Streetwise Professor

Elizabeth Warren, among other Democratic candidates, have promised to eliminate fracking in the US. The WSJ has a dialog between pro-ban and anti-ban advocates. It demonstrates just how unmoored from reality the fracking ban side is.

The anti-ban participant, Sam Ori, executive director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, points out that as a result of the fracking revolution, US production accounts for 8 percent of the world total, and eliminating this would dramatically increase prices:

One year after the implementation of a ban, shale-oil production would be down by more than a third. After two years, production would be down 55%. You’re talking about triple-digit oil prices and a possible global economic shock

To which the ban supporter, Kassie Siegel, director of the Climate Law Institute at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, replied: What? Me worry? My magical thinking will save the day!

I think an oil-price prediction is largely a red herring, because I am not talking about banning fracking in a vacuum. My organization and others propose a fracking ban along with other smartly designed programs to speed the development and deployment of clean technologies, support local communities, and offset oil and gas price increases. Government policies that drive a rapid just transition to clean-energy technology can create the largest economic stimulus since World War II.

I’m talking about policies like accelerated clean car and truck standards that rapidly decrease oil consumption in the transport sector and moving the power sector to 100% renewable energy. Other policies like reinstating the crude-oil export ban would also counteract price increases from banning fracking and restricting the supply of oil and gas.

Well-designed government policy in other areas, like tobacco and asbestos, addresses both supply and demand. Climate policy must do the same. The barrier to this is opposition from the fossil-fuel industry, not any insurmountable economic or policy problem.

And don’t you think we need to be a little bit skeptical of anyone’s ability to accurately predict oil prices?

Unpacking this idiocy in its entirety would exhaust my time and my patience. So just a few comments.

“Well-designed government policy” and “smartly designed programs.” Such a comedian! Because we know government programs are always well-designed and smartly designed. Did I say “always”? Sorry. I meant “never.”

Case in point. The brilliant European strategy to reduce CO2 by forcing the replacement of gasoline engines with diesel. Whoops! Not only was it colossally expensive, it was a major mistake because (a) it barely affected emissions of CO2, and (b) greatly increased auto emissions of harmful particulates.

Further, since China is the largest emitter, and the largest growing emitter, of CO2, Ms. Siegel is relying upon the wise beneficence of the CCP to achieve her goals.

Need I say more?

“Accelerated clean car and truck standards that rapidly decrease oil consumption in the transport sector.” First, this is costly, not just directly in terms of replacing a huge stock of existing capital, but indirectly by forcing people to drive lower-quality automobiles. How do we know they are lower quality? Because people don’t buy them voluntarily: they have to be compelled.

Second, auto emissions are a drop in the CO2 bucket.

“Moving the power sector to 100% renewable energy.”

Excuse me a minute. I have to walk my unicorn.

OK. I’m back. One-hundred percent renewables is utterly unrealistic and enormously costly, including in terms of reliability and transmission–and fires started (in places by California) by transmission needed to support renewables generation. Fires which, by the way, emit massive amounts of CO2.

Look at Germany, which I wrote about a few days ago. They are running into a renewables wall well short of 100 percent, and have incurred massive costs (imposed on energy consumers) to get this far.

I note that Ms. Siegel doesn’t mention cement, or steel, or other industrial emitters (which put autos in the shade, btw).

Not to mention that fracking oil has f-all to do with power generation, and fracking gas that supplants coal reduces CO2 emissions.

“Other policies like reinstating the crude-oil export ban would also counteract price increases from banning fracking and restricting the supply of oil and gas.”

Yo. Einstein. We have oil and gas to export because of fracking. If we ban fracking, we’ll have no exports, and the export ban will have zero, zip, nada impact on prices.

Further, export bans reduce the price in the exporting country, but raise prices in the importing country. So I guess Ms. Siegel is an economic nationalist. I bet she looks stunning in her MAGA hat.

“And don’t you think we need to be a little bit skeptical of anyone’s ability to accurately predict oil prices?”

Yo. Von Neuman. This has nothing to do with predicting the level of oil prices. Demand curves slope down. You reduce production, prices go up. In fact, oil demand curves slope very steeply, so if you reduce production a little prices go up a lot.

Not rocket science. Just the law of demand.

And these are the brainiacs who are going to make sure that we have “well-designed” and “smartly designed” government policies.

God save us.

Germany, under Angela Merkel, has pursued with monomaniacal fervor an agenda of “decarbonizing” the German economy. This has been driven by a monocausal view of what constitutes “green” policies, one that begins and ends with greenhouse gasses.

