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BEATING KEVIN LIKE A DRUM

Kevin Drum criticizes a leftist hack and the wingnut portion of his readership go ape***t.

INTELWIRE BLOCKBUSTER -CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRETLY HELD AND DEPORTED BIN LADEN RELATIVE FOR TERRORISM INSTEAD OF PROSECUTING HIM

Documents received by INTELWIRE under a FOIA request reveal that the Clinton Administration chose to deport rather than prosecute Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a member of al Qaida and brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden. Once deported, Jordan dropped the charges against Khalifa who now lives freely in Saudi Arabia.

9/11 Commissioner Jaime Gorelick was involved in this decision process.

NEW TO THE BLOGROLL

The ” Republican Underground” of the Foreign Service, the folks at Diplomad. A taste of Diplomadic analysis from a post entitled ” Bush in his Second Term: How Long Until He Is Nixoned?” :

“The Diplomads always have believed that President Bush would be re-elected (despite the wishes of most of our State colleagues). To cite Senator Trent Lott’s words, Americans are not going to elect a “French-speaking socialist from Boston.” Given the pronounced liberal bias in most polling, we have never bought polls showing Kerry in front. Bush probably has had a lead all along, somewhere in the 3-5% range, and now likely has bumped that up to a 6-8% lead among actual voters. Come election day, we expect him to win with an edge in the 4-6% range, and to take a sizable electoral college majority (300+ EVs).Charles Krauthammer recently wrote, “What if Bush is re-elected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They’ll need therapy.”



The Good Doctor K is almost certainly correct — he is rarely wrong — that the rage of the left will be something to see when George Bush wins re-election. We will see a horrific rage as the realization sinks in among the lefties that Soros wasted his millions; that Rather committed public suicide for nothing; that having Michael Moore on your side is even worse than having the French; and that the NY Times, CBS, CNN, NPR, et al, no longer control the setting of the national agenda. We will see fingers-pointed and hear blame-assigned, e.g., “If Kerry hadn’t been a bad candidate”; “If only he had responded earlier to the Swift Boat liars”; “If only he had run a better campaign”; “If only he had gotten out the message more clearly”; “If only we had gotten better forgeries”; “If only there hadn’t been those damn pajama bloggers”; “If only we hadn’t had those hurricanes”; and “If” and “If” and so on and on.



But the rage will not remain inwardly directed. The American left repeatedly has demonstrated an inability to reflect deeply on the “root causes” of its own failings. It simply cannot accept that Americans are conservative; they do not want their country to become like Europe. The left only reluctantly and sporadically realizes that it can only win a national election if it hides its true agenda (we bow down before Clinton the Master.) Kerry has tried half-heartedly to do just that: the mock heroics at the DNC; the “strong America” talk. One sees the outsourced Kerry (he grew up overseas) portraying himself as a life-long hunter and gun-owner, when, in fact, he has consistently supported extreme gun control measures; we see him trying to trade on his status as “war hero,” when in fact he has made a whole career out of being anti-military.



It doesn’t take much to see that once it gets up from the floor, finishes dusting itself off after November 2, the left will dedicate its energies to destroying Bush and his second term. They will try to “Nixon” him just as they tried to “Nixon” Reagan and, of course, managed to “Nixon” Nixon. And as, to be fair, the Republicans foolishly tried to “Nixon” Clinton over a stupid extra-marital affair.



If Bush wins by a margin considerably more narrow than we have stated above, the “Nixoning” will begin almost immediately,e.g., calls for recounts, recourse to courts. If he wins by the above margin or greater, the “Nixoning” will begin later. Either way it will begin. It will involve a relentless effort by the Democratic Party and its allies in the press, the law professions, the unions, and hordes of NGOs putting out a steady drumbeat of dire messages on the environment, civil and human rights, and wealth distribution. Any sleaziness, reverse, or error, no matter how minor, any misstatement of policy, or violation of some obscure statute, will bring banner headlines, and calls for resignations, investigations, and impeachment.



Presidential second terms are traditionally marked by a loss of momentum and onset of decay. The “second string” often gets key appointments. The President’s political leverage steadily declines as the second term wears on. The GOP will enter a period of disorganization as it seeks its next batch of leaders. All that will work against Bush as the left tries to “Nixon” him. In his favor, and the biggest defense he will have against being “Nixoned” is the fact, quite simply, that he is not Nixon; Bush is an honest man, apparently without the psychological quirks and deceitfulness that so bedeviled the otherwise brilliant Nixon. It is highly unlikely that Bush would get involved in something as sordid as the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He will also have working for him that the liberal MSM no longer wields the power and credibility of years of old. He will have allies in the internet and on talk radio which will “Fisk” the MSM attacks and launch counterattacks. All that said, it will be a prolonged battle with the left seeking, ideally, to drive Bush from power or so cripple him that by 2008 Americans are eager for a change.



The “Nixoning” of Nixon was a disaster for America and for freedom around the world. It cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, encouraged the Soviets to pick up the tempo of their imperialist adventures, and led to the election of the worst American President of the 20th century, Jimmy Carter. Under Carter, of course, the retreat of American power around the world produced untold suffering as dictatorial regimes became emboldened. Above all, the destitution of Nixon convinced leftist and other anti-American thugs around the world that America could be defeated at home.



The stakes over the next four years are no less. “

GEORGE W.BUSH -MULTILATERALIST

I find it rather odd that the fact that the Bush administration has managed to line up not only the UN and the IAEA but every major power except China to exert pressure on Teheran to open its nuclear bomb program ( for that is what it is) and this fairly counterintuitive event passes without comment from anyone.

It’s all fine and dandy to cheer the well-deserved disgrace of CBS and Dan ” What’s the frequency Kenneth?” Rather but I think Iran’s collision course with the world over making weapons grade fissile material is at least slightly more important.

