Posse Incitatus

Veterans Day 2011

As always, the Posse offers deep thanks to our military veterans for their service.  Perhaps I was just inattentive, but it seems to me that more businesses are offering discounts and promotions for veterans than ever before.  This is a good thing.

Our nation is not only divided between the producers and consumers (or "makers" and "takers" but also between those who serve and those who do not - and will not.

I never liked all the flowery rhetoric about the World War II generation being the "Greatest Generation."  First off, every generation faces is challenges.  To say that this one or that one had more strikes me as the height of arrogant self-importance. That this label came from the Baby Boomer made it even more obnoxious.

When I think about important generations, I think about the parents of the "Greatest," the people born between 1890 and 1910.  They weathered slumps, two wars and ignited the greatest period of technological advancement in human history.  The leaps forward in medicine, communication, transportation - and even warfare - far exeeded anything before or since.

When war came, they went.  When the economy collapsed, they muddled through.  The World War II generation provided the footsoldiers for victory, but the architects came from this age group.

As everyone should know, today marks the anniversary of the culiminating moment of that earlier generation - the end of the World War I.  Back then they called it the Great War, the World War, the War to End All Wars.  It gets little attention here in the United States, but it lies like a chasm across human history, a break with what went before every bit as significant as the fall of the Roman Empire or the Norman Conquest of England.

That calamity saw the collapse of the old ways - religion, tradition, family - and the rise of new beliefs, like Communism, National Socialism, moral relativism.  We are now, almost a century later, still trying to pick up the pieces of that conflict.  The constant crisis in the Middle East, the uncertain rise of China, Russia's turmoil, Africa's uneasy borders and the strife in the Balkans are all the legacy of that perfect storm and imperfect peace.

Where do veterans come into this?

In 1917, for the first time since the Civil War, the United States implemented conscription.  The fear was that were would be draft riots, as their had been in 1863.  It did not happen.  Instead, millions of young men registered and, when called, reported for duty.  Almost from scratch this country went from a miniscule peacetime army to millions of Doughboys ready to go "Over There" and fight in France.

It took time to call up, train, equip and ship them there.  More than a year after the declaration of war, the US Army was still pulling itself together.  In the meantime, the desperate Germans launched the Kaiserschlacht - one last desperate gamble to win the war before our troops arrived in force.  It failed,

The Allied counterstroke was terrible, and starting in July 1918, it proceeded without stop.  Unlike previous offensives, this was no localized affair, but a series of hammer-blows all across the Western Front.  There was no pause, not respite, and as American divisions became ready they were marched to the front and hurled into the inferno.

The American portion of the offensive has gone down in history as the Meuse-Argonne campaign.

To call it a bloodbath is to cheapen the term.  In the space of six weeks, roughly 120,000 American troops were hit with 25,000 of them killed.  In six weeks.

The American commander, "Black Jack" Pershing, used tactics as subtle as a tire iron to the head, but it worked. By early November, the German army was reeling. The Armistice took effect 93 years ago today, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Since then, World War I has faded from memory.  Its veterans are all dead, and those who remember them are mostly gone.  Yellowed pictures, dusty uniforms, spiked helmets - these are all we recall.  Even the Red Baron has been distorted and commercialized.

The point here is that a generation was called and went.  In 1941, 1950 they also went.  Some disagreed in the 1960s, but enough went to give us a victory - that we pissed away.  After that, it fell to the volunteers, and they have performed admirably.  The prestige of American arms has never been greater -and the reputation of American politicians has never been lower.

Looking at the "Occupy" protesters, one cannot help but contrast their self-indulgent tantrums with the quiet sacrifices of the veterans.  Let there be no mistake, military people are no saints (f they were, the JAGs would be unemployed).  They expect to be paid and complain about everything (a time-honored tradition).

But they do their duty.  They join to be part of something bigger than themselves and they yearn for the opportunity to prove that they are just as tough as those who went before.

The Occupiers want none of that.  They want free wi-fi, guaranteed income and a life of unearned leisure.  A half-hour of PT would leave them begging for death.

This Veterans Day, think about that contrast and what it says about those who choose to serve despite every reason not to.  MSU's basketball game today on the USS Carl Vinson is a great example.  I admire coach Tom Izzo, but his remarks about how sports pale in comparison to the military life are heartful and utterly appropriate.

