To kill the bad guys or not

The US military/administration found a top Iranian military leader in a vulnerable position and they blew his two-car convoy to kingdom come. As a bonus they got a top Iraqi militia leader, who maybe was conferring with Iranian on new year's resolutions or maybe the next moves in Iraq's current riots.

When I was young, I was taught always to doubt the actions of the US government, as though they were thoroughly untrustworthy, though not as evil as, say, the Nazis. At some point I wised up and I started to look at reality instead of propaganda, and the US didn't look so bad.

Unfortunately, that liberal middle-class distrust of anything military still exists as unchanging lumps in the heads of many a liberal or progressive, including my mother and some siblings. I also see it every single time the US military does something. Some silly, mindless liberal or progressive denouncing the action reflexively, with no knowledge and seemingly no effort to understand the situation. Liberals are supposed to understand context, but not in these situations. Thank God I'm not like anymore, and haven't been for decades.

There is hand-wringing about the US escalated conflict, as though that US must never respond to attacks. Well, that's obviously stupid, but I wonder what responses would bring out hand-wringers. Of course it brought out the idiotic liberal celebrities, who aren't much different in their mindlessness but are considerably more photogenic than your average liberal.

Iraq has been awash in rioting, and I've got to wonder if that has something to do with this targeted military action. Lo and behold, the US embassy in Baghdad was attacked six days ago on 12/31/19.

Other countries have their idiots too, and the Iraqi parliament has voted to ask the Americans to leave. Yes, the Americans who helped save Iraq when it was overrun by ISIS. Did Iraq turn to Iran for help then, or to people who could definitely help?

The hand-wringing and American-damning forces aren't overwhelming, though. The world is largely being attentive, but not overly worried. Well, maybe not the whole world, but the oil traders. I like to be reassured by the markets, though they aren't infallible. However, Iran hasn't been able to do anything spectacular yet. The biggest victory was hacking the webpage for a US federal library program. If that's the best they can do when they've probably pulled out all the stops, I'm not going to get into a sweat. Yes, there may be repercussions, but I don't think this will be a killing I'm going to regret. The Iranian military aren't good guys, and killing a top guy is probably a favor to the world, not a frightening miscalculation.

DEAD

Image: freep.com

Update 1/7/20. Someone in the Pentagon mistakenly sent out a letter saying that the US and Iraq had better nail down this withdrawal. Oops, folks, that letter went out by mistake. The Iraqi prime minister is demanding an explanation of the mistake, but didn't his country just vote to throw 'em out? This is funnier than the Keystone Kops.

Update 1/9/20. The Iranians responded by shooting a bunch of missiles at bases in Iraq. However, they unofficially put the word out and all personnel were able to hunker down in fortified places. So a bit of damage was down and no one was hurt... in Iraq that is. It's possible that Iran accidentally hit a commercial flight, killing almost 200 people. Oh, the stupidity and waste. Maybe hand-wringers will blame it on the US somehow.

November links

I lost a bunch of links, and had a bunch more before the two bombshells of the DNC paying for the Steele dossier and being totally under Clinton's control hit.

Since I'm hoping not to lose the links again, here they are.

The Steele dossier summarized. A great summary of the dossier, with each piece discussed separately. Must read to get a good background on it.

Changes at the Fed. This was a preview of what could happen due to end of the Federal Reserve chair's term. Trump could keep Yellen, could choose a current board member similar to her, or could choose a conservative with non-standard ideas. Luckily, Trump chose Powell, the current board member. By the way, Yellen stays on the Fed board.

Australian chaos. An Australian court threw a huge monkey wrench into government with a ruling about citizenship. They ruled that if you could be a dual citizen, you were, and therefore were ineligible to hold government office. Many officeholders with foreign-born parents were caught in the ruling. Bizarre and disruptive.

Who got indicted? A good backgrounder on Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, two advisers to the Trump campaign who had ties to Russia. Papadopoulos pled guilty to charges brought by Mueller in his Russia investigation. Other charges include the former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is accused of laundering $75 million.

Fun with the indictments. This is such a great read in terms of humor. It feels like a classic joke--something that could be from the 'Who's on first' era. But I think it's original.

Socialism is defunct in Russia. All kinds of interesting factoids in the article and the discussion thread.

Peace dividend in Iraq? An article telling about greatly improved Shi'ite and Sunni relations in Iraq. I hope it's not just a puff piece.

Image: farmersalmanac.com

Best summation on the Mideast

U.S. post-Arab Spring responses included intervention, non-intervention, and vacillation, and literally none of them turned out well.

