Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus

It being Sunday morning it seemed, again, the appropriate time to step back for some reflections on values. And given some of the news and events of the last couple of weeks even more so. For one thing it was the Jewish Passover celebration and if you've never had a chance to participate in a Seder it's a wonderful experience. And the Pope wrapped up his visit to the US and enjoyed the applause of the Faithful, a lot of bashing from the pundits and shallow coverage from the media who seemed to have missed some incredibly substantive speeches. Perhaps the best discussion of his visit was, again, on Charlie Rose.

Now if you've been following along it may be clear that we consider values and beliefs as fundamental characteristics of any society - and more importantly foundational for the health and future prospects of society. In our opinion we squandered the happy decade of the '90's, took our prosperity and prospects for granted and indulged in a "values" debate on superficial issues. Not the real ones - which we view as what values and beliefs are appropriate and work for the world we face. Answers to which questions determine the long-term resilience and adaptability of society and individual. Now we've poked at the question from an individual basis a couple of times before ( Re-visiting Ramblin Randy: Do the Best You Can with What You've Got ) looking at what lessons we can draw from Randy Pausch's experiences. We've also looked at the role and importance of values in long-term social performance ( Putting the Pieces Together: Framing, Crisis & Linkages). Here we'd like to begin weaving the two together just a little bit.

Now this is an area we've been exploring for some time and you'll find some readings and excerpts below we've found particularly valuable, including excerpts and links for three of the Pope's most important speeches. We think you'll be rather surprised because in addition to what was reported he emphasizes the importance of renewing spirituality in and for the modern world. In earlier works, including an encyclical, he's also emphasize the dual roles and complementarities of Science and Faith. A synergy which unfortunately the "Scientism" community is willing to deny and denigrate. But the real trigger for this post was a column by David Brooks in which he laments the passing of enchantment and a sense of mystery about the world, lost since the Middle Ages, due to the rise and "triumph" of Science. As it happens we think he's capture the symptoms of the problem but mis-diagnosed it. But we'll pursue that inquiry in the future. For now let's focus on why values are important and how they've been wrestled with thru millenia. The charts below BtW come from some slides we put together which are available in a downloadable form. (Value Systems Evolution:20 Millenia of Religious Exploration) 

Why Religion is Important

 The question we think Ramblin Randy really pointed to was what ground do you stand on ? That is what fundamental beliefs do you think should govern your life, guide your choices, explain your role and position in the world and help understand the world and the Universe you must live in ? These are question mankind has wrestled with as long as we've been conscious. The earliest art was related to our views on life, death and happiness. In wrestling with those questions, in standing witness to life and experiencing it, there are different key questions and approaches that must be addressed. Many of which we've lost sight of in the modern world - or failed to cope with particularly well. Perhaps the first is that the world can be an ugly and painful place and our security in it is purchased on a foundation of violence and power. Something many are in denial over. Another question is the relative roles and influences of Faith and Reason. Until the 1500s, and then only in the West, it was wonder at the Great Mysteries that dominated our religious inquiries. In the West we thought we'd discovered a new faith in a materialist Science that would resolve all these questions - a faith that's failed. Another avenue of exploration is High Culture - art, literature, music etc. Which at their best hold up a mirror of the world to us and at their very best help us touch the Divine - that mysterious place beyond words, logic and analysis. The final avenue is Inspiration - the acceptance that words are not the Word and there's a place where logic fails us.

Religious Evolution

 Those are the questions that every faith, religion, philosophy, ideology or value system must wrestle with, one way or another. Including of course denying their value or relevance. Yet while the answers, insights and dogmas have varied thruout the ages much of value has been gained, transformed and transmitted. In the busy little chart here (the slideshow is easier btw) you can see how religions have evolved. While we were wandering bands and tribes the dominant belief systems were a naturalistic animism, Shamanism, which sees the world as a magical though not necessarily safe place. But each system reflects the experiences of the world of the time. As Agriculture became more widespread simple Shamanism gave way to worship of the Mother Goddess based on a deep apprehension of the recurring cycles of the world. Then with the rise of the early Cities and more structured and organized societies as well as early discoveries in Math and Astronomy we came to see the world as a more ordered and orderable place. As Cities grew and the early city-states and empires emerged the hierarchical religions morphed yet again. And with the great disruptions of the Axial Age the belief in order as a given, with the proper propitiations of the gods, was shattered. Out of that turmoil the foundations for all of the world's major modern religions was laid. Yet thru each age the insights of the prior age weren't entirely discarded as many of the characteristics and characters were adopted, adapted and transformed to answer the new challenges. One can for example trace the sustained role of the Mother Goddess thru the early Sumerian's and Egyptians to modern Hindui and Christian beliefs and practices. On that consider if you like the opening sequences of the DaVinci Code. In other words, as we've tried to show, religious insights accumulate and build on one another as well as being created in the pressures of the time. But for millenia there was a "uniform" field - that is religion and beliefs were insuperable from the other parts of society. With the rise of Science in the 1500s an entirely new approach was created that challenged these traditional approaches. Yet in 500 years of exploration, debate and change, more rapid and disruptive than in any previous time, the same questions had to be faced.

Modern Challenges

Questions that we're now realizing won't go away and aren't readily answerable by materialist presumptions. It turns out that Science for all it's power and usefulness doesn't deal with the Big Questions. And in fact admits that they can't be resolved. Nor is the alternate answer that they can be neglected very workable either. When you reach an impasses of this sort, where the tools you have at hand no longer work and don't appear to promise to work in the future you need to consider alternatives. And when those questions are too important to be neglected or set aside, on both an individual and collective basis, because they are vital for personal happiness and the health of our civilizations then they are too critical to be left fallow. The fact of the matter is that we will resolve them in one way or another. But some ways are much better than others. And it is in finding those better paths forward that are challenges lie. 

Religion, Faith and Science

The Great Escape But on my desk for much of this period I have kept a short essay, which I stare at longingly from time to time. It’s an essay about how people in the Middle Ages viewed the night sky, and it’s about a mentality so totally removed from the campaign mentality that it’s like a refreshing dip in a cool and cleansing pool. It points out that while we moderns see space as a black, cold, mostly empty vastness, with planets and stars propelled by gravitational and other forces, Europeans in the Middle Ages saw a more intimate and magical place. The heavens, to them, were a ceiling of moving spheres, rippling with signs and symbols, and moved by the love of God. The medieval universe, Lewis wrote, “was tingling with anthropomorphic life, dancing, ceremonial, a festival not a machine.” Lewis tried to recapture that medieval mind-set, Ward writes. He did it not because he wanted to renounce the Copernican revolution and modern science, but because he found something valuable in that different way of seeing our surroundings. The modern view disenchants the universe, Lewis argued, and tends to make it “all fact and no meaning.” We tend to see economics and politics as the source of human motives, and then explain spirituality as their byproduct — as Barack Obama tried artlessly to do in San Francisco the other week. But in the Middle Ages, faith came first. The symbols, processions and services were vividly alive. Medieval Torture's 10 Biggest Myths

A discussion about Pope Benedict's visit to the United States with Jon Meaham Editor-In-Chief of Newsweek, George Weigel, Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Scott Appleby and Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete. Benedict will travel to Washington and New York from April 15-20, speak at the United Nations on April 18, 2008 and visit ground zero on the final day of his trip.

Homily during the celebration of Holy Mass at the Washington Nationals Stadium (April 17, 2008) Who can deny that the present moment is a crossroads, not only for the Church in America but also for society as a whole? It is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of Christ and God. The Church, too, sees signs of immense promise in her many strong parishes and vital movements, in the enthusiasm for the faith shown by so many young people, in the number of those who each year embrace the Catholic faith, and in a greater interest in prayer and catechesis. At the same time she senses, often painfully, the presence of division and polarization in her midst, as well as the troubling realization that many of the baptized, rather than acting as a spiritual leaven in the world, are inclined to embrace attitudes contrary to the truth of the Gospel. “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!” (cf. Ps 104:30). Dear friends, my visit to the United States is meant to be a witness to “Christ our Hope”. Americans have always been a people of hope: your ancestors came to this country with the expectation of finding new freedom and opportunity, while the vastness of the unexplored wilderness inspired in them the hope of being able to start completely anew, building a new nation on new foundations. To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves. Yet hope, hope for the future, is very much a part of the American character. And the Christian virtue of hope – the hope poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the hope which supernaturally purifies and corrects our aspirations by focusing them on the Lord and his saving plan – that hope has also marked, and continues to mark, the life of the Catholic community in this country. It is in the context of this hope born of God’s love and fidelity that I acknowledge the pain which the Church in America has experienced as a result of the sexual abuse of minors.

Celebration of Vespers and meeting with the Bishops of the United States of America at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington (April 16, 2008) America is also a land of great faith. Your people are remarkable for their religious fervor and they take pride in belonging to a worshipping community. They have confidence in God, and they do not hesitate to bring moral arguments rooted in biblical faith into their public discourse. Respect for freedom of religion is deeply ingrained in the American consciousness – a fact which has contributed to this country’s attraction for generations of immigrants, seeking a home where they can worship freely in accordance with their beliefs. While it is true that this country is marked by a genuinely religious spirit, the subtle influence of secularism can nevertheless color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior. Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death? Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted. Only when their faith permeates every aspect of their lives do Christians become truly open to the transforming power of the Gospel.  For an affluent society, a further obstacle to an encounter with the living God lies in the subtle influence of materialism, which can all too easily focus the attention on the hundredfold, which God promises now in this time, at the expense of the eternal life which he promises in the age to come (cf. Mk 10:30). People today need to be reminded of the ultimate purpose of their lives. They need to recognize that implanted within them is a deep thirst for God. They need to be given opportunities to drink from the wells of his infinite love. It is easy to be entranced by the almost unlimited possibilities that science and technology place before us; it is easy to make the mistake of thinking we can obtain by our own efforts the fulfillment of our deepest needs. This is an illusion. Without God, who alone bestows upon us what we by ourselves cannot attain (cf. Spe Salvi, 31), our lives are ultimately empty.

Celebration of Vespers and meeting with the Bishops of the United States of America at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington (April 16, 2008) Education is integral to the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News. First and foremost every Catholic educational institution is a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and truth (cf. Spe Salvi, 4). The dynamic between personal encounter, knowledge and Christian witness is integral to the diakonia of truth which the Church exercises in the midst of humanity. God’s revelation offers every generation the opportunity to discover the ultimate truth about its own life and the goal of history. This task is never easy; it involves the entire Christian community and motivates each generation of Christian educators to ensure that the power of God’s truth permeates every dimension of the institutions they serve. All the Church’s activities stem from her awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself: in his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known the hidden purpose of his will (cf. Eph 1:9; Dei Verbum, 2). God’s desire to make himself known, and the innate desire of all human beings to know the truth, provide the context for human inquiry into the meaning of life. This unique encounter is sustained within our Christian community: the one who seeks the truth becomes the one who lives by faith (cf. Fides et Ratio, 31). It can be described as a move from “I” to “we”, leading the individual to be numbered among God’s people. This same dynamic of communal identity – to whom do I belong? – vivifies the ethos of our Catholic institutions. A university or school’s Catholic identity is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction – do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22)? Are we ready to commit our entire self – intellect and will, mind and heart – to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God’s creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold. From this perspective one can recognize that the contemporary “crisis of truth” is rooted in a “crisis of faith”. Only through faith can we freely give our assent to God’s testimony and acknowledge him as the transcendent guarantor of the truth he reveals.

Readings

The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions by Huston Smith. The World's Religions, by Huston Smith, has been a standard introduction to its eponymous subject since its first publication in 1958. Smith writes humbly, forswearing judgment on the validity of world religions. His introduction asks, "How does it all sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange, ethereal harmony? ... We cannot know. All we can do is try to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine. Such listening defines the purpose of this book." His criteria for inclusion and analysis of religions in this book are "relevance to the modern mind" and "universality," and his interest in each religion is more concerned with its principles than its context. Therefore, he avoids cataloging the horrors and crimes of which religions have been accused, and he attempts to show each "at their best." Yet The World's Religions is no pollyannaish romp: "It is about religion alive," Huston writes. "It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit. The call is to confront reality." And by translating the voices of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, and Judaism, among others, Smith has amplified the divine call for generations of readers.

Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief by Huston Smith. Why Religion Matters is a passionate, accessible, ambitious manifesto written by one of the very few people qualified to address its titular topic. Huston Smith is the grand old man of religious scholarship. Raised by missionary parents in China, Smith went on to teach at M.I.T. and U.C. Berkeley, among others, and his World's Religions has long been the standard introductory textbook for college religion courses. The subject of Why Religion Matters, Smith writes, "is the importance of the religious dimension of human life--in individuals, in societies, and in civilizations." Smith believes that the religious dimension of human life has been devalued by the rise of modern science: we have now reached a point at which "modern Westerners . . . forsaking clear thinking, have allowed ourselves to become so obsessed with life's material underpinnings that we have written science a blank check ... concerning what constitutes knowledge and justified belief." In candid, direct style, Smith describes the evolution of intellectual history from pre-modern to postmodern times, and the spiritual sensibilities that have been shunted "by our misreading of modern science." In the book's final sections, Smith avoids the folly of predicting the future, instead focusing on "features of the religious landscape that are invariant" and therefore may serve as "a map that can orient us, wherever the future may bring." This book is fresh, insightful, and important. It may prove to be as influential in shifting readers' terms of religious understanding as any of Smith's previous writings.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins. Keats complained that Newton's experiments with prisms had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow. Not so, says Oxford biologist Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) who, in an eloquent if prickly defense of the scientific enterprise, calls on the "two cultures" of science and poetry to learn from each other. Yet Dawkins cautions against "bad poetic science," i.e., seductive but misleading metaphors, and cites as an example " 'Gaia': the overrated romantic fancy of the whole world as an organism," a hypothesis proposed by atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and bacteriologist Lynn Margulis. Dawkins (continuing a celebrated battle that has been raging in the New York Review of Books) also lambastes paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould for "bad poetry," rejecting Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, which holds that new species emerge during relatively short bursts of evolutionary advance. In these conversational, discursive essays, Dawkins is, as always, an elegant, witty popularizer, whether he is offering a crash course in DNA fingerprinting, explaining the origins of "mad cow disease" in weird proteins that spread like self-replicating viruses or discussing male birdsong as an auditory aphrodisiac for female birds. However, in venturing into realms beyond the immediate purview of science, he reveals his own biases, launching into a predictable, rather superficial assault on paranormal research, UFO reports, astrology and psychic phenomena, all of which he dismisses as products of fraud, illusion, sloppy observation or an exploitation of our natural appetite for wonder. Dawkins is most interesting when he theorizes that our brains have partly taken over from DNA the role of recording the environment, resulting in "virtual worlds" that alter the terrain in which our genes undergo natural selection. Agent, John Brockman. 50,000 first printing; first serial to the Sciences.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson and Edward Osborne Wilson. The biologist Edward O. Wilson is a rare scientist: having over a long career made signal contributions to population genetics, evolutionary biology, entomology, and ethology, he has also steeped himself in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences. The result of his lifelong, wide-ranging investigations is Consilience (the word means "a jumping together," in this case of the many branches of human knowledge), a wonderfully broad study that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps that yawn between and within the cultures of science and the arts. No such gaps should exist, Wilson maintains, for the sciences, humanities, and arts have a common goal: to give understanding a purpose, to lend to us all "a conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." In making his synthetic argument, Wilson examines the ways (rightly and wrongly) in which science is done, puzzles over the postmodernist debates now sweeping academia, and proposes thought-provoking ideas about religion and human nature. He turns to the great evolutionary biologists and the scholars of the Enlightenment for case studies of science properly conducted, considers the life cycles of ants and mountain lions, and presses, again and again, for rigor and vigor to be brought to bear on our search for meaning. The time is right, he suggests, for us to understand more fully that quest for knowledge, for "Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us.... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Wilson's wisdom, eloquently expressed in the pages of this grand and lively summing-up, will be of much help in that search.

The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare (Modern Library Science) by Henri Poincare. More than any other writer of the twentieth century, Henri Poincaré brought the elegant, but often complicated, ideas about science and mathematics to the general reader. A genius who throughout his life solved complex mathematical calculations in his head, and a writer gifted with an inimitable style, Poincaré rose to the challenge of interpreting the philosophy of science to scientists and nonscientists alike. His lucid and welcoming prose made him the Carl Sagan of his time. This volume collects his three most important books: Science and Hypothesis (1903); The Value of Science (1905); and Science and Method (1908).

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We've paraphrased Jim Carville's famous observation by adding on the notion that we're all boiled frogs. In other words economic issues have moved front and center stage, in case you haven't noticed. In fact if you look back at the last two posts which frame the overall set of challenges we face and sketched some strategic policy directions, admittedly simply at a high level, we id'd Economic Policy as one of the Big Three. If you'll skim over the readings below you'll get a pretty good take on the deep-seated structural challenges we all face. The problem is that most of them aren't new to this downturn but are the gradual accumulation of things that have been building up for quite a while - time to que the Crazy Frog ? Wonder what he'd look like boiled.

Just to put this in some long-term perspective the chart shows shares of national income going to Wages, Profits and Capital since the end of WW2. What you see is a relatively healthy high-wage, high-profit economy in the '50s and '60s followed by a deterioration in Profits and Wages in the '70s as more equipment was required to shift the structure of the economy under oil prices, regulations, etc. Capex reached a plateau but other than a brief blip during the Tech Boom Wages have been in a long-term secular downtrend ever since. Profits have shot thru the roof relatively speaking because companies aren't either hiring or buying equipment. Why - setting evil capitalist conspiracies because they don't see rising demand justifying the return. We forget that our post war Golden Age had four major new industries (Pharma, Plastics, Electronics, Transportation) that drove the creation of new jobs, we had a major shift upward in human capital with the GI Bill and we inherited a lot of manufacturing equipment investment from the war. If we'd like a new Golden Age we need to come up with new industries that create new jobs and make sure that the right kind of folks are available to work in those jobs. A lot of the symptoms of our failure to do that are listed and discussed in the readings.

Now the Economy has many moving parts but two large components. The business cycle and the long-term secular growth trend. L.T. growth is entirely dependent on the sum of population (labor force) growth and productivity. If we want to get wealthier in the long-run the only sure path is to get more productivity. Just to keep growing to pay Social Security we need to grow the population (btw - that's one reason Immigrants are so vital. Without Hispanic population increases are growth would drop ~ 1% and we'd look like the aging Europe !). In the short-run the economy goes thru cycles where the goal is to get as close to the long-run speed limit of about 3.3%, though it may be dropping for the reasons discussed. On the outside you want to keep inflation from turning into hyper-inflation and destroying the society (think Weimar Republic) or from dropping into a major depression - which we could have in '01 in the aftermath of the bust bubble (think Great Depression or Japan since 1990). Within those bounds we need to ride out the cycles but mitigate the effects as best as possible. Cycles can't be cured but can be managed. In other words we can't avoid the downturn that's coming but we can keep it from metastasizing. We have basically two options - monetary policy (lower interest rates) or fiscal policy (cut taxes or spend money). That's it. So you put it all together we need to deal with the Housing and Credit Market crisis before they spin out of control (btw - you may not have been paying attention but the credit markets did their drunken Irishman thing and almost completely collapsed in mid-March. Collapse is analyst-speak for oh my god the world is ending). Then we need to stimulate the economy to mitigate the downside. Finally we have several major things like infrastructure and energy that are drains on the economy. Let's put it all together.

1. "Quick Fixes" -

a) the Fed may have saved the free world with it's new tools that prevented the collapse of the credit markets and it's foreclosure of Bear-Stearns (nobody got rescued btw). Now we need serious regulatory reform

b) Houses got inflated way over sensible values thru widespread greed and stupidity. If we don't figure out a fix this will drag on for years and threaten the viability of the economy. Two parts - re-write the loan terms, with gov't guarantees and workout management and then combine it with writedowns in house and home value. Straightforward, simple and hard - the biggest problem is finding the people to do it. But it'll get done the hard way or this way.

Stimulus - that still leaves us with a weak economy, just not one on the brink of implosion. So we need to spend some money. And $150B ain't gonna cut it. But any fiscal stimulus needs to be targeted, temporary and big enough. McCain's gas tax holiday is actually a pretty good idea. What should be added is some major hits (on the order of the '00s of $Bs that people pulled from home equity) in such things as extended unemployment insurance, targeted tax cuts and training programs.

2. Big Fixes - the US has let it's electrical, waterway and transportation infrastructures deteriorate to the point of...well never mind. A massive decade long infrastructure rebuilding project would see us get new electrical grids, new highways and transportation systems and possibly new power plants and alternative energy supplies. This would have the benefit of providing enormous fiscal stimulus, i.e. creating jobs and making a major long-term investment for things we know how to do. BtW - major sidebar. The long boom of the '80s and '90s was primarily built around two things. Supply side is utter nonsense. Reagan got it going the old-fashioned way with deficit spending and Clinton got lucky and also cut the defense budget. Bingo, that's it.

3. Long-term Fixes - we need new industries and we need to get off of our oil dependencies. There's things we can do in each and both. For example by increasing conservation as well as mandating enormously higher mileage thru better materials and engineering we could get a huge jump for the next ten years. Then we need to build new power plants, particularly nuclear, we need to open up our own offshore deepwater to oil exploration and we need more refineries. That all togeter takes us into the next decade. Beyond that we need some major alternatives - and don't believe 'em. We don't have the knowledge or technology do magic yet. For example we should really be heavily emphasizing coal but need major new technology not the Rube Goldberg fixes running around. So a concerted national effort (does the word Manhattan Project ring any bells) to create major new energy sources and technologies would stimulate the economy, create new industries and provide us several paths to the future.

Combine that we major parallel investments in new life sciences and materials, both because they offer the best hopes for the Next Big Things and because they are synergistic with energy investments. For example if we pie-in-the-sky about Fusion we need the new materials for the reactor vessels. Or new lightweight composites for high-temperature turbines. Similarly new bio-sciences offer up their own benefits not least of which is designed alternative energy crops as well as way to control and manage environmental problems. The real beauty of this is that it doesn't take a lot now because it's all at early stages.

So there you have it in a nutshell :) A complete now to futures strategic economic policy recommendation. Believe it or not it's at least a decent strawman based on reality, the ways things actually work instead of fantasies and offers some real benefits. Test it against the candidates if you like. The results might be interesting ! 

Economic Situation

Dumb Money We don't need a conversation about race. At least not now. What we need is a conversation about money.  It becomes clearer by the day that this is not your grandmother's--or even Barack Obama's grandmother's--economic downturn. This time we start with a huge government deficit and record private debt, all run up when times were good and we should have been storing up acorns. This is one that begins with people losing their homes, which is usually the last act of the drama. This is one that is bringing back stagflation--that poisonous combination of economic slowdown and eroding currency we cured at a terrible cost back in 1981. When that red phone rings in the middle of the night, it probably won't be the National Security Adviser saying Osama bin Laden has struck again. It will be the Treasury Secretary reporting that markets have opened in the Far East and the dollar has become worthless. The three remaining candidates have finally given speeches that addressed the economic crisis. But the presidential campaign is bouncing into its second year inside a hermetic bubble where the discussion is mainly about itself. Who cares about the economy when there is the allocation of superdelegates to worry about?

