Cruise Missile Diplomacy: The Solution for the Iranian Hostage Crisis

All it would take to bring the 14 British sailors and marines held hostage in Tehran home would be a few cruise missiles fired from a British frigate in the Persian Gulf.
All Prime Minister Tony Blair has to do to get his people back is to go on TV and deliver the following message to the Ayatollahs: “if our military personnel are not on a plane traveling back to a British base in Iraq within twelve hours I will order Her Majesty’s ships in the Persian Gulf to start using their cruise missiles to destroy Iran’s oil refineries and the tanker ports which enable the export of oil. There will be no negotiations, if our people are not released unharmed within twelve hours we will take this course of action. My decision is final.”
I imagine if Blair were to make this statement within a couple of hours the British military personnel would be released and crisis quickly forgotten. Okay maybe the Iranians would dither and the Royal Navy would have to fire a few cruise missiles and torch one oil refinery. The result would still be the same the humiliated Islamic Republic would release its prisoners and the matter would be forgotten.
Iran would cave into this pressure because it lacks the military power to attack the Royal Navy and its American allies. More importantly Iran’s economy is based on oil if it stops flowing the Ayatollahs will have no money to pay off their followers with and they’ll be out of power within a few months.
Of course, Blair wouldn’t take this course of action even though it is the logical solution to the crisis. He won’t take it because he doesn’t want to feel criticism from the British press and intellectuals although I think he’d have the full support of the British people. If Blair were willing to act like the great Prime Ministers of the past such as Maggie Thatcher, Clement Atlee and Winston Churchill Iran would never have dared touch a British sailor. I imagine Maggie is throwing things at the TV and Winston and Clement are rolling over in their graves.
Tony Blair has proven to the world that he is nothing but a hypocritical fop and Britain a paper tiger. Blair sends his soldiers and sailors on pointless missions then refuses to use Britain’s military power to back them up. Blair isn’t the only problem here, anytime it wanted Parliament could remove Blair from office and replace him with a real Prime Minister it won’t.
There are other pressures that keep Blair from acting as well. The bloated military establishments in the US and Britain and their neoconservative mouthpieces need a menace to fear. If Iran can be stopped by one frigate firing a couple of cruise missiles and torching an oil refinery there is no need for a massive military deployment to the Persian Gulf or an elaborate attack to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Or for the idiotic military adventure in Iraq for that matter.
If a little old fashioned gun boat diplomacy can shut down the Ayatollahs there is no need for the United Nations and all of its pointless protocol. No need for the mindless political theater in New York City and for the Secretary General and all the overpaid bureaucrats on the Hudson. Nor is there any need for the bloated Diplomatic service at the US State Department and the British Foreign Office. The President and Prime Minister can communicate with Iran’s leaders by calling them on the phone or holding a press conference.
Unfortunately Tony Blair is the perfect modern politician a pathetic little man afraid too afraid of the political implications to take any action. So Britain is no longer a major power, just a bad joke that will join France and Germany in the ash heap of history.
Hopefully we Americans will learn from this idiotic series of events and take some real action against Iran before it is too late. If we don’t we’re going to find ourselves in the middle of a needless war with a third rate power for no real reason.

Iran A False Crisis

The media is all a flutter about the fifteen British sailors taken hostage by the Iranian military while conducting useless naval operations in the Persian Gulf. They've declared this a major crisis and a potential war.
Fortuately this is neither a major crisis or a potential war simply a minor incident turned into a crisis by our so called leaders egostical posturing and posing. There is a cheap and simple way to end this crisis but our leaders won't take it.
The cheap and simple way to put an end to this crisis is do what Queen Victoria's navy would have done if some petty warlord grabbed a few of Her Majesty's sailors practice gunboat diplomacy. The way to deal with Iran is this simply inform Iran's real leaders the Ayatollahs that unless the British sailors are released immediately the US and British military will start destroying Iran's oil refineries. In words threaten the one thing they really care about namely oil and the money it brings in.
Since Iran is a third rate power whose military prowess on par with Saddam's it would pose little threat to British and American forces. Once Iran's air force was shot down all we'd have to do is bomb one or two refineries and the Ahatollayahs would give in and release the British hostages. They might shut down the nuclear program and fire the loudmouthed antisemtic kook of a President to boot.
Since all it would take to shut down the Ahatollayahs would be a few bombs or cruise missiles fired at their oil refineries. We have to ask why don't our leaders do it?
The answer is simple and disturbing the politicians in Washington, the brass and the Pentagon, the hysterical media and the military industrial complex needs enemies to fight. They need an Iranian menace for our bloated and largely obselescant military to defend us from.
If the Iranian menace is shown up to be a third rate power that can barely defend itself there is less need for the massive military and the spending it generates. Nor is there an sort of a crisis or castrophe for our politicians to deal with and feel heroic.
So once again a group of petty tyrants are allowed to bully great powers and create a crisis that will cause the deaths of real people so our politicians and soldiers can look great and justify their military spending. And a group of decent men who tried to do their duty end up as pawns in a sick game for lack of real leadership in London and Washington.

