Pick a Flashpoint, any Flashpoint...

The one prediction I'll make for 2012 is that it probably won't start out boring. Taking the Mediterranean/Middle East/South Asia alone, there is unrest and tension from the Pillars of Hercules to North Korea. Algeria is a barely contained powder keg, Libya is a disaster waiting for extremists to take over, and Islamists are posed to or have taken power in Tunisia and Egypt. That's just North Africa.

Moving into the Med, the Turks are firing into the sea adjacent to Cypriot/Israeli gas developments and one of their sabre waving exercises will likely result in an armed confrontation with Israel unless they back off. That gets interesting, as Turkey is still a NATO country,and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter would compel Canada and most of Europe as well as the USA to come to Turkey's aid. In practice I don't see that happening, but the Israelis have too much at stake to let the Turks push them around, so Turkey either backs away or there's a regional war.

NATO's involvement in Afghanistan is winding down, and Pakistan is moving firmly into the "enemy" camp as it destabilizes (further), so lots of potential for mayhem. I skipped Iran, but moving back to them, a lot of people are trying to figure out what game they're trying to play right now. The talk about closing the straits of Hormuz is madness and must be for domestic consumption. Even at that it's messed up, as the Iranians know damned well that even the fading US could hand them their ass in less than a day, leave off what the Gulf Sates and Israel would do to them.

Smashing Iranian military power would not be difficult, and since no-one's even thinking of invading the place I see no upside to them playing tough. Perhaps they got overly bold after bringing in that US drone, in which case some serious questions need to be asked about who is in charge of what in Iran these days. Flaunting (distant) pictures of a US carrier group is not even close to being able to seriously threaten it, so bad decisions abound in Tehran these days.

So, get your money and place your bets. I haven't even mentioned the looming holy war in Nigeria, but think of it as a cross between the Lebanese Civil War with the mess that was/is Iraq, with a population of 160M people. To be more local, any Sierra Leone/Liberia etc. machete-waving necklacing atrocity-fest on a massive scale. Oh yeah, and Sudan is bombing South Sudan already...

Lots to look forward to, and I've only hit the most obvious stuff. Hopefully your New Year doesn't involve any of these places, but in any event, the best of luck.

Tyrant Turnover and year-end review

As the end of 2011 rapidly approaches, I can't say it's been a dull year geopolitically. Barring some (by no means impossible) last-minute additions, the following will serve as a list of things that got my attention for any length of time. In no particular order:

• the Arab Spring. It won't quite be "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", but I can't say that things are likely to improve as much as was hoped in the first blush of protests. Syria is still a running sore and Egypt and the rest which have forced a change (however incremental) are looking pretty iffy.
• Related, Libya. Gaddafi is no loss to the world, but it's worth noting that he kept the Islamists down and was trying pretty hard (post Iraqi Freedom) to make nice with the west. Indications of Al Quada in the militias should give some pause for thought amidst the rejoicing about Gaddafi's summary execution and illusions of instant functional democracy.
• Israeli oil and gas. This isn't getting a lot of press but is a potential game-changer in the Middle East. Erdrogan in Turkey rattling his Muslim credentials at Israel and the loss of Mubarak (and associated stability) in Egypt weakens two of the underpinnings of Israeli security. Obama and the current American foreign policy regime weakens the biggest one, but not terminally. This gives Israel some breathing room to work with Cyprus to develop their off-shore as well as on-shore oil shale deposits. Turkey is making hostile moves toward the former, so a skirmish is not out of the question.
• The Tsunami in Japan and associated nuclear mess at Fukushima. The loss of life and property was massive, a huge glot of debris is working its' way across the Pacific even as I write this. The repercussions for the already struggling nuclear power industry have been serious, with Germany pledging to get rid of it. Of course they don't say with what it'll be replaced, but it's easy to say things like this to look like you're doing things.
• "Occupy" *.* I'll be interested to see in the spring if this makes any sort of a comeback, but it was formless to begin with and rapidly degenerated. City governments were caught off guard the first time, but once the the camps started to get out out of hand they were rolled up across the continent in pretty quick order. You want change, form political parties with a clear agenda. Otherwise it's perilously close to insurrection and/or anarchy.
• Keystone pipeline. The PM isn't bluffing when he says we'll sell our oil to China if the US doesn't want it, but there's no infrastructure either way so watch and shoot.
• Euro crisis. It strains credulity that the default of Greece can shake the foundations of world (Western) economy, but after the last few years said economy is obviously all a particularly persistent illusion (apologies to the late A. Einstein). the UK might finally cast off the EU out of all of this, but deals are still being done and regulatory empires built, so nothing is really settled.
• Lastly (for now) the changing of the guard in North Korea. Much like Syria right now, I don't imagine that the latest Kim will be calling the shots in the DPRK against whatever vested interests are already there, but North Korea is "too big to fail". The Chinese don't want the humanitarian disaster on their doorstep and the ROK has lost interest in absorbing their northern cousins, so the big question is: Bang or Whimper?

There was a whole lot more, but most of those were big news this year, and more to the point things that I've commented on here. I'm going to be very busy after New Years so this can be considered a "greatest hits" before things go into maintenance mode. I thank all the non-spambots for dropping by (assuming there are some real people) and you never know when I'll be back.

Whatever happens, we have got The Stealthy Drone and they; oh wait....

The Associated Press

Date: Saturday Dec. 10, 2011 11:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON — The loss to Iran of the CIA's surveillance drone bristling with advanced spy technology is more than a propaganda coup and intelligence windfall for the Tehran government. The plane's capture has peeled back another layer of secrecy from expanding U.S. operations against Iran's nuclear and military programs.

...

Iran aired TV footage Thursday of what current and former U.S. officials confirm is the missing Sentinel. The robotic aircraft suffered what appeared to be only minimal damage.

Iran protested Friday to the United Nations about what it described as "provocative and covert operations" by the U.S. The Tehran government called the flight by the drone a "blatant and unprovoked air violation" that was "tantamount to an act of hostility."

Flying any sort of military and/or surveillance aircraft in sovereign airspace is not merely "tantamount" but a de jure hostile act. This means only that I concur that this was a military action against Iran, NOT that I have a problem with the concept. Only the execution in this particular case.

I have read that Obama (Commander in Chief after all) was presented with options to destroy (easiest) or recapture the drone. He did nothing, and the US will suffer for it as its enemies get physical access to their best drone tech. The blog title is my take on this from Hilaire Belloc:

The Modern Traveller

Blood thought he knew the native mind;
He said you must be firm, but kind.
A mutiny resulted.
I shall never forget the way
That Blood stood upon this awful day
Preserved us all from death.
He stood upon a little mound
Cast his lethargic eyes around,
And said beneath his breath:
'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'

So the much vaunted F-22 is grounded more often than not due to oxygen problems, the F-35 is vastly over budget and over time, and now this. America is rapidly losing any advantage over potential competitors, and if Iran did in fact hack the drone (unverified but likely considering it didn't crash) the lynchpin of American surveillance and small conflict strategy is seriously compromised.

It has been a concern in some quarters for some time (it's occurred to me also) that the other side can have drones as well, AND anything which is remote controlled can be jammed or hacked. Appearances are at the moment on the side of the Iranian account, so this would be a efficient payback for some of the lethal shenanigans which have been played on Iran of late.

I'd like this more one-sided (to "our" side) but assuming that your enemies are stupid and incompetent is always a bad idea. The proof of that is sitting in "an undisclosed location" in Iran right now, and nothing short of an outright act of war can now prevent all of the highest bidders (China foremost) from getting their mitts on it. Nice going Obama.

They could make a lot of glass with all that sand...

America has always feared that a nuclear Iran would lead to a Middle Eastern arms race. Speaking at a regional security forum in Riyadh earlier this week, Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki Al-Faisal (former ambassador to the US and intelligence chief) stepped up the pressure. The NYT reports:

Prince Turki said at the forum on Monday that an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons and Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal might force Saudi Arabia to follow suit…
“It is our duty toward our nation and people to consider all possible options, including the possession of these weapons,” Prince Turki was quoted as saying.

In case anyone had any lingering doubts about the characteristics of America's fade from the World Policeman role, this will give an indication. It is however the logical result of previous and current US and international policy toward hard-case regimes around the world.

