Austin Bay Blog

Via StrategyPage.

What’s the synergy crisis? It is a soundbite for a complex, long-term problem involving bureaucratic turf battles and lack of focused leadership that costs America lives, time and money. America has trouble synchronizing its “tools of national power” — synergizing its diplomatic, information, military and economic power to achieve a policy goal, like winning a war.

This isn’t a new affliction. Arguably, the “interagency process” that the White House uses to coordinate and synergize the Pentagon, State, Treasury, and every other department and agency hasn’t worked well since the Eisenhower administration. Not only does the government fail to bring “unified” governmental power to bear, but America’s private sector strengths are — at best — applied haphazardly, if at all.

The column covers the State Department’s experimental Economic Empowerment in Strategic Regions (EESR) program.

They are just misunderstood, or victims of imperialism, or antagonized by Bush, the appeaseniks argue. Negotiations, Barack Obama proclaims. Pursue negotiations.

From today’s New York Times, dateline Peshawar:

The bodies of 28 members of a government-sponsored peace committee were found dumped on a road near the tribal area of South Waziristan on Wednesday, Pakistan officials said. The Pakistani Taliban said the men were killed because they supported the government, according to a Taliban statement made to a local journalist.

The peace committee was attacked by forces of Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, near the town of Jandola on Monday, not far from the Afghan border, said the district coordinating officer, Berkatullah Marwat.

The attack on the peace committee sent a particularly chilling message because it was a brutal tactic by Mr. Mehsud’s forces to quash pro-government groups in the region, tribal elders said. The killings appeared to be a direct challenge to the policy of the new Pakistani government to negotiate with militants rather than use military force. Some of the men had been shot; others had their throats slit.

28 people on a peace negotiating mission murdered, their throats slit. Grisly. Brutal. Indicative of the depravity of this enemy. Let’s see, what are the options? Negotiate with the terrorists and insure they are read their Miranda rights when you arrest them? Yes, that’s an option. A realistic option?

I know, I wrote “arrest.” It’s the wrong verb.Terrorists like these “are taken prisoner” as the result of offensive combat action by military units or (in some cases) offensive paramilitary police action directed at their base areas, lines of communication, and safe houses — if the thugs are captured alive.

According to CNN SPecial Investigations?

Check it out.

“Pretty tough and ruthless…Does it fit in with the rhetoric now? Perhaps not.”

“Political tactics of the machine…then calls himself progressive.”

Sheesh. A strong investigative piece? Yes. But late. May 29. Everyone in Chicago, it appears, knew this about Obama, but we had to hear for five months that he was “new,” he was “hope,” Obama was “change” from “the old politics.” This CNN background investigation should have been done in January. But it wasn’t.

A friend of mine in the US Army Reserve is currently deployed at Fort Hunter-Liggett, which is just south of California’s Big Sur area. There is a forest fire in the Los Padres National Forest adjacent to the fort, and the Reservists have become firefighters. Here’s part of a recent email:

I was up on the fire line yesterday…The photo is of a back burn. They had a heli-torch up on the mountain. Pretty cool - will send better pictures after I get home. In essence, the chopper has a big tank of diesel fuel that splashes fire down on the burn area & sets the fire. In short order, the whole hillside lights up. Similar to a napalm run, but more of a drip than a splash. The US forest service doesn’t really try to “fight” a forest fire. It simply tries to manage the fire so that it eats itself out of fuel. My team was backup for the hotshot team. If the wind carries embers & spot lights on the wrong side of the burn line, their responsibility to to create an escape corridor. Anytime the hotshot team moves, my guys go with.

So, what did I do as part of my “ride along?” My team moved from one safety area to another. They were all pumped up - fire crap on & all that. They’d roll into the safety spot in a blast of dust & energy and . . . go sit in the shade. Really cool to see what was going on, but being the last line of defense means a good day equals a really boring day. The mountain roads our firetruck is rolling on are just goat trails with 1 dozer pass…

A photo taken form his cell phone camera:

Looks like terror works.

Morgan Tsvangirai has dropped out of the run-off election — he fears for his life.

AFP from Harare:

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai quit Zimbabwe’s run-off election Sunday, saying violence had made a fair vote impossible, in a move that virtually hands victory to President Robert Mugabe.

“We in the MDC cannot ask them to cast their vote on the 27th when that vote would cost them their lives,” Tsvangirai told reporters. “We will no longer participate in the violent illegitimate sham of an election process.”

