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Adios sir!
News that 44's Pentagon Purge starts at the top is out and the semi avuncular Senator SGT Def Sec Hagel has been cut...
He raised the ire of the White House in August as the administration was ramping up its strategy to fight the Islamic State, directly contradicting the president, who months before had likened the Sunni militant group to a junior varsity basketball squad. Mr. Hagel, facing reporters in his now-familiar role next to General Dempsey, called the Islamic State an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” adding, “This is beyond anything that we’ve seen.” White House officials later said they viewed those comments as unhelpful, although the administration still appears to be struggling to define just how large is the threat posed by the Islamic State.
Dang it!
No mention of climate change chiz LOL.
Anywrought,
Aside from being the first former enlisted combat soldier to run the Pentagon, it’s hard to find any achievement that will highlight Hagel in the history books. He didn’t come into office with a clear agenda. He was widely perceived as having been outplayed by a vast military bureaucracy that he never sought to tame. The brash, engaged, occasionally self-centered ex-lawmaker seemed to retreat inward and practically disappear.
Hagel was never a major player in debates among top national security officials, nor did he have the president’s ear as he prepared to handle the scaling down of wars in the Middle East and grapple with the mandatory budget cuts allowed by Congress and the president.
But the world had other ideas: the president extended the American combat commitment in Afghanistan through 2015, and the rise of ISIS made American plans for a drawdown in the region look like foolish, misguided hopefulness.
Pic - "Hope Michèle Flournoy gets the gig!"
Nishan E Hader!
Everyone's heard the tragic tales - all the babies in Pakistan were in one room and some accursed drone went in and killed them all...
See,
Pakistan has absorbed more drone strikes—some four hundred—than any other country, and has been a test bed for the Administration’s hypotheses about the future of American airpower. Between mid-2008 and mid-2013, C.I.A.-operated drones waged what amounted to an undeclared, remotely controlled air war over North and South Waziristan, a sparse borderland populated almost entirely by ethnic Pashtuns. As the campaign evolved, it developed a dual purpose: to weaken Al Qaeda, and to suppress Taliban fighters who sought to cross into Afghanistan to attack American troops after 44 ordered a “surge” of forces there, in December, 2009. (Drone strikes continue in Pakistan; seventeen have been reported so far this year.)
The drone war in Pakistan took place during an increasingly toxic, mutually resentful period in the long, unhappy chronicle of relations between the United States and Pakistan. To many Pakistanis, including Army officers and intelligence officials in the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or I.S.I., drone strikes have symbolized American arrogance. Within the C.I.A. and the White House, a belief took hold that Pakistani generals and intelligence chiefs were unreliable partners in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Administration officials concluded that since Pakistan wouldn’t help adequately to protect U.S. soldiers and American cities, they would send drones to do the job.
Russian jets probing NATO airspace and supersized war drills are spilling Kremlin military secrets and scaring European nations into stiffening their armed forces.
The alliance said by late October it intercepted more than 100 Russian planes this year, more than three times the number in 2013. A report by the European Leadership Network, a London security research group, termed the incidents "a highly disturbing picture of violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles" and "narrowly avoided mid-air collisions."
Monitoring drills and Russian aircraft flying along NATO or Finnish and Swedish airspace is yielding intelligence on command and control, communications and tactics - plus - non-NATO members Finland and Sweden upgraded their alliance ties in September.
After suffering initial setbacks in the 2008 Georgia War, Russia has continued investing in its armed forces. The Kremlin increased military spending by 50 percent since 2005 while NATO has cut spending by 20 percent
NATO, at its Sept. 4-5 Wales summit, shored up its eastern defenses against Russia as the U.S., which makes up two-thirds of alliance military spending, urged European allies to pay more. The alliance agreed to rotate more troops through eastern Europe and to set up a 5,000-soldier rapid-reaction force.
The Baltic states are bolstering their armed forces with Estonia vowing more troops on its border with Russia after a security officer was snatched and taken to Moscow.
Alliance states including Denmark, Poland and Germany also plan to increase defense spending, though in the case of Germany only from 2016. Germany spends about 1.3 percent of gross domestic product on the military.
Denmark is poised to spend more than $4 billion in its biggest air defense upgrade on either Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)'s F-35, Boeing Co. (BA)'s F-18 Super Hornet or Typhoon fighters, built by the Eurofighter consortium of BAE Systems Plc (BA/), Airbus Group NV (AIR) and Italy's Finmeccanica SpA. (FNC)
Poland, which shares borders with both Russia and Ukraine, will choose suppliers for helicopters and an air-defense system within a year as it begins a $27 billion program to overhaul the military and replace Soviet-era military equipment. It's also bringing forward purchases of attack helicopters, drones and missiles for Lockheed F-16 jets.
