This from Greg Mankiw, which states with simplicity my point that the current health care debate is not about improving the system, it's about changing the political and cultural landscape in order to better serve an uber liberal agenda:

Behind the healthcare debate is the classic tradeoff between equality and efficiency. Consider the following question: Would you favor a substantial increase in marginal tax rates for millions of middle and upper income Americans to provide more resources for those toward the bottom of the economic ladder?

Your answer to this question cannot be determined by positive economics without some additional normative judgments. But your answer should strongly influence your view of the health reform bill. The bill moves us closer to much of Western Europe by favoring equality and paying the price of reduced efficiency from much higher marginal tax rates.

That may be a policy choice Americans want to make. But before buying the merchandise being offered by Congress, I hope we all take a close look at the price tag.

Europe's a pleasant place. I've lived there, enjoyed living there - but it's a tired entity and completely lacking the qualities necessary for meaningful leadership in the world as it exits today - the US goes down this road, hard to see it ever coming back - and then what fills the void left behind? That's the question these dilettantes have no good answer for.

Suggest in comment threads on liberal blogs the possibly that Obama's coffin salute was a political ploy and watch those peace lovin' lefties turn into rabid vengeance seekers - a lot of HTML threats hurled my way. Pains me. Stigmata.

Still, to be either so naive or so indoctrinated that you can't even consider the possibility that this photo was more political event than legitimate commiseration is... well, I guess I'm not that shocked, actually. Maybe a little scared - not for myself, but if the US is to spend the next 20 years floundering in a sea of ideologically driven hyper-partisanship, well, that won't be good. If Bush was so bad that we end up with a worse Obama, what if his mistakes and missteps lead to Palin [although I still have trouble not liking her for some reason] or worse, Huckabee? Please, not Huckabee - if that god addled former fat boy becomes president, I'm going feral, live in a cave. Fuck it all.

But back to that photo - shouldn't be surprised but I am - no reporter feels the need to ask Gibbs if permission to photograph that coffin was sought and given prior to Obama leaving for Dover? He took a lot of camera people with him - no one thinks that warrants a question? Wouldn't the truly respectful thing have been to not trouble the families with intrusive requests? You gotta think so since only one family out of twenty some odd agreed. I dunno - Denmark, something rotten - there's a smell and you gotta be motivated by bias or olfactorily challenged not to notice it.

Understand, I'm not suggesting that Obama invented the cynical and unseemly political calculation - as the saying goes, politics ain't bean bag, and that's fine - I don't care that much per se that Obama saw fit to use dead soldiers as a political tool, probably par for the course in many ways - what I'm interested in is what the act says about him, his ideological pathology and, if what has been revealed does not sit well with Petraeus et al, how the consequences of that will play out in the civilian/military dynamic and the formulation of strategy.

Well, that only took forever - following observations from Brooks in today's Times after he talked to several military professionals regarding Obama's much fretted over review of his review of his position on Afghan policy - observations I made, conclusions I reached on Obama's war rhetoric, what, a year and a half ago? I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen any of the major players in the MSM get to the heart of the matter in this way.

... they do not know if he possesses the trait that is more important than intellectual sophistication and, in fact, stands in tension with it. They do not know if he possesses tenacity, the ability to fixate on a simple conviction and grip it, viscerally and unflinchingly, through complexity and confusion. They do not know if he possesses the obstinacy that guided Lincoln and Churchill, and which must guide all war presidents to some degree.

Their second concern is political. They do not know if President Obama regards Afghanistan as a distraction from the matters he really cares about: health care, energy and education. Some of them suspect that Obama talked himself into supporting the Afghan effort so he could sound hawkish during the campaign. They suspect he is making a show of commitment now so he can let the matter drop at a politically opportune moment down the road.

Finally, they do not understand the president’s fundamental read on the situation. Most of them, like most people who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, believe this war is winnable. They do not think it will be easy or quick. But they do have a bedrock conviction that the Taliban can be stymied and that the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be strengthened. But they do not know if Obama shares this gut conviction or possesses any gut conviction on this subject at all.

This also confirms my belief, my concern that many in the military are looking at Obama and seeing the same thing I'm seeing - hell, Petraeus is a lot smarter than me, if he and his cohorts are viewing the Obama administration with increasing scepticism one has to wonder about, maybe worry about the consequences of that.
 

