Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 3

Mobile Blogging from here.

"I've seen the future, and it is murder."

--- Lenord Cohen

Is this story just another piece of idiot journalism from the NYT, or what?

I read this piece and I'm filled with a sense of both dejavu and a deep and unabiding sense of fear and loathing.

Suppose Obama is, indeed, planning to fail in Afghanistan. After he begins the pullout, then what? Does he go before the American people and just embrace defeat? After reading this article, reading Obama's nuclear posture review and seeing his circle jerk - er, "Nuclear Security Conference" - last week I'm wondering if there isn't an incredibly dumb yet surprsingly cohesive strategy in the whole thing: Barack Obama is going to win reelection by bombing Iran.

Sounds crazy, right?

But consider that perhaps things have not really gotten much better in Afghanistan. Consider that Obama has basically acquiesced to ISI/Taliban control of everything outside of Kabul. Consider that Obama then will be branded as mister "cut and run" by his opponent in 2012. Consider that Rambo is telling Obama that he's going to have to "triangulate" by getting tough on something and Iran is an easy target.

The more I think about it, the more sense bombing Iran probably makes to the increasingly vainglorious and strategicly tone- deaf crew we have running the policy shop at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave right now. The target package is fairly straight forward, and with a combination if cruise missile and B2 strike, coupled with a lingering campaign conducted via drones, a war against Iran must look like quit a splendid little war that we are certain to win- or at least end- in a really short time horizon.

Of course by losing Afghanistan and bombing Iran Obama will have completely erased all strategic rationale for his presidency. We will be no better off than if McCain/Palin had won and Obama's entire first/last term will have been a complete waist.

And the American people won't fall for it. Iran will squeeze whatever assets we have left in Afghanistan and Iraq and they'll do everything they can to escalate the adiministration into some kind of naval confrontation in the Gulf. It'll become clear pretty quickly that the attack achieved nothing and will probably hasten Iran's desire for a quick shoot just to prove that they still have a nuclear capacity.

And then Romney is going to have one hell of a mess on his hands January 21st, 2013.

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This is what happens when you pal around with terrorists...

Everyone has seen this video, I'm sure. Everyone has also heard a lot of the bullshit emanating out of people like James Fallows, who is a serious journalist and should know better. He should never compare the acts of troops under fire to the torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib.

This is what I see: Two journalists got a lead on a hot story - they were going to have the chance to hang out with a group of Mahdi Army guys. At that moment, these particular insurgents were involved in a battle with the 1-8th and 2-16th of the American 2nd Infantry Division. The ground pounders called in air support, which was delivered via an Apache helicopter, and the helicopter crew made a call - the best call they could possibly make given the information at their disposal - to engage a group of armed men operating in a region where the ground units were reporting fire. The insurgents were armed with AKs and RPGs, which can be clearly scene in the video. Later, a unmarked black van appears, several men pile out of the van and picked what appeared to be a wounded insurgent and also begin collecting weapons. The aircrew then requests, and is given, the green light to destroy the unmarked van.

I don't see anything in this video that violates any sort of Rules of Engagement or Rules of Land Warfare. The black van was not marked with a red cross or a red crescent. The journalists did not report their position  to the U.S. Army ahead of time. To the best knowledge of both the ground units and the aircrew, all of these men were insurgents setting up an ambush in the path on an American infantry unit.

Being a war correspondent is risky. I have a great deal of respect for the men who do the job, but correspondents know the risk. They know - especially in an insurgency where the combatants don't wear uniforms - that they could be mistaken for insurgents themselves. They know - or should - that air power, mortars and artillery are all inherently indiscriminate and if you are standing beside a target you might get killed. While its a tragedy that these two journalists were killed in combat, it is not a war crime, and the ultimate responsibility for their death rests, not with the U.S. military - which as the video demonstrates goes out of its way to confirm a target before engaging - but with the journalists themselves, who willingly put themselves in harms way in pursuit of a story. 

Me Run? You Betcha!

 H/T: Andrew Sullivan used this video when live blogging Palin - and I find it fitting as well. As an aside, this actress is too old to be Evita, as was Madonna. 25-26 max. I'd love to see Lea Michel or Jessica Lee Golden as Evita. But I'm way off topic....

Palin. Sarah. Barracuda. 

Yeah.

"I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," Palin said, later adding: "I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."

I don't like it and I don't want it to happen. She's scary. She does not understand the gravity of the presidency.

Like her interview with Charlie Gibson, her views on foreign policy are just plain scary. "We win, they lose" or something.

I went to high school with Sarah Palin. Not Palin, per se, but a bunch of people who were just as dumb and just certain they were right. Fortunately for the world, most people that dumb and certain are swallowed whole by the mid-west or some small town in Alaska before they can do any real damage. Unfortunately, the McCain team was irresponsible enough to elevate this dangerous and unserious woman to a position where she could potentially do real damage.

From Sullivan: 

Do not under-estimate the appeal of a beautiful, big breasted, divinely chosen warrior-mother as a military leader in a global religious war. Bush at least had some inkling that we need a strategy to depolarize the Muslim world and bring moderates along with us to defeat the Islamists; in my view, he genuinely believed that what happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong but couldn't break down his denial that he had authorized almost all of it (she wants more of it); his Washington Cathedral speech reflected statesmanship (Palin wants brazen projection of hard power everywhere and her election as president would represent a true crisis in any alliances that Obama has been able to rebuild).

If Palin can navigate the primary process - and if unemployment remains high - the White House is hers. The press will empower the Junta from Alaska - just as they acted as accessories after-the-fact to John Edwards pathetic charade for nearly half a decade - before they turn on her midway through her first term. By then she'll have launch codes. And if the description of Palin from Game Change is to be believed - and no credible source has yet to disputed Heilemann and Halperin's scenes - then Palin is more then just a dilettante - she is quit possibly mentally unstable.

Palin did not understand WWI, WWII, the existence of two Koreas or even the name of her opponent in the vice presidential debate. Uninformed dose not begin to describe Palin.

She was prone to bouts of depression that left her near catatonic. She worried incessantly about her approval ratings in Alaska even as she was in the race of the lifetime that would have put her a heart beat away from the presidency. 

And then there's the weird story of her pregnancy - or - lack thereof? - with her youngest son. From today's Daily Dish:

Since I long ago committed to publishing any evidence I could find related to Palin's remarkable pregnancy stories (she steadfastly refuses to provide any), I post it below:

What dose this mean? Was Palin not pregnant? Not really in labor? This is just odd.

What I will say conclusively is this: Palin is a dangerous person. I fully support any T.V. network paying her as much money as possible so as to dissuade her from quiting her day job and running for president, but I fear this woman will have to be dragged from the national stage leaving claw marks all the way.

Hopefully, unemployment falls precipitously throughout the next two years and Obama will be virtually guaranteed a 2nd term. For whatever misgivings I have about the president - especially his penchant for not holding underlings accountable for failure - President Obama remains head and shoulders above Sarah Palin in terms of judgment and temperament. I wish the president a successful 2nd year. 


 

The Next Ten Years, Pt. 2

Recently, I predicted that within a decade there would be some sort of device which would instantly translate from language to another.  I pegged its arrival on the market as the year 2020. Maybe Google plans to beat me by a few years: 

Google's vision for a better world involves removing those pesky language barriers that keep people apart, and so the Internet search giant has begun development on a voice recognition and automatic translation system for cell phones. Such technology could either herald a new era of fruitful international collaboration or usher in new grievances and conflicts, depending on your viewpoint. The Times makes the obligatory reference to the Babel Fish of Hitchhiker's Guide that spawned bloody interstellar conflicts.
Experts remain divided over whether Google can accomplish its goal within several years, but the company may stand the best chance of doing so. So far, smart phone voice translators for English speakers have only come out for specific languages such as Japanese and Arabic.

Google already has a separate system for translating text on computers that covers 52 languages, and uses the company's special algorithms to continually scan millions of websites and documents as a form of improvement. It would presumably try to integrate the translation system with its more basic voice recognition system for smart phone commands.

Interestingly enough, Google appears poised to begin the creation of my predicted "Google Doctor" in the not-to-distant future as well. 

Book Review: The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, by Joel Kotkin

  In his new book The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, Joel Kotkin attempts to extrapolate current trends for forward 40 years to create a vision of exactly where and how the next hundred million Americans will live. I heard about this book in Tom Barnett's WPR column last week and immediately ordered it, looking forward to a nice bit of Utopian futurism. What I found was a somewhat meandering history of urban politics in America that is at once informative about the future of medium sized cities and uninformed about international politics and economics. The book is also long on description but short of prescription, preferring to say "this will happen" as opposed to "this is how things will happen".

   Kotkin begins his book by taking down a couple pieces of conventional wisdom about the United States - mainly that the U.S. is currently in a state of decline. Kotkin is especially rough on the notion that either China or India is poised to overtake the U.S. economically, pointing out that both countries still have a large percentage of their populations living in poverty and that China in particular is set to age rapidly, having over a third of their population over the age of 60 by the mid 2030s. Kotkin is certain that this rapid aging (which also impacts Japan and the E.U.) will bedevil most other major powers while the America's ability to integrate new immigrants will allow us to remain dynamic. Ultimately, Kotkin offers a vision for a healthier, wealthier, post-racial, post-ethnic America that will remain the global leader in innovation even in the mid 21st century.

What's Useful About this Book:

As a resident of Columbus, Ohio, I know that Kotkin's analysis of the folly of a medium sized mid-western city trying to become a "luxury city" is 100% accurate. Kotkin calls out Cleveland and Dayton specifically, but as I watch the local debate about whether or not to bail out the local NHL franchise (money looser - big time) I think his point is dead on. Kotkin's advice is that medium sized cities need to focus on what he call "vanilla" services, such as police, fire and local schools, as opposed to marque projects "downtown" which are designed to attract the "creative class" but typically wind up money pits in all but the largest and wealthiest cities. Kotkin compares the results of Potemkin luxury cities, like Cleveland, Philadelphia and Dayton, with vanilla cities like Austin and Phoenix, and suggests that the path of the latter is a better strategy for 21st century sustainability.

On the topic of sustainability, Kotkin is bullish on not only on America but the global environment as well, taking a very Lumborgesque "wealthier is healthier" outlook. And Kotkin is skeptical that the current environmental obsession with urban living, believing that Americans are unlikely to ever give up their preference for owning their own home and living in the suburbs. Kotkin believes that current Great Plains small towns in states such as Iowa and Nebraska will become the suburban boom towns of the next several decades.

Less Useful Sections of the Book: Unaddressed Issues:

1. Kotkin spends exactly zero time addressing the coming Medicare implosion. I think it's beyond remiss to write a book in 2010 about America in the year 2050 without seriously addressing the financial issues the U.S. government faces. 

2. Kotkin's read on international politics is, at best, short sighted. He seems to embrace the notion of America as an ever-evolving institution but quickly reverts to The Clash of Civilizations when discussing other world powers such as China and Russia. He takes the so-called Beijing Consensus way too seriously, seemingly ignoring the myriad of problems which plague China's political system - and which justify his belief that China will not surpass the U.S. - and suggests that China will develop a sort of Sino-Globalization opposed to the United States. Can't have it both ways guy - either China has a long way to go or they've discovered a longer lasting light bulb - can't be both. For what its worth, I'm a big supporter of his first proposition - China has a long way to go before they are truly strong and what we've seen in the last 3 decade basically amounts to China picking a lot of low hanging fruit.

