Center for a New American Security

Ha! This quote made my day, even if I have no idea what Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is talking about here:

I’m going to be the sneaky little guy that pops up from behind the bush and fights the guerrilla. But guerrilla warfare does succeed sometimes.

Wait, so who is the guerrilla? You or them? I have read this quote 12 times and am not sure who is the person meant to be conducting guerrilla warfare. You? Because if it's them, you can totally be on our team and I'll send an intern with a copy of Galula over to the Capitol Building ASAP.

(h/t wonkette)

It's all well and good to ask Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (Ret.) how to beat piracy. But why can't we just send PKVR himself off the Horn of Africa with his fishing boat and a .50-cal? If I were setting the Vegas odds, I would give PKVR a wide spread.

There is some good stuff in thus interview, though:

What we’re really talking about is what kind of methods folks might use that are unconventional. You struggle with words because to the person doing it, it’s not unorthodox, irregular, any of those things; it’s very normal. If you think in history, the Japanese didn’t think that kamikaze pilots were unconventional, but the U.S. did and the British did. The insurgents don’t think that IEDs [improvised explosive devices] are irregular or asymmetrical. It’s in the eye of the beholder. I think [the tactics] you’re seeing with many of these pirates—it’s not something they’ve done deliberately with relation to more modern nations—it’s what they do normally.

My goodness, if that isn't music to this blog's ears. It's only "irregular" or "unconventional" from our limited historical perspective.

In other news, Mac Owens has a really good criticism of Gen. Shinseki.

The fact is that Gen. Shinseki failed to prepare his service for the kind of war that emerged in Iraq in 2003: an insurgency. The “surge” implemented in 2007 by Gen. David Petraeus was successful not only because of an increase troop strength. It was successful because of the application of a new counterinsurgency doctrine that Gen. Shinseki and most other Army generals had rejected.

Of course, this is only coming up since Gen. Shinseki has been nominated to head up Veterans Affairs by the president-elect. And this is the National Review. Which hardly criticized Tommy Franks for battlefield ineptitude when he entered the political fray, speaking at the 2004 Republican National Convention and endorsing the president's re-election bid. (Mac Owens does, though, approvingly quote Yingling & Co., extending the criticism to the general officer corps at large.)

What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body of an Ethiopian soldier through the streets of Mogadishu that appeared in newspapers last year was his shirt. It bore the number 13, beneath the legend “Ballack”. This particular fighter was declaring his fealty not only to the Islamist Shebab movement, but also to Chelsea football club and its newly acquired German midfielder.

It seemed fitting given last night's events in Moscow that today's initial post should be on the odd relationship between guerrillas, tribalism, and footballing culture. Remember the way in which al-Qaeda's child soldiers in Iraq all wore Real Madrid strips? So very odd. Though if we allow for the term Islamo-fascism, perhaps not when considering Madrid's own fascist past... (Thanks, Sean)

That image reminded me of a 2002 story in the London Sunday Times, in which Hala Jaber painted an extraordinary portrait of a group of young Palestinians training to be suicide bombers. Amid the tension of the boys steeling themselves to kill and be killed, one of the fighters ran in with “very important news”: Manchester United had beaten West Ham 5-3. “David Beckham two score. Very good Manchester,” Jaber quoted him as saying, adding: “The announcement was greeted with unanimous pleasure, amid further calls of ‘Allahu akbar’.”

[via Angry Arab] This story reminds Abu Muqawama of the way in which Hizbollah tried to ban card-playing when it first came to prominence in southern Lebanon. That didn't go over too well, and old men went back to playing cards after pragmatism overcame ideology. Islamist insurgent groups get into trouble when they put more emphasis on fundamentalist social values than the stuff people getting rocketed and living in filth actually care about. Which tends to be the fact that they're getting rocketed, and living in filth. Do you think the Israeli government visits Sderot to roll out a family values campaign?

GAZA (Reuters) - Islamist group Hamas has told the main Palestinian telecoms company to block access to pornographic Internet sites in the Gaza Strip, a Hamas government official said on Monday.

Gaza's Ministry of Communications said in a statement that telecommunications firm PALTEL has agreed to block Internet users in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave from viewing adult websites starting this month.

[via Arabist] Abu Muqawama loved Legos so much as a kid that his mom still puts a few pieces in his Christmas stocking each year. (Actually, Abu Muqawama's job this Christmas was to put together a Lego airport for his three year-old niece.) Mom's not going to have to look very far to find next Christmas's stocking stuffer: Abu Muqawama wants Lego insurgents, which you can buy from BrickArms, the hilarious company with the hilarious name. You can also buy a Lego U.S. Marine, but if we took an informal poll of the readership, we're guessing about 99% of you would buy the Islamist insurgent over the jarhead, right? Nothing against the Marine Corps, but c'mon... A no brainer, even for Charlie.

Update: Charlie, here. Yeah, a no brainer. Especially with those awesome Reservoir Dogs -inspired names. (Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?) But you're going to have a hard time dislodging Han Solo from his long standing perch atop Charlie's office computer.