Category Archives: defense policy

There’s Defense

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…and then there’s defense.

According to Fox News, there was this exchange during and immediately after a day of testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last Wednesday.  At the end of his testimony, wherein he had expressed his frustration at not only not getting the additional security personnel and equipage he’d been requesting for the security of the consulate in Benghazi but getting the assets he already had materially reduced, LtCol Andrew Wood, former head of our Tripoli embassy’s military security, said

We were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had[.]

Eric Nordstrom, erstwhile head of regional security for State, closed his own testimony by recounting a conversation he had had earlier with State about his own request for more security personnel.  That conversation included this Nordstrom frustration remark:

You know what (is) most frustrating about this assignment?  It’s not the hardships, it’s not the gunfire, it’s not the threats.  It’s dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me.

And I added it by saying, “For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

In response, Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick Kennedy, in a post-hearing press conference called for the purpose, emphasized that Wood’s team was in Tripoli, not Benghazi.  He also carefully pointed out that expanding Wood’s team and extending its area of responsibility to include Benghazi would not necessarily have prevented the attack on Benghazi.  After all,

The assault that occurred on the evening of Sep 11…was an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men[.]

Hmm….

Deterrence is not the only means of defense, as Nordstrom and Woods—and anyone with any competence in security—understands.  Sometimes defense involves, well, actual defense.  Actually shooting back.  Actually killing the attackers.  Even those taking part in “an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men.”

Listening to the experts on the ground, rather than putting the political theater of “acting normal” in a still-fluid environment (however hard the Libyan government and people may be trying) ahead of the lives of our embassy staff, would have put more assets into the area, would have beefed up the security at the Benghazi consulate.

Sure, the attack would have gone in, anyway.  As we now know—and as it turns out, State knew at the time—this was a terrorist assault that was going to occur.  Period.  But the plussed-up security might have successfully defended the consulate against those dozens.  Even without that, it might have saved the lives of our Ambassador and those three men who died with him in the terrorist assault.

But it’s more important to maintain the Obama narrative and get him reelected than it is for State—and the Executive Office—to do their jobs and to allow the security personnel they’ve emplaced for actual security to do theirs.

German Intelligence Assessment of Afghanistan

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According to Spiegel Online International, here’s what the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, the German Federal Intelligence Service), in their report “Afghanistan until 2014 – A Prognosis,” is telling the German government about the situation in Afghanistan.

Of the Karzai government, the report says

Susceptibility to corruption, influence peddling by individuals and nepotism will continue[.]

On Afghanistan’s security, the report says, as summarized by Spiegel Online,

[T]he number of attacks that members of the Afghan security forces carry out against Western soldiers will continue to increase.  It also predicts that the program for reintegrating former Taliban fighters who have renounced violence will have “no effects” on the peace process.

And

[T]he Afghan government’s efforts to hold talks with insurgents have no chance at success.  It says that the latter only want to negotiate with the US and not with Kabul, and that “no greater progress” is to be expected by 2014, the year of planned [American] withdrawal[.]

And

Up to 35,000 foreign soldiers—mostly trainers for the Afghan army, combat troops required to protect the trainers and as many elite soldiers as possible to hunt down terrorists—will be needed to stabilize the country [post-2014.]

If this is accurate, what does this say about American intelligence capability?  Or, what does this say about what the administration is willing to tell us, publicly, about what our intel is telling them?

Another Chinese Attack

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…this time against the White House’s computers.

White House sources partly confirmed an alarming report that US government computers were breached by Chinese hackers.

“This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network,” a White House official told FoxNews.com.

Spear phishing consists of attempts directed at specific individuals.  Sure enough, “This [White House Communications Agency] guy opened an email he wasn’t supposed to open,” according to a law enforcement official investigating the attack.

Most likely, this was a preliminary, probing attack, in preparation for a later, more fully developed assault.  Or a demonstration of things to come if we don’t step back.

Sure enough,

[a] White House official downplayed that report, saying that the system involved was not a sensitive nuclear system, and no evidence indicated that information was actually taken.

That’s OK, then.  The fact of the successful probe is itself no big deal.  Sure.

