Tom Clancy For National Security Advisor

“How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?” — James Madison, Federalist No. 41 — 1788”

In his comments regarding national defense in Federalist 41 Madison was not advocating a hostile posture towards other nations, but he was not so naïve to belief that mere words could prevent malevolent intentions of other nations towards the United States. His complete statement in Federalist 41 states:

”How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation? The means of security can only be regulated by the means and the danger of attack. They will, in fact, be ever determined by these rules, and by no others. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions. If one nation maintains constantly a disciplined army, ready for the service of ambition or revenge, it obliges the most pacific nations who may be within the reach of its enterprises to take corresponding precautions.”

While Madison was in no way advocating a large standing army that would pose a threat to other nations and the Constitution itself he did, however, realize that we should take precautions and actions that would safeguard our newly formed republic. It was Madison who, in 1812, requested Congress for a declaration of war against Britain for their trade restrictions brought about by Britain's ongoing war with France, the impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, and outrage over insults to national honor after humiliations on the high seas.

Today we are under attack by the People’s Republic of China. Their attack is not an overt military action such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This war is an attack on our commercial enterprises and our national security and the chief weapon is the computer and their soldiers are experienced and competent computer hackers. The PRC is attempting to damage our ability to be a leader in technology through their cyberattacks. This is not too much different than one of Madison’s reasons for requesting the declaration of war against Britain for their trade restrictions.

A group linked to the Chinese military has stolen massive amounts of data from over 100 different targets, most of which are based in the U.S., a security firm said in a report released Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reports Internet security company Mandiant says in the report it traced 141 major hacking attempts to a People's Liberation Army building in Shanghai, 115 of which targeted U.S. companies or organizations.

Mandiant didn't name specific targets of the attacks but said they included information technology firms and telecommunications to aerospace and energy companies.

The stolen information allegedly includes blueprints, details on proprietary processes, pricing documents and contact lists.

Mandiant also cites a memo from a Chinese telecommunications provider supplying communications links to the building where the hacking allegedly occurs, saying it would "smoothly accomplish this task for the military based on the principle that national defense construction is important."

The Mandiant report comes a week after President Obama issued a long-awaited executive order aimed at getting the private owners of power plants and other critical infrastructure to share data on attacks with officials and to begin to follow consensus best practices on security.

Mandiant Corp. said in a 74-page report released on its website that a group attached to China's People's Liberation Army has since at least 2006 stolen data from 141 companies, 115 of which were in the U.S. Mandiant didn't name specific targets of the attacks but said they spanned industries ranging from information technology and telecommunications to aerospace and energy. Mandiant's accusations were reported earlier by the New York Times.

The report comes as China's potential role in hacker attacks has come under increasing scrutiny. In recent weeks, a number of news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal, have said they were infiltrated by Chinese hackers believed to have government links. People familiar with an earlier investigation by U.S. intelligences agencies into Chinese hacker groups infiltrating U.S. networks have said most are linked to the Chinese military. Previous targets of Chinese hackers have included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Nortel Networks Ltd.

In an October speech, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said China was "rapidly growing" its cyber capabilities.

"In my visit to Beijing, I underscored the need to increase communication and transparency with each other so that we could avoid a misunderstanding or miscalculation in cyberspace," he said, while also calling for greater information sharing about cybersecurity between private enterprise and the government.

Akamai Technologies, which provides services to help websites speed up connections and monitors large amounts of web traffic, said in the third quarter of 2012 China was the world's No. 1 source of observed attack traffic. China was the origin of 33% of the traffic, Akamai said, more than doubling from 16% in the second quarter. The U.S. was second, rising to 13% from 12%, and Russia was third, falling to 4.7% from 6.3%.

Mandiant said it believes the group behind the hacking is Unit 61398, within a wing of the People's Liberation Army. It said it has observed hacking attempts against nearly 150 victims over seven years. Hundreds of terabytes of data were involved, it said.

It pinpointed the group's location in facilities in Shanghai's Pudong district. It also reprinted a memo from a Chinese telecommunications provider supplying communications links to the facility that said it would "smoothly accomplish this task for the military based on the principle that national defense construction is important."

