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Do Not Mourn the Brutal Dead

It was my honor to visit a successful Iraq this year, that part of the country longest free from Saddam's control. Despite being surrounded by three hostile and suspicious countries, Iraqi Kurdistan is flourishing with a liberal democracy. I cannot say that everything the Kurdish Regional Government is doing is right, but I can say that they are earnest in their support of the genuine success of those willing to be free. It appears they contrast strongly with Saddam's behavior whenever possible.

Where Saddam concentrated power and wealth to his family, tribe, and sect, Iraqi Kurdistan allows opportunity to anyone who respects the law and will create lasting value.

Where Saddam made the security forces of Iraq an incompetent slave army with a record of pillage and rape, Iraqi Kurdistan has an effective volunteer Peshmerga who are decent professionals. I was not ever concerned that the Peshmerga would rob or abuse me in any of the hundreds of checkpoints I crossed. This was not because I was a valued foreigner, but because I was not there to cause harm.

Where Saddam put the concerns of minority Sunni Arabs over everything in Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government values the contributions of all the many peoples of the region.

Where Saddam drove the economy and industry of the country into the ground, in Iraqi Kurdistan they are building new production capacity...and not just oil. As an example, nations bordering Iraq make beautiful rugs, and they are imported to the country in the middle because sources of revenue not under central control were destroyed by Saddam. Even the Taliban didn't destroy the Afghan rug industry, but they had less time and central authority.

Where Saddam accumulated so much death that we are still finding mass graves and buried arsenals, Iraqi Kurdistan is experiencing the biggest baby boom in the world.

Where Saddam gave his sons and torturers license to steal and rape, the sons and daughters of Kurdish leaders are expected to serve Iraqi Kurdistan in full public scrutiny.

The unflattering comparisons keep going on forever. I do not know if Iraqi Kurdistan would have made so many good decisions without Saddam's excruciating evil to push against. Arguing that Saddam was necessary to create the conditions of Iraqi Kurdistan is insufferably vacuous. He had no capacity to create wealth and power he did not control. The fact remains that Saddam Hussein was a petty, vicious, and criminal tyrant.

Do not mourn the brutal dead. The rest they receive is better than they deserve. Do not yield one more second of the future to them, they have stolen too much already.

 
To Whom It May Concern,

Michael Totten is excused again today from blogging because he is terribly ill. As his way of embracing the holiday spirit he spent 22 hours sharing with strangers. Specifically he was travelling and inhaling recycled airline air in cramped conditions and somebody was willing to share their latest virus with Michael. Four hours after he got home, his temperature reached 103 Fahrenheit and he fell like a poleaxed steer. Rather than blog under the influence of tussin remedies, Michael has decided to stay in bed and be miserable.

Thank you for your patience,

Patrick S Lasswell
(Michael's Self Appointed Apologist)

 
Success Bonus: What if We Got Serious About Winning?

My reserve unit just got an excellent new sailor because the active duty Navy is penny wise and pound foolish. He is a nuclear power technician (training cost to the USN $1 million plus) who was offered over a hundred thousand to re-enlist, but got out because his unit wouldn't temporarily transfer him to the Gulf so he could accept the bonus tax free. Instead of doing without his services for a few weeks at the cost of a few thousand dollars, they lost a million dollars worth of training forever. Now he's with my reserve unit in a new specialty that is paying him a smaller, but still substantial, bonus. Not everybody in the military is as apparently mercenary as this outstanding sailor, but all of us include an economic component to our service career decisions. Frankly, the pay structure encourages extra effort for all service members, and this is an accepted part of the volunteer military. What if we took that to the next level and started paying extra for skills that help us win our current and expected conflicts?

The most critical skill our troops lack on an individual level is language proficiency. Oddly enough, this is largely due to the US military possessing the best language schools in the world. Because the Defense Language Institute (DLI) is dedicated to providing absolute fluency necessary for strategic communications and intelligence, they are neither prepared for or interested in providing training tactical pidgin level of skill. This is not a critique of the DLI. Their focus on excellence is necessary for today and the future and their record of accomplishment over the last sixty-five years is unparalleled. Any time since the beginning of WW II, we were able to point to the language instruction of the DLI and know it as the best in the world. But in the era of the “imperial grunt”, language skills are needed at every level of the deploying military. In addition to the thousands of perfectly fluent professional linguists, we need hundreds of thousands of troops every year who are capable of basic communications with people around the world.

Traditionally, the way this is handled is for an extra task to be added to the force requirement and everybody would pretend that an extra hour or more had been added to the day so this could be met. Then to ensure compliance, “assist visits” would rise from the depths to afflict the unworthy...that is...observe the dogs and ponies...I mean...provide guidance to the affected units. An entire new staff empire could be generated from this requirement, filling thousands of chairs far, far from anything resembling an actual enemy. Regrettably, this kind of pathology is unsustainable during a shooting conflict, so we need a minimally staffed, maximum results oriented method of improving language skills.

