Syria Time

Suriya al Kubra!

Whale, looks like the clock has plumb ran out of 44"s Bystander In Chief manuever as far as Syrian chiz goes 

44's administration, rightfully concerned about the costs of intervention in Syria, failed to grasp early enough just how much it would cost to stay out of this ugly situation. As the war has dragged on, the humanitarian toll has grown to obscene proportions (far worse than anything that would have happened in Libya without intervention), communal and sectarian hatreds have become poisonous almost ensuring more bloodletting and ethnic and religious cleansing, and instability has spread from Syria into Iraq, Lebanon and even Turkey. All of these problems grow worse the longer the war goes on—but it is becoming harder and costlier almost day by day to intervene.

But beyond these problems, the failure to intervene early in Syria (when "leading from behind" might well have worked) has handed important victories to both the terrorists and the Russia-Iran axis, and has seriously eroded the administration's standing with important allies. Russia and Iran backed Bashar al-Assad; the president called for his overthrow—and failed to achieve it. To hardened realists in Middle Eastern capitals, this is conclusive proof that the American president is irredeemably weak. His failure to seize the opportunity for what the Russians and Iranians fear would have been an easy win in Syria cannot be explained by them in any other way.

Ouch!

In these circumstances, it is the easiest thing to say that, in the case of Syria in particular, there are only bad options. That may be true. But increasingly it may be that there is a worse option: doing nothing

One of the big anti Great Satan LOLs around the begining of Surge time was - Look, we may not be so great at nation building but we are the world history masters of nation destroying

Tactical delights like cruise missiles, air strikes, seizing WMD to unAss Bashar Bay Bee into a war criminal trial, exile or a grave aside - the strategical delights need to be tho't about. 

True enough there are no good options - and 3 little Syrias (with a dash of Kurdistan thrown in) with the resulting sectarian slow bleed may actually be more better than watching mass casualities events like WMD in Damascus suburbs

Pic - "Post War Syria"

WoW!!

WoW - the Watchers Council - it's the oldest, longest running cyber comte d'guere ensembe in existence - started online in 1912 by Sirs Jacky Fisher and Winston Churchill themselves - an eclective collective of cats both cruel and benign with their ability to put steel on target (figuratively - natch) on a wide variety of topictry across American, Allied, Frenemy and Enemy concerns, memes, delights and discourse.

Every week these cats hook up each other with hot hits and big phazed cookies to peruse and then vote on their individual fancy catchers

Thusly sans further adieu (or a don"t)

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes! Joshuapundit –What The Media Won’t Tell You About What’s Really Going On In Egypt
• Second place with 3 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room – Torture and Murder in Tennessee – Why No Movement for These Innocents?
• Third place with 2 votes – The Razor -Elementary School Math
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes – The Right Planet-Obama Awards Presidential Medal of Freedom to Bayard Rustin, a Socialist
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye-Life in a Dog Pack: Old Age
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote – Nice Deb-TX Congressman on NAACP Request For Rodeo Clown Probe: ‘We Can’t Even Get the DOJ to look at Benghazi!’
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews-Erdogan’s shocker: Tzipi Livni and Bernard-Henri Levy deposed Morsi
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi-The Art of Caring
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD –Foreign Policy Playbook

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Via Medea-Bambi Meets Godzilla in the Middle East submitted by The Razor
• Second place with 2 votes – Mark Steyn –Consensus in Egypt submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Sultan Knish –The Brotherhood’s Currency of Blood submitted by The Noisy Room
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes -Danger Room - How to Fix the Army: Sack All the Generals submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Daniel Greenfield – Whose side is Obama on? submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place *t* with 1 votes - Kevin D. Williamson/National Review –The Front Man submitted by The Right Planet
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - The Passing Parade –Phoniness and how to achieve it… submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Stately McDaniel Manor –Warning: Warning Shots submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Zero Hedge –Is China Doomed? submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -John Hayward/The Conversation –The Rodeo Clown Police understand the power of contempt submitted by Nice Deb
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -Joshua Foust – The Miranda Detention: Troubling from all Sides submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Michael Ledeen –The Shape of the Global War submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The College Conservative –TCC’s Guide for Back-To-Campus submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Andrew Klaven –The Sad Fate Of Democrat Women submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