The Executive Summary to the Mandiant Report states:

“Since 2004, Mandiant has investigated computer security breaches at hundreds of organizations around the world. The majority of these security breaches are attributed to advanced threat actors referred to as the “Advanced Persistent Threat” (APT). We first published details about the APT in our January 2010 M-Trends report. As we stated in the report, our position was that “The Chinese government may authorize this activity, but there’s no way to determine the extent of its involvement.” Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment. The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them

Mandiant continues to track dozens of APT groups around the world; however, this report is focused on the most prolific of these groups. We refer to this group as “APT1” and it is one of more than 20 APT groups with origins in China. APT1 is a single organization of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. From our observations, it is one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen. The scale and impact of APT1’s operations compelled us to write this report.

The activity we have directly observed likely represents only a small fraction of the cyber espionage that APT1 has conducted. Though our visibility of APT1’s activities is incomplete, we have analyzed the group’s intrusions against nearly 150 victims over seven years. From our unique vantage point responding to victims, we tracked APT1 back to four large networks in Shanghai, two of which are allocated directly to the Pudong New Area. We uncovered a substantial amount of APT1’s attack infrastructure, command and control, and modus operandi (tools, tactics, and procedures). In an effort to underscore there are actual individuals behind the keyboard, Mandiant is revealing three personas we have attributed to APT1. These operators, like soldiers, may merely be following orders given to them by others.

Our analysis has led us to conclude that APT1 is likely government-sponsored and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors. We believe that APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part because it receives direct government support. In seeking to identify the organization behind this activity, our research found that People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources. PLA Unit 61398 is also located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.”

While we are fighting a shooting war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and other terrorist groups the Chinese are busy infiltrating and attacking our commercial and national defense infrastructure using bits and bytes.

This brings me to the title of this blog —Tom Clancy for National Security Advisor. I have been a reader and a fan of Tom Clancy’s techno-thrillers for years. It began with his best seller “The Hunt for Red October” where he provided us with an incredible amount of information on the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarine threat and our defense to these “boomers”.

In “Red Storm Rising” he detailed the Soviet threat to Europe and how NATO – led by U.S. forces would counter such an attack. He wrote quite a bit about the logistics problems in supplying the forces of NATO. Problems that became demonstrably evident in the NATO attack on Libya.

In “Sum of all Fears” Clancy warned of a possible nuclear attack on the United States from Middle Eastern terrorists using home-made nuclear weapons. And in “Clear and Present Danger” he warned of the growing power of the Columbian drug cartels — cartels that have now moved to Mexico.

In “Debt of Honor” Clancy portrayed a 747 loaded with fuel crashing into to Capital Building and decapitating our government six years before 9/11. In his sequel to Debt of Honor “Executive Orders” he addressed the potential of bio-warfare against the United States and how we might combat it.

In “Rainbow 6” Clancy wrote about an elite anti-terrorist group that could go anywhere to clandestinely take out terrorists before the general public ever heard of SEAL Team 6. He also exposed the tyranny of the environmentalist and their desire to let people die to save trees, bugs, and bunnies.

In his latest novel “Threat Vector” Chinese cyberwarfare experts have launched a devastating attack on American infrastructure. It's a new combat arena, but it’s every bit as deadly as any that has gone before. It’s as though Clancy predated the Mandiant report as he has been in front of the curve on many other national security issues. Either Clancy is clairvoyant or he has a multitude of contacts within the national security establishment.

Clancy will claim he is “just” and author of fiction. His modesty is overwhelming. As “just” an author of fictional novels he has the ability to take bits and pieces of data and assemble them into a cogent analysis of the threats facing us. His ability to think out of the box far surpasses the political appointees to our national security bureaucracy including the Directors of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the Defense Department with their embedded political agendas and party loyalties. Party loyalties as George Washington stated: “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human Mind. It exists under different shapes in all Governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.”

It amused me to no end to find this quote by the Former U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who mentioned, “A lot of what I know about warfare I learnt from reading Tom [Clancy].” Even Ronald Reagan was a fan as documented by his wife, Nancy Reagan: “Ronnie especially enjoyed history, biography and the novels of Tom Clancy.” In a way former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave Clancy a left-handed compliment when she stated not everyone is a fan. In an interview, Rice showed her disapproval of Clancy’s work and fictitious US military warfare by saying, “No-one [but Clancy] could have imagined [terrorists] taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon [or] into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile”.

