It’s been a relatively quiet week…but only seemingly. There’s a lot bubbling beneath the surface.
Terrorism
Yemen looks to be an emerging hot spot. More and more of the country is completely lawless, and the government in Sanaa grows weaker and weaker as oil revenues dry up. As a result, no more detainees will be repatriated to Yemen in the foreseeable future.
The more unsettling news is that most of the evidence against a detainee at Gitmo, who is now going to get a trial in the U.S., is being thrown out.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100108/ap_on_go_ot/us_guantanamo_detainee
This is a very dangerous precedent. It probably means we won’t get convictions against most of the detainees being moved to Illinois. Keep in mind, al Qaeda’s own version of SERE school teaches them to lie about their treatment, or to exaggerate any grievance to play to Muslim sympathies.
So, what if the Marines who capture a bad guy don’t read him his rights? Properly tag and bag the evidence? Get information without the presence of a lawyer? Use harsh language in front of the detainee?
Score one for the terrorists. However, keep in mind that releasing a bunch of hardened al Qaeda terrorists on the basis of legal technicalities would be a nightmare for the Obama administration. Doing a catch and release with KSM could easily cost him the 2012 election, along with basically any congressman (or woman) not from Massachusetts or the San Francisco Bay area who supported the closure of Gitmo and the use of civilian trials. Even when using a poll deliberately design to skew the results, it still indicates a clear majority of Americans want these guys locked away at Gitmo indefinitely (kind of like how child molesters can be held past the end of their sentences if they are still deemed a threat).
On a lightly lighter note, many of the inmates don’t want to leave Gitmo for Illinois:
“But the final irony is that many of the detainees may not even want to be transferred to Thomson and could conceivably even raise their own legal roadblocks to allow them to stay at Gitmo.
Falkoff notes that many of his clients, while they clearly want to go home, are at least being held under Geneva Convention conditions in Guantánamo. At Thomson, he notes, the plans call for them to be thrown into the equivalent of a "supermax" security prison under near-lockdown conditions.”
Afghanistan
Shortly after last week’s intel update, Maj Gen Flynn, NATO’s top intelligence official, described our intelligence efforts in Afghanistan as “only marginally relevant”. The core of this assessment is that we are focusing on the enemy and completely ignoring the human terrain. This is a classic blunder in COIN operations, and usually is fatal if not corrected. The populace is the lynchpin of any successful COIN strategy. Ignore it, and you lose.
Another black eye for the intel community. This comment is the most damning thing I have seen coming from a high level member of the military about his own people.
Rumor has it that Gen McChrystal never understood his predecessor’s move to secure Helmand, and never really supported it. The term “sideshow” has been bandied about.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124986154654218153.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
One way or another, this is going to wrap up eventually.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-01-11-Helmand-Taliban_N.htm
One unnamed source described what is coming in the city of Marjah as “The Fallujah of Afghanistan”.
Ummm…is that a good thing? My fearless prediction is that most of the Taliban will manage to slip away ahead of time, and turn the entire episode into a PR victory.
Israel
This Saturday the Administration upped the ante with Israel in it disagreement with them over the issue of settlements, Iran, and the root causes of turmoil in the middle east:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0110/Israel-shrugs-off-Mitchell-s-loan-threat
Essentially, George Mitchell threatened to cut of Israel’s loan guarantees unless it stops building in the West Bank. I goes along with the Administration’s perspective that the root cause of most middle eastern tensions are due to the Palestinian issue. They believe if it is resolved, then things will fall into place afterwards as part of a domino effect. Israel holds most of the trump cards in the negotiations, and the Palestinians don’t have much to offer, so the Administration believes that if something is going to happen, Israel will have to initiate it.
From the Israeli perspective, the Palestinean demands are a no-go, particularly the right of return (which most Israelis believe would be national suicide at best, and a Holocaustian massacre at worst.) The Palestineans haven’t budged on this issue in 20 years, so it’s unlikely to happen now, especially with the US apparently leaning on Israel diplomatically.
What Israel chooses to do with this is a matter of conjecture, but from their perspective it seems like bullying. It seems logical that they are preparing themselves to live in a world without any sort of U.S. support, if the worst should come.
On a weirder note, a former Israeli general says that Iran won’t be a nuclear threat for another 7 years or so.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582696,00.html
This is probably a best case scenario that BG Uzi Eilam is looking at. It also probably assumes that Iran will take the longer, harder road to produce modern, more efficient types of warheads. Neither is necessarily true. If Iran is willing to cut all sort of corners (such as warhead type, and unconventional delivery methods), the traditional Israeli estimate of “possible in a year” remains true.
Iran
An Iranian nuclear physicist was killed by a vehicle borne bomb yesterday.
What makes this interesting is both that he’s a nuclear physicist, but also that he has been a vocal critic of the Iranian regime. According to some reports, he was an academic primarily, and has had no involvement in the Iranian nuclear program. Even more interesting is that there have been a number of airplane crashes in the past that have killed senior Iranian military personnel, scientists, and even foreign advisors. The rumor has long been that Israel has had a hand in these (one of which set back their nuclear program by over a year), but the truth is elusive (and probably highly classified).
I put forth the suggestion that the Iranian government did this to Dr. Mohammadi because they were worried (or believed) he was going to defect and reveal information extremely damaging to their nuclear program. If you remember from a few weeks ago I wrote about a scientist and a General who both apparently defected. By killing him this way it lets them try to shift attention to the US and Israel, and to continue to use these two nations to act as a target for domestic disquiet. No one can argue that both history, and motive suggest either of these two nations could be responsible. It gets rid of a highly visible supporter of Moussavi at an institution which has been fomenting revolution against the regime.
Iran will soon be trying both the Americans and French woman they have accused of spying within the next few weeks. We will just have to see in what manner they try to turn this to their advantage, or what they want as a bargaining chip.
Admiral Mullen basically ruled out the US using military fore against the Iranian nuclear program. Not that Israel held out much hope anyway that we would help them with the problem.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N0575255.htm
China is digging in it’s heels, and sanctions in the first two months of 2010 are very unlikely.
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100105/tap-oukwd-uk-iran-nuclear-china-03b3b4c.html
General Petraeus says we have a plan for Iran’s nukes. Of course we do. We have a plan for everything. More likely than not, we have a CONPLAN stashed on a shelf somewhere that details what we plan on doing in case Mexico invades Singapore. Based on what we see today, it is a plan that is essentially a containment policy much like the one we have with North Korea. And we all can see that North Korea doesn’t have nuclear weapons now, as well as their movement towards liberal democracy and a greater respect for human rights. I don’t think “containment” is going to hold much water with the Israelis.
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