When I Think About You I Touch Myself

When it is all about the Big O:



This (via Weekly Standard) is really sad:

If there is a knock against Obama, it is that he is perhaps a little too enchanted with all the attention and acclaim. ... And I couldn't help noticing, when we sat down to talk in the dilapidated storefront that houses his Springfield campaign headquarters, that the blue-pen drawing he'd doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself. [emphasis added]

And this was known in 2004. But nobody cared, and the writer drew no bad conclusions from that observation:

Indeed, charisma, intelligence, and ambition, tempered by a self-deprecating wit, are the particular hallmarks not so much of a great black politician as of any great one.

Self-deprecating? In what alternative universe? I don't think that term means what the author of the article thinks it means. When he thinks about himself, he draws himself.

Look, as I wrote when President Obama was elected, I still hope the country is so prosperous and safe in 2012 that his reelection is a no-brainer for the public. I don't care if our good fortune is because of him or in spite of him. I'd rather he get totally undeserved credit for our good fortune than see our country falter economically or in foreign affairs and war to the benefit of his opponent in the 2012 election.

What gets me about the 2004 article is that the lack of experience and leadership was totally ignored by our press corps, which similarly touched itself when it thought about the "great one." I know I've ranted about our collective press corps' obvious bias toward anything on the left side of the political spectrum (and don't get me started on their sheer ignorance of military matters even after nearly a decade at war, which is what really gets me), but the 2008 election continues to stand out as a monument to their pretense of objective reporting.

They didn't want anybody else. Ooh ... ooh ... aah.

The press compromised their principle, yeah yeah. That kind of love is mythical. He's anything but typical. He's a craze you'd endorse, he's a powerful force. You're obliged to conform when there's no other candidate. He used to look good to them, but now they find him simply irresistible:



When it is all about the O, the blood rushes away from the brain.

UPDATE: Drat. It appears that neither video works. Well, you can go directly to You Tube to see them ...

UPDATE: I like both songs too much to let this slide. I put in links to videos that work. You're welcome.

Truly, there's no telling where the money went.

Back Off

India is warning China not to interfere in Kashmir against India:

Drawing a dramatic parallel between the territorial red lines of both countries, India on Sunday told China that just as New Delhi had been sensitive to its concerns over the Tibet Autonomous Region and Taiwan, Beijing too should be mindful of Indian sensitivities on Jammu and Kashmir.

I imagine that implicit in this warning is that India could choose to interfere in Taiwan against China if China doesn't back off from Kashmir.
 
India would gain military advantages from arming Taiwan and getting Taiwanese help in the South China Sea, as I noted in an aside in this post.

Let the Science Guide Us!

I do hope our scientists aren't actually stupid enough to make predictions about future events based on current trends:

The world will run out of oil around 100 years before replacement energy sources are available if oil use and development of new fuels continue at the current pace, a US study warns.

What rubbish. In what world would factors remain static if oil started getting more scarce? Of course, I'm sure the scientists perfectly understand the weakness of making a claim about static trends running out to the year 2140. Which makes using their study to make that claim all the more shameful. This statement is absolutely true:

You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it.

They have "science," to be sure, telling us we'll run out of oil long before we have a replacement source of energy. But the counter-argument has the advantage of history, which I believe demonstrates that we've never run out of any resource before a replacement was found.

Your Objection Is Duly Noted

General Petraeus is not amused that President Karzai called for an end to our special forces raids on Taliban targets:

Officials said Petraeus expressed "astonishment and disappointment" with Karzai's call, in a Saturday interview with The Washington Post, to "reduce military operations" and end U.S. Special Operations raids in southern Afghanistan that coalition officials said have killed or captured hundreds of Taliban commanders in recent months.

In a meeting Sunday morning with Ashraf Ghani, who leads the Afghan government's planning on transition, Petraeus made what several officials described as "hypothetical" references to an inability to continue U.S. operations in the face of Karzai's remarks.

The night raids are at the heart of Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy and are key to his hopes of being able to show significant progress when the White House reviews the situation in Afghanistan next month.