The opposition chief said Mugabe had “declared war by saying that the bullet has replaced the ballot”, referring to the president’s earlier threats to fight to keep the opposition out of power.

Earlier from All-Africa.com:

The MDC-T made the decision after saying supporters hoping to attend a rally in the capital Harare on Sunday came under attack.

More…NY Times.

Only five days before Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff election, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the race because armed forces backing President Robert Mugabe have made it clear that anyone who votes for Mr. Tsvangirai faces a real possibility of being killed.

Background here.

See Comment 2 on my post from Friday, June 20.

It’s an attempt to optimize the capabilities of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

Thom Shanker’s article in the NY Times begins a different angle– mission friction among the armed services–and it is that as well:

Ever since the Army lost its warplanes to a newly independent Air Force after World War II, soldiers have depended on the sister service for help from the sky, from bombing and strafing to transport and surveillance.

But the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have frayed the relationship, with Army officers making increasingly vocal complaints that the Air Force is not pulling its weight.

In Afghanistan, Army officers have complained about bombing missions gone awry that have killed innocent civilians. In Iraq, Army officers say the Air Force has often been out of touch, fulfilling only half of their requests for the sophisticated surveillance aircraft that ground commanders say are needed to find roadside bombs and track down insurgents…

Shanker provides details on the Army aviation task force, which includes manned aircraft. For example:

The Army aviation task force became fully operational last July with headquarters at Camp Speicher, in the north-central city of Tikrit, and focuses its efforts on insurgents planting roadside bombs. But it also has located and attacked insurgents in battles with American and Iraqi troops, and has supported missions of the top-secret Special Operations units assigned to capture or kill the most high-value targets in Iraq.

The battalion is called Task Force Odin — the name is that of the chief god of Norse mythology, but it also is an acronym for “observe, detect, identify and neutralize.” The task force of about 300 people and 25 aircraft is a Rube Goldberg collection of surveillance and communications and attack systems, a mash-up of manned and remotely piloted vehicles, commercial aircraft with high-tech infrared sensors strapped to the fuselage, along with attack helicopters and infantry.

Read the entire article.

StrategyPage has this (also published June 22) in its Leadership section– a useful reminder:

Critics should not forget that the U.S. Air Force has been the main reason the U.S. has dominated the skies, worldwide, for the last 65 years. That was no accident, it took a lot of effort and imagination. A certain amount of myopia regarding jet fighters, and how to shoot down everyone elses, was necessary to obtain that air supremacy. Without it, winning on the ground is difficult, if not impossible. Let’s not forget that the zoomies are, above all, winners.

Then see my Creators Syndicate column from a couple of weeks ago (June 10, via StrategyPage).

Key point:

Gates’ decision to appoint Gen. Norton A. Schwartz as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, however, indicates Gates used a nuke to win a battle in the Pentagon’s turf war among the war-fighting services — a complex, often opaque and long-lived problem that makes war-winning more difficult and costly.

And:

The biggest turf war, however, is over Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) like the Predator and an emerging fleet of “strike” UAVs that can handle traditional bomb and close air support (CAS, supporting ground forces) missions. The Air Force wants UAV operators to be pilots. The Army has found young soldiers familiar with video games can fly UAVs.

The UAVs are a sensor and weapons system that conflicts with current organizational structures…

UAVs are forcing organizational adaptation. The technology escapes current turf boundaries. Recall US military aircraft were once part of the Army Signal Corps.

UPDATE: See this, via nationalmuseum.af.mil.

Excerpt:

The Wright 1909 Military Flyer became the first military heavier-than-air flying machine. Upon purchase by the Signal Corps for $30,000 on Aug. 2, 1909, the U.S. Army designated the Wright 1909 Military Flyer as Signal Corps Airplane No. 1, and it remained the only Army airplane for nearly two years.

The display craft at the museum is a reproduction — a superb reproduction.

RealClearPolitics posts this week’s Creators Syndicate column, which addresses the upcoming Zimbabwean election (June 27) and dictator Robert Mugabe’s depredations.

I’ve followed Zimbabwe’s political situation since the 1970s, my interest sparked for many reasons but the Anglican Church being one major reason.

Here are a string of columns (not a complete list):

2002

2005 (I repeat the Milosevic comparison but I think it’s apt)

2007 (with some obscene numbers, like the current column)

Telling graf from the current column:

His greatest obscenity is his war on his own impoverished nation. Mugabe’s tyranny has savaged Zimbabwe, making the country yet another tragic example of a nation brutalized by its own government. Zimbabwe is blessed with rich farmland and ought to be an agricultural breadbasket. It was, until Mugabe’s “land redistribution” and “farm policies” turned it into a starving basket case.