He’s Been Booker’d

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Fox News reported this last night:

The office of the United States’ top intelligence official appeared to take the blame Friday for the Obama administration’s changing narrative on the US Consulate attack in Libya, saying administration officials who initially claimed the attack was spontaneous did so based on intelligence officials’ guidance.

The statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was put out late Friday….

As Fox News put it, “Turner’s statement marked a complete reversal from the initial claims.”  Turner’s statement included this, in part:

In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo.  We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available.  Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

However, Fox News also has been reporting that two intel sources have told them that intelligence officials knew within 24 hours that the attack was terrorism and that they suspected it was tied to Al Qaeda.  As Fox dryly put it, it’s unclear why the intelligence community told Executive Branch officials it was spontaneous.

This is highly reminiscent of the event late last spring involving Newark, NJ, Mayor Cory Booker.  In a May “Meet the Press” interview, Booker told NBC’s host, Dick Gregory, that the Democratic Party campaign’s attacks on Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney (in all but name at the time) for his time at Bain Capital were “nauseating.”  Twenty-four hours later, Booker had been browbeaten by the White House into apologizing for his nauseating remark.

This is what is being done to Clapper—he’s being forced to take the fall for this administration’s dishonesty in its mischaracterization of the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left our Ambassador to Libya murdered along with three of his staff.

Foreign Policy and China

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As useless and timid as our foreign policy “strategy” has so graphically shown itself to be in the Middle East and northern Africa, it’s just as foolish in Asia, most especially regarding the People’s Republic of China.

In response to Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed (in some circles) “pivot toward Asia,” Ambassador John Bolton, writing for The Wall Street Journal at the above link, points out these small details concerning the PRC and its relationship with us.

Whoever becomes president in January will require a policy of sustained American involvement and leadership….  The US is already perilously close to the point strategically where China will simply run the table with its claims [to the South China Sea, right up to the shores of the Philippines, Vietnam, and Malaysia].  Potential hostilities are no longer hypothetical.

Last week in Beijing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the usual US bromides, namely: resolving the region’s maritime disputes peacefully through negotiation consistent with international-law principles regarding freedom of navigation.

The PRC answered this nonsense with a naked threat of war if we don’t shape up and accede.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi replied bluntly that China was sovereign over the territories, and government media mouthpiece Xinhua warned the US that “strategic miscalculations about a rising power could well lead to confrontations and even bloody conflicts, like the war between ancient Athens and Sparta.  To avoid such a catastrophic scenario, Washington has to change its obsolete and doubt-ridden thinking pattern and cooperate with Beijing to settle their differences.

So. Obama has received his marching orders.

Bolton then offers a solution, albeit one that the present administration will find itself unable to implement after looking in the mirror.

Such [timidity] must give way to a strategic approach based on three key elements.

First, the US must decide unequivocally that Beijing’s expansionism…is contrary to American national interests.  There are high, tangible stakes for us and our Asian and Pacific friends, ranging broadly from Japan and South Korea to Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.  The stakes include undersea mineral resources and sea lanes of communication and trade critical to US and global prosperity.
…
This is about power and resolve.

Second, we must rapidly rebuild America’s Navy, without which any shift in strategic thinking is hollow.  This is a maritime problem at the operational level, demanding adequate resources

China is building its own blue-water navy…actively pursuing anti-access, area-denial tactics and weapons systems intended to push the US back from the Western Pacific.  Unless we increase the Navy’s capabilities, or essentially abandon other ocean spaces, the negative direction and ultimate outcome in the waters off China are clear.

America’s current approach—watching while initially minor incidents risk escalating—puts us at a distinct disadvantage.  Passivity will allow Beijing to prevail repeatedly, incident after incident, until US weakness becomes so palpable that there is no doubt of China’s across-the-board success.

Third, we must work diplomatically, largely behind the scenes, to resolve differences among the other claimants.  In the East China Sea, Japan is the major competitor, while Beijing butts heads with Vietnam, the Philippines and other ASEAN members in the South China Sea.  These regions…for China both are part of the same strategic picture. So it must be for America.

Fat chance.