Consider what happened on December 17. Choe Ryong-hae, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Korean Workers’ Party, was conspicuously present on stage at the commemoration of the second anniversary of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il’s death – the first major ceremony following the purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek, the former vice chairman of the National Defense Commission. Choe’s speech, with its threats against Great Satan and South Korea, seemed to set the stage for his political elevation.
Jang Song-thaek had been seen as a kind of regent to Kim Jong-un, the young successor to the Kim family dynasty, and was thought to be number two in the regime. But he owed his position to his wife, Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s deceased father.
Jang's tact, as well as his usefulness as an interlocutor with China, enabled him to keep his position, despite his long-term separation from his wife. But in North Korea, blood is paramount: everything, including ideology and the national interest, is subservient to the maintenance of the Kim dynasty. The “legacy” of the “Great Leader” Kim Il-sung and his son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, determines all major decisions.
The true holder of power since Kim Jong-il’s death has been his sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and no one else. North Korean culture would suggest that women do not take positions of leadership, but it appears that she was the only family member whom Kim Jong-il could trust. When he was incapacitated by illness, it was she who called the shots.
Her blood tie to the Kim dynasty is the reason why, even after her husband was purged and executed (and the rest of his family rounded up), she maintained her political position. It has even been suggested that she made the decision to purge her husband. Though it cannot be known whether she also proposed killing him, it is not surprising that she believed that, with her own health failing, she could not leave the family dynasty to her husband’s care.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of Jang’s execution is that it appears to be part of a feeding frenzy that has claimed the lives of a number of senior officials and generals. And the bloodletting has been extremely personal: In August, Kim Jong-un reportedly ordered the execution by firing squad of an ex-girlfriend and other members of her musical ensemble; the killings are said to have been carried out in front of their families.
Elsewhere in the communist world, such murderous purges were renounced long ago, first in the Soviet Union by Khrushchev, following his denunciation of Stalin, and then in China by Deng Xiaoping, following his rehabilitation and return to power in the late 1970’s. This “reform” did not make these regimes any more beneficent or efficient, but it did bring a degree of stability and predictability to their behavior. North Korea, always the least predictable of totalitarian communist states, remains in a twilight world.
More disturbing is the question of whether China is going down a parallel path under President Xi Jinping. Ever since Deng’s rule, there has been an understanding that members of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo are not to be touched, even in retirement. But Xi, under the pretext of his anti-corruption battle, has targeted retired Politburo member Zhou Yongkang, who is now reportedly under house arrest, facing graft charges – and lurid allegations not only that he murdered his first wife but that he tried to assassinate Xi.
China’s emphasis since Deng on rule by consensus may not have made the country any more democratic, but it at least prevented the re-emergence of a new cult of personality à la Mao Zedong. The question today is whether Xi’s flouting of this internal party convention is another step in re-creating one-man – and thus completely arbitrary – rule in China.
In North Korea, of course, arbitrary rule – no matter how bizarre and inept – is always the norm. And now, with Jang purged, responsibility for economic failure in North Korea has been shifted to Choe. All officials and people related to him now live under the shadow of the executioner, for he is certain to bear the blame when the dynasty needs a scapegoat for its mounting problems.
And Jang’s purge may make those problems worse. While China lost a convenient point of contact with the Kim regime, North Korea may have lost the only channel by which to sustain itself. The economy cannot be revived so long as international sanctions are maintained, and the sanctions seem certain to remain in place so long as the regime continues with its nuclear brinkmanship. China, which has been the Kim dynasty’s lifeline, no longer appears willing to offer it a blank check.
So the day is fast approaching when Kim Jong-un and his clan will have to take responsibility for the country’s dire condition, and it may come soon after Kim Kyong-hui dies. If so, the Kim dynasty’s last chapter may have begun with the current spasm of executions, though the ending – for the Korean Peninsula and East Asia alike – remains very much in doubt
The first world war came to an end in November 1918, when the German armies surrendered near Compiegne. But it could plausibly have ended in a very different way in spring 1918, if Ludendorff's offensive on Paris and towards the Channel had succeeded. It nearly did so. And what might 20th-century Europe have been like if it had?