Why did Obama take a late night flight to Dover AFB to salute dead soldiers and meet with their grieving family? This is a delicate one, you don't want to impugn the president for showing reverence and respect to those that have paid 'the ultimate price' - still, my scepticism stirs - because of the delay re Afhganistan, the recent rhetoric coming from the White House trying to suggest this delay serves the interests of the soldiers who will be asked to bear the burden - and most importantly because there's a photo of him saluting a coffin. This used to be illegal, but new Pentagon rules allow for the photographing of coffins if the grieving family oks it - which immediately gets an evil cynic like me wondering: since photographers accompanied the President they must have had ok from the one family that agreed before they left - so would he have gone without approval of the photo op from the family? If not and this was all about the photo op doesn't that seem to indicate that he's about to announce a decision that the military is unlikely to be thrilled by?

You could also say that he's trying to send a message to a liberal base that is about to be pissed off ie this decision is not made lightly. But I have trouble buying that - I think it's the other way around.

[are you suggesting that Obama is trying to circumvent the generals by going directly to the troops, essentially saying 'the brass don't agree with what I'm proposing, but it's in your best interests - I care about you'? Or are you suggesting that Obama is sending a message to voters who, if they see him at odds with the generals, may infer that he is weak and afraid of the consequences of difficult military decisions? One does not exclude the other]

"... a despairing view for sure, but there could be an upside, a silver lining... if California is indeed a failing or already failed state, it may in that fallen condition act as a cautionary tale delineating the awful fate of a society left to the mercy of an untrammeled liberalism... of course I don't mean that in the pentecostal sense of evil sinners receiving their just deserts... though I can't entirely insist that that is not the case at all... but in a broader and less end of days light you can certainly see the outlines of a story that seems to want to say that a wise liberal would beware of what he wished for... but then I guess a cynic might ask where are you gonna find a wise liberal?... wisdom being by its very nature unaligned, ideologically speaking... so forget what I said, no silver linings..."

With Press Secretary Gibbs attacking Cheney re Bush administration's supposed dropping of ball in Afghanistan does that then indicate that Obama will be taking McChrystal's advice and commit to undropping the ball? Or does it mean they will be forging an opposing or alternative strategy which they will defend by saying Bush mismanagement left them with few options? Given the continuing delay in rolling out a decision hard to believe it's anything but the latter - though possibly Gibbs, in effort to fill dithering void, simply said too much.

I continue to believe Obama's sole purpose here is to look like his campaign rhetoric wasn't simply campaign rhetoric and that he's not the one who lost Afghanistan if indeed he ends up losing Afghanistan, both of which could conceivably doom his chances in 2012. In other words, everything Obama has said and done or will say and do regarding Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter, has and will continue to be all about serving limited domestic political ends.

What will be curious to see, among other things, is if the military leadership see Obama and his actions or lack thereof in the same light I do, how will they respond? In this regard, I wonder if Gates, a conservative, was acting as a true public servant when he chose to stay on and serve a very liberal president? Maybe he saw what was coming and realized that without a reasonable counterweight operating in the oval office bad things could happen.

I don't have any overwhelming desire to hammer on the 'Obama is a communist/socialist' meme [even though I do invoke the charge often - out of a sense of fun of course] but this note from Fund in the WSJ does jar the sensibilities a wee bit:

Anita Dunn, the White House's communications director who has declared war on Fox News, came under scrutiny herself last week when it was discovered she had told an audience that Mao Tse Tung was one of her favorite political philosophers and quoted Mao on how to "fight your war." In her speech last June, after she joined the Obama White House, Ms. Dunn said the "two people I turn to most" were Mother Teresa and Mao Tse-Tung. She barely discussed the late nun, but waxed at length about the lessons Mao had taught her. To call Mao a "political philosopher" is a stretch. As Roger Kimball of the New Criterion reminds us, the great Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski properly labeled the Chinese revolutionary "one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, manipulator of large masses of human beings in the twentieth century." Indeed, the Mao revelation prompted William Ratliff, an expert on China with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, to call her statement "outrageous and pathetic" given that Mao's role in the deaths of some 50 million people "makes it impossible for any serious person" to view him as a great philosopher.

