We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I’ve just read this Opinion Journal review of a new Mel Gibson movie and it sounds like a “must see”.
I do find myself of two minds on the tenor of the article. It says some things which I fervently agree with:
“Black Hawk Down” is a true story. But it differs from “We Were Soldiers” in that nearly everyone admits the shootout in Somalia was the bad consequence of aimless foreign policy–many just don’t want to admit it was Bill Clinton who didn’t have a clear sense of what he was doing and thus his policy hung those men out to dry.
There is no reason why one cannot simultaneously respect the valour and ability of the men who fought in Somalia against incredible odds while simultaneously disagreeing they should have been sent there in the first place.
Where I part ways from the reviewer is on Vietnam. Where I see no difference betwixt the two – honourable men doing the best they can at the behest of dishonourable and incompetent politicians – the reviewer apparently believes Vietnam served some sort of purpose. I lived through the time. I saw no point to it then and 30 years on I still don’t.
This is a dichotomy never to be bridged in this life. But perhaps we can all make peace amongst ourselves by settling on something we can agree on. Those who fought in Vietnam were decent, brave and honourable men who deserved more respect than they received.
I was on the phone this afternoon with an old Manhattan customer of mine. As long time readers of Samizdata know, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working in Midtown and lived in the Lower East Side while on the job. I even did jobs in the WTC, and in fact just heard today one of the hotel staff I dealt with on a cybercast was last seen making certain people were evacuated.
In any event… my consultancy customer base in New York went down the crapper along with the DotCrash so I’ve not had any jobs there since summer 2000.
The call lasted nearly an hour. We discussed the possibilities, some of which would require I once again spend considerable time on the left shore of the Atlantic. I suggested further negotiations go through my Financial Director – her family is from Cavan so she knows how to bargain. Afterwards I was in quite good form, thinking about getting back to my old haunts, looking up the friends in the trad scene there… and then I read this.
The 10kt weapon which the Drudge Report mentions is in the size range of the missing Russian ones I discussed earlier today. If al Qaeda do have one, and if they do use it… may Almighty God have mercy on their souls.
Because we will not.
The Drudge link looks rather generic, so if the content should change, this is the info to search for: Sun March 03, 2002 09:22:37 ET, October Bulletin Said Terrorists Thought To Have 10 Kiloton Nuclear Weapon To Be Smuggled Into New York City
There is an interesting article “Nuke Nerves” over at Jeff Jarvis’ blog today. Unfortuneately he doesn’t seem to have easily extractable links so you’ll just have to search. What grabbed my attention was this “Sum of All (my) Fears” line from the Washington Post:
…the intelligence community, they said, believes that al Qaeda could already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead…
I mentioned once before, perhaps as far back as October, my worries about several Russian tactical nukes reported missing by a UK newspaper feature article in the early ’90’s. It may have been the Telegraph but it is so long ago I simply do not remember. I do remember discussing it with General Daniel O. Graham of the High Frontier Society at an International Space Development Conference in Washington DC in May 1992. Anyone who has access to the appropriate archives can thus limit their search to the period between September 1989 and May 1992.
The point of the article was that 2-3 advanced low yield Russian tactical nuclear weapons, artillery shells I believe, were unaccounted for. Iran was believed to have acquired them. I have heard not a peep about this story in the last 10 years.
As Sandline International proved in Sierra Leon once when they dramatically improved the security situation before their good work was largely undone by the amoral drones in the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, private military organisations can be a valuable and stabilizing factor in many parts of the world. It is interesting that there are progressive elements in the British government who see this. Not surprisingly many socialist Labour MPs are horrified at the thought of non-state owned military formations even existing, as if somehow only being a state makes the use of force moral. Yet if the 20th century showed anything, it is that nations are far more likely to use force to murder their own citizens than to fight foreign wars. Third world armies in particular are notorious for endemic human rights abuses and rather than protecting the societies that fund them, in fact pose the primary threat to them.
Highly professional modern mercenary outfits could give many small nations the best of both worlds: first world capabilities without third world problems. Also the hiring nation is not forced into being a neo-colonial supplicant that results from accepting British, American or (particularly) French military ‘assistance’. Similarly for countries like Britain or the US to contract out certain military operations is not just a return to practices that were common in the 19th century but give more ‘casualty sensitive’ nations like the US a good way to bring stability without making worthy objectives hostage to opportunist politicians looking to boost their exposure with every returning flag draped coffin. Companies like Sandline and Executive Outcomes are almost certainly the face of low intensity warfare in the future regardless of short term opposition because they make such eminent sense.
In a recent interview General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness – towards the people who has aided and abetted the terrorists who had perpetrated the September 11th attacks on the United States.
He said: “I believe that forgiving them is God’s function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.”
Over on the excellent blog Flit, Bruce has done a good ‘back of the envelop’ bombing survey that highlights some interesting facets of ‘smart’ bombing vs. ‘dumb’ bombing vs. ‘real indiscriminate’ bombing (i.e Al Qaeda). The article pointing to Bruce’s survey “U.S. Aerial bombing: a statistical summary” provides a simple interpretation of what the numbers mean.
This sort of short but thoughtful factually based commentary really does the blogosphere credit and is an excellent example of high quality original content blogging.
