Affordable Terrorism Act

 The truth is incontrovertible. 
Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, 
but in the end, there it is 
--Winston Churchill
 _________________________

It is reported this month that the cost of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is approaching $4 trillion. It is a number hard to conceptualize. Few federal programs are funded to this figure (over a 12-year span). 

Moreover, we do not know what we are buying, or for or from whom. The expense is buried in secret budgets, state and local costs and the expenditures of the Departments of Defense and State. We cannot evaluate either the intent or capabilities of the terrorists, yet we throw mega dollars at the concept. 

The benchmark of a viable project is that it defines the problem and the subject (population), and from this it formulates an approach. We have fallen short in the PWOT.

Pretend for a moment that the United States took no military action following the attacks of 9-11-01, as we did following the attacks in Beirut (1983) and Iran (1979). Let us say we realized that that war is not the correct response to a low-level terrorist attack.

Now fast-forward to 2015: Can we say with any certainty that the lavish expenditures of the PWOT minimized future attacks on the homeland? 

It was Ranger’s position following the attacks that there would be no follow-on scenarios because the group lacked the capabilities to do so. The opposing camp says that it was the ensuing expensive military campaign which has thwarted any such potential events. In making a judgment, it is important to consider the quality of the piddling, pathetic efforts made by the sad sack terrorists manqué here at home, i.e., Jose Padilla, Richard Reid (the “shoe bomber”); Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the "underwear bomber"), the Ohio bridge bombers, et al.

We need an Affordable Terrorism Act (ATA). But to agree to such a thing, we would have to believe in ourselves and in an observable world order.

We would have to accept that:

• The Taliban were and are not a threat to our internal security
• The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein was not a threat to the U.S.
• Islamic State is not a high-level threat. However, if they are we must acknowledge that their existence is due to our actions in their country of origin. We must accept that we have no Arab friends, and that calling any Arab nation an ally is a lie
• The threat facing Europe is not the same threat facing the U.S.

If we accepted these things, Ranger’s suggestions would include:

• Eliminate the NSA focus on collection of data from U.S. citizens. Have them focus instead upon foreign threats, per their charter.
• Put the Central Intelligence Agency back into the CIA business
• Put the Defense Intelligence Agency back into the DIA business 
• Cease world-wide drone strikes. Focus on international and police and intelligence interplay. 
• Reinstate the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the sole counter-intelligence terrorist agency in the continental U.S. 
• Let the DoD concentrate on war-fighting, rather than police-oriented efforts
• Respect the sovereignty of all nations, to include Syria

We cannot afford an open-ended war of such extravagant spending when our social welfare system struggles to provide services to needy Americans. We can ill-afford this ongoing distraction.


When 40 million Americans got to bed hungry each night it seems superfluous to say terrorism is a threat to our way of life.

[cross-posted @ MilPub.]

Menage a Trois

--Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
ISIS leader

 Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible!

Supposing we could judge value, what follows?
The idea of recurrence as a selective principle,
in the service of strength (and barbarism!!)
--F. Nietzche

(T)he power to cause pain is the only power that matters,
the power to kill and destroy,
because if you can't kill then you are always subject
to those who can, and nothing and no one
will ever save you 
--Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card 

Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw?
Well, what tongue does the wind talk?
 What nationality is a storm?
What country do rains come from?
What color is lightning?
Where does thunder go when it dies?” 

 *   *   * 

You can't act if you don't know.
Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
 --Something Wicked This Way Comes, 
Ray Bradbury 
____________________

President Barack Obama is expected to ask Congress tonight to authorize $500 billion to bolster the moderate militants fighting the Syrian government. These supposed moderates will then be used to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). At least that's the plan. 

But how does one gauge "moderation" in a civil war? Beyond the difficulty of deciding who to support, for the first time in United State's history, the nation is proposing a strategy based upon opposing both sides in a war.

For some reason, the U.S. is dedicated to the destruction of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, while also opposing his major opponent, ISIS. This strategy ignores what happened the last three times the U.S. deposed dictators. The supposed unholy trinity of Libya, Iraq and Egypt are examples of this folly. Realpolitik would suggest the U.S. is better dealing with the devils it knows rather than those it does not. 