In pursuit of this objective, Germany has embarked on a hugely expensive endeavor–“Energiewende“–that looks to replace virtually all fossil-fuel generation with renewables, notably wind and solar. The foolishness of this campaign was evident from the onset (as I wrote about some years ago), but Merkel and the German ruling class ignored it: but now reality is rearing its ugly head.

Where to begin?

For one thing, for those who do not have a view of environmentalism that begins and ends with carbon, many in Germany are finding wind power in particular to be visual pollution, sonic pollution, a major threat to bird and insect life, and a threat to some of the few remaining forested parts of the country. As a result, expansion of windpower is facing increased opposition on environmental grounds.

Expansion of offshore wind is sharply limited by the need for vastly expanded transmission capacity (to bring power from the windy northern coast to the central and southern regions of the country that consume the power). This is expensive, and also faces substantial local opposition on environmental grounds.

In a truly amazing fit of stupidity, Germany decided to terminate a large and reliable–and carbon free–source of electricity when Merkel ordered the shutdown of the country’s nuclear plants post-Fukushima. Let’s see: a coastal nuclear plant is hit by a tsunami, so let’s close down all nuclear plants in a seismically stable country with no zero risk of a tsunami. Yeah, that makes sense.

Now Germany is planning to decommission all its coal plants, because global warming. It is not intending to replace them with gas-fueled ones, despite their lower carbon emissions. Because global warming.

So . . . no nukes, no coal, no gas to replace them, severe constraints on increased renewables output. Which leads to . . . looming shortages of power. Which means that Germany’s already incredibly expensive power will become even more expensive. Hardly great for German consumers, or German industry.

But no worries, Germany will just export less!

Germany is counting on its status as a net exporter of power to help it brace it for potential shortfalls as nuclear and coal power wind down in stages. It transmitted about 53 terawatt-hours of power to its European partners in the nine months through September, compared with 31 terrawatt-hours of imports, monitoring group AG Energiebilanzen reported Monday.

Screw the neighbors! How German of them! La plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Er, that’s not very “European” of them, is it? “European partners.” Ha!

How any European can listen to Merkel’s lectures about “more Europe” without vomiting is beyond my comprehension.

It also demonstrates the failure to think through the effects of their actions. If the Germans export less, will those who currently import from them say: “Well OK then! We’ll just sit in the dark and freeze!”? As if. They will build generating capacity. And it won’t be largely renewable. Meaning that Germany closing coal plants will not lead to an equivalent reduction in the number of coal plants, but a displacement of those plants to other countries, or the building of gas plants outside Germany. So the amount of global emissions reduction will be a fraction of the amount of German emissions reduction.

The virtue signaling aspect of this is also absurd. For all of the contortions and coercion that Merkel will employ to reach her decarbonization goal, the reduction in CO2 emissions will be a drop in the bucket, given that China is opening a coal plant per week, and Chinese and Indian emissions already dwarf those of the US, let alone Germany. So the impact of this on CO2 emissions, and on temperature, will be de minimis.

Germany is a great example of the fallacy of composition. It has an incredibly intelligent and well-educated population. Arguably the most intelligent and well-educated population in the world. Yet, Germans collectively have a history of making the worst decisions of any nation on earth.

Perhaps this reflects their obsession with grand theories (as opposed to say, the more practically minded British and Americans). As a result, they tend to embark on grandiose missions that end in disaster. (Adam Smith’s remark about “the man of system” comes to mind. So does Adenauer’s remark about Prussians being Belgians with megalomania.)

In the past, tens of millions have died of German theories–most of them non-Germans. Not many will likely die of Energiewende, so in that way it is not comparable to the great debacles of German history. But it is a debacle nonetheless, and one with its roots in a grand theory, and which will produce virtually no environmental gain despite imposing a massive cost on Germans (and other Europeans who consume German electricity).

How very German.

A few years ago, presumably because of all the torture United has inflicted on me over the years, I was bumped to business class on an Amsterdam-Chicago flight. A friend was sitting in coach, and during boarding some very agitated woman sat next to her, talking loudly on the phone: “They put me in coach! COACH! I had to do the walk of shame!”

Turns out this woman was the ex-US ambassador to the Netherlands, appointed (natch) by Obama. Well, it also turns out that I was sitting next to Bill Daley, and my former boss from that brief interval where I had a real job, another prominent Chicagoan. They and the humiliated ex-diplo had been in Amsterdam for a wedding.

Since I would have preferred to sit in a jump seat having a root canal for 10 hours instead of sitting with that lot, I gladly swapped seats with the ex-ambassador so I could sit with my friend, and she could sit with hers

Oh–miss high and mighty didn’t even say thank you for sparing her 10 hours slumming with the hoi polloi. She didn’t even acknowledge me.

