Obsidian Wings

Pottery Barn Libya, Pt 2: Anthony Cordesman, One Man Army, or Give Peace A Chance?

by Gary Farber

In Pottery Barn Libya, Part 1, I began explaining the situation in Libya.  Now, more, and what America and NATO should do.

The tactical day to day sway of battle does not matter, save to those brutally slaughtered in it,  and suffering from it.  Suffering greatly.

What matters are the choices America and Europe make.  

Naturally, Joe Lieberman and John McCain want bombs away, all-out regime change.  Nothing makes John McCain happier: Back on the Battlefield: How the Libya debate snapped John McCain out of his 2008 funk—and into a fresh fight with Obama.

John McCain has never met a country he wouldn't like to bomb:

[...]

McCain, who insists on visiting Iraq and Afghanistan twice a year, often favors a muscular approach to projecting U.S. military power but is wary of entanglements with no exit strategy. The old aviator, who had both arms repeatedly broken in a Hanoi prison camp, says that experience has “also given me a sense of caution in light of our failure in Vietnam.” While McCain opposed the U.S. military actions in Lebanon and Somalia, he is sympathetic to humanitarian missions—and would even consider sending troops to the war-torn Ivory Coast if someone could “tell me how we stop what’s going on.”

Pressed on when the United States should intervene in other countries, McCain sketches an expansive doctrine that turns on practicality: American forces must be able to “beneficially affect the situation” and avoid “an outcome which would be offensive to our fundamental -principles—whether it’s 1,000 people slaughtered or 8,000…If there’s a massacre or ethnic cleansing and we are able to prevent it, I think the United States should act.”

McCain: bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.

 

Bombs away.  "There will be other wars."

McCain: "We are all Georgians now."

Tough guy Anthony Cordesman naturally wants to fight.  Unsurprisingly, he used to be national security assistant to Senator John McCain.

Cordesman, who has, see previous links, always been deeply wired into the militarist networks of the Washington, D.C. village of talking heads and millionaire journalism, has a (surprise!) widely-quoted piece advocating we (surprise!) go all in.

Let's not.

Pottery Barn Libya, Part 1

by Gary Farber

What is to be done?

Colin Powell famously said of Iraq, quoting Tom Friedman (who got it wrong)

'You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,' he told the president. 'You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all.' Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.

Does anyone want to buy Libya, and own it for the next decade?

That's what's on order.

That, or negotiating a way out of this thing.

The Libyan rebels are a mess.  April 3rd:

[...] The rebel army’s nominal leader, Abdul Fattah Younes, a former interior minister and friend of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi whom many rebel leaders distrusted, could offer little explanation for the recent military stumbles, two people with knowledge of the meetings said.

Making matters worse, the men could hardly stand one another. They included Khalifa Heftar, a former general who returned recently from exile in the United States and appointed himself as the rebel field commander, the movement’s leaders said, and Omar el-Hariri, a former political prisoner who occupied the largely ceremonial role of defense minister.

“They behaved like children,” said Fathi Baja, a political science professor who heads the rebel political committee. 

Little was accomplished in the meetings, the participants said. When they concluded late last week, Mr. Younes was still the head of the army and Mr. Hariri remained as the defense minister. Only Mr. Heftar, who reportedly refused to work with Mr. Younes, was forced out. On Sunday, though, in a sign that divisions persisted, Mr. Heftar’s son said his father was still an army leader. [....]

On March 29th,  Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney told the press gaggle on AF1 that, in essence, he didn't know who the hell these people are, but let's hope for the best:

[...] Q    One of NATO’s military leaders testified on the Hill today that there had been signs of al Qaeda seen amongst Libyan rebels.  How does that affect the White House thinking on engaging with them?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, what I would say is that, as you know, we spend a lot of time looking at the opposition and now meeting with opposition leaders.  And the folks who are in London, the people that -- and the leader that Secretary Clinton met in Paris, have made clear what their principles are and we believe that they’re meritorious -- their principles.  I think they had a statement today that had some very good language in it that we support. 

