A Limbavian Flap

Hibernation is over and this Dino is back! Now, it is time for more exhilarating commentary.

Monsieur Remi asks if anyone still listens to Rush Limbaugh. Seems like they sure do these days.

I will admit right here and right now that I am opposed to talking any more about Rush Limbaugh. He is a distraction, and everyone has said as much. Right now children are wandering about uneducated, the world’s economy is imploding, and Americans and other humans are getting killed in various wars.  But media talking heads, politicians, and average Americans love bright shiny distractions. So in the spirit of talking about affairs that have no demonstrable importance, I will indulge in the ultimate purpose of Dino: to tell you the things that I am thinking.

Barack Obama and his political machinery have made it very clear their intentions: no one likes Rush Limbaugh, so if you equate him with the average Republican then no one will like any Republican, average or no. Rush Limbaugh, whose income is derived from the number of people that listen to him, always profits from controversy. And he has hardly failed to take advantage of Rahm Emanuel’s generous offer to make him “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party.” 

The advantages may be financial for Mr. Limbaugh. Or maybe he genuinely wants to be the ‘intellectual’ force of conservatism. He certainly enjoys people paying attention to him. So on one or more of these levels, Mr. Limbaugh has profited. Mr. Obama and Mr. Limbaugh are in collusion – although certainly not as amicable partners.

Amy Holmes has conveniently inverted Mr. Emanuel’s comments and the situation they have created in a way that highlights what is really going on:

Imagine, for a moment, if George Bush and his chief of staff had made coordinated and concerted attacks on Michael Moore, and suggested that the colorful left-wing fulminator — not Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid — was the “true intellectual force” behind the Democratic party. Imagine the howls of protest. And, undoubtedly, the media would have focused on the propriety of a commander-in-chief and his advisers wasting time and political breath on an entertainer. And yet we have President Obama and his hammer, Rahm Emanuel, doing just that in a time of war and economic crisis, and the story is about … Republicans!

Conservative commentator David Frum recently rebutted this Limbavian flap in a Newsweek article entitled “Why Rush is Wrong.” He argues for changes that he believes will bring the GOP back to power, and Mr. Limbaugh’s place in that equation.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

Partly, Mr. Frum is motivated by the fact that Mr. Limbaugh and others have criticized him for his advocacy of a flexible conservatism. Mr. Limbaugh’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on 28 February included commentary on such allegedly fractious elements of the GOP, in favor of an unchanging set of conservative idealogies:

Conservatism is a universal set of core principles. You don’t check principles at the door. This is a battle that we’re going to have. And there are egos involved here, too. When the situation like ours exists, there are people who want to lead it. They want to redefine it. Their egos are such that they want to be the next X, whoever it is. So there will be different factions lining up to try to define what conservatism is. And beware of those different factions who seek as part of their attempt to redefine conservativism, as making sure the liberals like us, making sure that the media likes us. They never will, as long as we remain conservatives. They can’t possibly like us; they’re our enemy. In a political arena of ideas, they’re our enemy. They think we need to be defeated.

First of all, we can notice two tendencies here. One is the overt reactionary nature of these comments (and if you read the rest of the speech you will notice a tendency to ramble off-topic, and the speaker’s need to congratulate himself on what is, at various points, his first national and international address). Second, and related, is the ultra-montane attitude that goes out of its way to be disliked by ‘the media.’ I cannot imagine that Mr. Limbaugh does not realize that he is part of the media. He is using a simple but very effective rhetorical trick: set up a straw man, then burn it down. The straw man here is the liberal media bias, about which he would be happy to tell you. But the bottom line is that he does not want to be liked by the mainstream media, because he can simultaneously cast himself as a rebel and self-righteous advocate for conservatism.

Then, Michael Steele, RNC chairman, called Mr. Limbaugh an entertainer, and his show incendiary and ugly. After lambasting Mr. Steele, Mr. Limbaugh received an apology from Mr. Steele. There are fewer more public ways to broadcast the internal chaos the GOP must be experiencing than through a radio host who has 13+ million listeners per week and is always on the lookout for more outrageous ways to attract more.

