Carriers in motion to Gulf

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In Stratfor’s War Diary (sub­scrip­tion required), it’s being reported that the car­rier USS Con­stel­la­tion will set sail for the Gulf later this week and will arrive in Decem­ber. The USS Harry S. Tru­man is also due in late Decem­ber or early Jan­u­ary. These two car­ri­ers will relieve the USS Abra­ham Lin­coln and the USS George Wash­ing­ton, which are cur­rently sta­tioned in the Gulf and the Mediter­ranean, respec­tively. How­ever, if the Lin­coln stays in the Gulf and the Wash­ing­ton moves there, that would give the United States four car­ri­ers by the begin­ning of 2003.
Also mov­ing is the USS Kitty Hawk, which left Japan a few days ago, mis­sion unknown. A British car­rier is also on the move, appar­ently. Strat­for pre­dicts an attack soon after the first of the year.
This seems likely since France seems to be weak­en­ing in the United Nations and Rus­sia might be more likely to sup­port a hard res­o­lu­tion after the Chechen hostage sit­u­a­tion in the Nord-Ost the­atre. Britain is with the United States, obvi­ously, and China says it won’t veto a res­o­lu­tion. Bot­tom line: The U.S. will get its res­o­lu­tion.
Cry ‘havoc’ around the first of the year, me thinks. The dogs will be loos’d

Qatar denies coup attempt

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Well, hell. Qatar has denied the reports of an attempted coup on Oct. 12, call­ing the rumor “non­sense.“
This is a tough call for me to make, espe­cially after I blew it up as big as I did. But I’m not on the ground there, and I only have Strat­for and Ara​bic​News​.com to go by. While both can be pretty reli­able, the State Depart­ment has said there’s noth­ing to it and now Qatar says the same thing. For what it’s worth, I will say that it’s pos­si­ble that some­thing went down and both the U.S. and Qatar have vested inter­ests in pre­serv­ing the image of a happy, pacific part­ner­ship.
How­ever, just because some­thing is pos­si­ble doesn’t mean it hap­pened. I have to say until another source comes for­ward, it looks like rumors of a Qatari coup were just that — rumors. I regret com­pound­ing the error by pub­lish­ing it. I will do bet­ter next time.

Happy birthday, Turkey

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Happy 79th birth­day, Turkey! You look weeks younger!
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded by the mod­ern Turk­ish state Oct. 29, 79 years ago. For all of Turkey’s prob­lems today, no one should under­es­ti­mate the deter­mi­na­tion and accom­plish­ment of Atatürk. In the face of hos­tile ene­mies, a skep­ti­cal world and a col­lec­tion of peo­ples with no rea­son to band together, he forged a mod­ern and Western-facing nation out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Regard­less of how peo­ple view the mod­ern Turkey, it’s a damn sight bet­ter than what might have been had he failed. And for that I tip my hat to Father Turk.
I also think that were he alive today, he would have brought the same energy, deter­mi­na­tion (and, frankly, author­i­tar­i­an­ism) to the prob­lems of the Repub­lic. But he’s not, and Turkey needs to step out of the great man’s shadow and move on. Atatürk was able to accom­plish what he did because he didn’t worry about the demo­c­ra­tic process. And his approach was exactly right for what was needed at the time. But today, Turkey must embrace a full democ­racy and remove the mil­i­tary from the deci­sion mak­ing process. The slo­gan that adorns the steps lead­ing up to Atatürk’s mau­soleum in Ankara should be amended. Instead of “Sov­er­eignty rests with the Nation,” it should instead derive from the peo­ple — all of them, Turks and Kurds alike. His admo­ni­tion to the army to pro­tect the nation from all ene­mies for­eign and domes­tic should come with the appen­dix the peo­ple are not the enemy; they are cit­i­zens.
I’d like to think that Atatürk would rec­og­nize this. Turkey no longer needs a Great Man. It needs a great people.