North Korea figured this out a long time ago, and the mere suspicion that they might have (lot of qualifiers here) functional nukes will keep the merely pushy or adventurous away from military action. Libya cut a deal a few years back and relinquished "all" their WMD, particularly the nuclear aspects. We can see how well that worked for Qaddafi, and for Saddam Hussein before him, and the lesson to Iran was clear: proliferate or die.

Iran's nuclear program has taken some knocks of late, but nothing short of a massive and carefully targeted air attack and/or a suicidal Special Forces attack on the tunnel complexes that hide it will stop it in the medium term. In the long run anything can be rebuilt, but it's pointless to worry about that with the current problems we face.

I didn't predict the Saudis wanting nukes, but it didn't surprise me when I read it. The Saudis want them for standard deterrence purposes, so they don't fall into my "despot fail safe" pattern above. The US still has their back, but that too could change and the Saudis play the Monarchical long game. If things go totally off the rails and we see a Mid East nuclear arms race, I REALLY can't predict where that will go. Not that I can usually predict anything in particular; if I could do that I'd be getting paid for this.

Pakistan is falling apart, and you can be sure the Americans won't get all of their nukes when the centre completely fails to hold. There are a number of places with money who could buy some through existing contacts, and I would be shocked if feelers were not already extended.

It will never happen, but an ideal stop-gap deterrence for the Saudis already exists: Israel. It would be domestic politics suicide for the House of Saud, but I'm sure the Israelis could (for significant financial inducement) "rent" an extension of their nuclear umbrella against a common foe. Israel is already strategic depth for the Saudis whether it's intended or not, regardless of what the Americans may guarantee the Saudis in the future.

Here's my AotF strategic calculus to get that result. Iran's government and a good slice of the population hates Israel, (for no good historical reason, but no matter) and Israel takes this seriously. I am assuming a great deal with this next bit, but if Iran attacked Saudi Arabia, I can't see Israel standing idly by. This would likely take the form of opportunistic attacks on Iranian targets through Saudi airspace. The reason this might happen is that Saudi is the closest thing Israel has to an ally in the region since Turkey flaked out. There is some affinity with the Kurds, but that isn't going to be a strategic asset to Israel in the near future.

Conversely, if Iran nukes Israel the Saudis will have lost a de facto ally and it will be completely up to the (now) unpredictable Americans to save Saudi bacon from Iran. This is the strategic depth I was taking about; the advantage to the Saudis in keeping Israel around is that they have a lot of skin in the game, whereas the Americans could decide they don't care what happens between Iran and Saudi.

Even two years ago it would be unthinkable that the Americans would abandon the Saudis, but perceived National Interest can change quickly. For the time being, anyone attacking Israel can count on the Americans lining up against them, but that isn't eternal either. Egypt is getting some sort of Islamist government as I write this, so Israel is now the only proxy the US has in the area.

Pulling back to the Mediterranean, yes the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is suddenly not to be relied upon, at the same time that Turkey is rattling its destroyers around the joint Cyprus/Israel gas projects in the eastern Med. Syria is destabilizing further by the day, and Hezbollah is making a play at a coup (again) in Lebanon. The latter is unlikely to succeed as Hezbollah's hostage "allies" in the country are starting to see daylight between Syria and Hezbollah and are getting brave now that they might have a chance.

Holy flashpoints Batman! I know I've left some things out, and I'm sure I'm missing some other stuff that going on, so it's at least this potentially messy. I don't know whether adding more nuclear weapons to the mix will make things more stable or less, but the best case is some sort of multi-sided Mid East Cold War. That certainly sounds like fun, but whatever I can imagine is a small slice of the possibilities the unpredictability of human interaction provides us with. As always, watch and shoot.

The end? Nothing ever ends...

With the writing on the wall, you'll hear a lot more of this:

Karzai said: "Afghanistan will certainly need help for another 10 years, until around 2024. We will need training for our own troops. We will need equipment for the army and police and help to set up state institutions."
Referring to the Taliban regime, he added: "If we lose this fight, we are threatened with a return to a situation like that before Sept. 11, 2001."

Afghanistan is a sinkhole for all the blood and treasure anyone could sink into it, and this shilling for baksheesh has set the gears in my head into motion. It's napkin math time ladies and gents, lets see what my Frontier Arithmetic comes up with; specifically the cost of what brought us into that tar pit, versus what it's cost since.

Wikipedia has the total fatalities "in and around Afghanistan" for coalition countries at about 2800 (their figures as of 30 Nov 2011). This sounds about right to me so I'll work with it. Likewise, the amount that the USA has spent on Afghanistan to date will be impossible to determine exactly, but http://costofwar.com/en/ has it as $464Bn at the time of writing. I won't bother with what Canada has spent, but I'm sure we had better things to do with the money, even if it has been a big boost the the Canadian Army and (lesser extent) Air Force.

Now, the cost of the 9/11 attack that triggered it all is almost equally fraught. Here is one account which has it in the neighborhood of $2T. A lot of that is stock market "loss" but looking at property losses alone it's over $100B. Canada of course was physically unscathed in the 9/11 attack, but we've still spent billions in and because of Afghanistan. This is an amount that Canada can easily absorb, the same can not be said for US expenditures.

The happily departed OBL stated Al Queda's plan as one of "Bleed to Bankruptcy" and it was more successful than it should have been. Based on the above the balance sheet for nation building in Afghanistan (as opposed to Special Forces and air support) isn't looking good. For the umpteenth time, it's been diminishing returns since 2002, and there will be little to show that we accomplished anything. Bad geopolitical investment.

I can't say I've given up predicting the course of things over there, but our side has lost a lot (modern terms) of troops and poured a lot of money down the Central Asian drain. I don't think that the Taliban will be as successful as last time, but the hard-won progress in the Afghan provinces has been very temporary and as soon as we leave every idiot gang with guns will move in all over the south and east.

If nothing else, remember that the USSR did the same things we did; propped up a government, built stuff, etc., with the difference that they bombed "civilians" ON PURPOSE when they felt it necessary and never apologized. Whatever temporary cooperation we've bought over there will dry up as soon as our money does and the troops aren't there to keep the Talibs down. Should look great in the history books; I wonder who'll try the place next? China perhaps?

Time to stir the alphabet soup

I have said many times before that NATO (not Nato, BBC!) has outlived its usefulness. It is after all the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and as such should stick to its neighbourhood. Afghanistan is an exception since the 9/11 attacks were an attack on a member nation, and Article 5 covers that quite distinctly.

Rebuilding Afghanistan was never in the agreement and I object to it as a bottomless pit for blood and treasure. Certainly routing al Queda and putting the boot to the Taliban government neutralized the immediate threat (as much as reasonably possible) and could be counted as effective payback under the circumstances. Iraq was most certainly NOT a NATO concern, and has done much to put the USA in the situation where they need to be guilting other Alliance countries into stepping up.

Regional confederations of nations with aligned interests are coming together, which is a good thing for them. America is worse than broke and entirely too beholden to the Chinese holdings of US debt and currency to be counted on in South-East Asia, for example. That said, no combination to be found around the South China Sea can stand up to Chinese strong-arm tactics over its ludicrous claimed Exclusive Economic Zone , assuming that China continues to disregard world opinion about it's blatant expansionism.

One can of course compare what China is doing on it's way up with what the US did, and a lot of it is standard Great Power manoeuvring. The South China Sea stuff however is baldly hegemonic and there is no way to spin that one as anything other than screwing over everyone smaller than them in the neighbourhood.

The world is adjusting to the balance of power, much as it did 20 years ago. China is not quite a Superpower, but it's on its way up as the Americans contract, and this leaves local vacuums that China will happily fill. China however is not a monolith, and the cracks are plastered over at the moment.

So, should NATO get involved in a dispute over the Spratly Islands? Certainly what happens in that part of the world is significant to international trade, but the Europeans are almost as boned as the USA, and in any event shy about shooting at anyone who can shoot back. I don't see Canada getting into that, nor any reason why we should. If the Americans think we should get involved just because they are, I don't see it that way, and I don't think the Canadian government (and certainly not the people) will either. Multiply that by all of the NATO signatories, and you have a problem with Mr. Panetta's position.

