His latest mad dash (Hyah! Mule!) “Obama First Test” is half partly right and half completely wrong.

President Obama’s first test in the national security arena is likely to come not from al Qaeda or Iran or the Taliban but from within his own Democratic Party. Powerful constituencies in that party, the Feminists and the gays, will demand that he open the ground combat arms to women and allow acknowledged homosexuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. If he agrees to either of these demands, or both, he will begin his Presidency by doing immense damage to the fighting ability of the America military.

First and foremost, I simply can’t fathom anyone forcing the Army and Marines to open the “ground-pounding grunt” fields to women. There are good reasons to keep women out of infantry, engineers artillary and a few other professions. Simply put, any standard fitness routine will crank out stronger men than women. There are plenty of arguments to be made about agility, flexibility, dexterity, whatever, but when it comes to hauling a M-240B, with tripod and ammo, in addition to food clothing and whatever else a woman is never going to have the raw strength of a man. Ditto pounding pickets, loading Paladin rounds, doing a fireman’s carry, etc. The best metaphor I’ve ever heard is that when two guys are goofing around and wrestling their primary concern is winning (within bounds), when a guy is wrestling with his girlfriend his primary concern is not hurting her.

But Lind really heads out on a shaky limb when he speaks of “the gays” as unfit for duty for any of the same reasons as women.

Barring indisputable sissies, of which there are a fair few gay, straight and other, there is no reasonable explanation for why a gay man should not be allowed to volunteer to defend his nation. He tries to conjur up the usual imagery of two dudes doing it in the shower or of young Pvt. Billy getting raped in his foxhole by the evil predatory gay man and ends up conjuring nothing more than a ridiculous idea that no one with any sense would accept.

First, militaries must represent the society they spring from. There were grim forecast of death and destruction when the services were integrated, and there were unpleasantries. The result was a better, stronger, military. The modern U.S. military must represent the U.S., and our nation increasingly is ambivalent about homosexuality. This is, despite protestations to the contrary, a promotion of the Founder’s dream of creating a nation where “all men are created equal,” (which isn’t to say we haven’t fudged other parts of the Founder’s dream.)

Second, to assume a gay man’s future service would be lessened because of his sexuality is also to declare that all past service by homosexuals is lessened. You’d have to be stupid to assume that none of them men killed at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, Verdun or the Ardennes Forest were gay. You’d have to be insane to think none of the names inscribed on the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial are names of gay men. Should those names be chisled away?

And you’d have to be way adrift on moron sea to think none of the volunteers in our current military are gay.

Bottom line, there are gays serving in our military, openly. They are deploying with regularity. And the only ones that seem to care are the pogues in charge of the linguists program who are merrily booting Arab linguists (good thing we don’t need any of those right now.) Even when I was in, way back yonder from 99-03, there were guys that didn’t leave much question. They neither flaunted it nor hid it and behaved almost like you’d expect adults to behave. Other than a few oafs that remained perpetual privates, no one cared, and I never heard of anyone getting an unwilling rogering in the foxhole, either.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Lind, this column was a stinker. History is full of gay men serving in and even, ahem, leading militaries, and the nation most famous for turning out a true turd booting military culture was notorious for everyone shagging just about everyone else.

I’ll give a nod to Lind for being an idealist, there’s nothing wrong with that, and he’s a brilliant military thinker. But he also is an ivy league educated, Washington worker. He’d be about as comfortable slamming Bud Light with grimy Army Privates as he would be on a bed of nails. So when he writes things like,

One of the most basic human factors is that men fight to prove they are real men. They join fighting organizations, whether the U.S. Army or U.S. Marine Corps or MS-13, because those organizations are made up of fighting men. Their membership is a badge of honor that says, “We’re not sissies or pansies. We are men who fight, serving alongside other men who fight.” That tells others and themselves they are real men.

If ideologically-driven policies deprive fighting organizations of their ability to convey that message, men who want to prove they are real men will not join. Instead of men who want to fight and will fight, they will end up recruiting men who join for good pay, or education benefits, or because they can’t get a civilian job. Armies like that may fight when they have no other choice, but if they come up against opponents who want to fight, they will be in trouble.

I feel like he needs to be sat down for a good talking to. Bill, history is full of people who join up for pay, for the benefits and because they’re too aggressive, too undisciplined and too uneducated to do anything else. I’ve served with them, starved, roasted, froze, marched, suffered and at the end of the day gotten plowed like a champ.

