Amidst the barrage of criticism leveled at President Obama in recent months over his decisions on healthcare reform, trials for terrorists, and the US economy, he made at least one decision last week that is worthy of praise from his critics. On Friday, January 29, he notified to Congress the sale of $6.4 billion worth of arms sales to Taiwan.

Read my full column at http://ewross.com/Selling_Arms_to_Taiwan.htm

China's previous reactions to major US arms sales to Taiwan over the past 20 years have followed a pattern. They issue strongly worded statements, warning of dire consequences. They break off military exchanges (when they have existed). And they reiterate talking points, saying that the US is interfering in the internal affairs of China, threatening China's national security, and, since President Ma Ying-jeou took office in Taiwan, inhibiting China-Taiwan détente.

China also has put pressure on US business with divisions that sell defense equipment to Taiwan, although this has had limited effect as US companies are in no position to refuse participation in government-to-government sales to Taiwan through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system.

In due course, however, US-China relations have always returned to their own equilibrium. Economic interdependence and political necessity constrain China from allowing the Taiwan issue to dominate the relationship.

Will this time be different? China's political and economic stature have given it a self image of a world power equal to the United States. Chinese leaders may see US economic dependence on China's willingness to purchase US Treasury Bonds as leverage they can and should use. And they may believe that Barack Obama is a US President they can pressure.

Chinese leaders have demonstrated in the past a willingness to subjugate national interest to national pride. They could overplay their hand. More likely however, they won't. They know they can't inflict pain on the US without inflicting pain on themselves. Their economic growth is too dependent on the US market and, since 1949, China-Taiwan relations have never been better.

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You have to wonder if the Obama administration officials who came up with the idea of establishing the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) weren’t overly influenced by Hollywood. It's a familiar, action-packed concept. Highly-skilled interrogators work out of Washington, DC, under the direct supervision of the White House. They deploy around the world to obtain critical intelligence from newly captured high-value Islamist-Jihadist operatives in the nick of time to prevent a catastrophic terrorist attack. It would make a great prime-time TV series.

If Hollywood were to produce such a program, however, they’d have to write scripts that had little resemblance to the real one. Few Americans would tune in more than once to a series in which the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were read their Miranda rights, provided a comfortable cell with a copy of the Qur'an, and asked politely if they would cooperate with US Intelligence before their lawyers arrived. Americans would much prefer to watch protagonists that behaved more like 24's Jack Bauer or Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp.

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We repeatedly hear that the reason we must close Guantanamo and refrain from the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is that they do more harm than good. "They are a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda."

Indeed, they are one of many on a long list that Islamist-Jihadist use to convince radicalized Muslims to become suicide bombers. But no one has yet produced evidence to prove that without them the there would be any fewer terrorist attacks. What we hear instead is that the terrorists themselves tell us this, so it must be true.

On the other side of the argument, however, there is considerable evidence that the interrogation of captured terrorists after 9/11 provided information that resulted in the thwarting of terrorist attacks in the United States and Great Britain.

Former Bush administration speech writer Marc Thiessen in his new book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, makes the case for the Bush administration interrogation practices. In his book and the video above he argues that we are no longer capturing and interrogating terrorists and that the Obama administration is denying the intelligence community the ability to acquire the information it needs to prevent another 9/11. This week the administration itself confirmed that it has no such capability. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) does not yet exist; and when it does, given its limitations, it's not likely to be effective.

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Seldom has the outcome of a single state-wide election determined the fate of an American president or his administration. By all accounts, the outcome of Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts may do just that.

If Republican Scott Brown defeats Democrat Martha Coakley and becomes the 41st Republican Senator, Obama’s ambitious liberal agenda to transform America could be stopped cold in its tracks. What’s more difficult to predict is then what? That, of course, depends on how Democrats and Republicans react; both parties have a penchant for shooting themselves in the foot.

