The Persians have not been happy with their Arab neighbors since the seventh century when Persia was invaded by Arab Muslim armies.

Now we have a more public confrontation between Iran and the United Arab Emirates when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, made visit to a disputed tiny island of Abu Musu which is 47 miles from the Iranian coast and claimed by UAE and Iran.

Iranian nationalism responds happily to this short of think and keeps the Iranian government in a good light with the population.

Abu Musu occupies a commanding position near the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz which see a fifth of all oil transported by ships pass through this coke point.

The Emirates have nothing to fear from Iran because the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, will offset any precipitous move by Iran. This is not to mention the U.S. navy and air power in the region.

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An excellent analysis appeared on the Washingtonpost.com (Right Turn), May 1, 2012, by Jennifer Rubin: “President Obama’s Speech In Afghanistan.”

Rubin said: “There were two reasons for President Obama to deliver a speech on the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and sign an accord with the Afghan government for ongoing cooperation after U.S. troops leave. The first, obviously, is to grab some more of the spotlight. (Had he not ridiculously overplayed his hand by insinuating Mitt Romney would not have killed bin Laden, no one would have thought much of it.) But the second reason and the substance of the speech were more objectionable.

“Obama would have us believe with bin Laden dead we can now just ‘end’ the war. He used ‘end’ a lot in the speech. He didn’t say ‘win’ or ‘victory.’ And in fact he redefined his own mission, now saying we were only concerned about defeating al-Qaeda. His determination to root out the Taliban, which he reiterated at the onset of his Afghan surge? Airbrushed out of history.”

It is important to remember that in 2009 Obama told the cadets at West Point: “We must deny al-Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future… [W]e will pursue a military strategy that will break the Taliban’s momentum and increase Afghanistan’s capacity over the next 18 months.”

It would seem that we have a major conundrum here.

Obama said:  “To build a country in America’s image, or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban” would “require many more years, many more dollars, and most importantly, many more American lives.”

There is no mention of the other terrorist networks at work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His focus was on bringing troops home, getting out, and quiting.

Maybe Afghanistan can survive a Taliban and Al Qaeda assault. But, I agree with Rubin that it is more likely that Afghanistan will head the way of Libya, Mali, Somalia, Yemen and others — a failed state where terrorists have free reign. It seems that Obama doesn’t understand or doesn’t care.

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It has been reported that nearly 300,000 women have served in combat zones since 2001 and there were 12,000 women serving in Iraq at one time, and there are even more in Afghanistan right now. While females are technically in support roles those jobs include flying aircraft, military police units and vehicle drivers.

It is a fact that many have come under fire with unfriendly forces.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps in a msg called ALMAR 012/12, “Assignment of Women to Ground Combat Units” wrote:

“I HAVE DIRECTED THAT MEASURED AND RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH BE CONDUCTED TO PROVIDE ME WITH THE INFORMATION AND DATA NECESSARY TO MAKE AN INFORMED AND EDUCATED RECOMMENDATION ON POTENTIAL POLICY CHANGES.  THE CUMULATIVE RESEARCH EFFORT WILL INCLUDE AN EXCEPTION TO THE GROUND ASSIGNMENT POLICY, QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH, AND A TOTAL FORCE SURVEY.”

Contrary to many news media reports the Commandant has not assigned Women Marines to ground combat. Please note that he has asked for research on the subject.

I asked a senior Woman Marine office (retired), whom I hold in high regard and could serve in combat with me any time, what she thought of the research.

“I actually think it’s a good move to see how many women actually volunteer for the training/research and then make it through. It may be a very small number and mostly put an end to the controversy, at least for the Marine Corps — that is, as long as the women actually have to keep pace with their male counterparts throughout the training. If the Infantry Officer’s Course (IOC) remains unchanged, I suspect a similar thing will happen as happened in the 70’s when Gen Wilson integrated OCS and TBS — female Marines were initially injured in such large numbers (breaking ankles and legs) that the Corps had to scale down the obstacle course and eventually develop a completely different “agility” course for the female candidates. If IOC stays exactly as is, most of the female volunteers will likely drop out or be dropped. The Corps will have to decide beforehand how they will assign the Women Marines who complete the training and also make it clear to the volunteers beforehand that they are not going to be assigned to infantry units directly. I imagine the volunteers will have to sign a letter of understanding so the Press and/or the ACLU won’t be able to claim discrimination.