This all came to mind when reading about, and watching a few excerpts from, the testimony of the ex-US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

Just as United had offended the amour propre of the ex-ambassador on the plane, the President of the United States had grievously damaged the ego of Ms. Yovanovitch by unceremoniously axing her–and dissing her on Twitter. (That’s Yovanovitch with two”v’s”, not a “v” and a “b”. I checked to make sure.). How dare he fire her! How dare he insult her! Doesn’t he know who she is??????

And get this–this pampered creature of the US permanent bureaucracy compared her fate to that of Christopher Stevens. You know, the US ambassador to Libya who was sodomized, murdered, and burned to a crisp by rampaging jihadis in Benghazi on 9/11/2012 When Hillary Clinton–for whom it is metaphysically certain that Yovanovitch voted–was in charge of the State Department, and who (at the very least) lied shamelessly about the events leading up to Stevens’ gruesome death.

Yeah. Marie’s experience was totes the same. Totes!

All I can say is: who the fuck does she think she is? Who the fuck do all these people think they are?

But apparently the making Her Royal Highness Marie “Antoinette” Yovanovitch butt-hurt is a high crime and misdemeanor, worthy of impeachment. At least in the mind (being generous here!) behind Adam Schiff’s bulging eyes.

You could not make up this shit. I knew things were going to be crazy starting 8 November, 2016. But in my wildest imaginings I could have never figured they would be this crazy.

But maybe it’s all for the good. Outing these jumped up apparatchiks, and the coterie of DC journalists who slobber over them–including, I emphasize, from Fox News–may be the greatest public service that Trump has performed, or will ever perform. We can see them in all their petty vanity, overweening pride–and serial incompetence. It is not a pretty sight, but it is a damned instructive one.

In 1947 and 1948, President Harry Truman vented his anger at the “striped-pants boys” in the State Department, who fought him at every turn, especially over Israel. They were Arabists, almost to a man, and they despised Truman’s pro-Zionist policy, and assiduously attempted to undermine it.

This came to mind when I saw a picture from today’s impeachment hearings, which have transitioned from the secret Star Chamber phase to the public Show Trial phase. (Quite an accomplishment, combing two of the two most outrageous judicious processes in a single proceedings.)

Specifically, I saw a picture of State Department apparatchik George Kent, complete with bow tie, waistcoat, striped suit jacket, and presumably, striped pants.

George Kent represents everything that is wrong with the U.S. State Dept, and the pontificating elitists within it, who construct U.S. foreign policy over white wine spritzers and crustless triangle sandwiches. pic.twitter.com/r7MlB06XZF

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) November 13, 2019

Is he trying to play to caricature?

Kent told the assembled idiots that the Ukrainians were modern-day Minutemen, manning the front lines against Russian aggression. He followed fellow State Department apparatchik Bill Taylor, who echoed the party line: “Ukraine is important to the security of the United States…they are a young democracy struggling to join Europe and ally themselves with the United States.” Taylor also opined that Trump seemed more interested in pursuing investigations than supporting Ukraine.

What is gobsmacking about this is that these people were silent when the Obama administration adamantly refused to provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine. Hell, Obama was so concerned about upsetting Putin that he did not even permit American military planes to fly the pathetic non-lethal aid (blankets, and such) directly to Ukraine. Instead, it was flown to Poland and trucked in–and not on US military vehicles.

So, did the Ukrainians only become Minutemen on 20 January, 2017–more than two-and-a-half years after the Russians invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea?

As an aside, LTC Vindman, the National Security Commission’s Ukraine “expert,” testified that he was under the impression that Obama had provided weapons–Javelin anti-tank missiles, specifically–to Ukraine. Some expert. Yet we are supposed to believe that the oblivious Vindman and the rest of the “interagency [AKA Blob] consensus” considered it a vital US interest to arm Ukraine.

No, this is all bullshit. Ukraine only became vital in the eyes of these people the day it appeared that it could be used against their bête noire, l’homme mal orange.

These people are using Ukraine. Period. They really don’t give a shit about it. If they did they would have made a scene–and attempted their coup–in the Obama years.

Despite their many real differences, Trump and Truman share much more than the first four letters of their last names. Most importantly, they are outsiders who appeal to Jacksonians, and who are disdained by the Washington/East Coast “elites” (a term which can only be applied ironically, hence the quote marks). Truman came by his Jacksonianism naturally, coming up through the old Democratic Party from the heart of Jacksonian America: I have yet to figure out by what strange alchemy the New York mogul became a Jacksonian.

