Not with a bang, but a whimper...

The Authoritarian Reflex

3 Generals Spurn the Position of War 'Czar' - washingtonpost.com

The authoritarian reflex to a failed policy is not to examine the policy, but to assume that those entrusted with the implementation were not "up to the task." The answer is always more power, concentrated more densely, with fewer checks upon the authority in question.

Now, the idea of a "War Czar" empowered to do the job right with the authority to make militarily sensible decisions based on the reality of the situation is appealing, even to this anti-authoritarian. I'm not really so much opposed to the idea of authoritative people having power as the opposite, the assumption that the power to enforce one's authority grants one the magical ability to make wise and prudent decisions. And I see that this idea comes from the latter school of authoritarianism - if only we give the right person enough power, they will be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

But the response of people who are qualified for the position have all demonstrated their qualifications by refusing the job.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

Yep, some vague concept of what "victory" would look like is important. More significantly, it would have to be a victory on the terms of the American People as a whole, not just the cheerleaders of war. It would have to be significant, meaningful and tangible - not merely a symbolic moment.

Most importantly, it would have to achieve lasting, positive change. I do my philosophical opponents the credit of believing all of these things were not just possible, but inevitable at the start of the war. Frankly, I suspected myself that while the results would be less positive than the cheerleaders suspected, they would nonetheless be a net positive, given what I understood about rational war-planning and preparation. In other words, I made certain reasonable assumptions about what sane people and competent military organizations do before they "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."

I, along with everyone else, was betrayed in that assumption. There appears to have been no planning, no precautions, no allowances made for "the fog of war," no preparations made for casualties and consequences and most damning of all, no thought toward what victory would look like, and because of that most fundamental flaw - nobody has been able to plot a course toward it.

Some administration critics said the ideas miss the point. "An individual can't fix a failed policy," said Carlos Pascual, former State Department coordinator of Iraq reconstruction, who is now a vice president at the Brookings Institution. "So the key thing is to figure out where the policy is wrong."

And this is the lesson that we must take from the situation; that there are policies that are so deeply flawed, so fundamentally erroneous and unethical that no-one with the character, competence and moral stature to lead soldiers will take it on.

One of the great unstated consequences of this war - emblematic as it is of what happens to Bushite policies when they are implemented - is a broad loss of confidence in the competence of leadership. The greatest test of leadership is how you react to unanticipated problems - and the second greatest is how many problems inherent in your policies you anticipate and forestall.

While the Bush administration has clearly done everything it could to avoid anything resembling prudence and preparation, it was not sufficiently opposed by those who's very careers were supposedly based on knowing better. And those who were in a position to know better, should have known better as soon as the directives hit their desks. They must have known that the troop levels were insufficient, that training times given were insufficient, that the equipment mix and logistical trains were unprepared and that - most critically - they were woefully short of reliable intelligence and translation resources.

And yet - better to keep their jobs than to act in the interest of the men and women they were responsible to, and in proper deference to the office of Commander In Chief.

Authoritarianism is a lot like Communism - there are specific circumstances where it works, and works very well indeed - but it does not generalize to larger, more complex situations; for their inherent problems are identical - trust. People in either situation donate a portion of their liberty, their resources and personal power to people they can trust, and if there is no basis for trust, the appearance and reality will be two entirely different things - leading to a system divided against itself and effectively serving only the self-delusions of those seemingly in charge of the entire mess.

This leads me, and millions of others, to come to the conclusion that there is no way out of this current mess that resembles "politics as usual." Those trying to avoid political fallout, and who are aiming at political victory in 2008 are betting that Bush will not do something elementally stupid between then and now. I don't think that's a bet that's worth the prize. Indeed, Democrats should be looking at the question of "if we win in 2008, what will we have won?"

We do not need politics as usual; we need statesmanship. And we need to impeach the miserable failure, purge our government of his taint, and I would strongly suggest going so far as to impeach those members of the Supreme Court that selected him in the first place.

tag: Impeach the President, Miserable Failure, War Czar, Authoritarianism, Jack Sheehan, 2008, politics

Screw the left and the right - let's get REAL.

