24 February 2009

Political Lexicon: early 2009 edition

Ah, a new President and a new vocabulary comes into play. For those of you not catching on to the Newspeak I'll do a bit of quick translation between the new word or phrase and its older meaning. It really is quite simple, once you listen for a bit! So, without further preface lets dive right in:

Accountability = Previously, oversight so as to hold institutions to account for funds and activities. New meaning is placing corrupt politicians at the head of institutions so as to ensure that political payoffs go directly to those favored by the Administration. Usage: 'I will make 'Accountability' of federal departments my top priority.'

Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) = Ancient, the idea that humans putting another log on the fire during the Little Ice Age helped to keep a real Ice Age from forming. Previously a misunderstood concept of the dynamics between atmosphere, solar radiation, insolation, albedo, and gaseous chemical compounds on a planetary scale. Currently, a religion that puts man at the center of all things bad happening on Rock 3 from the Star Sol, and aims to eliminate humans via 'Regulation', 'Accountability' and 'Oversight' with the help of 'Social Activism'. Soon to be an extortion phrase used against government, private institutions and individuals to make them conform with the religious beliefs of its adherents. Usage: ''AGW' is a threat to all of humanity and we must do something to stop this global phenomena.'

Bailout (or bail out) = Previously, jumping from a plane at high altitude with a parachute as a means of descending safely to the ground, originally used to imply the aircraft was headed for an uncontrolled ground vector. Currently, handing money out to institutions that had much 'Regulation' and 'Oversight' and are now being made 'Accountable', to the point where the amount being given is more than the cost of the institution itself. Usage: 'We will have to bail out GM and Chrysler and add more 'Regulation', 'Accountability' and 'Oversight' to them so they succeed.'

Carbon Dioxide = Previously a chemical compound that is utilized in the biosphere and naturally occurring, with some current uses of fuels producing it as a byproduct. Currently a pollutant that can be 'Regulated' due to worries about 'Anthropomorphic Global Warming'. Usage: 'The EPA will 'Regulate' the amount of carbon dioxide you can emit by breathing, with a special tax for hyperventilation.'

Crisis = Previously on the domestic side, anything that one could drag their feet on and have worked out by the time a solution full of 'Regulations', 'Accountability' and 'Oversight' was drafted. Currently a rhetorical means to coerce people to give up their money, liberty and freedom for fleeting problems. Usage: 'This 'crisis' requires the largest change in the government of the United States, ever.'

Deadbeat = Ancient, one who does not keep up with paying off their debts or defaults on them. Previously in the credit card industry, anyone who paid off their balances in full and on time so as to incur not interest charges. Currently, an American Taxpayer. Usage: 'We have to get those 'deadbeats' to pay out by new 'Regulations' and 'Oversight' with the help of 'Social Activism' to give money to those who took out larger amounts than they can pay off.'

Depression = Previously economic for a long term Recession. Currently it is any Recession. Generally talked about for years before it arrives so its presaged arrival seems much worse than it really is. Usage: 'We are headed into a Depression.'

Fascism = Ancient, meaning an authoritarian government instituting National Socialism so as to control banking and private industry while allowing for individuals to have some private property. Also an early form of Transnational Progressivism. Currently, a catch-all by the Left to impugn anyone they disagree with based on firm 'Political Convictions'. Usage: 'Those right-wingers wanting to remove 'Regulation' of the banking sector are a bunch of 'Fascists'.'

Great Depression = Older meaning - the financial downturn starting in 1928 that neared recovery in 1937 until government taxes and programs kicked in to prolong it to 1942. Currently, a 'Depression' that is widely predicted during other Recessions, and will be as bad or worse than the 1979-83 Recession. Usage: 'This 'Depression' will turn into the 'Great Depression' if cardigan sweaters go on sale.'

Greatest Mistake in US History = Ancient, the Civil War. Previously, creating a Progressive government that was able to tax 'deadbeats' to pay for those who lacked means to become stable citizens. After that a term used by the Left to denote the Viet Nam conflict. Just after term is used by the Left to denote the election of Ronald Reagan. Just after that the term is used by the Left to denote the election of 2000. Just prior to the election, the Iraq War by many on the political Left. Currently, trusting the federal government to do anything right and spend more money than was spent on the just prior usage of this term by the Left. Apparently whatever today's problem is, is the 'Greatest Mistake in US history' to the Left. Usage: ''The Greatest Mistake in US History' is to believe in the omnicompetence of government to get us through the current 'Depression'.'

Hope & Change = Previously a political slogan (cf. Hot Air). Currently being wiped from the MSM in attempt to have people forget that those we elect provide more the of same old, same old. Usage: 'I will use 'Hope & Change' to guide my 'Political Convictions' and know that I am right, even when things work out in ways that I don't expect.'

Indulgences = Ancient, the practice of paying money to the Roman Catholic Church to get time off in purgatory in the after-life. Current, purchasing carbon credits to reduce one's carbon footprint so that one feels better about all the pollution they do. Usage: 'Soon we will be purchasing 'indulgences' from the federal government due to 'regulations' on 'carbon dioxide' so that we may breathe without undue taxation involved.'

New, New Deal = Previously a social compact to drain money from the rich and industries to give to the poor while enriching 'Regulators' and those performing 'Oversight'. Currently, something twice the size of the old New Deal and that by a minimal factor of two if not larger. Usage: 'To avoid the next 'Great Depression' we need a 'New, New Deal' to prolong it!'

Oversight = Previously a term used to demand 'Accountability' by having 'Regulators' called before Congressional panels. Currently, a witch hunt to browbeat individuals to conform to political dictates of the members of Congress. Usage: 'Barney Frank performed an 'Oversight' function on federal regulators of the banking system in 2003-04 when they complained of the unsound fiscal policy embodied in 'Regulations'.'

Political Convictions = Previously a firm set of ideological work that was the underpinning of one's understanding of the role of government, the citizenry and the Republic. Currently it is The End Justifies The Means for those elected to high office. Usage: 'My 'political convictions' are firm and will always have the right process in mind to achieve them.'

Regulation = Previously the act of ensuring that certain criteria of financial standards, product safety and other items of interstate trade held to federally set norms. Currently, the utilization of corrupt politicians to create laws to place money into the hands of lobbyists to write bills that regulate their industry. Also, economically, the call for more of the previous so as to enact transfer payments to individuals with No Income No Job or Assets via the banking system via Congressionally passed law, so as to meet a political end. Usage: 'The financial system is corrupt and needs more 'Regulation'.'

Regulators = Previously those individuals who had oversight duties on federally mandated regulations and their enactment. Currently, corrupt political cronies put in charge of oversight so as to avoid 'Oversight' by conforming to political beliefs of the Congress or Administration or Both. Generally, those who utilize no sound standards of judgment and kowtow to political goals and aims while in a position of 'Oversight'. Usage: 'We will have the smartest 'Regulators' ever in the history of the United States.'

Social Activism = Previously and Current - Using thuggish means to extort money from politicians, banks, industries or any other viable institution in a poor region so as to 'help the poor' by making private institutions flee the area. Usage: 'That was not a riot with looters, but productive 'Social Activism'.

Socialism = Ancient, a system where everyone owns everything and all are beholden to a central government. Also an early form of Transnational Progressivism. Currently, the advocacy of National control over the banking sector and private industry. See: Fascism, ancient. Usage: 'The banks need to be Nationalized so that they don't fail so that we can have a more 'Socialist' economy.'

Sound fiscal practices = Ancient, to utilize means testing in the area of banking to ensure that borrowers are fiscally able to carry loans or are generally credit worthy. Previously handing out loans to NINJA borrowers due to 'Regulation' and 'Oversight' plus 'Social Activism' used against them. Currently this term has no meaning at all and is a null phrase that is chucked out at whimsy by those promoting schemes of any sort. Usage: 'It is 'sound fiscal practice' to hand out money to those who cannot pay it back and we must give them a 'bail out'.'

We need unity = Previously used as a political stump speech concept for 'Hope & Change'. Also a thing disdained by those who put dissent as the highest form of patriotism while the Nation was fighting a Congressionally sanctioned set of wars overseas. Currently, those who held dissent as the highest form of patriotism now wanting others to conform to their political beliefs. Usage: 'In this country 'we need unity' to confront the banking crisis so as to get 'deadbeats' to pay for those who took out larger loans than they could afford.'

Even though the lexicon is evolving very quickly, the general outlines can be seen with a number of phrases now taking on exactly opposite meanings than they have previously had. In no time at all you can just hear the phrase, substitute in its exact opposite meaning and be properly oriented for our modern times.

With the removal of some words and vowels, we will soon move to the very Progressive form of speech known as 'Duckspeak' and be done with meaning completely.

11 February 2009

The shadow and the firestorm

Consider Bill Roggio's latest on the strengthening of al Qaeda forces in Pakistan, over at Long War Journal.  This is information that you can get no where else as easily and with such depth.  The re-appearance of the al Qaeda Shadow Army, particularly the unit that was the Taliban enforcer, Brigade 055, now Lashkar al Zil, or Shadow Army, is something to take note of, as the dispersal of the Talibe regime and subsequent operations disorganized it requiring it to re-formulate outside of Afghanistan.  Of particular note is the presences of ex-Baathist Republican Guardsmen amongst the diverse non-Pashtun organization that is the Shadow Army.  That said the 'foot soldiers' and mid-level types are bound to be from other places and Mr. Roggio cites as much in the article.

I've gone over some of the line-up previously and will list some of those posts, although I am sure to miss a few:

Examining the al Qaeda playbook (initial perusal)

First cut overview on The Management of Savagery

Terrorists on the decline?

Terrorism: the good, the bad and the ugly

Seeding the whirlwind and getting the vortex

A quick refresher on Pakistan

Terrorism and Pakistan, part 1

Terrorism and Pakistan, part 2

Huawei Technologies and its role in terrorism

Management of Savagery - The 'weak horse'

Afghanistan and the essential fight

Those are just the high level basics necessary to understand what we are seeing, and with those an examination of who the players are can be done.  No, fun was not had in writing those.

 

The Shadow Army has integrated parts of other terrorist organizations into their utilization schema.  In terrorist organizations that co-operate you often find mutual cooperation without hard and fast lines of authority - thus members may work together due to organizational needs, via  ideology, via common contacts, via common enemy, or one just weakening and transferring to a newer and stronger organization.  So seeing who they incorporate should be able to tell what sort of associations they are making.  This from the Roggio piece:

Afghan and Pakistan-based Taliban forces have integrated elements of their forces into the Shadow Army, "especially the Tehrik-e-Taliban and Haqqani Network," a senior US military intelligence official said. "It is considered a status symbol" for groups to be a part of the Shadow Army.

The Tehrik-e-Taliban is the Pakistani Taliban movement led by Baitullah Mehsud, the South Waziristan leader who has defeated Pakistani Army forces in conventional battles. The Haqqani Network straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border and has been behind some of the most high-profile attacks in Afghanistan.

From the Daily Times of Pakistan article of 09 JAN 2007 on this area:

In South Waziristan, according to the sources, the two main Taliban commanders are Baitullah and Abdullah from the Mehsud tribes. The former is the most powerful Taliban commander in the entire South Waziristan. He signed a peace deal with the Pakistani authorities at Sararogha in February 2005. It was agreed that the army will evacuate tribal territories, the Taliban will not attack the army, foreigners will not get protection, the army will not conduct operations against the Taliban if they agreed to help in the completion of development work. After the agreement, the Taliban established 16 offices in different parts of the Mehsud territory which are still functioning. They undertook harsh steps against criminals and dacoits. A ban was imposed on the use of computers/TV/music/dance. Sharia law was imposed. Baitullah has a lashkar of 30,000 armed tribesmen, while Abdullah has 5,000 armed men associated with him. Both groups give training to local youth and organise cross-border attacks. Baitullah Mehsud is associated with JUI-F like Sadiq Noor in North Waziristan while Abdullah Mehsud is attached to Uzbek/Tajik groups.

The sources said that in the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe, there were 14 groups of Taliban until November 2006 but after the appointment of Mullah Nazir as commander, all of them were brought under one leadership. Two Taliban commanders, Ghulam Jan and Ifthikar, do not accept Mullah Nazir as commander. However, Mullah Nazir remains the most powerful Taliban commander. He and other Taliban commanders like Muhammad Umer, Sharif, Noor Islam, Maulvi Abbas and Javed are affiliated with JUI-F. A separate group under commander Zanjeer, associated with Gulbadin Hikmatyar of Hizbe Islami is connected to the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan.

Taliban commander Noor Islam based in Wana is an active supporter of Uzbek/Tajik and rebel Arabs. Haji Khanan, who is against the presence of Uzbeks, is another important Taliban commander. He is based in the Shakai area of the agency. Uzbek commanders and Abdullah Mehsud groups are more active in attacks on supporters of the government, while Arab commanders are more active in cross-border attacks.

The Mehsud brothers, now down to Baitullah, have been Talibani organizers on the border for years.  Their combined Lashkar was 30,000 or so locals.  Baitullah is the man who had not only the bulk of their private Lashkar, but the one who associated with other organizations and actively ordered and coordinated raids across the border.  Now lets look a bit more at the Mehsud brothers with this taken from the second of a two part report on them -

Part 2 from The Crime Library by Anthony Bruno:

Tribal militant leader Baitullah Mehsud has shown a disturbing interest in Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the controversial father of Pakistan's nuclear arms program, who in 2004 admitted to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea on the black market. Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan reported that when Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October of this year, Baitullah instructed Al Qaeda militants in Karachi to kill her for "three major offenses against Islamists." First, she supported the Pakistani military attack on Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque) in Islamabad on July 10, 2007—Lal Masjid was considered a hotbed of Islamist radicalism; one hundred and sixty-four Pakistani special-forces commandos stormed the mosque and madrassah, killing at least 20 and injuring over 100. Second, Bhutto has made it clear that if she takes power in Pakistan, she will allow American forces to search for Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan's borders. Third, she has said that if elected, she would allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to question A. Q. Khan.

[..]

Until 2005, Baitullah lived in the shadow of his daring and charismatic brother, Abdullah Mehsud, who, with his long black hair, was considered a terrorist rock star. Abdullah fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan against the Northern Alliance and in 1996 lost a leg when he stepped on a land mine. He was taken captive by warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum who turned him over to American forces. Abdullah Mehsud was sent to Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and held for two years, insisting the whole time that he was just an innocent tribesman. He was released in 2004 for reasons which remain unclear and returned to Waziristan. Soon after his return, he orchestrated the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on a dam in his region, proclaiming that Beijing was guilty of killing Muslims. He also ordered an attack on Pakistan's Interior Minister in which 31 people perished. In July 2007 he died in a clash with Pakistani military forces as they raided his residence.

