Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: National Security

The New Iraqi Army, Take Two?

It appears that the Iraqi Army is going to retake Mosul. It has been slow going, and they have had to use the US and other Air Forces (plus some ..um, irregulars) to finish the job. How, after so many years of training and arming the Iraqi Army, did this state of affairs come to pass?

First, a little background. The Iraqi Army at the beginning of 1979 was of respectable size, and it was fully equipped with Soviet export-grade equipment. Its doctrine and training were the usual crude aping of Soviet doctrine. Heavy reliance on numbers and artillery with tanks. Not very flexible and individual initiative was all but non-existent. The Iraqi Air Force was similarly Soviet armed and organized. The 8 year war with Iran 1980-1988 degraded this force significantly.

Then the Iraqis really got their arses kicked. An exhausted and broken army faced the peak Cold War ready forces of the US, UK, France, and others. The results, in retrospect, were what should have been expected (I chuckle remembering Edward Luttwak and other “experts” warning that the “battle hardened” Iraqi Army would be a tough fight). Cut to a dozen years later, and they were in even worse shape – while their enemies were fielding even more advanced forces. What was left of the Iraqi Army was clubbed down, faded away, and the country was occupied in 2003. Long story short – this was not a history of success, no tradition of excellence, or a force that could adapt, change, and improve. So that was the situation when we decided to put a hand to it (or a foot in it, your choice).

The new Iraqi government (2005 edition) started the rebuilding of the Army (and other branches) from scratch. With heavy US and Allied assistance, the Army started to build Infantry Divisions, and take over responsibility for more and more parts of the country. In 2008, the new Iraqi military faced its first major test – retaking Basra from the Jaish al Mahdi and various Iranian handlers and IRGC groups. The Iraqi Operation Charge of the Knights did not start off too well. One brigade, fresh from initial training and only partly equipped, was shoved into the fight too early and quietly saw 50% of its troops melt away. That is when it got personal…

Welcome to scenic Mahmud al Kasim!

I got sent from a semi-backwater, helping advise the Iraqi Army 10th Division, to advising the 14th Division (they were fighting in Basra). A handful of Brits, two Americans, and one Australian were going to give advice and do a little coordination with a company of US Apache helicopters and the British who were nearby.

We few, we happy few

The Iraqis brought in their best – the 1st IA Division (later renamed the 1st QRF – Quick Reaction Force) to join the 14th, some other bits and pieces, and a Brigade of freshly trained and equipped National Police (similar to European Gendarmerie). They also had the Prime Minister, Interior Minister, and various fixers show up to smooth over the sluggish supply situation (10 stamps and signatures to get ammo, 13 if it was 14.5 mm or higher). It worked. Some really long hours, one really loud artillery barrage, several 107 mm rockets seeming to have my name on them, and meeting some Iranian prisoners later – Basra was cleared. A triumph, right? Actually it was the peak and start of the decline of that iteration of the Iraqi Army.

With simultaneous operations going on in Baghdad (Hi there, Sadr City!) and Basra – the Iraqis had really put the boot to internal enemies. The necessity of having this combat force, needed to protect against existential threats, began to pale in comparison to the drive to crony up the Army. Before I left at the end of 2008, we were getting grumbling from authorities in the Kurdish area that the Iraqi Defense Ministry was replacing competent Kurdish commanders with crony Shias. The Sunni had a related beef that they were getting shut out of opportunities as part of score settling by the Shia dominated Government. Fuel, pay and supply pilferage, embezzlement, theft, and black marketeering had been a problem, even in 2008 (we used to watch the 10th Division get its fuel allotment and line up their own civilian vehicles, family members, and various connected or bribe bearing people to fill up in long line….then bitch they didn’t have enough fuel to conduct operations). Without nosy Americans asking where things were, looking at records, and checking inventories, it went to pot – and don’t expect a fix to be fast.

