There Is No Plan

All this talk of “[insert term for revolution here] revolution” in Egypt is a tad premature, and seems to gloss over the apparently incongruous fact that the Army were welcomed into the streets by the protesters. Cheering when the troops get called out is hardly the stuff of the barricades.

The Egyptian moment is moving very, very fast, but it is starting to become increasingly clear that Mubarak’s future is in the hands of the Egyptian military, which is much revered in highly nationalistic Egypt (and in which every young man serves).

So with that in mind, let’s extrapolate what this could mean for Cairo.

Mubarak has a major problem. The moment he asks the Army to fire on the protesters is the moment he books his ticket out of Cairo. The Army’s own credibility and continued power rests on it NOT doing that. The protesters know this and with the brutal and hated police thoroughly routed, it looks like we’ve arrived at stage two of the game. The ball is in the Army’s court. Read the rest of this entry »

See you around, Hos.

Before we get carried away with the birth of democracy in Egypt, let’s ask ourselves why the United States has been plying the Mubarak regime with a couple of billion dollars worth of play money for the last God knows how long. Was it because he was such a great guy doing right by his peeps? Uhh, no. Could it have been because we needed him to keep the lid on the Muslim Brotherhood, that’s been threatening to give the West indigestion for the last eighty years? Way more likely.

So where exactly have the Muslim Brotherhood been during the riots in Cairo and other cities around the Nile Delta? Not in huge evidence that’s for sure. And that’s what worries Thereisnoplan. You see, it would seem like a smart move for the Brotherhood to stay on the sidelines. After all, if they were seen as stirring the pot, the US and others might be a little less likely to be pushing the Democratic agenda for Egypt, just in case Cairo went the way of Gaza after its Democratic experiment and ended up in the hands of the Islamists. It may be a genuine secular revolt, but – and this is just a wild guess – Thereisnoplan is betting that much of President Obama’s trip to the White House basement (otherwise known as the Situation Room) was spent chatting about just that eventuality. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Julian Assange, that globe-trotting internationalist has made it crystal clear that he’s in favor of total transparency in government by going after probably the single most transparent government on the planet, here in the United States. When America has its secrets, say in arenas of diplomacy and defense, there’s usually – not always – but most of the time, a justifiable and defensible reason. In short, he’s going after the wrong target. I’d like to see how far Mr. Transparency gets with say, China, or Russia, France, or even Britain. Now you’ve gone after the low-hanging fruit, what’s your next destination? Red Square? The Forbidden City?

2. One of the ironies of the diplomatic cables crisis is that it exposes Assange’s anarchist supporters as the rent-a-mob they truly are. If they’re not ‘Freeing Assange’ they’re ‘Liberating Palestine’. Too bad that the nations that suffered the most Wikileaks cables collateral damage were the the (supposed) Arab nation allies of the Palestinians. Now Al-Jazeera is getting in on the act, releasing documents that show how the glorious PA leadership was prepared to privately deal away one of the supposedly sacred planks of their ‘negotiating’ strategy.

3. Assange is a self-aggrandizing anarchist, a self-appointed destroyer of the status-quo. Which is a tad ironic. Because in the unlikely and unlucky event that secretive megalomaniacs like Assange ever achieve real power, it’s almost certain that the first convenient casualty would be the transparency they supposedly craved.

Chalk it up as a bad week for democracy.

A few days ago, Muqtada Al Sadr comes back from his extended vacation in Iran to restore a little of his special brand of sanity to the Iraqi Government in Baghdad. And yesterday, Jean-Claude Duvalier, retired evil dictator who along with his evil dictator dad drove what was left of Haiti into a ditch checks into a luxury hotel to plot a return engagement in Port-au-Prince.

Neither of these characters has the words “avowed believer in democracy” on their blood-stained resumes.

So I’m guessing in both cases, Washington is none too pleased. In the case of Sadr, we’re talking about a guy who whipped up a very nasty insurgency and cost us plenty in lives and treasure. And as for Haiti, we’ve been dabbling with much failure in the place, since Duvalier was turfed out, and are powerless to do anything to stop him raiding the hotel mini-bar. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days later and we’ve got a nice little fire burning in the blogosphere.

On the left, the bloggers tell us that the ‘eliminationist’ rhetoric of Beck, O’Reilly et al, had created a tinderbox that was just waiting to explode.

On the right, we’re being led to believe that the Arizona shooter was just a lone nut and Congresswoman Giffords and the citizens who attended her parking lot meeting were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Beck et al? How dare you impugn their good names!

Not so fast.

It’s rare for Thereisnoplan to say this, but I’ve had a chance to consider both sides of the argument, and as much as I hate to sound like the Barackslider, I now realize the truth probably lies somewhere between these two extremes. Read the rest of this entry »

The wave of 9/11 remembrance on the 9th anniversary is far, far greater than on the 8th. Why? Thank the totally manufactured “ground zero mosque” & “Koran burning” controversies. Yet again the right wing and their blogging stormtroopers manipulate the zeitgeist, and wag the dog. They know that 9/11 plays far better for them, than for liberals. General David Petraeus, whose politics are as thinly disguised as his buzzcut, dutifully raised the stakes by warning that burning the Korans would endanger US troops – as if it was possible to put them more in harm’s way than they already are.

And all this 7 weeks before crucial mid-term elections that could put Obama out of business. The Republicans said that they’d go after the “Ground Zero Mosque” trope as a campaign tactic. They couldn’t have formulated a more effective and more insidious approach to it.

To make matters worse, the Progressives are willing dupes, rending their hair in the name of Islam (on the anniversary of the very moment when a derivation of extreme Islam attacked us to our great cost), while actually reinforcing Muslim victim-hood, and alienating the left and the Democrats in the wider political context.

The GOP must be loving this.

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.

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.

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 »

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 »