Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Well, here’s a big surprise. It turns out that Shock and Awe is yet another one of those dusty tomes that Strangelovean neocons have kept in their back pocket just waiting for a Chauncey W. Bush to be installed so they could test its crazy theories. Here’s the official DOD book on Shock and Awe. It’s part of a military doctrine called Rapid Dominance.

Rapid Dominance would seek to be more universal in application through the overriding objective of affecting the adversary’s will beyond the boundaries traditionally defined by military capability alone.

I hear that they originally wanted to call it Hegemonic Terrorism, but they figured that might have bad public relations implications.

To affect the will of the adversary, Rapid Dominance will apply a variety of approaches and techniques to achieve the necessary level of Shock and Awe at the appropriate strategic and military leverage points. This means that psychological and intangible, as well as physical and concrete effects beyond the destruction of enemy forces and supporting military infrastructure, will have to be achieved. It is in this broader and deeper strategic application that Rapid Dominance perhaps most fundamentally differentiates itself from current doctrine and offers revolutionary application.

Flowing from the primary concentration on affecting the adversary’s will to resist through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe to achieve strategic aims and military objectives, four characteristics emerge that will define the Rapid Dominance military force. These are noted and discussed in later chapters. The four characteristics are near total or absolute knowledge and understanding of self, adversary, and environment; rapidity and timeliness in application; operational brilliance in execution; and (near) total control and signature management of the entire operational environment.

Whereas decisive force is inherently capabilities driven—that is, it focuses on defeating the military capability of an adversary and therefore tends to be scenario sensitive—Rapid Dominance would seek to be more universal in application through the overriding objective of affecting the adversary’s will beyond the boundaries traditionally defined by military capability alone. In other words, where decisive force is likely to be most relevant is against conventional military capabilities that can be overwhelmed by American (and allied) military superiority. In conflict or crisis conditions that depart from this idealized scenario, the superior nature of our forces is assumed to be sufficiently broad to prevail. Rapid Dominance would not make this distinction in either theory or in practice.

To their credit, the planners did offer the following caveat:

We note for the record that should a Rapid Dominance force actually be fielded with the requisite operational capabilities, this force would be neither a silver bullet nor a panacea and certainly not an antidote or preventative for a major policy blunder, miscalculation, or mistake. It should also be fully appreciated that situations will exist in which Rapid Dominance (or any other doctrine) may not work or apply because of political, strategic, or other limiting factors.

No shit.

Thanks to High Water for the link. He also links to this analysis called “Awe Shocks” by Joseph Stromberg.

Here’s a bit:

Chapter Three catalogues and evaluates recent US interventions and teases out apparent lessons. There is muted praise for our sometime friend Saddam Hussein’s ruthless rocket attacks on Tehran, undertaken back when he was still salonfähig, attacks approvingly said to have “amounted to a reign of terror.”

It really does: Here’s what it says:

When our troops were having difficulty dislodging Grenadian soldiers from their main fortress, Marine tanks were sailed around the island to confront them. At the sight of tank guns, the seemingly stubborn occupants surrendered almost immediately without a fight.

The cease fire in the bloody Iran-Iraq war was quick to follow after the commencement of daily Iraqi long-range rocket bombardments of Tehran that amounted to a reign of terror. Given that both sides were exhausted at that point, a show of force could have been convincing. Strong U.S. action in response to Iran’s mining of neutral waters may also have had a sobering effect on the mullahs. Not only were Iran’s vulnerable oil-producing platforms in the Gulf boarded and destroyed with impunity by the U.S., but Iranian naval forces that had come out to challenge the U.S. Navy were destroyed. Iraq’s reign of terror, and the strong American message to Iran, possibly helped end the war.

You cannot make this stuff up. Read the whole document, if you can stomach it.

All I can say is, “Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.”

Thank You Peggy

It was so nice of her to help out the hapless Dems with some sad, heartfelt observations of our snobbishness, elitism and exclusionary tactics. She said:

“Be pro-free-speech again. Allow internal divisions and dissent. A vital political party should have divisions and dissent.”

