Weapons of War – 5.30.2008

The objective of War, last I checked, is as Clausewitz said the “continuation of politics (Politik) by other means.”  If we accept this, and I certainly do, then we must also accept that in war, one of the ways which the Politik is achieved is by killing your enemy. If that is the case, then why do we abide by this nonsensical ruling, courtesy of the 1899 Hague Convention?

Laws of War : Declaration on the Use of Bullets Which Expand or Flatten Easily in the Human Body; July 29, 1899

The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions.

This came to my attention because of this article, Army, Critics Debate Choice of Bullets. This debate has been around for some time, with many “experts” on either side proclaiming the legitimacy of their opinion or “study”. I don’t know enough about firearms to render an informed decision as to the lethality of the 5.56 M855 round. My own personal opinion is that bigger is better, but only to a point. My dream weapon would be the IMI Tavor, chambered in 6.5 Grendel, but that’s just me.

To get back on topic, this line caught my eye:

Rules of war limit the type of ammunition conventional military units can shoot. The Hague Convention of 1899 bars hollow point bullets that expand in the body and cause injuries that someone is less likely to survive. The United States was not a party to that agreement. Yet, as most countries do, it adheres to the treaty, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Again, why do we adhere to this? The Maryland State Police use .40 caliber Smith & Wesson hollow-point ammunition in their standard sidearm. Why? Because when you shoot someone, you want them to go down, and not get back up, plain and simple. The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps are still using 9 mm ball-point ammunition, which is an inferior round to a .40 caliber hollow-point bullet.

In terms of assault rifle rounds, you want something that will kill your enemy. Compromises have to made between weight of heavier ammunition, and the increasedkickback, but lethality should be the prime motivator in choosing which weapons and ammunition types to equip your military – not adhering to an antiquated treaty that places unrealistic and foolish restrictions on your military. Does anyone ask if the mujahidin’s use of the 7.62 for the AK-47 flouts any treaties or violates a Law of War? Of course not, so why should we not adapt to the conflicts of a new world and be free to select a better, more lethal ammunition?

Mike Grant — Samnite Gladiator

What Does Iran Have to Hide? – 5.29.2008

One of Iran’s main defences of its clandestine enrichment program is that it is meant for peaceful purposes only. However, if that is indeed the case, why are they stonewalling the International Atomic Energy Agency?

From MSNBC:

The unusually strongly worded report issued Monday said Iran may be withholding information needed to establish whether it tried to make nuclear weapons.

His [Ali Larijani]comments drew chants of “God is great” and “Death to America” from the chamber.

But Tehran ended all voluntary cooperation with the IAEA, including allowing snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, in February 2006 after being reported to the U.N. Security Council.

Ever since, Iran has limited its cooperation to only its obligations under the NPT. The treaty does not require Iran to allow short notice intrusive inspections of its facilities.

It seems that deck is stacked against the IAEA, in my opinion. Here is the IAEA Report. I urge you to read the entire report, but felt compelled to include this excerpt:

16. At follow up meetings in Tehran on 28-30 April and 13-14 May 2008, the Agency, presented, for review by Iran, information related to the alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and missile re-entry project (See Annex, Section A). This included information which Iran had declined to review in February 2008 (GOV/2008/4, paras 35, 37-39, and 42.) This information, which was provided by to the Agency by several Member States, appears to have been derived from multiple sources over different periods of time, is detailed in content, and appears to be generally consistent. The Agency received much of this information only in electronic form and was not authorized to provide copies to Iran.

17. One aspect of the alleged studies refers to the conversion of uranium dioxide to UF4 as green salt. A second aspect concerns the development and testing of high voltage detonator firing equipment and exploding bridgewire (EBW) detonators, inter alia, the simultaneous firing of multiple EBW; an underground testing arrangement (GOV/2008/4, para. 39); and the testing of at least one full scale hemispherical, converging, explosively driven shock system that could be applicable to an implosion type nuclear device. A third aspect of the studies concerns development work alleged to have been performed to redesign the inner cone of the Shahab-3 missile re-entry vehicle to accommodate a nuclear warhead.

From the IAEA Report Summary:

27. The alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle project remains a matter of serious concern. Clarification of these is critical to an assessment of the nature or Iran’s past and present nuclear programme. Iran has agreed to address the alleged studies. However, it maintains that all the allegations are baseless and that the data have been fabricated.

My Take:

It is my personal opinion that Iran is developing nuclear weapons; whether the Mullahs will use them is anyones guess. One argument for the Mullahs not using them is that it would not be in their rational self-interest. However, this argument has several flaws. How we, as a Western People, define “rational self-interest” may be completely different from the “rational self-interest” of the Mullahs. The Western view of War that is currently being pushed is that talking is always better than fighting, since violence solves nothing. Therefore, war making is not in a nation’s rational self-interest. If all people were goverened with this outlook on war, then life would be vastly different. However, was in Adolf Hitler’s “rational self-interest” top invade Poland? Was it in the “rational self-interest” of Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in the early 1990s? Of course not. Yet, they thought they could win their respective conflicts. That is one of the most important lessons to learn about War. If “the other” thinks that they can win, they will fight, no matter how irrational it may seem.