Enjoy the game, and thank a veteran.

 

Retreat from Iraq

Long-time readers of this blog have no doubt noticed that it has changed over the years.  Initially posting was almost daily and focused on politics, grand strategy and world events.  There was also a good bit of gun-blogging as well.

Over the last few years, that has changed.  Posts happen several times a week instead of daily, they mostly focus on sports, in-state politics and sometimes touch on the national and international scene.

Partly this is a function of our schedule:  T-Mo and I are busier now and simply don’t have the time to do a daily morning update.

At the same time, the world is a more depressing place than it was when we began.  Rather than chronicle the unfolding debacles in economic and foreign policy, we – like a good many Americans – are turning to the things that make us happy.

Since we get paid the same whether we write about something we enjoy or not, we choose to go where the fun is.

That being said, the president’s weekend announcement that the war in Iraq is “over,” cannot pass without comment.

The political calculus here is both obvious and pathetic.  Having failed to negotiate a long-term American strategic presence, the administration is trying to make the best of its failed policies.  Essentially it is “declaring victory and going home.”

That phrase has been thrown around a lot lately, mostly by the left. 

NOTE:  I won’t say “anti-war” because it is now clear that the “peace protesters” don’t give a crap about non-violence.  The war in Libya was unauthorized and bloody and represents an open-ended commitment of the worst kind, yet not a peep was uttered against it.  These people were nothing more than partisans reaching for anything at hand to throw at George W. Bush.  But I digress.

The left focuses on language a lot, and often it’s thumb-sucking think pieces focus not on whether their policies work but whether they’ve named them correctly.  Take the American Jobs Act.  It’s nothing but a sop to unions – Stimulus II:  Electric Boogaloo.  It won’t create any private sector jobs, but no matter.  It’s got a catchy name and that should poll well.

Similarly, the deep-thinkers in the White House believe that simply announcing “WE WIN!” will magically place the laurels of victory around the president’s head – at the same time placating the peace lobby within his political base who – despite the aforementioned cynicism, actually do find all this drone-missile assassination/open-ended undeclared warfare stuff a little unpalatable.

It won’t work.

In the real world, no one cares what you call it – what matters is reality.

Wisconsin could declare that it actually “won” in East Lansing this weekend.  It could announce that the final play was a fluke and therefore it won.  Its press office could refer to the Badgers as undefeated in all news releases.  But it wouldn’t be true.

Similarly, our enemies in the Middle East don’t much care whether we claim we are victorious or not, all they know is that we are leaving and doing it on unfavorable terms.  We have to pull 40,000 troops and their equipment out in a couple of months.  Iraq’s fragile government is under considerable strain already and it is unclear how much protection their military will provide us. 

The knock against the United States has always been that we don’t stick around – particularly in Iraq.  In 1991, we urged the Iraqi people to rise up and that sat and watched Saddam Hussein butcher them.  When we invaded in 2003, our potential allies held back because they expected a repeat of our previous behavior.

We insisted it was different and certainly we’ve shown more stamina, but now the long-expected flight is on.  I am at a loss as to why any Iraqi soldiers would exert themselves to defend our bases or personnel at this point.

At the same time, every surviving radical in Iraq – Sunni or Iranian-backed Shiite – will probably come at us as hard as they can, hoping to cause as much damage as possible.  Their goal is a headline stating that November and December were the two bloodiest months in years.  If they can get anything going at all, they can turn the entire campaign around in the public mind and turn the orderly withdrawal into a disorderly retreat.

Let there be no mistake:  I know our troops are supremely professional and I guarantee every unit commander has set a goal of losing not one G.I. during this final operation.  They are looking to Dunkirk and Gallipoli – the latter was performed flawlessly without losing a single soldier.

But both of those operations were defeats, the last heroic act of an doomed campaign.

No victorious army ever has to withdraw under a strict timeline while harried by the enemy.  If the US decided to remove its bases in Germany, or Japan, we would do so safely and peacefully.  When we closed our bases in the Philippines, we did so without fuss or drama.

That latter example provides a useful contrast.  Facing escalating financial demands for basing rights that no longer mattered, the administration of George H.W. Bush decided to leave.  And that was that.  We left.  No drama, no bombs, just a historical footnote as Clark Field and Subic Bay Naval Base were turned over to the Philippine government.