“It would be a travesty if the Corps were forced by DoD to make the IOC training ‘gender neutral’ and, thereby, lower the standards to accommodate women. I pray that never happens.”

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“We’re within an inch of war almost every day in that (N. Korea)  part of the world, and we just have to be very careful about what we say and what we do,” Panetta said Wednesday on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

Yet, on April 12, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, discussed what he called the “security paradox.” According to Dempsey, the good news in the world today, is that interstate conflict is currently minimal, human violence is at an all-time low, and the United States faces “no obvious existential threat.” He did allow that future threats may be on the horizon. Also, Dempsey did say that he envisions an expanding set of threats.

There seems to be a gap between the world Dempsey sees and the forces that will be available to future U.S. military commanders.

There is still Iraq and Afghanistan where there is the possibility of another attempt at a “Tet Offensive” style assault nation wide that may cause the US to over react. The Taliban may have recently tried to launch a Tet style assault but had minimum success.  Maybe they had lessons learned.

To quote a famous ancient Greek philosopher: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

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It should be no surprise that Saudi Arabia is interested in the final outcome of the revolution in Syria and is helping the insurgents

The great divide between Saudi and Iran is now front burner in Syria.

The Saudis helping to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Shi’ite minority government and installing a Sunni majority government friendly with Saudi may be well worth it.

Iranian influence has been pushed into the region through Syria. Iranian money, weapons, and trainers have moved from Damascus to Hezbollah and Hamas, not to mention the other Islamic jihad hotspots.

Iran’s commitment to a nuclear bomb has flamed fears in Saudi Arabia that the Islamic Republic seeks regional hegemony.

Saudi supported forces in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and Bahrain have all resulted from Iranian interference.

There is one major problem; it could have an effect on the opposition movement by strengthening ideologically allied radical Islamist groups over moderates opposed to the Assad regime.

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The expansion and modernization of the Peoples liberation Army has many wondering what is it all about.

The PLA is the largest army in the world, with an active manpower of 2.3m. However, China’s real military strength is more than just men, guns and ammo. The Pentagon thinks China is planning on acquiring what is called A2/AD, or “anti-access/area denial” capabilities. The idea is to use asymmetric warfare and stop the US Navy with lots of anti-ship missiles, modern submarines, cyber-information warfare and anti-satellite weapons.

In the western Pacific, that would mean targeting America’s aircraft-carrier groups and amphibious assault groups.

It is no secret that the U.S. distraction in Iraq and Afghanistan has neglected the most economically dynamic region and it has responded inadequately to China’s growing military power and political assertiveness. According to senior American officials, China has the ambition and increasingly the power to implement regional hegemony.

According to the Chinese military leaders they are laying the foundations of modernization for the future. The next decade should see what is called the deployment of advanced military platforms and information warfare – bringing them together as an integrated network. They believe that the two processes should be completed by 2020.

Taiwan is the main point for China’s military focus. In 1996 the U.S. reacted to Chinese ballistic-missile tests carried out near Taiwan by sending two aircraft-carrier groups into the Taiwan Strait. Since then China’s strategy has been largely built around the possibility of armed conflict in which China’s forces would not only have to overcome opposition from Taiwan but also to deter, delay or defeat any American attempt to interfere.

In 2005 China passed the Taiwan Anti-Secession Law, which demands a military response should Taiwan ever declare independence or even if China thinks all possibility of peaceful unification has
been lost.

The range of forces facing Taiwan with the new A2/AD potential to push the forces of other countries over the horizon indicates that they see the guarantor of their security will always be there for them.

But there is more to the military situation than arms and new doctrine. There are three major factors to be considered. 1st, China now has a vital national interest in the stability of the global economic system.

2d, as some sensible American policymakers have said, it is not a matter of surprise that a country of China’s importance in the world should want armed forces which reflect that.