Does “old radical solidarity” afflict South Africa’s Mbeki?

Nobel Prize winner former Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has called for international peacekeepers to ensure the elections are fair and safe. It may not matter. This week, Mugabe said he will ignore the election results. Yet the political heat on Mugabe is increasing — primarily from Europe and the United States. The real disappointment is South Africa President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki was supposed to help “mediate” Zimbabwe’s political crisis, but his mediation has been a biased farce in favor of Mugabe.

Why? “Old radical solidarity” is one possible reason. Mbeki’s memories of anti-colonial struggle produce a soft spot for Mugabe. Pray that it’s blarney, but this kind of embedded, selfish bitterness from the political past does scar the present and damage the future. True or not, Mugabe continues to kill and steal, with obscene impunity.

ArenaUSA will soon post an “Over The Horizon” video on Zimbabwe’s future. We filmed it in Los Angeles a month ago.

I just heard on tv that the House of Represenatives is about to pass the war supplemental bill — and this AP report says the House is on the verge. There will be no date for withdrawal. Where is John Murtha? Where is Harry Reid’s defeat, dude? Ah yes, the voices of the cut and run crowd, disappearing to a frail whisper.

The bill buys the next president “breathing space,” according to the reporter on the screen. What it does is take us a step closer to Strategic Overwatch– but more on that in a moment.

Obama still touts his pull-out — sort of, occasionally, okay, less occasionally. Obama, like his cohort of supporters, is politically committed to defeat. Obama will now rely on rhetoric to assauge the DailyKos-crowd and obscure his shift on Iraq. He will change his position– and Samantha Power prepared the way several months ago in her ill-fated BBC interview this past spring. Obama thinks he can get away with it: he just backed out of public financing.

The NY Times on the deal before the vote. And Fox.

The real rubes in this election won’t be the rural Midwesterners Obama slandered, the ones who cling to their guns and religon. It will be the gray-haired profs with ponytails, clinging to their cannabis and liturgy of defeat.

As for Strategic Overwatch — I see that “condition” emerging in 2009, becoming fully-fledged by 2011. This will amount to a limited US and coalition in victory — but a major victory for Iraqis. Of course Iraqis already consider the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s regime to be a huge victory.

ArenaUSA filmed a segment on Strategic Overwatch four weeks ago in Los Angeles and it is now up on my Arena Channel. There are two sub-scenarios, one dealing with Iran. The effect on the average Iraqi? Increased GDP means an overall increase in wealth, but look for a revival of Iraqi neighborhoods in general and the Baghdad business community in particular. Another plus — a revival of Baghdad’s nightlife. See the video update for an assessment of the effects are on the region — complex, dicey, but for Iraqis and peace in the 21st century, also promising. This update is a bit different than the tv pilot. The tv pilot posited the results of a trigger incident that has not occurred– a Murtha-Reid rapid withdrawal. And thank goodness it has not occurred. The update takes an assessment of conditions in Iraq, March through early May 2008, as its start point. Speculation? Sure. No one can predict the future but people bet on it all the time. But continuing to fund the fight without imposing a withdrawal date is a key assumption in the Consequences update.

NOTE: The full show on the Arena channel requires a minimal registration — name, email, state, country. There is a guest login but it is time limited. I hope the video segment on Zimbabwe will be up this weekend, as well.

UPDATE: Reuters reports the bill passed.

Reuters lede, hope the AP won’t sue me because I quoted Reuters (but provided a link!):

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved enough new money to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for another year, while abandoning attempts to set deadlines opposed by President George W. Bush for withdrawing American combat troops.

By a vote of 268-155, the House approved the funding for the two wars. Most of the $161.8 billion the Pentagon will get, which is slightly less than Bush requested, will be used to fight in Iraq.

Another example of why Bush Derangement Syndrome is psychological transference.

Pajamasmedia has an article of mine covering the cluster munitions treaty.

ArenaUSA also has an addition to the Consequences pilot episode, this one postulating an outcome based on conditions in Iraq March-May 2008 — a bit more aggressive than the original.

UPDATE: Please register at the Arena Channel, if you have not already done so. You may access the Arena Channel by clicking the Arena button on the upper right hand side of the blog.

ArenaUSA will have more programming up shortly, so bookmark the site.