The Price of Sovereignty

The Globe and Mail defends the Canadian decision to move forward on buying 65 F-35s, which will be one of the largest (NOTE: This is a correction, I originally wrote that it was the largest) Canadian defense purchase ever:

Fighter jets do not come cheap. On Friday, Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay announced that Canada plans to spend $9-billion on 65 Joint Strike Fighter F-35s to replace our current fleet of aging CF-18s. Add in maintenance costs, and the total sum will likely rise to $16-billion. And yet we must remember that sovereignty does not come cheap either.

With the world's second-largest land mass and longest coast line – much of it forbiddingly remote – Canada is a very difficult country to patrol, whether by land, sea or air. It is therefore vital that our Armed Forces be given the most modern means available to protect our territory. When the CF-18 was originally selected in 1980, it represented the cutting edge of fighter jet technology. It makes sense to replace it with equivalent 21st-century capabilities.

Canadian critics who blast the purchase as just creating the ability to fight alongside America in our wars are living in the past. Sure, during the Cold War, Canada was part of the alliance rear area. To fight, Canada had to deploy aircraft and troops to West Germany to fight. Ships and planes would also help defend the sea line of communication between Europe and North America, but Canada would be safely in the rear for the most part, as long as a war did not escalate to nuclear exchanges.
 
One, I don't see how it is bad to fight alongside America in wars that we share interests in winning. It is distressing that so many Canadians think they have no interest in defeating jihadis. I never held it against Canada that they did not help us in Iraq. They are sovereign and had the right to check out of that war even though I think it was as much a shared interest to win there as in Afghanistan. But Canada has enough alliance credit in my mind to let it go, thank them for what help they give us and be grateful for past help. I'm sure we'll get more help in the future, even if the Canadians check out of the Afghan campaign early.
 
The second reason Canadian critics are wrong is that this is not about fighting alongside America. That mention in the editorial of forbiddenly remote borders clearly refers to the Arctic frontier. The Arctic is the new frontline for Canada and Russia has already probed that line.
 
Nor does Canada have the option of assuming America will defend them. We have very different views about what Canada owns up north. Sure, we would defend Canada if attacked, but short of that will we really defend Canada's interpretaton of international law over what is international waters and what is national territory? Not even the Obama administration will be that helpful--unless Canada threatens to go nuclear and threatens us, of course.
 
It is comforting for critics of the F-35 purchase to think that wars are always far away, always nothing to do with Canadian interests, and always the responsibility of America. They are wrong. Canada itself is under threat, not only from terrorists who'd behead and blow up stuff, but from old fashioned territorial integrity threats.

A Quality of Life Issue

Apparently, the White House has decided to pull the plug on the House after the president's people did some political triage, and focus on retaining the Senate this fall.

Who says there is no "death panel" in the White House?

Remember, a high proportion of expenses are incurred during the last several months of life. So let's save the money for those who might live.

I'm sure Robert Gibbs will cry at Pelosi's political funeral, if it makes you feel better.

This is Not "Resistance"

Iran experienced terrorism:

Two suicide bombings at a Shiite mosque in heavily Sunni southeast Iran killed more than 20 people Thursday, including worshippers and members of the Revolutionary Guards, state media reported. ...

More than 100 people were wounded in the attacks, which came only minutes apart, at the Jamia mosque in the restive city of Zahedan, capital of southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It would be tempting to say that Iran's regime just got what it deserves, but the regime was not killed and wounded--people were.

This was a terrorist assault even if the government of Iran is evil. I do not celebrate this attack.

UPDATE: The Iranians blame us. The Iranian rulers will blame us for their problems whether we act against them or don't.

The Korb-O-Might Maneuver

Lawrence Korb thinks we can cut defense spending and our ground forces without hurting our national defense. My, that is convenient. As it turns out, he's affiliated with the Barney Frank report I mentioned as a disaster of a policy guide. But Korb's policy advice is as based on reality as the Corbomite Maneuver.

Korb, of course, isn't qualified to offer advice on anything related to national defense, as far as I'm concerned.

But let's get to his ground force recommendations:

We recommend cutting the Army and Marine Corps back to their pre-Afghanistan-and-Iraq levels when we withdraw from those theaters because, as Secretary of Defense Gates noted in the May/June 2010 issue of Foreign Affairs, “the United States is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Iraq and Afghanistan anytime soon — that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire.”

