Anti-Subjugator

With Syria now in the cross-hairs and the very real prospect of sectarian violence like was seen in Iraq, let me explain why I'm willing to go into Syria regardless.

For starters, I would like to be friends with every single Syrian. But I especially want to be friends with the guy who controls the military and education system - as he will be the one who determines whether I am deemed good or bad (and thus whether friendship is possible) in the eyes of the next generation.

The Syrian dictator is not a friend - he is an enemy. He is teaching children that he is good, and his rubbing shoulders with an anti-western power like Russia is good. Against the evil America and other westerners. This is not an acceptable message. Dictators are generally illegitimate already (ie unless there is a rational or humanist reason that a temporary dictatorship is required). When a dictator chooses to be an enemy, he suddenly becomes a target. Anyone who supports him is also a target.

The person I support is my ideological ally - the guy with the "HELP" sign. He's probably a Sunni. He's being oppressed by the Allawite dictatorship. Now the Allawite minority have legitimate concerns about being on the wrong end of sectarian violence, and I'm willing to negotiate. But they've had decades to negotiate and instead all they did was teach children to hate me. Unacceptable. They need to very rapidly change their tune now if they want to negotiate at this late stage, as the revolutionaries have forced the issue by putting their lives on the line, goading me to protect them.

Anyway, the general principle is that I will take arms off the Allawite dictator and give them to my Sunni ally. This does not mean democracy. It means my instinct is to set up a friendly dictator who will start teaching children my definition of good and bad (communists are not good, for example). However, although that is my instinct, we need to be realistic. Democracy is a far easier sell than a dictator. And far less trouble to install, as it is self-maintaining. We can literally provide air support only to get a democracy installed. Given that we already have an unfriendly dictator, even if we end up with an unfriendly democracy, we're still no worse off. And we're in with a chance of a friendly democracy - if not now, then it may evolve with expected freedom of speech. Probability and statistics says to go ahead with the war.

If the Allawites want to negotiate, here's what they need to do. First of all replace their definition of good and bad, and acknowledge that their dictatorship has been bad up to this point. Provide evidence that the Sunnis are religious bigots (generally true) and that they wish to temporarily protect against this until the required cultural changes are in place. In short, they need to adopt the same ideological position as the "HELP" guy, assuming the "HELP" guy is a non-bigotted Sunni. If they do that, then they will also be willing to promote the "HELP" guy to a position of power, e.g. president. This will hopefully mollify the other Sunni who are religious bigots. If it doesn't, that's fine, the Allawites can continue to hold the automatic weapons so long as their ideology has changed so that they are now my friends.

Let's put this into a general principle with a worked example.

Group A (NATO - humanists)
Group B (majority Allawites - non-humanists)
Group C (majority Sunni - non-humanists)
Group D (minority Allawites - humanists)
Group E (minority Sunni - humanists)

If a group, B, is oppressing another group, E, then group A (which is ideologically allied to group E) has a right, or possibly even an obligation, to exterminate B. Group A may choose to create a temporary alliance with some other ideology C, who are also being oppressed, in order to get the extermination done. Group A may also create a permanent alliance with a similar ideology, D, even though D is not being oppressed.

The general form should apply to wars in general, e.g. WW2:

Group A (US/UK/etc - rationalists)
Group B (Nazis)
Group C (Communists)
Group D (Swedes etc - rationalists)
Group E (Poles etc - rationalists)

Another thing to note is that a country like Saudi Arabia is only a temporary ally like the communists were in WW2. It is not a true friend, which is why its education system is turning out anti-western people. When we've gotten rid of our in-your-face enemies we should be looking to topple countries with a hostile education system.

Open letter to Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy

Dear Sir,

As you are aware, the Syrian people have been demonstrating to express their desire for freedom. It should always have been obvious that these people were there desiring freedom, and that their opinion was being suppressed by their dictator. But now the people have taken the extraordinary step of demonstrating in the streets of the dictatorship, at great personal risk to themselves.

Today I saw the protesters carrying some signs in English. One said "SOS" and the other said "HELP". Help, as in, "foreign aid". I am asking the Italian military to provide that foreign aid. It is a once-off cost, unlike the foreign aid you probably give every year to be squandered in Africa. Can you imagine what was going through the mind of the people writing that sign "HELP"? I can imagine their frustration that they can do nothing about their situation and that they were forced to beg for help. They know they need international help so they wrote in English. They were probably thinking "will anyone even see this?". But they would have reasoned that they should at least try. Even worse they would have reasoned "will anyone care about us?". For some reason images of starving Africans are enough to pull heartstrings of foreigners, but Arabs being held in state-slavery are not photogenic. But they would have again reasoned that they can at least try their best. That's all anyone can do, really. If everyone tried their best, we'd have a very different world.