DoD released its report on the Fort Hood Shootings last week, "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood." The independent review headed by former Army Secretary Togo West and former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral (Ret.)Vern Clark is enlightening.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said in his press conference when he released the report, DoD's policies and procedures for dealing with internal threats is still rooted in the Cold-War. He acknowledged that DoD has to change and make them more relevant to the threats posed by people like the "alleged perpetrator," referring to Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

The report's 47 findings and recommendations address shortcomings in DoD's personnel policies, force protection, emergency response, and support to DoD healthcare providers. Like the 9/11 Commission Report this one should go a long way toward correcting the problems and mistakes it highlights.

One recommendation in particular caught my attention, and, I believe, has great saliency for those outside DoD charged with protecting us from terrorists.

Finding 3.7 states, "DoD installation access control systems and processes do not incorporate behavioral screening strategies and capabilities, and are not configured to detect an insider threat." and "Detecting a trusted insider's intention to commit a violent act requires observation of behavioral cues/anomalies."

It only sounds logical to me that if behavioral screening will detect people like Hasan we should use it to detect people like the underwear bomber. Are terrorists attempting to surreptitiously board commercial airliners not insider threats? I hope Secretary Gates sends Janet Napolitano a copy.

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From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Christmas-Day 2009, the term most often heard in the aftermath of attacks on the United States and our interests abroad that we were unprepared for is 'intelligence failure.' Time and again we discover that it's not what we couldn't know but what we should have known that would have prevented catastrophe. And it’s become an American tradition in the wake of these events to focus on the shortcomings of organizations and agencies in government more than the people who run them. Intelligence failures, or as President Obama calls them, 'systemic failures,' are almost always leadership failures.

A US Army Lieutenant Colonel I knew in Vietnam was relieved of his battalion command because one of his artillery batteries accidentally dropped rounds on a friendly unit during a combat operation.

One of the battalion's batteries was firing in support of an infantry company engaged in an intense, close-quarters battle with a Viet Cong unit. The forward observer with the infantry company that called for the artillery fire was adjusting it as best he could under difficult circumstances. One volley landed on his own company killing and wounding several US soldiers.

What struck me as odd at the time is that the colonel wasn't even commanding the battalion when the incident occurred. He was on leave in the United States. The battalion executive officer was in command. The exec, the battery commander, the forward observer, and the battalion commander all were reassigned.

When I saw him a few weeks later after he had returned to Vietnam, I told him I was sorry that he had been relieved and questioned the brigade commander's decision.

He quickly admonished me. He said he would have made the same decision had he been the brigade commander. He said it was his battalion and he was responsible for everything it did or failed to do, regardless of whether he was on leave at the time or not. "When we pin on our insignia of rank, we become accountable for our actions an those of the people we command," he told me. "Don't ever forget that." And I never have.

It may not always be appropriate to apply the same standards of accountability to civilian officials that we apply to military officers in the United States. Where the lives of American citizens are involved, however, that difference should be very small.

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On Christmas Day a combination of luck, incompetence, and quick reaction prevented the scattering of 300 bodies from Northwest Flight 253 across the Michigan landscape. The breakdown in security that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the aircraft and reports that there are hundreds more like him in Yemen waiting to martyr themselves should serve as wake-up call to President Obama and his administration. It also provides him an opportunity that he should not fail to take advantage of.

Air travelers have come to expect airport security screening as a necessary inconvenience in today's world. Commercial aircraft are just too tempting targets for terrorists; and after 9/11, we all know too well what can happen.

Despite the inconvenience and annoyance it has caused us, it has provided a general sense of security to the flying public. The Christmas-Day attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253, however, has made us acutely aware of the illusion that sense of security was.

No security system exists that can't be penetrated, bypassed, or deceived by someone who is determined and dedicated enough to find the flaws in it. Reports out of Yemen reveal that al-Qaeda uses the latest security scanning equipment to practice deceiving it.

Full-body scanners have been around for several years but not in widespread use. Now airports around the world will scurry to buy and use more of them, but they too are not foolproof.

The most effective airport security systems, like the ones used at Israeli airports, do not rely almost exclusively on technology (metal detectors, x-ray machines, and body scanners). Screening by well trained security personnel with access to the latest intelligence and who employ multiple techniques, including questioning passengers and profiling to supplement scanners, are the most effective.