Try feeding a Marine lance corporal or a young airman with a 19-year old pregant wife all that ideological stuff and be prepared for some weird looks. People serve for all sorts of reasons, and if a man wants to raise that right right and spend 3,4 or 20 years pounding pickets or hauling mortars we shouldn’t be in the business of stopping them.

What we’re left with is sifting through the rubble and the propaganda to find out what exactly happened down there. U.S. public relations folks are doing their standard routing of maintaining everyone killed was, if not another Hitler, at least a Pol Pot. The Syrian’s story is that it was a construction site full of people simply going about their day.

Of course, the multi-headed Hydra of U.S. operations has too many mouths to keep everything straight. Last Friday, Maj. Gen. (Marine) John Kelly, the guy responsible for Anbar province, told U.S. News and World Reports “that Syria has become ‘a sanctuary’ for [Al Qaeda in Iraq."] When asked whether the Syrian border presented a problem for operations in the area, his reponse was, “We don’t go across the border, for sure.”

For your viewing amusement, Anbar is that big ole’ yellow triangle looking thing on the west edge of the map. The big gray smudge along the western border is Syria. To the north of Anbar is the festive Ninawa province, home of Mosul, which is not doing so hot right now, either.

On a side note, and just a quick reminder on how bloody old civilizations in this part of the world are: there’s no “W” sound in Arabic, so whenever you see a “W” what you need to be saying is “V.” (EDIT: See below - there actually is a “W” sound in Arabic. Nevertheless, Ninawa IS the archeologically accepted location of ancient Ninevah - Ah well, Ball Gunner’s can’t be right all the time.) So when you see Ninawa, what you need to be saying is “Nin-eh-vah” as in Nineveh, as in the place in the Bible where Jonah was headed when he decided to skip out and allegedly spent some time in intestinal confinement. So bear it in mind that we’re dealing with places so old that they’re more easily remembered by ancient myth than modern association. And not some sissy “I cannot tell a lie” myth, either, but some good old timey Godly smiting and “you’re going to sit your behind in that fish and think about what you’ve done” sort of mythology.

But fast forward a millenia or seven and things still aren’t making a whole lot of sense. For starters, if the Syria is really serving as a launch pad for beturbaned mustache twiddlers then it’s apparently news to “U.S. Officials,” and surely “officials” must include at least a few military, who recently reported that a whopping 20 people per month were coming across the Syrian border. Now, I haven’t seen the immigration numbers recently, but I’m going out on a limb and saying if the Syria-Iraq border is SO porous that 20 people sneak across per month that we probably should be sending every U.S. Border Patrol agent to Syria for whatever sort of high-speed hardcore training they’re getting out there.

Second, it goes without saying that, absent the commies, Al Qaeda is the best boogeymen we’ve got around. They caught us napping back in 2001 and slugged us so hard that the country’s collective ears are still ringing. But just about everything I’ve read comes to the conclusion that AQI is mostly a rabble-rouser in Iraq, despite the “officials” protestations to the contrary.

Andrew Tilghman’s article in Washington Monthly titled The Myth of AQI was one of the first serious swipes at the notion of AQI running the show. The definitive work is the Congressional Research Service report Al Qaeda in Iraq: Assessment and Outside Links. The CRS states what I’ve long argued, that Iraqis aren’t particularly predisposed to the sort of nutjob Islam proposed by Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein’s rule, for all its many flaws, was rather secular, meaning all the crazy Wahabbi Islam stuff across the border in Saudi Arabia never made an appearance (largely because fundamental Islam was a threat to the secular dictatorship.) And even before Hussein, Iraq’s rule under the British and the half dozen monarchs and military coups all had a secular flavor. Long story short, trying to introduce the bongo version of Islam that Osama Bin Ladin wants to shoehorn onto the world in Iraq would be like trying to introduce 16th century Puritanism into modern day San Francisco.

The same more or less holds true in Syria. In fact, if anyone has shown the world that it simply does not tolerate Islamic extremism it would be the Syrians. Back in 1982 when the Muslim Brotherhood got uppity and decided to seize the city of Hama, the Syrian government surrounded the city, shelled it into oblivion for three weeks, and by some accounts pumped tge few remaining buildings where the insurgents were hiding full of poison gas. The survivors found in the city were more or less assumed to be sympathizers and tortured or summarily executed. To this day the Hama Massacre is held as the gold standard of how to send a message. To this day, if you’re wondering around Syria and you pipe up with, “I love me some Allah” you’d better follow that with a quick, “But I love me some President-for-life al-Assad even more.” Besides, the ruling duo look more like flashy East Europeans than Islamist theocrats, and Mrs. al-Assad certainly is easy on the Ball Gunner’s eyes.