Kleptocracies

Kleptocrazies are more than unfun - they don't play well with others or each other 

Democratic states enjoy a certain camaraderie among themselves, and despite their shortcomings democracies manage to peacefully coexist. At least, they do not behave like unruly neighbors, tossing beer bottles into each other's yards. But in contrast, there can never be an international brotherhood of kleptocracies.

The very nature of modern authoritarian kleptocracies makes it impossible for them to have meaningful working relationships. Such states are built exclusively upon the principle that the president distributes the country's wealth among his friends. And when two such leaders come together, all they can do is smile all they want for the press and claim to have reached agreement on this or that issue

Pic - "Take it easy on dictators"

Off Shore Control

As Air Sea Battle gets debated, the designer of Off Shore Control makes another case

ASB proponents want our allies to believe that new technology will make Douhet’s elusive goal—airpower defeating an enemy—a reality.

It is clear a critical element of OC is denying the Chinese use of the waters inside the first Island chain. We need not sustain dominance for its own sake, or in irrelevant locations. OC also states Great Satan will defend those allies in the first island chain who choose to join us. So OC and ASB aspire to the same goals with one major exception. OC does not seek to strike tactical targets inside China. Rather OC will apply pressure to the strategic target of China’s economy.

Since the Communist Party’s legitimacy is based on economic growth, major reductions in China’s imports and exports will create major pressure for a solution. Worse, from China’s point of view, is that U.S. control of the seas outside the first island chain means the world economy will begin to rebuild.

 The longer China maintains the conflict, the harder it will be to recover lost trade relationships. It is hard to see how Chinese leaders will simply ignore this kind of economic damage.

The key discussion we must have is about a strategy that preserves our interests in the unlikely event of a conflict with China. It must reassure our friends, stabilize the region—particularly in times of crisis—and allow Great Satan to respond effectively if conflict starts. Such a discussion must include ends, ways and means, both in war and peace. It should be free of assertions that we can achieve a difficult task because we wish to, but delve into the force structure, training, equipment, and budgetary factors that are the basis for a strategy.

Pic - "Off Shore Control"

Stratofortress

Just lucky perhaps, The Wild Blue Yonder cats are prob gon keep Great Satan's forever bomber - the B 52 Stratofortress - forever flying

Despite the bomber's more than half-century of service, the Air Force believes that modifications and overhauls have made the B-52 ageless. Now engineers and technicians are working on a contract worth up to $11.9 billion for an array of upgrades to bring the B-52 Stratofortress fleet into the 21st century.

Conceived in the late 1940's and debuted in 1952 - the B.U.F.F. (Wild Blue Yonder lingo for Big Ugly Fat Fellow) is easily able to adapt and evolve way later in the new millennium

For more than 40 years B-52 Stratofortresses have been the backbone of the manned strategic bomber force for the United States. The B-52 is capable of dropping or launching the widest array of weapons in the U.S. inventory. This includes gravity bombs, cluster bombs, precision guided missiles and joint direct attack munitions. Updated with modern technology the B-52 will be capable of delivering the full complement of joint developed weapons and will continue into the 21st century as an important element of our nation's defenses. Current engineering analyses show the B-52's life span to extend beyond the year 2040.

