Middle East Strategy – The Wrongologist

Is This What The Final Straw Looks Like?

The Daily Escape:

Atlantic Ocean, St. Augustine FL – 2019 photo by Wrongo. (Wrongo and Ms. Right are on their annual trip to visit siblings who moved from the Northeast to Southern climes. Columns will be light and variable until April 22.)

With Israel’s killing of the seven humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen (WCK), did Netanyahu deliver the final straw to the US and the Biden administration’s unconditionally having Israel’s back in their war with Hamas? From Axios:

“Israel’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers has the makings of a watershed moment — rapidly accelerating a decline in U.S. support for the war in Gaza, Axios’ Zachary Basu writes.

The big picture: Frustration with the Israeli government has been building inside the White House for months as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has worsened. It’s now boiling over.”

It’s difficult to say what is actually policy and what is political theater when parsing the words of Biden and Blinken about what Israel needs to do next in order to keep the US supplying armaments. You may vote for theater when learning that CNN has two stories that seem to indicate it will be business as usual with Netanyahu and the Israeli government. First Natasha Bertrand reported:

“…the Biden administration is close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion…”

Second, CNN’s Bertrand also reported that:

“The Biden administration recently authorized the transfer of over 1,000 500-pound bombs and over 1,000 small-diameter bombs to Israel….adding to its arsenal despite US concerns over the country’s conduct in the war in Gaza. The transfer authorization of the MK82 bombs and small-diameter bombs, more than 2,000 munitions in total, occurred on Monday…”

These aren’t the biggest bombs, but a 500-pound bomb will destroy your apartment building. Monday was the same day that Israel killed the seven WCK staff. Chef José Andrés took to the NYT to express his view:

“We know Israelis. Israelis, in their heart of hearts, know that food is not a weapon of war.

Israel is better than the way this war is being waged. It is better than blocking food and medicine to civilians. It is better than killing aid workers who had coordinated their movements with the Israel Defense Forces….The Israeli government needs to open more land routes for food and medicine today. It needs to stop killing civilians and aid workers today. It needs to start the long journey to peace today.”

Chef Andrés’s words have resonated deeply with many Americans. In some ways it reminds us of the late Gen. Colin Powell’s famous Pottery Barn rule that he cited in the summer of 2002, warning President GW Bush of the consequences of the planned invasion of Iraq:

“You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people,….You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.”

Israel must be shown how they “own” the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They’ve pulverized the buildings. They’ve killed most of the now-dead civilians. They’ve prevented food and medical assistance from reaching the sick and the starving. Therefore, they should own the humanitarian solution starting immediately.

BTW, think of all the suffering we’ve heard about in Gaza. Now recall just how little of it you have actually seen via western media. Many of the same videos run day after day on US media. Why? Because Israel has made it a priority to conduct the war largely beyond the sight of Western cameras, beyond the scrutiny of the press.

If we knew more and saw more, we might be even more horrified.

The Israeli military has dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others for their role in the WCK strikes, saying they had mishandled critical information and breached the army’s Rules of Engagement (ROE). The Guardian reports that the IDF’s ROE are classified, but reporting by the Israeli media and human rights organizations suggests an exceptionally high tolerance level for civilian casualties.

In the current war, observers suggest, ROE rules that were already permissive in previous conflicts in Gaza have been loosened further, as evidenced by the number of civilian casualties in high-profile strikes. America faces a serious moral dilemma and Wrongo has been feeling it for a while. Wrongo still thinks it’s possible to be committed to Israel and to its right to defend itself. But at the same time we need to be highly critical of the Israeli response in Gaza.

There are times when a friend, a family member or a neighbor asks you to help them solve a problem. You go along, thinking that you’ll be able to help out, only to find you’re deeply involved in something that has become either a reputation killer or possibly, something life-threatening.

And this is where America sits with Israel in their war with Hamas. Our friend has caused us to get badly stuck in something awful. And it’s become very difficult to see how to get our partner to stop the bombing, killing and starving.

Wrongo suspects there have been more than a few final straws among Israel’s friends in recent months, since Israel seems oblivious to the damage they’re doing. It has been gut wrenching to watch America go from responsible support for Israel on 10/7 to becoming likely complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza. We must change course now.

Biden needs to follow through on his message to Netanyahu.

It’s Saturday, so it’s now time for our Saturday Soother, where we attempt to pull back from the fire hose of news and opinion and grab a few minutes of calm. On the Fields of Wrong this weekend, we’ve seen snow, an earthquake and on Monday, we’ll witness a solar eclipse. We’re certainly operating in interesting times.

As the Wrong family takes off for a few days, let’s listen to a road song of sorts, “The Drinking Gourd”, a song of the open road. It was originally used by Underground Railroad operatives to encode escape instructions. In the1950s and 1960s, it played a role in the Civil Rights and folk revival movements. Here is the folk singer Eric Bibb performing the song for the television series, “God’s Greatest Hits”, airing in Canada on VisionTV:

We’ll see you down the road!

Russia. China And Iran, And Other Thoughts

The Daily Escape:

Snow at sunrise, Grand Canyon NP, AZ – February 2024 photo by John Fecteau

Welcome to another Monday Wake Up. Wrongo wants to touch on a few different ideas today. First, a non-trivial topic that Wrongo plans to return to this year. When we look at the geo-political landscape today, the US is confronting a growing alliance between three countries, each of which holds ill-will towards us and towards our western allies. Those three are China, Russia and Iran.

We’re confronting them separately and also in the case of the Ukraine War, jointly. This is an excellent time to harken back to something that Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1997. He had formerly (through 1981) been Carter’s National Security Adviser:

“Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition, united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. . . . Averting this contingency . . . will require a display of US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

Today’s geopolitical landscape reflects exactly what Brzezinski feared more than two decades ago. Is the world heading toward what the late Brzezinski referred to as “the most dangerous scenario”? What should America be doing now to head off what we’re seeing from our three rivals? Or is it already too late?