Piracy in the Indian Ocean? Sure, that's something that affects almost everyone, and doesn't drag us into geopolitical struggles. Peace support (not Peacekeeping!) in Africa, Company to Battalion scale? That sort of thing also can work, provided the area in question has any reasonable chance of being salvaged.

You may see a trend here: smaller countries like Canada can do the smaller stuff, but we have to have a good reason to do so if it's not part of our treaty obligations. If that's what the Americans want, they might get it, albeit appealing to NATO for it renders completely meaningless the terms of that organization. There is this other thing called the UN that was designed to do this sort of job, but we've seen how well that works. Time for everyone to re-evaluate their national interests and possibly re-combine into more relevant organizations to meet those.

To bomb, or not to bomb?

It now seems imminent that Iran will have its nuclear weapons. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but the place is a flash point in the meantime. There is a lot of handwringing about bombing or not bombing, but I say go for it. But, NOT the nuclear program.

Leaving aside the troublesome aspects of dropping bombs on radioactive material, the nuclear program is something that virtually all Iranians are behind. Hitting this would rally them all and trigger a whole pile of proxy wars with Iranian surrogates from Gaza to Afghanistan.\

While a chance to kill a whole bunch more Hezbollah wouldn't exactly be unwelcome in Israel for example, the current situation of Syria ensures no significant threat from them. Those who say the Israelis would be "mad" to bomb Iran now are not as right as they could be.

What I have advocated before I will advocate again: hurt the regime in Iran, not the people and the infrastructure. Hit all the Quds Force assets you can, the Revolutionary Guard, and anything else that will weaken the mullahs. This will strengthen the opposition while compromising the government's ability to hit back.

Leaving the nuclear program in place is then a gamble that a more reasonable regime will take over and not hand fission bombs out like Hallowe'en candy to Islamic terrorists. To put that scenario in perspective, Pakistan has a bunch of nukes and we never bombed their program.

Pakistan is a lost cause due to fanaticism and failed-state-ishness but Iran has more potential as long as we can help them get some better leaders. Does Iran with a bomb scare you more than Pakistan, in the state the latter is rapidly devolving to? If so, why?

Pusillanimity and the Oakland Soviet

A recent conversation with my father-in-law resulted in him saying that all of these "Occupy" people are "communists". This is fundamentally accurate, and not a surprising reaction from a retired businessman; if the "Death to Capitalism" banners weren't enough to give the game away I don't know what is.

People are starting to get fed up and again hardly surprising given the hijinks in Oakland in the last few days. I don't know if there has been a sifting out of participants so that the most radical are the ones who are sticking it out, but the novelty has definitely worn off even when they're not destroying property and trying to kill public servants. The whole thing is devolving rapidly, the worst example being Oakland. The others (especially in Canada) are varying degrees of useless and just plain squatting, but they are certainly now doing more harm than any possible good.

This means that the continued presence of these communes in business areas is killing small businesses in the vicinity through intimidation, deliberate vandalism, and effective blockade of customers. These people are not fans of the crony capitalism that got the U.S. in the mess it's in, and are certainly NOT in the much maligned (with some cause, some of the time) "1%". One problem (there are many) with not having a set "aim" is the inability to see when things are going badly off-track, as they obviously have done now.

The lefties and fellow travellers pooh-pooh the conservative/capitalist concept of having some idea what the hell you're doing and trying to accomplish, but most of us aren't nihilist anarchists and we like Order. Civilization requires some structure and certainly some common ideas about how things should work, and certainly requires enforcement of basic concepts. The occupiers are discovering, like it or probably not, that when you get more than three people anywhere you start needing organization if you are sticking around.

Supplies and security come right after shelter (often before) and they don't just happen. They require organization and leadership, and you won't have the former without some version of the latter. Now as is my wont, I circle back to the original point.

Oakland's civic reaction to this, specifically that of the Mayor and City Council, has been and to the time of writing continues to be inconsistent, and therefore a guaranteed and de facto disaster. The police have been whipsawed by contradictory orders, and one of the predictable results of this is certain Black Bloc elements in the protest will exploit the resulting chaos, as happened last night (main link). Another is a drop in morale of the police as they realize that their bosses don't have their backs, and no good can come of that.

So, the Oakland Soviet has blockaded the third-busiest port in the U.S. and to "press time" it is shut down. It has been pointed out that this hurts all of the workers who depend on the port for their livelihood; this is where the true colours of the Occupy clowns is shown. It's not about "the 99%", it's about their vague concept that things should be "different". Different how, exactly? I've asked this class of person that question before, and as much as they don't like what's happening the only coherent answer you'll likely get is some variation of "revolution".

So far it's a polyglot of signs about all things except making money and paying taxes, but the black flag has already been flown; how long until we see the red?

No good options

The IDF's operational forum will discuss a procedure which stipulates that the abduction of living soldiers must be prevented at any cost later this week in the backdrop of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal, Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Since Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners Hamas has stressed that it will attempt to kidnap more soldiers in order to bring about the release of the remaining Palestinians held in Israel.

The IDF estimates the threat is concrete and has therefore briefed commanders on a series of preliminary actions which can help prevent kidnappings. IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz has also ordered that the commanders learn ways to actively thwart kidnappings, even at the expense of the kidnapped soldier's life.

There will be different opinions on this to say the least, but here's my $0.02: if it was me getting snatched by any of these groups (pretty much any group, really) I'd want my people to shoot the fuckers and I'd take my chances with that. Your odds of survival aren't great if taken, and I'd be damned if I'd be put in a position where hundreds of murderers could be exchanged for me. Besides, you might get lucky and only the bad guys get hit. Those odds are slim, but in that circumstance I'd take them. It's that or:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

Talibanistan and the Line of Death

I formed my opinions of Afghanistan well before I went there, but I didn't see anything which changed my mind about how to deal with the place. Michael Yon has spent far more time and ranged much more broadly there than I have/ever will and in the linked article he brings up the same point that I was advocating five years ago.

I called it "Talibanistan", but it was really about maximising return on our efforts. The more bad guys there are in the population, and the more support they have, the more it will be a lethal rats' nest for our troops and development workers. There is in Afghanistan a rather obvious dividing line (several in fact) between people who support the "Taliban" and people who will not.

Sectarianism is usually a bad thing, but there are a lot of examples from history which show how it can be used to achieve an aim. The aim admittedly is usually "divide and conquer", but the principles work just as well for "unite and secure".

Birds of feather do indeed flock together, and if the "feather" is not wanting to live under repressive religious thugs, there are a lot of those people in most parts of A-stan. There are a lot of those same people however who have ties of blood and/or culture to the Taliban et al, and in this case that would be the Pashtun. Not all Pashtun are Taliban, but most Taliban are Pashtun, so you have a ready-made dividing line. This line tallies pretty well with the southern provinces that ISAF hs been fighting and dying in for the last 10 years, so a "Line of Death" would be pretty simple to come up with.

The key element to make this work is to ensure that the rump Afghanistan encompasses contiguous populations who are inimical to the Taliban. This means the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras as a start. The map here provides a rough idea, and this one of the Northern Alliance (vs. the Taliban in 1996) correlates very well, although the Hazara regions were overrun.

This of course would lead to a large area of the Pakistani NW Frontier and Southern Afghanistan being written off, but ask yourself what difference that would make in the big picture. The place is already not controlled in any way, we're just playing high-(and low)tech whack-a-mole with a bunch of Pakistan-supported badasses all through the south and east. Shift the borders of what we'll concern ourselves with (if we even continue to do so) and we shift the goalposts toward a win for somebody as opposed to a loss for everyone.

This is the point of Michael's article; there are people there who want our help (I've met them too) who won't try to kill us as we deliver it. These are the people over there (if anybody) that we should try to help, because they'll fight with us to defend their communities and projects.

As for my "Line of Death", the proposed border? I wouldn't want to consign civilized Pashtuns to the brutish rule of the Taliban (and the Haqqani Network, etc.) so it would be a mutable border. From a stable base the Pashtun territory could be absorbed in discrete "bites" working outward until too much resistance was reached, then the border Hesco fortresses go up. Those would be manned by Afghans with drones flying patrol and some bombers and SF teams on call. The"Line of Death" name isn't meant to be figurative: cross it with a weapon or try to sneak across, you die.