Certainly any administration has its share of wackos and deviants and enthusiasts with inappropriate affiliations - but there does seem to be too many roads leading from the ultra left into Obamaland - enough to accommodate the long march home of a lost generation of uber liberals? So far he's done little to dispel the notion - the press seems to want to continue to prop up the idea or mere perception or outright lie that he's tracking a moderate course but I don't see it at all.

Report circulating that Iran has agreed to send LEU [lightly enriched uranium] to Russia for processing, with indications that this retards their progress towards developing the bomb by about a year and this all hailed as possible 'diplomatic' success in attempt to thwart Iran's nuclear aspirations - to which I say 'are you people fucking crazy?'.

One, there's probably, in fact there's almost definitely no way to tell that if Iran actually follows through on this [huge if as far as I'm concerned] that the amount of enriched uranium they end up sending off to Russia represents a significant dent in their stockpile, enough to impede development of the bomb - and there's a good reason for this ie we have no idea how much EU they have! Whatever they end up shipping to Russia could just be a token amount - in fact, if they're really clever they could have been planning for this deception all along, carefully making it seem like they had a certain amount of EU when it fact they have more. And let's not forget that there are rumours that problems exist with some of Iran's LEU, problems that make it unsuitable for bomb making - I read this in technical journal and the details of it were beyond my understanding - but if true, if that compromised LEU is what they end up sending to Russia, then such an act would be pretty useless, no?

Two, the current regime in Iran is under siege, vulnerable, supposed progressive forces want to see it unseated and brought to shame - what on earth would be the advantage to them of looking weak on an issue they have staked a great amount of their credibility and prestige on? The whole focus of their anti-Western, anti-Israel international position has been buttressed up by the threat of a nuclear inevitability - how the fuck would it serve their purposes to now cave in on that? One would have to indulge the belief that they are at peace with accepting their demise as a political power and willing to admit to being ideologically flawed - pretty selfless acts for revolutionary autocrats. What next, the leader of Hamas is going to proffer a hand of friendship across the bomb scarred border of Gaza and say to Israel: 'enough is enough - let's embrace a better future together'. I mean, c'mon people.

Fact is, the Persian sense of superiority over Arabs and how that impacts their regional strategy combined with the political utility the bomb represents to the current regime combined with the anti-Western logic of the '79 revolution and the ties of all the big players in Iran to that logic - Khamenei, A--- and the Republican Guard - these things all point to Iran wanting the bomb, needing the bomb and probably being willing to do just about anything to get it. Furthermore, it is also a fact that the current regime knows China and Russia will back them because all their respective interests dovetail on this issue - and without China and Russia you've got nothing - so you're telling me you think Russia and China are going to act against their perceived interests and by doing so substantially empower Obama, a leader they no doubt read as enticingly weak? Again, are you people outta your fucking minds?

World, here's a hand-basket and if you look just over there you'll see the road to hell - have a nice trip.

China apparently tells Israel it will not support sending the Goldstone report to the UN Security Council - proof positive that China will not be backing sanctions against Iran? Make the shallow pro-Israeli gesture now to provide cover for the deeper anti-Israeli move to come? Personally, I don't need further demonstration of what the logic of China's actions so far lead one to believe concerning their intentions - but since China has already in another forum supported the Goldstone report I'd say the game they're playing here is pretty obvious.

Mr Coll, author of Ghost Wars and therefore a point of view that should be respected, weighs in on the situation in Afghanistan. His two main points, if I remember correctly, seem to be that those calling for taking the Afghan war offshore or of just focusing on Al queda do not understand the synergistic relationship that holds between the Taliban and AQ and, closely related to that, do not understand how difficult it will be to get actionable intelligence without a significant presence on the ground. His second point was that Afghanistan will remain hostile to our interests until some semblance of a somewhat unifying and relatively competent government emerges - his point being that, contrary to what many are suggesting, this is only difficult, not impossible, that Afghanistan has had a functioning government, army and constabulary before and can again - it may not prove to be law and order according to Western standards but it will be good enough for Afghanistan.