I doubt the Iraq drawdown will be as smooth.

Why Fast and Furious (Gunwalker) is a different kind of scandal

With the election a little more than a year away, political scientists across the land are busy tabulating their data and feeding it into their proprietary formulae – all with the goal of successfully predicting the outcome.

Pundits are doing the same, and the data points are pretty much the same:  economic growth, unemployment, approval numbers and right direction/wrong way questions.

But there is another variable that has yet to make an appearance:  Scandal.

Scandal – or the hint of one – is a powerful instrument that can derail even the strongest election campaign.  George H.W. Bush was hit with a special prosecutor on baseless charges in October 1992 and it arguably cost him the race.  Similarly, the last-minute revelation that George W. Bush had a drunken driving conviction likely cost him the popular vote (remember the freelance Dem operative wearing that goofy hat?  Wonder where he is now).

Fast and Furious is the most serious scandal in my lifetime – arguably since the 1920s.  Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater – none of these had body counts in the triple digits.  None of these involved the deaths of United States law-enforcement officials.

The mainstream press is trying mightily to downplay it.  It was “a sting operation gone wrong,” is the current story.  As many blogs have pointed out, once one knows the specifics, the real question is how it could have “gone right.”

Other bloggers have done a fantastic job of covering the details, but what they lack is an understanding of the realistic political consequences.  That’s where we come in.

The first thing to understand is that this is not a “normal” scandal.  That is to say, the press will not be hyping it and reporting on it as a lead story.  The narrative of an embattled administration struggling to get it message out simply will not emerge because the mainstream press will not buy into it.  The scandal involves guns, and guns are bad to these people.  Anything done to limit their ownership – even if it involves arming drug gangs and terrorists – is okay by them.  Indeed, the audacity of the plan and its breathtaking scope cause right-thinking people to draw back.  It is too fantastic, too much of a conspiracist pipe dream to be true.  So it must be fake.

That is why there will be no fawning coverage of its victims, no Hollywood dramatization with Sean Penn as a brave truth-teller.

We saw this before with Ruby Ridge and Waco, but this is different.  It is different because – as a bipartisan gathering of Arizona sheriffs pointed out – every time someone is killed with a gun, the Dept. of Justice has to wonder:  “Was that one of ours?”

Thus is it is not enough for the administration to turtle up and ignore Congressional subpoenas; it is not enough for AG Eric Holder to stonewall Congress by claiming their queries will compromise a face-saving but otherwise useless Inspector General investigation.

This is because of the distributed nature of the U.S. justice system and because the guns are so widely distributed.

Each time a Fast and Furious gun is found at a crime scene, the local prosecutors can demand to know who sold it.  If it is used to kill a local cop, they will certainly do so.

In addition, the state attorney general can open his own investigation – or file suit in federal court.  Unlike the Valerie Plame distraction, these cases carry real consequences for the participants.  The participants in ATF, FBI and DEA face felony convictions and they have every incentive to cooperate.

In short, this is a hydra, sprouting heads all over the place.

Then there is the international angle.  A friend of mine was chatting with me about the president’s reelection prospects the other day and I mentioned Fast and Furious in passing – specifically how little press coverage it has gotten. 

“Oh, it’s getting coverage,” she said, “just not in the English language.”  You see, she is fluent in Spanish, and often listens to Spanish-language radio.  It is a huge story in Mexico, and while Mark Steyn may wonder why no one in the New York Times news room cares about 200 dead Mexicans, the Mexicans themselves are quite bothered by it.

They are amazed at how their supposed benefactor is so callous about the wholesale slaughter of fellow Hispanics – and how disrespectfully he has treated the Mexican government.

The lily-white liberal punditocracy knows nothing about this, but it’s out there.  It is all fine and dandy for the White House to strategize about carrying this state or that one, but if Hispanic voters in Nevada, New Mexico and California stay home, Obama will be crushed utterly.  They may not want to vote Republican, but they certainly will not support a man who lied to them about amnesty and then nonchalantly implemented an operation that slaughtered hundreds of people just like them.

Libyan situation unclear; ask again later

I haven’t opined on the latest Libya situation largely because I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add. The whole point of blogging (to me at least) is to say something that hasn’t yet been said. When I notice that everyone’s on the same page, I get bored and go looking for other things to read.