It for the reasons stated above that I nominate Tom Clancy for the post of either the National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, the National Intelligence Director, or the Secretary of Defense. I am sure Clancy would not have allowed those four Americans to perish at the hands of terrorist in Benghazi. Oh, and you can add Brad Thor and Vince Flynn to my short list. They are cut from the same mold as Clancy with Thor’s latest offering “Black List” a novel based on the premise that a group of powerful, well-financed people in cahoots with a foreign power are attempting to take over the United States through cyberwarfare and data mining.

Obama’s Hypocrisy on Jobs

“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.” — Friedrich August von Hayek

A few days ago President Obama sat on a panel with Jeffrey Immelt the CEO of General Electric. They both had a good chuckle when Obama said that his shovel ready jobs weren’t so shovel ready, ha, ha, ha.

Immelt heads up Obama’s so called Jobs Council; a group of academics that have never created one job in their lives. Immelt has also been a strong supporter of Obama.

In his efforts to create jobs in the United States Immelt, Obama’s buddy, has done two things that go virtually unreported in the main stream media. Firstly he moved GE’s X-Ray Division from Waukesha, Wisconsin to Beijing, China. On July 26, 2011 the Wall Street Journal reported:

“General Electric Co. said it is moving its X-ray business headquarters to China to accelerate sales in the country's fast-growing health-care market, the latest sign of China's growing importance to the giant U.S. conglomerate.

The X-ray unit will be the company's first business to be based in China.

The business has already begun the move—which includes the unit's chief executive and three other members of its executive team—and expects to complete the process by year end, said Anne LeGrand, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare Global X-Ray. The senior leadership team's move to Beijing is aimed in part at helping develop more medical equipment specifically for the Chinese market, Ms. LeGrand told a news briefing Monday.

GE said it doesn't expect the move to result in any job losses in the U.S., where the unit has been based in Waukesha, Wis. The Wisconsin X-ray division has 120 employees. The company also said it is too early to say how many employees it will hire for the unit's new Beijing headquarters.

"As the company grows more global, it's increasingly important for us to become close to our customers," Ms. LeGrand said, adding that she expects 20% to 25% of GE Healthcare's X-ray products to be developed in China during the next three to five years for sale around the world.

As China's market has boomed for a range of products, a small but growing number of companies have moved senior executives to the country or sent them for extended stints. Intel Corp. in May said Sean Maloney, one of its best-known senior executives, would move to China from Silicon Valley to oversee the chip giant's operations here. Bayer AG unit Bayer Healthcare moved its general medicine headquarters from Germany to Beijing in March, and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. of the U.S. temporarily moved its headquarters to Shanghai for five weeks starting last month.

GE has long placed high hopes on China, with CEO Jeffrey Immelt in 2008 calling it the company's "second home market." In January, the company finalized a deal with state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China to inject much of GE's civilian avionics business into a 50-50 joint venture based in China.”

If this wasn’t enough Immelt then announced GE has struck a billion dollar deal with the Chinese state owned aircraft industry to export GE’s sophisticated avionics business to China for the manufacture of the COMAC C919 airliner that will compete with Boeing, a company battling he NLRB to build their Dreamliner in South Carolina with American workers. The Business Courier reports:

“When GE Aviation Systems signed a joint venture agreement last month with a state-owned Chinese conglomerate, plenty of questions were raised about transferring aviation electronics technology and intellectual property to what will be a China-based company.

The 50-50 joint venture will develop avionics for new commercial airplanes, beginning with the Chinese-built COMAC C919 that’s due to enter service in 2016. Avionics are a plane’s central information system and related applications such as cockpit displays. Officially, the joint venture is the GE AVIC Civil Avionics Co.

Skeptics cite examples of China exploiting foreign companies to gain access to technology in order to build its own capabilities. The country’s desire to create its own globally competitive industries – including aviation – is hardly a secret.

GE officials acknowledge that protection of the company’s intellectual property is a concern, but they insist the AVIC joint venture includes adequate safeguards.

For GE Aviation, the real issue is this: There are huge opportunities in the Chinese aviation market, poised for rapid growth in coming decades.”

Here we have a person Obama has appointed to a council for creating jobs in the United States exporting jobs offshore to China while his NLRB fights Boeing’s move to South Carolina where they will create good paying jobs in Charleston. GE’s move will also take commercial aviation business away from Boeing, thus reducing jobs in the United States.