Which presidential candidate will do the better job of blunting this potential power conflict ?

Second, what did the weekend’s South Carolina Republican primary tell us? Trump won by a wide margin. As of this writing, the tally has Trump at 59.8% and Nikki Haley at 39.5%. The media is treating this as a significant triumph. When you win by 20 points, that’s true.

The real story, however, is that Trump underperformed expectations and failed to expand his coalition beyond his base. If you doubt that, take a look at the polling group 538’s polling vs. actual results for Trump across the three Republican primaries:

We’re seeing Trump consistently underperform the polls by 7-8 points. Worse for Trump, Fox News’ John Roberts talked about an alarming exit poll finding that 59% of Haley voters in South Carolina last night (equal to 40% of the electorate) would not vote for Trump in the general election.

From Simon Rosenberg:

“It’s my view that something broke inside the GOP when Dobbs happened. That even for many Republicans, it was just too much, the party had gone too far, had become too ugly and dangerous.”

Trump and the GOP are showing signs of deep institutional weakness. They had disappointing elections in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. They’re replacing the entire leadership team at the RNC due to their ongoing fundraising struggles. Today’s RNC is broke:

In addition, the GOP’s state parties have atrophied in some key battleground states. Trump is burning through cash at unprecedented rates to fund his many lawsuits. Even Nikki Haley out raised him last month.

Wrongo thinks that we’re finally seeing “Trump Fatigue”. Everybody has seen his act and has zero need to ever see it again. The assertion that Trump is strong beyond his die-hard MAGA base seems to at last, be untrue. But what does Wrongo know? When he retired from the F500, he thought he would go into private equity. But he was seduced into online journalism by the promise of very small paychecks and zero job security.

Our third story is for the birds. The Guardian reports that:

“The Eurasian eagle owl named Flaco, which escaped New York City’s Central Park Zoo last year, has died after crashing into a building in Manhattan, officials said late on Friday.”

Here’s Flaco in happier times:

“Flaco was rescued by the zoo in 2010, when he was less than a year old. He was reputed to be the only owl of his kind in the wild in North America, and there were widespread fears he ultimately wouldn’t survive for long outside captivity.”

The Eurasian eagle-owl is one of the larger owl species. Flaco’s wingspan was reported to be about 6 ft. Ornithologist Stephen Ambrose wrote on LinkedIn that there was evidence light glare from city buildings’ windows could blind owls momentarily and increase their risk of crashing into the structures, especially at night.

This raises the evergreen question of how to keep birds safe in US urban areas. Federal officials estimate that one billion birds in the US die annually after accidentally flying into building windows. Wrongo and Ms. Right had this happen to us years ago when a hawk crashed through our lakefront cottage living room’s wall of glass. He was dead when he hit the floor. It doesn’t only happen in high-rise buildings.

Time to wake up, America! There’s glare everywhere, including in the media’s silly discussion about how overwhelming Trump’s electoral chances are vs. Biden. Trump has a very small chance of being elected in 2024. To help you wake up, watch this great video of England’s Prince William singing “Livin’ on a Prayer” with Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift at the Winter Whites Gala charity ball at Kensington Palace. This is fun and worth your time:

The future King of England singing with the current Queen of Americana.

Biden’s Dilemma

The Daily Escape:

Highlands, Nantahala National Forest, NC – January 2024 photo by Michele Schwartz

The drone strike on a US base in Jordan killed three American troops and wounded at least 34 more. The base is called Tower 22. The attack has had several effects: First, it makes very real the likelihood of a widening conflict in the Middle East (ME). Second it has caused another partisan fire storm in US politics. Biden vowed to respond to the assault, blaming Iran-backed militias for the first US military casualties in the many similar strikes in the region since the start of the Israel/Hamas war. Here’s a map showing where the attack happened:

Basically, this is a logistics location for US troops in Syria at the US military base at al-Tanf, just 12 miles north of Tower 22. Tanf has been the key support location in the US effort to control ISIS in Syria and to contain Iran’s military build-up in eastern Syria. From AP News:

“Since the war in Gaza began Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias have struck American military installations in Iraq more than 60 times and in Syria more than 90 times, with a mix of drones, rockets, mortars and ballistic missiles. The attack Sunday was the first targeting American troops in Jordan during the Israel-Hamas war and the first to result in the loss of American lives.”

The timing of this attack could hardly be worse. What began in October as a war between Israel and Hamas has now morphed with involvement by militants from four other Arab states. In addition Iran, Israel and Jordan all bombed Syria this month. Iran also bombed Pakistan, and Pakistan retaliated.

All of this is tit-for-tat in which American airstrikes against militias in Iraq or Syria, alternate with more militia attacks on the US installations. This illustrates the ME mission creep since last October. Whatever the original mission was for US troops in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq is now being sidelined as protection of the troop presence itself becomes the main concern.

All of these tit-for-tats carry an extreme risk of escalation into a larger conflict.

Iran has a network of proxy militias to project power across the ME. It is trying to support them while simultaneously trying to remain outside of the conflict. While Iran has tacitly accepted Israel’s targeting of Hamas, it has been loath to unleash Lebanon’s Hezbollah, fearing that Israel (or the US) will hit back at Iran directly. Iran would like to force Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza and force American troops out of the ME. So far, its proxies have achieved only an increased American presence.

If we assume that the Tower 22 hit was a deliberate hit, (the base has been there for several years), it’s certain that militias in the area knew where to hit it to achieve a maximum result. Expanding from that, the US has about a thousand bases scattered around the world that are used to influence local operations, etc. Up to now, the US has considered them as assets. But if they suddenly become targets, trying to defend them simultaneously will be as difficult as defending ships in the Red Sea: Impossible. On the other hand, they are excellent targets if the US wants to be provoked into attacking Iran.

