(While I am busy …)

Your News & views …

Following Lavrov's press conference yesterday the Russian federation issued a  non-paper to formalize its proposal for an international conference on Syria:

1- Purpose of conference: to negotiate practical steps aimed at finding a durable political solution t0 the Syrian crisis. Encourage key external players who may exert real influence on various Syrian parties, to take coherent measures in support of Kofi Annan's Peace Plan and to ensure full implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 2042 and 2043, in which the Security Council endorsed the Plan and authorized the deployment of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria.
2- Suggested participants of the conference: China, France. Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, LAS, OIC, EU, UN.
3- Level of the conference: foreign ministers, heads of regional organizations, with possible preparatory meetings of experts.
4- Expected outcome: all conference participants undertake to exert all their influence on the Syrian parties in order to immediately stop the armed conflict and fully comply with their obligations under Kofi Annan’s Plan and UN Security Council Resolutions 2042. and 2043.br> …

More at the link.

While that sounds good anybody who wants the foreign fed Syrian conflict to end with as little bloodshed as possible, those who are committed to regime change and the destruction of the Syrian state will likely try to sabotage this attempt or, if that does fails, to undermine any result such a conference might bring.

Let's see if Russia can actually shame everybody to take part in this.

The prime German daily, the center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has a new report (in German) about the Houla massacre. The author is Rainer Hermann who studied and speaks Arabic, Turkish and Farsi. Hermann also has a PhD in economics and wrote his thesis about the modern Syrian social history. He currently lives in Abu Dhabi and has been reporting from the Middle East for over 22 years.

What follows is my translation of the relevant parts of his report, which is datelined from Damascus, about the Houla massacre:

Syrian opposition members who are from that region were during the last days able to reconstruct the most likely sequence of events based on accounts from authentic witnesses. Their result contradicts the pretenses from the rebels who had accused regime allied Shabiha they alleged were acting under the protection of the Syrian army. As opposition members who reject the use of lethal force were recently killed or at least threatened, the opposition members [talking to me] asked that their names be withheld.

The massacre of Houla happened after Friday prayers. The fighting started when Sunni rebels attacked three Syrian army checkpoints around Houla. These checkpoints were set up to protect the Alawi villages around the predominantly Sunni Houla from assaults.

One attacked checkpoint called up units from the Syrian army, which has barracks some 1500 meters away, for help and was immediately reinforced. Dozens of soldiers and rebels were killed during the fighting around Houla which is said to have lasted about 90 minutes. During these fights the three villages were closed off from the outside world.

According to the witness accounts the massacre happened during this timeframe. Killed were nearly exclusively families from the Alawi and Shia minorities in Houla which has a more than 90% Sunni population. Several dozen members of one extended family, which had in recent years converted from Sunni to Shia believe, were slaughtered. Also killed were members of the Alawi family Shomaliya and the family of a Sunni member of parliament who was [by the rebels] considered a government collaborator. Members of the Syrian government confirmed this version but pointed out that the government committed to not publicly speak of Sunnis and Alawis. President al-Assad is Alawi while the opposition is overwhelmingly from the Sunni population majority.

While I do not agree with the FAZ's general editorial positions, I have followed Rainer Hermann reports for years. In my view he is an very reliable and knowledgeable reporter who would not have written the above if he had doubts or no additional confirmation about what he was told by the opposition members he talked to.

The Russian Federation's Foreign Minister Lavrov just held a press conference on Syrian. The major points as I noted them from the live TV stream:

