Neanderthals, Ethnicity, and Social Darwinism

When I was 5 or so, my Uncle Quig, a rough and jovial, self-educated free-thinker, remarked in passing: "You know, Marcky, you'll hear a lot of people claim the Neanderthals are extinct. But they're not. Just look around you!"

At this remove, it's hard to say whether my good uncle, whom I loved for spoiling me and feared for the tools of mobility and violence he versed me in, was being literal, figurative, or both. Regardless, I have ever since pondered what may have happened to that race, whether they survive at all in our genome, or how they may have influenced humanity's development. Neanderthals are commonly portrayed in speculative science as an inferior design, a deservedly failed race. In truth, it's not at all certain either was the case, and the procedural developments leading to humans as presently composed is, I suspect, much more variegated than reigning orthodoxies suggest.

To the Neanderthals, we must have looked like out-grown children, lacking in menacing brow ridges, our eyes so exposed and unarmored. They may have noted how our cranial sutures never even close completely. On first meetings, they surely would've heard how our throats could make words like bird-song, or even the cooing of babes. Instincts in their equal or greater brain capacities must have been triggered, and they might have even decided on the spot we were comparatively fragile creatures, in need of nurturing.

And nurture the Neanderthals certainly did. Evidence indicates they far outclassed our forebears in that regard. One in five of their found remains come from individuals over 50 years old, data which dumbfounds scientists who study primitive humans. Among sapien remains of the same vintage, attaining the 50 year benchmark of longevity was a comparatively rare achievement. Yet more Neanderthal remains have been found, individuals who reached past 70 or 80, their bones so afflicted with advanced arthritis, for practical purposes they were immobile. Well cared for, nonetheless, apparently with some good sort of Social Security system. Neanderthal graves were covered with flowers. This and a host of other clues point to that race being, in the main, gentle creatures with elaborate rituals and mild manners, not lacking in intelligence. They were recently re-classified as a sub-set of Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

Facts lurk behind legends. The conceptualized fantasies of dwarves and trolls may echo disdain proto-humans felt for their shorter, squatter, coarse-featured cousins. Yet the two species overlapped for at least 60,000 years. There are clues to what happened. Near the latter part of that period, when Neanderthal artifacts disappear, Cro-Magnons were engaging in hazing rituals. And there is very old evidence of human torture.

For example, rock carvings over 10,000 years old depict hog-tied men in a Sicilian cave. Hog-tying is a simple but extremely effective means of torture, one which allows torturers to kill their victims by the action of leg muscle tension against rope tied around the throat. The victim's innate reflexes ensure death by strangulation, and the torturers can revive them as many times as desired. If you've ever died by strangulation, you know it's an extremely uncomfortable, viscerally terrifying experience, and the ancients from which we come had already perfected this agonizing death by 500 generations ago. Genocide as pastime is voluminously illustrated in our histories, the smallest of ethnic differences have conflated shocking levels of ferocity, and these tendencies would seem to be rather deeply embedded in our DNA. Our evolutionary decisions may have to be made in the space of about 30 seconds, about the length of warning time a select few of our race would receive in the event of an encompassing nuclear war.

At a time when US soldiers are being trained to "bait" Iraqi boys by leaving coils of wire or various objects on the ground so that, when examined and picked up the boys can be shot dead in good conscience, the question of what happened to the Neanderthals seems pretty topical. If we're so willing to hunt our fellows, equal to us in all ways, in naked imitations of The Most Dangerous Game, one wonders what hells were visited on species which represented the Other. Were Neanderthals hunted to extinction for sport? Were they displaced, or replaced? Or were they folded into our bodies and cortices?

The fragments jutting out from the hominid past are so complex that a close replica of humanity's future may already have once lived. It seems likely all the scenarios above occurred in parallel. Gene flow across regions is persistent across human development, so if it was possible for humans to mate and breed with Neanderthals, they did so. My long-held hunch would now be called replacement theory: we interbred routinely, and for a long time. But on average, Neanderthal mothers liked having hybrid human offspring more than (we'll call them Cro-Magnon) human mothers liked having hybrid Neanderthals. While their offspring might have displayed the typical hybrid's hyper-vitality, there may have been some degree of "mulishness" manifested by lower fertility. Even in the absence of active genocide or infertility, social preferences connected with Neanderthal nurturing instincts being triggered by those smooth human baby-faces, would lead to being out-bred and replaced.

