The Middle East (general catch all)

[Compost]

Abdel Bari Atwan's article reads like a real Arab nationalist. And he seems to have good reasons for pessimism.

Entering any contest without a guiding purpose is an indulgence, diletantism or whatever almost anyone bothers to call it. Going early is a tactic but at least it is a concept of operation with some prospect of success. Going strong demonstrates real sense of purpose and sometimes a form of evangelism. Possessing an order of battle without exercising it is exhibitionism. Holding back massive resources can be a problem because once committed momentum becomes a form of inertia.

US strategies as expressed in its OOB are generally well understood but its current concept of operation seems to be maintaining the OOB because the US has forgotten – or perhaps has never understood - how to exercise a graduated response. One concept for special forces in FID and FMA is base camp warfare and identifying civilians from protagonists with limited support from main force units. The parallel concept in FMA and FMA-plus is that main force units – most of whose financial and social interaction should be kept well away from foreign civilians – are committed to continuous and intensive harrying of the opponent with little recuperation time spent off-line or behind some wire.

FMA-plus is when an opponent competing by proxy provides a convenient sanctuary that is then subjected to rigorous blockade if not destruction. Modern warfare is when an opponent has not managed to employ a foreign proxy and has not managed to stir up much dissent in your home.

The Middle East cannot make up its collective mind. NATO and the UN are something else again. So who else can the Arabs turn to ? And there the US will eventually go again because at least it can agree on one thing. Going is almost always worth doing even if the US always manages to make some basic mistakes such as disbanding the defeated Iraqi army in already conquered Iraq.

[Compost]

This is a second effort. But have looked up the US Department of State and been told by Wiki that the term metonym preceded State’s move to Foggy Bottom. So this partial recap of lessons experienced by various parties might be of some use there.

The current disruption in the Middle East is in part due to the poorly planned, inadequately pursued and now discontinued voluntary ground work of the US particularly in 2001, 1990/91 and to lesser extent 1956. And before those ineptitudes the sloppy work of the British and French in their organization of what was called the Middle-East. It is unsurprising that a variety of ratbags and malcontents have finally managed to concatenate all those and their own stupidities together into a troublesome mess.

It is past time for show and tell and now time to iron things out before more countries contract what can only be described as a form of rabies. Several out-of-area countries have already contributed small military forces to demonstrate belief that things have become serious. And many do not want to send more because colonials are always called on to send troops when the sophists give up in disgust or incompetence. But if/when the current bunch of crazies start digging up war dead, then affairs in the Middle East will further accelerate and the next crusade will make the last look like the proverbial picnic in a park. Even in our part of the world the mullahs and the fence sitters are working to ensure there will not be a need to pack lunch.

Realistically the prompt commitment of a co-opted but forceful coalition is a job for the leviathan US, the stolid Brits and Turks and the energized French who have recently been doing more and better in Africa than anyone else. In the arranging one thing should be kept central because in some cultures the principal function of the army is in-country policing with civilian police doing window dressing. So it is essential to select current army generals to become the new political leaders. Just make sure this time that such are industrious rather than venal and if fortunate get several halfway as sensible as Ataturk.

Also and as more than window dressing have as coalition force and deputy force commanders two generals from outside those four main countries and from outside the region. For example Scandinavia could be suitable as one source and particularly Norway because it is most distant and has its own offshore oil. And one reminder, if either commander is American we lose.

Many inhabitants of that sweeping region which includes South Central Europe through into Western Asia, Arabia and along two coasts of Africa might agree with much of the above. But do not expect them to say so because few including sophisticates seem prepared to be secular or humanist.

[Compost]

The reason the US is a popular study is that it is large enough and tolerant enough to permit many forms of useful and also eccentric behaviour. So the world can look on and learn and choose bits and pieces to try. Of course not all good things were developed in the US. The Brits apparently developed canned laughter and an Aussie developed the flight data recorder. The US just boosted the use of both. However a lot of its home-developed behavioural stuff is hyper specialised and some would say crazed. The US possibly has a higher per capita rate of uniformed and armed security personnel than any other nation. It has as a favouredl sport a concessional game in which only one person is permitted to think before short start-stop intervals and only one specialist kicks the ball. If any social activity is declared a belief then the rest leave it do whatever it wants. Outside the US few inhabitants of modern societies would consider concealed carry, American football or Jonesville eligible for any kind of support. But the US fought a civil war in part for human right to free choice and a future predicated upon something more than a charter that maintained in part the ‘birthright of kings and their ignoble courtiers’.

What is often unadmitted is that the US employs its concept of human rights as a strategy in international afairs and also as a lever in pseudo-revolutionary warfare. What happened to an elected government in western Ukraine and how was it that its quickly endorsed successor permitted civilian flights to continue over eastern Ukraine ? Is there any difference except ourselves and them between an action-packed US Navy cruiser shooting down an Iranian airliner over international waters in the Persian Gulf and an action-packed separatist or Russian missile post shooting down a Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine ?