If such attacks continue, the position of these bases is going to become untenable and will pose a massive political problem for Biden.

Biden has fallen into a trap. And worse, it is Israel that placed Biden in the trap by not even trying to find a way to de-escalate the war with Hamas and bring Israeli hostages home. Biden’s support for Israel and his gentle pressure on Netanyahu to stop killing Gazans hasn’t worked; it also helped Biden fall in the trap. Biden should stop letting Bibi lead him around by the nose.

Biden can retaliate directly inside Iran, which will likely escalate the tit-for-tat attacks. And if taken as far as certain Republican pols want to go, it will endanger the Straits of Hormuz and risk doubling oil prices.

Worse in some ways, direct retaliation inside Iran might lead Russia to announce Iran is under full protection of Russia’s nuclear umbrella. That would make the Russia-China-Iran axis a concrete and formidable enemy. That would be a terrible outcome, even though some American Neo-cons have been making noises about being able to “win” a nuclear war. Here are some Republican chicken hawk suggestions about Iran:

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI):

“We must respond to these repeated attacks by Iran and its proxies by striking directly against Iranian targets and its leadership. … It is time to act swiftly and decisively for the whole world to see.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK):

“The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote:

“Joe Biden has emboldened Iran and shown weakness on the global stage. We have to have a stronger Commander-in-Chief.”

Talk is always cheap, and most of this is political theater. Biden could also conduct limited retaliatory missions against the actual militias in Syria who US Intelligence says attacked Tower 22. Whatever he does, Biden will suffer inevitable attacks from Republicans at home. All this with less than eleven months to go before Election Day.

As of now it isn’t clear how Biden intends to respond. In the past, when Trump targeted Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani, and other Iranian interests, the US conducted these actions outside of Iranian territory. Iran’s denial of direct involvement in the attack complicates the situation and makes it less likely that Biden will attack inside of Iran.

Striking militia leaders outside of Iran will cause Republicans to question the effectiveness of Biden’s tactics. The US has employed this type of retaliation in the past, but it hasn’t significantly curbed Iran’s or its proxies’ aggressive actions.

We need to keep perspective on the Tower 22 deaths. Republicans should remember that 48,000 Americans are killed by Americans with American-made guns every year. Of course our three soldiers should be honored, and we should retaliate. But if the loss of American lives is the big deal the Republicans say it is, then their indignation should be directed here at home in addition to in Jordan.

Otherwise, it’s false indignation.

All of us should remember that we have failed in every mission in the ME. We only accomplish growing our list of enemies like the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, Syria and whoever comes next if we stick around.

The End Of US Naval Superiority?

The Daily Escape:

Barn in orchard with Mt. Hood in background, OR – January 2024 photo by Mitch Schreiber Photography

What are we to make of the continuing war in the Red Sea? The Iranian-backed Houthis launched more attacks on merchant shipping just hours after the US preemptively struck them in Yemen. There is word from unreliable sources that the Houthis have now banned all US and UK ships from transiting the Red Sea, an escalation. Previously, they focused only on maritime shipping associated with Israel.

From the WaPo:

“Just as global supply chains finally returned to normal….The continuing attacks by the Houthis…have increased global shipping costs, caused cargo carriers or their clients to opt for longer alternate routes from Asia to Europe and the United States and raised alarms about the economic costs of a wider conflict.”

“Almost one-fifth of US freight arrives at East Coast ports after transiting the Red Sea and Suez Canal… Solar panels, electric vehicle batteries, toys and vacuum cleaners are among the goods making that trip. But for now, economists do not anticipate a major impact on the prices that US consumers pay — unless the violence worsens.”

Three months after the start of the Israel/Hamas war, a maritime danger zone has been created that extends hundreds of miles from its original location. Houthi militias have launched dozens of attacks on ships with drones and missiles, cutting container activity in the Suez canal by 90%.

The Western naval forces protecting global trade are now stretched dangerously thin. The attacks are beginning to spread beyond the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. That complicates the task facing US military planners.

The economic implications are easy to understand. What may be more difficult is what this implies for America’s preeminent role in defense of the seas. The US simply doesn’t have the armament or manpower to: a) occupy Yemen or b) push the Houthi back far enough from the mouth of the Red Sea to reopen the Suez Canal to western shipping.

We have to consider the implications of an important global logistic choke point being closed as retaliation for the Israel/Hamas war. Also a second choke point, the Panama Canal, has also been forced to limit ships due to their persistent drought.

A second strategic implication is the impact of drone warfare on naval operations. Drones are plentiful and cheap. Large numbers of cheap drones means that warships now must have enough anti-aircraft (AA) systems to stop drones, along with electronic warfare counter-measure systems. Otherwise, they become sitting ducks.

A new fact of war is that cheap drones will overwhelm expensive missiles.

Our navy’s defense against drone attacks on commercial vessels runs headlong into the fact that our ships at sea can only store so many missiles. The US has sent a number of AEGIS destroyers to help protect international shipping, performing the dual role of intercepting Houthi drone and missiles and coming to the aid of distressed commercial ships.

Every missile salvo reduces the amount of time before they have to be resupplied by returning to base. We also know that America’s manufacturing capacity for missiles is far below what is needed to refill stocks, given how many need to be expended against drone swarms in the Red Sea and elsewhere.

Here are a few numbers from Stephen Bryen:

“The [AEGIS] destroyers have a complement of 96 VLS cells, while the [Ticonderoga class] cruisers have 122…However, they need to fit a mixture of weaponry in those cells so they can’t all be used for air defense….In short, each of the AEGIS has around 100 missiles.”