So Mr Berlusconi, I now wish to do my best. I know there are western militaries that are capable of doing this job. I know that you are one of them, and I know that you haven't taken the political or military lead for any recent liberation. As a citizen of a democracy with freedom of speech, basically the best that I can do is to use that freedom of speech to lobby the people in power to do the right thing. So that is why I am writing this letter to you.

I realize that the job will entail a lot of thanklessness. The left-wing media will be levelling charges of "imperialism" and "murder". That's why when you take action it will be a brave act on your part. But that is hopefully what you are - a brave man. Sometimes a man is called upon to show his bravery by physically fighting to protect his family or country. Sometimes a man is called upon to show his bravery by sending a simple order to his military - "do whatever is required to liberate Syria". It is actually this absence of political bravery that is causing the world to be in a much worse state than it needs to be.

For a specific strategy I would suggest you repeat what has been done in Libya. The regime has been overwhelmed in certain cities to the point where it feels the need to use tanks. Those tanks can be destroyed from the air. Syria has a conscript army, and most Syrian males should have military experience. So a rebel army can be constructed from that. They will need to have heavy weaponry supplied to them. The war won't be as quick and clean as if professional Italian soldiers were to go in on the ground, but you need to deal with cultural realities. A large percentage of Arabs find foreign ground troops to be humiliating. It's easier for them to stomach the increased loss of life. In the long run, it is probably better to do it their way - although it should be noted that we are necessarily working with imperfect information. But the moment really needs to be seized. It is right now that people are out on the streets, so it is right now that they should be provided the necessary air support. The Gaddafi spokesman (Moussa Ibrahim) correctly pointed out that the Libyan rebels wouldn't have been able to advance 1 metre if it wasn't for NATO air cover.

Another thing. You will not be able to get UN approval for this action. The fact that the UN approved the Libyan action was nothing short of miraculous. For cultural reasons the Russians and Chinese will not agree to the use of force. So I ask you to give your loyalty to the man holding the "HELP" sign, rather than being loyal to a couple of countries who see nothing wrong with state-slavery.

And one more point. There may well be sectarian violence in the transition to majority rule. This is something innate in Syria and you are not responsible for that once-off cost. The cost needs to be paid at some point in time - you can't justify keeping people living in slavery indefinitely because there's a cost of war waiting to be paid. It's more important to ensure that the man with the "HELP" sign isn't rounded up and locked in jail for the rest of his life. The sooner the cost is paid, the sooner the horror of people living in state-slavery will be brought to an end. This is the target of opportunity.

Good luck, sir.

A long time ago I came up with a comprehensive war plan showing which country to liberate next, starting with Iran. But as the saying goes - "no war plan survives first contact with the enemy". In this case we have a new situation - we have people on Syrian streets (compared to Iran where there aren't). We also have the Libyan model as a reference.

First of all the prospects for Syria are not good. It's a disaster story waiting to happen as the sectarian violence starts when religiously-bigotted Sunnis come to power. What I'd rather see is a model like the UK had where the Allawites are basically the House of Lords and can block the majority Sunnis from doing anything really bad. However, I don't see that happening practically.

Syria is an enemy of the free world and is collectively punished for being such. I don't think that is fair on the Syrian people. If they're going to be held to account for the actions of their government, then that government should at least be democratically-elected. So, the Syrians should be able to democratically choose to be enemies, then punished for it. Note that Syria is already an enemy, so it doesn't matter that we convert a dictator enemy into a democratic enemy. For other countries where we have an allied government and enemy people, it does not make sense to convert them into an enemy government. At least not while there are enemy dictators still awaiting conversion to democracies.

At the end of the day, the Syrian people have been brave and stood up for an end to their subjugation. The dictatorship is using the military to quell the uprising, and without NATO air cover, my money is on the military being ultimately successful. I think the Syrian people deserve to be rewarded for their bravery. And also I think that breaking open freedom of speech stands the best chance of culturally changing the Syrian people so that they stop being enemies of the free world.

