15 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker Of The Day – Government Truth: Prodigo, ergo sum.

On 30 September 2011, the U.S. Special Operations Command, in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, remotely fired AGM-114 Hellfire missiles from MQ-1 Predator drones at a convoy of vehicles in Yemen. They killed two American citizens in the attack: Anwar al-Awlaki and Shamir Khan, both U.S. born citizens. These two men were not tragic, collateral damage in an attempt to kill terrorists who endangered U.S. security; indeed, they were the targets. Their activities, which brought down upon their heads the heat, blast and frag of U.S. military munitions, were not clandestine or minor in nature. Indeed, the opposite is true. They declared openly their hatred for the United States, they trained terrorists to conduct operations against the United States, and they operated open websites and other media that preached hatred for and encouraged violence against the United States. These men were, as a friend described them, dirtbags.

But, as American citizens, are they legitimate targets for U.S. military and CIA operations? Was the U.S. government acting with due process when it declared these U.S. citizens targets for military operations and subsequently killed them? The answer to both questions is yes, with a further explanation that the men’s U.S. citizenship is irrelevant to the argument. In the Civil War, U.S. government military forces killed U.S. citizens who declared themselves in open rebellion against the state. In World War II, President Roosevelt, acting as the Commander-In-Chief in time of war, declared German saboteurs, including an American citizen, who were captured on U.S. soil, to be under military tribunal jurisdiction. They were subsequently executed. I see firm precedence in treating openly rebellious and violent persons as Mssrs Al-Awlaki and Khan as legitimate targets of U.S. military action. These acts are wholly consistent with the intent of the expressed power of Congress and the President in Articles I and II and the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

Is there current legislation that authorizes such actions? Yes. On 18 September 2001, one week after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). In this, Congress invoked the War Powers Resolution and stated:

That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.^[34]

In simple words, Congress declared that a state of war existed between the U.S. and a stateless, but in every other way a very real, movement that had committed acts of war against the United States. In fact, the attacks on 11 September 2001, were not the first acts of war perpetrated by this stateless organization. Attacks on our embassies, on the USS Cole, and elsewhere were the precursors to the horrific sneak attack of 11 September 2011 on New York City and Washington, D.C. Congress was responding, with wording that attempted to reflect the conditions of a world that defied old conventions and rules of war.

After a century and a half of international attempts to define and restrict the definition of war, combatants and noncombatants, and war crimes, the U.S. must now lead the world in forging new rules to guide a state when it prosecutes a war against those who neither wear a uniform, nor carry the commission of any state, yet are warriors and soldiers in every other sense. Congress’s 18 September 2011, actions reflect our first attempt at defining, fighting, and winning such a real war. Subsequent presidential and congressional decisions and actions to fight this war not gone smoothly. Government leaders from both political parties face harsh criticism from those won’t admit that these terrorists are, by deed, intent and their own rhetoric, combatants in a war between Western civilization and radical, jihadist Islam. These warriors’ caliphate will recognize no sovereign state borders, only the dominance of their brand of religion. The sooner our official government statements and policies reflect an understanding of this war, the easier it will be to prosecute the war in a way that will protect our Constitution and the way of life it engenders.

12 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker Of The Day – Aren’t you glad your mother chose life?

I tried to laugh yesterday when I read a 1 October 2002, article from CNN:

“The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that a U.S. war against Iraq

would cost between $9 billion and $13 billion, according to an initial estimate

sent to the House and Senate. The report says the estimate will swing widely

depending on the size and composition of the force the U.S. may deploy to the

Persian Gulf.”

Cost estimates depend on how different accountants add them up; but, what the U.S. government actually paid out was around $845 billion. That is roughly equivalent to the cost of the President’s stimulus package in 2009. We got precious little out of either effort. I feel like I got duped into borrowing money to buy two Ferraris, was convinced I didn’t insurance, and then smashed them on successive weekends in foolhardy street races. Lest we forget, since the war started on 20 March 2003, nearly 4,500 Americans have been killed and nearly 33,000 have been wounded in the theater of operations.

