WORLDLYMIND: exploring on the roads less taken

It's time for a major, major strategic reappraisal

2010-06-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

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So now it's time to shift "Left" a bit.

Redeploy, bring 'em home.

It's time for a major, major strategic reappraisal.

As the "fog of war" swirls around the long term impact of the oily invasion of the Gulf Coast, a reduction of the American military presence in Afghanistan is essential for this nation's security.

We must cease living in a fantasy land. Those who seek to fly too high will have their waxen feathers melted by the sun.

It is time for a "rolling reassessment" -- to find a creative way to tamp down Afghanistan.

Without destabilizing the entire region and creating new sanctuaries for terrorism.

That will not be easy.

But ways must be found to reduce the American military "footprint" in Afghanistan, support local and regional accommodations among competing warlords, even to support competing factions from a distance. The Taliban could win complete control, but there may be other outcomes.

Above all to focus American goals on the demolition of Al-Qaeda base areas.

Mr. President, you are not so good at waging war....so focus on the vital ones.....

Crises such as the Gulf oil spill have the potential of doing as much long term damage to the economy of parts of this country as Al-Qaeda.

You have no choice but to win on issues such as the new "Battle of New Orleans" -- and other battles, challenges facing this country.

Learn from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan....Bring 'em home.

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Back to Basics: with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the legacy of an oil slickened Gulf, it important to remember the thousands of young soldiers and their mothers whose lives are caught up in the tribal flames of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over extension can be the Achilles heel of great nations.

Obama must exercise leadership to protect many more from a lifetime of pain.

Now it is time to win this new "Battle of New Orleans" -- a symbol for many challenges facing the U.S.

Scarlett Tide

"When the Crater Meets Afghanistan"
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood

We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America, China: Circling the Afghan Carcass: a Bamboo Curtain Dead
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

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Treasure box for those who survive horrible events

2010-04-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

Written for those who survive horrible events
by a friend who as a child lived through the bombing
of Germay (but not Dresden) in WWII

A Treasure Box

The winds of fortune blow hot and cold,
No one's pot holds only gold.

The tides come in and the tides run out,
bringing and taking promise and doubt;

Joy and pain, all the same;
unpredictable, on any given day,
the winds of fortune will have their way,

What you imagine is yours to hold;
in a treasure box much more true

than anything else that happens to you.

You can fire it up on the darkest day,
and the winds of fortune won't have their way.

Oh Shenandoah, I love your daughter....

2010-03-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

It is good to remember the longing refrains of "Shenandoah, I love your daughter."

Listen below to the traditionalist Tennessee Ernie Ford version of this song I recently sang in a New Bern concert.

One of America's greatest ballads. It is many a man's voyage: a song of leaving, roving, but always loving...with the heart forever open to the dream of peace, a return home.

The trapper and the Indian maiden, the "archetypical" image of the American frontier.....where love and movement sometimes uneasily coexist. Centuries of romance have swirled around "Shenandoah's Daughter:"

'Tis seven years,; I've been a rover,; Away you rolling river,; When I return,; I'll be your lover,; Away, I'm bound away; 'Cross the wide Missouri.

It was once informally the state song of Virginia, before that a boatsman's song on the Missouri River, then a shanty song shipping around the world with the clipper ship crews out of New Orleans.

Listen to Paul Robeson's 1936 version. The great Afro American singer was a classmate of my father at Columbia Law School, class of 1923. This son of a slave, obsessed with the battle against lynching, threw in his lot as an apologist for the Soviet Union. He lost his show business career in the "Red Scare" of the early 1950's.

Few are the Americans who have not sung or heard this tale of the American voyage. Check out a vast panorama based in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley as painted out on the melody of this great ballad. And click below to listen to a golden white robed choir of youth following with Bruce Springsteen's glistening arrangement.

Now it is truly international. Hear the words of the equisite Norwegian singer Sissel. Compare with New Zealand's teenage superstar Hayley Westenra (the version on my cellphone ringback.) Hear a violin version by Celtic Woman. Then there's Arlo Guthrie. Top it off with Anna Sophia-Henry, a nine year old soprano.

Lastly, listen to actor Jimmy Stewart's Hollywood version of "Shenandoah" -- tailored to a post Civil War call for peace and healing.

And here is a standard version of the grand old ballad:

Oh Shenandoah,

I long to hear you,

Away you rolling river,

Oh Shenandoah,

I long to hear you,

Away, I'm bound away

'Cross the wide Missouri.

Oh Shenandoah,

I love your daughter,

Away you rolling river,

I'll take her 'cross

Your rollin' water,

Away, I'm bound away

'Cross the wide Missouri.

'Tis seven years,

I've been a rover,

Away you rolling river,

When I return,

I'll be your lover,

Away, I'm bound away

'Cross the wide Missouri.

Oh Shenandoah,; I'm bound to leave you.; Away you rolling river,; Oh Shenandoah,; I'll not deceive you.; Away, I'm bound away; 'Cross the wide Missouri.

The origin of the name Shenandoah is much debated. One theory holds that Shenandoah is an Indian word meaning "sprucy stream" or "river flowing alongside high hills and mountains."

Acccording to Wikipedia, that great source of modern wisdom. the word Shenandoah does come from Algonquian-Wakashian American Indians and mean Beautiful star daughter; maybe spruce-lined stream or vast prairie.

Another theory is the origin of the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, Indian, of course, and also means "daughter of the skies."

Other claims are that Shenandoah is Iroquois for "great plains" and less likely, that it is derived from the Schind-han-dom or "spruce stream."

Whatever the source, the ballad lives on -- and its sounds ever change along the rivers of life.

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Ah, sweet Indian maid, where has thee been before? In "Song of the Indian Maid," by John Keats, 1818:

Young Stranger!
I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime;
Alas! 'tis not for me!
Bewitch'd I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.

Come then, Sorrow,
Sweetest Sorrow!
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
I thought to leave thee,
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.

Let us come down from the highbrow lyricism of English poetry and explore the dozens of love songs about Indian maidens published in the "Tin Pan Alley" parlor music of a century ago (Click on the link to enjoy both the lyrics and the sounds).

Centuries of romance have swirled around "Shenandoah's Daughter."

China, US: both hit by fast movin' trains

2010-02-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

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As China pulls ahead with its fast moving trains, Americans ponder whether Sarah Palin scribbles notes on her lovely hands.

Could it be that Sarah Palin is a fast movin' train?

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We all know what Sarah Palin can do to a crowd.

Let's take a look at another "picture from life's other side" to see a bit about what fast trains can do for some Chinese:

TIPS for the US?
all aboard the
GUANGZHOU-WUHAN EXPRESS

"Once the speed gauge hits 350 kilometers per hour, or 217 miles per hour, passengers charge down the aisle to photograph the electronic display.

"'If we go any faster, we'll take off!' jokes Hu Qing, cracking open another can of beer on China's world-record-breaking train.

"The Dec. 26 opening of the high-speed link between south Chinese cities Guangzhou and Wuhan is the latest example of massive state spending to keep China's economy roaring.

"The fast-expanding network of high-speed trains is stoking patriotism, too."

China's "black ops:" hacking away at U.S. power

2010-01-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

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Who would have expected the agressive forward strategy of a more assertive China?

In a cyber attack on Google and other Western computer companies.

Well, it should be no great surprise.

For China's capacity to assert itself has been growing -- and so has been its annoyance at the ability of the internet to penetrate its "closed" society.

So China now has its own brand of "black ops."

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Hacking open Google mail accounts is minor compared to the possibility, but not probability, that Chinese and other cyber warriors could bring the American economy to its knees.

