Battle of the Bilge

“The Vulcan Neck Pinch is not half as powerful as the Vulcan Groin Kick, but it’s more politically correct” – Star Trek

Summary

Following the release of the Department of Defense’s report on the Ft. Hood tragedy, there has been ample criticism in the press regarding how DoD handled the situation and the resulting conclusions of the report. Below you will find an email alert that was sent out by Act! for America, an organization started by a Lebanese immigrant that fled her homeland during that nation’s long civil war and is dedicated to rooting out anti-Israeli and anti-American media bias. Both the introduction and the article that it references are opinion pieces and both make valid points about the report and the colossal disaster of management that led to the rampage.

The Email

Ft. Hood Jihadist Massacre Report – “Gutless and Shameful”
How bad is the cancer of political correctness in the Defense Department?

So bad that the 86 page report on the Ft. Hood jihadist massacre mentions “Islam” or any of its derivatives only once—in a footnote.

So bad that CNN commentator Jack Cafferty called it a “joke.”

Unfortunately, the only ones laughing are the Islamists.

They must be looking at our military and political leadership and thanking Allah for their good fortune. It’s easy to envision discussions among Islamists where they tell each other “surely Allah is with us; the infidel leaders are so blind and stupid they won’t even acknowledge who is fighting them!”

Ralph Peters’ column below is RIGHT ON POINT!

We believe American outrage at this suicidal level of political correctness is only going to grow. Let us resolve together to make 2010 the year that “main street America” shouted back at Washington that we’ve had enough!!

Hood Massacre Report Gutless and Shameful

By RALPH PETERS

January 16, 2010

There are two basic problems with the grotesque non-report on the Islamist- terror massacre at Fort Hood (released by the Defense Department yesterday):

* It’s not about what happened at Fort Hood.

* It avoids entirely the issue of why it happened.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It’s so inept, it doesn’t even rise to cover-up level.

“Protecting the Force: Lessons From Fort Hood” never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat “the alleged perpetrator,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they’re still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).

The report is so politically correct that its authors don’t even realize the extent of their political correctness — they’re body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian.

Reading the report, you get the feeling that, jeepers, things actually went pretty darned well down at Fort Hood. Commanders, first responders and everybody but the latest “American Idol” contestants come in for high praise.

The teensy bit of specific criticism is reserved for the “military medical officer supervisors” in Maj. Hasan’s chain of command at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. As if the problem started and ended there.

Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn’t stop Hasan’s career in its tracks.

The answer is straightforward: Hasan’s superiors feared — correctly — that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.

Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today’s armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.

This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain’t many colonels willing to hammer the Army’s sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.

Of course, there’s no mention of political correctness by the panel. Instead, the report settles for blinding flashes of the obvious, such as “We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people.” Gee, really? Well, that explains everything. Money well spent!

Or “Department of Defense force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats.” Of course not: You can’t stop an internal threat you refuse to recognize.

The panel’s recommendations? Wow. “Develop a risk-assessment tool for commanders.” Now that’s going to stop Islamist terrorists in their tracks.

The Fort Hood massacre didn’t reflect an intelligence failure. The intelligence was there, in gigabytes. This was a leadership failure and an ethical failure, at every level. Nobody wanted to know what Hasan was up to. But you won’t learn that from this play-pretend report.

The sole interesting finding flashes by quickly: Behind some timid wording on pages 13 and 14, a daring soul managed to insert the observation that we aren’t currently able to keep violence-oriented religious extremists from becoming chaplains. (Of course, they’re probably referring to those darned Baptists . . .)

To be fair, there’s a separate, classified report on Maj. Hasan himself. But it’s too sensitive for the American people to see. Does it even hint he was a self-appointed Islamist terrorist committing jihad? I’ll bet it focuses on his “personal problems.”

In the end, the report contents itself with pretending that the accountability problem was isolated within the military medical community at Walter Reed. It wasn’t, and it isn’t. Murderous political correctness is pervasive in our military. The medical staff at Walter Reed is just where the results began to manifest themselves in Hasan’s case.

Once again, the higher-ups blame the worker bees who were victims of the policy the higher-ups inflicted on them. This report’s spinelessness is itself an indictment of our military’s failed moral and ethical leadership.

We agonize over civilian casualties in a war zone but rush to whitewash the slaughter of our own troops on our own soil. Conduct unbecoming.

Origins

The article from Ralph Peters appeared January 16th, 2010 in the New York Post and can be found here. The DoD report on the massacre, entitled ‘Protecting the Force: Lessons from Ft. Hood’, which is a very large .pdf file and will be tough to download unless you use broadband service, is here.

