Mercenaries Rock

Long War: Today's Wall Street Journal features an article highlighting the fact Al Qaeda has moved back into northeastern Afghanistan after a long absence. Camps have been set up along the Pakistan border dedicated to shipping bad guys to Long War hot spots around the globe, such as Somalia, Yemen, N. Africa, etc... Simply put, the Afghan surge did not include enough troops. At the time the surge debate was going on, the Pentagon told Obama it needed twice as many troops as he finally agreed to.

Much the same can be said of the Libya War. America does have boots on the ground in Libya, but not enough, and as a consequence Gaddafi is (for the moment) winning. When analyzing military spending it is important to stifle our natural libertarian instincts, which tell us to cut all government spending no matter what. The language left wing politicians apply to social spending, i.e. it is an investment that eventually turns a profit for all of society, actually applies to military spending if done wisely. Consider, the Libya War has added about $20 a barrel to the price of oil in risk premium, that is above and beyond actual supply constraints. If overwhelming force had been used against Gaddafi in the beginning, then hundreds of billion of dollars worth of petroleum risk premium would have been saved. This savings would have been vastly greater than the cost of applying overwhelming force.

Let's step back and look at the big picture by reviewing recent Long War history. The Pak Taliban was formed in 2007 when a dozen smaller Talibans were loosely yoked together into one big Taliban. At the time it issued a kind of mission statement including attacking the government of Pakistan, conquering it and imposing sharia law; plus it would fight NATO in Afghanistan. Last year it expanded the mission statement to include terror strikes on the American homeland. One clumsy terror strike was launched, when Faisal Shahzad tried and failed to blow up Time Square, New York. My point isn't that subtle: the bad guys are a real threat.

In the absence of greater miltary spending, existing resources have to be used more effectively. For instance, the African Union is doing most of the fighting in Somolia. America pays the salary of AU soldiers. These salaries are very small but the AU soldiers are very good. AU soldiers could fight in Libya. Gaddafi isn't using mercenaries because he's stupid. Mercenaries rock. In any case, we need to watch for signs of more effective American policies to remain bullish. To do this we must hone our skills at sleuthing out CIA fingerprints.