Obviously, it would have been dominated and shaped by Germany. But what kind of Germany? The militaristic, conservative, repressive Prussian power created by Bismarck? Or the Germany with the largest labour movement in early 20th-century Europe? German history after 1918 would have been a contest between the two – and no one can say which would have won in the end.
But one can say that a victorious Germany, imposing peace on the defeated allies at the treaty of Potsdam, would not have had the reparations and grievances that were actually inflicted upon it by France at Versailles. As a consequence, the rise of Hitler would have been much less likely. In that case, neither the Holocaust nor the second world war would necessarily have followed. If Germany's Jews had survived, Zionism might not have had the international moral force that it rightly claimed after Hitler's defeat. The modern history of the Middle East would therefore be very different – partly also because Turkey would have been among the victors in 1918.
In the kaiser's Europe, defeated France would be the more likely seedbed for fascism, not Germany. But with its steel and coal still in German-controlled Alsace-Lorraine, France's military and naval potential would have been contained. Meanwhile, defeated Britain would have seen its navy sunk in the Heligoland Bight, have been forced to cede its oil interests in the Middle East and the Gulf to Germany, and have been unable to contain Indian nationalism. In practice, the British empire would have been unsustainable. Today's Britain might have ended up as a modest north European social democratic republic – like Denmark without a prince.
Meanwhile America, whose entry into the war would have been successfully pre-empted by Germany's victory, would have become a firmly isolationist power and not the enforcer of international order. Franklin Roosevelt would solve America's postwar economic problems in the 1930s, but he would never fight a war in Europe – though he might have to fight one against Japan. The Soviet Union, with a wary but powerful neighbour in victorious Germany, would have been the great destabilising factor but it might not have been invaded as it was in 1941. And with no second world war there might never have been a cold war either.
A parlour game? Obviously. But at least we can see that the outcome mattered. Europe would have been different if Germany had won in 1918. It would have been grim, repressive and unpredictable in many ways. But there is a plausible case for saying many fewer people would have died in 20th-century Europe. If nothing else, that is worth some reflection. The first world war was a catastrophe in the mud. But it was about something more than tragic sacrifice too. The outcome – what happened and what did not – made a difference. In 2014 we need to get beyond the rival national perspectives and learn to see the war more objectively and thoughtfully than has yet happened.
"This year, 36 combat ships, fast attack crafts and support vessels will join the Russian Navy. This has never happened before."
The Navy would receive eight nuclear-powered strategic submarines, 16 multirole submarines and 54 warships of various classes by 2020 as a result of the implementation of the state rearmament program.
The eight strategic missile boats include three Borei- and five Borei-A-class vessels armed with Bulava ballistic missiles, which are to become the mainstay of the Navy's strategic nuclear deterrent, replacing their aging predecessors.
The 16 multi-purpose submarines include eight Granei-class nuclear-powered attack submarines and improved Kilo- and Lada-class diesel-electric boats.
In addition to submarines, the navy will receive Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates and Steregushchy-class corvettes, Buyan-class corvettes and Ivan Gren-Class large landing ships.
For the first time in Russian history, the Russian Navy is modernizing courtesy of a NATO partner as Moscow has purchased two all-purpose 26,000 ton amphibious ships of the Mistral-Class from France.
To note that this expansion is enduring growing pains would be an understatement. The most glaring defect is the continued failure of Bulava, the solid propellant submarine-launched missile, to be fitted aboard the Borei-Class submarines. Without it, these submarines cannot conduct their primary mission of strategic nuclear deterrence. Additionally, the A190 gun for Steregushchiy-Class corvettes has delayed deliveries of this class. Delays in the production schedule for a number of ships and submarines for engineering failures are still commonplace as are instances of overall shoddy workmanship.