Evaluation

While MOAA as an organization has not taken a stance on the DoD report, Battle of the Bilge found much to agree with in the New York Post article. Although the article under represents the recommendations of the panel, the general theme that political correctness and the failure of so many people that could have stopped this from ever happening is undeniable. The statement that there were gigabytes of intelligence data that were missed or ignored is spot on. Nidal Hasan was a radical Islamic extremist and his actions were motivated by his religious beliefs, but our nation and our military have been ingrained with the concept of tolerance that sometimes makes us blind to obvious warning signs.

It is true that the word Islam is only mentioned once and in a footnote, and it is also true that ‘Muslim’ does not appear anywhere in the report. But then again neither do ‘Christian’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘Hindu’ or ‘Atheist’. It is standard run of the mill PC from DoD reports and in most cases, it is prudent to exclude specific groups. But we are not at war with nations that are composed primarily of those religions. Like it or not, we are at war with Islam, or rather Islam is at war with us. It is not the entire population of Muslims, some are very much on our side in this civilization clash. But the extremists are the ones that cause the damage, and a religion, ethnic group or organization that can not control its extremist elements must be held accountable for their actions. Where is the public outrage on the Muslim street to the actions of Nidal Hasan and the failed perpetrator of the Christmas day airline plot? There is none, and the silence speaks much louder than words.

The US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs had much of the same reaction to the report as Ralph Peters and I do:

“I am encouraged that the Department recognizes the need to update its policies to protect servicemembers and welcome the Department’s intention to hold accountable those who failed to take necessary protective action.

“I am disappointed, however, that the report does not adequately recognize the specific threat posed by violent Islamist extremism to our military, a threat directly addressed by Senator Collins and me in a January 13 letter to Secretary Gates. I believe firmly that if DoD educates its personnel about violent Islamist extremism – and how terrorists distort the Islamic faith to promote violence – we will increase trust between the thousands of Muslim-Americans serving honorably in the military and their colleagues.

“This omission underscores the need for our Committee’s independent investigation. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense has been less than forthcoming in providing us access to the documents and witnesses we require. Now that the DoD review is public, the Department must cooperate fully with our Committee so that we can fulfill our constitutional duty to determine our vulnerabilities and correct them.”

I don’t believe that the report was a ‘whitewash’ but I do believe that it was watered down to the point of being ineffective. The Executive Summary list of recommendations (found on page 7), however, are important going forward:



Yet, at the same time, three findings in the report come close to violating the ‘no religious test for employees of the government’ clause in the Constitution:

Finding 2.3: DoD standards for denying requests for recognition as an ecclesiastical endorser of chaplains may be inadequate…. This limited authority to deny requests for designation as ecclesiastical endorsers could allow undue improper influence by individuals with a propensity toward violence…..

Finding 2.7: DoD policy regarding religious accommodation lacks the clarity necessary to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might indicate a potential for self-radicalization….

Finding 4.9: The lack of published guidance for religious support in mass casualty incidents hampers integration of religious support to installation emergency management plans.

While it seems on the surface perfectly practical given the state of the world and the reality of Islamic terrorism, ignoring our Constitution can’t be the reaction to a tragedy like this. Because the next group they put limitations on may be one more broadly followed by Americans. First they came for…

Additional Sources

New York Post Op-Ed
Act! for America
Religious Clause Blog
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Reaction

Discussion

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“From a pound of talk, an ounce of understanding” - Yemeni Proverb

Security Failure and Luck

Following the Christmas day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to take down Delta Air flight 253 on approach to Detroit, the Obama administration has been meeting with top security and intelligence members to figure out what went wrong in the process. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian citizen who received bomb making material and training in Yemen, was unsuccessful in what would have been a disastrous act of terror when the powder/liquid mixture he was carrying in his underpants failed to ignite. A Christmas miracle, to be sure, but a complete breakdown in screening procedures and common sense. The flight originated in Amsterdam and Abdulmutallab carried no luggage and bought a one way ticket in cash. President Obama said that the U.S. “Failed to connect the dots” and that “We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals, not because the system worked and that is not acceptable.” The incident, in addition to increasing airline precautions and re-sparking the debate over full body scans and profiling, has also caused the world to take a close look at Yemen, where Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula reportedly provided the training for the mission and are planning more attacks. Nearly a decade after the attack on the USS Cole which took the lives of 17 U.S. sailors, a look at the current situation in Yemen shows a deeply troubled nation and one that has the potential to become the next major focus in the war on terror.

Modern Yemen’s Violent History

Although it is one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen is in an extremely important geographical location when it comes to shipping lanes and oil exports.