Kotkin's read on Russia is even worse, bordering on silly even. He suggests that Russia will successfully embrace something called neo-Czarism. This supposition completely ignores the failure of the Russian economy in the wake of the financial crisis and also ignores Kotkin's earlier read on Russia's weakness.

3. Perhaps the biggest weakness of Kotkin's book has to do with point #1. Kotkin makes a series of vague suggestions for policies but offers no way to pay for them. He writes vaguely about energy policy and industrial policy but doesn't explain how America can square the circle, so-to-speak, with regard to the increasing share of overall government spending going to entitlement spending and the need, if we are to pay for Kotkin's policies, to increase discretionary programs.

In conclusion, The Next Hundred Million offers a welcome dose of optimism but is long on assertions and short of policy national policy suggestions. On the other hand, Kotkin's observations about housing patterns could be very useful to students or practitioners of state and local politics. In fact, I recommend Columbus mayor Micheal Colman read this book ASAP.  Beyond local politics, however, Kotkin's theories could use a bit of fleshing out, and I might recommend he look into writing a follow up which examines what type of economic policies would best empower state and local governments to follow his policies.

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

The Opposite of "Get Rich Quick" isn't "Get poor soon"....

Nick Kristoff has a great story in the NYT about a reverse get-rich-quick-scheme:

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.

“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”

Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.

 Yep. These idiots sold their $1.6 million dollar house and donated half the money to charity.

Then they wrote a book about it.

I'm disgusted. Here is why:

1. That little girl has a GREAT topic to write about in her admissions essay for Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, etc. I would kill for a great topic like that. As long as she isn't a complete knuckle dragger, she's virtually guaranteed acceptance. Is it worth $800k to get into a top school? I don't know, it seems like you'd be better off making a donation to the school of your choice - but - I suppose you need access to an alumni network to know who to talk to about a donation and you still risk the girl not getting accepted to the school you made the donation to whereas with this method she's got a all access path she can use to apply to many schools.

2. Whenever Earnest Hemingway wrote a hero the character would often perform selfless acts without the desire for recognition. These bozos didn't have that problem. If you're really such a hero, why don't you donate the money anonymously? But no, not in America, not in the year 2010. Today, you do something "good" (I'll to that in a minute) and then you write a Oprah Book about the event. I'm going to go out on a limb and say between the advance, royalties, maybe an eventual movie deal (Tom Hanks and Sandra Bollock, I say), plus their daughter's acceptance to a Ivy League school I bet they recouped most of that $800 grand.

3. Oh, and the economics of the whole thing is just ridiculous. Why not say to your daughter, "How did the guy in the Mercedes get the Mercedes? What do you think he does for a living? Do you think he's maybe made better choices then the bum?" The answer to all those questions is that the guy in the Mercedes was almost certainly a highly educated professional who invested many years into becoming proficient at something whereas the bum probably wouldn't know what to do with money if you gave it to him. But you won't get into Harvard writing that in your admissions essay.

What this family did was a get-rich-quick-scheme in reverse.

Get rich-quick-schemes are dangerous.    

The money they donated to a charity in Ghana would have done more good if it had been invested in a business in Ghana.

But more important is the implication that there is a "simple" solution to poverty. The implication is that if everyone would just cut their consumption in half poverty could be eliminated and the ECONOMY would be sated by the sacrifice. This theory was recently pilloried in a source far more scholarly and reputable than the NYT's Op-Ed page. 

The only solution to poverty is to grow the economy. You cannot grow the economy easily. Growing the economy requires investment in companies that invest in innovation and new technologies. Growing the economy also requires years of education in science and mathematics.

The Next Ten Years

Curzon, of Coming Anarchy, has an interesting blog post entitled, Ahh, the Futility of Strategic Forecasting…, which details some of the trials and tribulations of trying to guess what sorts of challenges a nation-state may face several decades out. For example, he points out that:

1900 - If you had been a strategic analyst for the world’s leading power, you would have been British, looking warily at Britain’s age old enemy: France.
1910 - You would now be allied with France, and the enemy would now be Germany
1920 - Britain and its allies had won World War I, but now the British found themselves engaged in a naval race with its former allies the United States and Japan.
1930 - For the British, naval limitation treaties were in place, the Great Depression had started and defense planning for the next five years assumed a “ten year” rule—no war in ten years. British planners posited the main threats to the Empire as the Soviet Union and Japan, while Germany and Italy were either friendly or no threat.
1936 - A British planner would now posit three great threats: Italy, Japan, and the worst, a resurgent Germany, while little help could be expected from the United States.
1940 - The collapse of France in June left Britain alone in a seemingly hopeless war with Germany and Italy with a Japanese threat looming in the Pacific. America had only recently begun to scramble to rearm its military forces.
1950 - The United States was now the world’s greatest power, the atomic age had dawned, and a “police action” began in June in Korea that was to kill over 36,500 Americans, 58,000 South Koreans, nearly 3,000 Allied soldiers, 215,000 North Koreans, 400,000 Chinese, and 2,000,000 Korean civilians before a cease-fire brought an end to the fighting in 1953. The main opponent in the conflict would be China, America’s ally in the war against Japan.

With this challenge in mind, he asks C.A. readers to make predictions about the next ten years. And since nobody likes a wishy-washy visionary, here goes nothing:

U.S.Politics


By 2014, the American political system will face its Waterloo. Four or five weeks ago I would have suggested this involved the disillusion of the GOP, but after last Tuesday's vote in Massachusetts I'll say its a tossup about which party collapses over the next two election cycles. Frankly, if the Democrats can't pass ObamaCare with 60 votes in the senate, a huge majority in the house and control of the White House, they don't deserve to be a party anyway.

But the election of Scott Brown highlights another issue which the U.S. will have to wrestle with over the next 2 elections cycles - the need to have a super majority to do anything at all in the senate. We will face a "Waterloo" when some sort of crisis - be it natural disaster, terrorist attack or financial crisis - will expose the senate as a hollow organization. Should such a crisis happen - particularly if the crisis involves massive inflation or the U.S. defaulting on its debts, American may have no choice but to convene a new constitutional convention and design a parliamentary system.

