The assassination conundrum

I once blogged about the discomfort I felt when a remotely piloted drone aircraft targets an individual for death, or a team of Special Operatives hunts down and kills someone. That’s more akin to assassination than warfare as usually practiced, and I contrasted it with the glee I feel when the US Marines come crashing ashore to accomplish the same deed. Somehow, taking the bad guy out in a full frontal assault is okay, while dispatching a Hellfire missile or killer team seems evil, or anyhow not the work of gentlemen.

So it is with the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai earlier this month. The man abducted and killed two Israeli soldiers, among other activities. Now either what he did in that instance was either an act of war or a cold-blooded murder. If an act of war, then his assassination by what we assume were Israeli agents is no less problematical. And if murder, how can we possibly object to his receiving the same treatment in his turn? It’s not as if Hamas is going to bring him to justice, or the statelet of Dubai, and certainly not the International Criminal Court.

Yet the BBC among other western news outlets report on the assassination as if Mr al-Mabhouh were the victim and his assassins the criminals. Partly this is the result of a reflexive anti-Israel bias, and partly the West’s confusion over how to respond to an enemy who wears no uniform and follows no code of war. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Mr Brown goes to Washington

Congratulations to Scott Brown, who in a single month broke the Democratic death grip on the U.S. Senate and sent his fellow Republicans into orbit for voting “aye” on the latest Democratic stimulus, er, jobs bill. I am opposed to all such trillion-dollar pork projects, but I am heartily in favor of a man who can think for himself, as Mr Brown so clearly does. Besides, as I can testify, he writes a smart and engaging thank-you note to anyone who contributed to his campaign. I hope he serves the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as long as his predecessor did. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

A man who earned his medals

Any follower of this blog knows that I kvetch about the chests-full of medals that American generals wear, 90 percent of them absurd or undeserved. Well, here's a man who also wore a chest full of medals: Colonel Bob Howard. The difference is that he earned them the hard way--at least the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Purple Hearts, and the Combat Infantryman's Badge. He was buried at Arlington on Monday. Blue skies, Colonel! -- Dan Ford

F-22 and a nation in decline

Mark Helprin--novelist and conservative--has written a devastating critique of America's defense meltdown in today's Wall Street Journal. Ostensibly it's a defense of the F-22 Raptor, but in a larger sense it's a broadside at a people and a government that would rather bail out General Motors and the United Auto Workers than properly equip its armed forces. It begins:

Cancelling the F-22 Raptor, the most capable fighter plane ever produced, is yet another act in the tragedy of a nation that, bankrupting itself, embracing moral decline, and apologizing to its enemies, is losing the will to prevail. In pursuit of false prosperities that have failed even the economy, America for three presidencies and an entire generation has diminished its arsenals, unbalanced its military, and forgotten its genius for strategy.

I'm not so sure about that last bit: when did the US ever have a genius for strategy? (Tactics, yes, and even operational art, but grand strategy seems always to elude us.) But for the rest, I think I'd rather live in a country guarded by the F-22 than not. Read it. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The face of future air combat

Meet the Sukhoi PAK-FA, which an Australian aviation website terms “the new, younger, tougher kid on the block, and … likely to become the nemesis of the F-22” Raptor, which the U.S. has just capped at 187 aircraft, on the theory that there’s little need in today’s world for an air-superiority fighter. The money thus saved is to go into procurement of the F-35, a smaller, lighter, cheaper, multi-role warplane to be acquired by the USAF and the Navy and Marine air arms. The logic of this move is disputed by the Australians, who argue that the F-35 just can’t stand up against the PAK-FA. India plans to co-produce the Russian plane, and Israel is a likely buyer as well. Concludes the website:

The US would be left with the scraps, producing ineffective combat aircraft that could only be sold by forcing purchases onto the wary and resentful US Armed Services, who would know that they are now ‘second tier’ and likely to be slaughtered en-masse in a shooting war.

How to rescue the situation? Easy: just cancel the F-35 program (actually, there are three such programs, since the Air Force, Navy, and Marines each have different requirements for their “joint” fighter.) Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Helping hands

I haven't yet blogged about Haiti, in large part because I find the international aid effort as horrifying as the underlying natural disaster. I kept thinking of my dentist, who for years has taken his vacation in Haiti, pulling teeth and filling cavities. While Bill Clinton and the UN stumbled around, the 900-pound gorillas who must have confused the aid effort more than they helped, where were the private-sector volunteers who could actually get things done? Well, Tom Ricks has an account by and about Team Rubicon, which nobody has ever heard of, and which for that reason probably did more good than Mr Clinton could ever have done, had not a medical emergency fortunately removed him from the scene. Team Rubicon consisted of two US Marines (not on active duty, but it's considered bad form to refer to anyone as an ex-Marine), two doctors, a physician's assistant, two firemen, and a Jesuit brother. They write:

At every turn, big aid organizations not only rejected our team's offers of assistance, but even attempted to dissuade us from going to render assistance in Port au Prince. With creativity and conviction, Team Rubicon, as we came to be called, found a way to put our original eight members into the devastated city, found a partner eager for our helping hands, and found that, contrary to everything the big aid bureaucracies were saying, small and skilled teams of military combat veterans and seasoned first responders were exactly what could render immediate, life-saving assistance in this situation.

They also paid their own way. An inspiring story. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

You are being watched

You probably won't want to watch the whole of this Dubai television program--it's nearly half an hour--but it's a fascinating glimpse of how closely we are being watched as we go through life. I trust the United States is not as advanced in this activity as is Dubai--or Britain, for that matter. But I find it positively creepy that even a government television station can put together such a detailed video of the assassins from the moment they arrive at the airport, and through their various taxi rides, hotel rooms, and disguises. (I particularly liked the videos of the guy who enters his hotel room bald and leaves it with a fine head of hair.) Is there any place in Dubai without a surveillance camera? In London? In Washington? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford