The Road to War

View 789 Monday, September 09, 2013

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

President Barrack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

The Syrian story has become bizarre. John Kerry, an unlikely Secretary of State, said that if Bashar al-Assad were to turn over all his chemical weapons http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/us-syria-chemical-weapons-attack-john-kerry the US would not kill some Syrians and destroy Syrian property because someone in Syria used chemical weapons to kill some Syrians. Whether he meant that or not, President Putin immediately went to President Bashar Al-Assad and proposed that Syria turn in all his chemical weapons, and Assad said sure, I don’t need no chemical weapons. Don’t have many, who do I give them to?

Which is apparently where things stand now. There are rumors that President Obama is not pleased. There are rumors that President Putin is cackling gleefully. There are rumors that the US fleet has now been told to widen its target list. There are –

And that’s the way some people think it is, or at least they say so.

And why I tend to stay away from breaking news.

Tactics vs. Strategy

Dear Jerry,

Interesting & thought-provoking:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/09/sun-tzu-would-be-very-unhappy-with-obama-plans-for-syria-strike/?intcmp=HPBucket

Sun Tzu: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Syria is a symptom of a larger problem. Over the past 12 years (since the 9/11 attack) tactics to counter terror have distracted us from achieving any strategic focus.

We have now, as we have for the past decade, the finest, most lethal fighting force that mankind has ever seen.

There is no doubt that we would quickly dispatch any military challenger. From Fallujah, Iraq to Gardyz, Afghanistan, to other secret battles that are not yet public – we have won hundreds of tactical engagements and yet, somehow, we have yet to win a single strategic victory.

During World War II there was a clear strategy that was followed bring victory in that war in less than five years.

During the Cold War, there was a very clear strategy of containment and mutually assured destruction and all tactics were based on insuring the success of these larger strategies.

Our great tactical capacity now drives our Pentagon budget and creates the temptation for politicians to this lethal capability without regard to a strategy that would focus our efforts to achieve global success.

I would love to see some reasoned discussion of this, especially from a military point of view.

How’s Sable doing?

Thanks for all you do,

Tom Brendel

As I have observed before, if you want to be in a horse race you need a horse. If you want to intervene in a civil war you have to choose a side to support. If your goal is simply to keep everyone killing each other and you wish a pox on all their houses, you don’t want to go breaking things and killing people because someone will catch on. If you do not know your goals, it is hard to achieve them.

Our vet says Sable is the wonder dog: she was supposed to be dead months ago, but she’s a happy dog enjoying life. She got a hot spot on her tail and had to have some of it shaved, and she didn’t like that much, but that’s recovered. She doesn’t run much, and we bandage her cancer leg to protect it from being broken, and she does get a pain killer every day, but she enjoys a walk (in the evenings – it has been 100 here in LA most days – and she spends a lot of time being with us. Every day is a gift.

It’s lunch time.

Despair is a sin.

Obama’s Mideast policy

Hello Jerry,

Here is a short commentary on Obama’s Syrian (and Mideast in general) policy by a pundit in the ‘New Yorker’:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/08/obama-promises-syria-strike-will-have-no-objective.html

I must say that of the commentary that I have seen on the subject, this one is the one that best explains the policy as observed.

Bob Ludwick=

So even the New Yorker is on that track. Or is competing with the Onion.