The Libyan situation is particularly murky – no one knows what is really going on. In this sense, it reminds me of the early reporting on the Selfridge Airshow wing-walker accident. Initial press accounts said that the wind was high, that the announcer had warned, the wing-walker Scott Green and that he failed his first two attempts before making a final – and ultimately fatal – third attempt. Subsequently we learned that none of that was actually true: the announcer was reading from a script and the first two attempts are always “failures” because that heightens the suspense.

The point is that press accounts are almost always wrong. Indeed, the closer to the event, the less accurate the story will be. Gaddafi may fight on for years, may go into exile, or may even make a comeback – assuming he lives out the week. What is certain is that the Obama Administration’s decision-making skills are consistently terrible. The president can be relied on to get it wrong, not matter what the circumstance.

AND THAT INCLUDES OPTICS: The fact that the Virginia earthquake made him miss a putt distills things perfectly.

Civilization

The Belmont Club offers its usual insight in regards to the anarchy in London and makes a key point:  what keeps public order is not force, but legitimacy: 

Since no police force has the numbers to be everywhere at once, it maintains order through the force of its name, the power of the uniform. This was once known as ‘prestige’; today it is better known as ‘legitimacy’.  Although as insubstantial as air it is as vital as oxygen. Without it things become very dificult. Once the authorities begin lose their prestige they must rely ever more heavily on force, of which there is never, ever enough.

In one sense legitimacy is the fiction on which society is based. It is to government what confidence is to a bank.  As long as everyone believes that the bank will pay the depositor no one will demand all his money back. As long as most believe that the King’s justice is effectively invincible, no one will challenge it. But when a government behaves in a supine manner for an extended period — or a bank refuses to pay out without a good reason — then doubts begin to grow. Both legitimacy and confidence are more severely tested and once it is known that there isn’t enough money in the bank to pay everyone nor enough cops in the station house to arrest everyone then the fiction is bust.

A deadly cycle begins to set in. Both the government — or the bank — have to make payouts in force or money more frequently than they otherwise would. There is a “run” on this key resource and their are bankrupted. Financially in the bank’s case and politically in the case of government.  When confidence finally dwindles to its last remaining levels the declining institution must either risk everything on the last throw to restore it or face collapse.

This is one of the reasons the Posse has pointed out that looting in response to a natural disaster or civil disorder is the absolute worst thing one can do.  It is also the reason we take a dim view of “survivalists” who think that hoarding bullets and canned food out in the country will make them immune from a society-wide catastrophe.  In fact it will not and the isolation of a farmstead will make it easy pickings when roving bands – who will likely be well-armed as well if law-enforcement has been overwhelmed – decide to take what they have.

The key to preserving order is to support it from outside – to add a shot of adrenaline to the faltering system.  In the bank run example, it is putting in a large deposit to help cover the bank’s needs – and also send a signal of confidence.

In the case of the police, it is to organize one’s neighbors and support the police by bringing them supplies (a bottle of cool water on a hot day goes quite far) – and if necessary additional manpower.  This gives them renewed confidence and also additional resources.  If they know your neighborhood is secure, they can concentrate themselves elsewhere.

It is a simple concept: If one person’s property is in danger, everyone’s is at risk.  This is exactly how the mob thinks – if it can rob one store, it can rob them all, and so it will do as it pleases.

This was seen most clearly during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  While the New Orleans Police Dept. was shooting civilians and looting Wal-Mart, armed citizens came together and looked after one another.  As one resident of the French Quarter put it:  “Some people became animals, we became more civilized.”

The ultimate measure of the society’s strength is the willingness of its members to defend it.  When citizens become passive onlookers to the destruction of their wealth, the society they have known cannot survive.  

Yet Europe and UK takes the exact opposite view – with predictable results.

I am an optimist and I believe that the residual tradition of self-reliance is what will get the United States through the perils to come.  Time and again, Americans have showed amazing resiliency and a remarkable capacity for self-help.  When seconds count, we expect the government to get there late and bring a check book.

Civilization requires someone to defend it.  Europeans have decided to leave that job to the "experts" and let events take their course.  Here in the US - in the jurisdictions that still function - we are letting the people handle it themselves.

World on fire

I picked the wrong week to be away from the computer.