He doesn't talk military details, force size and disposition etc, I suppose he feels, and no doubt rightly so, that the expertise of military professionals has to be trusted here - but he does seem to endorse the idea of COIN and the potential of nation building but states clearly that a commitment must be long term - and he states that forming a national army is only possible if there's a sense of a national government. My impression is he believes there's no workable option that includes accommodating the Taliban and trying to 'limit' it - my sense he feels it needs to be destroyed and that Pakistan will help once they see it on the run in Afghanistan - although he suggests Pakistan can be a productive partner he also clearly states that it hasn't been in the past and there are no guarantees of how it will behave in the future - he seems to say that there is a significant divide within the Pakistani military about what end state viz Afghanistan and the Taliban will best suit Pakistan's interests - he would say that India continues to loom large in a not particularly logical way for many in the Pakistani military - that is certainly a view point I've read elsewhere.

To wrap it in as discrete a package as possible I'd say this: if one applies an extremely loose conception of what a government is or need be then no doubt you can wrest such a thing out of the inchoate mess that is Afghanistan - but because of the lack of money or any monied future and how that restricts potential I think you're never going to be able to get too far away from a warlord driven, clan driven, tribal/theological diffused dispensation that coheres tenuously but neither significantly prospers nor declines - and therefore you're never going to get too far away from corruption - like Mexico, but much worse and without the nice beaches. Coll suggests Afghanistan was a problematic but manageable country before the Russians invaded - possibly - but I might say the Russians invaded because the defining premise is not quite accurate.

To get conciser and more narrow still and thereby broader and more general [art thou there, Truepenny?] I say this: there are wars with short term objectives and ones with long term objectives; long term wars need to be big, you cannot compromise on that; the problem with both Afghanistan and Iraq is that they were long term wars fought as is they were short term ones; it's hard now to go back and correct those mistakes - but you may not have a choice and Afghanistan will prove harder than Iraq; a military mistake left uncorrected or unaddressed will come back to haunt you.

Waiting for the 12th Imam - if the real point of contention between the looming military dictatorship and the putative reformers in Iran is the true role of the clergy in governance while they wait for the 12th Imam - the reformers believing it should be muted, Khamanei and A--- not so much - and not at all about liberalizing the theocracy, then what would that say about what reform would look like should the 'radicals' succeed in unseating the status quo? One's tempted to say any change enacted would be superficial, cosmetic - but the Republican Guard is a wild card - you could see a 'reform' chain reaction that leads then to social upheaval that leads to martial law - I could also see a scenario where the reformers gain control but out of fear of what demons they've unleashed become just as reactionary and repressive as current regime and in likewise fashion crawl into bed with the Guard - but regardless my point is if all that separates the reform from the status quo are protocol questions having to do with the 12th Imam, well then what does that say about the prospects for and nature of some hoped for reform?

Related, I also wonder: if present regime manages to make Iran a nuclear power I imagine that will leave its authority unassailable - does it then follow that the reformers have a deadline if they want to get something done? And if so should we then be more interested in giving them a helping hand?  Of course, since Obama was given the Nobel for being willing to engage with bad people, for apparently being able to engender a brave new world simply by talking about it, I suppose he won't be doing that - besides, as I said, the dynamics involved here are hard to predict - I'm just saying there appears to be an opening there that probably should be examined.

A report in a French newspaper says Israel will soon be deploying covert strike teams into Iran to blow stuff up and assassinate key people in the nuclear program - who knows if this is true but I realized I should have thought of this before - all the talk and gestures aimed at keeping the threat of an air strike alive could really have been about hiding the true tactic of using special forces on the ground. Air strikes were an iffy proposition no matter how you looked at it and best case scenarios guessed at most Israel delays Iran's plans by a few years - it could be Israel has decided that covert operations can do just as well as that but with the added advantage of limiting the ways Iran can retaliate - they obviously could still launch missiles in response but such an indiscriminate act would be more difficult to justify given the discrete nature of Israel's aggression thus possibly limiting Iran to employing its terrorist proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, to exact revenge - which would be bad, sure, but still, a threat Israel understands and has acquired significant expertise in defending against.

On the surface, this kind of makes sense - allowing for the fact that I have no realistic idea of just how much havoc Israeli special forces can unleash. I would imagine that to be successful some, possibly many operatives would already have to have infiltrated Iran.