This incident is not only a lens to highlight the problems that the Right is having, but it also brings out very disturbing, yet normal, behaviors in the Left. It is precisely at the juncture of the conflict between Messrs. Steele and Limbaugh that Mr. Emanuel framed Mr. Limbaugh as the intellectual force of the Republican Party. The timing smacks of opportunism and the White House has much to gain from a Republican Party handcuffed to Rush Limbaugh.

So where is the Change that the nation voted for in November? The change in dialectic, the change in Washington politics that Mr. Obama purported to bring? The bi-partisanship – that word that we love to say but scarce know how to implement – where is it?

In the end, this issue demonstrates the nature of power and justice. Bi-partisanship is not reaching across the aisle with an open hand and a smile, and cooperatively solving problems. It is winning elections, having a sufficient majority in the Congress, holding the White House, and then telling the other side what the agenda is because the opposition does not have the practical bargaining chips to do anything else. This Limbavian flap is a realpolitik method, employed by Mr. Obama, of accomplishing ‘bi-partisan’ relations.

A New Army for Every War

Strictly speaking, no two moments are ever alike.  Even on an infinitesimal scale, the measure of time spent between breaths contains entire univereses of possibility, no two exactly similar.  Now blow this up to the grand scale of politics and it doesn’t take a professional philosopher (ha!) to figure out that no two situations will exactly repeat themselves.

It’s important to take lessons from the past, recognize patterns where they exist (and acknowledge where they don’t), and make educated plans for the future.  It is reckless, and a mistake oft repeated, to seize on a model and apply it wholesale to new conditions.  This is best illustrated in the arena of armed conflict.

The Atlantic points out how the apparent success, and political popularity, of the Petraeus Doctrine is reshaping the future of the army. The Petraeus Doctrine was overdue for Iraq, there is no denying that.  If civilian leaders had done any research on Iraq, or any history at all, they would have recognized the need for a counterinsurgency plan and an occupational strategy.  As it was, the army was forced to reinvent itself on the fly, and what a testament it is to the soldiers and officers that they were able to do this.  That being said, it’s in danger of going too far.

Undoubtedly, the Patraeus Doctrine will help the army avoid a similar shock in the future.  But the article points out the dangers of seeing the Doctrine as an end in itself for armed forces.  It’s most vocal opponent deserves to be listened to, fearing:

that an infatuation with stability operations will lead the Army to reinvent itself as “a constabulary,” adept perhaps at nation-building but shorn of adequate capacity for conventional war-fighting.

While it is important that the army be ready to take on all situations, and all aspects of war, it should not put slack on the most basic abilities in order to refocus the battle to hearts and minds.  It needs to be remembered that before the stage of “winning hearts and minds,” one needs to conquerer hearts and minds, armed with weapons, and shooting them at our soldiers.

I take issues with Gentile’s assertion that Abrams’ strategy wouldn’t work in Vietnam.  I think the evidence currently supports the claim that, with continued funding (and no American soldiers) victory was possible.  That being said, I understand his defense of this position.  Strategy is not always strictly about “victory,” it’s also about cutting losses.  If the army is being geared to fight long wars, it will fight long wars, even when they are best avoided altogether.

Ultimately, the goal of the army must be the protection of Americans, and that includes the soldiers who serve it.  Rigid plans to fight past wars will not accomplish this.  The army should absorb the Patraeus Doctrine like a sponge and let it soak alongside the Powell Doctrine before it decides to wring it all out. The army needs to be flexible and ready to adapt, not stiff and forced to adapt.

Better yet, their civilian bosses should remember the Washington Farewell Doctrine.

Quote of the Day

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the ‘root cause’ of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired.

Nick Cohen, “Why Bush has been a liberal’s best friend“

This is actually one of my biggest reasons for supporting Obama as a conservative: to essentially call the world’s bluff on everything being the fault of George W. Bush.

Were McCain to win, the talking heads would simply denounce him as Bush II and we’d have at least another 4 years of Europeans hiding their head in the sand instead of acknowledging that maybe some problems are not the fault of George W. Bush.

Only with a symbolic and decisive break from the past–in this case an Obama election–will the world be willing to stop blaming us. And if even the election of the consummate anti-Bush is not enough to get Europeans to act like allies, perhaps it will finally sink in to the editorial board of the New York Times that maybe Europeans simply cannot or will not cooperate with us, and coupled with the fact that their relative power on the world stage declines even faster than our own maybe it’s time we look for some new allies.