What To Do in Iraq

As the Iraq War enters it's fourth year one thing is apparent - our stategy if we have one - is a miserable failure.
Iraq is falling apart torn by ethnic cleansing and what appears to be the beginnings of a very nasty civil war. The Iraqi government we have created is far from a model democracy, in fact it is a very bad joke.
Obviously it's time for a new strategy in Iraq, but what should that strategy be and how should it be implented. My suggestion would be Iraq for the Iraqis and American involvement to the extent that we protect our interests only.
First, we should pull the vast majority of our forces out of Iraq they are achieving little or nothing by blundering around over there and maybe making the situation. Pull them out now, our people are dying for nothing and the resources expended to maintain the mission in Iraq are wasted. Move most of our troops out of Iraq now and leave only the forces needed to protect our embassy etc.
Second, rule Iraq through local people it shouldn't be too hard to make deals with local groups such as the Shiite militias and the Sunni tribes. These groups can patrol Iraq, fight our enemies there and protect our vital interests. Make a basic deal with these people they'll get foreign aid and military support from us if they keep the oil flowing and Al Qaeda out.
Basic military support such as training and infantry forces on the ground can be provided by private military contractors not our military. That way our troops can be pulled something that will certainly stabilize the situation. If necessary our air power and missiles can be used to back up Iraqi forces on the ground.
Third, confine our military mission in Iraq to fighting and destroying those forces actually a threat to us namely Al Qaeda. This can be done by commandos, air power, our local allies etc. We don't need 100,000 troops in Iraq to deal with a few terrorists, in fact our presence there makes the situation worse.
We should pull the troops out because Iraq is not Vietnam, our pull out won't hur our military and it won't give our enemies any sort of victory. We can stay in Iraq and keep waging war there without a major military presence. Instead the Iraqis will fight and kill our enemies for us and all we have to do is give them a little aid.
Unfortunately none of our leaders has the courage or common sense to see this. They simply want to pore in more troops or run away completely. Either way they will turn what amounts to a second rate colonial war into a caststrophe.