China is just one of several nations which need on occasion to stand up to the United States.

Countries such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia already have or will soon have cyber war capacity.

In the wake of U.S. military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, nations confronting the US more than ever seek nuclear weapons and cyber arsenals to put limits on American power.

More frequent cyber attacks ahead?

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China sees its cyber war arsenal as an important insurance policy to assert its influence and stave off American dominance.

It is a carefully orchestrated cockpit of conflict -- where a Chinese government sensitive to internal dissent threatens an assault on the very technology which is part of its opening into the modern world.

As China grows stronger, it can be expected, as in the past, to insist upon standing up.

It need not actually take down the American economy or the global internet.

Still, demonstrating its capacity carries a big, if quiet, stick.

This then, for now, is one flavor in today's sometimes dysfunctional America-- China relationship.

In the insecurity of the Chinese government lies the need for an aggressive outward kick.....

So it has often been with authoritarian, insecure regimes.

But this time we have a modern one -- with the power to punch --- to enlist skilled hackers into military style units with orders when and where to strike.

The importance of a little minor hacking is that it reminds of far more aggressive steps which could be taken to undermine American power.

Some experts believe China's underground stable of hackers could bring the American economy to its knees.

So what can or should Americans do?

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Should they threaten or take retaliation? Should they even, under certain circumstances, strike first?

From The New York Times on China's more agressive rise.

From The New York Times on how the U.S. finds no easy "digital deterrent."

Haiti quake: a wakeup call for a new "war" ahead

2010-01-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

Haiti: Fighting a "New Kind of War"

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"A picture of life's other side" includes the dark futility of much rescue effort in Haiti.

Maximum outpouring of international concern, but slow access to the trapped, wounded, homeless, and hungry.

Against a "deadline" after which hundreds, even thousands, of those trapped will be dead.

The dark picture also contains a compelling wake up call: to step up prediction and contingency planning for a new form of "war" which may lie ahead.

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Despite all the international attention, very little in the way of medical aid and rescue assistance made its way to those in need during the window of opportunity during which entrapped survivors were still alive.

And then thousands who could not be reached quickly were dead.

Looking Backwards: What Happens Without Planning

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As bottlenecks opened, aid workers and thousands of U.S. soldiers poured in to help sustain those who survived.

An exercise in futility?

Hardly, for the money collected and the attention aroused could be used for future long term recovery -- after the dead are buried.

After the failure to save those who could not be quickly reached comes the second major challenge: to maintain interest, commitment, and co-ordination for long term recovery.

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And the broader challenge: to step up prediction and contingency planning for a new form of "war" which may lie ahead.

Looking Ahead: One Guide to Choice

Stepped up international planning will be necessary to meet fresh emergencies.

From unpredictable weather, earthquakes, climate change, and a rise of ocean water levels which may threaten coastal settlement in both poor and rich parts of the world.

There is a need to learn from Haiti, to improve precautions against bottlenecks, methods of co-ordinating aid, establishing security, getting medical teams in fast.

Haiti may be an extreme case but the challenges it presents will occur again and again.

Coastal Flooding: Waves of the Future?

Climate Change: To Mitigate and Adapt

It matters little whether climate change is "man made."

To one degree or another we can expect the consequences will be there.

In some cases there will be sudden catastrophes.

In some cases gradually developing, more manageable problems.

But stepped up international planning and co-ordination will be necessary to minimize bottlenecks, confusion, rivalry.

As we push forward ahead, let us learn from Haiti.

New forms of "war" lie ahead.

As the World Turns: is the U.S. "Play It Again Sam?"

2009-12-17T04:44:00.001-08:00

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It can be argued the U.S. has been a "bird dog state."

"Locked on" in global conflict for decades with enemies of choice, bad guys who have challenged it, who repress their peoples, and have leaders wearing funny clothes.

A militarized state with vast overseas troop deployments -- whose diplomacy sometimes seems forever habitually locked in "Play It Again Sam."

A country used to pushing others around, used to getting its way.

America, a country with lots of military power, a wonderful capacity to make quirky extremist enemies.

A country which defines the world into good guys and bad guys.

A country which never forgets.

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Perhaps it began with the crusade to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Sustained by forty years of Cold War with the Soviet Union.

In sustained confrontation with China from 1949 to 1971. Moderated conflict to 1979,

"At war" with North Korea from 1950 to the present.

"At war" with Iran from 1979 to the present.

"At war" with Castro's Cuba from 1959 to the present.

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Oh, it did not work with Vietnam.

The Vietnamese defeated the U.S.

It seemed to work in Iraq -- at a cost.

Now, will it work in Afghanistan?

Stay tuned.

"As the World Turns," does the U.S.?

As the World Turns: say "bye bye" to being on top?

2009-12-15T19:22:00.000-08:00

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Is American world dominance a thing of the past?

Is the Obama Administration's aggressive forward strategy to stabilize and reshape Afghanistan a glamorous, quick flashing cover for an over extension, then a lessening of American power?

Will China match or even win over American power?

Anyone can have an opinion.

Let's hear one.

Geopolitical strategist Parag Khanna suggests that three centers of competing but cooperating power are emerging.

His argument emerges in his volume The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century, Random House, February, 2009

Read Khanna's provocative views directly in this New York Times article, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony," March 6, 2008.

Here is how Publisher's Weekly summarizes his thinking:

Khanna, a widely recognized expert on global politics, offers a study of the 21st century's emerging geopolitical marketplace dominated by three first world superpowers, the U.S., Europe and China.

Each competes to lead the new century, pursuing that goal in the third world: select eastern European countries, east and central Asia, the Middle East Latin America, and North Africa.

The U.S. offers military protection and aid.

Europe offers deep reform and economic association.

China offers full-service, condition-free relationships.

Each can be appealing; none has obvious advantages.

The key to Khanna's analysis, however, is his depiction of a second world: countries in transition.

They range in size and population from heavily peopled states like Brazil and Indonesia to smaller ones such as Malaysia.

Khanna interprets the coming years as being shaped by the race to win the second world—and in the case of the U.S., to avoid becoming a second-world country itself.

The final pages of his book warn eloquently of the risks of imperial overstretch combined with declining economic dominance and deteriorating quality of life.

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And here is how The New York Times Book Review puts it:

"No shots will be fired. Instead the three imperial rivals will woo and coerce, relying on distinct styles.

The United States offers military protection, along with the promise of democracy and human rights.

The European Union dangles the prospect of membership in, or affiliation with, the world’s most successful economic club, provided that applicants undertake specific reforms.

China talks trade, investment and infrastructure projects, with no annoying demands for political reform in its would-be client states.

“To a large extent, the future of the second world hinges on how it relates to the three superpowers,” Mr. Khanna writes, “and the future of the superpowers depends on how they manage the second world.”

As the World Turns: China pushes "new great game"

2009-12-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

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While the U.S. plays its "great game" to preserve some kind of hegemony, China pushes ahead cementing energy supplies with Turkmenistan.

By inaugurating a pipeline with the central Asian state of Turkmenistan which will transfer natural gas to China without passing through Russian territory.

It is a pioneering stage in China's "New Great Game."

Chinese, Turkmen leaders celebrate
(watch the video)

China wins a race with both Europe and the U.S. -- which sought their own pipelines from Turkmenistan.

The new pipeline does not pass through Russian territory.

It shatters a bit Russian efforts to control energy resources passing from former republics of the Soviet Union.

