Category Archives: defense policy

An Open Letter

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Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) is the lead signatory, among 47 Republican Senators, to an open letter to the Iranian government regarding how the American government works.

An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran:

It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution-the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices-which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.

First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement.

Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then-perhaps decades.

What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.

We hope this letter enriches your knowledge of our constitutional system and promotes mutual understanding and clarity as nuclear negotiations progress.

Unfortunately, the letter isn’t only addressed to the Iranians, it’s also, of necessity, aimed at President Barack Obama.

The letter can be seen here and here.

Another Installment in Sea Grabs

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The People’s Republic of China Foreign Minister Wang Yi had this to say, according to The Wall Street Journal:

This construction does not target or affect anyone.

We are not like some countries who engage in illegal construction in another person’s house, and we do not accept criticism from others when we are merely building facilities in our own yard. We have every right to do things that are lawful and justified.

The satellite imagery at the WSJ link is remarkable.

Of course, Wang is lying. What the PRC is doing affects all the nations on the South China Sea rim: being international waters, the Sea is theirs as much as it is the PRC’s, which is to say it’s owned by no one.

As far as construction in another person’s house is concerned, the Spratly Islands (the site of the present construction), if not in anyone’s house, most assuredly are in the jointly held front yards of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. These islands are nowhere near the PRC, and like the South China Sea in general, they are not at all PRC territory.

National Security and Terrorists

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More than a dozen Islamic State fighters from Iraq and Syria—some with direct ties to the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—are now in Libya, according to US and European sources.

And the US has no authority to take them out.

And

The nation’s most senior intelligence officer, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Libya is not only a safe haven for ISIS but at least six other terror groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, which paraded police vehicles through Benghazi last month.

State’s Deputy Spokeswoman Marie Harf repeated State’s (and so President Barack Obama’s) position on the matter, insisting that this is not the fault of our foreign policy.

Are we happy with the situation in Libya from a governance and security perspective? No. Absolutely not. At the end of the day, though, this is not just a line, it’s true. This is ultimately up to the Libyan people, leaders in Libya to take the security of their country into their own hands and try to move it in a better direction with our help, the UN and others’ help as well.

This is a misreading of the situation. These Daesh members (and with direct ties to…Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, they’re Daesh leaders themselves) also are threats to our own national security, as are those other terrorist groups present—and not only to us, but to our friends and allies, also. From that, two consequences result directly.

The first is that, most assuredly, the situation in Libya is Libya’s to answer first, and we should do all we can to help Libya in that regard if they ask.

The second consequence, and from our national safety perspective the more important one, is that if Libya is unable or unwilling to handle the situation to our satisfaction—that is to the satisfaction of our own national security interest—then we have an obligation to ourselves, to American security, to enter and to handle the situation ourselves.

A foreign policy that is in the way of that, whether actively so or passively, very definitely is at fault, and it’s at odds with our national security.

State’s Cynical Distortion

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The State Department accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of taking congressional testimony by Secretary of State John Kerry out of context in Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday.

What Kerry said in Congressional testimony:

[I]f you have a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately and not a threat to proliferation, you could have as many as 190,000 or more centrifuges[.]

What Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

He [Iran’s Supreme Leader] says, Iran plans to have 190,000 centrifuges, not 6,000 or even the 19,000 that Iran has today, but 10 times that amount—190,000 centrifuges enriching uranium. With this massive capacity, Iran could make the fuel for an entire nuclear arsenal and this in a matter of weeks, once it makes that decision.
My long-time friend, John Kerry, Secretary of State, confirmed last week that Iran could legitimately possess that massive centrifuge capacity when the deal expires.
Now I want you to think about that. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons and this with full international legitimacy.

Out of context? Not so much, FactCheck.org notwithstanding (their statement, Kerry wasn’t saying that “Iran could legitimately possess” 190,000 centrifuges. He was saying that “a civilian power plant that’s producing power legitimately” could have 190,000 or more centrifuges, simply restates what Netanyahu said Kerry said—that Iran could possess as many as 190,000 centrifuges under the Kerry/Obama deal). The Obama/Kerry deal on offer to Iran would allow Iran to have “peaceful,” “civilian” nuclear power plants “producing power legitimately.”

What’s key here is this. Those centrifuges, busily spinning away to produce fuel-grade uranium for peaceful nuclear power plants, could just as easily be spinning away through additional purification cycles to produce weapons-grade uranium. Netanyahu understands that.

John Kerry and Barack Obama just as clearly understand that; their cynicism and crocodile ire over Netanyahu’s speech aside.

See the centrifuges spin. Spin, Centrifuges, spin.

The Mosul Campaign

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A couple of things.

Regarding the well-publicized upcoming Mosul, Iraq, campaign (remember the ability of WWI allied general staffs to predict German army movements by reading Berlin newspaper society pages? President Barack Obama plainly does not), a carefully unnamed “military official” had this to say:

When we feel that the Iraqi forces are ready to go and win decisively, we will go and advise the Iraqis to begin the operation.

Hmm….

Keep some things in mind for a broader context of this official’s remark. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably against the Iranian army. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably against the American military, twice. These are the same Iraqi forces that failed so miserably when the Daesh ran all over them just a few months ago. These are Iraqi forces.

Update: As prelude to the upcoming Mosul campaign (and from which all the publicity may have been intended to distract as well as to show “initiative”) a 30,000-strong mixed Iraqi, Kurdish, militia, and Iranian force began an assault on Tikrit, which some 1,500-2,000 Daesh terrorists are holding, over last weekend.

This force is made up of Peshmerga, Sunni and Shia militia units, and units from Iran’s Quds forces.  Some Iraqi army units are along, too, to lend a government imprimatur to the operation.

As happened the last time the Iraqi army tried to take Tikrit, the offensive has stalled short of the city’s suburbs, having run into mines on the roads and other key approaches: Daesh emplaced IEDs.  The move now is to attempt to surround the city; Quds leadership is guiding the eastern part of the operation.