The Prison Industrial Complex

One of the biggest problems facing America today – the Prison Industrial Complex - is being ignored by liberals and conservatives alike.
It’s bad enough that liberals with their self righteous claims of being interested in social justice and concern for the downtrodden don’t seem to care about the million or so people locked up in our prison system (most of them there for the crime of not being able to afford a decent lawyer) but do seem to care about the rights of terrorists more than those of the average Americans in our monstrous prison system. Now Conservatives compound the hypocrisy by failing to notice the abuse of government power, corruption and the waste of taxpayers’ money inherent in the prison industrial complex.
The vast growth in the prison industry represents a vast growth in the power and scope of government. Millions of Americans are now under the direct control of the government in the prison system. A vast new bureaucracy has been created to service the prison industry, and this new bureaucracy is largely beyond the control of our elected officials.
Each new prison costs millions of dollars taken directly from the taxpayer. Government owned prisons are financed directly by taxpayers while private prisons are indirectly financed by the money governments pay private prison operators to house convicts. Either way vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money is being flushed down a giant toilet never to be seen again. I don’t hear a single conservative complaining about this monumental rip off of the taxpayers.
Nor do conservatives seem to be concerned that the prison industrial complex is a vast expansion of the welfare state. Prisons are a form of welfare, poor people are forced into them where they are under the direct control of the state. Instead of supporting themselves the people in prison are fed and cared for by the state at taxpayers’ expense. This gives taxpayers a double whammy first vast amounts of money is spent to build and maintain the prisons and house and feed prisoners, second hundreds of thousands of people who should be working and paying taxes are locked up increasing the tax burden on the rest of us. Yes, I know a lot of those prisoners would be flipping burgers or mopping floors if they weren’t beyond bars but at least they’d be paying their own bills and some taxes if they weren’t in the joint. Even many professional crooks would be paying sales and property taxes on the proceeds of their thefts and drug deals if they weren’t locked up. The prison industrial complex is the welfare state at its worst it takes productive citizens off the street and turns them into wards of the state then taxes honest citizens to pay the bill.
To make matters worse the prison system has created a class of bureaucratic parasites who subsist off the taxpayers. Large numbers of poor mostly white people in rural areas are making a decent living as prison guards. Instead of moving away from dying small towns and finding real work in the cities these people get welfare jobs at prisons. Instead of going to school, getting an education and a real job these people get jobs babysitting poor minority in the prison system. In other words the rights of poor minorities are being trampled and productive citizens are being taxed to death so a bunch of ignorant hicks can get cushy jobs at the local prison. I can’t think of a worse betrayal of conservative values than that, self reliance and individual responsibility thrown out the window, the average person reduced to a drone in a system Lenin would have been proud of.
Then there’s the corruption prisons bring, I lived in two different small Colorado towns that relied heavily on prisons. In one local officials turned the jail into a private prison and promised hardened criminals wouldn’t be locked up there. Despite this within weeks murderers and hardcore gangsters were there. Worse they brought their corruption with them, I remember one local kid who found a job as a prison guard. Within weeks he was in the jail, charged with smuggling stuff to the prisoners.
In another town where I lived, I saw nothing that blatant but I did know one guy, a civic leader, city councilman etc. He worked as a janitor or something at the local state prison, he also owned a liquor store. This liquor store was never open and I never saw anybody buying anything from it but I saw lots of trucks delivering booze to it. Get the picture, the guy was selling the booze to the prisoners at inflated prices and making a good living off the backs of the poor. Everybody in town knew it and nobody said a thing. Lots of smart cookies in small towns all over the country now have big new houses, boats, and pickup trucks thanks to the cash they’ve raked in from the prisoners. Lots of high school drop outs from small town America will be retiring early with nice savings accounts. Nothing is said about this but it’s a sorry truth related to the prison industry.
Where are the conservatives, when I see this going on? Where are the Christian conservatives reminding the church goers about “turn the other cheek,” “thou shall not steal” and “ye shall not cast the first stone?” Where are the libertarians when rights are trampled and where are the fiscal conservatives when our tax dollars are flushed down the prison toilet?
Sooner or later some politician is going to ride to the top on the simple platform of no more prisons. Maybe he’ll be a liberal concerned about social justice, but I doubt it. The passion for “social justice” can be easily satisfied by writing a check to Amnesty International. Not so the practical demand for moral and fiscal accountability on the part of our leaders. My guess is the political leader who shuts down the prison industrial complex will be a good old fashioned conservative who asks the all important question: “what are those rats spending our tax money on?” and demands a few answers.

Closing Gitmo

The Congressional Democrats are both right and wrong in their plans to shut down the US government's holding pen for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Closing down Gitmo (military slang for the naval base on the Commie island) makes a lot of sense. The international left has made the base a symbol of imperialism by alleging that it violates international law and human rights. Shutting it down and transferring the prisoners there, most of whom are foreign nationals, back to their homelands would give us a cheap propaganda victory in the war on terror.

Now many of the terror suspects would be sent back to countries like Pakistan and Egypt where they would be tortured and probably killed by the local secret police. Yes, this would be tragic but these men are fanatics who want to kill us and blow up our cities. I can't think of anything more just than turning the self proclaimed champions of Islam over to the tender mercies of Islamic law.

Closing Gitmo and shipping the suspects home would also earn us points in Europe where the human rights lobby has condemned the fact that some of the terrorists are citizens of European nations. These people demand that the fanatical killers be released onto their streets let them have the Islamic nuts. See how much respect the terrorists have for the rights of European citizens.

Unfortunately the Democrats want to take the sensible action of closing Gitmo but they want to bring the terror suspects back to the US for trial in the US Federal Court system. This makes little or no sense it is unclear that the Gitmo prisoners have committed any crime under US law or if the US courts have any sort of jurisdiction over them. This means that the terror suspects could be brought to US soil and then ordered released by the courts.

Once on US soil it might be impossible for the US government to deport the terror suspects because they could claim asylum. After all most of them would be tortured and killed by their own governments if they returned to their homelands so they could seek asylum as political prisoners.

The Democrats could bring terrorists onto US soil and have them set free to wreck havoc in the name of respecting human rights. Or more precisely in the name of scoring points with the Far Left and its apologists in the media.

What should the US do with Islamic terrorists it captures on the battlefield? The best solution would be to quietly turn them over to allied governments particularly Islamic governments which will try these Islamic criminals under Islamic law. Yes, most of them would be tortured and killed by their fellow Muslims but they wouldn't be a threat to us anymore. That's the policy we're pursuing in Iraq right now and it should be our policy on all fronts. This policy involves common sense and respect of other cultures things that are in very short supply in Washington these days.