“Neither the US nor the British ships can be reprovisioned at sea, so they have a limited ability to “stay in the fight” if it continues for any length of time.”

So Yemen can launch a hundred drones and missiles at US ships and the destroyer escorts will very quickly exhaust their supply of air defense missiles. In the 1970s the U.S. Navy had ship tenders that could pull alongside a destroyer and resupply it. But today, these new Vertical Launch Systems must be reloaded in port.

In the ME, that means the destroyers will have to sail to Dubai or Europe, and the US aircraft carrier they are accompanying will have to follow because it relies on them for protection from ballistic and cruise missiles. Does America have enough carrier groups to rotate them when missile inventories are exhausted? The answer is no. Unless we are willing to move carrier groups from Asia to the ME. The US currently has 11 aircraft carriers in service, but here’s a map from Stratfor showing the location of our three! active carrier groups (CVNs) as of Jan 11, 2024:

We have three of 11 active, and you can see that CVN 78 (The Gerald Ford) sailed out of the Mediterranean and was replaced by CVN 69 (the Dwight Eisenhower) this week. This is the likely rotation for resupply of on-ship missiles.

Then there’s the issue of the US Navy’s manpower shortages. Forbes says in an article:

“…America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors….Over the past six months to a year, some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced.”

“…most likely scenario, according to long-time Navy observers…is that, after the Navy’s massive 20% miss in FY 2023 enlisted sailor recruitment goals, the Navy simply has no sailors to spare.”

This is the US Navy that pretends it can take on either Russia or China or both together!

A profound shift is underway: Our globalized economy relies on ocean freight. Some 80% of trade by volume and 50% by value travels on a fleet of 105,000 container ships, tankers and freight vessels. But today’s superpower rivalry and the decay of global rules may mean that oceans will become a contested zone for the first time since the Cold War. China’s naval build-up means the US Navy’s primacy in the Pacific is being contested for the first time since 1945.

The “law of the sea” is in decline. China increasingly ignores rulings that it objects to. And the West’s use of sanctions has triggered a boom in smuggling: 10% of all tankers are part of a “dark fleet” operating outside mainstream laws and finance, more than twice as many as 18 months ago.

The bottom line is that the US cannot invade Yemen or stop the Yemenis from shooting missiles at commercial vessels or at our own warships. As always, we can bomb a lot, but that’s unlikely to stop the Yemenis. They live in a mountainous country and their missiles are mobile.

The US Navy can’t take them out just by bombing. The Yemenis are tough, experienced fighters. They have endured one of the longest and most brutal bombing campaigns of the last few decades, and they are still here.

The plain fact is that the US and its western allies simply do not have sufficient deterrence to prevail in the Red Sea. The shipping industry has already come to that conclusion:

“In response, some shipping companies have instructed vessels to instead sail around southern Africa, a slower and therefore more expensive route.”

Commercial cargo lines are not going to chance being shot up.

We don’t have sufficient deterrence to keep the Red Sea, and thereby, the Suez Canal, open. We can’t do enough to the Houthis to make them back down. And we won’t be able to stop them with boots on the ground.

What will the US military say is our way out of the box we’ve gotten ourselves into?

Welcome To MLK Weekend

The Daily Escape:

Housatonic River, near Appalachian Trail, Bulls Bridge, CT – January 2024 photo by Jane Haslam

We’re into the MLK, Jr. holiday weekend, during which Wrongo, Ms. Right and our extended families and friends are gathering to observe Wrongo’s 80^th birthday which occurred late last year. That means this column will be brief but paradoxically, unfocused.

In addition to MLK’s birthday, is anyone else worried about the expansion of the Israel/Hamas war into the Red Sea? From NBC:

“The United States and Britain launched military strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen on Thursday, after weeks of mounting attacks (on commercial shipping) by the Iran-backed militant group in the Red Sea.

The strikes, carried out from land and sea, threatened an expansion of the conflict in the Middle East beyond Israel’s war in Gaza — an escalation the Biden administration and its allies have been working to avoid.”

Nothing about this should be surprising. Houthi leadership have been near-begging for airstrikes against them for the last month, given their continued attacks on international ships attempting to use the Red Sea to transit the Suez Canal.

The reaction so far has been as expected. The Houthis have pledged retribution. Pro-Palestinians claim this is the start of WWIII. Some Republicans in Congress say this strike is not authorized, but Wrongo isn’t sure that was necessary.

Anyone who looks at America’s history with cruise and tomahawk missile attacks knows that they are not particularly effective at taking out land-based military installations. It doesn’t seem particularly likely that these strikes will either prevent or deter attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. But it also doesn’t seem likely to escalate things much beyond where we are right now.

America’s military often says “something must be done, and this is something”, and this seems to be another example. And the alternative of confining ourselves only to defensive responses may not have been any better.

Either way, we seem to be looking at a larger and more long-term military presence in the Red Sea. If the Houthi leadership wants to be part of the Israel/Hamas war, then they’re going to be a part of it. Whether the Houthis benefactor Iran wants them to attack global shipping companies is an unanswered question for now.

Is the Iranian leadership about to start a war? The real question is with whom? Iran has a very highly educated population and a diaspora of people waiting to help push the theocrats out if those theocrats slip up. Iran’s options (in a war) would be the many countries that they share land borders with. Those are Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq (who they fought with for 10 years), Turkmenistan, and Pakistan, (a nuclear power). Also Turkey, (in NATO), Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Among countries they don’t share a land border with, are the Saudis or Israel or US, all of which would likely result in Iran getting at least some of the shit bombed out of them. So a war started by Iran seems unlikely, but “Houthis disrupt global shipping from Yemen” was not on Wrongo’s 2024 bingo card, and it’s still January

Since it’s Saturday, let’s close with a musical statement that echoes MLK’s enduring message. Watch and listen to “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize“, a folk song from the American civil rights movement.

The song was composed as a hymn before World War I, but the lyrics in this version were written by civil rights activist Alice Wine in 1956. It is based on the traditional song, “Gospel Plow”, which is also known as “Hold On”, and “Keep Your Hand On The Plow”.

In this version from 2006, Bruce Springsteen starts on vocals, but when Marc Anthony Thompson (with hat) joins him, it becomes a great soul-stirring anthem. Thus, an instructional guide for all of us:

Sample lyrics:

Paul and Silas bound in jail
Had no money to go their bail
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Paul and Silas thought they were lost
Dungeon shook and the chains come off
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Freedom’s name is mighty sweet
And soon we’re gonna meet
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

The only chain that a man can stand
Is the chain of hand on hand
Keep your eyes on the prize
Hold on

Wrongo’s Seen Enough

The Daily Escape:

Tini Martini Bar, St. Augustine, FL – December 2023 photo by Rosie Taylor Photography. Wrongo and Ms. Right have had many martinis there in the recent past.

Wrongo has seen enough. The US must change direction in its support for Israel’s war in Gaza. This isn’t an easy decision. Israel has suffered mightily at the hands of Hamas in Gaza and at the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon with its backer, Iran.

Wrongo has written about the lack of proportionality in Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Now that the war is two+ months old, there can be little doubt that by turning about half of Gaza into a parking lot, Israel’s war is at least as much about uprooting Palestinians as it is about destroying Hamas.

It would be naïve to think that cutting off (or reducing) American funding to Israel would materially improve the chances of Palestinian statehood. And the prospects of that happening have been decreased both by Israel’s disproportionate response to 10/7 and by Netanyahu’s explicit opposition to any form of Palestinian statehood post-hostilities.

Unless the war is ended soon, it will widen beyond Gaza.

It’s already heating up in Lebanon with Hezbollah firing more than 1,000 different types of rockets, missiles, drones, and mortars toward Israel since October 8. Newsweek asked how close Israel was to full-scale war in Lebanon. Israel’s spokesperson said:

“…we could have been at war with Hezbollah…based solely on their actions, their violation of Israeli sovereignty and the casualties that they have caused…”

The tempo of attacks along the boundary between Israel and Lebanon are at levels not seen since the IDF and Hezbollah fought in 2006. Axios reports that Israel told the Biden administration it wants Hezbollah to move six miles back from its border, far enough that they will not be able to fire at Israeli towns along the border. But why would Hezbollah agree?

In Yemen, the Houthi are attacking ships transiting the Red Sea. The US announced a new multinational security initiative aimed at protecting ships in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. Apparently it’s mostly a PR effort. Politico reported that three additional US destroyers have been moved into the Mediterranean Sea and a Carrier Strike Group vessel has been moved into the Gulf of Aden. Attacks by Houthi militants have prompted Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) (both are container shipping companies) to avoid the area.

And inside the Israel/Hamas war in Gaza, CNN reports that an IDF sniper killed a mother and daughter inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza on Saturday. Seven others were wounded in the attack on the complex, which is housing most of Gaza’s Christian families seeking safety. Pope Francis condemned it.

Also, Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is no longer functioning and patients including babies have been evacuated, Reuters reported. Last week Israeli forces used a bulldozer to smash through the outside of the hospital.

Israel itself is roiled by the deaths of three Israeli hostages who were mistakenly killed by the IDF in Gaza. Apparently one was carrying a stick with a white cloth says the BBC. This sparked angry protests in Tel Aviv, where thousands of people called for a truce, chanting “Bring them home now“.

Netanyahu refused, saying Israel only had leverage if they continued to fight:

“Military pressure is necessary both for the return of the hostages and for victory. Without military pressure…we have nothing…”

For its part, Hamas said it will not release hostages until the war ends and Israel accepts its conditions for an exchange of 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, which Netanyahu says is a non-starter.

Biden is beginning to get uncomfortable. Recent polling by New York Times/Siena College shows that:

“Voters broadly disapprove of the way President Biden is handling the bloody strife between Israelis and Palestinians….with younger Americans far more critical than older voters of both Israel’s conduct and of the administration’s response to the war in Gaza.”

Here’s a chart from the NYT:

But among young voters, 46% sympathize more with the Palestinians, against 27% who favor Israel. Only 28% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said Israel was seriously interested in a peaceful solution to the broader conflict, while older voters had far more faith in Israel’s intentions and less in the Palestinians’. Biden sees this and is casting blame on the hardline members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet more than on the prime minister:

“One of the things that Bibi understands, but I’m not sure…[Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar] Ben-Gvir and his War Cabinet do…they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place…”

War, What Is It Good For?

The Daily Escape:

Garden of The Gods, CO – December 2023 photo by James H. Egbert

It’s another Monday, and the world is still a mess. There is so much division here at home that we forget that the rest of the world is boiling over with wars. Not a world war, but there are wars everywhere around the world. Americans are focused on the Ukraine War and the Israel/Hamas war, but there are local and regional wars we barely hear about.

From Hal Gershowitz:

“Among the deadliest wars so far in this still young century are the Second Congo War, the Syrian Civil War, the Darfur War in western Sudan, the war in Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the war against Boko Harem in Nigeria, the Yemeni Civil War, Russia’s current war against Ukraine, and, of course, the current blood-letting between Israel and Hamas.”

“According to the Geneva Academy….more than 110 armed conflicts are raging worldwide.”

Gershowitz says that in 2022, 237,000 men, women, and children died from organized violence, double the number of armed conflict deaths of the year before. While the bloody toll for 2023 hasn’t been compiled yet, we should expect the numbers to exceed those of 2022.

The Middle East, including North Africa, is the most blood-soaked region of the world, hosting more than 45 shooting wars. We know about the Israel/Hamas fight, but we hear much less about ongoing armed conflicts in Cyprus, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Western Sahara.

There are scores of other active hot conflicts, most of which don’t ever make headlines: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan are among the most dangerous places on the planet for civilians.

War dead in this region alone adds up to between hundreds and thousands every day. Some countries, such as the Central African Republic, have had multiple wars. Last year, the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region accounted for over 100,000 battle-related deaths, according to Oslo’s Peace Research Institute.

Currently, there are 21 separate armed conflicts raging in Asia, two of which are considered international wars (India-Pakistan and skirmishes between India and China). In some countries, such as Pakistan and the Philippines, there are multiple armed conflicts taking place simultaneously. Both countries are host to six separate regional in-country conflicts.

While everyone is familiar with Putin’s war in Ukraine, there are five other European nations (or territories) that Russian armies have occupied, including Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Moldova’s Transdniestria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia (Georgia).

The deaths in Ukraine are adding up. The US estimated in August that there were approximately 300,000 Russian casualties, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 180,000 wounded. Ukrainian losses were estimated at 70,000 deaths and 120,000 wounded. Since those estimates were released, the toll of dead and wounded on both sides has climbed even higher.

In our hemisphere, there are six armed conflicts in Latin America—three in Mexico and three in Columbia.

The 21^st Century is still young, but it’s horribly violent. China is eyeing Taiwan, North Korea is elbowing its way into the nuclear club, and Iran, which follows the Shia form of Islam, is eying all of Arabia, which embraces Sunni Islam.

Back to Israel/Hamas for a few random thoughts: First, at the start of any new armed conflict, the UN, occasionally the US and other nations, call for an immediate cease fire. There hasn’t been a durable cease fire in this century. Yet, Steve Coll in the New Yorker had this to say:

“Even a temporary ceasefire displays the moral power of peacemaking. Last week, as a shaky truce to allow prisoner and hostage swaps and aid deliveries quieted the ruinous war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli families welcomed back more than a hundred children and older adults whom Hamas and its allies had kidnapped on October 7th…..In the West Bank, jubilant crowds waved the flags of Fatah and Hamas as Palestinian parents hugged their teen-age children released from Israeli jails.”

“Ceasefires usually don’t end wars because they don’t address the issues that underlie them. (A study of sixty-seven civil wars published in the Journal of Peace Studies in 2021 found no evidence that ceasefires and prisoner releases led to sustainable peace agreements.)”

Specifically with respect to Israel/Hamas, we can’t see what the end state looks like. Netanyahu visited Gaza during the ceasefire and cited three aims: “eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages, and insuring that Gaza does not become a threat to the State of Israel again.”

As Wrongo said two months ago, it is difficult to see how the second objective can be achieved in tandem with the first. Regardless of what Netanyahu thinks, the third will not be controlled by Israel, even though it may be the most important of Israel’s three objectives.

Another problem is that this war is causing a terrible divide in America. Think about how quickly U of Penn’s president Liz Magill was forced to resign after giving a truthful and legally correct answer to an utterly bad faith question. The question she was asked was, “Is calling for the genocide of Jews always a violation of Penn’s code of conduct in regard to bullying and harassment?”

Now, no rational person is in favor of genocide, but Rep. Stefanik’s question implies that simply speaking out in support of Palestinians is the equivalent of calling for Jewish genocide. Plenty of today’s college students support Palestine, and very few of them think that Jews should be exterminated.

Stefanik’s question asks us to ignore people’s free speech rights when they are awful and noxious. It lands very close to the witch hunting of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

Also, it’s clear in Wrongo’s circle that people are afraid to express opinions on the Israel/Hamas war, because whatever is said is sure to offend someone. It could possibly be enough to cause a threatening retaliation. What’s worse is that not a single person will live or die in the Middle East because of anything anyone says or doesn’t say at the University of Pennsylvania or in Wrongo’s hometown.

There is nothing at stake in the performative rage about what’s said at college demonstrations. It’s all empty theater.

Time to wake up America! If Republicans and other hardliners are able to make criticism of Israel a forbidden topic in mainstream society, that means our democracy will die right along with the many more deaths we will see in the Middle-East.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a globally produced cover of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” by the people behind Playing For Change. This song came out in 1971 when the Vietnam war was still going on. Here it features Sara Bareilles among many other talented people:

Sample lyric:

Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some loving here today…

Wake Up To Monday’s Hot Links

The Daily Escape:

Cypress trees, Lake Verritt, LA – November 2023 photo by Rick Berk Photography. Note the egret in the background.

For today’s Wake Up Call, we return to a staple of yesteryear, some hot links that caught Wrongo’s eye over the past few days.

Wrongo isn’t happy with how the Ukraine War has slipped from the consciousness of America’s media and thereby, from our view. Saturday’s WSJ offered an intriguing idea with its column, “Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?” (free link). The article makes two excellent points. First, how these two wars have divided the world. Here’s a view of the division:

From the WSJ: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Outrage and political mobilization have become subordinated to geopolitical allegiances—a selective empathy that often treats ordinary Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis as pawns in a larger ideological battle within Western societies and between the West and rivals such as China and Russia.”

Second, the article concludes by saying that the main difference between the two wars is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with all its complexities, lacks the moral clarity of the Ukrainian resistance to Russia. They quote British lawmaker Alex Sobel:

“There is no moral justification for the Russian invasion. Zero. It’s just about Russian imperialism….But in Israel and Palestine, it’s about the fact that there are two peoples on a very small amount of land, and political and military elites on both sides are unwilling to settle for what’s on offer.”

Yes, America may have the moral high ground in both cases, and views can differ on how both wars are being waged. But as the article says in its second paragraph:

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was unprovoked, while Israel sent troops into Gaza because of a mass slaughter of Israeli civilians…”.

Make of the article what you will, but it’s important to think through why you (like Biden) think both wars are morally equivalent.

Link #2 is apropos of the COP28 conference now underway in Dubai. Grist Magazine has an article: “Where could millions of EV batteries retire? Solar farms.” As solar energy expands, it’s becoming more common to use batteries to store the power as it’s generated and transmit it through the grid later. One new idea is to source that battery back up at least in part from used electric vehicle batteries:

“Electric vehicle batteries are typically replaced when they reach 70 to 80% of their capacity, largely because the range they provide at that point begins to dwindle. Almost all of the critical materials inside them, including lithium, nickel, and cobalt, are reusable. A growing domestic recycling industry, supported by billions of dollars in loans from the Energy Department and incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, is being built to prepare for what will one day be tens of millions of retired EV battery packs.”

“Before they are disassembled…studies show that around three quarters of decommissioned packs are suitable for a second life as stationary storage.”

Apparently there are already at least 3 gigawatt-hours of decommissioned EV battery packs sitting around in the US that could be deployed, and that the volume of them being removed from cars is doubling every two years.

Link #3 also shows the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. Wolf Richter writes that:

“In October, $18.5 billion were plowed into construction of manufacturing plants in the US ($246 billion annualized), up by 73% from a year ago, by 136% from two years ago, and by 166% from October 2019.”

“The US is the second largest manufacturing country by output, behind China and has a greater share of global production than the next three countries combined, Germany, Japan, and India.”

All of this construction spending will take time to turn into production. When these new plants are up and running and producing at scale, manufacturing’s share of US GDP will rise. And much of the new construction is happening in fly-over America, which can use the help.

Finding factory workers in sufficient numbers to support the new capacity will be a key. America has energy in abundance and has robotic manufacturing. So pulling production from overseas with fewer workers needed will be a giant plus for the US.

Link #4 is a downer. Civic Science says in this week’s 3 things to know column, that “Nearly 3 in 10 Americans say they have had to forgo seeing a doctor in the past year due to costs.” Here’s their chart”:

Civic Science says that 12% of US adults have had to miss or make a late payment on medical bills in the last 90 days, a two percentage point increase over September 2022.

A far larger percentage of Americans – 27% of the general population and about 30% of respondents under 55 years old or with an annual household income under $100,000 – report they could not go to a doctor in the past 12 months because they could not afford the cost. Gen Z adults and households making between $25K-$50K are more likely to have held off seeing a doctor due to cost (34% and 31% respectively).

We all know that medical costs have continued to rise and that medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US. If Congress was really interested in helping provide for the general welfare, they would deal with this out of control problem.

Time to wake up America! There’s plenty going on that isn’t getting visibility in the mainstream media or on social media. You have to cast your net widely to be on top of the good and bad happening in the US.

To help you wake up, we turn to Shane MacGowan, frontman for the Irish group the Pogues who died last week. He left behind a body of work that merged traditional Irish music and punk rock. He wrote many songs that could easily be mistaken for traditional Irish tunes including this one, which was also used as the music for wakes by the Baltimore Police Department in the great, great HBO series, “The Wire“. Here’s “The Body Of An American” from their 1986 album, “Poguetry in Motion”:

RIP Shane.

Reconsidering US Blanket Support For Israel

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Outer Banks, NC – November 2023 photo by Stephen P. Szymanski

Sometimes a friend, a family member or a neighbor asks you to help them solve a problem. You go along, thinking that you’ll be able to help out, only to suddenly find you’re deeply involved in something that could easily become either a reputation killer, or possibly even life-threatening to you.

And after five weeks of intense bombing, this is where America sits with the Israel/Hamas war. Our friend has caused us to get badly stuck in something and it’s become very difficult to see how to get out of it.

First, all right-minded people should agree that what Hamas did on Oct. 7 was a war crime. And the taking of non-combatant Israeli hostages is also a violation of international law, as is Hamas using Palestinians as human shields.

Second, it is possible to be committed to Israel and to its right to defend itself while at the same time being critical of its response in Gaza and sympathetic to the Palestinian’s plight.

Third, (and what is the focus of this column), is how Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has become close to violating the rules of war. Israel has launched near-continuous airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. According to Barron’s since the onset of the war, Israeli attacks on targets within Gaza have destroyed or damaged 45% of all housing units in the Palestinian territory.

In addition, the Times of Israel acknowledges that a lot of Gazans have died since the October 7 terrorist attacks. It cites the “Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza,” while arguing that the numbers cannot be confirmed and likely include Hamas fighters and victims of misfired Hamas rockets. They still put the number of dead north of 11,000. But there’s also allegedly 26,000 who have been injured and more than 3,000 that are missing. That adds up to 40,000.

The CIA estimates that Gaza began 2023 with a population of 2,098,389, so the total casualties (including the missing) in Gaza are about 2% of the population. And nearly a million people have had their homes damaged or destroyed so far. And the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) estimates that 70% have been displaced from their homes.

The systematic bombardment of housing and infrastructure is prohibited under international law. You can’t destroy 45% of the housing units of a population of 2 million people in five weeks and argue that you are doing all you can to avoid harming civilians.

Indiscriminate bombing of cities became an issue before WWII. Concern about “ruthless bombing of civilians” began with the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1932, and the bombing of Barcelona and Guernica in Spain by Italian and German fascists in 1937-38.

An important review of the historical background to the law against bombing cities is in the late Daniel Ellsworth’s excellent 2017 book, “The Doomsday Machine” (TDM). Ellsworth says that the need for rule-making became clear after the German Blitz of London in 1940. That led to the US and Britain secretly adopting Hitler’s tactics. The actions of the three belligerents obliterated the distinction between bombing combatants and civilians for the rest of WWII.

Citizens in the opponent’s country were considered legitimate targets because they were contributing in some way to their country’s war effort. This led to the moral justification that it was better to kill civilians in order to get the war over quickly. After that, bomber attacks exclusively aimed at exterminating German population centers was accepted by Churchill: (TDM, p.239)

“This is the way to pay them back; it’s legitimate for us to do so, and in fact it’s virtually obligatory for us to do so….”

The near-exact words were spoken by Biden, Blinken and Netanyahu after Oct. 7. But even in WWII, there wasn’t true proportionality. From TDM: (pg. 245)

“For every ton of bombs dropped on England in the nine months of the Blitz, England and the US…dropped a hundred tons of bombs on German cities…”

And more than 500,000 Germans were killed.

In 1949, a series of treaties governing the laws of war were adopted. The Geneva Conventions and specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention attempted to create legal defenses for civilians in war, but it wasn’t explicit about bombardment.

In 1977, Protocol I was adopted as an amendment to the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting the deliberate or indiscriminate attack on civilians, even if the area contained military targets. But Protocol I also says that locating military objectives near civilians “shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians“.

This has always been honored in the breach.

Aerial operations are supposed to comply with the principles of: military necessity, distinction, and proportionality. An attack or action must be intended to aid the military defeat of the enemy. It must be an attack on a military objective, and the harm caused to civilians or civilian property must be proportional and not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. But proportionality doesn’t hinge only on absolute casualty counts but on how harm to civilian lives and infrastructure is weighed against expected military gains.

That means theoretically, a lot of suffering is permissible.

Under the law of war, Israel’s proportionality calculation must take account of the civilian casualties its air strikes and ground invasion are causing. But Israel has in the past interpreted the rules to exclude damage to apartment buildings if terrorists occupy them.

Israel and America also believe that civilians who voluntarily serve as human shields are participants, not bystanders. But, how to tell the difference? Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters are embedded within Gaza’s population and store weapons in and under civilian sites. They also say it’s impossible to defeat its enemy without killing innocents — a lesson that Americans learned at Hiroshima, Falluja and Mosul.

The NYT reports that during Blinken’s visits to Israel after Oct. 7, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They quoted Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman:

“In any combat situation, like when the US was leading a coalition to get ISIS out of Mosul, there were civilian casualties….[and] that Israel’s “ratio” of Hamas fighters to civilians killed “compares very well to NATO and other Western forces” in past military campaigns”.

When all you have for an argument is that your friend has done worse, you’re in serious trouble. Regev’s statement is also impossible to verify. US military officials have discussed the lessons learned from the battles in Iraq and in Raqqa, (the ISIS headquarters in Syria) with Israel.

Israel isn’t exempt from learning from the past and applying the lessons to their current urban warfare. And this is coming from an ally that receives $ billions in US aid every year. Israel is obviously willing to use any justification to continue its destruction in Gaza.

It’s clear that Israel is following a deliberate policy of wrecking Gaza’s infrastructure and buildings. Netanyahu said on October 7 that the IDF would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On October 10, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories, stated “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”

That gives context to the fact that almost half of the housing in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed since October 7.

Gaza is now well beyond a long and expensive reconstruction process. It’s approaching the point where Gaza is becoming a place where human beings will find it difficult to exist. It’s true that Hamas is also culpable; they’ve brought this upon their own people. They continue to hold the hostages, and that provides Israel with justification for fighting in the heart of Gaza, including near its hospitals.

If Hamas cared about their own people, they would do something to stop it.

The point is that these disproportionate attacks should make it clear that the US needs to find a way to stop blindly taking Israel’s side. We should not be making excuses for Israel’s targeting of civilian populations. Figuring out what we should be doing is urgent, since our current posture isn’t benefiting the US, while it is benefiting our many adversaries in the ME.

The world thinks that the US has leverage over Israel, but as this war shows, we do not. We’re joined at the hip, and no other two countries have had a closer relationship. And when the war broke out on October 7, Biden made it very clear we would give Israel whatever aid it needed, that we would support Israel to the hilt. And we’ve done that.

But, Israel rebuffed Biden’s efforts to talk Israel into arranging “humanitarian pauses” until world opinion started to turn against Netanyahu. CNN and others reported that Israel has finally agreed to move forward with four-hour pauses of military operations in Northern Gaza. We’ll see how that goes.

But should America sacrifice any more of what shreds remain of our moral standing in the world to cooperate with Israel in what seems about to become massive civilian slaughter? Even if Israel’s war efforts are justifiable, their actions are making Gaza uninhabitable.

And when the smoke clears, and much of Gaza’s population has moved south, will Israel allow them return to sit amongst the rubble that remains?

Finally, Israel may be doing exactly what Hamas hoped. It is radicalizing many Palestinians. It isn’t difficult to imagine that if you lived in Gaza and saw Israel’s bombs kill most of your family, you might be willing to walk a bomb into a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv after a ceasefire. If you’re going to live like a dog for the rest of your life, at least you could gain a modicum of revenge by taking a few Israelis along with you.

Time to wake up America! Israel is telling the world that it will stop at nothing to re-establish the security of its borders, even down to the last Palestinian. While the IDF tells us it is following the laws of war, Netanyahu is showing us that his strategy is to make his Middle East adversaries think that no one can out crazy Israel. Israel’s willing to do this even if it has to defy the rest of the world and even if it doesn’t have a plan for returning Gaza to the Palestinians on the morning after the war.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to U2’s 2001 hit “Stuck In A Moment That You Can’t Get Out Of”. Bono wrote the lyrics about the suicide of his close friend Michael Hutchence, lead singer of the band INXS. The song is an argument against suicide in which Bono tries to convince Hutchence of the act’s foolishness.

We also should see the foolishness of total war even against a terrible enemy. It could turn out to be suicide: