Dithering?

Well, here is the question. Is President Obama “dithering” on Afghanistan? Lots of people certainly think so. I personally do not believe it. I think he knows exactly what he wants to do there. I also think he has managed to play himself into a corner where he isn’t going to get to do what he was planning on doing and has to make some new choices.

My opinion is that he deliberately delayed announcing a decision on Afghanistan because he didn’t want to announce an up tick in the war just as he was asking the left wing of his party to abandon their long sought after “Public Option” The irregularities in the Afghan election gave him the perfect opportunity to delay an announcement on the war until health care was done. Unfortunately for the Pres, the Afghan election worked itself out and health care still isn’t done. In fact it looks increasingly like it is not going to get done any time soon at all.

The use of the “Election Fraud”* in Afghanistan as an excuse to not make a decision was a particularly cynical and, dare I say it, dishonest ploy. It is not as if either of the two candidates would have said “nope, we don’t want you anymore, get out.” Both Abdullah Abdullah and Hamid Karzai would have continued the fight and needed our support so it would not have made any difference in theater if he had committed to sending more troops. In fact, I think it would have helped because it would send a signal that whoever won we were there to back them up and help. But instead we look like we are “dithering” and we look like we are strong arming the Afghan government (which we are)

Now of course with the slow down on health care Obama has to continue placating the left wing of his party so they don’t push for the whole nationalized health plan they really want and thus split away those Democratic members of the House and Senate who know they will not get re-elected if they were to vote for such a bill. Since this same left wing is now increasingly opposed to the war in Afghanistan ( I predicted this a couple of years ago, as soon as it looks like the anti war guys get what they wanted in Iraq they would then turn against the War in Afghanistan which they used to say as the “good”, “real”, or Important” war.) Now Obama has to avoid stepping up the war too much in Afghanistan to keep these flakes happy but not so much so that everything over there falls apart. What I am afraid of is that the President will listen to some of these people who say we should go around the government of Afghanistan and use the Warlords to fight the war. This would work. For us. It would be a disaster for Afghanistan. It would roll things right back to the situation there Post Soviet occupation. And we could start looking at another generation of the same type of chaos that led to the rise of the Taliban in the first place.


* Election fraud. So what. I mean really, that election was no more fraudulent than any other election run within 1000 miles of Kabul. Pakistan faces the same kind of issues in every election, Iran just declares winners and makes up votes for them, the Various former soviet –stans sort of pretend to hold fair elections, China makes no remote claim to them. Why, or even better, HOW, in the hell can we expect a country with no democratic tradition, peopled by cultures that operate on tribal seniority, to hold a real election on their second try. We certainly didn’t get it right that fast. Hell, if you ask the Democratic whiners we didn’t hold legitimate election in two of the last three. But theses sanctimonious geeks will condemn Afghanistan because, as is their tradition, the tribal elders decide who the tribe wants and put than many votes in the box.

They all disgust me.

A Rant on Human Stupidity.

Ok, I know that ranting about human stupidity is really pointless. It could even be said to be stupid. But I must.

I was reading an article online on Monday that talked about how schools are “Teaching the Darker side of Columbus.” Like ti was a new thing. Good old Christopher C has been the whipping boy of the “we hate white European males” crowd for quite some time. There was a LOT of stupid stuff talked about in the article but one line just reached out and grabbed me because it is a really, REALLY stupid saying. An elementary school teacher said “Columbus couldn’t have discovered America. After all, people were already living there.” Now, Columbus came from Europe where no one had any good idea that there was an extra continent between them and Asia going west. It was unknown, it was undiscovered. He stumbled upon it by accident, didn’t really know what he had found at first but he certainly “discovered” it in the context of his society, culture, and civilization. To say otherwise is really moronic. Sort of like saying the no one discovered radiation because it had always been there.

I actually heard a man use that line in person once: In a graduate level education class. I resisted the urge to verbally abuse the fellow out of deference to the teacher. (This was a teacher who later showed the trailer for Disney’s Pocahontas movie and told us how that would be a great tool to teach “native American” culture. I did not let that lunacy pass unchallenged but that is another story.)

