Saturday, September 16, 2006

The (except America) No Armed Troops Organization

It used to be that NATO was considered the one international organization on which we could count. After all it was the “most successful alliance” in history and such. It also wasn’t full of corrupt and incompetent third worlders like the UN. However, the value of even this alliance is increasingly in question.

The fundamental flaw in NATO is similar to the problem with the UN, it has become extremely unbalanced in the capabilities, responsibility, and interests of its members. The rapid collapse of Europe in virtually all aspects of global power and influence is the heart of the problem. This has bred in Europe a desire to maintain the trappings of power and influence the only way they can (diplomacy) while avoiding any tough actions that would lay bare their impotence. They are further bedeviled by their rapidly growing Muslim minorities, their proximity to the rapidly growing homelands of said Muslims, and their rapidly growing class of retirees with their high social spending requirements. The former restricts European actions due to fear of social disturbances and the latter prevents European actions due to lack of military spending and the intense quest for money wherever it can be found.

We are seeing the results of an increasingly dysfunctional Europe today in Afghanistan. NATO has sent remarkably few troops given its European members have over 400 million people and 2 million soldiers. Recent requests for an additional 2,500 soldiers have apparently fallen on unconcerned ears. One of the few good European countries, Poland, has offered 900 soldiers but sadly their capability doesn’t match their courage and responsibility (we should increase aid to help the former). Norway has recently ordered their soldiers to redeploy to a safe northern province since they aren’t prepared for combat (no excuse in this case, Norway is as rich as us with much of it coming from oil). Meanwhile, what NATO forces are in the south are not capable of completely wiping out the Taliban in their area since we have yet again been burned by European promises.

The change in the world power structure highlighted here is nothing new or surprising and should be expected and adapted to. Europe is in an irreversible slide, Japan is reawakening, Russia is returning to great power status, China and India are rising, and a global anti-West socialist ideology is advancing throughout the third world and beginning to join forces with radical Islam. Bush has made great strides in refocusing our foreign policy to radical Islam and China, while deepening our alliance with Japan and India. Yet the central focus of our foreign policy continues to be on a Europe who more and more does not share either our capabilities or our interests. The world is going to keep on turning no matter how much we wish it would stay still.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Friendly fire then and now

I’m vacationing at the moment so this is just a short observation. After the Gulf War the media went crazy over the friendly fire rate. I was a preteen at the time but was already watching the news and Discovery Channel. As such I remember the reports and shows about the unbelievably high “blue on blue” incidents during the war (to think of what things were like before the internet and Fox News, *shudder*). Why, they were much higher than in World War II, Korea, or Vietnam. Countless time was spent analyzing why this was the case and what should be done to fix it. As I recall the most common conclusion was that war had become to video gamey. All the thermal displays and night vision had made it too difficult for soldiers to tell who was who.

Even at the time I thought this attempt by the media to disparage whatever aspect they could of our massive victory to be silly. I thought the high friendly fire rate was merely the result of the Iraqi soldiers not doing their jobs. Had they been more competent and actually stood and fought then the friendly fire share of killed would be much lower. Thankfully the Iraqis didn’t even though that meant the friendly fire share was higher than usual. There were other peculiarities about that war that would have caused higher friendly fire casualties, it was a large and extremely aggressive mobile campaign, fought in the open desert, and fought day and night for the first time.

I was reminded of this by this article on strategypage.com about the number of friendly fire incidents in Iraq. Out of 2,100 killed in action since March 2003, only 21 have been due to friendly fire or 1%. This war, like all wars, also has its difference with past wars. Many of the killed are the result of I.E.D.’s that don’t have gunfights associated with them, engagements are mostly smaller scale with little operational maneuver that results in units unknowingly bumping into each other, and the soldiers are not dealing with a furious 24 hour tempo. Given the choice, I would prefer 21 friendly fire dead representing an absurdly high 35% of soldiers killed in action rather than 1% even if it causes the media to look down on trigger happy G.I.'s.

Nevertheless, it does show that American soldiers do not have an obsession with killing anything that moves, including fellow Americans. Unfortunately, that notion has been hammered into the minds of many around the world by this point. It is also further evidence that the media does not like the military or report fairly or intelligently about it. The military wins a conventional campaign quickly and with low casualties and the media still finds something that looks bad when incorrectly analyzed and beats the military over the head with it. Now it is ignoring the historically low friendly fire rate, once its pet cause, and instead focuses on casualty rates that are below those of the Filipino Insurrection and Vietnam (5 per 1,000 soldier-years for the Philippines vs. 20 in Vietnam vs. 4 today). Lastly, it further shows how incompetent the media is that they couldn’t figure out something an 11 year old boy could; that the high friendly fire share of the Gulf War was nothing endemic and would unfortunately not be as high when we faced an enemy who fought.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Thoughts about a couple Muslim talking points

We kept hearing during the fighting in southern Lebanon about “disproportionate” Israeli action. Teeth were gnashed and hands were wrung by countless people over the fact that roughly 6 Arabs were dying for each Israeli. The Lebanese Prime Minister bemoaned what he said was the world valuing Israeli tears more than Lebanese blood. And so on it went. This was the same thing were heard regarding the Palestinians during their second intifada (where about 5 Arabs died for each Israeli). Yet, no one complains about the Arabs disproportionate prisoner swap demands. For one Israeli prisoner the Arabs routinely demand 400-1000 Arab prisoners. The same Arabs who decry what they say is counting an Arab as 1/6 an Israeli are counting their prisoners as 1/400 to 1/1000 an Israeli. It should also be noted that the Iranians have said trading 60 million Muslims for 6 million Jews is worth it since it is a loss of 6% of the world’s Muslims for 50% of its Jews. So the Arabs own Muslim brothers put the Muslim-Jew value at 1/10. For that matter, where are the complaints about the Alawis killing 20,000 at Hama for demanding democracy? Or when the Jordanians finally had enough of Palestinian terrorism and killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, during Black September? Or are disproportionate responses only ok when it’s Goyim doing the killing? It would seem to me then that Israel is overvaluing Arabs by at least twofold and maybe as high as 170-fold based on the Muslims own view of their value.