General Characteristics
Primary Function: Heavy bomber
Contractor: Boeing Military Airplane Co.
Power plant: Eight Pratt & Whitney engines TF33-P-3/103 turbofan
Thrust: Each engine up to 17,000 pounds
Wingspan: 185 feet (56.4 meters)
Length: 159 feet, 4 inches (48.5 meters)
Height: 40 feet, 8 inches (12.4 meters)
Weight: Approximately 185,000 pounds (83,250 kilograms)
Maximum Takeoff Weight: 488,000 pounds (219,600 kilograms)
Fuel Capacity: 312,197 pounds (141,610 kilograms)
Payload: 70,000 pounds (31,500 kilograms)
Speed: 650 miles per hour (Mach 0.84)
Range: 8,800 miles (7,652 nautical miles)
Ceiling: 50,000 feet (15,151.5 meters)
Armament: Approximately 70,000 pounds (31,500 kilograms) mixed ordnance -- bombs, mines and missiles. (Modified to carry air-launched cruise missiles)
Crew: Five (aircraft commander, pilot, radar navigator, navigator and electronic warfare officer)
Unit Cost: $84 million (fiscal 2012 constant dollars)
Initial operating capability: April 1952
Inventory: Active force, 58; ANG, 0; Reserve, 18


Pic - "Cutting Edge"

FoPo Playbook

44"s Foreign Policy Playbook is looking kinda - well - played

As best understood - 44 used 3 Pillars to support a particular World View and alla Policies that go with it 

Demonstrate a willingness to engage directly with those countries that disagreed with America. If Great Satan eschewed the more muscular and aggressive foreign policy practiced by 43, 44 was convinced he could focus on addressing legitimate differences and finding common ground for consensus solutions.

Play a more restrained role in the world, substituting "smart" power like diplomacy and economic aid for the "hard" power of military force. This practice, he believed, would both reduce global tensions and free up resources for "a little nation building right here at home."

Manage more issues through international organizations and agreements. Working through forums like the United Nations, he would join in treaties and conventions to help establish legitimate “rules of the road” for the conduct of international affairs. These structures would, in turn, help mobilize efforts to deal with global challenges from global warming to freedom of the seas.

Alas! Reality doth bite

At the end of the day, it could work only if our adversaries chose to cooperate. It ceded the initiative to the other side and offered no alternative if they choose not play by the doctrine’s rules. Predictably, no one—from Putin to the Taliban—has opted to take up the president's offer. But layering risk-averse policies on top of the doctrine only exacerbates risks, encouraging competitors to press their advantage.

The problem is that every pillar upon which 44's Doctrine rested seems unable to bear any weight. No longer confident in his approach, the leader of the free world has become intensely risk-averse in his second term.

Meanwhile, his foreign-policy and national-security teams are left floundering.

Pic - "Nowhere is our inability to grasp the realities of Middle-Eastern politics more obvious than in our self-deceiving attitude towards the theocracy in Iran"

Suez Stuff

While 44 cancelled the Great Satan -  Aegypt military exercise known as Bright Star, cats seem divy'd over keeping up the 1.5 or so billion bucks to the Coupmaking caretaking Military Gov

Nork City Great Satan Fans editorialized a Realpolitik style bit pointing out the Military is the best bet to coincide with Great Satan's material interests namely:

Free passage through the Suez Canal; the suppression of insurgents throughout the country, especially the Sinai; and, most important, maintenance of the peace treaty with the Little Satan. The military has always been an acceptable guarantor of those objectives, and any government led by the Muslim Brotherhood would not be, out of incompetence and hostility.

While this clarian call doesn't go far enough in expressing ideals that Great Satan should and must use whatever influ she has to keep the military towards stability AND caretake Aegypt's generational trek to a fun and free choice egalitarian society with a free, uncensored press, freedom of religion, periodic, transparent elections, a military under civilian control, an independent judiciary under elected gov oversight and a nat'l treasury under public scrutiny

Mantaining Writ of State in Sinai and taking a break from tormenting girls with V Checks would be a bonus perhaps - yet that is just another reason why cause Great Satan should embrace the Military regime in a deathly bear hug

Pic - "That’s what’s in Egypt’s future right now—persistent civil strife between the military and its supporters on one side and the Brotherhood and its supporters on the other."