“Stop being the party of snobs. Show love for your country and its people–all its people. Stop looking down on those who resist your teachings

“Stop the ideology. A lot of Democratic Party movers and intellectuals have created or inherited a leftist ideology that they try to impose on life. It doesn’t spring from life; it’s forced on life, and upon people. Stop doing that–it’s what weirdos who are detached from reality do.”

That was such good advice. You can’t say too much about it. What could be more important to a political party’s intellectual vitality

than to allow all points of view?This is what makes Peggy a national treasure. Her consistency, her caring advice to the opposition, her committment to values and principles that all Americans should (and so rarely do) hold dear are the very definition of the American character.

It’s called Honor and Integrity

Or, as Peggy says, “It’s called, class.”

Eastern Front

MOSCOW – The US envoy to Russia has warned Moscow to think twice about the consequences of using its UN veto to block military action against Iraq.

And in a further sign of deteriorating US-Russia relations over the Iraq crisis, a top Russian official said Washington’s bellicose stance could freeze a key nuclear arms pact

Why are we ratcheting up the rhetoric at this particular time? What could be causing this relationship — with a country that actually has a whole big bunch of nuclear weapons — to deteriorate like this? It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to be even thinking about freezing nuclear arms pacts and withholding economic aid from Russia right now. Who would even think of such a thing?

A Kremlin spokeswoman said US President George W Bush discussed the Iraq crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone on Wednesday.

Not a good idea.

I knew President Merkin Muffley. President Merkin Muffley was a friend of mine. And you sir are no President Merkin Muffley.

Psychotic Break

Kieren and others are talking about how den Beste has lost his bearings, but it’s pretty clear it’s just symptomatic of a much wider form of mass psychosis on the right.

Michael Ledeen, esteemed fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and intimate of the neocon nutballs who are running our foreign policy has gone completely around the fucking bend:

A Theory

What if there’s method to the Franco-German madness?

Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren’t thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there’s evidence of such a design.

Like everyone else, the French and the Germans saw that the defeat of the Soviet Empire projected the United States into the rare, almost unique position of a global hyperpower, a country so strong in every measurable element that no other nation could possibly resist its will. The “new Europe” had been designed to carve out a limited autonomy for the old continent, a balance-point between the Americans and the Soviets. But once the Soviets were gone, and the Red Army melted down, the European Union was reduced to a combination theme park and free-trade zone. Some foolish American professors and doltish politicians might say — and even believe — that henceforth “power” would be defined in economic terms, and that military power would no longer count. But cynical Europeans know better.

They dreaded the establishment of an American empire, and they sought for a way to bring it down.

If you were the French president or the German chancellor, you might well have done the same.

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America’s vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we’ll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.

[…]

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

Radio Free France, anyone?

Somebody had a little Ecstasy with his Freedom Toast this morning.

The next time somebody says that the left is full of conspiracy theorists I’m going to pop a gasket. This guy is a MAINSTREAM Republican, writing on the National Review website, for crying out loud. His nutsy wife worked in the Reagan administration and formerly ran the Barbizon School of Dyed-Blond Former Prosecutors.

Michael Ledeen gets invited to the White House. He is crazy as a loon.

Epitaph

“One of the tests of a leader is to convince your allies what’s right and what’s wrong,” Bush said. “And that’s what a leader does. A leader builds up alliances.”

December 1999, ABC “This Week”

I hear ye, Junior.

OPERATOR

Colonel, you better have a look at this radar.

COLONEL

What is it, son?

OPERATOR

I don’t know, sir, but it looks like a giant–

CUT TO COCKPIT – JET

PILOT

Dick!

CO-PILOT

Yes?

PILOT

Take a look out of starboard.

CO-PILOT

Oh my God, it looks like a huge–

CUT TO WOODS

MAN

Pecker!

WOMAN

Where?

He raises his binoculars.

MAN

Over there. A rare red-billed woodpecker!

(looks over with binoculars)

What sort of bird is that? Oh goodness, it’s not a bird, it’s-

CUT TO ARMY BASE

SERGEANT

Privates! We have reports of an Unidentified Flying Object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with-

CUT TO BASEBALL DIAMOND:

UMPIRE

Two balls! No strikes.