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Monday, December 14, 2009 8:26 AM

Mark MacKinnon, The Toronto Globe and Mail's Beijing bureau chief, blogs on life and happenings in China and East Asia:

Beijing – A few hours ago, in a place called Samadepe on the rarely visited border between the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, the global balance of power tilted ever so slightly.

Flanked by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, Chinese President Hu Jintao today turned a symbolic wheel as oil started flowing into a new 1,833-kilometre pipeline that snakes east from Turkmenistan and across Central Asia to Xinjiang in the far west of China, where it will connect with China’s own pipeline network.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has insisted that Russia is not bothered by the opening of the pipeline, but that’s difficult to believe. Mr. Putin’s nine years in power (the first eight as president) have been spent trying to reestablish Russia as a global force. Key to that effort has been its role as one of the world’s biggest producers of natural gas, a position that was strengthened by its effective monopoly over the pipelines coming out of the former Soviet states of Central Asia.

That monopoly has now been broken. The Turkmenistan-Xinjiang pipeline is the first that will transport gas from Turkmenistan, the world’s fourth-largest producer, to market without going through Russian territory. When it reaches full capacity in another three years, it will pump up to 40 billion cubic metres annually, feeding China’s rapidly-growing and energy-starved economy, meeting half of the country’s current demand.

In building the new pipeline, China can also claim victory in a race with both the United States and Europe. Both have sought for years to establish a route to bring Turkmen gas west without going through Russia, efforts that were repeatedly thwarted by interference from Moscow as well as Iran, which blocked efforts to build a pipeline underneath the Caspian Sea.

Quick In; quick out: a search for U.S. hegemony

2009-12-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

The Great Game Mural tells the story of the
perennial search for hegemony

"Back Baby, Back in Time"

Gen. Roberts' forces watch Afghan retreat

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It is reassuring that President Obama chooses to follow at least in part the advice of Lord Frederick Roberts, who commanded Britain's successful 1880's Afghan campaign.

Quick in and quick out was the Roberts strategy.

No "nation building," no direct rule. Negotiate and rule indirectly was the path forward.

Yet so far, despite Obama's emphasis on early withdrawal, we see an ultra-muscular "forward strategy."

The new policy includes both a troop increase and an escalation of goals.

It seems increasingly clear that the U.S. becomes a more vigorous player in a new version of the classic Central Asian form of politics known as The Great Game.

The aim: to build American hegemony in Afghanistan -- as a precondition for troop withdrawal.

Stabilization under American leadership of the broader region, including Pakistan with its nuclear weapons, appears to be the objective.

A remaking of Pakistani politics in a more pro-American direction is part of the goal.

The new strategy has both offensive and defensive aspects -- to dominate in the reconstruction of Afghanistan as well as to weaken, destroy al-Qaeda.

In many ways the Obama approach is far more aggressive than that of former President George Bush.

Stepped up drone attacks in Pakistan, stepped up pressure on Pakistan to join forces with the U.S. against the Taliban -- all are hallmarks of a renewed "forward strategy."

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The strategy of "quick in, quick out" worked well for Gen. Roberts in those days "way back in time."

But the world was much simpler then.

Roberts withdrew in part because William Gladstone succeeded the aggressively imperialist Benjamin Disraeli as Britain's prime minister.

Roberts seemed adept at adapting to the anti-imperialist Gladstone.

Lord Roberts' memoirs on the internet give a most graphic description of the battle against Afghan resistance.

The Brits firmly controlled what is today an independent Pakistan only partly allied with the Americans.

Today's Pakistan is sometimes a sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda -- and itself vulnerable to militant attack -- especially if American pressure destabilizes it.

It is hard to be optimistic.

Still let us hope that what worked in the past will work once again.

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Much will depend on how Obama interprets the "advice" of Lord Roberts.

To what extent will he restrict the areas of occupation and nation building during the surge?

To what extent will the U.S. rely on more mobile attacks not requiring long term occupation?

These critical questions have so far been left, at least publicly, unanswered.

The way they are addressed will heavily impact the feasibility of a rapid exit.

"The devil is in the details."

For the moment the Obama strategy is agressive and far reaching -- showing an extraordinary willingness to up the ante, to take the risks.

Sir Frederick Roberts, 1832-1914

On his 82nd birthday

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In Afghanistan it's time for the "God of War" to create his own fresh harmonies.

Once combatants are fully joined, blood must be shed to establish either a clear victory or a new balance of forces.

There is no substitute for killing.

How to follow Lord Roberts' advice
WITHOUT following in Soviet footsteps?

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Back in September it became apparent President Obama would "need" to escalate in Afghanistan.

I decided to dedicate the next few months to research and writing on that Central Asian land -- including the options available to the President.

I pledged to myself to cease "reporting and writing" -- once the President announced his new strategy.

At first favoring withdrawal, I gradually concluded some kind of limited surge followed by some kind of rapid withdrawal was necessary -- but that chances of success in combining these two ingredients were marginal.

I support what the President seeks to do -- but am pessimistic about the prospects for success.

(For a quick, incomplete, no doubt carefully spun account of how President Obama reached his decision, try The New York Times, December 5, 2009.)

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Back in September I decided to do once again what I had done in the days of yore -- back in 1978 when China's Deng Xiaoping planned to enlist American support to invade Vietnam.

For three months I did my best to penetrate Chinese thinking to profile the coming escalation of a border war.

Then retreated to the sidelines after exhaustion and breakdown in Beijing.

To watch and report from a distance the 29 day February, 1979 war in which up to 40,000 Chinese and Vietnamese died.

Deng Xiaoping: invasion was in his mind

It was an avocation I began in the mid 1950's when studying Sidney Bradshaw Fay's "Origin of the World War" (1928).

That famous groundbreaking diplomatic history which punctured holes in the wartime propaganda that the cause of World War I was as simple as German militarism.

I have long been fascinated by a common theme of diplomats, politicians, and journalists making often blind decisions from inadequate or misinterpreted information.

War is very often deliberate and calculated, but often grows in a sea of "fog" -- where terrain, armies, intentions, consequences are deeply obscured.

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It is now time to "Exit Stage Left" -- from the tiny moving platform of my blog.

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One other thing: as war unfolds, media becomes even more a player and a tool of politicians and vested interests.

If judge you must, wait for the verdict of historians such as Sidney Bradshaw Fay...

Be patient.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary and his wife Countess Sophie shortly before their assassination in Sarajevo, Bosnia, June 28, 1914.

The killings sparked World War I.

Not to worry.

Americans have been fighting small wars which did not become world wars for two hundred years.

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"Back Baby, Back in Time," this time
by the "Punch Brothers"

Standing on the corner with a nickel or a dime
There use to be a rail car to take you down the line
Too much beer and whiskey to ever be employed

And when I got to Nashville, it was too much soldiers joy
Wasted on the wayside, wasted on the way
If I don’t go tomorrow, you know I’m gone today

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

Black highway all night ride
Watching the times fall away to the side
Clear channel way down low
Is comin’ in loud and my mind let go

Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall
If I can’t have you all the time, I won’t have none at all
Oh, I wish I was in Frisco in a brand new pair of shoes
I’m sittin’ here in Nashville with Norman’s Nashville blues
So come all you good time rounders listenin’ to my sound
And then drink a round to Nashville for they tear it down

Hard weather, drivin’ slow
Buggies and the hats in town for the show
Oh darlin, the songs they played
All I got left of lovin’ me

Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back babe, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine

*****

Need a Job: Why Not Try Afghanistan?
Obama's Battle Plan: Step Carefully Amidst Craters
When The Crater Meets Afghanistan
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood
We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America, China: Circling the Afghan Carcass
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

Need an exciting job: why not try Afghanistan?