The main difference between what is happening today, and what happened nigh onto 70 years ago is that today’s administrative state feels far less constrained than its Truman-era predecessor. There were lines that they would not cross in 1948 that they breach today without a second thought.

Why? A complex phenomenon. Some factors that come to mind:

The bureaucracy has become so much bigger, so much more swollen today, that it is more difficult to control. That is a problem that any president would face.

Trump faces a much greater challenge because whereas even though Truman was not part of the governing elite, he was firmly embedded in a political support structure–the Democratic Party, which dominated American political life at the time–Trump is completely, utterly on his own. Truman was a party regular, the product of a Democratic machine, in fact (the Pendergast organization). He could rely on party loyalists–including many in the bureaucracy. Trump, conversely, can count on no such support. He is nominally a Republican, but the Republican establishment, especially in DC, dislikes him–when they don’t hate him. One of his major problems is his difficulty in finding loyal subordinates who have influence in the bureaucracy. The loyal have no influence: the influential have no loyalty.

These farcical proceedings, like the Mueller farce before it, is a the establishment vs. Trump. He is Trump agonistes. Trump the struggler, from the Greek ἀγωνιστής–“a contestant in the public games.”

Very appropriate. Very literal. And these games are deadly serious.

In my post on the reasons to target terrorist leaders like al-Baghdadi, I said it wasn’t the killing, it was the chase. A leadership focused on avoiding catching a JDAM or taking a 556 to the noggin isn’t able to take the initiative. I specifically mentioned paranoia, fear of traitors, stress, and the disruptions of communications from constant moves and the need to reduce the possibility of detection.

An AP story from yesterday says, yeah, all that happened:

In his last months on the run, Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was agitated, fearful of traitors, sometimes disguised as a shepherd, sometimes hiding underground, always dependent on a shrinking circle of confidants.

Associates paint a picture of a man obsessed with his security and well-being and trying to find safety in towns and deserts in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border as the extremists’ domains crumbled. In the end, the brutal leader once hailed as “caliph” left former IS areas completely, slipping into hostile territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province run by the radical group’s al-Qaida-linked rivals. There, he blew himself up during an Oct. 26 raid by U.S. special forces on his heavily fortified safe house.

. . . .

During that time, al-Baghdadi was a “nervous wreck,” pacing up and down and complaining of treason and infiltrations among his “walis,” or governors of the group’s self-declared provinces, his brother-in-law, Mohamad Ali Sajit, said in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV aired last week.
“This is all treason,” Sajit recalled al-Baghdadi shouting.

. . . .

At times, al-Baghdadi was disguised as a shepherd, he said. When al-Baghdadi’s security chief, Abu Sabah, got wind of a possible raid on the desert Syrian-Iraqi border area where they were hiding they took down their tents and hid al-Baghdadi and al-Muhajer inside a pit covered with dirt, Sajit said. They let sheep roam around on top of the pit to further disguise it. Once the threat of the raid was over, they returned and put the tents back up, he said.
Al-Baghdadi moved with a circle of five to seven people, including al-Muhajer, al-Zubaie and Abu Sabah; and the group’s former governor for Iraq, known as Tayseer or Abu al-Hakim. Al-Muhajer was killed on the same day as al-Baghdadi, in a separate U.S.-led military operation, following a Syrian Kurdish tip, in Jarablus, also in northwestern Syria; al-Zubaie was killed in a raid in March. On Monday, Turkish officials said they arrested al-Baghdadi’s older sister in northwestern Syria’s Azaz region. All are areas outside of government control.

Now Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is in the cross hairs. Enjoy, dude!

In a post last week, I wrote that LTC Alexander Vindman arrogated authority beyond his pay grade. I was wrong, to the extent that statement implied that there is a pay grade in the uniformed military that does have the authority that Vindman claimed for himself. There isn’t.

Here’s the Washington Post’s description of Vindman’s thinking and motivation: “he was deeply troubled by what he interpreted as an attempt by the president to subvert U.S. foreign policy.”

Hello! U.S. foreign policy is always set by the president. This is a Constitutional fact and a practical reality. As of 20 January, 2017, U.S. foreign policy has been set–to the accompaniment of wails, rending of garments, and gnashing teeth–by President Donald Trump. Full stop.

It is the job of everyone in the U.S. military, from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to some recruit getting screamed at in boot camp (if they do still scream at them) to implement that policy. It is also their job not to substitute their own view of what that policy should be, and act contrary to the policies of the lawful Commander-in-Chief.

Vindman’s view is an oxymoron. It is self-contradictory. The president cannot subvert what he sets. QED.