The Iraq war will certainly confuse future college history majors as they regurgitate at test time the many stages of the ten-year-long conflict. What is important for these young men and women to answer competently and coldly before they become our future generation of national strategists and politicians is if the reasons declared for going to war were indeed compelling enough to commit the military instrument of national power to effect decisive change. The second thing these young Kissingers and Bismarcks need to answer is if the U.S. war strategy was sound enough to effect the desired outcome. Let me help you budding strategists.

Compelling strategic reasons for the U.S. to go to war with Iraq in 2002.

Stated Strategic Reason One: Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and needed killing.

Fact: Yup, he surely was. The world is a better place without this man who tortured and killed tens of thousands of his own countrymen and women to stay in power.

Question: But, is his bad-guy status alone a compelling U.S. strategic reason to commit military power in a full-scale conflict to get rid of him? After all, the world is full of Qadafis, Assads, and other lesser lights of evil who commit similar crimes on varying scales. Why this guy and not others?

Comment: In fact, we had contained bad guy Saddam’s expansionist and offensive activities pretty well between the Gulf War of 1991 and 11 September 2001. He was going nowhere, and his country was not to the point of uprising to throw him off. Therefore, this one point alone was not compelling enough to get rid of him with military force.

Stated Strategic Reason Two: Saddam was building atomic, chemical, and biological weapons—weapons of mass destruction, or WMD—and the delivery systems to hit US friends and allies in the region.

Fact: He was indeed pursuing these programs; but, strong, in-country investigative efforts later showed fairly conclusively that the first Gulf War in 1991 effectively stopped Saddam’s development of WMD. The remnants of his programs presented little to no military capability.

Question: Why were we fooled so badly into thinking that Saddam had such weapons of mass destruction?

Comment: The U.S. intelligence community, of which I was part during this episode, produced massive amounts of data and analytic products on this specific subject. Everything I read throughout the 80s and 90s told me that while there was no incontrovertible evidence that Saddam was indeed producing WMD, he certainly had the resources and the capability to do so, if he chose to. It also showed me that he had no moral compunction against using such weapons, demonstrated by his gassing and killing rebel Kurds in the 1980s. Finally, my readings showed clear statements of belligerence and offensive military threats to his enemies, including the United States. These were the generally accepted facts. From this, the intelligence community’s analytic effort produced two arguments, the first being the far weaker: 1) Saddam was a real and compelling threat to U.S. strategic interests in the area, and decisive action had to be taken immediately to stop that threat; 2) there was no verifiable evidence that WMD was being produced in Iraq, the dictator’s bellicose emanations to the world were for internal pumping up of his image rather than external effect, and there was no compelling threat to U.S. strategic interests that required immediate military action. The Bush administration’s neoconservative leaders chose to use the first argument as the basis of its causus belli because it suited their purposes. It reminds me of a cartoon where a seminary student was pouring through the Bible. His instructor asked him what he was doing so intently. Without looking up, the student answered that he was looking for proof to back up his preconceived notions.

Stated Strategic Reason Three: Saddam Hussein allowed Al Qaeda to train in and operate out of Iraq.

Fact: At the time of the U.S. invasion, there was little to no AL Qaeda activity, training or otherwise, in Iraq—and certainly no overt support by the Saddam regime for Al Qaeda operations against the United States. Saddam did praise Al Qaeda actions against the U.S—again for internal purposes.

Question: Why then were such dubious ties presented as a compelling reason for U.S. military action against Iraq?

Comment: Saddam and Al Qaeda both were enemies of the U.S.; but, they didn’t like each other and never played well together during recess. Saddam’s Baathist dictatorship was a secular-based power grab over a particular region and little else. He could have been espousing K-Martism as his guiding philosophy; but, his power was rooted in the effective terrorizing of his own people. Nothing new there. Al Qaeda, on the other hand, was a fundamentalist religious movement that stressed violence against secular rule of any Islamic state or people. Its stated enemies were secular dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and their supporters such as the United States and the decadent West. And, of course, Israel. States such as Saddam’s dictatorship in Iraq were far closer to being enemies than friends to Al Qaeda. A world-changing act allowed neoconservatives to strengthen the dubious connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam into a compelling reason to attack Iraq: 9/ll. Al Qaeda being under every rock in the Middle East was then the fear. It was an emotional, but fatuous, connection between AL Qaeda and Saddam’s Iraq. Any intelligence analyst who had looked at the area for more than a week dismissed the connection. But, it was a handy pile-on reason to make the case for war. Tragic and ironic is the fact that it wasn’t until after the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq and subsequent mistakes in handling the peace that the conditions were right for Al Qaeda to spread its tentacles into Iraq and attack U.S. forces.

