Why Air Power Isn't Stopping ISIS

It’s fashionable in the past couple of months to say that air power is ineffective against ISIS.  The effectiveness of air power depends on the rules of engagement, which are set by the White House. The White House has decided that it's more important to avoid civilian casualties than it is to defeat ISIS. There is no way that ISIS should be able to move vehicles with troops and supplies on desert highways in the face of US total air dominance. The fact that ISIS is moving troops and supplies means that the rules of engagement are too restrictive to allow victory.

Given how many civilians ISIS kills when they take over an area, it seems to me that even in humanitarian terms restrictive rules of engagement are self-defeating. Even if attacking ISIS targets means some civilians will die, far more will die if ISIS is allowed to continue its rampage across the Middle East.

I think any vehicle convoy which includes military vehicles should be a free fire zone. Military vehicles should be defined to include armored vehicles, Humvees, pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, or civilian vehicles with a lot of gun barrels pointing out all of the windows. Even if these convoys contain civilian human shields, attacking them will prevent ISIS from killing a lot more people when they overrun the next town.

The same policy should be extended to bomb factories. If we know that ISIS has a lot of explosives in a residential neighborhood, we should still bomb the building. If ISIS uses the explosives to take another town, they will kill hundreds or thousands of civilians themselves. The casualty count will be a lot lower from the secondary explosion of the bomb factory.

In the long run, it's them or us. ISIS has made it clear they plan to attack us and kill us if we don't convert to their brand of Islam. We should take them at their word and stop them now, before they become an existential threat to the US. The leaders who did not believe Hitler meant what he said lived to regret it.

Is the NSA Collecting Phone Numbers an Open and Shut Case?

The NSA collecting phone numbers is more of a grey area than liberals and libertarians make it out to be. Before computers, security services used to run what were known as mail cover operations. They would monitor the envelopes of postal letters sent to people suspected of spying. They would track where the letters were post marked, what return addresses were used and anything else they could find out without opening the letter. They did not need a warrant for this because the outside of the envelope was public information disclosed to allow the letter to be delivered. The argument for collecting who called whom is that this information is similar to information on the outside of an envelope. The NSA collects that you called your mother's phone on Wednesday at 3:45 PM.  It does not listen to the phone call without a warrant.  

What makes it troubling is the massive amount of data collected. However, as a computer programmer with experience dating back to 1968, I don't think the solution proposed by the House bill is technically feasible. They want all of the local phone companies to save the data and allow federal access to it when served with a search warrant.  Mining the phone call connections for useful patterns requires an extensive set of calls collected in one place that you can examine all at the same time.  In essence you have to build the haystack before you can look for the needle. As a Republican with a Libertarian domestic view and a strong defense foreign policy view, I don't have an easy way to solve the technical problem of getting the information when it's needed while protecting people from intrusive government.  What I do know is that any proposal involves trade offs.  As my grandfather used to tell me, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Why New US Weapons Take So Long To Develop

The way US Military new system development works right now, we are wasting hundreds of billions of dollars. When we develop a new aircraft, like the F-35 for example, we get new everything. Not just a new air frame and engines, but new bleeding edge electronics, new landing gear, new ejection seats, new everything. This needlessly increases development risk. If everything is new and untested, then everything has a higher probability to fail, delay development and balloon costs, especially in combination with other new and untested components. The alternative is to start with a new air frame and engines while buying as much as possible off the shelf. The idea should be that the money saved by using off the shelf components initially could be used for upgrades later. This matches the realities of how fast electronics and software change versus how long air frames last. The development cycle for software and electronics is 18 months. The development cycle for new platforms is 18 years. Upgrades should be part of the plan.

Also, when we buy a new platform, it has to be multipurpose. The F-35 had to have versions for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. This meant that it had to be sturdy enough for carrier landings, which are essentially a controlled crash, for the Navy. It had to have internal room enough to a completely new vertical takeoff and landing system for the Marines. It has to be able to do both air to air and ground attack. My grandparents' generation used to have a saying that summarizes the compromises required, jack of all trades, master of none. The compromises required to make all of this work with one family of airplanes expanded costs with minimal corresponding benefits. For the price of one F-35, we could have bought a stealth air to air fighter and a ground attack plane with a lot of money to spare. And the combination of the two airplanes would have been a lot more capable than a single F-35.

Part of the reason that liberals have such an easy time of attacking military spending is the obvious waste in our current procurement system. We need to fix it fast. It's vital to national  security that we get this right.

Earl Simon De Montfort Defends and Expands Magna Carta Rights in 1265

King John had been forced to sign the Magna Carta, but his son, Henry III, pretended it didn't exist. Simon De Montfort, the French born Earl of Leicester who was also married to the king's sister, lead a revolt to confirm and expand the rights in the Magna Carta. De Montfort reached out to commoners to help defeat Henry III, while the king bribed barons with confiscated land to switch sides. The revolt ironically became a rising of commoners against all foreign born noblemen. In 1265, Simon De Montfort called the first English Parliament to include commoners. De Montfort was killed in battle later on in 1265. Henry III’s son, Edward I, made it a habit to call commoners to parliament in 1297. Without Simon De Montfort fighting for the Magna Carta, I don't think it would be considered as important a precedent as it is today. Prior to De Montfort's organized resistance to Henry III, the Magna Carta was a dead letter.

Our rights required defenders, and still do. Freedom is not free.

Article on Magna Carta (requires subscription)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/magna-carta-eight-centuries-of-liberty-1432912022#lf_comment=318079386