I’m not saying the Syrians are all sunshine and lollypops. The Syrians have been some of the best funders of Hezbollah for a variety of political reasons. But that’s crazy Islam in someone else’s country. Big difference.

What this brings us back to, is what in the world was the cross border raid all about. The notion that there was some AQI schmuck hiding out in Syria is certainly plausible. But that doesn’t explain the sort of urgency that justifies an international incident. Maj. Gen. Kelly said that Syria is where foreign Al Qaeda fighters are flowing in from, but even the blowhards from the Weekly Standard say that foreign fighters make up only about 10% of AQI. At this point I’m not entirely ready to discount the entire Pentagon having gone crazy or some loco attempt to pull of some Hollywood style snatch and grab.

For all we know at this point someone made the supreme strategic error of giving a Lieutenant the map and now we’re playing cover your backside. But one safe bet, the U.S. can’t possibly hope to pull together an agreement with Iraq if every neighbor on the block, Sunni, Shia and other, is leaning on Iraq to give the the U.S. the boot.

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UPDATE:

Alright, Long War Journal is saying that Al Qaeda leader Abu Ghadiya was the target of the raid. The excitement isn’t catching.

US strike in Syria “decapitated” al Qaeda’s facilitation network

The identity of Ghadiya and several members of his senior staff have been known since February 2008 when the US Treasury identified Ghadiya, his brother, and his two cousins as members of the network. The US Treasury department publicly designated Ghadiya, his brother, Akram Turki Hishan Al Mazidih, and his two cousins, Ghazy Fezza Hishan Al Mazidih and Saddah Jaylut Al Marsumis as senior members of al Qaeda’s foreign facilitation network.

Ghadiya, whose real name is Badran Turki Hishan Al Mazidih, was an Iraqi from Mosul. He was working as an al Qaeda logistics coordinator in Syria since 2004, when he was appointed to the position by Abu Musab al Zarqawi. After Zarqawi’s death, he “took orders directly, or through a deputy” from Abu Ayyub al Masri, al Qaeda’s current leader in Iraq.

A logistics coordinator. So… we just killed a supply sergeant? Not to belittle the effort, the Long War Journal is a credible source and paints this guy as a high level logistics agent. But this seems like a poor target to alienate Syria for. If we push the Syrians to overt support for Al Qaeda then a high level logistics coordinator will be the least of our worries.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Syria has taken an unsurpising move and frozen diplomatic relations with the U.S. The extent of this has yet to be felt, but I’m willing to wager Ball Gunner bucks that Hezbollah leaders are already licking their chops and anticipating a financing increase.

As for Georgia, we’re clearly in lunatic territory now. Russia or no Russia, the Caucasus nations’ borders have always been more or less a form of interpretive dance. As in, I’m going to dance over here with some guns and then the border goes this way. John McCain, George Bush and Barack Obama all support wrapping Georgia up in the NATO blanket. This despite the fact that Mikheil Saakashvili is a close contender for best tin-pot thug of 2007, after he called in the police to dispatch anti-government protests and shut down opposition TV station IMEDI. So even if you get past the point of allowing an unstable nation into NATO, you still have the rather prickly problem that:

• Saakashvili started a war
• Russia countered
• If Georgia was a NATO nation then the U.S. and western Europe would have been REQUIRED to assist them

That’s kind of the point people seem to miss, once you’re a NATO nation the gist of the matter is that you don’t have to do this stuff alone any more. If Georgia had been a NATO member back in August then the U.S. would be fighting a third war, and a much worse war, and very likely a world war, this very moment. It’s true that the Russian military at this point isn’t all it pretends to be, but there are long lines of bones from Moscow to Paris and then Volgagrad (was Stalingrad) to Berlin. Being that neither George Bush, nor Barack Obama, nor John McCain would be doing the freezing amid General Winter and General Mud I suppose these things are of little consequence to them.

Opening up NATO to these two, not entirely stable, nations is asking for nothing but trouble. Of course, its total exposure as a poor idea undoubtedly means it will be pursued with gusto. Like William Lind, I occasionally wish we had only one monarch for several decades, there would be a greater chance of talking sense into them.

