There Is No Plan

when it comes to news coverage being in two minorities is better than being in one

On February 1st, Arnold Schwarzanegger announced the appointment of Brigadier General Mary Kight as the new Adjutant-General of the  California National Guard and Air National Guard. It was vintage Shwarzawanker. Let the cheap, no-risk compliments flow, so he looks just totally fabulous.

Brigadier General Kight is a 25 year veteran of the guard, and had been its assistant head honcho since 2006. Kight is also the first African-American and the first woman to hold the post, once confirmed by the California State Senate.

An African-American AND a Woman. Stop the presses!

This story has been pushed by one of my local NPR stations for three days since February 1.

Sure, it’s worth a a quick slug for one day, but not the rolling repeats of the long, gushing interviews with the Brigadier General to which we have been subjected. I doubt that many other Adjutant-General appointees are asked “follow your dream” questions to see if they have any advice for young people just starting out.

To her great credit, Brigadier General Kight responded to the patronizing questions she was asked with brisk equanimity. But the fact that they were asked, and the fact that the story has been papering the radio station with alarming regularity just smacks of an almost tawdry level of political correctness. And one that begs the question;

At what point does diversity drivel turn into the very racism it’s compensating for?

One would have hoped that the election of Barack Obama, one half of whom is African-American, to the Presidency, would have enabled our newsrooms to ease off on the gooey, politically correct diversity fetishism that they offer us, ad nauseam.

If I was African-American I’d be frankly embarrassed by the media’s constant need to spoon-feed me with touchy-feely stories to make me feel better just because I was a minority. It’s really time to lay off the cheese here, guys. We live in America, and all your diverso-crap points up is the fact that you, the white man media, has a great big guilty conscience that just won’t go away. It’s not racist to treat every American the same. But the media just cant help categorizing, labelling, dare one say it, ghettoizing its audiences.

Minorities in this country don’t want to be treated as minorities. They wanted to be treated as, oh, I don’t know, Americans. That is the way to consign racism in the US to the dustbin of history.

Perhaps if Brigadier General Kight was a black man OR a white woman, it would have prompted the media to be less irksome. After all, a recent former chairman of the Joint chiefs was a black man, and there are many senior female generals in the regular services.

One can only suppose the fact that Brigadier General Kight is black AND a woman was the reason for the media gush.

But in the view of Thereisnoplan, that just makes the whole moment insulting to two minorities (one of which is a majority) rather than one.

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In the old days, policy used to have at least some potential to become reality, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that in America at least, those days are over. Nothing anybody seems to suggest from the President on downwards seems to mean a hill of beans anymore. It’s as if the country is set on a course for planet “slow decline into mediocrity” (or worse) and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. All this despite some soaring rhetoric from the President, and plenty of hot air from just about everyone else.

Here’s a rundown of the current bullshitian landscape.

Jobs.

Anyone who thinks a $30-40bn Jobs bill is going to pass without being watered down to meaninglessness is dreaming. And it’s not certain why it will fare any better than the $800bn dollar stimulus package which was supposed to rebuild the economy and create, yes, that’s right. Jobs. The problems that the US economy is facing are profound and structural. Just throwing money at the problem without deep and lasting changes to – industrial, fiscal, and budgetary policy – sorry about the ‘P word’ again – needs to rethink very, very quickly. We don’t make stuff here. Some people suggest that manufacturing in the US isn’t “cost effective”, but my question is this. Why is it cost-effective in Germany?

Any-way, moving on to…

Wall Street

The President talks a great game about beating up onWall Street, especially now he’s been sobered up to the problem by the Massachusetts debacle. But it’s a tad too late. In January of 2009 the banks were still sinking in the quicksand. That’s the time to make them an offer they can’t refuse. After we’ve pulled them out, and they’ve put on fresh $500 shirts is not the time to be making a deal with them. And yet this is what we did. We had our boot on their necks and we blew our chance to make the single most destructive force in this country pay. And now, in the cold light of day, is anyone in the 41 strong Republican Senate caucus going to vote for meaningful financial reform? Uhh, Nope. Will Wall Street be constrained from ruining the nation again? Nope.

Healthcare

What was once a burning need is now a footnote that’s about to be buried ahead of the mid term elections. The Democrats thought that Healthcare reform was a winner, but after being thoroughly outmaneuvered by GOP demagoguery that idea is now going the way of another smart idea…

Stopping Global Warming.

Let’s get this straight. The world is waiting for America to get its act together on controlling greenhouse gases. But is 41 strong Republican Senate caucus going to vote fr meaningful climate legislation? Uhh, Nope. It will die.