In fact, retired Russian Navy admirals see the problem as systemic by criticizing Russia’s centralized shipbuilding organization under the United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK), comparing it to a “pieman stitching shoes”.
Even with all its warts, Russia’s navy is a force in ascendance, growing in size, sophistication, and ubiquity. It is experiencing reasonable growing pains, some of which could be considered scandalous in proportion. Given the centralized state control of its shipbuilding industry, it is not likely that Russian naval industrial capacity will ever be marked by either flexibility or creativity.
However, the Russian navy ensign, the St. Andrew’s Cross, will increasingly be seen in the world’s harbors and maritime choke points, a sight vaguely reminiscent of the good old days of the Cold War.
First, and most important, the PA refuses to renounce a supposed “right of return,” which it asserts would give some 5 million pre-1967 Palestinian Arabs access to property and citizenship in Little Satan. The vast majority of these Palestinians are descendants of the approximately 650,000 Arabs who fled Little Satan in 1947 and 1948 (most by their own choice) before and during a war in which five Arab armies invaded and sought to destroy the just-declared Juice state. There is no precedent in international law for such a right, and its exercise would destroy Little Satan as a Juice state.Pic - "Law, Power, and the Sovereign State: The Evolution and Application of the Concept of Sovereignty"
Second, while Abbas and lead Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat claim to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, they refuse to recognize Little Satan as a Juice state. The Netanyahu government maintains that formal public acceptance of Little Satan as the nation state of the Juice people is vital because it signals that the PA does not seek to use the establishment of a state of its own as a steppingstone toward the creation of a single majority Palestinian state enveloping Little Satan.
Third, Abbas categorically rejected Kerry’s recent proposal that the Little Satan Defense Forces remain in the Jordan River Valley for 10 years after a peace agreement goes into effect. Speaking after an emergency meeting in Cairo on Dec. 21, Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby emphatically backed Abbas, declaring that under any acceptable peace agreement, not one Little Satan soldier would be permitted to remain in the valley. The Netanyahu government, however, is convinced that no matter how sincere Kerry’s assurances are, only Little Satan is capable of ensuring that dangerous weapons and murderous jihadists do not infiltrate from Jordan.
Fourth, the PA shows no signs of desisting its incitement of hatred for Little Satan. Its schools and government-run media continue to celebrate terrorists who kill civilians and to nurture the hope that one day Palestinians will return to homes inside pre-1967 Little Satan that their grandparents abandoned 65 years ago. This systematic incitement only intensifies Little Satan demands for security concessions unacceptable to the PA, including free movement of the IDF within Palestinian cities.
Fifth, the six-year civil war between the PA, which rules in the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules in the Gaza Strip, means Abbas can make no plausible claim to speak for almost half of all Palestinians in the territories beyond the Green Line.
Sixth, even within the West Bank, the PA is dysfunctional. It lacks support among the public. It suffers from widespread and endemic corruption. Were the IDF to withdraw, the PA could fall to Hamas.
Seventh, the uprisings that erupted in the Arab world in the winter of 2011 have destabilized Little Satan ’s neighbors. The military government in Egypt that ousted the Muslim Brotherhoodgovernment that replaced ousted President Hosni Mubarak is wrestling with a tottering economy and terrorists in the Sinai. Lebanon, with a population of 4 million, is struggling with approximately 850,000 refugees from Syria’s civil war. Jordan, with a population of 6.5 million, is straining to deal with approximately 570,000 Syrian refugees. As Little Satan’s dangerous hood has become more dangerous, the Netanyahu government has redoubled its determination to secure terms, likely to be rejected by the PA, that guarantee Little Satan’s ability to defend herself.