Like, say, India.

Narcotics, Economics, and the War in Afghanistan

The poverty-crime cycle is well-known to the practitioners of the social sciences. It goes something like this:

Step 1: An area is impoverished for a variety of economic and social reasons.

Step 2: On account of the aforementioned poverty, residents start trafficking in narcotics to their neighbors, who use narcotics because of their impoverished condition.

Step 3: Narcotics trade attracts black market businessmen and violence to the area, which prevents property values from rising and thus overall equity remains low and the potential for high-end business, cultural establishments, and families effectively becomes nil.

So far, pretty simple and sensical. We have all personally witnessed this sort of process in American cities, and if we have not, it is certainly easy to imagine as happening.

Until…WHAMMY! Afghanistan defies all social science logic by actually following the lines of rational thought: Afghanis are gaining wealth by selling drugs. Afghani opium farmers are actually becoming prosperous off of the narcotics trade and supporting Hamid Karzai’s government. However, for many years the drug trade in central Asia has been represented as the recourse of poor farmers in the war-torn north. A recent UN report reveals that the largest opium estates are in the southern part of the country, which is relatively free of violence. Who could have guessed that being the number one exporter of opium could make you rich?

Thomas Schweich, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, details the fight against opium trading, its involvement in Mr. Karzai’s government, and its relation to the war in Afghanistan in this New York Times article. The recommendation? That we, and our allies (including Mr. Karzai and Europe), need to step up to the plate and offer some serious and consistent negative incentives to opium cultivation. Mr. Karzai may be funded by the narcotics trade, but so too is Al Qaida and putting a stopgap in their funding source needs to be a priority.

Looks Like VDH is Vindicated

Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist and military historian at Stanford University’s invaluable Hoover Institution has long advocated that the culture of Western civilization has throughout history given its constituents a decisive advantage over its enemies. In the brave new world of 21st century asymmetric terrorist and anti-terrorist warfare, this shamefully antiquated, western chauvninist, orientalist, </ivory tower newspeak> proposition of VDH seemed destined to meet its Waterloo in the bloody streets of Baghdad.

But it looks like VDH may wind up with the last laugh after all. The quantitative and qualitative success of General Petraeus’s COIN [COunter-INsurgency] strategy has turned the tables on the insurgency (knock on an entire rainforest’s worth of wood, of course), whose brutal tactics and inflexibility have cost it the strategic advantage and popular support it once commanded. As Andrew Sullivan opines:

Maybe this will be history’s judgment of the last few years: both the US and al Qaeda over-reached. But al Qaeda’s over-reach was greater. And in this we see why democracies do actually do better in warfare in the long run: because our leaders have to be responsive to the people; because legitimate internal criticism and debate forces course correction and exposes self-defeating hubris. With the Bush administration, this process took much longer than it should have, and the Bushies did all they could to stamp out, rather than hear, criticism. But in the end, democracy adjusts to reality; religious extremism cannot.

Whammy! Western Civ for the win!

Petraeus for President. and VDH as veep. And Andrew Sullivan as Secretary of the Interior[-Design].

Re: Iran

Dear Kingremi,

When you mention the Melian dialogue and its relevancy to Iran, I am reminded of another episode from ancient history.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Macedonia was largely unable to maintain an important part in the politics of the Hellenistic world. Meanwhile, the Seleucids in Palestinia and the Ptolemies in Egypt dominated the Greek East. In the latter half of the third and into the second century BC, Philip V of Macedonia attempted to expand his holdings in the Aegean Sea. By both armed conflict and diplomatic overtures he tried to bring Macedonia back to the primacy it once held. He made an alliance with the Carthaginians to stave off the threat of Rome. He made a pact with Antiochos III of the Seleucid Empire to seize Egyptian holdings in the Aegean Sea.