Given that we take great care to avoid killing civilians even when it puts our troops at risk (as we should do in a counter-insurgency), it is doubly insulting to hear Karzai say this.

I get the impression that Karzai's worry is that the raids are working. I get the impression that he'd be happier to have a stalemate that allows him to skim money from Western money pouring into Afghanistan as the war rages than to win the war and end the gravy train of corruption.
 
Unfortunately, it would be a mistake to take action to remove him. That has to be an Afghan decision taken in elections and legal processes. Karzai may be a son of a bitch, but at least he's not our son of a bitch.

You go to war with the allied leaders that you have, and not the allied leaders you wish you had.

The Next War?

Could war break out over the fate of North Korea? I find this rather ominous if it really reflects Chinese thinking:

U.S. military planners have discovered that China's current arsenal of non-nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles could probably knock out five of six major American air bases in Japanese and South Korea. Oops. To make matters worse, this has become an issue as North Korea stumbles towards political collapse, and China indicates that it will assume control in the north if that happens. South Korea believes it should move north to deal with a collapse, and this plan is becoming a contentious issue with China.

One, as an aside, as the article notes, this capability applies to a Taiwan scenario, too. People really need to get over that "million-man swim" dismissal of Chinese capabilities to invade Taiwan.

Back on point, do the Chinese really believe they should move down to the DMZ in case of state collapse in North Korea? Do the Chinese really think we'd sit still for that? I understand that China does not want a unified Korea essentially run by Seoul. That's why I figure partition is the best course in case of nation collapse up north.

And if the Chinese let their capabilities to strike our air bases guide their actions rather than considering what they should do, does Peking really think we'd just accept that blow and do nothing?

If North Korea collapses, South Korean forces will likely move north and do so more quickly than Chinese forces can move south if the collapse is sudden rather than anticipated (or caused?) by China. China might then believe they have to decide whether to coordinate the meeting in the middle with South Korea or launch a war begun with their missiles targeting American air bases in the region.

The Chinese need to be perfectly clear on this: even President Obama will fight back if China attacks us or South Korea. Let nobody be confused this round about whether South Korea is within our defense perimeter.

And this is no theoretical problem. I think the issue is moving up on the presidential daily briefing agenda, given that North Koreans are starting to act out on their fight or flight reflex:

The number of North Koreans defecting to South Korea has surged in recent years because of economic suffering in the North, with more than 10,000 defections over the past three years, South Korea's government said Monday.

About as many North Koreans have defected to the South since the end of 2007 as the number who had fled over the entire previous period since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, the Unification Ministry said in a statement. The overall total stands now at 20,050.

Ministry official Han Dong-ki said the rise in defections reflects North Korea's worsening economy.

No, it isn't because of the worsening economy. The economy has always been bad. And even during periods of starvation the refugee flow to the south hasn't been this great. In the past, Northerners stayed put despite the bad economy. What has changed is that the people are starting to lose their fear of the consequences of fleeing the bad economy.

Even more significant is that the fight reflex is being demonstrated--even if only in symbolic measures.

Yes, North Korea has been collapsing for a long time, really. So we have no way of knowing when their collapse reaches cataclysmic status and we hear news reports of Romania-style chaos. If China has its way, North Korea will adopt Chinese economic policies and reverse the collapse before it results in state collapse. But I'd bet on collapse if I had to wager money on the question.

Make sure China knows that we don't want all of North Korea; and that we won't let China get all of North Korea. Otherwise, we get a worst case scenario that nobody should want. The only value North Korea has is its strategic location. Do we really want to blunder into a war over that geographical black hole?

I hope everyone agrees that the answer is "no." I hope our diplomats are addressing this now urgent mission. Otherwise, North Korea will be the place where the next war begins.

UPDATE: More on the Chinese missile threat to our air bases near China.

New NATO. Same as the Old NATO

NATO has a new role that reflects its original role. It is a role apart from the long duty NATO had of defending NATO from the Soviet Union. I don't understand why so many people want to write off NATO.