Coyote Angry: One Nevada Dimwit's Point of View

We (as in the democratic party) just don't get it. We're so wrapped up in party politics and being on the "right side" of every itty-bitty issue that comes up so as to remain in good standing with the cool kids that we completely forget who it was we were supposed to want to represent. Let me remind you. It was regular people. Not party hacks, not wanna-be blogging mega-stars, not just the all-important and ever snarky Las Vegas pundits and definitely not the ultra-rich and uber-cool folks in Pacific Palisades who do not give a rats ass about Nevadans even on a good day.

A big amen chorus to that - and let's send that out to the Republicans, Libertarians and Greens too. SCREW your ideology! Take those knee-jerk special interest "litmus test" issues off the table. All politics are local, so let us not beat folks up for serving their constituents first and their party second. Most importantly, let us get back to basic, bread-and-butter politics. Tell me what's in it for me, that I should vote for you.



I do care about a woman's right to choose. But that concern is overridden by MY right to choose what is important to me.

I don't happen to be a womb-bearing American, so I'm not even sure I have a right to a vote on this one, assuming one ever comes up. But I've been listening to these arguments since Roe v. Wade and they have not changed a whit on either side; which tells me one thing for sure. Whatever is being argued about, it ain't the issues either side is apparently arguing.

Since that's clearly the case, either talk about what you are really trying to achieve, or shut UP already. The way forward here is less doctrine, more positive and practical outcomes to individual Americans, WHATEVER their political beliefs.

You want universal access to family planning - good idea. YOU want (ideally) no abortions, because Abortion is Bad. I have a hard time arguing that an abortion is anything other than a "least worst" outcome, so I'm all for doing everything possible to provide superior choices to abortion and ideally, no need to consider that final choice at all.

And if the Abortion Debate were actually about abortion, instead of an argument as to who gets to commit an act of social engineering upon which class of despised persons, the debate would have ended at that point of commonality.

I think that this issue illustrates the ethic I wish to speak of better than any other. Good governments exist to expand choices, opportunities and liberties. Bad ones exist to restrict options, compel obedience and restrict liberties.

If the only options presented are to change who is oppressed every four to eight years, any actual liberty, any "right to choose" OR "right to life" is conditional and therefore a despicable illusion.

If this current government were a restaurant, it would have only one menu option - the "Family Values Meal," it would cost three hundred bucks, and it would be peanut based, because "average Americans" aren't allergic to peanuts. (The price of your meal would cover the complementary epinephrine injections to those who might request them.)

We have had far too much of our economy, our personal freedoms and our individual dignity sacrificed at the altar of ideology, despite the constant failure of that ideology to produce anything resembling the results it predicts. And we have to be very sure that we do not replace one set of ideologues with another, equally clueless set of beltway commandos.

I'm a Libertarian, but I'm a realist first. We have governments because we cannot do without them, they do things that cannot be done efficiently or fairly by any other means.

This is not to say that our current government IS efficient, fair, or does anything like what it should be doing as well as it should. It isn't. But then, that's what elections are all about.

I believe that if there is to be a government, it ought to do something useful and beneficial for the people it taxes and governs. I hardly think that to be a controversial idea, either. I've spent a lifetime putting up with being treated disrespectfully by governments, kept waiting in line, being judged on my "worthiness" for benefits, access or even consideration. I have learned - as has every other American - that the less you have to interact with government, the better off you will be.

And yet we pay for the privilege of this system of indignity.

Do you think it's reasonable that you or I have a harder time getting meaningful access to my government than, say, Paris Hilton? For that matter, do you think it reasonable that ANY elected official or functionary realistically has to give such a vapid twit priority over actual tax-payers? Does it seem to you like that's a good use of their expensive time on your dime?

But I'm not saying she should not be heard. I'm saying we all deserve the same respectful consideration as taxpayers that she, as a rich twit with the financial capacity to make some officials life hell, gets because they cannot afford to piss on her Pradas.

I passionately believe that the government that governs least governs best, but there are people and groups, cultures and subcultures, marketplaces and crossroads that need to be lightly, fairly and evenhandedly governed.