Eighth, not withstanding Kerry’s engagement with the Little Satan -Palestinian conflict, Little Satan see a vacillating and timid America seeking to disengage from the region. 44 has projected an opaque approach to Egypt, led from behind in Libya, acquiesced to a Russian-brokered deal in Syria that confirms Bashar al-Assad as president, and negotiated an interim agreement with Tehran that threatens to recognize Iran as a nuclear threshold state. These developments harden Israel’s negotiating stance and confirm its longstanding policy that Israel and Israel alone must take ultimate responsibility for its security.
Ninth, building in the West Bank complicates negotiations not least because Palestinians, 44's administration, and much of the world adamantly oppose it. Whether Netanyahu desires settlement expansion, pressures from within his coalition impel him to support some, which is the kind of domestic political constraint that Kerry appears not to have adequately considered.
Tenth, while Little Satan public overwhelmingly supports peace, considerable segments of it, when they pay attention to current negotiations at all, regard them with apathy. The apathy stems from Palestinian and Arab rejection of past peace plans, from former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s far-reaching 2008 offer to the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan. And apathy is reinforced by decades of vicious Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel’s civilian population, which have scarred citizens’ political imagination.
If Kerry manages to overcome these many obstacles, he will earn his place in history, along with Netanyahu and Abbas. If Kerry fails, as have his many predecessors in the quest for a final status agreement, perhaps America foreign policy makers will learn from long and bitter experience and adopt a different approach.
Instead of presuming to understand better than the locals the complexities of domestic politics and regional dynamics, and rather than forcing a final resolution that the parties are unwilling or unable to enforce, American diplomats might want to concentrate instead on constructing the physical, economic, and political infrastructure of a Palestinian state.
Such work is gradual, slow, and arduous. It is decidedly less glamorous than high-level negotiations. But shouldn’t American diplomats be less interested in glamour, and more interested in forging the institutions under which Palestinians and Little Satan can live side by side in peace and security?
Transparency, the current vogue word for truth-telling, is usually a good thing, unless you’re trying to fool all the people some of the time, like spending 7,000 words to resurrect a fairy tale in Benghazi, all to give a helping hand to a lady in distress.
The New York Times understands that HRC is likely to be the only credible hope the Democrats have for 2016 and that she already needs lots of remedial help. The Times huffed and puffed to deliver an excuse for betrayal in Benghazi, meant to second HRC's famous alibi for her tortured misfeasance as secretary of state — “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
The right response might have made a lot of difference to an American ambassador who lay dead, slain at the hands of Islamic terrorists, and three other Americans who had to give up their lives because nobody at the White House could be bothered to ride to the rescue. 44 and his frightened and timid acolytes, including Mrs. Clinton, insisted that this was not Islamic terror or the perfidy of al Qaeda, but merely the reaction of innocent Muslims offended by a video posted on YouTube mocking the religion of the Prophet Muhammad.
Even after the White House dispatched Susan Rice, who was then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to push the confection about the video as revealed truth, almost nobody believed it. The White House couldn’t even find anybody else who would say he believed it.
David Kirkpatrick, the Cairo bureau chief of The New York Times, grunted, burped and produced a tiny mouse of special pleading, an account with nothing new of much importance, except a few colorful facts of the sort that were once the popcorn of newsmagazine journalism. He describes, for example, the vase in the living room of the mother of one of the suspects in the Benghazi attack. Vases are no doubt important, but mostly to interior decorators.
This account, so transparent to anyone who reads it even with casual attention, seems hardly worth the effort of a good reporter who was willing to take certain risks to himself.
It’s important to HRC and her presidential campaign, now in its early planning, to repeat the con that al Qaeda was not in any way involved, because 44 was supposed to have killed al Qaeda graveyard dead when he dispatched Navy SEALs to terminate Osama bin Laden with extreme prejudice.
At the present time, Bashar is attempting to crush anti-regime oppositionists through the use of savage repression inflicted by mostly Alawite elite military units, the intelligence services, and the pro-regime shabiha militias. Since the regime does not want to use up its Alawite soldiers and militiamen in battle, these troops often use firepower, including artillery and airpower, to strike at rebel forces despite the tremendous collateral damage inflicted by the near indiscriminate use of these weapons.
