View 844 Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Ebola has arrived

Ebola Diagnosed In U.S. For The First Time: CDC

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/ebola-us-cdc_n_5909394.html

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

 

• Patient Quarantined In Dallas For Possible Ebola Infection
• Ebola Diagnosed In U.S. For The First Time: CDC

The Huffington Post  | By Alana Horowitz

A patient was diagnosed with Ebola in the United States for the first time, CNBC reported, citing the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Until Tuesday, Ebola patients had only been treated in the U.S. after being diagnosed elsewhere.

The AP confirmed the news.
According to WFAA.com, the patient was being treated at a Dallas hospital.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas announced on Monday that one its patients was being tested for Ebola. The patient was kept in isolation and CDC officials headed to Dallas to meet with doctors there.

Texas health officials told KDFW that the chances of an outbreak in the Dallas area are very low.

UPDATE [6:08 p.m. ET]:

The CDC gave more details about the case in a Tuesday press conference.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director of the CDC, reported that the infected patient was traveling from Liberia and left on September 19th, arrived in the U.S. on September 20th, but had no symptoms of the disease during that timeframe. On September 24th, the patient developed symptoms, and then sought care on September 26th. On September 28th, the patient was admitted to the hospital in Dallas. Frieden stated that he had "no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks in the U.S."

This is a developing story…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/ebola-us-cdc_n_5909394.html

Given our travel restriction policies, it was inevitable; and meanwhile the President says we are sending 3,000 troops into the plague area. Despite all precautions, there is a reasonable likelihood that one or another of them will bring home a case of Ebola (and others will bring home sexually transmitted diseases, unless the Army has changed a lot since I was a soldier). It is unclear what military troops will do in the plague area, but President Obama has high confidence that something good will come of sending them.

Update 1200 hours Wednesday, October 1, 2014 :  It is now reported that Patient Zero (who has not yet been identified publicly) is in critical condition.  His sister days he developed symptoms and went to the Emergency Room, where he told them that he was from Liberia.  The ER physicians did not recognize his condition as Ebola, and he was given antibiotics and sent home.  (Precisely what the antibiotics were to treat is not known; his symptoms were those of flu.) His symptoms got worse and he returned to the Emergency Room, where he was diagnosed as having Ebola and was quarantined.  There has been no published information on the identity or location of the sister (who is resident in America) but one presumes she is in quarantine.

In later developments, CDC officials said that Ebola could be contracted by contact, but later defined ‘contact’ as ‘close proximity’, which was later defined as being within one meter of a person with developed Ebola symptoms.  It is said that patient zero’s Ebola had not yet developed sufficiently to be contagious when he arrived at the Dallas airport. Investigators are trying to discover who may have been within close proximity after his symptoms became sufficiently developed.

It is reported that the ambulance crew that transported him to the hospital is now quarantined. Nothing has been said about the ER personnel who treated him.

The Principle of the Objective

It is a military maxim that you do not commit troops without some idea of the objective: an achievable goal. There may be exceptions, as with Winston Churchill’s speech to Parliament:

You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/churchill.htm

But that is hardly the situation of America in the Middle East.

Arming the Kurds

Jerry,

I was surprised by your suggestion of using US forces yet again in an effort to create an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq and arming them in return for a portion of the oil revenue.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/

Are you really expecting Turkey to tolerate the existence of a Kurdish state on its border? There is considerable evidence that Turkey has with President Obama’s not so covert support been sponsoring ISIL as a proxy to not only overthrow Assad but subjugate the Kurds as well as the Shia of Iraq. You might recall that Turkey was so averse to the prospect of an independent Kurdish State or a Shia dominated Iraq that they steadfastly refused to allow a US Division to invade Iraq from the North through Turkey even when the international consensus was that Saddam did have WMD?

More importantly; why is it in the US interest to expend yet more blood and treasure to create such a Kurdish state? ISIL is allegedly pumping $6 million per day worth of oil or about $2 Billion per year. This is about as much oil as the US uses every day, perhaps every few days if you factor in the black market discount that ISIS is granting it’s illicit customers. If the US were still on a downward spiral of declining energy production, this might make sense. However; President G W Bush revived the US petroleum industry and President Obama’s determined efforts to FUBAR energy policy have been unsuccessful. With the US on track to become the world’s biggest oil producer and perhaps even a net exporter, the additional oil supply from an independent Kurdish state is simply is not worth the expenditure of the blood and treasure.

Of course the real issue is long term grand strategy. You have been one of the few visionary people who questioned the population bomb mantra and you are aware of the ongoing demographic implosion of Europe. I believe that you are also aware of the massive immigration of Muslims to Europe. Europe is still decades away from becoming majority Muslim, but the time when the majority of the youth in many European countries is Muslim is at hand. Europe has already ceased to be a reliable US ally and will become increasingly hostile n the future. Will it serve US interests to have to support such a client state in an overwhelmingly hostile region going into the future?

Given the demise of the Bush strategy, a retreat to neo-isolationism is the only sane policy. As Colonel Ralph Peters wrote, we must become willing to observe genocide with equanimity.

James Crawford=

The answer is complex, and you must not confuse military strategy with policy. I have always said that the best US policy toward the Middle East is to develop US resources, build energy independence – which we could have done for the money expended in the Gulf Wars – and minimize involvement in that area. Just as we should not become involved in the border disputes of Europe, we should not become entangled in the border disputes of the Middle East.

That has not been our policy. For good or ill, we have chosen to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs and involve ourselves in the religions disputes of Sunni, Shia, Druze, Alawite, and various other Muslim factions.

We have already chosen to intervene in the Syrian civil war. Our intervention in Libya does not seem to have been beneficial to the Libyan people – to all of them or indeed to any single group of them; one suspects that an honest plebiscite in Libya would return the verdict that they were better off with Khadafy – and our intervention in Syria may not have even that much success.

As to Turkey, while Turkey was an ally of Israel we had no real choices in the matter. But today’s Turkey is not the old government backed by the successors to Ataturk. Its military has been divided against itself and greatly weakened. Turkey has chosen a new course of action, and the notion that Turkey is an ally needs to be questioned.

If we are to examine US policy in the Middle East we have to look at realities, and one reality is that we are there; we have spilled much blood and destroyed much treasure, and only a small fraction of those were American blood and treasure.

Bombardment with inevitable civilian casualties has the inevitable effect of generating hatred for America among survivors, particularly if they do not see that we gained anything from doing it. Is it that we are simply addicted to breaking things and killing people?

We seem determined to bomb someone in the Middle East. We seem to believe we cannot simply walk away, seal our borders, and get on with building the City on the Hill as an example to all mankind. A North American self-sufficient state was the goal of the old Howard Scott Technocracy movement that grew out of the writings of Bellamy and Thorstein Veblen. It is very likely that it could be built. (Not necessarily a technocracy, although that is not so unlikely as it once seemed: ask the people of Detroit if they would prefer democracy or a government that delivered the mail, generated electricity, paved the roads, and organized a working Fire Department.)

