Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Who has Obama's Ear on Syria?

Seymour Hersh has just published a long article in The London Review of Books in which he claims to reveal some aspects of a major disagreement between various Washington players concerning US strategy in Syria.  In the article Hersh claims that the leadership of the military - the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), under its former Chairman, Martin Dempsey - had a very different idea from the Obama administration on strategy in the war.  In this they were supported by the head of the Defence Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn.

Obama from the outset has said that for the war to end Bashar al-Assad must first step down.  The US blocked peace negotiations earlier in the war, saying negotiations should not take place, until al-Assad relinquished his presidency.  By making this a pre-condition the US was in effect backing continued warfare and saying that the US would support Assad's opponents until victory was achieved.  Clearly Obama believed that Assad was on the ropes and would eventually be defeated.   But it should have been obvious that there was no way Assad would yield power short of military defeat.  If he were to do so he would soon find himself either dead like Moamar Qadaffi, or on trial in his own country under a new government, like Saddam Hussein, or on a one-way journey to The Hague to face trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal.  


The Obama administration seemed to believe that there was a 'moderate opposition' which could take over government if and when Assad was defeated.  The DIA under Michael Flynn and Dempsey's JCS who had a lot of intelligence on what was happening on the ground knew that this was wishful thinking.  What was actually happening on the ground was that the opposition to Assad consisted almost entirely of jihadi groups such as Islamic State (IS), Jabhat al-Nusra and The Army of Conquest.  All of these are extremist Salafi fighters frequently using terrorist tactics and happily murdering others (Muslim or non-Muslim) who don't share their extreme ideology. The Free Syrian Army, the supposedly moderate group opposed to Assad, had been absorbed into one or other of the various jihadi groups.  Al-Nusrah and IS regarded them as a joke - but also a source of  modern weaponry freely supplied by the CIA.


The DIA and JCS were extremely worried about what would happen if Assad's Syrian Arab Army were defeated.  They feared a situation, which at best would be one of chaos, like that prevailing in Libya, or much worse the take-over of Syria by extreme murderous jihadis, who would gladly slaughter, by the the thousands, those who did not share their extreme views - Alawites, Christians, secular Sunnis etc.   


The DIA passed on their intelligence and concerns to the White House and State Department but got no response.  General Dempsey and the JCS chose a different way of dealing with the head-in-the-sand approach of the Administration. According to Hersh's informant, rather than challenge the policy head on, they chose to surreptitiously pass intelligence to al-Assad's military intelligence.  They did this by sharing intelligence they had gathered on the jihadi militias with other intelligence services (Germany, Russia and Israel) they knew or strongly suspected would pass the information onto Assad. Apparently they passed intelligence on the whereabouts, strength and aims of the various jihadi militias.  


Russia's entry into the war complicated matters for the Obama administration.  To the JCS it appeared obvious that US policy should be to ally with Russia to combat IS.  But the Obama Administration took a different view and regarded Russia as an enemy. Right from the start of Russia's involvement, the US (and the mainstream media) accused them of bombing not IS, but other combatants of Assad, who the US claimed were 'moderates' (see my earlier blog post Foul.  Your bombing our jihadis!).  This didn't change even when IS claimed responsibility for downing the Russian civilian airliner in the Sinai.  In fact there seemed to be an element of gloating in the US media's response to this terrorist action.  There was no attempt to explain why IS would retaliate against Russia if the Administration claim that Russia was not targeting IS were true.  


Another aspect of the war, which the DIA reported to the Obama administration, was the duplicitous behaviour of supposed NATO ally Turkey, which was allowing arms and recruits to freely cross its border with Syria to supply and support IS and Jabhat al-Nusra.  In fact we now know it was going much further in supporting IS by allowing convoys of tankers of stolen oil to enter Turkey where it was sold on the black market.  Obama is well aware of Turkey's behaviour and yet continues to publicly support its president, Erdogan, as was evident in his condemnation of Russia after Turkey had shot down a Russian plane.  


For some reason Obama is reluctant to challenge Turkey even though the US is well aware of Turkey's duplicity.  He is reported to have told Erdoğan’s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House "We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria". Nonetheless he is apparently not prepared to do more. 