On a humerous note that will fly over the heads of most, Russia apparently thinks the U.S. really should stay in Iraq a bit longer.

From other fronts:

The looming disaster in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region rapidly is decending into a comedy of errors. The lack of a unified strategy means a hodge-podge of actions that only push forward in one area by pushing back in another. But the combined might of Generals Larry, Curly and Moe have decided that arming the tribal militias in Pakistan (free registration required) is the solution du jure. While this is billed as a Pakistani solution, the reality is that this is likely a U.S. solution handed to the Pakistanis.

First, if the problem in the area is a LACK OF ACCESS to weapons then I’ve apparently been reading the wrong news.
Second, the reason this resoundingly fails the smell test is the desperate attempt to brand this as “Surge: Part Deux - Surge Harder” or whatever. Even the military has proclaimed the obvious, that attempting a surge type strategy in Afghanistan would be well beyond worthless. Iraqis, despite their religious divide and total willingness to kill the ever loving crap out of each other, DO have a common identity as Iraqis, with a shared language, common ethnicity, common lineage and the like. Afghans, on the other hand, don’t really havy any of that stuff. What they’ve got instead is a mash of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and half dozen smaller groups each trying to chisel out a small corner of the mountains and valleys to kick back with their wives and enjoy all the benefits the 18th century has to offer. Handing out weapons to the Pashtun in Pakistan is essentially the same as handing out weapons to the Pashtun in Afghanistan, and when the Pashtun in Afghanistan are not fighting foreigners they are quite content to spend their time fighting the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Just maybe the Uzbeks and Tajiks will resent being shot at by weapons provided by the U.S. / Pakistan. At least, I would.

But we’ve still got nothing but noise coming from the sound box in Washington. (from the Wa-Po article)

“There is a significant, but not a comprehensive, bump up in the security element,” one official said. While there are more soldiers on the ground, he said, the military strategy is not sustainable because Pakistan “is still doing virtually nothing about extending the government’s political authority into the tribal areas, and virtually nothing about economic development” in the region.

Of course they are “doing virtually nothing about extending government’s political authority into the tribal areas” you bleeding wanker! There has never been “political authority” in the tribal areas outside the tribes - get it, Gus? NEVER-NEVER-NEVER-NEVER-NEVER!!!!!!

Meanwhile, As Hamid Karzai and the Afghan state slide ever closer to the chasm of illegitimacy and irrelevance, NATO has stumbled upon the perfect solution - just pick some other poor schmoe to lead Afghanistan. Of course, the Afghans have plans of their own when it comes to governance. After being ingloriously runoff by the Northern Alliance, the Taliban are resurfacing as the de facto government in many regions.

As William Lind has noted, cutting a deal with the Taliban that returns them to power with the promise of keeping out Al Qaeda might be the best hope for Afghanistan.

Here’s hoping that the new silverback in the Oval Office is paying attention.

The provided link is to an Agence France-Presse story. If you head to CNN, Fox News or MSNBC there isn’t the first lick about Iraq anywhere to be found. Presumably the stuff about reality TV shows and celebrity gossip trump major international policy, or at least they do here. If you go to the BBC Web site you at least can find something near the bottom.

This is all circumspect in modern age. “The surge worked” is the mantra and that’s that, why are we still talking about it? If you’ve got at least a functioning brain stem, which automatically excludes a good 90% of the nation, you can probably riddle out that saying “the surge worked” at this point is kind of like saying “the house is built” when the first shipment of lumber arrives. What happens in the next few days and weeks will be the first and only indication of whether we have cobbled together a workable system. If things sour then it will not only sound the last hurrah for U.S. policy in the region but will likely bury the Republican Party alive in the November election. The American public has been sold on the inevitable victory and has boxed up their belongings ready to move in. If we arrive to find our new reality built on a rotton structure the “awakening” here will be neither gentle nor pleasant. Needless to say, with a growing and souring campaign in Afghanistan the political will to recommit in Iraq is nonexistent.

The other possibility (and anything is possible on this cracked planet) is that the Awakening Councils will either be absorbed by the new government or reintegrate peacefully into society. This could either be a genuine transformation or an intentional effort to keep the lid on the pot for a bit longer. The nature of American politics is that if Iraq fell apart on Jan. 21 it will immediately be blamed on the guy still trying to work his crease into the executive chair. If the change is genuine and sparks a new era for Middle Eastern political processes then President George W. Bush will indeed laugh all the way to his best-selling memoirs.