The US and many other countries avoid profiling for political reasons and routinely delegate questioning passengers to untrained airline employees.

If we truly want better airport security they we will have to accept more than security officers viewing our private parts on full body scanners.

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Nearly two feet of snow fell in Washington, DC, last weekend, setting a record for a December snowfall and guaranteeing a white Christmas. Senate Democrats couldn't wait, however, and they braved the blizzard, exchanged Christmas presents early, and got the 60 votes they needed to invoke cloture and ensure final passage of their unpopular healthcare-reform bill in January. Democrats should enjoy their new toy when it arrives. All they are likely to find under their Christmas tree next year is a notice that their House and Senate have been repossessed.

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Like the recent case of US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, are the pending courts-martial of three US Navy SEALs for allegedly punching captured terrorist Ahmed Hashim Abed, the purported planner of the 2004 Fallujah killings of four Blackwater security guards, another case of political correctness displacing common sense?

In Hasan’s case, fear of accusing a Muslim officer of highly questionable behavior allowed him to escape the scrutiny common sense dictates he should have gotten before it was too late. Now, many suspect that fear of detainee-abuse allegations may have led to charges against the SEALs that are not warranted.

The first unit of the 30,000 troops President Obama has ordered into Afghanistan, 1500 Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will arrive before Christmas. Many of them have spent Christmas away from home before in Afghanistan or Iraq. They'll join thousands of others who have done the same. It goes with the territory. It's no big deal, unless it's your first time.

For me that first time was Christmas 1966. A brand new 2nd LT assigned to the reactivated 9th Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kansas, six months earlier, I deployed on 2 December with the 3rd Brigade aboard the USNS General William Weigal out Oakland, California. Twenty-one days later we moved by truck convoy from the port of Vung Tau, South Vietnam, to the 9th's new base camp at Bearcat southeast of Saigon. I spent Christmas eve sitting on a sandbag wall, cleaning my M-16 rifle, looking up at the stars, and thinking about my family 11,000 miles away. I'll never forget that lonely night because it made me aware of what Christmas is really all about--family, friends, and shared beliefs.

A lot has changed in 44 years--the troops today have have email, cellphones, digital pictures, and video. What hasn't changed is that America's young men and women must still go in harms way to defend our freedom. Remember our troops this Christmas. They'll be thinking about us.

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By now, unless the only place you get your news is from ABC, CBS, or NBC, you know what “Climategate” is all about. The hacking and dissemination of more than a thousand emails from the influential Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, revealed wholesale deception and data manipulation to support global-warming trends that don’t exist. Curious minds want to know, what impact will it have?

Considerable impact; more I suspect, than most people believe, not only on the climate-change establishment, but on the scientific community in general, the alternative energy industry, the so called mainstream media (MSM), and Democrats. The emails themselves were explosive enough; however, their full effect will take time to play out.

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As a US Army Captain, I was stationed on Oahu, Hawaii, in the mid-1970s. Our house in Pearl City overlooked Pearl Harbor. In the military and later as a civilian working for the Department of Defense, I visited Hawaii dozens of times until I retired from government service in 2007.

Living there and visiting so often, I had a different perspective, of course, than the tourist who only visits Hawaii once or twice. Still, I couldn't drive by the USS Arizona Memorial or, after 1998, the battleship USS Missouri without remembering the events of December 7, 1941. And I couldn't stand on either and look down at the sunken hulk of the USS Arizona with oil still seeping from it and where bodies of 1102 of the 1177 sailors remain entombed without thinking about what it must have been like that day.

I was only a few hundred yards from  from the Pentagon on September, 11, 2001. I heard the plane crash into the building, saw the column of smoke, and smelled the burning jet fuel. A few months later when I visited Hawaii, I went again to the Arizona Memorial. This time I had an even deeper understanding of the shock and surprise the men of the Arizona must have experienced.

With each passing year, the memory of that "day of infamy" fades further in the American consciousness. For many, it's becomes just another tourist attraction. A nation at war, America would do well to keep the memories of the attacks of December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 alive.

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