Halliburton Endangers Our Troops

H/t Contrairimairi:

US Special Forces Invade Syria

Dan Friedman just forwarded this Yahoo! news AP release that says that US helicopters based in Iraq invaded Syrian air space. Special forces landed and attacked a building, killing eight people. Ninety percent of foreign fighters in Iraq enter Iraq through Syria. Needless to say, the Syrian government is ticked.

America Winning the War in Iraq

Hugh Hewitt blogs a NY Post article by Arthur Herman (hat tip Larwyn) that states:

>"AMERICA has won, or is about to win, the Iraq war.

"The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army - just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists - forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

"Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation's army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country's leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul - a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible..."

Hewitt points out that Obama has been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support despite his eagerness to prove Herman wrong and to prove that America has lost. Obama does not express a pro-America game plan, but rather views defeat in Iraq as a way to prove America is a "nice" country so that terrorists will understand how nice the US is and stop being terrorists. Obama's and the left's position is foolish. General Petraeus has demonstrated that a fourth generation warfare strategy will work. The war will wind down soon without the left's and Obama's anti-American posturing.

In Praise of NOTA (None of the Above)

I have a project in which I believe: None of the Above. I had a long conversation with Bill White on Tuesday. Bill founded Voters for NOTA in Massachusetts and introduced bills in both legislative houses to permit voters to register a vote for "none of the above". The bill isn't going anywhere in Massachusetts, but it's worth a college professor's try in New York as well. Back in the 1960s, Howard Jarvis, a 1962 California primary Senate candidate didn't see Proposition 13 pass until 1978, eight years before his death in 1986. I envision a similar bill being proposed in NY, and I think I will be the one to propose a bill to my legislators. Bill White has done all the heavy lifting, and NOTA is an idea whose time has come in New York State.

This is a good year for NOTA. There's very slim pickings among the presidential candidates in both parties. Newsmax reports that James Carville believes that the Democrats are stronger than the Republicans only because of the "complete implosion" of the Republican Party, not because of enthusiasm for the Democrats. Even so, reports Newsmax, Carville still believes that the Democrats "could still lose focus". One reason might be the way the candidates look. I still believe that, ugly as Carville is, he is still better looking than Hillary, although both are better looking than Rosie O'Donnell.

On October 3, the Sun reported that growing evidence that conservatives are concerned about the choices shaping up in the Republican primary race, and Mike Huckabee's increasing popularity among voters in caucus states, offers the former Arkansas governor a rare opportunity to become a serious contender. Instead, social conservatives are thinking of running a third party candidate.

Speaking as an advocate of hard money, limited government and the common man, I feel the same way. Candidates just aren't interested in the erosion of the dollar, presumably because they assume that since voters have been educated in American public schools, the subject is difficult for them.

Last week in Kingston, NY, a shopper on line behind me in Hannaford's Supermarket claimed that grocery prices have gone up six percent since July. At dinner on Monday night, my aunt, Norma of Manhattan, a retired bookkeeper, mentioned that she believed that the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics has been misleading the public by publishing inflation statistics that do not include food prices.

The only candidate who grasps the inflation issue is Ron Paul, but his views on Iraq are silly and his use of the phrase "Israel lobby" concerns me. Ryan Sager covers this matter here.

Hasselbeck versus O'Donnell; Buckley versus Vidal

Jonah Goldberg of NRO finds ABC News's claim that Rosie O'Donnell's and Elizabeth Hasselbeck's debate on Barbara Walters' "The View" "harkens back to a Vietnam-era exchange between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William Buckley."

Larwyn has provided the following link to the New Editor which has clips of both the Vidal/Buckley debate (which I recall took place in the summer of 1967 when I was a camper at Camp Woodcliff in Sawkill, NY) and the O'Donnell/Hasselback debate.

There are two similarities. Both debates are based on mistaken assessments and characterizations about, respectively, the Vietnam and Iraqi Wars. For example, Vidal claims that North and South Vietnam were one country, a mistaken claim that Mark Moyar debunks in Triumph Forsaken. Second, you had some people like Buckley and Hasselbeck both favoring the respective wars and Vidal and O'Donnell both opposing them.

However, there are two big differences. First, neither Buckley nor Vidal are as good looking as Hasselbeck but both are better looking than O'Donnell. Second, Buckley and Vidal are extremely articulate and are the products of education and refinement. In contrast, Hasselbeck and O'Donnell lack these characteristics.