I’m not in any way prepared to pick one limb on this gargantuan tree and stake my claim. There are simply too many possibilities and too many players and too many things that could go right or go wrong. But the apathy and ignorance of American citizens is truly appalling. Blaming the media is like blaming Wal-Mart for stocking shoddy stuff. Media outlets give people what they want; gossip, no news about yet another bailout attempt and pictures of Kim Kardashian’s gigantic butt. The fact is, denizens of the Republic either do not care or are enmeshed in the belief that all is well and there is nothing further to report.

For the dozen or so actually interested in the future of American policy in the Middle East, the next few days and weeks certainly will be worth watching.

From the Washington Times:

“Undoubtedly, the withdrawal [of the Black Sea Fleet] from the Crimea will affect Russia’s security in the south. New bases in the Mediterranean Sea could make up for the departure,” Rear Adm. Andrei Baranov stated Monday according to a report carried by the RIA Novosti news agency.

Ukraine’s pro-American President Viktor Yushchenko has been putting pressure on Russia’s leasing of the Sevastopol base in the month since Russian forces occupied one-third of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus in a five day operation Aug. 8-12.

Mr. Yushchenko’s policy has infuriated the Russians, who have dominated the Black Sea for almost a quarter of a millennium. Sevastopol is also a fabled fortress and hero city in Russian history that was only conquered after long, heroic sieges in the Crimean War of 1854-55, and against the British and the French, and in 1942 against the Nazis.

Yushchenko squeaked out a victory (and a life) in the 2004 presidential elections riding a thin wave of pro-Western sentiment over the Russian oriented Viktor Yanukovych. The west shifting into full speed jibberish immediately dubbed this the “Orange Revolution” and proclaimed it a glorious victory for democracy despite the well known interventions of foreign government into Ukranian politics. When questioning the west’s love for democracy we need only recall the words of the great dope Henry Kissinger:
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

Ukraine like Georgia is all geared up and hopeful that the big boys out NATO way are going to invite them to sit at the cool kids table. Russia is, of course, telling Ukraine to stuff it up their treaty hole, and with a little over 17% ethnic Russians and enough eastern Ukrainians that might as well be Russians the chances of Ukraine running away with a wide pro-West coalition rank right up there with Bob Barr winning the presidency.

Militarily, it’s not entirely clear what would be accomplished by moving the Russian fleet out of the Black Sea and into the Mediterranean. Everybody that gets into the Black goes through Turkey, and Turkey would find itself in an unenviable position of choosing between NATO’s marching orders or staying cozy with Russia and the trading relation worth an estimated $25 billion. By hook or by crook, Russia could still find itself as the big hoss of the Black Sea.

For the U.S., having a large part of the Russian fleet stationed in Tartarus, Syria (map) would hardly be an improvement over having them squirreled away in the Black Sea. Particularly in regards to Israel, having a fleet with air capabilities would mean a threat that Israel has never taken seriously, those fast, zippy things in the air. A problem that would hinder strikes on Iran and potentially get downright ugly if it came to blows with Lebanon for the zillionth time.

But to understand the grooviest possible scenario you first need to see the map of the 2004 elections in Ukraine… TA-DA!

When someone points out that 1/3 of Ukraine, the part with the most Russians incidentally, wants a more Moscow-oriented posture the real daisy of a scenario comes into play - a vast swatch of Ukraine breaking off and attempting to rejoin Russia, and that little red dot at the bottom that voted for the pro-Russian guy to the tune of 88.83%, that just happens to be Sevastapol - the port in question.

If push comes to shove, and both of the very special boys running for the big seat in D.C. give every indication that it is, we could be looking at a reshuffling of some really old borders. All Russia would even need are the two eastern oblasts and the southern one containing the Navy base. With 97%, 93% and 81% that goal could be entirely within reach. To give you an idea, in 2004 George Bush won Texas by a piddly 62% and we called THAT a landslide.

So Viktor Yuschenko, for whatever else he might be, is not an idiot. He’s lived through a Ukranian election (barely) and he knows the political landscape. It’s not likely he’s looking for a good excuse to stir up pro-Russian sentiment and lose big chunks off his country, likely never to be seen again. So the idea of booting the Russians out of the Black Sea might sound tempting to the vicious lipsticked pitbulls in Washington, but living as a Russian neighbor brings with it certain realities. Surely we are promising to “support” Ukraine. But our dear Georgian president might be phoning ole pineapple face to inform him just how much traction that support had when the Russian army was merily dancing jigs on the rubble of his country.