Let's not confuse that with "administered" or even "policed." Those might be the means, but they aren't the ends, and a lot of folks confuse the two.

Don't.

There are lots of ways to govern situations that do not depend on saying no and backing that up with force and compulsion. Those should be tools kept in the "sharps" drawer for special occasions.

The best way to govern is to concentrate on outcomes, and then consider the best way - here and now, in this particular community - to get there. That means increasing options, not restricting them. It means putting decision making power in the hands of the consumer of services as much as possible, and if not possible, as close to them, physically and hierarchically as possible.

As I write, I'm listening to re-runs of the Carson City Speachification on CNN and everyone I've heard has had good things to say. Of course, after years of listening to Clinton, Gore, Bush and Kerry, Tickle me Elmo would be a relief. It was nice to see some people throwing down and using words like "wrong" and "mistake" and "morality" and suchlike.

But I'm yet to be convinced that these are more than words.

Everyone there wanted out of Iraq. But few spoke about "Then what?"

But they are all on point about energy independence, universal health care, un-assing from Baghdad, at the very least and fixing education so that it prepares kids to work in the 21st century instead of the 19th.

This seems like a plan and about all I could expect in a few minutes, but I expect specifics in the next couple weeks, although Joe Biden gave us some good stuff on Iraq and education.

I missed Obama's bit, and I'm disappointed at that. I am convinced of two things; I will not be supporting Hillary Clinton or Dennis Kuchinich. One other candidate - and I misremember which - made a very serious point; the next president will have ZERO margin for error and I think both are predisposed to make some serious, ideological mistakes and diplomatic gaffes. I don't think Clinton realizes that this is not just more politics as usual - and more importantly, I think she's needed more in the Senate, and can do more there better and longer than she could as a highly controversial President.

Kucinich - well, he came across as a smug jackass; I found myself offended by his "no strings" stunting, because, well, he DOES have strings. And any politician who forgets he's beholden to them what brought him to the party ain't the sort of person who's got the judgment to be president.

Besides, it would be a waste of a perfectly good rabble-rousing ringtailed sumbitch. I want him in a position where he can kick ass, take names and not worry about being Mr. Popularity. I think he's my choice for Energy Czar, because I think he's probably not as vital to the senate as Sen. Clinton. On the other hand, he's a committee chair in the process of kicking ass and taking names, so maybe I should rethink that thought.

But it's not just the big names that are interesting. It's the small candidates that bring some of the more interesting ideas to the party. For instance, I was a little stunned when hard-line Liberal and dark horse candidate Mike Gravel came out with a proposal to eliminate the IRS and replace the IRS with a sales tax and a "prebate" covering the necessities of life.

It's not a bad idea, actually, and it's hardly original - but it's just so not socialist; it's a minarchist solution - if you grant that there is a need for social spending and non-Straussian views of poverty and welfare.

I happen to feel that's painfully obvious. But solution that just happens, with no ear-flappers or administrivia involved? No review committees? No preferences? No paperwork? Where's the socialism?

He's also an advocate of Direct Democracy. I'm not sure what I think of this yet - I need to read it instead of just skimming but while the man IS a flaming liberal and gloriously unapologetic about it, he's not a moonbat. Again, not presidential timber - too old, and we need two terms for sure. But definitely worth thinking of as cabinet material. And I'm starting to change my mind about this two year-long election cycle, because I'm sure glad I tripped over him.

Anyway, while I cringe at the idea of two years of unabated politics, THIS time, we have a LOT of thinking aloud to do as a nation and a people. I'm starting to thing that in these exceptional circumstances, two years is barely enough, and I suppose I must resign myself to doing my duty as a citizen. Indeed, so long as a single American is at risk due to the irresponsible choice of this as yet unimpeached president, I can do no less.

tag: Iraq War, universal health care, education policy, energy policy, morality, ethics, foreign policy, democratic presidential candidates, Nevada Caucus

Iraq: Forget winning. Forget losing. Let's beat the spread.