China reaffirms its 'close' ties with Iran and the mutual benefits thereby derived - which is China's way of saying 'we value this strategic relationship and everything we do or say will be a reflection of that' - which is China's way of saying 'fuck you, America, this is our century: if your own president doesn't believe in American exceptionalism we sure as hell aren't gonna act as if it matters'.

And on cue Putin chimes in with a 'there's no need to rush Iran or get all up in their face with sanctions - everything is cool, man - just chill people' and then throws out tasty bit of info detailing how Russia has changed its rules of engagement concerning defense of the nation to allow for the use of nuclear weapons against threats even if the threat is conventional in nature. Nice.

As absurd as it was giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, what was more disturbing, once one stopped guffawing or laughing outright, was realizing that a great many people actually believed it was deserved, actually believe that the world is fundamentally changed for the better simply because Obama is president, regardless of any manifest accomplishments - that the world is better simply because Obama says it can be. It's shocking, dumbfounding - I'm found dumb by it.

And so it is 'drinking the cool-aid' no longer captures the degree of delusion that follows this man. He's tapped into a willful ignorance that surpasses mere stupidity, surpasses even the abject cretinism of the fatuously naive - it's as if he's accessed some pathological dementia, a vestigial obtuseness, that lurks in the shadows of the species' collective psychology waiting for a perfectly insipid incantation to call it stumbling into the pallid light - yes we can.

Or is it - apropos previous post - is it that the generals are thinking about Vietnam? In the sense, after Abrams took over and COIN employed by '72 you had something that looked like victory in Vietnam - and then, if you believe the history of some, the US congress withdrew support for a functioning and largely pacified south and the north, with the support of China, broke the peace accords and invaded thus leading to the 'defeat' we now associate with Vietnam.

If they do have that in mind, and it's hard to imagine they don't, then I guess my speculation about them angling for a 'token' victory is misguided - they would realize that a loss is a loss no matter how clever you are in trying to reframe it.

I was reading a review of Galula's renowned counterinsurgency tome and one thing Galula stipulates, that seems revealing viz Obama's dithering over what to do in Afghanistan, is that the country sponsoring the COIN action cannot look weak - if the victimized population sees weakness in their ostensible saviours or perceives a reason not to trust their commitment, the cause will be lost. You can see how the military leadership right now is probably none to happy with Obama - they thought they already had a commitment [with good reason] and now are to say the least no doubt discomfited by the knowledge that anything that makes that commitment look tentative could prove fatal, could undermine the whole strategy. They must feel they've been played and betrayed - nothing Obama has said indicates that he is going to give McChrystal what he's requested even though everything he did and said during the campaign and when he first took office suggested he was on board with the strategy - but even if he does sign on the strategy is weakened, possibly beyond salvaging, by the delay in making a decision - at the very least, if one follows the dictates of Galula, a difficult mission has been made much more difficult - it's hard to see a scenario here that doesn't end with the military feeling disappointed - yeah, I'd say Petraeus and the boys are not big fans of the Obama right now.

The other thing that struck me was a flaw in Galula's argument that the reviewer pointed out and is in line with my thinking, namely, just as with the insurgency, the counterinsurgency must be motivated by a cause - but what if the the population the COIN seeks to protect does not share the cause? If our cause is to bring to Afghanistan good governance and other advantages of a modern civil society - and as I've said many times before getting involved in a war like this only makes sense if that indeed is your cause, by definition there has to be a culture changing imperative otherwise what is the point? - but what happens if the target population prefers, as the writer of the review states it, the 7th century? Galula writes about the role fear plays in an insurgency - what if to Afghans the best way to avoid fear is to cling to their medieval tribalism and tolerate their Taliban masters - what if to them that represents the lesser of two evils?