If we are going to break things and kill people, we should be doing it to accomplish something. Establishing a Kurdish Iraq as part of a confederacy with the rest of Iraq is an achievable objective, and greatly preferable to a policy of cut and run after killing over a hundred thousand people.

Are there better strategies and policies? Given the present situation I don’t think of any.

Note, incidentally, that what I proposed is a great deal more than “arming the Kurds.” 

Bombing people in company with other Arab states is not an objective in and of itself.  Killing selected people with drones is not an objective.  Cut and run is not in my judgment a desirable objective at this stage or our involvement.  I would be very pleased to debate competing objectives.

Objectives 

Jerry,

I’ve really been enjoying your discussions on our current mishandling of things in the Middle East. Your objections to getting into that mess are well noted and long standing. They go all the way back to G.W. Bush and questioned what could we hope to achieve in going to war in Iraq.

Afghanistan was understandable since they were shielding our enemies but once that was no longer true, you rightly concluded it was time to come home with the admonishment that we could easily come back.

Of course, history chose a different path. We broke Afghanistan slightly and then hung around to ensure it was completely broken. We’ve lost lives there that should not have been lost; ours and theirs. Iraq was a complete fiasco. We broke it; broke it terribly, then sent in the horrid Bremer to ensure it would stay broken for decades. In both countries we did just about everything we could to ensure the local population not only hated us, they would continue to hate us for generations to come. Then President Obama pleads surprise that Iraq hated us enough to band together to destroy anything and everything we had tried to accomplish. The same will happen in Afghanistan once we leave and Barack will plead ignorance of why and how we underestimated the opposition yet again.

Through all of this you have been correct simply because you recognized one simple thing – we have no goal. Peace, democracy, even oil are nice concepts but they are not goals. Goals are measurable.

Topple the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, kill Osama bin Laden, capture or kill Saddam Hussein – these are measurable and once done can be demonstrated so that we know we are done and can bring our troops home.

In short, our goal should always be to accomplish something measurable and then come home. Part of any objective must be to identify when we are done.

To that end, I would contend that James Crawford is missing the point or perhaps has moved past it to the point where he is just ready to cut and leave as we did in Vietnam. You’ve also commented multiple times on how we had met the objectives in Vietnam, then gave it away. Mr.

Crawford, it appears, would want to do the same in the Middle East.

Isolationism is no longer an option. When 5 guys in shirt sleeves with box cutters can capture a plane and fly it into a building you can truly no longer be isolationist.

The overall objective, of course, is national security but that is an abstract and not measurable. In terms of the Middle East, what national security goals could our government implement that would be measurable and give some indication of when this will end? I would submit that the first should be the destruction of ISIS ability to finance itself. That is measurable since most of their funding is coming from oil. It does appear our military and perhaps even the president understand this and are sending our planes at the refineries to do just that. Another source would be financial support from governments. It is hoped our government is working to destroy that source of funding as well. Should both of these succeed in any large way, ISIS source of munitions would begin to dwindle. With air support taking out stockpiles of these munitions, the Kurds and Iraqi forces would have more success at defeating them.

The steps they take to do this should be left to them, however. The UN and the U.S. should not wag the finger of displeasure at the methods used however distasteful they are to our sensibilities, ethics, and media. It is the Kurds and Iraqis that must live with how they win their war and the steps they use to ensure ISIS or something like it does not rise again. The UN and our only other option is to send in ground troops to do the same job and then live with what we had to do to accomplish this part of our objective.

Braxton Cook

The goal in Viet Nam was to bring the ARVN up to the point that it could resist an armored invasion from the North with no US ground troops, but massive US air support including bombing the holy hell out of Hanoi and various North Viet Nam targets.  We achieved that goal as witness the 1973 invasion from the North with a full armored army: 150,000 came south and were resisted by ARVN with US air support.  The result was that fewer than 40,000 of the 150,000 invaders, and none of their armor, returned to North Viet Nam after a full defeat with fewer than 500 American casualties.  We won in Viet Nam but did not go on to victory, dictating peace terms in Hanoi.  By 1975 the Democrats were able to limit support of ARVN to 20 cartridges and two hand grenades per man, and withdraw American air support.  The North sent in another armored army with as much armor as the Wehrmacht had in the invasion of Russia.  ARVN had no American support on the ground or from the air, and Saigon became Ho Chi Minh city. See http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view349.html 

Our goal in Viet Nam was to allow the south to defend itself with American air support.  We achieved it, but then withdrew the air support.  I say this as a reminder that we should carefully choose our goals.

Understand that there may be a place for ISIS in this world.  It is not my business to determine that.  It is the business of the United States to pursue its interests.  We have interests in the Middle East, and we have allies there.  Building up a survivable Kurdish Iraq is a feasible and obtainable goal.  Bombing hell out of ISIS in Syria and Iraq with no actual purpose gives them more reason to hate us, but it is not certain what else it accomplishes.

r.e. Some principles of a Middle East Strategy 

Dear Jerry,

"Fortunately the Kurds claim and can hold a land pipeline path from the Iraqi oilfields to Turkey. Of course the Kurds may need a bit of help: and that is the rub. Holding land is primarily the business of those living on it, but holding it against foreign invaders armed and supplied by a major outside power"

Possibly. There are two major proposed pipeline projects from the Gulf area and Iran going to Turkey. One is promoted by a Shiite bloc including Iran, al Maliki’s former portion of Iraq and that part of Syria still ruled by Assad. The other pipeline project is favored by Sunni Arabs including the Saudis and others. This pipeline competition reflects the roughly 50-50 division in the Gulf area between Shiite and Sunni natural gas reserves.

NATO and the EU have a broad interest in Choice C, both projects. Meanwhile Vladimir Putin’s selection is Choice D, None Of The Above. Coincidentally enough the entity now called ISIS is presently operating on top of necessary segments of both routes. The question is whether this is by strategic design or the result of faulty strategic analysis by the ISIS leadership and its veiled backers.

Any proposed resolution of "ISIS" that favors only one of the pipelines will be inherently unstable. A settlement that includes both pipelines is a potential regional compromise acceptable to both blocs. This means resolving relations with Iran. This settlement will then require protection from meddling by evilly disposed external influences (insert Vladimir Putin & Sergei Lavrov pictures here).

The ISIS epic is another chapter in the emerging interconnected natural gas grid linking most of Africa, Europe and Asia. This has been steadily growing for 15 years. Seaborne Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports/imports will function to set marginal spot prices and level out regional discrepancies to a more uniform global price such as we see with oil. This will incidentally reduce Gazprom’s extreme regional profit margins in Europe towards a lower global price.

Growing US LNG exports will also sharply raise presently low US domestic n-g prices toward the same global price. Dow Chemical among others have been opposing LNG exports for precisely this reason. This will be one "price of empire" for the hoi polloi outside of Manhattan and a few other select zip codes.

LNG Exports plus Obama’s War On Domestic Coal guarantees American serfdom will be worse off in the immediate future than before the shale gas bonanza.