For Many, a Boom That Wasn’t  [CHART: Stagnating Wages] The bigger problem is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort. In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less — about $60,500. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens? In the second half of the 20th century, the United States passed the test in a way that arguably no other country ever has. It became, as the cliché goes, the richest country on earth. Now, though, most families aren’t getting any richer. The slowdown began in the 1970s, with an oil shock that raised the cost of everyday living. The technological revolution and the rise of global trade followed, reducing the bargaining power of a large section of the work force. In recent years, the cost of health care has aggravated the problem, by taking a huge bite out of most workers’ paychecks. Real median family income more than doubled from the late 1940s to the late ’70s. It has risen less than 25 percent in the three decades since. Statistics like these are now so familiar as to be almost numbing. But the larger point is still crucial: the modern American economy distributes the fruits of its growth to a relatively narrow slice of the population. We don’t need another decade of evidence to feel confident about that conclusion. Now, though, we appear to be out of bubbles. It’s hard to see how the economy will get back on track without some fundamental changes. This, I think, can fairly be considered the No. 1 economic project awaiting the next president. Fortunately, there is an obvious model waiting to be dusted off. The income gains of the postwar period didn’t just happen. They were the product of a deliberate program to build up the middle class, through the Interstate highway system, the G. I. Bill and other measures. It’s easy enough to imagine a new version of that program, with job-creating investments in biomedical research, alternative energy, roads, railroads and education.

Many More Are Jobless Than Are Unemployed THE unemployment rate is low. The jobless rate is high. Those two seemingly contradictory statements are especially true for American men in what should be the prime of their working lives. Those facts may help to explain the stark pessimism of Americans about the economy, and shed some light on the rise of illegal immigration as a political issue. Men in the prime of their working lives are now less likely to have jobs than they were during all but one recession of the last 60 years. Most of them do not qualify as unemployed, but they are nonetheless without jobs. But there is another rate — called the jobless rate in this article — that counts the proportion of people without jobs. To be sure, some of them do not want to work. Some are raising families on a spouse’s income, or are disabled, retired or independently wealthy. But others may be discouraged workers, who would take jobs if they thought any desirable positions were available. In the latest report, for March, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate — also called the “not employed rate” by some — at 13.1 percent for men in the prime age group. Only once during a post-World War II recession did the rate ever get that high. It hit 13.3 percent in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82 recession, and continued to rise from there. To be sure, employment is a lagging economic indicator, and rates higher than this have prevailed after recessions ended. But this rate has arrived at a time when the government still hopes that a recession can be averted. As can be seen in the accompanying chart, there has been a long-term decline in the proportion of prime-age men with jobs.

[CHART: Fewer Men Are Working ]

Attitudes & Reactions

Are You Better Off Than You Were Five Years Ago? For the first time in 50 years of polling, a majority of Americans believe they are stuck or falling behind, according to a new Pew Research poll measuring the attitudes of the middle class. “Americans feel stuck in their tracks,” Pew states. “This is the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in nearly half a century of polling by the Pew Research Center and the Gallup organization.” According to the poll, 25% of respondents said they haven’t moved forward in life in the past five years, while a higher number, 31%, believe they have taken a step back. Still, nearly two-thirds said they have a higher standard of living than their parents. More than half of American adults, 53%, consider themselves middle-class. Pew notes that in the long-view, middle class Americans have seen economic gains, with median household incomes rising 41% since 1970. But looking at the shorter term, Pew said real median household income peaked in 1999 “making this decade one of the longest downturns ever for this widely-accepted measure of the middle-class standard of living.”

• Income Mobility How has the movement of families up and down the economic ladder changed over the past 20 years? (Superb interactive chart graphic from the NYT)

81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on Wrong Track Americans are more dissatisfied with the country’s direction than at any time since the New York Times/CBS News poll began asking about the subject in the early 1990s, according to the latest poll. In the poll, 81 percent of respondents said they believed “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track,” up from 69 percent a year ago and 35 percent in early 2002. Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems. A majority of nearly every demographic and political group — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, residents of cities and rural areas, college graduates and those who finished only high school — say the United States is headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-eight percent of respondents said the country was worse off than five years ago; just 4 percent said it was better off. The dissatisfaction is especially striking because public opinion usually hits its low point only in the months and years after an economic downturn, not at the beginning of one. Today, however, Americans report being deeply worried about the country even though many say their own personal finances are still in fairly good shape.

Only 21 percent of respondents said the overall economy was in good condition, the lowest such number since late 1992, when the recession that began in the summer of 1990 had already been over for more than a year. In the latest poll, two in three people said they believed the economy was in recession today.

• U.S. on the Wrong Track? Eighty-one percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, but is that really the story behind todays jobs story? David Leonhardt, of the NY Times, and CNBCs Steve Liesman share their insight.

Long-term Consequences

Trapped in the Middle Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for several years, even as the well-heeled keep doing better, and the resulting angst is coming front-and-center in Tuesday's Democratic showdown in Pennsylvania.Here and elsewhere, middle-class earnings aren't keeping up with the cost of living. Rising gasoline and food prices, health bills, child-care and education costs are leaving less to set aside for retirement. With the housing market in turmoil, even the asset many had come to count on -- the value of their homes -- is threatened.It isn't just a reflection of the current economic slowdown and rise in commodity prices: Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for several years. The well-heeled keep doing better, with the wealthiest 1% of U.S. families garnering the largest share of income since 1929. Middle-class angst is front-and-center in Tuesday's Democratic showdown in Pennsylvania between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both candidates have been repeating a simple theme: Elect me and I will revive the fortunes of the American middle class. Both Democrats offer similar prescriptions: tax cuts that would total about $1,000 per family; new tax credits for college costs; an overhaul of the health-care system to cover millions of people who are uninsured; aid to homeowners to reduce foreclosures and stricter enforcement of trade agreements. To help pay for the changes, they'd let President Bush's tax cuts for more-affluent Americans expire. Recessions often depress middle-class incomes and moods. What's unusual about these declines is that they occurred during the economic expansion that began in 2001 -- the first time that's happened during a prolonged expansion in at least 40 years. The main reason: The benefits of prosperity have gone disproportionately to the families at the very top. Online chart slideshow

The Wage That Meant Middle Class is on its way to extinction. Americans greeted the loss with anger and protest when it first began to happen in big numbers in the late 1970s, particularly in the steel industry in Western Pennsylvania. But as layoffs persisted, in Pennsylvania and across the country, through the ’80s and ’90s and right up to today, the protests subsided and acquiescence set in. Hourly workers had come a long way from the days when employers and unions negotiated a way for them to earn the prizes of the middle class — houses, cars, college educations for their children, comfortable retirements. Even now a residual of that golden age remains, notably in the auto industry. But here, too, wages are falling below the $20-an-hour threshold — $41,600 annually — that many experts consider the minimum income necessary to put a family of four into the middle class. The nation’s political leaders — Democrats and Republicans alike — have argued that education and training are a route back to middle-class wages for those who have fallen out. But the demand isn’t sufficient to absorb all the workers that the leaders would educate. Even now, roughly 15 percent of college-educated workers find themselves in jobs for which they are overqualified, the Economic Policy Institute reports, and many of these jobs pay less than $20 an hour. “The most important model that rolled off the Detroit assembly lines in the 20th century,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley, “was the middle class for blue-collar workers.”

The Wealth Trajectory: Rewards for the Few IF there is one thing about the United States economy in recent years that is beyond dispute, it is this: It’s a great time to be rich. Yes, I know, being rich has never exactly been a downer. But today it is all the more sweet. They report that one out of every 10,000 American families has income in excess of $10.7 million. These lucky duckies number less than 15,000. Put together, they could all fit into a modest-size town. (We could call it Aspen or Nantucket.) What’s more, the superrich have been getting an increasing slice of the economic pie. In 1980, the top 0.01 percent of the population had 0.87 percent of total income. By 2006, their share had more than quadrupled to 3.89 percent, a level not seen since 1916. What accounts for rising inequality? Some pundits are tempted to look inside the Beltway for a cause, but the case is hard to make. Government policy makers do not have the tools to exert such a strong influence over pretax earnings, even if they wanted to do so. Also, the trend toward increasing inequality has been fairly steady, despite changing political winds. According to Professors Goldin and Katz, for the past century technological progress has been a steady force not only increasing average living standards, but also increasing the demand for skilled workers relative to unskilled workers. Skilled workers are needed to apply and manage new technologies, while less skilled workers are more likely to become obsolete. For much of the 20th century, however, skill-biased technological change was outpaced by advances in educational attainment. In other words, while technological progress increased the demand for skilled workers, our educational system increased the supply of them even faster. As a result, skilled workers did not benefit disproportionately from economic growth. But recently things have changed. Over the last several decades, technology has kept up its pace, while educational advancement has slowed down. The numbers are striking. The cohort of workers born in 1950 had an average of 4.67 more years of schooling than the cohort born in 1900, representing an increase of 0.93 year in each decade. By contrast, the cohort born in 1975 had only 0.74 more years of schooling than that born in 1950, an increase of only 0.30 year a decade. Because growth in the supply of skilled workers has slowed, their wages have grown relative to those of the unskilled.

Policies and Politics

McCain Confirms GOP Out of Ideas, but So Are the Democrats  John McCain has tabled an economic program that won�t rescue the economy from its mess but Senators Clinton and Obama offer little more. McCain advocates tax cuts for parents and corporations and mortgage relief for distressed homeowners, paid for by pairing nondefense, discretionary government spending and higher Medicare premiums for the well off. Cutting taxes and government outlays together won�t boost spending for U.S. made goods, increase traffic at restaurants and dry cleaners, put unemployed back to work or resurrect growth. Neither would a stronger stimulus package, because the economic quagmire is not a 1950s-style recession, caused by a temporary buildup of unsold goods precipitating shorter shifts and layoffs. Rather, it is caused by systemic malfunctions, created by wrong-headed energy, trade and banking policies, that won�t easily resolve. On important energy, trade and banking issues, McCain offers Bush redux. Clinton’s platform is a throwback to 1970s French statism, something President Sarkozy is trying to escape. Obama is offering what he does best. An Elmer Gantry campaign, full of expressions of hope but thin on policy and anything truly new. It seems elephants have long memories but few new ideas. Donkeys are endearing but even less adaptive.

Where's the bailout for Main Street? It would be hilarious that economists are still debating whether or not the economy has fallen into a recession if so many people weren't hurting so badly. If you live in the real world, you know there's a recession going on. From January 2006 through January 2007, employment grew by 2%; over the next 12 months, through January 2008, employment grew by just 0.2%. And the pain is worse than those numbers indicate. As employment growth slowed, so did wage growth, while at the same time inflation took a bigger bite out of paychecks. The rate of annual change in real wages -- pay adjusted for inflation -- turned negative in October. By January 2008, real wages were declining at an annual rate of 1%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. So if you think your paycheck isn't keeping up with the price of milk, bread, medicine and gasoline, you're absolutely right. And for many American families, this isn't a recent phenomenon. The median hourly real wage has been falling for the last three and a half years. So a family in the middle of the U.S. economic pyramid knows there's a recession going on; for some the recession has been going on for three years. And, of course, that median family isn't among the worst off. Think of this the next time that anyone, myself included, tells you that the national unemployment rate is just 4.9% and that 4.9% isn't high enough to make this a real recession: Unemployment in Michigan was running at 7.6% at the end of 2007. It's one of seven states with unemployment rates above 6%.

·         FHA as linchpin Giving the Federal Housing Administration an expanded role is central to Washington's strategy for throwing troubled homeowners a lifeline. While the White House wants to avoid moves it sees as bailing out irresponsible mortgage borrowers, observers say it's likely that lawmakers looking to be reelected this year will expand the reach of the Federal Housing Administration to keep more borrowers in their homes. The House and Senate are trying to figure out the right way to widen the reach of the Depression-era agency, with Democrats favoring a large new financial responsibility, a move that concerns conservatives. But there are areas where consensus is developing, such as helping troubled borrowers to stay in their homes by encouraging lenders to write down loan values -- a move that the Bush administration advocated last week through its targeted FHASecure program.

Rescuing the Rust Belt When the American automobile industry was the world's leader in its field, many people seemed to think that labor unions could transfer a bigger chunk of that prosperity to its members without causing economic repercussions. Toyota, Honda, and others who took away more and more of the Big Three automakers' market share, leading to huge job losses in Detroit, proved once again the old trite saying that there is no free lunch. Like the United Automobile Workers union in its heyday, unions in the steel industry and other industries piled on costs, not only in wage rates having little relationship to supply and demand, but in all sorts of red tape work rules that added costs. State and local governments in what later became the rust belt also thought that they too could treat the industries under their jurisdiction as prey rather than assets, and siphon off more of the wealth created by those industries into state and local treasuries with ever higher taxes -- again, without considering repercussions. In the short run, you can get away with all sorts of things. But, in the long run, the chickens come home to roost. The rust belt is where those rising costs have come home to roost. While American auto makers are laying off workers by the thousands, Japanese auto makers like Toyota and Honda are hiring thousands of American workers. But they are not hiring them in the rust belts. They are avoiding the rust belts, just as domestic businesses are avoiding the high costs that have been piled on over the years by both unions and governments in the rust belt regions. In short, the rust belts have been killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

• Punching Bag Named NAFTA Discussing the trade agreement, with Jack Welch, former GE chairman/CEO and CNBCs Carl Quintanilla

Deficit Hawks Try, Try Again …..they agreed that the "first step" should be for Congress to take Social Security and government health-insurance programs -- Medicare for the aged and Medicaid for the poor -- off autopilot and set "sustainable," enforceable 30-year-long limits on growth in those programs, which today account for 42% of federal spending. With the U.S. struggling with recession and a credit crisis, and with interest rates low and a deliberate (and warranted) effort to increase the budget deficit under way, it's hard to talk about the long-run deficit. A wiser government would have tackled this during the good times; instead, politicians dug the hole deeper by expanding Medicare and cutting taxes. But this year, with the oldest baby boomers becoming eligible for Social Security, the "silver tsunami" begins. The next president can't escape this long-deferred problem. But their idea to set limits on the three big benefit programs has significant flaws. First, the budget process is a good way to implement a political consensus; it isn't a good way to achieve that consensus. The history of successful efforts to reduce the federal deficit proves that. Second, Social Security's finances are a problem, but not the big one or the hard one. The substance is easy, the politics aren't. The major driver of future federal spending is rising health costs… Third, taxes. Underlying all this is a fundamental question on which conservatives and liberals differ: How big a government do Americans want? The answer determines how heavily Americans should be taxed.

Creating an American Innovation Agenda The Presidential candidates have paid scant attention to the international decline of America's economy, and leaders already in government have paid even less, if that's possible. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is like a jet with its passengers comfortably watching a movie, seemingly unperturbed by the silence of the engines outside, the gradual loss of altitude, and the apparent indifference of the pilots up front. America, once home to the roaring engines of the world's postwar economy, has lost a lot of altitude, sinking to 24th in world economic outlook and stability. The goal of economic competitiveness through innovation must be set at the highest levels of corporate, academic, and governmental leadership. These leaders must provide both the strategy and resources to back their positions. By necessity, the fundamental innovation strategy must be multidimensional and must address national priorities to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to reap the rewards of a newly competitive economy. To do that, we must redirect our highly politicized national environment where Republicans are fearful of government strategy that engages the private sector and where Democrats see this as the occasion for social engineering. Such outdated predilections undermine a national agenda for innovation. Because of pressing social, economic, and security issues, six functional areas require sustained, multibillion-dollar R&D investments to stimulate innovation in both universities and the private sector through collaborations and partnerships. The priorities are: health care, energy alternatives, the environment, public transportation, homeland security, and national defense.

Posted by dblwyo at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After the break are several of this week's interesting excerpts on key policy issues which we'll leave you to skim as you would. [UPDATE: two new readings on Education have been  added recently].

We're going to use them as an excuse and fulcrum to sketch a framework for thinking about an integrated set of policies. They point toward a set of pragmatic and workable paths for where we need to go to tackle all our "Black Swan" challenges. Let's start with a diagram we've used before to illustrate the dynamics and dysfunctions we face and explain where it comes from, in part. Just to frame it we return to one of our favorite Adam Smith quotes (the real one not the popular financial columnist):"Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice."

We've used the diagram before to analyze why the parties and politicians retreat to the extremes, where the electorate tends to converge on the middle and how the major policy clusters map to the political spectrum. In case you were wondering the party mappings come from the last 20 years of partisanship and the voter mappings from the last several years of polls. But the policy mappings are the most interesting and come from our accumulated analysis of what's the best portfolio of policies that satsify Smith's Criteria of Prosperity. Notice he essentially uses the same three categories we use of Defense, Economics and Social administration, as understood in his day.

Our proposals build on the string of analysis you've seen being built up from the framework, the issues of making politics more about serving the national instead of special interests and the examples of what happens when the politicians and the voters (that means US) choose short-sighted, sounds-good over sound, sensible and workable. The posts are listed below if you want to track them down. 

 We start with the great paradox of a Prosperous society - this isn't tribal warfare where you win and I loose. It's a non-zero sum game where if we cooperate the pie gets bigger even though my share may be relatively smaller. A proposition that seems to have escaped most statesmen and societies for millenia and still today. Oddly enough what's really a fundamental and provable tenet of Political Economy sounds rather like a fundamental principle of Moral Philosophy (Smith's 1rst book was "Theory of Moral Sentiments" btw and he was famous for it in his day). Or Religion even, if we may be so bold.

From that over-arching 1rst Principle we go to each of the areas - not just by derivation but also because the sub-principles stand along on their own merits as well. First, we need to be constructively engaged with the world both because of the gains and, as we should have all learned and known, the need to avoid the losses. That just keeps us safe - to make us satisfied we need food, clothing, shelter etc. In other words we need a healthy economy. Finally economics alone is not enough - both as an end goal and as a means. For everybody to get into the game the playing field has to be level and accessible. And finally society needs to have citizens who believe in it because it works and they know these principles. Which we call Civitas. At the end of the day we don't owe you a win in this game but we owe you a fair chance to play and visa versa. There'll always be differences in ability, character and history. The trick is to not let the fortunate abuse privelege to reduce access for the rest. As Buster says in Gettysburg, "I want to be judged for myself, as a man, on my own merits. Not on who my facther was or his position. And damm all gentlemen to hell".

You can break all those principles down a bit more in each of the areas and also make the big picture stuff more operational IOHO. Our breakdown of the Critical Philosophies is not so much new as a return to the principles that have underpinned our entire history. The big change maker is to re-discover that the implication is that on a level field with equal access you are then self-responsible, not owed or excused from playing. To make that work we need to re-visit our governance machinery - not at the Constitutional level where it's one of the most brilliant and creative creations in the history of mankind. Rather we need to leverage the framework's adapatability to adapt yet again and change the machinery that's grown up in the last 40-50 years. All too often machinery that sounded good but was distored to support political agendii of one group, party or another. Finally in each of the Big Three policy areas you need to break down the principles to Policy, Strategy and Plans for the major issues contained in the larger buckets. While each list is not entirely exhaustive we will very strongly suggest it is comprehensive. That is the key issues listed taken all together span strategies and solutions for all the swirling myriads of details. In other words, among other things, you can think of this as a filter and analysis toolkit for sorting things into graspable and workable categories. Solve the key issues and the rest can be cloned. Or so we opine but not without a little work, investigation and thinkng.

But test it for yourself on the excerpts below - or in fact any prior post. We think you'll find that things do slot in fairly well. 

Policy Readings

Petraeus Is Picked to Replace Fallon as Head of U.S. Forces in Middle East Army General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, has been chosen by President George W. Bush to become head of all American forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. Petraeus, 55, would succeed Admiral William Fallon if confirmed by the Senate. Fallon stepped down last month after a dispute with the Bush administration over perceived policy differences on Iran and reports that he had clashed with Petraeus over how deeply to draw down troop levels in Iraq. The promotion to head the U.S. Central Command would expand Petraeus's responsibilities to include the war in Afghanistan, where his counter-insurgency expertise would be applied to the fight against a resurgent Taliban militia. Army Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the former deputy commander in Iraq, will step into the top spot, Gates said at a Pentagon news conference today. Odierno will replace Petraeus in Iraq in late summer or early fall, Gates said. Asked if Petraeus's elevation signaled a hardening U.S. position toward Iran, Gates said there was no disagreement among senior commanders -- including Fallon -- about the need to confront Iran over its conduct in Iraq.

Military's odd couple rises up the ranks The scholarly, wiry Petraeus had his troops working on politics and economics to revive the northern city of Mosul in 2003 while the giant, shaven-headed Odierno conducted tough combat operations around Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's home town. Petraeus won widespread praise for his approach while Odierno faced criticism that his tactics drove local people into the arms of insurgents, although he insisted his sector was very different from Mosul and needed a robust approach. The two men came together again in Iraq last year to implement a strategy that helped drive down violence and marked a change in image for Odierno as he stressed the importance of reconciliation and good governance to bring stability. A former senior U.S. officer who has worked extensively with both men said Odierno's thinking had evolved. But he said Odierno was always a far more thoughtful officer than his formidable appearance might suggest. "This guy has a degree in nuclear engineering," the former officer said. "One should not be confused by his size. Many have made that mistake." Although critics have questioned whether the gains in Iraq are sustainable, both Petraeus and Odierno have won praise for helping pull the country from the brink of all-out civil war.

CBO Chief Is Health-Care Referee In the debate over the future of U.S. health care, Peter Orszag is playing one of the toughest positions: referee. As director of the Congressional Budget Office, he is charged with toting up a bill's impact on the federal budget. Mr. Orszag wants to drive home concerns about what he says are the "unsustainable" current growth rates of Medicare and Medicaid. Over his desk hangs a chart showing projected growth in federal spending on the two programs, which together are projected to represent 9% of gross domestic product in 2035 and 19% by 2082. Currently, they constitute 4% of GDP, or nearly $600 billion in federal spending for 2008. The Medicare trustees have said the elderly-insurance program's hospital trust fund is on track to run out in 2019. The CBO director, who started his four-year term in January 2007, is going beyond the traditional budget-Cassandra role, and analyzing causes and solutions. He has emphasized that the biggest driver of rising medical costs is the increasing use of new technology, not simply an aging population. Mr. Orszag likes to present a slide show that highlights geographic variations in Medicare spending -- which, he points out, don't clearly correlate with healthier people.