This seems to be the weak link in COIN thinking - at the very least it suggests the need for a long involvement in the victimized society and I just don't see how America can make a commitment like that. I know that McChrystal's plan is to hand things off to a revitalised Afghan military a couple years from now - but that idea sounds pretty shaky to me - Afghanistan doesn't really inspire confidence in that regard. [is it possible Petraeus et al also see that and their whole objective here is to merely create a scenario that looks less like an American loss and more like a failure by Afghanistan to preserve the win? Seems possible to me]

Interesting - I suggested a while ago, in something of a whimsical mood, that US should fore go attempts to reform Afghanistan, create a secure military zone in the North, attract what serviceable Afghan allies they could to that enclave which I assume would include Kabul, and leave the Pashtun south to the Taliban - with the understanding of course that the US will continue to blow up and shoot to kill anything suspected of involvement with Al queda. Now some Pakistani officer who is receiving training at the US War College has written an article suggesting a strategy very similar to that - saying essentially Afghanistan is ungovernable as a whole so create a northern enclave, save the parts that can be saved and adopt a policy of slowly isolating and wearing the Taliban down until the Pashtuns themselves rise up and fight for better lives - or don't, his point being Afghanistan has always been a tribal mess, highly prone to civil war, and nothing is going to change that until the people themselves are motivated to do so.

Two obvious problems though: it will at first look like a defeat and will certainly be portrayed as one by Islamists; I'm not sure about the logistics of keeping AQ out - that border with Pakistan seems unsecureable and that means killing the bad guys after they've already gained access to the 'outlaw' south - I'm not at all sure how effective that can be - although I would think the US wouldn't have a problem finding lots of young Afghan men, poor young men, willing to make big bucks serving as human assets for covert operations.

Obama awarded Nobel Peace prize. Ah... a development that is so absurd it almost defies comment? Possibly. The world is collapsing into farce. Eventually some cunning, calculating, cold hearted bastard is going to exploit that weakness and bad things are going to happen - whether it's a year from now, twenty years from now, I dunno, but it will happen. Sorry people but electing the black guy president doesn't change the fact that the species is defined by conflict, not peace.

Didn't Arafat win a Nobel Peace prize? Quick search... yes, 1994. Well, it all makes sense then.

update: as many are pointing out this absurdly unwarranted act of blatant politicking on the part of the Nobel committee may end up doing more harm than good to Obama in so much as it reaffirms the image of him as more celebrity than qualified leader and of being the favoured child of internationalists who dislike the US and would enjoy nothing more than to see it reduced. It also complicates his decision on Afghanistan: if he rejects the recommendations of his military his motivations and his character will be judged with even more scrutiny as people wonder if this is him dutifully obliging a global, left wing elite; yet if he escalates, this silly award will be used to stoke the fires of anti-Americanism - the Nobel committee has essentially handed a perfect platform to the enemy from which to hurl rocks at Lady Liberty by offering up a false ideal of peace so that when America inevitably betrays those airy dreams its infamy will seem that much more repugnant. It's truly a moronic decision on the part of the committee - I suppose the only people who prosper here are those who view the idea of a post nation state internationalism as unworkable and naive - certainly would seem to be the case if it proffers up pompous idiocy of this sort.

Robert Kaplan in the NY Times:

Everyone keeps saying that America is not an empire, but our military finds itself in the sort of situation that was mighty familiar to empires like that of ancient Rome and 19th-century Britain: struggling in a far-off corner of the world to exact revenge, to put down the fires of rebellion, and to restore civilized order. Meanwhile, other rising and resurgent powers wait patiently in the wings, free-riding on the public good we offer. This is exactly how an empire declines, by allowing others to take advantage of its own exertions.

Of course, one could make an excellent case that an ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan is precisely what would lead to our decline, by demoralizing our military, signaling to our friends worldwide that we cannot be counted on and demonstrating that our enemies have greater resolve than we do. That is why we have no choice in Afghanistan but to add troops and continue to fight.

But as much as we hone our counterinsurgency skills and develop assets for the “long war,” history would suggest that over time we can more easily preserve our standing in the world by using naval and air power from a distance when intervening abroad. Afghanistan should be the very last place where we are a land-based meddler, caught up in internal Islamic conflict, helping the strategic ambitions of the Chinese and others.

I guess I pretty much agree with all of that - except to add this is the last war like this we should involve ourselves in unless we are willing to go all the way, by which I usually mean [perhaps naively if not with ignorance] acknowledging and accepting the consequences of the culture changing imperative at the heart of occupation and an attendant and necessary belief in full spectrum, or I might say total war. I wonder if this means Kaplan shares my scepticism vis COIN? He seems to be echoing my point that counterinsurgency possibly makes sense on a tactical level but loses merit the more it comes to dominate an entire strategy - although his last paragraph seems a bit contradictory on exactly what he means.