Not one of these reasons eventually proved to be compelling enough to use the U.S.’s military instrument of national power to effect decisive change. Now, the administration’s spin meisters are asking if the Iraq War was a “dumb” war. That is not the adjective to use around anyone who ever served there. It probably was an unnecessary war. Therefore, all reasons to double down and “win” the various mutations that followed the initial conflict probably have been just as unnecessary—as compellingly as they may have been presented to the U.S. public. All victories claimed also are somewhat meaningless. The President’s year-end pull-out of troops, therefore, cannot be spun into some courageous move to end Bush’s War. In fact, the Iraqi government refused to accept the latest proposed Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing the actions of U.S. forces in Iraq. Anyone who has ever served in the military overseas knows that without a SOFA, U.S. troops simply cannot operate. We didn’t leave. The Iraqis threw us out. We shouldn’t spin the end of the war any more than we should have spun the start of the war.

9 December 2011 –

Bumper Sticker of The Day – Social Security: The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme

Yesterday, a dear friend of mine referred to my blog entries about sovereignty. Her opinion is always to be carefully considered, therefore, I start today with a few sentences from her e-mail.

“Your thoughts on sovereignty were particularly relevant as was the questioning of

traditional means by which we recognize sovereignty. Though I have no answers,

I can't help but wonder what might be possible if we simply abandon Western imposed

and conceived border constructs for certain segments of the world and create altogether

new approaches. There are always winners and losers when it comes to people, land,

and authority, so such an action would undoubtedly generate instability and violence. I

wonder if starting over would be worth the initial pain to get to a more sustainable peace.”

Hmm…I admire my friend’s backbone of idealism and principle. Concepts like “abandon[ing] Western imposed and conceived border constructs..,” and “starting over,” show that she contemplates what “could” and what “should” be in life. But, what makes her a trustworthy idealist is her steely pragmatism and ability to do everything that can be done when implementing lofty plans. If dominant western powers—or the collective ineptitude of the UN—gave her the strategic task to start over in places like Egypt, Libya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or the Horn of Africa, I believe that her pragmatism most certainly would guide the operational phase. She certainly would not imitate President Wilson’s efforts to “make the world safe for democracy” after World War One when he arrogantly dictated from the outside what a liberated region’s borders should be. Such impositions are the spoils left to ruthless conquerors over the hapless conquered. In fact, such forced agreements inhibit the necessary sense of ownership, the expanded cohesion if you will, among the people in the region if they are to prosper.

Besides, history of the last two hundred years shows that once a sovereign border is declared, it is almost impossible to change—without the violence my friend referred to—because it serves so many purposes for so many people in and out of the region. In the worst case, borders add one more point that can local power mongers can pick at until it too becomes a painful sore on the body sovereign; instability, therefore, continues, and evil people continue to make money on the pain of others. In the best case, borders serve as a symbol that those on one side of the border now identify themselves more by where they live than by the skin color, language, or religion that may tie them to those across the line. An in-between case would be where a cohesive group of people, divided by the border, ignores the line, pays unto Caesar what Caesar demands on both sides of the check points, and still identifies itself by more fundamental cohesive factors (The U.S., in the case of its southern border, is somewhere between the in-between and the best cases).

Most borders in the “developing world” probably are going to stay as we western imperialists drew them in the sand with our riding crops. Nonetheless, most people in those regions are going to continue to identify themselves at least as much by other fundamental, cohesive factors such as language, race, culture, or religion, as they are by the name and benefits given to them by living on one side or the other of an international border.

What about in the European Union? Will identification with basic cohesive groups and the traditional countries that have more or less coalesced around those groups hold significant sway? Yes, especially now that the monetary crisis brought about by profligate government spending has ostensibly created a rich North and a dependent South Europe. What remains to be seen is if the sacrifice necessary to maintain the higher level of EU sovereignty among the Greek, Italian and Spanish Europeans will continue to be worth it to the German Europeans. It seems that higher orders of sovereignty work—until they don’t.