GE one of the largest exporters of jobs and a company that has paid no corporate taxes is one of Obama’s favorites and one of his largest contributors to his presidential campaign Until this year when Comcast took over GE owned the cable network MSNBC Obama’s biggest mouthpiece. These are the guys Obama hangs out with while he tells us to sacrifice and pay more taxes.

There is another aspect to GE’s deal with the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (CACC) and that’s the national security issue. GE will be giving sophisticated avionics technology to the Chinese that can be used in commercial aircraft and fighter planes and guided missiles. An article in Daily Finance by Peter Cohan states:

“General Electric (GE) plans to sell its aircraft electronics to Chinese companies, and if you don't have a problem with that, maybe you should. After all, China just flight-tested a prototype stealth fighter (pictured), it continues to build up its military -- and we can only hope it's not planning to expand its territory in ways that threaten the U.S.

But if China does decide to get aggressive with the U.S., GE will have provided it with the aircraft technology it will be using.

According to The New York Times, GE is signing a deal to sell avionics technology -- electronics that control an aircraft's basic in-flight operations -- to Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China (CACC), which aspires to build commercial and military aircraft. GE will do this through a joint venture with a Chinese company, Aviation Industry Corp. of China (Avic). Avic makes avionics for CACC and for China's military -- including its stealth fighter.

Sure, GE is based in the U.S., but that doesn't mean its shareholders expect it to be loyal to U.S. interests. Still, selling technology it developed for U.S. companies like Boeing (BA) to Boeing's Chinese competitors -- which are trying to build a competing aircraft company -- may be going too far. The question facing American policymakers is how to keep GE from crossing the line before it's too late.”

Mr. Cohan continues:

“Officially, this GE/Avic venture will be making a commercial aircraft for CACC. The Times reports that together, they'll build CACC's C919 -- a single-aisle plane capable of carrying up to 200 passengers and designed to compete with the Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 -- to be delivered in 2016. The avionics technology that GE/Avic will supply is the same as GE is providing to Boeing for its 787 Dreamliner, an industry-leading concept vehicle that is proving awfully hard for Boeing to deliver.

Is GE betraying its customers and its country? I think so. And the reason it's doing so is simple: GE believes that China will be a $400 billion market for its aircraft products over the next two decades. To be fair, GE is making all sorts of noises about how China's aircraft industry isn't sophisticated, so it won't be able to make use of all GE's advanced technology against Boeing or the American military. GE also claims it briefed the U.S. government before selling this technology to China, and that its joint venture will keep a Chinese Wall (pun intended) between its commercial and defense units.”

Mr. Cohan concludes:

“All this corporate maneuvering raises an important question: Who's in charge? To me, it looks like big-company CEOs are making the decisions that will determine America's fate. These execs may live in the U.S., but they're making big money by selling our best technology to China. And since China is lending America $907 billion through its government bond holdings, our nation's financial system is also under China's thumb.”

Television host Bill O’Reilly has long been skewering General Electric and its CEO Jeffrey Immelt for his company’s corruption and double standards. He really let loose on a recent episode of "The O’Reilly Factor," bringing in several researchers who claim that GE, the company for which Ronald Reagan was spokesman from 1954 to 1962, was heavily involved with a corrupt charity called “Oil-For-Food” in Iraq that benefited Saddam Hussein and got American soldiers killed.

Immelt, besides being the CEO of GE, is also President Obama’s jobs czar. He has consistently lectured businesses in America to pay up and create more jobs regardless of tax and regulatory burdens.

On the show, O’Reilly highlighted how GE had been fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission almost $24 million for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In the segment, O’Reilly asked Dr. Tom Borelli, who is the director of The Free Enterprise Project, if it is unfair to attack GE specifically for its malfeasance if many other companies were involved.

Borelli answered, “Absolutely not, because there has been a pattern of corruption at General Electric.”

Borelli then went on about how GE had been “cooking the books” to create the perception of higher earnings, which also forced them to settle with the SEC.

This scandal is only one in a long line of offenses both of corruption and hypocrisy that have riled up O’Reilly, and conservatives especially.