Best Wishes,

Anon

The casualties of drone warfare

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Seen in the Daily Mail — a study has concluded that our drone strikes are killing 49 innocents for every terrorist killed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208307/Americas-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-killing-49-people-known-terrorist-Pakistan.html

While that’s certainly an improvement over the mass bombings of World War II, I’m curious as to how this war can be prosecuted more effectively. I suspect that drone strikes *by themselves* aren’t terribly effective. If you blow up an AQ commander , his second in command will take over . The network will be degraded, but so long as they have the capacity to replace manpower, talent and expertise there will be little lasting effect.

I don’t, at this point, see any alternatives. We do not have an American Foreign Legion. What we have is air supremacy. So tit-for-tat targeting of terrorist cells from the air — something which allows us to say we’re "doing something" but is unlikely to permanently destroy the terror network — seems to be about all we’ve got. Would welcome alternatives.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Wednesday, 1 October, 2014  1200 hours:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/first-ebola-case-is-diagnosed-in-the-u-s-cdc-reports.html <http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-30/first-ebola-case-is-diagnosed-in-the-u-s-cdc-reports.html <–the hospital gave him drugs for his symptoms and sent him home 2 days before admitting him> <–the hospital ER gave him drugs for his symptoms and sent him home 2 days before admitting him; 12-18 people are believed to have come in contact during this time

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-ebola-patient-exposed-school-age-children-governor/story?id=25885934 <–5 school-aged children may have been exposed to the patient during the 2 days between the first patient’s ER visits, attended school (but are not presenting symptoms)

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/health/2014/10/01/thompson-dallas-county-ebola-patient-cases/16524303/ <–district schools identified: 2 elementary, 1 middle, 1 high; original patient is not a USA citizen

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/01/hospital-ebola-patient/16527143/ <–ER triage nurse asked for, was given, his travel history, recorded it; information failed to get to the rest of the ER team

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2775608/CDC-confirms-Dallas-patient-isolation-testing-returning-region-plagued-Ebola-HAS-deadly-virus.html <–began presenting symptoms 2 days before his first ER visit; this means he was exposing people for 4 days before being admitted & quarantined; Dallas Co. Health Dept. denying a second patient is being monitored

Also if you do the arithmetic for death rates in Liberia from the graphic in that UK article, it is quite possible that the strain presenting in Liberia is the stronger strain: the known death rate in Liberia is just over 86%. The weaker strain has a 60% death rate, whereas the stronger strain has a 90% death rate. However, Sierra Leone and Nigeria are indicative of how proper care can change that, because they both have death rates between 30-40%.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-ebola-texas-20141001-story.html <– original case upgraded to "serious (but stable);" where are his contacts?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/01/texas-ebola-patient/16525649/ <–second possible case

And this, folks, is how a pandemic can get started.

Stephanie Osborn

Interstellar Woman of Mystery

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com <http://www.stephanie-osborn.com/>

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 844 Sunday, September 29, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

The President famously announced last month that he did not have a strategy with regard to the organization that calls itself The Islamic State, is called regionally in Arabic Daash or Daesh (pronounced dahhsh”), and called by many “The Caliphate”. It is not clear that he has one now.

I was preparing this essay when the President decided to act and launched a vigorous onslaught of air raids on ISIS held territory, mostly in Syria. What he plans next is not clear.

I will discuss the current actions, but first the basics.

For well over a thousand years various Islamic factions have tried to establish a unified state which will be the secular ruler over all Islamic faithful. It will be ruled by the Caliph, the true steward of Muhammad, and in theory a true Caliph would be both General and High Priest.

When Muhammed died, many expected that Ali, his son in law and the first adult male convert to Islam, would become his successor. Instead the community of the faithful chose his father in law, Abu Bakr, as steward. Abu, on his death bed, chose yet another of Muhammed’s companions as Caliph. The fourth Caliph was Ali, Muhammed’s son in law, and the fifth was Husan, grandson of the prophet. Husan was opposed, rebellion and civil war broke out, and gave up the Caliphate. There has not been a universally recognized Caliph since. Husan died in 670 AD.

Within the two great factions of Islam there are many divisions. Some, like the Aliwites of Syria, claim to be the only true Muslims. Others, in particular the Druze, call themselves Unitarians and do not claim to be Muslims, although many Muslims, both Sunni (who accept the various successors to Husan as legitimate Caliphs) and Shia (who wait impatiently for the return of the true Caliph from the House of Muhammed) regard the Druze as an heretical sect of Islam. The Israelis often hire them as security guards, and Druze citizens of Israel are considered reliable. In Lebanon Druze are an important faction and have worked in cooperative governments there.

The Kurds are mostly Sunni, although it is widely said by other Sunni that “Kurds are Mohammedans compared to Infidels.” Kurds are not Arabs, being more closely related to the non-Arab Persians. Persians are Shiites. Persia and Iraq were conquered before 700 AD, by Arabs loyal to the early Caliphates before the Sunni/Shiite division solidified.

Perhaps that’s enough. It would take many pages just to list the potential factions, and outline their relations with each other, and it would be pointless because that changes from time to time.

The Middle East has enjoyed the joys of diversity for over a thousand years, and the result is that there are no stable republics or democracies there.

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing … but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

That should be enough to indicate that there never was a hope of establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq; the best we could have hoped for was a tolerant coalition government along the lines of the old Lebanon agreement, where the Marionites, Druze, Sunni, Shia, Orthodox Christians, and sometimes others shared power in a complex arrangement that allocated government offices – President, Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Minister of the Interior – to the various factions. Oddly enough it worked, and at one time Beirut was known as the Pearl of the Orient. That was all long ago upset by invading factions.

Attempts were made to stabilize Lebanon, but none worked very well. Eventually they kidnapped an American from the Embassy and killed him. Lebanese also kidnapped four Soviet diplomats in an attempt to get the USSR to put pressure on another faction. The KGB responded by discovering through serious questioning just who had taken their people, kidnapping a dozen relatives of the kidnappers, sending the faction leader his brother’s testicles, and indicating that more body parts would be forthcoming if their people were not released. It is reported that no other Soviet citizens were ever kidnapped, but of course the USSR ended in the early 1990’s.

The United States conquered Iraq and pacified much of that loose collection of former provinces of the Turkish Empire, trained and equipped an Iraqi army, and withdrew. Many of the weapons are now wielded by the soldiers of the Caliphate, and many ISIS recruits are Iraqi Sunni who prefer the Caliphate to the anti-Sunni government of Iraq. Of course Iraq is different now according to the President of the United States, but there does not seem to be strong confidence in either the stability or the tolerance of the New Iraq. We have tried to create an Iraqi army capable of defending the “nation”. The result has been that about a third of the country – a large part of Sunni Iraq — is in the hands of the Caliphate and armed with weapons America provided for the Iraqis to defend themselves with. It is not likely that any new attempt to build an Iraqi national army will be more successful than the last.