We're not going to get another miracle of a UN resolution supporting NATO action. I don't think even NATO will be able to take action. It will instead need to be an adhoc coalition. My plan is to write to the Italians and Libyans to take the lead. The Libyans because they of all people should know that it's impossible to win without foreign air cover. The Italians because they didn't seem to be very active in Libya probably because of their colonial past (but France was free in Libya, unlike Tunisia), but Italy doesn't have that problem in Syria (but France does).

Another thing to note was that I wasn't really keen to go into Syria while we were still gathering data from Libya. In order to determine the best strategy it is best to have lots of data available. If we had 30 examples of liberation we'd be in a better position to decide how the 31st should be done and what it will look like. Unfortunately we have so few examples that it has been very hard to predict what will happen. E.g. I originally thought that Libya could be won quickly with air support and the defections that had already happened. This was based on the easy victory that the Northern Alliance had. But for whatever reason this was a 6-month slugfest and it looked like it could have taken a lot longer than that too, as it appeared to be stalemated. But once again the war plan didn't survive first contact with the enemy.

Anyway, Damascus or bust!

I've been glued to Al Jazeera for the last week after the rebels pulled off a truly amazing entry into Tripoli. It certainly took longer than it would have if NATO troops had been used, but it's much better to have the locals doing it themselves. I think with this militarily historic event we hopefully have a new model of warfare. Provide weapons and air support to local militias. We can hopefully free the whole world this way. With Syria next in line. I saw Syrian protesters with a sign in English, but couldn't read the whole thing. The two phrases I was able to read were "Syria is not" and "to watch and enjoy" with perhaps "only" after the second phrase.

I think the message is that they don't like the idea of us sitting in our comfortable living rooms while they are attempting to go up against a cruel dictator. But I have to ask the protesters what they expect us to do. My solution would be to repeat Libya, even if the UN refuses to endorse it. The UN is currently unwilling to even impose sanctions. Countries like Russia and China for whatever reason aren't as keen on human freedom as the western democracies.

There is one extra thing that I'd like to comment on. We didn't know what Tripoli would look like after liberation. Even now we don't have the results of a secret ballot or even an opinion poll. Some analysis is best done while the situation is still ambiguous. If you don't know what is innate in people, what action should you take? My opinion is that the people of Tripoli have a right to a secret ballot even if they use that to reelect a government with similar policies. Anything less is state-slavery which is unacceptable. And post-liberation when you can see all the happy faces - you know for sure that these good people should never have been held in chains.

An interesting comment from a Libyan - everything can be bought with money except freedom. For freedom you need to pay a blood price. I think he added that now was the time for Libya to pay the price. That is another reason why objections to the Iraq war make no sense. The country needed to pay the blood price at some point. It may as well be now. Why should generation after generation have to live longer in state-slavery and then pay the blood price instead of paying it now? It's another form of compound interest.

Anyway, I will be suggesting to Libyans that they now take the lead in getting Syria liberated. NATO air support, Libyan special forces if required. Or if special forces are beyond Libya's capability, they can at least take the political lead.

I also note that the motley collection of African thugs and halfwits refused to recognize the NTC, although hat's off to Nigeria for leading the way for recognition. We need a new union, probably NATO is good enough, with countries like Libya and perhaps Nigeria being members. And Australia too for that matter.

I will leave you with a letter I was constructing to send to NATO on behalf of Anonymous to request ground troops when it looked like the rebels were stalemated. I was trying to get an opinion poll from Benghazi before sending it though. It was then that I realised I could try finding Libyan bloggers in Benghazi, and when I did, they seemed to be under the impression that they could win just with air support, so I never sent the letter, as the stalemated situation wasn't so bad, so long as the rebels didn't lose their territory, so that they could change their mind when ready. Obviously in hindsight we know that the ground troops weren't required, so I am glad I didn't send my letter. But the thanks to NATO still stands. :-)



Open Letter from Anonymous to NATO Secretary-General regarding Libya

Dear Sir,

Anonymous applauds you and all contributing nations for recent actions in setting up a no-fly zone in Libya and implementing the 1973 resolution. This so far has succeeded in preventing the fall of Benghazi and provides a basis for real change in Libya after 42 long years. "Wars of liberation" are justified as humanitarian action and should be seen very differently to "wars of conquest" which have historically blighted humanity.

Note, Anonymous expresses the sentiments seen in the streets of Benghazi. Especially noted are the number of French flags being waved and Anonymous applauds Sarkozy for stepping up to the plate when the free world called. Most inspiring is the passion of people who have been denied freedom for so long.