Back in July, Immelt got up on his high horse to lecture business owners at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. He said, among other things, that companies must “double the number of engineering interns taken from colleges and universities.” This, of course, doesn’t coincide well with Obama’s plan to crack down on unpaid internships.

He then complained of a lack of skilled U.S. workers. “There are thousands of open jobs in the advanced manufacturing and health care fields, but our training programs have not evolved to keep up with changes in technology or the needs of employers.”

Immelt told business owners in the room, “The people who are part of the business sector, the people in this room, have got to stop complaining about government and get some action under way. There's no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution.”

While Immelt’s theme at the conference was basically, “American jobs for American workers,” GE shortly thereafter announced that the company will move thousands of GE Healthcare jobs over to China.

A spokeswoman from GE said that the move away from “Waukesha, Wisconsin, was made two years ago and will be completed by early fall.”

In part this move, like many others that GE has made, will allow it to avoid paying taxes. In 2010 GE didn’t pay any federal taxes at all. It did this by hiring an army of lobbyists and tax lawyers, and by shifting businesses overseas.

Worse than the simple act of moving jobs overseas, which is what many other businesses must do to compete in a heavily taxed environment, is the sharing of innovative technology secrets with China. GE has decided to sell highly sophisticated aircraft technology to the Chinese government. The technology being sold is the kind that goes into the military aircraft built by Boeing.

The path that GE has been taking is a far cry from the days when Ronald Reagan was the company’s spokesman. For years before he really entered politics, Reagan traveled around the country speaking positively about the company and its workers. It was from these lectures and his countrywide travels that he crafted the famous “Time for Choosing” speech in the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, thereby launching his national political image.

With the corrupt actions of GE and the hypocritical language of its CEO, who is closely aligned with President Obama, it is no wonder that many conservatives have turned against the company.

Why is NATO like McHale’s Navy?

“NATO was facing collective military irrelevance after years of inadequate defense spending by most of its members.” — Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, June 10, 2011

On June 10, 2011 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said before a meeting of Europe security experts in Brussels:

“In March, the alliance unanimously backed the decision to go to war in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Moammar Gaddafi but less than half of NATO's 28 members were participating in the military operation and fewer than a third are conducting airstrikes against ground targets.

"Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they cannot, the military capabilities simply aren't there."

You can read more by clicking here

Anyone old enough remembers the 60s sitcoms Gomer Pyle -USMC, F Troop, and McHale's Navy. A review of DVDs of those fine, funny shows of yore should be high on anyone's list who's been following NATO's misadventure in Libya. Incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta may want to take a look-see. After watching a few episodes of each show, you'd swear Gomer Pyle is leading McHale's zanies and F Troop fumblers across Libya's desert sands in side-slapping futility — all set to laugh track guffaws.

Okay, NATO doesn't have boots on the ground in Libya, so Gomer and his goofs aren't zigzagging across North Africa. NATO, you see, can't make up its collective mind to put boots on the ground. NATO can't make up its collective mind to dispatch Muammar Gaddafi, either. One day the irascible Muammar is on NATO's hit list, the next day he's off — sort of. It's all high, humorous, and deadly incompetence, this game of whack-a-dictator that NATO is playing with Gaddafi.

Gaddafi pops his head up in some hamlet or village and NATO launches a barrage of missiles or drones or whatever's left in its dwindling munitions stockpile. Gaddafi escapes but some poor fellahin who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time gets a one-way ticket to paradise to meet some virgins.

NATO's Libyan adventure is premised on a lie — or, at least, a semi-lie. The lie is that NATO has intervened in Libya to protect innocents from Gaddafi's ghoulish depravity. NATO's leaders — so-called — might as well have declared that they're in Libya for the chil'ren's sake. "The chil'ren" is the all-purpose throwaway line that progressives use to justify any and every use or expansion of government, so why not use it to justify war?

The truth is that the Europeans who conceived the Libyan mess are a more cynical lot; they're using a humanitarian cover to protect vital Western European oil interests in the Middle East, but they're doing very poorly. You see, national self-interest is long out of vogue among progressives — European and American. Oil is too practical and tawdry a concern. The West must be about upholding selfless ideals. Hence, the need for Florence Nightingale to ride into Libya on the back of a Tomahawk missile or in the cockpit of an F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Though NATO's dithering incompetence in the Libyan fight might make for a few laughs for us observers, it's far less humorous and more instructive to NATO's and America's enemies (Opps — competitors; we must be scrupulously PC).