WASHINGTON — As part of an escalating offensive against extremist targets in Pakistan, the United States is deploying Predator aircraft equipped with sophisticated new surveillance systems that were instrumental in crippling the insurgency in Iraq, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials.

This is the first I’ve heard about the Predators were “instrumental in crippling the insurgency.” Perhaps this is because I lack access to this trove of unnamed U.S. military and intelligence officials, but I’m willing to bet I’ve never heard the claim because there is really only one logical response to whoever makes it:

When it comes to the Iraq “insurgency” (as if there is only one) most people are referring to the ominous specter of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the hillbilly militia of Mesopotamia. And when it comes to AQI the only thing that crippled it was being AQI. The Iraqis are not fundamentalists, and whatever excitement might have been conjured by standing against the Americans was quickly stomped out by the idea of living in a hardline Salafist Islam society. The Iraqis ran AQI out afterwards, we just happened to be standing around to take credit.

But being misinformed or flat out stupid about Iraq is one thing. Claiming that a clearly decremental tactic is effective as a justification for using it again is another. The myth of winning through air power is a hardy one that no amount of dead joes and lost battles seems able to dispel. It was there at the Battle of Stalingrad, and there at Dien Bien Phu, and there at Khe Sanh and is still alive and haunting us in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Manned or otherwise, airpower is no more capable of “winning the war” or “crippling the insurgency” than a carrier group is capable of holding Death Valley. Used correctly air power is a valuable asset, used poorly it is exceedingly detremental. The U.S. will be no more successful at bombing the Pashtun into compliance than the Germans were in bombing the Brits or the French were in bombing the Viet Minh.

The sooner we understand this the better off we’ll be.

Behold:

The number of Hellfire missile attacks by Predators in Pakistan has more than tripled, with 11 strikes reported by Pakistani officials this year, compared with three in 2007. The attacks are part of a renewed effort to cripple al-Qaeda’s central command that began early last year and has picked up speed as President Bush’s term in office winds down, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials involved in the operations. 

That would be the Washington Post article, “In hunt for Bin Ladin, a new approach.”

There is nothing new here, the grasp of warfare in this post is as old as Napoleon and cold as his bones. Note the theme - that we can concentrate on the base in Pakistan and beat back the central command - presumably to Berlin or possibly Krakow. The article goes on to state that we are now looking for Bin Ladin by flying around in Predators and shooting the occasional missile with predictable results.

Apparently the Post writer and whoever ladeled out this story consider that the Pakistan-Afghan border is some tiny, irrelavant place and that with enough Predators and enough missiles we are bound to find him, you know, eventually. The premise of the article and of the strategy simply do not wash with reason or logic. It is what my grandfather referred to as “bottle-assing around” - ineffectually moving around in an attempt to look busy.

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Onward and upward.

The mighty darlings at the Heritage Foundation (oh how I love them) have served up yet another steaming platter of preposterous. You can find it in the ominously titled “The Return of History:  Confronting the Russian Bear after the Georgian War.” I think the better title would be, “Europe and Russia: lets you and him fight.”

It’s the same old tired story: that we need to like, TOTALLY invite the Ukraine and Georgia to NATO, and Russia is like so totally mean, and I just can’t believe what Vladimir Putin was wearing the other day. OMG LOL!

You can always tell when the apes are getting serious because they throw in the serious word du jure - geopolitical. Like so -  The Russian-Georgian war rocked the geopolitical landscape.
Well dear lord, we know they’re super serious now. The geopolitical landscape, you say. This calls for serious cat!

Heritage, as always, is chock full of good ideas: the Europeans should goad Russia into war, the Europeans should not have fuel to heat their home of cook their food this winter, the Europeans should make demands that Russia will never accept, the Europeans should militarize and then beef up their NATO presence which will be led by… take a guess who Heritage thinks NATO will be led by.  Come on, I dare you.

Jaded though I am, I will excuse Heritage as simply being utterly clueless. But it’s truly discouraging when supposedly educated people lend credence to this unadulterated nonsense.

In the month since the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Bush administration has crafted a policy that should please some liberal critics and upset conservative hard-liners — a low-key approach that tries to help the Georgians recover without backing Russia further into a corner. 