Also note the inevitable detractors - if not now, then later. This is expected, and why in this day and age, it is the person who takes the political and not the military lead, who is most brave - currently that man is Sarkozy. Footage from Benghazi suggests that the mood of the people is unabashedly one of gratitude, and this brave leadership should continue.

Anonymous suggests taking some polls in Benghazi to gauge sentiment. Whatever action is taken next must be taken with due care as not to steal the thunder of the brave Libyan people in facing down Gaddafi's mercenaries. Unfortunately Gaddafi retains most of the heavy weaponry and is proving quite difficult to dislodge. Special forces would be an appropriate addition to the war at this point in time - although a recipe for disaster if the rebels object to it and why consultation plays a crucial part.

Ground forces may set a precedent for continued and swift liberations in places like Syria where we currently witness the horror of the regime hunting down protesters at night. This is on top of the horror of Gaddafi random bombing of Misrata with no-one intervening in a meaningful way. Note that there has been a formal request from Misrata rebel leadership for ground troops:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/misurata-body-says-it-has-asked-for-foreign-troops/2011/04/19/AFH6sJ6D_story.html

and they have stated that they are willing to pay a high price (80% casualties) for victory:

"Even if 400,000 people die and only 100,000 live, this is a victory"

We would expect professional western troops to be able to secure victory with far less than 80% casualties.

Russia owes its current freedom to patriots like Sergey Yevdokimov (Russian tank commander) who turned his tanks around to protect the Russian parliament. I'm surprised people like him weren't made saints or something. It'd be nice to connect with him on Facebook or something. That was where the real war was won. With tanks. Freedom comes when the military chooses to change sides, which is effectively a military coup even though it's not formally recognized as such.

While involving myself in debates over at Strategy Page, I ran across a Russian who caught my attention. I think he admitted he had lost arguments on Strategy Page, and people who are willing to change their mind based on logical arguments seem to be very rare and very valuable. As is my usual style, I strip people down until I find out their unchangable dogma that they have been indoctrinated with or internalized for some other reason.

He opposed the Iraq war, a basically untenable position in my mind given that Saddam was ordering the rape of Iraqi women and chopping out the tongues of Iraqi men. I can logically explain that, but there is a barrier to understanding that. I had never been able to uncover the details of the barrier. I was only vaguely aware that something existed, and it was blocking the logic from being accepted. But this guy was willing to engage in the pure logic.

The logical debate ended for me on a couple of points. He was quibbling over the definition of freedom, allowing freedom to exist even in a prison. My definition is "not subjugated". The other thing was that he didn't consider inaction to be something bad. So if someone else was doing the raping, he's not in any way responsible or obliged to stop it. I really couldn't argue these basic definitional things. So I was basically stuck, and thought that was the end.

However, what I didn't realise was that his heart probably wasn't in those definitional things - they seem to have been thrown up just to avoid having to admit defeat. So he went away and did further thinking on his own, and forged a path from anti-interventionism to pro-interventionism. When I found out this, I asked him to document it, as I believe it may hold the key to world freedom. He has now documented it and it is truly fantastic.

You really need to read the whole thing. But here is one thing he said:

"But, regardless of logic, I still had to justify this to myself on an emotional level. How could I believe in something so... abhorrent?"

Basically logic is not enough. I personally operate in a paradigm where I am an individual in the world/universe, and where logic rules supreme. But not everyone else does, and that stumbling block of nationalism needs to be overcome.

Look at this:

"without national pride, logic takes precedence, and logic states 'avoid casualties' as opposed to 'don't invade another country'"

Gold. Pure gold.

This blog post should be the basis for an entire curriculum. The UK government should be expanding on this, with examples etc, and use it to properly assimilate immigrants. Even if at the end of the process they reject it out of hand, at least they will understand the culture they are entering.

Speaking of culture, the way people are currently being taught is totally the wrong way around:

"Western culture is uniquely inferior to the more authentic, spiritual, and wise cultures it has brutally subjugated"

Anyway, I've been waiting for this key for years. Ever since message 666 failed to do the trick on its own. I'll now spend my time trying to see what I can do to expand on this theme. In the same way I used to debate strangers to see if I could get them to respond to pure logic, I'll see if I can get them to respond to this different way of expressing the same thing.