It is difficult to discern the goals of the latest America campaign. The main use of the military is to break things and kill people, but breaking things and killing people does not usually of itself lead to desirable results. What results we want other than dead Caliphate citizens – men, women, and children – has not been announced.

Yet the Caliphate is the enemy of Iraq, and could easily play the role that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq played in the last century. The Caliphate represents a long standing faction of the Middle East. They have beheaded Americans, but they are hardly the only ones to have done so. The KGB convinced many Lebanese factions that kidnapping Russians entailed quite high risks, and the lesson seems to have been learned. Retaliation by bombing is likely to be both bloodier and less effective than the KGB operations in Lebanon were.

Purely destructive military operations – bombarding an enemy seaport or other city or encampment as an example – are intended to accomplish a certain result: stop doing what you are doing, and stop other people from doing it, or more of this will happen to you. Roosevelt’s cable in the Pericaris Affair – This government expects Pericaris alive or Raisuli dead – was intended to convey that sentiment, and the seven US warships in the harbor gave some credence to the matter. Pericaris was restored to his wife and children and lived out his life in London, so there was no port bombardment or seizure of customs houses; the objective was achieved without that.

It’s not so clear in the present case. What does the Caliphate have that we want, and is bombing seemingly random targets in Iraq and Syria likely to achieve it?

And yet they do have something we want, and which used to be ours: large parts of Iraq with oil wells. They manage about six million dollars a day in profits from the oil they have seized. Moreover, many of those oil fields are claimed by the Kurds, who are, at the moment, the most reliable allies we have in that region.

Which ought to suggest a strategy.

There are a number of military “principles” taught to officer cadets. They vary from nation to nation, but they’re pretty much all the same. The 1952 Bugle Notes – the Handbook for incoming cadets at West Point – lists nine Principles of War.

The Principles of War

1. The Principle of the Objective

2. The Principle of the Offensive

3. The Principle of Mass

4. The Principle of Economy of Forces

5. The Principle of Maneuver

6. The Principle of Surprise

7. The Principle of Security

8. The Principle of Simplicity

9. The Principle of Unity of Command

USMA Handbook (1952)

There are other contenders for the title of Principle of War. Nearly every war college has a set. In nearly every case they begin with The Principle of the Objective. If you don’t know what your objective is, you aren’t going to win – how can you?

There appears to be no objective in the current campaign against the Caliphate. “Destruction of the Enemy” might be a stated objective: the Roman destruction of Carthage, with the slaughter of all the adult males, sale of all the women and children into slavery, pulling down and burning all the buildings of the city, and sowing its fields with salt was a pretty decisive victory, and Carthage was certainly never a problem for Rome after that. However, we are committed to do this with air power and perhaps a few forward observers, spotters and shot callers, and some training officers. We aren’t committing enough airplanes and weapons to kill all the ISIS citizens, and even if we did it is not a politically acceptable goal.

But there is an achievable objective: retaking every inch of land claimed by our Kurdish allies and held by the Caliphate. An American regimental combat team with a wing of good tactical ground support aircraft, supported by the Fleet with its air arm, could achieve that objective, and do so rather quickly. Having taken that land, we can turn it over to the Kurds. Much of the population will be Kurdish, although some of that land was formerly Kurdish but taken by Saddam Hussein to be distributed to non-Kurds as part of his Arabization program. One presumes the Kurds will deal with that situation, returning the land to its former owners, and expelling the current occupants, but we would take no part in that.

As to the oil fields, we keep them. Part of their revenue goes to us to pay for this operation. Some goes to the Kurds. The rest is a matter of negotiation us and what’s left of Iraq (Sunni and Shia).

At that point we have a decision to make. Do we need a long term expeditionary force in that area of the world? There are other factions, such as the Druze, who might make long term allies.  If so, we have the means for financing it – those oil wells – and a good source of recruits to an American Legion. Terms of service: Sign up for four years. At the end of that term, if we want you, you can sign up for a second four year term; if you don’t care to, or we don’t want you, we hand you something like $20,000 and a ticket to anywhere you want to go, but only a temporary US visa if you want to go there. Sign up for 4 more years – that makes 8 – and you leave with a better bonus and permanent residence in the US, with a path to citizenship. At the end of 8, if you want to re-up, it will be for 12 years, and you’ll get a pension, US citizenship, and decent severance pay. Obviously I’m making up the details, but the point is that if we’re going to have long term overseas forces we need to build them, not disrupt the lives of Americans. The notion of citizenship and a bonus after honorable military service is hardly new.

Whether we build an American Expeditionary Force – an American Foreign Legion – determines to some extent what our objectives in the Middle East must be. We can’t take land we don’t hold, and we can’t keep sending citizens there. Our voluntary military is the most effective military force in the history of the world, but it depends on the quality of the soldiers; and that means more than just the bleeding edge front line troops. If we are to remain a Republic we must have citizen soldiers. If we are to hold overseas territories we must have long term occupational troops.

Bombing the Caliphate without objectives is not a strategy. Intending to restore Kurdish Iraq to the Kurds is a feasible objective, and having made the restoration we can simply come home. If we intend to remain a power in the Middle East we will need an army capable of living there.

More another time.

: Paper Bear

But still with potency…

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htworld/articles/20140929.aspx

David Couvillon

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work

The Red Army had been purged to near impotence in 1940. It was able to revive and turn the course of the war at Stalingrad.  Napoleon was certain that the Russian Army could not oppose his Grand Armee. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters

Dr. Pournelle,

Thanks for this morning’s post. You’ve often remarked on competency in empire, and illustrated other points of empire, but with this essay you’ve synthesized some of the parts of the principles of competency that I think had not been brought together before.

I know that you have probably said little that you think is new…Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, at the very least, were there before you…but you’ve certainly put proven practice in contemporary context.

It worries me greatly that there is no strategy for the Middle East. I remember then Senator Obama harangued General Patraeus about the failure of strategy in Iraq. I wonder on which side of history the CINC is now. Many members of the administration were quick to use the word quagmire up to the first election, but I haven’t heard it recently.

-d

Destroying the enemies of our enemies without gaining anything in return for that is generally a poor strategy: we did that with Saddam Hussein, as I said at the time.  Wars should be fought for an objective.  We should enter wars from reason, not from passion. Passion is useful in winning battles, but it should have no part in planning new wars.  Napoleon learned that.

The Caliphate is our enemy, but the Caliphate detests Iran and Shiite Iraq.  See

Israel: ISIL Is Not A Problem In This Neighborhood

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20140929.aspx

Some principles of a Middle East Strategy 

Dear Jerry,

It’s not so clear in the present case. What does the Caliphate have that we want, and is bombing seemingly random targets in Iraq and Syria likely to achieve it?

And yet they do have something we want, and which used to be ours: large parts of Iraq with oil wells. They manage about six million dollars a day in profits from the oil they have seized. Moreover, many of those oil fields are claimed by the Kurds, who are, at the moment, the most reliable allies we have in that region. Which ought to suggest a strategy.

