radio beacon as a crude homing device and ride the beam in to the carrier. That meant that if lost a pilot would climb, circle and call for help. If they were lucky then the aircraft carrier would break radio silence, a very dangerous thing to do, and broadcast so that the lost chick could find its way home.

BTW, Gremlin is probably the prize winning worst automobile model name ever. It makes sense that the acolytes of the Answer/Acorn affiliated administration, given Answer and Acorns links to the New Party and thereby to the North Korean regime, are now arranging bankruptcy for the American automobile industry.

-------
Why does China support North Korea? Why do people keep large angry abused dogs in their front yards until the day a child of theirs is mauled? We make a mistake when we presume that governments, just because they employee people with American University degrees who speak better English than we do and wear decent suits and use cell phones, will act in accord with our rational expectations. It is an obvious mistake to think that about our own government so why think that about the Chinese? It is true that a rational analysis is over time the best predictor of how another party will act, unless they enter a sub Pareto optimal path to failure. It is also true that we do not know all the variables, you study the numbers you have. Westerners repeatedly make the mistake of trying to explain to the guy on the other side of the table what we think is best for him. That usually insults the other party and makes it more likely that they will not take us seriously. How many times have we seen a Western spokesman explain that Islam is really a Religion of Peace, if only the Moslems themselves would be willing to let us teach it to them?

-------
outa my league,
Marketing people are paid big money to consider how a name translates. We are all entertained when they screw up. Case in point the Chevy Nova. They spent a fortune trying to figure out why a car named "No Va" wouldn't sell in Latin America. Another collection of brain surgeons tried to market mens briefs in Hong Kong with the name "Homme" emblazoned across the package photo. They had neglected to find out that their product name was a homonym with the Cantonese word for "suck."

Comments on Belmont Club"You may say that I'm a dreamer"

Reagan said “Trust but Verify” and had a much more powerful Soviet/Russian Apparatus to talk down and a much smaller China to worry about. Obama will reduce us below secure survivable second strike probability. Given the increasing complexity of our strategic challenges and given the far greater costs of conventional forces than nuclear forces for strategic impact, we should be significantly increasing all of our forces, both tactical and strategic.

-------
L3
Reagan proposed an elimination of ballistic missiles and denuclearization track at Reykjavik and scared the pants off of Gorbachev and the Americans. See the (always to be treated like Debka) wiki on the Reykjavik Summit.

-------
It may be possible to construct an effective shield against ICBMs but that does not eliminate the escaped Genie’s knowledge of how to construct nuclear weapons. The missile is one delivery system, there are others. Eventually we will have to have huge offshore inspection stations, like highway truck weighing stations, so that cargo ships can be stopped and searched for special weapons in a safe location. Even during bad economic times the shear volume of containers makes this a numbers game.

-------
peterike,
The Azatlan plan is to return parts of the US to Mexico rather than add them to the Union.

steveaz,
There were solid plans in the 19th century to incorporate both Cuba and the Philippines into the Union. They failed because of competing interests in the North and South and due to old fashioned bigotry. Before 1860 the South wanted Cuba as a slave state, after 1865 the South opposed Cuba as a competitor for local sugar interests. Racial and religious issues also kept both places out. While I think that Japan would make a splendid addition to the United States, so would Taiwan and Korea. One of the nice features in the old Articles of Confederation was that it specifically included an offer of statehood for Canada. Australia could probably become 5 or 6 states any time it wants to. New Zealand on the other hand might be the last redoubt for Obamanauts to retreat to when things get ugly.

Comments on Belmont Club"The King's Shilling"

The power to tax involves the power to destroy - John Marshall

The game is rigged, the government sets the regulatory environment and the tax rate that create the conditions that impeded the bank's (and other firms) ability to raise capital and make loans or otherwise conduct normal business with a reasonable prospect of getting a fair return on the risk. That means that the corporations are not free agents entering into a voluntary contract for the Tarp money. The government then changes the regulations and claims that because of the presence of Tarp money, or maybe just because the banks and other corporations engage in interstate commerce, the government can ex cathedra void the rights of the owners and the Directors of these corporations. If Ward Churchill could sue because he was fired from a State College then Rick Wagoner should have a good case.

Are there no lawyers in America?

Yesterday I attended a meeting of my local Republican County organization. Really it was a candidates workshop and many useful topics were covered that all of us should keep a firm grasp on. I buttonholed my County Chairman to urge him to get excited about Acorn getting involved in the Census. That is a subject that any professional politician, who lives and dies by redistricting the same way that military professionals live for logistics, must take seriously. Please go to your local Political Party Club meetings, I know that they can be depressing with a half dozen very old folks and an egomaniac holding forth, and get involved. Please get to your local party officials, the County level is often the right place to start, and get them focused on the Census.

Comment on Belmont Club"Shifting the foundations"

Every week I get the letters in my mailbox from the American Museum of Natural History and the Frick collection and the Jewish Museum and the Noguchi Museum and Living Memorial to the Holocaust Museum and the New York Botanical Garden. They ask where is my membership renewal? In my stomach I feel like I do when I see the ads for the ASPCA with the desperate puppies and kittens. If we do not support what makes us civilized then who will? The circle draws closer and the choices become harder. Obama wants no competition from private charity. Families will look at the children and ask who can go to college? Families will look at the family pet and ask can we afford this?

Comments on Belmont Club"North Korea fires its missile"

Dave, (who suggested sinking the Pueblo)
The USS Pueblo is a United States Warship and is still in commission. There is a precedent in the 1804 destruction of the frigate Philadelphia,, which had been captured by the Barbary Pirates in 1803, by Lieutenant Stephen Decataur and the US Marines. Nevertheless I believe that lesson would not be clear to the North Koreans and it would be more effective to simply enforce a Naval blockade. Granted that would not control the land borders but as an incremental acknowledgement of the violation of the cease fire, not even an Armistice, of 1953. Remember that Korea is and has been for almost 59 years in a legal state of war.

