Ouch

Juan Cole:

Gates went to Pakistan to emphasize to Islamabad that the US was not again going to abandon it and Afghanistan, as it had in the past. Pakistan, he wanted to say, is now a very long-term ally of Washington. He hoped for cooperation against the Haqqani, Taliban and Hizb-i Islami guerrillas. He wanted to allay conspiracy theories about US mercenary armies crawling over Pakistan, occasionally blowing things up (and then blaming the explosions on Pakistanis) in order to destabilize the country and manipulate its policies.

The message his mission inadvertently sent was that the US is now increasingly tilting to India and wants to put it in charge of Afghanistan security; that Pakistan is isolated; that he is pressuring Pakistan to take on further counter-insurgency operations against Taliban in the Northwest, which the country flatly lacks the resources to do; and that Pakistani conspiracy theories about Blackwater were perfectly correct and he had admitted it.

Oof.

In, uh, less significant good news, I've written 18 pages of thesis!

Qifa Nakbi makes many funnies

The Qnion is totally my new favorite thing. It's like the biggest inside joke ever (in that people who don't follow the Middle East wouldn't find most of it funny, but if you do it's brilliant).

From a recent post from Alex at Syria Comment:

“The Syrians knew that the Israelis were following their official in the U.K,” says retired Russian intelligence specialist Vladimir Balakhoff. “So they loaded all of these false photographs of nuclear reactors, diagrams, and documents in North Korean onto his computer. And the Israelis fell for it.”

“Why do you think that no one in Israel made a big deal out of the bombing?” asks Egyptian political affairs expert Gamal Galagala. “Once they realized that they’d been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they tried to sweep it under the carpet, but that’s hard to do when the milk’s already been spilled. If you catch my drift.”

High-level Syrian sources are now confirming that the laptop decoy was intended to veil a much more sophisticated security project, one with the potential to change the strategic balance of power in the region.

This project, known as the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), is headquartered in another remote town, Hassake, not far from the site of the fake nuclear power plant. It boasts three desktop computers – two IBM compatibles with 486 processors and an iMac G3 – and a 14.4 kbit/s dial-up modem.

The project’s director, Dr. Samir Mahdoum, suggested that Syria could use these advanced machines to spy on Israel, thereby denying their arch-enemy the element of surprise. “Using Google Maps Satellite View, we see all of Israel,” said Dr. Mahdoum, stroking an albino hamster. “Their troop movements, their weapons, everything!”

Regional specificity be damned, it was the albino hamster that really did me in.

Things fantastic

Ron Paul seems to be advocating privateering as a solution for Somali pirates [h/t TalkLeft]:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and a growing number of national security experts are calling on Congress to consider using letters of marque and reprisal, a power written into the Constitution that allows the United States to hire private citizens to keep international waters safe.

Used heavily during the Revolution and the War of 1812, letters of marque serve as official warrants from the government, allowing privateers to seize or destroy enemies, their loot and their vessels in exchange for bounty money.

He is absolutely correct that this is a good idea if you want to have some sort of naval presence off Cape Horn for minimum cost. That this idea is being floated at all is fascinating to me given that we are living in an age of mercenary rebirth and proliferation; it seems everything old really is new again in the realm of privatized violence.

The trouble with privateers is that they date from a time when states weren't very powerful. They couldn't afford to police their own waters, so they allowed privateers (whose mission was not only to police but significantly to hand some booty over to the Crown) to operate more or less unrestricted. Privateers disappeared, just as mercenaries did, when states developed the power, capacities, and institutions to perform these functions themselves.

We have had states powerful enough for this for a long time. International law and custom has evolved based on a framework where states control and are responsible for the actions of their citizens, by and large. To willfully set a bunch of bloodthirsty Americans free somewhere across the world will not be well-received. Piracy is messy. It is unprofessional. There will be unpalatable deaths, probably rape, the wrong sort of plundering, etc. The U.S. will still be held accountable for such occurrences in a way that the French monarchs in the 16th century simple could not be. Furthermore, it is my opinion that resorting to piracy will make the U.S., whose superpower status is in many ways based on its military superiority--and I mean that conceptually, not historically--look weaker than if it had not gotten involved at all.

That such ideas are being floated may represent how much smaller Ron Paul wants the U.S. military and government to be. Or they may represent how strapped for cash and truly weakened they are. I actually find it bizarre that Paul, generally quite consistent when it comes to smaller government and military nonengagement, thinks we need do anything off of Cape Horn at all; there is no direct, let alone existential, threat to the U.S. Perhaps I'm missing something here, or maybe Ron Paul just really wants to be able to vote for a letter of Marque before he dies.


Meanwhile, Blago is trying to get on reality TV: "Ten celebrities will be dropped into the Costa Rican jungle 'to face challenges designed to test their skills in adapting to the wilderness,' a network statement said."

I admit it. If Blago is on it, I think I'd watch.

Secrets, secrets are no fun

Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries

Doesn't sound too bad till you read this:

"The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

"These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States."

Since 2004 they had this. They were already bombing Pakistan in 2006. I'm amazed Musharraf held on as long as he did.