Category Archives: foreign 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.

Marbles

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The Wall Street Journal confirmed what’s been widely predicted: the Governor of the People’s Republic of China’s central bank has announced he won’t attend this month’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund because it’s being hosted by Japan.  Instead, the PRC will be represented by Zhou Xiaochuan’s seconds, neither of whom will have the authority—or the contacts or trust—necessary to conclude any substantive agreements.  Not that the PRC is interested.

The PRC’s cancellation is just an escalation of its protest over another territorial dispute: Japan refuses to acknowledge that its Senkaku Islands in the southern part of the East China Sea belong to the PRC.  Eswar Prasad, late of the IMF with the PRC portfolio and now with the Brookings Institution, has the right of it:

China clearly does not feel the need to be subtle or nuanced in making apparent its displeasure about the escalation of the territorial dispute with Japan.  China is making it clear that it puts territorial sanctity above all other political and economic considerations.

The PRC made its intentions clear with the threat it issued through Xinhua, which the PRC government routinely uses for its public communications. In the context of the IMF cancellations, the PRC said the dispute (over the Senkakus) was “now starting to weigh on the world’s economy.”

However, if the PRC were truly serious about its territorial sanctity, it would withdraw its forces back to within its own borders.  It would cease its grab for the South China Sea right up to the borders of Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia; it would cease its occupation of Tibet; it would acknowledge the independence of the Republic of China.  No, this is just another naked power grab, part of a collection of land and resource grabs the PRC feels safe in making in the growing power vacuum developing from the American military reduction.

In the end, the IMF meeting should—and it will—proceed, concluding such agreements as were on the agenda before the PRC’s withdrawal, as though China’s substantive presence does not matter.  Because it does not.  They’ve taken their marbles.  Let them stay home and play by themselves.

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?

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.

First, the Official Denial

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…now comes a partial enumeration of the weasel words and evasion.  I wrote a bit ago about the official denial that the Blind Sheik, he of the first World Trade Center bombing, would be released/transferred to Egypt at Egypt’s behest.

Here’s what former Judge and US Attorney General Michael Mukasey has discovered in the way of that evasion and those weasel words.

Asked before Congress in July whether there is an intention “at any time to release the Blind Sheikh,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano responded: “Well, let me just say this.  I know of no such intention.”

And

The State Department’s spokesperson last week, after the ceremonial “let me be clear,” said that there had been no approach on this topic “recently” from any “senior” official of the Egyptian government….

I suppose Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi isn’t senior enough for this spokesperson.

And this:

All of this plays out in the context of an Obama administration that hasn’t hesitated to employ executive orders to get around Congress, led by a president who was caught on a “hot mike” assuring Russia’s leaders that if he wins re-election he will have more “flexibility” to accommodate Russian demands that the US curtail missile defense in Europe.

Since the guy who occasionally sits in our President’s chair refuses to say definitively that the Blind Sheik won’t be released/transferred anytime or under any conditions, all of this sounds pretty definitive to me.