Winning Strategy for Afghanistan

As a former Air Force Systems Analyst Officer (1972-1976), the part of Vietnam that I remember is that in 11 days of unrestricted bombing and air dropped mines, Operation Linebacker II put all of North Vietnam's ports out of business.  This cut off all supplies, because the Red Chinese skimmed 90% plus of what was shipped overland.  If Linebacker II had been launched in 1965 instead of December, 1972, it would have saved a lot of lives and made Counter Insurgency (COIN) a lot more effective, a lot earlier.  We lost in Vietnam because between 1973 and 1975 Congress cut aid to South Vietnam by 75% and outlawed US air strikes anywhere in Southeast Asia.  Congress and the American people lost patience with the Vietnam War.  If we had bombed in 1965 and kept bombing, we would not have had Congress outlaw air strikes after we had won in 1967 or 1968.

The part of strategy in guerrilla war that the US has forgotten is that without supplies, guerrillas die. Guerrillas don't have the luxury of growing food or manufacturing ammunition for themselves.  They're on the run.  Rangers in the American Colonies originally got their name because they ranged through Indian territory and attacked Indian farming villages, which were the base of Indian supplies.  The US beat the Plains Indians by almost exterminating the American buffalo, which the Plains Indians used for food, clothing and shelter.  Hunting the American buffalo to extinction was an intentional strategy originally proposed by General William T. Sherman.  It was carried out ruthlessly, and it worked exactly as planned.  The Plains Indians moved onto reservations because they had nothing to eat.

Recently, we have watched ISIS go from strong to dead because we eliminated their source of income, oil sales, by bombing their tanker trucks, oil fields and oil handling facilities.  I don't mean to make light of the combat efforts it took to eliminate ISIS, but I do want to point out that ISIS was far less formidable broke than they were when they were rich.  Eliminating their financial resources made them far easier to defeat.

Which brings us to Afghanistan.  The Taliban runs on opium sales.  Everybody knows it.  To eliminate the Taliban, we need to eliminate their opium sales.  We can either legalize opium world wide, which would lower the value of the opium sold, or we can destroy all Taliban opium exports coming out of Afghanistan.  Since legalizing opium is highly unlikely, the only alternative is destroying all opium exports.  Anything less and we still have a rich Taliban who can hire soldiers and pay for food, guns and ammo.  We haven't done this because Afghanistan's main foreign exchange earning export is illegal opium sales.  However, unless we do something about Taliban opium, the best outcome we can hope for in Afghanistan is a steady state of what the Israelis call "mowing the lawn."  We can use air power and special forces to limit the Taliban to controlling 40% of Afghanistan.  We can't win in Afghanistan unless the Taliban can't sell their opium to finance operations. 

To defeat the Taliban, we would have to eradicate opium systematically, using air power, in all areas the Taliban controls or even partially controls.  If the Taliban controls your poppy field, the US will destroy your crop.  If you want to keep your crop, keep the Taliban out of your area.  Otherwise, the US puts napalm on your poppies.  Displaced farmers will move to areas under government control.  There will be no people, and no money, for the Taliban to use to support their operations.  At that point, COIN (COunter INsurgency operations) will work a whole lot better.

Original article I reacted to.

US Strategy: Ukraine, Syria and Fracking

Aid to Ukraine was under discussion this week.  The Budapest Memorandum, signed by the Clinton administration in 1994, guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in return for the surrender of 1,800 ex-Soviet nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. It was signed by the US, UK and Russia. The US has given no arms to Ukraine after Putin seized the Crimea and sponsored the separation of two rebel areas in eastern Ukraine from Kiev. Our inaction demonstrates that our word, at least in executive agreements involving nuclear weapons, is no good. We have done absolutely nothing to defend Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Putin has two big problems. The low price of oil means he's broke, and his suppression of the Union of Mothers of Soldiers of Russia for counting casualties from the Ukrainian conflict, means he can't take large casualties. Putin is trying to distract his populace from their economic problems with military victories.

The way to handle Putin is to give long range artillery and man portable guided anti-tank rockets to the Ukrainians, along with the training to use them properly. The 40 million people of Ukraine are very willing to fight, but they need more effective weapons to increase the cost of Putin's adventurism. The Russians have been fighting us with proxies they armed since the end of World War II. Putin can hardly object to us if we use proxies against him.