It is also incredibly dangerous to the military as an institution, and to the stability of the United States. The US military has been almost unparalleled in subordination to civilian authority. Having O-5s (or even retired O-9s, like McRaven) openly challenge that is the road to perdition. (I note that most coups are led by field and company grade officers, for a variety of reasons. Vindman’s middling rank is actually makes his actions more of a concern.)

Maintaining this subordination is of far greater importance than any passing policy matter, let alone Ukraine, a Sovok basketcase. (I am reminded of the line from A Man For All Seasons:  “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world [Matt. 16:26]. But for Wales?” (Substitute “but for Ukraine?” and the meaning remains the same.)

Now we hear that Vindman is whining that he was told not to discuss the phone call with anyone. Well, obviously for good reason, given his evident agenda, not that it made any difference.

Was this a direct order? Is there even a colorable case that it was an unlawful order? If it was lawful, he acted in disobedience of that order.

Further, if the phone call was classified–as it apparently was, which is another gripe of Schiff and his fellow grifters–to discuss it with anyone without a need to know would also be a violation of the UCMJ.

And what about the guy with whom it appears that Vindman did discuss the call, in violation of his duties? It is evidently Eric Ciaramella. Does he look like the soyboy from central casting, or what? Who elected him to anything?

Just where the hell do these people get off?

The conventional wisdom spouted by the political class in the US is almost always wrong, and often laughably so. The only question on any particular issue is the exact mixture of stupidity, ignorance, and manipulative malignity behind the conventional wisdom on that subject.

The political class’s narrative regarding the Kurds in Syria is a perfect example. According to this narrative, the Kurds are a veritable band of Gunga Dins, selflessly fighting alongside the United States in its war against ISIS. Hence, we owe them. We owe them so much, in fact, that we should risk conflict with Turkey and support their dream of an independent Kurdistan.

As I’ve argued several times, however, this is close to an inversion of reality. The Kurds were fighting ISIS out of necessity because ISIS wanted to destroy them, and American intervention on behalf of the Kurds saved them from mass slaughter, even though this was not a necessity for the US. This fascinating account of a raid in which a Delta Force soldier was killed provides a great illustration of just who was sacrificing for whom:

A number of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) sources with intimate knowledge of the operation spoke to SOFREP about that fateful night.  What they described is a story of leadership and bravery under fire.
Intelligence indicated that the prisoners were facing imminent execution after freshly dug mass graves were spotted in the compound’s perimeter.  Discovering this, the Kurds were adamant to go in even without American forces (the U.S. didn’t have a real stake in assaulting the compound). They thus took the mission lead. The plan that the Kurds came up with, however, was below average and would have resulted in a catastrophe if it hadn’t been for the tactful recommendations of their Delta partners.
The Unit agreed to accompany the Kurd assault force, and the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (160^th SOAR) chipped in the air transport. But once on target, the Delta operators were supposed to stay back and let the Kurds breach and clear the target. The compound was surrounded by a wall. Behind the wall, there were a number of buildings. One of those buildings contained the hostages.
Once on target, the assault force was divided in to two parts: The Kurds took the lead and assaulted the compound while the Delta operators stayed behind and provided support. The Kurds breached the wall and flooded into the compound. Identifying the correct building, they ran toward it and breached it. At that moment, however, they began receiving accurate fire from the other structures, which were occupied by ISIS fighters. The Kurds began suffering casualties, and the attack lost momentum at the most critical point.
The Delta operators could see and hear everything from their vantage point. And they understood that if they didn’t do something then the Kurdish assault would turn in to a bloodbath.  The imposing figure of MSG Wheeler was in the front of the Delta group. He turned around, locked eyes with the nearest operator, and shouted: “On me!”
These were his last words.
The two shooters run through the wall, into the compound, and past the pinned down Kurds. MSG Wheeler led the way into the target building. As he stormed into the breach, a random bullet went through his throat. He died almost instantaneously. His fellow operator neutralized the enemy fighters in the room. The rest of the Delta shooters came in and cleared the rest of the building.
“This would have been a disaster hadn’t Wheels been there,” said one Delta operator. [Emphasis added.]

And that is the reality of the Kurdish-American relationship. The Kurds needed to assault a compound to save Kurds. It wasn’t in the direct interest of the US to participate in the assault, but they did, selflessly assisting an ally. When the Kurds ran into a buzzsaw, a few brave American GIs ran into it with them, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and saved dozens of Kurdish lives.

Who? Whom? Read that story, and you get an idea of how the political class in the US as the answers to those questions backwards.