2009-12-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

Let's face it.

Good jobs are hard to find stateside.

If the money won't come to you, why not seek it out -- in Afghanistan?

Just keep close your helmet and your body armor.

There are a growing number of jobs for Americans and others in military and civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

(Not to be confused with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is something some combat people bring home with them from Afghanistan).

Let's remember there are exciting jobs available out there in Afghanistan -- as the U.S. seeks to mediate, administer and protect local development.

Employees at UK/US/Danish PRT
in Lashkargar

Men and women of an adventurous nature have ahead of them exciting and challenging cultural and professional experiences which will enrich them for the rest of their lives.

And the money isn't bad.

The State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are currently advertising for new recruits for temporary positions at $70,000 to $155,000 a year.

Check this USAID page for more detail on Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

USAID employees assist Afghan agriculture

Canadian PRT forces in Kandahar

American PRT police officer in Gardez

American PRT women officers in Jalalabad

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There are issues:

Are the PRT's under U.S. military protection and leadership economic development tools militarized and Americanized and -- thus made more vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Can new forms of PRT more independent of the military be developed without being vulnerable to Taliban attack?

Are these PRT's compromising the role of non-government organizations (NGO's) as neutral humanitarian organizations protected from military attack?

Not to worry.

Everywhere is controversy.

When times are tough, go where the jobs are.

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Obama's battle plan: step carefully amidst craters

2009-11-25T13:33:00.001-08:00

Rolling the dancing dice:
only the strong will stay on the floor

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"One can be at the mercy of the Gods
with whom one dances.
Gambling deeper in the quicksand
And every escape route becomes a trap.
But sometimes there is an exit
if one builds up the strength to take it.
Take it."

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Will Obama be forced to learn
from Clint Eastwood

Now let us brighten up the thought
with some "constants" from Chinese culture

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And now let us return to Obama --
knowing full well, "this, too, shall pass"

Scarlett Tide

Well I recall his parting words
Must I accept his fate
Or take myself far from this place
I thought I heard a black bell toll
A little bird did sing
Man has no choice
When he wants every thing

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

Man goes beyond his own decision
Gets caught up in the mechanism
Of swindlers who act like kings

And brokers who break everything
The dark of night was swiftly fading
Close to the dawn of day
Why would I want him just to lose him again

We'll rise above the scarlet tide
That trickles down through the mountain
And separates the widow from the bride

"When the Crater Meets Afghanistan"
Obama's War: to Lift the Fog or Tap the Passions
The way Ahead: Does Obama Need a Bit of Clint Eastwood

We Are All Soldiers: Honoring the Miracle of Survival
Obama's Sophie's Choice: a Blind Media
"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches
What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?
Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech
Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand
A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama and a Hybrid Strategy
Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama
Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw
Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story
Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan
Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian
Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"
US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations
America and China: Circling the Afghan Carcass with a Bamboo Curtain Dead
"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

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"Obama's war:" to lift the fog - or tap the passions?

2009-11-25T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions i recall.
I really don't know life at all.

******

"Both Sides Now."

Yes, 1970, oh were there clouds back then...

Does anyone remember Vietnam? How deep a shadow it cast over our world.

Today a similar but far less painful kind of cloud, a "fog of war," hangs over the entire country.

President Obama has chosen to increase U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan. To finish out this war.

Will that help lift the fog?

Or simply blanket Aghanistan in a new generation of rhetoric?

Will the President's cool and distant style help mobilize Americans for more war, more sacrifice of lives and money?

What kind of rhetoric will he summon up?

What combination of "high minded internationalism" and basic "take down our enemies" nationalism?

Will he need to tap America's more fundamentalist, vengeful streak in order to gather widespread popular support?

Will he need to learn a bit from from the fundamentalist, tough justice, apocalyptic strains of Clint Eastwood?

If he does not, will Americans still support him?

******

Each generation must face the reality of war's "fog."

To move forward into the shadows of the entrappment in war's Crater -- or to skirt the edges, to climb free and upward into the light.

We may be reaching a "tipping point" where overextended military occupations drain the country's resources and diminish the nation's power, safety, and standard of living.

With true love there must be no illusions...

Now the President has made his Sophie's Choice:

The hard decisions on Afghanistan which will shape who lives, who dies....

Time to pay the price.

Time to lift the "fog of war."
And rewrite the lyrics:

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"I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions I have lost
I know there is a price to pay"

******

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, i've looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things i would have done but clouds got in my way...

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions i recall.
I really don't know clouds at all...

Moons and junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; i've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away...

I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still somehow
It's life's illusions i recall.
I really don't know life at all.

******

The way ahead: does Obama need a bit of Clint?

2009-11-25T04:30:00.000-08:00

"The Outlaw Josey Wales:"
Revenge and Judgement Day

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Strange bedfellows: feminist abolitionist
fundamentalist Julia Ward Howe pushes forward
in one of America's first great human rights
campaigns. Meet Clint's early prototype,
abolitionist sword wielder John Brown.

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"The Preacher...
and Hell followed with him"

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As we move forward into a new stage of Afghanistan, we can see that Obama seeks to tone down the Clint Eastwood rhetoric, so famously used by President George Bush.

Still the Eastwood strain, deeply rooted in American history and religious culture, is an important part of mobilizing for war when much blood and treasure is at stake.

It is difficult to mobilize for sacrifice without demonizing your enemy.

This may be a challenge for the cool, cerebral Obama -- if substantial casualties continue.

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So when making war, it's nice to have a bit of Christian fundamentalism on one's side.

Tired of those Islamic folks having a monopoly on apocalyptic visions, symbolism and zealous religious calls to arms?

Let's see what WE have.

The strict moral codes of the Old Testament combined with the apocalyptic visions of persecution, prophecy, judgement, death and resurrection.

All found in symbolic form within the New Testament Book of Revelations.

Click here for the Chapter Six account of the Lamb opening the first six of the Seven Seals.

******

A book trickling down to the American frontier, the Indian fighter, the Bible toting preacher.

Trickling up to America's concept of itself as bearer of the sword of justice -- with its armies overthrowing tyrannies, enforcing upon the world God's work.

Howe: turn of the century

Listen to the tune and read the lyrics of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The lyrics were rewritten to go with the original tune of "John Brown's Body."

Julia Ward Howe, that glorious heroine of American military theological nationalism.

From this feminist New England Unitarian, a biographer of Margaret Fuller, came the Bible rich verses justifying blood on the battlefield.

Justifying the use of military power to free the slaves, as abolitionists steeped in fundamentalism pushed forward one of the first American "human rights campaigns."

A song designed to mobilize and encourage Union soldiers in their righteous combat against a slaveholding Confederacy. To do "God's work" on the battlefield.

A world of spiritual and military warfare where good and evil reign supreme.

******

That's where Clint - with his terrible swift sword of avenging justice - comes in.

Clint, perhaps a modern day version of the martyred, fervently Christian fundamentalist John Brown.

John Brown, the lifelong failure who in crazed fury chopped up his victims with swords during a vicious revenge massacre in Kansas while fighting for slavery's abolition.

His 1859 hanging after seizing the Harper's Ferry Armory in Virginia coupled the immortality of a martyr to the infamy of a butcher.

The Clint of his day.

Julia, John Brown, and Clint -- strange bedfellows, but bedfellows just the same.

Yesterday's feminist becomes today's fundamentalist.

Fundamentalism with veangeful justice around individual grievances -- or fundamentalism with violent fervour around grandiose social causes?

They are not all the same, but they tend to sleep in the same bed.