If Putin is defeated in Ukraine, he will have to retreat from Syria. If Putin is defeated in Ukraine, he may lose office and, without his position to defend himself, he may lose his life. The last time oil prices were this low, Russia went bankrupt, Boris Yeltsin was forced out of office. That's how Putin gained power. It could easily happen again.

This will not put ISIS in control in Damascus.  ISIS is in the process of being wiped out as a conventional military force that can hold territory. It turns out that the US Air Force can actually kill ISIS forces if the rules of engagement are reasonable, as they are now under Trump. Air power is only ineffective when the president wants it to be, like the Smartest President Ever seemed to want.

Iran wants a Persian Empire stretching from Pakistan to the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has interveniened in Syria to help Iran achieve their goal of empire. I don't think it's in our interests. Iran prays daily for "Death to America." I choose to take them at their word.

I gave you a slight exaggeration on the price of oil.  When Boris Yeltsin was forced out of office, the price of oil was about $25 a barrel.  But the point is that wars are expensive, and up to 80% of Russian export earnings come from energy exports. At $50 a barrel, the Russian government is running a big deficit because it's spending too much.

President Trump's energy policies are going to expand US energy exports and put pressure on world energy prices. Trump withdrew from the stupid Paris agreement. Trump stopped the EPA's war on coal. Trump has opened almost all federal land, including the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, to drilling. Under Trump, the federal government has quickly approved every application for a liquid natural gas export terminal. All of the pipelines Obama stopped, Trump approved already.

In natural gas, the Russians are going to lose market share. The European price for natural gas is currently about $5.20 per million Btus. The US price is about $3. Even allowing for transportation costs, the price in Europe has to fall as more US LNG reaches the market there.


 It will be harder for Iran to get everything it wants without Russian help. They will have to chose between nukes and empire. I think they will chose nukes. Your opinion may vary. The most likely outcome in Syria is partition. Damascus will remain under Bashar al Assad's control. A mixed group of Kurds and Arabs will control the Northeast. Shiites or chaos will rule the Southeast. Jordan and Israel will try to keep Sunis in control of the Southwest.

The Russians win in the Middle East if they make a mess, because all they want is for the price of oil to go higher. If there's chaos in the Middle East, there will be less oil production. It's as simple as that. Not giving the Ukrainians any help at all means that nobody will ever give up their nukes ever again. They will know they will get NOTHING in return. Giving the Ukrainians enough arms to stop further Russian attacks is just good sense. It shows Putin that it costs him too much to attack westward. Would you rather wait for Putin to attack a NATO country, like Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia?

Liberals say, "If Assad were removed and replaced be by Sunnis the most likely outcome would be Hezzbollah in Lebanon would be cut off and the result in Lebanon would be Sunni genocide against Christians and Shia"

Malarkey! Hezbollah is the most powerful armed force in Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the Beriut Airport. Iran ships arms to Hezbollah through the Beirut Airport and also through the Damascus Airport and then by truck convoy to Hezbollah territory in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah is the reason that Assad can't be driven from his core territory. They back him up.

Before the Russian intervention, ISIS was the biggest Sunni power. The US, the Kurds and the Iraqi Army have flattened ISIS and killed most of their fighters. They ain't coming back from the dead. The Sunnis in general are not coming back for at least 5 years.

The Syrian civil war has resulted in mutual exhaustion of the local Syrian forces, except for the Kurds in the northeast. That's why all of the locals called in outside help. For example, the Iranians hire Afghan Shiite mercenaries to fight in Syria, because Assad is out of people who will fight for him. The people who still nominally back Assad will fight only to protect their own villages and local areas. It's a matter of self preservation and religious freedom. Assad is the enemy of their enemies. That does not mean they support everything he does.

Liberals need to check their bi-coastal elitist privilege. There’s a whole world out here where arugula ain’t on the menu. The Democrats' openly socialist ideology is a joke out here in flyover country because, like Bullwinkle pulling a rabbit out of his hat, it’s a trick that never works. The latest example is Venezuela, a once mildly prosperous petro state now experiencing famine and food riots. My advice to liberals: if you’re going to be arrogant and dismissive, try to have something behind it other than bluster and manure from MSNBC.