From my view in the cheap seats it hardly looks like Russis into any corner anywhere. Flush with money, flush with resources, increasing their influence and re-exerting themselves in the so called near-abroad - if they are in a corner it is one of the more spacious and luxuriant corners I have ever seen.

The world has changed dramatically in a few short years and America is refusing to point itself in the new direction. I know its pointless to get upset about things I can’t change, but we are talking about fundamentally failing to understand the big challenges of the modern world. Oh well.

We’ve got the Wa Po saying the Pentagon wants a long pause in post-surge drawdowns, at the same time Barack Obama is claiming the Surge “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams,” and without missing a beat we have “top military officials” saying we’re going to haul 7,000 troops out of Iraq early next year.

The long and short is that no one really has a clue what is happening, and nobody wants to make promises they’re likely going to be eating later. The Republicans really, really want to get some meat on the table before November to shore up their victory credentials. Given that one month and three days before the election the Shia government is going to take control of the Sunni Awakening Councils, there is probably a good amount of puckering going on over at the GOP campaign headquarters.

To make matters a bit worse, everyone watching Afghanistan can see things unraveling quickly. Hamid Karzai himself visited and appealed to a village that was hit by a U.S. led strike. There are variety of numbers out there, the U.S. said we got 30 bad guys and 7 civilians, the villagers and the United Nations say it was more like 90 people including 60 children. I’m inclined to believe the number is somewhere in between the two claims, but it still plays to the Afghans, who are increasingly able to castigate the U.S. as a technological goliath whom everyone should fight.

This is compounded by the fact that U.S. troops are now conducting cross-border raids into the tribal areas of Pakistan. Pakistani politicians realize things are at a boiling point right now and wisely negotiated a ceasefire during the holy month of Ramadan. The U.S. moving in with a contingent of Tajiks and Uzbeks to start shooting and bombing during that ceasefire could potentially blow the top off the situation. It goes without saying that Pakistani politics are currently at a dangerous level. The ruling coalition has collapsed and there are a lot of power struggles going on in a nation with nuclear weapons. If the U.S. comes across as a physical and not just moral and political aggressor against Pakistan we could easily find ourselves with a hostile government in Islamabad. There is always the possibility of putting in another tin pot to beat the country into submission, but the U.S. desperately needs an image as the arbiter of democracy to continue support for its current operations. 

The Ball Gunner, for one, is wondering what in tarnation is happening at Centcom that made them suddenly toss the counterinsurgency manual out the window. Especially when you consider that the guy who wrote the fricking thing is getting ready take command, you’d think who ever is getting all airstrike and raid crazy might take a step back to reconsider exactly what the hell they’re hoping to accomplish.

It’s looking more and more like a comedy of errors at this point. There are way too many plans at this point and each plan depends on the one before it working before it can go into affect:

• We need the Surge to work so we can reduce troops in Iraq
• One we reduce troops in Iraq we can send them elsewhere
• Elsewhere largely being Afghanistan
• Once there we can use the same tactics used in the Surge
• But first we need the Surge to work

As any private that has spent a week in the field can tell you, no plan survives contact with the enemy and whatever can go wrong will. There are lots of rabbits waiting to be pulled from lots of hats at this point and as things cool off in Afghanistan and everyone proceeds to bed down to reequip and retrain for the winter there are any number of wires that could come loose.

We know there is still the banga-banga-banga and pow-pow-pow of guns and mortars going off along with the RRRRRRRRRR of armor moving around. No doubt some hot-blooded Georgian youngsters have decided to gin up an irregular force and try to carve their names into history, so there is likely still some mopping up going on, and any dullard can tell you that you don’t
park your tanks and trucks for long unless you really want your wheels and crews to get mortared and artilleried into swiss cheese.

If the Russians are pushing into Poti then it’s truly an ambitious shot. Without Poti the Georgians don’t have a significant port outside of the southern autonomous region of Ajara. There is a dandy little UN map, here. That includes every autonomous region BUT South Ossetia, for some reason. Curious. For the U.S., which is hoping to ride to the rescue, not having a port presents some pretty big problems. For start, supplies would have go be flown in, which is expensive and manpower intensive. A few flights have already come and gone, but its not sure where those are coming from. The air bases in Turkey are convenient, but the Turks, not wanting to get drawn in, might tell the U.S. to find their airspace for that mission elsewhere. When it comes to ships, moving carriers and relief ships into the Black Sea is not only time-consuming and expensive but dangerous as hell.