-------
Obama is reducing the Armed Forces of the United States to the status of the French who permitted the Vice President of Bosnia to pulled from their armored personnel carrier and killed. Right now I am watching Hotel Rwanda in which the “UN Army” stood by without firing its weapons while massacres happened in front of them. They could not even defend their own men. That is the model that the Americans will now be held to emulate.

-------
JMH,
Germany could supply a verb but it would have to found in volume 2 of the supporting documents.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it’s all together. It’s downright inhuman to split it up. But that’s just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. - Mark Twain

-------
I sneezed a sneeze into the air
It fell to the earth I know not where
But hard and froze were the looks of those
In whose vicinity I snoze.

- I thought this was by Ogden Nash but I’m getting Anonymous on line. For my money I prefer Nash.

Comments on Belmont Club"Why?"

1) There is a real security threat, especially from China
2) After the ouster of the GM CEO and other extra-Constitutional acts Obama lacks the credibility to be trusted with such power. That is one reason why powerful people are careful to appear modest and downplay calls for panic. Actions have consequences and truly powerful people know that if they do not stoke panic they will build trust and the people will come to them when needed.

Big Dogs Don't Bark.

-------
When arguing with a Moonbat of the left or a Wingnut of the right (not something I recommend in either case) it helps to try and force a logical test on them. For example assuming your worst case fantasies what should and should not happen in the eight most pressing policy issues. Agree on the top four for domestic and the same for foreign policy. If fewer then half the events happening track with your conspiracy theory then stop hyperventilating about side issues, even if you do have a line on corruption or other routine government abuse, clean yourself up and start acting useful. On the other hand if seven or eight of the top issues agreed on are playing out in accordance with the basement dwellers model then "Houston, we may have a problem."

So now we face another problem. How do we shove that unwashed Wingnut over to make room for us on the Shrink's couch?

Comment on Belmont Club"Thirty"

The NY Times has been slowly and more recently more quickly circling the drain ever since Abe Rosenthal was forced out as Managing Editor in 1988. Pinch Sulzberger succeeded his father in 1992 and instituted a regime of aggressive politicization that could be considered a prototype for what Obama is doing to America. Rosenthal was finally and unceremoniously ejected from his column in 1999. Part of the shift between Rosenthal's Times and Sulzberger's has to do with issues of sexuality. Rosenthal did not see the homosexual agenda as being an essential component of inclusive Civil Rights reform. Abe Rosenthal was a Liberal in the solid Times tradition of his boss Punch Sulzberger and columnist Scotty Reston. He was high minded, patriotic and rigorous in his devotion to standards. He was devoted to New York City and the working and middle classes and their aspirations. Pinch Sulzberger along with columnist, former theater critic, Frank Rich and Editor Bill Keller has transformed the paper into something far more strident and narrow in its perspective.

The paper was always liberal, when the editorial page endorsed Eisenhower the reporters hung a banner across the newsroom proclaiming their support of Adlai Stevenson. The paper, despite the Duranty episode, was also far more scrupulous until recently.

I miss the NY Sun.

Comments on Belmont Club"The arithmetic of news"

Many bad things in the Obama administration are emanations from the Clinton years. Remember Wen Ho Lee and the Bundlers? The millions of phantom small donors that donated via the unsecured web system to Obama's campaign were a refinement on that. No need to send Al Gore to a Buddhist Temple, just set up Hamas operatives in Gaza with a PC and a list of stolen credit card numbers.

wretchard is correct with a proposed refinement.
Rumsfeld's Razor

The problem is no longer Rumdfeld's "Unknown unknowns" but the deliberate desire to create a wilderness of mirrors to prevent the reflective study of issues needed for the citizenry to give informed consent. Journalism becomes replaced by melodrama or conspiracy mongering that creates an atmosphere of helpless paranoia. That reduces the electoral process at best to an emotional referendum.

-------
When I was a Junior Officer I performed the ritual known as inspecting the troops. Sometimes it could be fun, as when we were returning to port after a long deployment and the guys would put a hat and a pair of shoes on the deck so that I would stop and ask "Who is this?" and they could reply "Seaman Short Sir" or a guy would show up in dungarees with his dress uniform in a dry cleaning bag to prove it was inspection ready. The lesson for me there was, never stop people from acting cute, we all need comedy. Civilians have asked about inspections as if they were some big mystery. Is the officer some incredible genius with a superior attention to detail that ferrets out each flaw? Of course not, the trick is in fact simple. You have six or twenty or forty men lined up. One looks different. Bingo. We learn from new and unexpected information. We learn to recognize outliers from our data set. The ways that our ability to gain knowledge fails fall into (guess how many?) three categories.
1. New situations where we don't have prior data to measure against.
     Anybody know how to wear the new uniforms?
2. Corruption or collusion among the sample pool.
     Everybody looks the same, wait a second, nobody shaved.
3. Balancing of priorities on the part of the observer.
     The Admiral inspected a fan room and asked one of my men 3 Questions:
        a. Is this your space Son?
        b. Do you know what is wrong in this space?
        c. Am I going to find it?
     The answer was "No Admiral," the Inspection ended with all of us happy.
OK, add variable number four and call it Schrodinger's Cat or the GE Effect. There sometimes is or is not new information to discover because you are looking for it.

-------
Habu,
The dirty secret of the Marine Corps is that they are the true home of the Liberal Arts among the Armed Forces.
The Navy is focused on the back end of the Ship and the Air Force, well OK I meant to limit myself to military branches but still, they focus on Industrial Organization and Human Resource Management Theory like they believe that stuff and the Army has always been devoted to Engineering and Artillery as the fast tracks, although they would find Brains and then hide them until needed. A friend of mine 25 years ago was a damn good Officer of Marines and a French major at Berkeley.