The stock market is dropping like a rock and London is in flames.  The world watches in disbelief as the Leader of the Free World holds dilatory news conferences devoid of anything other than petulant whining. 

I’m generally an optimist, but there’s not a lot of bright spots right now.  Thanks to Michigan’s new governor, Rick Snyder, it looked like our “lost decade” might finally be ending, but the President’s economically self-destructive policies are dragging us back to the hole from whence we came.

The Democrat base is mobilized, but it has nothing to do.  Imagine that their fondest dreams are achieved and that Scott Walker, Rick Snyder and the rest of their current bugbears are driven from office by recalls.  What then?  The public at large has no appetite for massive tax increases nor the means the pay for them.  The S&P downgrade shows that we cannot borrow the money, so there is literally nowhere left for the left to go.

The current talking points about “soaking the rich” are just that – talking points.  Adding surtaxes to corporate jets will merely shatter the aviation industry, adding even more unemployed workers to the dole.

Back in the sunny halcyon days of the late 1990s, I tried to imagine what a world run by liberals would look like – a modern analogue to Atlas Shrugged.  Now I’m living in it.

(I suppose it’s just as well – I didn’t care for Rand’s ultra-verbose writing style and dropped it after a few hundred pages.  You know, Orwell wrote political pieces but he was at least concise.  Maybe people were supposed to read Rand on the train or something.)

Anyhow, I find myself wondering how much food I can grow in my back yard and watching for sales on canned food. 

I know the “experts” in the chattering classes insist that Obama still has a good chance of getting reelected, but at this point the stock market is now lower than it was when he took office.  Ignoring the historically high unemployment, when was the last time the nation rehired someone who destroyed that much wealth?

More to the point, has he at any point showed the ability to learn from his mistakes?  The seismic scandal that is Gunwalker has not yet even begun to register in the mainstream press.  As information continues to flow about just how many guns we sold to drug cartels in Mexico – and how many people were killed with them, I find it impossible to believe that the administration’s standing with the public will increase.

 

How's that war in Libya going?

The ongoing non-war in Libya may yet result in Gaddafi’s ouster, but new developments must be giving the Duck of Death and his adherents reason for hope: 

On Thursday events in Libya took a turn for the worse with the killing of opposition army chief Abdel Fatah Younis. Not only have the Libyan rebels lost one of their most experienced military leaders, but the murky circumstances surrounding his death now threaten to provoke a war within rebel-controlled territories—to start another Libyan war before the current one has ended.

As I’ve noted before, the strategic situation in Libya is not what it seems.  While it is true that Gaddafi and his minions are increasingly hemmed in on every side, this has the virtue of shortening his supply lines and allowing him to maintain a tight grip on his own forces.  The opposition, by contrast, must contend with severe logistical problems as it attempts to deliver, food, ammunition and fuel to their advancing forces.  Even the slightest setback and force a lengthy retreat –with all the disorder and waste that this entails.

One thing I had not considered was dissention in the rebel ranks.  It should not be surprising, however, that the rear areas where the troops are being mustered should become breeding grounds for discontentment – particularly when many of the leaders are defectors from Gaddafi’s regime, and therefore have plenty of folks who’d like to settle some scores.

From a tactical standpoint, the rebels have the worst of all positions – their lengthy supply lines mean they can only bring a fraction of their total strength to bear.  Because of divisions between the various elements, this means that the burden of combat will fall unevenly, as will resources.  The main body of troops therefore has nothing to do but get in fights as they wait their turn.

Anyone who has ever watched what happens when the fleet comes in from a tour or army units get leave near a combat zone should be able to guess what happens next.  In the West, we see bar fights and barracks brawls.  In Libya, without stone-faced MPs and a vigilant Shore Patrol, things could rapidly escalate.  Add the mutual distrust and ambition of the higher commanders, and the Libyan uprising looks more like a series of Roman legionary commanders vying for a chance at the Imperial purple than a popular uprising seeking democracy.

 

When the conventional wisdom is insane

There is a lot of talk about the debt ceiling increase and the nominal “centrists” (or, if you prefer, “moderates,” “pragmatists,” or whatever) are claiming that if the US does not raise the debt limit right away, the economy will collapse and the Democrats will enjoy a beautiful upland of permanent majorities.