After all we ( or the Israelis) may soon be launching something closer to Operation Desert Fox than the Osirak raid.

LINK: Frontpagemag Symposium on Iran’s Atomic activities.

GREATER THAN THE SUM OF THE PARTS–THINKING ABOUT STRATEGIC PRINCIPLES FOR A SYSTEMICALLY CONNECTED WORLD: SYSTEM PERTURBATIONS AND PNM THEORY PART II.

” The vertical shock generates an outflow of horizontal waves while cascading effects can cross sectoral boundaries, actually growing with time”

— Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett

Now that we have some understanding of what System Perturbation is, how do we as a society and a Core deal with the possibility – in the case of catastrophic terrorism, the probability – of wrenching changes of this magnitude ? What are the possible ” Rules” or principles that govern System Perturbations ?

With a concept like System Perturbations it’s helpful to try and get your mind in the same groove as that of other systemic thinkers like physicists and economists. We can’t do the same level of predictive quantification with PNM theory as in those fields because we can’t correctly anticipate the parameters or the intensity of the effects of a System Perturbation until an event like 9-11 actually happens. Afterwards the damage is quite measurable. We can however try to think in terms of constructing a model that has some analogous validity with the far more complex real world.

Here are some major principles or the ” Rule Set” of System Perturbation as I see it at the present time:

THE RULE OF ASYMMETRY: We have been hearing a lot in the last decade regarding Asymmetric Warfare both in terms of state vs. state strategy ( China vs. the United States is the favored example both here and in China) and states vs. non-state actors like terrorists and guerillas. Asymmetry as a general principle in warfare exists whenever two opponents are relatively unequal and I highly, highly recommend brushing up on Asymmetry’s ancient master strategist, Sun-Tzu and the more modern literature on the subject is quite large.

Asymmetry in terms of System Perturbation has to do not merely with size or resources but the degree of connectivity that each opponent possesses. The greater the connectivity, the more damaging a System Perturbation attack is likely to be and the less likely that opponent will care to risk making such a strike. Being in the Core is usually great but ” Blowback ” has it’s costs and this acts as a form of deterrence reminiscent of MAD to inhibit connected states from making such strikes. Teheran’s ayatollahs, because Iran’s economy is more connected and dependent upon globalized trade, are less reckless in their scale of Terror than were Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. The potential consequences for Iran are extremely high were they to replicate a 9/11 type action so they stick to car bombs, assassinations and supporting low-rent unconventional warfare jihadism.

A disconnected, non-integrating Gap opponent like al Qaida or more fearsomely, Kim Jong-Il, has greater incentives to launch a System Perturbation because their organization or state will weather the unpredictable ” cascading ” effects more easily than a Core state. When you live in a cave or an underground bunker and your enemies are more numerous, richer, better organized and better armed, a System Perturbation or two will help level the playing field.

THE RULE OF THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT: To continue the above point, setting off several System Perturbations at once or in short succession is potentially far more effective at rendering an opponent prostrate than trying only one. Recall 9/11. Now Imagine the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania had instead hit the Capitol building and killed a significant portion of the national legislature. The degree of chaos that would have ensued would have been several orders of magnitude greater than it was. Now imagine al Qaida had coupled their suicide hijackings with a massive cyberattack on internet communications and DoD computers.

Multiple System Perturbations will interact to reinforce each other’s most destructive, centrifugal effects in terms of deconstructing or ” de-integrating” the system, setting off yet other perturbations. Authority to respond to the crisis would shift to the local level away from the paralyzed national government and you would have local officials of limited experience and perspective energizing the governmental machinery but setting it to work in a host of different directions, inevitably aggravating problems or diverting resources whose use would be critical elsewhere.

THE RULE OF CHOKE POINTS: Most systems, whether we are discussing computer networks, power grids or governmental decision making have built-in ” choke points” that act to self-regulate or rationalize the efficiency of the system as a whole. In terms of air travel, we have for example, airports like O’Hare in Chicago that serve as a major ” hub” with destinations radiating out like spokes on a wheel. The discussion of intelligence reform in the last few months showcased a different kind of choke point, ” the stovepipe” which centralizes and narrows many strands from different directions into one.

A System Perturbations attack that hits a choke point not only ensures systemic paralysis but makes certain that the effects of the attack are maximized to reach all the origin points that feed into the targeted choke point. This is a devastating attack but difficult to pull off. Not only does it require specialized systems knowledge but a fair amount of skill and luck. The Allies attempted to disable key, ” limiting factor”, German war industries like synthetic fuels and rubber production during WWII. But the subsequent Strategic Bombing Survey and Military Intelligence interviews with captured Nazis like Albert Speer revealed that German production actually increased each month up to the defeat of the Third Reich even as Allied bomber payloads grew heavier.

THE RULE OF REDUNDANCY: This rule is really quite simple. Systems that have built in layers of Redundancy are decentralized enough to shrug off Systems Perturbation attacks by bypassing localized damage. The internet you are reading this blog post on was made possible originally by DoD scientists seeking to prevent a Soviet nuclear first strike from destroying our defense computer communications. Redundancy needs to be built into all our financial and communication networks on a global scale so there is no ” central ” target presented to would be attackers.

THE RULE OF DIMINISHING RETURNS: In terms of both offense and defense when dealing with systems level operations the initial investment yields the greatest return. September 11 cost al Qaida roughly $ 500,000 to pull off yet caused enormous damage to the world economy. Attempting to defend every vulnerable point is particularly wasteful and self-defeating. The entire system has to be retooled to resist System Perturbations, not merely guarded.

These rules represent a modest beginning in terms of looking at the strategic implications of System Perturbations but the greater the degree to which globalization advances the more validity such principles are apt to have in warfare.