Education

Ah, what’s the point. Nobody cares.

Finally, on domestic policy, my personal favorite…

High Speed Trains

California just got $2bn dollars of Federal Stimulus funding to build a high speed train network. Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that the total bill (and that’s before the usual corruption, incompetence, delays and overruns) is $42 billion. Chances of this happening in a state with a perennial budget crisis? Nil.

Moving abroad now…

Iraq

At a certain point in time, the United States is going to have to face the rather unpleasant moment when our last grunt gets on the last transport plane out of Baghdad Airport. Cue the bombs. Cue the resurgence of the insurgents and the reemergence of the Mahdi Army. Hello, reality.

Afghanistan

One day conference in London. Karzai tells us he’s going to end corruption and undo a millennia’s worth of being a basketcase that’s swallowed up empires, as well as buying off the Taliban recruits without guaranteeing their protection. He’s got 18 months before the troops we’re about to land there ship out. You do the math.

Iran

Sanctions work. And if you believe that, you think Sarah Palin is a closet liberal. Will the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 be able to justify NOT attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities? Unlikely.

Haiti

Will the outpouring of aid from Americans be matched by a long-term commitment to fix Haiti? Watch the BS flow. Ain’t nothing gonna change in Haiti.

So you see, on just about every front, there’s an awful lot of talk about how we’re going to fix things.

And then there’s reality.

Welcome to the Bullshit Era.

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Haiti's Presidential Palace will be rebuilt and we will all know about it. But so will the shanties. Without the cameras.

Haiti. A tragic, profoundly unlucky nation, poster child of colonial brutality and exploitation – right on America’s doorstep.

Every few years or so, Haiti pings the heartstrings of the world’s wealthy nations and donations flood in – along with every journalist worth his or her salt.

The scale and magnitude of this latest catastrophe is truly appalling, but its hard to imagine that its going to be any different this time. The Presidential Palace will be rebuilt and its new found glory will no doubt be photographed as a symbol of Haiti’s resurgence. But the photographers will be less present when the shanties are rebuilt too on the same hillsides they once stood on.

It’s possible that this time it will be different, that Haiti will be rebuilt by the world community, but it’s far more likely that Haiti’s misery will likely continue when we go back to business as usual, with our own jobs and futures on the line too.

It’s all just a tad ironic. I mean, nation building is something that we’ve been getting pretty good at recently. Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles away are works in progress, to put it kindly, with literally tens of billions of dollars frittered away on projects that are blown up, mismanaged, or simply abandoned as soon as the US contractors have cut their corners and pocketed their profits and then left. Read the rest of this entry »

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Iran nukes out. Palestinian State in. No problem.

Struggling with a Middle-East Peace Process that seems to have bogged down in a matter of months, President Obama is probably thinking he needs Iran’s nuclear ambitions like a he needs a Republican filibuster.

But looking a little deeper, it’s possible that Iranian nukes and creating a Palestinian state could be connected, and each helps the other problem go away.

How come?

We’re told that President Obama is a chess grandmaster when everyone else is still getting a handle on checkers. So let’s get some moves going and find out.

There’s no chance an Iranian nuke could be lobbed at the USA, but it’s totally unacceptable to both Israel and Saudi Arabia that Iran gets to nuclear “breakout”.

Neither of these countries has a chance of knocking out Iran’s nuclear facilities alone.

The Saudis are militarily weak and let other people do their dirty work.

Israel acts belligerently, but would have to overfly US controlled airspace to strike Iran, at maximum range, against advanced surface-to-air missile systems, and against hardened underground targets. It’s a stretch that they’d do anything more than enrage the Arab world, and make us Great Satan all over again. People try to suggest that Israel could do the job on Iran just like they did on Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. But Osirak is a first-grade spelling test next to attacking Iran’s hardened bunkers.

The only nation that can stop Iran from reaching nuclear break-out is the USA. From our bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and other long-range bases, the US could bring to bear overwhelming air and naval power, to protect air-delivered special forces that could knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities and then get the hell out of Dodge when the job’s complete.

Are we going to reach that point? It’s not unlikely, it’s probable. Read the rest of this entry »

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in the next couple of years you are going to get very sick of this picture

Attorney General Eric Holder made the sobering announcement today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (henceforth KSM) would be tried in New York for masterminding the 9/11 attacks.

It’s a bold move that’s been well received by progresssives as an opporunity for America to show that no matter what the crime, justice and due process will always be served.

Even though There is No Plan is a card-carrying member of the American left, it takes a very different view.There are no upsides in bringing KSM to America to face trial. Not one.