By the time we had (temporarily, as it worked out) left Iraq, the seeds of decline were starting to bloom. Once ISIS kicked their way into Iraq, the post-2003 Iraqi Army had become unable to hold a large chunk of its own country.

After all this, the US looks like it will be back in the business of training the Iraqi Army once more. NOTE: This isn’t a “partisan” issue, as both Obama and Trump Administrations have committed.

What is the libertarian take on this?

The first reaction = “none of our business, goodbye.” Why should American taxpayers pay for training a foreign army? Internal squabbles on the other side of the world are not our business, nor our duty to settle. A less hands-off reaction might be “better to train them than have US forces doing the fighting.” “ISIS is a threat to us, and they have made it clear they want to bring it everywhere – better to fight them over there, with locals, than wait for them to send the next truck to plow through a crowd, or some guys with nail-packed bomb vests take out a mall.”

Practically speaking, it appears that the Iraqis have not yet made the commitment to maintaining a capable force, even if we do rebuild it yet again. If they want to have us train them – fine, pay for it completely. See you at Fort Polk for training and humidity! Come on, guys NTC should be like home! Same goes for equipment… All you can buy! But going to the US Taxpayer well, once again, is not a very palatable option.

What are your thoughts, Glibs? In for a penny, in for a pound? We broke it, we fix it? Fuck off slaver? No, fuck you, cut spending?

March 16, 2017
Quick Hit: The Ethics of Taking a Leak… Er, I Mean Leaking Classified Info

I imagine STEVE SMITH looking something like this when shaved

Traitor. Hero. Scoundrel. Saint. Whistleblower. Disgruntled. Those who leak classified information are labeled and categorized before the impact of their revelations are even known. In essence, there are three views of a leaker (none of which are satisfying). The first view is that leaking is traitorous and wrong in every circumstance. These law & order types tend to say things like “they should’ve gone through proper channels.” The second view is that leaking is heroic and right in every circumstance. These anti-government types tend to say things like “governments shouldn’t have secrets.” The third view is that leaking is good when it benefits the person’s TEAM and bad when it exposes the person’s TEAM. These political neanderthals are worth no more electrons than have already been spilt on them.

I’m in a fourth camp, one that I have seen espoused by some other libertarians from time to time. I believe that the virtuosity of the leak is dependent on the information being leaked. To take a quick intellectual shortcut, the ends justify the means when it comes to leaks.

The distinction is clear when viewing Edward Snowden in comparison to Bradley/Chelsea Manning. On one side we have a person who collected and released targeted information about unconstitutional spying programs against US citizens with the intent to inform the citizenry for the good of the country. On the other side we have a person who collected and released a wide assortment of information without any particular rhyme or reason for the purpose of getting back at an employer who wasn’t providing the person’s preferred benefits. Snowden is a hero. Manning is a disgruntled traitor.

At the end of the day, I don’t think we can judge a leaker until we are able to assess the information being leaked. However, there is not enough nuance in the American political realm to allow such a subtle distinction. Either the leaker is good because they’re stickin’ it to the man, or they’re bad because ‘murica.

March 10, 2017
We’re Living in a Post-Digital-Evidence Age

Revelations from Wikileaks have far deeper implications than have been covered by the media as yet. The CIA has lost control of not only a trove of documents about the organization’s cyber warfare capabilities. It’s lost control of the weapons themselves.

WikiLeaks has dropped a bomb on the CIA

In digital warfare, there exists the concept of a zero-day exploit. In hacker/information security parlance, a zero-day is an undisclosed vulnerability in software that has been discovered. Ordinarily, watchdog groups and the organizations that produce software have procedures in place to discuss vulnerabilities and issue patches before releasing details of exploits to the general public. Only in the extreme circumstance of an organization deliberately ignoring reports by security researchers of exploitable weaknesses do ethical hackers resort to releasing details of the attack to the general public. The obvious ramification of knowledge being openly available before a patch is released is that anyone can use it prior to patching.