[..]

Baitullah made his intentions clear this past January when he said, "As far as jihad is concerned, we will continue to wage it. We will do what is in the interest of Islam." Speaking of the growing threat of Baitullah's militia, Pakistani military analyst, Hasan-Askari Rizvi, told The New York Times, "The army has never faced such a serious challenge in the tribal areas."

For those of you insisting that Guantanamo is such a 'bad place' and that 'innocent people are held there', do consider that Abdullah Mehsud, who controlled 5,000 personal war fighters, who was alllied with the Taliban, whose brother was actively fighting the US and its allies in Afghanistan, was SET FREE because he was 'an innocent tribesman'.  Really, it sucks to get picked up with weapons in a war zone or otherwise swept up in raids and such in such a conflict.  When he was released he went on to kidnapping and killing, and helping his brother and the Taliban.  You wanted a swift determination of combatant status and got it: kidnapping and killing are your return on investment of 'good will'.

With this information we can start to piece together Baitullah Mesud's range and scope of influence, and I'll swipe this from a previous article of mine:

1) Baitullah Mehsud - Sipah-e-Sahaba/Pakistan (SSP) (Source: TKB and SATP) [now Millat-e-Islamia/Pakistan via the SIPS name table] and its main factional group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Source: SATP). Baitullah Mehsud does not *lead* either of these organizations, instead being a leader of a Lashkar (from TKB: Lashkar: Literally “battalion” in Urdu, the term is often part of the name of many South Asian terrorist groups) of 30,000 to 35,000 Mehsud tribesmen and other terrorist followers. Thus he is a military leader of import, with a sizeable following of Pashtuns. He is also cited as being commander of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Source: SATP, SAIR Report 31 DEC 2007) or Taliban Movement Pakistan (Source: e-Ariana).

 

Now for a bit on how the Mehsuds stage attacks across the border.  Here is the SATP Pakistan Assessment: 2009 that examines this in part:

Alarmingly, some Taliban clerics reportedly boasted of converting ordinary persons into suicide-bombers "in six hours flat".

"From the 26 suicide attacks where we recovered a head in 2007, we made a startling discovery… The vast majority [of suicide bombers] came from just one tribe, the Mehsuds of central Waziristan, all boys aged 16 to 20," an analyst at the elite Special Investigation Group (SIG) told The Guardian. Qari Hussain, also known as Ustad-e-Fidaeen (teacher of suicide cadres), a Mehsud tribesman in his early 30s, is identified as the 'commander' who manages Baitullah Mehsud-led Taliban suicide bombing training centres and is directly responsible for indoctrinating youth for suicide missions. One of the training centres was discovered at a Government-run school in the Kotkai area of South Waziristan by the Army. GOC-14 Division Major General Tariq Khan told reporters in Dera Ismail Khan on May 18, 2008: "It was like a factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys, and turning them into suicide bombers." The computers, other equipment and literature seized from the centre give graphic details of the suicide training. There were videos of young boys carrying out executions, a classroom where 10- to 12-year olds are sitting in formation, with "white band of Quranic verses wrapped around their forehead, and there are training videos to show how improvised explosive devices are made and detonated." .

"Pakistan is now a one-stop shop," says Tariq Pervez who recently retired as the Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency. He told The Guardian in an interview, "ideas, logistics, cash from the Gulf. Arab guys, mainly Egyptians and Saudis, are on hand to provide the chemistry. Veteran Punjabi extremists plot the attacks, while the Pakistan Taliban provide the martyrs. And it all came together in the Marriott case."

In fact, so pervasive is the phenomenon of suicide attacks that suicide bombers are also now available for a price to settle personal scores. This was revealed during Police investigations into a suicide attack in Bhakkar on October 6, 2008, in which 25 persons were killed and 60 wounded. According to Crime Investigation Department of the Lahore Police, accused Waqas Hussain and his four accomplices had hired a suicide bomber and explosives expert from Wana in South Waziristan to kill a former friend with whom they had a monetary dispute.

Need to hire a martyr/hitman?  Waziristan is the place to go!

Just so you know, that would be an ISI supported concept - using a government run school to train child suicide bombers.  Someone in the government must have known what was going on, and the finger would point to the ISI not only subverting the school, but then intimidating those inside the government who would try to report it.  Now this gives us the flow of the overall project:  Money,  materials and skilled operatives from KSA and Egypt, local Islamic Radicals as trainers/brainwashers, construction of devices locally, and then the recruited boys and others picked up in the area sent on their missions.  This has worked so well that they have a surplus of martyrs to help settle your local disputes: pay the money and have a suicide child bomber blow up your target.

Remember when you criticize the US for 'barbaric activities' you are glossing over what the hell is actually going on in the world and that US soldiers are accountable for their actions.   But then children as suicide bombers have never bothered the Left in America - they try to say that the US causes them and not blame those doing the funding, training, brainwashing, equipping and sending of them.  Always the US, never the actual people using children like this.  Of course that attitude is, itself, barbaric.

Now over to FATA and the Khyber Pass area, and from that same report:

Within FATA, violence is reported from all the seven Agencies - Bajaur, Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan - in varying degrees. The continuing instability in neighbouring Afghanistan and the rapid fading of the Government's writ in FATA in 2008 has only intensified the conflict in the region. After Waziristan, Bajaur is arguably the most significant stronghold of the militants, who have entrenched themselves in the area, transforming the Agency into a nerve centre of the Taliban - al Qaeda network. Sources indicate that foreign al Qaeda militants - including Chechens, Uzbek, Tajik, Sudanese and Afghans - are converging on Bajaur to bolster the ranks of the jihadis. These foreigners are reportedly leading counter-attacks, since local militants alone were having difficulties confronting the Army action.

The Taliban, led by 'commander' Abdul Wali alias Omar Khalid, has near-complete control in the Mohmand Agency. Khalid, in his early 40s, was the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) chief in the agency before becoming a Taliban commander. One of the most influential Taliban leaders after Baitullah Mehsud and Maulvi Faqir, sources indicate that Khalid, who claims to have more than 3,000 fighters with him, has strong links with some Kashmiri militant groups. It is during 2008 that the Pakistani Taliban made a surge in the Mohmand Agency, where they now run a parallel state, implementing the Sharia (Islamic law), largely under duress.

[..]

Throughout 2008, attempts at regaining territory by the armed forces in FATA proved to be unsuccessful, with the militants swiftly recovering lost spaces. In essence, the state does not have a civil administrative system worth its name in FATA and, indeed, across the NWFP and Balochistan, and efforts to hold and sustain territorial gains rely almost exclusively on the presence of the Armed Forces.

During 2008, the Taliban-al Qaeda combine, notwithstanding sustained military operations, also consolidated their sway on the Khyber Agency. In fact, strengthening their presence in the Jamrud and Landikotal sub-divisions of Khyber Agency by the end of the year, the Taliban from Khyber began to extend support to their brethren in the NWFP and to threaten the supply lines of NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan. Baitullah Mehsud's fighters have now established at least nine centres in Jamrud and Landikotal, with at least one of these centres located no more than 10 kilometers from the NWFP capital, Peshawar.

The state's withdrawal is tangible. While senior officials seldom venture into any of the Agencies, the administration virtually lives at the mercy of the militants and is unable to exercise any real authority. The SFs in FATA are also faced with the dangerous scenario of their Pashtun elements demonstrating reluctance to fight their fellow Pashtuns. Apart from the "high" casualty rate there is also an "unprecedented" level of desertions and discharge applications being reported from FATA (numbers for which are presently unavailable), an unambiguous sign that multiple insurgencies are bleeding the Pakistan Army.

In case you missed it: Pakistan is now fighting a massive insurgency that is draining its Army and limiting the operations of the Nation.  I haven't added in the Balochistan problems, but they are also doing a number on the Army and National forces.  Now on to the NWFP area:

During 2008, the Taliban-al Qaeda was able to unambiguously demonstrate their supremacy to the extent that the NWFP, a region where the state's presence has historically been relatively strong, is almost as ungovernable as FATA. While the Government has declared eight Districts out of the Province's 24 as 'high security zones', all the Districts are presently affected by various levels of militant mobilisation and violence. The extent of state collapse is visible in the fact that only six Districts were declared 'normal' for elections on February 18, 2008. A parallel system of governance now exists under the command of the Taliban in Swat District and the militants have announced the enforcement of Sharia in the Shakai, Sheikhan and Mulakhel areas of Hangu District as well.

[..]

Peshawar, the NWFP capital, is under siege and is vulnerable to collapse. There were three suicide attacks among 71 terrorism-related incidents in Peshawar during 2008. In December 2008, the Taliban in Peshawar, facing little resistance, blew up at least 261 vehicles carrying logistics and supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Earlier, in June 2008, as the Taliban advanced towards the city, NWFP Police Chief and top administrators warned that, unless the Government took decisive action, Peshawar would fall. Peshawar is home to the headquarters of the Army's 11th Corps, the paramilitary Frontier Corps, the Frontier Constabulary and the Police. The Taliban have always had a significant presence in the capital and adjacent regions, including the Khyber Agency, Darra Adamkhel, Mohmand Agency, Shabqadar, Michni and Mardan.

Even as violence continues unabated across the Swat District, where Daily Times reported on January 19, 2009, after a year of military operations, the territory controlled by militants has increased from 25 per cent to 75 per cent, the provincial Government has, time and again, stated that it was ready for a dialogue with the Taliban - an offer that has been contemptuously ignored. While the dialogue process failed repeatedly in 2008, temporary cease-fires, in fact, allowed the Taliban-al Qaeda combine to regroup and rearm, while the state capacity has gradually diminished in the region. Worse still, continuous military operations in Swat, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Peshawar, Bannu, Hangu, Malakand, and other areas have failed to establish the state's dominance in any of the territories temporarily 'regained'.

One of the fundamental reasons for the state's inability to hold territory in the Frontier is the absence of an effective mechanism for governance on the ground. This is compounded further by severe deficiencies in fighting capacities. While the Army is a relatively well-equipped force, the hamstrung Police forces face a grim challenge of constituting the first line of defence against urban militancy. According to the National Police Bureau's Annual Report, 2006, the Police operate under significant constraints, including the paucity of funds (only 12 per cent of the annual budget is available to meet Police development requirements) and shortage of Police strength (50 per cent deficit against sanctioned strength). In attempting to make amends, the Awami National Party-led provincial Government has proposed the creation of an elite police force of 7,500 personnel, which could be deployed on short notice in militancy-affected areas. However, reports on January 13, 2009, indicate that approximately 600 specially-trained commandoes of the newly established Elite Police Force have refused to get posted in the besieged Swat Valley, saying they would prefer dismissal to being made "scapegoats". "The services of around 600 commandoes of Platoon No-1 to Platoon No-13 were placed at the disposal of the District Police Officer of Swat. They were supposed to join duty during the first week of January. However, none of them left for the troubled town," The News reported. Parents of the newly trained commandoes had also reportedly refused to send their sons to Swat, where Policemen have been slaughtered and strangulated publicly on various occasions in 2008. Large-scale desertion is being reported from the Frontier. "Many cops had to place advertisements in local newspapers to assure the militants that they were no more part of security forces," said a local from Swat. A November 13, 2008, report said that approximately 350 Policemen had resigned from their posts, subsequent to a Taliban threat to either leave their jobs or get ready for "dire consequences".

This is what the beginning of a civil war looks like: insurgency strengthens, takes over the control of local government, then unifies against the National authority structure.  Pakistan isn't trying to 'negotiate' with the Taliban-al Qaeda and various groups that now follow them, it is trying to 'appease them'.  That is a sure sign of weakness, as the offers are now REFUSED.  That is not a good sign for the Pakistani regular forces, nor are the desertions, unwillingness to deploy in those areas, and the fact that highly trained commando police are unwilling to go there.

If these areas are falling from government control and to the Taliban/al Qaeda, we would expect to see their operations spread as success breeds success.  This from Punjab:

While the progressive collapse in NWFP and FATA is well documented, it is Punjab that is, in many ways, emerging as a jihadi hub. While 304 persons, including 257 SF personnel and 34 civilians, were killed in 78 terrorism-related incidents in Punjab in 2008, it is the presence of many militant groups in the province that is alarming. Data indicates, further, that more SF personnel and civilians were killed in Punjab than militants. While this is a clear indication that the Taliban-al Qaeda network is securing the upper hand, it is also evident that the extremists are bringing the conflict to Pakistan's urban heartland, including the national capital Islamabad, the provincial capital Lahore and the garrison town of Rawalpindi. In fact, out of the approximately 78 incidents in 2008, 21 were reported from Islamabad and 22 from Lahore. Apart from the fact that some of the terrorist attacks in Punjab have been carried out by the Taliban-al Qaeda network, suspects arrested in places like Faisalabad, Sargodha, Islamabad and Lahore, among others, in 2008, included persons from the FATA and NWFP. Militants from across the country and outside easily find safe havens in places like Islamabad and Lahore. With Peshawar, the NWFP capital which is just 150 kilometers away from Islamabad, already under militant siege, it is not surprising that Islamabad and Rawalpindi are being targeted. A senior Punjab Police officer has claimed that all cases of suicide bombings in the province had links to Baitullah Mehsud and his sub-groups operating in the NWFP: "The bombers and their accomplices have close links with Baitullah Mehsud and his sub-group leaders like Kali Zafar, Maulvi Rabbani and others who all belonged to Waziristan."