Sure, Russia isn't about to march to the Rhine since they lost their Cold War Soviet empire, but they could march part way there to restore at least some of their lost empire. That alone is worth guarding against (especially if you are on the eastern edge of NATO). But even apart from the alliance's role in defending Europe from Russia (or even other threats as NATO does in Afghanistan--even if not as much help as we'd like), NATO kept Germany down. You'll recall the the witticism of NATO keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and Germany down?

Well, it is about more than keeping Germany down. After two wars in the 20th century centered around Germany, it was easy to blame Germany; but it is really all of Europe that has a history of energetic warfare. The formation of the European Union recognizes this violent past, even if the Brussels overlords mistakenly blame the people of Europe for this history of bloodshed.

On the question of NATO itself, the conventional wisdom is that the alliance is obsolete. With the future of NATO and American leadership in doubt, the Europeans are restoring old thought patterns of power politics, as this article mentions:

But there was a Britain before there was a global America. The pivot toward Russia represents the reemergence of an older pattern: one in which Britain used continental alliances to maintain a regional balance of power. Britain and France have tempered their courting of Russia with a new bilateral defense pact between the two of them, concluded last week. As NATO dismantles its raison d’etre, the old fault lines of alliance and wagon tracks of diplomacy reappear. The factors in why France and Britain made this agreement, but Germany is not part of it, are the same ones that obtained before there was a NATO or a global America: some alliance is necessary, but a tripartite pact with Germany would alarm Russia too much.

Germany, naturally, prefers to retain a privileged central position anyway; for Berlin, the right note was struck with Angela Merkel’s participation in October’s three-way talks with Nicolas Sarkozy and Dmitry Medvedev. But Germany is deeply embedded in Russia’s oil and natural gas empire too. The Germans have their own growing ties to Russia.

We don't want a post-America Europe. Some years back I commented on a fairly recent French outreach to Turkey (darned if I can't find the post), which I thought reflected French actions in their earlier history to seek allies against potential European enemies. This was part of the traditional practices of dealing with powerful nations too close geographically to be fully trusted. So nations hedged their bets with alliances with other nearby nations and nations on the periphery of core Europe such as Russia and Turkey.

For a while during the Cold War, the distant America proved to be an ideal ally. We were too distant to be a threat and powerful enough to smother intra-European violent rivalries. The Soviet threat obviously helped to paper over traditional internal divisions.

Remember, NATO began in 1949 as a political organization with little defense capabilities. The Korean War prompted real efforts to create a military capability to defend NATO states against the Soviet threat. It wasn't until we allowed Germany to stand up a real army in the mid-1950s that our conventional capabilities started to match the threat.

So don't make the mistake of thinking that NATO's only purpose is to defend against an external threat. Without a Russian threat, NATO with a strong American role still has a political reason to exist by keeping internal European divisions tamped down. Does anyone really think we could escape the effects of a Europe that returns to a history of violence? That alone is worth the price of maintaining a so-called obsolete alliance.

A post-America Europe would look an awful lot like the pre-America Europe. If we continue to retreat from our leadership role, we'll see more Entente Cordiales, Triple Ententes, Pacts of Steel, Triple Alliances, and Central Powers in the future. (Heck, the Russians already believe they are resisting a new Cordon Sanitaire with NATO expansion eastward--and they're kind of right, although I think it is justified to keep a vacuum from forming that Russia might try to enter.) They'll have names that sound all warm and fuzzy, I'm sure, but the outlines of military alliances will be clear.

As a bonus, perhaps a NATO that restores its political role will deprive the gathering European Union of oxygen as it attempts to create what NATO once was--a political alliance, but without the EU problem of evolving to a single state (or empire, in this case). Without America, the EU risks becoming a USSR Lite, as far as I'm concerned (and maybe not so "lite" in the long run).

A NATO alliance with a strong American role would be far better for all of us. We still need NATO with a strong American commitment to the alliance.

A Crime No More!