• Russia will NOT support any military intervention and will veto should any such UN Security Council resolution come up.
• Any intervention in Syria would have unpredictable consequences and would likely lead to a wider conflict sprawling over the Middle East.
• Outside forces clearly continue to incite violence and to deliver weapons to Syrian rebels. These forces are breaking the Annan plan that was agreed upon and is supported by the whole UNSC.  People who do this clearly want the Annan plan to fail and have said so. [Lavrov emphasized this several times.]
• Russia will not allow an end-date for the Annan plan or any end-date that could then be used to argue for new action, i.e. intervention. Some seem to want such an end-date but Russia will not allow for such.
• When Syrian troops withdrew from the cities rebel forces moved in. Rebel forces are continuing the violence. Thirty dead government forces per day clearly show that these are not "peaceful demonstrators".
• There is some progress since the Annan plan was implemented. Journalists are allowed in Syria, the humanitary access has been cleared up, the violence went down. This must continue.
• Russia suggests a conference that would include the UNSC veto members, Syria's neighbors, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Iran. This conference shall have an open agenda with the purpose to find a negotiated way between the Syrian parties to end the conflict. Everyone who has influence with the Syrian government or with the rebels should take part. That is why Iran needs to be included. The U.S. can be pragmatic. It negotiated with Iran when its troops in Iraq were in danger. So why then should Iran not be table in such a conference.
• Russia has not and is not arguing for Assad to stay president of Syria. Russia is arguing for a peaceful solution in Syria and for the Syrians to decide over their government. This was our position from the very begining and this is, unlike some seem to suggest, has not changed at all.

Alex Thomsen reports for the British Channel 4. He is just back from reporting in Syria for which he had an official visa. He accompanied the UN observers and was frequently also in rebel held areas. On his blog he just posted this vignette:

We decide to ask for an escort out the safe way we came in. Both sides, both checkpoints will remember our vehicle.

Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind.

We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land.

At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover.

Another dead-end.

There was no option but to drive back out onto the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.

Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we re-appeared.

I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.

That conviction only strengthened half an hour later when our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side-street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead.

The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town.

Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus.

In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone?

It was nothing personal.

Is anyone still believing that Syrian government forces are committing those massacres? Has there been any evidence yet of the one that Ban Ki Moon claimed yesterday to have happened?

It seems that the homepage editor of the New York Times made a Freudian slip here:

Cut from a screenshot of the current NYT Global homepage

The link for the "U.S. Agency …" headline goes to a piece headlined Nuclear Agency Resumes Talks With Iran Over Access to Sites:

LONDON — Senior inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog renewed talks with Iran on Friday aimed at securing access to restricted sites where the agency believes scientists may have tested explosives that could be used as triggers for nuclear warheads, officials at the agency said.

The discussions at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna …

To name the IAEA an U.S. agency, when it is supposed to be an independent technical agency associated with the United Nations, is not completely wrong. As we know from Wikileaks cables the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, is a total U.S.puppet:

Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the developing countries group], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.

The homepage editor's slip was probably induced by that and as such simply documented the truth about the IAEA in its current form.

The whole nuclear weapon issue with Iran is of course not about anything nuclear as Iran has no nuclear weapons program. It is about continued U.S. hegemony over the Middle East which requires regime change in Iran. The recent negotiation offer to Iran was not serious and now the P3+3 talks are again getting stalled by the U.S./EU side. The Obama administration does not want to find a solution with Iran. For now it wants to push the issue off until the U.S. election is over. If the economy allows the U.S. then may again push for war in the following year.

There is currently an informal UN General Assembly meeting on Syria.

As now has become a regular feature, right in time for the UN GA today a new "massacre" was claimed to have happened by the rebels and picked up as news rather than rumor in all "western" media. That "massacre" is supposed to have been in al-Qubeir and was said to have 86 victims. A video of that "massacre" shows some ten seemingly dead children and women.

But something is weird here. No wounds are visible. Two black pieces of whatever, not recognizable as bodies, are introduced as "burned children". The speaker in the video is clearly propagandizing calling for "the world to act." While I can not prove that it is a complete fake, the video does look staged to me.

There was fighting in the area of al-Qubeir reported by the Syrian government:

[T]he Syrian government troops raided a hideout of armed groups in a village of central Hama province, clashing with armed men and killing an unspecified number of them, Syria's state TV channel said on Wednesday.

Two of the government troops were killed in the clashes that took place in al-Qubair village, the TV channel said, adding that the troops' raid was conducted after the local residents asked for help.