Howe: circa 1861

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When dealing with scenes of the Christian Apocalypse, it is always nice to have Wikipedia to fall back upon.

And a bit of Clint Eastwood, the master himself.

Some of you may enjoy this ecclesiastical portrayal below of the End Times.

Careful, you may have to shoot a pale horse.

When you see that pale horse coming,

that's death itself: open fire with
.45 cal. cap and ball horse killers!
But wait, what if it's a white horse?
That could be evil, the anti-Christ --
or it could be Christ himself.
Careful you don't shoot
the wrong horse.

******
Check your Wikipedia to see just
how hard it is to tell.

"The Outlaw Josey Wales:"
a time for righteous revenge

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Behold, below, a pale horse of death bears a rider, "the stranger," seeking revenge in "High Plains Drifter:"

Always one more thing to do on life's battlefield...

2009-11-21T20:01:00.000-08:00

General Hal Moore's Philosopy
of Life and Leadership

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A General's Spiritual Journey

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From: We Are All Soldiers:
Honor the Miracle of Survival

The wisdom of General Hal Moore, commander of the 1st Batallion, Seventh Cavalry
at the battle of the Ia Drang Valley,Vietnam, November 1965.

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"Trust your instincts...if your gut tells you one thing
and your heart another, go with your gut"

Ia Drang Valley: Prologue and Aftermath

From "Freedom Fries" to statesmanlike skepticism

2009-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Meet Congressman Walter B. Jones

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East Carolina's conservative representative who has migrated from pushing "victory fries" for America's campaign in Iraq to skepticism on any stepped up American military force in Afghanistan.

A Republican (check his official website), he currently represents North Carolina's 3rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.

The district encompasses the Outer Banks and areas near the Pamlico Sound.

The political voyage of this conservative Republican tells something about the nuances of war and peace politics in this conservative pro military region home to the Marines' Camp Lejeune.

Indeed the Congressman's concerns dovetail with those of a number of veterans: that one great danger is that the American military will again be put in an impossible position: unreachable goals with limited resources.

As one veteran puts it, "to be set up agains for defeat as we were in Vietnam because no sitting President wants to be seen as losing."

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With memories of Vietnam: Hal Moore
who commanded at Ia Drang

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Here is how a Wikipedia entry describes the Congressman:

"Jones was initially a strong supporter of the conflict in Iraq, but then became one of the leading Republicans opposed to continued involvement in Iraq...

"Jones became well-known for leading the effort, along with GOP Rep. Bob Ney, to have french fries renamed "Freedom Fries" in House cafeteria menus as a protest against French opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq...

"He said of his previous position on the fries, 'I wish it had never happened...'

"In July 2006, the names were quietly changed back...

"He contends that the United States went to war 'with no justification...'

"On the subject, he said, 'I just feel that the reason of going in for weapons of mass destruction, the ability of the Iraqis to make a nuclear weapon, that's all been proven that it was never there.'

"He added that his change of opinion came about from attending the funeral of a sergeant killed in Iraq, when his last letter to his family was being read out...

"In an annual survey by Washingtonian magazine, Congressional staffers voted Jones the 'kindest member' of the House."

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Dear Rep. Jones,

I think your position is eminently relevant and wise. It provides a strategic pivot around which people of diverse viewpoints can rally.

Bravo,
Fred Moritz

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On Nov 18, 2009, at 5:43 PM, Congressman Walter B. Jones wrote:

Dear Mr. Moritz:

Thank you for contacting me to express your thoughts regarding sending additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

I appreciate you taking the time to share your views with me on this matter, and I am happy to respond.

As you may know, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of the North American Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan, submitted a request to President Obama in August for 40,000 more U.S. troops to be committed to the region.

General McChrystal is a seasoned commander for whom I have great respect, and our troops serving in Afghanistan are doing so with honor and courage.

Obviously there is great debate the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Some, like Admiral Mike Mullen, want our troops to now combat Afghanistan's "culture of poverty".

Others, like conservative columnist George Will, believe "America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters".

What is undeniable is that the United States is running trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, adding to what is already a record $12 trillion in U.S. federal public debt.

The money being spent "fighting the culture of poverty in Afghanistan'" (and therefore not being spent of roads, and schools, and jobs here in America) is being borrowed from our international competitors like communist China.

Our forces in Afghanistan are not being directed to eradicate the poppy crop in that country, which would help deal with the problem of drugs on American streets.

Rather, the money we are borrowing from China is being spent to stabilize the government of President Hamid Karzai whose Vice Presidential running mate in the recent disputed election was an ex-warlord who is widely accused of giving cover to Afghan criminal gangs and drug traffickers.

In fact, the Karzai government has been described by Economist magazine as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."

What started out as U.S. involvement in one type of mission has clearly become U.S. involvement in another type of mission altogether.

After spending eight years of blood and treasure, our national policy in Afghanistan has drifted into an ill-defined strategy of 'doubling down' to protect the status quo, with no end in sight.

The war in Afghanistan has now gone on longer than U.S. involvement in World War I and World War II combined.

Supporters of the status quo would have us borrow yet more money from communist China to send additional troops to reinforce an overall policy that President Obama has yet to articulate, much less gain support for.

I do not believe we are faced with the false choice between "doubling down" in Afghanistan or pulling out completely and creating a vacuum which might ultimately be filled by America's enemies.

Military experts have testified to Congress that there are a range of policy options between those two extremes that can protect America's interests in that part of the world, minimize American casualties, and which would do far less to hasten the bankruptcy of the U.S. Federal Treasury.

I voted to authorize the use of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in order to rid that nation of Al-Qaeda training camps, and to remove from power those elements that gave shelter to those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

However, I cannot support requests for additional troops until President Obama can first lay out a coherent comprehensively revised policy that rationalizes our continued involvement in Afghanistan, makes plans for a clearly defined end-point to that involvement, and gains the support of a majority of the American people.

Thank you again for contacting me. If I can be of further assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Walter B. Jones

Member of Congress

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Obama's Sophie's Choice -- when media cannot see

2009-11-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

"Ample Make this Bed," by Emily Dickinson,
from the 1982 movie, "Sophie's Choice," --
Where no choice is clean -- though one must be made

********
"Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.

"Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground."

********

"Obama's Choice:" Play Agressively

With a Weak Hand

After two months of researching and writing about President Obama's Afghan policy choices, I am convinced I have witnessed a "mass media" disaster.

A globally important issue has been dominated by polemicists, ideologues, and party campaigners who spin, proclaim, and argue, who scream the loudest -- with very little emphasis on illuminating the challenges of choice.

It is fair to conclude that the more one has followed the national "debate" in mass media, the less one understands.

We have witnessed a form of national media pollution.

In a strategic and political and moral trap where there may be no good or easy choices.

Indeed Afghan policy may be a kind of "Sophie's Choice."

Whomever President Obama seeks to save, many others will die.

********

Very rarely have there been mass media explorations of the nuances of choice as they would be dealt with in political and military planning.

Very rarely does the mass media provide historical or cultural context -- beyond slogans and reported polemic.

Such issues are reasonably obvious to anyone who seriously researches these subjects -- but systematically obscured by mass media.

There have been exceptions in the pages of serious newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Wall Street Journal.

PBS and National Public Radio have often tried to get below the surface -- although each is limited by the nature of its news judgement.

Sometimes this involves political slant.

Even in these relatively sophisticated outlets there has rarely been concrete indepth examination of the President's options.

American media tend not to be interested in the nuances, the dilemmas of choice.

The focus is on conflict, polemic, who are the "good guys," who are the "bad guys."