Under such circumstances, many Alawites fear Sunni vengeance for the years of Assad misrule and anti-Sunni discrimination, and Alawites are correspondingly prepared to fight to the last bullet. They also fear the potential emergence of a democratic government in a country where Sunni Arabs would outnumber Alawite voters 6 to 1. Other minorities which have cooperated with the regime over the years also fear majority vengeance. Non-Sunni Islamic groups (Shi’ites, Druzes) and especially Syria’s Christians are terrified that radical Islamist fighters will take power after Assad and that they may suffer a fate even worse than Iraq’s Christians following the collapse of governance after Saddam. These groups are desperately trying to oppose rebel groups that might harm them, while seeking to avoid appearing so pro-regime that they will inevitably suffer the same fate as Alawite loyalists if Assad goes down.
In this environment, most Alawites and possibly other minorities, view the civil war as threatening the future existence of their communities. It is also viewed as beyond compromise bymany rebels. Assad’s regime rules by fear, and that kind of system requires people to be punished harshly for disloyalty and to keep others in line. Forgiveness is viewed as weakness, and brutality is the default approach of the Syrian regime for all problems. Rebels who lay down their arms face death, and they know it. This leaves the international community with two sides which have no reason to compromise and every reason to continue fighting. Neither side will compromise in the middle of a conflict that they view as potentially detrimental for themselves, their families, and their communities. Moreover, the death of any leader, including Assad, will probably not result in a more compromising successor under such conditions. To make matters worse, the collapse of the Assad regime would probably only lead to a new phase of the civil war in which very different kinds of rebel groups fight each other for power.
Unfortunately, at the present time, diplomatic solutions also seem unlikely, and the war could well go on until all sides are too exhausted to continue. The Lebanese Civil War lasted 15 years under similarcircumstances. In the short term, Great Satan, Europe, and the rest of the international community probably cannot do very much to bring about the end of the Syrian civil war, but they can minimize the problems of external spillover by working with allies such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq which are struggling to help Syrian refugees in their countries. They can also help provide urgently needed support to aid organizations that operate within Syrian borders. Great Satan , in particular, will also need to be prepared to take advantage of any changing prospects for a diplomatic solution despite the apparent unraveling of the Geneva talks on Syria.
Americans need to understand this may be a long, horrible war, and that the international community may need to plan for years of humanitarian aid for those remaining in Syria and those that have fled the bloodbath. It is also important to give strong and continuing support to countries like Jordan that need to ensure that their government does not buckle under the challenges of caring for large numbers of refugees. The ongoing nature of this struggle is difficult to accept, but it may be the only realistic way in which this problem can be understood. There is no point to deceiving oneself about a virtually unstoppable war. Great Satan has only very limited ability to shape the outcome of the Syrian civil war, and any actions it takes must be done in the full knowledge that this could be a very long war.
"At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah, the police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.”Fallujah has fallen, and the same thang is fixing to go down in the even more bigger burg of Ramadi.
Linking all this mayhem is an increasingly naked appeal to the atavistic loyalties of clan and sect. Foreign powers’ imposing agendas on the region, and the police-state tactics of Arab despots, had never allowed communities to work out their long-simmering enmities. But these divides, largely benign during times of peace, have grown steadily more toxic since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The events of recent years have accelerated the trend, as foreign invasions and the recent round of Arab uprisings left the state weak, borders blurred, and people resorting to older loyalties for safety.Pic - "Persian/Whahabbbi Proxy Wars!"