Quality Care at Bargain Prices When politicians talk of reforming the health care system to rein in costs, skeptical patients often worry that they will be forced to accept shoddy treatment in second-rate institutions. So it is a relief to learn that the famed Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Ohio offer outstanding care at bargain prices — at least compared with higher-priced, equally prestigious medical centers elsewhere. The Cleveland Clinic, at $55,000, and the Mayo Clinic, at $53,000, were far more cost-effective. The reason for the disparities is not that one hospital charges a lot more for a given service than the others. Rather, the high-cost hospitals provide a lot more services for patients than the lower-cost hospitals: keeping patients in the hospital and in intensive care for longer periods, sending them to a slew of specialists and doing a lot more tests and procedures. No doubt the high-cost institutions think they are “going the extra mile” for their patients, but some patients don’t want such aggressive care and most don’t experience any health benefits from it. Reducing the cost of medical care will require changing longstanding habits — no easy feat. It may not happen until the medical profession reaches consensus on which treatments will truly improve the health of patients and which are superfluous. The Dartmouth researchers estimate that Medicare could save tens of billions of dollars annually — without reducing the quality of care — if all hospitals mirrored the practice patterns of the Mayo Clinic. That is a very good reason to change.

Back from the brink One of America's most violent cities has suddenly become less so—thanks to smarter policing. Baltimore's police chief, Frederick Bealefeld, prefers not to rely on divine intervention. With 282 murders last year among a population of 630,000, Baltimore was one of the most violent cities in America. But since last summer, the killing has slowed. The six months to March this year saw an impressive 28% fewer murders than the same period a year earlier. Mr Bealefeld credits smarter policing, and says he is cautiously optimistic that the trend will continue. Television dramas such as “The Wire” may give the impression that Baltimore is a hellhole. It is not. Most of the city is calm and pleasant. Only a couple of areas are crime-ridden. And even in these areas, relatively few young men commit—and are the victims of—the most serious crimes. Last year, 89% of those murdered in Baltimore had a criminal record. Like nearly every other large city, Baltimore has learnt from New York's example in the 1990s and now uses computers to create up-to-date maps of where crimes are being committed, so that officers can be sent where they are most needed. Mr Bealefeld is also making more officers patrol on foot. That way, they get to know the people they protect, who may in turn supply them with information. That is crucial in a city where thugs have mounted a “Stop Snitching” campaign, complete with T-shirts and a DVD, to intimidate potential or actual informants.

In the Projects, Hope and Hard Knocks IN 1991, the high crime rate at the Cypress Hills Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, made it the perfect setting for Mayor David Dinkins to announce a crackdown on illegal guns. It was a little too perfect, in fact. As the mayor spoke, shots rang out a block and a half away. People in the crowd screamed, some started to run and others ducked for cover. No one was injured, but the story added another chapter to the rough reputation of Cypress Hills. The situation has improved greatly since Mr. Dinkins’s foray into East New York. Crime has dropped even in places like Cypress Hills, a project of 15 seven-story buildings. In 1991, there were 107 murders recorded in the 75th Precinct, which includes Cypress Hills; last year, there were 33. Residents of Cypress, as many call it, now relish being able to sit on the benches outside their apartment buildings during the day, something that was once unimaginable. But while things are better, Cypress can still be a grim place. When the project appears in the headlines, it is usually bad news: a woman burned to death, a murder on Christmas Eve, or a sweeping drug bust. In 2002, for example, 60 people were arrested in what Cypress residents call the Big Takedown, and another 31 were indicted after a similar sweep last April 25. Besides crime, another constant is the daily struggle of the ordinary people at Cypress Hills. Whether in bad times or in less bad times, in everyday dramas that never make the headlines, the approximately 3,500 residents of the development strive to eke out a living, to raise their children and to steer clear of the cross-fire, both real and metaphorical, in a place where danger may ebb but never vanish. Here are portraits of four regular citizens — a teenager looking for a job, a retired welder, a mother of five, and a middle-aged worker for the Department of Homeland Security — who call Cypress Hills home and try to make do, day by day.

First, Kill All the School Boards The United States spends more than nearly every other nation on schools, but out of 29 developed countries in a 2003 assessment, we ranked 24th in math and in problem-solving, 18th in science, and 15th in reading. Half of all black and Latino students in the U.S. don't graduate on time (or ever) from high school. As of 2005, about 70 percent of eighth-graders were not proficient in reading. By the end of eighth grade, what passes for a math curriculum in America is two years behind that of other countries. Dismal fact after dismal fact; by now, they are hardly news. But in the 25 years since the landmark report A Nation at Risk sounded the alarm about our educational mediocrity, America's response has been scattershot and ineffective, orchestrated mainly by some 15,000 school districts acting alone, with help more recently from the states. Spending by pupil graphic.

Effort to Curtail Emissions in Turmoil A multibillion-dollar experiment that allows polluters to purchase "carbon credits" to combat global warming is stumbling as regulators question whether the program is doing enough environmental good. `Restless' Independents, Not Parties' Base, May Select Next U.S. President Barack Obama and John McCain both have a demonstrated appeal to independent voters, who may account for one-third of the vote in the general election and determine the outcome, whether the Democratic nominee is Obama or Hillary Clinton. Independents are the ``restless and anxious moderates,'' and their profile has ``broadened significantly'' over the past decade, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen said. ``They are much more concerned with how Washington works, with gridlock and the failure of the system, with education, the environment and fighting terrorism,'' said Schoen, author of the study, ``Declaring Independence.'' The presidential contenders are focused on securing their base. Republican Arizona Senator McCain, 71, is targeting conservatives, while the Democrats, Senators Clinton of New York, 60, and Obama of Illinois, 46, are chasing blue-collar voters. Yet it is the independent voters who shaped both parties' fields and may decide who will become the next president.

Prior Posts

Let's Play President: Evaluating the Candidates

Super Tues.: Barrack & Billary "Tied", John-Boy in Front ?

Unintended Consequences: Blowing Off Our Own Feet

Putting the Pieces Together: Framing, Crisis & Linkages

Finding the RadCenter: Making Politics Work ?

Policies

Readings(Education): the Single Most Important Domestic Policy Issue

Standing Corrected: Education 2nd Avoiding Economic Collapse 1rst

Examples

WRFest 23Feb08(Int'l Affairs): What Makes for Progress

Posted by dblwyo at 07:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're going to start with a confession of being tremdously jealous of the Brits and what their political system has managed for them. If you've ever seen The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you've got a perfect picture in the Borgons what their system was like after decades of socialism and wrong-headed policies - a level of dysfunction we thankfully never reached. So when Thatcher came on board and proceeded to Roto-rooter the arteries and blow out the accumulated scelrosis we applauded. And hoped that Reagan would do the same for us. Which he did but not to the same radical extent. The question then was what was the next step ? Once you got the blood flowing again it was time to pendulum back off the extemes which Major proceeded to do. And when Bill Clinton came in '92 he and the DLC proceeded to promise to maintain a healthy, growing adaptive economy, continue to free us up from regulation and find new, innovative ways to achieve major social policy reform. After being in power too long the Tories lost to Labor in Britain and Blair started his reign as the longest serving Prime Minister since Pitt. Yet, oddly, he continued Major's major policy thrusts at the expense of alienating the die-hard ideologues in his own party. Clinton turned Healthcare over to Hillary who proceeded back to 1963 with a huge, unwieldy, unworkable, high-tax and political un-saleable proposal for a giant "moonshot" of a program. At which point we got the "Contract with America" which turned out to be as ideological and unworkable in the other direction. So the Brits got 25+ years of continuous, thoughtful and workable adaptation and we got increasingly partisan, bitter and special interest based politics. Which we apparantly wanted because we kept voting for these idiots. Before you start thinking we're entirely nuts about all this we've got a few things for you to check out. First off the graphic at right will take you to a worldwide survey and you can find out where you stand. Now it's a European survey and while you're there take the time to look at the examination of European politics if you don't think the US is both different and more conservative on the whole.

Since '95 as the partisanship has grown Americans have gotten increasingly dissastisfied with Washington, the in-fighting and the breakdown. Which, IOHO, is central to this election. Before we go on though we think you ought to know there's a 3rd Way forward, it works and it's got some darn good leadership with names like Bloomberg, Schwarzeneggar, et.al. Take a pause (it's a full hour but it's chock full of really good insights) take a look at this:

A conversation with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California.

[PAUSE] 

 Now we've been here before and with worse challenges. When Industrialization took off in the late 1800's we had no mechanisms for dealing with the growth of the economy, industry, urbanization, public health, education or any of the other things that we're threatening to break down our society. That was the Progressive Era and we had two great almost back-to-back presidents in Roosevelt and Wilson who helped lead us thru the morass. But they didn't get it started or down by themselves. It was started, tested and developed on the state and local levels by concerned citizens who knew we had to find ways to change. And didn't have a clue to start with but invented them and then put them in place. In fact this country is run today on the socio-political innovations of that era. Which have obviously been successful but need to be significantly, if not radically adapted, in combination with the adoption of new innovations, to deal with the challenges we face. Which are not at crisis proportions yet but could be if we don't Gung Ho - "all pull together now" - these things.

By and large we've actually reached a point of national consensus on what we'd like to accomplish though with significant differences remaining. The real problem is the means not the goals. We've been our own victims for years and decades now by creating UiC galore thru choosing to believe the easy answers and opt for the quik fix. The second graphic captures that, at least conceptually. If you'd like to see some changes then vote for the candidate who a) tells you the truth, b) recognizes how hard and complex this is and c) is willing to work in the center and not on the extremes. Otherwise, par for the course, we'll get what we deserve. Again.

And if you don't believe us check out the readings below which range from the previously unknown and hidden story of how Next the Grinch and Slick Willie almost worked it out but got sideswiped by Monica and the partisan warfare that resulted. There are so many ironies here since it was Newt who created this attack-dog political process in the first place and which has hamstrung us ever since. IOHO the reason Barry's had so much appeal this time is that's been speaking toward this Radical Center. Let's hope we can all find it.

And oh yeah, in case you were wondering the first graphic are my results :) ! 

UPDATE: This is a great interview with Howard Fineman, a noted political commentator, on Charlie Rose. It starts with a discussion of the Penn. primary contest but the real interesting part is his new book on the 13 American Debates discussing the key questions we've argued over since the founding of the country. Obviously I think well of this and it's alignment with my basic argument. See what you think ! 

Politics and Policies

How Monica Killed a Clinton-Gingrich Pact In public, they were oil and water. As president, Bill Clinton distrusted then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the Republican felt the same way about Clinton. But in a shocking revelation, we're learning that the political foes—desperate for a heroic legacy—made a secret pact to fix the nation's most problematic programs like Social Security. The plan crashed, however, in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "Monica changed everything," says former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. It was in 1997, when the budget was flush and partisanship at a lull, says Steven Gillon, a History Channel host and University of Oklahoma professor who reveals the deal in his upcoming page-turner, The Pact. "This was a moment where everything came together to create this possibility in 1997-98," he says. "Those circumstances will probably never be duplicated." Using Gingrich's notes and interviews with Bowles and other Clintonistas, he describes months of meetings leading to a face-to-face in the Treaty Room on Oct. 28, 1997. The plan: Clinton would propose fixing Social Security and Gingrich would back it. Both would work their sides to pass it after the 1998 elections. Other deals would follow. But the Lewinsky saga broke first, returning partisanship. "It really did matter, and it destroyed this moment of bipartisanship that both of them had worked hard for," says Gillon.

Can Broken Washington Be Fixed? The war. Healthcare. Airline delays. Americans are fed up with inaction--and demanding change. It's the constant refrain from the presidential candidates, political scientists, and, most important of all, everyday Americans: Washington is broken. Rancorous partisanship has nearly paralyzed the government. The nation's leaders have lost touch with the people. Above all, it's time for a change. Historians and pollsters say the zeitgeist is clear. Americans are more frustrated with their government today than they have been in a long time, even more so than during the Watergate scandal. And those negative feelings have become the subtext of the 2008 presidential race. "Distrust of politicians and politics are part of American culture," says Princeton historian Julian Zelizer. "But the distrust is getting worse." With good reason. The government can't seem to solve any of its major problems, from reforming Social Security to illegal immigration. The Democrats and Republicans are increasingly relying on their base voters and aren't reaching out to anyone else, making compromise nearly impossible. Corruption scandals have increased public cynicism. The 24-hour news cycle emphasizes conflict and wrongdoing more than ever. The Iraq war has deepened the nation's anxiety. President Bush and Congress endure record-low approval ratings. In fact, 7 out of 10 Americans now say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The need for change is such a dominant theme that all the main presidential contenders are calling for an end to business as usual.

`Restless' Independents, Not Parties' Base, May Select Next U.S. President Barack Obama and John McCain both have a demonstrated appeal to independent voters, who may account for one-third of the vote in the general election and determine the outcome, whether the Democratic nominee is Obama or Hillary Clinton. Independents are the ``restless and anxious moderates,'' and their profile has ``broadened significantly'' over the past decade, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen said. ``They are much more concerned with how Washington works, with gridlock and the failure of the system, with education, the environment and fighting terrorism,'' said Schoen, author of the study, ``Declaring Independence.'' The presidential contenders are focused on securing their base. Republican Arizona Senator McCain, 71, is targeting conservatives, while the Democrats, Senators Clinton of New York, 60, and Obama of Illinois, 46, are chasing blue-collar voters. Yet it is the independent voters who shaped both parties' fields and may decide who will become the next president.

Where Have All the Republicans Gone? Marketers might call the Republicans' experience over the past couple of years "brand distress." And after losing the majority in Congress in the 2006 election, it looks like the party's fortunes continue to slip. Is the party of Lincoln ready for the Endangered Species list? Solid Republicans just jumping ship is an unlikely scenario. Social-science research suggests strong partisans are the most likely to vote, give money, participate in politics generally and least likely to change party. But overall partisan drift can occur. The strength of attachments to a party varies a great deal among citizens. So, a shift in the strength and direction of partisan identification is a more likely explanation. Strong Republicans probably still call themselves Republicans but they shifted into to" weak" or even "independent-lean-Republican" territory for a variety of reasons, including the party's record over the past several years on spending, ethics or the War in Iraq. "Leaners" or even weak partisans may have also shifted toward the "independent" category. What you're left with is a slightly bigger group in the "true independent" category -- voters who could swing either way in this November's election. Due to their weaker partisan attachments, these voters could also shift again, helping to either build an enduring Democratic majority or contribute to rebuilding the GOP. Partisanship works like a lever with the fulcrum under the "independent" label. Adding a little more weight to the Democratic side causes the less attached partisan to all roll a little away from the Republicans. And if this theory explaining the state of the electorate in 2008 is right, it's more than a little ironic that after all the questions about John McCain's ability to draw support among the GOP faithful earlier in this election cycle, the party will nominate the person best situated to win in this environment and maybe even resurrect the Republican brand by beckoning some of the less attached partisans back

Where Have All the Liberals Gone? These days Democrats are not sounding very liberal. Classic liberals, after all, would support free markets, internationalism and the universal desire for constitutional government, while downplaying racial affinity. But the following examples highlight how far from these ideals today's liberals are. Campaigning earlier this year in recession-prone Ohio, both Democratic candidates trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement. Despite such illiberal pandering, both Clinton and Obama know that a traditional liberal position would be to defend free trade that lowers prices and increases choices for poorer American consumers -- while helping foreign economies catch up with the United States. Free trade isn't the only example in which liberal Democrats advocate positions that sound parochial and blinkered. Let's take an environmental issue. It may seem environmentally correct for liberals to oppose oil drilling in a small part of Alaska. But how is this prohibition in any way liberal? Unless Americans are willing to accept a drastic reduction in their standard of living or can discover novel methods of conserving or creating energy, in the short-term transportation fuel will have to come from somewhere. And given our present prohibitions, that somewhere apparently means foreign oil. Homegrown, clean-burning biofuels sound great as a partial replacement for polluting foreign petroleum. But at present, to supply grain-based ethanol, we are diverting a large percentage of American farm acreage away from food production. The result - apart from the net energy loss needed to grow and refine ethanol - is that the price of basic food staples is soaring.

Readings

Government's End by Jon Rauch and Jonathan Rauch 

The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities by Mancur Olson 

The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics by Ted Halstead and Michael Lind

The Search for Order, 1877-1920 by Robert H. Wiebe 

 Previous Postings

Super Tues.: Barrack & Billary "Tied", John-Boy in Front ?

Let's Play President: Evaluating the Candidates

Campaigns, Candidates & Characteristics: Slings and Arrows, Oh My !

Putting the Pieces Together: Framing, Crisis & Linkages

Posted by dblwyo at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let's catch up with the last week or so's excerpts on world affairs and politics - all of which share one crucial thing in commom. Most of the "shake-your-head" problems are largely self-inflicted consequences of three repeated failures: 1) not understanding how the "buzz saw" works, that is not understanding how one thing links to another - people would rather starve in the dark apparantly than make their heads hurt by thinking it thru. Compounded by 2) not telling people what's really going on, which is consistent. After all if a simple and self-interested explanation sounds good who cares if it's right. And then 3) there's the little problem of facing up to crisis and cowboying up the realities. So while we seem to be surrounded by "Black Swans" most of these things have not only been coming for years they've been anticipated for years. It's just that nobody wants to face up. The problem with that is the Black Swans tend to reproduce to the point of metastasis until the take us all over the cliff along with the rest of the lemmings. Or put another way if we keep deceiving ourselves with high-flown, emotionaly appealing rhetoric that leads to PCPolicy that in fact leads to crisis, death and destruction how sound was our ideological purity in the first place ?

We start the readings with three excerpts, one from our prior post on an approach to framing and analyzing these complex and inter-linked phenomenon. It's a little abstract and one would need to develop and apply the approach for each major problem area. Nonetheless we'll argue that each story below fits nicely into the framework. That's coupled with two more general articles on worldwide trends and issues. Then in the specifics we start with a series on Italy which could be the posture child for emotional choice and self-inflicted wounds. Berlusconi is back in office years after promising to address all the problems he now faces. Someday the Italians may go thru the Pogo Revelation and have the right religious experience - you know "we have met the enemy and he's us" ?

The stories on Russia and China are a bit more benign. The first is a Rose interview with Russia's UN Ambassador that's worth watching IOHO - especially the part where he almost pleads with us to not necessarily treat them as an equal but at least respect them and accord them the same rights to act in their own interests. When you consider what America's historical insularity has cost us and will cost us in combination with centuries of grudges built up one isn't surprised. And that's not a bash America statement, far from it. In fact I've made the argument that America's contributions have been major and instrumental .

China was making progress in new high-level talks with Taiwan. Which may unfortunately get a lot of backwash from the troubles with Tibet and internal dissent and disruption (WRFest 13Apr08(China): More Troubles in Big China). But the real poster children of UiC (Unintended Consequences) are Mexico and Zimbabwe. In fact Z. is so bad with all it's bright promises destroyed by a government and egomaniac that it's really more pathological than "mere" wounding. As Z. continues to a complete and utter self-created socio-economic breakdown and collapse this is giving Col. Kurz a bad name. After all he was only being sociopathic in a small area not a whole country who's fundamental institutions are being degraded and will take decades to recover.

Similarly Mexico which has made great progress but has great obstacles badly needs to at least maintain oil production but nationalist intransigence prevents allowing foreign investment that would provide the funds, expertise and technologies needed to keep up production and develop new fields. Something that Russia is also doing. Worse Mexico has fore decades under-invested in existing fields and has used the cash flow to subsidize a corrupt and oligarchic system. Sigh... 

General & Special

Putting the Pieces Together: Framing, Crisis & Linkages we're facing an accelerating series of crisis, e.g. the Black Swan of the exponentiating world food crisis, which we need to address both nationally and internationally. What each of these problems have in common is this: they all inter-relate and are themselves built of component parts. If we want to address them we need, as my intellectual hero Robert Heinlein put "know how the buzz saw works". Good intentions are no substitute for being able to run the sawmill if you need lumber to build houses, provide jobs and all the other things that are bedeviling us. And TANSTAFFL - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Telling people what they want to hear instead of telling them how things work and pretending the easy answers are feasible is disingenous at best and dangerous. But not at worst. Worst is when all these problems metastasize into crisis and catastrophes. Fortunately we can solve most of them with a combination of realism, hard-work, skills & knowledge and discipline. In fact there's no crisis I'm aware of that's not capable of being addressed, if not readily solved.

Econ Blog: Why Don't More Poor Countries Get Rich? One of the great embarrassments of the economics profession is its inability to explain why some countries get rich and some don’t. Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan minister of industry, once compared the gap in knowledge to physicists not being able to explain how gravity works. Next month, the Commission on Growth and Development, a group of policy makers and academics led by Nobel Laureate Mike Spence, will offer its contribution to the growth debate. At a Monday conference, Spence gave something of a preview, presenting research he had done with Mohamed El-Erian, the co-CEO of Pimco, a large fund manager. Looking primarily at China’s ability to grow an average of 9% annually over 29 years, Spence said a key for poor countries was to focus on exports of manufactured goods. That’s what China had done, as had some other fast-growing nations in Asia. It is “striking that the sustained high-growth cases all chose…to provide incentives for investment in export diversification and to structure in particular foreign direct investment so as to increase the rate of inbound transfer of knowledge and technology to domestic individuals and institutions,” the Spence-El-Arian paper said. In other words, export, export, export, even if that means subsidizing some firms and manipulating the currency to help exporters. Well, maybe. Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the prescription struck him as a former of “modern mercantilism” in which “international economic development is like a basketball game, and exports are like playing offense.”  What’s the problem with that? If every country takes the export path, he said, it will flood markets in the U.S. and Europe that are already saturated with imports—and boost already-high protectionist sentiment. He doubted there was enough import demand and “political tolerance” in rich countries to allow such a strategy. He also doubted most governments are smart enough to figure out proper export strategies. Mr. Summers’s predecessor at Treasury, Robert Rubin, ventured that “effective government” was the key for growth. But Summers wasn’t buying that one either. Government are often seen as effective because the countries are growing fast, he said. Then when they stop growing, the governments are dismissed as lame and corrupt – Indonesia under Suharto, for instance. For his part, Summers urged African countries to focus on exploiting their wealth in commodities, rather than trying to ape China’s manufacturing export model. But the Spence-El-Arian paper warns that relying on commodity prices “emphatically is not the basis of sustainable growth” because of the traditional volatility of commodity prices. Anyone know why apples fall down, not up?

The Rise of the Mega-Region When people talk about economic competitiveness, the focus tends to be on nation states. In the 1980s, many were obsessed with the rise of Japan. Today, our gaze has shifted to the phenomenal growth of Brazil, Russia, India and China. But this focus on nations is off the mark. The real driving force of the world economy is a new and incredibly powerful economic unit: the mega-region. Extending far beyond a single core city and its surrounding suburbs, a mega-region is an area that hosts business and economic activity on a massive scale, generating a large share of the world's economic activity and an even larger share of its scientific discoveries and technological innovations. While there are 191 nations in the world, just 40 significant mega-regions power the global economy. Home to more than one-fifth of the world's population, these 40 megas account for two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85% of all global innovation. The world's largest mega is Greater Tokyo, with 55 million people and $2.5 trillion in economic activity. Next is the 500-mile Boston-Washington corridor, with some 54 million people and $2.2 trillion in output. Also in the top 10 are mega-regions that run from Chicago to Pittsburgh, Atlanta to Charlotte, Miami to Tampa, and L.A. to San Diego. Outside of the U.S., you can find megas around Amsterdam, London, Osaka and Nagoya, Milan, Rome and Turin, and Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Mega-regions are the true force driving the rise of emerging economies. Some 40% of Brazil's total economy is made up of a corridor stretching from Rio to São Paolo. Russia is propelled by the Moscow mega. India's economy is shaped by the mega-regions of Bangalore and Mumbai. China is not our real competitor. Rather, we should be thinking about the great mega-regions around Shanghai, Beijing and the Hong Kong-Shenzhen corridor, which account for roughly 43% of the output of the entire country.