But that doesn’t mean, obviously, that everyone who opposes Moammar Qaddafi I Libya is someone whose ideals we can support.  But beyond that, I don't have any detail about individual members of the opposition.

Q    Does it concern you about how much you don't know about the opposition?

MR. CARNEY:  Well, what I would say is that we have met with opposition leaders and we're working with them, but as the President said, and as the opposition leaders who put out a statement today said, it’s up to them to decide who their leaders are going to be.

But we do know something of who they are right now, as Jason Packer explains:

If you let strangers know that you research Libya for a living, there seems to be only one question on their minds: "Who are the Libyan rebels?" I've been asked it at cocktail parties, on ski lifts, at academic seminars, and even by Western journalists in Benghazi who have developed the flattering habit of Skype-ing me at odd hours. Americans seem captivated by this question, perhaps because they have heard senior U.S. officials from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to various Republican congressmen proclaim that they do not yet know enough about who the rebels are. I do not take such statements at face value. U.S. statesmen know quite well who the rebels are -- but pretend otherwise to obscure the fact that the United States has yet to formulate a comprehensive policy toward them.

The rebels consist of two distinct groups: the fighters and the political leadership.

do as I say, not as I do

by fiddler

(not an April Fool's post, despite the date)

Richard A. Clarke, former counter-terrorism czar for both the Clinton and Bush administrations, had some strong words about the US Chamber of Commerce's aborted plans for discrediting its critics, which included spying on families, using malware to steal information, faking documents to embarrass its liberal opponents, and creating and using 'sock puppet' personas to infiltrate their targets.*

Clarke said of the US Chamber's plans to hack, impersonate, spy upon and steal from its perceived opponents:

"I think it’s a violation of 10USC. I think it’s a felony, and I think they should go to jail. You call them a large trade association, I call them a large political action group that took foreign money in the last election. But be that as it may, if you in the United States, if any American citizen anywhere in the world, because this is an extraterritorial law, so don’t think you can go to Bermuda and do it, if any American citizen anywhere in the world engages in unauthorized penetration, or identity theft, accessing a number through identity theft purposes, that’s a felony and if the Chamber of Commerce wants to try that, that’s fine with me because the FBI will be on their doorstep in a matter of hours."

how do you like living in Omelas?

by fiddler

Despite eastern Virginia's steamy summers, the temperature can drop close to or below freezing at night in late fall, winter and spring. Concrete is not a good insulator against the chill in the ground, or in the air. And in a concrete cell in the brig at the Marine base in Quantico, VA, US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is being forced to go without clothing for hours at a time, including sleeping at night and for inspections.

Walk Like An Egyptian

by Gary Farber

Blender:

Robert Fisk:

Exhausted, scared and trapped, protesters put forward plan for future.   [...] Sitting on filthy pavements, amid the garbage and broken stones of a week of street fighting, they have drawn up a list of 25 political personalities to negotiate for a new political leadership and a new constitution to replace Mubarak's crumbling regime.

They include Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – himself a trusted Egyptian; the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zuwail, an Egyptian-American who has advised President Barack Obama; Mohamed Selim Al-Awa, a professor and author of Islamic studies who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood; and the president of the Wafd party, Said al-Badawi.

Sights:

 

Fisk again:

We Control The Horizontal

by Gary Farber

Appearances matter.  To control information is to control.  "Don't judge a book by its cover" is a popular saying that will cause anyone who sells books or works in publishing to ROFl ("roll on the floor laughing"), because it's exactly what people do, though no one wants to admit to doing it.  It's always someone else.

In Egypt, we're seeing this play out. Mubarak intensifies press attacks with assaults, detentions:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak unleashed an unprecedented and systematic attack on international media today as his supporters assaulted reporters in the streets while security forces began obstructing and detaining journalists covering the unrest that threatens to topple his government.

Democracy Now!

 

[...]