The Caliphate also "has" a land passage from the stranded natural gas fields of the Arabian/Persian Gulf leading to the gas pipelines in Turkey that flow onward into southern Europe.

This list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_gas_proven_reserves shows the immense potential natural gas competition for Putin’s Gazprom that is already proven to exist in the Middle East. Were any of several proposed pipelines to Turkey to be completed then Gazprom would lose its monopoly pricing power in southeastern and central Europe.

Keeping this entire region in a state of incipient war is therefore a clear strategic imperative for Vladimir Putin given his extreme dependence on high export prices for hydrocarbons. "Syria" can therefore be added to the list of "frozen conflicts" this ex-KGB thug turned international war criminal has been trying to manipulate. A similar motivation exists for Putin’s regular diplomatic interventions in Iranian affairs.

The converse is true for NATO, the EU and numerous Arabian/Persian Gulf states. The surest way to defeat Vladimir Putin and his cabal is to open up large new natural gas supply sources to Europe.

Stabilizing a land route for natural gas pipelines appears to require ground forces. The USA is the only candidate supplier of sufficient force. Meanwhile ISIS is proving to be a useful geopolitical magnet for US ground troops judging from many peoples’ statements. Exactly who has fomented ISIS and why is a fascinating question when considered from a cui bono viewpoint.

Best Wishes,

Anonymous

Dr Pournelle

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/some-principles-of-a-middle-east-strategy/

An American Foreign Legion. Interesting concept.

The question is where should we build our Sidi bel Abbes. Iraq is not a good site, but the AFL should take and hold the oil fields in southern Iraq to pay for the Legion.

As much as I like the idea, that way lies empire. And we Americans have no one I would want for emperor. Not even you.

Perhaps if Bill Buckley were alive . . . . but he would not take the job.

Wait a minute. Do you think Prince Harry would take the job?

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

Fortunately the Kurds claim and can hold a land pipeline path from the Iraqi oilfields to Turkey.  Of course the Kurds may need a bit of help: and that is the rub.  Holding land is primarily the business of those living on it, but holding it against foreign invaders armed and supplied by a major outside power – South Viet Nam comes to mind – requires some continuous assistance by another major power.  Sending American troops into that situation is neither politically acceptable nor long sustainable. It requires forces which understand that their lifetime career is as auxiliary forces assisting American allies.  Giving such soldiers an incentive to take such a thankless job is difficult but we are in a position to do so; there are plenty of potential recruits.  Moreover, Kurdish (former) Iraq can provide an American equivalent of Sidi bel Abbes with this advantage: Kurdistan is not an American colony, nor will it ever be.  The purpose of the Legion is to assist the Kurdish army, not to oppress it.  And when that is no longer needed, I make no doubt there are plenty of places in this world where long term forces who are not and cannot be colonists will be useful.  This is not Empire unless you wish it to be.  The French Foreign Legion existed throughout the entire Third Republic and never was a threat to it; indeed came to France for the first time in World War I.

We do not need forces who govern without the consent of the governed; but we cannot send Americans everywhere that our interests are threatened when it is known they will not stay long.

Syria: A Better Future

Next Article → AIR WEAPONS: Turkey Sticks It To Israel Again

September 19, 2014: Thanks to continued Russian logistical (spare parts) and technical (maintenance technicians and experts) help the Syrian Air Force continues to send up warplanes and armed helicopters every day to hit rebel targets. Currently the air force is concentrating on ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). The Assad forces are not bothered by civilian casualties, so the ISIL custom of using local women and children as human shields does not work in Syria. In any event the Assads want to kill pro-rebel civilians both to lessen their resolve and persuade some of them to leave the country. The fighting that began in 2011 has now killed about 200,000 in Syria and forced over 20 percent of the population (most of them rebel supporters) from the country. The Assads have encouraged this flight with attacks on pro-rebel civilians and leaving open escape routes to the borders.

The United States has declared that it will seek to destroy ISIL without putting any troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria. The U.S. also admits that this effort will likely go on for years. In part that is because the U.S. insists that no American troops will be sent in for offensive combat. By the end of the year there will be at least 5,000 American military personnel in Iraq and even more contractors. That number is expected to grow in 2015 is needed.  Meanwhile there will be American troops in combat. These will primarily be special operations troops from the army (Special Forces, Rangers), marines, navy (SEALs) and air force (para-rescue). There will be some similar special operations troops from American allies. Britain and Australia are already in and others are expected to join, including some Moslem special operations units that worked with NATO in Afghanistan. Some of these special operations troops will end up in eastern Syria. While ISIL knows a lot about avoiding smart bombs and missiles they also know that if they are to control their new “Islamic State” (eastern Syria and western Iraq) they have to use bases and concentrate gunmen to deal with armed opposition. There is no tactic that will make ISIL immune to smart bombs under those conditions, not if they still want to control territory. The U.S. has managed to get nine other countries (Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Denmark and Australia) to join an effort to destroy ISIL in Iraq and Syria. The coalition will provide more advisors, weapons, ammo and air power than the U.S. itself is currently providing. The Americans will probably continue to be the major contributor.

 

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/syria/articles/20140919.aspx

And yet Assad is tolerant of Christians and Druze at the same time that he is friendly with Iran; while the United States is pounding on ISIL, which is an enemy of Assad and Iran, and is tolerant of no one. We will not be sending in American troops, and we have no objectives, and if we did we have nothing with which to hold them if they were acquired.  This is not a strategy.

Stalingrad

The Red Army had been purged to near impotence in 1940. It was able to revive and turn the course of the war at Stalingrad. Napoleon was certain that the Russian Army could not oppose his Grand Armee.

——————

Due to these factors

1) Hitler insisted on this Stalingrad campaign – foolish.

2) Western Allied Strategic Bombing, which, if not crippling the German War effort, added an element of uncertainty.

3) Hitler ugly racial theories caused occupied countries to conduct Guerrilla warfare.

4) The USSR outnumbered Axis by about 3 to one.

5) The Axis was unprepared for the Russian Winter.

And other things, many of which were Axis Mistakes which they did not have permission to correct.

B

Some of those factors may not have played out as you think, but the point was that despite Stalin’s inept handling of the Red Army (which became the Army of the Soviet Union or the army of the glorious homeland during that war) it was able to slow the Wehrmacht and eventually bring it to a halt, recover, and march westward to Berlin.  Underestimating Russian patriotism is a mistake. Underestimating Russian capability when faced with danger to the homeland has historically been a disastrous mistake. Do not count Russia out, and do not underestimate the ingenuity of Russians when ingenuity is needed.

This President’s Latest Failure

Normally, when the policy makers are crying "intelligence failure", it’s actually a policy failure. Intelligence failures happen, but not as often as policy makers would like the general public to believe.

Remember Condi? "I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." But, they called it an "intelligence failure" and created more bureaucracy. Well, now we have this:

<.>

President Barack Obama’s intelligence briefings have provided him with specific information since before he won re-election in 2012 about the growing threat of the terror group now known alternatively as ISIS and ISIL, an administration insider told MailOnline on Monday.