What the Taliban/al Qaeda now lack to make this a full civil war is a declaring of independence, uniforms, and an identification of the actors in charge.  This is now a full throated insurgency beginning to tremble the heart of Pakistan, and little is being done to stop it.  Indeed, it is now serving as a safe haven and recruiting ground:

While the lone terrorist arrested during the Mumbai attacks of November 26, 2008, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman alias Kasab, hails from Faridkot village in the Okara District of Punjab province, eight of the nine who were killed during the attack were also from Punjab. Both the LeT and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) draw a majority of their cadres from south Punjab, including Multan and Bahawalpur, which is also the JeM headquarters. The LeT and its recently banned front, Jama'at-ud-Da'awa, have long maintained an open presence in places like the provincial capital Lahore and Muridke (approximately 40 kms from Lahore), where the group is headquartered. Qudsia Mosque in Chauburji Chowk in Lahore is the Jama'at-ud-Da'awa headquarters. On December 11 and 12, under relentless international pressure, authorities sealed 34 offices of the Jama'at-ud-Da'awa across Punjab, Police sealed the group's offices in south Punjab cities of Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur, Arifwala, Bahawalnagar, Khanewal, Arifwala and Rajanpur. These sealed offices, however, represent no more than a tiny fraction of the large LeT presence across Punjab. The Punjab Government has appointed administrators in 10 Jama'at-ud-Da'awa schools after intelligence agencies reported that these institutions were promoting extremism. At least 26 educational institutions of the outfit operate in various parts of the province. Before the recent crackdown, LeT leaders like Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, Abdur Rehman Makki, Abu Hashim and Ameer Hamza were openly seen in Lahore. And despite the recent ban on the Jama'at-ud-Da'awa/LeT and the house arrest of its chief, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the group continues to function quite openly.

Groups like the LeT, with considerable state support, have, over the years built an elaborate socio-economic infrastructure in Punjab, functioning as an alternative to the state, since the latter is unable to provide the needed social capital for an overwhelming proportion of the population. The worldview of groups like the Jamaat-ud-Dawa / LeT thus enjoys wide acceptability. Given the quantum of popular acceptance, the Punjabi dominated armed forces - themselves deeply ambivalent on this count - may find it difficult to engage with the jihadis in Punjab, if subversion in the Province become unmanageable in the proximate future.

When folks talked of a 'civil war' in Iraq, they did not know what they were talking about.  This is the beginning of a long, hard and deep one in Pakistan.  By being unable to provide protection and services to the entire population, Pakistan has been playing a 'pay off A to plague B, B to plague C, and C to plague A' sort of deal, using Kashmir and Afghanistan as 'B' and 'C'.  Now the 'C' part in Afghanistan comes home to roost, finds support, makes friends with 'A' (the local radicals) and then both utilize contacts to 'B' to start bringing their organizations into the fold.

Next up is Sindh:

Levels of violence in Sindh province were relatively low with some 42 incidents reported during 2008, in which 52 persons, including 29 civilians, were killed and 109 injured. There is, however, growing evidence to suggest that militant groups maintain a significant presence in the Province, notably in capital Karachi, Sukkur, Khairpur, Jacobabad, Badin, Larkana, Mirpur Khas and Hyderabad. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain stated, on August 9, 2008, that Taliban activities were visible in the interior of Sindh in areas like Badin and that an unspecified number of people were coming from FATA and Northern Areas to Karachi and the interiors of Sindh, on a daily basis.

Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, has seldom been out of the headlines for all the wrong reasons. While sectarian strife between the majority Sunni and minority Shia Muslims persists, the city is also a safe haven for Islamist extremists linked to Taliban - al Qaeda combine. The Taliban are present in Karachi and have links with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and other banned religious organisations, but have no intention of carrying out attacks in the provincial capital, unless provoked by a political party or the Government, a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan spokesman, Mullah Omer, clarified on November 23, 2008. Earlier, on February 15, 2008, Karachi Police arrested 10 members of a militant group linked to the Taliban, who were planning massive terrorist attacks in the city during elections. The Inspector General of Police Azhar Ali Farooqi said the group, Tehrik-i-Islami Lashkar-i-Muhammadi, had ties with Mullah Dadullah, and with Taliban commander Tahir and Sirajul Haq Haqqani. Farooqi disclosed that the arrested men were formerly members of other banned outfits, such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, but after the Lal Masjid operation they formed a group of their own because their former organisations had 'deviated' from their mission.

Sources indicate that the LeT maintains a training camp in Azizabad in Karachi. The ten LeT militants who carried out the multiple terrorist attacks in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, set sail from Karachi. Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman alias Kasab, the lone militant arrested during the Mumbai attacks, stated during his interrogation, that Zaki-ur-Rehman-Lakhvi, the LeT 'operations chief' and one of the masterminds of the Mumbai carnage, had briefed them in Azizabad. The Jama'at-ud-Da'awa reportedly has offices in all major cities of Sindh where recruitment drives are conducted every year. It is from the metropolis, with a population of approximately 16 million, that many al Qaeda operatives, including Ramzi Binalshibh - the "20th hijacker" of the 9/11 attacks - have been arrested. The city also houses the Binoria mosque complex, which has long been the nerve centre of the Military-Jihadi enterprise.

Police indicated in August 2008 that the Taliban, in order to accelerate the funding process, has hired youngsters belonging to the JeM, HuM, Harkat ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and other militant groups, from Karachi. Intelligence agencies have indicated that Baitullah Mehsud, the LeJ and other outlawed jihadi groups have joined hands to pursue terrorist acts in Karachi. Daily Times reported on September 4, 2008, that this new grouping is headed by Raheemullah alias Naeem alias Ali Hassan, a 35-year old resident of Orangi Town. Adviser on the Interior, Rehman Malik, warned on November 21, 2008, that the LeJ may launch terrorist attacks in Karachi and "we need to discourage them and increase the vigil."

And there is the name Haqqani associated with the Lal Masjid mosque/training center.  While Haqqani left the previous organization, he kept many ties and started forming up a support organization to supply the Taliban and al Qaeda.  So when the Shadow Army indicates ties with two organizations, strongly, those organizations are, themselves, deeply tied into other organizations that stretch throughout Pakistan.

The Mehsud organization, itself, ties directly into a large number of places outside of FATA and NWFP, and into Sindh and Punjab.  Starting from a tribal based Pashtun organization it has now spread in influence and size as it garners funds from Saudi and Egyptian backers.  Mind you the heads of al Qaeda are Saudi and Egyptian, so this is not surprising, that these individuals have deep ties into the radical pockets in their home countries.

Now we can go on in Bill Roggio's piece, oriented on what the background and support of the Shadow Army represents:

The presence of the Shadow Army has been evident for some time, as there have been numerous reports of joint operations between the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Hizb-i-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, and other terror groups. In January 2008, The Long War Journal noted that the various terror groups were cycling through the numerous camps in the tribal areas and have organized under a military structure.

While the Shadow Army has been active, there has been little visual evidence of its existence until now. The Long War Journal has obtained a photograph of a unit from the Shadow Army operating in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled district of Swat.

[..]

A look at the clothing of the fighters gives a good indication of the identity of the fighters, an expert on al Qaeda told The Long War Journal. The length of the pants of pictured fighters is described as being at "al Qaeda height" -- meaning only al Qaeda and allied "Wahhabi/Salafi-jihadis" wear their pant legs this high.

"The extremists who follow al Qaeda's religious beliefs think that pants must be at least six inches above the ground because there's a hadith [a saying of the Prophet Mohammed] that says clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and vanity," the expert said. "This, along with the new dyeing of men's beards red or yellow is a sure sign of al Qaeda-ization."

The type of masks worn and the tennis shoes are also strong indicators that these fighters "are non-Afghan fighters," an expert on the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan said. "Those types of masks I have seen, and they are always on the Pakistani side of the border," the expert said. "The tennis shoes and socks are a big indicator that they are non-Afghan fighters, probably Pakistanis or Arab/Central Asian fighters."

[..]

The re-formed Brigade 055 is but one of an estimated three to four brigades in the Shadow Army. Several other Arab brigades have been formed, some consisting of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards as well as Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians, North Africans, and others.

During the reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan prior to the US invasion in 2001, the 055 Brigade served as "the shock troops of the Taliban and functioned as an integral part of the latter's military apparatus," al Qaeda expert Rohan Gunaratna wrote in Inside al Qaeda. At its peak in 2001, the 055 Brigade had an estimated 2,000 soldiers and officers in the ranks. The brigade was comprised of Arabs, Central Asians, and South Asians, as well as Chechens, Bosnians, and Uighurs from Western China.

The 055 Brigade has "completely reformed and is surpassing pre-2001 standards," an official said. The other brigades are also considered well trained.

One official said the mixing of the various Taliban and al Qaeda units has made distinctions between the groups somewhat meaningless.

"The line between the Taliban and al Qaeda is increasingly blurred, especially from a command and control perspective," the official said. "Are Faqir Mohammed, Baitullah Mehsud, Hakeemullah Mehsud, Ilyas Kashmiri, Siraj Haqqani, and all the rest 'al Qaeda'?" the official asked, listing senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan that operate closely with al Qaeda. "Probably not in the sense that they maintain their own independent organizations, but the alliance is essentially indistinguishable at this point except at a very abstract level."

The Taliban have begun an ideological conversion to Wahhabism, the radical form of Sunni Islam practiced by al Qaeda. "The radicalization of the Taliban and their conversion away from Deobandism to Wahhabism under Sheikh Issa al Masri and other al Qaeda leaders is a clear sign of the al Qaeda's preeminence," the official noted. Sheikh Issa is the spiritual adviser for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Ayman al Zawahiri's organization that merged into al Qaeda, and the leader of al Jihad fi Waziristan, an al Qaeda branch in North Waziristan.

The money, expertise, and supplies that al Qaeda can bring in has won converts amongst the Taliban.  The only good note out of this is that the Ba'athist Iraqi Republican Guards have, by and large, abandoned Iraq.  They do not serve as a lynch pin, however, that is what the Saudis are for: the ideological motivators and bagmen.  Outside of that, the longer reach of pre-existing terror groups, like that of Hekmatyar's, who could actually reach into China for insurgents, is still seen: he is the one man who has had a coherent organization to draw across the southern swath of ex-Soviet Republics in the region, and continues to do so.

What this demonstrates is that the Shadow Army organization is now one of the leading groups in the Taliban/al Qaeda sphere:

The Shadow Army has distinguished itself during multiple battles over the past several years, particularly in Pakistan's tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province. Taliban forces under the command of Baitullah Mehsud defeated the Pakistani Army in South Waziristan during fighting in 2005-2006, and again fended off the Pakistani Army in 2008 after fighting pitched battles and overrunning a series of forts.

In Swat, the Pakistani military was twice defeated by forces under the command of Mullah Fazlullah during 2007 and 2008. Earlier this year, the military launched its third attempt to secure Swat, which has been solidly under the control of the Taliban. The most recent operation was initiated after Fazlullah issued an amnesty to certain government officials and called for others to be tried in a sharia court. The military regained control of a small region last week, but fighting has been heavy. A few days ago, Taliban forces overran a police station and captured 30 members of the police and paramilitary Frontier Corps.

In Bajaur, the hidden hand of the Shadow Army has been seen in multiple reports from the region. Taliban forces dug a series of sophisticated trench and tunnel networks as well as bunkers and pillboxes. The Pakistani military took more than a month to clear a six-mile stretch of road in the Loisam region. Pakistani military officials also said the Taliban "have good weaponry and a better communication system (than ours)."

"Even the sniper rifles they use are better than some of ours," the Pakistani official told Dawn "Their tactics are mind-boggling and they have defenses that would take us days to build. It does not look as though we are fighting a rag-tag militia; they are fighting like an organized force."

To those who have always wailed about how 'Iraq was distracting us' and 'allowing al Qaeda to rebuild' you have never, not once, offered a SOLUTION to this problem.  If it was to invade Pakistan than you should SAY SO and stop whining about things and just being a complainer.  This is, fully, the problem of the Pakistan, a sovereign nation, that is now unravelling and NOTHING offered by those opposing the war in Iraq would have done a damned thing about this problem as there is very little we can do with it.  By offering no concrete way forward, and there is no way to win in Afghanistan without solving this problem in another Nation, you have criticized to no good end.  Worse, by offering no hard evidence, complaining about Gitmo and otherwise publicizing every event that al Qaeda and the Taliban have wanted you to publicize, you are complicit in making them grow stronger. 

You want to *not* attack them?  Then they grow stronger because we are weak. 

You complain about 'civilian casualties' when they hide amongst civilians?  Then that is the blame of those doing the hiding like that - they are cowards.

Pacifism is appeasement to such as these, and look where that has gotten Pakistan.  By not supporting harsh reprisals, understanding that our enemies are barbarians and by accepting that they will cause innocents to be killed by their own actions, you have given them much strength and weakened our resolve to bring them to heel.

And with Pakistan releasing AQ Khan, we now have the one man that Baitullah Mehsud has sought for help for years.

Pakistan is trying appeasement once more, and getting attacked for it and its people killed.

The Shadow Army is about to unleash pure chaos in Pakistan.

The goal is the nuclear weapons there: the most unstable State to have them outside of the deranged Mr. Kim in NoKo.  They want to use AQ Khan to get at them... the man who ran the nuclear black market to Iran, Iraq, Syria, NoKo and others.  Once that happens we will see the firestorms begin.

Those that are left alive will either fight or submit.

No thanks to those who have been complaining for years and offering nothing better.

Part of the blame will be theirs for the deaths that will come from their dissolution of will by America.  As the world is not so small as it was during Vietnam, this time it is likely to come home and bring the firestorm directly to the critics as well as the innocents they castigated.  That is what you get for being nice and considerate to barbarians: killed or enslaved.

Or you can fight.

Only you can make that decision and when you don't fight, you are stuck with the other alternatives, of which 'peace' is not an option to those you empower.

08 February 2009

The perpetrator always returns...

Do you remember the start of the current fiscal 'crisis'?  Fannie and Freddie putting out loans to folks with No Jobs, No Income or Assets (NINJA loans)?  All of that is due to the 'regulations' put in by Congress during the 1990's under Clinton to get more people to own homes...

Remember where all this started?

From Bloomberg News on 04 FEB 2009 -

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Homeowners with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages bigger than their property’s worth must wait for the companies and their regulator to assess the possible “unintended consequences” of allowing them to refinance into lower payments and related “hurdles,” Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said.

While FHFA and the two largest mortgage-finance companies are considering permitting so-called underwater borrowers whose loans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac already own or guarantee to refinance, the companies haven’t yet submitted formal proposals seeking the right, Lockhart said. The change could harm mortgage-bond owners and also affect mortgage insurers, he said.

“One of the things we’ve seen a lot is unintended consequences, so I think we want to go through that to make sure there isn’t an unintended consequence here,” Lockhart said in a Feb. 2 interview.