But Philip overplayed his hand. The Carthaginians could not defeat the Romans, who now had an excuse to march into Macedonia. Antiochos III did not dare come to Macedonia’s aid (at least not openly) because he recognized that it was Rome, not Macedonia, against whom he was struggling in a cold war for control over the Aegean. Macedonia was just a second class state who should have picked a superpower to support instead of trying to grab power for itself. Philip failed because he tried to exert influence when he did not have the political or military clout to do it. As a result, Rome invaded Macedonia and Greece – on behalf of the “independence” of the Greek cities, a novel reason to invade a foreign state indeed – and forced Philip to disarm and become its ally. Philip’s son Perseus was the last king of Macedonia, dependent on Rome to sustain his figurehead status.

The historian Ernst Badian once said that history needs to be rewritten for every generation. He studied the diplomatic and military maneuvering of the Roman Republic against Hellenistic empires in order to understand the Cold War politics of seizing influence over the second and third worlds. Should these histories be rewritten for us today, and who will rewrite them? Is Iran a Macedonia that should just lay down its arms in the face of powers with which its resources simply can not cope? Are we Rome?

Forcing the hand of any state by means of threat is not typically a good idea. And more war is usually the last thing anybody could do with, not least of all us. If history is going to be rewritten at this time, it needs to be done by clear planning and innovative diplomacy.

I think that Iran is fighting – and by fighting I mean clandestinely shipping arms across its borders so other people can die for their agenda – for the same thing for which we are fighting: an ideologically and politically friendly state in the Middle East. Besides this, they are also supporting militant groups against Israel and attempting to make Lebanon its own satellite state. And it is apparent that they have the resources to at least be disruptive, if not actually accomplish anything. But I surmise, or perhaps I hope, that Iran’s cold war/hot war pseudo-imperialist actions will exhaust itself before it can bring about any more destruction and death.

Go-go gadget history,

Aristeides

The Air Force Is Wasting My Money

I am not a fan of the air force.  I think that strategic over-reliance on air power in the latter-half of the 20th century has produced some of the greatest embarrassments for the western world’s military endeavors.  The US expectation that North Vietnam would cower in fear at its bombs to the recent Israeli attempt to bomb Hezbollah into the stone age while they hid in… well… the stone age… are too of the greatest offenses of an air force strategy.  No war will ever be won by anything but an army boots on enemy soil (or the distinct threat of).

Now before I sound like a crazy hater, I’d like to explain my position a bit more clearly.  First of all, I acknowledge the extreme importance of air power.  The Allies do not win World War II without it.  April 1975 would have been a much different month in Saigon if ARVN had it.  But what has been crucial about the success of air power, and its failure, is how it has been used—successfully, it is a means to an end, the best support a soldier could hope for.  Improperly, it is thought to be an end in itself, an expensive way to avoid casualties to the home team while accomplishing very little on the ground.

The Navy still operates their own planes, the Marines still operate theirs, and in my opinion the air force should never have been separated from the Army.  Attempting to promote themselves and their self-anointed role as defenders of my cell phone, the Air Force has been running ads so ridiculous, I thought they were trailers for a bad Babylon 5 knock off the first time I saw them.

The premise of the ad is ridiculous and not grounded in any sort of current tactical reality.  The solution to the ad is vague and non-existent.  So… you want more money?  The Air Force already has the biggest budget of all the services.  If I begin think about how inefficiently that money is spent within the armed forces I will smash my computer screen, but I will acknowledge that inefficient spending is unavoidable, so let’s just say this: if anyone needs more money, give it to the army so there is no excuse for sending soldiers to war without kevlar and hummers into battle zones without armor.  The last thing I need my tax dollars wasted on is an $81 million ad campaign to tell me that someone is going to blow up my satellites.

Which, interestingly, doesn’t make me want to give the Air Force more money.  It makes me want to ask what the hell is wrong with us if the destruction of a few satellites would fuck up our world so much?

Basra’s Back!

Are recent Iraqi victories too good to be true? Only if they lead to poorly drawn conclusions by hawks or doves alike. As the Atlantic correctly points out, the truth is somewhere in the middle. We can see progress, but it is at best progress progressing—these victories are not an end in the themselves.

Still, it’s nice to see potential light at the bottom of Pandora’s box.

How’d You Get Here? Oh, Iran.

Short Answer: I support opening dialogue with Iran.

Longer answer: Here’s a solid run down of recent and upcoming observations about US strategy with Iran.