Italy

In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment But these days, for all the outside adoration and all of its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself. The word here is “malessere,” or “malaise”; it implies a collective funk — economic, political and social — summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, say they are the least happy people in Western Europe. “It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and a possible future center-left prime minister. “There is more fear than hope.” The problems are, for the most part, not new — and that is the problem. They have simply caught up to Italy over many years, and no one seems clear on how change can come — or if it is possible anymore at all. Italy has charted its own way of belonging to Europe, struggling as few other countries do with fractured politics, uneven growth, organized crime and a tenuous sense of nationhood. But frustration is rising that these old weaknesses are still no better, and in some cases they are worse, as the world outside outpaces the country. In 1987, Italy celebrated its economic parity with Britain. Now Spain, which joined the European Union only a year earlier, may soon overtake it, and Italy has fallen behind Britain. Berlusconi’s Long Shadow Casts a Chill Over Italian Politics, With Flawed System Unchanged, Italy Sets Elections for April

The Atheist Urging Italy to Get Religion One fringe candidate is different. He is Giuliano Ferrara, a Communist turned conservative who is Italy’s most operatic and most mercurial intellectual provocateur. A newspaper editor and former government minister, Mr. Ferrara is best known here as a television talk-show host. He combines the political theatrics of an Abbie Hoffman with the rhetorical flair of a William F. Buckley. Italy’s political life has always been absurd, but Mr. Ferrara’s recent theatrics touch on something deeper. He is a cultural barometer, highly attuned to the desperation of the national mood. More than the real-politiking of the mainstream candidates, Mr. Ferrara, with his insistence on ideas, taps into Italian anxieties about the future of Europe, the loosening of national identities, the rise of immigration, the decline of Christian belief. But most of all, the fragmented Italian left hasn’t produced a coalition strong enough to displace Mr. Berlusconi, the most vivid manifestation of a corrupt political culture in which everyone is implicated. In light of this, Mr. Ferrara’s campaign seems a cry for life in a country steeped in death and decline. Still, the campaign can be surreal.

Bitter Italy could blight Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi may have won the elections held in Italy last Sunday and Monday, but he did not win the popular vote. His new centre-right coalition party – The People of Liberty – did better than any other in the contest, capturing 37.4 per cent of the popular vote against 33.2 per cent for the Democratic Party on the centre-left. But in absolute terms, Mr Berlusconi’s coalition did much worse than the separate parties he cobbled together did when standing alone in 2006. So where can we find Italy’s 2m missing voters? Almost two-thirds of them voted for a regional protest party called the Lega Nord (or Northern League). The attraction of this anti-immigrant, anti-globalisation, anti-authority rhetoric is easy to see in the data. Such sudden increases are more likely to be a sign of frustration and bitterness than any lasting affection for Italy’s xenophobic far right. With the economy turning down, a series of law-and-order problems that people tend to associate with recent immigrants and a general insecurity about Italy’s chances in the global economic competition, Italians have a lot of reasons to be frustrated that their politicians seem so unable to come up with solutions and to be bitter about how difficult it is to see any real changeover in the political ruling class. Mr Berlusconi comes to power riding this wave of bitterness and frustration and more beholden to the Lega Nord than ever before.

MURPHY'S LAW: The Mysterious Half Million Chinese AK-47s Two years ago, Italian police had a wiretap on a black market arms dealer, when a call came in from a Libyan army officer, looking to buy 500,000 AK-47s, and 10 million rounds of ammo for them. The Italian gangsters were not used to moving that many weapons, but were game to act as middlemen for such a deal. The gangsters got in touch with Norinco, the Chinese arms manufacturer, and explained the situation. The Chinese were up for it, as long as they got the proper documents signed by Libyan government officials (attesting to the fact that the Libyan government was, indeed, the buyer of these weapons.) The Chinese would be discreet, but they wanted to cover their collective asses.

Other Countries: Russia, China, Zimbabwe, Mexico

A conversation with Vitaly Churkin, Russia's Ambassador to the U.N.

China, Taiwan Hold Highest-Level Talks Since 1949 Split as Hu Meets Siew Chinese President Hu Jintao will meet Taiwan's Vice President-elect Vincent Siew tomorrow, the highest-level contact between China and the island, ruled separately since 1949. The meeting will take place at China's Boao Forum for Asia, Siew's spokesman Wang Yu-chi said today, without giving a specific time. Long Yongtu, the head of the three-day conference for business and political leaders modeled on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has confirmed the meeting, China's official Xinhua news agency said. ``This is an ice-breaking visit,'' Siew told reporters earlier when he arrived in China's southern island of Hainan, where the forum is held. ``Taiwan and China should build mutual trust, increase mutual understanding.'' Hu has offered to discuss peace with Taiwan if the island accepts it isn't a separate state, a position that Siew and President-elect Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang hold. Their victory ended eight years of confrontation with China under the pro-independence rule by the Democratic Progressive Party. China and Taiwan have been administered separately since 1949, when the Kuomintang lost a civil war and fled to the island.

Playing Monopoly in Mexico Felipe Calderón won the July 2006 presidential election by convincing Mexicans he was the candidate who could bring about 21st-century living standards. A more robust economy was not just a Calderón campaign promise, it was the campaign promise. To deliver, Mr. Calderón knew he would have to confront the nation's monster monopolies, which gorge themselves on privilege at consumer expense. The poster child of this practice is the state-owned oil giant, Pemex. Now, 16 months into Mr. Calderón's government, the effort toward even limited reform at Pemex is in serious trouble. To understand why, do as Deep Throat famously advised Bob Woodward and "follow the money." Despite the myths, the reason Pemex is considered a sacred cow has much less to do with nationalism than with who benefits from its monopoly power. Over the past decade, Mexico has wisely diversified away from oil production as the principal source of national income. But oil remains an important source of financing for the government. In 2006, the petroleum contribution to the federal budget was $43.9 billion, or 37%. That income stream is in no way guaranteed in perpetuity. At the end of last month, Mr. Calderón's government released a 130-page study that found existing wells are drying up faster than new ones are coming on stream. Bottom line: Pemex production, as Energy Minister Georgina Kessel put it, has "fallen constantly" in the past three years. It's not that the oil is not there any longer. Reserves are plentiful. But they are not being exploited. As a result, she said, Mexico has "left on the table income of around $10 billion annually, almost three times the annual budget of 'oportunidades' [the government's social program targeting the poor], the principal tool in combating poverty." In December 2006, daily output dropped below three million barrels per day for the first time since 2001, and it is expected to continue to shrink. By 2012 the minister says that production is forecast to drop by 800,000 barrels a day at its principal wells. By 2018 daily output will be down 1.5 million barrels.

State Oil Industry’s Future Sets Off Tussle in Mexico A bitter debate over what to do about Mexico’s ailing state oil monopoly has dominated national politics here in recent weeks, tapping strong emotions on both sides and resurrecting the political fortunes of the leftist leader who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election. Revamping the oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, is perhaps the greatest challenge facing the administration of President Felipe Calderón, a conservative economist who won the disputed 2006 election by a hairbreadth. At stake in the debate is not only the future of the Mexican economy but also the supply of oil to the United States. Last year, Mexico was the third largest supplier of crude imports to the American market, after Canada and Saudi Arabia. The government has neglected the public company for 20 years, siphoning off its profits. Now production is dropping, reserves are dwindling, and Pemex lacks the technology to go after undersea oil, the administration says.But his rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the former Mexico City mayor and presidential candidate, has called any private investment in Pemex a threat to national security and has accused Mr. Calderón of secretly seeking to sell off the industry to private investors, a charge the president denies.The leftist leader has skillfully used the issue to catapult himself back onto center stage in national politics after a year of remaining on the fringes. At mass rallies, he has threatened blockades of roads, airports and oil wells by his followers if the president even introduces a bill to Congress. With leftists promising unrest, President Calderón warned last week that ignoring the company’s problems would cause a catastrophe.

Imagining a Future for Zimbabwe In fact, Zimbabwe now confronts a longer road to prosperity and stability than it did at its moment of independence; anyone who was there at the time can testify that this was then a land of prosperity and hope after years of warfare. Then, over the years, Mr. Mugabe turned the breadbasket into a basket case. Most disastrously, he seized the farms and doled them out to loyalists who squandered their bounty. Today, four people out of five have no job. Inflation is said to be running at an annual 100,000 percent. But there is a much deeper malaise, posing challenges that simply did not exist to the same degree in 1980. The AIDS epidemic has slashed life expectancy for Zimbabwean women to 34 years. And millions of Zimbabweans have gone into exile in South Africa, Britain and elsewhere. Today, remittances from the exiles sustain what is left of the ruined economy. But the exiles will not return while Mr. Mugabe is in power, and when he goes, luring them back to a land of deep poverty will remain a major challenge. As in the Balkans after the wars of the early 1990s, no reconstruction plan will work without a citizenry to implement it.

Posted by dblwyo at 09:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while back we put up post on Randy Pausch and his inspirational Last Lecture (Sunday Morning Reflections: Ramblin Randy's Rules of Life, Living and Love) which we're given to understand wasn't too badly recieved in certain quarters. Since that time his Wiki page has been refreshed, he's had a wonderful interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Good Morning America (actually a whole 1-hour special) and his new book has come out (The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow). We think those are all worth your time and his discussion with his co-author Jeff Zaslow about his motivations and thought process is a particularly good place to start. But the real place to follow-on is Randy's reprise of his Time Managment Lecture at the Univ. of Virginia. That may seem like an odd place to go from here but if you watch we think you'll find it's not. In his background discussion with Zaslow he puts his whole approach in a nutshell - "you do the best you can with the circumstances as they are". He puts it a little differently of course so listen for yourself.

Now in our last post this was our summary:

But there's one final, almost subliminal lesson that's a big one and Randy doesn't mention nor have any of his commentators. Each of his major career milestones, any of which would be sufficient laurels for a whole career, had some key characteristics that we think are really important and, on reflection, are important at least to us.

1. They were all really...really hard. Both technically and organizationally. by which we mean politically. They crossed discipline and organizational boundaries and were cross-grained to the way the institutions he was in worked. And boy do we mean CROSS.
2. They all reached out to other people and found a way to get them involved, committeed and contributory.
3. And they all had and have larger implications and potential benefits for the well-being of the world. Other people in other words. As the Shakers say, "Hands to Work and Hearts to God".

With all the myriad problems we spend most of our time talking about on this blog and our modest attempts to sort the unsensible into sense and then chart a path forward it's not Randy's obvious lessons that are most important. It's that to address and solve these challenges we need to take his lessons and his example and find ways to work for and with others for the betterment of us all.

The Last Lecture sets out some principles and it has been inspirational for millions, leading them literally to take Randy's example as a trigger to get them to seize control of their lives. But there are two questions, or challenges, that Randy doesn't answer there. Sorta the Big Before and the Big After. The Big After is how do you conduct yourself. Well the Time Management Lecture is a big first step in that direction. The Big Before is how did he find ground to stand on. And it is the fundamental one we all face no matter what our backgrounds, creeds or religions. A partial answer is his parents, upbringing and mentors of course - on which he waxed eloquent. But there's much more to it than that and we certainly don't have any answers. Nor even attempts that would hold up  to the standards that've been set here. At some point we'll try to offer up is a cobbled together approach for finding your ground. But for now let's focus on lessons from Ramblin Randy - because it's about how to live your life...not just "Time Management".

In other words how do you make the most out of the time you've got ? Here's Randy's Rules for translating Principles into Actions... 

Here we've tried to extract some lesson for you though they won't have the weight or conviction that listening to the Prof himself will have. What we heard, partially, was some fundamental principles for translating his original guidlelines in to "Rules of the Road", some sidebar comments that were pretty good aphorisms worth noting and a lot on techniques. The techniques all made a lot of sense but they're examples not rules. You need to think it thru and come up with your own. But the most important parts of all were the fundamental principles for putting your values into action. So here's our best shot:

Posted by dblwyo at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A friend suggesed that this blog had so much loaded up that he couldn't see how the pieces all tied together so it seems like a good idea to show the framework that underlies all the postings. But just showing the framework leaves us with an abstraction - a powerful, useful tool for understanding how all the myriad bits and pieces fit together into a more comprensive whole. That's nice but so what ?

Well we're facing an accelerating seris of crisis, e.g. the Black Swan of the exponentiating world food crisis, which we need to address both nationally and internationally. What each of these problems have in common is this: they all inter-relate and are themselves built of component parts. If we want to address them we need, as my intellectual hero Robert Heinlein put "know how the buzz saw works". Good intentions are no substitute for being able to run the sawmill if you need lumber to build houses, provide jobs and all the other things that are bedeviling us. And TANSTAFFL - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Telling people what they want to hear instead of telling them how things work and pretending the easy answers are feasible is disingenous at best and dangerous. But not at worst. Worst is when all these problems metastasize into crisis and catastrophes. Fortunately we can solve most of them with a combination of realism, hard-work, skills & knowledge and discipline. In fact there's no crisis I'm aware of that's not capable of being addressed, if not readily solved. But let me appeal to Hans Rosling in the 2nd of two great TED talks he gave on how things all work together. In the accompanying video he uses his great toolkit to show us where we've been and are going, introduces some realism on how things really work and points the way to the critical factors we need to address. It'll take you 19 min. but it's such a well-spent 19min that you may want to watch it more than once. 

The table below summarizes Han's final points about which are the critical factors and how they serve as either means or ends. As you'll see an important and vital distinction. After the break we lay out some more of our framework - one we hope you find answers the challenge.

Now we'd like to do a couple of things. First, briefly illustrate how supposed Unitended Consequences (Uic) arise from a failure to understand and deal with the complexities of major policy issues and then introduce a simiple version of a general framework for looking at these sorts of things. It's quite a bit more abstract than Hans' talk but lays out a way of thinking that can be applied to each.

Unintended Consequences: Major Policy Problems

Here we look at several major policy challenges including Energy, Environment, Education, Healthcare, Welfare and Retirement. Each of them are their own complexities of course and they all have inter-relationships. What we've briefly done is sketch out how we arrived at our current situation though in each case by failing to ask the most fundamental policy question - what happens next ? That is if we adopt your goal and pass the "right" legislation how's it going to work ? What's the buzz saw ? In each case what we find is that well-intentioned, badly thought-thru and terribly executed policies have resulted in perverse outcomes that nobody should really want.

Generalists and Specialists

The same friend pointed me at an interesting chart that illustrates how we need to think about these things generally. Each of these topics requires experts but in fact those experts need to be a team. And as, or perhaps more, importantly we need to have generalists who can link the pieces of a problem area together into a cohesive whole. And link these areas in turn to others. It's a conceptual chart but it pretty well captures the notion of combining depth with breadth with linkages. Take a look at the chart for a minute and see if it works for you. Every problem we'd like to address needs to have a specific chart/analysis/model built for it whether it's Energy, Education, reducing inner-city poverty or whatever. This is the kind of thing that Hans is talking about. For example in our assessments of why a reasonable outcome in Iraq is important we built a specific chart that looks at the linkages within Iraq to Iran, the broader ME situation and the worldwide geo-political situation. And then re-used it to frame a discussion of the strategic situation in the ME.(WRFest 16Mar08(Middle East):Diversity, Complexity & Confusions).

Socionomic Dyanamics: a Strawman Framework

In this particular "simplified" framework you see what we think are the key factors in any socio-political situation. And the linkages between them. Rather like Hans we think that the state of the Economy is the most important and critical factor to start with. It is the sine qua non - that without which there is no other. According to Hans economic growth explains 80% of the well-being of a country for example. At the same time market-based economies don't function without a proper institutional framework which includes the rule of law, safety and security of property and a stable government able to protect its' citizens. But both the political and economic systems function in the context of a society - in other words who gets what by right of social position. It's literally taken us millenia to learn that a static, rigid and hierarchial society which prevents people from achieving their dreams provides mediocre economic progress. At the same time it takes a certain amount of wealth to support a more inclusive and open-ended society. Hence the dynamic linkages - the more an economy grows the more it depends on good government. The difference between Africa and Western Europe, because both have the "propensity to truck, barter and trade" lies in the ability of sound governments to provide the long-term stability and security necessary for major investments. And at the end of the day the other major governing factor are Values, in addition to Institutions. People have to see that they have a chance and belive in the justice and legitimacy of the system as whole or they not only don't support, they can't afford to. People have to work with each other in a system they trust and in turn the system has to support the people, not subsets of special interests, as a whole. That's a key trick in growing the pie for us all instead of letting some get bigger slices of an ever-decreasing pie.

If not then they fall back to reliances on more primitive social structures. This turns out to be exactly the problem with tribes that we face in Iraq and thruout the ME. Finally of course just working hard just gets you in the game - it is the progress of Technology, broadly defined to include not just science and engineering but organization and general knowledge, that makes us more efficient and effective.

There you have it in brief - this is our framework and why we think it's important. You won't find a post on here that doesn't slot into one or another of these categories and usually slots into several along with the linkages that tie them into a larger whole. 

More importantly we don't think you'll find a serious issue that you can about or that impacts you that doesn't need to be thought of in this sort of systematic and systemic way. 

Posted by dblwyo at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, well, well....apparantly the recent debate is more important for the questions asked than for the candidates and/or real issues. Which means, as they say out West, we're gettin' down to the nut-cuttin' (ask a friend who's ranched for an explantion...this is a family blog). Actually there's a lot more going on and we're starting to really see the real people behind the personnas. IOHO there's three things one ought to bear in mind when contemplating all this agita: 1) the 60-lb pack test, 2) how people see things (quick answer they don't they see what they want) and 3) the Centricities of this campaign (not eccentricities mind you but they're plenty of those too).

1) 60lb Pack Test - when the Special Forces is evaluating candidates for selection they send them into a grueling, sustained and exhausting testing process designed to break them down and find out if they can perform under pressures. Part of this of course is that nothing else but combat is that stressful. What they're really looking for, after they've run somebody in the ground, froze off their assess, starved them, made them work to exhaustion is somebody who's still decisive, clear-headed, able to make the most serious decisions under the worst conditions and continues to support their team ahead of themselves. Gee it almost sounds as if we should run the candidates thru...oh I forgot...we are. It's called primaries. A friend of mine had an old-fashioned suggestion for deciding to get married...put a 60lb pack on the other and spend a week or so hiking in the high mountains. If you got along then you'd probably weather the normal run of storms. Well we're seeing the 60lb pack test applied to the candidates and the results aren't pretty. Both Billary and Barry are getting testy and punchdrunk it would seem.

2) See What You Want - there's been a firestorm of controversy over the questions as being too hostile, not issued-centerred enough, etc. etc. Nonsense - challenging Barry on his attitudes is exactly the point. We elect people who we think can to their best to represent both our interests and the overall, balanced interests of the nation as a whole. And don't kid yourself - people vote their own balance between self and broad interest when it gets down to. The whole bitter thing, if you dig into, is a fair test. Plus he's skated thru so far without any serious challenges. Interesting to see how he reacts. And so far he doesn't seem to be doing particularly well. I well remember supporting Bradley in his first campaign and then giving up as the fabled warrior retreated to Shibboleths and Special Interests as he scrambled for traction. Sad. Push come to shove the great expositor seems to be doing the same thing. But you're either for 'im or agin 'im on this. Nicholas Kristoff has a great column on how different people look at the same movie, report or debate and come to different conclusions by ignoring what doesn't agree with their believes.

3) Centricity - this really needs a long post of its' own but a friend recently challenged my assertion that we (I)'ve already won in this election because all the candidates have converged on the middle. Briefly cast your mind back to the profound differnces in '92 or '80 ? Or '60 for that matter when there were huge differences on direction and policy. The reason that Bush and Gore were so close was not because we're a divided country but because we'd converged on a rough consensus and were really debating how to go about it. Just in this campaign you see the more extreme candidates have fallen out, extreme being a relative term. Remember Dean last time ?

So at the end of the day we've got a real horse race. In fact McCain has not only revived his own fortunes but those of the Republicans. Partly his own doing but little to do with the prolonged primary conflicts, though some. No...what's going on here is that everybody's looking at real issues. Or was until this debate. McCain the Rep. had come up with serious, thoughtful and decent sounding proposal on Healthcare of all things. And when you look at the intent the three are pretty close. The differences lie in mechanism. Billary's still in the old biggov, bigspend, mantra and pretending that bigtaxes won't go with it. Barry's in nearly an identical policy position but favored a more mixed set of market and gov't means to make them happen. When you look at economic policies the three have almost identical diagnosis on the table. Fairly similar treatment recommendations. And what they're largely debating are the mix of surgey, drugs and therapy, i.e. exactly how to go 'bout it.

Sadly the one fly in the ointment of all this is that in his exhaustion and under serious questioning for the first time Barry reverted where most revert at the end of selection - back to their most basic reflexes. Which in his case appear to be pretty leftish liberal. Sad to see in the True Prophet of the 3rd Way forward. 

READINGS

Nicholas D. Kristof: Divided They Fall If you’re a Democrat, your candidate won in Wednesday night’s presidential debate — that was obvious, and most neutral observers would recognize that. But the other candidate issued appalling distortions, and the news commentary afterward was shamefully biased. So you’re madder than ever at the other candidate. You may even be more likely to vote for John McCain if your candidate loses. That prediction is based on psychological research that helps to explain the recriminations between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — and the reasons why Senator McCain should be smiling as the Democratic campaign drags on. To understand your feelings about Wednesday night’s debate, consider the Dartmouth-Princeton football game in 1951. That bitterly fought contest was the subject of a landmark study about how our biases shape our understanding of reality. Psychologists showed a film clip of the football game to groups of students at each college and asked them to act as unbiased referees and note every instance of cheating. The results were striking. Each group, watching the same clip, was convinced that the other side had cheated worse — and this was not deliberate bias or just for show. “Their eyes were taking in the same game, but their brains seemed to be processing the events in two distinct ways,”

Democratic Voters Pushing Obama, Clinton Toward Populism and Protectionism Protectionist and populist sentiments run strong among Democrats in three states holding presidential primaries, showing why the campaigns of candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are moving in those directions. A plurality of Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina blames predatory lenders and mortgage- company greed for the housing crisis that may be dragging the U.S. economy into a recession. A majority in each state favors a government bailout of homeowners in danger of foreclosure, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of likely Democratic voters. Most Democratic voters in the three states also believe free trade has hurt the economy and favor tougher regulation of Wall Street.

Clinton, Obama Spar Over Who Is More Vulnerable to Republicans in November Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama agreed they could each lead their party to victory in November and then spent the rest of a debate last night sparring over who is more vulnerable to Republican attacks. Clinton needs a decisive win in Pennsylvania's April 22 Democratic presidential primary to maintain party support for her candidacy, and several recent polls show her with a narrow lead. Obama, an Illinois senator, leads in the popular vote and delegates to the August nominating convention. The New York senator went on the offense last night, saying Obama's recent comments calling some Americans ``bitter'' represent a ``fundamental sort of misunderstanding'' of their religious heritage and that his explanation of his relationship with his former pastor ``deserves further exploration.''

