No really? I'm shocked!

A new classified report leaked to the BBS (sigh, that really shouldn't happen) reports that the Taliban is receiving support form the ISI in Pakistan. And this is big news why? Despite the Pakistani objections that has been clear since day one. I knew it back when I was interrogating people in Afghanistan. Every Afghan sheepherder, thief, and insurgent knew it. Hell the commanders of the US forces knew it. but can anyone do anything about it? No......

And people wonder why Iran wants nukes too.

Syria

So why hasn't the West intervened in Syria? Well there are a lot of different reason but the biggest in probably fear. Not fear of what Syria could do to them but fear of the chaos that could, and probably would, erupt all over the area. Add tot hat the rather serious logistical problems and the simple fact that more nations are interested in continued stability than they are in keeping some protesters alive and you have a potent mix of "Stay Away!"

Libya was easy. It had a pretty dysfunctional military, had a huge coast line and most of the targets you had to hit we right there along the coast. Syria on the other had has a military that is relatively well equipped and well trained. Their Air Force and Air Defense system is set up to defend against Israel so it clearly is as good as they can make it. Now this doesn't mean that the West, or more specifically the US, couldn't flatten it. They/We could but it would take an air campaign the equivalent of those at the beginning of Gulf Wars I and II. Massive round the clock attacks. (although this would be simplified somewhat by the new generations of drones which could be used against Air Defense sites) The problem with this of course would be where do you stage the attacks from? The Mediterranean of course is a good site but Syria doesn't have a huge coast so you would need to either overfly Lebanon or stay in Syrian Airspace for the whole raid. And I doubt Lebanon would grant overflight permission. Hezbollah would prevent them allowing it even if they wanted to. Similarly I don't think the Saudis or the Iraqis would let us stage or overfly for bombing missions. The obvious place to launch from and clearly the politically impossible place is Israel. We would not want Israel involved at all for any reason. For that same reason of course, if we attacked Syria, I would not be at all surprised to see Syria attack Israel. We don't want the specter of Zionism over the fight and they need would need it. Hezbollah and Hamas would probably jump into an Israel fight too. then, lat but far from least we have Iran which I seriously doubt would sit peacefully by while we bombed their Arab ally/client into submission.
A whole world of hurt for everyone is just sitting there waiting to get opened up.
Then of course we have what could happen after the bombing, Syria is fractured politically, religiously and socially like Iraq and Lebanon are. The odds of vicious sectarian conflict breaking out after the collapse of the Assad regime are huge. Nearly certain in my opinion.

So intervention is just a huge ugly hole waiting to get ripped in the middle east.
Unfortunately, not intervening isn't a whole lot better. Assad has failed where his father succeeded in crushing anti government forces. His problems seem to keep growing each and every day so those chances of sectarian warfare keep looming larger and larger in the future.
The only intervention that might,a nd allow me to emphasis the MIGHT there, succeed would be if say Turkey and Saudi Arabia/Jordan did the whole thing on their own. To make that work they would have to bride the Syrian Military into throwing Assad under the bus. And even then, we have the Iranian/Hezbollah wild card waiting to screw things up. so I don't see any such thing happening.

In fact, I think it looks real bad there for everyone. There will be no winners in this mess unless we (being the world as a whole) get really lucky

Surprise. I'm back

I have been neglecting this blog lately. No real excuse except laziness and I guess lack of desire. I never even got around to doing that post on Syria. Sorry.

I came back because I was inspired to write by some of the recent events in Afghanistan. To be precise, by the killing of Rabbani. Now the fact that the Taliban/Haqqani forces killed Rabbani is no great surprise. He is a long time old enemy of the Taliban. I find it interesting though that they killed him in his role as negotiator with the Taliban for their peaceful integration into the Afghan political system.
There have been a lot of talking heads, pundits and "experts" saying that the only path to peace involves bringing the Taliban into the system.
The problem with this of course is that the Taliban leadership really has no interest. They do not want to be part of the political system in Afghanistan. They intend to be the political system in Afghanistan. There will be no sharing of power, no coalition government. The Taliban is quite convinced that the US is going bug out and that they will then take over. And sadly, it is quite possible. When I came home from Afghanistan I was convinced that the Taliban would never regain power because the Afghan people would not put up with it. Sadly, it looks like many of the Afghan people will just rollover and let them come back. (not all of course, it appears that the Ethnic minorities are busily rearming and preparing for a most unpleasant future.)
Victory goes to the last guy standing in the fight.

Stalemate?

A few weeks ago I had a blog post half written about how the urge for consensus in foreign policy had doomed the Libyan rebellion. Then, much to my surprise the UN pulled a resolution out of nowhere and authorized a "No Fly Zone" which was interpreted to mean a "Blow up Libyan military assets wherever we may find them". Low and behold, Benghazi was saved and it looked like I was wrong.

Well, not so fast.As it turns out the effort is being somewhat less than gloriously successful. The Libyan Air force is indeed grounded, or destroyed, but the rebels.... well it seems they need a bit more.It was clearly hoped by the European leaders and by our President that the Libyan Army would turn against Qaddafi once the bombing started. It was a nice but but it failed to play out. Now we have a situation where the rebels are too weak to actually win, and the Libyan military can't mass enough forces without getting bombed to actually beat them. Now, given time, the rebels will become more capable, but that time will be years, not months. France is annoyed that NATO isn't doing more to help the rebels, the rebels blame NATO for their lack of success, (how soon gratitude turns to blame)the populaces of Europe are watching with an increasing lack of enthusiasm the growth of their own little Iraq. (yeah, hyperbole, I know but why shouldn't I jump on that band wagon too?)