3d, the PLA may not be as advertized particularly after the embargoes placed on China after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. China wants to produce high-performance equipment and many  think this is why the U.S. military, industrial and DoD offices are often hit by cyber-attacks that appear to come from China. China’s defense industry may be improving but it remains behind western technology and must catch up.

China’s military openly says that closing the gap between U.S. and China is at least 10 years away. Additionally, China says it has no need to be a military peer of the US.

All this said, China views the U.S as a declining power, but at the same time believes Washington is capable of fighting back to undermine, and even disrupt, the economic and military growth that point to China becoming the world’s most powerful nation.

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While the U.S. has a myopic focused on Afghanistan the Administration may have lost its capability to work with Pakistan.

Pakistan is still fuming with internal strife after the earthquake and the floods that have weakened the Pakistan government rule in most of the country. There is no rule in the Northwest Territories, Pak Taliban control much of the border with Afghanistan, terrorist groups like the LeT (terrorist who attacked Mumbai) are supported by the Pak Army Inter-Service Intelligence – ISI -agency (their CIA, FBI and DHS all rolled into one)  and Baluchistan is ripe for a major insurgency.

The drone UAV strikes into Pakistan have been a source of tension for some time. While many UAV attacks have most likely killed many Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, the death of Pakistani civilians has acerbated the problems

NATO Supply trucks are still stuck in Pakistan

The explanation for the incident where NATO killed 24 Pakistani soldiers has never been accepted.

Pustans are part of the ethnic group in Afghan and Pakistan.

The attack on the Osama bin Laden compound was a serious bl;ow to Pakistan prestige.

This is not to ignore the ever present cold war with India and both are nuclear armed states. On top of all this is the tension between the Pakistani civilian government and the military leadership.

Why the Pakistan alliance with the Taliban?

Pakistan needs a friendly state to its their west to provide maneuver room in the event of war with India. Without resorting to nuclear weapons the much larger Indian army may over run much of Pakistan and the Pakistani army would need to retreat west to survive.

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Stephen M. Walt. writing on ForeignPolicy.com, March 20, 2012, “Top 10 Lessons Of The Iraq War, “ ask: “Now that the war is officially over and most U.S. forces have withdrawn, what are the most important takeaways?”

He raises some interesting points. But, missed the boat on a number of issues

I have condensed and opined on his top ten lessons as follows:

1. The U.S. lost. He clarifies that by saying: “The first and most important lesson of
Iraq war is that we didn’t win in any meaningful sense of that term.” Agree.

2. “It’s not that hard to hijack the United States into a war.” Do not agree.

3. “The United States gets in big trouble when the ‘marketplace of ideas’ breaks down and when the public and our leadership do not have an open debate about what to do.” Do not agree. There was plenty of debate but not for the right reasons.

4. “The secularism and middle-class character of Iraqi society was overrated. Before the war, advocates argued that democracy would be easy to install in Iraq…” Agree. A long history of dictatorship was to turn into a democracy – no way.

5. “Don’t listen to ambitious exiles. The case for war was strengthened by misleading testimony from various Iraqi exiles.” Totally agree. The key U.S. advisor, Ahmed Chalabi, was/is an Iranian stooge.

6. “It’s very hard to improvise an occupation. As the Army’s official history of the occupation notes dryly: ‘conditions in Iraq proved to be wildly out of sync with prewar assumptions.’ “Totally agree and L Paul Bremen was the most disastrous plenipotentiary that could have been sent to Iraq.

7. “Don’t be surprised when adversaries act to defend their own interests, and in ways we won’t like.” Agree. This lesson seems obvious when you have to consider centuries of Sunni and Shi’ite animosity. Don’t believe one person in the decision making process understood that paradigm.

8. “Counterinsurgency warfare is ugly and inevitably leads to war crimes, atrocities, or other forms of abuse.” Do not agree at all. Vietnam had its mistakes but all in all we won the counterinsurgency war. But, Congress lost the will to fight the conventional war by North Vietnam.

9. “Better ‘planning’ may not be the answer. There is little question that the invasion of Iraq was abysmally planned, and the post-war occupation was badly bungled.” Totally agree. War on the cheap was the corner stone of the SecDef planning.