This blog is called "Arithmetic on the Frontier" for a reason; there are diminishing returns with everything, and nation building is no exception. After the 10 years we've been mucking about in the place there are still lots of "no-go" areas (Helmand, Zari, Panjwai, etc.); if we're not going to completely cut and run we'll need to cut our losses. I'm sure quiet parts of Afghanistan would appreciate some help,and our money wouldn't be going down the drain like when the Taliban blows up our schools and irrigation projects in the less-friendly parts.

My bottom line? Screw the villages that we get blown up patrolling; there's nothing there that we (or the Americans) need, and if you really want to dent the opium trade, spray the damned poppy fields. My prediction? China will move in and do (something like) this if we don't. If they don't, the place will carry on much like it is.

If you're so eager to die...

By Adrian Blomfield, Gaza City and Richard Spencer in Mitzpe Hila
11:13PM BST 19 Oct 2011

An unsuccessful suicide bomber released from prison as part of the deal to free Gilad Shalit, the Israeli conscript, on Wednesday vowed to fulfil a childhood ambition by "sacrificing" her life for the Palestinian cause.

As she returned to her family home in northern Gaza, Wafa al-Bis insisted she would seize any opportunity to mount another suicide mission and encouraged dozens of cheering schoolchildren to follow her example.

When the first of these released idiots kills someone there will be a hell of an uproar in Israel, but there is plenty of "I told you so" to go around.

What I would really like to see out of all of this is a compelling reason NOT to bulldoze the entire Gaza Strip into the sea and start over. I know it's not an isolated incident, but when children are raised to revere people blowing themselves up, I see that as a problem, to put it mildly. Another Operation Cast Lead would be a good start, and would send a message that the only representative democracy in the Middle East still has a will to survive after this ridiculous prisoner swap.

Cradle to grave of civilization

I never spent a lot of time here (or anywhere else) talking about the US foray into Iraq, but it's now all but over.

Washington and Baghdad's failure to agree on a troop-extension deal means that virtually all of the 43,000 U.S. troops now in Iraq will stream out of the country over the next six weeks, bringing a quiet end to a conflict that began with so much bombast.

Radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has called for public rallies on Jan. 1 to celebrate the U.S. withdrawal, but the idea hasn't gained much traction with other Iraqi political leaders. For now, there are no formal ceremonies planned in Iraq to mark the end of the U.S.-led mission there or to commemorate the thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the conflict.

Going in there to "fix" the place seemed like a bad idea to me the first time in 90/91, and this bit of regime change was poorly conceived and badly bungled (yes, I'm looking at YOU, Mr Bremer!) My take in '91 was that if you removed Saddam you'd just have to find another guy like him. Of course, after the Iran revolution in 1979 Saddam became one of "our" bastards to contain the mullahs, and after a smacking back into place he could occupy that position again.

I doubt my analysis was that complete back then, but my take on what is required to run your average (mostly) Arab country was within spitting distance of reality. The near-term result of the last eight years of carnage and displacement is to have upset the entire balance of power in the Gulf area, and I read it as follows:

Removing the Baathist/Sunni hold on Iraq has handed it to the Shia, and thus into the back pocket of Iran. This removes the Saudis' main bulwark against Iran and throws the entire Gulf Cooperation Council into a tizzy (approved diplomatic terminology abounds here). The salutary effect of that is for the Saudis to start being part of the solution to the overall terrorist problem instead of creating monsters and loosing them across the world.

So far, could be worse. I have remarked previously about how it is evident that the interests of the House of Saud and those of Israel are increasingly convergent. This comes at a time when Egypt has become more actively hostile to Israel than it has been in over 30 years, and Turkey has thrown it's good relations with the Israelis under the bus. Turkey will probably conflict with Iran, which with Syria tottering will put a brake on Hezbollah in Lebanon, shifting the geopolitical balance again. Look for naval clashes in the Med, specifically off Cyprus between Turkey and Israel.

The Americans will probably back Israel up against Turkey, and as long as they do turkey will probably behave, but the sabres are rattling ominously. With the disengagement from Iraq, and probably another from Afghanistan in the near future, I can't predict what that will mean in the Near and Middle East, but Mrs. Clinton's arrival today in Libya and Obama's announcement of advisors to Uganda to sort out the Lord's Resistance Army may suggest more Africa and less Gulf/Central Asia.

We'll see what fills the partial vacuum which will be left by the US withdrawal from Iraq; resurgent Persian or Ottoman Empire? Both? Neither? Whatever happens, the Sunni Arab bloc is on the ropes in that neighbourhood. The Saudis still have lots of cash though...

Keystone Quixote

With the Occupy *.* protests going in fits and starts all over North America, I will come back to what I threatened to talk about a little while ago. Specifically that's the Keystone XL pipeline project and more generally, geopolitical energy policy.

Oil is messy stuff; you'll get no arguments from me on the basics. There have been and will be leaks in pipelines all over the world (less when people aren't actively breaching them) so the environmental concerns are not to be dismissed. I do however have some sympathy for those who complain that the facts are being distorted by "celebrity protesters". To try to put this in perspective to facilitate a less fraught risk assessment, let's zoom way out and start from there:













We (and this includes the USA) need petroleum in many forms and we need lots of it. Even if/when we get to the point where we can stop burning it (I hope to live that long at least) we will still need it to make things, and it will need to be transported. Moving as much of the transportation and generation grid (big trucks, power plants etc.) over to natural gas will help to reduce the amount of oil which will be sloshing around the continent, and we have lots of NG so supply will be "merely" logistics. LNG likes to explode if you're careless with it, but it's not much of a spill risk unless it lands on you (really REALLY cold). Although not as completely pollution free as Hydrogen, it's far easier to work with. There remains the thermodynamically inescapable fact that petroleum products (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.) have a much higher energy density than you can get from propane, methane et al, and there's the infrastructure cost of providing places for these vehicles to fuel, so oil is not going away just yet.

So the oil needs to come from somewhere, and the Oil Sands are close and friendly to the US. This is as opposed to (for example) Venezuela which is arguably closer, depending on the refinery, but not (presently) friendly and we're talking tankers. While I'm on the subject of tankers, they don't seem to be the menace you'd assume them to be, but they get a lot of press due to the impressive swath of oily mess they cause. Leaky pipelines are typically unspectacular, although your groundwater may feel differently. This brings us back to the NIMBY problem which brought this to you today, and the current US administration's hostility to "Drill, baby, drill!"

Countries have no permanent Friends and no permanent Enemies, only permanent Interests. I really don't want to think too much about what happens if Canada is no longer friends with the US (although the words Manifest Destiny pop into my head), but if their money has to go somewhere, at least they can be certain we're not financing terrorist groups with it. They need Oil, and we have oil, so it should work out. However if it doesn't, China ALSO needs oil; if the Americans get too wrapped around the axle about how "dirty" the oil is, I'll happily sell to whoever wants to buy.

Economics are a permanent Interest for all concerned. Well, not all; those protesters (especially the "celebrity" ones) have a very narrow focus and keeping the economy moving is not part of it. This is the crux of the issue, balance and Risk Assessment. In the "pro" column is security of supply. In the "con" there is cost and environmental risk. "Con" is here as objective as possible and takes ideology out of it as much as possible; in this day and age ignoring the environmental potential of something is not an option, but the number of variables that encompasses is a matter of ideology.

How this balances out depends (as always) on where you put the weight. Since I have no skin in the game I come down on the side of "build it", assuming that it is done properly. This is for simple geopolitical and economic reasons, both serviced by the "pro", and my caveats cover (to my satisfaction) the "con". I realize that you will feel differently if it's going through your fields or aquifer and I have no pat response to that, but Darryl Hanna and the rest of them still annoy me, mostly because it's another bandwagon for them.

Here's some more of my ideology at work: all of this is happening because nuclear energy has not been supported and developed. Tripling the output of conventional fission plants could provide all of the energy the US currently gets from coal, accomplishing Obama's goal of driving coal plants out of business and cutting way back on pollution. The current fetish of blaming CO2 for all that's wrong in the world would be satisfied by that, and if they got some thorium action going they could take fossil fuels out of the generation sector entirely while ensuring domestic control of reliable energy. There'd be a boom in construction as well.

