Bin Ladin wants Republican Victory

CIA veteran Michael F. Scheuer’s claim that Bin Ladin is hoping for a Democratic victory on election day is pure political psych-ops. In trying to psyche Americans into voting Republican it appears he is more committed to his party than our nation’s security. ( http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20061024-090445-5244r)


It’s indisputable that the US military invasion of Iraq became Bin Ladin’s best recruiting tool. Bush’s use of military force has only exacerbated global terrorism and hurt vital US alliances that will be essential to capturing and stopping terrorists. Our ‘shock and awe’ military force to find Iraq’s WMDs fit perfectly with Osama’s propaganda that the US is more committed to dominating Islamic nations and stealing Muslim oil resources than helping Muslims.
Scheuer may be an intelligence expert but he lacks wisdom. The use of war to stop terrorism is like using gasoline to put out a fire. Even the most careful US military operations will result in large scale collateral damage. Using President Bush’s lowest estimates of 30,000 innocent Iraqi deaths from our invasion and forceful occupation the amount of human/Muslim suffering is difficult to imagine. It shouldn’t be. We know how we felt about losing just 3000 of our loved ones on 9-11. Imagine how Iraqis and observing Muslims feel as we keep immaculate records of US soldier deaths but can’t even guess within 500,000 how many innocent Iraqis have died.
Terrorists will be stopped when we have more friends in the Muslim world than enemies. Bush’s war approach only makes us more enemies. When we demonstrate to Muslims that we are far more willing to die for what we believe thank kill, we will have the right formula for defeating Bin Ladin. The British defeated the IRA with a ‘law and order’ approach while Israel’s persistent use of military force has not brought them peace or security.
US policemen risk their lives every day to avoid collateral damage. Our freedom and security, our rule of law is preserved by their willingness to die in avoiding the use of excessive force around innocent people. Some democrats still don’t have this life and death formula down but any intelligent voter should take that fact into the booth on election day.

The Stakes are high!!! War creates terrorism.

The RNC has morphed President Johnson's famous 1964 "Daisy" commercial against Barry Goldwater to invoke the threat of a nuclear attack by al Qaeda on American soil. Factcheck.org summarizes (http://factcheck.org/article457.html) that Al Qaeda’s access to suitcase nuclear devises as possible, but not likely.

The add shows accurate quotes from bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri about their commitment to mass murder Americans but then offers no mention of their motives even though other Bin Ladin quotes are available that clearly state abusive US foreign policy as one of terrorists primary motivating factors. (It would be great if “Factcheck.org” did a report on Bush’s statement “they hate us for who we are…not what we do” or “we are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here”.)

Liberals to their great discredit (and ineffectiveness in generating support from moderates) greatly underestimate the threat of terrorism. Conservatives on the other hand are in profound denial about the absurdity of waging war against a tactic, a response that actually has the impact of throwing gasoline on a fire.

And both sides obsess about nuclear weapons while greatly ignoring the fact that biological weapons are infinitely more affordable, available, transportable and stealth than nuclear weapons AND could mass murder more people than a suitcase nuke or even a limited nuclear exchange.

FACT: Weaponized smallpox could kill tens to hundreds of millions.

FACT: As biotechnology advances so does the capacity to create newer, more lethal and genetically targeted weapons that will outpace any defensive capacity using the same technology. In addition, restricting the use or abuse of this technology is impossible.

To any mind that accepts this biological reality the idea of improving our security through disarmament (including pre-emptive strikes) or superior armament (including shock and awe capacity) becomes undeniably ludicrous.

But the real kicker is the ‘fact’ that the RNC add doesn’t mention why Al Qaeda had and continues to have access to suitcase nukes in the former Soviet Union. GOP leadership on Capital Hill has persistently failed to adequately fund the Nunn-Lugar Threat Reduction Initiative -- a highly effective initiative that would have more effectively prevented the availability of former Soviet or current Russian nuclear or biological weapons (or technology) from spreading.

But most important is the failure of ‘war’ in reducing terrorism. To innocent Muslims losing innocent loved ones as a result of our war machine and military occupation or who are mistakenly imprisoned, painfully interrogated or sexually humiliated under US ‘offensive’ operations, or have children who are sickened or die as a result of a lack of clean water, it becomes painfully clear that terror is more than a tactic. War is terrorizing… and a political party or leader who wages it will not make us safer.

Iraqi war death estimates are irrelevant!

Critical analysis doubting 600,000 Iraqi war dead estimated by Johns Hopkins study may be correct. But they are also irrelevant.

Our local, state and federal governments document the smallest details of 99.9% of every American death both here and abroad. What does it say to Iraqis and the greater Muslim world when we can’t even guess within hundreds of thousands the number of innocent Iraqi men, women and children that have been intentionally or unintentionally killed as a direct result of a war of choice that we started? Americans appear to care more about batting averages, financial statistics and oil prices than the mass death tolls of Muslims

Even using the lowest ‘guesstimates’ of 20,000 innocent Iraqi citizens killed from a population of 25 million it would take 200,000 American deaths for us to experience the lethality of their nation’s ‘occupation’.

