Category: Military

It seems McChrystal, the Afghanistan theater commander, continues to undercut Obama to the media: in this case noting that Obama has only talked to him once.

Well well. I hope Obama is pleased that he ok’d McChrystal for the job, eh?

You reap what you sow, and Obama is getting the commander he promoted: a political officer happy to use the media to get his way, whether that hurts the Commander in Chief or not.

A lot like his mentor, Petraeus.

Petraeus and his cadre should have been been sidelined when Obama took office, for their rampant political actions during the Bush administration. They proved they were political officers, and Republican inclined officers.

But as usual, Obama wanted to play nice with conservatives.

He’s getting what he deserves, but I’m sure he won’t learn from it, since so far he’s shown no ability to understand the fundamental point that playing nice with modern American conservatives doesn’t work.

(One might suggest that McChrystal is standing up and saying honestly what he thinks he needs to “win” the war as did General Shinseki before the Iraq war. Even if one takes that view, he should still be canned for insubordination. The difference between him and Shinseki, is that Shinseki gave his testimony to Congress, he didn’t run around to the media undercutting President Bush.)

Parable of the Scorpion and the Frog

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I could not help myself. It is my nature.”

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Restructuring America’s Military

By Ian Welsh

On September 4, 2009

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Military spending by country, 2008

Here’s a truth for you. No one, and I mean no one, can invade the US. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 nations combined, and more naval tonnage than the next 13 navies combined. For this the US gets an army which, sorry American jingoists, is bloody awful at brushfire wars.

The US army should be cut in three quarters, at the very least. The air force should be disbanded, since it refuses to do its job anymore (it hates doing close support of troops and its planes are too expensive to be used in most circumstances, which is one main reason for the rise of drones) and the army and navy can pick up the necessary pieces.

The navy should be America’s main arm, but even it needs some cuts, and the carrier flotillas need a serious rethink, they’re nothing but big targets in the case of a war against a real enemy.. The army should be a much smaller expeditionary force, designed so it can be ramped up in the case of the sort of war that requires a mobilization.

The US cannot afford its current military. The budget should be cut in half, at a minimum. That budget, and the huge distortions that the military industrial complex is inflicting on America, are a large part of what is destroying America as an economic power. The best and smartest techies are flooding into the military industrial complex as fast as they can get security clearances, because post dot-com bubble it pays far better and has far better salaries than any other part of the economy except the financial industry. Certainly the military industry isn’t the only thing destroy America’s economy (who needs them when you have the banks) but in the long term, they’re doing more than their fair share.

With a much smaller expeditionary force the US will stick to bombing and shelling, and occasionally kick over small Caribbean countries, which is as it should be, because even the large army has proved radically bloody incompetent at very great cost for almost zero results (what, exactly, is the benefit to the US of the Iraq war? An Iraq aligned with Iran?)

And Americans need to stop talking about being invaded. No one can, no one will. You’re a continental power with a huge nuclear arsenal, even if they could get to your borders, the idea of invading a continental mass the size of the US is insane: there is no one who can do it.

Go back to a pre-WWII army, with a relatively large navy (though not as large as what you have, which is over 50% of the entire world’s naval tonnage). You’ll be fine. Honest. And so will the world. The world is not being made safer by US brushfire wars and neither is America.

And hey, maybe you can take the money and give yourselves real universal healthcare as opposed to some garbage bill that forces you to buy insurance you can’t afford to use.

In Memoriam

By Ian Welsh

On May 25, 2009

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black-angel-by-sy-parrish It’s Memorial Day. I gather for many it’s just another long weekend, but I know that for many it’s what Remembrance Day is for Canadians like myself: a day to remember those who have died in war. I won’t say “died to protect our freedom” or any such trite BS, because with few exceptions, most wars had nothing to do with protecting anyone’s freedom, but they did die, nonetheless, for us.

Their blood is on our hands, sticky and wet, and it will never dry. Why?