Every amateur psychologist and sociologist knows what the Greeks said simply and long before they went off to treat themselves on other people’s money. It is possible to believe Voltaire was using more words to say much the same. Even then he left out two groups of predictable words at the end, such as ‘and mine also’ followed by ‘provided I do not forget’. It is allowable and useful to have many but hopefully small groups of enthusiasts and crazies provided society also has forensic psychiatrists able to distinguish eccentrics from psychopaths and sociopaths. Society also needs to provide those psychiatrists with every form of legal support and sanction. And there are two aspects to US exceptionalism which are highly dangerous. Many have possibly heard it being described as “The US believes in its own exceptional omnipotence and that belief is shared by others.”

The Bali bombings and the Twin Towers made it increasingly apparent that world affairs was extending to stages worse than serious. Dire was the appropriate word then and it is more-so today. The inability of the US State Department to get most current WMD powers on side in regard to any proliferation into Iran and North Korea is almost unbelievable but world affairs does attract strange competitors. So the US goes on as lead protagonist in its accustomed way. Many neurotics and others may view that as analagous to a book thumper or a groper from a psychedelic top-less bar often expounding and sometimes trying to impose views on a hapless onlooker. And on the other side is an assorted group of noisy neurotics and psychopaths offended by tolerances and unwanted initiatives they do not understand, plus sociopaths who want to become major vandals. And behind them are cliques of far more dangerous psychopaths and sociopaths. The latter are more clever than those out front and even more determined to build one absolutely conformal and misguided commune. The one thing that unites them all is that they really believe the US is trying to impose things such as classical ballet, nude statues, rock bands, Tammany Hall politicians and everything else when they themselves already have the use of possibly more hectoring speakers, hash, belly dancers and of course young boys and girls than are similarly available in the more populous and sometimes thoughtful US.

Everything about the US offends the psychopaths. The clever ones use simple messages such as the ‘great Satan’ and ‘smaller Satans’ which every primitive believer can readily understand and then use to both arouse and intimidate the bovines who would otherwise be content to just wander around. Frequent use of the word great shows their fear otherwise they would use a descriptor such as gross or monstrous. However many of the secular are intimidated and just leave and move on to distant societies different from wherever they came from. But when away from danger many of the alleged would-be integrees turn out to be fencesitters because they still want to support the less horrific bits of what they left behind. And that in effect makes them fifth columnists although of course they deny the nature of that and pretend it is just an eccentricity.

One way or another the psychopaths and sociopaths in the Middle East are currently managing to have enough supporters to keep their excesses going. A wealthy society can possibly afford to catch and keep its psychopaths and sociopaths for indefinite study by forensic psychiatrists. That luxury does not apply in international affairs however much anyone might hope so. Hence the use of drones which seems justifiable to keep numbers down in both ways. The problem is that drones cannot catch any for analysis and in current circumstances result in much collateral damage. One way to make psychopaths and sociopaths and their unwitting cronies stop and think might be – just might be - to demonstrate that more of the world is opposed to their views than seems possible. So the US with many resources has to be involved again but in a somewhat different way.

That is in effect being pro-American. It is to force the realisation in the Middle East and elsewhere that what is happening now is no longer between two forms of evangelism but rather rational versus maniacal.

It leads naturally to a forceful military ground campaign commanded by parties other than the ‘great Satan’. And a good reason to go hard now is that the psychopaths might become even crazier and the sociopaths might be unwilling or unable to restrain them. The US role should be entirely overhead especially supply of munitions for use by others, and next to nothing on the ground. On the ground should be as many others as practicable and hitting as hard as is reasonably permissable. So a ground force with out-of-area cool, calm and implacable leadership.

Going back to the beginning the main good thing that can be said about the US is that despite everything it is tolerant to an exceptional and admirable degree. What does not kill us makes us strong. And either or both ‘us’ can be alternatively written in capitals. However, many who admire the US prefer to live elsewhere to avoid the tumult and excess. Unreserved US evangelism and belief in exceptional permissiveness can be just as maniacal as the behaviour in some other places. But believe it or not most people are probably on the US side. Just give them something more than bulldust evangelism. Being more focused on underlying purpose and above all using adaptive strategy would be a good way to go on.

[davidbfpo]

So on the 25th anniversary of that first Iraq conflict, how is it possible that the U.S. is still entangled in a messy, complicated war with no end on the horizon? Aside from an intermission from December 2011 until August 2014, the U.S. military has been rumbling through the sweltering sands or soaring over the desert skies for this entire quarter-century, a military engagement unparalleled in U.S. history.
Before the first Iraq battle, the U.S. had never fought a large-scale war in the Middle East. Yet freeing a tiny Gulf emirate from Saddam's clutches has morphed into a seemingly permanent state of war, metastasizing to so many countries it's tough to put a precise number on it.

Link:http://www.npr.org/sections/parallel...-end-in-sight?


An interesting reminder how long Iraq has been in the centre of attention.