The observers tried to reach the area today but were first held back by the Syrian army which said that the area is too dangerous. The observers passed anyway and, the Annan mission said, were later shot at with small arms.

I watched the UN GA on the UN live webcast.

The GA is currently chaired (not unintentionally) by the representative of Qatar who's government is, according to its own statements, arming the rebels in Syria and contributes to the $300 million slush fund for implementing violent regime change in Syria. The first speaker was UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon. He was clearly propagandizing for the anti-Assad party which I found quite shocking for someone who is supposed to be neutral towards UN member countries. He called for "united international action" against Syria which seemed to be a request for sanctions.

He was followed by a spokesman from the Arab League who spread more propaganda and called for Security Council sanctions on Syria under Chapter 7.

Then came Kofi Annan who had a bit more neutral comment on the situation but noticeable also on the anti-Syrian side. The violence has increased he said. This somewhat contradicts this McClatchy report which says that the total number of casualties are down while government casualties have been going up. He mentioned yesterday's "massacre" as it was confirmed when it so far has not been confirmed. He confirmed that the Syrian government has recently again released hundreds of its prisoners. He also confirmed the "presence of a third force", aka terrorists, in Syria. He still seems to dream of a "peaceful transition" without saying what such a "peaceful transition" would be or how it could be implemented when his plan has been rejected by the rebels from the very first day.

Annan was followed by the vice president of the UN Humanitarian Rights Council Simonovic. He differed from Annan in calling yesterday's massacre "not yet confirmed". He again confirmed violence and torture by both sides in Syria. But the reports of his council on Syrian, he says, are only based on witness reports taken outside of Syria. Simonovic seemed to threaten with the International Criminal Court when he called the conflict near to a "internal armed conflict" and said that this characterization has legal consequences.

Then followed the Syrian representative Ja'afari and suddenly the UN webcast picture went black. The sound continued though and the representative asked for a minute of silence for all victims of violence. The UN webcast then suddenly switched to UN Security Council meeting about some old tribunals in Guatemala. After some three minutes the webcast went back to the General Assembly. Ja'afari was still speaking but any watcher of the UN webcast will have missed his first remarks or the minute of silence should it have happened.

Other representatives followed giving the opinion of their governments. On could clear distinguish the U.S. puppets from neutral countries with the first propagandizing against the Syrian government versus the later emphasizing a political process like China, Brazil, Iran and others did.

Interestingly France and the U.S. only send their deputy representatives to read out their statements.

The Russian representative more or less accused the rebels of committing the massacres as they have interest in foreign intervention. He spoke out against any regime change and condemned the delivery of weapons to the rebels. He said that Russia was open to a conference of countries that would help to find a political solution to the situation. This may have allured to a new phase of the Annan plan.

WSJ

A coalition airstrike during a night raid on a suspected insurgent hideout in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 18 people, including nine children and four women, United Nations officials said.
…
[T]he compound was filled with family members preparing to celebrate the marriage of one of the suspected Taliban commander's daughters, Afghan officials said.
…
"ISAF is in the process of beginning the assessment process to try and determine if the operation and this tragedy that seems to be unfolding in Logar are related," said an ISAF spokesman, U.S. Army Maj. Martyn Crighton.

Shouldn't "the process of beginning the assessment process to try and determine if" one should bomb another wedding be done before the actual bombing?

The unofficial U.S. government spokesperson David Ignatius writes about some new plan Kofi Annan is supposed to have developed:

To break the deadlock, Annan would create his contact group, composed of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), plus Saudi Arabia and perhaps Qatar to represent the Arab League, and Turkey and Iran. The idea is to bring together the countries with most influence on the situation.

This unwieldy group would then draft a transition plan and take it to Assad and the Syrian opposition. This road map would call for a presidential election to choose Assad’s successor, plus a parliamentary ballot and a new constitution — with a timeline for achieving these milestones.

There is no way the Syrian government and the Russians would agree to this plan.

Why should they? It would give the U.S. and the Gulf tyrannies all they want. It also would not work.