But let’s examine why many people think there are.

The argument put forward is that America will be able to show the world and in particular the Islamic street that we’re giving this guy a fair shake, so they won’t think he’s being martyred if and when he’s executed.

Think again. We can’t buy a break with Islam, literally. We build them roads, schools and institutions and they hate us. We buy their oil and accept their undemocratic and they hate us. The idea that they’re suddenly going to say, “You know America gave this guy a fair trial so if they say he’s guilty, he deserves to be executed” is total delusion. It doesn’t matter whether we drive the guy to the death house in a limo, or sentence him to death in the brig at Gitmo, he’s gonna be a martyr to Islamists and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. And as for the rest of the world, whether we try KSM at Gitmo or in downtown Manhattan will not change anybody’s opinion of us a jot, apart from the Europeans who are sure to whine about the death penalty.

Another argument is that the crime that KSM committed took place in New York so that’s the jurisdiction that should try him. Legally correct. Let’s give this guy due process. But sadly, this is no ordinary case. Firstly, we waterboarded the guy nearly two hundred times so admissibility of evidence is going to be in doubt. Secondly, KSM will make sure that it’s a show trial, and you can be pretty sure that torture will get the headlines in this case, not American justice. Thirdly, it will take forever, draining, dragging us all down with it, and finally, we might not even get a conviction. Think about that for a second. The guy who was behind 9/11 could walk free or do jail time? That’s a risk we’re prepared to take? To say that notion is red meat to the Republicans is the understatement of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

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Shout it out. Pakistan is priority number one.

Nothing in Foreign Policy is simple, but problems don’t get any thornier than what do about Pakistan.

One of the most perplexing elements of the discussion surrounding the current hand-wringing over what to do in Afghanistan is how little Pakistan is mentioned as ‘the reason’ for our Afghan policy. This despite the coining of a racy new phrase to describe US policy in that arena “Af-Pak” (mainly for use on Twitter) as well as clarion calls from lots of Foreign Policy Wonks (FPWs) that Pakistan is where the action is.

So why is this? Why is Pakistan the nexus of US foreign policy in the region?

There’s really only one reason for this.  Pakistan has nukes, and the word around Washington is that those nukes are less than secure.

Sure, the rise of the Pakistani Taliban is a deeply unsettling development for the US. But a little perspective is useful here. They are not a threat to the US homeland unless they get access to a usable nuclear weapon. But if they do, they represent probably the single most dangerous threat that the world has faced in this short and already violent century.

The Taliban’s success in sequestering power in Pakistan is a product of many factors, but despite being medieval thugs, we, America are seen in a lesser light. The truth is that body politic in Pakistan is a strange and unpredictable beast indeed. Most Pakistanis distrust the militants almost as much as they hate America or India, while their government stumbles on, loathed, despised and ineffective. It’s hard to for America to make national security judgments when Pakistani society seems to be in constant state of an odd mix of utter and post-colonial good sense.

Meanwhile, the real power broker in Pakistan, the Army, is itself weak.  The Taliban absorb the body blows of their brutal campaigns to quell the insurgency, and attack the heart of the Army establishment at will. The US has tried – rightly – to build a strong relationship with the Pakistani army but the results have and will continue to be disappointing. Distrust reins supreme.

So what’s a superpower to do?  The answer is not too much. Read the rest of this entry »

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nothing changes in afghanistan

Obama’s Afghan Dilemma is only vexing because it pits one conventional approach against another, when neither holds much hope for success.

Both the COIN + CT approaches are what I call “perfect world” approaches. They rely on countless variables going right, and if history in Afghanistan has taught us anything, it’s that banking on anything there is a bad idea.

So what to do. First, we need to establish the prism we’re seeing the problem through. Is it humanitarian prism? Or a principled ideological prism? Or through the prism of securing the strategic interests of the United States via realpolitik. Ideology, in the form of neo-conservative export of American Democracy was tried, and failed. After eight years, we’re dealing with a deeply corrupt prime-minister in Kabul with zero credibility at home and in Washington. As for humanitarianism, we have to examine what it is we want to achieve. There is tremendous hardship in Afghanistan, but it’s been there for millenia. The place is now and always has been essentially Medieval. A true humanitarian mission would be massive, would require a stable government in Kabul with reach across the country, and a commitment to accelerate the course of Afghan history at great cost to the United States, and with no real guarantee of success. All that would beg the question. The third world is full of desperation. Why should Afghanistan be singled out for saving, at the expense of so many other countries that need our help.