Why is the U.S. opposed to Syria, anyway? What threat originates there that would endanger the U.S. homeland? While ISIS is a dangerous organization, what proof exists beyond emotion and hyperbole that this group is a danger to the U.S.? 

The proposed new strategy lacks a clear objective (beyond smashing people and things from the sky), violating the Principles of War in a big way. The destruction of a government or a group is not a strategy, but at best, Phase #1 of a strategy. 

The key point is: what is the purpose and objective to destroying Syria and ISIS? The U.S. strategy lacks a definable end game.

Meanwhile, a half gallon of milk has risen 20% in one week here in Florida. People are now audibly questioning the steep jack in their grocery bill. Most often heard: "Maybe they don't want us to eat."
But they will manage to find money for flyboys to kill more Arabs; hopefully, they will kill the right ones. But there is the rub -- WHO are the right ones, and by whose metric?

Ranger is more consumed with food prices in his hometown than with the mistaken notion of stopping violence and hatred on the far side of the moon.  

Somewhere, General David Petraeus is asking with a wry smile, "So tell me: How does this end?"

Bunker Buster

The flash from a distant camera
Reconnecting thoughts and actions
Fragments of our missing dream 
--Distant Camera, Neil Young
_____________________

Today's entry is an analysis of a bunker of the 1/502/25, a slice of life in today's United States Army. [The bunker was caught incidentally in a photo of the recently returned U.S. Army soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, rt. of photo.]

As background, think of all the wonderful photos of World War II, German, Japanese and U.S. fighting positions: there are always grenades laid out for final defenses. There are no grenades in this photo.

Why is the Light Machine Gun (LMG) not protected from the elements (or at least, the $1,500 sight)?

As for the gun, it is too high of a silhouette, forcing the gunner to expose his body to enemy suppressive fire. The gun needs to be dug into a lower firing platform. The ammunition is open to trash, dirt and the elements, and the gun does not have the belt in the feed tray. This means the gun is not ready to fire.

A military axiom says that Machine Guns are employed in pairs, to provide interlocking fires through coordinated defense. The lay of the land in the photo would seem to make this impossible. Does this fighting position have room for an assistant gunner/loader to service the gun? Does the position have a rear egress and entrance? Must the soldiers enter the bunker from the enemy side?

Now see the roof of the structure: it is weak, unsupported and would not provide any appreciable protection from either direct or indirect fire. An enemy assault could chop this bunker into smithereens with direct rifle fire. An RPG would spell disaster. The bunker's supports are 2 x 4 white pine, like you'd buy at a a home supply store. (Ranger hopes the Army got the military discount.)

Ignoring the troops' casual and non-technical demeanor, we will not ignore the mortar to the left rear seen between the three troops (with hands in their pockets.) The gun is clearly not dug in, meaning that it could not be serviced if this position were attacked. (We have noted this deficiency in several past Afghan battle analysis here at RAW.)

Further: why would a mortar be placed directly on a firing line of a defensive position? This is just wrong, and violates the logical placement of the weapon, which should be protected from direct fire.

If the situation were dire, move the gun forward (in what would be a tactical leadership call), but dig it in and have connective trenches so that friendly movement could ensue, crawling if need be under enemy fire.

Last comment: what were these troops defending, anyway?

Unprivileged

--The Burned Village (1942),
Alexander Deineka

If there is going to be change, real change,
it will have to work its way from the bottom up,
from the people themselves.
That’s how change happens
--Howard Zinn, historian

It's so easy not to try,
let the world go drifting by
--The Hobbit (animation)
______________

The Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) construction has created a miasma of legal contortions where before there was only clarity.

The blatant lies are the most grating: If the U.S. is at war with al-Qaeda and terrorism, then all imprisoned while engaged in such activities should be prisoners of war. Instead, they are what we choose to call them, and the sandwich board changes daily.