It’s surprising the rule revision hasn’t happened already, because it would reduce the companies’ default costs and boost the U.S. economy by allowing more consumers to benefit from mortgage rates near record lows, said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, the head of fixed-income strategy in New York at Barclays Capital. Almost one in six U.S. homeowners with mortgages owe more than their homes are worth, Zillow.com said in a report yesterday.

“It’s not logical,” Rajadhyaksha said in a Feb. 2 telephone interview.

So if you actually got one of those loans on hideously overvalued property you *can't* refinance them... if you got it from FHFA.  Lovely, huh?  There you are an adult and everything... say, they were lending to just adults, right?  Just checking... getting into a contract and you wouldn't be allowed to do the 'right thing' because the lovely federal government backed the asinine loan you got.

But this only gets better.

And then on 06 FEB 2009 we get this from Bloomberg via WaPo:

Fannie Mae will loosen rules for homeowners seeking to lower their mortgage payments by refinancing.

The District company, which accounts for more than 40 percent of the $12 trillion in U.S. residential mortgage debt, is seeking to break a "logjam" in refinancing and allow more homeowners to take advantage of near-record low interest rates, according to Brian Faith, a spokesman for Fannie Mae, which like its rival, Freddie Mac, is under government control.

The increased flexibility for borrowers isn't enough to significantly harm mortgage-bond investors and mortgage insurers, analysts said.

"This is not yet the no-appraisal refi wave that many have feared," Matt Jozoff and Brian Ye, mortgage-bond analysts at J.P. Morgan Chase, wrote in note to clients yesterday.

Fannie Mae will drop some credit-score requirements, reduce income-documentation standards and waive the need for appraisals in some cases, according to a notice to lenders it distributed this week. The changes apply to loans that the company owns or guarantees.

Fannie Mae will probably use automated models to check home values listed on applications before offering to waive appraisals, analysts said.

The changes will also include allowing borrowers seeking to take out a loan that is 80 percent of the value of the home or less to qualify for refinancing with credit scores below its 580 minimum.

FICO credit scores as measured by Fair Isaac Corp. range from 300 to 850. The program also will lower income-documentation requirements to one current pay stub.

The program, DU Refi Plus, will start April 4.

Damn, I can get a pay stub pretty damned easily... even without having to go to a forgers!

So proof of one week of work, greater 'flexibility' on credit scores.... now wait a second.  These folks ALREADY GOT THAT ONCE.

If you haven't noticed the RULES that CONGRESS has put in place have NOT CHANGED.

Yes, for all of those out there worrying about various Spendulus packages and Porkriforia, the PROBLEM that caused this is STILL THERE and in spades.

You want a fast recovery?

Remove these damned rules and let the market take care of those who should never have gotten loans in the FIRST PLACE.  Those who default can then *rent* elsewhere.  And it is too bad if that is their only place they can go... really it is.  The idea of actually having to earn one's keep seems to be lost amidst the worries here: that is a basic and fundamental right and liberty that one has so you can be free of being a slave to government.

It does, indeed, suck to be an adult.

It sucks even worse to be treated as a petulant child by government all your damned life.

Things are tough all over, in case you hadn't noticed, and these miscreants who signed contracts they had no means of keeping are not to be catered to.  That would devalue the housing market a bit... yup!  Sucks to be an adult, no?

You want the market to EVER REVIVE?

Then lobby to get these damned rules out of the system.

I don't care if you have a D or R or I affiliation: this is corrosive to the entire citizenry and must end.  This isn't about being 'nice' but doing the right thing for EVERYONE.  The needs of this very few are destroying the system for the entire population and these are American Citizens who are adults.  They can survive going broke.  The Nation cannot afford for that to NOT happen.

Afghanistan and the essential fight

The following is a posting from The Jacksonian Party.

The following is a position paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Of all the things that cannot be done, Nation Building is the one that cannot be done from the outside. To have a Nation one must have a people committed to it, willing to stand up for their neighbors to live under the rule of law and be able to expect some modicum of protection from their government. When reading Sen. Lieberman's piece in The Wall Street Journal of 06 FEB 2009, I come away agreeing with much and disagreeing with some areas. While I have disagreed with Sen. Lieberman on many social issues, on military and foreign affairs I find more than majority agreement with his positions.

First and foremost is a strategic coherence on the fighting in the Afghanistan theater, as it is more than just Afghanistan a full and complete approach that includes Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan is essential. I have looked at the main supply routes now under attack by al Qaeda, Taliban, Mehsud fighters, and followers of Hekmatyar and they are choking off the critical supply routes to Afghanistan from the south. Because our supply system depends so much on shipping as the cheapest form of transport, fully 90% of all supplies for Afghanistan arrive in Pakistan and must be shipped overland through the passes through the mountains. Those routes must go through hostile provinces, now under siege and often full control of these opposition forces. Pakistan has not been ready to take up arms to finally integrate these Pashtun provinces into their country, disarm the rebels, and disband traditional war fighting bands (known as Lashkars, or personal forces beholden to a leader or organization). At this point the most powerful organization is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's terrorist organization that spreads across the Central Asian Republics that used to be held by the USSR.

Russia has been unwilling to offer supply services and, instead, wishes to send troops into Afghanistan. This would further break up command, put different Rules of Engagement in play and cause more complexity than what we now have on the ground. To simplify command the command structure must revert to the Nation that actually declared war on Afghanistan and that is the United States: it is our responsibility to see it through to its end, not NATO's. Further we need the troops that can be acclimated to the climate and who have the best capability to fight there. Finally we need a secondary route of supply for our forces so as to lessen reliance on Pakistan.

The route to do this is clear: work with Turkey, Greece, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan for a route across the Caspian using Georgia and Azerbaijan to trans-ship goods from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. This would bypass the need for Russian help and put Russia on notice that interdicting Georgia or Azerbaijan is a direct threat to US warfighting in Afghanistan. In theory this should be part of a 'hope & change' initiative by the US to offer good contracting through those Nations, help support Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan trade with the rest of the world and help to start putting the ability of Pashtun tribal areas into a role of reduced significance in our fight in Afghanistan. Doing so would also put it to Pakistan that the US is more than prepared to set up alternate and more expensive means of secure transport if they are unwilling to step into their role to actually build their Nation.

Unfortunately I do doubt if the new leadership in the Oval Office has the skill, fortitude, and capability to be assertive abroad in a war handed to them by their predecessor which was mandated by the 9/11 attacks and Congressional response.

Thus to firm up strategic coherence with limited supply lines, the troops most able to fight in such conditions, and fight extremely well, are Mountain Warfare, Alpine, Highland and other similar forces from NATO. Mountain Warfare forces are not regular, flatland forces, and have some of the most rugged and disciplined training for fighting in the most hostile climate the planet has to offer. I go over that in this article, on such troops and how they consistently out fight, out maneuver and out survive their opponents in any conditions. These are not 'Special Forces' but Specialized Forces and this is their domain of battle and now that Iraq is moving towards civil control by local authorities, it is time for a full deployment of Mountain Warfare forces into Afghanistan. During the Winter of 2007-08 Canadian Mountain Warfare forces staged the first successful winter campaign in Afghan history: the locals said it could not be done. When we look back at all the training camps identified in Pakistan we can rest assured that specialized forces known for their ability to infiltrate in hostile climates had no small part to play. When the Taliban attempted a Spring Offensive their troops were spotted, targeted, more than decimated and routed.

To that end the US should call on all NATO Allies to agree to a unified set of Rules of Engagement administered by CENTCOM and remove any and all troops not willing to be under that ROE. Additionally the US should call for all NATO and Allied specialized warfare units adapted to Mountain Warfare to come and join us in removing the al Qaeda, Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan and in interdicting their supply routes. Further all Stryker Brigades not actively needed in Iraq should now be given Afghanistan as their central mission area as these are the troops best equipped to do forms of fighting that were once only the realm of Special Forces. This redirection may actually cause a draw down of troops in Afghanistan, but the fighters put in often fight far above their 'weight class' on a 3:1 basis or better. As this fight may take up to five more years to complete, the US is now in sore need of a SECOND Mountain Division and we should spend the eighteen months necessary to train and equip such a Division.

As these forces are ones best able to adapt to climate and local problems, they are the ones that should be used and only backed up by regular forces that are also adaptable and able to change to varying local conditions of tribal concerns. This needs to be dovetailed with Mr. Lieberman's second point.

Further the US should seek the help of Mountain Warfare troops in Iraq, particularly Kurdish troops, as Kurds have ethnic heritage that stems from that region of Central Asia. Iraqi troops drawn from all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, however, are to be the primary goal, even if Kurds will tend to lead such troops at the highest levels, the lower levels will be populated by a diverse set of ethnicities, cultures and religions. What we seek is the necessary cultural and ethnic support, along with combat support, to help Afghanistan examine how it is that close cousins can work with others. This is one of the great benefits of having done such hard work in Iraq: we can now ask for help from those we have helped and know that when we say it will be a tough fight, we mean it.

Second is increasing civilian capacity both in areas of tribal and National concerns, and in helping to stand up local government beyond the tribal level to interact with the National government. Here Provincial Government has not received much attention by the MSM or even embedded reporters, but has proven to be a key mediator between tribes in locales and in passing problems up to responsible offices to be addressed without bias towards any tribe or ethnic group within a locale. I have heard very little about this middle-tier of government from anyone in Afghanistan, and yet a good federal system of distributed powers and local authority has been a demonstrated positive good for all Nations, save for periods of internal conflict and then the National government must take on the same role as the Provincial Governments so as to mediate in good faith between Provinces and Ethnic groups.

To do this requires substantial training of government officials at that level not only on the bureaucratic side, but the accountability side. This is of primary importance as policing power administered to the good of all citizens then removes an argument for forces controlled by strongmen. For Afghanistan to self-govern, the day of Private War forces held by the local leaders in tribes must be ended and equitable policing power enforced at the Provincial level. This requires training for judges in these concepts to be carried out and administered by them. Further a means for checking and restraining judicial authority and a system of higher courts is necessary so as to remove judicial bias via an internal check and balance system within the judiciary itself. This gives citizens the right to appeal judgments they feel to be unfair and yet puts a final stop at such things at the highest National level. Continuing problems in the judiciary will be seen at that level and, with good training and mentoring, addressed over time. This does not mean that tribal level courts or other systems need be abridged, just that they need to be incorporated into the larger suite of judicial systems in the Nation.

Do note that this is not a mandated system from the outside, by the US, and must be indigenous to Afghanistan. If there is any legal tradition to the English Common Law system, however, the US and Great Britain will be in good stead to help firm up such a system as we all use the same judicial philosophy. Even absent that, ensuring that good laws that are not biased towards any one group or ethnic concern becomes a key point in demonstrating that the tribes can be respected, that local control can be exercised and that war fighting is done by the Nation, not strongmen.

The single, largest threat to civil government in Afghanistan is not ethnic rivalries, although those are ancient and need to be addressed, we, in the West, can learn profitably from our ancestors on how best to do this. Nor is it the Islamic Radicalism of the Talibe and al Qaeda sort as these arise and fall in frequency in Islam, although the death toll to each is horrific. Both of these seek a common table setting with which to become local overlords of their peoples and other peoples, and it is that source which threatens Afghanistan to its core time and again. I looked at this some time ago in Defunding the opium trade in Afghanistan, and stand by that view and it is the one of Jefferson: a people who are able to profitably farm to sustain themselves and have enough to trade and ensured income from it will prosper. The illegal nature of the crop does not change that component, but shifts it hard against local support for food and shifts it to imported food via illegal commerce to procure it. It is true that many farmers plant in fallow or rugged areas unsuitable to farming and gain meager extra income from that, from which their lives are put at risk from the criminal class seeking to gain those crops. Here the criminal class can be actual criminals, Islamic Radicals, local strongmen... the list is near infinite and yet their means of coercion and meager pay while taking the middle-man's cut is unchanging. To destroy that system, the farmer needs the tools and skills necessary to not only grow legal goods for local use, but to have an advantage of better techniques and equipment to do this.

America oversupplies her own large scale agricultural corporations, called 'Big Agriculture', while having let the small farmer become beholden to a system of paybacks and payoffs via Congressional funding in the Agriculture budget. And yet 'the war on drugs' can actually, for once, be fought by the military and administered as part of a Counter Insurgency plan: COIN to address the rural farming base of Afghanistan with useful and needful dryland techniques and water conservation that can be done locally would begin to shift the base of that rural section out from the strongman as the money to be garnered by trade of legal goods would not come with immediate threat of life that the illegal sort has. Protecting these communities until they can protect themselves is the GOAL of COIN, in case anyone has forgotten that. This requires a multi-year commitment of shifting funds from America's already overstuffed Big Agricultural sector and putting those funds, skills and tools to use in Afghanistan. The road to fighting the indigenous Taliban and other Islamic Radicals requires not only the right skills on the military front, but the right ones on the civilian front.

There will be no peace, no ending of the supply of radicals until the local farming community has a Jeffersonian attitude demonstrated to them of how good husbanding of farms, crops and livestock via insured means taught by those skilled at such farming can gain the farmer a decent, reliable profit and demonstrate that the need to work together to maintain that system is greater than any minor profit an individual would get from illegal goods. When the land holder is invested in the land and its husbanding of resources and care, the system of tribal views changes to become centered on THAT. The farmers in their tribes will then become the backbone of the tribe, and will be the ones who will need protecting BY the tribe so that the local tribe may flourish.

With a single, hard blow, the US can remove the Central Asian supply system from Afghanistan in not less than a decade and make Afghanistan a net agricultural *exporter*. By teaching dryland techniques, how to husband rain water and other water sources, how to deal with droughts... these are the finest and most well honed weapons in excising this problem and demonstrating that investing in yourself to sustain your people is not only a good thing to do, but well supported. To date the US has paid almost no attention to this, and yet the military component to bring this home is absolutely necessary to peoples who are brought up as warriors: farming must become the respected backbone of the community to support local warfighters to protect the tribe and Province. The badge of honor must shift from how many you attacked and killed to how well you defended your people so that they may flourish against those wishing to strong arm them.

There will be no peace in Afghanistan or Central Asia until this is done.