The reasoning of Korb and people like him who want to reduce our ground forces is stunning in its audacity. Their logic is that we don't need to buy sophisticated weapons or train for large battles because Iraq and Afghanistan prove that we need to focus on counter-insurgency rather than a force-on-force high intensity conventional conflict. And then they argue that after our Iraq and Afghanistan experiences, who thinks we'll fight another counter-insurgency? So why bother maintaining enough troops to fight a counter-insurgency we'll never fight?

Ah, logic. It's like they hope we won't notice that it is a two-step process to effective disarmament. Never mind that we never wanted to fight the counter-insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that's what we got.

Hopefully, we should understand that we don't usually get what we plan for. But we'll have to fight the wars we don't plan for anyway, no matter how unlikely Korb thinks such a war is. Hopefully, we don't take Korb's advice on our ground forces.

As an aside, let me mention his Navy suggestion, which I suppose should be compared to the Vulcan Death Grip if I'm to maintain the Star Trek allusion:

We also recommend reducing the Navy’s fleet to 230 ships and argue that this can be done by reducing the number of aircraft carriers from eleven to nine (something that Secretary Gates has also suggested)[.]

I'm not against reducing the number of carriers, but I want to do that to free up surface ships and submarines for action apart from defending carriers, which should no longer be our primary weapon. Korb clearly thinks the reduced number of carriers should be our primary weapon at sea since he also calls for reducing the Navy by about 80 other ships, along with the three carriers, thus leaving us even more reliant on a smaller number of carriers. That makes the situation worse than the status quo. Our Navy won't be in any condition to come to grips with any enemy and kill them with this suggestion. Really, Korb is just getting on my nerves.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to Korb. Perhaps he isn't trying to argue that we can maintain national security with lower defense spending and a smaller military as he advocates. Maybe he just wants a smaller defense budget and a smaller and less capable military. And the rest is just mumbo jumbo to convince the gullible that he's some type of defense genius (Reagan hired me! A long time ago!) who can maintain adequate defenses while decimating the military. The idea that defense will only be part of massive deficit reduction in the non-defense side of the budget is delusional at best and willful deceit at worst. Only defense will be cut, and everyone knows it.

If simply slashing our defenses is his objective, then bravo, Mr. Korb. I blow a vuvuzela to celebrate his budgetary prowess.

Korb's ideas on national defense will gut our military might quite nicely.

Stay Alert on the Way Out

General Odierno has warned that Iranian-backed cells could attempt to harass our forces as they pull out of Iraq this summer, in order to make it look like they are chasing us out:

“There has been some intelligence of Iranian surrogates attempting to attack U.S. bases,” General Odierno said at a Baghdad news briefing. “For years, these groups have been talking about that they are forcing the U.S. to leave. It’s not necessarily what’s reality; it’s what they’re able to use propaganda-wise, and I feel they think this would be a huge propaganda tool for them in the future.”

General Odierno said any attacks on bases would not disrupt the American plan to reduce the number of its troops in the country to 50,000 by Sept. 1, from about 85,000 currently.

We'll still have a sizable force to help the Iraqis go after such attackers if they truly come out in the open to attack our withdrawing forces. It would be a pointless exercise that will only get some of our guys killed and many more of their people killed, but if it allows them to claim they chased us out, they'll try it. You'd think that 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq would make such a claim self evidently ridiculous, but these people are nuts in so many ways that they'll make the claim.

Our troops will need to stay alert. The war is won, but the shooting isn't over.

Urban Serfs

Ah, China all year round:

The government calls it "sealed management." China's capital has started gating and locking some of its lower-income neighborhoods overnight, with police or security checking identification papers around the clock, in a throwback to an older style of control.

It's Beijing's latest effort to reduce rising crime often blamed on the millions of rural Chinese migrating to cities for work. The capital's Communist Party secretary wants the approach promoted citywide. But some state media and experts say the move not only looks bad but imposes another layer of control on the already stigmatized, vulnerable migrants.

So far, gates have sealed off 16 villages in the sprawling southern suburbs, where migrants are attracted to cheaper rents and in some villages outnumber permanent residents 10 to one.

Perhaps Peking can bring in Tom Friedman to explain to the peasants that this is a reasonably enlightened measure.

Lock and Load

Well, I think the Clariton-D has done the trick and I can conclude that I was experiencing allergies and not the onset of a cold. Scratchy throat and some light-headedness gone. The light-headedness is especially a problem for a work commute on the highway that I normally do.

So I'm home today.

