November 17, 2015--ISIS's Oil

I haven't been paying enough attention to how ISIS funds itself.

Mainly by stealing Iraqi oil I am embarrassed to admit I recently leaned. To the tune of at least $50 million a month's worth. About half-a-billion a year.

The oil comes from wells in northern Iraq, territory that ISIS now controls, and then is trucked overland into Syria and, after that, who knows.

But it has been working well for ISIS and up to now has not been interdicted by Syrian rebels, Western powers, or--and here's my rub--the United States.

One would think that with drones, satellite technology, and smart weapons easily deployed by fighter planes safely plying the skies looking for targets of opportunity, that given the go-ahead by allied forces' commanders in chief--particularly ours--it wouldn't require more than a few days to take out the oil trucks that go back and forth, east and west, through wide-open desert, at 45 miles per hour, without a place to hide.

Why then didn't we begin to bomb these facilities and trucks until two or three days ago? Why for years have we allowed this illicit commerce to take place in plain sight? Commerce that generates enough money to fund much of ISIS's evil business?

As best as I can learn the United States and it allies (such as they are) didn't want to do any permanent damage to Iraq's petroleum infrastructure. We have had the belief that ISIS would quickly be rolled up and things in the Iraqi oil fields would return to "normal." Very much in quotes.

Also, there was concern about killing civilians, mainly the drivers.

But now it appears that we feel battling ISIS will take a long time and concluding that drivers of these rigs are hardly civilians, we have turned attention to destroying the tanker trucks.

There appear to be 1,000 of them. One thousand! All easily spotted on Google Earth and of course, in even greater detail, through whatever the U.S. has in its surveillance arsenal.

In just a few days of bombing and strafing runs, according to reports in the New York Times, we have destroyed up to a quarter of them. Perhaps 250. In another few days most will have been blown up and it will no longer be easy for ISIS to remain in the oil business.

This previous hands-off approach to the ISIS oil trade also was based on the assertion that ISIS was effectively "contained" in Iraq and Syria, as claimed incredibly by President Obama just days before the uncontained attacks in Beirut and Paris.

All sorts of gears are being shifted as the result of these massive intelligence failures.

While I am ranting, I have two more questions for the Obama administration. An administration that has been ignoring reality as it attempts to "polish" its legacy. With only 15 months left in office, Obama wants to repaint reality--to claim that he ended two wars begun by George W. Bush and thus has no intention of getting in a new one against ISIS. This in spite of the fact that we are in reality half-heartedly fighting a war against ISIS.

But since we are in a version of war with ISIS why not fight smarter? Two things might help--

First, why not take down all jihadist Websites? The ones ISIS uses to promote itself and recruit young people from the Western democracies? And the ones they used to communicate among themselves, including using them to coordinate terrorist activities.

And why don't we through cyber-warfare tools disable the tanks and armored vehicles ISIS has stolen from Iraqi security forces? Vehicles and weapon systems that we manufactured and turned over to Iraqi soldiers which in turn were captured and are now being used against us by ISIS fighters?

I was just reading in Wired magazine how it is relatively easy to hack into people's Fords and Toyotas, to in effect disable them. So why not do the same thing to our Humvees and tanks that are now (see below) in ISIS's hands? I assume they are just as hackable.

If they aren't we should immediately reconfigure any weapons we sell or give to allies which inevitably get into the hands of very bad guys. As in Afghanistan where we covertly supplied the Mujahideen with weapons to use when fighting off Soviet invaders which in turn were used against us after the Mujahideen morphed into the Taliban.

I am wondering if anyone in our government and military is paying attention to these obvious things.

If not, it will be to our everlasting regret.

November 16, 2105--ISIS in Paris

I may have a different perspective after I, perhaps, cool down.

God knows there have been much worse cases of barbarism, evil during my lifetime. Even quite recently. By the numbers, ISIS's blowing the Russian plane out of the sky over the Sinai killed more innocent people than the seven or eight coordinated attacks in Paris.

Numerically, the terrorist bombings in Mumbai, Spain, Beirut, and of course on 9/11 killed and maimed more people, but there is something different about ISIS than al Qaeda. Something different for me about Paris than even New York.

That tells you how in a rage I am about what happened Friday night.

OK, I used the e-word. Evil.

All of these terrorist atrocities, including the pubic beheadings, are more than "cowardly acts." If there is such a thing as evil, this is it. Have there been worse examples? Of course. Including in France.

The French, among other "civilized" people, during the Second World War rounded up and shipped many thousands of their Jews to certain death in Nazi Germany.

A special definition of evil is necessary to categorize the various holocausts of the 20th century.

But what was perpetrated Friday still qualifies as dastardly. Unspeakable. All too human in its inhumanness.

Words fail.

French president Hollande says this was an act of "war." The Pope said we are in "World War III." Both may be right.

If we are, what then does that mean?

France is a linchpin of the NATO alliance. NATO's charter in effect says that "an attack on one is an attack on all." That includes us. The United States.