The Backlash Against ABC The political fallout from the Philadelphia faceoff between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was all but eclipsed yesterday by a fierce debate about Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. The ABC moderators found themselves under fire for focusing on campaign gaffes and training most of their ammunition on Obama. Huffington Post blogger Jason Linkins called the debate "utterly asinine." Washington Post television critic Tom Shales called the duo's performance "despicable." Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch said the moderators "disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself."

David Brooks: How Obama Fell to Earth Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new — an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that. But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal. He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn’t on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates’ words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment. Obama also made a pair of grand and cynical promises that are the sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than governing. He made a sweeping read-my-lips pledge never to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That will make it impossible to address entitlement reform any time in an Obama presidency. It will also make it much harder to afford the vast array of middle-class tax breaks, health care reforms and energy policy Manhattan Projects that he promises to deliver. Then he made an iron vow to get American troops out of Iraq within 16 months. Neither Obama nor anyone else has any clue what the conditions will be like when the next president takes office. He could have responsibly said that he aims to bring the troops home but will make a judgment at the time. Instead, he rigidly locked himself into a policy that will not be fully implemented for another three years. If Obama is elected, he will either go back on this pledge — in which case he would destroy his credibility — or he will risk genocide in the region and a viciously polarizing political war at home.

Who’s Bitter Now? This [the “Bitter” comments] is a remarkably detailed and vivid account of the political sociology of the American electorate. What is even more remarkable is that it is wrong on virtually every count. Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites. Small-town, working-class people are more likely than their cosmopolitan counterparts, not less, to say they trust the government to do what’s right. Do small-town, working-class voters cast ballots on the basis of social issues? Yes, but less than other voters do. Among these voters, those who are anti-abortion were only 6 percentage points more likely than those who favor abortion rights to vote for President Bush in 2004. The corresponding difference for the rest of the electorate was 27 points, and for cosmopolitan voters it was a remarkable 58 points. Similarly, the votes cast by the cosmopolitan crowd in 2004 were much more likely to reflect voters’ positions on gun control and gay marriage. Small-town, working-class voters were also less likely to connect religion and politics. It is true that American voters attach significantly more weight to social issues than they did 20 years ago. It is also true that church attendance has become a stronger predictor of voting behavior. But both of those changes are concentrated primarily among people who are affluent and well educated, not among the working class.

·         Continued discussion about the Pennsylvania Primary with Joe Klein of Time and Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Posted by dblwyo at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've recently put up a collection of posts on the real situation in Iraq from reliable sources which is vastly at variance with MSM coverage, including the political editor for the WSJ of all places ! In the process of trying to pretend this isn't happening we've largely abandoned a couple of really key things. One is the serious national debate we should have on our policy and strategy there, which is not something we can continue to neglect.

The things that's really shameful IMHO is that we've neglected and ignored the troops who are putting it all on the line for us. Whatever your position, and make no mistake this is serious, neglecting the just due for our troops is reprehensible at best. We'll leave you to insert any other words you care. By and large there's such a small minority of the population serving that people can continue to ignore this.

As we re-enter the Age of Kipling, as he really wrote not as a century of critics read him. Sidebar - it's worth your time to go back and read some of his poetry and short-stories. All of his intellectual critics conceded he was a wonderful craftsman but dismissed his content as base and jingoistics. Well when I shared my copy with selections of his collected poetry my nephew, who left the Corps after two tours though none in combat, was lost to me for hours. His only and final comments were that they were so true, where had this stuff been and why didn't people get it. When you talk to the troops they don't ask you to support the war. Or even support them though as the video shows they deeply, at the most profound levels, appreciate it. What they ask you to do is pay attention. If for no other reason that they are dying for our sins.

Tommy

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
    Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
    But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
    The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
    O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

 And if you think we're kidding or exaggerating check out this video as well: Marines in Berzerkley from the Daily Show

READINGS

The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook THE night before last week’s Senate hearings on our “progress” in Iraq, a goodly chunk of New York’s media and cultural establishment assembled in the vast lobby of the Museum of Modern Art. There were cocktails; there were waiters wielding platters of hors d’oeuvres; there was a light sprinkling of paparazzi. Then there was a screening. We trooped like schoolchildren to the auditorium to watch a grueling movie about the torture at Abu Ghraib. Yet I must confess that, sitting in MoMA, I kept looking beyond the frame of Mr. Morris’s movie as well. While there’s really no right place to watch “Standard Operating Procedure,” the jarring contrast between the film’s subject and the screening’s grandiosity was a particularly glaring illustration of the huge distance that separates most Americans, and not just Manhattan elites, from the battle lines of our country’s five-year war. If Tom Wolfe was not in the audience to chronicle this cognitive dissonance, he should have been. This is not merely a showbiz phenomenon but a leading indicator of where our entire culture is right now. It’s not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time. The simple explanation for why we shun the war is that it has gone so badly. But another answer was provided in the hearings by Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, one of the growing number of Republican lawmakers who no longer bothers to hide his exasperation. He put his finger on the collective sense of shame (not to be confused with collective guilt) that has attended America’s Iraq project. “The truth of the matter,” Mr. Voinovich said, is that “we haven’t sacrificed one darn bit in this war, not one. Never been asked to pay for a dime, except for the people that we lost.”

MORALE: Sailors Serving as Soldiers Surmount Stress Currently, for every soldier killed in combat in Iraq, at least one is sent back to the United States because of severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and several others are treated in the combat zone for less severe cases. During World War II, PTSD was a serious problem. In the European Theater, 25 percent of all casualties were serious PTSD cases. In the Pacific Theater, the rate varied widely, depending on the campaign. In some of the most intense fighting, like Okinawa in 1945, PTSD accounted for over a third of all wounded. In Iraq, less than ten percent of the wounded are PTSD, but the more troops serve in a combat zone, in combat jobs, the more likely they are to develop PTSD. 

Bush gives Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL Navy SEAL Michael A. Monsoor had fast thinking to do when a live grenade came out of nowhere to bounce off his chest: Take the clear path to safety that he had but his comrades didn't, try to toss it safely away, or throw himself on top of it. With barely an instant's hesitation on that Iraqi rooftop, Monsoor took the last course, sacrificing his life to save the men around him. For that, President Bush on Tuesday awarded him the Medal of Honor. In an East Room ceremony, Bush presented the nation's highest military honor to Monsoor's still-grieving parents, Sally and George Monsoor. About 250 guests, including his sister and two brothers, fellow SEALS, other Medal winners, many friends and GOP Sen. John McCain and other members of Congress, looked on quietly. "The Medal of Honor is awarded for an act of such courage that no one could rightly be expected to undertake it," Bush said. "Yet those who knew Michael Monsoor were not surprised when he did."

• VIDCLIP:Bush awards Medal of Honor to Navy SEAL

Patches Flies On Lt Col Dallman and his crew would need all of their skills to survive their flight into Khe Sahn. John Frisbee recounted their valiant mission in a July 1989 article for Air Force magazine:

"..At a sweaty 300 feet they broke out of the overcast, the strip directly ahead. Then as the C-130 ground and bucked to a stop, the big bird was hit by a shell that ignited ammunition boxes in the cargo compartment. Johnson and loadmaster SSgt. Wade Green immediately began fighting the fire, assisted by Behnke, who had called the tower for a fire truck, and flight engineer SSgt. Charles Brault. 

Seventeen tons of ammunition could explode at any moment, closing the runway and flattening the built-up area of Khe Sanh, with many casualties. Dallman began backing the Hercules to a safer area at the far end of the runway, where the five-man crew, with help from the fire truck, finally extinguished the fire and helped offload still-smoking ammo boxes.

All was not yet over. As the last pallet of ammunition was unloaded, one of the tires was blown by a sniper's bullet, and a mortar attack bracketed the C-130. Dallman told the crew to leave the plane, which was drawing most of the fire, but every man remained with the aircraft as it was towed for a short distance, then taxied to a maintenance area. There Brault repaired an aircraft jack and managed to change the damaged wheel, all the time under fire from mortars, rockets, artillery, and heavy machine guns.

Posted by dblwyo at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Black Swan is a perfectly natural event that's usually perfectly comprehensible after the fact of its' observation, the perfect historical example being Australian Black Swans which are quite natural and completely unanticipated. Now oddly enough the recent Housing and Credit Market crisis are NOT BS's. Despite the talking heads and MSM key folks have been talking about this for, literally, years. To a large extent the other two major shift changes in int'l affairs this last month are not either. If you recall we saw and see the Shiite uprising being supressed by the Central government in Iraq as a sign of growing maturity and capability, badly....badly reported and analyzed by the MSM (Three More for the Road: Iran, Sistani and the Big Snake). And the Tibetan uprising is also something that's not surprising though it's just the opposite of hopeful and represents a serious threat to the legitimacy and stability of the regime and is likely to end badly because of Chinese cultural attitudes and political constraints (WRFest 13Apr08(China): More Troubles in Big China). The sudden emergence of a major worldwide food crisis isn't as explainable though also a natural consequence of the state of things.

The reason it qualifies, IOHO, as that rare thing a true black swan is because long-simmering systemic problems with rising energy and food costs metastasized in the last several months with little warning into a major threat. There are several causes, including the unintended consequences of our own corn for ethanol programs. So remember that when the starving Mexican peasants come storming across the border to eat. Which'll be helped along by the falterring Mexican economy and drug border wars. Talk about illegal immigration problems !

There's a bunch of interesting readings excerpted but let's try and summarized it. Obviously the driver force is exponentially rising food costs. That's a worry because food price increases are painful in the developed countries, though many lower income folks are on the edge there as well, e.g.Central LA. But in the developing world we're talking about slipping over the knife-edge between life and death for millions. We're also talking about worldwide foot riots, protest, social breakdowns and the collapse of governments and societies at the extreme. Let's hope it doesn't get that far.

It is addressable in the short- and long-terms but not readily nor easily. The proximate cause is rising energy costs which always raise food production costs. The hidden implication is that the lack of a coherent and effective national energy policy is a major contributing factor to the risks of millions of deaths. Just to put a point on it the anti-nuc movements have, with the best of intentions, the worst of analysis and terrible moral responsibilities, contributed to the situation.

Two other major causes for rising food and energy causes are the rapid development of the BRICs which has caused energy demand to exceed supply. As it turns out we aren't finding new oil fast enough to develop to offset this and the old supplies are so aged and under-invested that oil production is dropping from Mexicto to Saudia Arabia. On top of which as incomes have gone up the developing new middle classes in China and India are raising their dietary standards, just as Japan did. That often means more meat consumption and that tends to be more energy intensive.

Since these prime drivers are all natural consequences of rapid development worldwide this is a systemic problem that will be with us for a long time, barring major collapses of course. In other words it ain't going away any time soon. Whatever we can do to move emergency food supplies abroad will be helpful as a short-term pallative. In the intermediate-term we need to get a new Green Revolution growing which means lots of demand for fertizilzers, tractors, etc. Which we can help with. But in the long-term there are only really two complementary systemic solutions. Reduce the supply/demand imbalances by increasing energy production and/or reducing consumption. Which in turn gets back to things like nuclear power and a concerted national energy effort. A new Manhattan project. And an equivalent effort to find new sources. That 2nd Green Revolution. Let me close with a quote from Dr. Norman Borlaug but kick if off with the obseravation that EU, African and other efforts to suppress "frankenfoods" may kill a bunch of folks in pursuit of ideological purities. Not the first time of course - just look at the 00's of millions of deaths caused by Communism in Russia and China.

Continuing the Green Revolution Persistent poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries, changing global climatic patterns, and the use of food crops to produce biofuels, all pose new and unprecedented risks and opportunities for global agriculture in the years ahead. Agricultural science and technology, including the indispensable tools of biotechnology, will be critical to meeting the growing demands for food, feed, fiber and biofuels. However, science and technology should not be viewed as a panacea that can solve all of our resource problems. Biofuels can reduce dependence on fossil fuels, but are not a substitute for greater fuel efficiency and energy conservation. The debate about the suitability of biotech agricultural products goes beyond issues of food safety. Access to biotech seeds by poor farmers is a dilemma that will require interventions by governments and the private sector. Seed companies can help improve access by offering preferential pricing for small quantities of biotech seeds to smallholder farmers. Beyond that, public-private partnerships are needed to share research and development costs for "pro-poor" biotechnology. Finally, I should point out that there is nothing magic in an improved variety alone. Unless that variety is nourished with fertilizers -- chemical or organic -- and grown with good crop management, it will not achieve much of its genetic yield potential.

Just as an example of where UiC has "helped" us in the past consider the micro-examples here: Unintended Consequences: Blowing Off Our Own Feet

Food Crisis Readings

UN Chief: Food Crisis Is Now Emergency A rapidly escalating global food crisis has reached emergency proportions and threatens to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against poverty, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Monday. He called for short-term emergency measures in many regions to meet urgent food needs and avoid starvation and longer-term efforts to significantly increase production of food grains. The "international community will also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis," Ban told international finance and trade officials who came to a U.N. meeting following weekend talks in Washington. The secretary-general echoed World Bank President Robert Zoellick's appeal to governments on Sunday to quickly provide the U.N. World Food Program with $500 million in emergency aid that it needs by May 1.

Hungry Mouths Finance ministers gathered this weekend to grapple with the global financial crisis also struggled with a problem that has plagued the world periodically since before the time of the Pharaohs: food shortages. Surging commodity prices have pushed up global food prices 83% in the past three years, according to the World Bank -- putting huge stress on some of the world's poorest nations. Even as the ministers met, Haiti's Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis was resigning after a week in which that tiny country's capital was racked by rioting over higher prices for staples like rice and beans.Rioting in response to soaring food prices recently has broken out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Pakistan and Thailand, army troops have been deployed to deter food theft from fields and warehouses. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned in a recent speech that 33 countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices. Those could include Indonesia, Yemen, Ghana, Uzbekistan and the Philippines. In countries where buying food requires half to three-quarters of a poor person's income, "there is no margin for survival," he said. Many policy makers at the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other targets, they singled out U.S. policies pushing corn-based ethanol and other biofuels as deepening the woes.

The Outlook: Higher Food Prices May Be Here to Stay For all the economists and consumers who hope high food prices are temporary, here's one reason why they probably won't be: Farm costs are skyrocketing, making permanently higher prices essential for farmers to keep expanding production.Inflation is biting farmers world-wide. In New Zealand, farm wages are up as much as 20% this year, and the average price of a dairy cow has jumped to more than $1,900 -- almost double last year's average of about $1,000. In Thailand and Indonesia, farmers are complaining about sharp increases in the price of fertilizer and diesel fuel. In the American Midwest, land prices have jumped, along with the cost of energy and chemicals. The price of diammonium phosphate, a common fertilizer, is about $1,200 a ton in the U.S., up from about $450 a ton a year ago. Farming costs are climbing for several reasons. Higher fuel prices make it more expensive to run tractors and other equipment, while pricier natural gas -- needed to make some fertilizers -- has also played a role. Equipment prices are rising because of strong demand for farm machinery in China and other developing countries, along with rising costs for raw materials like steel.Wages are up in some parts of the world because many farms are expanding to meet higher demand, putting pressure on labor supplies, especially in countries like Australia where many workers are already occupied in commodity-based trades like mining. Cost pressures have intensified over the past six months. Many farm suppliers and equipment dealers held back on price increases in 2006 and 2007, despite their own higher energy and labor costs. Now, after a year or more of strong markets for corn and other crops, those suppliers are deciding farmers can afford to pay more -- and they are passing costs along. Many farmers were able to postpone cost increases through hedging or by buying fertilizer, chemicals and other supplies in bulk in 2006 or 2007, when they were cheaper. Now those strategies are hitting their limit as the stockpiles run down.The higher costs are transforming the economics of agriculture. Since some of the heftier outlays -- like those for fuel -- are expected to persist, farmers will need to command higher prices for their crops than they did a few years ago to maintain their profit margins.

Food-crunch 'fix' won't work The answer to the world's food-supply squeeze isn't to ban or curtail exports (though that's being tried). The short-term solution lies in seed and fertilizer. Investors, take note. It leaves something to be desired as moral advice. It's pretty bad economics, too. The recent decisions by Argentina, Russia, Vietnam and others to limit exports of wheat, rice and other grains won't stop runaway food inflation in those countries. It will, in fact, prolong today's global food-supply crunch. Speculators, however, are cheering because the less grain there is on world markets, the more hoarding and panic buying will drive prices higher. The only long-run solution to the global shortage of grain and other foods is to increase supply. That's going to take lots and lots of fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals and new varieties of higher-yielding seed. Investors can count on an additional decade of good times for stocks such as fertilizer maker… The likelihood that starve-thy-neighbor policies are going to drive up the price of grains and other foodstuffs isn't exactly good news, coming on top of stunning increases in grain prices. That's a huge hit to the budgets of the 300 million Chinese who, according to the World Bank, live in poverty. For these families, food makes up 50% of the household budget. In contrast, the average U.S. family spends a little less than 10% of its household budget on food. China isn't the only country experiencing runaway food inflation. India, Argentina, Egypt, Vietnam, the Philippines, Mexico, Cambodia and others are caught up in a global trend. With incomes rising in much of the developing world, and with biofuels such as ethanol eating into grain supplies in the developed world, global grain production isn't keeping up with demand. And that's pushing up the prices of everything from soybeans to chicken, pork and beef. In the short run, these countries know what to do -- and that what they have to do isn't all that difficult. They have to increase the amount of credit available to farmers so they can buy more fertilizer, better seeds and better equipment. In the longer run, the challenge is much tougher because the limits of current agricultural technology are already in sight. China, for example, uses about three times as much fertilizer per acre as the global average. Applying more to Chinese farms won't produce bigger crops but merely add to the country's appalling water pollution. The rest of the developed world can increase fertilizer use toward Chinese levels, of course, but this isn't a permanent solution for a world where God isn't making more farmland and yet men and women continue to make new mouths to feed, creating a demand for more and better food. It just buys time for a long-run solution that will require a new green revolution.

Egypt's Soaring Food Prices Bring Bread Lines, Protests, Deficit Pressure Bread is just about the only affordable food these days in Egypt, where rising commodity and energy prices have sent unsubsidized food prices up 20 percent or more in the past year. The rising cost of subsidies is damaging the government's efforts to reduce its budget deficit. About 500 political activists and textile workers at the Mahallah El-Kobra factory in northern Egypt were arrested and dozens were wounded in clashes with police on April 6 as the government clamped down on a one-day national strike to protest food inflation. In Mahallah itself, demonstrators threw stones at police phalanxes and set fire to trash. The government-owned Egyptian Gazette newspaper said April 1 that seven people have died since the beginning of the year in brawls in bread lines. Egyptian inflation accelerated to 12.1 percent in February, the fastest pace in 11 months, the Cairo-based Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics reported March 19. Food and beverage prices increased 16.8 percent, while non-subsidized bread and grain prices jumped 27 percent. Dairy products and eggs rose 20.1 percent. A GAMBLE that proved too costly.

Food Crisis: The Maze Behind Maize Corn (maize, as the Mexicans correctly call it) feeds Mexico. When corn prices rise, Mexico's poor must spend more to buy their staple. The Mexican government knows corn's price is politically sensitive. In January 2007, StrategyPage.com published the following short commentary: "Mexican authorities are concerned that a rise in the price of tortillas will lead to civil unrest. The price of tortillas rose 10 to 14 percent in 2006. The cause: international demand for corn." Mexico planned to import "duty free" several hundred thousand tons of corn to stabilize prices. Corn prices continue to climb, this month hitting an all-time high of six dollars a bushel, up 30 percent since then end of 2007. Take the all-time high, however, with a dose of mathematics. Prices have increased for numerous, complex and often opaquely connected reasons, but producing ethanol "biofuel" (an alleged "green" alternative to gasoline) certainly contributes to the rising demand for corn. But what about the long term? Beware the calls for "structural changes" if that means mandates from bureaucrats. "Smart guy" mandates brought us subsidized ethanol. Large-scale alternative energy that diminishes reliance on oil? That's a truly systemic solution, but for three decades environmentalist fear-mongers in the United States have stymied the development of nuclear energy, a proven large-scale alternative energy source. Applying human creativity is also a "structural change." "Algal fuel" -- algae producing biofuel, or methane -- is experimental but promising; it sounds sci-fi, but genetically engineered algae might someday produce first-rate fuel. Genetically modified crops (they already exist, the gift of genetic research) dramatically increase land yields, but they have been tagged as "Franken-foods." Their fear-inciting critics forget modern corn is hybridized maize.

Posted by dblwyo at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This has been an interesting and unusual campaign which has NOT, repeat, not gone on too long IMHO. The thing about a long-drawn-out, bruising, tiring and painful campaign is that it's still nothing like a year, or probably even a month, in the office. We're in the process of letting everybody cowboy up and boy, are things we're finding out interesting. So we'll take a quick pass at framing it and after the break you'll find a whole bunch of readings for your skimming pleasure.

While I haven't come to any conclusions as yet I do have certain leanings, which change from time-to-time but no oftener than weekly, so far. Let me share some of my "findings" with you and base them on the chart at right. To set the table, no matter what else you think is going on, we need to remember a couple of critical things. First off these are all bright, talented, hard-working people who do seem to have the best interests of the country at heart. We'd all like Lincoln to be running but we not only don't have that choice but he sure lost a lot before the one that really counted.

My bottomlines, such as they are, are this. Barry is the candidate I'd like to vote for because my assessments tell me we need a new, centrist, 3rd way forward to cope with all the huge structural changes coming. McCain is the candidate I'm likely to vote for because being President requires being able to ride the tiger, have a broad understanding of foreign affairs and national security, economics and social policy. As for Hillary she's a fine senator but shares her husband's character flaws of being willing to win at almost any cost and putting her own interests ahead of the balance of broader interests. Those quiksums are based on the chart, watching the polls for years and the candidates as well.

It's a busy little chart and let's hope we have a chance to take it apart and dig into sometime but the suggestion here is at least two fold, well actually three, if you'd like to understand politics and policy in this day and age. First off the electorate has always been centrist though that moves over time. This time moreso than ever as dissatisfaction with the parties, politicians and policies is reaching justified terminal dissatisfaction. Mostly because the two parties have been retreating to their own bases and pursuing more ideological agendas. The end result of that is a vast gap between where the parties are at, where most of us are at and the infamous 50% + .01 strategy.

On the other hand there are certain things we need to survive and prosper in the world: a strong national defense because it's an ugly place and a well-executed foreign policy that respects all legitimate and sincere players and works to suppress the ill-intended. That's been sound national policy since the days of the Sumerian Empire. Next is a sound and balanced economic policy were we don't think stuff grows for free but also recognized gov't is a necessary framework for free markets. Lo and behold instead of voodoo economics vs tax & spend 'til we collapse everybody's converged on that more than we have collectively in 40-50 years. Will miracles never cease ? Finally we don't want to let our citizens freeze in the dark while they're dying of preventable diseases. Moreover the better education the population and the more people playing in the game as contributors, setting aside such crass and mundane issues as ethics or morality, the better off we all are. It's called a non-zero sum game or better...focus on growing the pie first and then slicing it. A smaller share of a much bigger pie is better than the other way around.