Obama pissed by McChrystal going rogue? Has McChrystal gone rogue? He's certainly ruffled some feathers with the leaking of his recommendations to the president a couple weeks ago and now making very public comments on what needs to be done in Afghanistan if you wanna win. Rumour is that when Obama saw fit to make time for him while in full rut with Olympic committee it was to dress him down. Possibly. His actions only seem to make sense if he believes Obama is going to reverse course and go against his recommendations and he wants to either try and forestall that or simply make sure it's a matter of public record so that if things go badly he can't be made the fall guy.

I take McChrystal's actions and possibly more significantly Petraeus' silence regarding those actions to be an indication that the military has come to share my opinion that Obama is a charlatan and was playing politics when he embraced the war in his campaign and then again when he set in motion, soon after taking office, facts on the ground which led McChrystal et al to believe that embrace to be serious only to find now Obama waking up the next morning, looking over at what he crawled into bed with and saying 'Jesus, that was a mistake'.

Now, I've criticized COIN as McChrystal and Petraeus have expressed it and possibly the criticism has been unfair or misguided or not grounded in reality - I dunno - but whatever the truth is the real question now becomes has Obama made the Afghan situation untenable by employing aggressive rhetoric that he either didn't mean or didn't understand the consequences of? Certainly, if Obama has already decided to not follow through on McChrystal's recommendations and these deliberations are merely more political game playing to give the impression they truly laboured and agonized over these weighty decisions - well, you can see how that could cause some serious tension between the military and its civilian overseers.

"... I suppose it's curious to contemplate that China, not as Mao imagined it but as it exists today, is an engorged dependent feeding off the excesses of a fostering capitalism... that it is in effect the bound and regimented bastard offspring of democratically enabled free markets roiled by a liberality of desires... raised by our freedoms, our innovations, our progressive thinking, the dynamics of our view of the rights and values that belong to and abide with the individual... a creature created by us but not capable or willing or interested in becoming what we are and therefore no doubt destined to repudiate us when they come to imagine they no longer need us... I suppose it's curious to think that repudiation is increasingly near and at hand..."

Interesting story in Washington Post today about former key tribal Sunni players in the Anbar awakening, backbone essentially of the successful surge, feeling abandoned by America now, feeling resentful, embittered, at the mercy of Shiites - tribal leaders who have seen the power they acquired while working with the American now gone. In short the story gives the impression that the success of the surge will be short lived if growing Sunni disenchantment of post-surge world coalesces into open opposition.

Also interesting in the story is description of to what lengths American troops on the ground in these restive regions have gone towards indulging and showing respect to the prevailing culture, relating in one instance a CO explaining to new officers the proper way to serve tea when meeting with tribal elders - and yet they're still distrusted, resented, hated.

Again, we're in these countries because of events engendered by the prevailing culture - I have trouble understanding how a military strategy based on preserving those cultures can be successful in the long term - as a short term means to an end? Yes, possibly - but then that necessitates nation building, no? And doesn't that in turn dictate you change the prevailing culture? I assume if we were to attempt a remaking of Afghanistan we're not foolish enough to replicate what was there before.

It perplexes me - I look at COIN and see what they're thinking and understand up to a certain point how they might have faith in it - but after that I come to see the whole idea as resting on a fragile base of vague assumptions and contradictory, or maybe simply disingenuous reasoning. We're an occupying force yet we don't want to be seen as or act like an occupying force - I'm not sure the brutal logic of war can be made to make sense within the confines of those limitations. What's worse, I think the insurgents, the Taliban have figured out how to exploit this self-imposed weakness. We possibly can protect the population and separate it from the 'bad guy' [dubious but possible] but if the Taliban is thinking 'what you're protecting doesn't belong to you, it belongs to us, it will never trust you, but we don't need its trust, we know what they fear and are more than willing to deliver that fear into their huts and places of worship; your soldiers long to go home but this is our home and we are willing to wait forever to return' - if that's how the Taliban see COIN what good is it doing us in the end? Unless of course you're going to engage in nation building which means committing to a culture changing occupation and the idea of total war.