The Blog | Sen. Harry Reid: The Clock is Ticking, Mr. President | The Huffington Post

From Sen. Harry Reid's Blog:

Frankly, I don't believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq. It's a civil war and America should not be policing a Sunni-Shia conflict. In addition, we don't have the additional forces to put in there. We obviously want to support what commanders in the field say they need, but apparently even the Joint Chiefs do not support increased combat forces for Baghdad.

There's an even simpler reason, Harry. It's wrong. Going in was wrong, the people who planned the war were wrong, the administrators sent there are wrong, the ideas were wrong, the priorities were wrong, the money went to the wrong people; everything about this war was and is comprehensively wrong.

And now, after Cheney gets bitch-slapped by the Saudis, we are supposed to be their proxy army in a religious civil war between Islamist factions? We don't OWN a dog in this hunt, Senator. Not even our Islamic citizens do; as with all religious wars, it has almost nothing at all to do with the religions in question - and looked at it that way, we have neither laudable nor illegitimate reasons for trying to pick a winner.

Senator, I remind you that you represent a state of Casinos, and in the parlance of the casinos, it's not whether you win or lose; it's whether you beat the spread.

The House of Saud has lots of money, let them train and equip their own cannon fodder. Hell, let them hire mercenaries from Blackwater at the going rate.

I see no reason why we should be expending lives and treasure to protect Saudi interests. If Americans must die in this war, at least they should die very far in the black, with robust survivor insurance and pre-paid disability coverage.

We do need to increase recruitment of Regular Forces people so that the Guard and Reserves can go home, to replace casualties and to replace those who leave as soon as stop-loss measures expire. We need money to deal with the long term health care costs of the wounded and and their post-traumatic stress. And we clearly need to have a new generation of general officers, which means there must be larger classes of cadets, at least for the next few years.

Meanwhile, Sir, I suggest that research into more practical crops for bio-fuel generation than corn (ones that will grow as well or better in cornfields) and a much higher priority for both bio-fuel production and nuclear energy. We need a realistic way of dealing with nuclear waste. That's not Yucca Mountain - we need fuel reprocessing, ideally on-site.

We also need to look into sustainable crops for paper and fiber. That would be hemp, and hemp could further reduce our dependency on petrochemicals for fiber. It takes less fuel to harvest and process for paper. It makes better jeans than imported third=world cotton and you can't smoke it, unless you like migraine headaches, so lets get rid of that dumb law. Hemp is a not bad crop for stabilizing a clear-cut, so the timber companies might not scream as much as one might think, especially as the waste foliage and residue from fiber extraction could be feedstock for bio-fuel production. Oh, and giving the Mexican textile industry a huge boost wouldn't hurt our border issues any much.

Here's another suggestion for you; the deregulation of ethanol production for individuals. So long as they are using a properly designed, factory-inspected automated distillation apparatus, they may produce as much as they like for private use or sale.

At one stroke, you've made it possible for many small businesses to turn their waste streams into fuel for their business operations, for households to generate an additional revenue stream in poor areas and all without a single tax dollar being spent. Of course, a fuel still would not make drinkable ethanol from organic kitchen and yard waste with the occasional dog turd thrown into the mix. At best, one could hope for "relatively non-toxic."

But, yes, it is predictable that this will result in a proliferation of private distillation for consumption. Whether this is a problem depends mostly on how we chose to react to that reality. If nothing else, ethanol stills are a lot less toxic than meth labs, and sketchy folk can make money brewing 'shine, maybe they won't blow themselves up or poison their kids with toxic methamphetamine fumes. At the very least, alcohol is somewhat less personally destructive. Certainly it would be possible to create an infrastructure for reliable testing and grading of potable alcohols, and that gives you the ability to place a tax upon it, if you care to. If a tax stamp on a bottle of shine means "assured to be non-lethal," I think that's likely a tax paid for a useful service.

We need to start thinking seriously about simple and incremental means to soften the blow of a fuel crunch in case of a general middle east conflict and we need to free ourselves from being caught up in that dynamic. Driving down the world price of crude oil will definitely suck a lot of energy out of various terrorist campaigns and some very unfriendly regimes. Every barrel conserved or replaced is tiny victory in preventing widespread warfare over dwindling oil supplies as well as a significant boost to our economy and every individual bottom line.

