Tag Archives: defense policy

Presidential Diplomacy

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Speaker of the House John Boehner (R, OH) has invited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the full Congress in early March. The purpose of the visit and address is to advise the Congress on matters of diplomacy and threat in the Middle East, in keeping with Congress’ duty to be sufficiently informed that it can maintain its oversight of the Executive Branch.

Naturally, President Barack Obama has his golfing knickers in a twist because the Congress, which he so assiduously ignores on other important matters, didn’t say, “Mother, may I?” before inviting Netanyahu. Indeed, Obama is refusing to meet with Netanyahu while the PM is here, having already found a previous engagement with which to occupy his own time. Formally, Obama says it’s too close to the Israeli elections, and he doesn’t want to influence them.

Obama’s formal excuse comes after he had invited British Prime Minister David Cameron—and embarrassingly, the man accepted—to actively lobby our Congress on a wholly domestic matter with the explicit purpose of influencing Congress’ deliberations.

Hmm….

Sanctions and Foreign Governments

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The new Congress is pushing toward legislation that would increase sanctions on Iran should the current “negotiations” over Iran’s nuclear weapons program fail. President Barack Obama has promised to veto the legislation, insisting he’s got everything under control.

Then, on Friday last, British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a press conference held jointly with Obama that he’d been lobbying US Senators against that same legislation and that he intended to continue to do so. In the next sentence he lied about it being lobbying, insisting in wide-eyed innocence

That wouldn’t be right[.]

Now we have two reasons to pass the sanctions legislation, and to repass it over Obama’s veto, either of which is sufficient by itself. Aside from Obama’s foreign policy and negotiating fecklessness, no foreign government has any business trying to influence our Congress. None at all.

Get to work, Congressmen.

Syria and the Bomb

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In 2007, an Israeli air strike blew up Syria’s nuclear reactor facility (the reactor itself wasn’t yet completed) and with it Syria’s nuclear weapons program.

Or so we thought at the time. If Spiegel Online International‘s reporting can be taken as even a bit accurate, al Assad is still working on a bomb at a couple of different facilities.

According to IAEA research, Syria possesses up to 50 tons of natural uranium, enough material for three to five bombs once the enrichment procedure is completed.

Keep in mind that, with Israel’s size, three to five bombs is all it would take for this Iranian client state to wipe Israel off the map.

And this:

The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington D.C. likewise has strong indications for the existence of such stockpiles [including fuel rods for the blown up reactor-under-construction]….

And:

Analysts say that the Syrian atomic weapon program has continued in a secret, underground location. According to information they have obtained, approximately 8,000 fuel rods are stored there.

I hate unnamed sources of any sort; this is why such reporting needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But what if the reporting is accurate?

Outside Qusayr, which is 20 miles southwest of Homs (and which would be an added motive for Syria’s desperation to recapture Homs from the Syrian rebels)

satellite images show six structures: a guard house and five sheds, three of which conceal entrances to the facility below. The site also has special access to the power grid, connected to the nearby city of Blosah. A particularly suspicious detail is the deep well which connects the facility with Zaita Lake, four kilometers away. Such a connection is unnecessary for a conventional weapons cache, but it is essential for a nuclear facility.

SOI also claims to have copies of Hezbollah communications that refer to the “atomic factory” and that mentions Qusayr.

What worries me if even a couple of details are being accurately reported is this: what happens if Hezbollah, or ISIS, or al Qaeda units operating in Syria get hold of the raw uranium or the fuel rods—which are a more purified version of the uranium?

Punishment of Terrorists

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There is a strong view that terrorists should be executed for their acts. In the main, I don’t disagree. Capital crimes desperately want capital punishment: prompt execution.

However.

Many of these terrorists are doing their deeds in order to become martyrs and to live in Allah’s heaven. For these, execution is a reward, not a punishment; for such as these, execution is a goal devoutly to be wished, not a deterrent.

Instead, I suggest, expensive as it would be, that wherever possible, those terrorists who are acting for martyrdom should be taken alive and allowed to die of old age in a prison cell. Here is punishment for the terrorist, and here is the possibility of deterrence: the price of failure being to live a long life in a cage, to be denied death except through the senility of old age.

Coordinated Lone Wolves?

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The terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo raises a question in my mind and in many other minds. This was an isolated attack, á la a number of other isolated attacks. However, this attack also was associated in time with the murder of a woman cop on the south side of Paris and the murders of four citizens in a Jewish bakery in eastern Paris: these ancillary(?) attacks went in while French police and security units were occupied with the hunt for and capture of the Charlie Hebdo butchers.

I wonder, then, whether al Qaeda (I discount ISIS in this, for now; they seem to be focused on Syria, Iraq, and Jordan) is changing their tactics away from the larger, but harder to execute, attacks like blowing up an embassy or flying airliners into economically and militarily important facilities.

I wonder whether al Qaeda is moving toward smaller, easier to execute, coordinated “lone wolf” attacks whose purpose isn’t to stress police forces with a major one-off, but to try to overwhelm them with more, and simultaneous, attacks than a police force can handle.

Following its inability to cow the West with large, splashily destructive attacks, I wonder whether al Qaeda is moving its attacks on Western civilization toward lots of these smaller, coordinated attacks in a different effort to demonstrate our inability to protect ourselves, the impotence of our police forces, and ultimately to using that version of fear to break apart our various national societies.

I see this, though, as both a greater danger and an admission of defeat. They can’t beat us in the terrorist version of pitched battles, so they’re moving toward this. Many of these will succeed (Charlie Hebdo), but the damage done will be small in each case (if tragic for the victims). They can succeed overall, though, only if we give in to the fear. They can succeed overall only if we citizens choose not to be actively vigilant, keeping in mind that when seconds count, and the terrorists are coming, the police are (only) minutes away.

Armed, confident, and alert. They can’t beat us.