I am boggled by the politically correct drivel that some people accept. Any person with even a partial understanding of history could not with any degree of honesty make such a load of hogwash. Heck, if they knew the meaning of the word discover they could see that the use is correct. People discover things everyday that other people have known about for ages. Bands, Bars, restaurants, historical reality, the fact that crying about something won’t change it, all of these are things that get discovered all the time.

So, I have to ask myself, is that teacher I quoted deliberately lying, hence evil, or is he just a flaming moron? My guess is a moron.

Acorns....

Ok, color me boggled. I think I have seen one of the stupidest people on earth. I had the opportunity to see some of the video associated with the current ACORN scandal. Wow. I mean really, if I hadn’t seen it myself I would have been willing to say there was misinterpretation or misunderstanding happening. But nope. This moron who is the ACORN rep sits there and tell these people how to set up their taxes so as to hide the fact that they are doing brothel. Hell, the people keep using the term prostitute until the ACORN lady tells them they need to file as performing artists (or maybe performance artists) and stop saying prostitute. Ok, that much I could almost let slide. Economic reality, supply and demand, there will be prostitutes as long as there is a demand for their services. At least they wanted to be paying taxes. (which seemed to boggle the ACORN lady’s mind, she kept asking them why. Answer: needing some legitimacy to get a house)

But then the kicker comes in. The “prostitute” tells the lady she is arranging to bring in 13 “very young” El Salvadorian girls who will be staying at the house learning the ropes of the business for at least a year before they move on and set up their own places. She wants to know how to list the girls on the tax forms. The ACORN lady says something about not listing them as employees because she “won’t be giving them W-2s at the end of the year”. So ACORN lady says she can list them as dependents. The guy here says that they will be “turning tricks” and earning money and want to know how they should handle that with taxes. ACORN lady asks if they are under 16, the “prostitute” says yes,
ACORN lady says if they are under 16 and earning money you don’t want to deal with it so just don’t mention it.


That is all I saw, they went to a break and then the talking heads began talking about how this could be linked to the President. (It can’t. Stop being stupid.) So I left. But that was enough. My mind was thoroughly boggled. If this had been some sort of right wing religious based organization the knives would be out for them all over the country (from the left and the right). Congressional hearing would be being held and heads would be rolling. I have to wonder if this is the end of ACORN. I doubt it because the Left covers it’s own a lot more thoroughly than the right does. The right will cut it’s own off with some degree of alacrity (the rapid demise of any right wing religious leader caught in sex scandals or say Sanford affair vs the left’s reaction to Edwards affair coming out or William Jefferson’s “cold cash”)

I think I need to go read some lefty blogs and see what people are saying. If they are saying anything at all. My personal bet, they are making more of that wingnut’s shout out of “You lie” to the President than they are of this.

We shall see.

As an aside, go over to Threescore's blog and read his posts on health care reform. Then forward them to your legislators.

Twitter

I checked the email associated with this blog the other day and found something that surprised me. I had two emails from twitter telling me that people had expressed an interest in following me and inviting me to set up an account and start tweeting. I am flattered to think that someone out there thinks I may have something to say all the time that they would find interesting. But seriously, tweeting???? I mean, unless yu are somewhere where there is a riot, a rebellion, or something happening that NEEDS immediate updating I really see no use for twitter. It really seems a bit narcissistic to me to believe that people really care what you are doing at any and every moment. Especially when there really isn’t that much going on. Now I suppose that I could use it to comment on things I read in the news or hear on the BBC or NPR or whatever that I never get around to putting on here. But since I am usually listening to those at work I doubt my boss would appreciate me grabbing the computer to tweet my feelings to the world. So thanks for the invite guys but I don’t think I will be Tweeting any time soon.

Note: the Russians only have about a day left to start their offensive against Georgia and prove the Chechens right. Of course if it never happens the Chechens can claim that it was canceled because they spilled the beans. And who knows, maybe they would be right.

Rumors from Chechnya

I was recently reading an old site that I picked up while I was still in the army. It was one of my "Know Your Enemies" sites. In this case the website is the PR front for the Chechen "Freedom Fighters". (Which can also be read as "Psycho Terrorist Loons")

On Aug 5 the posted an article announcing that their agents had uncovered a Russian Plan to crush Georgia. It would involve huge rocket attack intended to kill Saakashvili and most of the other government leaders followed by the installation of a pro Russian government. The whole thing was to be set off by the Russians arranging the "liquidation" of Eduard Kokoity, the head of the South Ossetian government. His death would be blamed on Georgia and used as the pretext for the Russian attack.

Is it going to happen? Probably not. But it certainly is a plausible scenario. What would the West do? Probably "sternly scold" Moscow again like they did last time. Would anyone help Georgia? Well, the Chechens would. Other than that, probably not. the only folks who might, and this would get real interesting, would be Ukraine, which has a vested interest in not allowing Russia to re assert itself in the area. And that is a scenario to give military planners in the west real nightmares. (Even more so if Ukraine got backed up by someone like Poland which also has a vested interest in not seeing a return of the Russian empire.)

Incidentally, this whole thing is supposed to kick off between the 12 and 15 of August. Watch the news.....

Teachable?

Okay, The President has said that the arrest of Henry Gates is a “Teachable Moment”. So what should be taught, or more accurately, LEARNED, from this mess?

1. Don’t mouth off to the Police. * The were called, they were doing their job, the more you cooperate the faster they will go away. (Note: This only applies if you are innocent. (If you are guilty, sit down, shut up and say NOTHING until you have a lawyer present.) If Gates had just been polite the cops would have gone away in 15 to 20 minutes and it would all be over.


2. The Police acted stupidly. Yes that is what I said and I’ll stick by. But not for the reasons the President implied. Frankly, the Police are to damned thinned skinned about every thing. They shouldn’t arrest a man, ANY man, for getting upset if they show up and start hassling the innocent. But they do. If you mouth off to a cop, (see learnable moment above) they will find a reason to arrest you. They will invade you personal space, they will accuse you of a variety of crimes, they will do any number of things until you do something to give them an excuse to ruin your day and arrest you. They need to lighten the hell up.


Those are my things to be learned. Nothing about race, just a little bit of common sense on both sides. Good luck in getting anyone to learn that.

* Why an asterisk on rule one? Well because sometimes you mouth off for a very specific reason. Such as to get arrested. Now I am not going to say that Mr. Gates deliberately got himself arrested. But, you and I both know that because of this the next book he writes will sell a million more copies than it would have sold otherwise. He will get invited to speak at more conventions, and get paid for them. He just became a household name all across the country at no cost to himself at all because he KNEW he would be released in no time flat.
Maybe I am a bit too cynical, but I can see it happening.

On a final note, I love the picture of Mr. Gates standing on his porch, bawling out “Look what happens to a black man in America!” And standing right in front of him, not at all concerned, is a very large black Police officer.

Afghanistan again

Ok, a bold “new” strategy in Afghanistan. Go in, drive out the Taliban, hold the territory so they can’t come back again. Yeah I know, that is how people have been winning wars since before the time of the Romans, but hey, we seem to get caught up in new ideas. (Which aren’t new either, the idea of sit in our bases, drive the enemy out of an area then go back to base failed for the French in Indochina, it failed for us in Indochina, it failed for the Russians in Afghanistan, it failed for us in Iraq.) But hey, at least now we are saying the right things. Of course we said them before but it doesn’t hold. The natural tendency of our military leaders is to MOVE. Constantly. And that won’t work if we want to occupy territory to deny it to the enemy. The big test is going to come, (heck it is already happening) when some Afghan villages are peaceful. The tendency in our military leadership is going to be to move the troops there to an area where things aren’t peaceful. This is a great way to win a battle and to lose a war. The Taliban will walk right back into those villages that were peaceful and we’ll be behind square one because the villagers will have lost any trust they may have had in us when we came in. WE are going to have to maintain an relatively strong military presence in these areas for not a week, two weeks, or even a month. It will take at least 6 months to a year for the structures to grow that will resist the Taliban; to enable the Afghan government to establish a real presence in the area and be able to defend it themselves. (and that leaves out the issue of them establishing a presence that isn’t corrupt and exploiting the locals instead of helping them.)

I really am disappointed about Afghanistan. We had that war wrapped up in about 2004 if we had just stuck with some committed follow through. But our policy or rotating troops and commanders all the time eliminated any chance of establish long term rapport with local leaders and the local people. Since a new commander will ALWAYS have a new focus or a new plan that blows consistency right out of the water too.

Sigh.

Opportunities lost, paths not taken, unintended consequences. Maybe we will do it right now. I can only hope.