Of course this does nothing about the need to move crude to refineries, but abundant and cheap electricity could (with improved battery tech) make electric vehicles more practical, reducing the need for petrol. All of this and no need for ugly noisy unreliable wind turbines cluttering the landscape; try that, H. Boone Pickens .

Who will bell the curve?

"The future of the nation depends on being able to educate the top 10% of the population and to civilize the rest. We are not doing a very good job of either task." Jerry Pournelle PhD, Oct 2011

This is quote taken completely out of context, but it refers to the horrible state of American education at all levels. I won't be smug about that for two reasons; one, we're not much ahead of them in our system and results, and two, 300M+ uneducated cretins on our southern border is cause for significant concern.

Now that "top 10%" thing. Anybody who believes that all people are created equal is an imbecile, and it is a simple fact that we are not all equally gifted in all areas. I might say "top 20%" but it depends what we're talking about when we say "educate".

When I was in high school, if you had any academic potential at all you were pushed toward University, and at the same time they were cancelling the Shop classes for the more mechanically minded. In the former case getting a Trade wasn't even mentioned, and in the latter, the possibility was taken away, or at least not facilitated.

I read a lot of science fiction (and I live here, now), so the challenges of the post-industrial economy are not a complete mystery to me. A particularly dystopian future has arrived however, as the cost of post-secondary education has increased radically at the same time that rampant credentialism has made it essential to a decent job. A whole lot of people (I've been in class with them) who had no business graduating high school with the academic deficiencies they displayed are pushed or guided to university.

Some drop out, but many more take "easy" Arts degrees simply to get the "credentials" essential to open the door to white collar work. I'm not a fan of Social Sciences in terms of accomplishing anything useful, so we can write off all of those degrees as "High School +" diplomas.

That was provocative, but I have an "Arts" degree, and it was mainly the science electives which taught me things useful for anything other than arguing with people, so I stand by it. At a time when the Public Service is swinging the axe around, that Psych or English degree isn't going to open a lot of doors for you.

That said, the "10%" in this case are the brightest people we have, and who will disproportionately innovate, create and generally not be worker bees. They are the people who can do the Calculus for that Science degree, and more importantly, they UNDERSTAND it and can use it for stuff. I can write but I can't do that, so if I even make that 10% I'd be right at the bottom.

The point here is that gearing your education system to achieve the same result for all will hold bright kids back far more than it will advance dull ones, average kids being fairly comfortable. Advances are created by an elite of humanity, the smart ones who can do stuff. Gadgets, innovations and improvements can come from a wider range, but still most of them will come from the top tier. Making a lot of money is certainly NOT limited to those of "gifted" intelligence, so there's hope for the rest of us.

As for "civilizing" the other 90%? Education with purpose, to enable you to function in society, get a trade, start a business, understand what's happening in the world and roughly why, that should be the goal. When you force square pegs into other-shaped holes you encounter resistance, and that should be avoided as far as practical. Giving students positive but appropriate (to them) options should be the job of our education system.

Backpay's a bitch

The deal was announced on Tuesday by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Under the terms, more than 1,000 Palestinians and Sgt Shalit, held since 2006, will be freed, beginning in days.

As much as I have no wish to extend Sergeant (he was a Corporal when captured if memory serves) Shalit's captivity (or worse), I can reduce the wisdom of this exchange to this simple axiom: anything which gets Islamic idiots dancing in the streets is not a good thing.

The Israelis have in the past repatriated remains at an unfavourable exchange rate, so it's not a profound shock that they would do this. The only strategic upside I see to this is that there will be 1000 Hamas idiots more out of the Israeli prison system where they can do something that will get them killed, so we have that to look forward to. Otherwise, this is pretty bleak.

The precedent this sets is terrible, but the Israelis have obviously decided it was the best of a bad situation. I don't presume to have anything to teach the Israelis about dealing with their part of the world, but the calculus of this deal values the life (freedom) of one accidentally famous soldier over that of all of the people that these released terrorists and criminals will subsequently endanger.

True, there was never a shortage of Palestinian misanthropes to lob rockets into or snatch more people out of Israel, so it's possible that this doesn't elevate the threat in the area, at least not in the big picture. I just hope that the IDF will be allowed off the leash enough to provide some disproportionate riposte to any Hamas celebratory violence. You might as well kill a lot of their fighters; the exchange rate is 1000-1. Hopefully Gilad spends some of his backpay on a nice vacation.

Down with the evil everythings, or something.

There is more to say about the trend of these events, but this is a good start:



These "Occupy Wall St" things are dragging out and starting to propagate, but it eludes me, and any thoughtful commentators I've seen, what precisely these people want.

Some visitors here get the superficial impression that I'm a big booster of capitalism, corporations etc. This is superficially true, as I am a fan of progress, and innovation is best fostered in a competitive environment. Profits are a good and necessary part of doing business, and making money makes your life better, or at least you have less pressing things to worry about than if you'll eat this week or how to replace your or your children's worn out clothes.

Greed however is still greed, and I must concur that it should be classed as a sin, or in a secular world, a character flaw. I have a serious problem with companies which are "Too Big to Fail", and avoiding that sort of thing is why monopoly and anti-trust laws were created and enforced.

So, if this was some sort of grassroots campaign to restore some balance in banking and corporate law I could get behind that. However, it seems to be an incoherent hodge-podge of disaffected "progressives" and anarchists out to disrupt and occupy other peoples' property. This sort of disregard for private property I have a serious problem with, especially when it seems to be for no useful reason.

Action without purpose is chaos, and there is enough of that in the universe with out us adding to it. Civilization, especially technological civilization, is about resisting entropy, not encouraging it. The TEA Party had an agenda: too much government means too many taxes, therefore they want less bureaucracy and smaller government. This is coherent, and despite the obsession of lefty media and individuals of accentuating the kooks at the margins of this inherently conservative movement it has had political success.

The same lefties are falling over themselves to praise the "Occupation" (at least when Israel's not doing it) but I can't see this going anywhere, except geographically. The Democrats in the US are now looking to see if they can do some sort of TEA Party thing with these rallies, but they already got their dream candidate in office for four disappointing years. I don't know what they could mould out of this to replace that bid for Hope and Change, but if it's even possible it would be a political Frankenstein.

That makes me think about the whole Keystone XL pipeline imbroglio, so perhaps (no promises) I'll look at that next time.

How's the new look?

I tried and rejected the new Blogger interface for posting things (old one much more intuitive for me), but I succumbed yesterday to the "Dynamic View" you see now. I can take it or leave it, so if any of you have strong opinions about the presentation of my ramblings (as unlikely as that is) please let me know.

"In and out clever" ad infinitum

Christopher Hitchens is a writer very much out of my league (even when I don't agree with him), but today I will shamelessly pillage one of his columns for my own purposes. Specifically, I will begin with the end of his piece:

Human history seems to register many more years of conflict than of tranquillity. In one sense, then, it is fatuous to whine that war is endless. We do have certain permanent enemies—the totalitarian state; the nihilist/terrorist cell—with which "peace" is neither possible nor desirable. Acknowledging this, and preparing for it, might give us some advantages in a war that seems destined to last as long as civilization is willing to defend itself.
To me, cancer seems a good metaphor for our permanent enemies; they are within civilization, sometimes society, and whatever version you end up with the results are predictable and unpleasant. Not necessarily fatal with proper treatment however; the metaphor holds this far, although it starts to break down when we talk about using radiation or chemical weapons against terrorists, but in my books whatever works is right.

"Works" is the key part to the otherwise ruthless statement, and more is not necessarily better in most of the situations we are likely to face. If it's not WW III against China or an alien invasion, mass is not your friend. Flattening villages is no longer a viable default tactic in the camera-smartphone era, but the option and ability to do so should the situation demand it should be retained.

Whatever the specific tactics, some sort of bad-ass will need a kicking pretty much forever, as there will always be those opposed to our sort of civilization, or garden variety sociopaths. This does NOT need to be front-page news (and it's best that it isn't) but some people just need to die lest they set off car bombs in the marketplaces or fly big planes into buildings.