‘Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president’s daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012 election,’ said a national security staffer in the Obama administration who is familiar with the content of intelligence briefings.

The staffer declined to share anything specific about the content of those briefings, citing his need to maintain a security clearance.

But ‘it’s true,’ he said, ‘that the [intelligence] community was sending pretty specific intel up to us.’

‘We were seeing specific threat assessments and many of them have panned out exactly as we were told they would.’

</>

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774122/Obama-accurate-intelligence-ISIS-BEFORE-2012-election-says-administration-insider.html

The article also alleges this president takes his daily briefings in writing so that nobody can testify on having warned him about anything in person.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It is being said in Washington that the President doesn’t sit through the briefings nor read the intelligence reports daily. Apparently they bore him.  I can understand that, and it may be that he makes that up by having a weekly briefing that summarizes; still, he must have got the notion that ISIS was the “junior varsity” from someone.  I can’t think that it came from the Company, so who has been telling him that?  And of  course the Benghazi fiasco was a classic failure of intelligence and will.

This President seems so determined to have all the troops out of the Middle East or at least out of Iraq and Afghanistan (although Afghanistan is not really Middle East, but leave that) that he can think of nothing else and listens to nothing that might contradict it.

Determining a policy regarding the Caliphate is very difficult.  They want to establish themselves as a nation. We have no real alternatives, except in Kurdish Iraq; but there we do have an alternative.  It will take a full regimental combat team – say a Division to be sure – and a wing of really good ground support aircraft, but that should be more than sufficient to establish the Kurds in control of all of their area of Iraq.  What we do about the central Sunni section of Iraq is another story.  Ideally, that would go to Jordan, which should have had that section in the first place.  There is the old “United Arab Kingdom” agreement that may actually prove useful, if we are bold enough to think that way.  Sunni Iraq is not going to lie down and be run over by Shiite Iraq. A long “civil war” between Sunni and Shiite regions is possible, but again not in anyone’s interest.   For the moment, one attainable objective would be establishment of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq.  It would be nominally Sunni (“Kurds are Muslims compared to infidels”) but not fanatically so.  It would be fairly wealthy; and judging by the record of the existing Kurdish areas since the fall of Saddam, fairly stable, not requiring any great commitment of American troops.  That is possible and attainable.

Other objectives would become possible once that was attained.

I doubt that our lack of coherent policy in Iraq is entirely or even mostly due to failure of our intelligence operations.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Minor Internet Problems. Still at work. 

The President has not chosen the strategy I would have chosen, but at least he is Doing Something.  More later.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/climate-science-is-not-settled/

climate change

Assuming the planet is 4,500,000,000 years old and we have been collecting weather data for approximately 200 years, how can anyone assume that we know anything about the planets overall weather/climate. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/climate-science-is-not-settled/

This sounds to me like finding a single grain of sand and trying to describe an entire beach that you have never been to.

Robert

Not a perfect analogy, but applicable.  We just don’t know.  We don’t even know what has effectively stopped the warming effects of the last fifteen years although CO2 production has risen by a lot in that time.  If you have not read https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/climate-science-is-not-settled/ you should.  It is an important work by a Democrat scientist who has had access to all the information available.

The Kurds have halted the daash near the Syrian/Turkish border. 

Kurds Say They Have Halted ISIS Advance Near Syria-Turkey Border

by Scott Neuman

Kurdish fighters claim to have halted an advance by self-described Islamic State militants in an area of the Turkish-Syria border region that has seen masses of refugees fleeing the fighting in recent days.

Reuters quotes a spokesman for the YPG, the main Kurdish peshmerga group in the region, as saying "fierce clashes" were still underway with ISIS, but that the extremist group had been halted in its advance just east of the town of Kobani in northern Syria. The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirms that the group calling itself the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, have not made any substantial gains in the past 24 hours, Reuters says.

NPR’s Deborah Amos reports that Kobani "had been a safe enclave for Syria’s Kurds about 10 miles from the Turkish frontier, but since June, ISIS has been attacking it and stepped up these attacks with tanks and artillery over the past couple of days."

The intense fighting, she says, is what has caused an "exodus of people" across the border into neighboring Turkey. The estimate of the number of refugees that have crossed over in recent days varies, but Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus has put the number at 130,000.

As we reported over the weekend, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees have fled.

By way of background, The Associated Press says:

"The extremists’ offensive on the Kobani area near the border with Turkey prompted the leader of Iraq’s Kurdish region to urge the international community to intervene to save Syria’s Kurds from the militant onslaught.

"In a statement posted on his website, the president of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, said the Islamic State group’s ‘barbaric and terrorist acts’ on the Kobani area in northern Syria ‘threaten the whole entirety of the Kurdish nation and it has targeted the honor, dignity and existence of our people.’ "

Turkish security forces, meanwhile, clashed with refugees, and Turkey has closed some of its border crossings. The BBC says: "Some of the new arrivals are being sheltered in overcrowded schools, as Turkey struggles to cope with the influx."

 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/22/350550541/kurds-say-theyve-halted-isis-advance-near-syria-turkey-border

There is no information on whether this was known to the Pentagon mission planners, but it is important, and someone should know.  This is a prime place for American air action.  The Kurdish fighters are not capable of resisting the caliphate without help.  Loss of this area in Northern Syria where we already have people on the ground whom we can trust would be a disaster.

Kurdish leader calls for ‘all-out resistance’ against ISIS offensive

ANKARA, Turkey –  The imprisoned leader of a Kurdish rebel group fighting Turkey has called for a mass mobilization of all Kurds against the Islamic State militant group which is fighting Kurdish forces in Syria.

In a message relayed through his lawyer late Monday, Abdullah Ocalan said: "I call on all Kurdish people to start an all-out resistance against this high-intensity war."

"Not only the people of Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) but also all people in the north (Turkey) and other parts of Kurdistan should act accordingly," lawyer Mazlum Dinc quoted Ocalan as saying.

The call came hours before the United States and five Arab countries on Tuesday launched airstrikes against the Islamic militants in Syria.

Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence on a prison island near Istanbul, leads the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has long fought Turkey for autonomy. PKK is affiliated with a Kurdish party in Syria whose armed wing is fighting the Islamic State group in northern Syria.

The Islamic State group’s offensive against the northern Syrian city of Kobani, a few miles from the Turkish border, has sent 130,000 refugees to seek safety in Turkey in the last few days.

Hundreds of Kurds from Turkey have clashed near the frontier with Turkish police, who fired tear gas and water cannons. The Kurds say Turkey is hampering their efforts to cross into Syria and help their brethren.

Kurds dominate a region that straddles Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Ocalan also accused Turkey of stalling peace negotiations aimed at ending a three-decade-long conflict, while Murat Karayilan, a PKK commander based in northern Iraq, accused Turkey of collaborating with the Islamic militants and declared the peace process to be dead, the pro-Kurdish news website Firat News said.