That charter was written well before al Qaeda and ISIS existed. It was for a time when there were credible threats of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. What does it mean now when the definition of war had shifted? Does it mean that the U.S. is also at war? That because France was "attacked," that it experienced more than an evil act of terrorism, we too have been attacked and thus are obligated to act accordingly? To join them in waging war?

I do not know how to think about this. What I do know is that this has struck me deeply. I have even been gathering information about going to France, Paris, this week. As an act of solidarity and defiance.

Rona thinks I'm crazy. She's right. I am.

Minimally I am trying to think about what France should do, more appropriately, as an American citizen what we should do because I do think we are at war.

Yes, I know how we got there. Not solely as the result of President Obama's weak leadership--though he has been weak and that hasn't helped, feeling that the "Arab Spring" would help bring about versions of democracy to the region. This just as naive in its own way as George W. Bush's delusion that toppling Saddam Hussein would do that for Iraq and surrounding dictatorships.

What matters now is what to do going forward.

Drone-guided bombings will not get the job done. Depending on lightly-armed Kurd forces on the ground will not defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Russia's involvement, even if it shifts to confront ISIS rather than Syrian rebels, will not get the job done.

Nothing this simple, this limited will work.

I can hardly believe I am thinking this, but only a massive, boots-on-the-ground force of American troops has any chance of succeeding. Perhaps 100,000 are required. Maybe more.

This would mean many casualties, even the beheading of captured U.S. soldiers. But does anyone have a better, more realistic idea?

I hate this. Hate all of it. But I am feeling radicalized.

ISIS has to be shown to be a failure in order to stem the flow of young lunatics to its "cause." Disaffiliated youth from the Islamic world as well as from Europe and the United States are partly drawn to ISIS because it is perceived to be winning. This encourages those with distorted minds to believe that the apocalypse they seek is near at hand. Defeat ISIS, devastate it, and that belief system will crumble.

I am sorry. I wish I could believe in the effectiveness of diplomacy and financial warfare, including bombing the oil fields and petroleum distribution system in ISIS-controlled territory.

I don't.

As long as they feel they are winning, ISIS fighters can live on fumes. They are that motivated and tenacious.

So they have to be killed. All of them would be ideal. As many as possible is imperative.

Again, I can't believe these worlds are coming from me. I have up to now considered myself to be moderate, essentially pacifistic. Not any more.

Paris on Friday changed that.

When will we too again feel the pain and fear?

January 15, 2015--Fanatics All

Do you know what happened to Angela Merkel?

I mean, I thought she was in Paris last Sunday to participate in the Je Suis Charlie march, joining governmental leaders from 40 or so other countries. (As a sidebar--not including the United States which sent the ambassador.)

I may have been hallucinating, but I thought I saw a picture of the front row of marchers with Francois Hollande, president of France in the center, locking arms with Palestinian president Mahmond Abbas on his right and Chancellor Merkel on his left.

But then when I picked up my copy of HaMevasar, the Israeli newspaper of the ultra-Orthodox, there was that same picture but no Angela Merkel.

So either I'm confused or losing it.

Before I could see if the New York Times had anything to say about this, I spoke with a friend who knows a lot about neurology to see if he thinks I'm losing it (yes and no, he said) and about the possibility that the image might have been doctored.

"Send me a link to the HaMevasar picture," he said, and within 15 minutes of my doing so he called to report, "It's obviously Photoshopped. I mean, the editor of the paper had Merkel crudely deleted from the photo. And also a few other female world leaders who were in the first two rows, making it look as if the march was an all-male affair. Just like a . . ."

"Just like an ultra-Orthodox Jewish wedding," I interjected, "where the men and the women attend and participate separately, including dancing with each other."

"Exactly," he said, "And here are a few ironic thoughts. First, they cut out the picture of the chancellor of the country that spawned the Nazis and perpetrated the Holocaust, but the country that now stamps out any manifestations of renewed anti-Jewish behavior and still pays reparations to Israel. Then the paper, HaMevasar, ranted about how the whole Hebdo massacre was about Islamic anti-Semitism, ignoring the fact that the initial victims were mainly French Christians. Finally, they completely ignored the fact that the march in Paris was about defending France's essential freedoms, very much including the right to free expression. And though HaMevasar does mention that the attack was on freedom of the press, it is in a journalistic context that is self-contradictory since by cropping the photo as they did it gives the lie to the very freedom this massacre was planned to stifle."

"Then there was Benjamin Netanyahu's reaction," I said. "On the day after the massacre he sent the French an impassioned letter of condolence that claimed, to quote him, that 'Israel is being attacked by the very same forces that attacked Europe.' As if the arrack on Charlie Hebdo was about Israel rather than about France."

"And he followed it up the next day when he linked the Paris suspects to Israel's enemies, likening the killings to the rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip."

"Talk about chutzpah."

"And can you explain to me how the four Jewish victims of the kosher supermarket shootings all wound up in Israel for a ceremony and burial?"