There is the obvious issue, raised by Wikileaks itself, that the CIA has duplicated the functions of the NSA, but very likely with even less oversight for the use of their arsenal. This is not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, but possibly a revelation that unconstitutional attacks on the privacy of American citizens may be taking place by more than one government agency. If that is the case, it is a clear violation of the CIA’s mission, as laid out by Congress.

The ultimate effect of losing this digital arsenal, which may now be in the hands of anyone, is that literally any digital evidence may be called into question. The scope of who may have access to it is completely unknown, and this genie cannot be put back into its bottle. The evidentiary value of criminal activity stored on computers could be disclaimed as planted evidence. This has wide-ranging implications not only for cases under consideration, but for future cases which may be brought.

The CIA now has an obligation to the American people to disclose all of the methods of its infiltration to software developers in advance of the coming storm. It must shatter the weapons it created and, if Congress deems it necessary, it may rebuild a new arsenal.

Furthermore, Congress must probe the agency deeply and potentially reform the country’s spying agencies completely. There is evidently far too much overlap for which the taxpayer is expected to foot the bill. It is also evident that there is too little civilian oversight and too much delegation of powers in the name of national security, a long-standing problem which has now become an emergency. Ethical considerations of spying on foreign powers aside, this lapse has made it clear that our own spying agencies are as much a danger to our own citizens as they are to the rest of the world.

March 9, 2017
VAULT 7: HOLY SHIT

WikiLeaks has just released the first part of the largest document dump on an “intelligence agency” in its history. Or in the history of record-keeping. Ever.

The first of many releases

Julian Assange is quoted in The Guardian as saying the release will be far larger than the Snowden Files.

ZeroHedge has a pretty good early take, as they usually do. It has charts, too!

CIA Organizational Chart

This is going to suck all the air out of the news for a while, and I’m predicting it will cause several heads to explode on both “sides” of American politics, let alone the impact it will have on the Deep State bureaucrats who think they are above the law.

March 7, 2017
Confessions of a Reluctant Drug Warrior

Pictured: westernsloper, maybe?

The seven-meter rigid hull inflatable boat carried us across a light chop on the purple sea. There is something about the Gulf Stream that makes the sea a deep purple. I often stared into the depths wondering how many fish would get a go at me if I was sinking to the sea floor 700 fathoms below. I sat on the sponson, gripping the life line and felt the weight of my body armor and the Berretta on my belt with each bounce of the hull. My preferred job was to be the guy operating the boat. That was why I joined the Coast Guard, after all. I had no desire to be the guy climbing off the small boat and onto the sailboat we were racing toward in front of us a few hundred yards away. In the opposite direction, past the widening V of our small boat’s wake was our ship: a glistening white 110-foot patrol boat with the well known diagonal orange stripe on the bow that parted the light chop with a small splash as it passed through each wave.

The captain had made contact with the sailboat prior to our departing the cutter. He gave them the usual orders, “Sailing vessel off my starboard bow, this is the United States Coast Guard. Muster your crew on deck, maintain heading and speed, and prepare to be boarded”. The USCG has the right to board any US flag vessel on the high seas, as well as any foreign flag vessel within our territorial waters extending out 12 NM. This “right” is written into law. 14 U.S. Code § 89

• (a) The Coast Guard may make inquiries, examinations, inspections, searches, seizures, and arrests upon the high seas and waters over which the United States has jurisdiction, for the prevention, detection, and suppression of violations of laws of the United States.

I knew little of this law when I joined the Coast Guard. The right of the Coast Guard to board a vessel was only briefly covered in a seamanship school I previously attended in hopes of making a career as a sailor. (My life didn’t work out that way.) My only contact with the Coast Guard prior to becoming one of them was being boarded once during a sailboat delivery from Grand Cayman to Venezuela. That trimaran was a UK flagged vessel, but the captain I was working for, a grizzled, wrinkled, weathered old German with an affinity for speedos, gave the Coast Guard permission to board our boat a couple hundred nautical miles south of Jamaica somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean.