Never mind that “proportionate” responses are never how a nation should respond. After Pearl Harbor we didn’t respond by bombing Kure Naval Base, killing exactly 2,400 Japanese, and then going home. We didn’t respond to the Lusitania sinking by demanding Imperial Germany load up a similar sized German vessel with 1,100 civilians so we could sink it. Nor was the Iranian response to Saddam’s limited invasion of Khuzestan province to invade a similar Iraqi province but to attempt to overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq. In the world of geopolitics this is a non-issue.

This also touches on the similar Muslim talking point that the world in general and America in particular care a lot more about Israeli babies than Arab ones. Last I checked it wasn’t the Israelis but the Arabs who are sending their children on “martyrdom operations” and who are setting up rocket launchers and terrorist safe houses in places with lots of children about. Adding the Iranians to the mix again, it was they and not the Israelis who used their young boys by the hundreds of thousands as human mine clearers and machine gun fodder. Even if the Muslims are right about us caring more about Israeli babies than theirs (which I would disagree with that), the real questions are why do they expect others to care more about their children than they themselves do and why they don't care about either their babies or Israel's.


Next up is another frequent claim by various “moderate” Muslims that stereotyping Muslims as terrorists is angering them and producing more terrorists. So angry at being considered the prime source for suicide bombers, bus bombers, school kid murderers, and beheaders they are going to disabuse us of this notion by….producing more suicide bombers, bus bombers, school kid murderers, and beheaders. Well I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly disabused. However, to be fair to Muslims, I will fully agree we need to focus more attention on elderly Japanese women’s Mahjong groups the first time one carries out a grade school massacre or bus bombing. Also I should note that I have no problem with hardline approaches against other terrorists like the ETA and IRA (to the point that I think the British should have invaded Ireland in the 60’s or 70’s for allowing the IRA to operate there). The attention on Muslims has nothing to do with their religion (except inasmuch as it motivates their actions and therefore requires us to pay attention to them) and the sooner “moderate” Muslims accept that and help us battle a common enemy, the sooner we can stop worrying about Muslims as terrorists.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Leftists are the same everywhere

How is a congressman to react when the outgoing president of the opposite party who won the recent election is about to give his State of the Union speech? If he’s leftwing, he’ll react by storming the stage and refusing to allow the president to speak of course. That’s one of the ways the left in Mexico is dealing with its narrow defeat in the July 2nd elections. It’s also blocking roads, holding mass protests, and otherwise making as much a mess of things as they can.

Fortunately for us, thus far our leftists only sit on their hands at the State of the Union, complain bitterly, imagine vast rightwing conspiracy after vast rightwing conspiracy, and otherwise make as much a mess of the courts as they can. Even prior to the 2004 election, the left admirably managed to limit itself to petty vandalism, a few burglaries, and a couple cases of assault and more serious destruction of property. However, as with the Mexican left still holding a grudge over what they claim was a stolen election in 1988 (mentioned here), how much longer before we see this sort of misbehavior and serious violence from the Democrats?


Hopefully the Democrats will instead realize elections are not street ball and will lose their "if I don't win I'm taking the school's ball and going home" mentality.

Friday, September 01, 2006

International community…what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing, as we are seeing. However, since that didn’t quite have a good ring to it, I’ll have to wait for someone to come up with a monosyllabic word for the international community before I use it again. Oh well, again at least the last part is right. August 31st was supposed to be a big day. Iran was to stop its uranium enrichment program as decreed by the United Nations. Completely unsurprising to all but the most dedicated internationalist, Iran didn’t. The IAEA also released a report that revealed that highly enriched uranium was found for the third time in Iran, and this time it couldn’t be written off as contamination from Pakistan. To further add insult to injury, Ahmadinejad was also very clear that he did not care what the U.N. said or did (I will give Ahmadinejad credit for that, I wish our president was as forthright about the U.N.’s value, or lack thereof).

Where is the vaunted international community that agreed at the G8 meeting that this was Iran’s last chance? Russia has said no to sanctions or any action; but they do regret Iran’s actions. I'm sure we will also have their regrets when London, or New York, and Iran are radioactive parking lots, but I digress. Europe is demanding…. more talks since 8 years is obviously to short a time to rush to impose visa sanctions on Iran’s leaders. The U.N. didn’t even release a statement as it was the ambassador from Ghana’s last day, and as he told reporters, “give me a break.” What a surprise that the good people of Ghana who can’t provide enough food, clean water, or jobs for their own people think that a nuclear Iran isn’t the biggest threat to their country. What is surprising is that there are people who think such a country should be allowed to head what is supposedly the most important institution to the security and stability of the world.


Well so much for promises from the international community (but then Europe's promises aren't worth the paper they are written on as I wrote about here, and pretty much the same thing with the Russians and Chinese). None of this is helpful to a Bush Administration that is beginning to look a lot like Olmert’s in Israel. Bush accepted the challenge from Iran, losing the challenge through inactivity as he is on his way to doing will be worse for us and the world than never having accepted the challenge to begin with.