Now, they are Unprivileged Combatants (UC's) per International Humanitarian Law. An unlawful combatant or unprivileged combatant/belligerent is "a civilian who directly engages in armed conflict in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and may be detained or prosecuted under the domestic law of the detaining state for such action" (per ICRC defintion). UC's do not qualify for P.O.W. status.

Since UC's are under the legal jurisdiction of the domestic law of the detaining state and the U.S. is the detaining state, then terror suspects are subject to Federal law, which covers crimes like murder, kidnapping, hijacking and conspiracy.

Yet despite the unambiguity of the designation, the conservatives continue the bad fight to keep our laws and Constitution from working.

Senators Lieberman and Collins wrote last week that the decision to treat would-be crotch bomber Abdulmutallab as a common criminal "almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks."

Predictably, Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Jim Webb, Republicans Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Susan Collins, and Independent Joe Lieberman are still arguing that "The attacks of 9/11 were acts of war, and those who planned and carried out those attacks are war criminals," and said so in a letter to Obama last week.

For a larger perspective: If al-Qaeda is such a threat, why would they send a 24-year-old toss-away with no worthwhile operational knowledge of their techniques to execute such a feat of non-derring-do? Anybody believing that the crotch bomber has additional information to impart has ridden shotgun with Jack Bauer one too many times. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is no Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (whom the Wall Street Journal still insists on featuring at his 2003-Ron Jeremy best.)

This contingent harangues that by deny these criminals the right to remain silent, the detained can somehow be forced to spill the beans, like in an episode of the t.v. series "24". But if they will not talk in a criminal case, why would they talk as UC's?

A WSJ editorial last week whined, "If the Administration is going to insist on treating the likes of KSM as ordinary criminal defendants, it would be clarifying if Congress voted on a bill laying down new limits to these laws (Congress and Terror Trials)." But why limit or constrict what works?

Congress cannot modify a legal construct such as the right to remain silent in a criminal case, or the right and dignity not to be tortured as a civilian non-privileged detainee. Why does the U.S. accept the concept of Presidential War Powers to address what is clearly a criminal threat evident by terror activities?

Everything that terrorists do is covered by U.S. code -- EVERYTHING. Terrorism is criminal activity, not warfare. The president cannot unilaterally and extra-legally declare someone to be an illegal enemy combatant.

Our Criminal Code and courts were not designed to protect spooks and spies. The laws of the land do not exist to protect intelligence services and their methods and sources: "Spies and terrorists are only protected by the laws of war if the power which holds them is in a state of armed conflict or war, and until they are found to be an unlawful combatant. They may be subject to civilian law or military tribunal for their acts."

The laws exist to defend the rights and dignity of all men -- even terror suspects. Taken pragmatically, we don't do it for them, but we do it for us.

While terrorism is not a war crime, the case could have been made that the attacks of 9-11 were Crimes Against Humanity, in which case its perpetrators should have been remanded to the World Court at The Hague. If we had critical thinkers in charge, they would have been able to discriminate the events of 9-11 from that terrorist activity involved in say perpetrating the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, which was an act of war. However, in neither case was the terrorism itself, war.

The government does not have my permission to torture or to hold suspects for long-term, open-ended imprisonment. That is NOT the American way. If it is, the Greatest Generation made a mistake in destroying the Nazi regime.

The Next Step

How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
--Maria, Rogers and Hammerstein
______________

It is all fine and well that we close the Gitmo detainee facility, but what do you do with truly dangerous men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)?

KSM can never be prosecuted in Federal court because his treatment following capture would outrage the court and the world. Therefore, he will never be legally convicted.

To boot, he is not a prisoner of war, so what to with him?

Option I: Send him back to Pakistan for legal resolution.

Option II: Release him. And do it right the next time.

Option III: Shoot him when he is trying to escape.

Option IV: Drown him for real.

Option V: Hire him as a Central Intelligence Agency consultant (assuming he is not already on the books.)

These are just options, but it is not in our democratic tradition to keep him locked up indefinitely without charges or a fair and transparent trial. Ranger sees no option but to release him or turn him over to Pakistan. Even the Pakistan card is a weak one.

And since there was no conviction, let's get the reward money back, too.