The worse offenders have been talk shows and cable news, especially FOX, MSNBC, and CNN.

Where commentators and "political strategists" repeat liberal and conservative "talking points."

Where the emphasis is on argument, on debate.

One redeeming feature in this dismal media scene is the rich variety of source material available on the internet.

True, the internet is chock full of the same opinion, hyperbole as other forms of mass media. But it also contains rich background and primary sources of the kind which are screened out of the mass media.

********

As of this writing, a "hybrid policy" seems to be emerging.

U.S. troops will be increased, but a wholesale national counter-insurgency policy will be avoided. Certain key population centers will be held with mobile strikes elsewhere.

A key aim will be to avoid over-extension of limited forces -- the kind of over-extension which made American forces so vulnerable to being overrun at Wanat.

The Battle for Wanat: Has it helped shape

Obama's Decision?

The New York Times reported the basic emerging Obama strategy on October 27.

One great danger is that the American military will be put in an impossible position: unreachable goals with limited resources.

As one veteran puts it, "to be set up again for defeat as we were in Vietnam because no sitting President wants to be seen as losing."

********

Time now to drop back -- and let the issues unfold not through the "pens" of journalists -- but through actions and events in the real world.

"Time and Tides" march to their own drummers...but it can be interesting to watch.

Here is a listing of this writer's Afghanistan blogs:

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"Tipping Point:" guns or doctors? China watches

What Will We See When the "Fog of War" Clears?

For Afghanistan, What Lessons from "The Crater?"

Obama's New Policy: Senator Kerry's Speech

Obama's Great Grim Gamble: He Holds a Weak Hand

A Digital View of Afghanistan: Obama Looks to a Hybrid Strategy

Rudyard Kipling Warns President Obama

Will Obama Follow Lord Roberts Advice: Get in Fast, Withdraw,
Rule Indirectly, with Limited Occupation?

Pick off an Occupying Army: Updating an Old Story

Following Alexander the Great to Afghanistan

Should Prez Obama Take Advice From a Russian

Left, Right, Join In: Ring the Bell on "Obama's War"

US in Afghanistan: Bearing Gifts to Other Nations

America and China: Circling the Afghan Carcass with a Bamboo Curtain Dead

"The Kiterunner" as a Guide to Afghanistan

True Love - fundamentalism's enemy - crosses lines

2009-11-19T11:26:00.001-08:00

Just like the land that bear the name Africa,
Love is on my mind.
It's for everyone no matter where you're from,
Love, it cross all lines.
Like the feeling of all the seasons changing,
Love is a memory
And in these last days, when iniquity blazing,
Truth Love Speaks.

******
What is love really if it only affects,
one aspect of life?
That’s like a musician who only accepts,
his own musical type.
That’s like a preacher who only respects
Sunday morning,
and not Saturday night
That’s how a soldier can come to reflect,
that Love is
more than a man and a wife.

******

Regardless of one's moral sentiments, this is an astoundingly beautiful song.

Nothing else this group has done quite rivals it.

As to a loving globalism of the heart, a precedent is perhaps the breaking down of barriers, which technology helps do.

Still the globalism of terror stimulates nationalism and hatred.

Reprisal and counter reprisal both of weapons and of the mind.

So we live in a paradox.

The growth of globalism goes hand in hand with terror, military operations and brutal war.....

Leaders make decisions...but they are also children of their times...jockeying for position, pushing their agendas.

On balance I think we see an enormous growth in global consciousness which also stimulates a fundamentalist backlash -- whether it be of the Islamic or Christian variety.

Nationalistic fundamentalism is alive and well on virtually all continents.

We can only hope it does not become as strong in China as it now is in the Islamic world and in the United States.

At present China's official, sometimes repressive media policies discourage ultra nationalism.

Let us hope that does not change.

In America ultra nationalism, sustained by religious fervor, is still a powerful force -- nourished by politicians, religious leaders, talk shows, and cable TV.

Obama seeks to restrain it.

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The evolving Chinese American relationship is a miracle of our time -- despite the dark patches.

We can see from President Obama's visit that China "pushes back," is feeling its leverage as a rising power, senses the American weakness amidst economic woes, growing debt, and overextension in overseas wars.

Likewise Obama appeared to go out of his way to avoid treading on Chinese political sensitivities. He abstained from meeting with political liberals and opponents of Chinese restrictive practices.

China appears to have a leverage it earlier lacked.

It is a joy that I have lived to see the emergence of this miracle -- where these two powers have reached the freedom to show respect toward one another.

For it was my subliminal but clear aim from the beginning of my journalism career to work toward seeing this happen.

China uses hi tech to seek "harmony" with YOU

2009-11-19T11:25:00.001-08:00

China's CCTV-9 (China Central TV) has a sophisticated web broadcasting facility which transmits all kinds of programming attuned to the most modern of internet technologies.

This video is based on a Beijing University 2009 Beijing Forum on the theme translated as "diversity" but built on the Chinese concept of "harmony" between nations and regions around the world.

"The harmony of civilizations for all, looking beyond the current crisis toward the harmonious future for all."

Attracting some "300 academics and scholars from some 40 nations and regions."

Including noted scholars from both the United States and the Islamic world.

The format and substance is designed to create an interaction between Chinese and other viewpoints.

To bridge conflict areas toward what are presented as common ends.

An interesting discussion useful in its own right -- and of course organized and structured to be "in harmony" with official Chinese goals.

The above video image, from the program "Dialogue," is not an "embedded video."

But if you click on it, the full video will come up on a separate page.

The CCTV website contains sophisticated utilities allowing for DIRECT export of links onto "blogger" formats.

I have placed the link exported to my blog within the above image of the video -- an image I have separately downloaded from the CCTV website.

The CCTV purpose is to encourage persons such as myself to "re-broadcast" the programming in a different format to a different audience.

That would be YOU.

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What will we see when he fog of war clears?

2009-11-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

Black Powder Smoke Over
Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862

"Fog of war" is a term used to describe the level of ambiguity in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations.

The term is ascribed to the Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote:

"The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently -- like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."

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The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding one's own capability, adversary capability and adversary intent during an engagement, operation or campaign.

With imperfect information, decisions must sometimes be made in ignorance or on hunch or speculation.

Deadlines and the press of events make it impossible to wait for certainty.

Such is the case when a President makes decisions on Afghanistan.

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Seeking guidance from von Clausewitz

Journalists. as well as soldiers, also must perennially struggle with the fog.

They must report under deadline with limited information from incomplete sources -- with the full knowledge that their reports may well be at least partly wrong when the fog clears.

For almost everyone the fog of war makes decisions even more of a gamble.

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An entire nation can be in a fog when at war...

...if there is confusion over objectives, the intentions of the enemy, the strategy to adopt in relation to the enemy, how many resources to commit -- indeed over who is the enemy.

Such is America today -- full of debate, full of uncertainty, awaiting a President's decision, a President's evaluation of the terrain, the enemy, the strategy.

A nation full of rhetoric, a nation debating the intentions of Islam, the nature of terror...

A nation of politicians and broadcasters grandstanding to steal votes and ratings, power and profits.

The louder the language, the denser the fog.

Now we have a nation buffeted by fear, by uncertainty, by hope, and paranoia.

Yet among many people an indescribable calm.

Vast parts of the country untouched by war -- with military age "children" who never pick up a gun.

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The fog of war can cloud a President or a general's view.

Or the view of any American.

It can obscure hidden opportunities or hidden perils.

Looking out over the battlefield of America's overseas military campaigns, it is tempting to see what one wishes to see or what one fears to be the case.