The nation we know of as Yemen has only existed in its current state since 1990, when North Yemen, which had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire until 1918 and became a republic in 1962, formally merged with South Yemen, which had until 1967 been occupied by Great Britain. North Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh became president of the nation and remains in power today, following two democratic elections. The unification process has not been a peaceful one, however. The nation fought its first civil war in 1994 between the northern and southern factions, with the south receiving significant support from Saudi Arabia. The south seceded from the country and formed the Democratic Republic of Yemen, but failed to gain international recognition and the fighting dissipated.

Yemen’s Battle with Militants

Internal relations were shaky until 2004 when the second civil war broke out. This time, Yemeni government forces were fighting a minority Shiite rebel movement called the Houthis, named after their leader Hussein Al Houthi, in northern Yemen. The war started when the government attempted to arrest Al Houthi, a leader of the Shiite sect (actually he is a member of an offshoot of the Shiite sect called Zaidi). This battle continues to rage today, with the Houthis dug in to mountain positions and occasionally striking out against the government. On top of the rebel fighting, a southern secessionist movement has been a constant problem for the government, although the issue has died down some recently due to the northern war. During this time, Al-Qaeda has supported the Houthis and sent hundreds, if not thousands, of their militants into the region. With the nation on the verge of collapse (unemployment is over 40% and popular support for the central government is eroding), the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh is finding it increasingly difficult to fight an insurgency and maintain order. This has led to several nations getting involved through various channels, including military action. This threatens to turn an internal war into a regional one.

Proxy War?

Saudi Arabia has been the nation most directly affected by the second Yemeni civil war. In August of 2009, Muhammad bin Nayef, a member of the Saudi royal family and ironically the country’s top counter-terrorism official, was injured in a suicide bombing attributed to a member of the Houthi movement. On November 3rd, Houthi rebels briefly captured two villages in Saudi territory. The Saudi response has been strong, with numerous air strikes and ground operations taking aim at the Houthis in support of the central government and out of fear of further incursions or attacks. The Saudi attacks have been starkly criticized by Iran, whose leaders have spoken out feverishly against the Saudi involvement. Iran has been accused of providing tactical and military assistance to the Houthis, raising the tensions across the region. With a growing U.S. involvement in the war, these tensions will only continue to rise. Iran’s objection to Saudi actions are based on their disgust of Muslims spilling the blood of other Muslims, in an obvious attempt to make Saudi Arabia’s influence in the Arab world reduced as Iran continues in its efforts to become the regional superpower.

The majority Sunni Saudi Arabia is in a difficult position. They face internal strife from elements of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups that are opposed to the royal family’s grip on power, and have seen in the past decade a rise in Iranian influence in the region, from Shiite majority Iraq and Iran’s sponsorship of Hizbollah in Syria and Lebanon. A Shiite state to its south would not bode well for the Kingdom.

American Military Actions

On December 17th and again on the 24th, cruise missiles struck Al-Qaeda bases in rebel provinces and caused considerable loss of life to the militants (as well as civilians, according to Yemeni sources). Admiral Mike Mullen praised the strikes but did not say that the U.S. had any active role in the operation. After the Christmas day attempted terrorist attack, President Obama stated that “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”, and that Al Qaeda in Yemen “will be held to account”. This will mean more support for the Yemeni government in the form of more than doubling the amount of aid sent to the nation to use to fight terror (a figure that could run as high as $150 million), continued drone air attacks, deeper intelligence cooperation and special forces operations. The New York Times ran a story on December 27th detailing America’s expansion of the war on terror to Yemen:

A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.

President Obama laid out his intentions on December 28th:

“We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland,” Mr Obama said.

As the center of operations for Al-Qaeda shifts to Yemen, we can expect more U.S. involvement in overt and covert operations to help the government there rid the scourge of terrorists in the strategic nation.

The Outlook

Yemen has all of the ingredients and hallmarks of a growing terrorist safe haven. An active rebellion against a weak central authority, a poor population base to draw in new recruits and access to some of the most critical shipping lanes in the world. The potential for another terrorist attack originating from Yemen is extremely high, and as the 2000 attack on the USS Cole and the Christmas airline plot have demonstrated, Americans are the prime target. While the Houthi movement and Al-Qaeda may have differing immediate objectives, their cooperation represents a clear and present danger to American interests. With our overstretched military engaged in multiple locations around the world fighting Muslim terrorists, the importance of regional engagement by Yemen’s Arab neighbors has never been more pressing. If the government falls, the safe haven will expand and become much like Afghanistan in the late ’90′s. That can not be allowed to happen.

Additional Resources

Qatar’s Peninsula Online
Qatar’s History (wikipedia)
Reuters Analysis
Washington Post’s Report of President Obama’s Statement
Center for American Progress

Discussion

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“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F Kennedy

Escalation on a Holiday

As the American press continues its coverage of the attempted terrorist attack on the Detroit bound airliner on Christmas day, which is something we should certainly be concerned about given the connections to Yemen and the increasing terrorist activity springing from that war, Iran has reached a historical point and is suffering tremendous upheaval.