(looking up)

What is that? It looks just like an enormous–

CUT BACK TO RADAR ROOM:

COLONEL

Johnson!

RADAR OPERATOR

Yes, sir?

COLONEL

Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.

Official transcript

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Tory Unrest

If the Tories are starting to falter then there is a faint (very faint) possibility that the Brits will drop out. If that happens, then all bets are off.

Conservative whip John Randall has quit his post because of his concerns over a possible Iraq war.

With the Tory leadership backing Tony Blair’s stance on the Iraq crisis, Mr Randall’s resignation shows divisions are not exclusively confined to the Labour benches.

His move comes after International Development Secretary Clare Short launched a searing attack on Mr Blair’s “reckless” Iraq policy.

One Labour ministerial aide, Andy Reed, has already resigned over his concerns and others have signalled they will follow if war begins without new United Nations backing.

[…]

They’re coming at Bush’s Freedom Poodle now from the right as well as the left. It’s probably just a “Ron Paul” moment, but you never know.

A Good Dad

TBOGG proves that it’s the smart, sensitive people who are the most devastatingly funny.

Here’s my pick for “oh my Gawd, my life just changed” reading:

When you look directly at an insane man all you see is a reflection of your own knowledge that he’s insane, which is not to see him at all. To see him you must see what he saw and when you are trying to see the vision of an insane man, an oblique route is the only way to come at it. Otherwise your own opinions block the way… The ghost [Phaedrus] pursued was the ghost that underlies all of technology, all of modern science, all of Western thought. It was the ghost of rationality itself.”

Oooh baby.

I was 17 years old and the world tipped off its axis and sent me flying in a brand new direction.

Orcinus

If those of us on the left read nothing else, we need to read this series from David Neiwert, called Rush, Newspeak and Fascism.

He is writing about something that we really don’t want to hear about. Marshalled with data and first hand experience in the field, he is laying out the scenario — step by step — for how the United States of America can slowly but inexorably move into fascism.

This is not hysterical nonsense nor is it tin-foil hat conspiracy mongering. Those of us who like to think of ourselves as fairly earthbound (polemic blogging notwithstanding) and who have grown up in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity where nothing really politically catastrophic has happened to us, are hard pressed to believe that something truly bad can happen here.

I have friends who have maintained until just recently that we would not go to war because well.. it didn’t make sense and the wise men who “really run things” wouldn’t let it happen. I know other who have faith that our electoral system could never be compromised in any serious way because well…it’s America. We don’t do that.

And, indeed, we have had an incredible run. We always existed within the context of the time, and as such we perpetrated genocide, institutionalized slavery, pandered to every bigoted and racist proclivity known to man. As a culture we have been no better (and probably no worse) than any other collection of flawed human beings. Rather, it has been the government, while certainly corrupt at times and thoroughly tainted by the necessity for the human species to run it, that has been the fundamental basis of the bold American experiment. A certain committment to that ideal has formed the core of what it means to be an American.

But, there is no guarantee that it remain so. Under stress, whether real or manufactured, the institutions we take for granted are subject to change. We are not immune from the dark side of human ambition or the folly of small men with grand ideas and little know how. It’s impossible to know if we are marching toward fascism but there is no law of nature that says it is impossible.

How Inappropriate

Bob Novak (singing along with the Mighty Wurlitzer) is upset that Jimmy Carter is speaking out of turn and criticizing President Legacy:

NOVAK: There was a time when ex presidents acted like elder statesmen, rarely seen, almost never heard. But on “60 Minutes” this past weekend, there was Bill Clinton, basking in the spotlight of big money and criticizing President Bush’s proposed tax cut. Even that wasn’t as grading (sic) as yesterday’s sanctimonious op-ed column in “The New York Times” by Sunday school teacher and ex-President Jimmy Carter. “As a Christian and as a president who was severely provoked by international crises, I became thoroughly familiar with the principles of a just war, and it is clear that a substantial unilateral attack on Iraq does not meet these standards.”

He’s right, as always. But, I really think he needs to have a talk with this guy too:

”We need to make clear the new world order is not some code for American imperialism, but making freedom and self-determination widely accepted norms”

It’s highly inappropriate for former presidents to speak out of turn this way.