It appears that US soldiers being sent to the Philippines to fight against Islamic Abu Sayyaf guerillas are welcome to clean up that nation’s mess and possibly get killed doing so, but only if they are kept away from local ‘sex workers’ (remember when they were called prostitutes?). As the commanding officer of the US troops must look after his men’s morale, he should march up to Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, hand her a packet of condoms and a Koran, followed by the single word: “Choose”.
Like so many nation states, it appears the Philippines thinks it actually owns the bodies of its subject-citizens and who they may freely associate with.
The cast of characters at DOD briefings has been a great relief after years of mealy mouthed morons who went pale at the thought of admitting their job was to defend their country by letting the other side die for their country as quickly as possible. I had a particular chuckle over the following from the 11th December 2001 DOD News Briefing.
Q: Which was what? What was the desired effect?
Q: Can you describe to us anecdotally what the —
Myers: The desired effect was to kill al Qaeda.
Q: What sort of results are you aware of? What did your people on the ground see?
Myers: Dead al Qaeda. (Laughter.)
I wonder if they break into laughter as soon as they leave the press behind in the briefing room? Personally I’d be near pissing myself as soon as the door closed.
There is an interesting piece on the Afgha website about US and British Special Forces moving around Kandahar openly and the curious rather than hostile reaction of the local Pashtun population.
Here are some very interesting articles relating to Somalia and it’s ongoing experiment without any central government. First there is A Dying Dream by Joshua Holmes, followed by What’s Really Going On in Somalia by Jim Davidson
Also of interest is a Somali perspective of the military actions that resulted in 18 US deaths and many more Somali deaths in 1993. Not exactly what we had heard from the western media thought the numbers were about right. Jim Davidson is not some kook so do not be inclined to just reject this out of hand.
I’m nursing an oncoming cold and sitting back with a hot cuppa (coffee not tea) whilst I do a bit of hardcopy reading. I’m rather seriously hooked on aircraft in general and warbirds in particular so my sneezetime reading material is not surprisingly on that subject: FlyPast. It is one of two very fine UK magazines about the world wide warbird scene I read every month.
There is a particular relevance to current events in a series of articles written jointly by the crew of a WWII American B-24 Liberator. The narrative is taken from their collected diaries, scrapbooks and recollections. At one point they say their formation had a very good day and all hit their Magdeberg target with extreme accuracy:
The squadron’s bombs hit right on the MPI (Mean Point of Impact) with 95% within 1,000 feet (300 meters) and 100% within 2,000 feet. The crew could see explosions and flames shooting into the air. Smoke rose to about 8,000 feet and was visible for about 100 miles as the aircraft proceeded towards home.
A very good mission indeed. Now fast forward it to today and imagine the squeals of horror we’d be hearing if 219 bombers hit a target inside an historic city and 5% of their load hit between a thousand and two thousand feet away from the Taliban facility that was being targeted.
I’ve seen some improvement in reporting, perhaps because the news media has been getting thoroughly and justifiably battered during the last few months. They still have some learning to do. Perhaps the biggest story of the war is the wonder of the changes in military capability over the last 60 years. Changes that now allow us to specifically target and kill the SOB’s who done it without leveling an entire city around them. So what if we occasionally miss with one or two bombs? Big deal. “Dog bites man” or “Bomb misses target” is not news.
Now “Dogs don’t bite much anymore” and “Bombs don’t miss much anymore”… that’s news.
Now I know we said this before but this really is the last Samizdata article on the subject for a while… unless of course someone sends us an article which is pure genius and covers new ground. Patrick Phillips gets the last word
I thought I might offer my two-cents worth in the controversy concerning our armed forces in Afghanistan. The original post by Mr. de Havilland concerning the utility of the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy aircraft carriers was true as far as it went. But it also read like someone from the Navy frantically trying to justify the Navy/Marine Corps budget and force-structure. There’s nothing really wrong with that (and the USN/USMC certainly requires no justification to me), but the analysis provided was highly selective.
When it became obvious that Afghanistan needed to be targeted for the Taliban’s role in supporting the terrorists, we had precisely three things in our military arsenal that could be quickly mobilized to “reach out and touch” that distant, land-locked country. They were Special Forces (predominately Army), USAF heavy bombers, and the Navy’s carrier aircraft and cruise missiles.
We promptly used the available resources — and to impressively good effect. After only a few weeks of preparation time, the Special Forces were in-country conducting reconnaissance and contacting the locals, the USN had grabbed control of the air and performed cruise missile strikes, and the heavy bombers began working their own special magic on the local landscape. The results have been uniformly (pun intended) unpleasant for the Taliban.
As the conflict in Afghanistan moves into its (hopefully) last stages, the USMC is serving its role of providing an extremely competent, highly transportable combined-arms force that will provide more direct muscle than Special Forces can provide. So Marines have seized control of an airstrip that was previously raided/scouted by Army Rangers.
What point am I trying to make here?
Teamwork. We needed all of the capabilities discussed here.
At various times, every force I’ve mentioned above have been declared superfluous by various “experts”.
Heavy Bombers? Don’t need them — their job can be done with cruise missiles and by smaller fighter-bomber aircraft.
Special Forces and Rangers? They dangerously strip too much high quality manpower out of the Army’s regular units.
Cruise missiles? Expensive, ineffective, destabilizing in terms of arms control.
Marines and aircraft carriers? Well, that’s already been discussed.
So while I appreciate the point that the Mr. de Havilland was making, I do think it needed to be expanded upon.
Patrick Phillips
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