Third is expanding the Aghan Army, and that is vital so that Private War forces that threaten the Nation can be addressed and so that Afghanistan may protect herself against neighbors such as Iran and China. With that said, we cannot discount the English and American experience of local militias under Provincial control that can stand ready to serve the Nation and yet also counters threats from local sources. As I looked at above this requires a change in COIN from Nation-Building oriented to re-orientation of local populations that will see some value in local and National control over war fighting. We cannot and must not disrespect the fierce and honorable tradition of the Afghan peoples: it has protected them for centuries against Persian, British and Soviet Empires. The very local skills of warfighting need to be upheld as that is the trump card against any invader, and supporting it through local economy and having these forces on-call to defend the entire Nation must become an honorable trade in itself. Thus the current Afghan Army will transform over time: we must beef it up now, for general self-protection of the Nation, but what must be set down is a way of reformulating it over time to reflect the culture in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, as so many detractors like to point out, is *not* a modern Nation and we cannot make it become one no matter how much money and how many lives go to it. America and the West, however, did not arrive at modern civilization without going through this exact, same phase between roughly 900-1700 A.D. Modern tools and training do not an Army make: there must be the tradition an necessity of it that makes it a respected profession *beyond* a tribal virtue. Afghanistan, at this point in time, looks more like 16-17th century Central Europe than a modern Nation State. We must identify that the Christian Tradition is not present in Afghanistan and yet the Westphalian State concept has actually taken root in another Islamic Nation: Iraq.

One of the few and great goods of the British Empire was to demonstrate that religious tolerance was no weakness upon the majority and strengthened the State. In Iraq the local traditions are now those of religious tolerance, as you cannot get through the fact that not only do two major branches of Islam have root in the Nation, but Christianity of more than one form, minor Islamic Sects, Yazidi, Alevi, Judaism, and even followers of John the Baptist. There is no more modern equivalent of a Christian Westphalian Nation State concept in action in the Islamic world than in Iraq. British Westphalian rule had to deal with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, there, craft a common law system, and the toleration of religions in Iraq is one of the great legacies of the British rule there. That is why Iraqi involvement, especially Kurdish involvement, is vital and necessary to long term victory and peace in Afghanistan. There will be no reduction of violence in Islamic Radicalism until a peaceful method of co-existing with multiple religious sects is found and that can only be done via a tolerant population seeing the good and end in bloodshed over religion as any legitimate means to power. Iraq is well poised to teach this at a civil level, and our help of Iraq to become stable must require us to ask them to help the United States in spreading that word of civil peace and its practices to Afghanistan.

For those looking to a long-term end to al Qaeda and similar groups: this is the only way forward that does not involve a horrific death toll. Many will die to do this, but our modern world demonstrates that this CAN BE DONE. Unless many have forgotten, the lives lost to uphold 'The Prince of Peace' demonstrates that having good intentions in a religion is NOT enough to spread peace. To do that requires a tolerant civil society that accepts religion as a personal means to enlightenment, not something mandated by the State for all peoples in the State. Religious Nations can exhibit tolerance towards other religions and not castigate or kill the members of them as those are members of civil society and of value to the entire Nation. We can but look to those pointing the way before Westphalia and directly after to examine how best to do this, and we will find thinkers like Machiavelli advocating for enlightened Princes. That does not mean *nice* Princes, but ones that will understand enlightened self-interest is in creating a safe and stable society *first*. To create a true, civil military force requires a true civil society. America can help lay the foundations, form fast friends with the peoples of Afghanistan, introduce them to Islamic enlightened rule concepts in Iraq and help *both* these Nations to secure long term civil societies for themselves.

That is what we did after WWII in Germany, Japan and Italy and should be the exact, same goal today: to help these people to civil societies and peaceful co-existence within their Nations with religious toleration and a productive class of people worthy of being defended by the Nation.

I disagree with Sen. Lieberman in the fourth goal in broad terms, but agree in many details. 'Hardening' Afghanistan is a loser's proposition as it requires time, effort and ability to be applied to the negative of defensive operations and sustainment. Many of the civil institutions need to be mightily revamped and many of the ones that we take as necessary in a modern State can't be built until the lower level society comes to some basic agreements in the Nation. Our own young Nation at the Founding had a very different set of organs and power arrangements in it than we do today: our goal must be to help Afghan society to create the organs they need in the form that best suits them and ensure that they are accountable to civil society. We did this in Iraq, ensuring that a good system of Inspectors General in the Iraqi military had the ability to root out corruption and subversive elements, and our own institutions have such organs throughout them.

Anti-corruption task forces are good, but changing the tone and tenor of civil society to move away from substantive gifts to honoring gifts, as is seen in Japan and other parts of East Asia, is a good and worthy goal. When trinkets devolve into bribes, the system becomes corrupt: those who seek honor they don't deserve will want bribes, those willing to accept the honor will take the trinket. Any goal of self-policing a society must involve the higher esteem of the honorable gift and the disdain and even disgust at the bribe. Here the value of our older allies in Japan and Korea should come to the forefront, and civil teaching of how cultures can still honor and respect, without the need for bribery have to become a necessary section of helping the Afghan society to flourish. Even in our enlightened Nation, this is no longer respected and officials now seek and take bribes, and while prosecuted for them, those seeking to excuse such activities are not castigated for corroding civil society. If we are on the downward slope of this, we can assuredly help others to see our bad example and NOT TAKE IT.

On the civil side that will give Afghan society an area in which they can be SUPERIOR to the US, and take just pride in doing that and then disdaining the corrupt American officials who only know the value of money and not the value of leading a good life. In truth much of the Left in the United States could do with this lesson, and the best way to get it is to teach the right way to do it via our friends and allies in the world. One does not need to be a mighty warrior to become a mighty,honored and respected person. Even as we forget this, we can still bring in those who know it to teach it, to get Afghanistan off to a better start. And once they do that, Afghanistan self-hardens and is sustained from the inside.

In the broader sense of regional engagement, the US will continue to have vital interests in Central Asia so long as corrupt societies create havens for Islamic Radicalism. The modern world can no longer afford an Empire of any sort, and yet another one from Central Asia will bring a death toll to the planet that is horrific beyond all recounting. India and Pakistan are well agreed that they prefer to screw each other up over Kasmir without outside interference - if we are their friends we should RESPECT that and not meddle as we have a full plate. Indeed the best way to end that conflict is by cutting out the criminal money supply from Afghanistan and seeing if the US can help in some COIN operations in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and southeast provinces in Pakistan. Active fighting to remove radicals and separatists will have no end until civil society has been given breathing space and local accommodation between these ethnic populations with the Nation of Pakistan can be performed. This does not require a full constitutional convention, but some formulation of civil organs to address the problems of the different ethnic groups in Pakistan with each other. Many feel that the agreements they made at the founding of Pakistan have not been honored, while others were more than willing to wait out a century holding pattern put in by the British Empire on provisional borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This cannot happen until the Pakistani ISI, its Intelligence Service, stops funding the damned radicals. This is something that can and must be addressed to at the Nation State level as the ISI is the source of much of the unrest in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and even into the Central Asian Republics. All Nations have need of an Intelligence Arm for the protection of their Nation: any Nation that funds one that not only puts internal but external order between Nations at risk must be asked why they are doing this. Simply put the ISI, as it currently is, must go. There will be no peace in Kasmir until the ISI's activities in funding Radical Islamic groups ceases completely. Any civil society that aims at disrupting its neighbors must be told that doing so will bring the death they are exporting to their own people: and it has already started. The nest of vipers, finding the rough and thick boots of US troops stomping them flat in Afghanistan now slither home to the warmer nest of their paymasters. At this point the ISI can only be seen in the light of destabilizing their own Nation to their own ends, and they no longer care about the blood spilled by those they fund in Pakistan.

Iran is a tough case to deal with and yet, if we work with Turkmenistan in a cross-asian route for supply, the US will then have an entire suite of friendly Nations encircling Iran. Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan will only leave Pakistan as the last great outlet for Iranian exploits and they are already facing problems from the local Balochs in the East of Iran who feel they got a 'raw deal' in both Iran and Pakistan. To this day Iran has problems with Baloch separatists and the underground independence groups have demonstrate high levels of competence and expertise in their terror attacks in Iran.

By shifting through Turkmenistan the US can slowly erode Russian influence in the region and help to stabilize that realm of Republics that would help us in getting a supply route to Afghanistan. Perhaps we could call it the 'Modern Silk Road' and open up some venues for increased civilian traffic through these routes to get better export markets for the Central Asian States. These Republics are not lacking in trade goods, but they do lack the modern transportation and means to get them to a global market. A long-term strategy of opening up a conduit for US supplies will, of necessity, start to build the infrastructure necessary to address the poverty in Central Asia due to their lack of markets. By opening up a non-authoritarian route for market goods, that is to say not going through Russia, China, Iran or Pakistan, these people will be able to start not only supplying goods to US warfighters (so we don't have to ship it all), but find other venues for their products in the empty trucks and ships going *back* to the Black Sea. Here the opening of trade venues in Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey will enrich the entire region as these 'exotic' goods move from luxuries to items finding their place in the global market. Indeed, America should welcome this opportunity to start laying the infrastructure for the 21st century of trade in the world: built of necessity to become the first pathways to the spread of market based economics in some of the most deprived areas of the planet in Central Asia.

Unfortunately I cannot see the current Administration doing this: it is too much hope & change to believe that America can be a demonstrable force for enlightenment and trade, even while making the necessary routes to keep our troops supplied. Such is the myopia of zero-sum Leftism in America that we cannot seize this opportunity to turn our investment in blood into something greater for all peoples in Central Asia.

Fifth is a 'surge' in political commitment to Afghanistan in America. I fully agree with the Senator here. Our political class only knows the value of money, not of lives: and then are willing to sacrifice both to schemes of home ownership, retirement systems, medical systems and such that will impoverish us all and shorten our lives if we follow those dreams to their poisoned fruit.

The United States used to know how to see opportunity in strife and reach out to do more than any other people on the planet would ever dare to do, while leaving our people free to choose their own lives, well and unwell, while garnering general support for those needful things that protected the Nation. Now we seek to protect all the citizens in detail and will be at risk of losing them in whole rank.

Soon we will have our own COIN operations in the desert South West of the US and northern Mexico.

Perhaps it is time to take the lessons of limited government, government that protects the Nation and is held accountable home to the United States.

We sure could use it right about now...

05 February 2009

Extraordinarily rendered into meaninglessness by its critics

I am a Law of Nations advocate, no training, it just looks like a half-way decent way to understand how, each and every time we invent something to secure the State or Country we get a Nation and then all the rest of what happens between Nations follows.  Applicable to the first City States all the way to our lovely modern world: it is a set of understandings that scale very well.

I've been reading along with Insty's links to the Dissenting Justice blog of Darren Lenard Hutchison on rendition (most recent with backlinks to previous).  I am not going to hit this from the bottom-up and the self-imposed legal morass we have created.  Instead I will go from first principles and reason outwards from there on the obligations of Nations to each other, Citizens to Nations and Nations to Citizens. Our modern world loves to stress the last as the pinnacle of humanity, but I find it to be a limited touchstone as it places the individual above our common creation of States, Countries and Nations.  If you want to place mankind to be subject to the horrors of everyone having complete liberty, do not call it 'legal' as you don't care about legality as it is a common, agreed-upon system between individuals to commit to a work above their own.  Nor is that illegal, it is just a reversion to mankind under the Law of Nature, the base state of being absent all forms of civilized behavior and limits.

Thus I start with Emmerich de Vattel's Law of Nations.

I will try to keep the quotes down, but they do need to be put down, here and there, to give the flow of logic between them.  And I will skip over the first parts on Sovereignty in Book I and go right to Chapter II GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF THE DUTIES OF A NATION TOWARDS ITSELF, which is to make sure civil society can provide for itself.  Hey!  Simple, huh?  Even better a Nation gets to preserve itself, which is why when folks try to take you over you get to fight back in an organized way.  Even better this is given to all of us by the Law of Nature and we agree to place it in the Nation for our safety and preservation so we don't go around slaughtering each other in warfare all the time.  Plus the Nation has to preserve all the members of the Nation whenever possible.  And best of all the Nation has the right to everything necessary to preserve it and avoid doing things that would destroy it.

I'm sure most Congresscritters skip that last part.

But doing everything to promote the preservation and prevent the destruction of the Nation seems pretty damned easy to understand.  That is why Nations are important to us as our constructs: they gotta keep us alive and allow us to lead good lives.  Great so far, this first principles deal.

Next is Chapter III and it looks at Laws... uh-oh.

To get the Nation deal we need a public authority that has the ability to regulate affairs.   Those are to be done with an eye towards the public welfare (surviving as was previously stated) and to those wanting to go against those things, the Nation needs the ability to compel obedience to its laws.  That said the governing part of the Nation is a part of its society, not the other way around, and that society gets to choose the best mode for it to have.

You would think that tyrants, despots and dictators would learn about this stuff and stop trying to seize power.

From that you form a constitution, make civil laws agreeable to society so as as to ensure that it society is preserved, it has safety, perfection and happiness.  You know, I wish we could get laws to do this sort of thing - which means fewer laws as my life is damned imperfect with so many of them that I can't keep track of them all.  I feel neither safe, secure nor preserved by the sheer quantity of them.

Ok, big quote:

§ 29. Of political, fundamental, and civil laws.

The laws are regulations established by public authority, to be observed in society. All these ought to relate to the welfare of the state and of the citizens. The laws made directly with a view to the public welfare are political laws; and in this class, those that concern the body itself and the being of the society, the form of government, the manner in which the public authority is to be exerted, — those, in a word, which together form the constitution of the state, are the fundamental laws.

The civil laws are those that regulate the rights and conduct of the citizens among themselves.

Every nation that would not be wanting to itself, ought to apply its utmost care in establishing these laws, and principally its fundamental laws, — in establishing them, I say, with wisdom in a manner suitable to the genius of the people, and to all the circumstances in which they may be placed: they ought to determine them and make them known with plainness and precision, to the end that they may possess stability, that they may not be eluded, and that they may create, if possible, no dissension — that, on the one hand, he or they to whom the exercise of the sovereign power is committed, and the citizens, on the other, may equally know their duty and their rights. It is not here necessary to consider in detail what that constitution and those laws ought to be: that discussion belongs to public law and politics. Besides, the laws and constitutions of different states must necessarily vary according to the disposition of the people and other circumstances. In the Law of Nations we must adhere to generals. We here consider the duty of a nation towards itself, principally to determine the conduct that it ought to observe in that great society which nature has established among all nations. These duties give it rights, that serve as a rule to establish what it may require from other nations, and reciprocally what others may require from it.

Bingo!