On the other hand, a new national party, perhaps spurred on by the "Tea Parties" could help create a sustainable centrist coalition. The Tea Parties, as they stand today, lack any sort of coherent policy position beyond "cut spending," etc, but as either the Democrats or GOP collapse its possible talented politicians will move to a viable 3rd party.

By the election of 2020 statehood for at least 1 Caribbean country will be a major campaign issue.

By 2020 marijuana will be sold over the counter in 10 states.

By 2020 gay marriage will be legal in at least half of the U.S.  

U.S. Economics 

On the economic front, 2020 will see a implosion of the "healthcare bubble". By the middle of the next decade,  most Western nations will be in a panic over he increasing cost of providing medical care to their aging populations. But at the same time, genetic engineering, nano machines and improving CPU power will be working from the other directions, making diagnosis, prevention and treatment easier and cheaper. 2020 will be the year that healthcare costs actually level off as increased understanding of the human genome and a program called "Google Doctor" will create "predictive medicine", which will allow for the prevention of most serious and chronic illnesses through gene therapy and other extremely early interventions.

By 2015, more people will be sent into low Earth orbit by private companies than by governments. By 2020 a private company will place a lander on the moon and a major business publication will publish an article entitled "Who Owns the Moon?" as entrepreneurs begin to press for a renegotiation of the mid-20th century outer space treaty, which does not provide for the allocation of property rights in outer space. Ultimately, there will have to be a "Homestead Act" of the 21st century to settle the question of who owns celestial bodies, especially resource rich asteroids.

By 2020 the iLanguage 3.0 App for the IPhone X is going to change the world. iLanguage will be a program which can interpret any known language into any other known language instantly.

By 2020, a online program known as "Google Lawyer" will be able to pass a legal Turing Test, by automatically compiling a legal brief that is indistinguishable from a brief written by top lawyers.

Geo Politics

By 2020, the worlds great powers, including China, Japan, the E.U. and the U.S. will continue to have a generally amicable and constructive relationship as the amount of economic and cultural connectivity continues to increase. The U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. will have be economically connected to the point where a citizen of any one "Anglo-Sphere" nation will not need a visa to work or attend college in another.

In Europe and the Middle East, there will be much hand wringing over the large refugee camps that exist to house the several million survivors of the 2nd Russo-Iranian War (Also known as the Caucasus War of 2018 and the 3rd War of Soviet Reunification). The new secretary general of the U.N. will be elected on the promise to "finally de-radiate Moscow and Tehran" but he will privately admit that no one really knows how many years or how much money that project will take. Most serious observers will accept that large sections of both Iran and Russia will remain uninhabitable for maybe 100 years. 

Islamabad will be occupied by U.S., Afghan, E.U. and Chinese Peacekeepers whose job it will be to make sure the Indians keep their promise to leave Pashtunistan by 2025. 

 







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Stumbling Towards Bush 4.0 Territory

Looking back, president Bush went through three distinct iterations during his two terms in the White House.

Bush 1.0 (1998-September 10th, 2001) During this phase Bush was the "compassionate conservative", successful and popular governor of Texas and a man who knew that there were republican solutions to traditionally Democratic issues such as education.

Bush 2.0 (9/11 2001 - April 2004) This is the version that got up on pile of ruble in the days following 9/11 and promised a group of workers at ground zero that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." It was this notion of Bush as the warrior, the protector, that led directly to his reelection in November in 2004. However, by November of '04 the creation of the third version of Bush had already begun.

Bush 3.0 (April of 2004-1/09) In April of 2004 Rumsfeld offered Bush his resignation because of gross abuses of Iraqi POWs. Bush refused to accept the resignation. This is the president Bush that is most remembered today; the man who let events get the better of him. The high - or low - point of Bush 3.0 was his "heckuva job Brownie" moment in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

And so it came to pass in November of 2008 then senator Barack Obama was elected to bring change. Throughout his campaign, Obama promised repair the damage done by the Bush administration and restore transparency and accountability to government.

But that was Obama .07, the public beta released for testing before all the bugs had been ironed out.

The first official release of Obama 1.0 has thus far proved buggy and has often been corrupted by errant files left over from the previous software (Bush 3.0). And on Christmas day, 2009, the Obama OS suffered its first full-scale kernel panic requiring a complete reboot. So far, the administration has decided to release a patch, which is designed to correct the security flaw in Obama 1.0 and update the system to Obama 1.01. Unfortunately, this may not be enough to really correct the security flaws:

Everyone who read the name "Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab" prior to December 25, 2009 should be reprimanded and fired.

The White House findings state that, "Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab's father about Mr. Abdulmutallab's potential radicalization." It's an embarrassing sentence of bureaucratese in its own right, but more so when considered in context. The State Department didn't revoke Abdulmutallab's visa because an office clerk misspelled his name in a database.

Has no one in the intelligence community ever used Google? When "Abdulmutalab" was typed in, did the computer not ask, "Did you mean 'Abdulmutallab'?"

Another admission that crosses the threshold of bewildering into the realm of criminally negligent: the National Counterterrorism Center has a database of all known and suspected international terrorists. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was added to that database.

But that database does not feed directly into the TSA No-Fly List.

Who more than known terrorists belong on the No-Fly List? There should be no human involvement required here. One line of SQL database code could have averted disaster.

According to the White House, when the CIA and NCTC got the name of a radicalized militant from the militant's own father, and a warning that he was planning an attack, they did not search "all available databases to uncover additional derogatory information." How many databases are there? And how many terrorist databases must one appear in before he or she is considered a threat to U.S. national security?

This wasn't a ticking time bomb situation involving a lone wolf under the radar. Such a terrorist will succeed, and there's nothing we can do about it, aside from remaining vigilant. But the United States already knew about Abdulmutallab, and learned of his intentions on November 18th -- a month before he struck.