"As I understand the situation," I said, "only one of the four had any direct connection to Israel. I think he had two chidden living there."

"The other three are either from North Africa or born in France and had no family in Israel. I don't want to be overly cynical," he said, "But it feels as if the Orthodox forces there have co-opted the situation and are representing the attacks in France as being about Israel and anti-Semitism. That is not to say that there isn't a reemergence of anti-Semitism in Western Europe, including France, though mainly from nationalistic forces, and so what Netanyahu and HaMevasar are up to is shameful."

June 6, 2014--Progressive Dinner With Vladimir Putin

High school is breaking out among the G-7.

They are meeting in Europe right now without including G-8--Russia. Because of their annexation of Crimea they, actually, Vladimir Putin, are in the doghouse.

No better evidence of how ridiculous things can get have been all the maneuvers to keep Putin and Barack Obama from running into each other. This is because Putin in fact has been in Brussels but meeting less officially with European counterparts and he, as well as Obama, were in Paris yesterday and will be in Normandy today, the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings.

But the funkiest machinations were those involving dinner and souper (supper) on Thursday (in a movement I will unpack that distinction) in Paris, hosted by French president Francois Holland.

"Dinner," at an undisclosed Parisian restaurant, will include Obama but not Putin while souper, which will follow dinner, will include Putin but not Obama.

So for Monsieur Hollande and other members of the G-7 or G-8 it will be like a progressive dinner (where courses are served at different locations) with the dinner part, I suppose, consisting of small plates while souper will be more robust.

Or the other way around.

I am not privy to the menus but they could be something like the following--

Always the good host, Hollande, wanting Obama to feel at home after being largely ignored at the G-7 talks, at dinner will order up a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a a couple of Big Baby double-cheesebergers.

"What, no Moules Marinieres?" Obama will ask. "Back home I eat Bug Babies all the time."

Dinner conversation with him will center around how, after tapping her phone, he can get Angela Merkel to return his calls.

At the Putin souper cabbage borscht will be served after which there will be skewers of lamb shashlyk.

"What, no Blanquette de Veau?" Putin, pouting, will ask. "In Moscow all I eat is shashlyk."

Souper conversation with him will likely include putting the final touches on France's sale of 1.2 billion-euros' worth of helicopter carriers to Russia in, sort-of, violation of the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia because of its intervention in Ukraine.

But as they say in Paris, C'est la vie.

October 9, 2013--Virgins in Paradise

This must be the week for passing along quotes from my reading. 

Monday, from Woodrow Wilson, I shared A. Scott Berg's description of the leaders of the Four Powers, victors in the First World War, literally redrawing the map of the world while on their hands and knees on the floor of the president's office in Paris.

Today I offer one from Jess Walter's powerful 2006 novel, The Zero, set in the days right after the destruction of the World Trade Center at what became Ground Zero. Largely through the eyes of a policeman who was there that day, Walter takes readers on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of that devastating terrorist attack.

His hero cop, Brian Remy moves through the dreamscape narrative in a state of heightened awareness and simultaneous dislocation, encountering "The Boss" (a slightly fictionalized version of Mayor Giuliani), first responders, government agents who inhabit an Kafkaesque world of mystery and half-truths, and U.S. and foreign nationals living double and and at times metaphoric lives.

One of the most vivid characters is peripheral to the main events--Walter calls him "the old Middle Eastern man"--but is an important truth-teller. At one point, he says to Remy--

"The way people here mock a religion that promises virgins for martyrs in the world after this one. Your own culture would seem to indicate that there is nothing more profound than sex, nothing more humbling or graceful or suggestive of the mystery of creation. And yet the idea of virgins in paradise somehow seems to draw your greatest scorn. Do you honestly imagine yours is a sexless heaven? What kind of paradise is it that has harps and angels but no orgasms?  

". . . You're always convincing yourselves that the world isn't what it is, that no one's reality matters except your own. That's why you make such poor victims. You truly can't know suffering if you know nothing about rage. And you can't feel genuine rage if you won't acknowledge loss. 

"That's what happens when a nation becomes a public relations firm. You forget the truth. Everything is the Alamo. You claim victory in every loss, life in every death. Declare war when there is no war, and when you are at war, pretend you aren't. The rest of the world wails and vows revenge and buries its dead and you turn on the television. Go to the cinema. 

". . .  Entertainment is the singular thing you produce now. And it is just another propaganda, the most insidious, greatest propaganda ever devised, and this is your only export now--your coffee and tobacco, your gunpowder and your wheat. And while people elsewhere die questioning the propaganda of tyrants and royals, you crave yours. You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith. In this faith you are grave and backward fundamentalists, not so different from the grave and backward fundamentalists you presume to battle. If there are barbarians knocking on the gates with stories of beautiful virgins in the afterlife, then aren't you barbarians too, wrapping the world in cables full of happy-ever-after stories of fleshy blondes and animated fish and talking cars?"