Two blogs are covering the ongoing violence extremely well. Juan Cole is providing excellent insight into the happenings and ramifications of the uprisings in his blog, which can be found here. Additionally, you can find more details about the clashes from Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Daily Dish.

Sunday marked the escalation of the popular unrest that has been on the upswing since the disputed elections in the summer. Juan Cole points out that the significance of the newest round of violence is in the extent of the demonstrations outside of Tehran:

Another remarkable dimension of Sunday’s events was the sheer number of cities where significant rallies and clashes occurred. Some of those allegedly killed are said to have fallen in Tabriz, a northwestern metropolis near Turkey. Even conservative cities such as Isfahan and Mashhad joined in. Shiraz, Ardabil, the list goes on. The attempt of some analysts to paint the disturbances as a shi-shi North Tehran thing has clearly foundered.

The most ominous sign of all for the regime is the reports of security men refusing orders to fire into the crowd.

Dissent and Fascism

One of the leaders of the opposition party is Mohammad Khatami, who gave a speech on Saturday condemning the Ayatollahs and President Ahmadinejad. The speech was broken up by the arrival of masked men at the service of the government. If you want to see what true fascism looks like, here is the video:



When Sunday came around, which was a holiday for Muslims called Ashura, the protests exploded, and the government forces used brutal and deadly force to try and shut it down. From the New York Times:

The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime … Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.

One of the more significant victims of the bloodletting was the nephew of the defeated opposition candidate from last summer’s election, Ali Mousavi. Mousavi’s body was removed by the Iranian junta forces to avoid any type of martyrdom/burial demonstrations. With varying casualty counts coming from both sides, it is hard to tell how deep the government crackdown has gone. But one thing is clear; the violence is not stopping and the pace of the uprising is increasing. Riots and attacks on banks and other institutions continued into Monday. Many more deaths are in Iran’s future before this either calms down or a new revolution takes place.

Moving Forward

As horrible as these scenes are, it is impossible to know what is really going on inside Iran. Is the government’s grip on power fading or are we seeing the end of a revolt that started last year? Only time will tell how it will work out, but evidence is pointing towards this episode being the start of an increased effort to change the fundamental governing structure in Iran. Some commentors are calling the events of Ashura the start of an Iranian Intifada (resistance):

This is a battle that Khamenei will find extremely difficult to win. In fact, if developments continue in their current form, they can result in significant changes to the structure of his regime, or more drastically, lead to its total demise.

His decision to allow the Basij to mount an attack on mourners at Ayatollah Montazeri’s funeral was one factor leading to the spread of opposition in rural areas, faster and more efficiently than any campaign the reformist camp could have orchestrated. Yes, members of the opposition tried to take advantage of the mayhem, but also many genuine mourners had come to pay homage to a Grand Ayatollah. To Ayatollah Khamenei’s forces, they were all the same. To allow attacks against the residents of a holy city where the seeds of the 1979 revolution were planted was not just dead wrong from a religious perspective, it was politically counterproductive as well.

The part in bold and italics (emphasis mine) may be a bit too optimistic. Unfortunately, the power is still not really on the peoples’ side.

Discussion

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“بدبختها ها سرخود یاد ميگيرند، خوش بختها سر دیگران میبینند”
“Unfortunates learn from their own mistakes, and the lucky ones learn from others’ mistakes.” – Afghan Proverb

As referenced in last week’s article, the Afghanistan war is at an extremely critical stage, especially on the political front. This article intends to lay the framework of this debate by providing essential history, political analysis and observations on the current state of the war and its regional and global implications. It is not meant to imply a formal MOAA recommendation to the administration on the way forward, only to provide background on the road that lies behind and in front of us. While this will not be an article for fans of brevity, it will strive to be as comprehensive as possible.
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“The wisest have the most authority” – Plato

A Myth, But a Fun One

Sometimes we stumble across old stories about the military that are virtually impossible to corroborate, but make for amusing reads. This story, about a lieutenant commander, J.P. Fyffe, details his exploits and attempt to make a statement about a bad policy that was in place at the time. In August of 1870, as the story goes, LCDR Fyffe was given command of a frigate stationed outside of San Francisco. The policy of the Navy during this era was that the cost of any move one had to make to a new assignment must be handled by the service member and then the costs would be reimbursed after they arrived. After LCDR Fyffe, who lived in Connecticut, attempted to get money for a train ride across the country and was denied, he decided to make the journey entirely on foot and report back to his ‘superiors’ his progress on a daily basis.
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