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H&I* Fires, 17 JAN 2007

January 17, 2007 | | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (3)

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite. [Hey - trackbacks work again!]

You're advertising here, we should get an ad at your place...

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I see many pathways to trouble with the Saudis wanting to send troops to Iraq. This may be a time when Mass might need to take a backseat to politics.
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Iran claims to have shot down a recon drone according to Xinhua.
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Anne Applebaum has a bit in Slate about what to do about Afghani opium. Not sure if I agree. Might be best to buy-and-burn and give incentives to do other crops than to legalize IMO.

The fields themselves are problematic. Can’t remember where, but I do remember reading that aQ/terrorists use the ‘night letter’ method. They kind of push the farmer into doing it----Coalition forces can’t be everywhere at once---- and once the farmer is doing something illegal they feel safer dealing with the terrs than with the Afghani gov’t. It’s not a problem that can be ignored much longer to be sure.

So maybe you do one year of buying the entire output to be put to the torch and then incentive-ize the heck out of growing other crops? Don’t know.

My worry is this: what’s to stop aQ from threatening the farmer to a certain amount of opium just for them? It’s all legalized now so you can’t get into trouble for having it, and photo-recon isn’t going to tell you squat, but the threat of being slaughtered still is. Farmer’s got no real choice. Do it the other way, you might (might I said), have an idea of where aQ’s been/is and who they’re leaning on. Just a (random and proll’y stupid) thought.
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A conversation that showed up in my email box last night:
Attack of the Smart Guys.

Commenter A: (Early 1990s) Use land mines? You've got to be kidding, right? There'll never be another conflict where they could be useful and should be outlawed forthwith. (Flash forward to 2005 and read the link) Sigh. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Wise@55 B: We simply aren't allowed to conduct economy-of-force operations, is all. We all need to have huge armies too, so we can violate Clausewitz's dicta of He Who Would Defend Everything, Defends Nothing.
_________________
ry
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(Pokes hornets nest)
Ehren Watada lost some legal battles and his court martial continues.
--ry
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Christopher Hitchens on how Bush is blowing the war, and Michelle Malkin on how she thinks the war is going...

Hitch:

I got the feeling that I have sometimes had before: the slightly ridiculous but unshakeable sensation that there is some kind of jinx at work. One strives, in other words, to think of a blunder that could have been made and was not.

La Malkin:

I came to Iraq a darkening pessimist about the war, due in large part to my doubts about the compatibility of Islam and Western-style democracy, but also as a result of the steady, sensational diet of "grim milestone" and "daily IED count" media coverage that aids the insurgency.

I left Iraq with unexpected hope and resolve.

Click their names to read their bits. The two views dovetail nicely with mine, after a fashion. Hitchens, who represents the media-driven view of the war, and Malkin, who represents the view of the war I get from my buddies in the box. Both are probably accurate as far as it goes.

Can anyone imagine what *this Congress* would have done after Kasserine, and the misery that was Guadalcanal? Or the retreat from Chosin? -the Armorer

Update: Greyhawk goes into more detail on how the Surge plays out in the press.

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This ought to be interesting: Tuesday marked the first flight of a FedEx plane equipped with Northrop Grumman's Guardian anti-missle system. Although no planes outside of a war zone have ever been shot down by missles, it has been attempted (they missed the plane). Should be interesting to see how the added anti-missle system affects cost, payload and maintenance of the aircraft. Use on commercial passenger fligths is probably 20 years away, so they have plenty of time to work out the bugs. ~AFSis

*A term of art from the artillery. Harassment and Interdiction Fires.

Back in the day, when you could just kill people and break things without a note from a lawyer, they were pre-planned, but to the enemy, random, fires at known gathering points, road junctions, Main Supply Routes, assembly areas, etc - to keep the bad guy nervous that the world around him might start exploding at any minute.

Not really relevant to today's operating environment, right? But, it *is*

The UAVs we fly over Afghanistan and Pakistan looking for targets of opportunity are a form of H&I fires, if you really want to parse it finely. We just have better sensors and fire control now.

I call the post that because it's random things posted by me and people I've given posting privileges to. It's also an open trackback, so if (Don Surber uses it this way a lot) someone has a post they're proud of, but it really isn't either Castle kind of stuff, or topical to a particular post, I've basically given blanket permission to use that post for that purpose. Another term of art that might be appropriate is "Free Fire Zone".