Part of the problem with today's public discourse is that the educational system has failed to prepare Americans to express themselves coherently. The mass media, especially television, have contributed to this inability. College courses no longer require good writing. Opinions count more than learning. Self-esteem and self-indulgence take priority over self-discipline and education.

The difference between the Hasselbeck/O'Donnell and Buckley/Vidal debates is that in the 1960s the public required its television commentators to be well educated. Today, the public commentators are circus clowns.

The Need for Counter-4GW

In 2003, William S. Lind argued that the US invasion of Iraq would face debilitating trouble from insurgency and terrorism, also known as fourth generation warfare, or 4GW. Col. Thomas Hammes also ably discusses this concept in his book The Sling and the Stone. Lind's view of second generation warfare is that it involves use of artillery followed by occupation of troops, or "putting steel on target." Third generation warfare follows the German Blitzkrieg in focusing on the situation and on surprise. Fourth generation war, though, involves fighting non-state opponents. It involves a conflict of belief systems or cultures. In it, "invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army." "At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation War on their soil."

Lind and Hammes are implicitly suggesting that just as generations one and two of warfare reflected industrialization, the telegraph and railroad, while the third generation reflected the advent of the automobile, truck and radio, the fourth generation is associated with the mass media and information technology. War becomes increasingly a matter of propaganda, mass information and attitudes rather than mere organized violence or, as Clausewitz defined it (On War, chapter 1) "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will." With a Ph.D. in labor relations, I would term 4GW the triumph of Saul Alinsky. The methods that Alinsky discusses in his book Rules for Radicals are very, very similar to the concepts of 4GW.

The transition from the second to the fourth generation of warfare parallels how management has changed from the days of the Ford assembly line to the days of self-directed teams, computer aided design, flexible management, just-in-time inventory systems and modular organizations. Rather than use artillery and then occupy an opponent's terrain, an entirely different set of issues becomes paramount: integration into the enemy's community; the interpersonal conduct of forces in the community after battle; cultural intelligence; reliance on intelligent special operations operatives; and emphasis on public relations. Lind argues that "(o)ne key to success in 4GW may be 'losing to win.'" Maintenance of state systems, which we failed to do in Iraq is also important, as is the observation that "many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war."

If Lind, Hammes and other advocates of 4GW are right, it seems to me that the response will not come from the state, which is bound by special interest groups. Rather, it needs to come from private individuals who respond to the terrorists' 4GW with counter-4GW. This would involve standing up to the media and our leaders who are motivated by personal interest in responding to special interest group pressure rather than the national welfare.

The chief source of informaton is of course the media. A second is academia. If insurgents and terrorists have used information to their advantage, then those who wish to respond need to work on exposing the rot in these institutions.

Earlier I watched The New York Times's Thomas Friedman on CBS News. Friedman was being interviewed as an expert on Iraqi policy. He made a few imbecilic points, each of which contradicted the other but had only one theme: attack President Bush. On the one hand, he argued that if the War in Iraq is like World War II, we have too few troops and we shouldn't have low taxes. On the other, he argued that America used to be in the business of exporting hope, but now it is in the business of exporting fear. I mean, which is it? Increase the number of troops, bring them home or what? The fact is that Friedman was unable to articulate a coherent alternative strategy for Iraq because he hasn't given it a moment's thought. Is Friedman the sort of person who should be viewed as an expert to be interviewed on national television? Or is he and the Times a joke?

It has become increasingly urgent for citizens to educate themselves about military strategy through books because the mainstream media, including some of my favorite sources like the Economist have not provided the public with a coherent framework for thinking about current events. Yet, Lind and Hammes provide one that is readily available.

Iraq and the Terror Threat

The New York Times (paid access) writes that a new intelligence report indicates that the terror threat from the Islamic world has grown in response to the Iraqi War, Guantanimo Bay and Abu Graib. The Times also indicates that prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 there was a similar report which argued that the invasion might increase support for political Islam and terrorism.

I don't have the polling facts, but let's say that popular dislike of the United States among Germans increased in Germany after Germany declared war against the US in 1941. Should we not have declared war on Japan in order to avoid the decline in popularity in Germany? The New York Times appears to think so.

The problem with the Times's reporting in this article ("Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat", Mark Mazzetti, September 24, 2006) and in general is its imbalance. In this article Mark Mazzetti examines only Type I but not Type II error. Type I error is the probability that the null hypothesis is true given a finding that it is false. Type II error is the probability that the alternative hypothesis is true, given a finding that the null hypothesis is true.