Finally, there is the prism of realpolitik. Some might call realpolitik amoral, but there is a view – and one that I subscribe to – that only America has the power and reach to keep the world stable and relatively peaceful, and this new realpolitik is built around the understanding that America’s interests are served by serving the interests of the world at large.

Sadly, America is not omnipotent. Its resources are limited. It must decide where it can best advance the cause of world stability.

So does adding to our troop levels in Afghanistan represent the best use of American resources. The answer to that is clearly no. The major threat to world stability in the Central Asian region is not in Afghanistan. It is in Pakistan to the east and Iran to Afghanistan’s west. With Al Qaeda a shadow of its former self, and the Taliban more interested in internal control than reestablishing the Caliphate, we can safely divert resources to Pakistan and Iranian wings of the theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

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BadBob of Planned Obsolescence very kindly pointed me in the direction of a fascinating Michael Ignatieff piece in the NYT in 2003, just before the outbreak of the Iraq war, which suggests that America needs to accept and embrace its role as the driving force of a new, more benevolent, but necessarily imperial agenda.

Ignatieff’s article presages some of the key points of our neo-liberal discussion, seeing it through the prism of Bush’s – then nascent – conversion to neo-conservative thinking, in the wake of 9/11 and the run-up to his disastrous war in Iraq. More to come on this.

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gates, are you trying to tell us something?

It was a reminder of the bad old days.  But it was today in Baghdad. Big suicide bomb, coordinated attacks on rescuers, dozens dead and wounded, and the customary “bears all the hallmarks of an Al Qaeda operation designed to ferment sectarian strife”.  It’s doubtful whether it had any effect on the tone of Robert Gates‘ interview on NPR this evening, but I’m sure the bombing was on the Secretary’s mind.

We’re not sure whether his boss is on board with this, although it seems likely, but Gates might have given us a little glimpse of reality during the interview. In response to a question about differences between him and the President on a final departure date for our troops from Iraq, Gates was less than convincing about the finality of that. From the NPR report. (My italics)

With regard to Iraq, Gates noted that under the Status of Forces agreement, all U.S. troops will be out by the end of 2011. Gates says he’s on the same page as Obama with the withdrawal and, barring a new agreement with the Iraqis, there will be zero troops in Iraq by that time. But he also speculates that the Iraqis could ask for logistical and intelligence support.

“The president’s statement is absolutely clear and it conforms to our current commitments, that is, according to the agreements we have signed, we will have everyone out of Iraq by the end of 2011,” Gates said. “And unless something changes, that is exactly what will happen. …[A change] would have to be at the Iraqis’ initiative. And the president will have to determine whether or not he wants to do that.”

“Logistical and Intelligence” support might well be a good cover-phrase for something a little more, shall we say, effective. In other words a new agreement ‘at the Iraqis initiative’ to guarantee some “we need your firepower because we’re getting our asses kicked” type support. Obama suspects that Al Qaeda is just waiting for us to shut the door after us before going all out again, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the President could make a judgment that keeping a few brigades on base for selective “logistical and intelligence support” might just be the insurance policy we need.

There’s been an awful lot of talk about the President’s philosophy. Nobody seems to know what it is. The reason is simple. His philosophy is the absence of a philosophy. Pragmatism.

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subtlety? that's the other guy's problem

To say that the Obama administration is all over the place on Iran is an understatement.

During the campaign, President Obama assured us that he would work hard to start a dialogue with Iran. His view remains, apparently at least, that engagement is the best way to deal with Tehran, their sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas, and most importantly the thorny issue of their nuclear ambitions.

Take today’s diplomatic shuffle on Iran. During her flight from Ramallah to Brussels after meeting Mahmoud Abbas, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton made the mistake of holding court with the press during which she gave Tehran a piece of her mind with rhetoric that was straight from W’s dusty old “axis of evil” playbook. HRC suggested that Iran seeks to “intimidate as far as they think their voice can reach.” She went on to say “It is clear that Iran intends to interfere with the internal affairs of all of these people and try to continue their efforts to fund terrorism, whether it’s Hezbollah or Hamas or other proxies.”  Yeah, Hil, we’ve heard this about fifty thousand times before.

During the same in-flight interview, probably after a whisper from an advisor, she remembered that she was working for Obama, not still campaigning against him, and went on to reassure the press corps that the President was in fact still seeking to engage Iran in a dialogue, “but wanted to make sure it’s constructive”.

First Hilary lambasts the Iranians then she wants our negotiations with them to be constructive.  Uhh.  Okay, what’s the best way to put this? 

Let’s start with the dictionary definition of the word “diplomacy”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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