Being addicted to mid-east oil makes it impossible for us to be an honest broker. Furthermore, it's a low cost way of developing a technology that could dissipate the looming Chinese energy crunch, forestalling a nasty resource crisis, and one that cannot be seen by the Chinese as "meddling," which almost any other approach could be. I'd much rather sell them a solution than be on the wrong side of their problem, and I feel I'm on firm Yankee ground when I say that.

Democrats - and indeed, Republicans and every stripe Independents need to start thinking outside of the box. We cannot afford to prop up current energy conglomerates to keep them doing what they are doing. We have already lost six critical years due to the Cheney "energy plan," and clearly sustainability was not part any part of that. It's time to throw wide the doors,and redirect the tax breaks and grants to sustainable energy. Let the market sort things out. After years of windfall profits, they have the resource to do very well by themselves if they choose to do well by us. They DO need to be reminded who is in charge of this nation, every bit as much as every other special interest who has been on the Iraqi Gravy Train to Hell.

Them what caused the mess outta be on the front lines of cleaning up the mess - or paying for it. But it would be wrong to think that the Iraqi clusterfuck was the result of malice. Had it been just that, we would not be in such an intractable mess. No, we have been ill-used and ill-advised by a generation of Neocon idealists, people who wanted to change the world for the better, in the very worst way. And lo, they were half-way successful. They did change the world, and they did it in the worst way.

But the fault was not in their lack of compassion, or of foresight; it certainly was not for a lack of sheer brainpower. It was due to the though that you could actually set off vast changes in how we do everything and predict a particular outcome.

Nope. You can initiate vast changes and influence a positive outcome by spotting and amplifying positive trends while damping negative ones. OR, you can aim toward a particular future with some reliability by focusing very narrowly and influencing change toward that particular end while accepting random fluctuations. You cannot do both at once on a massive scale and get anything you particularly want.

When things go to badly wrong, when the friction and stress levels in a particular area get too bad, you get rising levels of violence and even open warfare. Warfare is a symptom of large, systemic problems, so starting a war as a matter of foreign policy is akin to curing a cold with a syringe full of live rubella. Yes, you can then cure the rubella and when you have done so, if the patient survives, likely the cold will have passed as well. But they weren't cured of one disease; they simply survived two.

Their planning did not account for people who did not use their economic and social models as a basis for their own thoughts. It did not account for people who did not think in classical western terms, or with the biases built into English or the assumptions about the cultural roles of religion Americans take in with the mass-market formula we are given in place of that nasty pornographic breast milk. There was no place in their plans for chaos, for randomness, for sheer human perversity - and that is what you are dealing with in nearly pure form in the theatre of war.

Overwhelming firepower will overcome a large amount of chaos - but only by means of paradoxical destroying the remaining traces of order. And armies just plain suck at creating conditions suited for orderly civilian life; people who understand that don't do well in armies. Hell, that's one of the most persuasive reason we HAVE a large army; expensive as it is, it's both more useful and far cheaper than the prisons it would need to be replaced with.

The problem was not so much that the Bushes hadn't done sufficient planning; oh no. The problem is that they had far too many plans, far too many ideas, far too many people who were sure they knew how to get the job done! Not one of them would stray from their ideological purity to accept the plans or the input of the people who grew up there, knew the culture and had an idea of what would work and what was doomed to failure.

So we have the Neocon pattern of Faith-Based Failure, the folly of creating chaos and then trying to mold that chaotic mess as if it were wet sand at the beach. It's an apt analogy, for even if it had worked, it could only have worked to that extent; a superficial appearance of a vast and intricate order at the mercy of the first wave, rainstorm or passing spaniel.

But we are left with a big pile of chaos, and we must make the best of it. The best thing to do with chaos is to treat it like a big old murky pond filled with old tires, catfish and crawdads. You bait a line, throw it in and let your mind wander to your granny and her famous gumbo.