Paragraph 29, third sub-paragraph which is a single sentence: The civil laws are those that regulate the rights and conduct of the citizens among themselves.

With that we now ask ourselves about 'extraordinary rendition':  is this a civil law or fundamental law area?

When another Nation seeks to have a citizen rendered to it, that is NOT civil law.

This is an area of Nation to Nation duty and responsibility to each other as the public authority of each society, not civil law nor civil rights.  A Nation may look to its civil rights, but in this instance the ties must be between Nation to Nation conduct with civil law only a regularizing procedure at the discretion of the National public authorities involved.

You just have to love Law of Nations for cutting through the smoke.

And if people want a different formulation of public authority, it is up to society to do so.  No foreign power may interfere with that creation process, but once created the members of society are held accountable BY IT to other Nations.

Next I will skip Ch. IV (want to see what the Sovereign/Head of State has to do, go there), V (on elective States), VI (good government), VII (farming), VIII (commerce), IX (caring for public highways, waterways and tolls), X (money and exchange)... which gets us up to Ch. XI procuring true happiness for the Nation. 

No, you can't buy it.

The Nation is to have direct knowledge of what the virtue of its citizens are and the society that is formed by them.  Citizens must love their country.  Really, no 'if's, 'but's or 'and's there and no 'not in my name' either.  If you are fool enough to be a citizen of a country you don't like, admire or seek to help, then go to one you can do that with.  That goes for your fellow man, too.  You hate your fellow citizens and don't want to take part in society?  Then just why, exactly, are you still hanging around?  Then there is this part:

§ 123. How shameful and criminal to injure our country.

If every man is obliged to entertain a sincere love for his country, and to promote its welfare as far as in his power, it is a shameful and detestable crime to injure that very country. He who becomes guilty of it, violates his most sacred engagements, and sinks into base ingratitude: he dishonours himself by the blackest perfidy, since he abuses the confidence of his fellow-citizens, and treats as enemies those who had a right to expect his assistance and services. We sec [sic] traitors to their country only among those men who are solely sensible to base interest, who only seek their own immediate advantage, and whose hearts are incapable of every sentiment of affection for others. They are, therefore, justly detested by mankind in general, as the most infamous of all villains.

Somehow I just don't feel the love from the Left.

I will skip Ch. XII (piety and religion... really!) and get up to Ch. XIII of Justice and Polity.  Justice needs to be dispensed in a certain, speedy manner that puts the lowest possible burden on those involved, which I think we have lost track of since the mid-20th century: the idea of certain, speedy and low burden justice.  Instead it has gone to impossible to keep track of, slow, and maximum burden per person.  Something really needs to be done about that.  And there is this second paragraph there which, although this pertains to civil law, we really do need to understand as part of this rendition concept:

§159. To establish good laws.

There are two methods of making justice flourish — good laws, and the attention of the superiors to see them executed. In treating of the constitution of a state (Chap. III.), we have already shown that a nation ought to establish just and wise laws, and have also pointed out the reasons why we cannot here enter into the particulars of those laws. If men were always equally just, equitable, and enlightened, the laws of nature would doubtless be sufficient for society. But ignorance, the illusions of self-love, and the violence of the passions, too often render these sacred laws ineffectual. And we see, in consequence, that all well-governed nations have perceived the necessity of enacting positive laws. There is a necessity for general and formal regulations, that each may clearly know his own rights, without being misled by self-deception. Sometimes even it is necessary to deviate from natural equity, in order to prevent abuses and frauds, and to accommodate ourselves to circumstances; and, since the sensation of duty has frequently so little influence on the heart of man, a penal sanction becomes necessary, to give the laws their full efficacy. Thus is the law of nature converted into civil law.1 It would be dangerous to commit the interests of the citizens to the mere discretion of those who are to dispense justice. The legislator should assist the understanding of the judges, force their prejudices and inclinations, and subdue their will, by simple, fixed, and certain rules. These, again are the civil laws.

To anyone who wants a 'positivist' Constitution read that carefully:  It would be dangerous to commit the interests of the citizens to the mere discretion of those who are to dispense justice.

And yet we, today, have people trying to have rights made up by judicial fiat.  The most a Constitution should do is place bare limits on rights and enforce those, otherwise the State via the judicial system will become the enforcer for what it thinks is good.  You are best able to determine your civil rights and laws should only be necessary to stop their infringement, not *create rights*.  I do not trust government, lawyers and judges to tell me what my rights are, only to determine if I have put individuals, society or the Nation at harm by my utilization of them.

Do note that as already cited, rendition is no longer a civil law matter and this is why: if the Nation determines, by whatever means, that you have put the Nation at risk by your actions or caused another Nation harm outside of civil means, then you are not under civil law.  You do not determine that: the Nation does via its public authority bodies.

From here Law of Nations goes to Supreme Courts and Executive powers of various sorts, seen in that era by Princes, but we do delegate some of those to the President.  After that is execution of the laws via attributive and distributive means, followed by punishment and execution of the such punishment.  Also included are the civil police and a diatribe against dueling.

I am skipping Chapter XIV (fortifying the Nation against external attacks).

On Chapter XV concerning the Glory of a Nation which is its reputation amongst other Nations and good will of its citizens, I will only point out that it is the Duty of citizens to uphold that and whenever a Nation's Glory is run down or attacked, the Nation has a right to respond.  Even by force of arms.  The idea is to keep Nations from getting too swell-headed and letting those who chastise others know they could get a real hurting if they go over the line.  I do wish some of my fellow citizens would learn this simple concept.

Skipping Ch. XVI protection sought by a Nation and submission to another Nation, save saying that if your Nation is fool enough to do that, or suffer encroachments of other Nations through silence, then the Nation is not doing its job of protecting its citizens.  This might apply if someone would make a case for it, but, I haven't heard it so far as the antecedent of a Nation publicly submitting itself hasn't happened.

Also skipped Ch. XVII (a Nation separating itself from another), XVIII (establishment of a Nation in a Country).

This then brings up Chapter XIX about a native country and things relating to it.  Perfectly innocuous title to the chapter, really.  Most of it is straightforward about what a country is, who its inhabitants are, Naturalization, being born on ships at sea, settlement, vagrants and so on.  But of interest is if a person may quit his country.  For this there is a passage (§ 222) that actually sees the use of passports as authoritarian (although not called such the indication is that from the preceding text).  In this context simple travel abroad should be a liberty that is available to all citizens, but to emigrate should require the permission of the Sovereign public authority before one attempts to do so.  Requiring passports so as to control travel and refusing permission to emigrate from a Nation is seen as poor government for one's own citizens.

The rightful times one may quit their country are then described (and just a touch to reformat the section):

§ 223. Cases in which a citizen has a right to quit his country.

There are cases in which a citizen has an absolute right to renounce his country, and abandon it entirely — a right founded on reasons derived from the very nature of the social compact.

1. If the citizen cannot procure subsistence in his own country, it is undoubtedly lawful for him to seek it elsewhere. For, political or civil society being entered into only with a view of facilitating to each of its members the means of supporting himself, and of living in happiness and safety, it would be absurd to pretend that a member, whom it cannot furnish with such things as are most necessary, has not a right to leave it.

2. If the body of the society, or he who represents it, absolutely fail to discharge their obligations towards a citizen, the latter may withdraw himself. For, if one of the contracting parties does not observe his engagements, the other is no longer bound to fulfil his; as the contract is reciprocal between the society and its members. It is on the same principle, also, that me society may expel a member who violates its laws.

3. If the major part of the nation, or the sovereign who represents it, attempt to enact laws relative to matters in which the social compact cannot oblige every citizen to submission, those who are averse to these laws have a right to quit the society, and go settle elsewhere. For instance, if the sovereign, or the greater part of the nation, will allow but one religion in the state, those who believe and profess another religion have a right to withdraw, and take with mem [sic] their families and effects. For, they cannot be supposed to have subjected themselves to the authority of men, in affairs of conscience;3 and if the society suffers and is weakened by their departure, the blame must be imputed to the intolerant party; for it is they who fail in their observance of the social compact — it is they who violate it, and force the others to a separation. We have elsewhere touched upon some other instances of this third case, — that of a popular state wishing to have a sovereign (§ 33), and that of an independent nation taking the resolution to submit to a foreign power (§ 195).

Now those who immigrate illegally, without the consent of the Nation they are traveling to for work, and not even bothering to address the organ of society known as the public authority are not acting lawfully nor are they renouncing their prior citizenship and pleading for a new Nation that can provide them sustenance.  So while these individuals would have the pure and utter right to QUIT their prior country, that does not mean they get to force their way to another country.  This came up just a few sections previously:

§ 219. Vagrants.

Vagrants are people who have no settlement. Consequently, those born of vagrant parents have no country, since a man's country is the place where, at the time of his birth, his parents had their settlement (§ 122), or it is the state of which his father was then a member, which comes to the same point; for, to settle for ever in a nation, is to become a member of it, at least as a perpetual inhabitant, if not with all the privileges of a citizen. We may, however, consider the country of a vagrant to be that of his child, while that vagrant is considered as not having absolutely renounced his natural or original settlement.

I address this so as to separate what people do from civil and military endeavors.  On the civil side taking up a vagrant status and not renouncing your prior Nation to seek citizenship elsewhere affords little in the way of rights and only via the strain of law from the English Common Law does birthright of aliens infer citizenship to that child, not to the parents.  Indeed our own laws are lenient compared to what is expected and how other Nations lawfully practice enforcement of who may or may not come to their society.  Until they do this thing, renounce their prior Nation and citizenship and plead to a Nation for a new home, these people are vagrants.  Those seeking to practice Private War, however, will be addressed later, but they are *not* vagrants.

There are two cases where a citizen can be forced out of their Nation, but still retain membership of society, and those are exile and banishment and they can either be voluntary or involuntary.  Either of these may be done on a temporary or permanent basis.  To-date no Nation that we have worked with on 'extraordinary rendition' has indicated that those individuals handed over are being exiled or banished from the home Nation's territory or part thereof.  And while such an individual has a right to live *somewhere*, Nations may pick and choose who they let in to live in their Nation.  In the case of exiles and banishments the Nation that refuses to let them in must offer good reason as to why they refuse such a person who has been denied the liberty to live in their home Nation or part thereof.  Such individuals cannot be punished for faults by their home Nation for things done overseas unless those actions affect the safety of mankind.  It is with this final section that we begin to glimpse where 'extraordinary rendition' sits:

§ 233. Except such as affect the common safety of mankind.

But this very reason shows, that, although the justice of each nation ought in general to be confined to the punishment of crimes committed in its own territories, we ought to except from this rule those villains, who, by the nature and habitual frequency of their crimes, violate all public security, and declare themselves the enemies of the human race. Poisoners, assassins, and incendiaries by profession, may be exterminated wherever they are seized; for they attack and injure all nations by trampling under foot the foundations of their common safety. Thus, pirates are sent to the gibbet by the first into whose hands they fall. If the sovereign of the country where crimes of that nature have been committed, reclaims the perpetrators of them, in order to bring them to punishment, they ought to be surrendered to him, as being the person who is principally interested in punishing them in an exemplary manner. And as it is proper to have criminals regularly convicted by a trial in due form of law, this is a second reason for delivering up malefactors of that class to the states where their crimes have been committed. (62)

Those who violate public security of another Nation, no matter *what* their status, are enemies of all mankind.  Terrorists are in this definition as they commit crimes of public safety and that very crime is their declaration of hostility to civilization itself.  By attacking the public safety of citizens, their infamy is so declared.  And when a Sovereign public authority gets their hands on such actors who have acted *against* that National public authority, it has the right to seek them and those Nations holding them ought to surrender such persons to civil law.  The reason that one prefers civil law is that the recourse of the Nation so attacked is via military means and that puts at threat the whole of the society and polity of the Nation that refuses to surrender such individuals.

This is 'extraordinary rendition' on the civil side and it has a sharp and lethal end to it so as to end those who threaten all of mankind for their actions.  The activity to reclaim such individuals is not under the civil law until such malefactors are returned to be judged: it is fundamental law between Nations for the security of Nations and their societies to seek to bring such individuals to such justice.  The getting of these individuals is a power of the Sovereign public authority as declared by the Nation as to who has such authority.

The critics of 'extraordinary rendition' are mistaking civil law (political law) and fundamental law: that law that governs interactions between members of society and that law that governs interactions between Nations.  The first is amenable to what goes on within a Nation, the second is the exercise of the power of the Nation with its fellow Nations to ensure that such individuals as cited can be brought to ANY justice by those they have harmed.

 

For those seeking *why* 'extraordinary rendition' is outside the civil or political law and is fundamental to a Nation as a Nation, we need go no further.  I will go on, however, as there is some more of interest that does appear far later in Law of Nations and are often cited pieces by me.

To continue I will skip Ch. XX (public and private property), XXI (alienation of public property), XXII (rivers, streams and lakes), XXIII (of the sea) and that ends Book I.

In Book II which starts with this resounding section:

§ 1. Foundation of the common and mutual duties of nations.

THE following maxims will appear very strange to cabinet politicians; and such is the misfortune of mankind, that, to many of those refined conductors of nations, the doctrine of this chapter will be a subject of ridicule. Be it so; but we will, nevertheless, boldy lay down what the law of nature prescribes to nations. Shall we be intimidated by ridicule, when we speak after Cicero? That great man held the reins of the most powerful state that ever existed; and in that station he appeared no less eminent than at the bar. The punctual observance of the law of nature he considered as the most salutary policy to the state. In my preface, I have already quoted this fine passage — Nihil est quod adhuc de republica putem dictum, et quo possim longius progredi, nisi sit confirmatum, non modo falsum esse illud, sine injuria not posse, sed hoc verissimum, sine summa justitia rempublicam regi non posse.1 I might say on good grounds, that, by the words summa justitia, Cicero means that universal justice which consists in completely fulfilling the law of nature. But in another place he explains himself more clearly on this head, and gives us sufficiently to understand that he does not confine the mutual duties of men to the observance of justice, properly so called. "Nothing," says he, "is more agreeable to nature, more capable of affording true satisfaction, than, in imitation of Hercules, to undertake even the most arduous and painful labours for the benefit and preservation of all nations." Magis est secundum naturam, pro omnibus gentibus, si fieri possit, conservandis aut juvandis, maximos labores molestiasque suscipere, imitantem Herculem illum, quem hominum fama, beneficiorum memor, in concilium cœlestium collocavit, quam vivere in solitudine, non modo sine ullis molestiis, sed, etiam in maximis voluptatibus, abundantem omnibus copiis, ut excellas etiam pulchritudine et viribus. Quocirca optimo quisque et splendidissimo ingenio longe illam vitam huic anteponit.2 In the same chapter, Cicero expressly refutes those who are for excluding foreigners from the benefit of those duties to which they acknowledge themselves bound towards their fellow-citizens. Qui autem civium rationem dicunt habendam, externorum negant, hi dirimunt communem humani generis societatem; qua sublata, beneficentia, liberalitas, bonitas, justitia, funditus tollitur; quæ qui tollunt, etiam adversus Deos immortales impii judicandi sunt; ab Us enim constitutam inter homines societatem evertunt.