I heard that a study that examined the services by socio/economic background of the enlisted entrants had the following ranking.

1. Coast Guard, say what you want the quality of the Knee Deeps are
     outstanding.
2. The Marines, if you are going into a tough situation do it with the best.
3. The Air Force, it's the best hospitality industry outfit out there.
4. The Navy, the Soviet troops mutinied and couldn't get to Finland but the
     US Navy troops can do it all.
5. The Army, as an economist I know all the arguments for an all
     volunteer force and I still think that we should draft everyone for 6
     months of training after the 17th birthday and then recruit a more
     middle class army by limiting non-service related scholarships.

-------
michael hoskins,
My Department Head once asked why I requisitioned a big set of special request chits, the old 4 color paged carbon paper probably cost a fortune type. He was pleased when I explained that I had the troops fill them out for requests for Special Overtime Pay whenever they bitched. I had Deck Division, all stories were true. I faithfully filed the requests in my bottom drawer so we could have a laugh over them later. The troops knew they were getting nothing but giving them an outlet to record their frustration worked. Nowadays they would probably complain to the world off the ship via email or blogs, much more destructive.

Comment on Belmont Club"Murphy strikes again"

Once I read that the newly installed crisis phone rang and Kennedy picked it up and said "This the President." The voice on the other end came back, "The President? I was looking for a French laundry."

Of course the phone sex number was from a staffers address book list and the reason they are in full denial "That is my story and I'm sticking to it and Fox are all big doody heads" mode is not because of concern over security clearances or violation of the law. What the guilty party fears is ridicule by the aged 20 something staffers for being uncool and a loser or a witch hunt by those they fear more than Attorney General Holder's FBI, the feminist left who consider pornography violence against women and all male activity as rape. The progressives are far more regressive and puritan than the conservatives are.

Remember how the left were hugging themselves in glee in anticipation of Bush being embarrassed or acting boorish when his Yale class came to the White House, because one of them was a trans-sexual? Remember how flawlessly gracious Bush was? The woman who now calls herself Petra approached and said "Hello, George. I guess the last time we spoke, I was still living as a man" without missing a beat Bush replied to his guest "But now you're you."

-------
Thread worthy, from NRO, The Corner.
The Shameful Disenfranchisement of the Military in New York’s Congressional Race by Hans A. von Spakovsky

The debasement of the voting franchise of the free citizenry by the use of fraud, corruption, alien registration, felon voting. absentee ballot manipulation, motor voter fraud and other means has become a major threat to the legitimacy of the constitutional order.

-------
Jamie Irons (who graduated from Yale one year after George Bush),
All good schools are in slums, except for Stanford, blast them.

Of course he conducted himself properly with a guest. He is Prescott Bush's grandson. His Grandfather probably would not have wanted me as a Jew at his table but if I had shown up there it is my guess that I would have been charmed and left unaware of how much he disliked me.

Somebody must have liked him, he was Tapped. If you were class of '69 did you escape meeting Kerry?

-------
Two thirds of a century ago my Father was a Squad Leader (Sergeant) but a few years older than most and unlike most enlisted men had been to college. The orders finally came for the invasion of North Africa so he found himself marching next to his Colonel (who 6 months earlier had been a bank Vice President) as the men moved to the waiting troop ships. My Father asked if he knew where they were going and got the reply, "Hell Charlie I don't know anything around here." One of the English girls who was standing on the curb waving to the departing Yanks called out, "Oh Colonel your unit is going to land at such and such a place on such and such a day." They did the paperwork.

Comments on Belmont Club"Good Samaritan"

It is just over 45 years since Kitty Genovese screamed for help, March 13, 1964. That was a national scandal. It is just over 80 years and a month since the St Valentine's Day Massacre, February 14, 1929. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out the deaths of seven mobsters then was enough to get us to change the Constitution. As we become more progressively desensitized to the suffering of those near us we become more isolated and therefore more subject to manipulation and absorption in a totalitarian culture. In part people try to compensate by attaching to other wider humanitarian gestures, suffering in foreign places or diseases or global injustice, to cover for the fact that they are afraid and unwilling to tell the slouching youth to pull his pants up and leave the lady alone.

-------
Alexis,
Our Constitution didn’t keep Andrew Jackson or Woodrow Wilson from implementing evil policy, but it has at least stopped some horrors such as ex post facto laws and bills of attainder. (emphasis added)

Wanna bet? Now that was funny. The reason that the citizenry are presumptively empowered to keep and bear arms is because the government only has any right to use weapons because those same people have delegated that ability to the government. The government can not grant a license or privilege to the same power that has delegated a partial exercise of that same power to the government.

-------
It is not necessary for average people to physically intervene by using firearms to change the dynamic of passivity that breeds crime. What is important is to answer "Yes" when asked if you expect the train to stop. In a healthy society when there is a cry for help all normal activity ceases until the emergency is over. In this case the MTA employees should have publicly announced, "Attention Passengers, warning, there is a possible crime in progress on the West end of the Southbound platform," or wherever the location was. Then the employees and every able bodied person available should have gone to that location, not necessarily to intervene, but to witness. If a circle of a dozen people are standing there, with cell phone cameras, waiting for the police to arrive, they are doing the right thing.



If someone has the training to subdue the criminal then all the better. The key thing is to bare witness. When I was at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center they told us that if a criminal is assaulting someone other than another LEO and no Federal crime is happening then we did not have to intervene. We did our jobs if we were a good witness. Of course if you were carrying your off duty weapon and choose to intervene then that was your right.

Comments on Belmont Club"April 2 Notes"

Regarding the role of foreign law in domestic courts I quote Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; ..."

The sources of International Law are Treaties, Custom and Principles as interpreted by "publicists" or scholars. Domestic law in the United States is guided by Statute, the Common Law and precedent (stare decises.) It is wrong to refer to extraneous academic works which are often unproven opinions, and it is wrong to refer to foreign law or decisions that have not been ratified under the U.S. Constitution. The first vice was introduced in Brown versus Board of Education and the second has recently appeared in the opinions of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, to the delight of the New York Times.

-------
Fletcher Christian (who asked if Obama as the majority shareholder in GM has the right to fire the CEO, his facts regarding the level of public ownership, if any, were disputed by others),
It is not obvious to me that under our Constitution the President of the United States or his government have the power to own stock in any private corporation. The entire machinery of quasi public corporations, such as the U.S. Post Service (since 1970), or more credibly stock companies controled by the government such as Fannie and Freddie, or "a private corporation funded by the American People" PBS, seem to have been created out of thin air by fiat. Now Obama claims to own Chrysler and orders it to merge with Fiat.

-------
blert,
No American official or officer including the POTUS should bow to any foreign Prince.

-------
buckets (who accused me of being a lawyer),
You lose. This may be grounds for me to demand satisfaction.
I will have you understand that I know both of my parents Mister.
However I did take classes in International Law from Gidon A.G. Gottlieb, even finished one.

Walt (who said of taxpayers In the pluperfect tense we are scrod),
It was always my belief that Carpe Diem was the fish god.

-------
Robohobo (who agreed with Fletcher that the world was still complex),
There is a Universe in an atom,
There is all of Life in a single child,
There is Eternity in a woman's smile.

-------
Roy Lofquist (who claimed all war plans were counter force),
A quibble on your quibble Sir. The distinction in theory between Counter Force and Counter Value targeting was a product of improved navigation systems that permitted smaller warheads to target enemy silos as opposed to the earlier strategy of larger megaton range warheads targeted on cities. We presume that the Soviets and today's Russians went along with our academic and strategic evolution. We have no particular reason to think that the Chinese have.

Comments on LGF"They Got Us By the Gas Tanks"

Michelle grabbed the Queen and slipped her arm around her. He bowed to the Saudi and he grabbed Queen Elizabeth with two hands. Think of how many people the Queen has to shake hands with. It is a discourtesy to do more than touch fingers with her. That is not because of subservience but out of consideration for her physical safety, which is the basis of all true manners. The Obamas are ignorant bores.

-------
re: #860 godfrey

How's this for spin? The Taliban are pro-sex:

New Afghan law

Much of Islamic law reads like a bunch of hopeless 15 year olds who could never get near a girl had sat around in the basement making up the laws they'd enact if they had ultimate power.

Yeah and then we'll say that everyone who gave us a wedgie is gay and we'll kill them by making them stand under a wall and we'll have a real big machine push it over on them. whaddya think?

Comment on Belmont Club"The battle for Pakistan"

“If you’re going to take Vienna, take Vienna.”
It sounds clever and I do not dispute that once you have committed to your fixed costs it is foolish to refocus on secondary objectives. Napoleon however did not always calculate his objectives reasonably. So try this on, "If you are going to take Moscow, think again and then take Kiev and hold it, the next campaign season take Smolensk and hold it, the next campaign season take St. Petersburg and hold it, the next campaign season take Moscow and then hold all of them." A more pithy formulation would be "Focus up front but watch your six." Mother said, "Don't bite off more than you can chew."

So if we want to hold Pashtunistan we need to first hold Baluchistan and then hold the Punjab and then hold the Hazara regions and then hold the Tadzhik regions and then hold the Pashtuns. It makes sense to me that we at least consider redrawing boundaries to reward our allies. Why not unite the Tadzhik regions with Tadzhikistan? Why not unite the Uzbek regions with Uzbekistan? Why not unite the Punjab under Indian control? Why not create an independent Baluchistan? The Pashtuns have gambled big and should be convinced that they have lost, as the Brigadier from Oz indicated on yesterdays thread. A rump Pushtunistan centered on Quetta, or what might be left of it, could be viable between there and Kandahar.

To achieve this requires five things.
1. Eliminating the threat of Pakistan's nukes.
2. Forestalling intervention by China and Russia.
3. Determining if Iran might need to be dealt with first on the road to
     Moscow or might come later.
4. Sufficient forces, probably 300,000 to start, and sustained commitment.
5. Leadership.

Now that we can see what the problem is and where the plan is most likely to fail we have to fall back to sustained air interdiction, chasing 2 AM "wedding parties" with million dollar weapons until NYC and DC go boom.

-------
Alexis,
That is a well thought out argument you have there. If we had secured Damascus and the Levant in 2002 and seriously confronted Iran in 2004, when we could have much easier than it would be now, this war would be effectively over with a US strategic victory. Bush should have called for doubling the armed forces in his address to Congress immediately after
9-11. Instead he told everyone to go shopping and promised that we could fight a war on the cheap.

-------
My expectation is that in 4 years we will be down to 7 carriers, meaning one deployed in the Pacific and One in the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf not covered by sea power. Our nuclear arsenal will be unilaterally reduced, with all tactical special weapons eliminated, to the point that it will not be a a credible war fighting component but at best a retaliatory response to an enemy counter value first strike. We will in other words become another France. The problem is that such forces are vulnerable to a decapitating first strike and actually destabilize the situation in a crisis. Our SSBN fleet will however provide sufficient survivability that we can hope to get past this period if China and Russia do not read the US as so weak that they simply ignore the prospect of our response and press forward violating our vital interests without initiating a strategic exchange. By 2016 our airlift and refueling capabilities will have degraded to the point where we will no longer be able to project power as we have done and our tactical airpower will have been reduced in numbers and will lack the technical advantage that we now possess.

-------
dan,
The Shanghai Cooperation Council could add Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia and rename itself.
All Hail The Greater East, South and Central Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

-------
Doug,
We need 15 big deck carriers so that we can always have 5 deployed and surge another 3. We need far more naval ABM development and we need space based interceptors. We need to triple the armed forces. We need to have started on all this 8 years ago.

-------
Charles,
With luck in 20 years the residual oil possessed by the islamist arabs and persians (as well as by the russians) will be a useful but non-critical industrial resource. Their money and influence will be gone and we will have the dirty work of cleaning out the cancers that their episodic moment left behind.

-------
michael hoskins,
Very well put. Have you seen the work being done on small sealed nuclear power plants?
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html
http://criepi.denken.or.jp/en/e_publication/a2004/04kiban18.pdf

I can envisage a new generation of nuclear powered merchant ships. If properly designed these should be both safe to operate and pose no risk of seizure and diversion of the fuel by terrorists. It would however make sense for us to revive the concept of the "Armed Merchant" that current international maritime law discourages. The Q-ships worked in WW-II. It would make sense to mount 20 mm guns on merchants, and station occasional small detachments of five or six Gunners Mates under a Chief or Chief Warrant Officer or Lt (jg) for piracy suppression.

-------
Mike Sylwester,
Yes they are ludicrous but that does not make them less dangerous. Remember the thread from two days ago about Brazil? It is possible to be destroyed by an Unthinking Horror. We should estimate them highly enough not to ignore them. We should consider them dangerous enough that we make the effort to destroy them. Our greatest strength should be our flexibility and adaptability. Obama weakens us not only in the obvious sense by reducing our financial and physical resources, by cutting our forces and wasting our money, but he weakens us by centralizing and controlling and bureaucratizing and regulating all of our endeavors. The Indians failed to respond to Mumbai in time because the government rapid reaction force proved to be anything but rapid. India has become a dynamic capitalist society over the last two decades. They can fix that problem. The United States is going in the other direction. We do need to be modern and spread the virus of modernity among the backwards heathens. What we must fight against, as individuals and as communities, are the forces of retrograde collectivism like Obama that sap our capacity to innovate and our will to respond to a ludicrous threat.

-------
Habu,
How to raise the money?
Here’s one idea. March an army into Riyadh and round up the entire House of Saud. Weigh them and extract $1,000,000 for every pound that the King and his thousand senior Princes weigh over the average weight of the imported slave labor in their medieval fantasy kingdom. Then, after extracting an indemnity of one trillion dollars for past wrongs they have perpetrated, let them live provided they pump the current volume of oil at the price of $15/barrel and ten thousand foreign missionaries a year are admitted in perfect safety with permission to travel anywhere. Of course all foreign missionary activity on their part will have to stop and all foreign exchange transfers by them will have to be approved by the US government. That should do it.

-------
We have Obama's answer to my suggestion. Here is the photo of him bowing to the Saudi King.









(Getty Image)

-------
hdgreene,
Didn't Al G in the Hindu Kush chart on Billboard?

If the technology works costs will go down, if we have it coming we should import every drop we can and leave the current suppliers dry. McCain's best moment was "Drill Here Drill Now Drill Everywhere. We can do it all" When he took his eye off that ball and chased the squeeky toy of the economic crisis summit his campaign folded.

Comments on Belmont Club"Winning in Afghanistan"

michael hoskins, If you have followed my colloquy with Habu on the last thread the use of targeted and explicitly disproportionate force by B-52s makes sense to me. The operation should be called either "Linebacker III" or "Wrath of God." The goal is to create a space for the psychological changes to happen in the Pashtun so that we can shift to pacification and COIN operations.

If we can not do that then the only alternatives would be to either disperse and relocate them or to destroy them sufficiently to break them and remove their ability to threaten us or withdraw and in effect surrender. The problem with Pashtunistan is that since it already is the Back of Beyond there is no way to remove them, as Stalin did with problematic nations (Crimean Tatars, Balts or Jews) and replace them with more compliant clients who would want to live there. Given that limitation then our only options are to either succeed in subjugating Pashtunistan or we shall have to destroy it, or give up.

The option of withdrawing is advocated by voices on the right and the left. Upon consideration I do not find it feasible. There is simply no way that we can isolate the region and hope that it will not become again a base for strategic warfare against us. In their terms we live in Dar al-Harb and the war can not end.

That leaves us with only the two choices of acknowledging that we in a war, whether sought or unsought, with Pashtunistan and prosecuting it until we can secure the population and effectively convert them to a value system compatible with international norms or destroy them.

-------
During "Bush's War" the Neocons were ridiculed for making simplistic analogies between Iraq and Germany or Japan. Having pronounced the conclusion in their accusation the war's opponents and the media felt absolved from any need to actually examine the issue. In fact of course the position of the war's advocates, such as Podhoretz, was essentially correct. In WW-II we first broke the nations we were at war with so thoroughly that we were able to occupy and transform them. We started by taking charge of the education systems. No argument of "respect for local culture" was allowed to stand in the way of American Social Workers and Educators from acting with missionary zeal to ensure that future generations of Germans and Japanese would be raised to be tolerant. The process was more attenuated in Japan, largely because of the interjection of the Korean War, but the transformation desired may have proven more effective there then in Germany.

-------
twobyfour,
Permit me to disagree. Atheism is not the answer. It is tempting I know to conflate the Islamists and the religious bigots of other faiths but there are differences.

First the objections to Christian and Jewish fundamentalists are often based on social snobbery. Granted, I am as prone as anyone to prefer attractive witty urban sophisticates to fat ignorant doctrinaire people who live in trailers. Nevertheless they are not, despite a few forays into educational policy that I think are basically defensive in nature, a threat to the beliefs and values of anyone outside of their communities. Even the proselytizing groups are not prone to using coercion to spread or maintain their doctrines. It is probably over 500 years since a mainline Christian group executed anyone for Apostasy and considerably longer for the Jews.

Second the essential nature of Islam as a faith is different than that of other religions. To me the extreme austerity and abstraction of Islam, combined with the arbitrary justifications for otherwise immoral conduct brought about by what to an observer is the effective apotheosis of the personality of Mohammed, create a contradiction that is unique and makes for a much more dangerous set of conditions than those produced in other faith groups. Only Islam is both aggressively outer directed in its willingness to expand by the use of violence as a core belief and so dominated by the need to seek out and, again as matter not just of practice but of organizing principle, destroy all evidence of nonconformity within the community. In fact the nature of Islam with its arbitrary and impersonal god is more like a form of formalized Atheism, a militant Ethical Culture coupled with a set of most unethical moral precepts as exemplified by the example of Mohammed, then it is, despite its pretensions, like any other major religion.

-------
Annoy Mouse,
What would Holbrooke do?
1. Arrange his own payoff.
2. Arrange jobs for his friends.
3. Choose an official victim to compensate. Here that means some,
     not officially Taliban, Pashtun tribe.
4. Choose a defenseless victim to screw. Here that means somebody
     who trusted the Americans.

Comments on Belmont Club"Afpak"

Bibi understands that you can have Peace or a Process but not both.
My prediction now is that within the next four years the Russians will demand Alaska, a new Narco-Hezbollah government in Mexico will demand Texas, the Islamized Dutch will demand New York, the Swedes in the name of the Moslem Brotherhood will demand New Jersey and Denmark will demand Delaware, just because.

-------
Habu,
If by "dirty bombing" you are referring to the W79 Enhanced Radiation Weapon (The Neutron Bomb) I believe that these are no longer available. It was never an air launched weapon and the program was canceled. The idea of making the area uninhabitable by essentially dumping waste on it, a sort of toxic Agent Orange on steroids, is not only morally unacceptable but tactically ineffective. It would make more sense to kill the current inhabitants and repopulate a productive region than to poison the land and produce millions of murderous refugees. If you do want to kill about half of the million plus population in Waziristan there would be far more effective ways to do it than spreading poisons, radioactive or other, that would effect people over a range of time and would prompt a mass migration. Hypothetically what would be needed are several hundred thousand troops to seal off the region followed by the introduction of persistent chemical and biological agents. The costs, not just political, would be astronomical and given the rural nature of the target population the process would be slow and incomplete at best. Consider that the Russians have been fighting Chechens in the hills for centuries and their inability to end the conflict is not the result of their being to soft. The subsequent cleanup might prove more costly than the initial operation. India being downwind might have strong opinions on these issues. Given all these factors it might make more sense to rely on 50 plane B-52 raids on identifiable targets combined with serious long term support for civilized alternatives. This does not mean that I am calling for us to sing Kumbaya with the Taliban but I do think that we need ideas that are not only morally acceptable but tactically effective.

-------
On the question of whether we would respond to an attack by China on our Navy that used a ballistic missile launched carrier targeting maneuverable reentry vehicle with a nuclear warhead by destroying the Three Gorges Dam.

buddy larsen,
The problem with targeting the dam is that until we cross the line to full Counter Value targeting it is asymmetric with the value of our CVBG. The result of destroying the dam would be the death of tens of millions of civilians. The opportunity and the problem is the same as that posed to Israel by the Aswan High Dam. The Egyptians essentially built a bomb over Cairo knowing that the Israelis could use it but will not except maybe under existential threat. The fact that if the positions were reversed many if not most arab leaders would not hesitate to use such an opportunity to destroy Israel does not change the equation. Counter Force is Counter Force and Counter Value is Counter Value. That does not mean that things could not quickly escalate. For example in the case of China we might respond to an attack on our forces using nuclear weapons by attacking military installations and port facilities in a manner that would cause massive collateral damage to the adjacent civilian population. That could lead to a Chinese attack on our allies or a ballistic missile launch at US territory.

Comment on Belmont Club"Culture post of the day: form 27B"

Brazil has always been on my top list. The trailer is understandably designed to get the mob into the theaters so it does not fully display the growing sense of horror that the film portrays. In one way the dystopia of Brazil is worse than that of Nineteen Eighty Four because it is closer to reality. As we discussed in the prior thread the overriding feature of government bureaucracy is its growing incompetence. At least with the intellectual O’Brien you could grasp at some level with a belief that you could communicate with the person destroying you. In the world of Brazil you are consumed by a monster as mindless and pitiless as some cold blooded creature in a monster movie from the 1950’s.

Comments on LGF"Hitchens: The Swastika and the Cedar"

Hitchens just has to connect a few dots and realize that his enemies are not the stuffy heterosexual traditionalists of Christian Bushistan and Jewish Israel. He can engage in long pleasant disagreements with them over drinks. His enemies are their enemies.

-------
Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Do not be Unintentionally Rude

Those two mottos can take a gentleman far. Hitchens should have told his companions what he intended and planned to do so and get out safely.

-------
OT, Maybe Brown can give Obama something he has never had before, a job.

-------
The Italian Fascist symbol is prominently displayed on the pole that flies the American Flag in Washington Square park. It is NYC's tribute to Mussolini in an Italian neighborhood. In Chicago they named a short street downtown Balbo Drive after a Fascist aviator who massacred Ethiopians.

Comments on LGF"GM CEO: Thanks for the money"

Apropos of nothing at all I have always considered it cosmic irony that the plans for the invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall consisting of Operations Olympic and Coronet) used the names of automobile models as the code names for the various beaches on Honshu.

-------
If GM and Chrysler fold what marques do you think that Ford will pick up and which might resurrect as niche independents or be picked up by others?

My guess is Jeep goes to Ford, Opel to VW or Mercedes.

Cadillac, GMC and Chevrolet should be worth something to somebody. I expect Buick, Pontiac and Saturn to disappear.

-------
A tranzi Socialist sometimes gets to meet a real Trade Unionist, the results are interesting. Real Labour would make short work of Obama. When the soviet era apparatchiks had gotten soft and complacent Lech Wałęsa climbed over the wall.