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Michelle Malkin is back from Iraq.... from Media Lies on January 17, 2007 8:54 AM

....and she wrote a fantastic article about conditions there. These are some of her thoughts, but do read the entire article.

Last wee...
Read More

01/17 Morning Report from My Weekly Thoughts on January 17, 2007 12:59 PM

Back to the subject of Iraq, it seems the Saudis are ready to send in troops... Read More

Veterans Day Faces Expulsion By Schools from Theodore's World on January 17, 2007 1:07 PM

For World War II veteran Sam Stia, a legislative proposal that would cease requiring New Jersey schools to teach about Veterans Day and Memorial Day can be summed up in two words. Read More

33 Comments

By Cricket on January 17, 2007 6:54 AM
So Lt. Watada wants to serve in Afghanistan? What is the difference, pray tell? Isn't one battlefield very much like another? Didn't Armorer mention something about Iraq being an extension of Afghanistan? If I am mistaken, please correct me and provide the context.
 
By Oldloadr on January 17, 2007 8:24 AM
Cricket - You know that, and I know that but the "L-T" is following the same rhetoric and mis-guided logic that the Dems in congress have followed, i.e. Afghanistan is part of the GWOT, but Iraq is "W's" personal war for oil, or family vendetta or whatever their imaginary motive of the week is.
 
By AFSister on January 17, 2007 8:35 AM
My guess is that Watada feels the war in AFG was justified, because it had to do with getting rid of Al Qaeda... but the war in Iraq wasn't justified because it had to do with getting rid of Saddam.
 
By Maggie on January 17, 2007 8:36 AM
Watada feels that Afghanistan is a "just" war. He either completely misses how our government functions or, as some have said, this was planned all along. His father was a peace activist who joined the Peace Corps rather than be drafted. "Bob Watada, former executive director of the state Campaign Spending Commission and his son's former Little League baseball coach, chose not to fight in the Vietnam War after his brother died during the Korean War more than four decades ago. Instead, he went to Peru and served in the Peace Corps." There are those who feel the young Watada joining the military was a plot to cause this very story in the media. Seems a long way to go to protest the war, but hey, some people are crazy.
 
By John of Argghhh! on January 17, 2007 9:02 AM
Adding to the confusion about all this is the fact that we have allowed Afghanistan and Iraq to be treated as two separate wars, rather than campaigns in a single, unified war. And that's the fault of the leadership, Presidential, and Congressional.
 
By Oldloadr on January 17, 2007 9:16 AM
Maggie is right about the probabilty that Watada planned the whole thing before he raised his right hand and lied. Considering the family history, I would certainly never expect a true warrior to issue from Bob Watada's loins.
 
By Damian on January 17, 2007 9:36 AM
Ry, I had the same questions as you about the poppy fields (see the comments). Hopefully we're not both dumb, but if we are, it's nice to have company. ;) Legalization also opens up another can of worms for the Afghan gov't: if they legalize it, they'll likely warehouse the raw product, process it, and warehouse the processed product. All of which would have to be secured, otherwise the Taliban simply knocks over the gov't site and takes what they want. That approach even saves the bad guys the trouble of doing all the work themselves and it hurts the Afghan gov't even more than the current situation because if legal product is stolen, the gov't has actually invested in the product and suffers a financial loss. Double whammy. I don't think legalization is a bad solution, but I do think it's a far more complicated one than many proponents would have us believe.
 
By wolfwalker on January 17, 2007 10:44 AM
Regarding the opium issue: I've seen claims in several places that many places actually have a shortage of legitimate opiates such as morphine. Suppose we were to buy up the poppy crop, process it, and sell it on the legitimate market? Now, as to the snippet that really caught my eye: Can anyone imagine what *this Congress* would have done after Kasserine, and the misery that was Guadalcanal? I'm something of an amateur historian on the Second Big One. The news cycle from front line to Washington was days or weeks; the cycle from front line to civilian news agencies was often even longer. There was plenty of opportunity to apply censorship. And numerous first-hand witnesses have agreed that the censorship was necessary. One theme that crops up repeatedly in the memoirs of people who were there is "if the American people had known how incompetently the war was being run, the home front would've collapsed." During Guadalcanal, New Zealand and Australian work unions refused to work in bad weather, or work unpaid overtime. As a result, while American Marines were dying for want of ammo and supplies, huge stacks of those same supplies were lying around in rear-area ports. So nevermind what this Congress would have done back then. What would that Congress have done, if they'd had the same next-day or even same-day news cycle from battlefield that we have today?
 