Let’s begin with this reality: peace is always better than war. I realize that a lot of people see many definitions in this casual maxim, and it causes them ulcerating consternation—what I urge you to do is substitute whatever sensation meadows or comfy couches, where ever you typically find happiness, gives, make it a reality for everyone, and then ball it up in politics as peace. Now, no world is that perfect, so let’s make due with something imperfect, but practical, like utilitarianism, and say that there are always quantitatively more people enjoying peace when there are not wars. With agreement, this conforms to the rules of logic and we see that there is no possible world in which war period, and with Iran in particular, is better than peace.

I am afraid for Lebanon right now and Iran is responsible. Most importantly, I’m sickened when I think of what Iranian weapons are doing to US soldiers in a fight that is, crucially, not about Iran at the street-patrolling level. The battle for Iran is being fought in Washington and those soldiers are not hostile enough to invite bloody Iranian interference. It makes me sick and I want to see it end. Winning Iraq will require neutralizing Iran. Opening up any kind of a campaign against Iran just extends the borders of our trouble.

There have been a few attempts at dialogue, but nothing serious and substantial has been accomplished. Yet it seems to me that nothing serious and substantial has been tried. A new tone is required. Dialogue has acquired a stigma of weakness because of Chamberlain’s appeasement, but appeasement wasn’t because of the dialogue, it came from the politics.

Our tone has an unsettling precedent in Thucydides. When asked why they should give themselves up to Athens and not fight back, the mighty Athenians tell the Melians, inhabitants of a small island who desired neutrality, that “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” The Melians agree, but resist the Athenians anyway to defend their homes and families. The Athenians, as everyone knew they would, prevail.

Inherent in this dialogue is the key cause of war—that the weak should just simply succumb to the strong, that there is nothing worth fighting for when one knows one will lose, if they can even agree to that. We are making a very big show about our military muscle in an ability to dictate Iranian actions:

[Defense Secretary Gates] has ordered the deployment of a second Carrier Strike Group as a reminder to Tehran of US military might. Also, Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff has underscored that all options certainly remain open for US policy.

Despite Iranian posturing, there is little doubt about who would win in an all-out war. We do have nuclear weapons, after all. If we wanted to flatten a country, or several, we can. Maybe Iran doesn’t think we would do this—and it would take an extraordinary desperation or disdain for human decency to do so—but we could, and they couldn’t and they also can’t know we wouldn’t.

A Carrier Strike Group is a threatening thing and Iran is doing an awfully lot to provoke a Tonkin-like incident with these nat-like speedboats zipping around. We are trying to do as the Athenians did and show simply that we are the stronger and it logically follows that if you don’t fall in line with us, you will suffer.

This is a brute theory that is not likely to produce peace.

We focus on differences with a thoughtless strategy that makes me concerned there are other belligerent and selfish forces at work in Iranian policymaking. The top two priorities in our Iran strategy are victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing else—not nuclear power plants, not Hezbollah, not oil prices—is as important as bringing home troops and strengthening a region. Here, we should focus on our similarities.

Iraq is the most complicated for a host of reasons, not the least among them what our long-term military ambition in the country is, but regardless of whether it becomes a South Korea situation or all Americans are home, the ambition must not be to invade Iran. This needs to be stressed in a dialogue. An unstable Iraq is not in Iran’s interests. Clearly they favor a Shiite neighbor, but do they favor that greater than favoring delivering these kidney shots to the US? I doubt it. They are seizing an opportunity to be a pest. Besides, in all out war, other Sunni countries would back Iraq’s Sunnis and the Iranian advantage would level out. They enjoy their evasive ‘bee trapped in our bedroom’ role.

Present scenarios that the Iranians haven’t considered. What might peace be like with the US? Why should you join us, instead of why wouldn’t you? A stable Iraq means security for Iran. They need to reel in, or at the very least, cease supplying Shiite militias. The effects would be noticeable almost immediately—such is the ease of arms smuggling and receiving training on the other side of the massive border that it requires almost no effort by the Iranians to cause us an irritating headache.

In Afghanistan, Iran is not backing Al-Qaeda’s Sunni insurgency, but couldn’t they be offered an invitation into the fold? Here the US could offer an invitation to work side-by-side with NATO and other nations that have been critical of Iran at the UN. It isn’t necessary for Iran to provide soldiers to fight in Afghanistan, just to increase vigilance at the border. Perhaps there could be an intelligence swap, or even, gasp, a gift about some sanctuaries the Taliban could hold in or around Iran? Perhaps Iranian engineers could work closer with Afghani engineers since they will be living next to each other and all.