In plain English, you need to be aware of and control for the effect on terrorism of both invading and not invading. While it may be that the risk of terrorism has increased following the invasion of Iraq because of increased Islamic support for terrorism, it may also be that if we did not invade Iraq the risk of terrorism would have increased even more because terrorists would have perceived us as weaklings. Popular opinion is not the only necessary condition for terrorist threats. The ability and willingness to engage in terrorism are also important. It is entirely possible that these have been deterred while popular dislike for the US has increased. Better a hobbled terrorist infrastructure with hatred of us than a robust terrorist infrastructure with the entire world in love with us.

For example, we did not invade Iraq after the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and that was followed by the attack on the Cole in 2000. We did not invade Iraq after the bombing of the Cole in 2000, and that was followed by September 11, 2001. It is clear that the trend toward shorter time intervals between major terrorist attacks that evolved during the Clinton administration has been reversed. It was seven years between the World Trade Center I and the Cole. It was less than two years between the Cole and 9/11, but it has been five years since a major attack against the US outside of Iraq.

The intelligence report may be completely correct, but that might speak well for President Bush. Would the Times have liked to see the German people have more positive feelings about the US in 1945 than in 1935?

Ommission as per Charles Ellison of the University of Denver

Charles Ellison of the Center for African-American Policy of the University of Denver points out three additional major terror strikes during the Clinton years, namely Nairobi Kenya in 1998 and the car bomb explosion at the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam. In addition, there was the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Ellison writes:

>You may have inadvertently omitted the U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, Kenya in 1998 that killed 257 people and the car bomb explosion at the United States embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. These two explosions also resulted in he wounding of 4,000 people. In addition, we shouldn't forget the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia.

It was the 1998 Kenya bombing that attracted serious international attention to bin Laden for the first time and put him on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

Regards,


Charles D. Ellison
Senior Editor/Producer
Blackpolicy.org
Center for African American Policy
University of Denver

The Left's Plan to Stop Terrorism?

In his book The West and the Rest (ISI Books) Roger Scruton contrasts the evolution of the European nation state, attributable to such historical developments as Roman Law, where "strangers are expressly included in the web of obligation", with tribal rule and theocracies. Scruton reminds us of the importance of public spirit to democracy.

One of the interesting questions that is facing America is whether it is capable of facing up to a realistic military threat, or whether the media and liberal establishment are committed enough to anti-Americanism and a chimerical belief in world citizenship that they will ultimately succeed in tearing apart the nation by crippling our sense of citizenship.

For instance, although there has been considerable criticism of the Iraqi War, I have not heard any suggestions from the left as to how to stop terrorism. Instead, there seems to be an implied argument that terrorism does not exist, or that radical Islam poses no threat. This is easily refutable, ignorant nonsense.

So if liberals argue that the Iraqi War is wrong strategically, the question must be what is the liberal plan to stop terrorism? Indeed, a failure of the Bush administration has been to soft-peddle this obviously important objective (of fighting terrorism via the Iraqi War) to the point of denying it.

I do not believe that we are worse off with regard to fighting terrorism because of the Iraqi War. It might be arguable that the loss of American life isn't worth the strategic accomplishments of the Iraqi War. However to prove this would require facts that do not appear in the New York Times or elsewhere.

Al Qaeda recently issued a statement that it has 12,000 fighters in Iraq. If we were not accomplishing important strategic goals there, why would al Qaeda be deploying so much of its resources to Iraq? It would be nice to know everything, like the folks at the Times, Seymour Hersh, Bill Maher, Michael Moore and the long list of left-biased journalists and academics. Unfortunately, they are unschooled buffoons with respect to this question, and their views are, well, dumb.

Many liberal and left-wing Americans delude themselves about the nature of the terrorist Islamic threat. This is not new for the left, as the Stalinist left aligned itself with Hitler in 1939-1941, and Walter Duranty of the New York Times promised us that all was well in Russia during the Stalinist 1930s. Similarly, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger recommended to his Jewish relative that he remain in Germany in 1938. The Ochs-Sulzbergers have a long history of making idealistic recommendations that harm others. Now this crew assures us that Bernard Lewis is wrong, and there is not a thing to be concerned about. So what that Christians are lynched in Palestine; that Christians are lynched in Turkey; that Christians are murdered in Nigeria; that there is an ongoing Islamic-Christian conflict in the Phillipines; that there is a five-decade-old Islamic-Hindu conflict in India; that there is an Islamic-Russian conflict in Chechnya; that the Arab-Israeli conflict is six decades old; that we have been repeatedly bloodied by Islamic attacks? So what? Islam is a peaceful religion and anyone who disagrees is biased.