However, Karayilan said Ocalan would have the "final say" on the future of peace efforts.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/23/kurdish-leader-calls-for-all-out-resistance-against-isis-offensive/

The most important thing to remember about air power is that it is best at breaking things and killing people, and it is much easier to break things than to rebuild them. Choosing what things must be broken, and who shall be killed, is the essence of strategy in general, and target selection in particular.  You need to know what you should break, and when; and who should die.

There remain other things to worry about:

Fresh Graves Point to Undercount of Ebola Toll

By ADAM NOSSITERSEPT. 22, 2014

 

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery’s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day’s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies.

The backs of the battered secondhand vans carrying the dead were closed with twisted, rusting wire. Bodies were dumped in new graves, and a worker in a short-sleeve shirt carried away the stretcher, wearing only plastic bags over his hands as protection. The outlook for the day at King Tom Cemetery was busy.

“We will need much more space,” said James C. O. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger, as a colleague cleared the bush with his machete.

The Ebola epidemic is spreading rapidly in Sierra Leone’s densely packed capital — and it may already be far worse than the authorities acknowledge.

Continue reading the main story

Sierra Leone’s Aggressive Attack on EbolaSEPT. 19, 2014

Since the beginning of the outbreak more than six months ago, the Sierra Leone Health Ministry reported only 10 confirmed Ebola deaths here in Freetown, the capital of more than one million people, and its suburbs as of Sunday — a hopeful sign that this city, unlike the capital of neighboring Liberia, had been relatively spared the ravages of the outbreak.

But the bodies pouring in to the graveyard tell a different story. In the last eight days alone, 110 Ebola victims have been buried at King Tom Cemetery, according to the supervisor, Abdul Rahman Parker, suggesting an outbreak that is much more deadly than either the government or international health officials have announced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/africa/23ebola.html?_r=0

WHO: 21,000 Ebola cases by November if no changes

LONDON (AP) — New estimates from the World Health Organization warn the number of Ebola cases could hit 21,000 in six weeks unless efforts to curb the outbreak are ramped up.

Since the first cases were reported six months ago, the tally of cases in West Africa has reached an estimated 5,800 illnesses. WHO officials say cases are continuing to increase exponentially and Ebola could sicken people for years to come without better control measures.

In recent weeks, health officials worldwide have stepped up efforts to provide aid but the virus is still spreading. There aren’t enough hospital beds, health workers or even soap and water in the hardest-hit West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

EBOLA: Doctor says border controls critical

Last week, the U.S. announced it would build more than a dozen medical centers in Liberia and send 3,000 troops to help. Britain and France have also pledged to build treatment centers in Sierra Leone and Guinea and the World Bank and UNICEF have sent more than $1 million worth of supplies to the region.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/22/world-health-organization-ebola/16076067/

Ebola Doctor Says Border Controls Critical

A Florida doctor who helped fight the expanding Ebola outbreak in West Africa says the disease can be stopped, but only if nations quickly step up their response and make border control a priority. (Sept. 22) AP

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/world/2014/09/22/16065139/

Battling the Ebola outbreak

http://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/news/world/2014/09/03/battling-the-ebola-outbreak/7413993/

We are putting boots on the ground in terrible places, and what will they bring home to their families?  At least they are not likely to be shot by one of their own officers shouting Allahu Akbar in a workplace incident; on the other hand if they are careless in any way I doubt they will be allowed to come home to recover.  But then there will be political pressure to allow them to come home. Of course Ebola will never mutate to be carried by any air or insect borne mechanism, so it can’t possibly be brought back to the United States. Join the Army and see the world.  Yes, it’s an all volunteer army, but one suspects those joining did not quite foresee the full extent of what they volunteered for. But it is not usual to send 3,000 soldiers to an epidemic area, while sending none to an area where we have allies under ground attack in a critical area.

Perhaps we need to form a special army of volunteers for this sort of service.  A foreign legion…

Hillary: ‘Hello Iowa — I’m back!’

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/217678-hillary-hello-iowa-im-back

 

View 844 Sunday, September 21, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

CHAOS MANOR REVIEWS returns. http://chaosmanorreviews.com/

And if you did not see yesterday’s Climate Science Is Not Settled, you should find it worth your while whether you are a Believer or a Denier.

The California 1914 Sixth Grade Reader continues to draw praise as new readers discover what sixth grade readers – not advanced placement, or college prep students, but sixth grade students many of whom would not go to high school – read and enjoyed 100 years ago, when the heritage of western civilization was not despised by the self-anointed intelligentsia.

I am preparing an essay on a US strategy for the Middle East that has a chance of working to give us a positive outcome. Not the impossible glorious results we held back in the days of “the End of History” when serious intellectuals believed that liberal democracy would be the inevitable replacement for all the despotisms, radical ideologies, tyrannies, kleptocracies, failed states, and other unpleasant places, and that it was our duty to march with the flywheel of history and help implement this Hegelian inevitability. Those familiar with Marxism would have noticed that this sounded much like the Communist Party line in the days when many believed that Communism was the inevitable end of history; many former Marxists understood that and cheered.

Many who sent our troops and treasure into Iraq and Afghanistan truly believed that before we left those places they would be nascent liberal democracies, and help point the way for those laggard nations like Russia that were resisting the wave of the future. We were also encouraged to meddle in many places. We took sides in the Balkan Wars without understanding what was at stake, and with no discernible American interest to be served we alienated Russia while gaining no friends.

Now Russia is reverting to strengthening its nuclear arsenal and upgrading its delivery systems as the Russian rulers see NATO troops coming closer and closer to the Russian border, and hear stern warnings about ‘interference’ in territories that have been in the Russian sphere of influence for centuries. Libya is a shambles, Egypt has barely been rescued from possible incorporation into the Caliphate by the return of the Mamelukes, Jordan holds on but feels increasing pressure, the Iraqi army arms the Caliphate with all the modern military equipment paid for by the people of the United States while the Iraqi soldiers who recently persecuted Sunni Iraqis find themselves running from the ISIL Sunni.

There is a way out of this. It is not all the way out, and it involves some losses; but it does avoid disaster. I am still writing this.

I have accumulated a number of stories that ought to be better known. Here are a few.

Looking for Angel to Save Bradbury’s Hugo

Posted on September 18, 2014

Ray Bradbury’s 2004 Retro Hugo for Fahrenheit 451.

Phil Nichols of Bradburymedia would like to see Ray Bradbury’s Retro Hugo for Fahrenheit 451 reunited with the collection at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at IUPUI. That Hugo is on the auction block until September 25. The current bid is $5,000.

http://file770.com/?p=18829

 

Joshua Kaplowitz

How I Joined Teach for America—and Got Sued for $20 Million

An idealistic new Yale grad learns up close and personal just how bad inner-city schools can be—and why.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html

 

Ebola’s Warning for an Unprepared America

By Scott Gottlieb And Tevi Troy

The world is finally mobilizing to wage a muscular fight against Ebola’s catastrophic spread through West Africa. President Obama has put the Pentagon in charge of a robust, 3,000-person U.S. relief effort in the stricken areas. This is a positive step, but the world is still dangerously ill-prepared for the fight against pandemic outbreaks.