How does this plan stop the terrorists that roam in Syria? How would it stop the money flowing to them? How would it address “the opposition” when there is no united opposition?

That plan was likely whispered into Ignatius ears by some U.S. diplomat rather than Annan.

The major mistake “western” writers make in their rather stupid comments is their misunderstanding of the Russian and Chinese position.This is not about a Russian harbor in the Mediterranean and not about cultural ties though there are intensive ones.

To those countries the fight over Syria is a principle one. In their eyes the U.S. is trying to establish a dogma that inner strife in any country, even when fueled by outer interference, justifies the removal of a regime by force or other means.

The U.S. is instigating protests by some rather lunatic “democratic forces” in Russia. It is pushing Tibetan exiles to stoke unrest in the Tibetan parts of China. It interferes in other local Chinese affairs.

It is obvious to the Russian and Chinese governments that, should the new dogma get established, they will be next in line for the situation Syria is now in. They will do about everything to not let that happen.

They are also on the right side of history. One of the biggest cultural achievement of the “west”, paid for with lots of blood, was the establishment of the principals of the Westphalian peace which forbid outside interference in interior sovereign state affairs. This principal also underlies the charter of the United Nations:

Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.

The “west” has no, as in zero, rights to interfere in other countries.

That is the point Russia and China are making. And for that to stick they must, and absent of much greater threats will, hold on to their positions.

The U.S. continues to provoke Pakistan:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is urging leaders of India to play a more robust role in Afghanistan, as U. S tensions with Pakistan, India's arch-rival, continue to churn.

Inviting India to surround Pakistan will not be welcome in Rawalpindi. Adding that to the continuation of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, even on people mourning their dead, Obama's unwillingness to say "sorry" for the killing of Pakistani soldiers by U.S. troops and the recent snubbing of President Zardawi at the NATO summit one can only imagine how enraged the Pakistani feel towards the U.S. It is now likely that, even if the U.S. would be willing to pay the demanded transit fee of $5,000 per container, the Pakistani government, facing upcoming elections, would no longer be able to agree to that.

There has even been talk of war against U.S. forces. Today, as Panetta is in India, Pakistan tested a nuclear capable cruise missile. It was the fifth test of various nuclear capable Pakistani missiles within the last six weeks. That is supposed to send a message and the addressee is not only India. A war against Pakistan will not happen but the threat of war is real.

As the U.S. seems determined not to make peace with Pakistan it creates itself a huge problem for the retreat from Afghanistan. The only way out is now either by air or through the north. NATO has just signed new deals that will allow transports through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It also has agreements with Russia and Turkmenistan and while the routes through those countries are expensive and long they are also relatively secure.

So the retreat will have to go through the north with, like in Soviet times, only two major routes to leave the country.

General Concept and Scheme of Soviet Withdrawal (Lester W. Grau)
bigger

The Soviets also used the western part of the ring road from Kandhar via Herat towards what is today Turkmenistan while the U.S., it seems, will mostly rely on the eastern part of of the ringroad via Kabul, Bagram towards Termetz and Uzbekistan. U.S. troops concentrations are in the east of Afghanistan and around Kabul and there is no easy way from the east to the western exit route.

But that eastern part of the ringroad has one very problematic choke point, the Salang tunnel:

For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, 1½-mile length.

This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.

There are other roads, but they often are single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November was handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.

“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.”

He said 90 percent of the traffic now is trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.

With 10,000 trucks per day the roads at this bottleneck are likely to get worse during the retreat and periods of full closure of the tunnel, due to weather, accidents or attacks, are to be expected.

What makes this retreat more difficult than the Soviet one is the sheer mass of equipment that the U.S. has used in Afghanistan. The Soviet units had much less equipment and amenities than the U.S. troops have. They also left much of it for their Afghan partners. Today's Afghan army is unlikely to be able to use modern U.S. equipment and much more will have to be transported back than in Soviet times.

That equipment will also, unlike in Soviets times, have to cross multiple boarders of various countries each of which has its own interest and corrupt officials. The retreat will be very expensive and not only in monetary terms.