There's this intriguing bit too:

"had secret dreams of seeing Russian fighter jets flying over the British skies"

We need to embrace the sheer power of that statement. This is the natural state of immigrants. They can be turned to our side, as has been done in this case already, but let us be honest that there's no program in place to turn immigrants. A lot of words have been written about the Japanese internment camps (in the US), but this is the honest reason why we have things like that - the divided loyalties of immigrants is a major cause for concern. Also I'm not sure how to reconcile this with the supposed hatred of war he mentions later. I'm more inclined to believe that war is in our blood. ie we are genetically inclined to wage war, as those who weren't waging war and forming appropriate alliances were wiped out.

Anyway, at long last I have the required blueprint. If we can get more Russians on board we'll be home and hosed. China can be isolated at the UN and we can go and liberate the rest of the world. Just as the man says:

"the vital missing piece was interventionism. Instead of simply waiting for dictators to die or run out of people to rule over, we could free the people"

Man, what a gift to the world. And guess what? I'd be happy to see a pro-western Russian fighter jets flying over the UK skies too. As invited guests! Man I would so much love to be allied with Russia. Of course I'd like to be allied with China too, but it has to be on pro-free-world terms.

One of the ways I believe God communicates with us is via dreams. As usual, in order to get plausible deniability, the majority of dreams are stupid (just like the bible), so that you can hide some important concepts (like "love thy enemy" in the case of the bible).

Anyway, I'm just awake after a dream which I recognized as important and thus forced myself awake. I was going to just jot notes and write it up properly later, but what the heck.

Anyway, I was doing a particular job that was complicated but boring, and I wasn't doing it well. After a long time I was given the chance to try out some other jobs. One of them I was better at, but then there was a chance to be a tank driver. I didn't think I would be physically strong enough to do it, but I was, and it was like FUCKING STORMING NORMAN. There was a tape played by a tank driver who said that if he hadn't driven more aggressively (fuel-wasting) than trained, he would have missed out on most of his engagements. Lesson learned - drive by the seat of your pants.

I was just about to drive by the seat of my pants and not worry about fuel (hoping someone else would worry about that and give me some of theirs after the engagement) when I got scared, pulled back, and woke up.

Why was I scared? Perhaps no-one else was in fact ensuring that there was enough fuel left at the end of the engagements. If everyone is driving by the seat of their pants, you may end up winning the battle and losing the war. I'm the guy who naturally pulls back and ensures the bases are covered.

Should I be a general? Nope. You need to pull back even further than that. We've already got enough perfectly competent generals. The problem is that they are under civilian control, and the gigantic war machines at our disposal will remain in mothballs unless someone has the political balls to unleash them. And no-one is going to do that unless they have the citizens of the country largely on board. Which is why the Ultimate General is the one who engages citizens head on to try to change what is going on in the heads of pea-brained voters. I may have failed at playing Ultimate General, but at least I fucking tried.

There are times (such as the escapade to the Chinese Embassy) where I see a path of opportunity opened up where I can ruthlessly pursue the goal of freedom and justice. Accosting the guy down at the train station who hit a woman was another pursuit of that goal. But most times there is not a clear avenue to victory opened up. There is a military avenue opened up - the US military could liberate the entire world besides China after getting the nod from Obama. The trouble is we have fickle citizens who are electing people who are unlikely to give the nod. So I pull back and plot. Forever plotting. Forever probing at the edges looking for a crack in the armour. Forever waiting to rush in where I can drive victory home. Ultimate Warrior.

Not really General because I'm not a people person like a General needs to be. I'm more inclined to just provide advice to the Generals of the world. I believe World Dictatorship is a solvable problem if we can just come up with the right sequence of words to give to the US President or the UK Prime Minister etc. I used to think that Message 666 had the right combination of words to impart the required understanding. To this day it provides perfect clarity to me of where the battle lines are to be drawn. Admittedly it basically declares the whole world to be an enemy at least some of the time, so maybe that's where it's falling down. But to me that's just the internal jihad - fighting against yourself. It really is crystal clear. It needs to be packaged differently in order to be sold though. And that's what remains elusive. So the war drags on. Clunk, clunk clunk as the armour is tested for flaws.

Once again we are reminded by a soldier that the bottleneck for solving the world's problems is political will, not a lack of brave, decent, volunteer soldiers.

Solving the problem of political will is a task that is so far beyond my technical skills. I know the basic problem I am trying to solve (sociopathy, dogma, poor logic skills), but humans have so far proved resistant to all my attempts to correct that. Oh well, better not give up my day job of getting computers to respond logically.