Having grown up in western Colorado, I had a strong mistrust of authority, as did everyone I grew up with. I think there is something in the water in Colorado. Or at least there used to be. The general attitude was “leave me alone, and I will leave you alone.” The best government was a small government. We grew up with a respect for private property because if you didn’t, there was a good chance you would get shot at. I had learned of the constitution only in a basic way in high school civics classes, but I did know what the 4th amendment was. All that I was part of that day as we raced across a small part of the Florida Straights to board a boat we did not suspect of anything but were going to board, anyway, just because we could, seemed, at least to my simple understanding of the constitution to be, kind of messed up, and at the worst, un-fucking-constitutional.

The boat coxswain matched the sailboat’s speed and came alongside, edging the bow into the hull of the larger boat at an angle to allow us to climb over the wire rope lifelines onto the deck of the sailboat. The owners were polite, but, as usual, annoyed at the intrusion. Standard procedure was to keep the people on board in the cockpit, and search the vessel, “for officer safety”. The training goes: search all “man-sized” spaces to ensure there is nobody else on board that could do you harm and that the vessel was safe i.e. not sinking or about to burst into flame. My supervisor and I went below while the Boarding Officer stayed on deck and went through the owner’s documents and asked questions from a checklist to ensure they had all the required safety equipment. I went forward to the V-berth. My supervisor, the BM2, said, “Close the door to check that closet, and when it’s closed have a good look around”. I closed the door, looked in the closet, the bilge, and then flipped the bird at the door outside of which my BM2 stood. I did not have it in me to search where I should not. This is why I am no longer in law enforcement. It turned out not to be my cup of horse shit.

“Assets” *snicker*

I spent somewhere around 18 months stationed in Key West attached to that patrol boat. Much of it standing watch as we floated dark ship on dead calm nights on the Cal Sal bank under the glow of a magnificent star-filled sky as I stared off into the darkness looking for the smugglers. Many patrols ended with the rescue of rafters fleeing Castro’s Cuba, and I can say the odor of people who have been pickling in salt water for days is something that does not leave a person. We rescued a few boaters in distress and got underway in what was a storm lacking a couple mph of wind speed to make it to hurricane status. We made one big drug bust that was all intel and DEA had been watching the guys for months as they outfitted their boat with a false hull in the Bahamas. The amount of intelligence the federal agencies had filled several binders kept on the bridge with the names of suspect vessels as well as those on watch lists. All in all, I have fond memories, but it all watered the seeds of liberty from my Colorado youth and mistrust of big government and all the eyes watching what we do.

Judge Napaletono writes here (h/t Mike Schmidt)

• Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety — each one lying on top of a predecessor — eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late.

14 USC 89 became law in 1949. It was a building block for safety and is the reason “inquiries” are made.

My goal at the time I joined the Coast Guard was to drive boats and do search and rescue. To advance at the rate that were the drivers of said boats, Boatswainsmate, one has to become a Boarding Officer. As I advanced in rank and moved on to my next duty station in Washington state, I got orders from the USCG Maritime Law Enforcement School in Yorktown Virginia. The most important thing I learned there was that the strippers at the clubs in the area can’t actually take their clothes off. What kind of puritan idiocy is that? Hell, they even have proper strippers in Oklahoma for titties sake. I also received lessons in the case law that allows the USCG to continue with what seemed to me to be unconstitutional searches. Those searches have stood up in court time and time again. (I am sure there are those who would comment on this with much more knowledge than I and is why I followed this group of intelligent well-read degenerates across the interwebz. For lessons in liberty and smartassery.) A good breakdown of how 14 USC 89 became law can be found here, written by much smarterer peeples than me.

My experiences in that realm of things I never intended to be a part of all occurred in the early 90’s, when I was young and not nearly as jaded as I am now in my current state of being an irascible middle age jackass. Those were times when the USCG was under the umbrella of the Department of Transportation and fought Amtrak for funds. Now, after 9/11, the Patriot Act, and lord knows what else, they fall under Department of Homeland Security. I fear for what happens on the seas these days, and I wonder what eyes watch us at this very moment.