And why should we not hope still to find, among those who are the head of affairs, come wise individuals who are convinced of this great truth, that virtue is, even for sovereigns and political bodies, the most certain road to prosperity and happiness? There is at least one benefit to be expected from the open assertion and publication of sound maxims, which is, that even those who relish them the least are thereby laid under a necessity of keeping within some bounds, lest they should forfeit their characters altogether. To flatter ourselves with the vain expectation that men, and especially men in power, will be inclined strictly to conform to the laws of nature, would be a gross mistake; and to renounce all hope of making impression on some of them, would be to give up mankind for lost.

Nations, being obliged by nature reciprocally to cultivate human society (Prelim. § 11), are bound to observe towards each other all the duties which the safety and advantage of that society require.

The duty of the Nation is to do those things which protect the society of which it is an organ.  As reciprocity has been seen as an integral part of establishing society and, from that, the National public authority, so, too, is it amongst Nations to give reciprocity to each other:

§ 2. Offices of humanity, and their foundation.

The offices of humanity are those succours, those duties, which men owe to each other, as men, — that is, as social beings formed to live in society, and standing in need of mutual assistance for their preservation and happiness, and to enable them to live in a manner conformable to their nature. Now, the laws of nature being no less obligatory on nations than on individuals (Prelim. § 5), whatever duties each man owes to other men, the same does each nation, in its way, owe to other nations (Prelim. § 10, &c). Such is the foundation of those common duties — of those offices of humanity — to which nations are reciprocally bound towards each other. They consist, generally, in doing every thing in our power for the preservation and happiness of others, as far as such conduct is reconcilable with our duties towards ourselves.

This is, perhaps, the greatest failing of Leftist thought in the modern era, above just asserting civil law and civil rights above all else, is the non-recognition that the differences in culture create different societies and, from that, different National public authorities.  Beyond being unable to discriminate between civil and fundamental law, the idea that one set of civil law is everywhere and that the United States ought to treat each Nation as if its laws were the equivalent of our own is lethal to society and the nature of Nations.  A treaty declaring 'universal human rights' does not commit each Nation to those things that would be contrary to itself or its society.  Worse still is that the civil proceedings described in any such declaration do not go over the fundamental law that makes that very treaty possible.  By causing treaty to become some form of over-arching law SEPARATE from the Nations involved, those doing so are acting in a manner that is authoritarian as it indicates there is some higher level of law and right to enforce it above the National public organs of societies.  That is authoritarian in the extreme and can find no enforcers for it outside of the National public organs of societies.  What is attacked is the fundamental law of societies to be different, to govern themselves differently and to have regularized interaction between societies via their organs of public authority.  While man is born with inalienable liberties and rights, we duly give up some of those to society and its public organs.  Those liberties and rights are within each individual and the only justice that can be established is via society and its public organs.  For those of the multi-cultural bent to argue that civil laws which debase humans in different societies is 'just a natural expression of those societies' and then to turn around and tell us that there is some overarching set of human rights that must be enforced without recognizing the different nature of societies is deceitful, at best, or dishonest, at worst.

What this does not mean is that any Nation has the right to consider its doctrine to be above that of all other Nations.  Indeed the next two general principles examine this:

§ 3. General principle of all the mutual duties of nations.

The nature and essence of man, who, without the assistance of his fellow-men, is unable to supply all his wants, to preserve himself, to render himself perfect, and to live happily, plainly show us that he is destined to live in society, in the interchange of mutual aid; and, consequently, that all men are, by their very nature and essence, obliged to unite their common efforts for the perfection of their own being and that of their condition. The surest method of succeeding in this pursuit is, that each individual should exert his efforts first for himself and then for others. Hence it follows, that, whatever we owe to ourselves, we likewise owe to others, so far as they stand in need of assistance, and we can grant it to them without being wanting to ourselves. Since, then, one nation, in its way, owes to another nation every duty that one man owes to another man, we may confidently lay down this general principle: — one state owes to another state whatever it owes to itself, so far as that other stands in real need of its assistance, and the former can grant it without neglecting the duties it owes to itself. Such is the eternal and immutable law of nature. Those who might be alarmed at this doctrine, as totally subversive of the maxims of sound policy, will be relieved from their apprehensions by the two following considerations: —

1. Social bodies or sovereign states are much more capable of supplying all their wants than individual men are; and mutual assistance is not so necessary among them, nor so frequently required. Now, in those particulars which a nation can itself perform, no succour is due to it from others.

2. The duties of a nation towards itself, and chiefly the care of its own safety, require much more circumspection and reserve than need be observed by an individual in giving assistance to others. This remark we shall soon illustrate.

§ 4. Duties of a nation for the preservation of others.

Of all the duties of a nation towards itself, the chief object is its preservation and perfection, together with that of its state. The detail given of them in the first book of this work may serve to point out the several objects in relation to which a state may and should assist another state. Every nation ought, on occasion, to labour for the preservation of others, and for securing them from ruin and destruction, as far as it can do this without exposing itself too much. Thus, when a neighbouring nation is unjustly attacked by a powerful enemy who threatens to oppress it, if you can defend it, without exposing yourself to great danger, unquestionably it is your duty to do so. Let it not be said, in objection to this, that a sovereign is not to expose the lives of his soldiers for the safety of a foreign nation with which he has not contracted a defensive alliance. It may be his own case to stand in need of assistance; and, consequently, he is acting for the safety of his own nation in giving energy to the spirit and disposition to afford mutual aid. Accordingly, policy here coincides with and enforces obligation and duty. It is the interest of princes to stop the progress of an ambitious monarch, who aims at aggrandizing himself by subjugating his neighbours. A powerful league was formed in favour of the United Provinces, when threatened with the yoke of Louis XIV.3 When the Turks laid siege to Vienna, the brave Sobieski, king of Poland, saved the house of Austria.4 and possibly all Germany, and his own kingdom.

First you do what is necessary to secure yourself, then you help others if you have resources to do so.  That is a 'scale free' rule that goes from the individual to the Nation in perfect order of type and kind.  And when you see a friend or neighbor attacked you damned well go and HELP THEM.  Doesn't matter if it is a home break-in of a neighbor's house of an invasion of a neighboring country or one you have deep relations and agreements with: the principle and rule is the same.

These are not written laws, and if you have to try to write them down and enforce them you are devaluing them, because it is the liberty of having freedom to express these things outside of the law, in a positive manner, that builds society and amity between Nations.  It is hard to think of a worse evil than individuals being told what they must do because it is 'good' for them to do so, and doing this on an international scale is horrific.  And even if you wrote down such laws, the moment that individuals needed to do works not specified by law and yet fall under the general category of helping one's fellow man, the liberty and right to do so re-appears.  That goes true for Nations as well.  The moment a social 'good' must be enforced by law or treaty, it is well on its way to being lost as a 'good' and perceived as coercion.

As with general scale-free rules, this one appears in our modern instance of Afghanistan where the public organ of society is rooted in the clan or tribe and not in the Nation.  Thus 'Nation building' is the attempt to demonstrate that a Nation is a worthy place to invest those powers now held by tribal and clan leaders.  That positive transformation has not happened in much of Central Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has problems in the Middle East and Africa, where tribal and clan venues still can trump National venues for serving as the public organ of society.  Thus those Nations that are 'failed States' are not demonstrating that their public organs serve the public well and protect individuals and society to the benefit of all in society.

The rest of the opening section in Book II is the 'good housekeeping' of what we do expect from all Nations, what Nations ought to do and not to do in various circumstances.  This includes not trying to compel other Nations to do things, not force humanitarian office to be used when a host Nation does not want to use them, not to use force, to seek friendship and love amongst Nations, and to generally try to get along with each other and not give offense to each other.  Very basic and common sense sorts of things when you think about yourself: if someone tries to take 'charity' from you under threat of harm that is extortion or robbery.  That is why we don't compel people to 'do good' when they don't want to.

I am skipping over Ch. II (trade and treaties), III (dignity and equality of Nations, plus marks of honor).

Chapter IV of Book II brings up the Right to Security:

§ 49. Right to security.

IN vain does nature prescribe to nations, as well as to individuals, the care of self-preservation, and of advancing their own perfection and happiness, if she does not give them a right to preserve themselves from every thing that might render this care ineffectual. This right is nothing more than a moral power of acting, that is, the power of doing what is morally possible — what is proper and conformable to our duties. We have, then, in general, a right to do whatever is necessary to the discharge of our duties. Every nation, as well as every man, has, therefore, a right to prevent other nations from obstructing her preservation, her perfection, and happiness, — that is, to preserve herself from all injuries (§ 18): and this right is a perfect one, since it is given to satisfy a natural and indispensable obligation: for, when we cannot use constraint in order to cause our rights to be respected, their effects are very uncertain. It is this right to preserve herself from all injury that is called the right to security.

§ 50. It produces the right of resistance;

It is safest to prevent the evil when it can be prevented. A nation has a right to resist an injurious attempt, and to make use of force and every honourable expedient against whosoever is actually engaged in opposition to her, and even to anticipate his machinations, observing, however, not to attack him upon vague and uncertain suspicions, lest she should incur the imputation of becoming herself an unjust aggressor.

§ 51. and that of obtaining reparation;

When the evil is done, the same right to security authorizes the offended party to endeavour to obtain a complete reparation, and to employ force for that purpose if necessary.

§ 52. and the right of punishing.

Finally, the offended party have a right to provide for their future security, and to chastise the offender, by inflicting upon him a punishment capable of deterring him thenceforward from similar aggressions, and of intimidating those who might be tempted to imitate him. They may even, if necessary, disable the aggressor from doing further injury. They only make use of their right in all these measures, which they adopt with good reason: and if evil thence results to him who has reduced them to the necessity of taking such steps, he must impute the consequences only to his own injustice.

Security is the right to self-preservation and enlightened societies ensure that its citizens have recourse to their own self-preservation so as to perfect themselves and their happiness.  If you cannot use recourse to defend yourself, you will find that things are uncertain as to your continued survival.  That is true of individuals and of Nations, and is yet another 'scale-free' rule.  To those seeking out 'why' defensive war is justifiable, it is no further than here, although it is gone into in exquisite detail later in Law of Nations.  Similarly, when an  individual or Nation is attacked and the evil act done to them, they have the absolute right to recourse and reparation for those acts, even to the use of force.  For Nation the punishment must fit the crime so as to give others who would take similar actions pause to think about what ends they will come to.

Seen in this light 'extraordinary rendition' is telling an individual they will have no safety wherever they choose to hide.  Even worse is that those who do such acts set a bar below which they can be found and brought in, or otherwise have reparation rendered from them.  On an international scale when individuals act against Nations on their own without authority from any public organ of society in the Nation that can give them such authority to act, they find that there is no 'presumption of innocence' until they can be brought to a civil system which can provide them that.  When cited and named they are not presumed innocent of such acts at an international scale, but worthy of being judged by those harmed by such acts.  And for true offenses against mankind, such as safety of the seas and airways, those that act to endanger that common safety will find there is no 'double jeopardy' concept in the fundamental laws between Nations: they can be tried by anyone who gets their hands on them in a civil manner, save if they are in the activity of Private War itself.

It is this fine point that Conservatives and the Right have not properly understood: a harm against society that is done by individuals and involves Private War requires a civil venue when such individuals are not caught in the activity or immediately fleeing it, or are otherwise seeking to evade it being known they are participating in that action.  When they are caught by soldiers, in active combat areas, these individuals fall under the Laws of War and the Laws of Peace and the fundamental laws between Nations.  It is those fundamental laws are the things the Left is attacking to try and make ALL individuals fall under civil law, whilst the position and venue depends upon disposition of capture. 

For those that the Head of State puts into a venue as to *always* be considered at Private War with their Nation, those individuals fall into the military venue in all cases as they are cited as committing crimes against humanity, beyond just civil injury.  Currently no President of the United States has been willing to put such statement onto the 'Terror Watch List', but any that did so would clarify the venue of proceedings for those organizations and individuals cited.  They would be considered Private Enemies of the Nation, not its Public Enemies (like the FBI Most Wanted list).  Once brought to the territory of the US (including embassies, ships at sea under US flag, and, if my readings of the USC are right, US aircraft in similar disposition), then the initial distinction between those enemy types would hand the military venue first precedence to determine placement of individuals as the security of the Nation is fundamental while that of its civil side are political.  Those engaging in war crimes and actively at war in a Private manner would be liable for that determination.  Again there would be no 'double jeopardy' to then have a civil court try such individuals for more general crimes of the safety and property of the Nation and its people.

That being said, the DEFAULT is when captured these individuals go through civil means for justice upon capture outside of the Nation.  A Head of State is given wide discretion in these decisions, and can only be guided by civil laws within the confines of those laws being the territory of the Nation, but has the fundamental laws of the Nation to consider when dealing OUTSIDE of the Nation.  Here it is not Congress, which writes the political laws for internal actions of the Nation and its armed forces, but the Executive to determine first placement of adjudication.  Determining between those who are friend and foe is the responsibility of the Head of State alone when the Nation deals with other Nations.  Public Enemies we have good and substantial understanding to deal with, it is in the area of Private Enemies that the clarity brought to affairs can only arrive by Executive determination for first venue of determination.  The civil courts are not set up to judge if someone is fighting Private War, just the damage they have done in those activities.  The older form of Admiralty Courts prior to the founding used to do that, but had changed by the time of the founding in England.  The US,, however, traces its lineage to the beginning of England not to the time of the founding, for its Sovereignty there.  Thus the President by being the Head of the Armies and the Navies also has the right of choosing that venue based on being the Head of the Admiralty, which we have changed into a mere civil court jurisdiction, but the older concepts for identifying foes of the Nation still sits there.

