NYT: War, Meet the 2008 Campaign

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/weekinreview/20gordon.xml

A great article - although one could argue he only really touches the surface of the issue. The bottom line (in my view): McCain is the only candidate to even begin touching on the realities of the war and how our next president will have to address it.

Coming up snake eyes

Edwards's populist roll of the dice - The Boston Globe

4% of the vote in NV? By hanging in the race too long, Edwards has lost even the ability to act as "kingmaker" as his support collapses. I guess that tells us what angry populism and pretend toughness will get you in the 2008 Presidential election.

For shame, indeed

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01172008/postopinion/editorials/the_killer_vet_lie_443219.htm?page=0

I read the headline for the Times piece but was traveling and didn't have the time to look into it more deeply. My first impression - even from the headline - was that it appeared to be lacking in context. It appears that my assumption on that one was correct.

The game changes. Will we?

Iran encounter grimly echoes '02 war game - International Herald Tribune

A number of 4GW lessons come from this incident. First and foremost, those boats presented a very real threat to US Navy vessels - a point driven home all too deeply by both the Cole bombing and the 2002 wargame described in the IHT article. It was interesting to hear how completely some of the Republican candidates (and Ron Paul in particular - no surprise there) dismissed the extent of this threat during the debate in SC - and illustrates the lack of understanding within our modern political leadership regarding the nature of these sorts of threats.

Secondly, within a day, the Navy had released video and audio footage of the incident for general consumption. Within that day, bloggers were second-guessing much of it (to include the radio broadcast threatening to blow one of the ships up). Within another day, the Iranians had released their OWN version of events - complete with video tape. Thus, the conflict (tactical in nature) was played out on multiple fronts, with multiple participants, and becomes, to a degree, strategic in nature.

Thirdly, watching both video clips made me cringe. It really did look like footage from WWII as German fighters tore into the expensive, heavily-armed, "impregnable" B-17 formations flying over Germany during daylight hours. Unfortunately, the "answers" to that problem are difficult to apply to this problem set. 

As we saw last year, the IRGC has worked diligently to figure out ways to get small (cheap...) vessels in close enough to larger naval vessels in situations where firing machine guns in every direction (as the B-17s did) isn't going to work (hiding behind oil tankers and other merchants and acting non-threatening until within detonation range is the 4GW version of naval "stealth" - but a whole lot cheaper than the American version...).

As we also saw last year, it can be quite easy to create local tactical situations with such grave strategic implications that local commanders hesitate until it's too late.

It's a new version of naval combat that the West is poorly trained and equipped to handle. I have a feeling that small boats operating in tight shipping lanes (manned by suicidal attackers), increasing use of very quiet (and cheap) diesel submarines, along with the proliferation of anti-ship missiles will prove to be the undoing of our current navel strategy just as the aircraft carrier and robust airplanes capable of swarming attacks undid our previous (pre-Pearl Harbor) strategy.

Our new opponents/competitors (whether state-based or non-state-based have chosen to operate by a fundamentally different set of rules than those with which our military is familiar. Dangerous times.

Two steps forward...how many back?

New Leaders Of Sunnis Make Gains In Influence

While I had often previously pondered how long it would take until some portion of the Sunni population in Iraq realized their best move would be to work with the US, it remains difficult to see where this will all lead. Much of it depends on how willing the national government is to make concessions in order to solidify peace - not the sort of large scale concessions discussed during the last round of "benchmarks" but small steps like accepting Sunni "concerned local citizens" as a legitimate force in creating conditions for longer-term peace. That, of course, won't happen if either the Sunni militia movements push too hard against Shiite forces and civilians (because they feel that they have the backing of the US) or if Sadr and his leaders decide to throw out their cease fire and jump back into the fight with both fists.

Say it ain't so part 2!

U.N. Finds Fraud, Mismanagement in Peacekeeping - washingtonpost.com

UN Forces primarily generated from corrupt nations with corrupt militaries and inept ruling bureaucracies creates corrupt, ineffective Peacekeeping/making/monitoring? Who'da thunk?

Say it ain't so!

Vote-rigging by the criminal enterprise that is the Russian State apparatus? Who'da thunk?

Cutting off the nose to spite the face

Let's look at this clearly. The recording companies are trying to bust Apple's balls because they don't like the pricing model. In order to do so, they have empowered Amazon with a larger DRM-free collection of music. The Amazon tracks all...cost...the...same...or...less than those on iTunes. Hey, *I* don't mind that, but didn't the recording companies think about the fact that vigorous competition tends to reduce prices for the consumer...?

Pakistan and US military options

I'll be honest...not sure what this would accomplish, other than the aforementioned game of whack-a-mole. Here's the REAL problem, as the US has discovered in Iraq (up until probably this year): an aggressive kinetic campaign that doesn't recognize the simple truth that we can't kill our way out of an insurgency tends to accelerate the effectiveness of our opponents - especially when said kinetic campaign is under-resourced. We manage to kill all the dumb ones while teaching the smart ones a bunch of lessons we'd just as soon not have them learn at our expense.

Maybe we SHOULD sweat the small stuff...

It always surprises me how quickly false statements get woven into the popular consciousness as unquestionably true. In this case, Roger Cogen writes a generally upbeat message regarding the future of "Jihad" and includes, in a very off-hand way, an oft-quoted but incorrect assumption:

"Military guys deal in worst-case scenarios. But no Soviet-era planner of the 1979 invasion could have imagined being humbled in the Hindu Kush by a bunch of Islamic holy warriors; and no American cold warrior could have imagined those CIA-funded Islamists turning on the United States and bringing down the Twin Towers in 2001."

Roger, the CIA funded Afghan resistance forces. The so-called "Arab Afghans" did NOT receive funding or training from the CIA - or the United States. And they actually had little to do with the defeat of the Soviet Union (other than in their own minds). Maybe it seems like semantics...but it's not. Afghans had nothing to do with the rise of Al Qaeda...and Al Qaeda is the natural evolution of the Arab Afghans - Arabs (some would say dilettantes) who generally fought separately from the Afghans...and were actually most heavily involved in the fighting AFTER the Soviets had withdrawn (thanks in large part to the organizational efforts of Mr. Bin Laden). But, again, they are a completely different beast than the Afghan Mujahideen - a fact that many Afghans will take pains to explain to those who do not understand.