By KCSteve on January 17, 2007 11:39 AM
The only 'solution' for the poppy problem is some sort of poppy blight. As long as there's money to be made from opium there will be people who want that money and farmers who will grow the poppies (whether they really want to or not). If there are no poppies to grow - or at least no opium resulting from those poppies, then there will be no poppy farming. Totally unrelated note: The United States Knife & Tool Association has gotten up and running, albeit with a name change to the simpler and more focuse KnifeRights.org
 
By KCSteve on January 17, 2007 11:43 AM
I only see one way to solve the poppy problem. As long as there's money to be made from opium there will be people who want that money and farmers who will grow the poppies (whether they really want to or not). Some sort of poppy blight is the only way to stop it. Doesn't have to kill the flowers, just the opium. Not a great solution, but it would work. On a totally unrelated note, the United States Knife & Tool Association has come on line. Name was changed to the friendlier and more focused KnifeRights.org Click on over and check it out.
 
By Justthisguy on January 17, 2007 12:38 PM
Well, as some have written, "Reality is for those who can't handle drugs!" Back in my salad days, I betcha I coulda managed the BZ weirdness, and still prolly shot *most* of my ammo at the enemy! Snork.
 
By Wild Thing on January 17, 2007 12:47 PM
"Adding to the confusion about all this is the fact that we have allowed Afghanistan and Iraq to be treated as two separate wars, rather than campaigns in a single, unified war." I agree 100% with what you said. Our leaders messed up big time by seperating the two.
 
By KCSteve on January 17, 2007 2:18 PM
Let's see if I can get through this time. I only see one solution to the poppy problem and it's not a good one. As long as there are poppies producing opium there will be people who want that opium and farmers who will grow the poppies (whether they really want to or not). Therefore the only solution is to make it so there are no opium poppies. I don't care if the 'poppy blight' kills 'em or just horks up the opium production but from what I can see it'll take either bio-war or lots of daisy cutters to 'solve' the problem and the daisy cutters are even worse than the bio-war. On a totally unrelated note, the United States Knife & Tool Association has come on line. Name was changed to the friendlier and more focused KnifeRights.org Click on over and check it out.
 
By KCSteve on January 17, 2007 4:07 PM
Oh sure - now they all show up!
 
By Maggie on January 17, 2007 5:14 PM
Oldloadr said "Maggie is right..." MMMMM, those are some my favorite words! Thanks, baby!
 
By cliff on January 17, 2007 6:11 PM
c'mon John, I spent a lot of time building the case against your response to the accusation that the Bush administration squashes dissent (including Military) As a man of honor, I know you will take a second look at my work and the evidence, and give us your final verdict. Is the Bush administration guilty of the greatest effort to squish dissent in modern history or not? Unless of course you are OK with censorship inside the civilian government, retired military as well as free speech? I need some direction here.
 
By afsister on January 17, 2007 6:40 PM
Steve, John added comment moderation... it's taking for-evah for comments to show up. *raises hairy eyebrow at The Armorer*
 
By BillT on January 17, 2007 6:43 PM
AFSis - The antimissile system's a derivative of the old Stingray program. Major-league hush-hush until 1993 or so, when the usual leaks from the usual place sparked the usual uproar: "It uses a laser to blind the seeker?" "Yes, sir." "That's against the Geneva Convention. You can't field weapons that cause blindness." "Uhhh, sir? That section in the Protocols refers to weapons designed to blind *people*..." "You're quibbling. Tube it and spend the money on Consideration of Others programmed texts and give them to the troops." And civil airliners may indeed have been downed by MANPADs (okay, okay -- MAN Portable Air Defense) -- over Africa. Even given the lousy aircraft maintenance, spotty ATC radio commo, nonexistent radar coverage and tenth-rate weather forecasting, airliners transiting western African airspace in the '80s were vanishing at about twice the expected loss rate. If Angola ever burns down, I'll bet they'll find a lot of aluminum scrap in the central plateau...
 
