But once you cut through the endless coverage and your CNNs/Fox Newses/MSNBCs slpping any and every blithering, blooming, driveling idiot in front of the camera to repeat the same nonsense and you come to a pretty blasted quiet time, at least on the warfare front.

Now as an entertainer and blogger extraordinare I suppose it’s my sworn duty to come up with something. So here we go:

No one gets too excited about the half-dozen or so bush wars happening in Africa. You get the inevitable celebrity benefit concerts and alot of feel-goodery from the usual suspects, but no one is seriously interested in hopping between your Hutus and Tutsis until the machete arms are tired and everyone gets bored.

But there are few interesting bits kicking about.

Congo is getting steamrolled by the a small army of Tutsis led by dissident general Laurent Nkunda. The War Nerd has a great piece on this guy. Full of the usual diatribe and big boy language that makes the War Nerd so fun to read. I’m trying to catch up on my reading, so I’ll let the War Nerd do the talking here.

The real juicy info is oozing out of the festering wound that Somalia has become on the world scene. The brain trust in the UN decided a while back that the best way to calm Somalia down was by sending in that first-class fighting force, the Ethiopian Army. No one really sat down and thought about all the “wars” (used loosely) the two nations have fought in the past or what a grand idea it was to send in the Christian Ethiopians to rub the Muslim Somalis face in the mud for awhile. There must have just been a poster in some UN room where some general wannabe wrote “Send country A to calm country B” and everyone just went with the idea. I mean, what could go wrong?

Of course there isn’t much trade in sustained warfare out near the horn of Africa. The Ethiopians marched in and handed the Somalians a few humiliating years, now they’re marching right back out. Since the Somali government, never functional to begin with, was pretty much non-existant for that time, the religious nut branch of Islam went in and put into practice all the stuff it’s polished to a fine art in Beirut and Sadr City — it became the courts, the providers and the financiers. It showed the people what a grand old tradition Wahabbi Islam is. Now what was probably a small handful of nuts before the Ethiopians rolled in probably has multiplied into a trans-generational religious wave. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza the nuts have fine tuned the art of working underneath government while throwing just enough of your own people into the grinder to keep tensions high. Having completed defensive, and filling through the stalemate stage it proably won’t be long until we see a bit of counter-offensive in the works. Mao would be so proud.

The good news is that Africa being Africa no one will hold on to power for long. Even if the fundamentalist blaze a swath through to Mogadishu the usual infighting, disappearings and good old mutiny will mean Somalia will remain Somalia through and through. Religions have a way of thinking they deliver civilization, but Somalians have prayed to have a dozen strange gods before they started praying toward Mecca. And at the end of the day East African culture just won’t tolerate religious extremist for long without those long curved blades coming out.

Hopefully there are at least a few people at high level taking notes on flubbing an invasion. There’s sort of a golden moment where you’ve done all you can do and if you stay any longer you start losing ground. If the Ethiopians had gone in there and thrown all the clerics under the tank treads and then about-faced and high-tailed it back inland we wouldn’t be dealing with this now. There’d be just one more warlord grabbing what he could grab until he ran up against another warlord and the world would continue apace.

But as the saying goes, “The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” Trying to affect an outcome in Africa is an endless and expensive exercise in futility. After a few centuries of colonialism the lesson didn’t stick. But an endless supply of idiots with good intentions means an endless supply of intervention with the same dud results.

So, there. I found something to write about after all.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

From the LA Times:

By Julian E. Barnes, Paul Richter and Christi Parsons
November 26, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to serve in President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet, advisors said Tuesday, setting up the unusual situation in which a wartime Pentagon chief remains to work under a president who has condemned the previous administration’s policies.

An official close to the Obama transition team said it was likely that Gates would be named Defense secretary when the president-elect begins to unveil his national security team in announcements expected next week.

A former government official who has advised the Obama transition said it was “99% certain” that Gates would remain as Defense secretary for about a year in the Obama administration.

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“Nothing is definitive,” said the former official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing transition plans. “But Gates did agree to stay on.”

Gates continuation is the likely final nail in the F-22 Raptor’s procurement coffin. Gates, who famously said, “We’re fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater,” is not going to give the Air Force the funding it wants for the program, nor is he likely to bow down to a Congress hoping to score political points by requiring their purchase. The chances for a procurement boom, already slim under a democratic presidency, are all but evaporated.

Part 2:

The Ball Gunner is pleased to hear that Al Qaeda has abandoned an area it never had:

From the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan has replaced Iraq as al Qaeda’s main focus, and the terror group has stepped up its efforts to destabilize the nuclear-armed South Asian nation, according to a senior U.S. military commander.

“Iraq is now a rear-guard action on the part of al Qaeda,” said Gen. James Conway, the head of the Marine Corps and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview. “They’ve changed their strategic focus not to Afghanistan but to Pakistan, because Pakistan is the closest place where you have the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons.”

Gen. Conway also offered a stark assessment of the Afghan situation, saying the Taliban has built a rudimentary command-and-control network that enables the group’s leadership to direct attacks across the country.

“They move troops around. They resupply. They provide money,” he said. “It’s effective and it’s real. It’s not just happenstance that these guys know where to go and what to do.”

It’s an uphill battle to beat these fires out. But as has been noted time and again, Al Qaeda in Iraq is hardly the enemy we so desperately want it to be.

The monger sect likes to claim these arguments are mere semantics, which demonstrates only that they wield a keen judo grip on ignorance. Iraq’s long history of secular government has made the majority of Iraqis particularly poorly suited for the Salafist Islam espoused by the Osama Bin Ladin (may demons eat his flesh) and the structure of Al Qaeda (may demons eat their flesh, too). We need to get this through our head; if we can’t identify who we are fighting we surely won’t be able to beat them.