Again, it's just a hunch, and scientists are avidly following DNA trails in an effort to settle the cross-breeding arguments. So my speculations could be completely wrong. The general subject, however, brings us right 'round to the prime motive fear of the Clash of Civilizations crowd. Fear of being out-bred. The Neanderthal may have been a more formidable fighter than the humans, and skeletal structures alone support that case. Seeing their numbers dwindle and suffer persecution, Neanderthals may have sometimes retaliated with hostilities, perhaps even burning themselves out in a last gasp in the Europe of 30-40,000 years ago. Now as then, aggression comes in many forms, and the use of passive aggression in modern regional-cultural settings should yield far better survival profiles than confrontational models currently being applied to such futile effect. This would also allow for the preservation and promotion of ethnicities, and excellent means of hedging bets for species survival. We'll see if I'm right about that Neanderthal DNA, and if we figure out how to make it.

Wargame: Consequences Of Bombing Iran, Pt. II

There aren't enough country clubs around Boca Raton to embrace the generals who will fail in the Mid-East. There are also a lot of interesting stories state-side to share, it's just that they're all eclipsed, if you're cadged for time, by what's going on in The Gulf.

Some genuinely competent and thoughtful analysts have gone on the record saying the US won't attack Iran because it would be economic suicide, and would trigger a worldwide recession. I previously wrote about the nasty blowback US and Coalition ground forces in Iraq would face from escalated and open Iranian involvement in the insurgency there. But guess what? Cheney, the Neocons, the Likudniks, and the Reich Wing have good reason to think the Iranians are cheating, to fear the mushrooming-cloud-thingie, and they are all desperately working to gin up a case for taking out the nascent production facilities, which Iran has every right to have and for all I know could be nothing more than holes drilled deeply into the ground and some cement mixing. However, the Neocons are freaked out over this and have been thinking about it a long time. And unlike us, they've got access to all the free go-juice they want. Iran hasn't attacked anything since 1825, but given their past and present sins in the region, Neocon paranoia is justified. Let's hope renewed Democratic threats under Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's majority to cut the funding for the war are genuine. Meanwhile, though, the train keeps rolling.

This week, with Admiral William Fallon being put in command of the Pentagon's Central Command for Iraq, the Neocons have laid a few more sections of the required track to reach their ultimate goal, to remain the Mid-East's masters. That's right. They put a Navy fly-boy, Vietnam vet, blue-lagoon Pacific Admiral in charge of land-based operations. Whassup? Dudn't make much sense? Well, it do if his main purpose is to mount a sea-based bombing campaign against Iran. Fallon relieves the Special Forces-trained, Lebanese-descended and Arabic-speaking General Abizaid. And the guy who wrote the Army's most recent book on counterinsurgency and had some success in subduing the insurgency in Mosul, Lt. General David Petraeus, takes over from George William Casey, Jr., whose chief claim to fame is that his dad was the most senior military commander to die in Vietnam, in a copter crash when he was Major General commanding the 1st Cavalry Division. Casey is said to be the next Chief of Staff, replacing the Special Forces-trained Peter Schoomaker. When I'm trying to tell the next moves of an organization, I listen less to what they're saying and more to their new hires at the top. It's as good a compass as you get.

The Times says that two Israeli fighter/bomber squadrons are training to attack Iranian production facilities with the nuclear-tipped "bunker-buster" bombs: Israel Plans Nuclear Strike On Iran. Israel, of course, denies this. But I recall a lot of GBU-28 bunker-busters were shipped to Israel through Glasgow last summer, and they weren't used in Lebanon.

This is the part in those old war movies where the klaxons are sounding on the ship, and the announcer says over the loudspeakers, "Now hear this, now hear this!" Any type of attack on Iranian soil will mean severe oil supply disruption for at least three months, with periods of severe disruption continuing for the duration of a conflict. Iran would not only shut its own oil in, it would also be able to completely close the Straits of Hormuz, through which roughly 50% of the world's oil is shipped. Estimates on how long they could keep the Straits closed off vary widely, but it would take a significant amount of time to clear tankers sunk in the very narrow shipping lanes, a great deal of firepower to clear the area of military threats, constant minesweeping and taking of coastal land to prevent sabotage, and the expensive indefinite vigilance of at least a couple of carrier battle groups.

Even if the Straits of Hormuz can be kept clear, it'll be so expensive on top of spreading Damocles in Iraq that the effort is unwinnable--oh, and pardon me for being skeptical of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve being solid for six months' worth of supply, since it was drawn down after Hurricane Katrina shut down at least 11 oil refining, pumping, production, or transfer facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. It is time to go buy some spare gasoline, store up on some food and necessaries, and figure out how to change our energy consumption lives, because it looks like the Neocons are going to change them for us. And for those heavily parked in the stock market, it's time to start moving the car before it's stripped of saleable parts and torched by thieves.