Maybe the inversion is the result of mere ignorance or stupidity. But read this piece and one gets the sense that it’s more malign than that. The gravamen of the article is that elements within the State Department, the CIA, and the military had a far bigger agenda in Syria than defeating ISIS. These elements were actually scheming to affect the broader outcome of the Syrian war, presumably desiring to overthrow the Assad regime.

And replace it with what, pray tell? What has happened in the last 20 years that could lead any sentient being to conclude that the outcome would be any better in Syria than in Libya or Yemen or Iraq? (Maybe I should go back 30, and add Somalia to the list.) The probability of “success”?–close to zero. And what would “success” even look like? A failed state with warring factions like Libya or Yemen or Somalia? A state in the hands of Islamist fanatics? As horrible as Assad is, it is necessary to compare him to the real-world alternatives, which include exactly zero good outcomes. In the battle of the bads, Assad may well be the least bad. And the State Department, CIA and Pentagon types who claim otherwise have no record that they can point to to argue otherwise. Theirs is a sorry litany of failure.

Viewed from this perspective, the attention being lavished on the Kurds appears manipulative in the extreme, and the tears being shed for them of the crocodile variety. The permanent bureaucracy wants to use the Kurds as a pawn in their wider–and delusional–game. They wanted to use them in Syria to achieve their broader aims. They are using them now to attack a president who is thwarting their attempt to achieve these broader aims.

Trump has upset their game–although he continues to vacillate after making categorical declarations, meaning that he has not escaped the pull of the blob altogether–and hence the players need to turn on him. Turning the Kurds into betrayed selfless allies, rather than a people that survives in Syria by the grace of the United States (and its Sergeant Wheelers and JDAMs), is merely part of the scheme.

In early-May, 1863, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest brought to bay a Union raiding force led by Colonel Abel Streight. Streight’s men, though exhausted by their rapid march across Alabama with Forrest snapping at their heels, substantially outnumbered Forrest’s. Forrest met with Streight to parlay, and in order to gull the Yankee into capitulating (despite his numerical superiority), the rebel resorted to a ruse. One section (two guns) of Forrest’s artillery had kept up, and prior to meeting Streight, Forrest ordered the gunners to drive their guns up a road in Streight’s line of sight, turn into the woods and disappear from view, and then circle their pieces around a hill and drive them up the road again.

Streight watched the trundling artillery with growing alarm: “My God sir, how many guns do you have? I’ve counted twelve pieces already.” Forrest: “I reckon that’s all that’s kept up.” Streight surrendered forthwith.

When Forrest’s small number of men emerged from cover to take the surrender, Streight learned that he had been fooled, and demanded his weapons be returned. Forrest replied: “Aw, hell, colonel. All is fair in love and war.”

This story came to mind when reading accounts of LTC Alexander Vindman’s testimony before Adam Schiff’s Darkness at Noon impeachment inquiry. Like other witnesses before him, Vindman repeated the same story: Trump brought up Biden in a phone call, and his hair spontaneously combusted as a result.

In other words, just circling the same gun around the same hill and making it seem like some additional bombshell-hurling revelation.

Vindman is obviously one of the sources in the “whistleblower’s” complaint, so what he said before Schiff’s committee represents no new information, other than perhaps that the “whistleblower” didn’t make up everything.

How do we know Vindman is a source? First, he had the opportunity: he listened on the Trump-Zelensky call. Second, he had motive: Ukrainian born, he vehemently disagreed with Trump’s (temporary) delaying of military aid. Third, Schiff said he corroborates what the whistleblower said. Fourth, and most importantly, Schiff refused to allow committee Republicans to ask whom Vindman had spoken to, certainly because that would help identify the “whistleblower.”

So why expose Vindman, while keeping the “whistleblower” under wraps? Almost certainly because the latter has some serious issues (truthfulness, partisan connections and motives, etc.). And perhaps most importantly, because Schiff is covering his own ass. He collaborated with the “whistleblower” before the filing of the formal complaint, directed the “whistleblower” to attorneys that helped him write it, and then lied about his role.

Further, given his monitoring of the call, and his affinity for the Ukrainians, the White House has no doubt fingered him as one of the “whistleblower’s” sources. Already being burned, Schiff used him to regurgitate the narrative.

As to Vindman’s ipse dixits regarding the appropriateness of Trump’s interaction with Zelensky, to say that such judgments are above the O-5 pay grade is an understatement. Besides, the world has already seen the transcript, and can draw its own conclusions: the alleged flaws in the transcript that Vindman identified are immaterial, and hence are irrelevant to such conclusions.