And when oh when are people going to "protect the civilians" in Syria? Never I'd wager.

Interesting times indeed.

Torture. again.

I was reading today about a Croatian woman arrested in Tennessee for war crimes committed during the Yugoslav break up. The AP summed up her charges thusly

One witness describes watching as another prisoner named Blagoje Djuras was beaten unconscious. The witness said Basic then stabbed him in the neck, killing him, and dragged other Serbs to the body "and made us drink that blood." A second witness corroborated the account of the stabbing and identified a picture of Basic in 2009, Arehart said.

Another man told investigators in September 1992 that he was forced to drink gasoline, beaten unconscious, and his hands and face were set on fire by Basic, who was wearing a Croatian military police uniform. A subsequent medical exam concluded the witness had been tortured.

Another witness said that in August 1992, Basic cut a cross and four "S" letters into his forehead before hacking his neck below the Adam's apple.

Now for all you people who steadfastly believe that American interrogators tortured people in Bagram by playing loud music at them or for keeping them awake 20 hours a day. Well get a clue.

At times, I dream of crocodiles

At times, I dream of crocodiles. Not often. It may in fact be years between the dreams. But the other night I had a good one.

I was wandering through some sort of African wilderness area. I know this because I saw hyenas, cheetahs, and similar creatures. I was carrying a camera and was alone. There was a river off to my left but I wasn’t really in view of it. I was walking upstream. At one point I saw a hyena carrying a young cheetah by the throat. There was an older cheetah watching. The hyena dropped the cheetah while maneuvering down a steep embankment. The older cheetah came over to the body and slapped it with its paw as thought to say “Get up! Now is your chance to escape.” It did this a couple of times until the hyena came back. Then it walked away and they hyena picked the body up and drug it into the trees.

I went around a bend and came to an area of white sand that was covered with thousands of burned crocodiles. I mean the ground was latterly covered with heaps of carbonized crocodiles. They looked like piles of burnt logs until you noticed the lines of the body, a head, a leg, or the gaping jaws. I wasn’t sure what had happened here but I wandered in amongst the heaps taking pictures. At one point I went down a gully towards the river and came upon a mass of huge dead crocodiles. Beasts that were forty plus feet long with jaws as long as my body,. Amongst them was the carbonized body of woman. Perfectly formed, just lying among the burned crocodiles. I took a picture and made a note that I would have to tell the police about it. Then, up on the side of a huge sand bank I saw something moving. I stared at what seemed to be a rippling glass sheet in the sand until I realized what I was seeing was the side of a crocodile that was bigger than anything I had ever seen before and. Despite being burned was alive and moving through the sand. It was like watching a whale curve up out of the water then back in, just a giant piece of flesh of which I could only se a small portion. Then it submerged in the sand and vanished. As I stood there looking I was near another huge, though not as huge as the moving one, crocodile body. The body was up on the edge of the gully that I was in the bottom of. It was burned and I could see past its charred ribs into the body cavity. The head was above me and as I looked up at it I saw its eye move, and realized it was looking back at me. Then it moved. The head turned and the beast began to drag itself out of the pile and to move along the bank. I stared; petrified at the thought of this thing being alive, then I began to back up the gully. The giant beast above me turned its head, and followed my movement, then began to crawl after me. As I went past the heads of burned bodies again I began to see more eyes flickering to life, and tracking my movement. The log heaps of bodies began to twitch and writhe as the beasts came to life. As I went around a bend to get back to where I had entered the gully I saw there was another, smaller crocodile coming down it, following my trail, and others following it. I tried to climb out of the gully but the sand walls collapsed and dumped me back to the bottom. The beasts whose eyes I had seen coming to live as I passed them were dragging themselves up behind me, I grabbed a dried, burned, chunk of something that was probably the side of a croc and propped it up against the edge of the gully opposite the side where the giant beast was watching me. I scrambled up this, wishing I had a gun instead of a camera. Just as I reached the top, another crocodile head hove into view, right where I was climbing. So there I was, sitting in a gully, with two giant zombie crocodiles sitting on either side at the top following my every move and hoards of smaller ones dragging themselves up and down the gully towards the place I stood. I realized that a gun wouldn’t have really helped much and just sat and watched them come closer.

Then I woke up. Don’t ask me for meanings, I don’t interpret them, I just dream them.

Push has come to shove

Push has come to shove in Libya. The government of the country has finally started to use its military in an organized and relatively effective way to repress the rebellion in the east. The rebels have come to the rude realization that it is going to take a lot more than flag waving on barricades to win. It turns out that there is a big difference between an “oppressive regime” such as Egypt and a despotic one such as Libya’s. Those military leaders and politicians who defected from the Libyan government had better get organized pretty quickly or their heads will be on the block. And they know that well. Now of course there is an outcry for the US to establish a no fly zone in Libya. Why us? I mean seriously folks; there are a lot of other supposedly capable folks around who could do something. Italy for example. They are right there on the boarder. Of course the Italian government is not all that excited about rebellion in Libya. They are predicting a mass exodus of people from Libya to the south of Italy if the Libyan government falls and they don’t want that. They would just as soon keep the current government there. The Egyptians are an even better answer. Then there wouldn’t be all that Christian vs Muslim back story, no “Western Imperialism”. Let the Arab world clean up its own messes for a change. The Egyptian Air Force is quite competent and is equipped with top of the line US stuff. Hell, Tunisia could join the fun too. Let the other branches of this Liberation movement help out.

Of course they won’t. Neither will the French, or the Spanish, or any one else. They will all sit around and moan that something should be done and wait for us to do it.