Another solution might be to rewrite international law to give the terror suspects a legal status they aren't traditional prisoners of war but they aren't criminals either. Maybe an international tribunal should be set up to try them not the European kangaroo court in the Hague which will simply sentence them to time in a country club pen but a real tribunal tribunal like the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trial after World War II. This tribunal would have the power to lock the terror suspects up for life in a tough hell hole prison like the Russian gulag or sentence them to hang for their crimes. The Europeans wouldn't like it but if we insisted the tribunal try terror suspects according to Islamic law I'm sure the Muslim countries would go along. The tribunal would sit in some Islamic country like Pakistan or Egypt and be administered by that nation's government.
Since no American president would have the guts to challenge the international court system and Europe I doubt this will happen. So the best we can hope for is that the terrorists continue to languish at Guantanamo while the military turns all the terrorists it captures over to our allies. A problematic stop gap solution that will at least be better than foisting terror suspects on our Court system.

Fourth Generational Warfare Hits Home

I found myself on the Front Lines of Fourth Generational Warfare in one of the more surprising and peaceful places possible my workplace. The headquarters of my employer, Teletech was hit by a computer virus, called the Rimbot or Storm.
This virus shut down hundreds of computers, delayed our work and caused havoc. In my department I was able to work but a colleague, an educated lady with lots of experience ended up spending the day putting files in boxes and opening mail because her computer was down and she had nothing to do. Okay this was an inconvenience for us, Teletech is a big corporation with millions of dollars and vast resources but what about small businesses out there.
Say a freelance writer trying to turn in an article or somebody who works from home using their computer, they need the computer to meet a deadline but its not working anymore. Even big corporations can be hurt by sustained computer attacks. Virtually all financial transactions are done electronically these days, even checks when they are cashed or deposited are electronic the bank verifies your deposit or withdrawal via computer.
I work in accounts payable our job is to pay the company's bills we do that electronically by moving funds around with computers. If computers don't work we can't pay the bills, we can't pay our vendors many of whom are small business people who rely on the payment from Teletech to pay their bills and meet their payroll. If Teletech's AP is shut down for a couple of weeks or longer many small businesses could be put out of business. Teletech has offices in small towns so whole communities could be devastated. What if it's Teletech's payroll that doesn't work thousands of people including me depend on Teletech to pay the rent or the mortgage and put food on the table.
A virus attack on the financial system of a large corporation or country could disrupt the economy of a nation or even the world. Imagine going to the bank and not being able to get your money out because the computers aren't working. Or going to the store or the gas station and not being able to buy food or gas because your debit or credit card wouldn't work. In my home state of Colorado thousands of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens went hungry because the state's welfare computer system didn't work.
My guess is we're going to be seeing a lot more of this in the years ahead, attacks designed not to destroy but to disrupt systems and economies. Viruses have become a fact of life, and its not clear where they're coming from.
Popular mythology sustained by the media is that viruses are the work of hackers, some disgruntled nerd in a dingy apartment seeking revenge on the world. Perhaps that's true, but I have serious doubts about somebody is spending a lot of time, money and resources to develop these viruses. I doubt some character who delivers pizza or works at CompUSA has that kind of money, so I imagine there's organized effort behind this.
The most logical suspects are the world's major government especially China, the US and Russia. Countries like Russia, Iran, China and North Korea can't challenge us militarily but they can hurt us through cyber warfare. Iran can't invade the US and its doubtful they could give terrorists the weaponry to really hurt us but what if Iran unleashed hundreds or thousands or even millions of computer viruses against the US.
What if Iran shut down every computer at every bank in the US, or every ATM in the US? Or crashed the entire Internet or froze the stock market? The result could be an economic meltdown on the level of the Great Depression. Now I don't know if Iran has the capability to do this or if they would do it they had. After all the Ayatollahs have a lot of money stowed away in their overseas bank accounts and would like access to that money.
But what about foes who truly don't give daman such as Al Qaeda whose members view the modern world as evil and are willing to die to destroy it? Or Marxist fanatics who view capitalism as evil and wish to destroy it? Those kind of maniacs would be willing to push the button and unleash the viruses.
My guess is that is only a matter of time before somebody unleashes a computer virus or swarm of viruses powerful enough to disrupt the world's economy on a large scale. I wonder if we are prepared to deal with such a catastrophe? after the failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina, my guess would be the government isn't prepared so I hope corporate America is. If they're not a lot of people are going to suffer.