The paragon of this school of thought is Megan McCardle, whose blog never ceases to surprise me with its mediocre yet self-important arguments.  Why the Hated Instapundit links to her, I do not know.

McCardle worries that both parties are fundamentally misjudging the debt ceiling “crisis”, but fundamentally blames the Republicans because apparently actually trying to bring the US government’s revenues in balance with its expenditures is destabilizing or something.

I suppose this isn’t entirely her fault.  She gets a lot of her instruction from the conventional school of economics that believes that the sum total of a nation’s consumption plus investment plus government spending equals the gross domestic product (for you econ types, this equation is represented as C+I+G= GDP).  To this one can add the sum of exports minus imports, thus C+I+G + (EX-IM) = GDP.

All nice and neat, except that it doesn’t work that way.

This model assumes that government spending is every bit as efficient as private sector spending.  It isn’t.

Clearly McCardle has never read (or perhaps understood) Seen and Unseen by Frederic Bastiat .  That is, she sees only the reduction in government outlays which must therefore erode the overall well-being of the country.  But this ignores that which is not seen – that the same money might have been better invested without government getting in the way.

Consider a government loan guarantee.  These are usually made based on politics, not economic worth (which is why the guarantee is needed in the first place).  A large percentage of these go south, and when they do, they take money that otherwise would have been attracted to a viable investment and waste it on one that merely looked good to a politician.

This fallacy is the first part of why McCardle’s analysis is fundamentally wrong.

The second part is that she argues that Wall Street (and the bond market) only think in the short term.  That may be so, but we are rapidly moving beyond the short term.  Our national debt is growing so rapidly that the nice clean debt increase that she (and the Democrats) pine for will only make the problem worse.  Far from demonstrating the willingness of the US government to pay its debts, it shows that we will borrow as much as we can, and are incapable of taking any steps to stop.

Now is as good a time as any to apply the brakes to this self-destructive cycle.  The GOP needs to stand fast and force spending cuts because they are the only way out of this mess.

WIN-WIN SCENARIO?  If the ratings agencies do downgrade US debt, that also has its advantages as it illustrates the immediate need for the government to stop borrowing money and live within its means.

Higher interest rates would send a sharp signal that we cannot pretend that we’ll balance the budget in 2024 or whatever arbitrary year the Dem spin doctors have picked that conveniently falls after their careers in politics are over.

Sooner or later, the debt party is going to have to end.  The earlier it does, the less total damage there will be.  I say we get on with it.

The dog days of bummer

The Posse has been distracted for the last few weeks with business trips and chores around the ranch, and the blog has been languishing.  For this we apologize, but long-term readers have no doubt come to expect such lapses over the summer.

While most of Washington obsesses about the latest manufactured drama (the debt limit) the rest of the world continues on its merry way.

The war in Libya is effectively at a standstill.  While the optimists at Strategy Page continue to talk up the many strategic advantages held by NATO and its rebel allies, the fact remains that Gaddafi holds a superior position.  Yes, he is surrounded, isolated and at bay, but the effort required to pry him out of his stronghold is beyond the means of his enemies.  The French – who were one of the big supporters of this operation – are now working on a deal to buy him off.  This is not what one would expect if NATO’s situation were as strong as some believe it to be.

In fact, as this blog noted more than two weeks ago, NATO’s ability to fight is rapidly being eroded.  The military prowess is there, but the political will – and therefore the financial/logistical support – is not.  Just as the UK is watching its helicopter fleet wear out years ahead of schedule over Afghanistan, many NATO allies are seeing their pared-down air forces exhaust themselves at a sortie rate far beyond anything they are used to, or are willing to pay for.

NATO’s trump card is of course the US military, which could oust Gaddafi within a few days.  Yet the president cannot escalate matters without further damaging his own credibility.  Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama does not tend to dig in when matters go against him.  He may become petulant and peevish, but he almost always backs down.  Even his signature accomplishments – the stimulus and Obamacare – owe far more to Nancy Pelosi’s arm twisting than any White House pressure.

So it is that US involvement is downplayed as much as possible so as to provide credence to the bizarre and logic-twisting contention that the War Powers Act doesn’t apply because we aren’t technically doing anything warlike in Libya.

Given that the last thing the president wants is to explain the three-month stalemate, the ongoing soap opera over the debt limit makes perfect sense.