Because we live in democracies. Because we elected the leaders who sent them to war. Whether you think those wars are justified, or not, at the end of the day, we bear the collective guilt of their deaths. They died due to the decisions we made, the society we live in.

Oh, we can say “I did everything I could to oppose the war”, whether that’s Iraq or Vietnam, or some other war. But even if that’s true, well, you failed, didn’t you? (Didn’t I?) And so off went the young men and women, and they died, or they were maimed, or their brain case got knocked around and they came back shaking, and they wake up screaming at night, and they can’t control their emotions and they’ll never be the same again.

It’s one of the ironies of democracy that we’re all responsible, collectively, and yet each of us, individually, can say “but not me, I voted against him” or “I protested against that policy”. And because it’s true, each of us can feel, in the end, that the deaths and suffering caused by the society, whether in war, or through a horrific medical system, or through abuses in the penal system, aren’t our fault.

But is it true? Or is it true instead, that we failed, that we support the system with both our consent and our tax dollars, and that we are therefor complicit in what it does?

I don’t know. But I do know this, on this Memorial day, even if it’s not a Canadian holiday, I’m thinking of those who died, both soldiers and civilian.

And at the very least, I know I failed.

Why Pakistan’s Decline Is Almost Inevitable

By Ian Welsh

On April 27, 2009

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Image by takebackpackistan

Benazir Bhutto’s niece, Fatima Bhutto, lays out the reasons for decline as succinctly as anyone I’ve read:

The Taliban and their ilk, on the other hand, are able to seat themselves in towns and villages across Pakistan without much difficulty largely because they do not come empty-handed. In a country that has a literacy rate of around 30 percent, the Islamists set up madrassas and educate local children for free. In districts where government hospitals are not fit for animals, they set up medical camps—in fact, they’ve been doing medical relief work since the 2005 earthquake hit Northern Pakistan. Where there is no electricity, because the local government officials have placed their friends and relatives in charge of local electrical plants, the Islamists bring generators. In short, they fill a vacuum that the state, through political negligence and gross graft, has created.

To combat the Taliban’s incursions further into poverty-stricken parts of the country, Pakistan’s government only has to do its job less leisurely. That’s the frightening truth.

Napoleon once said that the moral is to the physical as ten is to one. My simple rule of thumb for determining who will win civil and guerilla wars is “who is the government?” Now if I were to ask 100 people who the government of northwest Pakistan is, 99 would probably say “the government of Pakistan.”

No. Government is what government does and Taliban is the government in most of that region. The organization which supplies security, social services and law is the government, and it doesn’t matter who is recognized by foreign powers. This is a mistake which the West makes over and over and over again, most recently in Somalia when the US greenlighted and aided in the destruction of Somalia incipient government, the Islamic Courts Union, plunging the country back into even worse anarchy than before, and pretending that the foreign chosen “interim government”, which had no popular support, was actually a government.

Now Napoleon didn’t say the moral is to the physical as infinity to one. If you’re badly enough outgunned and outnumbered, well, being the government may not be enough, especially if you’ve only been the government for a brief time.

This is why a lot of analysts believe that Pakistan can never “fall”, because the Pakistani army is very powerful.

I am far less sanguine. The army has shown very little willingness or ability to fight the Pakistani Taliban. It is unclear to me that the Pakistani army is willing to fight the Taliban, at least all out and if ordered to do so that it would obey that order, either at the top level, or at the operational level. Which is to say, just because the “President” orders it to do something, doesn’t mean it will, and even if the military took back over through another coup (quite likely) that officers and even line soldiers are willing to be used against the Taliban, when the Taliban is actually a more effective government than they one they ostensibly serve.

The legitimacy of a government comes from doing what a government does. The Pakistani “government” is less of a government to most of the country than the Pakistani Taliban. The danger is that it will continue to expand into places where the Islamabad government is not actually acting as a government, till it controls most of the countryside and some of the smaller cities. From there it will likely reach an accommodation with the army.