Which brings me back to the above referenced story: if things go south in Iraq how will that impact an American military establishment that has made a commitment to COIN?

China celebrated the 60th anniversary of the birth of the communist state yesterday with a huge, huge military parade [odd that Western styled democracies don't feel the need for grandiose military parades - we've got Santa Claus - a Sino cynic may wonder what that means [what?]] - but what struck me is how Chinese nationalists here were running round the city in cars [largely Japanese models - the irony lost on them it seems] with Mao's red flag fluttering proudly from windows. Since they've chosen to live in a democracy and since China was actually born many centuries ago which means what they're really celebrating is the advancement of communism under the dictatorship of a megalomaniac responsible for the deaths of millions of people, which seems odd given the choices they've made, ya know, living in a democracy, driving Japanese cars - I would liked to have asked them what the hell they were thinking, but realized their answers would not have untroubled my mind. And we would have argued, tempers would have flared, punches would have been thrown, all ending with me no doubt being arrested as an intolerant agitator. The world baffles.

related: from Financial Times via Marginal Revolution blog, as just one fact of many adding weight to my question 'just what in the hell exactly did they think they were celebrating with those bloody Mao flags?' [to be fair, it's a little hard to celebrate being Chinese and avoid the whole Mao thing - yes, but that's because China is still a communist oligarchy! - so were they celebrating being Chinese or being Chinese communists? or do they not note or care about the distinction? was it just mindless nationalism then? which, sure, every state and culture indulges in - but that thought still doesn't exactly warm my cockles because most states and cultures cannot lay claim to more than a billion loyal citizens all more or less under the control of an elite cadre of ideologues! that's not cockle warming]:

Today's Financial Times writes about the Central Organization Department of China:

To glean a sense of the dimensions of the organization department's job, conjure up a parallel body in Washington. The imaginary department would oversee the appointments of US state governors and their deputies; the mayors of big cities; heads of federal regulatory agencies; the chief executives of General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, Walmart and 50-odd of the remaining largest companies; justices on the Supreme Court; the editors of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post; the bosses of the television networks and cable stations; the presidents of Yale and Harvard and other big universities and the heads of think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation.

All equivalent positions in China are filled by people appointed by the party through the organization department.

I would not want to be on the bad side of the Central Organization Department. The full article, which is interesting throughout, is here. It's also related to why I don't see China just evolving into a normal democracy.

If China can't or refuses to or avoids through twists yet unknown becoming a 'normal' democracy, or can only approach such by means of a significant social upheaval that may in fact result in a more threatening, more reactionary, less progressive dictatorship than the one currently in power then it's to make a rather indulgent assumption to conclude economic concerns will continue to placate and render ostensibly irrelevant the ideological strain between it and America. I'm thinking history offers none or few examples of facts on the ground tolerating such an optimistic view of things.

Tending to find fault in everything he does [now how is that fair? It isn't - but life isn't fair - don't blame me, friendo - it's life you should be pissed at - life] I haven't really considered the possibility of what happens should Obama's Iran strategy succeed. So - I'd imagine the only thing more dangerous than Obama and his cadre of clever progressives thinking they're right would be evidence that seemed to demonstrate to those not yet indoctrinated into the way that yes indeed those clever bastards are right - this would be because one, Iran is not negotiating away the nuclear option - any agreement they enter into that appears to be a concession on this point will be a lie, they will not honour it - and two, those who understand Obama's approach to foreign policy to be proof of weakness will be emboldened. [so what you're saying with apparent shameless bias is that he fails even if he succeeds - no, what I'm saying is that success as Obama and his cadre understand it will be an illusion, a thin web of wishful thinking - now if he actually succeeds, which would mean compelling Iran to submit to verifiable limits on its nuclear program and warm to the resumption of normalized relations with the US - well then, I'd be shocked, dumbfounded - but I wouldn't deny him his victory - still, as I said, any agreement the present regime in Iran enters into that is in the least way watered down or is not accompanied by proof of a desire on the part of Iran to move away from its 'great Satan' framing of the past will be about as viable and sincere as Molotov-Ribbentrop]