Pic - "The Airborne Assault Forces, which comprises about thirty-five thousand troops and whose commander answers directly to Putin, is Russia's elite crisis-reaction force. A Special Operations Command, also a reserve of Putin, was created in 2013 to manage special operators outside Russian borders."
Palestine!
The recent attacks in Jerusalem are something a bit diff from the olde Little Satan is ruining the world by building apartments and bookstores on West Banker turf meme...
This is something new and dangerous: Allah — or at least some Islamist interpretation of Him — is driving events.
After weeks of enflaming Islamist passions, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now trying to revert to his old “moderate” pose (he condemned the attack). It’ll be tough to pull off.
Maniacs wielding butcher knives and a pistol slew four rabbis (three US citizens plus a UK one) and a policeman during morning prayers at their neighborhood synagogue in the undisputedly Jewish part of Jerusalem
As he landed Tuesday in London, Secretary of State John Kerry said the murders were the “pure result of incitement.”
For once, he hit it right on the head, admonishing Palestinian leaders to “begin to take serious steps to restrain any kind of incitement that comes from their language.”
Too bad it takes this degree of viciousness for anyone outside Israel to finally awaken to the dangers of the inflammatory language that Abbas and his top lieutenants have favored lately.
Fatah, Abbas’ party, has for decades been considered the secular, and therefore moderate, faction of Palestinian politics. But lately Fatah’s support among Palestinians, never too high to begin with, has sunk to new lows.
Worse: ISIS meanwhile sucked the air out of the Palestinians’ old argument that their dispute with Israel tops all others in the Mideast.
Desperate to find a cause to revive his political fortunes and turn the world’s attention back, Abbas seized on the Holy Mosques of Jeruslaem.
Was there a crisis for him to confront?
After Israel captured the entire city in 1967, it vowed to allow equal access to all religions at their respective holy places.
As part of arrangements made back then, the area at the top of the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Holy Sanctuary (Haram al Sharif), is administered by the Waqf, a religious authority appointed by the king of Jordan. Jews are allowed to visit, but not pray there.
But now, several far-right Israeli politicians are pushing to change these arrangements, allowing prayers.
After all, they argue, the Mount where the Temple stood has been the holiest site for Jews since centuries before Islam was even born.
All too aware of the explosive nature of any change to the status quo at the holy sites, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and much of the Israeli leadership told their right flank (and everyone else, including the Jordanians who manage the site): No dice. Won’t happen.
Yet the legislative attempts handed Abbas the pretext for the comeback issue he so craved. He started calling on Palestinians to defend the Holy Mosques by “any means,” and assure that Jews don’t desecrate them with their mere presence.
Some heeded the call by running cars over Jews waiting at Jerusalem train stations and bus stops. Others used guns and knives. At the end of October, a Palestinian man shot Yehuda Glick, an advocate for Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount, at point blank.
The gunman, Moataz Hejazi, was shot dead at the scene.
And Abbas, clad in ostentatious righteousness, sent a letter of “encouragement and support” to Hejazi’s family. After all, he was defending the Holy Mosques.
Misunderstanding the new dangers of a full-blown religious war, Washington and others issued well-worn statements of condemnations to “both sides.”
The New York Times led its news article on the Glick shooting by describing the victim as “an Israeli-American agitator” (and thus, hint hint, a legitimate target.)
Abbas, meanwhile, took his “defense” of Muslim holy sites to the world stage. 3
The Palestinian ambassador at the United Nations, Riad Mansour, convened the Security Council several times, calling on the world to end supposed Jewish “assaults” on Muslim holy sites (and, since a big lie works best, on Christian sites as well.)
True: Some far-right flame-throwers contributed, torching a West Bank mosque in the middle of the night. They were immediately condemned by all of Israeli society, from Netanyahu on down.
Abbas’ incitement, on the other hand, came at an especially sensitive time, with ISIS YouTube videos of triumphant throat-slashers exciting imaginations across the region.
The Jerusalem murderers could’ve easily exacted much greater casualties Tuesday had they used (readily available) machine guns rather knives and a handgun. But they chose butcher knives because ISIS has made chic again the weapons of the earliest cruelties in wars among monotheistic religions.
Abbas is no ISIS. He foolishly and irresponsibly tried to ride a religious tiger from which he’s trying to get off now.