Today’s witnesses include an aide to defenestrated National Security Advisor John Bolton, who will testify that Bolton was disturbed by the influence of Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine policy. John Bolton in a turf war! This surprised no one, ever.

Other witnesses include two “State Department Ukraine experts,” who, according to the emetic Lawfare blog (AKA, The Mouthpiece for the Deep State, AKA a polyp on Jim Comey’s colon):

Two State Department foreign service officers, Catherine M. Croft and Christopher J. Anderson, will appear before the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday. They will report that President Trump held a pessimistic view of Ukraine that did not match their own assessments. 

How dare the President of the United States disagree with the mandarinate? That’s obviously impeachable!

But that’s what this is really all about. That’s what it has been about from the beginning. Trump is an anathema to the GS nomenklatura, who have been waging a war against him from before his nomination. Hell, since before his election.

In other words, this is about criminalizing policy differences.

All of Adam Schiff’s ruses and reruns can’t conceal that fact. Indeed, the ruses confirm the fact.

Yesterday President Trump announced that ISIS leader Bakr al Baghdadi had blown (himself) up real good. His death was the culmination of a Delta Force raid, and al Baghdadi self-detonated when he was cornered by running American dogs. No, not “American running dogs” in the way that old Chicom and Nork propaganda used the term, but actual German shepherds. Trump (and Delta) literally released the hounds, and let slip the dogs of war on Baghdadi.

Beyond the satisfaction of a seeing a bad man come to a bad end, what is the benefit of such actions? Are they worth the risks they entail?

On one level, this just presents a promotion opportunity with the ISIS organization. (Although the heir apparent, ISIS propaganda chief–Baghdadi Bob?–also apparently met his doom yesterday.) If the dispatched leader is some sort of exceptional genius, his demise may degrade the organization as he would replaced by someone less capable. But you never know . . . maybe this could result in the terrorist equivalent of Lou Gehrig replacing Wally Pipp.

At a more substantive level, the role of such decapitation strikes is not so much the killing itself, or the capability of the target, but the chase. Threatening the leadership of a terrorist organization can deprive it of the initiative, and creates Clauswitzian frictions that reduce its lethality. The leadership spends disproportionate time and resources playing defense instead of playing offense. It has to utilize less effective means of communication, command, and control to avoid being detected. The constant threat of betrayal ramps paranoia to 11, which also limits communication, and can lead to paralyzing internal strife. All of these things degrade operational effectiveness.

In order for these things to happen, the terrorists’ opponents must make the threat credible. This requires them to devote the resources necessary to track down the leadership, and to execute strikes with sufficient frequency pour encourager les autres.

Since hardcore types like ISIS are unlikely to give up altogether, one cannot execute a raid like this and ride off into the sunset. The Lone Ranger’s job is never done here. It must be repeated over and over in order to keep the threat real, and thereby impair the effectiveness of its terrorist opponent.

Not willing to give Trump a single accolade, the media has utterly beclowned itself in the aftermath. I’m sure you’re surprised, right?

The first two clowns out of the car were the WaPo and Bloomberg, whose obituaries of Baghdadi portrayed him as an “austere cleric,” and student and teacher of the Koran.

Careful there folks, because pushing that line demolishes another one of your narratives: a clear implication is that deep study of the Koran encourages sectarian mass murder.

These dead-on-arrival obituaries unleashed a torrent of hilarity on Twitter, with mock obituary headlines containing benign descriptions of historical monsters from Hitler to Jeffrey Dahmer.

Most of the post-‘splosion coverage was a carnival of mass murder of straw men. A repeated theme has been that Baghdadi’s death will not be the end of ISIS, let alone terrorism.

Of course not.

Most “analysts” at best gave grudging compliments to Trump, but then unleashed a barrage of cavils and caveats. I have a dare for the media: write a column about the raid, and Trump’s role in it, without using the word “but.” Go ahead. I dare you.

And those who chided the media for not giving Trump even one day of credit–like lefty Nate Silver–were assailed relentlessly for their heresy. Die, Deviationist! Die!

Then there are jewels like this:

ISIS could attack the US as revenge for Baghdadi’s death, security experts say

Security analysts are idiots, people with actual brains say. We went after ISIS and Baghdadi because they were already attacking us. This cause and effect thing is apparently quite confusing to some people.

The Derp State weighed in too. A former ambassador to Qatar hacked up this hairball:

https://twitter.com/AmbDana/status/1188446071019724803

Yeah. As if ISIS people weren’t already panting to kill Americans. A far more important message in Trump’s very Jacksonian statement was that we will hunt you down–literally with haram dogs–in whatever hole you crawl into. Attempting to instill terror into terrorists is far more important than any infinitesimal increment to their desire to kill Americans.