Now that the internal part of security of a Nation is addressed, Chapter V goes to the justice between Nations and I will take the entire section here:

§ 63. Necessity of the observance of justice in human society.

JUSTICE is the basis of all society, the sure bond of all commerce. Human society, far from being an intercourse of assistance and good offices, would be no longer any thing but a vast scene of robbery, if no respect were paid to this virtue, which secures to every one his own. It is still more necessary between nations than between individuals; because injustice produces more dreadful consequences in the quarrels of these powerful bodies politic, and it is more difficult to obtain redress. The obligation imposed on all men to be just is easily demonstrated from the law of nature. We here take that obligation for granted (as being sufficiently known), and content ourselves with observing that it is not only indispensably binding on nations (Prelim. § 5), but even still more sacred with respect to them, from the importance of its consequences.

§ 64. Obligation of all nations to cultivate and observe justice.

All nations are therefore under a strict obligation to cultivate justice towards each other, to observe it scrupulously, and carefully to abstain from every thing that may violate it. Each ought to render to the others what belongs to them, to respect their rights, and to leave them in the peaceable enjoyment of them.1

§ 65. Right of refusing to submit to injustice.

From this indispensable obligation which nature imposes on nations, as well as from those obligations which each nation owes to herself, results the right of every state not to suffer any of her rights to be taken away, or any thing which lawfully belongs to her: for, in opposing this, she only acts in conformity to all her duties; and therein consists the right (§ 49).

§ 66. This right is a perfect one.

This right is a perfect one, — that is to say, it is accompanied with the right of using force in order to assert it. In vain would nature give us a right to refuse submitting to injustice, — in vain would she oblige others to be just in their dealings with us, if we could not lawfully make use of force, when they refused to discharge this duty. The just would lie at the mercy of avarice and injustice, and all their rights would soon become useless.

§ 67. It produces 1. The right of defence.

From the foregoing right arise, as distinct branches, first, the right of a just defence, which belongs to every nation, — or the right of making use of force against whoever attacks her and her rights. This is the foundation of defensive war.

§ 68.2 The right of doing ourselves justice.

Secondly, the right to obtain justice by force, if we cannot obtain it otherwise, or to pursue our right by force of arms. This is the foundation of offensive war.

§ 69. The right of punishing injustice.

An intentional act of injustice is undoubtedly an injury. We have, then, a right to punish if, as we have shown above, in speaking of injuries in general (§ 52). The right of refusing to suffer injustice is a branch of the right to security.

§ 70. Right of all nations against one that openly despises justice.

Let us apply to the unjust what we have said above (§ 53) of a mischievous nation. If there were a people who made open profession of trampling justice under foot, — who despised and violated the rights of others whenever they found an opportunity, — the interest of human society would authorize all the other nations to form a confederacy in order to humble and chastise the delinquents. We do not here forget the maxim established in our Preliminaries, that it does not belong to nations to usurp the power of being judges of each other. In particular cases, where there is room for the smallest doubt, it ought to be supposed that each of the parties may have some right: and the injustice of the party that has committed the injury may proceed from error, and not from a general contempt of justice. But if, by her constant maxims, and by the whole tenor of her conduct, a nation evidently proves herself to be actuated by that mischievous disposition, — if she regards no right as sacred, — the safety of the human race requires that she should be repressed. To form and support an unjust pretension, is only doing an injury to the party whose interests are affected by that pretension; but, to despise justice in general, is doing an injury to all nations.

On the other side of 'extraordinary rendition' is the Nation having the individual being sought within it.  That Nation should, as we have examined previously, render up such individuals who are even under mere suspicion of harming other Nations: the security of all Nations requires that lawful judgment by those harmed take place.  The Nation who has such a one within its boundaries must protect the whole of its society, and examine if there is more than enough indication that the individual to be rendered is likely to be culpable of those things.  On the civil side of justice this is done via warrant and other devices set up via treaties.  On the fundamental side, where a citizen may have taken up warfare without any given empowerment by the Nation to do so, nor leave to do so by the Head of State, the Nation that has that individual must consider that the high threat to all Nations in *not* seeing justice done is extremely high as it unravels the Nation State system when such individuals are given to no venue for justice.  That is a peril to the Nation, as well.

Additionally there are the higher crimes that are against humanity in which the acts done may have impinged upon many Nations or all Nations, and that the individual so rendered may not even go to the Nation asking for the removal of that individual.  The safeguard for that is to utilize a controlled portion of territory hard to get to, or otherwise have help in finding same, banish the individual there and allow multiple jurisdictions to set up in ships or provide extraterritorial enclaves to pass from Nation to Nation for each proceeding.  This would give each Nation its Sovereign ability to exercise its law an a determined place secure from that individual facing flight.  More commonly, if there are understood to be limited Nations involved, or only general possibility of wider inquiry, then handing such an individual over can be done with due expectation that those who have a pertinent interest to the activities cited will be taking part.  That does not absolve a Nation for keeping track of its citizens so rendered, get up dates on them, and have access to them.  That, too, is part of the understanding between Nations, but this devolves fully on the Nation that does the rendering of its citizen, not upon those doing the asking.

In this instance where the fundamental laws take precedence over the civil laws, any Nation trying to put pre-condition on such rendition would be attempting to put their civil law above the safety of their Nation and all Nations.  Thus a Nation trying to not agree because they are not, under normal, civil proceedings, allowed to hand over individuals to Nations that have the death penalty for certain crimes would not be able to use that as an excuse on this fundamental law question.  Fundamental law questions are only amenable to political law in certain circumstances, and when the safety of the Nation and rendering justice for acts taken against fundamental law are required, the full power of the Sovereign to exercise those powers cannot be abridged.  That weakens the Nation and puts it in a superior position of trying to determine what it is that ALL Nations must do: it is a local prejudice of society via such law that would put all Nations at risk and places the individual who does heinous crimes against humanity in a position of NEVER having to answer for their crimes against those they wronged to the full extent of their VICTIM'S laws.

On civil law this is an understandable and necessary part of treaty and foreign policy work.

For fundamental law it weakens the entire system of Nations and gives safe haven to malefactors who have done grave injury to one or more Nations by their activities.

This is covered more fully in Chapter VI with the concern of a Nation for the action of her citizens.  This goes to the heart of the matter where a citizen of one Nation harms another Nation:

§ 71. The sovereign ought to revenge the injuries of the state, and to pro

WE have seen in the preceding chapters what are the common duties of nations towards each other, — how they ought mutually to respect each other, and to abstain from all injury and all offence, — and how justice and equity ought to reign between them in their whole conduct. But hitherto we have only considered the actions of the body of the nation, of the state, of the sovereign. Private persons who are members of one nation, may offend and ill-treat the citizens of another, and may injure a foreign sovereign: — it remains for us to examine what share a state may have in the actions other citizens, and what are the rights and obligations of sovereigns in this respect.

Whoever offends the state, injures its rights, disturbs its tranquillity, or does it a prejudice in any manner whatsoever, declares himself its enemy, and exposes himself to be justly punished for it. Whoever uses a citizen ill, indirectly offends the state, which is bound to protect this citizen; and the sovereign of the latter should avenge his wrongs, punish the aggressor, and, if possible, oblige him to make full reparation; since otherwise the citizen would not obtain the great end of the civil association, which is, safety.

§ 72. He ought not to suffer his subjects to offend other nations or their cltizens.

But, on the other hand, the nation or the sovereign ought not to suffer the citizens to do an injury to the subjects of another state, much less to offend that state itself: and this, not only because no sovereign ought to permit those who are under his command to violate the precepts of the law of nature, which forbids all injuries, — but also because nations ought mutually to respect each other, to abstain from all offence, from all injury, from all wrong, — in a word, from every thing that may be of prejudice to others. If a sovereign, who might keep his subjects within the rules of justice and peace, suffers them to injure a foreign nation either in its body or its members, he does no less injury to that nation than if he injured it himself. In short, the safety of the state, and that of human society, requires this attention from every sovereign. If you let loose the reins to your subjects against foreign nations, these will behave in the same manner to you; and, instead of that friendly intercourse which nature has established between all men, we shall see nothing but one vast and dreadful scene of plunder between nation and nation.

Here civil rights are seen as secondary to the fundamental right of those things we vest liberties into for our protection.  Those public organs of society that are the Sovereign of a Nation have those liberties invested in it to address the rights done to that Nation by others, not just Nations but private individuals from other Nations.  Those that harm other Nations become an enemy of it by those actions, and are liable to be punished for them.  Any Nation that REFUSES to give up such individuals is REWARDING THEM with SAFETY.  Even worse is that in not handing such individuals over, the Sovereign is then seen as COMPLICIT in the act itself.  That is not to say that the Nation is tarred by this unless its public organs condones or approves them.  Only then is the entire Nation acting and liable for the offenses of the individual in question.

That is the reciprocity of power arrangement that a Sovereign has: you get the power but are also held liable for the effects of it.  Thus any Nation that does NOT render its citizens via the fundamental laws puts that leader or Sovereign at risk to be considered PART of the action taken.  The Nation, itself, is not part of that unless the political organs approve or condone such actions and then the entire Nation IS culpable for those actions and can be held accountable.

To make that last crystal clear: any king, president, prime minister, council, or whatever is decided by that society to have that Head of State power and the fundamental law under their guidance is put at RISK by not offering up wanted individuals to other Nations in fundamental law areas.

That is a very dicey thing to do for the next warrant that comes through will be for said individual to be rendered  for judgment along WITH the original individual as an accomplice to the action.  There is no Sovereign Immunity from the fundamental laws that arise between Nations.  Just the opposite, there is Sovereign Accountability for those actions and the individual, rotating leader, council or whatever the form is for that Nation is held accountable for that action.

If that action is taken by the Nation wronged, the Nation that has the individual refusing to give up a citizen for judgment can then either have that action approved, or be removed (by various means) and that action repudiated and the original individual plus Sovereign handed over for justice.  Of course that might be an ex-Sovereign or late Sovereign by that point in time...

Wars get started over this stuff, you know?

Thus the duty of the Sovereign is spelled out:

§ 76. Duty of the aggressor's sovereign.

And, since the latter ought not to suffer his subjects to molest the subjects of other states, or to do them an injury, much less to give open, audacious offence to foreign powers, he ought to compel the transgressor to make reparation for the damage or injury, if possible, or to inflict on him an exemplary punishment; or, finally, according the nature and circumstances of the case, to deliver him up to the offended state, to be there brought to justice. This is pretty generally observed with respect to great crimes, which are equally contrary to the laws and safety of all nations. Assassins, incendiaries, and robbers, are seized everywhere, at the desire of the sovereign in whose territories the crime was committed, and are delivered up to his justice. The matter is carried still farther in states that are more closely connected by friendship and good neighbourhood. Even in cases of ordinary transgressions, which are only subjects of civil prosecution, either with a view to the recovery of damages, or the infliction of a slight civil punishment, the subjects of two neighbouring states are reciprocally obliged to appear before the magistrate of the place where they are accused of having failed in their duty. Upon a requisition of that magistrate, called Letter Rogatory, they are summoned in due form by their own magistrates, and obliged to appear. An admirable institution, by means of which many neighbouring states live together in peace, and seem to form only one republic! This is in force throughout all Switzerland. As soon as the Letters Rogatory are issued in form, the superior of the accused is bound to enforce them. It belongs not to him to examine whether the accusation be true or false: he is to presume on the justice of his neighbour, and not suffer any doubts on his own part to impair an institution so well calculated to preserve harmony and good understanding between the states. However, if by constant experience he should find that his subjects are oppressed by the neighbouring magistrates who summon them before their tribunals, it would undoubtedly be right in him to reflect on the protection due to his people, and to refuse the rogatories till satisfaction were given for the abuses committed, and proper steps taken to prevent a repetition of them. But, in such case, it would be his duty to allege his reasons, and set them forth in the clearest point of view.

§ 77. If he refuses justice, he becomes a party in the fault and offence.

The sovereign who refuses to cause reparation to be made for the damage done by his subject, or to punish the offender, or, finally, to deliver him up, renders himself in some measure an accomplice in the injury, and becomes responsible for it. But, if he delivers up either the property of the offender, as an indemnification, in cases that will admit of pecuniary compensation — or his person, in order that he may suffer the punishment due to his crime, the offended party has no further demand on him. King Demetrius, having delivered to the Romans those who had killed their ambassador, the senate sent them back, resolving to reserve to themselves the liberty of punishing that crime, by avenging it on the king himself, or on his dominions.1 If this was really the case and if the king had no share in the murder of the Roman ambassador, the conduct of the senate was highly unjust, and only worthy of men who sought but a pretext to cover their ambitious enterprises.

§ 78. Another case in which the nation is guilty of the crimes of the citizens.

Finally, there is another case where the nation in general is guilty of the crimes of its members. That is, when, by its manners, and by the maxims of its government, it accustoms and authorize its citizens indiscriminately to plunder and maltreat foreigners, to make inroads into the neighbouring countries, &c. Thus, the nation of the Usbecks is guilty of all the robberies committed by the individuals of which it is composed. The princes whose subjects are robbed and massacred, and whose lands are infested by those robbers, may justly level their vengeance against the nation at large.(106) Nay, more; all nations have a right to enter into a league against such a people, to repress them, and to treat them as the common enemies of the human race. The Christian nations would be no less justifiable in forming a confederacy against the states of Barbary, in order to destroy those haunts of pirates, with whom the love of plunder, or the fear of just punishment, is the only rule of peace and war. But these piratical adventurers are wise enough to respect those who are most able to chastise them; and the nations that are able to keep the avenues of a rich branch of commerce open for themselves, are not sorry to see them shut against others.

Damn, the Uzbecks were already known to be a problem back then...

It is a basic restatement and goes a bit further on standard civil matters, but discriminates between those and the fundamental law areas of those doing crimes against a Nation and humanity.

And so, knowing that writing further is only of interest to the writer, not to the reader, I will sum up in saying: if you oppose 'extraordinary rendition' you are opposing Nations and the need of Nations to hold the citizens of other Nations accountable for acts against the fundamental laws guiding Nations (The Law of Nations) and for crimes that transgress the Nation State system, also known as crimes against humanity.  These are not civil crimes, although they may have civil components at the political law level within a Nation.  These actions go beyond that, however, and lay at the feet of the Sovereign the need to exercise the power of that Sovereign invested by the Nation so as to bring these miscreants to justice.