To justify one's view of the battlefield, one's view of the world...with imagined shadows on the wall.

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It can be argued President Obama is wise to take his time, to assess and plan systematically, to try to penetrate the fog.

To decide the nature of the enemy, how many troops to move and to where.

A question: how much time does he have -- or must he and his staff, like General Joseph Johnston below, make key decisions in sharply limited span?

Paradoxically one result of delay may be a more anxious nation as a air of uncertainty grows.

What will we see when the fog of war finally clears?

From "Fog of War," the Life
of Robert S. McNamara

McNamara's eleven lessons of war

Empathize with your enemy
Rationality will not save us
There's something beyond one's self
Maximize efficiency
Proportionality should be a guideline in war
Get the data
Belief and seeing are often both wrong
Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
Never say never
You can't change human nature

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Let's go back to the last
Confederate attack on the Union:

Bentonville, NC, March 19-22, 1865;
A Confederate commander struggles with
the "fog of war"

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That day -- as four Rebel commands gathered in North Carolina -- General Joseph Johnston traveled to Smithfield to form the hodgepodge Army of the South.

After evacuating Wilmington in February and resisting Schofield at Kinston on March 8-10, Gen. Braxton Bragg finally had arrived at Smithfield with Maj. Gen. Robert Hoke's Division (Army of Northern Virginia)...

Hampton's cavalry was split to monitor both wings of Sherman's army. The proud remnants of the Army of Tennessee were slowly trickling into Smithfield from the west, having departed Tupelo, Mississippi, by rail in mid-January...

Others were still on the way.

As his motley units converged, Johnston waited anxiously for news.

Was the enemy moving on Raleigh or Goldsboro?

From his position at Smithfield, Johnston could swing west or southeast to block the way to either destination.

Lacking sufficient numbers for a decisive engagement, however, Johnston needed favorable ground from which to tackle one wing of the Union army while the other was beyond supporting distance. The clock was ticking...

Desperate for news, Johnston fired off inquiries to his subordinates:

"Something must be done tomorrow morning," he pushed Hardee on March 17, "and yet I have no satisfactory information."

He then queried Hampton for specifics on the enemy's position, strength, and relative distance. "[G]ive me your opinion," urged Johnston, "whether it is practicable to reach them from Smithfield on the south side of the [Neuse] river before they reach Goldsborough."

--Mark A. Moore

General Joseph E. Johnston

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When the fog from the guns clears, what is the view?
Results of Artillery at Bentonville

We are all soldiers - honor the miracle of survival

2009-11-19T11:21:00.001-08:00

The Battle Begins: Prologue and Aftermath

Walter Cronkite covers the battle

When I saw snippets of this movie, "We Were Soldiers," on TV, I was intuitively struck.

Was this hyperbole? Is this the way it really was?

I had a nagging fear that this time Hollywood had "got it right."

So I called a friend, "Dave," who fought in Special Forces on the Laotian Vietnamese border in 1969.

"Are there any movies which catch your experience in combat?" I asked.

We talked for an hour.

"We were Soldiers" was his answer. The 2002 movie starring Mel Gibson.

So I rented and viewed the entire film.

The movie is based on the book "We Were Soldiers Once....and Young: Ia Drang -- The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam," by Harold G. Moore and Joseph Galloway.

Hal Moore, the commander of American forces during the Ia Drang battle, has called the movie seventy five percent accurate and twenty five percent "Hollywood."

He was a consultant in the making of the film.

Joseph Galloway was a United Press International correspondent who covered the battle.

Moore and Galloway wrote a second book, "Soldiers Still: a Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam."

A tale of reconciliation, chronicling meetings with the officers and men fought nearly thirty years before.

See Brad Knickerbocker's review of this book, including an audio clip of an interview with both Moore and Galloway, in The Christian Science Monitor, April 26, 2008.

The interview probes the attitudes of both men toward war in general and America's current wars.

A third book, "A General's Spiritual Journey," is a memoir by Moore's "driver."

General Moore's Definition of "Humility"

General Moore's Philosophy
of Life and Leadership

Combat Today in Afghanistan

I would compare this astonishing book to a collective memoir of the atom bombing of Hiroshima.

Or to a journalistic account of the Trojan war by Greeks who fought there.

It was the first major battle of the war between the American army and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

###############

On Nov. 14, 1965, the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry, commanded by Lt. Col. Moore and accompanied by UPI reporter Galloway, helicoptered into Vietnam's remote Ia Drang Valley, the so-called "Valley of Death."

To thwart an North Vietnamese Army (NVA) plan to attack eastward, the American force made their assault directly into the enemy assembly area.

The Americans found themselves surrounded by a massively superior number of NVA regulars.

The Vietnamese were familiar with the terrain and highly skilled from bloody encounters with the French army, also in the Central Highlands, eleven years earlier.

The Vietminh take on the French: 1954

For a more detailed description of the significance of this battle, see U.S. Military History Companion.

The Americans were forced to withdraw after inflicting casualties on the Vietnamese up to four times what they suffered themselves.

Massive air and artillery fire, including strikes by B‐52 bombers, helped push the NVA back into their Cambodian sanctuaries.

Most significantly the NVA used the battle to learn how to counter American hi-tech weaponry. See original video footage, detailed daily battle accounts, and maps.

This story is a tribute to 234 young Americans who died during four days in Landing Zone X-Ray and Landing Zone Albany in the Valley of Death, 1965.

###############

If you see this movie, you will truly wonder how veterans survive.

Mel Gibson Sends his Troops to War

Forty Four Years Later Marines Depart

Camp Lejeune for Afghanistan

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No written review can possibly portray what you will see in this film.

Nor what my friend shared with me.

It is important to see a movie such as this -- to understand why so many veterans were angry either at their government or at the civilians and anti- war activists who later treated them with contempt -- or at both.

It is important to know how much pain and fear so many experienced -- then came on home to try to live normal lives.

It is important to understand why they so often cannot accept that their suffering, and the loss of comrades, might have been in vain.

Why they may lash out when politics is discussed.

So very many of us were spared this.

We owe it to those who return to show the kind of compassion which they too rarely experienced on the battlefield.

This is an old story, in this case a true story.

We better get used to it. It is not going away.

Let us "honor survival."

It is a miracle for all seasons.

###############

General Moore's Personal Account of Ia Drang

The Battle's Aftermath

For the battle is everywhere -- with Vietnamese soldiers popping up in bushes 25 yards away.

Napalm delivered close in right on the edge of American lines.

Close on combat, people dropping on every side.

Four hundred and fifty Americans trapped by superior Vietnamese forces.

Continual eruptions of violence for hours, for days.

Can that ever be forgotten?

###############

It is no wonder my friend, when stressed, sleeps with a revolver under his pillow.

He will never sit in a restaurant with his back to the door.

Vigilance is the name of the game.

His nightmares have receded. He comes across as gentle, kind.

Still he worries if he can keep it together should he lose his wife.

He seems a caring man who treasures his son and daughter, both officers in the military.

That is what he loves, their following in his footsteps in the profession to which he almost gave his life.

But he will not take a job as a server of injunctions, lest his violent side come out.

"When he got close, I hit him with my gun barrel, then shot him with my rifle," recalled my friend.

I did not press him for his total "body count."

"We often could hear them creeping up on us at night."

While out on a reconnaisance patrol, one half of my friend's 12 man squad was burned to death by misdirected American napalm.

"I picked up a .45 pistol from one charred body --- and cleaned off the burned flesh so I could use the thing."