Comments on LGF"A Bill to Let Big Government Set Your Salary"

The new twist in the Democratic tactic here is that they are calling for wage controls first and only on "The Rich." That will quickly trickle down to controlling labor also as they colonize the Board Rooms and enact new regulations to protect the People's Investments. The old "Wage and Price Controls" that Nixon got suckered into sponsoring did wages up front and aroused hostility, followed quickly by economic trauma. This way Obama gets the power up front and the economic stagnation to be followed by collapse will come later.

Comment on Belmont Club"Silence, ye unbeliever"

Doug,
Regarding the report in National Review by A. McCarthy on Spain's grab for "Universal Jurisdiction," Israel needs to introduce Spain to the concept of State Responsibility. If Spain permits private citizens to abuse the judicial power then she creates an obligation to protect the external party and make restitution. Failure to do so could constitute a casus belli and justify Israeli responses to defend itself. The question arises as to whether the use of Spain's judicial authorities, with the implied right to resort to the police power or the armed forces to execute its judgements, could be considered an "armed attack" within the meaning of article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The United States should take a similarly dim view of such threats to Mr Bush (43) and officers of his administration. Bill Clinton responded to a threat against Bush (41) by Saddam Hussein's agents with violence.

-------
In a triumphant society brave men use their creativity to wrest a good living from catching fish and reward themselves by eating steak.
In a declining society women live on seaweed and feed sushi to a declining number of cows.

-------
Tony (who speculated that the left wants "to wipe out carbon-based lifeforms altogether"),
As they say in Chicago, "It can be arranged."

Twice I have linked to the New Year's Speech from Vaclav Havel on the spiritual and environmental devastation wrought by Communism. That is enough to think that all can take it as a given.

wretchard,
God or mathematics might ensure that sentient life returns to this corner of the universe even after a catastrophe but that may not include another Mozart. All things are not equal. What we happy few have built and cherished over the last 3,000 years is worth preserving. Some things are worth fighting for.

Comments on Belmont Club"The Dead Hand"

Cannoneer No. 4,
My first reaction was to think of the Muttawah incident also. The British are being steadily prepared for Islamification, not in any conspiratorial sense but emotionally as the consequence of their own bad choices. The origins of this vulnerability might be traced through the culture of Unionization that stemmed from the pathologies of the class system and underlay the rise of the Labour Party a century ago.

The idea that it is better the local citizens do it tolerably, now, than waiting for the Feds or the State to do it perfectly, later...

The kicker is that the expansion of government has been accompanied by a decline in its performance. Its presumption of exclusivity in a chosen role can be critiqued on two grounds. First is the question of what government should do and second is the question of what government can do.

In America, but not in England, the Constitution assigns some functions, such as coining money or regulating the armed forces, exclusively to the Federal government. The use of the Elastic and Commerce clauses to expand the Federal powers beyond those enumerated has blurred understanding of the distinctive nature of what was granted to the Federal government. These limits were alien to the English system in which Parliament is in theory now an absolute power, the King in Parliament. They are restrained only by custom and now by the even more arbitrary authority of the European Union.

The issue of competence, not in the meaning of moral capacity but of technical skill, is even more troubling because it is not susceptible to legalistic arguments. We get into the realm of Sociology here which always a slippery topic where prejudice can obstruct scientific study. The larger any organization gets and the more it attempts to do the less effective it is. Sixty or eighty years ago the government could in a crisis choose one task among fifty to do and marshall the best and the brightest and achieve miracles. Now the government attempts to do not one thing or fifty but a hundred and fifty using the ranks of the civil service. The results are failure. The more things government attempts the lower the quality of the workforce in each task. What you end up with is Airport Security. Not only does this result in sub-standard performance in those roles where large numbers have been hired to do jobs that were never meant to be the role of government at all but the dilution of talent and loss of focused oversight lead to failure in those positions, such as the police power, where we need government to function efficiently.

-------
One reason that hysterics yell "My child is in there" when they aren't is that it is usually cost free to do so.
Some are simply honestly mistaken but some are deranged attention seekers and others are malicious. If caught and faced with punishment they will whine that they intended no harm, or even wanted to encourage others bravery, or they'll plead if a would be rescuer was hurt that "there has been suffering enough" and if no one was hurt by their fraud then they will claim the "punishment is disproportionate." Israel faces the same carping when it responds to the provocations of the arabs. We have been desensitized to hypocrisy and irresponsibility by excessive regulation and lawyering.

-------
Armeggedon Rx (who commented that Red Ken might have progressed to ordering police to block recruiting stations),
It is already getting close to that situation in Berkley where the municipal administration and the police assist Code Pink in harassing the USMC recruiting station. If the civil servants not only refuse to perform the tasks that their employers think they have been hired to do but actively prevent others from doing so then the reasonable question is, "Why not save the money and send them home?" Would England be a more lawless place if The Plod went on vacation and told the public "So long and thanks for all the fish?" The purpose of government is employing staff not delivering services but simple self interest should limit the tendency to make it a complete farce. I will look for the Yes Minister clip in which Sir Humphrey explains to Bernard the fascinating history of the remit for the Department of Administrative Affairs by which their authority was expanded but their responsibility was progressively reduced.

-------
Cannoneer No. 4 (who quoted Det Supt Peter McGuinness),
Compare, "The Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand" and "our officers ... handled the incident as professionally as we would expect them to and they then worked long into the night ... South Yorkshire Police feel for the family and will continue to support them ..."

Comment on Belmont Club"The deadly drones"

I have always admired the Israelis ability to make lemonade out of lemons. They live in a region where their neighbors are prone to the wildest fantasies. Realizing that they could not undo that condition they have capitalized on it. The "arab street" might be mythical itself but it believes deeply in Israeli super powers. Judicious feeding of their paranoia has them believing in Israeli master spies everywhere and that the "Drones" to be feared are either invincible jewish robots or the result of secret rays that will turn arabs into asexual drones. Maybe the Israelis can convince them to be on the watch not just for Drones but for Killer Bees.