But the Islamist fervors that grow in the entire region make this blunder more dangerous than any of his past, infamous missed opportunities. If he can’t get the religious-hysteria genie back in its bottle, watch out.
After all, this is Jerusalem, a city too holy for its own good.
And let’s stop pretending that Palestinians are prepared for a state. It’s not going to happen.
After the murder of five Jews Israelis (three of them American citizens and one of them a Druze) this week, “people fired celebratory gunshots in the air … and praise for God and the attackers poured from mosque loudspeakers soon after the synagogue shooting,” reported The New York Times.
Fatah officials in Lebanon chimed in to let us know that: “Jerusalem needs blood in order to purify itself of Jews.” There were congratulatory message on Fatah’s official Facebook page and festive post-murder spree sweets for the kids.
This celebration of death—whether dead babies or dead rabbis, it matters not—doesn’t only illustrate the colossal moral gulf that exists between these societies, it reminds us that any Palestinian government inclined to entertain a viable agreement with Jews wouldn’t last long, anyway.
Pic - "Palestinian Pogrom"
Pursuing a Persian New Clear deal...
Odds are good the White House will strike a deal with Iran. All indications are that 44 wants a deal—any deal.
As 44 has explained in a number of interviews, he is aiming for a new geopolitical equilibrium balancing traditional American allies, like Little Satan and Whahabbi Arabia, against their longstanding adversary in Tehran.
From his perspective, we need to build up the Iranians’ confidence. Sure, it would be better if they didn’t have the bomb, but maybe having it will make them less paranoid. If the regime is no longer scared of being toppled, from within or without, it can become normal and real moderates might then come to power in Tehran. In short, 44 sees himself sowing the seeds of a Persian perestroika, and if the path to Middle East peace has to start with a nuclear-weapons-capable state sponsor of terror, so be it.
So much of this administration’s Iran policy has been conducted in secret it’s hard to know what they’re thinking. 44 writes private letters to Ali Khamenei because Iran’s supreme leader makes the final call. Perhaps the American president has come to imagine that he, too, is a supreme leader, who can circumvent the representatives of the American people.
Fortunately, Congress understands the stakes involved. The new Republican majority in the Senate wants oversight of any agreement with Iran, and it may be joined by Democrats like Robert Menendez in a bipartisan push. To date, the administration keeps telling its critics to wait and see what a final deal looks like—in other words, it’s trying to keep them at bay until it’s too late to do anything about a nuclear agreement.
Yet the White House has already established a clear pattern of caving to Iran, on the nuclear file and elsewhere. There’s no need to wait.
Pic - "Iran’s continued duplicity underlines how little faith we can place in any commitments the regime makes. At this point, we can only hope that Tehran saves us from ourselves by overreaching, as it has so often before."
Great Satan plots her advanced Naval Chicanery Enablers (Material)!
The importance of the Asia-Pacific is a major focus in the Navy’s upcoming strategy. Much of U.S. and global shipping passes through this region—especially oil. And many of America’s trading partners are also located here, and that U.S. treaties with many allies are predicated on a strong Asia-Pacific presence.
U.S. naval presence will be increased in Asia through forward deployment. 60 percent of Naval forces will be rebalanced to the region by 2020 (from a roughly 50/50 split currently). Much of the fleet will be “homeported” in the Pacific, to areas such as Guam and Singapore, where many ships are currently ported on a rotating basis.
With China’s expanding Navy and its technological advancements, some have worried that the U.S. might not be doing enough to keep up. In addition, there are concerns that sequestration could further limit the Navy’s presence. While sequestration could likely mean finances will need to be reallocated, currently the Navy is still on plan for shipbuilding through 2025.
Under the current budget, the objective is to have 308 ships by 2020 and 317 ships by 2025. However, if the Navy is forced to reallocate funds. Navy’s shipbuilding account would be most affected. It is likely that one or two shipbuilders—out of the U.S. Navy’s five remaining—would be shut down. This would also affect mid-grade venders that manufacture valves and circuits necessary for ships and especially important for nuclear ships.
Advances in weapon technology must also be assessed in the Navy’s strategic outlook. Greenert spoke about directed energy and the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS), which will be tested again in just a few days. This could be a major advancement in weapons technology and Navy combat strategy if they are able to increase the amount of energy that LaWS can power.
Money shot:
1) Assess areas in which Navy has opposed access.
2) Determine whether the necessary action is “kinetic” or “non-kinetic.”
3) Consider options for the Navy to achieve access (undersea, sea-surface, air, or perhaps in combination).
Pic - "If China starts off as the stronger antagonist, then, why wouldn’t she take the swiftest and surest route to success?"