It may not be that liberal factionalism has prevailed. The most interesting race in the recent election was in Connecticut, where the anti-war Ned Lamont lost to a pro-war former Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Yet, the ceaseless anti-American propaganda coming from the left-dominated media is bound to take a toll.

The liberal-left's factional anti-Americanism can be seen in its attacks on Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. The media demonized Rumsfeld, but the liberal borg's arguments lacked grounding in fact or theory and contradicted parallel arguments that it had made about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the 1960s.

For the past 25 years I have taught my students David Halberstam's version of the management errors that Robert McNamara made during the Vietnam War that appear in Halberstam's book The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam argued that McNamara had allowed the military to manipulate him into sending excessive numbers of troops given the nature of the Vietnamese insurgency. In other words, Halberstam argued that McNamara was too willing to be manipulated by the military. This is a valid argument if fourth generation warfare necessitates a complex of propaganda, political and surgically targeted actions for which the military is unprepared.

Now, the media's criticism of Rumsfeld is that Rumsfeld did not listen to the military and so failed to send more troops.

In short, I don't think the criticisms can be correct because they are equally ungrounded, contradictory criticisms. If McNamara has been criticized for being gullible (and establishing statistical decision systems that did not screen for accurate inputs and so listened to a biased military too much), then why would Rumsfeld be criticized for not listening to an unbiased military? What theory or body of knowledge do the Times, New Yorker, and television networks rely on to make such criticisms? What delusions lead them to imagine that they know what they are talking about?

The other criticism of Rumsfeld that also strikes me as nonsensical is that he encouraged torture at Abu Gharaib and Guantanimo Bay. In the January 2005 issue of City Journal Heather McDonald published an analysis of the left media's torture accusations and thoroughly debunked them. Yet, the media has not addressed McDonald's facts.

The main vision of the Iraqi War ought to be that to stop terrorism a conflict in a Sunni nation was necessary and that democracy might be installed that will institutionalize resistance to terrorism. However, the main point is to stop terrorism. It might be that the Iraqi War can be criticized, but it does seem to me that, if al Qaeda has sent 12,000 troops to Iraq and is attempting to base an insurgency in Anbar (opposed by Sunni tribes), the United States has pursued an intelligent strategy and needs to grapple with the insurgency using fourth generation warfare, not traditional military warfare.

Perhaps the left and the media disagree. Then it is up to the left and the media to inform us as to what their plan to stop terrorism is. Do nothing and let them explode dirty bombs? Please tell us, Seymour Hersh and Thomas Friedman. What is your plan to stop al Qaeda? If the left, the Democrats, Seymour Hersh or Thomas Friedman don't have a plan, then the question becomes: why are they so unhappy with the Bush administration?

One possible reason, which is probably true of the far left, is that there is hope that America will be harmed. Many on the far left are outright anti-American and aim to sabotage legitimate attempts to stop terrorism because they, far left Democrats, dislike America.

Because of the danger of faction; and because of the threat that the extreme left potentially poses, conservatives must insist that the left explain: What is the left's plan to stop Islamic terrorism?

The Failure of American Public Debate

The New York Sun reports that various politicians and pundits have been offering pessimistic assessments about the Iraqi conflict. Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy expert from the 1970s and 1980s who did not predict the important emergence of Islamic terrorism in the millenium, advises us that the war in Iraq is not winnable. The same Sun article quotes John McCain as saying that "there's only one thing worse (than deploying more troops), and that is defeat." Today, the Sun quotes Senator Obama of Illinois as saying that "a substantial number of American troops ought to be withdrawn" from Iraq. Thomas Friedman of the Times (Paid access, November 8) insists that the Bush team arrived in Iraq with too few troops (ignoring that, like Friedman, the Bush team was mostly in the United States and that it relied on the US military, specifically Tommy Franks, to project troop strength). Friedman, bombastic and ill-informed as always, suggests either reshaping Iraq into a federation (bad) or leaving Iraq by a fixed date (worse).

What is fascinating about all of these analyses is the willingness to make strong or absolute assertions without the benefit of a falsifiable theory or a body of empirical evidence that would point to the viability of one theory over another. Rather, pundits like Friedman and Kissinger and politicians like Obama and McCain (with whom I viscerally agree) pretend to know what they are talking about.