When (not if) those who hate us get their hands on a nuclear or biological weapon -- is there any doubt they will use it to even the score? Such is the ‘justice’ of war where the law of force reigns supreme. We used the death of 3000 Americans on 9-11 to justify a ‘war on terrorism and Iraq.’ What will they ultimately justify from the loss of their loved ones? And, finally, how many millions of lives will it take for humanity to discover the wisdom and inherent value of abolishing war as a means of solving differences? It’s past time for the global rule of law.

Iraqi war death estimates are irrelevant!

Critical analysis doubting 600,000 Iraqi war dead estimated by Johns Hopkins study may be correct. But they are also irrelevant.

Our local, state and federal governments document the smallest details of 99.9% of every American death both here and abroad. What does it say to Iraqis and the greater Muslim world when we can’t even guess within hundreds of thousands the number of innocent Iraqi men, women and children that have been intentionally or unintentionally killed as a direct result of a war of choice that we started? Americans appear to care more about batting averages, financial statistics and oil prices than the mass death tolls of Muslims

Even using the lowest ‘guesstimates’ of 20,000 innocent Iraqi citizens killed from a population of 25 million it would take 200,000 American deaths for us to experience the lethality of their nation’s ‘occupation’.

When (not if) those who hate us get their hands on a nuclear or biological weapon -- is there any doubt they will use it to even the score? Such is the ‘justice’ of war where the law of force reigns supreme. We used the death of 3000 Americans on 9-11 to justify a ‘war on terrorism and Iraq.’ What will they ultimately justify from the loss of their loved ones? And, finally, how many millions of lives will it take for humanity to discover the wisdom and inherent value of abolishing war as a means of solving differences? It’s past time for the global rule of law.

USAF Memorial vs The other ‘high Ground’.

The new US Air Force Memorial was dedicated today overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. There can be no doubt regarding the central role that US air power played in defeating the Nazi’s or Saddam’s Republican Guard, or, the saving of countless lives of US ground troops. But there can also be no doubt that in defeating terrorism superior air power is worse than useless.

Bomber crews targeting Hitler’s forces had a 100% fatality rate if they flew over 25 missions. Today’s fly boys enjoy a nearly 100% survival rate from enemy fire on nearly every mission they fly. This air ‘invincibility’ may be the single greatest contributor to the terror inspired tactics acts. It’s suicide for our enemies to fight us on the battle field. It’s no mystery why the dawn suicide vests and use razor blades and commercial airliners to fight back.

Laser guided smart bombs significantly reduce pilot risk and the need for mass bombings which would certainly increase collateral damage. But smart bombs still result in relatively large numbers of civilian deaths on the ground. Using President Bush’s own lowball estimate of some 50,000 Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion (other reports suggest as many as 900,000 Iraqi deaths) most agree that roughly 1/3 of those killed, died as a result of ‘coalition forces’, and many if not most of these from US air power.

John Carey (Monumental Tributes 10-14-06) sees the new Memorial/monument as “glowing shafts of arced and pointed metal” symbolizing “jet fighters or perhaps missiles arching toward the sky”. Others see these slivers representing the debris of civilization blown into the heavens by unprecedented destructive air power… or the ribs of victims --minus their flesh and organs -- compliments of a USAF ordinance.

UNICEF and other respectable entities estimate that as many as 500,000 Iraqi child died as a result of US sanctions in the decade after the first gulf war. These deaths were largely a result of US air power imposed sanctions and are on top of the innocent Iraqi lives lost from the deliberate US targeting of Iraqi water and Sanitation facilities prior to the first Iraq war. US war planners hoped Iraqi civilian death and misery from the anticipated disease burden would spark an overthrow of Saddam. The mass deaths of innocent Iraqi Muslims were and still are a multiplying force for Al Qaeda recruiting and general anti US sentiment world wide.

I haven’t done the math but I’m reasonably sure that while the USAF can claim credit for saving the lives of more innocent civilians than any other single military institution in world history it probably comes in second, only to Hitler’s SS, in killing innocent civilians.

The US Air Force and our space satellites do effectively control the high ground for any traditional field of battle. But, but they do not give us the moral high ground to win the war on terror.

Like a hammer, the USAF can be a tool for great good (stopping mass murder in Darfur or mass starvation in the Sudan) or great harm (like more preemptive shock and awe strikes that can only kill more innocent civilians and make others hate us even more). The problem with having such a powerful hammer is that everything looks like a nail (Iran? North Korea?).

US air superiority supposedly began with the invention of a couple of bicycle mechanics at Kitty Hawk. Given our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and oil links to both the war on terror and the war in Iraq one might wonder what the Wright brothers might have thought of the evolution of their invention. I’m guessing if they were alive today they’d be working on alternative energy sources to free us from our oil addition – or -- they would be actively lobbying against the use of technology to develop even more sophisticated nuclear weapons for future use.