Comment on Belmont Club"Nazis! Part 2"

Hitchens did well the other day, along with Salman Rushdie, in challenging an offensive Islamist rapper on TV. Then he went and wrote an Anti-semitic screed repeating lies about the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza. He is unstable and unpredictable but he does have courage but not judgement. He is an old fashioned liberal imperialist who knows in his bones that he has the right to criticize the provincials.

Many many years ago my Father went on a trip to Latin America with a Letter of Introduction from somebody or other. When he arrived in Havana he said to the taxi driver that he understood they had a new man in charge. The reply was "Si, Señor, Sergeant Batista." My Father, who was not anybody important, replied "Good, let's go see him." So the taxi took him to the barracks where Fulgencio Batista was living and the Sergeant came out to the veranda and apologized that his family had just sat down to dinner but spent 10 minutes in conversation with my Father, because an American had come to talk to him.

Comment on Belmont Club"Decisionmaking under uncertainty"

There are fundamental differences between conservatives and revolutionaries. I did not say between the right and the left since there are radicals in both camps. A salient feature of radicals is that they behave in consciously conspiratorial ways. Even when in a position of authority and even when engaged in presumptively lawful conduct they tend to express themselves through ways, such as subterfuge, secrecy and small group power struggles, that tie in to their emotional and historical underground links. Conservatives and most Republicans, but not most Libertarians, behave quite differently. Their values express their focus on the relentlessly normative. This may give them an affinity to the values of productive industry but not necessarily to those of politics. The Democrats have been captured by the radicals and have rejected the alternative of a moderately socially progressive heritage that built the party of George Meany and Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and John (but not Edward) Kennedy. Given that the Democrats are now dominated by radicals it makes sense to use that information when judging Obama. He was indisputably the candidate of the most radical elements and does have a history of associating with frankly revolutionary elements. Humans are not beasts. We have the capacity to use experience, not just our own but others, to predict future events and make plans accordingly. Given these facts it is prudent and sane for someone to expect bad things from Barack Obama and act on that expectation.

Comment on Belmont Club"Yes we can and no, they can’t"

In my bones I think that we cannot keep 70,000 Americans in Afghanistan unless we have 30,000 Americans in Gwadar. Only seven problems with that: the Pakistanis, the Baluchis, the Pashtuns, the Iranians, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese.

The Pakistani government is attempting to sew together a balloon while it is being shot full of holes from the inside. The odds on their welcoming an American base are between slim and none. Our best bet might be to tell "our friends" that we will need the base to evacuate them when everything collapses. Unfortunately "our friends" will not be in a position to deliver whatever we want from them.

The Baluchis are the regional population and have been subject to autonomy carrots being dangled by cynical outside powers (especially the Soviets) for decades. Why should they align with the soon to vanish Americans and play Kurds for a Day?

The Pashtuns are the 40 million plus tribe that thinks of Kandahar as its territory and have every intention of dissolving the governments in Pakistan and Afghanistan while looting American supply caravans and depots. It is what they do.

The Iranians think of Baluchistan and most of Afghanistan as break away bits of their empire. They are just over the border to the West and if you think that they can be trusted to protect a supply line for Americans then I want your bank account number, social security and credit card quick because you are about to get cleaned out and it might as well be me that profits.

The Americans are now under the command of Barack Obama. No one expects them to stay beyond the second bloodletting.

The Russians have been angling to get a warm water port in this area for over two hundred years. On the long term level that has not changed even if the demographic realities do not support those ambitions. On the more immediate basis an American base to the South reduces the value of the Russian controlled supply lines to the North. As noted before they have a long history of manipulating the tribal politics. The Great Game continues.

The Chinese happen to be the people who built the port, have their own ambitions and intentions with regard to the region and its mineral resources and have spent decades also in building ties in the region to counter the Americans, Russians and Indians.

The Indians could be the only natural friends that America has and I would be doubtful that they would trust Obama enough to stick their necks out for him.

Comments on Belmont Club"Big in Japan"

If I was the Republican Governor of Hawaii I would react to Obama’s failure to respond to a ballistic missile targeted on my state by marching down to the Hall of Records and personally fishing his birth certificate out of the file. While the Governor of Hawaii has no meaningful relation with active duty forces that could help to defend against such a threat, other than invoking Article IV section 4 clause 2 of the Constitution, the Governor of Alaska does. A potential conflict between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama could happen if she directs active duty Guard forces to defend her state and Obama federalizes the troops to prevent them from doing so. Eisenhower did that to force through desegregation and the Guard obeyed him.

If anyone will confront Obama in a constitutional crisis it will be someone from the Democrats in Congress. Remember the Republicans in Congress told Nixon when it was time to go. It is unfortunate that in Pelosi and Reid we have two of the worst examples of ignorant political hackery that ever disgraced their two offices. While the office of the Vice President and President of the Senate has not been exactly distinguished in American History Biden represents a modern low from whom we can expect no leadership. Strangely enough the most likely source of a challenge to Obama might be the ancient President Protempore of the Senate and third in line to the Presidency, former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, Robert Byrd. He is a bigot and a partisan and his pork barrel earmarks are legendary but he fancies himself an orator and a constitutional scholar on the order of Henry Clay or John Calhoun. The question is at the age of 92 is he up to the fight?

Comments on Belmont Club"5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Negotiations"

Obama has vowed to “cut unproven technologies”. The last thing he wants to do is prove the technologies by allowing them to actually be tested under battlefield conditions.

The answer should have been, “Who owns this problem? North Korea does and I will repeat what has been the stated policy of the United States for over 50 years. Any launch of a ballistic missile towards the territory of the United States or one of our allies shall be treated as a hostile attack and may be responded to with the full strategic power of the United States in a time and manner of our own choosing.”