From a global political standpoint the necessity of a U.S. retreat through the north has some advantages. It gives Russia a kind of veto over U.S. foreign policy. "You want to invade Syria? Sorry those containers can not pass right now. We need check on them fist, those papers seem to be wrong and by the way those trains are unlike to run this month or next."

With the only route out of Afghanistan now solely through the north the U.S. gave Putin a joker, a wild card, that he can threaten to play whenever he feels that he needs to. That may well tame some other agressive  U.S. foreign policies.

Each Tuesday Obama heads the counter terrorism meeting at the White House. He looks at “baseball cards” and decides who’s family is next to be put on the “kill list”.

He seems to believe that there is no god but Obama. That is wrong.

News & views …

The British Guardian with its orientalist accounts of the Houla massacre is one of the most anti-Syrian news outlet. It now, laughably, tries to explain that Syrian pro-government forces are responsible for the Al-Qaeda style killing of whole families of government supporters by throat cutting and beheading. This when it is well known that there are AlQaeda like forces active in Syria and that the area where the massacre happened was and is under rebel control.

But such obvious lying about and manipulating such events and witness accounts has its consequences.

The most recommended comment to today's Guardian editorial on Syria is this one by 44kicks with, as of now, 50 recommendation from other readers:

44Kicks
2 June 2012 9:48PM

I don't believe a single f**king word the guardian has to say about Syria.

Similar reader sentiment can be found at other western news sides that fabricate the current anti-Syrian narrative.

One would think that writers and editors of mainstream media like the Guardian would somehow feel discomforted over such feedback from their readership. But that does not seem to be the case. If it is neither the truth nor their readers who do they then serve?

I am confused. What is wrong with me today that I agree, at least in parts, with the Russian Orthodox Church, the National Review and Henry Kissenger?

The church:

As the West sought to pressure the Kremlin recently to help stop the killing in Syria, diplomats from Damascus were ushered into the heart of one of Russian Orthodoxy’s main shrines.
…
In his warnings, Patriarch Kirill I invokes Bolshevik persecution still fresh in the Russian imagination, writing of “the carcasses of defiled churches still remaining in our country.”
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The issue of “Christianophobia” shot to the top of the church’s agenda a year ago, with a statement warning that “they are killing our brothers and sisters, driving them from their homes, separating them from their near and dear, stripping them of the right to confess their religious beliefs.”
…
The statements on “Christianophobia” amount to a denunciation of Western intervention, especially in Egypt and Iraq, which lost two-thirds of its 1.5 million Christians after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The National Review (via FLC):

Yes, Assad’s minority Alawite Muslim regime is a key ally of Iran’s revolutionary Shiite-supremacist government. That does not alter the stubborn fact that the anti-Assad “opposition groups” are dominated by Sunni supremacists. Stubborn facts cannot be evaded by clever labeling — “opposition groups” in Syria having become the euphemism du jour that “rebels” was in Libya, “peaceful protesters” in Egypt, “uprisings” in Tunisia, and so on. Nor can we confidently assert any longer that what is bad for Iran must be good for us.

That war criminal:

Who replaces the ousted leadership, and what do we know about it? Will the outcome improve the human condition and the security situation? Or do we risk repeating the experience with the Taliban, armed by America to fight the Soviet invader but then turned into a security challenge to us?
…
In reacting to one human tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another. In the absence of a clearly articulated strategic concept, a world order that erodes borders and merges international and civil wars can never catch its breath. A sense of nuance is needed to give perspective to the proclamation of absolutes.

The Thirty Years’ War decimated the German population by a third through fighting, maiming and hunger.  It was a sectarian civil war with lots of self interested outside interference. One of my favorite plays, Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children written in 1939, is set in the Thirty Years' War. The war finally ended with the Westphalian Peace which forbid outside interference in interior sovereign state affairs. As a German aware of my people's history I deeply believe in this system.