UPDATE: the Economist just published a poll of voters opinions about the candidates capacities to manage critical issues. Oddly enough the structure of issues and the evaluation bears some passing resemblences to mine; which is either very scary or very encouraging :) ! 

So my quiktake is the Barry's the guy who gets the 3rd way forward the best, at least in his speeches. And even when he's talking about trade and protectionism he also talks about free markets, innovation and new jobs and competing hardly but fairly. You don't even have to listen particularly closely - just listen a bit. On the other hand his voting record is impecably pure liberal and so far he's at 500K feet. Hard to say what happens when and if his feet meet the ground. Worse, he seems to think that the things that worked for a community organizer will work with the Iran kleptoclergy. Johnboy's got the national security thing down pretty well and has had some suprisingly innovative proposals on education and healthcare that cause his fellow Rep. to gnash their teeth. And his economic views to date have actually been pretty decent. We'll give him a buy on the experience, integrity and character/values checks at least for now.

Billary on the other hand is running on her experience. Well, o.k. what experience ? Her web site is the most complete, well-organized and thought out on policy issues will a lot of decent stuff that needs some quibbling but ain't bad. And oddly ain't that far off Barry or Johnboy. But her campaign has been one management and leadersip failure and exemplar of bad organization after the other while Barry's run a superb one. As for other leadership well she really wasn't in charge of anything during the '90s - oh, oh yea. Healthcare - which was the great glowing opportunity and first and only major initiative of her husband's entire time in office. Guess what - D.P. Moynihan (one of our greatest public servants) had a slightly different proposal that could have been passed but she stomped him bad. Not stopped - stomped. Her way, her credit or the highway. As road kill. On the foreign policy front well since ABC took down Path to 911, which follows the commission report very closely that little test case is gone. But try Slate's comic book version for an assesment [Slate's 9/11 Report]. Or for a broader overview of Clintonian foreign and defense policy try War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam. If Hillary's running on that experience base somebody ought to check it out.

Ironically and amusingly nobody's pointed out that the last presidential candidates who were eloquent, intellectual, with good educations and limited experience were folks like JFK and WJC. And we wonder if being mediocre at governor of Arkansas was sufficient qualification. So like we said Hillary might be a better Senator where her mastery of detail and policy wonkdom are real strengths.

But come full circle. I've already won this election. First off I've got clear preferences but none of these are bad choices - not perfect or Lincolnesque of course (hmm another loser without experience in senior positions). Second when you look at the chart for the first time in what, ~ 40 years we're coming back to the moderate and workable middle. And third, compared to say the Europeans are, either in terms of their typical positions or challenges facing them we're in great shape. Or compared to where we've been - like I said all the candidates are closer to the right position on my little policy chart spectrum than not.

But you make up your own mind. What should those policies be ? Where are the candidates ? Can the bridge your gaps - have they the will, character, leadership to find that 3rd way forward ?

 Candidate Comps on the Issues

A quick update I just found from the Economist with an excellent poll on how voters perceive the candidates on the major issues. Oddly it seems to match up reasonably well with my take. Here's the text:

HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama get another chance to explain their policies on the big issues in a televised debate from Philadelphia on Wednesday April 16th. Who is better placed to beat John McCain in the election? In a head-to-head contest on the big issues, according to The Economist's weekly poll, voters appear to be aligned most closely with Mr McCain on law and order, taxes and trade. Mrs Clinton comes top on the budget and health care. Mr Obama comes second on most issues, impressing only on fuel prices. See the full results of The Economist/YouGov poll.

State of the Campaign

The Long Defeat Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near. Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign. First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up. Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes. Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance. When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness. Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule? The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life. For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity.

What Went Wrong with the Clinton Campaign With the demotion of Mark Penn, it is appropriate to take stock of the Clinton campaign. There is no doubt that it has been a poorly run campaign. But what has been so bad about it? We could point to a lackluster message, or Bill's various gaffes over the last three months, or the staff that couldn't stop watching soap operas long enough to pay the bills. There's something to all of these things, but I think they are symptoms of an underlying malady. As you well know, Obama has a huge lead in pledged delegates. But you might not know that nearly 90% of this lead comes from caucuses. Obama has netted 147 delegates via the caucuses alone. It need not have been this way. Caucuses have exceedingly low turnout - and so victory depends upon organizational prowess. Clinton was poorly organized in the caucus states, and it cost her. For every caucus state she has lost, Clinton could have found enough supporters in those states to at least tied Obama. Even more amazingly, Obama crushed her in states where Clinton probably would have won or barely lost a primary. This is an organizational failure of monumental proportions. There is no other way to put it. The question is why did it happen? There is no great skill that the Obama campaign possesses that the Clinton campaign lacks. Organizing caucus states still has a lot in common with 19th century politicking. You need a friendly smile, a good handshake, and a sturdy pair of shoes. Obama didn't develop a new way to organize. He just chose to organize while the Clinton campaign chose not to. The only reason it would choose not to organize is if it did not think it was worth the cost. What we are talking about here is plain old arrogance. I think this is the central mistake of the Clinton campaign. It presumed that the nomination was Clinton's. Not Clinton's to lose. Just Clinton's. Period. As a consequence, it behaved in an unduly confident manner.

Hillary's 'White House Experience' Blunder  By stressing her experience in her husband's White House in the 1990s and by portraying rival Barack Obama as an unprepared newcomer, Clinton invited de facto incumbency and a rehash of old fights in an era in which any whiff of status quo politics is toxic. Clinton fatigue and the anti-dynastic sentiment of two decades of Bushes and Clintons in the Oval Office have been widely debated. But the value of White House experience hasn't, and Jones says it is often overrated when Americans choose their presidents, even in times of national stress. "Mount Rushmore's faces include but one president with significant White House experience before serving," concluded Jones, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. Furthermore, he concludes, "Political experience alone is an uncertain predictor of the quality of presidential service. Other aspects play a significant role, to include character, vision, goals, self-confidence, communication, public regard and, above all, leadership." Running as an heir apparent has opened Clinton to unprecedented questions about what Jones called a "two-headed presidency." The questions came with considerable Bill Clinton baggage.

State of the Candidates

2 reasons 'bitter' is bad for Obama A Clinton comeback was looking far-fetched. But operatives in both parties were buzzing about that possibility Saturday following the revelation that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told wealthy San Franciscans that small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners “cling to guns or religion” because they are “bitter” about their economic status. Obama at first dug in on that contention Friday after audio of the private fundraiser was posted by The Huffington Post. Altering course, on Saturday in Muncie, Ind., he conceded that he “didn’t say it as well as I should have.” And he told the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal that “obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that. ... The underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so." Here is what he said April 6, referring to people living in areas hit by job losses: “[I]t’s not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” In fact, this is a potential turning point for Obama’s campaign — an episode that could be even more damaging than the attention to remarks by his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, since this time the controversial words came out of his own mouth. Here are a dozen reasons why: On the Defensive, Obama Calls His Words Ill-Chosen

A Living Lie Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed. There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation -- nor any other significant legislation, for that matter. Senator Obama is all talk -- glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk. Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image and his reality.

Tested Over Time John McCain’s speech on Wednesday was as personal, nuanced and ambitious a speech as any by a presidential candidate this year. John McCain is determined to carry out four more years of George Bush’s failed policies.” Obama is a politician, so it’s normal that he’d choose to repeat the lines that some of his followers want to hear. But before people buy that argument, I’d ask them to read three speeches. The first was delivered by McCain on Sept. 28, 1983. The Reagan administration was seeking Congressional authorization to support the deployment of U.S. Marines in Lebanon. McCain, a freshman legislator, decided to oppose his president and party. McCain argued that Lebanese society, as it existed then, could not be stabilized and unified by American troops. He made a series of concrete observations about the facts on the ground. Lebanon was in a state of de facto partition. The Lebanese Army would not soon be strong enough to drive out the Syrians. The American presence would not intimidate the Syrians into negotiating.

“I do not foresee obtainable objectives in Lebanon.” He concluded. “I believe the longer we stay, the more difficult it will be to leave, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of our withdrawal.” This was not the speech of a man who thinks military force is the answer to every problem. It was the speech of one who conforms policies to facts. The third McCain speech was delivered on Wednesday. It is as personal, nuanced and ambitious a speech as any made by a presidential candidate this year. McCain noted that we are not only fighting a war on terror. The world is seeing a growing split between liberal democracies and growing autocracies. We are seeing a world in which great power rivalries — with China, Russia and Iran — have to be managed and soothed. Moreover, the U.S. is not the sole hegemon. Power is widely distributed among many rising nations. McCain’s core purpose in the speech was to revive the foreign policy tradition that has jumped parties but that has been associated with people like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, Dean Acheson, John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Campaign Characteristics

Obama Confidante Valerie Jarrett Wields Clout of Campaign's Inner Circle Jarrett, chief executive officer of Habitat Co., a Chicago real estate development firm, is part of a cadre of women who serve in the top echelon of the Obama organization. They include finance chairman Penny Pritzker, the billionaire CEO of Pritzker Realty Group LP, finance director Julianna Smoot, Chief Operating Officer Betsy Myers and policy director Heather Higginbottom. ``There are major operations in this campaign that are run by women, and they may be the best-run operations in this campaign,'' said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. Her experiences are ``all real-life stuff -- you've got economics, transportation, all these issues; that is a rare toolbox,'' said Mellody Hobson, a member of the campaign's national finance committee and president of Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management LLC, which oversees $11 billion. Friends and advisers say Jarrett is a powerful voice in the campaign -- attending strategy sessions with the candidate, serving as a sounding board for both Obama and people offering advice, and playing a key role on conference calls.

‘Steady Hand’ for the G.O.P. Guides McCain on a New Path When Senator John McCain’s campaign was collapsing last summer, it was Charlie Black who set the comeback strategy: Mr. McCain had to win New Hampshire. When conservative opposition threatened to derail Mr. McCain just as he was surging again this winter, it was Charlie Black who called prominent conservatives to secure their backing. And when Mr. McCain was finally the last man standing, it was Charlie Black who engineered the campaign’s takeover of the Republican National Committee. “The Republican Party’s quintessential company man,” as one friend calls him, Mr. Black has worked in every Republican presidential campaign since 1972, and sometimes a couple each season, being diplomat enough to get along with both sides in some of the fiercest rivalries. In between, and often at the same time, he has parlayed his political connections to become one of Washington’s most successful lobbyists, making him an embodiment of the city’s permanent establishment. Now 60, Mr. Black is easing Mr. McCain into his new role as standard bearer for a party that the senator has clashed with and even snubbed over the years. Mr. Black has done so in the quiet way that has made him such an enduring player in Washington. A courtly Southerner, Mr. Black is an unflappable spinner, responding in the heat or silliness of a campaign with the well-modulated tone of a man who cannot believe that not everyone would see his position as the only reasonable one. His ability to move from one campaign to another surprises few who know him. “Ronald Reagan and George Bush didn’t particularly like each other and had a pretty bitter contest for the nomination, and Charlie Black got along with both of them,” Mr. Stone said. “John McCain and George W. Bush don’t really like each other and had a pretty bitter contest for the nomination, and Charlie Black gets along with both of them.” “He can be as aggressive as he needs to be to win, but it’s not personal,” Mr. Stone said. “He understands that losers don’t legislate.”

Posted by dblwyo at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while back we mentioned that amidst the all the noise that the two biggest int'l stories were the central government's move to suppress Shia insurgents in Basra, which has held up more than well as learn more. And that the troubles between China and Tibet were serious and threatened the fundamental political stability of China and would not likely come to a feasible benign multi-winner outcome because of the political immobility of the leadership. We now want to add a third to be picked up later - the growing Food Crisis thruout the world where rising foods costs driven by inflation are likely to lead to major socio-political disruptions. Let me put that another way....KABOOM. If that's not clear enough wait a bit.

Meanwhile back to China you can see our earlier summary here: WRFest 30Mar08(Asia): Trouble in Big China. Unfortunately it's not only holding up well it's holding up way to well. If anything positions are hardening and getting more unreasonable all the way around. At the root of this is a profound mis-understanding of Chinese history and culture as it currently is. We remember them as a monolithic communist police state (shades of Tianmen). Well they're certainly still a centralized authority but they're not either a police state nor that well centralized either.

More importantly the Chinese gov'ts actions are milder than a wide majority of the population would prefer. They think that Tibet is an integral part of China - not historically absolutely true though. In fact the irony is that if they could manage to grant Tibet the kinds of automony and self-rule it had under previous imperial regimes this crisis would resolve itself.

In the meantime and par for the course US and other int'l politicians are adding fuel to the fire by posturing for their domestic constituents rather than explaining the situation to them. China has centuries of legitimate resentment built up thru the abuse they took from the Western powers. That history is taught every day in every school and may be closer to the general understanding than last year's Final Four is for Americans.

Amazingly you can see all that by just reading sequenced headlines of the story excerpts below - which are laid out in our best logical order. Including the English language editorials from Xinghua which basically boil down to "hang the traitors". This is gonna get real interesting. 

China & Tibet Readings

The Roots of Chinese Nationalism Don't blame state propaganda alone for hardline sentiments on Tibet and other issues. It may be tempting to write off these Chinese nationalist attitudes as the results of state propaganda. And Beijing is certainly fanning the flames, at least for now. But as Chinese outrage explodes on the Web and among Chinese abroad, it's clear that Chinese nationalism is not just coming from the top down. It's not hard to find a Chinese person who expresses a "nationalist" view -- that Tibet is part of China, or that the Western media is biased -- but is also a vehement critic of the Communist Party. In some cases, nationalists have accused Beijing of not defending Chinese interests strongly enough. These expressions of outrage were rooted in the perception that China was victimized by a foreign country. This idea of a wounded, defeated nation has deep roots in education and propaganda. In "China's New Nationalism," Peter Gries discusses how the narrative of China's "century of humiliation" has framed its interactions with the West. This narrative starts, he says, with China's defeat in the First Opium War and the British acquisition of Hong Kong in 1842, includes unequal treaties with the British and the Japanese in the 19th century, and continues with the "War of Resistance" against Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. Running through this narrative is a potent streak of pride and indignation, and these emotions bleed into the business sphere.

A Not-So-Fine Romance In the aftermath of the Tibet upheavals, the complicated romance between America and China is degenerating into mutual recriminations, muttering about Olympic boycotts and tensions that are likely to rise through the summer. It would be convenient if we could simply denounce the crackdown in Tibet as the unpopular action of a dictatorial government. But it wasn’t. It was the popular action of a dictatorial government, and many ordinary Chinese think the government acted too wimpishly, showing far too much restraint toward “thugs” and “rioters.” China and the U.S. clash partly because of competing interests, but mostly because of competing narratives. To Americans, Tibet fits neatly into a framework of human rights and colonialism. To Chinese, steeped in education of 150 years of “guochi,” or national humiliations by foreigners, the current episode is one more effort by imperialistic and condescending foreigners to tear China apart or hold it back. President Bush and other Western leaders should also continue to consult with the Dalai Lama, even though this infuriates Beijing. The Dalai Lama is the last, best hope for reaching an agreement that would resolve the dispute over Tibet forever. He accepts autonomy, rather than independence, and he has the moral authority to persuade Tibetans to accept a deal. The outlines of an agreement would be simple. The Dalai Lama would return to Tibet as a spiritual leader, and Tibetans would be permitted to possess his picture and revere him, while he would unequivocally accept Chinese sovereignty. Monasteries would have much greater religious freedom, and Han Chinese migration to Tibet would be limited. The Dalai Lama would also accept that the Tibetan region encompasses only what is now labeled Tibet on the maps, not the much larger region of historic Tibet that he has continued to claim. With such an arrangement, China could resolve the problem of Tibet, improve its international image, reassure Taiwan and rectify a 50-year-old policy of repression that has catastrophically failed. But don’t hold your breath. Instead, President Hu Jintao — who made his reputation by crushing protests in Tibet in 1989 — will make up for failed policy within Tibet by trying to stir up Chinese nationalist resentments at nosy foreigners. America and China get on each other’s nerves partly because they are so similar. Both are big, self-absorbed, and insular nations; both are entrepreneurial overachievers; both are infused with nationalism and yet tread clumsily on the nationalism of others — whether in Vietnam or Iraq, or Tibet and the Muslim region of Xinjiang.

• Commentary: Tibetan separatists' violence unveils their unlawful nature Tibetan separatists and members of so-called international "Tibet Support" groups have staged violent attacks on 18 Chinese overseas diplomatic missions since March 10. Even the United Nations' office in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu was targeted.The attacks have seriously disturbed the normal work and daily life of the Chinese missions, the international organizations and the local residents. They constitute a gross violation of international law and lay bare these separatists' nature of resorting to violence and undermining peace. Worse still, the separatists who seek "Tibet independence" attempted to disrupt and sabotage the torch relay of the Beijing Olympics outside China in defiance of the laws of the participating countries.  Dalai clique's separatist activities condemned, Newspaper: Secessionists ruining Tibet
• China rights group disputes Amnesty International report The China Society for Human Rights Studies on Wednesday criticized Amnesty International's comments on the country's human rights record in the run-up to the Olympics. "We firmly oppose attempts by any organization to slander and attack China under the pretense of human rights, and firmly oppose the attempts by any organization to put pressure on China using the Olympics," the private non-governmental organization said in a statement.  London-based Amnesty International issued a report on Tuesday that assailed China's human rights record, criticized its handling of unrest in Tibet and urged the International Olympic Committee and world leaders to pressure China.
• Protests halt Paris torch relay early Security officials snuffed out the Olympic torch and carried it through Paris in the safety of a bus at least five times Monday before canceling the final run of a relay repeatedly disrupted by chaotic protests against China's human rights record.

Hu Faces Olympic Snubs on Tibet as Clout Makes 1980-Style Boycott Unlikely Worldwide protests over China's Tibet crackdown probably won't prompt a widespread boycott of the Beijing Olympics because the country's economic might makes escalating the controversy too risky for Western nations. Pro-Tibet demonstrators in London, Paris and San Francisco tried to upstage the Olympic torch relay as the flame traveled toward China in the past two days. The International Olympic Committee will consider ending the international leg of the relay, the Associated Press reported today. IOC president Jacques Rogge said he is ``deeply saddened'' by the violent protests that have greeted the flame, AP said. It's more likely that some heads of state will decline to attend opening ceremonies in China, an idea floated by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk already has decided not to go.

A Passage to Tibet Over the next four months, until the Beijing Olympics open, the world is going to get a crash course in China’s various ethnic and religious minority groups and their resentments. Violent stirrings in Tibet are just the beginning. With the world as stage, the Uighur Muslims of the northwestern Xinjiang region, the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement, Mongols and Kazakhs and whoever else wants his moment in the sun will have a dream opportunity to rail. I hope violence is contained, and the Chinese authorities show flexibility, but I’m not optimistic after a big demonstration in London on Sunday. If a Tibetan monk grabs the Olympic torch in San Francisco this week and immolates himself, nobody should be astonished. If the 19th anniversary on June 4 of the Tiananmen Square crackdown passes quietly, everyone should be surprised. Playing in the major leagues is no breeze. That’s where China is after the remarkable transformation that led to the hosting of the Olympics. No talk of “peaceful rise,” “harmony,” “multilateralism” - self-effacing Chinese buzzwords all - can hide that a global power must make tough calls, decide what it represents, and be judged. China can no longer pretend to be the unobtrusive power par excellence, in contrast to American intrusiveness. In Burma and beyond, that just won’t wash. China’s Communist party leadership has proved remarkably adept at adjusting to the country’s explosive growth. But in crisis it is not nimble. The next few months will present a number of crises that I see, at root, as challenges to the fashionable authoritarian-capitalist model.

Don’t Know Much About Tibetan History Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so. FOR many Tibetans, the case for the historical independence of their land is unequivocal. They assert that Tibet has always been and by rights now ought to be an independent country. China’s assertions are equally unequivocal: Tibet became a part of China during Mongol rule and its status as a part of China has never changed. Both of these assertions are at odds with Tibet’s history. In China’s view, the Western misunderstandings are about the nature of China: Western critics don’t understand that China has a history of thousands of years as a unified multinational state; all of its nationalities are Chinese. The Mongols, who entered China as conquerers, are claimed as Chinese, and their subjugation of Tibet is claimed as a Chinese subjugation. Here are the facts. The claim that Tibet entertained only personal relations with China at the leadership level is easily rebutted. Administrative records and dynastic histories outline the governing structures of Mongol and Manchu rule. These make it clear that Tibet was subject to rules, laws and decisions made by the Yuan and Qing rulers. Tibet was not independent during these two periods. But although Tibet did submit to the Mongol and Manchu Empires, neither attached Tibet to China. The same documentary record that shows Tibetan subjugation to the Mongols and Manchus also shows that China’s intervening Ming Dynasty (which ruled from 1368 to 1644) had no control over Tibet. This is problematic, given China’s insistence that Chinese sovereignty was exercised in an unbroken line from the 13th century onward. Marxist China adopted the linguistic sleight of hand that asserts it has always been a unitary multinational country, not the hub of empires. There is now firm insistence that “Han,” actually one of several ethnonyms for “Chinese,” refers to only one of the Chinese nationalities. This was a conscious decision of those who constructed 20th-century Chinese identity. There is something less to the arguments of both sides, but the argument on the Chinese side is weaker. Tibet was not “Chinese” until Mao Zedong’s armies marched in and made it so.

Bowring: Beware an angry China Tibetans have a strong case against Beijing. But mixing it in with the Olympics and Darfur is a red rag to a wounded young bull. Nationalism is more often aroused by setbacks than success, so the Tibet problems and the possible threats to a triumphal Olympics are stirring it in China. On the horizon is the possibility that these will combine with high inflation, stagnating exports and trade tensions with the United States to create a perfect nationalistic storm. The Chinese leadership faces a difficult balancing act. As its legitimacy is now based on national achievement, not communist ideology, it must appear in step with popular feeling. Yet stability at home and good relations abroad require keeping nationalist emotions in check. The paranoia about evil foreign designs that thrived under Mao and was discarded by Deng Xiaoping is still close to the surface. Almost all of China is offended that foreigners are so keen to lecture them and to encourage the petty boycotts that could spoil the Olympic party. It genuinely infuriates the Chinese that they are blamed for Darfur while their Western critics occupy Iraq. Beijing is happy to let such nationalist resentments vent in the sometimes violent language of Internet blogs and chat rooms. The anger, in turn, makes it easier for the government to pin the Tibetan problems on foreigners and Tibetan exiles headed by the Dalai Lama, to arrest human-rights advocates and crack down on foreign media. Beijing plays up the foreign threat - much like the U.S. government used the Al Qaeda threat as a justification for invading Iraq.