Mike Grant — Samnite Gladiator

The Awakening to Islamization – 5.29.2008

Perhaps the tide has begun to turn, in a small way. This press release from the Church of England found it’s way to my attention yesterday. Perhaps our own Awakening has finally begun; we can only hope. Unfortunately, I cannot find the original article to link to, but have reproduced it below.

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue. This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims. Perhaps most importantly the government has chosen to allow hard-liners to act as representing all Muslims, and more liberal Muslims have almost completely failed to produce any leadership voices to compete, leading many Britons to wonder if there are indeed many liberal Muslims at all, surely a mistake.

At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty. While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.

The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.

Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace. There needs to be some fresh thinking in this area where the claims of Christ are sensitively explained. Our church leaders must develop ways of explaining this, as our feature on mission and evangelism this week demonstrates.

Londonistan, written by Melanie Phillips, which I finished reading last year covered the Islamization of the United Kingdom extremely well. I short, a primary weapon of Islamists and their apologists was guilt. (There were other weapons as well, but am limiting it to this one). They guilted the British into accepting them based on the “crimes” of Britains past, and even more disturbing, the British accepted this. I will cover this topic of Western “Guilt” and how it used to accomplish political goals detrimental to the Western world in a new post.

Mike Grant — Samnite Gladiator

The Struggle for Iraq Continued Part 2 – 5.22.2008

This post will address Richard’s and Hope Seton’s comments. The comments I wish to address I have excerpted from the original statement.

The Struggle for Iraq / The Struggle for Iraq Continued Part 1

Richard:

No American soldier should ever have set foot on hostile Arabic soil. Shock and Awe should have rained from the skies onto every significant government* building or military* base for every Arabic nation that had anything to do with terrorists –if that government was not actually capturing them and prosecuting terrorists. It would not be inappropriate to destroy Mosques and unoccupied Maddrassah’s either. (The U.S. even has the means to do this without working from a neighboring nation.) Civilian casualties? They are entirely the fault of the terrorists, as there would have been no “Shock and Awe” if they had left the West alone.

A Presidential Addressto the World should have made the above point, and said that mosques and madrassahs will continue to be targets, until the Muslim clerics (imams etc.) cease advocating the destruction of Israel and America and, instead, actively demand the apprehension of terrorists.

This Address should also make it clear that the exact same procedure will be repeated should even a single American be killed by an Arabic terrorist (this might require difficult-to-obtain knowledge of the terrorist’s country of origin, but a reasonable guess will do!

Cost to American families: probably only one month’s expense at the monthly rate of Bush’s present, ‘nation building’, method. Americans have no obligation to provide other countries with ‘democracy’.

Indeed, ‘democracy’ is a brutally stupid misnomer for the American political system that is a “Constitutional Republic respecting Individual Rights”.

America’s Founding Fathers understood the difference between “The Tyranny of the Majority” (”democracy” as described by Alex de Tocqueville in the late 1700s). Today, those bringing ‘democracy’ have no idea what individual rights are and, as you pointed out, Iraq will degenerate into warring factions in no time without ongoing American intervention (barely running on the fumes of the original understanding of Individual Rights)

Bush’s actions simply sacrifice more American lives to millions of people who are incapable of grasping what Individual Rights are. Sadly, a majorityof Americans do not know either!! Bush’s War, and those who think America is a ‘democracy’, are reprehensibly un-American!

 Normally I would agree with you on the use of “Shock and Awe”, though recent events have made me doubt the ability of air power to win wars in this new age. I have several reasons for this new belief, which I will expound upon:

1) The Media

2) The Public

3) Resistance of Hizballah during the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah War

4) The new prevalence of 4th Generation Warfare Tactics

The Media:

The Media is now a force that must be reckoned with in what I call the “sandbox” of war. It can change victory to defeat, influence public opinion, be a constant source of propaganda for the enemy, result in the cancellation of military operations, and cause public policy to be changed. While the Media plays an essential role in our system of checks and balances, advocacy journalism has been taking an inordinate amount of control in this world. During the Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian War of 1991-1995, the Media overwhelmingly sided with Jihadists, and whitewashed their crimes. To this day, in Microsoft Encarta 2005, Muslim war crimes are non-existent and unmentioned. I personally witnessed and took part in the constant editing of this Wikipedia article. Before the final editing, the article had no account of Muslim war crimes against Serbian civilians, while concentrating on Serbian war crimes. I am not excusing the Serbians, but to ignore the crimes of the other faction is absurd. The Global Media also continues to undermine the War Against Jihad – what the government calls the War on Terror – at every turn. Prince Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan was published early, despite an agreement the media had with the British Ministry of Defence. This is just one example of the Media’s inability to tell truth from fiction, or even use basic fact checking and common sense.

