Poland Must Take the Lead on Combating Global Warming! And they should ask Pakistan, Iran and North Korea for help on the matter...

This picture depicts global warming and the 3rd Reich, up to no good.


This is an excellent article about why Poland is so afraid of global warming.

Poland should be terrified of global warming.

Global warming considers Poland part of it's sphere of influence.

And, as before, global warming is making a deal with Germans to divide Western and Eastern Europe:

Currently, Russian gas has to be piped through Eastern Europe to reach Western Europe. If Russia shuts off the gas to pressure a neighbor in the east, it is felt in the more powerful, wealthier countries to the west, where it touches off loud protests.

The new Nord Stream pipeline will change that equation. By traveling more than 750 miles underwater, from Vyborg, Russia, to Greifswald, Germany, bypassing the former Soviet and satellite states, it will give Russia a separate supply line to the west.
As a result, many security experts and Eastern European officials say, Russia will be more likely to play pipeline politics with its neighbors.

“Yesterday tanks, today oil,” said Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, a former head of Poland’s security service.

But fear not! We all know that the antidote to global warming is alternative energy. 

As a matter of fact, global warming has recently agreed that its ok if Iran develops alternative energy, so global warming should not object if Poland, the Baltic states, and other Eastern and Central European countries join together to develop alternative energy as well.

As I've said before, global warming has made its choices. Global warming wants more alternative energy.

Of course, this post makes more sense if you realize that when I say global warming, I mean Russia.

And when I say "alternative energy" I mean a break-out nuclear capacity, similar to what Japan has and Iran and is reaching for. 

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. 

I Don't Have to Write About Obama's Nobel Prize...

Because I can't say it better than Tom Friedman already did:

All that said, I hope Mr. Obama will take this instinct a step further when he travels to Oslo on Dec. 10 for the peace prize ceremony. Here is the speech I hope he will give:

“Let me begin by thanking the Nobel committee for awarding me this prize, the highest award to which any statesman can aspire. As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.

“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi fascism. I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers and sailors who fought on the high seas and forlorn islands in the Pacific to free East Asia from Japanese tyranny in the Second World War.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American airmen who in June 1948 broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin with an airlift of food and fuel so that West Berliners could continue to live free. I will accept this award on behalf of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who protected Europe from Communist dictatorship throughout the 50 years of the cold war.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who stand guard today at outposts in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan to give that country, and particularly its women and girls, a chance to live a decent life free from the Taliban’s religious totalitarianism.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the American men and women who are still on patrol today in Iraq, helping to protect Baghdad’s fledgling government as it tries to organize the rarest of things in that country and that region — another free and fair election.

“I will accept this award on behalf of the thousands of American soldiers who today help protect a free and Democratic South Korea from an unfree and Communist North Korea.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American men and women soldiers who have gone on repeated humanitarian rescue missions after earthquakes and floods from the mountains of Pakistan to the coasts of Indonesia. I will accept this award on behalf of American soldiers who serve in the peacekeeping force in the Sinai desert that has kept relations between Egypt and Israel stable ever since the Camp David treaty was signed.

“I will accept this award on behalf of all the American airmen and sailors today who keep the sea lanes open and free in the Pacific and Atlantic so world trade can flow unhindered between nations.

“Finally, I will accept this award on behalf of my grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who arrived at Normandy six weeks after D-Day, and on behalf of my great-uncle, Charlie Payne, who was among those soldiers who liberated part of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald.

“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers.

I agree. And I'd like to add that I hope Obama understands that in order to make peace he will have fight his own party in order to shrink the Gap and grow the Core.

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.