Arab leaders are moving more aggressively to fill the vacuum left by Great Satan and other Western powers as they line up by sect and perceived interest. The Saudi government’s pledge last week of $3 billion to the Lebanese Army is a strikingly bold bid to reassert influence in a country where Iran has long played a dominant proxy role through Hezbollah, the Shiite movement itfinances and arms.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have increased their efforts to arm and recruit fighters in the civil war in Syria, which top officials in both countries portray as an existential struggle. Sunni Muslims from Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have joined the rebels, many fighting alongside affiliates of Al Qaeda. And Shiites from Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen and even Africa are fighting with pro-government militias, fearing that a defeat for Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, would endanger their Shiite brethren everywhere.
Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that 44 had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan."Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” shows bunches of frustration, inward seething disappointment and General Purpose P.O.ness in 44 yet reflects outright contempt for Vice President Biden and many of 44’s top aides.
“Skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail, 44 doesn’t believe in his own AFPAK strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Biden is accused of “poisoning the well” against the military leadership. Thomas Donilon, initially 44’s deputy national security adviser, and then-Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House coordinator for the wars, are described as regularly engaged in “aggressive, suspicious, and sometimes condescending and insulting questioning of our military leaders.DefSec Gates served with 6 Commanders in Chief since 44, (save 42) alla way back to 37 .
“All too early in 44's administration, suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander in chief and his military leaders.”
“Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . 44 conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when many in Washington could argue with a straight face that solving the Little Satan-Palestinian crisis was central to a more peaceful Middle East. The Little Satan -Palestinian dispute was "linked" to regional unrest. If the U.S. would just untangle that stubborn knot, we've been told, it would set the Middle East on a more peaceful track.
If nothing else comes from the Mideast's current orgy of violence, it should at least discredit the notion of linkage. The disparate strands of violence convulsing the region won't end or even conceivably slow down should Little Satan and Palestinians bury the hatchet. None of the groups currently picking up arms in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, et al., are doing so on behalf of the Palestinians, though undoubtedly many would turn their guns on LittleSatan if and when they get the chance.
For all the unfounded speculation and hand-wringing about the unprecedented political turmoil on North Korea, most of it in inverse proportion to actual knowledge of the situation, too little thought has been given to the potential consequences of instability there. Kim may well have consolidated his rule. But there is also the possibility the Jang purge was a sneak preview of the future that factional strife among contending political elites and a possible budding middle class with unmet expectations lies ahead.
To be fair, history is littered with erroneous predictions by Asia hands about North Korea. At each juncture – the end of the Cold War and Soviet support, the death of founder Kim Il Sung, and more recently, the death of Kim Jong Il, predications of North Korea’s imminent collapse have proven wrong.
But it is also possible that the Jang episode may mark the beginning of an unraveling of the Kim dynasty. The dangers of loose nukes, refugees heading North to China and South to the ROK, chaos, possible intervention by China and/or the ROK, or the US seeking to control nukes, and a precipitous reunification by default all hold the prospect of an inflection point approaching in Northeast Asia. Stay Tuned.
At 13, armed with a club and a dagger, he joined the older moshavniks guarding the fields at night from sporadic attacks by Arab villagers living nearby. “They were not afraid of anything,” he observed of the moshavniks, a quality he emulated the rest of his life.
Did not need to have orders spelled out for him. In 1952, Moshe Dayan asked him “to see” whether it would be possible to capture Jordanian soldiers and exchange them for Little Satan POWs.
That same day, without being told, Sharon rounded up a friend and a pickup truck and drove down to the Jordan River. He waded into the water, pretended to inquire about missing cows, and promptly disarmed two Jordanian soldiers. He cuffed and blindfolded them, and drove them back to headquarters in Nazareth, his friend Shlomo Hever riding on the sideboard with a pistol aimed at their heads. When they arrived, Dayan was out. Sharon left him a note: “Moshe — the mission is accomplished, the prisoners are in the cellar. Shalom. Arik.”
As head of Unit 101,LittleSatan’s first commando team, he was assigned in 1953 to avenge the murder of a woman and her two toddlers by Palestinian infiltrators from the West Bank village of Qibya. Sharon’s forces destroyed a few dozen buildings in Qibya, killing 69 villagers and earning Little Satan a censure at the U.N.