With regards to enemy propaganda, CNN aired footage of an insurgent sniper killing a U.S. soldier. There is much media controversey over the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah War, with many allegations and proof of media manipulation in favor of Hizballah. I could list many more examples. The bottom line is that the Media can affect how a battle can turn. That means we have to tread more carefully than we did in World War II. The Media played a crucial role in spreading NVA propaganda during the Vietnam War, and that helped cost us victory. You and I may accept that civilian casualties are an inevitable part of war, but the age of war-fighting has changed. I will elaborate on this later on.

The Public:

Public attitudes regarding war have changed with the advent of a global media. As the new age of warfightingfocuses less on Shock and Awe and more on Hearts and Minds, public tolerance of any war time death has shrunk drastically. Outcry after the conclusion of Operation Gothic Serpent, aka Black Hawk Down, was strong enough that the United States pulled it’s military presence out of Somalia. Army Rangers and Delta Operators lost 19 men because of that operation, but killed over 1,000 members of Muhammed Farah Aidid’s Habr Gidr militia. However, because of the brutal treatment of the U.S. dead by Somali’s which shocked the American public, combat operations concluded rather quickly despite the stunning military victory.

We deal with the same issues in Iraq: much is made of just over 4,058 dead and 29,395 woundeddespite the fact these figures are extremely low when compared to conflicts of comparable length. In World War II, the United States lost 405,500 dead and 671,750 wounded (source Microsoft Encarta 2005). While it is true that World War II was a different conflict, there were intense and sustained periods of Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT). The Italian campaign, which alternated between fighting through fortified lines in the Italian countryside and fighting in urban terrain cost the United States 114,000 casualties from September 3, 1943 – May 8, 1945. I haven’t even touched on the brutal urban combat of Stalingrad. I firmly believe that today’s public has lost the will to fight; unless the attacks on American soil were so brutal and so shocking that the American public would simply lose all restraint. If victory is to be achieved in any conflict than the public must accept the inevitability of American deaths.

To summarize:

The support of the American public and International Media may not be necessary for sustained military operations, but it certainly makes things go smoother. That isn’t to say we must confine our war-fighting to what the uninformed approve, but merely realistically acknowledge the affect that they have on the “sandbox” and plan accordingly. As we learned in Vietnam and had to re-learn in the early days of Iraq, overly heavy-handed tactics alienate the Media, the Public, and the Civilian population of the target country. I say overly because there will always be the use of fixed wing air craft, artillery, and tanks to mount surgical strikes against the enemy. Shock and Awe also has several other flaws; you must rebuild whatever you destroy, whether that be civilian housing, factories, or infrastructure required for the running of a nation.

 Resistance of Hizballah:

Hizballah was able to resist an Israeli Force equipped with tanks, artillery, and aircraft. They had dug in small towns in hardened pockets and engaged the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in guerrilla warfare. Despite the Shock and Awe which Israel unleashed, this had a minimal effect on the dug in Hizballah fighters. When the IDF moved in on the ground, they still faced a well prepared, well armed, and unbroken foe. Predictably, the Media sided with Hizballah, painting the Israeli shock and awe campaign as a merciless bombardment of civilian positions. Of course as you and I know, they completely neglected the fact that Hizballah launched rockets from civilian population centers, used ambulances for troop transports, and staged photographs as demonstrated previously.

Because terrorist organizations can so adeptly manipulate the willing Media, we must adopt a Media friendly policy of war-fighting. Our heavy-handedness of the initial invasion of Iraq caused many problems, and set back our relationship with the population we were liberating. This helped breed the insurgency; only when we began using Counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy were inroads and great progress made. Counterinsurgency uses “softer” tactics to win over the civilian population and siphon their support from the insurgents. The military is then used in hard “kinetic engagements” to kill the isolated enemy. Michael Yon’s book “Moment of Truth in Iraq”(which I am currently reading) does an excellent job of describing this change in strategy. Another excellent book outlining this change is “Fiasco” by Thomas Ricks, though Ricks has made some additional comments that I don’t agree with.

The bottom line is that our use of Shock and Awe has often done more harm than good in operations that demand the approach of COIN. Shock and Awe still has its place, make no mistake, but in this new age of war-fighting it is increasingly shooting the United States in the foot.