Both of these scenarios are in both country’s strategic interests. It would require a major change of attitude and I’m not afraid to say that we would have to be the “bigger” country and make that leap. A conciliatory gesture, some kind of information, a lifting of some restriction, should be done to set the tone of a new approach. The timing, with a new president on the way, is perfect.

The nuclear issue will always remain. It is obvious that this is where Iran will want a return for its concessions and efforts. They continue to claim that they use their nuclear facility for peaceful purposes, which I don’t believe, and we can force this bluff as well. If Iran agrees to shift its strategy in the two theaters of war, we will be able to bring it under an umbrella of our protection. Who would Iran be afraid of attacking it if not for us? Let’s take that effort off the table by exposing it as nonsense. Israel is not going to preemptively nuke Iran for kicks. A country might still resent our nuclear capacity, but its existence can’t be denied and if people are kept happy and cared for, the issue will fade in front of the reality.

If Iran finds this unsatisfactory, her motives are revealed and her lies exposed. Our priority in everything must be to defend American life and currently Iran has indirectly killed too many to ignore. Politically, if the truth of the region can be well-articulated, it would leave Iran no choice but to join us because it would be in their interests.

Settled in this manner, Iran is forced to expose its motives. Everyone agreed the Melians would lose and they fought anyway. We should exhaust ourselves discouraging the fight in order to win the wars.

How to Fight Wars

It is frustrating that it seems we need to re-learn old lessons with every conflict we find ourselves engaged in, but at least it seems that we finally learn them. Here is a great example of how a Marine general has turned an Iraqi prison around with the real application of soft-power that is going to win a protracted war.

Few strategists would disagree, but most politicians and citizens are blissfully ignorant to the fact that the nature of war has completely changed. The purpose of the American Armed Forces isn’t so much tearing down as it is building and protecting–and this is a jarring difference from expectations. Were we a misguided Soviet army or vengeful fascists, we would have already accomplished our goals by flattening everything in sight. These are short-term and easy to affect with the modern tools of destruction.

However, whatever errant and deceitful path led us here, it is in the long-term interest of our nation (and the world, but whatever) to have a moderate, stable Iraq. This means, first above everything, that insurgents must be convinced that that they should put down their weapons, and a facility like Bucca works to accomplish this. Instead of torture, humiliation, and degradation–all practices that will lead to the hardening of resistance and the depletion of our morale–Bucca is making efforts to rehabilitate enemies and turn them, if not to friends, at least ambivalent towards violence. Allowing families to visit often is a fantastic move on General Stone’s part, reminding the combatants what they were fighting for in the first place, and showing them that there is a better way to ensure their safety.

I can hear the clamor of accusations already mobilizing against the prison’s policies of having

no maximum period for holding them. They are freed only when it has been determined by a review board they are no longer a security risk. Some have been locked up for more than three years.

Undoubtedly, I would like to see some kind of charge raised against every person imprisoned, superficial as they may be, so that inmates can be presented with a cause to their imprisonment, but in the meantime it seems to me that expediency can take precedence of bureaucracy.

Another note: the word “re-education” smacks of every depraved oppressor from the Nazis, to the Soviets, the North Vietnamese, and the Khmer Rouges, but before propaganda tries to connect these disparate dots, I’d like to see the military release a comprehensive overview of what, and how, re-education is being applied. I necessarily trust an moderate imam because other Muslim countries have employed a similar teaching style.

A lack of communication between political and military leaders and the citizens they serve has doomed missions in the past. Press coverage is good, but this is the kind of stuff that the President and the President-to-be needs to highlight and emphasize. This looks like an excellent counterinsurgency model that is finally being employed to a great effect. Hopefully this is a lesson we won’t need to learn again.

Of course, one hopes the military can find more eloquent speakers. Sometimes generals have a bit of a one track mind…

“Each detainee represents the possibility of being a moderate missile, if you will, fired into a community to spread a degree of moderacy and that’s the way we view it,” he says.

“If we have half of them hitting their target, it makes a huge difference.”