Syria is a secular state that threatens no one. A small minority of Syrians wants to change that by force and with the help of some self interested people from other countries. That is a sure recipe for a much bigger war. We should not allow this to happen.

The Obama administration, as part of its reelection campaign, is leaking details of half-secret operations to friendly journalists. These leaks are released to make it look as if Obama were personally and in detail involved in operational decisions. The tactical results of these operations are described as successful, but their strategic outcome are rather important setbacks.

Earlier this week the New York Times published a long piece on secret kill lists of terrorists who are targeted by drones. It portraits Obama as personally deciding who and how to kill various people in foreign countries. But that kill list is just a shiny object:

That’s because it propagates the myth that everyone we’re killing is a known terrorist.
…
There is absolutely no reason to believe, for example, that Obama–or even John Brennan–knew the identity of the up to 8 civilians who were killed by a drone in Jaar, Yemen, on May 15. All anyone knew about them, according to reporting, is that they ran out after an earlier drone strike to look at the impact site. Boom! They were never on any Kill List, but they are nonetheless just as dead as Quso is.

At precisely the moment the press reported the White House had embraced signature strikes in Yemen and pulled control of those strikes into the White House, John Brennan rolled out a propaganda campaign to focus on the deliberation that goes into the Kill List–that is, into drone killings not covered by the new signature strike policy.

The effort, very clearly, is an attempt to distract attention from those drone killings that don’t involve the kind of deliberation so carefully portrayed by the NYT.

The campaign also deceives in that it hides or plays down the long term and negative strategic effect of these drone strikes. In Yemen anti-U.S. feeling, and Al Qaeda, are growing because of the drone strikes and drone strikes are also a major hindrance in cooperation with the Pakistani government. Something that will cost the U.S. billions as it has do wind down operations in Afghanistan without the transport route through Pakistan.

Today the New York Times publishes a piece by propagandist David Sanger about the Stuxnet virus the U.S. and Israel unleashed against Iran’s enrichment program. Like the one on drones it is full of spin that makes Obama look very involved in the day to day details of a clandestine operation:

The architects of Olympic Games would meet him in the Situation Room, often with what they called the “horse blanket,” a giant foldout schematic diagram of Iran’s nuclear production facilities. Mr. Obama authorized the attacks to continue, and every few weeks — certainly after a major attack — he would get updates and authorize the next step.
…
“From his first days in office, he was deep into every step in slowing the Iranian program — the diplomacy, the sanctions, every major decision,” a senior administration official said. “And it’s safe to say that whatever other activity might have been under way was no exception to that rule.”

For the U.S. to admit to the offensive use of cyber-weapons is a strategic mistake. The U.S. is supreme in conventional and nuclear military capability because of its strong industrial base and financial capabilities. These are capabilities other countries would have to achieve to the same grade before being able to match U.S. warfare might. That is much different in cyberspace. There you only need smart people, a bunch of off the shelf hardware and software and a bit of time. It also quite easy to disguise oneself cyberspace and let an attack seem to come from someone else than the original attacker. Therefore deterrence does not work in cyber wars. Despite big Pentagon projects like Plan X the U.S. has little, if any, structural advantage in a fight in the cyber realm. With being the first to use active cyber war the us has set a new standard of what is acceptable in the international realm. Other will now use that to their advantage.

Like the shiny object of kill lists today’s revelations about Stuxnet are likely only a diversion from much bigger rogue cyberwar activities, like that huge Flame virus, various U.S. services are running. But unlike global drone killer capabilities, which do need lots of physical resources, cyber capabilities are available to all actors and the cyber realm is a much more leveled playing field.

But back to the Obama campaign. I do not believe that Obama is personally involved in various program details, authorizing every next step, as much as portrait in the NYT piece. After such a program is once launched there is no need for him of being involved at all and playing golf is much more fun than sitting in conferences. The campaign may well be effective in portraying Obama as The Decider daily involved in keeping U.S. safe. But what it really portraits is an Obama who is fixated on tactical level operations which at the same time generate serious strategic set backs.

What is the use of a Decider when he lacks strategic foresight?