4th Generation Warfare:

This is the new age of warfare. Though conflicts on the scale of World War II are certainly still possible, I believe that 4th Gen Warfare will be with us for a very long time. Since the article covers what 4th Gen Warfare is, I won’t mention it here. But this ties in with everything else I have written. Whereas in World War II, we could target the indudtry and manufacturing of a country to destroy it’s ability and / or will to fight, that task is now much harder given the Media, the Public, and the way in which our enemy fights.  Though it is appealing to many people (including myself) to threaten a country with “being bombed back into the Stone Age” I have to ask myself whether or nor such a policy would indeed by effective in today’s era. If it is not an effective strategy anymore then should we continue it? I think Arab and Persian governments will merely take the punishment, reap the foreign aid, international attention, and all the while we will provide fuel for the fire of Jihad. I believe that we must adapt, or we will continue to fall short on any military mission we undertake.

Nation Building:

Let me say that I do not view Nation Building as the responsibility of the United States. You and I are in complete agreement on this point. I do believe in isolating dictators and using them in alliances of convenience, much as we have done. I view that as a necessity for a very simple and practical reason. The United States does not have the manpower or the funds to invade, secure, and rebuild every corrupt country on the globe. I believe when it serves our interests (as long as such interest are for the genuine greater good and be based in morality) then we have the authority and right to defend ourselves. I do believe staying in Iraq is in our current self-interest, and not just an occurence of altruism (fascinating essays by the way). In my mind, invading a country like Zimbabwe would be a mark of altruism. When Europe is ready to help shoulder the burden of Nation Building, I may then be interested. Until then, not so much.

Hope Seton:

The end game for a nation that has lost its vision is evil and corruption. The perfect fuel for jihadism is sanctimonius posturing by a country whose only moral authority is a huge self-importance inflated from the lingering fumes of a genuine moral authority it has not had for over a hundred years.

Where is the moral authority in invading a country to free it from an evil and corrupt government *you* put in power, as the CIA did with Saddam?

“Shock and Awe” rained down from the skies is the concrete manifestation of that posturing. Collective punishment for “collective sins” and the worst and most cowardly example of a pretended respect for Individual Rights. “Shock and Awe” is state terrorism. Those who created it are Fascists. No “founding father” would ever have supported it. Not Washington, not Franklin, not Jefferson.

The United States still does have moral authority. We fought Nazi Germany, the USSR, and now Jihad. We are the only country to fight a war over slavery, are one of the freeest countries on this earth. Have we made mistakes? Hell yeah, but show me one country who hasn’t. The history of Europe, Islam, and Asia can read just as bloody and sordid as our own. Despite our checkered past, I am still proud of our country and proud of our legacy.

I will recycle this, which I wrote to an individual who believe the same as you about Saddam Hussein:

“As for supporting dictatorships:The world isn’t a nice place and two choices are often presented to the United States – bad and worse. The enemy of World War II was Adolf Hitler and a decision was made to kill him using any means necessary and allying with anyone necessary. Enter Josef Stalin. Stalin was a mass murderer, dictator at large, and one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of this earth. Yet, we the freedom loving United States, picked him because we needed him. After World War II, the enemy became the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union actively supported Marxist revolutionaries all across the world in their quest to expand their influence and destroy us. We were left with two options:

1) Ignore these Revolutions aimed at destabilizing us and let the Soviet Union expand its spheres of influence
2) Support a Stalin equivalent to keep to keep the targets of the Soviet Union on “our” side

It was a necessary evil that was required for victory in the Cold War. The world would be a vastly different place if we had not opposed the Soviet Union. Am I proud that we had to ally ourselves with the scum of the earth to win? No, I wish life was much different. But it isn’t, and this is what war throws at you. A play for the greater good was made, and it succeeded. The Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in victory.”

 

 

Welcome to reality, and you better get used to it. At least we actually confront dictators when possible instead of caving to them and “respecting” them like Europe. Would you rather we never fixed our “mistake” ? Would you rather we just let all dictators live an easy life ?

Collective punishment can be perfectly justified. It was justified in World War II against the German civilians, Italian civilians, and the Japanese civilians. Notice that they didn’t care when London was being fire-bombed, or when Nanking was being literally raped. But when war comes to their doorstep, things change, and fast. They suddenly realized that war isn’t fun when you lose, and what goes around comes around. Have we heard a peep from them since World War II? I think not. However, as I have mentioned above Shock and Awe is growing obsolete, hence my lessening lack of support for it. Shock and Awe is a legitimate tool for fighting a war. Do I hear you complaining about how Hamas gunmen use human shields, launch rockets from civilian population centers, or use ambulances as troop transports?

Our founding fathers weren’t the saints that we have built them up to be. The American War for Independence was fought with guerilla tactics against the British Army with reprisals against the civilian population who supported the British crown. Washington fought hard, and fought well, but the War for Independence was hardly what I would call a chivalrous conflict. War has never been fought in a chivalrous fashion, and never will.

Mike Grant — Samnite Gladiator