— Charles Homans (@chashomans) April 15, 2016

To all of those who claim we should have done this or that in the Mideast, this is plain truth. What's more, it's the truth in 140 characters. For a change, the truth is short and the lies are longer.

Mideast policy proposals: many kinds of stupid

What have we learned about the Mideast?

Top of the list would have to be that there isn't an easy way in and back out. If we try to limit our engagement, the situation on the ground quickly spins out of control (see Libya and Syria). If we put in more resources, we're sucked in for more than we counted on (see Iraq).

The only proven winning strategy is (drum roll) ... non-existent.

That's tempering what Obama is currently doing in the Mideast, but not what some of the GOP candidates are declaring. Joke-candidate Donald Trump says that we can bomb the hell out of the oilfields, encircle them, and then send in Mobil to extract the oil to pay for the mission. This would be the best way to get rid of ISIS, according to him.

Great plan! I don't see anything wrong with it, since it obviously worked for Russia when they wanted Crimea. No one in the whole world will complain and make it stick if we do it. We won't have to worry about the drip-drip-drip of IED warfare because, um, well Donald's not worried about that.

Moving from the laughable to the merely deluded, we have Jeb Bush praising the surge and pretending everything would have been peachy if only Obama had kept troops in Iraq. This strategy worked so well in Afghanistan that we didn't need a surge there, or did we? For some reason, keeping troops in Iraq would have made everything turn out fine in Syria, would have prevented ISIS from invading Iraq, and other magical stuff. Back in the real world, perhaps ISIS wouldn't have taken over as much of Iraq as it did, but assuming better outcomes than that is quite a stretch.

Jeb Bush, of course, isn't deterred from engaging in such fantasy. He declares that by defeating Assad, we'll also defeat ISIS, "but we have to make sure that his regime is not replaced by something as bad or worse." Unfortunately, there weren't any hints on just how we "make sure."

Is anyone falling for that? I doubt it. I don't even think GOP supporters believe it. How could they, after the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Syrian civil war (ongoing), Vietnam, and Korea? They may pretend that they believe, just like Trump and Jeb Bush pretend, but that's a whole different thing from actually believing.

 Image: politicususa.com

Extra. One war Trump definitely could win (funny).

The crazy debate about which Americans caused the rise of ISIS

Which stupid American or Americans are responsible for the rise of that murder/torture group extraordinaire called ISIS?

The usual conservative story is that it's Obama's fault. He took all the troops out of Iraq, and that's why we have ISIS. (Examples: typical versus more intelligent than usual.) The usual Dem counterpoint is that Bush destabilized the region.

Why isn't someone pointing to players in the Middle East? I doubt that Obama was involved in financing and developing the recruiting strategies. So who was?

This story fits into the narrative that the US is so strong it can do anything or prevent anything, if only we were cognizant and had the will to act. Any failure in the world can be laid at our feet because of something we did wrong or something we should have done right but didn't.

In the case of ISIS, I reject that thinking. The Sunni paymasters have put together jihadi force after jihadi force. I'm not sure how we're supposed to prevent that, short of taking over the oil-rich Gulf states. A bunch of rich Saudi/Gulf guys support jihadis in Afghanistan, and that's good, Then they support a bunch called Al Queda, and that's bad. Then they support a bunch called ISIS and it's bad. However, the pattern time after time is A BUNCH OF SAUDI/GULF GUYS SUPPORTING JIHADIS. Doesn't that tell us how this happens?

It's true that maybe we should have foreseen that the 'Arab spring' uprising in Syria against Assad was going to be an opportunity for the rich Gulf guys to raise another jihadi army. Maybe we became too enamored of the Arab spring idea, and the many brave Syrians fighting for freedom. Maybe we missed all the signs that it was a civil war that would attract outside money that would mushroom beyond Syria. Or maybe there were hopeful, optimistic reasons why we didn't foresee it. Not every Arab spring uprising has turned into a jihadi murder-fest. Tunisia didn't (not yet, at least). Egypt didn't. So we had hope for Syria, and we were wrong. Does that make it our fault?

I don't think so. There were Syrians fighting against Assad. Money and fighters were flowing into Syria, and hardly any of it was from the US. So why is it our fault? Assad wasn't our puppet. The rebels weren't our proxy fighters, dependent on the US. No, the conflict would have developed the same way, regardless of what the US did .. unless we chose to level the entire country. Then it might have gone differently.

But bombing a country out of existence isn't a good tactical or strategic choice. Well, it isn't the usual choice. Has any government tried it and found that it works? Not that I know of. I don't particularly want the US to be the trailblazer of that strategy, do you?

Your donation (or ransom) hard at work buying violence

Image: mirror.co.uk

Extras. Rand Paul is offering a different story. NYT brief on ISIS's hearty finances.

Update 7/27/16. Detailed, frightening story about the beginning of ISIS.

Did you notice we survived 2014?

 Image: gopixpic.com

According to conservatives, the world was almost certainly going to end in 2014. The Russians were overrunning Ukraine (due to Obama's incompetence), ISIS was going to take over the Middle East and launch massive attacks on western countries (due to Obama's incompetence), and Ebola was going to decimate the US (due to Obama's incompetence).

If these things didn't happen, does that mean that Obama isn't as incompetent as portrayed? According to classic symbolic logic (if X, then Y), yes, it means Obama isn't as incompetent as stated. But, honestly, 1) conservatives aren't interested in logic and 2) classic symbolic logic is so limited as to be pretty useless. Here's a little known fact--logic doesn't deal with actual causation. 'If then' isn't necessarily a causal statement in classic logic. This is deeply disappointing.

Crisis contained - Russia and Ukraine

I think Obama did pretty well in each of these crises, mostly by not flipping out. Instead of starting a war with heavily armed Russians, he encouraged the Ukrainians to stand up for themselves, which is a VERY GOOD THING. More countries should do this instead of whining for the US to intervene and also conveniently bear most of the costs. The sanctions have hurt, but what's even better is that Obama has let the Russians show their true nature--militaristic liars. If we had gone to war, the narrative could have been that the US is the world-wide bully, and the Russians are heroes making a stand against the US. Instead, the Russians are the local bully, and the Ukrainians are the heroes. Other countries around Europe are seeing that you can make a stand against Russia. (At least I hope this analysis is correct. World affairs isn't my strength.)

(As an aside: This also bolsters the first lesson I learned that disproved a liberal tenet. Liberals said that demilitarization was good and morally superior. I learned, by observation, that being strong enough to defend your country was much more important, and the supposed moral superiority of demilitarization was hogwash. Liberals are so stupid sometimes that it boggles my mind.)

Crisis tested - ISIS

The surge of ISIS definitely was a crisis instead of being a faux-crisis trumped up by opponents. Obama reacted in way we haven't seen before--turning the crisis into a teaching moment. That may sound ridiculous--that you would allow a deadly crisis to play out instead of ending it as soon as possible. But I think this was the right approach.

In the Mideast, as in much of the world, too many people want the US to swoop in and save them (while also conveniently bearing most of the costs). It's a VERY GOOD THING for countries to get a reality check that the US might not be willing to do this, so they better be ready to defend themselves. Plus, they may want to identify threats early and do their best to avoid them.

Perhaps some people in Iraq finally learned the lesson this time. If you oppress large numbers of Sunnis, you create an angry insurgency that will try to take over the country. So don't oppress them. That's a relatively simple lesson that Iraq government under Nouri al-Maliki refused to learn. (Another aside--much of the Mideast, having been locked into strong-man dictatorships for so long, is now learning a lot of lessons. The learning process is important, so we shouldn't short-circuit it by swooping in like a helicopter parent.)

Crisis wildly overestimated - Ebola

The last threat that we survived was Ebola. The conservative response was so stereotypical as to be laughable. Talk about people not learning lessons--the conservatives really don't seem to understand science, and that the US response was going to be scientifically sound and based on evidence. So we brought a few infected citizens back to the US for treatment, and we learned from doing it. When we made mistakes, we learned and didn't repeat those mistakes. It is so incredibly simple, but partisan politicians seem not to know how to learn from mistakes. This is very strange, and I'll have to research why reality doesn't force politicians to learn.

Crisis for dollars - Underage immigrants

While we're reviewing crises that didn't pan out, there was one liberal crisis that didn't end up nearly as horrible as predicted. The crisis of immigrant minors crossing the US-Mexico borders supposedly required an infusion of $3.7 billlion. Not surprising, but the House did not dutifully comply with the request. Somehow, the Obama administration managed to deal with the crisis without the cash, so perhaps they didn't need the money after all.

Congratulations, everyone, we survived! Well, to be more specific, congratulations everyone except:

• Militaristic Russians
• ISIS and their sugar daddies
• Stubborn Iraqi politicians
• Overheated American conservatives
• Pollyanna American liberals

Trust whom?

Image: craftymcclever.wordpress.com

Tiptoe around the War Powers Act

The US is bombing quite a bit of Iraq these days, targeting the forces of the Islamic State, or whichever name they're using today. (It used to be ISIS for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, then changed to ISIL, referring to Levant in place of Syria.)