Meanwhile, all Gaddafi has to do is hang on.

 While a flamboyant dresser and ideological lunatic, Gaddafi does possess a high degree of cunning, which is how he has survived so long.  He can read opponents quite well, and the irresolution of the West is helping to sustain his own hopes that he may somehow ride out the storm around him.

Even assuming that Gaddafi can be toppled, what comes next?  Libya is a deeply fragmented country whose component parts – the east, west and south – historically have not gotten along very well.  The Duck of Death may well decide to partake of a negotiated exile and leave the messy cleanup of his reign to someone else.  Is the US prepared to shoulder that burden?  Of course not.

Oh well, at least the economy’s booming and the job market is surging.

 

Italy calls it quits in Libya

It is rare to see a prediction come true so completely so quickly, but the Posse will claim a victory lap on our earlier Libyan strategic analyses.

The current situation is familiar to anyone who studied the North African campaign of World War II:  The rebels are stymied at what is often referred to as “the corner” of Cyrenaica – the point at which the coastal road turns west after Al ‘Uqaylah and Adjabiya (Agbdabia and El Agheila on my battered copy of “Afrika Korps”).

At this point, the supply line from Benghazi begins to fray – it is stretched too tight.  This was where Sir Archibald Wavell’s brilliant 1940 offensive ground to a halt – and the line from which Erwin Rommel drove Wavell’s depleted troops in a rout in 1941.  After heavy fighting, Wavell’s replacement, Claude Auckinleck, once again drove Rommel back to almost the same line in December 1941 – and once again his forces were sent hurtling backwards by Rommel.

Sir Bernard Montgomery was finally able to punch through - to “turn the corner”-  in 1942, but only because of overwhelming strength and the tremendous advantage of having thousands of Allied troops playing in Rommel’s backfield (Operation Torch).

This is the dynamic to which I was referring.  Gaddafi is under siege, and there is considerable pressure for him to give way. 

At Strategy Page, Austin Bay gives a good summary of all the threats facing Gaddafi.

However, Bay omits a key factor in Gaddafy’s favor:  inertia – what Clausewitz called the friction of war.

The NATO air forces are ill-accustomed to wartime operations.  The keen edge they took on during the Cold War has been dulled by 20 years of budget cuts and loss of mission focus.  Some nations have already exhausted their stocks of munitions and must rely on American replacements.

At the same time, Gaddafi knows that world opinion – and in this case American public opinion – is growing restless with the cost and the burden of the operation.  Indeed, Italy is now calling for a halt to combat operations.

Three months ago, when the uprising first began, Gaddafi could likely have been overthrown with a show of force.  At the moment when Libyan fighter aircraft and warships were defecting to Malta and when Army battalions were throwing in with the rebels – that was the moment for US aircraft to swoop low over Tripoli and send an unmistakable message that the regime’s days were numbered.

The opening hours of a rebellion are critical, for it is at that moment when the loyalty of the old regime is at its weakest.  No one knows who will turn next, and the fear is not that the loyalists will win, but that the rebels will punish those that fail to defect fast enough.

That was the moment when Gaddafi was at his weakest.  Typically, Obama gave a speech.

Gaddafi rallied his forces, and now we are three months into a two-week operation.

Once again, we come down to the eternal truth that war is a contest of wills.

Gaddafi (and his family) has far more at stake and far more to lose than NATO.  Bay is correct that he has five fronts to contend with, but he can do so with utter clarity: His very life is at stake.  This allows him to achieve a degree of focus NATO cannot match.

The rate of operations is already wearing out the various continents’ – Norway pulled its meager contribution and others are likely to follow suit as the operational tempo threatens to take years off of the service lives of their aircraft.

With the Euro in crisis and budgets strained to the breaking point, defense ministers across the Continent are faced with choosing between a face-saving deal with Gaddafi or a much-diminished air force for the foreseeable future.  Make no mistake – any plane lost over Libya will not be replaced, and the European air force generals know it.

This is the friction I spoke of earlier, and it is working almost entirely against NATO – and therefore in favor of Gaddafi. 

Gaddafi knows that he does not need to military defeat the United States or even outlast us – simply hanging on until Italy loses heart will be enough.  From the looks of it, he may almost be there.