In the case of Ebola, we were late to the battle and are now focused too narrowly on places like Liberia while failing to see West Africa as one big outbreak. We also remain too dependent on outdated tools and strategies in fighting the virus, and are tethered to an effort not yet scaled to the challenge.

While Ebola may still be contained, other potentially calamitous threats are out there. MERS, SARS, avian flu and other illnesses could re-emerge at any time. In the American Midwest, for instance, a novel virus classified as Enterovirus 68 has recently sent some 300 children to the hospital in respiratory distress, with no available antiviral therapy or vaccine. We need to rethink our preparedness and adopt a more modern approach for dealing with these and other looming outbreaks.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/scott-gottlieb-and-tevi-troy-ebolas-warning-for-an-unprepared-america-1410910044

An Obsolete Nuclear Treaty Even Before Russia Cheated

The U.S. should withdraw from the INF and upgrade our arsenal to match the nation’s global responsibilities.

By John Bolton And John Yoo

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine are consistent with its efforts to re-establish hegemony in the former Soviet Union. Strategically, however, newly revealed Russian intermediate-range nuclear weapons are just as dangerous, and may be worse. Either way, Moscow’s arms-control treaty violations give America the opportunity to discard obsolete, Cold War-era limits on its own arsenal, and upgrade its military capabilities to match its global responsibilities.

In late July, the Obama administration publicly revealed that Russia had violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. The INF treaty enhanced European stability at the Cold War’s ending, easing concerns about a Götterdämmerung meltdown-scenario as the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union collapsed.

Russia has extensively tested a new ballistic missile, the RS-26 Rubezh, which violates the INF. Despite the country’s demographic and economic decline, Moscow also is overhauling its nuclear and conventional arsenal, adding new, multiple-warhead ballistic missiles, and suspending the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Russia claims that new threats along its southern border and the rise of China require modernizing its nuclear stockpile. "Why is it that everyone and anyone can have this class of weapons and we and the United States cannot?" Sergei Ivanov, President Vladimir Putin‘s chief of staff and former defense minister, said last year about intermediate-range missiles.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/john-bolton-and-john-yoo-an-obsolete-nuclear-treaty-even-before-russia-cheated-1410304847

 

20YY: The Future of Warfare

Paul Scharre and Shawn Brimley

The U.S. military is at a critical juncture. With the end of two wars and a sharp drawdown in defense spending, investments over the next several years will set the military’s course for decades to come. The Pentagon can make smart investments now to prepare for the future, or it can continue to cling to “wasting assets,” legacy platforms and concepts that will be less and less survivable in a future of widely proliferated precision-guided weapons. Without a clear vision of what future force to build, however, bureaucratic inertia and existing programs of record will carry the day.

A new report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) articulates a vision of unmanned and autonomous systems as the centerpiece of an emerging warfighting regime dominated by robotics. The proliferation of anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) technologies to both state and non-state actors is only a precursor to an even more lethal regime characterized by swarms of networked, intelligent machines. Because many of the underlying technologies behind robotics are driven by commercial sector innovation in information technology, the U.S. defense community does not have a monopoly on this technology. Unlike previous innovations like GPS, stealth technology, or advanced sensory capabilities, the robotics revolution will happen whether the U.S. moves first in this arena or not. While the United States enjoys a small lead in unmanned and robotic systems today, other actors are moving aggressively. Scores of states have unmanned vehicles, as do some non-state actors. Autonomous drones can be purchased off-the-shelf, allowing a single terrorist to field a swarm of kamikaze drones. Last month, a hacker demonstrated the ability to use a drone to hack and take control of other drones, raising the specter of a “zombie drone” air force. The robotic warfighting regime is barreling down upon us at an alarming rate, and the U.S. military will need to be more adaptive and innovative or risk falling behind.

20YY: Preparing for War in the Robotic Age is the first report in a multi-year initiative that CNAS has launched examining the impact of emerging technology on the future of warfare. Rapid changes in robotics, autonomy, networking, and computer processing have the potential to dramatically change the character and speed of armed conflict.

http://warontherocks.com/2014/01/20yy-the-future-of-warfare/

 

With genetic testing, I gave my parents the gift of divorce

Updated by George Doe on September 9, 2014, 7:50 a.m. ET

I’m a stem cell and reproductive biologist. I fell in love with biology when I was in high school. It was the realization that every cell in my body has the same genome and DNA, but each cell is different. A stomach cell is not a brain cell is not a skin cell. But they’re reading from the same book of instructions. With 23andMe, you get your personal genome book, your story. Unless you have an identical twin somewhere, that genetic makeup is unique to you.

Last year, I taught a course about the genome. For one of the lessons, I demonstrated the process of acquiring a tissue sample — in this case saliva — and sending it off to 23andMe to look at a million letters in my genome. 23andMe analyzes them, and spits out a report telling you things about yourself at the genetic level. Then you get the awesome bonus of learning about your ancestry: finding out which parts came from Europe, Africa, Asia.

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-gave-my-parents-the-gift-of-divorce-23andme

 

You can guess what happened next.

Is Artificial Intelligence a Threat?

Photofest

By Angela Chen

When the world ends, it may not be by fire or ice or an evil robot overlord. Our demise may come at the hands of a superintelligence that just wants more paper clips.

http://chronicle.com/article/Is-Artificial-Intelligence-a/148763/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

 

And you have certainly seen other variants of the “grey goo” scenario. But just because someone has thought of the danger does not mean that someone else will not implement it. Bureaucracies are capable of many horrors.

Rotherham Child-sex Victim Confronts Muslim Abuser, Gets Arrested for Racism

September 15, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield

Nothing has changed. The police covered up the Muslim sexual abuse of 1,400 British girls, in some cases arresting the girls and their fathers, but not the Muslim perpetrators.

Now it’s more of the same. (via Instapundit)

A victim of Rotherham’s child sex abuse scandal confronted a man she says groomed her – but was left shocked when she was the one arrested.

The woman was shocked when she saw the man walking through the town’s centre on Friday and decided to challenge him over the allegations.

But she was tackled by two police officers and pushed up against a wall during her ‘thuggish’ arrest, a witness has said.

‘A police van came and six male officers piled out. ‘Two of them dragged her away, handcuffed her, put her against a wall and then shoved her into the back of the van.’

A spokesman said: ‘The woman was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.’

I highly doubt that a police van with six officers is dispatched everyone time someone in South Yorkshire is suspected of being drunk. The key there is “Racially”. A Muslim complained and the hounds were released.

The same police who wouldn’t step in when young girls were being raped, are on the go whenever a Muslim’s feelings are hurt.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/rotherham-child-sex-victim-confronts-muslim-abuser-gets-arrested-for-racism/#.VBgqfIVQwjo.twitter

 

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.