To accomplish this goal, an individual effort reward system should be put in place for service persons attached to deployable units. When a service member tests out at a given level of proficiency, they would be paid a monthly bonus for maintaining a critical skill. This cannot be just for deployed units, we need the incentive for units long before they arrive in country so they have time to train. The rewards also need to be applied to deployable reserve component because they often spend more time in training missions with indigenous peoples than active units do. This cannot be paid to chairwarmers in chairwarming units who have all the time in the world to develop skills they will never use. This should be administered at the unit level to reduce overhead. Although higher reward levels will require more specialized testing from experts, basic proficiency can be tested locally. Additional languages should be rewarded with additional bonuses, and the allowed language rewards list should be maintained at the command. No unit should have fewer than three languages rewarded, one of which must be outside the primary focus area (i.e. Arabic, Persian, and Mandarin). If possible, one unit-specific obscure language should be rewarded to allow semi-secure tactical communications on open channels in the manner of Navajo code-talkers.

Although the list of languages desirable is virtually endless, the following are both obvious and urgent: Arabic, Persian(Farsi), Kurdish, Azeri, Turkish, Swahili, Pashto, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog, Serbian/Croatian, and Russian. Obscure languages can be a deceptive choice; Korean is fairly well known in Kurdistan, although the reverse is not true, for instance. The odds of a designated opponent's ability to decipher calls for fire from an isolated unit member better than the TOC should be the criteria for obscure language selection.

The total annual cost for this bonus program will be less than $5 billion across all services, both active and reserve components if everybody became expert linguists overnight. This is about five percent of the operating budget for Iraq alone, and will certainly add more than one twentieth to our operating efficiency. In a happier world, this would be provided tax free to everybody, but that isn't going to happen. What will work is to provide a real reward for really useful skills on an individual basis for individual effort. The biggest block to this program is that it won't provide any congressman's generous constituent a big new lump in their wallet. It will just improve our troop's ability to win.

 
Open Letter to Congressman Blumenauer Regarding the Proposed Draft

Congressman Blumenauer,

Your colleague, Representative Rangel, has again put forward his ill considered and unnecessary proposal for a military draft. To support this exceptionally bad idea, he has put forward outdated and untrue assertions that the US military is composed of uneducated and disadvantaged people. He somehow thinks that our foreign policy would benefit from a resumption of the draft because this would tie our hands from engaging except in the utmost extreme.

I have the privilege of serving in the Navy Reserve with the best group of people I know. Everybody in my unit is there because they want to be. I do not want to serve with people who do not want to serve with me. I do not want to fight in my backyard because we have abandoned every opportunity to fight elsewhere.

This year I worked as a consultant in Iraqi Kurdistan, and I have seen the cost of allowing Saddam Hussein to dictate conditions. You may regret the war, but my friends in Iraqi Kurdistan do not in the slightest. Their current prosperity is a result of their decision to fight and the success of the volunteer Peshmerga against Hussein's draftees. Their continued prosperity is dependent on our keeping faith with the people of the Kurdish Region.

Representative Rangel is wrong on so many levels. We will fight for our country and each other. Bonuses justify the economic decision to stay with the military between fights for the many of us who have tremendous prospects and families to support. Bonuses are a lot cheaper than a giant conscript military and civil service corps.

Patrick S Lasswell

 
Where Terror Lost



This is the Mosque where Zarqawi quartered his terrorists at the start of the Iraq invasion. Ansar al-Islam controlled this Mosque and several villages nearby with Iranian assistance. They brutalized the locals and used the sacred shrine to three Islamic saints at this Mosque as a toilet. This is Iraqi Kurdistan, this is someplace the US made free.

Arianna Huffington went on national TV and told the world that Iraqi Kurdistan has changed not one iota since the reign of Saddam Hussein. Maybe she is too ignorant to realize that she is wrong, or maybe she loves her hatred of the current administration too much to have a shred of integrity.

Ms. Huffington, you are dismissed.

 
Michael J. Totten Excused

To Whom It May Concern,

Michael J. Totten is excused from being on the first commercial flight into Beirut. He is tired from dodging terrorist rocket attacks in Israel and is coming home to rest. He promises to get back to Beirut sooner than he ought to.

Signed,

Patrick S. Lasswell
Michael J. Totten's Self-appointed Apologist

 
Pictures of Michael Totten in Iraq

Since my good friend Michael Totten has decided to represent the US blogosphere at the Katyusha catching games in Israel, this is probably a good time to post pictures of him. During our recent trip to Iraq we were both trying out new cameras and often getting in each other's way. Here are some of the images from last month in Iraq.

[Please do not patronize the games sponsors: Syria and Iran.]

All photos copyright Patrick S. Lasswell

 
The Glacier Theory of Conflict Resolution

As a vicious, brutal, knuckle-dragging war-monger, I have been accused of not waiting for all peaceful means of conflict resolution to be played out before using violence. In an attempt to reform my wicked ways, I suggest the following conflict resolution tools be engaged. At the first indication of conflict we should await the return of glaciers from the poles to scour the earth and resolve the dispute peacefully. With glaciers occupying the field of battle, there will be no strategic objectives to dispute. All indigenous, refugee, and migrant populations will be displaced or ground to paste in a non-violent conflict resolution process. Similarly, weapons stockpiles will be eradicated or futilely expended on the advancing ice face. During the intervening years as the glaciers recede, mastodon peacekeepers will roam the marshy conflict regions ensuring that fighting does not resume.

What is important here is that we use every conflict resolution method before devolving into violent behavior. We should not allow unseemly haste to compel us to use military force. We must only have the moral courage to wait out the millennia, ignoring all provocations and the cries of supposedly injured peoples. Ours will be the superior form of behavior, regardless of how long it takes for the next ice age to arrive. Given the current media interest in climate change, it must be just around the corner.