It won't be long now. Either the people trying to stop an attack on Iran (diplomats representing more or less the entire world) will be successful and the Cheneyettes will break and recede, or Iran will be attacked and First World economies will be plunged into disruption, panic, and severe recession. Plunged into history. But the Cheneyettes still control the Pentagon promotions and the mainstream airwaves, so we must conclude they're still running things, however tenuously.

Wargame: Consequences Of Bombing Iran, Pt. I

Al C. wrote to remark on my last post, Iraq and How to Win The Mid-East, that he would rather hear about what might really happen than what could ideally under leaders with a lick of sense. Realistically, the Bush Administration has worked itself out of face-saving options in Iraq, and is running out of time before its humiliation is complete. They are entering into a period in which the logic for attacking Iran goes like this: "If not now, never."

This is the same logic the German High Command labored under in the years prior to declaring war in 1914, and as uttered by Helmuth von Moltke. The longer Germany waited, the thinking went, the stronger its enemies and the weaker its position, particularly relative to Russia, worsening with time until there was no prospect of a German victory. Ironically Germany knocked all its adversaries in the East out of the war, but lost in the West, which was not its preferred battleground. Next time, in WWII, the German High Command tried to knock the West out first, before turning to what it still saw as the true evolving threat in the East. However, they felt compelled to attack eastward before they had completed a defeat of England, once again out of fear Russia was too rapidly gaining in relative strength. (It was.) Faced with a Catch-22 they found unacceptable, the German wargamers decided to free themselves from a key constraint, believing a course of aggressive action to be their lowest risk. They were wrong, very wrong. Twice.

This fear of impending failure and associated desperate logic are well known in military affairs and labeled under the "Flucht nach Vorne" (flee forward) conundrum, and it'd be strange if the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and especially Israel weren't feeling the teeth in this tendency gnaw on their brains day and night. I don't mean to compare the group individually or collectively to the German High Command, they do such a fine job themselves, but to spotlight a powerful planning dilemma. If Iran develops nuclear weapons capability, it at best means the end of American oligarchy in the region, via a Persian balance of power with Israel. Both Israel and Iran are widely seen as willing to use nuclear weapons against each other, so there is the Catch-22. (I don't agree with it, but there it is. I think it's more plausible that Israel finds the prospect of military parity unacceptable, and that BushCo finds the prospect of ceding energy control to market forces unacceptable.) The West's logic is that an Iran led by mullahs must either be stopped from developing any nuclear capacity at all or undergo regime change, and that if neither outcome can be achieved it must be struck first. Reality: there's not going to be a regime change, because Iran is expanding is influence, is not under immediate threat of domestic unrest, and is in an excellent defensive position militarily and politically. They're not going to stop enriching uranium for nuclear energy, at least not at an acceptable price, because it is their right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

I believe the odds of a first strike on Iran during 2007 are greater than 50%. There are many consequences which can be easily projected from such an act, many of them far-reaching and some very dark. Let's for the sake of comfort assume a response would be escalated gradually and not careen immediately out of control into a global nuclear war. I'm fairly optimistic on this point because Russia, Iran, and China all would have a common tormenter conveniently within reach: the US troops, mercenaries, bureaucrats, and facilities in Iraq. Think the Iran Hostage Crisis, magnified a thousand times.

Our high-level planners have little idea how vulnerable Coalition ground forces are in Iraq. In the aftermath of an air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities, ground supply lines in the Shia rump of Iraq would be crimped shut, and the 400-mile supply line running from Kuwait would be immediately cut in numerous places, with columns attacked and plundered. All unarmored vehicles would require heavy escorts, and these would shoot anything which moved. Then bridges would be blown by guerillas, effectively limiting the armored columns to very limited local operation only. Obtaining fuel for vehicles would quickly become a major challenge. After one week, many garrisons would be unable to mount offensive operations, and most would desperately need re-supply even in the absence of any attack. They would need to obtain food from the local populace, another challenge it is hard to imagine would proceed without significant resistance.

Re-supply by air would commence fitfully, with helicopters eventually dispatched to remote bases. Iran can be expected to speedily supply the latest Russian-made MANPAD (shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles) weapons systems to Shia militias. There are already indications sophisticated portable air defense systems are in Sunni hands, as 1 F-16 and four helicopters went down in the Anbar Province during the week of November 27th. The presence of these SAMs in any numbers at all would make re-supply by helicopter no longer be feasible because of unacceptably high loss rates at low altitudes. Within two weeks' time this would force unit consolidation into the largest bases, particularly those bases with air strips allowing more efficient re-supply and with very long lines of sight for defensibility. Few other locations in the country would be safely tenable for long.