In the past 24 hours alone, CPJ has recorded 30 detentions, 26 assaults, and eight instances of equipment having been seized. In addition, plainclothes and uniformed agents reportedly entered at least two hotels used by international journalists to confiscate press equipment. On Wednesday, CPJ documented numerous earlier assaults, detentions, and confiscations. Mubarak forces have attacked the very breadth of global journalism: Their targets have included Egyptians and other Arab journalists, Russian and U.S. reporters, Europeans and South Americans.

De Nile Truly Is A River

by Gary Farber

There are many expert reporters on Egypt, obviously, and tons of scholars.  But let's start with the excellent generalist on international policy that everyone has, I hope,  been reading for many years -- and if you haven't you should start last year or whenever -- Laura Rozen. Some good news and bad news:

Earlier today, I was on a panel discussing coverage of the Egypt unrest, and someone mentioned that no one had seen it coming.

But that is not the case. Several foreign policy scholars and former officials have been urging the U.S. administration for months to prepare for the end of the Hosni Mubarak era and the instability that would accompany it.

Now that the administration has found itself scrambling the past few days to, first, try to avert a bloodbath in Egypt and more broadly, figure out what to do amid a hugely complicated power transition there with much at stake for the U.S., it's worth noting the people who have been pleading for policy attention on this issue long in advance. Chief among them, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Michele Dunne, a former NSC and State Department Policy Planning official, and the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan, who co-chair a bipartisan working group on Egypt.

I (and others) wrote about their efforts to get the U.S. policy community to pay attention. See "W.H. pressed on Egypt democracy," from September:

MAJ. Andrew Olmsted On Gays In The Military

by Gary Farber.

Major Olmsted is no longer with us; he died a hero.

Doctor Science wrote a superb post in the last week of December on DADT and Rape Culture, which didn't get remotely the attention it deserved, because, of course, it was just after Christmas, and before New Year's, in America, according to the majority calendar.

Spirited debate did result in comments, and the debate, while tedious and understandably offensive to many, nonetheless had many comments I thought worthwhile.  Open debate is something we try to aim for at Obsidian Wings, though like all bloggers, we have our personal views and prejudices.

I'm extremely grateful to long time and valued commenter Mike Schilling, who has been writing smart stuff online at least since the Nineties on Usenet, for reminding us, and me in particular, of the late Major Andrew Olmsted's, former co-blogger here on Obsidian Wings and elsewhere (see our upper right sidebar, please), first under his own name, and then under the pseudonym of "G'Kar," from his beloved Babylon 5, which was one of the best serial space operas yet made for American television, words and views about gays in the military, written December 21, 2007 in a post entitled Military Musings.

Andy started off talking about the M4 carbine, and then moved onto this, which I'll quote, because he isn't here to do so himself:

[...] Now, on to other topics, like heterosexism in the military and the breaking of the Army. While I am sure that what OCSteve recalls as the situation extant in his unit when he served prior to Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) may have been the case in his unit, I find it less plausible that a similar situation obtained across the entire military. As Jesurgislac points out, the military was discharging people vigorously for their sexuality throughout the 1980s; DADT may have made matters worse for gays and lesbians, but they were far from accepted before that policy arrived. I have nothing but contempt for a policy that permits convicted criminals to serve while asking people to leave simply because their sexuality or gender does not fit neatly into society's binary system.

Playing the Violin

by Robert R. Mackey, LTC, USA (Retired)

All--Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I blame Red Dead Redemption and getting the first kid off to college.

Crossposted from HuffPo.

I read Huffington Post daily, and not just because they were nice enough to allow me to blog.  I like the spread of news available; it gives a good balance to other news sites.

However, I keep looking for something on a serious internal debate inside the U.S. military, which has yet to be discussed outside of the cloisters of the Pentagon--an ongoing discussion of the ability of the U.S. armed forces to disobey orders they don't like.

We aren't talking Me Lai, or Dachau, or waterboarding.  We aren't talking the ethical, moral, and legal requirement of military officers to disobey orders that are unconstitutional, violate U.S. or international law, or are obviously of such crass evil to be disobeyed out of hand. 