Finally:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Post from: The Ball Gunner

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s two most powerful Shiite clerics on Friday challenged the government’s planned security pact with the United States, undercutting efforts to reach a deal before the U.N. mandate for American troops in Iraq expires Dec. 31.

Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr renewed threats to unleash his militia fighters to attack U.S. forces unless they leave Iraq immediately, and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani vowed to intervene if he concludes the proposed agreement governing the presence of U.S. forces infringes on national sovereignty.

Iraqi officials have said they will seek a renewal of the U.N. Security Council’s mandate if the pact, which would allow American troops to stay in Iraq through 2011, is not passed by parliament by year’s end.

Not only has the ever-growing pain in our rear bit Muqtada Al Sadr come out against the arrangement, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has shouted his opposition, too. This coalescing of the moderate and radical Shia in Iraq under one opinion is nothing good for the coalition forces. The balance of power that consisted of Al Sadr’s radical forces vs al-Sistani’s moderates kept things moving forward in a slow, but steady, direction. If the Shia as a whole wrinkle their collective noses at the SOFA then we’re in for a spin.

The other side of this, is that the paralysis of the Shia has meant the Sunni have expanded their power. The Sons (and daughters) of Iraq were intended to be folded back into the country at large. As it turns out, the government has found it easier to keep buying them off.

For “Sons of Iraq,” being paid in U.S. dollars is becoming a thing of the past. Members of the armed civilian groups, credited with helping to curb violence in Iraq, received their pay from the Iraqi government for the first time this week.

The Iraqi government took over the “Sons of Iraq” program from the U.S. on Oct. 1. But only now are the Iraq security forces taking over from U.S. troops the task of paying the members, in Iraqi dinars.

Maybe its just my Ball Gunnie sense tingling, but does anyone else think elevating a sectarian militia to legitimate status is a cockamamie idea? As the Sunni militias grow in political power, it seems they will inevitably begin to demand more from the Shia government. If the Shia government denies their demands then the militias have the power and ability to destabilize sizable portions of the nation. Militias and governments do not play well together. Just ask the Pakistanis how it’s working in the tribal areas.

What the coalition, in specific the U.S., is likely finding is that ideological leaders, al-Sadr and al-Sistani, are a lot more difficult to manipulate than politicians. What it means in the long-term is yet to be figured out. There’s no telling what deals might be cut to keep operations in the clear before the deadline expires. I doubt if the deadline passed that anyone from CENTCOM on up would tell the boys to call it a mission and sleep it off in the FOBs until it’s time to come home. But it could greatly change the nature of the game.

Primarily, it gives the signal that the Shia, the majority of Iraq, are ready for us to go, and to go now. The idea of using Iraq as a base of operations in the Middle East, long unrealistic, has now become a chimera. The U.S. excursion into Syria, launched from Iraq, was widely denounced. Iraq is simply unwilling to be the top rope for the U.S.’ pro-wrestling style atomic elbows, for obvious reasons.

Second, if the Kurds get a wild hair during the power vacuum and make a break for full autonomy the whole region could get sucked into hell.

Admittedly, some of the Iraq demands for the SOFA were simply unworkable from the start. Man will walk on Pluto before the U.S. would allow an American troop to be tried in an Iraqi court, everyone in the Iraqi government knows that. This leads me to believe that these negotiations might have been loaded from the onset.

The U.S. better be preparing to do something else to enact its Middle East peace policy. The current administration’s efforts might unravel before the new guy even plops himself down in the office. As I’ve been saying for some time, if the situation deteriorates there is no political will for a second “Surge.” Any attempts to build support for it could torpedo the shaky support for ongoing operations in Afghanistan. If the U.S. objectives in both nations are left unfulfilled our nation’s credibility will likely never recover. Unfortunately, their failure or success may already be determined and out of our hands.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

From the AP (via Yahoo news)

Iraq outlines changes it wants in pact with US

BAGHDAD – Iraq wants a security agreement with the U.S. to include a clear ban on U.S. troops using Iraqi territory to attack Iraq’s neighbors, the government spokesman said Wednesday, three days after a dramatic U.S. raid on Syria.

Also Wednesday, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric expressed concerned that Iraqi sovereignty be protected in the pact. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani wields vast influence among the Shiite majority and his explicit opposition could scuttle the deal.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the ban was among four proposed amendments to the draft agreement approved by the Cabinet this week and forwarded to the U.S.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said U.S. negotiators in Iraq are closely reviewing the new amendments from the Iraqis to see if they are acceptable to the administration.

I have little doubt that the new amendments are completely and totally unacceptable to the administration. The purpose of securing Iraq has long been billed as creating a stepping stone against other belligerents in the region — primarily Iran.

The new amendments would represent a colossal failure of the war’s objectives by tying the U.S. to Iraq. Those who think the U.S. could sign and then simply renege when it became opportune lack any reasonable understanding of foreign policy. Were we to do so, every nation, organization and alliance with a treaty with the U.S. would view that treaty as worthless.

It’s pointless to speculate at this point, but no one in the Middle East is looking to be the launchpad from which the U.S. attacks its neighbors. I would not be surprised if Turkey is the next nation to slap restrictions on U.S. operations originating from its soil.

The price for this attack will be steep, possibly steeper than was anticipated. We can only hope it was worth it to kill a logistics expert.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

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.

Post from: The Ball Gunner

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.

Post from: The Ball Gunner