What about the United States? Specifically, is our grand experiment on this side of the pond sufficiently strong to maintain the aegis of sovereignty over a country that increasingly panhandles for the benefits that come with such concepts as diversity and and group rights. A useful exercise for Americans would be to list, in priority order, the titles and names they are most proud of and most loyal to. American? African American? Polish American (For you, Grandma)? Texan? Father? Mother? Baptist? Democrat? Moslem? Jazz Saxophonist? Rapper? Military Officer? Cowboy? Senator? Academic? National Education Association (union) Member? Well, do our titles allow us to embrace American sovereignty, exemplified by her borders and Constitution, as being in synch with the rest of who and what we are? It is a useful exercise to determine loyalties, cohesion and sovereignty. Would it be worth the effort—the violence or pain—to realign our priorities? To drop some titles? I do know that I would not be comfortable with the titles world citizen, fellow traveler, or Facebook follower.

More tomorrow.

6 December 2011 –

Martha Stewart should have been on retainer by the Department of Justice bigwigs who are squirming around, trying to delay the inevitable admission to Congress that they lied about their involvement in the silly and dangerous Fast and Furious program. Remember Martha Stewart who went to jail for five months for lying to investigators about insider trading, something for which she probably only have paid a fine, if the government had decided to prosecute, which it probably wouldn’t have. The lesson? The cover-up is always worse than the crime.

Let me get this straight. The Bush administration’s ATF and DOJ tried to implement a stupid program to funnel and follow guns from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels and then capture and convict those bad guys using them. It was so stupid a program that normal bureaucrats cancelled before it could take full form. How stupid? In the words of a typical teenager: “Like, dumb!” Then, with a change of administrations, stupidity again metastasized through the current collective crania in ATF and DOJ. I must ask: Are they smoking what they are trying to stop at the border or what? Anyway, FAST AND FURIOUS was the exciting name they rechristened a dull yet quite dangerous idea. This time, not to their credit, our ATF and DOJ succeeded in pushing thousands of guns into the hands of, what a surprise, devious and dangerous criminals. These criminals easily hid these weapons and then used them to kill their bad guy enemies. I would not lose sleep over dead drug dealers on the streets of Mexico, I suppose. But, the criminals used U.S. government-supplied weapons to kill good guys as well.

Uh, oh! Now what? Well, stupid is what stupid does, as Forrest Gump said. Rather than come clean, take the medicine for third degree stupidity, and resign, ATF and DOJ officials all the way up to the Attorney General seem to have self-infected with first-degree stupidity. It looks like they still will have to resign but face possible criminal charges as well. My big disappointment in growing up was when I realized that adults often don’t act like adults. The Attorney General and his deputies, all educated men with grey streaks at their temples, look increasingly like silly junior high kids smoking in the boys’ room and then lying about it as the school burns. Let us applaud when Congress treats them like the fools they are. Anybody want to be the next Attorney General? Adults only need apply.

6 December 2011 –

I had hope that when the Penn State Board of Trustees fired its head football coach, president and other culpable minions, the school had grasped the ladder to recovery from the abyss of abetting child abuse. Alas, I was wrong. Once again, the school is putting football ahead of decency, with the full complicity of the NCAA and football bowl organizers. Penn State has accepted the offer to play the University of Houston in the TicketCity Bowl in the Cotton Bowl on 2 January 2012. The president of the TicketCity Bowl, Tom Starr, told Associated Press, “I can honestly say that we didn’t even think about that that. We just looked at all the positive sides—a great school, great legacy, players that deserve a reward.”

How can a school be called great when its senior officials allowed such crimes to be committed for years on its campus? How can a football program have a great legacy when its head coach allowed such crimes to be committed under his famous banner of “Succeed With Honor?” How we teach our young adults the real effects of criminal and morally bankrupt actions if the football elite, the reason the criminals were on the campus to begin with, are shielded from those effects? I wonder what lessons these princes of society, the football players, are learning from all this? I wonder if they are past caring already? After all, their coaches and mentors were too corrupt to stop horrific crimes. How could they have taught anything that requires courage to accomplish? Shame on everybody involved. Criminals raped children. Moral cowards covered up the crimes. But, Hallelujah!! Football continues. Penn State might as well bring its head coach back to stand on the sidelines in the Cotton Bowl, with a half-time pep talk over the big screen by his pervert assistant. Sad.