Although they aren’t communists, this is classical Maoist style countryside to city guerilla strategy. By the time the major cities fall, they will be all that is left, completely isolated from the rest of the country.

The Pakistani army is powerful, but it is only an army, not a government.

Government is as government does. If the current Pakistani government wants to stay in charge, Fatima is right, it needs to do its job. If it doesn’t, those who are willing to do the job will take over.

Endnotes:

1. Fatima does have an axe to grind with the other faction of her family, but that doesn’t make her statements inaccurate.

2. Certainly Juan Cole is correct that the government is not likely to fall in the next 6 months to a year. In fact it might never fall, per se. Despite the fact that Hezbollah is more powerful than the Lebanese central government, that government still exists.

American Voters Approve of Force Against North Korea: AKA American Voters Are Fools

By Ian Welsh

On April 6, 2009

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Image by Joffley

Most of the time I’m angry US elites pay so little attention to popular opinion, but sometimes I’m glad:

American voters across lines of age, party and gender support a military approach to eliminate North Korea‘s nuclear capabilities, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey released Sunday morning — and conducted in the two days prior to North Korea’s test missile launch on Saturday.

The poll shows that 57 percent of all voters support such a response, while just 15 percent oppose it. A military response is favored by a majority in both parties — 66 percent of Republicans and 52 percent of Democrats — and by 57 percent of both men and women.

A majority of respondents, 51 percent, also oppose the U.S. offering economic aid to North Korea in exchange for it agreeing to dismantle its nuclear program.

Uh huh. North Korea has a very large army, poised at the border with South Korea. Strikes against North Korea would lead to retaliation against South Korea. In this case, the capital, Seoul. North Korea, unlike Iraq, has a lot of chemical weapons. They are pointed at Seoul. If the North Korean army decided to shell Seoul, there would be huge loss of life. If they invaded, and there’s a good chance they would, they would overrun Seoul, and, since I know most Americans could care less if hundreds of thousands of foreigners die, they’d also overrun US forces in South Korea, killing thousands.

The only thing that might allow an attack to work would be heavy use of nuclear weapons. I believe that would meet the definition of irony.

News Flash for Fox News: Canada Doesn’t Need the US For Security

By Ian Welsh

On March 22, 2009

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Royal Canadian Regiment In Afghanistan

Canadian Lieutenant General Leslie Andrew Leslie recently noted that after Canada’s deployment in Afghanistan ends in 2011, Canada’s military may need a year to recover. The reason, as Ellen points out, is because Canada has been suffering 4 times the casualty rate of American troops in Afghanistan, because Canada’s in one of the most dangerous provinces.

Of course, Fox panelist Benson then mocked Canadians:

“I didn’t even know that they were in the war,” Benson said, adding he thought Canada was where someone went to avoid fighting.

No, Fox and the Republican party is where people go who avoid fighting. None of the panelists on the show appear to have ever served in the military.

Then Fox pundits made the suggestion that Canada leaches on the US for security:

“Would Canada be able to get away with this if they didn’t share a border with the most powerful country in the universe?”

Here’s a fact for Fox. There is only one country in the world which threatens Canada’s security in any meaningful way. Only one country in the world which might be able to successfully invade Canada: that’s the US.

Canada doesn’t need the US to save it from anyone but the US. Sort of like protection money: “Such a nice country you have there. Be a shame if anything any happened to it.”

Which is more or less what one panelist meant when he said:

“Isn’t this the perfect time to invade this ridiculous country?” Gutfeld asked panelist Doug Benson.

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Military

McChrystal continues to undercut Obama

Restructuring America’s Military

In Memoriam

Why Pakistan’s Decline Is Almost Inevitable

American Voters Approve of Force Against North Korea: AKA American Voters Are Fools

News Flash for Fox News: Canada Doesn’t Need the US For Security