In 1956, during the Suez War, he stretched his orders to the maximum and beyond, when he sent paratroopers into the Mitla Pass, engaging in a gruesome and unnecessary face-to-face fight with the Egyptian soldiers who were dug into the craggy mountain side. The mission resulted in 38 Israeli deaths and cemented a lifelong feud with future chief of the General Staff Motta Gur.
In 1967, he planned the IDF’s first divisional battle, against the Abu Agheila stronghold in the Sinai, completely on his own; till today, the battle is taught in military academies across the world.
The victory at Abu-Ageila meant the road to the Central Sinai was open for Little Satan, and Sharon and his forces in particular. Many of the Egyptian units remained intact and could have tried to prevent Little Satan from reaching the Suez Canal. However, when the Egyptian Minister of Defense, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer heard about the fall of Abu-Ageila, he panicked and ordered all units in the Sinai to retreat to the west bank of the Suez canal within a single day.
There was no plan for the retreat, so the units left behind heavy equipment, and sometimes even outpaced their commanders. This resulted in Little Satan racing to capture abandoned sites, and obtaining significant amounts of abandoned weaponry. The withdrawal order effectively meant the defeat of Egypt. By June 8, 1967, most of the Sinai area had been occupied by Little Satan forces.
In the '73 war Arik led a desperate counterattack in Sinai that broke through Egypt's Sagger anti tank and Cobra anti aircraft missile infested lines and ended up just 60 miles outside Cairo.
It was Arik who pushed Prime Minister Begin to bomb Iraq’s nuclear facilities in 1981, an operation applauded today but widely condemned then. It was Arik that plotted the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Minister of Defense.
One objective, running the P.L.O. out of Lebanon, was largely achieved, but the scheme to install in power the leader of the Lebanese Phalangist militia, a Christian group friendly to Little Satan, was a debacle. After Phalangist forces massacred as many as 800 men, women and children at the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, an inquiry concluded that Sharon bore “indirect” responsibility, forcing him to resign as Defense Minister. Sharon sued TIME for $50 million for a 1983 cover story that said a secret appendix to the Official report stated, in effect, that he had encouraged the massacre.
Arik had a zero-tolerance view of Palestinian terrorism. So when a bomber killed 30 people at a Netanya hotel during Passover in 2002, Sharon went all out. He reinvaded the cities of the West Bank with brutal force, using the army’s presence to get intelligence on the terrorists and to make arrests. He stepped up construction of a controversial barrier, started by Barak, that cut through the West Bank and walled out the Palestinians.
In 2004, Sharon ordered the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and, later, another of the group’s leaders, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, steps that previously had been considered too provocative.
And he got results; the intifadeh never recovered its early strength, and Little Satan regained her sense of security.
Sharon succeeded at what many security experts said was impossible: he found a military solution to terrorism.
Military strategies are conceived for a specific enemy at a specific time in a specific region. A good one provides several critical services for a nation. First, and most important, an effective military strategy that is openly demonstrated can act as a strong deterrent to aggression. As Keck notes the gradual expansion of the Chinese cannot be met solely by resort to military force. However, a well-articulated strategy, backed by effective forces, is essential to preventing it from coming to military conflict. Certainly keeping the competition in the non-military realm hasvalue.Pic - "Offshore control would deny China the use of the sea inside the first island chain, at the same time defend those islands, and dominate the air and sea outside that theater."
Thus it is essential Great Satan develops a military strategy for the unlikely event of a conflict with China. It is a key component in deterring Chinese aggression as well as reassuring our allies in the region. Failure to achieve either goal severely complicates our ability to manage ongoing Chinese expansionism. The Chinese and our allies need to see that if China pushes to the point of open conflict, it will be defeated.
There are other reasons this debate is significant. As Keck notes, we cannot rule out the possibility of conflict with China. Because of worst-case planning, the possibility of conflict with China is driving our military procurement and force structure. The absence of a military strategy removes a critical yardstick we should be using in measuring the value of the expensive weapons systems we are procuring. In a time of limited national resources, the allocation of scarce dollars to defense rather than national infrastructure has national security implications. If those defense dollars are used on very expensive systems that do not support a strategy or create a sustained advantage, the investment may actually reduce U.S. national security.
Keck’s fundamental point is that we need a regional strategy to deal with Chinese expansionism short of conflict. We clearly need one, and several think tanks as well as the Pentagon are exploring options. Such a strategy must include a subordinate military strategy as part of the effort to insure the conflict does not escalate. But the military strategy is only the supporting element. The regional strategy requires diplomatic, political, economic, and information components in a unified campaign.
While Great Satan clearly desires dominance, China’s increasing capabilities combined with falling U.S. budgets and ever more expensive U.S. weapons systems mean U.S. decision makers need to consider if dominance is still feasible. If we cannot afford it, what other approaches should the U.S. examine – and how would she execute them?
The rise and impact of hard-line Salafist-takfiri Islamist groups that have recently proliferated and controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. Groups like the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), the Nusra Front, and many other smaller ones represent perhaps the fastest growing ideological sector in the region – in some cases attracting tens of thousands of adherents. There are real reasons to be concerned by their behavior, from their beheading and torture of opponents to their imposition of draconian social norms.
Essentially a short-term phenomena that have no place in a future Middle East, because they are essentially gangs of losers: deeply alienated young men who can only try toestablish their fantasy lands of pure Islamic values in areas that have experienced a total breakdown of order, governance, services and security.
These transitional movements have no possibility to control significant territory and set up their own self-contained statelets, principalities or emirates for extended periods, because they have no natural support in society and only operate where they can take advantage of lawlessness and fear.
They can do plenty of damage in the short run, because of their ability to stoke sectarian conflict across the Middle East, shatter people’s lives and development, kill and main thousands, and provide scores of recruits with training and battle experience that can later be used to carry out terror operations around the world. But as political movements they are total failures, which is why they can onlyoperate by the gun.Umm, Ground Control To Major Tom Time - what about the New aQ? Certainly these creeps learned a thing or three since Anbar, nicht wahr?Nasser al-Wahishi - al-Qaida’s top op in Yemen - laid out a blueprint for aQ government.
Al-Qaeda itself and its offshoots have tried for decades to mobilize popular support across the Arab world, playing on the same grievances (Palestine, corruption, foreign aggressions, domestic injustices and disparities)
Al-Qaeda-like groups have totally and repeatedly failed the test of popular legitimacy. They have never achieved any anchorage because their violent, oppressive operating methods are deeply repulsive and alien to the overwhelming majority of Arab men and women. So we see their presence only in ravaged lands, zones of chaos and ungoverned areas, in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan’s border areas, rural Yemen, Somalia, Mali and parts of Libya, Gaza, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon where governance and order are weak or nonexistent.
Make sure the people in the areas they control have electricity and running water. He also offers tips for making garbage collection more efficient.Or,
“Try to win them over through the conveniences of life. “It will make them sympathize with us and make them feel that their fate is tied to ours.”
Capturing turf is not enough: They must also learn to govern it if they hope to hold it.
In the short term, these cats can control small patches of land by stabilizing security situations and providing basic services such as food and medical care, allowing them to impose their brand of harsh justice. The populations under their control appreciate the provision of basic human needs, because they do not want to live under the law of the jungle. But neither do they want to live permanently under Salafist-takfiri rule.Pic - "Rebound"
They can be partly contained by military action in the short run, but in the long run they can only be countered by better governance and more equitable socio-economic development and citizen rights. These remain elusive in most Arab countries, and so the Salafist-takfiri extremists hang around
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