March 1, 2017
Do We Owe Anything To The Afghan Dead, Opportunist or Brave?

In 2004-2005 I was part of the long and latest version of the wars in Afghanistan. I was the Civil Affairs Officer for one of the two Task Forces running around Parwan, Kapisa and part of Kabul province. My job – Go make nice with the locals, and keep your ears and eyes open.

“Daddy will be back to help in a minute”

“I thought the Marines did Toys for Tots, dang it!”

At the time, the Taliban was trying to reconstitute itself and come back into the country from Pakistan. A few of them managed to straggle in, without being vaporized by A-10s or such. Where I was, the asshats were primarily the HIG. Our local friends were all former Northern Alliance members.

The fellow on the left is Haji Almos – he was a commander of one of the Northern Alliance “corps” and a man rumored to have gained his wealth through opium and other smuggling operations. He “went legit” by running for office in the Wolesi Jirga (Parliament). During a meeting, he informed those in attendance that an endorsement from a particular American military officer in the area would carry great weight, and if he got it…well, we would have a friend in the Wolesi Jirga. (I was only slightly startled, being from the Chicagoland area.) I did ask that officer if, when he was at West Point, he was ever told he would be asked to be a Kingmaker in a far off land? That got me a chuckle and a shake of the head. We politely demurred and wished him luck, nonetheless. He won office that Fall. Here was a man that had basically fought on our side, offered political support…but it was, I think, because the wind was blowing our way. His actions after taking office were not all that nice. For what it is worth, he is not in office anymore.

The man on the right is Abdul Rahman Sayedkhili. He is dead. While still alive, he was appointed provincial police chief of the province I lived in. He cleaned out the Taliban and HIG, and was asked to take an even more dangerous assignment. The Taliban killed him by suicide bomber attack. Before we got there in 2001, he had personally aided hundreds of people fleeing the Taliban, fought those same Taliban and welcomed us. He closely cooperated with NATO all the way up to his death.

The man on the left, front is Kabir Ahmad. He was the government head of the district (roughly equivalent to an American County) I lived in. He had also been part of the fight against the Taliban, but moreso keeping things on the administrative side. He found out I was a lawyer back in America, and we hit it off (he was an attorney as well as administrator). Whenever something broke bad, he would be rushing to the scene with the district police (his office was kind of a County Chairman, Sheriff and District Attorney all rolled into one). He received death threats on a regular basis from the HIG, Taliban and anyone else who resented his fairly honest and efficient work. He was a tireless advocate for help improving the area I was working – anyone or anything he could wrangle to dig a well, build an agriculture cooperative building or the like. He was a brave man, a good man.

So what, if anything did we owe them? By “we,” I mean the taxpayers and military members of the countries involved in Afghanistan (primarily the US, but the UK, Canada and others had expended a considerable effort). The US led forces had come in to bash the Taliban over the head and get the AQ folks who had set up the 9/11/2001 attacks on the US. The Northern Alliance used our air support to push the Taliban back

“Here, and no further, went the Taliban”

and some of our own forces helped finish the job. Once the head bashing was done, we stuck around, dumped in more forces, and started doing mostly occupation and rebuilding things. Did we owe anything to the Afghans that had been on our side? They fought our enemies, helped us as much as they could…some of it out of self-interest (survival, primarily), some of it out of a sense of honor, and some out of an opportunity to use us to their own ends (both good and selfishly bad).

As a soldier, I felt a debt to them. These were allies and fellow combatants – they had been killing Taliban before any of us had even heard the name. But as a budding libertarian, I felt that we were sort of hanging around when it was not so much our job any more. Why was I, a 20 year Soldier, digging wells, building schools and trying not to get blowed up real good while doing so? Was I supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign or domestic? This is what NATO was for?

So my question to all of you, is when is the debt paid? Was there a debt to begin with? Do we owe anything to the people that risk (and sometimes lose) their lives working on behalf of our government’s stated goals?

I struggle with it, partially because part of my heart is still in the Panjshir Valley, with Kabir Ahmad, and with the Sayedkhili family. But as a libertarian, I know that if you kick in the door and get the SOB inside the house– once you fix the door back up, or give the homeowner enough to fix it themselves…it is time to leave.

Update: Yes, I once did narrow my gaze at the entirety of Northeast Afghanistan

“Don’t think I missed any of that Parwan, Kapisa, Kabul or Panjshir…you too Badakhshan.

February 24, 2017
Georgetown Professor Jonathan Brown Responds

Jonathan Brown has struck back at his critics and issued a lengthy release addressing many of the complaints people have levied against his purported positions on slavery and rape.

Professor Jonathan Brown

He begins by admitting to his tone-deafness on the issue and how he perhaps needed to have more understanding of a broad audience when speaking in a scholarly manner. He then puts out a claim that he has received many death and rape threats on him as well as his family, although he doesn’t substantiate the claim in any way, shape or form.

He then continues to spin interesting stories about what he means and that the context was completely misrepresented. He continues to explain how Muslims were actually some of the greatest abolitionists in the history of mankind and that a lot of the latter slavery in the Muslim world was misunderstood, especially much of that from the Ottoman Empire.

Read it for yourself, but I personally have a hard time taking someone seriously that says rape can actually be punished under Sharia as assault with only two witnesses as opposed to the four necessary to prove the charge of Hudud (fornication/adultery). It diminishes the rule of law in a civil society and still essentially makes women second-class citizens.

Enjoy the read and share your thoughts on the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and the Director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.

Hat tip to The Fusionist

February 16, 2017
Obama was right to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence

by Lucy Steigerwald

(Original article here.)

After eight years of waging war on whistleblowers, and indeed, being president during former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning’s sentence, trial, and three years of brutal detainment before that—President Obama finally delivered some pleasant news on Tuesday. Instead of 35 years in prison for 20 charges, Manning will be out in May of this year.

A heroic whistleblower to some and a traitor to others, Manning was an Army private who leaked thousands of documents related to the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks, which in turn shared some of those documents with various newspapers. Though U.S. officials and their most dutiful lapdogs cried out in outrage over this individualist act of light shedding, no one died because of these leaks, as some claimed. We did, however, get to see what war looks like live with the “collateral murder” video. Furthermore, Manning’s information gave us body counts for Iraq, reports of the U.S. failing to follow up on reports of torture and murder, and war crimes committed that were never prosecuted.

There was all the reason in the world to assume Obama wouldn’t free Manning. His administration tried a record number of people under the espionage act. Edward Snowden fled to Russia rather than face the dubious justice that anyone unimportant would be granted for spilling government secrets. Former NSA executive Thomas Drake narrowly escaped the Espionage Act, and now works at an Apple Store, because he spoke to a reporter about privacy concerns he had with the agency, which he said was committing privacy violations worse than those which took place under Richard Nixon.

General David Petraeus could have been charged under a section of the Espionage Act for leaking classified secrets to his mistress/biographer, but he wasn’t. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and retired as CIA director, and that was all. Six months later, there was talk of him being in Donald Trump’s administration.

After two suicide attempts, miserable treatment, and draconian punishments for crimes such as possessing verboten books and expired toothpaste,

The law is the law, and “illegal” has serious meaning which all should respect. Because toothpaste.

and seven total years without freedom, Manning has five more months to go. It appears that President Trump will have no power to reverse this decision. Presidential clemency power is a beefy power indeed. Obama, after a term and a half of being known for a dubious healthcare law, and setting exciting new precedents in drone assassinations of Americans, finally started using that power in earnest, and is now breaking records there. As of today’s news, the president had commuted the sentences of more than 1500 people, and pardoned 212 people.