Obama sent a letter to Congress on August 8 in compliance with the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress of military intervention, and conduct it for no more than 60 days without congressional authorization. So if the US continues bombing beyond Oct. 7, Congress needs to authorize it.

Oh no! Bad timing...

But wait! That's less than a month before the election. Will Congress be willing to take such a vote then? According to this article (and observations of this Congress), Republicans won't want to vote for anything the president requests. But they don't want to vote against military action either when it's action against murderous fundamentalist Muslim forces who are conducting mass shootings, terrifying minority religious groups, beheading high-profile prisoners, and threatening to take over the world. If you're a Republican, you hate Obama, but you hate Muslim extremists more. That still doesn't make it an easy vote, so Republicans will probably want to avoid it.

Dems have their own reasons for wanting to avoid it. They don't like reminders of how many Democrats voted for Bush's Iraq war resolution. If that was a mistake, wouldn't this be a mistake too? That's the easiest way to look at it. They can try to lessen the unease by putting limits on the military actions, but it's unclear that will satisfy wary Dems who'll have to take that vote.

So both Dems and GOP fear making a mistake on this vote. Will Obama force them to take a vote? If history is a guide, he won't. He never forced a vote on Libya. He got a lot of pushback against a vote authorizing bombing of Syria, and the vote never materialized. There's a very good chance that this vote won't happen either.

A Law is a Law

That's not good. We don't need yet another military action where the Congress was too divided to discuss and vote on it. We don't want to add to the precedent of a president and a Congress being too cowardly to follow a perfectly reasonable law... do we?

Maybe we don't mind it. Skirting laws probably happens all the time. The president and Congress don't follow the law, but they get away with it because ... the law is a pain in the ass, and no one that important is going to complain about the breach. Breaking the law is less embarrassing than having to decide which way to vote, so it's tough noogies to the law. Hey, maybe we shouldn't bother having laws at all.

Well, on second thought, laws are generally good, and it's best to abide by them for the most part. The War Powers Act is a reasonable law, and should be followed. Obama shouldn't be such a wuss--he should go to Congress and ask for authorization, a definite yes or a definite no. Then it's on Congress to act. They can authorize, vote against the authorization, or they can wimp out and not vote at all. If the members of Congress can't get a vote, they are the ones who failed to express their will, and Obama should do what he thinks needs to be done. That's still not in compliance with the law, but at least he gave it a chance.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but didn't.

Image: cagle.com

Update 4/6/15. We now know how Congress will respond, and it's by wimping out. Obama sent a request to Congress on 2/11/15. For some, it's too limited a request, for some too much, and for some, it's the hated prez asking for something, so the answer is easy.

How to Lose a Country in 3 Years

We, the U.S., left Iraq is reasonably good shape. There was a workable agreement between the central government and the Kurds. There was also the demonstration project (the surge) that showed how to work with the Sunni minority.

All that was lost on a clueless leader.

If you're a GOP partisan, you think the clueless leader is Obama. But I disagree. I think the clueless leader was Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. He pursued policies that shut out the Sunni population as though there would be no repercussions. That was foolish because the Sunnis had already shown a preference for rebellion over submission. 

Now the Iraqi army is deserting its positions without even engaging incoming Sunni forces. They are just running away. al-Maliki wants to declare a state of emergency, but can't get a quorum in the legislative branch to show up. Well, that's what happens when you build your plan on wishful thinking.

I don't know if a different US president could have helped prevent these losses in Iraq. My best guess is that the Iraqi leaders were stubborn in their views that they could do exactly what they wanted, and needn't share power (and spoils), nor make other compromises for the sake of unity. Any other US president also would have failed in negotiating a Status-of-forces agreement and failed to maintain US influence and US-tested moderating policies. 

So I don't think Obama is losing Iraq. Nor it is Bush's fault (for a change). Instead I think it's the short-sightedness of leaders in Iraq. Sometimes, there's no saving people from themselves. Actually, most of the time, you can't save people from themselves. Yet we try because sometimes it works. If only we knew when it was hopeless, or, more importantly, when it's worth the effort, expense, and lives. 

Image: bbc.com

Extra. Recently I was pointed to this column in National Review. It talks about the likely results of the Status-of-Forces agreement of 2008, worked out between Bush and the Iraqis. So much of what has occurred was predicted then, without any idea of what Obama would fuck up do as president. It was predictable based on the Iraqis, the Iranians, and the habits of Islamist fighters.