Once it was horrible to suggest that unlawful combatants could be held as long as the war rages--even though we can't say when our jihadi enemies will stop trying to kill us.

Well! Times change, it seems:

The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, may remain behind bars without trial indefinitely because of disagreement over his trial location, according to the Washington Post. ...

Obama administration officials said Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators can be held under laws of war, until a trial location is agreed on, the newspaper reported.

If a trial location can be agreed on, of course. In that vague fullness of time sense of the timing.

That which was once immoral when believed by people such as myself is now perfectly acceptable and allowed by the laws of war, according to our morally superior overlords who changed their mind about the whole thing!

What Fanatics Will Do

I 've written in the past that I worried that fanatics in Iran would be willing to "take one for the team" if nuking Israel resulted in an Israeli counter-strike that destroys Iran. As Moslems more than Persians--if this conjecture is true--their loyalty would lie with their view of Islam and not a rational desire to preserve their country. I couldn't find a reference I knew I'd made to Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis where Castro wanted to take one for the communist team.

Well, I found it in an old post on my old site. And with the New York Times archives open again, the link works:

But a Nov. 16 letter to Mr. Mikoyan from Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, revealed Soviet impatience with the Cubans' rejection of inspections and their pledge to shoot down American spy planes.

''Cuba, which now does not even want to consult with us, wants to practically drag us behind it by a leash, and wants to pull us into a war with the Americans by its actions,'' Mr. Khrushchev wrote. ''We cannot and will not agree to this.''

Fanatics have their own logic and we risk mass casualties when we try to impose our logic and values on their decision-making process.

Looking for a Headline

When 14 Taliban attackers hit a NATO base containing thousands of personnel, the effort is clearly not to capture the base:

A group of would-be suicide bombers tried to storm a major NATO base in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday but were repelled before they could enter, officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack — their second assault on the NATO base and an adjoining airport outside Jalalabad city in six months.

Indeed, the assault didn't even get near the base:

The militants attacked the Afghan army checkpoint outside the Jalalabad base shortly after dawn, sparking a gunbattle that lasted at least two hours and involved NATO helicopters firing from overhead, said Sgt. Abdullah Hamdard, a national army commander at the site.

A spokesman for the Nangarhar provincial government, Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, confirmed the attack and said eight assailants were killed — including two who were wearing explosives vests.

We suffered no KIA in the successful defense of the base outpost.

The enemy is just trying to keep their name in the news. It isn't as if the enemy can't mass forces to try and overrun one of our positions. They tried that at Wanat in 2008 (as the official report details). But sending in a large force against a small outpost is tough enough without wasting Taliban lives on an assault on a major base. And the Taliban got their headline:

Militants mounted attacks in Jalalabad and Kunar in the east and in Kunduz in the north, after an attack in the capital Kabul on Friday, apparently demonstrating their continuing strength despite NATO-led forces stating that they have made gains.

The attacks will send a message to NATO leaders meeting in Lisbon next week that the Taliban remain a formidable enemy. European NATO leaders are under particular pressure because popular support for the drawn-out war is sagging.

This should not be cause for hand wringing. The enemy fights--that's why it is a war. Heck, sometimes they will have successes. But when the enemy presents themselves to be killed, that's supposed to shake our morale? God help us if that is the case.

The key is to keep moving forward in seizing and holding enemy dominated areas and snuffing out support for the enemy in those areas. This all takes time, and during that time the enemy will try to defeat us (as at Wanat) or just try to defeat our home front with a media operation (as at the Jalalabad base).

Ready. Fire. Aim

I did ask the question early on that if our health care problem is that people can't afford health insurance or can't get it, why would the new law need to compel people to buy cheaper and universally available insurance?

So if the price and lack of availability were the problems, why is the market for these new policies so unexpectedly low?

It's almost like our federal government has implemented a massively expensive state-centric "solution" to a completely irrelevant problem.

Perhaps we'd do better in our diplomacy if foreigners thought our finances were on a better footing for the long run.

The Force of Bush Derangement Syndrome Is Strong In This One

Steve Walt is truly an idiot.

I tend to just skim Foreign Policy magazine rather than take it seriously because they let Walt be associated with their product.

Let the Why Do They Ignore Us Questions Begin

Sadly for our media, President Obama's trip to Asia has wrecked their usual explanation that any problem in Asia and Europe is a result of our unilateralism and being distracted by Iraq. Without the cowboy Bush in office, Iraq winding down, and the sainted international community elevated to near-cabinet status by President Obama, we still seem to have some problems exposed in Asia:

Yokohama is the president’s final stop on a 10-day, four-nation journey that took him to India, Indonesia and South Korea. In the wake of the battering his party took in the midterm elections at home last week, Mr. Obama has cast his Asia trip as mission to revive the American economy and bolster job growth.

But his policies, contentious at home, have proved contentious overseas as well, and he faced stiff challenges during the Group of 20 gathering in Seoul, South Korea, from the leaders of China, Britain, Germany and Brazil over currency policy and his contention that the United States could pump money into its economy to stimulate growth before concentrating on reducing the deficit.

During a news conference on Friday afternoon in Seoul, Mr. Obama attributed the conflict to his administration’s efforts to even out global trade imbalances, by pressing other nations to accept numerical targets for limiting trade surpluses or deficits. In the end, the leaders of the world’s 20 most affluent economies drafted a communiqué that fell short of Mr. Obama’s goal, leaving most of the work on creating ways to monitor and correct such imbalances for future meetings.

“Part of the reason that sometimes it seems as if the United States is attracting some dissent is because we’re initiating ideas,” the president said at the news conference in Seoul. “We’re putting them forward. The easiest thing for us to do would be to take a passive role and let things just drift, which wouldn’t cause any conflict. But we thought it was important for us to put forward more structure to this idea of balanced and sustained growth. And some countries pushed back.”

So there you go. Failing to get cooperation from other countries this year isn't because we are distracted and doing what we want--it's that we're paying attention and asking nations to cooperate with us.

The Other Axis?

Russia's actions and attitudes the last several years have given me a serious case of deja vu as if we are seeing the inter-war years happening again.

But perhaps I've identified the wrong prime actor in this drama:

This hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago — a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe’s attempt to manage Germany’s rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China’s expansion.

Could be. Perhaps my impressions of Russia in Europe have been the equivalent of focusing on Italian aggression in Africa in the pre-Second World War years. The real action is watching out for China in Asia and wondering whether Russia goes along or wakes up and flips to our side.

Phobias of Islamists

I'm sure the Concerned Westerner Community will be all traumatized by this display:

As millions of Britons fell silent to remember those who have died in war, members of a group called Muslims Against Crusades clashed with police during an ‘emergency demonstration’ in Kensington, west London.

As the clock struck 11am, the Islamic protesters burned a model of a poppy and chanted ‘British soldiers burn in hell’.

Yeah. Islamophobia is our biggest concern.

You Have No Idea What Really Hurts

I just came back from a field trip with Lamb's elementary school class to some sports place. It was a huge success.

I'm tired. Once I pushed Lamb on a little wheeled cart across the gym floor at high speed, cries of "Mr. Dunn! Push me!" filled the gym. Sigh. I made sure I pushed Lamb the most, but I shuttled dutifully around pushing kids at high speed across the floor. I worked up more of a sweat than the kids did. Although that is probably more a function of me being out of shape. I need to work on that.

One kid annoyed me a bit in the modified dodge ball the kids played--foxes and rabbits--which was a kind of fun the gauntlet thing. Lamb as a rabbit made it to the last two to end the game, and during the fusillade of soft balls, one boy in Lamb's class looked at me and gleefully boasted, "I'm going to hit your daughter!"

I wasn't too worried given his track record as I had watched him throw. But I did say, "I'm not worried. She'll get revenge in high school."

He's just too young to understand the real meaning of pain. Take that, you little ...

Now off to pick up my kids from school.

Spy Versus Spy

It looks like we did something good in the espionage area:

The head of Russia's deep cover U.S. spying operations has betrayed the network and defected, a Russian paper said Thursday, potentially giving the West one of its biggest intelligence coups since the end of the Cold War.

Now this is a reset I like.

Although I liked it better when the Russians sent somewhat hot spies who couldn't manage to lose their Volga River accent.

UPDATE: It looks like the Russian spies are exploiting this loss to restore the old KGB. Reset!

A Reputation for ... Seriousness?

Look at the adorable, fun-loving, mass-murdering, autocrats happily discussing their odious ideology! (Tip to Jonah):

IF communists have a reputation for anything, it is seriousness. (And if you have seen old photos of Karl Marx, you know that he did not smile much.) But at the Brecht Forum, a community center on West Street where revolutionaries and radicals gather daily to ponder and to pontificate, they also play. (Smiles abound.)

Yes, without any authority to ship people off to gulags to reeducate them through the joy of forced labor and starvation rations, these revolutionaries and radicals play games along with their earnest and serious discussion.. Just like real people! The writer was charmed off his/her feet:

While Mr. Balagun waved me out the front door, I imagined Marx’s ghost floating in the hazy light of the evening, watching over the poker players. Behind his famous thicket of a beard, I could almost see a grin.

This is from the New York Times, of course.

A reputation not for mass murder and oppression, as history would indicate. No, communists have a reputation for "seriousness" according to the Times reporter. To be fair, there is an audience here for that rot.

When I read about these proto-thugs gathering freely in a free country, I can almost see a gun--pointed at us, of course. Because that's the way they roll.

Have They Ever Been Unclear on This Issue?

I don't understand the amazing commitment we in the West have for negotiating with Iran to end their nuclear programs. Iran has always been clear that talks won't have an effect on them.

So let's actually listen one more time to the nutballs who run Iran today:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran's right to nuclear capabilities was non-negotiable, ahead of proposed talks with major world powers on its controversial atomic program.

Western diplomats have made clear they want Iran to address their concerns about Tehran's nuclear program in talks that the United States, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and China have offered Tehran later this month.

"We have repeatedly said that our (nuclear) rights are not negotiable ... We only hold talks to resolve international problems ... to help the establishment of peace," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech in central town of Qazvin.

Iran's grudging willingness to talk extends only to providing a forum for the West to accept and recognize Iran's nuclear path. Period.

Iran will go nuclear unless we stop them. And talking will not stop them.

Thank You

On Veterans Day 2010, remember that the person in uniform is the weapon system. All their equipment, as fine as it is, simply makes them a more effective weapon system. These words are well said:

It is not our weapons or our technology that make us the most advanced military in the world; it is the unparalleled spirit, skill, and devotion of our troops. As we honor our veterans with ceremonies on this day, let our actions strengthen the bond between a Nation and her warriors.

Thank you to generations of troops who have served our nation. We were born in war, preserved in war, kept free in war, and remain at war today against monstrous killers who must be stopped. There will be veterans in the future, too, who we will owe our thanks to one day.

Until It's Over, Over There

The Obama administration is now obviously backing off from the notion that we will begin the Great Skedaddle out of Kabul in summer 2011:

The Obama administration has decided to begin publicly walking away from what it once touted as key deadlines in the war in Afghanistan in an effort to de-emphasize President Barack Obama's pledge that he'd begin withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011, administration and military officials have told McClatchy.

The new policy will be on display next week during a conference of NATO countries in Lisbon, Portugal, where the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the year when Afghan President Hamid Karzai once said Afghan troops could provide their own security, three senior officials told McClatchy, along with others speaking anonymously as a matter of policy.

Unfortunately, it just puts the hard date for withdrawal a few years into the future rather than conditioning it on victory.

Still, this could be the Obama administration's first benefit from the November 2010 elections--he no longer has to worry about his left flank demanding a retreat from Afghanistan and enforcing it with the power of the purse.

Funny how life works.