We must ignore places like Iraqi Kurdistan where violent people aided by the US war machine were able to carve out a territory of their own from Saddam’s political brutality and make it work. They are so backwards as to have armed persons stationed throughout their region who show every intention of using violence to resolve conflict before the glaciers return. The prosperity the Kurdish Regions of Iraq are experiencing due to this hostility backed security is strictly an illusion because it denies the pacific effect of glaciers. The happiness of the local people, as demonstrated by the national obsession with marriage and family creation, is further glacier denying behavior that must studiously ignored. Although there are many problems still facing the Kurdish Regional Government, only a small number of the ministers in charge remain committed to the glacier problem solving method. We must do everything we can to reach out and support those ministers in their quest to do nothing before the glaciers return; for they are the only enduring moral guidance we can rely on. The recent merger of KDP and PUK governments has severely reduced these ministers with the vision to embrace immobility as an action plan, and those remaining deserve our full attention.

Glacier Theory of Conflict Resolution is morally sound, politically correct, intellectually defensible, and an idea whose time will someday surely come. It only requires patience, moral courage, and a substantial research grant for its originator (me) to be properly implemented. My recent travels to Iraqi Kurdistan have helped me visualize the effectiveness of this method relative to its more brutish alternatives. We must be ready to abandon happiness, family growth, prosperity, and security in our quest to avoid violent conflict resolution. We must wait for the glaciers secure in the knowledge that someday all our problems will be irrelevant, rather than take violent action to solve problems in our lifetimes. Viva la Glaciacion.

 

(photo by Michael J. Totten)
Unpacking

It would be more fun to unpack if my butt wasn't dragging so much. The carpets are accepted with joy despite my use of mothballs. One escapes and I am compelled by Abigail to chase it down and make it go away, far away. I don't open celophane wrappper on the Johnnie Walker Blue Label to look at the actual bottle until I've slept a good seven hours on a vertical surface. Bruce is ecstatic to have me back and mostly keeps his complaints about the mothballs to himself. Mostly. It is several hours before he lets me out of his sight without anxiety, but he is a good dog.

I call my mother to let her know that I'm back from my trip, but chicken out from telling her where I've been. It is going to be a difficult transition for her to accept that Iraqi Kurdistan is an amazingly safe dangerous place. The Prime Minister of Turkey isn't making that any easier. She is so invested in the New York Times "all car bombs, all the time" vision of Iraq that my responsibility to let her know where I've been is just one of the more difficult aspects of the trip. So don't any of you tell her where I've been... It will be our secret.

 
Packing

The great thing about the Korea trip earlier this year is that it really taught me a lot about packing. The first thing is that when you don't know where you're going to end up, it helps a lot to have wheels on your luggage. I went to Korea with one footlocker with wheels and one without. There's something about having to move two 50-pound footlockers one-hundred yards or more that makes you appreciate wheels. The side-by-side comparison, combined with the discovery that getting old hurts like hell, drove my luggage purchase decision earlier this month.

I bought an REI WheelyBeast 2.0, a duffle bag designed to be rolled behind while holding a lot of junk. It's a great bag, holds about 7,200 cubic inches, and did I mention the wheels? You see, bitter experience has taught me that you should take all the crap you can imagine every time you go someplace you've never been. It has three big, comfortable handles that should make lugging it into cab trunks a lot more fun than the footlockers were. Can't stack it or stand on it, but other than that, the bag is a peach.

I got the bag on speculation when it went on sale earlier this month, and then speculation paid off. I'm out and about on a jaunt, and I hope to post pictures soon. If you're checking on this blog and know where I'm going, please don't post it. It's a surprise.

 
"Lefty Girl" (A Tragic Love Song)

Because we have been instructed that racial and religious comments associated with the song "Haji Girl" are inappropriate I have endeavored to replace them with appropriate terms that will clear up this whole controversy. The problem with incoherent ideologues willing to kill their own children is not limited to Iraq, and so this tragic love song gets a new setting: the People's Republic of Berkeley.

"Lefty Girl"

I was out on the campus of UCB
And we were under attack
And I, well, I didn't know where to go.
And the first thing I could see was
Everybody's favorite, Burger King
So I threw open the door
And I hit the floor
Then suddenly to my surprise
I looked up and I saw her eyes
And I knew it was love at first sight
And she said

Worker, worker socialist jihad
Murtha, Murtha, Che is God
Lefty Girl I can't understand what you're saying
And she said
Worker, worker socialist jihad
Murtha, Murtha, Che is God
Lefty Girl I love you anyway

Then she said she wanted me to see
She wanted me to meet her family
But I, well, I couldn't figure out how to say no
Cause I don't speak Lefty
So, she took me down an old dirt trail
And she pulled up to a VW bus
And she threw open the door
And I hit the floor
Cause her brother and her father shouted

Worker, worker socialist jihad
Murtha, Murtha, Che is God
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And the said
Worker, worker socialist jihad
Murtha, Murtha, Che is God

So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me
As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniaclly
Then I hid behind the PC
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f***ers to eternity.
And I said

Worker, worker socialist jihad
Murtha, Murtha, Che is God
They should have known they were f***ing with a Marine.

Original Lyrics Hat Tip: Blackfive

 
How to Convict an Enron Fraud Part One

Last week was a good one for my friend Andrew Nisbet and the energy market research firm he works for, McCullough Research. Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted of a variety of charges stemming from driving a culture of fraud to tremendous wealth. Much of the testimony that has put Enron frauds in jail was discovered by the people at McCullough Research. Andrew is a not entirely satisfied, though, because the culture of fraud still exists. There is a list of 58 people who were on the Enron trading floor in Portland, Oregon. After reading their email, diaries, and spreadsheets for the last four years, Andrew is convinced that all of them were engaged in securities fraud. Less than one in five has been successfully prosecuted. Most of those not in jail are still engaged in energy trading.

This is part one of an interview with Andrew on the occasion of Lay and Skilling's conviction.

Meaningful Distinction: Why aren't the regulators catching these people?

Andrew Nisbet: The people who are supposed to regulate it have a vested interest in not admitting that there's a problem. The people who are supposed to catch Enron, and for that matter the big five producers in California, built the system and they have a vested interest right till this day in telling you that the system worked just fine. FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) was in the process of doing what I actually think in a very real extent was a good thing, deregulating the energy markets. They have a vested interest in saying, to the extent that there was a problem it wasn't what we were doing and it certainly has been dealt with it already.

One of the reasons I don't have complete confidence that just making things transparent would work is that you have to be motivated to deal with things.

MD: Additional checks and balances?

AN: During the middle of the California power crisis one of the big five who owned most of the generators in the LA area, suddenly on their EPA reporting forms cut the amount of pollution the produced by a factor of ten.

MD: One tenth of the...

AN: Suddenly by magic, the amount of pollution those plants were producing dropped....when they running. Not because sometimes they weren't running. We're not talking about the amount of pollution that they produced over average, we're talking about when they were turned on. The amount of pollution...

MD: Ten times as clean?

AN: Ten times as clean. They didn't change fuel sources. Because they would have had to note that. They put in no new equipment, they would have had to tell us. Just by magic, that happened.

Now, you can believe, if you choose that a sudden decision that instead of having the plant manager sign the forms they have to send to the EPA that gives the amount of pollution, having a central official sign all the forms that they sent to the EPA from all the plants decreased the amount of pollution. Or you can believe that magic decreased the pollution. Or possibly the immaculate polluter pole was suddenly used, or something... Or you can believe that they lied.

I know which one of those things I believe.

When it was pointed out to EPA, who has an immense budget and whose job it is...

MD: To find this?

AN: Well, I don't know what their job is. You would think, that if you worked at EPA you would care about pollution. But the fact of the matter is that when things like this were pointed out to the people who run the EPA's Acid Rain Database, they remarked, “Oh. Well that does seem odd.”

And to the best of my knowledge, no one has even been questioned about this.

The people that collect the information, EPA keeps track of hourly production at all of the plants, they don't care. As long as the forms come in...he's a bureaucrat. Forms come in, boxes mainly filled out right.

MD: So, they could have no pollution protection, at all, right now and short of having giant gouts of black smoke?

AN: No one would give a shit. Nobody. The people who are bureaucrats, care that the paperwork is filled out right.

MD: Would you buy green power from Enron or any of the other big five?

AN: No, I wouldn't buy green power from anybody. If you're going to buy green power, what you're saying is that somehow electricity comes around in discreet packages.

MD: So is there any incentive for the power producers to actually generate honest numbers when reporting about green power sales?

AN: None that I can think of.

More Soon...

 
How to Catch a Fake Veteran

Since there are people out there willing to lie about their military service for personal and political gain, it is the patriotic duty of people who support the troops to find the frauds and ridicule them. Unlike lying about your military service, ridicule is protected speech, even when extreme. To help you find and flush these miscreants, there are a few simple steps you can take.

1. Ask Direct Questions. When were you there? What unit were you with? Who was with you? Where were you at? Why did you take those obviously illegal orders? How many times did this happen? Were the goats consenting adults? These are the sorts of things that imposters give vague and implausible answers to that can be checked afterwards.

2. Record All Answers. If they are speaking in public or posting their comments online, they have no expectation of privacy. When you have them recorded, share the media online so everybody can review their statements, not just the gullible few. It will come back to haunt them in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan…

3. Keep Them Talking. The longer they talk the further off the rails they go. Fake veterans make stuff up as they go along, it is central to their pathology. Eventually they will blather something utterly irreconcilable with reality and you can nail them. This part is hard because it involves a delayed gratification in exchange for immediate boredom and tripe. Try to bear up like a soldier, because they usually aren't.

4. Use Research Tools. The Internet is a wonderful thing if you want to expose fraud. Calculators and spreadsheets help a lot, too. Frauds rarely do the math. Calendars with timelines are exceptionally helpful, but relatively rare online. Compare uniform regulations with photos provided by the frauds. Nobody in the US armed forces is authorized to wear leopard-skin accessories, for instance.

5. Learn About the Military. The best way to discover a fraud is to know more about the subject than they do. The best way to do this is to spend some time in military service, but if that is not available to you, do some reading. CentCom (Central Command) has an excellent web site, and they are covering many of the most lied about places in the world right now.

The US military is currently the most trusted group in the country, and a lot of unscrupulous people are trading on that. Anytime someone identifies themselves as a veteran when speaking publicly, they are borrowing authority from the sweat and blood of a lot of good people, many of whom will never get to speak for themselves again. We owe it to the real veterans to be skeptical of outrageous claims and denounce fraud far and wide.

Patrick S Lasswell is a veteran, as was his father and a grandfather before that.

 
How to Avoid Getting Caught as a Fake Veteran

Recently a man named Jessie MacBeth was caught lying about his military service in a video where he described various atrocities committed in Iraq. Within one day, every aspect of his claims and public life were examined and found severely wanting. His attempt to discredit the war did a great deal of harm to the credibility of anti-war organizations that embraced his claims. If you want to avoid a similar fate, there are several basic steps you can take to avoid discovery.

1. Do Not Lie About Your Military Service. This step is so basic that many people forget it altogether. The easiest way to avoid discovery of your lies is not to lie. The truth is a much easier story to keep straight than lies and it often has a useful paper trail that you can point to when confronted.

2. Do Your Research. If you must lie about your military service, it will take a lot longer for you to be caught if you take some time and make sure the story holds together. Regrettably, the more detailed and factual your story is, the more likely it is that the people who were there will be contacted and out you for the fink you are. When discovered, you should be ready to disappear, even if you are in Congress. The easiest way to do your research accurately is to spend several years in military service…okay, maybe not the easiest, but certainly the best.

3. Do Not Say Your Unit Activities Were Classified. Especially if you are claiming a war that is more than ten years old, nothing is worse than the old line "I can't tell you, it's a secret." Real veterans grit their teeth the instant that line is told and start their search engines. A certain Republican Congressman from Oregon discovered the hard way how badly this line is received. If you were involved in a special-ops black bag program, you're probably either dead or making six figures still doing it. Either way, nobody who does super-secret stuff talks about it, ever.

4. Do Not Play Dress Up. There are these things called "uniform inspections" that everybody in the military goes through, a lot. In them, the slightest imperfection in uniform appearance is noted and commented upon. This is called "attention to detail" and the military is really big on it. They act like their lives depend on attention to detail, mostly because their lives depend on attention to detail. Showing up in costume may make you feel important, but it makes you look like a fool to real veterans who can spot an imposter from a mile away. Once again, the best way to avoid this faux pas is to spend some quality time in the military, learning by doing.

5. Do Not Slander The US Military. If you are going to lie about the military, do not give veterans, their friends, families, loved ones, and survivors a burning desire to discredit you. Military people have been known to carry grudges for decades after being slandered and libeled. They get really touchy about getting called "baby-killer", "rapist", "murderer", "mercenary", "traitor", and "coward". Actually, they get more than touchy; they become enraged by this kind of thing, especially because it is almost always a lie. Lying like this will tend to get you caught and publicly exposed at Internet speed these days. Veterans and their families will drop everything to shut this kind of slander down. Not just because this is hurtful, but because it saps the morale of those who need it most.

Some people, including many who have actual military service, just can't help lying about their service…or at least improving on the truth to make things more interesting. Jessie MacBeth is only the latest to be caught lying about his service to gain attention, he won't be the last. Everybody has access to an Internet search engine if they don't have access to a real veteran, and fake veteran stories just don't hold up they way they used to. If you want a veteran who is opposed to the war speaking at your rally or for your organization, you owe it to your cause to make sure that they are authentic and actually speaking truth when speaking to power.

Patrick S Lasswell is a Navy veteran of Operations Southern Watch and Uphold Democracy. He once sailed by Operation Restore Hope and went to the location of Operation Just Cause only seven months after it was over. He very nearly got to go move cargo for Operation Desert Storm and might someday get mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom…or not. http://pslasswell.blogspot.com

Update: Thanks for the link, Sir! I suppose I should post a permalink to Milblogs, if only so I can find it faster.

 
5 Reasons to Join Naval Coastal Warfare

5. People crazy like you are hard to find in other settings.
4. Camouflage is slimming.
3. Recognition for hard work happens...and then they give you more hard work.
2. You go places, get cold and wet, and not mind so much.
1. Where else can you find out that your best accessory is a string of 40mm grenades?

 
Why Protests Fail

The protest in Portland was pretty large, I'd estimate 10,000-15,000. The overwheming majority were there to gather peacefully. Lack of discipline allowed in some creeps in to what should have been a good thing.

She was on-topic and a helpful image.

They were on-topic but a harmful image.

She was off-topic and deeply offensive.

Somebody was very smart, though. They told supporters to wear white as color of unity. I'm not sure if this was done to deliberately marginalize the black block, but it sure made it easier for the police...

This guy shouting to the police that they were traitors was not doing the immigration rights people any favors.

Other folks were clearly using the demonstration for their own purposes, note the tissue thin attachment to the topic and the offensive fellow traveller from above.

The Wobblies attended and dreamed that someday they could get this good a turnout on their own, or maybe they thought they did...


I caught myself getting angry at the black block twit trying to incite the police, and so I left before I started a problem. About 20 minutes later I saw a riot team leave the reserve area at the Rose Quarter and start heading downtown, so maybe somebody else abandoned restraint. I leave you with this study in contrasts on May Day.

 
Clarification of Oil Supply

SMASH has a generally irrefutable set of facts for the reality impaired. On one point he is marginally incorrect in his details.

Gas prices are high because oil prices are high.

Oil prices are high because increasing global demand is outpacing supply.

There is nothing any politician can do about it.

Supply is a more complex concept than described in SMASH's post. The overwhelming infrastructure investment in Oil Supply is predicated on a baseline reality that at any moment Saudi Arabia can sell oil for $15 a barrel. They can make a substantial profit at this price, and they can maintain that price for five years without a problem. Everybody in the oil industry knows this.

Nobody in the oil industry has been willing to invest in solutions that generate oil that is only profitable at $20 a barrel without extensive government subsidies. This is not a massive oil company conspiracy, this is just good corporate governance. There is no justification for risking billions of dollars of other people's money when you know that at any moment the Saudi's can drop the price through the floor and bankrupt you. Any corporate officer who made such a risky expenditure would be fired or the stockholders would file suit and win.

There is a lot of petroleum in various forms available around the world, and most of the research on deposits is proprietary information owned by the companies that did the exploration. Oil companies extract the cheapest and most readily available oil first because they have an obligation to the stockholders to be profitable. Oil Sands in Canada are just now being developed again because prices have been high enough, long enough to justify building the infrastructure to extract this expensive ($20 a barrel) source. Coal transference is another expensive ($30 a barrel) source that is getting developed because it is now profitable. Other, more esoteric and often less realistic sources are being developed now because it is relatively profitable to do so.

Our national economy is doing well, much better than during the stagflation days of 1979 when oil traded for the equivalent of $98 a barrel in today's dollars. Although oil is trading for over $70 a barrel today, we are much better able to absorb the effects individually and nationally. We are currently rich enough to pay for high fuel prices and still develop alternative energy sources much more efficient than in the pre-microcomputer days of yore. President George W. Bush is an oil man, like his father before him. He knew all of the above when he took the oath of office to support and defend the constitution. There exists reason to believe that President Bush has chosen to execute his oath by furthering the energy independence of the United States. For instance, President Bush's repeated statements that he was going to do so are indicative.

SMASH is wrong on one detail. President Bush is perfectly capable of driving events to the point where oil prices are high enough for alternative sources are profitable. There is every reason to believe that he has done so and he is a politician. It is more accurate to say that there is nothing that any other politician can do about oil prices while President Bush is maintaining his oath by keeping them high.

 
Captain Van Steenwyk Puts the Boot in...

Arguing with Jason Van Steenwyk is worthwhile and informative, and if you've got your facts wrong it is also an education in getting your ass handed to you. It is also instructive to see how much of a minefield stroll it is to use the term "Chickenhawk" when there are veterans about.

 
Glass Houses and Rumsfeld

Compare the results of current leadership of the Department of Defense and the Oregonian. Morale in the military is high; the Army exceeded its re-enlistment goals for deployed units by 15%. The Oregonian has not so much a matter of re-enlistment as downsizing due to subscriber loss. The Department of Defense is engaging enemies of our nation around the globe with the lowest rate of casualties in military history; nobody has ever done so much for so little cost. The Oregonian is taking its highest personnel losses ever. The Department of Defense is rewarding innovation from all corners of the globe to serve its vitally competitive mission. The Oregonian pays external sources a pittance for stories that can only be about local matters, despite trying to reach one of the most cosmopolitan and literate readerships in the country.

Editors in glass houses…

Patrick S Lasswell

 
Live Clown in a Cave, Dead Schmuck on a T-Shirt

The other day I was debating somebody in the comments section of a blog about the conduct of the war. They brought up the old chestnut of Osama Bin Laden's lack of expiration, as if failure to have his hide tacked to the wall of the West Wing was some kind of national disgrace. I don't like stale chestnuts, especially ones that are so morally vacuous and strategically bankrupt.

A lot of this rolls back to the Che Guevara threat of the 1960s. After 1959, Earnesto "Che" Guevara was an embarrassment to his friends while he lived. Apart from casual apparel iconography, can you think of any significant contribution the Argentine mastermind made? What are his revolutionary successes? Was he more valuable to his friends alive than dead?

There is a persistent rumor that the US Army Special Forces, having lost some of their own to Earnesto's tender mercies, decided to make him their special friend. Rather than just kill him, they kept him a live failure. Pissing off the Green Berets is actually a bad idea, they are smart and have a mean sense of humor and will milk a joke for everything they can. Allegedly, they ran all over him in the Congo, getting him to waste millions of Castro's seized dollars and hundreds of his loyal followers. In Bolivia, they could only keep the government from killing him so long and couldn't capture his arrogant ass themselves without tipping their hands. Regrettably, self-described revolutionary heroes don't survive catch and release programs with their ego intact.

Fast forward thirty-five years to Afghanistan where we have another iconographic hero with a weak grasp of strategy. Regardless of his value as an adornment to the White House, Bin Laden was surely setting himself up as a martyr for quite some time. He has repeatedly indicated his readiness for martyrdom, and that is a winning end-game for him. As long as he is dead, he cannot surrender his cause or grow old and become fearful. There is little left for him to accomplish in life, and probably he doesn't really have the imagination to conceive of a greater victory than he achieved on 9/11. The rest of his life is a succession of squalid victories and repeated defeats; soaking up resources while locked into a doctrine he must defend while he still draws breath.

The strategic thinkers who surround the President are probably perfectly willing to extend Osama's sorry decline as long as possible. As long as he is alive and failing, he is a strategic resource for the US. The leaders of Al Queda have to listen to him, because he can still excite their followers, but he must be supported in isolation at substantial cost. Only the most proven and loyal can guard him, draining potential leaders from the movement. All of his information is dated and all of his pronouncements are late; and there can be little of either to prevent their transmission being tracked. While he lives, Osama Bin Laden is a disaster for his movement, and they know it.

None of this mattered to the person I was debating. They wanted Osama dead because they were not interested in winning a war; they wanted to pursue a vendetta. Bin Laden had scared them once and killing him would give them a sense of security or completion or the feeling of accomplishment. They didn't care about the cost, the strategic consequences, or the value of the action; what matters are their feelings. Thankfully, our government is not constitutionally required to answer every tantrum. They are required to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and emotionally underdeveloped. It is in our national interest to keep this clown alive in a cave rather than put another dead schmuck on t-shirts everywhere.

 
Seditious Libelers Support Group

During AT (Annual Training) I had a good natured ongoing argument with a sailor from Massachusetts over the nature of matters political. It was quite civil because we were both in battle dress uniform, the same rate, the same rank, and stuck on the same island in Korea during the same gale. Our bona fides were established; a circumstance that does not occur all that often in arguments of this sort. I am more than willing to put up with a lot of crap from somebody who is out there walking the walk despite their reservations about the current political leadership.

One of his talking points we didn't get around to discussing at length was his contention that accusing former Senator Max Cleland of anything was beyond the pale because he had lost three limbs in Vietnam. He stated that the loss of three limbs gave anybody a free pass for life. He contended that because some people who hold some political viewpoints I agree with accused the former Senator of communist sympathy, my arguments were void. Such was his drive for moral equivalency that he seemed to willing to restore our country to early colonial justice. Back then one offensive statement against authority would get you branded for life.

"In Maryland, every county was ordered to have branding irons, with the lettering specifically prescribed: SL stood for seditious libel and could be burned on either cheek."

This is clearly unacceptable in physical practice today, but the intellectual practice seems wholly embraced in common discourse. Even though I had never accused Max Cleland of communist sympathies, I was guilty by association and similarly pariah. Nobody else in the tent bought the argument, mostly because they were pointedly ignoring us and hoping we weren't going to start throwing punches they'd have to pay attention to. I did not get the chance to resolve this point out on the island, but that is what we have blogs for.

Max Cleland did not get a free pass for life with his injury in Vietnam. I learned this from my father who was also blown up by a grenade, only in Korea years before Cleland took his hit. My father was an anti-war activist before Max Cleland went to Vietnam, but he never played his injury as his identity or insisted that his wounds made his behavior beyond reproach. If Max Cleland is allowing himself to be a tool for our nation's enemies, he should be called on it. If the people calling him on his failures are wrong, their facts should be assaulted, not their temerity to cast an icon in a bad light.

Our freedom of speech is founded on the principle that the truth is never libel. It is also a critical feature of our democracy that nobody is above the law or their fellow citizens. Injury in national service is not a patent of nobility or canonization. If we cannot criticize our war wounded when they are wrong, we cannot be free. Put away the branding irons.

 
Pictures from Korea

Still playing with sizes, stay tuned.

Cho Do (Do means Island) with camp on the right and nearest head on the left. Did I mention the deep sand between the two?


Dawn from Cho Do with Patrol Boats. Picture taken from my tent.


Sunset from Gaedaek Do during a storm with sustained winds of 40+ knots and gusts 65+ knots. Funny thing about islands, when there is a gale, you can't get off them. Climbing up the steep trail to this camp location, I regretted all the stuff I had brought with me. After the second night stuck there, I rejoiced in it.

 
Happy Thought:

Peace is the opiate of the ineffectual.

Patrick S Lasswell

 
People Who Don't Stand Watch...

...should not call the ones standing in the cold wind pussies. I'm just putting that out there and letting others learn. With all possible respect, of course.

Seriously, the wind chill up at the lighthouse that some people only saw from a distance was severe, but the units up there were ready for it. Also, the first class petty officer I talked to who stood watch on a boat last night, while aforementioned others were in their heated tents, said he just couldn't stay warm or get warm after watch.

Tonight as I tuck into my cot, I will dream pleasant dreams of talking to certain others after they spend a night in an unheated gym. Some of us remembered to bring plenty of handwarmers...

 
From the Land of the Morning "Golly It's Cold"

I left for annual training without as much briefing as I would have liked regarding conditions or expectations upon arrival, I operated on a worst case scenario. Good choice, that. Although rainfall has been minimal, every night has been cold, and the wind has been piercing.

If anybody who knows my phone number is reading this before I get back, please call my wife and tell her that I'm fine and that she should read her email. Back soon.

 
The Long Run

Al Haig is Still Wrong After All These Years

Former Nixon adviser Alexander Haig said military leaders in Iraq are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of the military to win the war.

“Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don’t do it,” Haig said. “We’re in the midst of another struggle where it appears to me we haven’t learned very much.”

Gen. Haig's remarks make sense in the context that he has not learned very much.

As a nation, we are outspending every other nation on earth, and we can afford to do so. Although we could be spending a lot of that money better, we have the money to spend and can maintain this expense indefinitely. Although the New York Times would do almost anything to avoid you becoming aware of it, our economy is as strong as it has ever been and getting better. We can maintain this pace.

Gen. Haig is from an entirely different era of military thinking, one that assumed that you fought a war and then rested. In effect, during the 20th this resulted in four major binge and purge cycles and a hellishly large number of dead troops. We do not have the luxury of resting on our victories anymore, so we can no longer afford to sprint.

The rest of the world has always wanted the US at least humbled; now they are wealthy enough to make it happen if we let them. Regrettably, there is no longer a margin for allowing ourselves to be defeated. The will it takes to attempt attacking the US requires more than humiliation as a goal. The only reason people attack us is because they want us to die. While we can still afford to engage in limited wars, all of our opponents are fighting total wars. Thankfully, the coordination of our enemies has been weak, possibly because each of their total wars is for individual extreme reasons and on different timetables.

After we finish Islamism to the point where they are a controlled annoyance, there are the warlords of China, and our grandchildren will have to clean up the sewer of Africa. Beyond that none can see without transitioning straight to science fiction. Who knows what intolerant people will someday be adamant in their insistence that the US must fail? As a child I dreamed of peace but history proved me wrong. Gen. Haig is still dreaming if he thinks there will ever be a time when we can afford to rest again. If we cannot rest, we cannot sprint.

We are engaged in the longest and most crucial marathon ever run. Gen. Al Haig is still thinking in terms of war as a massive but short event. We can no longer afford anaerobic engagement. If we overwhelm Iraq now, what well we do when Iran attacks? Or will we ignore a resurgent Russia annexing Ukraine? Do we sacrifice Lebanon to Syria or Iran or Hezbollah? Who else do we throw to the wolves so that we can finish this fight quickly?

Gen. Al Haig is still focusing on the conflict, not the consequences.

Hat Tip: Michael Totten and Co.

 
Professionalism in Home Defense

On Miss Kelly's web site there was a request for advice about what to get for home defense. In addition to a flood tide of advice, there were more than a few people terrified by the level of knowledge available, and the people who were knowledgeable. Somebody asked who we were and why we should know such things.

I am a reservist who used to be on active duty in bad places where unpleasant people were. On Saturday I go to Korea for two weeks. My best friend has arrested senior members of the Crips while a security guard and been shot at while walking a regular warehouse post. A lot of people have been worse places than you and lived more dangerous lives than you live. Ignorance is not a protection because the scope of violence is no longer limited to the bad parts of large cities, like it used to be. There is now economic incentive to be violent in small markets.

What you are seeing is the results of some fairly serious people getting together and talking seriously and honestly about the effective, professional use of violence by law abiding citizens. In many cases this is due to a rising of violence in the criminal element requiring greater professionalism to survive. In other cases, this is the practical result of failures in Vietnam driving the professional military to adjust to the difficulties of urban counter-insurgency. Part of it is that unprofessional enforcement personnel and unprepared homeowners get raped by lawyers in wrongful death suits. In no small part this is due to honest practitioners of military and law enforcement trades utterly fed up with listening to braggarts and frauds. In your lifetime, tactical skill and knowledge have advanced tremendously.

About 18 years ago I started playing paintball. After a couple of months, I had spent a few hundred dollars on a gun, mask, some surplus camo, and a bit of the accessories. One week I pinned down this new guy behind a bush for fifteen minutes. The very next week, he was on the field with $1,200 worth of the best gear he could get. We asked him why, and his answer essentially was that he wanted to be as good at this as quickly as possible, he made plenty of money, and he wasn't going to let shoddy gear be an impediment to his progress. We are a lot richer as a country than we used to be, and our hobbies and professions are a lot more advanced than they used to be and they get that way a lot faster than they ever did.

It used to be that a policeman was unlikely to ever draw his firearm in the course of his career. Ten years ago my friend the security guard was drawing his firearm to arrest people once a month at the least. Part of that is because the compliance of the criminal element has diminished considerably. A critical part is the unwillingness of citizens to allow criminals to rule them by fear.

Finally, the most important aspect is that knowledge of the effective use of firearms is saving the lives of law abiding citizens every single day. Criminals do not get to spend time on the range in prison, ever. Free people trained with firearms can resist criminals trained with shanks, and it happens all the time.

 
Defy Terror!

Four and a half years in and I finally figure out the bumper sticker. It has been a long and painful time for the supporters of the Global War on Terror; we can't even fit the name of our fight on a bumper sticker. We have deep beliefs for why we are fighting, and because they are so strongly rooted in our consciousness, we have difficulty expressing them shortly and simply. The opposition to the war has different intellectual and moral considerations and don't seem to care about presenting slogans that are incomplete, oversimplified, and frankly insulting to most of the country.

I have more than my share of Scotch-Irish in my ancestry, and the notion of rallying around a cry of defiance to those who would be our lords is an idea that resonates deeply with me. Without insulting anybody, without giving explicit directions, without abandoning our ideals; this slogan expresses our basic intent to be free of those who would rule us through fear. I hope that others find this simple slogan useful and I give it to the free people of the world without reservation.

I would appreciate it if somebody could send me the link to the marine giving the bird to the terrorist who wounded him with an IED in Iraq. That would make an excellent t-shirt.

Update: Thanks to Jason of COUNTERCOLUMN for sending the image.