That takes me into the current tactics the US is using. I will shed no tears for anyone affiliated with any terror group who is waxed by a Hellfire (or a JDAM, or SDB, or SF team) but some interesting questions have been raised about how one gets on the list for that sort of treatment. Nobody whose opinion I take seriously has a problem with Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan getting knocked off, but the process to become drone fodder is completely obscure.

A lot of pixels have been rearranged over that already so I won't get into it myself, but when there are no rules anything can happen, and that's not a good thing. There is a space between a free-fire zone and the legal handcuffs and leg irons our troops are typically in where what needs to be done can be done, but regular citizens need not worry that they'll randomly end up on a Proscription list. This is where we need to be to fight the "Forever War" against shadowy bad people without turning into police states.

Obama and Other Peoples' Money

Nothing really new here, but what I really want to get at here is the whole idea of "fair share'.

In a combative set of remarks, the president vowed to veto any package that cuts into Medicare without raising "serious revenues" from wealthy Americans and corporations. He effectively dared Republicans to follow through on their no-tax-hike pledge as the deficit committee works under a strict timeline to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit savings by Thanksgiving.
"We can't just cut our way out of this hole. It's going to take a balanced approach," Obama said. "It's only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share."

Emphasis mine. First, ask this question: why does the government constantly need more money? There are a few reasonable answers, mostly involving inflation; the rest are all about the growth of bureaucracy and thus the size of government itself.

Next, define "fair share" in society. This is not commonly questioned, and most people (2/3 of Americans according to some poll I glanced at) support fleecing "rich" people. I "quote" the word rich because that's slippery these days too, and for tax reasons the definition will be arbitrary.

Put these two concepts together and it leads you in the direction of asking what people are expected to pay for, and (hopefully) why? Is my misfortune yours, and if so, what are the limits on that? People get (rightly) bent out of shape when some connected business people get bailed out by government, meaning by your tax dollars. Of course, in the US right now we have something different, businesses being saved for the unions employed there, but this elaborate vote-buying scheme still uses taxpayer money.

If you work in the ever-shrinking private sector, do you want your taxes going up to preserve bloated union salaries and benefits which have driven work out of your country and damaged your prospects? A bit less evocative than the Robin Hood-esque desire to despoil the rich, but no more "fair" than bailing out magnates.

All over the world, the Socialist state is in trouble, and has been for years. It has been proven that the welfare state is not sustainable (you'll eventually run out of other peoples' money), but Obama seeks to imprint that on the US. Here in Canada the fight continues, but we have realized that we must periodically purge the Public Service to prevent the service creep that would bankrupt us a la Greece.

I'm not sure what I think is fair, but flat-rate taxes combined with consumption taxes on non-essentials comes close. Say a minimum 5% and maximum 25% Income tax rate and a 15% VAT; rich people tend to spend more and can better afford to lose 25% of their income, but how fair is that?

If you make a household income of <$100K (most people) you don't have a lot of margin these days, and there is limited blood in a stone. Thus the temptation to squeeze the better-off, but what are they being asked to contribute to? Infrastructure, Public Health (as opposed to Health Care), Research and Defence are common goods, certainly, but do rich people use them any more than anyone else? Next, health care; do rich people have preference in a Public health care system? I bloody hope not, and if not why should they pay more for it? It's "rich people" paying for the best available treatment which advances medicine, not the stretched Public system, but that's not on most peoples' radar.

In case there was any doubt, I am significantly less than rich and have no vested interest in the top marginal tax rates, but the underlying principle at work here concerns us all. That principle is Expectations.

What is reasonable to expect of government services? Canada is founded on "Peace, Order and Good Government", which is pretty vague but not fundamentally different from the Preamble of the US Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

People get the (democratic) governments they deserve, so I suppose the People are the arbiters of "fair". Of course, the way these things work, a mere plurality of votes will establish who's in charge, so a LOT of people will be potentially discomfited by decisions as the rest are swept along by dangerous simplifications. The second and third-order effects of tax and policy decisions are never the concern of the short-lived government, but they should concern you, the tax-payer, as you'll be living with the (mostly) unforeseen consequences when the chickens come home to roost.

Far called, our NATO slips away

I had part of this earlier in the week with this article about the Visegrad Group, but the link in the title provided the missing bit for my latest installment on the irrelevance of NATO in today's world:

According to Turkish press, as quoted by Ynet, the Turkish air force will be fitting its F-16 fighter jets with new IFF systems, which will not treat the signal from an Israeli IFF transponder as friendly, and will thus facilitate more efficient attack. The F-16’s original IFF system is made to US/NATO specifications, and identifies an Israeli IFF response as friendly.

This would appear to be a basic requirement in a modern alliance: compatibility of all IFF equipment. For my part, it's obvious to me that Turkey's interests and those of the rest of NATO (diverse as they are) have fatally diverged. Turkey is trying to be a big fish in its' part of the world (again) and this is incompatible with playing nice with Israel while Turkey panders to other Muslims. Of course, the "Muslim world" is not a bloc, and playing footsie with one part will alienate others.

Since this is the road that Erdrogan wants to go down, let me speculate a bit about consequences. Turkey has a problem common with Iran, and Iraq for that matter: Kurds. This pulls Ankara into line with Tehran (already happening) and with Iraq's government in Iran's back pocket we have a confluence of interests if not an alliance. Add Syria into the mix as a client of Tehran and you have a real bloc. This last point is unlikely at present, but Assad's regime is still hanging on in the face of massive public disapproval.

Turkey is of course threatening Syria with military action, but I suspect this has more to do with securing their common border than any permanent problem. In the bigger picture, any government which takes over in Syria is unlikely to like Israel, so another confluence of interests. Even more troublesome, if Hezbollah's (and consequently Tehran's) hold on Lebanon is not broken, there's another brick in the bloc.

Turkey will never recover the extent of influence, let alone control of the peak of Ottoman power, but it looks to be moving to become a regional Power, and jumping on the Palestinian bandwagon will give them a lot of the Arab street. Turkey has less skin in the game than the Arabs, but its' recent threat to provide naval escort to break the blockade of Gaza would add it to the group of countries who have lost a fight to Israel and possibly to war. The Israelis have let a lot slide (relatively) of late and this has pissed of the populace, so the odds of the Turkish navy being allowed to do this unmolested in this climate are not good.

If I know this, they know this, so it's likely just a lot of posturing. The IFF thing may or may not physically happen, as announcing it was obviously political, and actually doing it is probably a big no-no in NATO with some sort of consequences. Now if Turkey no longer cares...

Turkey and Greece have hated each other for 4000 years and there is no reason for that to change, always an anomaly within NATO. Israel aligning with Greece and Cyprus is extremely rational, and a partial counterbalance to Erdrogan's neo-Ottomanism. It is also another crack in the peeling facade of NATO, as you now have a NATO country having a "military understanding" with a non-NATO country plainly aimed at another member.

It gets better. I have mentioned the backroom deals Israel has made with the Saudis in relation to Iran, and as things develop it's not out of the question for more co-operation with the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation council. Hell, what if Israel can make common cause with the Sunni Arabs, especially as Israel begin to exploit its' hydrocarbon reserves?

Keeping Shia Iran's influence in check is a matter of survival to a lot of ruling families (House of Saud not the least) and viewed objectively Israel is no threat to the Gulf states; there's significant common ground. Way out in left field is the idea of Saudi acting as a "sugar daddy" for Israel to beat up on Hezbollah (modern munitions are expensive...) as a stick in the Mullahs' spokes. Unlikely? Yes, but less so all the time, especially if the Saudis grasp the strategic threat of a new axis of Turkey-Lebanon-Syria-Iraq-Iran.

"A country has no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent Interests". Those interests are not always appreciated by the governments of the day, but something will stand in for them if the real ones aren't sufficiently compelling. Since Western Europe is no longer worried about Russian tanks crossing the Rhine, NATO has lost it's raison d'etre with some of the results evident here, others in Libya, and yet others in Central Europe. For anyone curious about the title of this post, it's inspired by Recessional by Rudyard Kipling:

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget

It's rare that empires fall in a vacuum; usually they get tired and replaced by more energetic neighbours (Byzantine) or simply fragment (Habsburg). NATO isn't an empire, but as the defacto American empire which underpinned it from its' foundation shrinks back into the Western Hemisphere the whole thing spins apart. No loss, but it creates local vacuums or at least opportunities for those hungry (or desperate) enough to fill somehow.

