Swift Sword

Hi Stan,

Yeah we should try some good old fashioned deal making and yes the war in Iraq is by any, rational, objective standard looking awfully detrimental to U.S. interests in the region and globally.

The baseline scenario for a limited strike on Iran to the best of my knowledge appears to involve three hundred targets and a five day air campaign.

You consider these people dangerous enough to bomb in the first place and then expect them to sit around and take that level of military incursion without seeking a wider war?

When I check the order books at several large South Korean shipyards and ponder the military history of the Persian Gulf I think it would be safe to say that the length of time in question would be 2 to 3 years and that assumes not a single shot is fired at Qatar.

But what is being suggested is to alter the security climate in a manner that introduces economic uncertainty which means that gas supply is still off of the market.

A "market kill" is just as effective as a hard kill where commodities are concerned.

Fighting elsewhere is groovy but we are not fighting in all of the places where the enemy is.

We fight him in the Middle East and he pursues his agenda in Africa.

When we fight him in Africa, he will take advantage of chaos in the Middle East and Central Asia.

At the same time, we have an unsecure perimeter and no meaningful counterterror effort at home.

The enemy is still able to raise men, money and material and operate across international borders so I would say that we are in danger.

Would it not be better to secure the perimeter, agressively patrol inside and out while working on strong allianances to check and reverse the progress of Pan Islamism and various roguish regimes?

Now that is an easy question to answer: it depends upon what we can get out of them.

One thing is for certain: nothing is going to happen unless somebody goes and asks them what they want or better yet convinces them that they want is what we want.

No, that is not what I want but you will find plenty of backers for that plan I suspect.

As to democracy and groups having a voice, you will find that the group that has 60% of the people is usually going to have the final say. Just so happens that the group with 60% of the people in this case just happen to be Shi'ite so there is going to be an Iranian dynamic in the mix somewhere regardless of whether you like it or not.

I was simply stating that it looks like the Iranians already have an essentially de facto victory in this case. Next question is how did that come to pass what do we do about it?

Ask the Iraqi truck drivers and you will get the answer to the first half of that question and in a word it is instability; as to the second, I am open to speculation.

Lebanon has not been stable for decades. Don't you think that just might be part of the problem?

As for Hizballah being part of the Lebanese government, there is this thing called democracy which allowed that to happen.

It is much easier to rig an election than a coup or regime change which opens up a host of low cost, soft power options that might be explored.

Sure, Israel's recent foray in Lebanon was justifiable but that did not neccessarily make it a wise move. Too, by targetting all sorts of infrastructure, they shot themselves in the foot because Hizballah is the agency that is probably going to get that fixed the quickest in many areas which is only going to increase their influence. Great move.

State sponsored terrorism is part of the international system and use of proxies is quite common. In fact the United States has used it on several occassions and will no doubt do so in the future unless there is a concerted, multinational effort at renunciation; which I happen to favor, BTW.

This being the case, let us delve into the strategic implication of state sponsored terror viz our interests. State sponsored terror implies the existence of a governing agency, i.e. a state.

By their very nature, states have limitations on what they can and cannot do based on their own internal organization as well as the fact that they are snared in the same web of states as the rest of us.

Violent, non state actors, e.g. the terrorists, do not suffer the constraints of state actors. They are only limited by the amount of stability in the international system to hamper their activities in combination with their ability to raise men, money and material.

State actors are much more easy to influence than the multi national holding outfits like al Qaeda. Libya is a good example of how states can be influenced to change their behavoir.

Now my military education has been sadly neglected but what it sounds like to me is that you want to trade known enemies with practical and self imposed constraints for the unknown, unconstrained enemies that thrive in unstable climates while sacraficing the very stability which hinders them. Can you explain to me how this is a sound strategy?

Saddam is out of the picture and plenty of people are still getting killed. Could the destabilization induced by American invasion have anything to do with the current chaos and lawlessness in Iraq?

We traded his complicity in violence in Iraq for our own which was not a paricularly wise move.

As to paying the families of suicide bombers, while it is distasteful and may encourage them, it might not in and of itself be a crime. Too, the money has to reach the intended recipient which opens up a whole host of questions.

With the United States fighting two wars in the Middle East and Central Asia and getting the results witnessed thus far, I do not think there is really any good argument that starting a third is going to somehow make the problems go away.

U.S. grand strategic interests and imperatives in the region do not appear compatible with more widespread military activity and instability and the NEOCONS are incredibly short sighted but that seems to come with the terroritory when you are a radical.

Hope you have a Happy New Year,

William

__________________
Pharoh was pimp but now he is dead. What are you going to do today?