Category Archives: defense policy

Some Predictions

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Because the air is fresh out on the end of a limb.

The Wall Street Journal asked a question regarding Iran’s next moves following the successful killing of its head terrorist, Qasim Soleimani:

What do you think are Iran’s next steps?

My predictions—among other things, Iran will do these:

  • hook up with the Taliban
  • strike Saudi oil fields
  • take speedboat shots at our fleet in the Arabian Gulf
  • mine the Strait of Hormuz
  • sink some oil tankers rather than just put minor holes in them, including British and French tankers—not necessarily in the Arabian Gulf
  • hit some Kurdish bases in northeastern Iraq

Preemptive Update: I wrote the above Tuesday morning; I’m writing this Wednesday morning. My predictions already are outdated. In the realization, Iran struck at two Iraqi facilities on which Americans are based–one in Irbil and the other at Ain al-Asad (will the Iraqi government take official notice of this Iranian assault on Iraqi sovereignty?).The air is fresh as the limb falls, too.

Separately:

Of the 15 Iranian missiles fired, 10 missed Ain al-Asad, one missed Irbil, and four failed.  Some are saying the misses were deliberate, but that’s a terrible OR/reliability rate….

Honorable Military Service

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and town mayor Pete Buttigieg has been making a big deal about his heroic service during his five-month tour in Afghanistan.

Greg Kelly and Katie Horgan, both ex-Marines with actual combat duty, had some thoughts about that in their Wall Street Journal op-ed.  So do I.  Kelly and Horgan noted,

He [Buttigieg] entered the military through a little-used shortcut: direct commission in the reserves.

Not even a 90-day wonder—a pomeranian prince.

Especially this:

Mr Buttigieg spent some five months in Afghanistan, where he writes that he remained less busy than he’d been at City Hall, with “more time for reflection and reading than I was used to back home.” He writes that he would take “a laptop and a cigar up to the roof at midnight to pick up a Wi-Fi signal and patch via Skype into a staff meeting at home.”

It’s a mark of the quality of Buttigieg’s “service” that he had less work to do even than that of being a small-town mayor.

Honorable officers, when they’re short of tasks, go looking for more things to do to advance the mission, they don’t head up to the roof top to moonlight on Skype or hide out somewhere recreationally reading.

Oh, and Bob Dole felt no need to lean on his military service, much less his actual wounds, in order to campaign for office. Neither did Phil Hart or Daniel Inouye.  But the unscathed rooftop pomeranian prince does.

A Retreat

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In the aftermath of killing Qasim Soleimani, the Iranian government is trying to create the impression of subsequent American retreat from the Middle East.

Certainly Iran’s leaders already are working to create that impression. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, citing the angry reaction to the Soleimani killing within Iran and Iraq, tweeted Monday that the “end of malign US presence in West Asia has begun.”

Iran’s government isn’t the only one trying to manufacture the impression.  See Gerald Seib’s characterization of Soleimani in his piece at the link:

Iran’s top military leader, Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani

and

the surprise attack that killed an Iranian leader

No, Sir. Soleimani was Iran’s top terrorist leader; the attack killed an Iranian terrorist leader. That he also was a high leader in the Iranian government means only that the Iranian government is terrorist in its bent and action.

Seib’s gentling description of a powerful and prolific terrorist, of a piece with the press’ characterizations of al-Baghdadi as an “ascetic religious scholar” and the recent attackers of our Baghdad embassy as “mourners,” is symptomatic of the NLMSM’s expanding manufacture of a US in full retreat.

It’s shameful.

It’s a Start

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TikTok is a People’s Republic of China company (for all its public moves to resite its headquarters outside the PRC) that’s a popular social-media app that’s used for posting short videos.

However.

TikTok collects information about its users, including data that could be used to track the location and movements of individuals….

As a result, tour military is banning the use of the app on government devices; the Coast Guard and Air Force have joined DoD, the Navy, the Army, and the Marines in the ban.

That’s a good start, but it needs to go much farther.  The app needs to be banned from use by anyone while they’re on any government installation or in any government facility, including civilian facilities.  The app also needs to be banned from use by anyone in an overseas military operations area of responsibility.  Location and movement data are just too important to make it easy for our enemies to have access to them.  Recall the Fitbit fiasco, from an American company, and Pokémon Go, from a Japanese company.

Engraved Invitations

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…personally hand-delivered.

President Donald Trump has notified Congress of his intent to respond to any Iranian attack against Americans or American facilities:

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
2:25 PM · Jan 5, 2020

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Mayor Pete Buttigieg is dismayed by this form of notification.

Buttigieg said Trump is not handling the situation properly with respect to informing Congress, arguing that the Senate’s Gang of Eight—a group of top Republican and Democratic lawmakers—should have been notified.
“That heads-up to Congress is to Congress as a body, not to certain members who agree with you politically…You don’t notify Congress by tweet,” he responded.

I’ll elide the detail that notification to Congress of such matters is notification to House senior leadership as well as to Senate senior leadership.

No, what Buttigieg is upset about is that nontraditional Trump is using nontraditional means to notify Congress instead of hand delivering personally engraved notifications.

How precious.

How easily distracted.