What is revealing about the discussion about Iraq is not just the failure of US intelligence and strategic planners (on both the intelligence and military sides) to anticipate and devise an updated strategy that would anticipate the diverse tribal and religious differences in the Arab world and methods for effectively handling terrorism, but the degree to which the politicians, press and media continue to remain uninformed. The arguments being made in the public press suggest a failure of American public debate and an unwillingness to learn.

In particular, Kissinger, McCain, Friedman, Obama and their ilk have had many years to conceptualize an intelligent response to terrorism and to develop a method of proactively responding to strikes like 9/11. Yet, no ideas are forthcoming. Instead, given their assessment that the American military has failed to respond competently (a point concerning which they offer no information and are apparently utterly uninformed), the "pundits" and politicians carp critically but offer no body of falsifiable theory nor any empirical evidence for their endless complaints and criticisms. Those of us who have other occupations (I work in the human resource management field) are forced to spend our valuable time reading about Iraq because those who are paid to do so have done such an incoherent and, plainly put, stupid job.

For example, consider Kissinger's claim that the war in Iraq is not winnable. This is obviously false. We can win any war by redefining it as a total war and killing the entire country of Iraq. I am not suggesting this as an option. However, the use of our moral restraint as propaganda to attack us is a tactic that ought not be permitted to work indefinitely. Perhaps total war ought to be an option against population groupings that support terrorism. I'm not sure why saying it isn't is "realpolitik". Because Kissinger says so? But Kissinger hasn't come up with a solution to terrorism, so what does he really have to offer? Is he the kind of 17th century physician who used leeches to bleed patients? I suspect that the entire field of foreign affairs has this quality of quackery. So why is the public taking the quacks seriously?

The Iraqi war is certainly winnable. The question is which path maximizes the US's interests. One thing that I am certain of: defining the war as not winnable is not in the US's interests. Kissinger ought to reframe his analysis to make it more precise. Someone who has failed to grasp the nature of or project methods to resolve the terrorist assault on America, like Kissinger, ought to be busy revising his theories and doing some basic reading instead of offering advice that has proven unsuccessful in the past. Yet, I do not hear anything new.

It seems evident that in dealing with a multiplicity of terrorist groups the concept of winning and losing that held true through World War II may no longer apply. The question is, how to convince the people of Iraq to support a moderate government and how to convince them to take action to stop terrorist violence. This might involve securing control of specific territories, providing economic support in those areas, propagandizing to the remaining areas, targeting specific terrorists and eliminating immigration here to the United States. There are likely other approaches. One might be total war.

But we are not hearing about them. What we are hearing is that the US's media, press and politicians lack ideas.

John Kenneth Galbraith on the Iraq Study Group

Baker's and Hamilton's Iraq Study group exemplified the clichés and inept analyses that have characterized popular discussion of the Iraqi and Vietnam wars. The idea that a committee of many uninformed former politicians could arrive at an informed military strategy was as silly as the report's media attention.

David Farber's excellent book, Sloan Rules: Alfred P. Sloan and the Triumph of General Motors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), explains the Hamilton-Baker phenomenon. Farber writes very well. He and I do not agree politically, but I appreciate his historical knowledge, competence and fine writing. Sloan's own book, My Years with General Motors, also is a fascinating, brilliant book, but dull as dust because of Sloan's writing style (Sloan was an MIT-trained engineer whose vision created the mid-twentieth century "concept of the corporation", and is of course forgiven for dry writing). Farber adds to Sloan's book by providing considerable historical context, detail and rich writing. For example, in John Kenneth Galbraith's classic Great Crash 1929 Galbraith writes of the role of John J. Raskob, and Farber gives us wonderful detail about Raskob's role as GM treasurer and "pal" of the staid Alfred P. Sloan.

On p. 138 Farber reminds us of Galbraith's "acerbic" assessment of the series of White House meetings that Herbert Hoover called concerning the downturn in the stock market in late 1929. Sloan attended one of these meetings of "business, farm and even labor leaders" on November 21, 1929. Farber notes Galbraith's phrasing, that can easily be applied to the Iraq study group almost exactly 77 years later about "one of the oldest, most important--and unhappily one of the least understood rites in American life.":

"This is the rite of the meeting which is called not to do business but to do no business. The 'no-business meeting' Galbraith explained, served to create the impression that business is being done...'Even though nothing of importance is said or done, men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming important. Even the commonplace observation of the head of a large corporation is still the statement of the head of a large corporation. What it lacks in content it gains in power from the assets back of it...'"