10. “Rethink U.S. grand strategy, not just tactics or methods (whatever that means). Because it is not clear if any U.S. approach would have succeeded at an acceptable cost, the real lesson of Iraq is not to do stupid things like this again.” Totally disagree. It was winnable with more troops, like 500,000 as Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Eric Shinseki, said early on.

It was/is well known by the military that there were extensive pre-war plans for occupying and
rebuilding Iraq; the problem was that key decision maker (i.e. Donald Rumsfeld) simply ignored them. Trying to do “state building” in a deeply divided society is difficult at best, and there was no understanding in Washington, D.C. of the magnitude of the challenge.

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Unbelievably, the United States has come under increasing pressure from local political and Latin American leaders to rethink its drug control policy—and specifically, to start talking about decriminalization.

To quote one reporter who thinks we need to legalize drugs: “This debate is long overdue for many practical reasons; every pundit in every relevant country seems to agree that the drug war long ago failed. But there is also a very good ethical reason to start rethinking current US strategy… As the world’s largest consumers of narcotics, the American market has stoked violence, conflict and armed insurgency, corruption, and human rights abuses abroad.”

The so-called “Drug War” has yet to be really fought. Therefore, how can it be declared “failed?” Everything so far has simply been cosmetic or politically correct.

There has been no serious effort on the part of our political leaders to halt any type of drugs from crossing the border – no real military sentries or surveillance equipment to help the Border Patrol. To make matters worse when some states like Texas and Arizona try to enact laws to address the border problem they get sued by the Department of Justice.

Most law enforcement agencies and medical clinics who treat drug users know that marijuana or uppers or downers are “gateway” drugs to more hard stuff.

Many former casual users of marijuana will tell anyone they want a bigger kick after the MJ wears off.

Drug users, pushers, academics and social activists advocating for legalization are demanding it to satisfy their own greedy needs – money or drugs.  Then there are those who seek political advantage for votes.

Now, the sitting presidents of countries including Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala are talking that Washington should change course.

It is true that the U.S. is the country whose consumers are keeping the market booming. However, let’s be honest, when Mexico is at war with its cartels, the United States is, essentially, also at war. Unfortunately, the U.S. sure doesn’t act like it.

Larry Martines, noted law enforcement expert, has said: “BILLIONS have been spent for GADGETS, with token appearances by the National Guard and there is no political will from the white house or congress by the last 3 presidents. All the taxpayers money has been spent to make it APPEAR we were doing something when in fact we were in reality putting a bandage over a problem that needs serious surgery.”

Many law enforcement agencies along the border know that the drug traffickers are moving to methamphetamine because it is more easily transported and is bringing in more profit.

Very few have considered the environment impact of meth labs. They pour chemical in the sewers and the rivers and that kills all aquatic life and is dangerous to water treatment plants.

The U.S. fight in the drug war has not really begun to fight.

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According to Ken Dilanian, Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2012, “Iran’s record of deceit fuels worry over President Obama’s assurances that he’ll know if Tehran starts trying to build a nuclear weapon:. Skeptics Doubt U.S. Can Be Certain About Iran’s Nuclear Progress.”

According to Dilanian: “Despite President Obama’s assurances that the United States will know if Tehran begins to secretly build a nuclear bomb, some senior officials familiar with U.S. intelligence and spying capabilities in Iran are doubtful.”

Surprisingly, there is some unusual thinking in the U.S. news media that doesn’t accept the National Intelligence Estimate that it will be some time before Iran has a nuclear bomb.

The issue is important because the White House has suggested that U.S. satellites, sensors and spies, as well as United Nations inspections, provide reliable reports to decide whether diplomacy has failed and military action is needed to stop Iran from assembling a nuclear device.

It is no surprise that over the last decade, Western intelligence agencies have twice discovered large-scale Iranian facilities built to enrich uranium. The question now is whether Iran is hiding other nuclear enrichment sites or weapons research centers and has already built a bomb.

Iran’s interaction with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been unfruitful. Tehran has refused to fully show all nuclear production sites and answer questions about what the U.N. agency calls “possible military dimensions” to its program. It drew back on one issue last week, saying it would permit inspectors to visit a military base that it had previously put off-limits but then changes its mind and would not let the inspectors visit the site.

In my opinion, Iran has the bomb or can build one any time.

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