The worst possible mistake would be to attempt to plan a new energy infrastructure. That could take decades and we certainly do not have twenty or thirty years to piss away on this. The best way is to encourage as many potential solutions as possible so that competition and experience can narrow things down. Arguments over which fuel-stocks congress should support are dumb, just as arguments over whether we should emphasise wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal research and development. In all cases, the answer should be "yes." I'd say the idea would be to think in terms of tax breaks or subsidies contingent on units of energy delivered, with an eye toward making start-ups possible, and real dollars dependant on engineering and production efficiencies.

In other words, make it possible for as many people to try as many different approaches to this problem as possible. Start an energy rush!

This is not cause for panic or despair. Yes, it is the end of an era; we must change the way we do things because we are well past the point of diminishing returns. We certainly must take global warming seriously, and I think it prudent to prepare as well as we can for potential worst cases, not because I think the worst case predictions are that likely to come true, but because we will be prepared for the shocks, disasters and dislocations that we cannot possibly have anticipated.

I absolutely do not think there's any need to consider it as the likely end of civilization. It does mean a change in how we go about obtaining our needs and our comforts, it certainly implies rethinking how we upholster our caves - but a huge amount of the necessary thinking and prototyping has been done, is well understood and is already creeping into use. Some judicious tweaking of building codes could turn that into a wholesale rush.

The great advantage of a combination of passive conservation and diffuse technologies such as ethanol and bio-diesel produced in useful quantities close to or even by the end user is that aside from the obvious advantages, it's another layer of disaster-proofing that requires no central co-ordination or management.

It means that if mass energy distribution is disrupted by some disaster, there is in place a nearby capacity to brew up needed fuel, and a great deal of fuel in individual hands. The sheer advantage, for instance, of a higher percentage of people having a full tank of fuel in a time of evacuation is obvious - as is the advantage of having a large and distributed excess capacity for fuel generation from whatever biomass is at hand.

In national security terms, it means that nobody can hold us hostage - cutting off petrochemical supplies would be an inconvenience, not a disaster.

In cultural terms, it should mean a gradual drift toward sustainable living at or above the level of comfort we have become accustomed to and with the degree of mobility a free people require. I do not see this as an either-or, I see it as a range of choices; there are urban dwellers that wouldn't bother with cars if they had viable alternatives and could rent a car any time they felt the need. Enough people do this now that it's clearly both practical and cost-effective. More urban rapid transit would make this more possible.

But there is no way that people can be forced to change their whole way of life overnight as many radical greens would like. The only way a society changes is because it's to the advantage of individuals to change where they go, what they do and how they go about doing it; what they choose to buy and what they consider valuable to them. From that perspective, there is no single magical solution. There are many millions of tiny improvements that can add up to a magical result, if we go about things intelligently. It's possible, even easy to generate huge multiples of effect by tossing regulatory and incentive snowballs downhill - so long as you don't try to predefine who's yard the huge snowball lands in. Toss enough snowballs, and the "right" people will have more than enough to keep them fat, rich and busy for the next hundred years.

As I said, we need an energy rush. This will inevitably lead to a glut, because all of the parallel efforts to reduce energy dependence. So then you are left with all the things you could do if there were cheap enough energy to throw around... and the really smart folks are thinking about that opportunity already.

A lot of our problems could solve each other if we simply introduced them to one another. You put your hog farm together with a co2 emitting power plant and bio-reactor producing oil rich algae from hog waste and co2-rich stack gas. Suddenly your two waste streams are raw material for a whole new industrial process with nearly zero additional footprint and the operation costs covered by now-absent disposal overhead.

Instead of emissions and waste, you have a new raw product which can be used in the power plant, and the compressed, energy rich residue that can be animal feed. That smells green to me - as in greenbacks.

We have to step away from a culture that spends far too much time and effort trying to keep people from doing things we think they shouldn't outta do and start thinking about how to get folks actively exercising their perversity bumps for profit. The people who are generating the solutions, who are doing the non-linear thinking, the very people who support the progressive politics that swept you into the Majority Leader's suite are the very people the other guys have been pandering to, with their obsessions about social conformity and their willingness to create a living hell on earth for others in the name of forestalling hell for themselves.

Now, I learned in Sunday School that human sacrifice was a bad thing. Is that still taught in Sunday School, Senator? I think it's an important question to ask of your particularly Christian colleagues to your right.