Even in the absence of any Iranian "freedom fighter" formations, which would probably be marched in from Iran as a response to a US or Israeli attack on its facilities, the problem for most of the coalition troops would be balancing the likelihood of prolonged supply interruption with the feasibility of breaking out by pulling a "Thunder Road" over to a larger fortified base. In many cases it would be against orders or infeasible, so some bases could be worn down by simple lack of supply and lack of access. In order to conserve supplies and defensive capacity, smaller garrisons would fortify their positions and cease patrols. For those which obeyed orders and didn't quickly break out, you would begin to see company-level guerilla actions against them. The smaller garrisons would be the first to be cut off, like those of the Danes, Poles, and Brits. Typical evacuation scenarios would probably be columns of humvees and trucks driving into unexpectedly heavy RPG ambushes, or helicopters being shot down while trying to land or take off from a base, with prolonged firefights as air assets are used to secure the area, and then having the process repeat. There are only so many helicopters available, and they are not easily replaced, so the threat of SAMs would result in widespread caution regardless of their actual presence. Many garrisons and columns between them would likely be captured. I can't see how there wouldn't be thousands of captured troops, and indeed that outcome would probably be the primary objective of Iraqi militia and Iranian political activity.

If an overall militia battle plan were decently timed and coordinated, there wouldn't be enough air cover to go around and bases could be directly assaulted and overwhelmed in force, probably at night. Atrocities could well be expected if significant numbers of Iranian civilians had been victims of US or Israeli air attacks, said to be a virtual certainty because of the urban locations of many of their hardened bunkers. However, captured troops are the best protection from retaliatory air attacks, and as hostages would provide very damaging ongoing political effects and a very strong negotiating position. Many Americans, unfortunately, would feel the effects of the Bush Administration's disavowals to honor Article Three of the Geneva Conventions (those pertaining to humane treatment of prisoners and non-combatants) and this would likely pose an immediate and significant threat of rapid escalation on the part of the United States.

In terms of effectiveness, the Iraqis have had a long time to observe coalition tactics, compare response levels and timing, and must be understood to have gained a working sense of how to exploit declining operational capabilities. Fortunately, the Shia militias who would form the backbone of an Iranian response are not as practiced as the Sunnis. Their level of preparation is unknown, but there is significant risk that it is much higher than expected, and levels of unit command and control discipline may be surprisingly high because of their now-routine civil war operations and the widespread Shia penetration of Iraqi Security and Police Forces. These forces were armed and trained by the United States. There is also ample evidence of highly sophisticated tactical thinking in the Iran-Hezbollah cooperation in constructing effective defensive positions in Lebanon; it is unknown if any similar cooperation, in terms of doctrine or tangible aid, has leeched over into Shia Iraq, but the possibility must be allowed for as not being remote. If any of these provisions are true, the above speculations on the speed, severity, and style of a Shia response on coalition forces may tend to be underestimated.

Given what we've seen from the US command structure, it seems likely garrisons would be ordered to remain in place and wait for re-supply, and also likely no Generals in the chain of command would disobey White House orders quickly enough to avoid serious losses and re-deploy vulnerable garrisons into protected and easily supplied positions. Depending on lack of responsiveness, 15-25% of coalition forces and mercenaries in Iraq could easily be lost, primarily through isolation, transportation vulnerability, and capture. This estimate depends far more on the level of preparation in Shia militias, than it does on US or Coalition responses, because of the overwhelming vulnerability of their largely unsecured supply network. Obviously it is my opinion that Iraqi Shia militia preparations and cooperation with Iran have been or will be fairly significant. Only intended as a "Part One," this section focuses solely on military conditions in Iraq following an attack on Iran, and as such ignores possible external effects of local oil facility attacks, military attacks on US Naval ships in the Persian Gulf, and wider escalation such as the closure of oil transportation infrastucture and the Straits of Hormuz, destruction of oil production facilities, and the activation of terrorist cells.

Downed F-16 Follow-Up

Circumstantial evidence of the presence of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles in Iraq has mounted to the "very high" level:

Three US Helicopters Crash in Iraq
27 November 2006 | 21:55 | FOCUS News Agency
Baghdad. Three helicopters of the US Air Force crashed in Iraq on Monday, RIA Novosti reports.
According to the information the aircrafts crashed in the same region where an F-16 fighter jet crashed earlier. No further information has been announced so far.

The odds of four aircraft crashing in the same area on the same day, unless from enemy fire, are very low. And about that F-16CG...the Air Force spokesperson at the F-16's base says all its pilots are "safe and accounted for." Obvious question: then who belongs to the dead body in the anti-gravity suit strapped into the ejection seat? The plane was assigned to the 524th Fighter Squadron based at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico.

One additional area for speculation is that Iran is testing out new weapons systems which they recently bought from Russia, like the truck-mounted Tor M1 system. One thing's for sure: the US won't be staying in Iraq for long if they lose a heli or a fighter jet every day.