No, we are talking about an underground current in the U.S. military's officer corps, in which some officers believe that their legally elected civilian leaders can be disobeyed if the individual officer believes the order to be "immoral."

In the newest edition of Joint Forces Quarterly, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Milburn openly states "There are circumstances under which a military officer is not only justified but also obligated to disobey a legal order." 

While this might be music to the ears of some, thinking that Milburn is referring to "illegal" wars in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, that is not what is being batted around the officer corps.  No, Milburn's argument is being used by the adherents of the Disobey Lawful Orders School to support resistance to the ending of Don't Ask/Don't Tell.

Well, so what?  This is what. The American people, since the 1970's, have depended upon an All Volunteer military.  The result has been a very professional, well-trained, and highly respected force that literally can dominate nearly any adversary on the modern battlefield with ease.  However,  it also created a separate professional military caste, with its own language, belief structure, and living on their isolated compounds separate from many of the issues that plague non-military communities.

Add to this that, due to misguided and short-sighted policies by many of our liberal universities, ROTC was banned from campuses and the armed forces banned from recruiting...ostensibly to show that the military would get no support from said institutions until gays and lesbians could serve openly.  The result, however, has been somewhat different.  Instead of military officers coming from a wide variety of educational, social, and religious backgrounds, we have a military caste that is predominantly white, Southern, evangelical Protestant and staunchly Republican.

Was this the Department of Agriculture or IBM, would we care?  No, most likely not. The problem is that IBM or the DoA does not possess nuclear missiles, tanks, machine guns and warships.  We have, basically, allowed for the politicization of the "managers of violence" (as said by Samuel Huntington in his classic work, The Soldier and the State).

The U.S. military today is not the military of the civil rights era--we cannot expect, as Ike, JFK and LBJ did--to send in the 101st Airborne to enforce laws that some officers found distasteful and "immoral," such as the right to an equal education and the end to racist terrorism. 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real problem.  We can discuss a senatorial candidate's teenage witchcraft for fun and profit, but things suddenly get very real and very dangerous when we discuss the possibility of armed troops disobeying the orders of the President.  When I taught military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I would tell my students that "the first time a tank shows up on the Capitol steps and begins spraying machine gun bullets, our democracy is over."

It is my opinion, after 24 years of military service, from the rank of buck private to Lieutenant Colonel and after three wars, that the role of the professional officer is to obey the "orders of the President and the officers appointed over me."  It has been that way since the Roman legions--you take the King's Shilling, you obey the King's orders.  Our entire civil-military structure is based upon that one truth--that the orders of civil authorities are the highest form of authority.  If an officer disagrees with a policy or order, they have the right to resign their commission and take the issue public.  They do not have the moral, ethical or legal right to disobey but still wear the uniform.

The military is not the same as the other branches of government or the civilian world. They have their own laws, rules and system of control.  You can, for example, commit adultery in the civilian world, and your punishment (if any) will happen in divorce court.  In the military, you go to jail.  The same for a broad swath of transgressions that would see minor in civilian life--from littering to going to an off-limit bar.  Why? Because the system requires absolute obedience to authority--and it requires it most of all from its senior officers. 

I leave you with this essay, written by Major General Charles Dunlap (USAF, Retired) many years ago.  For the good of our Republic, let us hope that the warning of Major General Dunlap, and others, is heeded well before we listen to the words of Lieutenant Colonel Milburn and his ilk.

(pdf) "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012"

Don't Do The Cybercrime If You Can't Do The Time

by Gary Farber

Except that who is responsible for Stuxnet is a mystery. 

What we know is that it's incredibly dangerous.  And it's at least possible it was targeted at Iran's nuclear program, perhaps the enrichment centrifuges in Natanz.

Cyber security experts say they have identified the world's first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target – a factory, a refinery, or just maybe a nuclear power plant.

The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown. Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world – to destroy something.