Though the news of Manning’s imminent release is great, there can be at least a semi-cynical explanation. Having diluted his civil libertarian rhetoric with his, uh, actual record, Obama can now go out with a bang, one that makes even the crankiest small government fans cheer when they consider the 1500 people whose lives are improved (or in the case of the handful of people who sentences Obama changed from death to life imprisonment, saved). But he can also keep an elite credibility by saying Manning was punished already. The clemency was a surprise, but there’s a certain savvy logic to it as well.

It’s not enough for security state vampires such as National Review’s David French, who found 35 years in prison for Manning to be an unsatisfying compromise, and seven measly years and torturous solitary confinement to be an insult. French and his ilk, such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton (and the Trump of 2010), thought Manning deserved death. She could have received the death penalty if she had been charged with treason, or if she hadn’t been acquitted of the charge of aiding the enemy. Manning’s sentencing must have been a sad day for people who demand their pound of flesh, and who think that 35 years behind bars is small.

That’s the thing. This could be a brilliant compromise move. There are people who believe Manning deserved to be punished, and there are people who have been furious about her imprisonment for the past seven years.

But the former could develop some proportionality and realized that seven years is a lot of life to lose. Manning was punished for trying to show the world what war looks like beyond George W. Bush and a “mission accomplished” banner, or even sanitized photos of flag-draped coffins. By freeing her, Obama gets to get back some of his civil libertarian cred, but also isn’t doing something “crazy” like pardoning Snowden. In a country that loves to punish too much (2.3 million people in prison), Obama ending his presidency with a cascade of mercy is a good thing, no matter what you think of the people whose sentences he has commuted, or the people he has freed. But it’s a shame that he didn’t have the courage to push for these things earlier. Or that he didn’t feel like risking some of the political capital that he spent on drones, Libya, and ObamaCare.

Petraeus was showing off to his mistress. Hell, Dick Cheney has been enjoying his freedom for many years now. Henry Kissinger has a Nobel Peace prize, no matter how many Cambodians he helped to melt.

What happened to Manning is proof that there are rules for them, and rules for the rest of us. There are rules for former heads of the CIA, and there are rules for Army privates who want Americans to know what is going on.

They will go to war for us, and in our name. But God help anyone who wants to help the public get a picture of what those wars really resemble. No matter what Obama’s motivation was, sincere or otherwise, his freeing of Manning is a pleasant surprise, and a capper to a rocky, often-authoritarian presidency that Trump is about to inherit.

Originally published at Rare.us on January 17th, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

February 16, 2017
Prepping & Survivalism

So I read a book recommended to me by a nice dealer at the Lewisville Gun Show a few weekends back: Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse, by James Wesley Rawles. I’ll give a brief review, then I thought it might be interesting to open up the comments to ideas on prepping and survivalism, since these are recurrent themes in a lot of the circles that radical constitutionalists and libertarians run in.

I am sorry to say the book disappoints. The writing is didactic in the extreme. People regularly refer to their gear by both the brand and model number, and their weapons by brand, model, and caliber. In casual conversation. I don’t think at any point during my time in the Army National Guard did I ever refer to my equipment by anything more than it’s most generic name, i.e., “Hey hand me my LBE”. The names of specific companies where supplies were purchased are given, and even the names of the clerks at the companies that the protagonists deal with, only to never be used throughout the rest of the story. The author goes into agonizing detail on how to weld steel shutters over your windows, set up traps, etc. Frankly it reads more like the author wanted to write a how-to manual on setting up your own Cwazy Compund, but decided to do it through the medium of a novel.