Let one thing be clear. Our amazing USAF was powerless in protecting us on 9-11. In fact they may have been used to bring down civilian air craft. The most advanced stealth bombers or fighterplanes will be powerless in protecting us against suitcase nukes, the bird flu, global warming, or global economic recession. The USAF Monument should be in memory of the great skill, sacrifice and service that US air men and women displayed in the past. It offers nothing for the future. The future will be won by the moral high ground of human rights… not the tools of American might.

Winning the war ...without war.

This needs no blog response. It's a must read for all liberals and conservatives who want to win the war on terror. Printed today in the The Washington Times!!!!
Go To: www.washingtontimes.com
Send your letter to the editor to: Letters@washingtontimes.com

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To win the long war
By Robert H. Scales
Published October 10, 2006
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In war, words are more powerful than bullets. Written doctrines are blueprints for victory in battle.
Before the turn of the last century, Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote "The Influence of Sea Power upon History," a work that continues to influence blue water philosophies of modern navies. Between the world wars the Italian Giulio Douhet, author of "The Command of the Air," became the intellectual godfather of shock and awe when he proclaimed that airpower alone could guarantee victory without suffering the horrors of trench warfare. Mr. Douhet's disciples live on.
Militaries by their nature are conservative institutions and often the only true catalyst for change is failure. After the defeat in World War I, Gen. Hans von Seeckt, head of the German Reichwehr, described in his book, "Leadership and Battle," another way to avoid trench war in the principles of "blitzkrieg." Defeat in Vietnam induced the America's von Seeckt, Gen. William DePuy, to restore the integrity of the Army after its defeat in Vietnam by introducing "AirLand Battle" doctrine, essentially a new way of doing blitzkrieg American style.
War is the most perfidious of all forms of human intercourse. That truism was learned in spades after Desert Storm, when the tenets of "AirLand Battle," proven in high-tech warfare, quickly became a hindrance in the war against adaptive low-tech enemies. Experiences in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti reinforced in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon now compel us to craft a new set of words that embrace all that we have learned at great expense in today's wars against Islamic insurgencies.
The words have appeared, brilliantly albeit it late in the season, with the publication of the Army and Marine Corps Manual 3-24, "Counterinsurgency." Today's DePuy sobriquet is shared by two remarkably gifted generals, the Marines' James Mattis and the Army's David Petraeus. Their fingerprints are on every page and explain in large measure why this volume, (unlike virtually all other doctrinal tomes of the Defense Department) is written in English...and makes sense... and deserves a place on military bookshelves next to Mr. Mahan, Mr. Douhet, Gen. von Seeckt and Gen. DePuy.
The power of the manual is contained in its paradoxes: a clever literary ploy the authors use to differentiate this war from those of the past and to shock old cold warriors out of their fixation on firepower and killing. The phrase "The more you protect the force the less secure you are" warns of the danger of hiding inside fortified base camps. "The more force you use the less effective you are," and "The best weapons do not shoot," argue that counterinsurgencies are fought with ideas rather than bullets. "Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction," warns that impulsive, violent responses to enemy atrocities often play to its advantage.
The observation that in an insurgency "tactical success guarantees nothing" harkens back to Vietnam when, after the war, a retired colonel told his North Vietnamese counterpart, "you know you never defeated us on the battlefield," the reply was, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant," a warning that we and our Israeli allies might well take to heart.
When the manual warns "if a tactic works this week, it will not work next week," it is teaching us that to win the long war we must focus on the human side of war. The services must become learning as well as fighting institutions able to adapt faster than the enemy. The manual recognizes what any young soldier or Marine can verify: that success can best be achieved by empowering the Army and Marine Corps at the lowest level. Counterinsurgencies are the business of lieutenants and sergeants.
Gen. DePuy once observed that "doctrine isn't doctrine unless 51 percent of the officer corps believes in it." At last our military has a counterinsurgency blueprint worthy of its powerful antecedents. The question now is whether or not our policy-makers will read it and our military leaders will believe in it enough to put it into practical form. Mr. Mahan's influence led to the creation of the world's great battleship fleets. Mr. Douhet gave birth to huge bomber fleets that pulverized German and Japanese cities. Gen. Von Seeckt created and Gen. DePuy resurrected fleets of heavily armored fighting vehicles that rolled across Poland, France, Kuwait and Iraq.
You will know if this manual gains traction when its tenets translate in a similar fashion: more soldiers and Marines to fight counterinsurgencies which the manual recognizes as long and manpower intensive; modernized land fighting systems and organizations optimized to reach distant regions, control areas, influence populations and shape opinions; the appearance of a land force that learns and adapts as well as it fights; and the beginnings of change in other government agencies, such as the Departments of State, Commerce and Justice driven by recognition, again highlighted in the manual, that counterinsurgencies are won on the diplomatic, political and economic front just as surely as they can be lost on the battlefield.
Retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales is a former commander of the Army War College.



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