By Instapilot on January 17, 2007 6:51 PM
Cliff, Didn't your post sort of refute your own argument, or did I miss something? Instapilot
 
By Oldloadr on January 17, 2007 6:54 PM
Maggie - got to give credit where due. John - is Cliff a veteran/retiree? He seems to think he knows a lot about the inner workings of the puzzle palace through-out the years. Seems to me that it was during the Clinton administration was the only time in my 32 year association with the armed forces that anybody in uniform was publicly punished for dissent/disagreement/disparaging… Aditionally, I remember an AF chief of staff and AF Secretary who resigned rather than punish the wrong person for the Kohbar tower bombing as they were pressured to do by Slick Willy’s SecDef.
 
By Oldloadr on January 17, 2007 7:34 PM
Why is it taking so long for comments to post?
 
By Maggie on January 17, 2007 7:44 PM
Cliff said: "As a man of honor, I know you will take a second look at my work and the evidence, and give us your final verdict" Does he have to speak so condescendingly? *************************** Meanwhile on the poppy thing....I didn't know we were buying it from Turkey and India. I think that's a great solution. Whether we buy it and use it or buy it and burn it, just buy it. Then we can take the time to change things.
 
By John of Argghhh! on January 17, 2007 8:13 PM
Why is it taking so long for comments to post?
 Because the original blog mechanic screwed up the installation, and when they tried to fix it, they *really* broke it. The new blog mechanic is trying to fix it, but it's tedious, and for some reason, he seems to think his real job and life take precedence... a sentiment with which I am sympathetic. We apologize for the inconvenience. In fact, however, I have farking moderation turned off... but the software does not seem to really *care* what I want. Meaning there is some thread somewhere that is not quite knit.
 
By BillT on January 17, 2007 11:48 PM
What to do with opium poppies? Simple. We buy 'em, dry 'em, and bring them to schools in NJ on Veterans' Day. The administrators, properly horrified, will demand we leave -- whereupon we tell them that these are gen-u-wine opium poppies, not DAV paper ones. The administrators, properly mollified, will purchase the whole shebang and retire to the teachers' lounge to smoke them, thereby removing themselves from the scene so we can re-introduce the Three Rs and mebbe raise the graduation rate. We use the proceeds to leverage next year's crop so 1. the farmers can purchase surplus Canadian land mines 2. to protect their fields from vermin and 3. frustrate the narQaeda types; 4. we've taken the crop and put it to good use (hey, it ain't like the NJEA's *not* smoking dope already); 5. and the kids are learning something that will enable them to enter institutions of higher learning with something other than a fifth-grade education under their belts. That's a win-win-win-win-win situation...
 
By SangerM on January 18, 2007 12:33 AM
ok, ok... I can't help myself. And I HATE it... ******************************************** Cliff, for a direction, try the 2nd star to the left, and straight on 'till forever... As for your question, the answer is .... No. Moreover, your evidence is irrelevant and the debate is meaningless. But if you want to discuss Presidents, lets try the one I voted for twice who perjured himself, and then lied outright to me (and everyone else) about his adultery (it'd be hard to find pronography that abrasive anywhere else in the Congressional Record!)... Or perhaps we could discuss one or two other Democratic Presidents, like FDR, whose administration was _ruthless_ in regards to censorship (but _that_ was a _real_ war, huh?) and who a lot of people believe (with some good reason) had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. Or maybe we could talk about LBJ, whom it has been suggested (often by people who use the same sort of twisted specious reasoning you use) had some foreknowledge of JFK's demise. And we really don't need to discuss how LBJ ran things, do we? Wanna talk about censorship and repression of free speech with the FBI violating just about civil liberty with the Administration knowledge and approval? Oh, yeah, and here I almost forgot: we could discuss that little Vietnam thing a Democrat got us into, and the next one made worse.. . Or maybe if that's too coarse, we could talk about Massa Jimmy, the worst President EVER, by any standard used to measure presidential performance. The only good thing about Jimmy Carter was that Reagan followed him. Well, ok, so he helps build houses for poor people when he isn’t engaged in international diplomacy WITHOUT U.S. approval, or comparing Israel to South Africa. Speaking of which, considering the state he's from, one would expect he would know better than to cast stones, dontcha' think? Actually, I expect you would want to engage on all of those, but to be honest, I was just kidding. Really. It's not worth it to me, and I really don't have time to explain why, though if you get back to me around the end of March, I'm sure I'll have time then. And truth be told, after reading your reductionist tribal-mind piece, all I could think of in response was this rather inarticulate tribal response: Blah, blah, blah, blah....Bull$hit. (that's poor-Jewish-kid-from-Philly-tribe talk). Fact is, Cliff, you may be a genuinely nice, intelligent guy seeking sincere and honest debate, but you come off as an overeducated, condescending windbag who is far more impressed with his command of the language and logic than he should be. Unless you actually intended to be insulting, in which case I do apologize for thinking you were a clueless meretricious twit. V/R SangerM BTW, just out of curiosity, did you wear white shirts and black nametags and ride a bicycle everywhere during your 3 years overseas?
 
