NightWatch

For the Night of 17 September 2009

Japan: Foreign Minister Okada wants "serious discussion" with the United States on the revision of a 13-year-old plan to relocate the U.S. Futenma marine air base within Okinawa, The Financial Times reported today. Okada told The Financial Times that Japan and the United States must give discussions on the issue a "very high priority," saying the issue "must be resolved within 100 days." Okada did not give details of what changes to the relocation plan there might be.

This is the second shoe to drop in the first week of the Democratic Party of Japan-led coalition. It also is another holdover issue from when the Party was in the opposition.

India: The Army is strengthening security along the Line of Control near Jammu and Kashmir after some 300 suspected militants have been seen moving in the area, Press Trust of India reported 17 September, citing unnamed Defence Ministry sources.

This is the start of the militant infiltration season from bases in Pakistan into Indian Kashmir. The Indian Defence Ministry is serving notice.

Afghanistan: A suicide car bomber killed six Italian soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians today in the Kabul. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack to date for the Italian contingent.

The bomber rammed his explosives-filled car into two Italian military vehicles in a convoy about midday. Four Italian soldiers were also wounded, said Italian Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa. The Afghan Interior Ministry said an additional 55 civilians were injured.

Suicide attacks in Kabul have tended to target the foreign population, such as the hotels where foreigners reside. The attack against the Italian contingent in Kabul, such as today’s attack, implies a change in the target set and more careful intelligence and surveillance.

It is not clear that a specific national contingent was targeted, but almost all NATO contingents are vulnerable because their home electorates oppose the Afghan war by a substantial majority in nearly every state. These are attacks against the home front in that the killing of soldiers also erodes electorate support for the commitment of any soldiers.

Reacting to the attack, the Italian government called for an early withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. The Europeans derive no benefit from the Afghanistan fighting, regardless of the outcome. The Pashtuns pose no threat to anyone outside Afghanistan, except the Arabs and other al Qaida foreigners based in Pakistan and who betrayed them in the past.

The Washington Times article indicated General Petraeus wants no one to oversee his directives in Afghanistan. As in an earlier time, he wants to be judge and jury of his own actions. His embedded benchmark teams, described in the Times item, report to him and he will report to the President. That is the chain of command, but not the way it works in this Republic.

No general is entitled to be the judge of his own performance in this democracy. Time to dial-down the hubris. That is the legacy of General Washington.

Mind, polling in Afghanistan – which is a key part of the Petraeus and McChrystal benchmarks - is a ludicrous pursuit. The village votes with the village elder. The clan with the clan leader and the tribe with the tribe leaders. That is the nature of tribal society and the reason Western ideas of one-person-one-vote democracy are irrelevant. There is no reason on earth for which a tribe member would ever vote against the tribe leader. Just like south Chicago ward politics.

The latest news report is that General McChrystal wants 40,000 more men, not 20,000 more. US counter-insurgency doctrine approved by Petraeus shows that 500,000 US soldiers are needed in Afghanistan to ensure successful counter-insurgency.

On the battlefield, no one can deny the Taliban have earned the right to a voice in the government of Afghanistan, in some fashion, despite our best efforts. It is time to talk about terms.

Tajikistan: A senior Tajik defense official warned against a spillover of violence from fighting between the Afghan Taliban and the U.S.-led coalition, Reuters reported 17 September. Speaking at the opening ceremony of a Common Security Treaty Organization military exercise, Deputy Defense Minister Ramil Nadyrov called the exercise important because of the increased Taliban activity in areas where Afghanistan and Tajikistan border each other, including Kunduz Province in Afghanistan.

The Tajikistan government is looking for more handouts from the US or Russia. The alarmist statement cannot be taken seriously. The Taliban fighting in Konduz are from the transplanted Pashtun, put there as part of the Pashtun Sultan/King’s program of ensuring loyal Pashtun enclaves in Uzbek and Tajik territory in the north.

The danger to the Tajikistan government is from opposition by its own Tajik population more than from any spillover from Afghanistan.

Iran: A senior Sunni cleric and member of the Iranian Assembly of Experts was shot dead, Reuters reported Sept. 17, citing state media. Mohammad Sheikholeslam was killed by gunmen as he left his home in Sanandaj, the main city in Iran's Kurdestan province.

Comment: Every other day an important Iranian is getting assassinated. Iran was not like this before the elections; the national and ethnic consensus behind the leadership is unraveling.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned there will be a crackdown if there are demonstrations at a Quds Day rally 18 September5qqazw2,, IRNA reported. In a statement, the Guards, who are close to President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, said a demonstration would aid "the Zionist regime" and that there is a plan by "foreign network=s, especially the Zionist regime's intelligence service, to create disruption and division." The statement added that enemies of the Iranian regime and defeated presidential election candidates were retaliating over Ahmadi-Nejad's victory. The Guards warned against slogans, colors or ornaments that symbolize Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his allies.

Iran-IAEA:-US: Comment:: The first reports of the day were from the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) which said Iran has the information to enable it to make a nuclear weapon and has the technology for delivering it by a ballistic missile system.

The second reports came from US intelligence that appeared to defend the position it took in 2007 that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. All agencies agree with that assessment as to 2003, but only part of the truth, according to French, IAEA and German intelligence.

The aforementioned agencies assess that the program resumed shortly after 2003 and continues. According to US press, US executives were briefed that the Iranian program remains halted.

It takes a special kind of arrogance to insist on one’s rightness in the face of other equally competent contradictory assessments plus some who have first hand evidence. That arrogance is only sustainable with incontrovertible intelligence evidence. The flawed reasoning and biased interpretation of the evidence in the 2007 US assessment of Iran’s nuclear program has been pointed out in scholarly journals.

Note to new analysts: No responsible leader in the US or Israel can make decisions on the basis of a US intelligence assessment when the assessments of other nations and agencies with better access are contradictory. In these circumstances, US intelligence removes itself from the policy discussion. It becomes irrelevant to the issue of keeping Israel safe.

The challenge for policy makers is to chart a course ahead to safety under all conditions, not to trust a single assessment that could be catastrophically wrong and would lead to the destruction of a US ally.

This is a textbook case that shows how far some US intelligence entities have lost sight of the mission – to use intelligence to help keep the Republic and its allies safe. This is not a game of bean bag. US intelligence has no room for error concerning an Iranian nuclear weapon capability.

If French, German and IAEA assessments prove move accurate than the US assessment, then the US analytical team members should tender their resignations, shouldn’t they?

Israel-Lebanon: An unnamed senior Israel Defense Forces Officer said 17 September that rocket fire from southern Lebanon since the end of the 2006 war with Hezbollah has been against the militia's directives and Iran has taken control over the group, Haaretz reported.

Hezbollah has been weakened because of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon activity and southern Lebanese residents' objections to reconstruction of militia posts and weapons caches south of the Litani River.

Comment: Attributing a weakening of Hezbollah to the UN forces is not an idea even the most jejune Israelis would take seriously. The IDF appears desperate to find a reason to not retaliate against the rocket fire. IDF seniors need some new script writers for this.

As for the assertion that Iran has taken control of Hezbollah, no international news services appear to have appreciated the significance of that statement, assuming the Israelis believe it and are not using it as a provocation to the Lebanese Shiites. If Hezbollah has become an Iranian agency, vice a proxy, then the threat to Israel has worsened.

Somalia: Witnesses say two large explosions rocked the main base of African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu. An AU official confirmed that blasts occurred but had no details.

Updates indicated a senior Uganda office was killed. That death threatens to erode domestic support for the Ugandan mission in Mogadishu.

End of NightWatch for 17 September.