The Internet islanders amid the Lumpen Proletariat

Fred Reed says what he thinks and doesn't give a fuck, which is a rare trait at least in people who will put their name to things. (I keep mine off of here for work reasons; when I'm retired it'll be full attribution if this place lasts that long). I don't agree with everything he says, but it's rare that he says anything that I couldn't make a case for, and the linked post is well worth paying attention to:

The night closes in. Read the surveys of what children know, what students in universities know. Approximately nothing. We have become wanton morons. As the intellectual shadows fall again, as literacy declines and minds grow dim in the new twilight, who will copy the parchments this time?

No longer are we a schooled people. Brash new peasants grin and peck at their iPods. Unknowing, incurious, they gaze at their screens and twiddle, twiddle. They will not preserve the works of five millenia. They cannot. They do not even know why.

Twilight really does come. Sales of books fall. Attention spans shorten. Music gives way to angry urban grunting. The young count on their fingers when they do not have a calculator, know less by the year. We have already seen the frist[sic] American generations less educated than their parents. College graduates do not know when World War One happened, or what the Raj was. They have read nothing except the nothing that they read, and little of that. Democracy was an interesting thought.

This hit a chord with me because I read a LOT and I notice two things. One, I can never read enough to know all that I wish I did, and two, hardly anyone else even cares what's going on unless they see it on TV or Facebook. I don't do small talk worth a damn, because it's BORING. I want an exchange of ideas (the partial purpose of this blog, alas unrealized) and I want people to THINK.

We are a highly specialized society, at least the parts of it still doing anything but it's difficult for students to even get those specialized skills let alone know much general history and a smattering of philosophy to round them out. I'm not big on philosophy myself except as it helps us to understand how and why we understand/believe things, but ignorance is no virtue.

Fred of course is particularly referring to the US, but the same rot is apparent across most of the Western world. High School is irrelevant to the job market, so kids spend four years + to get a piece of paper that will allow them to pay tens of thousands of dollars/pounds/whatever and several more of the best years of their lives for a shot at the job market. Sounds to me like indentured service, without the guarantee of work and a chance to pay it back.

More Fred on education:

Home-schooling, it seems to me, becomes a towering social responsibility. I have actually seen a teacher saying that parents should not let children learn to read before they reach school. You see, it would put them out of synch with the mammalian larvae that children are now made to be. Bright children not only face enstupiation and hideous boredom in schools taught by complacent imbeciles. No. They are also encouraged to believe that stupidity is a moral imperative.

Once they begin reading a few years ahead of their grade, which commonly is at once, school becomes an obstacle to advancement. This is especially true for the very bright. To put a kid with an IQ of 150 in the same room with a barely literate affirmative-action hire clocking 85 is child abuse.

If I win the lottery, my kids are going to private schools unless I can find a good paedagogue for home, but I would pull them out of the public school tomorrow if I had an affordable option. Stupidity and regimentation is moving into Canadian Public schools, but MY 7-year-old at least knows what a Monotreme is (because I told her and looked it up to make sure I was right); I wonder if her teacher does? We're not at the pass Fred describes yet, and I hope we can keep it that way.

Everything you could ever hope to know is available online; the only thing a teacher is required for is to guide students to knowledge and teach them to think and ask real questions. In my experience, there are few people who have those traits, so the odds of getting a teacher like that are slim. There is as Fred says still hope for bright kids, especially the bright motivated ones. Even the less-bright motivated ones (like me) can do a lot of damage with what they can learn from the net, though us older types still like books. I have enough books on certain topics that I can cross-reference stuff and can now (at least try to) use the Internet to resolve discrepancies.

Fred laments the passing of a sound general education, and that is a Bad Thing, but if we're honest about it, how many people ever got that much out of theirs? It was a particular segment of the bell curve, the same segment which can sort itself out today if it is even pointed in the right direction.

I'd like to think of myself as doing my part to keep civilization alive on the 'net, and I may retract (with new information that proves to me that I was incorrect), but I will never apologize for saying what I think. Evey little bit helps keep the civilization's lights on, and I'm raising my kids to do the same, i.e. THINK, not regurgitate catechisms of whatever provenance. With luck I'll succeed, and with more luck my kids will be able to find friends they can actually talk to.

How much Bang is stopped for your Bucks?

Back to Slate again, but not to excoriate this time. It's pretty 'Progressive" but balanced enough or I wouldn't read it, and today's link ties into whatever it is that I've been on about here lately. The trend seems to be "efficiently fighting bad people" and here is the authors' explanation of "cost effectiveness":

A conventional approach to cost-effectiveness compares the costs of security measures with the benefits as tallied in lives saved and damages averted. The benefit of a security measure is a multiplicative composite of three considerations: the probability of a successful attack, the losses sustained in a successful attack, and the reduction in risk furnished by security measures. This product, the benefit, is then compared to the cost of the security measure instituted to attain the benefit. A security measure is cost-effective when the benefit of the measure outweighs the costs of providing the security measures.

Hearken back to my problems with the methods of the TSA in the last post, and we're all on the same page here. The enemy of cost effectiveness is bureaucratic empire building, and we come to where that begins in the context of American Homeland Security:

To evaluate the reduction in risk provided by security measures, we need to consider their effectiveness in foiling, deterring, disrupting, or protecting against a terrorist attack. In assessing risk reduction, it is important first to look at the effectiveness of homeland security measures that were in place before 9/11. The 9/11 Commission's report points to a number of failures, but it acknowledges as well that terrorism was already a high priority of the government before 9/11. More pointed is an observation of Michael Sheehan, former New York City deputy commissioner for counterterrorism: "The most important work in protecting our country since 9/11 has been accomplished with the capacity that was in place when the event happened, not with any of the new capability bought since 9/11. I firmly believe that those huge budget increases have not significantly contributed to our post-9/11 security."

There is another consideration. The tragic events of 9/11 massively heightened the awareness of the public to the threat of terrorism, resulting in extra vigilance that has often resulted in the arrest of terrorists or the foiling of terrorist attempts.

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, we come back to the fact (visited a couple of posts back) that history and terrorism didn't pop out of nowhere ten years ago. I will make the argument that 9/11 was Team bin Laden's peak (safe bet at this point) and only worked because they had element of strategic surprise about the suicide bombing thing. No one will ever again allow terrorists to take over an airplane, and you'll notice they have stopped trying and merely try to destroy them in air. A cost effective solution to hijacking: lock the cockpit door and give flight attendants tasers.

With that in mind, into the meat of Mueller and Stewart's excerpt:

Putting this all together, we find that, in order for the $75 billion in enhanced expenditures on homeland security to be deemed cost-effective under our approach—which substantially biases the consideration toward finding them effective—they would have to deter, prevent, foil, or protect each year against 1,667 otherwise successful attacks of something like the one attempted in Times Square in 2010. In other words, we'd have to foil more than four major attacks every day to justify the spending.

I don't crunch numbers too much here, so I'll use theirs and take this at face value. Assuming there was this much terrorist activity in the USA (it's a big place, but seriously?) how much of it is there that wouldn't be picked off by routine law enforcement? Standard police work with some elementary triggers (chemical purchases, reports from concerned citizens, etc.) will sort most of this out, and indeed there were warnings about the 9/11 hijackers which could have been acted on.

Now the age-old question: how much is your life worth?

It is possible, of course, that any relaxation in these measures will increase the terrorism hazard, that the counterterrorism effort is the reason for the low-hazard terrorism currently present. However, in order for the terrorism risk to border on becoming "unacceptable" by established risk conventions, the number of fatalities from all forms of terrorism in the United States would have to increase 35-fold, equivalent to experiencing attacks as devastating as those on 9/11 at least once a year or 18 Oklahoma City bombings every year. Even if all the (mostly embryonic and in many cases moronic) terrorist plots exposed since 9/11 in the United States had been successfully carried out, their likely consequences would have been much lower. Indeed, as noted earlier, the number of people killed by terrorists throughout the world outside (and sometimes within) war zones both before and after 2001 generally registers at far below that number.