I thought liberals or progressives or whatever were all angry that Trump was selling out to Putin. Their responses on arming Ukraine sound more like they really wanted to sell out to Russia themselves, and are angry that Trump may have beaten them to it.  All of that assumes they believe their own propaganda.  So far, Russian contacts aren't illegal.  In a delicious irony, Hillary's campaign is reported to have contacted Ukrainian sources for dirt on Trump.  But we all know the law only applies to enemies of Democrats.

Article I reacted to:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450140/arming-ukraine-bad-idea?fb_comment_id=fbc_1492167384211642_1492400224188358_1492400224188358

War Crime: Islamic Terrorists Used Human Shields in Yemen

War is hell because you have to make horrible, lose or lose worse decisions.  Trump took a chance and AQAP set up the combat so civilian shields died, including a very pretty 8 year old girl.

Under Obama we waited a year to start bombing ISIS oil trucks because they had civilian drivers. We didn't bomb ISIS vehicle bomb factories, because they were in civilian neighborhoods. ISIS used the time to make an extra $600 million at least. They also killed at least 50,000 additional people. For a year, ISIS had a sex slave market in Raqaa, Syria, where they sold captured Yazidi and Christian women in auctions. For a year, ISIS beheaded defenseless civilians for minor infractions of Sharia law. For a year, ISIS used armored vehicle suicide bombs to expand their territory. All because we didn't want to kill the civilians who were helping ISIS or were being used as human shields by ISIS.  The result of our decision not to kill human shields was the we gave ISIS more time to kill more people on the ground than the human shields we would have killed stopping them earlier.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is one of the most deadly Islamic terrorist organizations in the world. Under President Obama, the US used drone strikes to kill targets like the one Trump ordered attacked by SEAL Team 6. With a drone strike there is no opportunity to capture computers and memory sticks that yield intelligence information on AQAP's operations. Trump took a chance. The operational security for this operation was poor. AQAP knew we were coming. They were ready for us. I believe AQAP had the 8 year old girl there on purpose, to be killed and give them a propaganda victory. I believe they had a lot of women with guns there also intentionally. Using civilians as human shields is a war crime. Using bombs and strafing to destroy a building used by an enemy as a firing position is not, even if the destruction of the building results in civilian casualties. The people responsible for the civilian casualties are the members of AQAP who located a military firing position in the middle of a civilian neighborhood with no evacuation of the civilians and positioned civilians inside the firing position. AQAP committed a war crime that lead to the death of the 8 year old girl.

Defeating ISIS on the Digital Battlefield

Many US experts on terror have warned that we need digital sources of intelligence to defeat ISIS.  However, allowing the US government to collect intelligence from our phone calls and texts, emails and internet browsing requires that we trust the government not to misuse the information.

The way to build trust is to explain both what you are doing and what you are not.  For example, you are collecting who email is sent to and who it came from, but you are not looking at the message.  It's the same with phone calls.  You are looking at the number dialed, and the number of the phone that originated the call, but not listening to what was said.  You will then use the information of who called who as a basis to get a warrant before you look at the message or listen to the calls.  It's simple to explain that way and everybody would get it.  

The problem of trust in our government is also that the Feds ain't trustworthy, they're scofflaws. The federal government has a very recent history of misusing information for political purposes.  Lois Lerner used the IRS to attack the Tea Party without any cloak of secrecy.   The IRS used an excuse that was equivalent to saying subpoenas caused disk crashes, obstructing justice with impunity.  Lois Lerner retired with full benefits and no indictment. How much worse can the government do if it's cloaked as a secret national security issue.  There's a legitimate fear based just on the behavior we can see.  Ending federal lawbreaking with impunity will build trust. 

Unfortunately, the Clinton email scandal is creating more distrust.  After presenting a very strong case against Hillary Clinton, FBI Director James Comey went on to say no prosecutor would indict Mrs. Clinton.  They certainly indicted General David Petraeus for a lot less.  Stunts, like Clinton breaking the law with impunity, have national security consequences.  By lowering the trust people have in government, they make it harder for the federal government to collect the digital intelligence needed to stop Islamic terrorist attacks.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/defeating-isis-on-the-digital-battlefield-1466635130