Most grating in the White House report is the repeated notion that Abdulmutallab's plot failed. It didn't. Nine years after 9/11, and after billions of spent dollars in needless security, confiscated fingernail clippers, and dumped breast milk, he succeeded in smuggling explosives onto an airliner destined for American soil. He succeeded in igniting the explosive. If not for dumb luck involving bad chemistry and a brave Dutch film director, there might today be a smoldering crater in Detroit.

Worse, there are a number of indications that the Bush 3.0 software, which was supposedly deleted, may be coming back:

After the attack, President Obama remained in Hawaii and enjoyed a Christmas vacation on the golf course. After the attack, National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter took a six-day skiing holiday. After the attack, CIA director Leon Panetta remained in beautiful Monterey, California. The nation, the administration claims, can be governed from afar, and that's probably true. But when terrorists attempt a major strike on U.S. soil, isn't it a good idea to have someone in the White House situation room above the rank of janitor?

This tells me that Obama 1.0 - now 1.01 - is treading dangerously close to becoming Bush 4.0. And all it takes in one successful attack inside the U.S. and I have no doubt that the house and senate will pursue there own method of deleting the corrupt software, which will be very divisive and dramatic for the whole country. 

A Step in the Right Direction

I applaud the president for taking responsibility for the Christmas Day Attack -aka The Boxer Rebellion (he he) - but I fear his proposed changes, absent the ending of a career or two, will simply create more paper shuffling and CYA mentality:

The government will strengthen criteria for putting people on no-fly lists barring them from U.S. aircraft. Authorities will comb databases of people suspected of ties to terrorist organizations and determine whether any of them have U.S. visas. The man accused in the Christmas airliner attack, Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had a visa, even though he had recently been added to a government watchlist.

What was the point of the terror watch list? I heard recently that there might be 500,000 names on the government's terror watch list. 500k isn't a "watch list", its like 50 divisions. If Al Qadea had 500k people they would attempt a conventional combined arms invasion of Egypt, not send some goon to blow up his pants on an airplane.

What I really want is a system to stop somebody from getting on a plane - not a scanner - not a series of questions, but a system whereby a CIA station chief receives a tip - say the name of a foreign national who is reasonably suspected of receiving training in martyrdom operations - and he can quickly - within maybe 1 or two minutes, tops, put out an APB to every entry point to not let someone with the following name, nationality, etc, cross. The technology required to do this is a very sophisticated and expensive piece of technology known as Gmail.

But the level of cooperation between the CIA, DOS and DHS is probably not possible, and the  devolution of authority into the hands of lowly CIA station chiefs (not really a lowly position, but in the mind of some deputy COS in D.C. they are) would cause fits back at both Langley and Foggy Bottom but I believe it is an aspirational goal.

Also, why is a person who is banned from England allowed to enter the U.S.? Anyone barred from entering either the U.K. or E.U. should undergo a extra layer of scrutiny before being allowed entry into the U.S.

Obamacare, creating a nation of Californias, pt. 2

It seems that Ben Nelson is now opposed to the special bribe deal he received in exchange for voting for the health care bill.

The Democrat wouldn't say who he has spoken to regarding the so-called "Cornhusker Kickback" but that he would see to it that Nebraska doesn't get a special deal.

"At the end of the day, whatever Nebraska gets will be available to all states," Nelson said during a conference call with reporters.

Nelson provided the crucial 60th vote that brought the reform bill to the full Senate after winning concessions to limit the availability of abortions in insurance sold in newly created exchanges. Among other things, he was promised federal funding to cover Nebraska's entire cost of a Medicaid expansion included in the bill. Other states will have to begin picking up a portion of the added expanse beginning in 2017.

Nelson has said he didn't ask for special treatment for his state.

Nebraska wasn't alone in getting Medicaid breaks. Vermont, Louisiana and Massachusetts also got help with their programs.

Nelson said Thursday that if he can't secure a similar deal for every state, he wants states to be freed from paying the cost of Medicaid expansion. That could mean eliminating the provision, finding another way to pay for it or allowing states to opt out.

Allowing states an opt out seems an odd way of expanding coverage, and sense that is ostensibly one of the primary goals of Obamacare it seems counter productive to allow it. More sensible - if the goal is to cover everyone - is to pay for as much of the expansion as possible at the federal - as opposed to the state - level.

Of course, that still doesn't address how the new federal spending will be paid for, but at least this change would mitigate some of the damage Obamacare could do to cash-strapped state governments.

Let's see if house and senate leaders call Nelson's bluff take him up on his offer.

Madame Secretary, resign pt. 2

Perhaps I was a bit hasty when I called for the resignation of the secretary of DHS.

Thinking back, I now wish I had called for the resignation of the director and all deputy directors of the CIA as well whomever is directly in charge of the foreign service.

And the secretary of DHS.

Here is why:

ABC ferreted out the truth behind news reports that Umar Abdulmutallab's father alerted the U.S. Embassy about his concern that his son had gotten involved with radicals. The way such reports were worded conveyed the idea that the CIA didn't have a smoking gun to work with. Actually, the CIA had a smoking cannon handed to them.

ABC learned that what really happened is that Umar phoned his father to say he was calling for the last time because the people he was with in Yemen were going to destroy his SIM card. That would make his phone unusable. And that was as much telling his father he was entering the final phase of training for a terrorist suicide mission.

His father immediately alerted Nigerian intelligence officials that he was afraid his son was preparing for a terrorist mission in Yemen. The officials then brought him directly into the presence of the CIA station chief in Abuja on November 19.

So it's not as if some worried father wandered in off the street to unburden himself to a clerk at a U.S. embassy. And note that the Nigerian intelligence officials didn't run the risk of getting trapped in voice mail hell or hearing, 'I'm sorry your email got lost in the shuffle.' They made Double Dutch sure the station chief heard the father's statement and understood its import and urgency.