China Says U.S. Resolution to End Tibet Crackdown Is `Rude Interference' China said a resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives calling for an end to a crackdown on protesters in Tibet is a ``rude interference'' in Chinese internal affairs. ``China is strongly indignant and opposed to this resolution,'' the official Xinhua News Agency cited Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu as saying in a statement today. The resolution, sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ``flagrantly distorted the history and reality of Tibet.'' The House called on China to ``enter into a substantive dialogue'' with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, on the future of the Himalayan territory. China accuses supporters of the Dalai Lama of organizing protests in Tibet last month, the worst unrest in almost 20 years, as part of a campaign to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games in August. China says rioters killed 22 people in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on March 14 while Tibet's government-in- exile, based in northern India, says Chinese troops have killed at least 140 protesters since the demonstrations began. The House resolution condemned without reason all the legal measures the government of the Tibet Autonomous Region has taken to deal with violent crimes in Lhasa last month, Jiang said. There is sufficient evidence to prove the riots were masterminded by the Dalai Lama's ``clique,'' she added.

Posted by dblwyo at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well this seems to be a string of Iraq, ME and National Security posts. But then between the Shia uprising in Basra and it's defeat by the Central government, the Petraeus/Crocker Report and other associated ME and Defense concerns it should be. At least there was certainly a wealth of news. After the break is a set of excerpts that start with a review of the surge, the associted political debates and contrasting takes on the Petraeus Report. Perhaps one of the most balanced and interesting however is the recent appearance on Rose of John Burns and Dexter Filkins of the NYT, who collectively have more time in the heat than almost any other reporters or analysts. Normally they're both pretty negative and report on the current facts as they see them but without putting them into a larger analytical or interpretative context. Which makes their comments all the more surprising. So after you skim over the excerpts we suggest you watch the show, and come back.

[PAUSE]

These guys are bright, informed, courageous and good but I recently criticized them for not having seen the events they reported on in a larger context. For example last year when what we see today was being put in place yet they were still reporting negatively without understanding the SEE changes taking place all around them. A friend has called me to task on at least two grounds as being unfair. First off they're reporters not analysts. And second their tendency to report from their own worldviews is common among everybody involved - in fact we made policy on the foundations of appalling ignorance about the culture and the history. What's that line from Shakespeare ? "Caesar forgive him for he is a Briton and thinks the customs and manners of his tribe are laws of the universe".

At the same time we are coming to a fork in the road with three paths leading away. As you skimmed the excerpts you could see the symptoms of that with one set of commentators lauding the progress and another saying it's not enough. Or that we still don't know where we're going. Now actually the administration has been very clear, relatively, about it's strategy. Which has evolved. And we've made our own best effort but basically the goal is a stable, peaceful, prosperous society with the rule of law and governed with the overall balance of the best interests of all the citizens in mind. There are two pieces of extremely good news though. First we seem to have learned enough about how to incorporate cultural, political, economic and other factors that we are implementing a balanced and unified strategy. And second, as Burns and others note, some sense of reality is creeping back into the candidates heads when they realize there's not a magic wand to wave of "leave now". Or "stay forever". Though so far it's not made it into the public forum which is where we need to have a serious discussion.

What's lacking IMHO is not an overall strategy nor even a sense of where we're going. That's evolved, partly as it must, pragmatically and with experience. What's lacking is a clear framework that organizes and structures all the moving parts into a whole so everyone can see how they all fit together. Now one doesn't reveal a strategy in details publicly of course. But a sense of how to fit day to day events into a bigger picture and judge our progress would be exactly what's required to motivate and justify the kind of longer term commitment we're converging on.

Two final observations or stories. First, it used to be said about NATO (where we had a huge multi-decade commitment) that it's goal was to keep American in, the Germans down and the Russians out. Wry but completely true. Without American presence in Europe the Europeans would have been at each other's throats all over again. They almost were right after the war and it was the Marshall Plan that created the foundations of Europe today.

Jim Stockdale, who won the CMH as the leader of the prisoners in the Hanoi Hilton wrote a wonderful book, "Reflections of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot" in which he traces his survival to the grounding he got from the Stoics and especially Epictetus (also a central meme in Wolfe's novel "a Man in Full"). But some of his most powerful, moving and scary essays are on the failures of the then leadership to learn from its' mistakes and adapt. He correctly characterizes their failings as a collapse of moral courage. When McNamara knew in '67 that his strategy wasn't working instead of re-thinking he continued to feed our soldiers into the meat grinder. And now has his own apologia out attempting to redeem the unredeemable. In contrast we've seen more deep adaptation on the part of our leadership, accompanied by profound learnings from error than we saw thruout that whole two decades. We may still not have it entirely right but we're moving in the right direction.In fact, a case can be made that we've deeper and bigger re-thinkings regarding Iraq than the US high command made thruout either WW2 or the Cold War. The difference being of course that they original thinking was pretty darn good and allowed for adaptation.

Now the question is do the next generation of leadership have the moral character to tack the third path opening up before us ? Or will they let themselves be locked into two unworkable and dangerous backward-looking ones ? Ones that are easy because they don't require change. And hard because they'll require sacrifices and risk catastrophe for no good purpose.

So do we take the "Road Less Traveled" or not ?

READINGS 

Anatomy of the Surge Over the past 16 months, the United States has altered its trajectory in Iraq. We are no longer headed toward a catastrophic defeat and may be on the path to a remarkable victory. As a result, the next president, Democrat or Republican, may well find it easier to adopt the broad contours of this administration's current strategy than to jeopardize progress by changing course abruptly. That would be an ironic, but satisfying, outcome to the tortuous journey on which the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq, and this nation's views of Iraq, have been traveling over the past three years. The administration's description of the long-term American goal--a democratic Iraq that can defend itself, govern itself and sustain itself, and will be an ally in the war on terror--has remained consistent from the time the war was launched in 2003 until now. What has shifted, due to sobering experience, is its sense of how long it might take to achieve this goal: a time frame that has stretched from months, to years, and even to decades.

Iraq and Its Costs When Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress tomorrow, he will step into an American political landscape dramatically different from the one he faced when he last spoke on Capitol Hill seven months ago. This time Gen. Petraeus returns to Washington having led one of the most remarkably successful military operations in American history. His antiwar critics, meanwhile, face a crisis of credibility – having confidently predicted the failure of the surge, and been proven decidedly wrong. In the past seven months, the other main argument offered by critics of the Petraeus strategy has also begun to collapse: namely, the alleged lack of Iraqi political progress. Antiwar forces last September latched onto the Iraqi government's failure to pass "benchmark" legislation, relentlessly hammering Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as hopelessly sectarian and unwilling to confront Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Here as well, however, the critics in Washington have been proven wrong. In recent months, the Iraqi government, encouraged by our Ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has passed benchmark legislation on such politically difficult issues as de-Baathification, amnesty, the budget and provincial elections. After boycotting the last round of elections, Sunnis now stand ready to vote by the millions in the provincial elections this autumn. The Iraqi economy is growing at a brisk 7% and inflation is down dramatically.

The hallmark of the Iraq debate is its unreality Something quite strange happened in Washington today. Three US Senators took a day off from their usual working routine and showed up in the US Senate. For the candidates it was a rare opportunity to listen to and ask questions of the man whose military operations provide the backdrop to the presidential election campaign. For General Petraeus it was a rare opportunity to make his case to the next president of the United States – even though he could not be sure which one of the three senators would be facing him in the Oval Office from next January. The general was careful yesterday not to be seen to be over-selling the surge. There was not a hint of triumphalism or claims of Mission Accomplished. Instead he said the gains so far were “fragile and reversible”. Though he outlined political advances as well as security improvements in Iraq in the last six months he was especially wary of overstating progress in the light of the somewhat unexpected events in Basra in the last month. But the essence of his message was that the US should not pull the plug any time soon. Not only was Iraq still too vulnerable to sectarian and intra-sectarian violence, but Iran’s growing role in the country was also a direct threat to the US. But the hallmark of this entire debate is its continuing unreality. Republicans seem to suggest that the war is going so well that the US should simply stay indefinitely. But senior strategists close to Mr McCain acknowledge what many in the Pentagon are saying with increasing alarm - that the strains the war is placing on US military capabilities are so great that some significant reduction in the American role is essential some time soon. At the same time, Democratic foreign policy advisers also admit that the chances that their candidate will be able to meet campaign promises and pull US forces out quickly next year – whatever the situation on the ground in Iraq – is equally absurd. The reality is that, once the posturing is done and the election is over, whoever wins is going to have to sit down with General Petraeus or his successor – without the television cameras - and figure out a pragmatic resolution to this messy and prolonged American engagement.

Obama Not Rising To Seriousness of Iraq Challenge It is a political error for a candidate to believe that voters who agree with him will always end up supporting him. There is little doubt that Americans generally feel that the initial use of military force in Iraq was a mistake. Recent, paradoxical polls show a dramatic increase in the number of people who believe that the war is now going well alongside a hardening majority who believe it should not have been begun at all. Barack Obama's strongest argument on Iraq is increasingly about the past. But presidential elections tend to focus on the future. In spite of their past failures, whom do you trust more to conduct a flawed, messy war in the years ahead? Lincoln or McClellan? Nixon or McGovern? Bush or Kerry? McCain or Obama? At some point, most foreign policy debates, especially during a war, come down to a binary determination: Is a candidate strong or weak? Voters can disagree with a nominee on many things and still find him stronger than his opponent. So far, Obama has not taken this challenge with sufficient seriousness. His Iraq approach comes down to three points. Obama -- the most reflective of candidates -- displays little self-knowledge when it comes to these political challenges. The question here is not self-confidence but public confidence. And Obama's political judgment is exactly wrong. He will have enormous advantages on domestic policy in the coming campaign, on which he seems both more activist and interested than McCain. But McCain leads on measures such as "strong leader." Obama needs to seem, and be, more commander in chief-like. The situation in Iraq, as Gen. Petraeus insists, is "fragile and reversible." But the debate has moved far beyond a candidate's initial support for the war. This has led to an odd inversion of the generational battle. Young Obama's strongest arguments are focused on the failures of the past. The older man, by insisting on victory, is more responsible and realistic about the future.

Hearts and Minds, Again The Democrats appear so invested in a failure that a half-week of violence erases a year of progress. What is the source of such instincts? Most of the time, the national Democratic party is at pains to avoid the label "San Francisco Democrats" that was coined by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her devastating "Blame America, First" speech to the 1984 GOP convention. Bill Clinton's famous 1996 triangulation strategy was designed in part to avoid this national-security virus, which is thought to sit dormant in the brains of blue-collar Reagan Democrats, always alert for an excuse to bolt right. John McCain will offer himself as that excuse. On the handling of Iraq alone, Gallup recently gave Mr. McCain a 14-point lead over either opponent. The Democratic left never apologized for its antiwar politics. It abhorred Clintonian centrism. The newest generation of "progressives," unabashedly descended from the San Francisco Democrats, wants the party rooted in the worldview and attitudes that came to prominence during. With the constant talk from Sens. Clinton and Obama about how Iraq has "failed," one must ask, Why at this point, with Iraq's post-Saddam government forming, would one want to ask the American people to ratify, with a vote, that a commitment by their men under arms had failed? This means the military too has failed, not just George Bush. Rather than leaping on "failure," as with Basra, why can't one of these candidates or party leaders find examples of nobility, accomplishment or martial courage in what the troops have done in Iraq? Because the martial ethos rubs this generation of the party the wrong way.

Turning No Corners in Iraq The problem with the debate over our future course in Iraq is that the two sides are not even talking about the same things. For supporters of the war, the primary issue is Iraq itself and what happens if we leave. For the war's opponents, the focus is on how the conflict in Iraq is sapping our energies, weakening our military, and diverting our attention from our other interests in the world. The bottom line of the testimony this week from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is that even after the surge, what gains have been made in Iraq are, as Petraeus put it, "fragile and reversible." For the administration's friends, this can only mean that we need to stay the course. President Bush endorsed that approach on Thursday, meaning that 140,000 or so troops will still be in Iraq when he leaves office. But the administration's critics (and even some of its sympathizers) see the current policy as the equivalent of constructing a very expensive road, under hazardous conditions, even though those building it can't explain exactly where the road will lead. The road becomes an end in itself. The point is to keep building it in the hope that it will eventually arrive at some lovely destination. Such a project can go on only for so long before someone points out the obvious, which is what Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., did during the hearings: "I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like." Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in an interview that after five years of war, the argument that "we've got to take time, we need a little more time" simply falls apart.The administration and its supporters talk incessantly about winning but offer no strategy for victory, no definition of what it would look like, no concrete steps to get us there, and no real sense of where "there" is.

Posted by dblwyo at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Three stores have popped up in the last couple of days that are just startling, at least to me. So it seemed like a good idea for us to take a look at them in light of the MSM neglect of the real situation on the ground in Iraq and what its means for the long-term. We'll presume some background based on these prior posts which might be worth reviewing (WRFest 30Mar08(Iraq): the Emergence of Central Authority, WRFest 6Apr08(National Security): the Surge, Iraq, the Military & Terrorism). In a way the three stories after the break are capstone indicators. And despite all the troubles and tribulations, or is that tribalations, and what's still to come may mean a major turning point. Miliary men talk about a cusp point in operations when the momentum shifts in the strategic direction of a major operation. We reached that point sometime last summer with regard to Sunni abandonment of alQ and adoption of the Iraqi political process. But that's been having repurcussions, positive ones, across the country that speak to the glimmerings of a similar shift on the socio-politico-economic side of things. It ain't a chequered flag just yet but the head timer is getting it out of it's bag, at least for this race (which we need to remember is not a season).

Summary

1) It turns out that the sudden move by the Shia central gov't against the Shia nutjobs of al Sadr's wasn't entirely a decision out of the blue. Instead it was in response to the Sadrists uprising which was thought up, designed and decided on by the Iranian Qods Force - the arm of the military/intelligence charged with spreading the revolution. And Iran has apparantly admitted it. Which means that their telling Sadr to back down is about as big a black eye as you could manage.

2) Except for the other one where Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, the most respected and reverred Shiite cleargyman in Iraq (& btw because of history where the Iraqis have always had wider authority) and also in Iran, has basically told Sadr to shut up, sit down and grow up. What he actually said was that the "law is the only authority". My God....take that anyway you want. But it's the first time he's spoken up on this monumental an issue since persuading the US not to flatten Falujah a few years ago. This means that the pinnacle of the establishment has a) stepped on the nutjob power-seeking, b) put one in Iran's eye and c) conferred inestimable authority and legitimacy on the central governement.

3) And the US has been pursuing a careful balanced strategy, called Anaconda, where more emphasis has been placed on strategic themes besides plain 'ol head-thumping. Especially politics, security, diplomacy, jobs, etc. In an integrated strategy. NONE of which is being discussed anywhere in the MSM of course. Apparantly the Powerpoint Rangers worked overtime and managed to get the whole thing on some PPT graphics. If we ever can find a copy we'll try and post it. Marvelous.

Finally we're going to take our "cheap shot" for the day, and by our normal standards for the YTD. Iraq has moved off the front-page and out of the central concerns of the campaign. Which in a way is good but it allows two things to happen. First we really do need to have a serious national debate on our long-term policy and strategy and we're not getting it. Instead, second, we're getting continued political posturing that puts the narrow and short-term domestic political interests of certain parties and candidates ahead of facing up to realities. Which some people can't avoid. While these folks are paying the piper for our dancing having that serious, realstic and honest debate seems like the least we owe them.

One more point direct at you - yes, I mean you - the candidates are doing that because that's what some people want to hear. Which means they're in denial about the risks. Just walk away isn't a viable solution and to suggest so as a major campaign platform is irresponsible. At the end of the day it's WE who face reality - not THEM.

Key Readings 

Was Basra a Busted Tehran Op? That's how analysts in Tehran describe events last month in Basra. Iran's state-run media have de facto confirmed that this was no spontaneous "uprising." Rather, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) tried to seize control of Iraq's second-largest city using local Shiite militias as a Trojan horse. Tehran's decision to make the gamble was based on three assumptions: The Iranian plan - developed by Revolutionary Guard's Quds (Jerusalem) unit, which is in charge of "exporting the Islamic Revolution" - aimed at a quick victory. To achieve that, Tehran spent vast sums persuading local Iraqi security personnel to switch sides or to remain neutral. The hoped-for victory was to be achieved as part of a massive Shiite uprising spreading from Baghdad to the south via heartland cities such as Karbala, Kut and al-Amarah. Some analysts suggest this was the first war between new Iraq and the Islamic Republic. If so, the Iraqis won. To be sure, the Iranian-backed side lost partly because Iran couldn't use its full might, especially its air force. (That almost certainly would've led to war between Iran and the US-led coalition in Iraq.) The battle for Basra showed that Iraq has a new army that's willing and able to fight. If the 15 brigades that fought are a sample, the new Iraq may have an effective army of more than 300,000 before year's end. But the battle also showed that the ISF still lacks the weapons systems, including attack aircraft and longer-range missiles, needed to transform tactical victories into strategic ones. The Iranian-sponsored Special Groups and their Mahdi Army allies simply disappeared from the scene, taking their weapons with them, waiting for another fight. Tehran tried to test the waters in Basra and, as an opportunist power, would've annexed southern Iraq under a quisling administration had that been attainable at a low cost. Once it became clear that the cost might be higher than the Quds force expected, Tehran opted to back down.

Ayatollah Sistani on the Mahdi Army: “the law is the only authority in the country” With the Iraqi government applying pressure to the Sadrist movement and Muqtada al Sadr to disband the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s senior Shia cleric has weighed in on the issue. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shia cleric in Iraq, backed the government’s position that the Mahdi Army should surrender its weapons and said he never consulted with Sadr on disbanding the Mahdi Army. Instead, the decision to disband the Mahdi Army is Sadr’s to make. Sistani spoke through Jalal el Din al Saghier, a senior leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a rival political party to the Sadrist movement. Saghier was clear that Sistani did not sanction the Mahdi Army and called for it to disarm. On April 6, Iraq’s Political Council for National Security moved to bar the Sadrist movement from participating in upcoming provincial elections in October if it did not disband the Mahdi Army. The plan had the full backing of Sunni, Kurdish, and Shia political parties.The move caused panic inside the Sadrist movement as their political isolation became apparent. "We, the Sadrists, are in a predicament," Hassan al Rubaie, a Sadrist member of parliament said the day the Political Council for National Security announced the plan. "Our political isolation was very clear and real during the meeting." he said, referring to the meeting of the Political Council for National Security, where the legislation was announced. "Even the blocs that had in the past supported us are now against us and we cannot stop them from taking action against us in parliament."

Petreaus' Anaconda It's a shame Sen. Carl Levin failed to take the time to call public attention to Gen. David Petraeus' "Anaconda Strategy" chart. Petraeus briefly referred to the chart during his initial testimony this week before Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee. The Anaconda Chart is a complex graphic that depicts an intricate, multi-dimensional war. It's tough to describe even with a copy in front of you. However, the strategic concept behind Petraeus' chart (titled "Anaconda Strategy versus al-Qaida in Iraq") is dirt simple: Squeeze and keep squeezing. A commercial artist would certainly describe the chart as "too busy," but war isn't an exercise in aesthetics. The Anaconda Strategy identifies six routes of attack on al-Qaida in Iraq: 1) Kinetics (which includes combat); 2) Politics (which includes countering ethno-sectarian pressures and Iraqi political reconciliation); 3) Intelligence (operations from air recon to intel assessment); 4) Detainee Ops (which includes counter-insurgency in detention facilities); 5) Non-Kinetics (education, jobs programs); and 6) Interagency. Anaconda's Interagency is a hodge-podge and a kludge of a category, including diplomacy, information operations and -- an interesting specificity -- engagement with Syria. On the chart, these six broad routes become operations that converge upon and compress al-Qaida's command and control capabilities, finances, ideological appeal, safe havens, weapons and popular support. The U.S. military uses the acronym DIME as verbal coin for "the elements of power": Diplomatic, Information, Military and Economic. Petraeus' Anaconda Chart is DIME in big dollars.

Posted by dblwyo at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well we've now heard from Petraeus and Crocker and the short answer is that things are going well, as measured by progress on security, stability, political reform and central government development. Which hasn't stopped the MSM punditocracy from downplaying all that or not covering it at all. And of course the Democracts are downplaying for everything they're worth since they announced multiple times last year that the Surge was an abysmal failure before it even got started. And that's not to underestimate the fragilities and risks that are still in front of us or the Iraqis either. But there are two major things, actually three, that are not getting reported in any venue that I can find. As we've already mentioned (WRFest 30Mar08(Iraq): the Emergence of Central Authority) the launching of a major effort on the part of a Shia central government against other Shia is a huge and amazing step forward.

A 2nd and equally great step forward is the political progress with the passage of national reconciliation and other major legislation which gets no coverage. Perhaps the most important thing is what's implicit in the about-face of the Sunni tribal leaders. This means that they've decided it is in their best interests to become full-fleged participants in the national political process. Amazing. If you'd like to see all this on display we highly recommend this recent Rose review and especially the points made by Gen. Jack Keene.

Related to all this is what what on and why'd it work ? And what are the implications for the future. It worked because there was a major shift in strategy and doctrine on the part of the military from force on force to supporting the civil process. Which may hold many lessons for the future. In the excerpts below you'll find a discussion of how things are working on the ground, the emerging consensus and commitment to "nation-building" as a critical component of our national strategy, some continued poopoohing on the part of selected pundits, some hard-nosed assessments of the impacts of Iraq on terrorism and al Queda in general and what it might mean for the future. With all these excerpts we've also pointed to some other resources including our own prior posts that provide a strategic context for these discussions. 

Scions of the Surge While it's too soon to say Iraq has turned the corner, the violence in Baghdad and most of the country has since declined precipitously. Much of the credit has gone to Gen. David Petraeus, the commander who has changed the way the U.S. Army fights. "You can't kill your way out of an insurgency," Petraeus told NEWSWEEK, in an interview in his Baghdad headquarters last month. But this new way of war needs a new kind of warrior, and it needs tens of thousands of them. Five years into the longest conflict the U.S. military has fought since Vietnam, young officers like Tim Wright have been blooded by multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. They've learned, often on their own, operating with unprecedented independence, the intricacies of Muslim cultures. Faced with ineffective central governments, they have acted as mayors, mediators, cops, civil engineers, usually in appalling surroundings. Most recently, and hardest of all, they've had to reach out and ally themselves with men who have tried and often succeeded in killing their own soldiers. Brought up in rigid, flag-waving warrior cultures that taught right from wrong, black from white, they've had to learn to operate amid moral ambiguity, to acknowledge the legitimate aspirations of their enemies. And while the skills these American officers have gained are crucial in murky conflicts like Iraq, they are not universally valued or trusted within the Pentagon. Petraeus has fought many battles with his bosses—including CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon, who resigned last week—over getting the resources needed to make his counterinsurgency strategy work. As his heirs move up the ranks, they will face similar struggles over which wars America chooses to wage in the future—and the way the Army fights them. American officers learned very similar lessons in battling the Viet Cong. But much of that knowledge was simply lost. "It's said we fought that war nine times, a year at a time," says Petraeus, noting that because they had been drafted rather than volunteered, many combat-hardened troops left the Army as soon as their yearlong tours in Vietnam were up.