There are, of course, the usual fringe-right fever dreams. The villains are cardboard cutouts: the UN, lead by nefarious Europeans, wants to conquer America because they simultaneously hate/envy us because we’re free, and two traveling communists are found to be literally eating children. Only religious people can be moral, and one of the most important things you ask refugees when you first meet them is if they’re Christian. It’s formulaic: everyone who has a Bible or mentions going to Bible study is found to be a good-guy, and the ones who don’t, well…see the second sentence of this paragraph. There is a Jew who is one of the main protagonists, though he several times reminds the group that they worship the same God. Their Christianity is repeatedly invoked as being the reason they don’t go around raping and pillaging. The main protagonist is leery of leaving two young people alone at his compound, because he won’t tolerate “fornication”, but his wife assures him that as Good Christians they can be trusted to be celibate until they are married. And the Waco and Ruby Ridge killings by the government are described as specifically being the massacre of Christians who just want to be left alone. Would those incidents have been less tragic if they were Buddhists?

There is a happy ending – a Libertarian gets elected president! Hooray! But aside from that, I’m afraid it doesn’t resonate with a person like myself, who is taking sensible precautions for a several week disruption of supplies and services (accompanied by potential looters or attempts at street violence by bolsheviks), but doesn’t have the time or money needed to create your own private Fortress of Solitude in rural Idaho. Even if it sounds like a fun project, I have no doubt that a divorce would be in my near future should I attempt the thing!

That brought me the idea for the post: if you’re reading this, presumably you, too, are of a libertarian-ish bent. That means that it is likely that you have thought about prepping in some form or other. Personally, I have several weeks worth of water and non-perishable food stored, a bug-out bag with the usual contents, and a variety of weapons in several common calibers, with a few hundred spare rounds for each.

So I’ll open it up to the comments: do you consider yourself a “prepper”? What thought, if any, have you given it? What preparations have you made? What’s in your bug-out bag? What’s your main plan (bug-out, bug-in, etc.)? Perhaps we can have future articles on BOB prep, good fall-back locations, tips & tricks on making do without utility service, etc.

February 14, 2017
Provide for the Common Defense and Promote the General Welfare

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Let’s see how that’s working out, shall we?

A dozen airport and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have been arrested for their alleged involvement in a massive cocaine smuggling operation in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

Which one of the preamble clauses do you think government drug smuggling and trafficking is? It must fall under one of those clauses, since that’s what the government is for and this is what the government is doing.

Logic, how does it work. Like this, clearly:

An Airport Aviation Services worker, who was a baggage handler and ramp employee, is charged with paying TSA employees to clear the suitcases stuffed with cocaine; taking the suitcases to their designated flights; and giving a drug trafficking organization member the “all clear” for mules to board the plane.

“These individuals were involved in a conspiracy to traffic massive quantities of illegal narcotics to the continental United States,” Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, said in a statement. “These arrests demonstrate the success of the AirTAT initiative, which has successfully allocated a dedicated group of state and federal law enforcement officers, whose mission is to ensure that our airports are not used in the drug traffickers’ illicit businesses.”

Emphasis added for effect. A government agency charged with providing for the common defense requires yet another government initiative and a dedicated team to police it to also provide for the common defense violated by the first agency.

Children sing of an old woman who swallowed a dog to catch a cat that she’d swallowed to catch a bird that she’d swallowed to catch a spider that she’d swallowed to catch a fly. As analogies go, this works quite well.

(Spoiler: no one knows why she swallowed the fly. Analogy still accurate.)

It remains unclear how much it will cost to swallow the buffalo to catch the cougar needed to catch the goat, and it seems unlikely we can comfortably swallow the elephant currently being eyeballed. In the old days, before modern medical innovations, the patient usually died but one must keep in mind the profession only had horses to rely upon. We’ve learned so much since then.

What a good thing the entire affair is such a demonstrated success.

The TSA has dealt with a number of high-profile security lapses at airports in recent years, including a gun-smuggling operation uncovered at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in 2015.

… awkward…

So, how ’bout them Bears?

Well. This is probably far preferable to and not even remotely similar to bathrooms and cloths and million-dollar birthday gifts. Sound off in the comments to explain which clause this feels like to you.

February 13, 2017