What happened after the station chief took in the father's account? Report, file, and forget:

The next day the embassy sent out a thin report to U.S. embassies around the world warning Adbulmutallab may be associating with extremists in Yemen. The CIA official compiled two more robust reports following the meeting with the suspect's father. One was sent back to CIA's Langley, VA [headquarters]; the other remained in draft form in Nigeria and was not circulated until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day, according to a U.S. official.[...]

The White House better be on notice, because if something goes bump in the night in the near future a quick impeachment is sure to follow. I realize there will be a political cost - short term, in my opinion - for a major house cleaning in a mid-term election year, but the Dems are toast in November anyway, and I think the American people would give the president a lot of credit for - shock! - holding the people responsible for our safety responsible for this lapse.

 

Obamacare, creating a nation of Californias

It appears as though Obamacare is going to pass the Senate, thanks to senator Ben Nelson.

The deal was sealed Friday night at about 10:30 with a handshake between Sens. Nelson and Reid, ending 13 hours of negotiations. Mr. Reid later called President Barack Obama, who was flying back from the global climate summit in Copenhagen on Air Force One, to inform him the stalemate was resolved.

"Inaction is not an option," Mr. Reid said Saturday.

Speaking at the White House, Mr. Obama hailed what he called a "major step forward for the American people."

This is a horrible bill and Ben Nelson has been allowed to make a horrible, short-sited deal to accomplish it. Nebraska will never have to pay their share of increased Medicaid costs associated with the new bill.  And neither will several other Democratically controlled states:

Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.

But another Democratic holdout, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took credit for $10 billion in new funding for community health centers, while denying it was a “sweetheart deal.” He was clearly more enthusiastic about a bill he said he couldn’t support just three days ago.

Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.

Vermont and Massachusetts were given additional Medicaid funding, another plus for

Sanders and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Three states – Pennsylvania, New York and Florida – all won protections for their Medicare Advantage beneficiaries at a time when the program is facing cuts nationwide.

All of this came on top of a $300 million increase for Medicaid in Louisiana, designed to win the vote of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

This bill will create a nation of Californias, meaning it will create a situation where many other states are forced to follow California's lead into virtual bankruptcy. This is because many of the currently uninsured will be pushed onto the roles of Medicaid, which is paid for largely by state governments. So even if Obama claims that he has kept his campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $250,000 per year, this bill will force states to spend more money on the formerly uninsured which will force the states to cut services or raise fees and taxes in other areas to make up the difference.

From Obama's perspective, this is a bill is ok because the tax increases will have to come long after he has run for reelection and because the tax increases will be at the state, rather than the Federal, level so must people will blame their governors and state legislators.

But from the perspective of the American people, this is horrible bill. It is ultimately a wholesale effort to buy political points in the near term by leveraging future earnings. The cheaper health care gets, the more people will consume. And bringing 30 million uninsured onto the insurance roles will just cause those people to consume more healthcare, thus raising the cost, and it will also create a permanent bi-partisan constituency that will reliably support increasing the amount of money spent on public healthcare at every opportunity. 

Considering "Climategate"

I'm opposed to the Waxman-Markey bill. Not because I don't "believe" that human actions can cause changes in the climate, but because I think the W-M bill makes way too many assumptions about exactly how much humans impact the climate and in our ability to reverse that impact. My skepticism is rooted in the work of Bjorn Lomborg and his more conservative outlook on climate change and on the importance of resilience versus assuming we can turn some huge dial and make global temperatures go in the directions we wish.

So now that I've found out that there are numerous questions about the validity of current climate change models I am less than surprised:

The emails seem to describe a model which frequently breaks, and being constantly "tweaked" with manual interventions of dubious quality in order to make them fit the historical data.  These stories suggest that the model, and the past manual interventions, are so poorly documented that CRU cannot now replicate its own past findings.

That is a big problem.  The IPCC report, which is the most widely relied upon in policy circles, uses this model to estimate the costs of global warming.  If those costs are unreliable, then any cost-benefit analysis is totally worthless.

Again, none of this means that "global warming" isn't "real" or "true". All this means is that our ability to gather and interpret data is hamstrung by human frailty. We are - all of us - eternally dealing with scarce resources, be it time, money or knowledge. To me, that is a reason to take a measured, cautious approach to constructing public policies which we intend to affect extremely complex issues. In the case of climate change, this is a good reason not to pass either a so-called "cap and trade" system or even a carbon tax, because we simply do not have enough data to construct a sensible policy response to this situation.    

NY's 23rd Congressional District: We'll see......

A conservative 3rd party candidate has drawn such a heavy following in the race to fill the open seat in New York State that his Republican opponent has dropped out.

So is this good news for Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Conservatives or some combination?

We'll see.

I don't live in New York so I'm not completely at ease speaking to the particulars of any given candidate for a congressional seat in that state, but I do have a gut instinct that tells me that any candidate that is endorsed by Sarah Palin and opposed by Newt Gingrich is dangerous.

Scozzafava appears to have opposed the (horrible) Waxman-Markley pay back big contributors to the Democratic base  Cap and Trade bill and she was also endorsed by the NRA. So I'm not quit clear why conservatives oppose her reelection.

Obama: Voted Change, Got More of Same, pt II

There is a heartbreaking story in Monday's Washington Post about a gay sailor who was abused by his shipmates before being drummed out of the Navy for being homosexual.

It appears as though Obama is set to continue Don't Ask, Don't Tell for the time being.

And that's too bad.

America is in the process of building a "Systems Administration force" and we are going to need all talented people we can get - gay or straight.

The young man in the story in the WAPO was trained to train bomb sniffing dogs - a very sys admin skills set which can save lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also making the journey from "green to gold" (moving from being an enlisted man to being an officer). Officers trained in sys admin duties have been in short supply for the last few years, and that fact has cost American lives.