###############

From Chapter 2, "We Were Soldiers Once.....and Young:"

"One month of maneuver, attack, retreat, bait, trap, ambush, and bloody butchery in the Ia Drang Valley in the fall of 1965 was the Vietnam War's true dawn -- a time when two opposing armies took the measure of each other.

"The North Vietnamese wanted their foot soldiers to taste the sting of those (new American) weapons and find ways to neutralize them.

"Their orders were to draw the newly arrived Americans into battle and search for flaws in their thinking that would allow a Third World army of peasant soldiers who traveled by foot and fought at the distant end of a two-month-long supply line of porters not only to survive and persevere, but ultimately to prevail in the war -- which was, for them, entering a new phase."

###############

In this movie you see Vietnamese generals planning flanking actions from their tunnels, little space between the combatants.

Few bayonets, just close in rifle shots.

Helmeted Vietnamese popping up in the bushes, unpredictable, unrelenting.

A strange kind of balance in this movie...for all are caught up in a world that banishes every nuance of civilized life.

"Tipping point:" guns or doctors? China watches

2009-11-15T12:16:00.000-08:00

*******

No, folks, it's hardly rocket science.

True, it is not yet "closing time."

But the "tipping point" may be near.

*******

China, like the rest of us, must ask if the American superpower has approached, is approaching, or will approach what the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz called the "tipping point."

When a nation on the military offense reaches the point in its aggressive operations where it is ever more costly to defend its acquisitions.

Where garrisoning troops, supplying them, defending them drains a nation's power and eventually requires retreat.

As did Napoleon after he sent his forces in to occupy Russia in 1812.

As did Hitler after he attempted to do the same thing in 1941.

As the U.S. did after it attempted to occupy and and shape Vietnam.

*******

Now is a magical moment.....

Let's put together President Obama, Carl von Clausewitz, Afghanistan, Iraq, the American Medical Association, healthcare reform...

Let's add to that shrinking credit cards, shrinking credit, unending exploding deficits -- and the prospect of spending one million a year for every additional American soldier sent to Afghanistan.

Remember "Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

A slogan by Americans who resisted the Vietnam war....

Back when President Lyndon Baines Johnson thought he could have "both guns and butter."

The choice is different today.

"Can we have both guns and doctors?"

As Obama has ramped up his decision on more troops to Afghanistan, scarcely anyone has asked the question:

"What can the United States afford?"

It has been an easy assumption that anything is possible.

That "no bridge is too far."

But Obama is clearly asking the question -- and so are China's leaders.

The New York Times reported November 15 that the Obama Adminstration is costing out its Afghanistan choices.

That it is increasingly sensitive to the prospect that going whole hog for an extended occupation of Afghanistan may clash with the enormous long term fiscal liabilities of health care reform.

On the eve of Obama's visit to China The New York Times also reports that Beijing is concerned that the American budget deficits escalated by health care reform may make America a poor investment.

China wants assurances the U.S. will remain solvent, that it can pay back its debts to the "Middle Kingdom."

It is no one's "dirty little secret" that it is China that will indirectly finance both Afghanistan and health care reform.

If America's piggy bank breaks, China's path forward will be hampered.

So President Obama is expected to downplay any lecturing of China over how to handle human rights.

It is not wise to hector the bank that feeds you.

Instead he must do some reassuring that he heads a country that is not a foolish spendthrift.

Now it is America that appears to be the Prodigal Son.

Can this all be reversed? Or is my analysis on target -- more than the musing of a grimly seasoned man?

Maybe yes, maybe no....

The United States is fortunate to have as President one who understands the challenge.

But to reverse all this requires more than one man.

******

True Love trumps politics: let that be the lead..

2009-11-11T19:18:00.001-08:00

****

"Streets of Derry"

As I recovered from a mild senior citizen bout of George Orwell 1984 pig flu, I could not help but sip the healing wines of Celtic music -- from YouTube.

A fresh new prayer of my own came to mind:

"God protect us from the Tribes which guide us."

Cara Dillon

Streets of Derry

After the morning there comes an evening
And after the evening another day
And after a false love there comes a true love
I'd have you listen now to what I say

I swear my love is the finest young man
As fair as any the sun shines on
But how to save him, I do not know it
For he has got a sentence to be hung

As he was marching the streets of Derry
I own he marched up right manfully
Being much more like a commanding officer
Than a man to die upon the gallows tree

"What keeps my love so long in coming
Oh what detains her so long from me
Or does she think it a shame or scandal
To see me die upon the gallows tree"

He looked around and he saw her coming
And she was dressed all in woollen fine
The weary steed that my love was riding
It flew more swiftly than the wind

Come down, come down from that cruel gallows
I've got your pardon from the king
And I'll let them see that they dare not hang you
And I'll crown my love with a bunch of green

*****

A Gallows Tree

*****

When Tribes Do Prevail

"There Were Roses"

*****

Now it's time to dance

*****

Kris Kristofferson: let him speak for himself...

2009-11-05T18:38:00.001-08:00

"Sadness Has Nothing To Do With Sanity"
"There's humans entrusted with guarding our gold and
humans in charge of saving our souls."

From "Sister Sinead"

Listen to his latest "Closer to the Bone"

******

"God bless Obama. God bless the United States of America; And God bless the others outside of our borders." - Kris Kristofferson

******

"To Pass It On"

Obama's "new policy:" Senator Kerry's speech

2009-10-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

Rolling the dice again

******

President Obama will lean forward to play hard with a very weak hand.

Obama will escalate US intervention in the area, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While the nominal sovereignty of each nation would be maintained, we will see renewed U.S. efforts to turn them in one degree or another into "client states."

That is the conclusion to be drawn from an October 26 speech before Council of Foreign Relations by John Kerry, D Mass., Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

While Sen. Kerry does not officially speak for President Obama, he is intimately involved with the evolution of Afghanistan policy.

Below, from his speech, is the bottom line:

******

The U.S. will push to shake up the central Afghan government, push to change some top officials, attempt to diffuse power more to the local level -- where American advisors both military and civilian will play a growing part.

There will be a hybrid policy of clear and hold in some areas -- but a looser presence of military strikes elsewhere.

The goal of clearing and holding all of Afghanistan is rejected.

The Administration will trim down the call of General Stanley McChrystal for up to 40,000 additional troops for Afghanistan.

For Administration plans to focus on limited parts of the country, see The New York Times, October 27:

"At the moment, the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said. The first of any new troops sent to Afghanistan would be assigned to Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual capital, seen as a center of gravity in pushing back insurgent advances.

"But military planners are also pressing for enough troops to safeguard major agricultural areas, like the hotly contested Helmand River valley, as well as regional highways essential to the economy — tasks that would require significantly more reinforcements beyond the 21,000 deployed by Mr. Obama this year...

"Military officers said that they would maintain pressure on insurgents in remote regions by using surveillance drones and reports from people in the field to find pockets of Taliban fighters and to guide attacks, in particular by Special Operations forces."

******

Major pressure on Afghan government will combine with continuing full court press on Pakistan to step up its offensive against Taliban in Waziristan.

Although Washington denies it, American aid to Pakistan will be directly or indirectly conditioned on its willingness to co-operate with the U.S. -- and break with fundamentalists in its social programs.

******

In short the move is for more aggressive involvement in the affairs of both countries. The aim is to stabilize both around a pro American orientation -- and squeeze the Taliban by military pressure from both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is clear there is already a growing anti-American backlash in both Afghanistan and Pakistan -- where the appearance of being American puppets is hardly desired.

******

See this writer's analysis of the range of options open to Obama -- and the pitfalls of all of them.

******

"I just Got Punked in Afghanistan"