The Chinese, Russians, and Iranians — chief among the world's black hats — are watching avidly as NATO stumbles and bumbles in Libya — or never gets to Libya with troops in the first place, since the Great Libyan Humanitarian Intervention of 2011 is being run by committee (you know, committees, those wonderful collections of human beings tasked with designing elephants but concocting camels instead).

The military brass in China, Russia, and Iran must be licking their chops and taking copious notes. The once-mighty NATO can't make quick work of Gaddafi and his tiny semi-professional army. The United States — the world's remaining superpower, for the time being, anyway — and the NATO member capable of galvanizing resolve and leading the coalition to a swift victory in Libya is sitting on the sidelines — kind of. The U.S. is helping out, but halfheartedly. President Barack Obama, a thoroughly Kool-Aid drinking progressive, says the U.S. is weary of being the world's leader; let NATO's Barney Fifes figure out how to shoot straight and beat the bad guys.

Let's not forget that the Brits and Americans have had tougher fights in North Africa. Generals Montgomery and Patton drove Rommel and the tough-as-nails Germans out of North Africa during World War II. Are the Michael Jackson lookalike Muammar Gaddafi and his AK-47 wielding thugs tougher than Rommel and his Panzer divisions?

No one is suggesting that Libya is America's fight. There is no discernible vital American interest at stake in the overthrow of Gaddafi and the establishment of a new government there. Yeah, Gaddafi is a bad guy; everyone remembers Lockerbie, and most everyone knows that Gaddafi has given a helping hand to terrorists (militants for Islam - PC again). There are ways of exacting revenge for Gaddafi's deadly gambits like taking the guy out surgically and covertly without full-blown war. If we did it to Osama bin Laden we could do it to Gaddafi.

Or perhaps we could send in three or our four jeep teams with four SAS types and a .50 caliber Browning attached to each jeep like the 60’s series The Rat Patrol.

Yet, you can bet your bottom ruble that Putin and his gangster-cohorts are gaming moves to make against a weak and wavering Western Europe in light of NATO's impotent Libyan performance. Empire is in every Russian's DNA; Putin is certainly no exception. And Russians have a very Asian sensibility; they'll wait for exploitable opportunities, even if that's years down the road.

The Chinese are aggressively building blue water navy, and not to provide humanitarian relief in far-flung corners of the world, but to dominate the Asian Pacific region — and, perhaps, one day, say, the Indian Ocean. Mr. Obama's shoulder shrugs and masked hostility to U.S. global leadership is on full display in the NATO-Libyan imbroglio. The Chinese aren't dopes.

Chinese Leader Hu Jintao and Generals Liang Guanglie and Chen Bingde must be wondering if Mr. Obama's "We are the World — not Leaders" oath marks a permanent departure for the U.S. in global affairs, especially those involving military elements. A less assertive U.S. makes China's strategic and tactical moves — backed up by a strong military and the will to use it — much easier in the coming years.

And Iran? Despite the “marvelous” European and American team effort to shutdown Iran's nuclear weapons program, Iran's mullahs and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continue to intrepidly push ahead. The Iranians have already drawn a bead on Western impotence. The Libyan comedy starring NATO can only affirm that the Iranians need only finish making the bombs that they hope to kill Israelis with while cowing Europeans and Americans in the process.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are gambling men, and from their perspective, NATO's Libyan bog is a green light to keep rolling the dice. Can you say mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv? If so it will be a tribute to the Europeans and Americans.

Consequences? Not always a pleasant word in global affairs. Even with an eventual victory in Libya, NATO has already botched it. NATO's enemies have a predator's keen eye and instincts. NATO's Libyan pratfalls and tail-chasing have been fully registered in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran. The consequences longer term can't be good — and that goes for the U.S., too.

As Michelle Bachmann said in last night’s GOP debate:

“Our policy in Libya is substantially flawed. It's interesting. President Obama's own people said that he was leading from behind. The United States doesn't lead from behind. As commander in chief, I would not lead from behind.

We are the head. We are not the tail. The president was wrong. All we have to know is the president deferred leadership in Libya to France. That's all we need to know. The president was not leading when it came to Libya.”