But Obama does not seem interested in rectifying the situation. He does not seem interested in stopping the kind of human rights abuses described in the WAPO story.

He does not seem interested in calling the bluff of outstanding universities like Harvard - which bans military recruiters and ROTC units from its campus - ostensibly because of DADT. Would the cause of building a sys admin force be bolstered by recruiting from Harvard?

Ironically, on other issues of vital national security Obama has been unable to stand up to his own party. 

But on this matter, he seems to be going against his own base in favor of some imagined "middle America" where being gay is still frightening to regular people.

Mr. President, I'm a straight (and straight laced) conservative who lives in Ohio, I promise you, anyone who is sitting around worried that some "queers" might get into the army is pretty far off the reservation and highly unlikely to vote for you under any circumstances. It may shock you to know that an increasing number of liberals, moderates and conservatives are coming to agreement on this issue - its just not the wedge it was in 1993 or even 2004.  On the other hand, lifting DADT will increase the talent pool from which our future sys admin force can recruit and that will make America safer and stronger.

Mr. President, you are holding 11 - and you always double down on 11..

Barack Obama could learn a lot from Vince Vaughn in that scene.

Obama could learn the value of "doubling down" in Afghanistan.

Doubling down (i.e. approving McChrystal's request for 40k troops) isn't just about about a properly resourced COIN strategy anymore. Increasingly, Obama decision is about signaling to our allies in the region that we're serious about staying.

Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations may already have done incalculable damage. The Afghan people have survived three decades of war by hedging their bets. Now, watching a young and inexperienced American president appear to waiver on his commitment to their country, they are deciding, at the level of both the individual and the mass, whether to make their peace with the Taliban—even as the Taliban itself can only take solace and encouragement from Obama's public agonizing. Meanwhile, fundamentalist elements of the Pakistani military, opposed to the recent crackdown against local Taliban, are also taking heart from developments in Washington. This is how coups and revolutions get started, by the middle ranks sensing weakness in foreign support for their superiors.

Obama's wobbliness also has a corrosive effect on the Indians and the Iranians. India desperately needs a relatively secular Afghan regime in place to bolster Hindu India's geopolitical position against radical Islamdom, and while the country enjoyed an excellent relationship with bush, Obama's dithering is making it nervous. And Iran, in observing Washington's indecision, can only feel more secure in its creeping economic annexation of western Afghanistan. So, too, other allies far and wide—from the Middle East to East Asia, and Israel to Japan—will start to make decisions based on their understanding that Washington under Obama may not have their backs in a crisis. Again, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama only plays to such fears.

And Obama has already signaled to other American allies that they may be on their own when the wolf - or bear- comes howling at the door. 

Obama Wants to Get Pakistan Right; Congressional Democrats Don't Care If American Soldiers Die

Tip of my hat to President Obama on Pakistan.


On one hand, he wants to get tougher WRT the allocation of American aid (he wants to see it isn't used to build a big war force to fight India).


On the other hand, the president wants to offer a quid pro quo with greater economic connectivity to the U.S. in form of special economic zones within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.


This is an extremely good idea that will save lives, create jobs and grow the Core.


Unfortunately, the Democrats care more about appeasing their union overlords then they do about American grand strategy:

A bill sought by Obama to boost trade by establishing special economic zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan has stalled in the U.S. Senate, partly over concerns about labor standards as well as worries within the U.S. textile industry.

I am forced to conclude that Democrats in the senate do not care about winning in Afghanistan. If they cared about winning they would care about shrinking the Gap and growing the Core. They do not. And since they don't want to win but also don't have the balls to cut off all funding for the war and order the troops home, I am left with the only remaining logical conclusion: senate Democrats do not care about American soldiers.

If senate Democrats cared about American soldiers they would either give them the resources they need to win the war or bring them home.

Americans of all political inclinations should support Obama's plan to use a carrot and stick to bring Pakistan into the Core. This plan shows real grand strategic thinking from the Obama administration and will make America safer and wealthier.

Americans of all political inclinations should oppose the senate Democrats who will throw the U.S. military and the Pakistani people under the bus at the behest of their Big Labor masters who seek to create a worldwide Soviet Comintern.

I hope the check from the AFL-CIO was worth it you bozos.

The Worst of Both Worlds: Planning to Fail in Afghanistan

The NYT is reporting that president Obama is looking for a "middle way" on the debate over Afghanistan.

Oy vey.

The middle way will fail.

Obama's natural instinct as a consensus builder is failing him here. I've made it clear that I support going long and big with enough troops to control the population, but I think a compromise (not enough troops to defend the population, enough troops to make easy targets) is the worst of all possible outcomes. If you don't want to commit to winning don't stick around; send in the Terminators and be done with it. Yes, that would be an incredibly stupid move from a grand strategic point of view. It would be incredibly ineffective - it would be the Powell doctrine on crystal-meth - it would cost lives in Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, India and Russia and it would have nothing to do with building a future worth creating. But continuing with the status quo is also extremely counter-productive and will cost American lives and prestige.

We need enough troops to build trust on the ground or our endeavor will fail. But if we are going to fail anyway we might as well minimize American casualties.

There is only one reason to stay in Afghanistan: to put Afghanistan on the glide path towards becoming a functioning member of the SCO. This is essential to our national security because expanding the Core and shrinking the Gap is imperative to our national security. We have to regionalize this conflict by making partners of China and India. And American troops have a key role to play in both protecting the population and training Afghan security forces in the mean time. And both of those jobs are manpower intensive. 

I hope the president realizes this.

Petreaus 2012? Doubtfull....

One of the most interesting things I've read about the debate between advocates of leaving Afghanistan to the T&T (Terminators and Taliban) and those who advocate a COIN strategy was a short passage in a NYT article about general Petreaus's role in the debate:

General Petraeus’s aides now privately call him “Dave the Dull,” and say he has largely muzzled himself from the fierce public debate about the war to avoid antagonizing the White House, which does not want pressure from military superstars and is wary of the general’s ambitions in particular.

The general’s aides requested anonymity to talk more candidly about his relationship with the White House.

“General Petraeus has not hinted to anyone that he is interested in political life, and in fact has said on many occasions that he’s not,” said Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel and professor of military history at Ohio State University who was the executive officer to General Petraeus when he was the top American commander in Iraq.

“It is other people who are looking at his popularity and saying that he would be a good presidential candidate, and I think rightly that makes the administration a little suspicious of him.”

And, later in the article:

By then the general had been talked about as a potential presidential candidate himself, which still worries some political aides at the White House.

Is it possible that this whole hubbub about McChrystal and the debate over increasing troops in Afghanistan is really the White House projecting its fears that they'll face Patreaus/Jindal in 2012? Could the White House intentionally be trying to weaken the reputation of certain generals that they see as potential revivals for Obama?

It sounds pretty far fetched, and I wouldn't suggest that the president himself is thinking along these lines, but its entirely possible there are various political operatives within the White House who are both Lefties and hoping that there will be no one left to challenge Obama when the Taliban comes rolling back into Kabul.

Dick Morris - not the single most reliable source, I acknowledge - has often said that the Clinton administration spent the better part of 1994 and 1995 living in perpetual fear that Colin Powell was about to announce his presidential run and that that would be the end of Clinton's presidency.

Obama - or his administration - should put their minds at ease. I think it is highly unlikely that a general is going to take off his uniform and show up in Iowa and be considered a serious candidate. Petreaus would show up for the first primary and want to talk about his extremely complex and nuisance understanding of American foreign policy and national security but pretty soon he'd realize everyone in the room just wanted to know whether he was for or against abortion. Career politicians are used to the knucklehead issues the average slack-jawed yokel cares about, and would be well prepared to navigate the waters; a 4 star is not used to having his agenda dictated to him by dilettantes. Running for president is a process that takes years; decades sometimes, and you have to build a lrge base of domestic support. You have to have people who know you (meaning they know you will bring home the bacon) well enough to go door to door and make phone calls on your behalf. So any career officer (this is for 2012 - not 2016) will be at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to every aspect of campaigning, especially fund raising and a "get out the vote" effort.


Still, if Petreaus - or McChrystal, were to resign over a difference of opinion with the White House (I'm not sure that's something that's really in the cards, either) I would expect a number of polls to show either man beating Obama by 10-12%. I would also expect those poll numbers to drop precipitately as both the administration and Mitt Romney trained their fire on the potential future rival.  

The Song Remains the Same: Obama vs. the Pentagon

This reminds me a lot of what we saw in the 1990s WRT Clinton and the military. Whether it was DADT or Bosnia, mistrust and second guessing (in both directions) clouded the relationship and occasionally harmed American foreign policy, like the time Colin Powell wrote a letter to the editor in the NYT predicting that a military operation designed to stop 100,000 Bosnian Muslims from being raped, tens of thousands from being murdered and hundreds of thousands from being locked in death camps would certinally turn into a quaqmire from which there would be no escape.*

*We subsequently won the war in 2 weeks. It was the closest Powell ever came to being right.


So now it begins again. Last week somebody had the temerity to ask General McChrystal his thoughts on the probability that various strategies being bandied about may succeed or fail. And he had the audacity to answer honestly and objectively, based on nothing more than his 20+ years of professional experience and the most up-to-date orders he has received from his commander and chief.

The Obama/McChrystal plan is classic counterinsurgency and focuses on protecting the Afghan population while strengthening Afghan security forces and government. McChrystal was asked about a "counterterrorism" strategy that would purportedly contain al-Qaeda with much lower numbers of American troops, casualties and other costs. McChrystal did not try to force the president's hand on whether to increase the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. The general critiqued an option that is at direct odds with Obama's policy and conflicts with the experiences of the U.S. military this decade. That is not fundamentally out of line for a commander.

It important to remember in this debate that Obama has not made any official decision on a new strategy for Afghanistan. As far as anybody knows, Obama still plans to fight "the good war" and beat the Taliban.

But that hasn't stopped the cadre of armchair commandos from trying to muzzle the opinion of the professional.

McChrystal's view -- that a strategy employing fewer resources, in pursuit of more limited goals, would be "short-sighted" -- is something the White House needs to hear. He is, after all, the man Obama put in charge in Afghanistan, and it would be absurd not to take his analysis of the situation into account. But McChrystal is out of line in trying to sell his position publicly, as he did last week in a speech in London

I don't think McChrystal was trying to "sell" his idea so much as he was trying to give an honest answer to an honest question. For what its worth, his answer was almost identical to the answers I heard from a room full of experts- civilian, military, and retired military - only a few days before.

 It's clear that one thing that is happening here is that Obama, once again, is asking a question publicly without knowing the answer ahead of time. McChrystal wasn't sitting in his HQ in Afghanistan inventing cold fusion or something; his formula for troop increases was based on a careful study of both a history of COIN, stretching back to Indian fighting on the frontier, and the current reality on the ground and the nature of the Pashtun insurgents and AQ. The bottom line: Obama should have had a pretty good idea about what McChrystal was going to recommend before he even asked for the recommendation, and if he knew he wasn't going to want to increase troops he should have said so upfront. If he knew he was going to outsource his grand strategy to Biden, he should have said so as well.

It's also clear and unfortunate that this debate reflects residual antipathy that arose between the military and American liberals/Leftists during the Vietnam war. The animosity between  those in uniform and their civilian commanders created a "stabbed in the back" myth that took hold within the officer corps in the shadow of Vietnam and led the military to completely forsake its COIN capability in favor of the Powell doctrine so as to avoid ever being betrayed by the politicians again.

I just hope Obama realizes that his actions in the next few months will continue to affect policy long after he has been impeached for losing the war left office.