Category Archives: defense policy

The PRC and American Defense

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Seth Cropsey, Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy for both Presidents Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, made some points in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week.

Beijing continues to build up its medium-range and long-distance missile arsenal, antiship cruise missiles, space weapons and military cyberspace capabilities.  China is also improving its fighters, building three classes of attack submarines, and has commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.  It is, in short, building an advanced system of weaponry capable of striking Asian states from afar.

The US’ response:

plans for increasing the US Marine contingent based in Darwin on Australia’s north coast to 1,100 from 250 [ultimate goal in a nebulous future: 2,500].

And

Facing this…is a US fleet less than half the size it was…in the early 1990s.  The plan to build the 306-ship fleet that the Navy says is necessary to accomplish all its missions rests on assumptions about shipbuilding costs that the Congressional Budget Office and Congressional Research Service agree are unrealistic.  …  On Tuesday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on sea power, told a group at Washington’s Hudson Institute that “In 2007, the Navy was able to meet about 90% of America’s combatant commanders’ need [for ships].  This year that figure will fall to 51%.”

And

The defense budget since 9/11 has averaged 4.1% of GDP.  Under the budgets projected by the Obama administration, the figure is projected to drop to 2.5% in less than a decade.

Here is the American retreat in full throat.

Why?

The Defeat of al Qaeda

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…Orwell style.

[President Barack] Obama said in a speech to the National Defense University May 23 that because of the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and most of his top aides, “we are safer.”

While terrorist threats still exist, “the core of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is on the path to defeat,” the president said.

Because, you see,

…focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan resulted in a lack of targeted counterterrorism efforts in other locations…. …counterterrorism efforts have been weakened by the administration’s policy of dissociating Islam from al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorism.  The policy was a key effort of John Brennan, White House counterterrorism chief during the first Obama administration.  As CIA director, Brennan has expanded the policy of limiting links between Islam and terrorism at the agency.

The result is that Islamist terror groups are flourishing, posing direct threats to the United States and to US interests outside the country[.]

And a report from Lignet, a private intelligence group run by ex-CIA officials, had this on the matter in a report published last Tuesday:

…the U.S. government’s overreliance on sanctions and surveillance has limited the war on terror.

The result is “a decentralized al Qaeda structure—and a much greater threat….

“Al Qaeda has transitioned from a hierarchical cell structure to a franchise organization that is now responsible for four times as many terrorist attacks a year as it was before 9/11….

“Al Qaeda training camps are now being established on the Arabian Peninsula, in Africa, countries of the former Soviet Union, and Southeast Asia.”

Indeed, the al Qaeda empire is rapidly spreading, and with more than just training camps.

Truly, a defeat of Orwellian proportions….

A Whistleblower

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I offered this first as a comment to a Spiegel Online article.  Here it is with slight modifications to support its stand-alone status here.

Edward Snowden, of Verizon metadata and PRISM outing fame, thinks of himself as a whistleblower, and so do many who agree with him that the US’ PRISM program and its program for collecting metadata from cellphone providers are terribly wrong programs.

I agree that the programs are anathema to individual liberty.  However, the programs are legal under US law.  The only question here is whether the programs’ limits and checks are being honored–and that’s a matter of trust, since the programs and its procedures are secret.  That secrecy and the need for that blind trust in Government (not just the Obama administration, but any Government) form a large part of my dismay over the programs.

However, the programs’ legality mean Snowden cannot be a whistleblower; he’s simply a man who has illegally revealed classified data to the public.

What about civil disobedience, then?  Is he practicing this honorable means of protest of a government behavior to which he objects?

There are many legal avenues of calling legitimate attention to these flawed programs, including, for instance, any of the several formal whistleblower and Inspector General facilities to which he could have taken his case.  Given the damage already done by these programs (stipulating arguendo that damage to individual liberty has been done) any additional damage done through the delays of going through these legitimate programs would have been quite trivial.  Yet Snowden eschewed these programs and went directly public.  From within a foreign country.

Were this an act of civil disobedience, it would have had to satisfy two criteria: he would have had first to exhaust his legal remedies.  As I noted, he chose not to do so.

Secondly, he would have to have been willing to face the consequences of his actions.  It is, after all, those consequences and their absurdity in the face of the disobedience and the thing over which the disobedience is occurring that give force and credibility to the disobedience.  Snowden’s reason for being in Hong Kong, as stated by him, is to avoid facing those consequences.

If Snowden truly believes that what he has done is just, he must return to the US and face the outcomes of his actions in open court.  Let him make his case in front of the American people (where he’ll find no small measure of support) and convince our representatives in that court case–the jury of his peers–that his act was justified.

Of course he risks not being supported by our representatives, that jury, as there also are a large number of Americans who disagree with what he has done.

Snowden’s flight and so far refusal to return indicates he’s unwilling to take that risk, that he does not have the courage of his convictions.  In that case, Snowden did not commit an act of civil disobedience; he is simply a small man who is placing his ego above justice.

Progress

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Veterans face delays when applying for education benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), making it more difficult for them to receive an education after leaving the military, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed last week.

And [emphasis added]

veterans lack information on the timeline for receiving their GI benefits and face a backlogged call center at the Department of Veterans Affairs when they have questions, on top of delays in actually receiving the benefits.

And

It took the VA 31 days on average to process a new application for GI benefits under the post-9/11 GI bill in fiscal year 2012, 8 days longer than the VA’s goal, while it took the VA 17 days to process benefit payment claims, 5 days longer than the VA’s target.

Those might seem like trivial delays, until you have to live through them.  I was a beneficiary of an earlier GI benefit program, and at the time the money was the difference between bankruptcy and paying bills—like tuition, books, etc—which is what it’s like living paycheck to paycheck.  A day’s delay can be a disaster, not just 8, or 5 days.

More, this is in addition to the VA’s existing disability claim arrears.

Of the nearly 900,000 pending disability claims, nearly 600,000 are backlogged, meaning they have been waiting for over 125 days. The average wait time is between 270 and 330 days, depending on how you calculate the figure, while the number of backlogged claims has risen by 2,000 percent since 2009[.]

But the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, says progress is being made in the dysfunctional VA, and Shinseki is an honorable man—so are they all, all honorable men in the VA.

The GAO’s report can be seen here.

Answering the Phone

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Adam Housley, writing for Fox News, had this on the Benghazi fiasco:

On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help—but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya[.]

Normal ops in locations like Benghazi has the Chief of Mission in charge—Ambassador Chris Stevens in this case—who has procedures for calling for help and transferring authority in exigent circumstances.  With Stevens (and such protection as he was allowed to have) trapped, his “distress button” was pushed, and authority was transferred to State, where again in the Benghazi case, response oversight and authority transferred to then-Secretary Hillary Clinton and one of her Undersecretaries, Patrick Kennedy.

Housley cited some of his sources:

Sources said that shortly after the attack began around 9:40 pm, special forces put out the calls for assets to be moved into position.

“What that does is that enacts…every asset, every element to respond and it becomes a global priority,” one source said.  “I would tell you that was given and the only reason it was given is because of special operations pack.”

However, the source said, “Assets did not move.”

It seems apparent that when the phone rang at 4 am, Clinton said, “What difference does it make,” rolled over, and went back to sleep.