At the end of the day it again comes down to leadership or the lack thereof. If rational decisions are made and explained by calm, rational people to the rest of us, we will (mostly) follow that example. secure in the knowledge that our concerns are taken seriously and are being acted on. However, the Zero-Defect mentality is enforced by the media, and it takes a very strong personality to stand their ground in face of the shit-storm should something slip through, as it inevitably will.

Even with the extra multi-billions spent on all of this, things still slip through to be stopped only by alert and motivated members of the public. All that money and a Dutch tourist sitting next to the would-be bomber had to do the job; your organization was not very cost effective, was it, Ms Napolitano? Good leadership is also shown by subordinates who know when to act, but huge expensive bureaucracies don't generate many of those, and promote even fewer. Good thing the Americans can afford all of this...

After 10 years, what have we GWOT?

Today's post is my attempt to digest Abe Greenwald's article in Commentary this month. He has a very different view of Bush II than the subject of my last post, but that doesn't mean that I agree with everything he has to say either. I encourage you to read it, lengthy as it is, and form your own opinions, but as a primer, here are a few things I liked/took issue with:

1. Over the course of the 10 years, American authorities foiled more than two dozen al-Qaeda plots. Those averted tragedies were not foremost on the minds of revelers who gathered to celebrate Bin Laden’s demise on May 1 at Ground Zero, Times Square, and in front of the White House. But if a mere few of the plots had materialized, those spaces might not even have been open to public assembly. 9/11 was the result of systematic intelligence failures in the US, and intelligence agencies are more reliably evaluated on how much they can prevent or influence. On that basis the lack of post-9/11 al Qaeda attacks in the USA can be taken as a "win".



2. It was the Freedom Agenda of the George W. Bush administration—delineated and formulated as a conscious alternative to jihadism—that showed the way. Indeed, the costly American nation-building in Iraq has now led to the creation of the world’s first and only functioning democratic Arab state. One popular indictment of Bush maintains that he settled on the Freedom Agenda as justification for war after U.S. forces and inspectors found no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The record shows otherwise. “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East,” he said before the invasion, in February 2003. “Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both.” I'm a bit ambivalent about the end result, but I have maintained for years that Bush invaded Iraq because he believed that Democracy conquers all, and most emphatically NOT for oil. The (democratically elected) Iraqi government freezing American oil companies out in favour of Chinese ones seems to vindicate much of my view of cause and effect in "Iraqi/Enduring Freedom".



3. Incensed civil libertarians on the right, for their part, also fail to acknowledge some extraordinary facts. The TSA pat-downs, no-fly lists, travel restrictions, and legislation aimed at stopping would-be terrorist attacks have in fact worked. Ok, I take this a bit out of context, but I don't agree 100%. Even if it has worked as well as claimed, what sort of price should we pay for our freedom? I suspect it could be dialed back a bit and be just as effective while being more efficient, but the ways to make that happen will make the left froth at the mouth (e.g. Profiling).

It's long, but worth your time. I've seen things before which suggest that G.W. Bush will be looked back on more kindly by Posterity for "The Bush Doctrine", and this piece is a brick on that path. Obama has inherited any successes he's had in foreign policy from the system (mostly intact) built back then, because a lot of it works. I still hold that Iraq could have been done a lot better if it needed to be done at all, and that too will be laid at the Bush Administration's door by Posterity, rather like the dead animals your cat barfs up on your step.

As Winston Churchill said, “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.” Indeed, and things are rarely as simple as people would like them to be. I retain the right to change my mind to fit the facts, but I'll fight any inversion of that. Go read this and tell me what YOU think of it.

OBL's Bleed to Bankruptcy vs. FDR and The Giant Sucking Sound

This is from Slate (link) and is so blatantly half-assed and short-hindsighted that it begs me to challenge it, so I will in my own half-assed way which at least remembers things that happened more than 10 years ago.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama Bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

Boilerplate, but I take exception with "in ways that OBL probably never imagined". This indicates that the opposition had a pretty good idea of the economics involved in sucking the Americans into wars to ruin their economy. The rest of it is blatantly partisan (vs. Bush and the GOP) and mind-bogglingly simplistic and superficial in attribution of the USA's current economic malaise.

Example: Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America's future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2 percent of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion—$17,000 for every U.S. household—with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50 percent.

I won't quibble about the numbers, but the emphasis above is mine as it is evidence of an axe to grind at the expense of the big picture and gutted fundamentals of America's post-industrial society and economy. Perot came up with "giant sucking sound" in 1992 about American jobs moving south, but we can look back on NAFTA as the "good old days" in terms of North American employment. The Rust Belt started to decline in the 1970s and the US has been hemorrhaging jobs ever since. To sum up after Mexico, all those manufacturing jobs moved to Asia and show no signs of coming back.

THAT is NOT Bush's fault, and if I had to blame anyone it'd be FDR with his "New Deal" back in the 1930s. That is not meant to be a comprehensive policy statement, but the culture of Entitlement which that swept in led to the high cost of doing business in the US, and the Environmental and Litigation lobbies which were waiting in the wings and always there (respectively) knocked the US economy to its' knees and put the bullet in the nape of its' neck.

The thing to do when you get into a hole is to stop digging, and American politicians as a group have no concept of actually DOING it, even if they'll mouth words about restraint. Regardless, history didn't start in 2001, and the system which has brought America to the current pass didn't pop up mushroom-like overnight (though it is fertilized much the same way). My message to Mr Stiglitz: if you're going to ascribe causes to profound issues in huge systems, make sure there's some depth to your simplification for the casual reader. Most Slate readers won't question your cant, but we're not all so ignorant that you can slide such sloppy journalism past us.

Non quia aliquid consequendum

The link is to another of the inevitable elitist out-of-touch Hollywood liberals who need a bandwagon to jump on:

"I want to add my body and my voice to the thousands of others who are laying themselves on the line and saying,'No, we do not want to be party to this incredibly destructive path. We're becoming more dependent on fossil fuels and now we're becoming dependent on the most dirty of the fossil fuels, which is the tarsands fuel'," Hannah said.

TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline would run from Alberta through Nebraska to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas. It would double the capacity of the existing Keystone pipeline.

Proponents say the expansion would create thousands of jobs in both Canada and the U.S. and would help reduce U.S. reliance on Middle Eastern oil. Environmental activists say the pipeline is too risky and that extracting oil from the oilsands creates far too much greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, the U.S. State Department released a report that said the proposed pipeline would pose no major risks to the environment and would not necessarily spur further oilsands production in Alberta.

There is nothing in life without some risk (title, in classy and hopefully correct Latin thanks to Google Translate), and no, I'm not talking about getting arrested for a sit-in against something you don't like. We are indeed "dependant on fossil fuels", but this will not change by hamstringing our productivity and prosperity. I have gone over the "alternative" energy problem before, but in short Ms Hanna has no idea what is involved in keeping the modern world's lights on if she thinks that all of our energy can be produced by "solar, wind, geothermal, microhydro" and any other pie-in-the-sky "green" options.

Those listed are only good in specific locations and/or on small scale. Solar and wind farms are as much, I'd even say more, of a blight on the landscape as any (decent) pipeline and are not reliable sources of power. Geothermal only works very locally, and you can bet that any large-scale geothermal project (in, say, Yellowstone Park) would have the Green movement's useful idiots chaining themselves to drill rigs. As for microhydro, great if you have your own river, but how many people does that apply to?

Rich people can afford whatever low-efficiency power scheme tickles their fancy; the rest of us need what works, is proven to work, will continue to work or (the future) will work better than what we already have. That last one includes "scary" things like Liquid Fluoride Reactors which will do everything we need it to do, and do it more safely than existing nuclear plants or even hydrocarbon refineries. I would have one in my backyard, or at least where I could see it from there (it's still a powerplant after all) but the Greens would shit themselves at the name of it alone.

In the meantime, the USA needs to get back on its' feet economically and politically, and affordable secure energy is one brick on that path. Celebrities making responsible, informed announcements/actions would help in a small way too but fat chance of that; the sensible ones seem to just keep their opinions to themselves. Cutting the size of their government by about 50% would help that immensely, but that is another post.