If you’re wondering where Georgia is on the Black Sea, then look no further:

The big thing is that the U.S. has to do SOMETHING. It can’t throw Georgia under the bus without being humiliated like… well, like Russia was in the wake of Kosovo. President Bush is certainly not shopping for active hostilities with the Russians right now. If the sitting administration opened a third front it’s very likely that the Republican National Committee building would have a “For Sale” shingle out front come November.

An old friend, who I didn’t know was a Ball Gunner fan, sent me some interesting questions:

Also, is this just the scenario needed to help propel Condi Rice out of obscurity after failing to deliver any meaningful developments between Israel and Palestine? Is this enough to remind people she’s an expert on Soviet/Russo matters and get her some looks for vice president on the McCain ticket?

Rice, last I heard, wasn’t chasing a VP nod. Washington being what it is, the political winds can shift. But it’s not entirely clear that John McCain would want to attach his campaign to a very high-profile member of the controversial Bush presidency. But by all accounts she was (is?) considered very knowledgeable on the region. It seems that she was one of the old-timey bureaucrats who staked her name on the Cold War dragging on into the second coming. Once that dogged out she moved to academia. What remains to be seen is whether her own ego-feeding successes are going to get in her way when it comes to brokering a treaty that is agreeable to all sides. The fact that she is blowing off Moscow entirely on her trip is not encouraging. You’d expect a Russian expert to be aware of how insulting these sorts of things are in Russian culture, or anywhere for that matter.

Russia, on the other hand, must realize that the U.S. hand in this matter is weak. The object is not, and has never been to “take over Georgia,” as much as it is to emasculate the United States. Georgia sent troops to help the U.S. mission in Iraq, the U.S. sent water bottles and chocolate bars to Georgia while they were getting ground into paste. It certainly appears that Georgia expected more support from their ally. President Saakashvili apparently took the aid pledges as a promise to safeguard key Georgian infrastructure components and caused the U.S. to issue a correction. The Georgians are not getting the help they expected, and that disappointment will be an albatross around the neck of U.S. foreign affairs for some time.

As my friend noted:

…the fact that a “new” battle began on the same day as the opening of the Olympic Games is bound to catch people’s eyes.

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing was meant to be China’s “welcome back to the world” party. It is no coincidence that the day also marked the moment that the United States and the world no longer had the luxury of writing off Russia as a has-been power.

In general, military matters are poorly reported. I can resign myself to this inevitability. But when stupidity bleeds into sheer revisionism and a propaganda campaign so intense that its almost questionable that it occurred accidentally, then the Ball Gunner gets his scowl on.

This recent incident, a frilly little war involving a dispute that has been going on for near a thousand years, has sent the bed wetters into overdrive. The Russians! They’re coming to get us. We must run and be afraid. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Let’s look at the headlines from the recent Georgia- Russia conflict.

August 8 from the Telegraph:
Caucuses in crisis: Georgia invades South Ossetia

Read the headline CAREFULLY. Who did what to whom? Who started all this?

August 11 from Global Financial News:
Bush slams Russia for Georgian Invasion, calls relationship “damaged”

Finally, we come to today, August 12, From the LA Times:
U.S. has few military options in Russia response

Really? Four days? It only took FOUR &*$%#@& DAYS to spin this into the EXACT OPPOSITE of what happened?

Let’s look at a few more.

I loved the BIG FARGING stink made about Russia bombing the airports, port and infrastructure.
Reuters on  August 10:
Tblisi civilian airport hit in Russian air strike

To give you a good contrast, here is CNN on July 16, 2006 during the Lebanon-Israeli dustup:
Israeli warplanes hit Beirut suburb

Really? A suburb, you say? Oh wait, in the secondary head -”Israel attacks airports, major highway after Hezbollah lobs rockets”

The War Nerd already has a great entry. Go read it. But if you’re feeling lazy, he sums it up like so:

1.    The Georgians started it.
2.    They lost.
3.    What a beautiful little war!

If you’re wondering what number 3 is all about, and you should be, click the link. Until then, I really, really encourage you to not pay attention to the vast amounts of stupid being dished up piping hot for all to enjoy. I especially hope you notice the literary lobotomies coming out of the pundit factories right now. Lots of whom seem to be seeking active hostilities with Russia.

By all means, if you’ve got some questions shoot the Ball Gunner a line. I’ll help you out the best I can. If you are relying on  any of the big outlets (especially American outlets, European media occasionally does a reasonable job in covering war) then you are being aggressively led astray.