By ry on January 18, 2007 3:24 AM
All UncaBill's joshing aside(even if he's only 2/3 kidding) I still have a problem with buying the opium. Like I said, what's to stop Taliban and aQ jackalopes from coming over in the night and saying to the farmer 'Hey, give us 20% or we rape your horses and ride off on your wymens'? Even legalized it still leaves the insurgent integrated to the civilian(the night time visit demanding 20%). I thought the point of COIN was to pare them off from the populace. Tough call. Neither pathway, on its own, seems to do that. Chief, you've actually been over this ground before. Any ideas you care to share with dumb@55 me?
 
By John of Argghhh! on January 18, 2007 6:12 AM
Sanger was doin' fine 'till that last gratuitous swipe at Mormon on mission... Please rephrase your insults in the form of a comment...
 
By BillT on January 18, 2007 7:03 AM
Ry - We read Mao and separated the fish from the water by moving the water into strategic hamlets -- fortified villages surrounded by vallum fossaque with claymores on the vallum and punjis in the fossa. Patrol the daylights out of the surrounding fields out to max mortar range and set up roving ambushes. It worked fine, as long as it was surrounded by arable land...which is the precipitate in the solution as far as Afghanistan is concerned.
 
By Maggie on January 18, 2007 9:45 AM
Chief - I love it! You are good at that whole "killing two birds with one stone" thing aren't you. Ry - We buy it, we don't buy it....are we ever really going to stop it's propagation? Sanger - Is your keyboard bruised now? Great comment! FbL and I discussed Cliff last night and the way he comes off. I think Sanger is too generous with his benefit of the doubt, but it's a reflection of his own good nature (I don't have one of those). I'm just surprised he's from Utah. I didn't realize there were any of his type west of Harvard Square.
 
By SangerM on January 18, 2007 2:17 PM
OK... Being called on the white shirt comment, I feel the need to do something I rarely ever do: Explain and apologize to anyone who may have been offended--even Cliff. I was indeed being snide, but my barb went astray. Simple truth, you can believe or not. In retrospect, I shouldn't have asked the way I did, but at the time, I was really just thinking in terms of my very long familiarity and comfort with Mormons and I did not consider that it might be seen otherwise. I had read Cliff's bio, and I assumed (yes, that too) Cliff was glazing over his "language" studies, using that as a euphemism for missionary work, and that was my way of getting at that... I won't bore with details--or protesteth overmuch--but I will say I am quite familiar with Mormons, the tenets of their faith, and their day-to-day practices. While I have no desire to become Mormon (or any other religion for that matter), I have a great deal of respect for sincere practicing Mormons and for the way they live their lives and care for one another. I really meant no offense. Well, at least not in that direction.... Sincerely, SangerM
 
By Big Boot of Dissent Crushing on January 18, 2007 3:10 PM
See what a difference the emoticon makes? 8^)
 
By SangerM on January 18, 2007 5:21 PM
Yeah... ]:-p
 
By ry on January 19, 2007 2:03 AM
"Ry - We buy it, we don't buy it....are we ever really going to stop it's propagation?" Well, round up(or its carcinogenic big brother Agent Orange) comes to mind. Defoiliants---we've done wonders in the 30 years since the Fall of Saigon in the realm of defoiliants. The real point is to move the people to something better than just poppies. Poppies only buy the food. To make the country a more on-the-level affair that isn't so easy for the geurillas to 'move amoung the fish'. Legalizing it might just crash the market. So they move to something else that's illegal(and more profitable) and keep the cycle going. Yeah, we can alter the propogation. Check the Cannuckers burning down the pot forests in Afghanistan. It works. The reason it is being done is that it is really profitable in a really poor country. Make doing something else profitable, and safer, you might see a change.
 
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