So why is Obama persisting in his apparently wrong-headed policy? There seems to be a little movement on the demand that Assad must step down before peace talks.  Secretary of State John Kerry after his recent meetings in Moscow has allowed that peace talks should begin, even while Assad remains in power.  But on US hostility to Russia and support for Turkey, nothing seems to have changed.  Similarly the claims of a so-called 'moderate opposition' continue.  British Prime Minister Cameron, who faithfully follows the US line, recently claimed seventy to eighty thousand such fighters.


The former head of JCS, Martin Dempsey, has retired and in his place Obama appointed General Joseph Dunford, who is reliably anti-Russian.  In October Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the Senate Armed Forces Committee that Russia ‘is not fighting’ IS. He added that America must ‘work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria’ and ‘do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces’ – i.e. the ‘moderates’ – to fight the extremists. 


So who is giving the advice to Obama?  The role of the CIA is unclear. They have certainly played a big part in moving arms to anti-Assad groups.  But I suspect that besides the CIA the usual suspects are shaping policy.  By the usual suspects I mean the neocons, who have been responsible for so much bad policy in the Middle East.    In an earlier blog I quoted Andrew Sullivan


The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That's the conclusion I've been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into... But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

One has to ask, in whose interest is continuing warfare in Syria?  It is certainly not in the interest of the European countries, who are being flooded with desperate refugees and threatened by terrorism.  Nor is it the interest of Russia.  But to those states who are implacably opposed to Iran, ongoing conflict is just the ticket.  A 'rational' though evil policy for them is to keep Iran's allies, Assad and Hezbollah, tied up in fighting, and bleed them to the maximum extent.  So Israel and Saudi Arabia were no doubt quite happy with the way things were going, before Russia intervened.  Turkey under the megalomaniac Erdogan seems to be more motivated by the prospect of gaining territory in northern Syria, and at the same time preventing Kurdish forces from doing the same.  

But is it really in the interests of the US to keep the fighting going? General Dempsey and the former JCS and Michael Flynn and the DIA didn't think so.  But they have been ousted and others are now in control.  Whose interests are they serving?  

Friday, December 18, 2015

On Clocks and Sundials, Sunsets and Solstices.

If you put a vertical stake in the ground, and observe every day, the time when its shadow points due south, you may come up with a surprising result.  If your clock is accurate enough you will find that the interval between the so-called "solar noon" from one day to the next is not exactly twenty-four hours.  In fact you will find that it varies from day to day.  

What this means is that "solar time" (i.e. time measured on an sun dial) and time as measured by a terrestrial clock - say a pendulum clock or the digital watch on your wrist are not exactly the same.  We'll come to the reason for this in a moment.  But first let me show you the magnitude of the difference.  It varies throughout the year.  The following shows the difference between the two.



The horizontal axis is the day of the year.  The vertical axis is the difference (in minutes) between clock time and solar time.  Above the horizontal axis the clock is ahead of the sundial and below the axis it is the other way around.  So now in mid-December the clock is slightly ahead of the sundial, but soon it will change (on December 25 to be precise) and then will be behind (until 15th April).  The relationship between solar time and clock time captured in the graph is known as the Equation of Time.  

Now for the explanation.  Those with a mathematical background might suspect that the above graph is the sum of two sine functions with different phases, amplitudes and periods, and indeed that is what they are.  That is because the phenomenon is due to two causes.  

The first is that the earth's orbit is elliptic and not circular.  This means that the velocity of the earth varies throughout the year as it orbits the sun.  It is fastest at the two "pointed ends" of the ellipse which occur in mid-winter (3rd January) and mid-summer (3rd. July) and slowest on the "flat ends" in Spring and Fall.   The consequence of the variation in earth's speed is that the time from solar noon to solar noon varies. This is because when the earth is travelling faster it will take more time to complete a rotation to face the sun (because the earth has moved around the sun - from position 1 to position 3 in diagram below) than it would when it was travelling slower i.e the distance from 1 to 3 is greater in January and July than in March and September, so the angle to the sun is from 1 and 3 is greater in the former than the latter. 



This implies that in mid-summer and mid-winter, the interval between solar noons  should be larger than in the Fall and Spring. This yields the larger amplitude sinusoid (period one year).  

The other reason for the difference relates to the tilt of the earth (which gives rise to the seasons).  I won't go into details, which can be found in Wikipaedia at 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time

This is the reason behind the second, shorter period (six month), sinusoid.  

When these two sinusoids are summed one gets the equation of time graph above.

Apparently the variations in solar time were known to the ancient Babylonians (see Wiki article)  and Ptolemy tabulated the equation of time.  Ptolemy lived in Roman Egypt and was born about 100 CE.  In the Middle Ages various Islamic astronomers made improvements to Ptolemy's tables, especially the contribution due to the earth's tilt. 

One consequence of the difference between solar time and clock time is a fact which the very observant may have noted at this time of year. It is that the time of sunset has been gradually getting later since December 8 here in Victoria, BC (since Dec. 11th in London) even though the shortest day is not until 21st. of the month.  On the other hand, the time of sunrise will continue to get later until early in the New Year.  

In the December, up to the 25th, solar time is earlier than clock time, but with the difference diminishing as the month progresses.  This means that sunrises and sunsets are earlier than they would be if the earth's orbit were circular.  This pushes the earliest sunset to occur before the solstice (December 21st.) and the latest sunrise to occur after the solstice.


I am filled with admiration for the astronomers and mathematicians, both ancient and more modern, who worked all of this out.  The motion of the celestial spheres has been a continuing area of inquiry for some of the greatest mathematical minds of the ages. Apparently since time of Kepler (around 1600) many luminaries have studied planetary orbits and their  stability including

A heavenly galaxy of stars indeed!  







Saturday, December 12, 2015

IS as a Millenarian Sect

I have been reading a long and interesting article about Islamic State (IS, ISIL, ISIS, Daesh) by Graeme Wood.  It appeared in the March issue of The Atlantic but is still available online: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

Graeme Wood is a journalist (Canadian) and not a scholar of Islam, but he seems to have delved quite deeply into Islamic theology and history.  One thing that struck me in his article is the importance of apocalyptic thinking in the beliefs IS espouses.

Most of the major religions have millenarian or apocalyptic strains. The coming of the Messiah and the End of Days is a central tenet in Jewish belief.  When, in my younger days, I attempted to read the New Testament, I was struck by how much Jesus believed that the End of Days was nigh and preached that the Children of Israel better get their act together, because Judgement Day was coming.  This part of Jesus's teaching seems to has been conveniently forgotten, probably because it was obviously incorrect, the world having persisted.

And then after Jesus's death when the label of Messiah (or Christ) was pinned upon him, some Christians adopted a form of apocalyptic thinking, exemplified in particular in the Revelation of St. John.  For him Armageddon was on its way.  Interestingly the word Armageddon derives from an actual place, Megiddo, now in Israel.  It was an important location in a narrow pass through which the trade route from Egypt to Assyria passed.  There were a number of major battles there in ancient times.  

In Christian eschatology (end of times beliefs) of the Book of Revelation,  written by John the Divine, in exile on the island of Patmos, Jesus will return to earth and defeat the Antichrist (the "beast"), the False Prophet and Satan the Devil all together in the Battle of Armageddon.  After various other wild events, dreamed up in the lurid imagination of John, and involving a lot of fire and brimstone, Jesus will reign and the righteous will be saved.  

Mohammed, the Prophet, was well aware of Christian and Jewish beliefs, so it is not surprising that in Islam, there is a hadith  (writings claiming to be direct quotes of The Prophet) dealing with the End of Days.  It claims that Mohammed said that 

The Last Hour would not come until the Romans land at al-A’maq or in Dabiq. An army consisting of the best (soldiers) of the people of the earth at that time will come from Medina (to counteract them).

Dabiq is a city, now in northern Syria, close to Aleppo.  "Romans" was thought to refer to the Byzantines (the Second Rome) but others now think it refers to Christians in general.  According to the Prophet's prophecy, after the defeat of these Romans, the forces of Islam will go on to conquer Constantinople.  A messianic figure The Mahdi (remember General "Chinese" Gordon's expedition to Khartoum in Victorian days) will be instrumental in these victories and will reign for some years (variously 7, 9 or 19)  before the final Day of Judgement and the return of Jesus Christ.  

The name Dabiq has been adopted by IS for its propaganda magazine.  Apparently in 2014 when its troops captured the city and its surrounding plains there was wide rejoicing among its members, in belief that the decisive battle would soon come to pass.  Also in IS's propaganda messages there have been many references to Dabiq, whose significance has been missed by Western journalists. 

I gather from Graeme Wood's article that in the Muslim world belief in this End of Days is considered to be a somewhat vulgar indulgence by the masses.  In some ways this is not so different from the Christian world where believers in 'The Rapture' and their close cousins Armageddon survivalists ('Preppers'), are viewed with disdain by educated Christians and establishment churches.

Apocalyptic  considerations played no part in Al Qaeda's thinking. Both bin Laden and his number two Ayman Zawahiri were from elite Sunni families and looked down on lowbrow apocalyptic speculation. Apparently in Iraq in 2008 there was a lot of talk of the Mahdi and jihadi groups there were making tactical decisions based on their estimates of when the Mahdi was to be expected.  When Osama bin Laden was appraised of this he had to write to them and order them to desist.  It was from the jihadi groups (especially Al-Qaeda in Iraq) fighting in Western Iraq that IS emerged when it split from Al-Qaeda.  

Al-Qaeda is in many ways like an underground political organization with very clear earthly goals, albeit ones to do with the political revival of Islam.  This is not true of IS which sees itself as fulfilling prophecy. And part of that prophecy has to do with the End of Days.  This has lead some strategists to suggest that a way to defeat IS is to amass a huge modern western army in the vicinity of Dabiq, more or less inviting IS to do battle there.  It is claimed that it is a bait that they would not be able to resist. And when the western forces decisively defeat the IS forces, its credibility would be irreparably destroyed.

This could be true.  But I think Western leaders are very wary of sending more ground troops to Muslim countries.  Past experience suggests that when one dragon is slain, its blood only goes to fertilize the ground for the emergence of another more fearful and monstrous dragon.  

Graeme Wood suggests that in the long run IS might be defeated on a spiritual level by a quietist form of Salafi Islam.  These Salafis are just as unbending as IS in their literal belief in the Koran and in the divine word of the Prophet.   But their main emphasis is personal purification and compliance with the Koran.  In some respects they are like the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state, but go to extreme lengths to make sure their daily behaviour complies with 'The Law', even to the extent of having non-observant neighbours enter their homes on the Sabbath to turn on light switches. Mohammed preached against chaos, especially generated by discord between believers.  IS generates exactly this sort of chaos and discord and the quietist Salafis reject this behaviour.

Whether or not IS loses the spiritual battle only time will tell. Personally I can't see it happening.  The allure of fighting and dying in a righteous cause is much more appealing to the young than the non-ending rigours of an extreme ascetic life.   But at the same time I can't see how IS can continue if it stays rigidly attached to the very literal interpretation of 1400 year old scripture.  It is as if extreme Christian fundamentalists succeeded in obtaining absolute power in the USA - something that so far has only happened in the fiction of authors like Margaret Atwood.  An unbending attachment to scripture could not be sustained for long.  Compromises with the real world would have to be reached.  But this would lead to some weakening of the internal belief of the leadership and members.  Not only would it weaken the drive of the organization, in the case of IS it would lead the leadership open to the charge of takfir or apostasy, which would then make it the duty of other believers to overthrow the takfiri leadership.

I imagine that, like in every other organization, there is a spectrum of beliefs within the IS leadership.  The Caliph, Al-Baghdadi appears to be at one end of the spectrum - a true believer.   But I wonder about its military leaders.   They are said to be former officers of Saddam's Baathist army.  I don't know, but I can't picture these military men, who served Saddam, as extreme Salafis.  I suspect they are more driven by motives of power and revenge.  But at present they see their best strategy as going along with the extreme religious leadership. Who knows what might happen if the tide turns against IS, militarily. Will the religious leadership still put up with the Baathist soldiers?  Or will the soldiers try to take over the organization?  To me it seems that in the long run IS could be a victim of its own ideology.  But in the meantime it could cause an awful lot of  chaos and killing.  

Since Wood wrote his article IS seems to have adapted its tactics somewhat.  It seems to have followed Al-Qaeda's tactics of terror attacks on western targets, at least sponsoring, if not organizing, attacks in Beirut, Paris and the bombing of the Russian airliner.  So maybe it is not so constrained by prophecy and the Islamic texts as Wood suggests.  If true this is bad news for the rest of us.  

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Sonofabitch Bashar al-Assad.