Bloomberg panted to give credit to some mysterious international coalition:

Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. military operation in northern Syria, led a terrorist group that slaughtered thousands during a fearsome rise to power stopped only after an international military coalition was formed to bring it down https://t.co/4OOJ5JIZsm pic.twitter.com/wXgZAeJARn

— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) October 27, 2019

What military coalition would that be? The early airstrikes on ISIS included a few UAE and Jordanian planes (one of which was shot down, resulting in the gruesome immolation of the pilot). The Europeans contributed their usual window dressing. But this was a US-Kurdish (and Iraqi) show.

Speaking of the Kurds, they provided vital intelligence that contributed to tracking down Baghdadi, and did so after Trump announced that the US would not oppose the Turkish border clearing operation.

This reinforces a point I made in an earlier post. The Kurds have a very strong incentive to fight ISIS, because ISIS wants to slaughter them. They aren’t so stupid as to withhold cooperation with the US in the fight against ISIS, because they would be cutting their own throats–literally. An autonomous zone in Syria and cooperating in fighting ISIS are not linked, at least not as inextricably as the Dunning-Kruger commentariat apparently thinks.

In sum, killing Baghdadi is a good thing, even though it is only another battle in a long war against Islamic terrorism. It has also given another demonstration of the utter stupidity and ill-will of America’s alleged elite, which has shown yet again that it is mean spirited, obsessed with Trump, and incapable of rising above banalities and trite analyses.

The media dogs bark, but the Trump caravan moves on. American dogs of war barked, and an evil man moved on to hell.

I linked on Twitter to this StrategyPage article on Syria a few weeks back. It is well-done, and quite detailed, so it’s worth linking here.

I repeat my Twitter challenge: I dare anyone to read that article, and identify a plausible strategy for the US to bring about a positive outcome in Syria (either for Syrians, or for US interests). Especially in light of serial US failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

One thing of particular interest is that at one time or another, the US has supported virtually every anti-Assad group in Syria, including people who are indistinguishable from those we have been killing for decades in Afghanistan and Iraq (and Yemen and the Philippines and . . . ). What’s more, at times American-supported groups have fought one another. So it’s hardly as if (a) we’ve shown good taste in allies, and (b) we can actually get those allies to do what we want.

Yet the shrieks about the impending disaster that will attend getting out of Syria get louder by the day. Perhaps someone could tell me how the impending disaster would be at all distinguishable from the disaster that has been ongoing for 8 years.

Day after day we are bombarded by opeds and talking heads decrying Trump’s policy. (It is his policy, not his administration’s, for most of his administration has been trying to undermine it 24/7.) Just what record of achievement can these people point to that warrants paying attention to them for a nanosecond? They appear to be convinced of their own strategic genius, evidently based on the fact that they were awesome at Risk while doing tequila shots in their college dorms, rather than by any accomplishment in the real world (especially the Middle East).

They tell us that the truly horrible aspect of Trump’s policy is betraying the Kurds, whom fought alongside the US in defeating ISIS. This allegedly gives them some moral claim on the US.

Not to gainsay the Kurd’s contribution, or their bravery, but here’s the reality. Fighting ISIS in Syria was a war of choice for the US: for the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, it was an not. It was an existential clash. The US saved the Kurds, primarily through airpower. This video of a US smart bomb ruining an ISIS flag bearer’s day in Kobani (where the Kurds were fighting a vicious battle against ISIS) is emblematic:

So who has a moral claim upon whom?

As vital and courageous as it was, the Kurds’ fighting against ISIS clearly does NOT obligate the United States to advance their ambitions to carve out an independent state in Syria (let alone in Turkey, or Iraq). Especially inasmuch as this would complicate an already fraught relationship with a difficult ally, but one which is far more important to American interests than the Kurds. It was perfectly reasonable for the US to say to the Kurds: “We appreciate your contribution to the war against ISIS. But without us, you would have been massacred. You have to back off the border with Turkey, and not expect us to protect you if you decide to do otherwise.”

The Kurds decided to do otherwise. So be it. Instead of saying “how with good conscience can we repay the Kurds for what they have done for us in such a fashion?” with justice the US can say “how with good conscience can the Kurds repay the US for what we have done for them in such a fashion?”

The Kurds are reputedly the largest ethnic group in the world without their own state. Their actions in Syria provide a pretty good explanation of why that’s so.

The Syrian Kurds made their choice. Defending their choice would not advance the interests of the US, and the balance of obligations is hardly as one sided as the Syria-obsessed portray. Indeed, the balance quite plausibly goes quite the opposite direction.