I took advantage of the day off to take care of my broken front door lock. Sunday night the door lock mechanism died. It just kind of spun around. The dead bolt still worked, so no worries. And I had a spare door set from when I got a new door a couple years ago but told the installers to use the original set.

On Monday, I mistakenly locked the door knob lock on the way to work and then spent a small amount of time fiddling with the lock to unlock it so I wouldn't worry all day about being able to get into my home at the end of the day. I had copies made of the new lock key over my lunch hour and planned to install the new stuff this weekend.

But I decided to take advantage of the day off, and after only a little over a half hour, I have new locks with all the old keys swapped out for new keys on all the key chains. It would have taken a bit longer but I used the plate mechanisms already in place since they were the exact same model as the new ones. That saved time and saved wear and tear on unscrewing and re-screwing plates into the door and door frame. And it saved me the time of filing down one of the door frame plate for the dead bolt that was installed a bit high a couple years ago, but only became a factor in ultra low temperatures when the door twisted just so and then did not match up with the bolt plate. This last winter confirmed that my fix worked since I had no problem closing the bolt.

So now I have a nice shiny brass door knob set.

And I get to return to work tomorrow.

But I do now have an unexpected afternoon of free time to waste. That's quite the rarity at this stage in my life.

Belated Happy Birthday

Wow, the day slipped by without me noticing it. The Dignified Rant turned 8 years old on July 12th. Although I started on GeoCities and didn't migrate to Blogger until November 2004, I count the blog's birthday as July 12, 2002.

I still hope to get in gear and continue transferring posts from the original site to this site. But it is very tedious to do so.

Foul

I really don't like the idea that a Tea Party group likened Obama to Hitler on a billboard. That was wrong when the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd did it routinely, and it is wrong now.

Of course, there are two big differences between then and now. Now, others in the Tea Party condemn the linkage. Then, others who hated Bush simply smirked. And now, the press will be indignant that someone would compare an American president to a dictator and mass murderer. Then, the press didn't seem to care very much and just passed it along without comment when they bothered to cover it at all.

Plus, there's that old line that it is worse than wrong--it is stupid.

He Really Can't Go Home Again

Huh. This is interesting:

A missing Iranian nuclear scientist, who Tehran claims was abducted by the U.S., has taken refuge at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and is planning to return to his homeland, the State Department announced Tuesday.

"He has been in the United States of his own free will and obviously he is free to go," department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

I wondered who he was talking to. Now we know. Or do we?

Sound and Fury

The British are showing off their ideas for an unmanned combat aircraft:

An unmanned jet capable of striking long-range targets has been dubbed the "combat aircraft of the future" by the Ministry of Defence.

The Taranis -- named after the Celtic god of thunder -- was unveiled at a ceremony at BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, on Monday.

The £142.5 million prototype is the size of a light aircraft and has been equipped with stealth technology to make it virtually undetectable.

In a press release, the MoD described the Taranis as "a prototype unmanned combat aircraft of the future."

It is built to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions while its crew stays safely on the ground and can control the aircraft from anywhere in the world.

Thunder only sounds like something powerful, but is just a jet-powered drone, however, that is merely a step up from the slower and vulnerable drones we use now. It signifies nothing revolutionary, although it will surely be able to operate in a higher threat environment than our operational drones can manage.

The fighter of the future will be flown by its own computer and not by operators on the ground. That will be the lightning representing the true combat aircraft of the future.

The Umpire of the Roman Fall

In a healthy society, Roman Polanski, would find his movie career dead based on revulsion over drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. He would have fallen from grace and fallen on hard times.

But the Hollywood elite and European elites think his artistry should give him a pass on a little thing like child rape. They would not let him fall, having judged his actions no crime at all, in their eyes.

Good thing Polanski didn't go into the Gulf oil drilling platform business, eh?

So with the judgment of his peers long in that Polanski did nothing wrong that deserves punishment, who can be shocked that the Swiss let him go:

In a stunning ruling, Roman Polanski was declared a free man on Monday — no longer confined to house arrest in his Alpine villa after Swiss authorities rejected a U.S. request for his extradition because of a 32-year-old sex conviction.

The decision left the Oscar-winning director free to return to France and the life of a celebrity, albeit one unable to visit the United States.

Hours after the ruling was announced, Polanski's assistant said he had left his multimillion-dollar chalet with his family. Half-empty glasses seen on a back porch testified to a hasty exit.

"Mr. Polanski can now move freely," Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf declared. "He's a free man."

The story says we failed to show Polanski did not serve time for the crime. I can certainly believe that someone here could have screwed that up. But I also believe that had it been anybody less artistic and brilliant than Polanski is supposed to be that the judge would have found a way to hang on to the man and get that clarification.
 
But armed with the knowledge that all the right people judged Polanski too important to jail and would celebrate the decision to free Polanski, the judge let him go.
 
We're used to thinking of empires falling from barbarian invasion. But sometimes the barbarians evolve within the empire and slowly gain influence.
 
At what stage is the West when child rapists are considered persecuted heroes?

If It Makes You Happy, It Can't Be That Bad

Sure, the grand jihad project would love to kill Americans. Great Satan, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, etcetera, etcetera.

But killing Americans is so darned hard, it seems. Let's not even mention on the battlefield! Even getting at American civilians here at home seems too difficult, despite great efforts. Hard to get good help, it seems.

Luckily for al Qaeda, killing those nearby is almost as good as killing Americans:

An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group suspected in twin bombings in Uganda's capital that hit crowds watching the World Cup final endorsed the attacks Monday but stopped short of claiming responsibility, while the death toll rose to 74.

The blasts came two days after a commander with the Somali group, al-Shabab, called for militants to attack sites in Uganda and Burundi, two nations that contribute troops to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.

The attacks on two soft targets filled with civilians also raise concerns about the capabilities and motives of al-Shabab, which the U.S. State Department has declared a terrorist organization. If confirmed that the group carried out the attacks, it would be the first time al-Shabab has struck outside Somalia.

But don't go thinking that killing Ugandans is a consolation prize, or something. It still fills the jihadis with joy--with the synchronized multiple strikes a point of pride for al Qaeda and their franchise operators--even if the celebrations wouldn't be as raucous as one following a big strike on New York City, as one jihadi commander crowed:

Sheik Yusuf Sheik Issa, an al-Shabab commander, told The Associated Press early Monday that he was happy with the attacks in Uganda but refused to confirm or deny that al-Shabab was responsible.

"Uganda is one of our enemies. Whatever makes them cry, makes us happy. May Allah's anger be upon those who are against us," Sheik said.

Yeah, we are the prime enemy, but the jihadis seem perfectly content to slaughter non-Americans wherever they are--whether Moslem or not--when they can't kill Americans.

Killing someone--anyone--seems to take priority to fill their down time between the big hits on Western targets. It really does seem to make them happy.

Well who hasn't been there before?

ARMed and Dangerous

A human rights group assesses that we can't win the Afghan war as long as Karzai is in power?

Since when do these people have any clue about military operations?

And how much credibility can I give Afghanistan Rights Monitor when they make this bone-headed statement?

"Because an alarming number of civilians have been killed, wounded and affected by IED attacks, ARM calls on the Afghan government, the United States and NATO, insurgents and other key actors to stop, or at least reduce and control, their production and indiscriminate use," the report said.

This is unreal.

So let me get this straight. The improvised explosives device (IED) is a weapon solely used by the "insurgents"; yet ARM calls on the Afghan government, the US and NATO, and "other key actors" (NGOs? the UN? KAOS?) as well as the insurgents to stop using them?

ARM can't figure out IED responsibility, and I'm supposed to take their advice on the chances of victory in the war?

Preparing for the Big One

India is beginning to focus on China and away from Pakistan as the major military threat their military must prepare to defeat. India has a way to go, since China has advanced rapidly while India has remained poised to fight Pakistan. The military changes are part of a plan to meet the China challenge:

At the end of a marathon meeting, the Cabinet Committee on Security initiated a comprehensive, well-funded plan to bolster India’s land, air and naval forces to counter China’s rising military prowess. The plan is historic, coming after years of dithering by an Indian establishment seemingly paralysed by memories of the country’s humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese in a brief but brutal war in 1962.

Since the CCS plan was launched, there have been significant and wide-ranging signs that Indian policymakers are finally willing to realistically assess possible military responses to China’s rise. One clear example is a new division of troops aimed exclusively at the border region of the two great powers. India is now mid-way through raising two mountain divisions for the north-eastern border area with China, with the two divisions pencilled in to be ready for deployment by the middle of next year.

The goal is to plug existing gaps in India’s preparedness along the Arunachal Pradesh-China frontier, and the two divisions, consisting of about 20,000 well-armed troops, will include a squadron of India’s armoured spearhead—Soviet-built T-90 tanks and a regiment of artillery. They will be backed by enhanced command, control, communications and intelligence (C4I) capabilities aimed at covering the Tibet region.

But that’s certainly not all.

The Indian Air Force has over the past year deployed 36 Su-30MKI, its most advanced multi-role fighter aircraft, to Tezpur in the country’s north-east in response to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s seven airbases in Tibet and southern China.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy is working to counter the growing clout of the PLA Navy. The current thinking at Indian naval headquarters is that China will move to aggressively increase its presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to secure its extended energy supply lines (despite its name, military planners in Beijing don’t feel India has ownership of this expanse of water).

The air force component is clearly not good enough yet, and 36 advanced fighters is a drop in the bucket.
 
I looked at the basic situation India faces regarding China, recently. The military build up needs to be based on the fact that the Himalayas prevent China or India from waging decisive land campaigns against the other. Border areas need to be reinforced, however, to prevent China from waging a rapid, limited campaign to bite off chunks of land and then calling for a ceasefire under the threat of nuclear escalation to cement the limited gains.
 
But the lack of a major land campaign threat means that India can downgrade their army while shifting army resources to the north and east to confront China and their ally Burma. More limited resources can be left to hold the Pakistanis and preserve a more limited offensive capability there to expel Pakistani invaders or conduct limited offensives.
 
Just a note on the article's boast about the divisions going to the northeast, a squadron of tanks is hardly impressive--that's what we'd call a company. But for the rough terrain they are heading for, that's not a big deal--it isn't tank country, apparently.
 
As for at sea, India's navy has the edge in the Indian Ocean already, and could cut China's lines of communication through that ocean right now. Gaining the ability to operate in the South China Sea would pose a real threat to the Chinese in time of war.
 
India's most urgent need, in my opinion, is upgrading their air force so that they can gain air superiority over the land frontier. Do that and the Chinese will have problems moving their forces even on their own side of the border, let alone moving into India; and will have to face being bombed rather than dishing it out to Indian troops.
 
It is a long way from Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai. And a long time since the rising power of India needed to fixate on Pakistan as their main conventional military challenge.

UPDATE: And then there's the nuclear angle. If China and India go to US_Soviet levels of a nuclear arms race, the danger will be really high. Conside that China and India won't have the luxury of a whole twenty minutes of flight time from land-based ICBMs that we and the Soviets had in the Cold War.

And consider that India and China won't even have the theoretical half step toward total nuclear war of a theater nuclear war as we had in Europe where the main conventional battlefield for us was. As bad as a theater nuclear war would have been for those European states unlucky enough to be in the theater, at least for the Soviets and Americans the bombs weren't exploding on their respective territory, allowing (again, theoretically) a possible fire break before escalation to total nuclear war between us and the Soviets. India and China border each other so even tactical use of nukes will be an attack on someone's home country, which could mean an automatic pressure for retaliation on strategic targets.

For India and China, they have a lot of incentive to abandon the triad of nuclear deterrence that we've maintained (bombers, land-based missiles, and sub-based missiles) and weight the stool heavily on the submarine leg to reduce the incentive for the other side to strike bases in India and China in a crisis.

Hearts and Minds

Winning minds is tougher than winning hearts in Afghanistan.

We are better than our Taliban and al Qaeda enemies in Afghanistan. And the people of Afghanistan largely know that:

“I’d say most people are just on the friendly side of neutral, and that’s really because they’re still hesitant to be too publicly supportive of us,” explains Captain Chandler. “They’re just not sure if we’re gonna be here. [T]hey still believe there’s a possibility we’re going to leave before the Taliban’s gone and, if we do, they know that the Taliban will be right back. And anyone who’s done anything to support us that can’t be explained away will be subject to retaliation. So, they try to walk a fine line.”

But while they would like us to win, they fear the Taliban will win. And it is far safer to avoid pissing off the head loppers than annoying us. That's the rational calculation. Eventually, as the so-called deadline of July 2011 passes without our troops leaving, it will be harder for the Taliban to argue they'll outlast us. We wouldn't have to battle that perception as much if our president hadn't initally raised expectations of early departure (and if Biden didn't speak of that and if Pelosi didn't offer hopes we'll bug out completely). But he won't bug out and risk a loss, I think.
 
Remember, we are in a battle for hearts and minds. The evil that our enemies demonstrate makes it easy to win the hearts of ordinary Afghan people. But that same evil makes it too dangerous to risk siding with us if they aren't pretty darned sure we'll be there long enough to win. Afghans are using their minds on this score.

Excitement, Sugar, and Nausea

The carnival was in town this weekend!

I took Mister and Lamb for rides, sugar (and will I ever remember before it is too late that the $4.00 lemonades are the exact same size as the $5.00 ones?), and sun.

The rides were a ball, of course:

Lamb was primed for our Saturday trip after her mom took her for a brief trip Friday night to get a taste.

Afternoon is best despite the heat since it is less crowded and almost never a line to get on a ride.

But the heat made them less interested in elephant ears and cotton candy. So we focused on hydration junk:

I was the first casualty of nausea. The first ride--which I've successfully rode in the past--gave me a hint of queasy. Then, amazingly, the double ferris wheel pushed me to the edge. After that, I went on only occasional rides to make sure I could take Lamb on a ride when Mister could not.

This is the hang glider ride that nailed me--luckily Lamb could go on with Mister:

Still, we got 2-1/2 hours of fun in before Mister was done in by the centrifugal force ride that hangs you on the wall. Lamb loved it and ran to get on again. But when she came off, she complained her stomach was upset. We sat on a bench for ten minutes before she asked to go home. And Mister was still shaky enough to agree.

I blame the lack of the bumper cars. This was a major disappointment. I love the bumper cars. Mister does, too. And Lamb was hoping to be big enough to drive it on her own. It is not only a blast in its own terms but serves as a non-stomach tossing ride to break up the spinning and whipping and stomach dropping experiences. Kind of like cleansing one's palette, I suppose. (Although who am I kidding? I've never been in a position where I needed to cleanse my palette.)

Still, nobody lost their lunch, and we all recovered--and retained the memories of a really fun afternoon. One more ritual of summer down.

Actual Insubordination

So General McChrystal, who loyally carried out the president's Afghanistan policy, was fired for mocking the president a bit--but mostly mocking parts of the president's national security team. This has widely been called "insubordination." While President Obama certainly had grounds to fire McChrystal, and I do not question his right to fire a general for any or even no reason at all, this was not an issue of insubordination.

Rest assured, however, that this incident of public speaking will not be treated as insubordination and undermining President Obama's war strategy:

Vice President Joe Biden praised Afghanistan war critic Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) Thursday for speaking his mind.

“I encourage you, old buddy, to speak out,” Biden said at a fundraiser for Schrader in Portland, Ore.

The freshman Democrat has emerged as a fierce critic of the war in Afghanistan.

“It’s a waste of resources, a waste of America’s best and brightest,” he recently told The Oregonian newspaper. “I’m for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn’t win, the British Empire couldn’t win, the Soviet Union couldn’t win. That’s stupid. We need to be bringing these men home.”

Biden praised Schrader for being “independent.”

If I may be so bold, this is a big effing deal. The vice president has publicly encouraged an opponent of President Obama's war strategy to keep opposing the war. Yet Biden will remain on the job.
 
Yet another reason the words "President Biden" give me nightmares. If you think things couldn't be worse, contemplate that. And then there's third in line ...
 
Stay healthy, Mr. President. You might be the only person in your party leadership who wants to win the war in Afghanistan.

Epic Marketing Fail

Vu vu--oh, the heck with word play:

I think this is an AP photo. The site I grabbed it from no longer has it there.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!

Let me just say that I may have been quite wrong in my general lack of interest in the World Cups.

But since this insight into the reason why half the world has apparently been entranced by the spectacle and nuance of 1-0 games came to me mere hours before the World Cup final game, let me just say that this must rank as one of the epic fails of marketing.

How is it possible that with material like this that FIFA has been unable to generate interest in soccer here in America? Have these officials not watched our beer commercials during sporting events?

But no, all the media attention has gone to friggin' vuvuzelas. If Journolist couldn't coordinate better coverage of the World Cup in our media then it is worse than what it appears to be--a left wing echo chamber--it is incompetent and perhaps (yes, I'll say it) un-American.

This is way worse than the New Coke fiasco. This has been an epic marketing and journalistic fail. There is no way that the vuvuzela should be what this year's World Cup is remembered for in America.

Double Jeopardy

If it is true that Hezbollah is setting up shop in Mexico, the Obama administration had best hope they lose (and lose it quickly) their law suit against Arizona's new immigration enforcement law.

It doesn't even matter if that type of enforcement would have caught jihadi terrorists if they enter America and carry out an attack. What will matter is that the story will be that the administration didn't think enforcement of southern border security was much of a priority for them in 2010.

Let's hope this issue remains one of domestic politics.