Sheldon Richman  has an interesting article here
(http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43597.htm) entitled "Why Assad Isn't Our Son of a Bitch"

The statement "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son a bitch" is attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) in 1939 referring to Anastasio Somoza dictator of Nicaragua, and the first of three Somozas to rule that country.  Of course the US has a long record of supporting brutal dictators (our sons of bitches) often after having helped install them into power.  In Latin America they are too myriad to list but they go back to the nineteenth century with Porfirio Diaz in Mexico and later including Pinochet in Chile, Noriega in Panama, Batista in Cuba and Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti.  In Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and the Philippines have all been ruled by US backed dictators.  In the Middle East of course there have been Saddam Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh (in Yemen) and Hosni Mubarak and now Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in Egypt.  And once upon a time, Bashar al-Assad, like his father Hafez al-Assad was one of "our sons of bitches".  

If you recall, in 1991 Assad pere (Hafez) backed the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War, offering 100,000 troops. Syria was a very useful ally for the Coalition, because the support of a major Arab nation helped to lend the whole enterprise legitimacy in the Arab world.  Then following 911, Assad fils (Bashar) offered "intelligence" cooperation with the US and its allies.  What this meant in practice was that Syria acted as a contractor for US intelligence  - offering torture services for which the CIA or other agencies wanted a cutout.  Ask Meir Arar, a Canadian of Syrian birth, who was kidnapped while passing through JFK in New York and "rendered" to Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured.

So for a long time the Assads were "our sons of bitches".  But this changed in 2011 with the "Arab Spring".  Violence broke out at one or more demonstrations.  Who started it is not entirely clear, but the government responded with a very strong hand.   Soon al-Assad found he was the subject of sanctions by the US Government.  Other governments rapidly followed suit.

An important question is why did al-Assad go from being "our son of a bitch" to a pariah?  This was before the Syrian Army had started its arial campaign using barrel bombs and the like.  Was it simply because President Obama was a man of principle and champion of democracy and could no longer stand the brutality of dictators like al-Assad?  Hardly likely given the support it still lends to odious regimes such as that of el-Sissi in Egypt, or the royal family in Saudi Arabia.

In his article Richman suggests that the answer is Iran.  After the disaster of the Iraq War, Shiite Iran's influence in the region waxed considerably.  This caused considerable concern to the major Sunni powers, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.  They feared the emergence of a "Shia Crescent", running from Iran through Iraq and Syria to south Lebanon where Hezbollah has its roots.  I think this is one reason for the US dropping al-Assad, but I think the real reason lies with Israel.

Israel has long planned for the overthrow of any rival power in the Middle East. This has all been spelled out in the document 1996 A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, commissioned by Benjamin Netanyahu.   Among other things it called for the removal by force of Saddam Hussein and the destabilization of Syria.    With the the help of the Israeli fifth column of  Neocons in the US security establishment President G. W. Bush was persuaded that his manhood demanded the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.  If that had gone successfully no doubt he would have been persuaded by the mantra "Real Men go to Tehran".   But it didn't work out.  At least not for the United States.  Iran became stronger as a result of a Shiite government taking power in Bahgdad.  

Furthermore Israel was humiliated by Hezbollah when it invaded Lebanon (again) in 2006.  The Shiite Hezbollah receives armaments from Iran (via Syria).  Israel clearly wanted to cut off this supply route and deal a stinging blow to Iran.  

The best opportunity for Israel to hit at Iran was by destroying the al-Assad regime in Syria. Not only would it be one in the eye for the Iranian regime, it would also cut off Hezbollah from its weapons supply. So with the help of its faithful Neocon friends in Washington, Israel was able to persuade the Obama administration that it was time to cut Assad loose.  Obama was locked in a bitter struggle with Netanyahu over the nuclear deal with Iran, and probably felt he didn't want another conflict with Israel on his hands, especially since he was facing re-election.  So the US ditched its faithful son of a bitch and backed the opposition in Syria, even to the point of backing very nasty jihadi groups like Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria)

I can see no reason why Iran should be considered a real threat to the USA.   But I think the following comment from Andrew Sullivan (on NeoConservatism) explains why it acts that way and wants al-Assad gone.  

The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That's the conclusion I've been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into... But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.

The results of NeoCon policies have been nothing short of a disaster on an epic scale.  I predict that one day historians will not be kind in their assessment of the policies and actions of this bunch of immoral warmongers.