Sovereigns of All They’re Assigned, Captains Have Many Missions to Oversee During the war in Iraq, young Army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the “ground-owners.” In practice, they are power brokers.The Iraqis have learned that these captains, many still in their 20s, can call down devastating American firepower one day and approve multimillion-dollar projects the next. Some have become celebrities in their sectors, men whose names are known even to children. Many in the military believe that these captains are the linchpins in the American strategy for success in Iraq, but as the war continues into its sixth year the military has been losing them in large numbers — at a time when it says it needs thousands more. Most of these captains have extensive combat experience and are regarded as the military’s future leaders. They’re exactly the men the military most wants. But corporate America wants them too. And the hardships of repeated tours are taking their toll, tilting them back toward civilian life and possibly complicating the future course of the war. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said: “It is the captains who turn the ‘big ideas’ and broad guidance issued at high levels into specific actions geared to local circumstances. Captains plan and execute the operations that often prove the most important, at ground level, where gains are truly achieved in this type of endeavor.” As the war has worn on, many captains say, the nature of that work has changed. General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine is centered on relatively small groups of soldiers establishing outposts in communities and living among the Iraqis. The result is a war that has largely been transformed into a fight on the ground by the captains.  Captain as Maestro, Conducting Amid Crises

The Fight Over How to Fight Should we prepare for big wars or small ones? After Afghanistan and Iraq, the answer might seem obvious, but the truth is harder and more expensive: both. Great armies and navies are always tempted to fight the last war, especially if they won it. The British Army entered World War I wedded to the "up and at 'em" infantry advances of Waterloo—even though by the turn of the century the Maxim gun had made such tactics tantamount to suicide. Truly fearsome militaries prepare to fight the next war. Think of how the German Army used planes and tanks in a coordinated blitzkrieg to outmaneuver the Allies at the outset of World War II. But what if a military must prepare to fight not one war, but two very different kinds of war? That is the challenge facing the world's greatest superpower at the beginning of the 21st century. The American military must continue to ready itself for high-tech warfare; it must still be able to fight "big wars" against rising powers like China. At the same time, it must anticipate what military planners blandly term "low-intensity conflict" but what Rudyard Kipling more aptly called the "savage wars of peace"—small, asymmetrical conflicts against determined partisans with wicked low-tech weapons like IEDs, the improvised explosive devices that have cost America so dearly in Iraq. The tension over which war to prepare for has created a generational divide in the American military, particularly the U.S. Army, between old bulls who want to focus on all-out combat, drowning the enemy in precision firepower, and young upstarts who believe that in today's messy world of failing states, firepower is not enough—it is necessary to win hearts and minds. Many of the combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, who are among the most capable and experienced young officers America has had in a generation, fall into the latter camp. But the uncomfortable fact is that the U.S. military may not have the resources to be able to fight both kinds of war with any assurance of victory. Though political leaders have barely begun to address the problem, the shape, size and funding of America's armed forces is one of the most pressing issues the next president will face. It will be up to the nation's political leaders to decide whether to make some hard choices or try to convince the voters that they need to pay for it all. Too bad this is a topic that is rarely discussed during the presidential campaign.

·         Steel My Soldiers' Hearts : The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam by David H. Hackworth

Stuck in the Iraq Loop We have achieved some security in Iraq. But we have not built a sustainable security architecture. There is a paradox in the current situation in Iraq. We are told that the surge has worked brilliantly and violence is way down. And yet the plan to reduce troop levels—which was at the heart of the original surge strategy—must be postponed or all hell will once again break loose. Making sense of this paradox is critical. Because in certain crucial ways things are not improving in Iraq, and unless they start improving soon, the United States faces the awful prospect of an unending peacekeeping operation—with continuing if limited casualties—for years to come. In a brilliant and much-circulated essay written in August 2007, "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt," David Kilcullen, a veteran Australian officer who advised Gen. David Petraeus during the early days of the surge, wrote, "Our dilemma in Iraq is, and always has been, finding a way to create a sustainable security architecture that does not require 'Coalition-in-the-loop,' thereby allowing Iraq to stabilize and the Coalition to disengage in favorable circumstances." We have achieved some security in Iraq, though even this should not be overstated. (Violence is still at 2005 levels, which were pretty gruesome.) But we have not built a sustainable security architecture. How does one create a self-sustaining process that leads to stability? Do we need more troops? Longer rotations? Kilcullen points in a different direction: "Taking the Coalition out of the loop and into 'overwatch' requires balancing competing armed interest groups at the national and local level." In other words, we need to help forge a political bargain by which Iraq's various groups agree to live together and not dominate one another.

• Thinking About Iraq: a Balanced Perspective ?, Iraq: the Big Questions, Big Question #1: What Happens if We Leave, Big Question #2: What Needs to Be Done If We Stay ?
• Readings(Iraq Jul-Dec07): Catastrophe to Success to Not-disussed ?, Readings(MilDoctrine & Foreign Policy): Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife
• Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallach

OP Whittling Away at Sadr  After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory. He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail. This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a "success." Numbers, however, are a very limited gauge. The firefights, white flags, media debate and, for that matter, the Iraqi-led anti-militia offensive itself are the visible manifestations of a slow, opaque and occasionally violent political and psychological struggle that in the long term is likely democratic Iraq's most decisive: the control, reduction and eventual elimination of Shia gangs and terrorists strongly influenced if not directly supported by Iran. For four years, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have intermittently sparred with Sadr, sometimes in parliament, sometimes in the streets. Now the Shia-led Iraqi government focuses on its chief Shia nemesis. How the Iraqi government handles Sadr matters. In August 2004, Sadr's thugs grabbed the Grand Mosque in Najaf. Sadr was counting on Americans to bomb the mosque. The United States opted to follow the political lead of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani's aides told coalition officers: "Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr." The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections. In southern Iraq and east Baghdad, Sadr once again lost street face. Despite the predictable media umbrage, this translates into political deterioration. Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.

WEAPONS: Kamikaze Compared To Suicide Bombers Al Qaeda, and their Sunni Arab allies in Iraq made a major effort using suicide bombers. Nearly 2,000 men, and a few women, volunteered (including a few who were coerced or deceived) to make attacks. About 90 percent of the attacks were against Iraqi civilians or security personnel. The attacks against Americans killed 216 U.S. military personnel. There were three times as many attacks against Iraqi troops and police, and many more casualties (over 2,500 dead). Most of the suicide bomber attacks were against civilians, and over 10,000 were killed. This effort has become the second largest suicide attack campaign in the last century. The largest was the Japanese use of suicide pilots, in air attacks on the U.S. Navy (and some allied ships) during the later stages of World War II. Some 2,800 suicide pilots died. They managed to sink 34 ships and damage 368 others. About 4,900 sailors died. Only about 14 percent of the Kamikaze pilots survived U.S. fighters and anti-aircraft fire, to actually hit a ship. The Kamikaze always attacked military targets, while the suicide bombers tended to avoid anyone who could shoot back. With both the Kamikazes and Islamic suicide bombers, the idea was to demoralize the opponent, and force an end to the conflict, or at least reduce the extent of the attackers defeat. The tactic failed in both cases, although both Kamikazes and Islamic "martyrs"  are admired for their courage. In the case of the Islamic suicide bombers, the tactics backfired in that the civilian population, which was getting hurt the most, turned on the terrorists. The many attacks on Iraqi security forces were supposed to demoralize them, but that, by-and-large, did not work.

ATTRITION: Why 4,000 Wasn't 13,747 Five years of fighting in Iraq has killed 4,000 American troops. The first five years of fighting in Vietnam (1965-69) killed 40,258. There were about three times as many U.S. troops involved in the Vietnam fighting. But even then, the number of Americans killer per thousand troops in Vietnam was three times higher (19, versus 6 in Iraq). If the casualty rates were the same in Iraq, there should have been 13,747 dead so far. However, there were proportionately more wounded in Iraq. While there were 3.4 times more dead in Vietnam (in killed per thousand troops), there were only 3.2 times more wounded. Overall, there were 133 casualties per thousand troops in Vietnam, versus 47 in Iraq. Why the lower casualty rate? There are several reasons, few of which have gotten much coverage in the mass media. But the reasons are important. The most important difference is that the troops in Iraq are fighting smarter. While the Vietnam era troops were representative of the general population, the Iraq era army is all-volunteer and highly selective. The troops are smarter, healthier and better educated than the general population. This has been the case for three decades, and during that time, new attitudes have developed throughout the army (which always got most of the draftees). The army, so to speak, has become more like the marines (which was always all-volunteer, and more innovative as a result). This ability to quickly analyze and adapt gets recognized by military historians, and other armies, but not by the media. It also saves lives in combat.

Posted by dblwyo at 06:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last couple of weeks there's been a bunch of ME news, much of it as "blood leads" variety. We try and put a context around those sorts of stories as well as find ones that try and dig deeper so you can get a sense of the currents that drive things. In an earlier post (WRFest 16Mar08(Middle East):Diversity, Complexity & Confusions) where we reviewed the situation we also argued that overall ME policy, strategy, tactics and execution was going to be the #1 foreign policy challenge for the next president. And we didn't just mean Iraq by any means. Given the fundamental importance of ME oil to our own daily existence either we figure out how to cope or face serious consequences.

We're not going to be able to cope on our own of course but only in cooperation with the local countries and the folks in charge. And we can't cope if we continue to view the ME as another late term opportunity for headlines, as all recent Presidents seem to have done. Nor can we continue to do business as usual, ala Syrianna, which we've used as our bad example of short-sighted, self-interested and blind policy many times before. Just to put a point on it the movie, IOHO, perfectly captures the "just handle it" thrust of most Americans concerns. For example the ones driving large SUVs to soccer practice and then stopping off at the local church for another anti-war rally. You don't get steaks without killing the cow and you don't get our lifestyles without...well you get the drift. Human nature being what it is we'd all prefer to continue pretending that nice steaks just show up neatly wrapped at the meat counter of course. BtW - before we go down that path did you know that beef cattle are a) about as efficient a use of bad land where farming is both uneconomic, hasn't enough water and environmentally disruptive. And b) that meat protein is the best source of essential dietary elements. At the end of the day you make the best choices you can and pay the piper accordingly.

By way of encouraging you to keep reading here's the money quote from the lead excerpt on Shariah as it was/is really intended to be:

"At its core, Shariah represents the idea that all human beings — and all human governments — are subject to justice under the law. For many Muslims today, living in corrupt autocracies, the call for Shariah is not a call for sexism, obscurantism or savage punishment but for an Islamic version of what the West considers its most prized principle of political justice: the rule of law."

We're going to be similarly locked into ME oil for the next three decades even if we start a "Manhattan Project" to develop alternatives and make the massive investments required. The Yang to that Yin is the the ME has been under growing threat of violent disruption for some time because of demographics and population growth. Combine that with unstable, corrupt and ineffective governments and you have a recipe for freezing in the dark. In other words it is in your own immediate best interests, those of your friends, family and children and the country as a whole that we do whatever we can manage to encourage the development of stable, civil and prosperous societies in the ME. Our chances for doing that are problematical of course. Robin Wright of the WashPo recently appeared on the Rose program and gave the best 20 min summary and overview of all this we've heard in a long time, without the normal media pundit posturing, ideologies or distortions (explains why she doesn't work for the NYT ?). 

Below you'll find various readings on current status and outlook for the ME. One on the recent Iranian elections and the continuing decline in that particular theoractic kleptocracy was discouraging. Two on reformist efforts in Islam and Islamic countries were very encouraging. The first is on Shariah and the second is on reform efforts by Saudia Arabai's king.

Now a word of warning or three - we shared the first article with several friends who essentially dismissed the core of its' arguments out of hand because, obviously, Muslims are violent, uncivilized and their legal codes are without merit in this day and age. Which we'd think makes reform all the more important of course. It was particularly ironic that one of their main objections was the Archbishop of Canterbury's preliminary suggestion to allow Shariah courts to handle family legal matters was obviously anathama. Despite its' being couple to a simultaneous proposal to allow Orthodox Jewish courts to do likewise. They were even more surprised to find out that many so-called civilized countries let religous courts handle family law. Italy and most of the Latin countries for example.

The other major objection was that Muslims are too violent. We'll pick that up some more later but let's consider the last 40 years of Civil Rights in this country. Remember, or know about, the riots and destruction in Watts, Detroit or Newark ? How about the assination of Martin Luther King ? It would seem that we haven't always been as non-violent, civilized and law-abiding in recent memory as to justify rejecting Shariah, and it's reform, out of hand without looking at it on the basis of evidence, data and merit. So when you read the article bear in mind that a) we'd ask you to judge it on the merits, not on the emotions, b) remember that the re-stablization of the ME is a critical factor in your own future and c) if we don't get stuff like this what're our alternatives ?

None good that we're aware of. How 'bout you ? 

Either we manage to encouarge and support governments who put the best interests of their countries ahead of their own personal advantages or we face a major disruption. Take your choice.

READINGS 

Why Shariah? In fact, for most of its history, Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world. Today, when we invoke the harsh punishments prescribed by Shariah for a handful of offenses, we rarely acknowledge the high standards of proof necessary for their implementation. The extremes of our own legal system — like life sentences for relatively minor drug crimes, in some cases — are routinely ignored. We neglect to mention the recent vintage of our tentative improvements in family law. Shariah, properly understood, is not just a set of legal rules. To believing Muslims, it is something deeper and higher, infused with moral and metaphysical purpose. At its core, Shariah represents the idea that all human beings — and all human governments — are subject to justice under the law. For many Muslims today, living in corrupt autocracies, the call for Shariah is not a call for sexism, obscurantism or savage punishment but for an Islamic version of what the West considers its most prized principle of political justice: the rule of law.

Arabian rights Saudi Arabia's king, who also serves as guardian of the birthplace of Islam, could become Islam's chief reformer. This week, for instance, King Abdullah stunned the world's Jews and Christians with a call for a conference of the three main monotheistic faiths in order "to defend humanity." The king says he was given a green light for such a dialogue from the country's powerful Muslim clerics. If so, the clerics may want to explain why they still ban non-Muslims from practicing their faith. And so deep is intolerance of "infidels" by the country's official Muslim hierarchy that a recent proposal to ban the preachers from bigoted ridicule of other religions was shot down by a consultative council to the king. The king's move to reach out to Christians and Jews may be one more attempt to indirectly circumvent hard-line Islamic scholars with reforms. King Abdullah has conducted a delicate dance with conservatives in the clerical establishment and within the ruling Saudi clan. His government still arrests many political dissidents, controls the media, and tolerates many human rights abuses. His reforms are coming painfully slowly, and there are concerns that the next in line to be king, Prince Sultan, may reverse them. Still, many reforms deserve praise and support to help speed the process. The king shouldn't need foreign pressure. His call for an interfaith meeting was driven in part by a concern for the breakdown of families and an erosion of "loyalty to humanity." About three-quarters of his 24 million people are under 30 and, despite vast oil wealth, a high number are unemployed and must prepare for a post-oil age. His attempts to modernize are creating an economic elite that can counter radical clerics. He's begun a National Dialogue in which intellectuals are invited to offer solutions. In 2005, limited elections were first allowed for municipal councils. He's revamping the judicial system. A new law allows universities to form student unions, a form of grass-roots democracy on campuses.

Protests Erupt as Prices Soar in Mideast Protests and violent skirmishes over rising prices are hitting parts of the Middle East, a region already beset by strife but otherwise enjoying an unprecedented, oil-fueled economic boom.Hundreds of workers demanding higher wages to counter soaring food costs rioted at an industrial park in this Persian Gulf emirate Tuesday. They burned and battered dozens of cars and buses at a U.S.-owned contracting company, then ransacked and set ablaze parts of the company's offices. It was the worst reported protest in the oil-rich and booming U.A.E. since thousands of workers rioted and struck at construction sites in the neighboring emirate of Dubai this past fall. Meanwhile, in Egypt in recent weeks, thousands of textile workers, doctors and other professionals have protested against soaring prices. As food prices rise sharply in Egypt, queues for subsidized bread have grown, triggering a handful of violent skirmishes. Earlier this week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the army to start making more subsidized bread. Popular discontent over rising prices comes as Egypt and other large, oil-poor Mideast countries benefit from a region-wide investment binge fueled by petrodollars.

AFGHANISTAN: The Taliban Turn Too Tough There are 78,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. The 28,000 Americans are all allowed to fight, but most of the 50,000 NATO personnel are restricted in how they can be used. It has been this way for years, and the nations that allow their troops to fight (like Britain, Canada, Denmark, Romania, Estonia, the Netherlands, and non-NATO Australia), are getting angrier at those who will not (especially Germany, which has a large force that is forbidden from going after the Taliban). As Spring comes to Afghanistan, the armed Taliban will be out, supporting attacks on reconstruction, education (unless it's just religious) and anyone who supports democratic government (the Taliban considers democracy "un-Islamic"). In the last year, Taliban attacks kept about four percent of children out of school. This is often done by burning down the local school, or killing teachers. The tribes support the schools, but if the Taliban can get one of their combat teams (50-100 gunmen) into an area, the tribesmen back down and do what the Taliban want. If foreign troops are available, the Taliban often get caught, and that's when those items show up in the news, about "20-50 Taliban killed in southern Afghanistan." Last year, over 4,000 Taliban were killed in this way, and the Taliban lost influence in many areas. But NATO commanders can look at their maps and do the math. With a few thousand more troops, they can shut down the Taliban "enforcers" sooner and more often, shutting the Taliban out of many areas permanently. This takes the pressure off more rural Afghans, allowing them to send their kids to school, rebuild roads, get electricity, and generally get on with their lives.

·         AFGHANISTAN: Another Suicidal Spring Offensive As the Taliban announce their new "Spring Offensive," they must also confront a public relations crises. A religious scholar has issued a fatwa condemning the Taliban for their un-Islamic activities (killing civilians, use of terror) and declaring them "out of Islam" (not Moslem).

COUNTER-TERRORISM: Heroin and Bling Afghanistan's drug business, and the Taliban Islamic terrorists that live off it, is developing just like similar situations in Burma (Myanmar) and South America have in the past. In these earlier cases, heavily armed groups in remote regions, kept the government out, so poppies could be grown and heroin produced. Same situation  developed in Afghanistan. The reason you hear so many reports of battles with the Taliban in Afghanistans Helmand province, is because that one area (south of Kandahar and on the Pakistani border), currently produces over 40 percent of the worlds heroin (and about 70 percent of Afghan production). Helmand became a source of heroin during Taliban rule. The farmers of Helmand paid a share of their profits to the Taliban, and shipped the drugs out through Pakistan, or west via Iran. A lot of the Helmand opium and heroin stayed in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, and the addiction problem in those three countries has been growing for over a decade. The farmers in Helmand were doing well before poppy production became popular in the 1980s. Helmand has long been a major source of grain for the region. But the Taliban insist the farmers grow poppies, despite qualms many Afghans have about producing narcotics. The Helmand farmers have done well financially, but many are religious conservatives, and would not be as upset as you might think if the government shut down poppy growing throughout the province.

Back to first principles As the counting of the 23m ballots proceeded, it emerged that conservatives, or “principlists” as they prefer to be called, in deference to their claimed allegiance to the Islamic republic's founding principles, had trounced the reformists by three to one. In the biggest constituency, Tehran, where the voters could choose up to 30 names on the ballot, the conservatives took 19 seats in the first round. The reformists got none, though they consider the capital to be their main stronghold. Turnout was modest. Government officials claimed that as many as 65% of Iran's 44m eligible voters took part, trumpeting this as a victory over foreign plots to undermine the Islamic revolution. Yet the Ministry of the Interior's own figures indicated a national turnout of 52%, and no more than 30% in Tehran, close to the tally in the most recent election, in 2004, which many Iranians boycotted after a similar mass disqualification of reformists.

ATTRITION: Israel Calculates Losses to Arab Missiles The Israeli government has been passing around, to local governments, a war planning document. This exercise  assumes a future war with Syria, and gives the local officials an idea of what to expect. Currently, the Israelis estimate that there would be as many as 3,300 Israeli casualties (including up to 200 dead) is Syria tried to use its long range missiles against Israel. If the Syrians used chemical warheads, Israeli casualties could be as high as 16,000. Over 200,000 Israelis would be left homeless, and it's believed about a 100,000 would seek to leave the country. Israel now assumes that Iran would fire some of its ballistic missiles as well, armed with conventional warheads. But the big danger is Syria, which is a client state of Iran.

COUNTER-TERRORISM: Come Die For Me During the last three years, al Qaeda has been unable to carry out any attacks in Europe or North America. In fact, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, all al Qaeda has done is some bombings in Jordan and Algeria. This inability to kill infidels (non-Moslems), while slaughtering so many Moslems, has caused serious image problem for al Qaeda. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was seen by al Qaeda as a challenge (infidel troops in the Middle East) and a tremendous opportunity (infidel troops in the Middle East). For the last five years, Iraq became a magnet for al Qaeda fans, making it difficult to organize attacks outside the Middle East. Worse, the fighting in Iraq killed far more Iraqis than Americans. This eventually destroyed al Qaedas popularity among Moslems. Iraq is lost to al Qaeda, where it has been the most hated organization for the last three years. Al Qaedas poll numbers are down across the Moslem world. So bin Laden is playing to the few strengths al Qaeda still has.

Posted by dblwyo at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other really big foreign policy story going on over the last two+ weeks is the effort by Iraq's central government to bring Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (thugs, terrorists, sectarians, private army) under control. One of the biggest problems we've all, and all includes both the US and the Iraqis, have faced is the capacities of the central government. Which have sufferred from sectarianism, divided power and authority, corruption but most especially from the penchant of strong men to pursue their own agendas. Again we really don't grasp how truly lucky and blessed we are that our politicians may pursue their own ends they do it within the context of making the system work. Rather than trying to work the system to meet their own ends. In fact there is a general principle hiding in their someplace - whatever the form of governance and government if those in power will act, on balance, for the betterment of the whole then historically it qualifies as good government.

Well Iraq's government ain't great but it's getting better. And the reporting, coverage and analysis of the Sadrist insurrections, who are supported and funded (at least in part) by Iran,has largely missed, ignored or distorted what by is a major step forward. Which should be front-page news. And is not divorced from the last year's successes of the Surge.

In fact you're seeing major ripple effects where increased sophistication and knowledge in counter-insurgency has been combined with higher troop levels plus incresed local cultural awareness and tactics to lead to vastly increased effectiveness, especially in the Suni areas. Those successes in turn have led to the freeing up of resources to strengthen the border security with Iran. And now, in the last few weeks, a major effort to suppress Sadr.

We've always said that the surge wasn't the total answer and the generals have been acknowledging and saying that for years. In fact they've all been on record a saying that military force was at best 20% of the solution while improvements in governance were a major part of the rest. Along with economic improvements. And a stronger and more effective central government is key. Yet the front-page coverage and editorial page opinions have been talking about what a failure this is. Well while we've been accumulating these clippings for a while our delay is rewarded with the following headline. 

Iraq's Sadr to disband Mehdi Army if clerics order 

Which, once you understand the context speaks for itself. But apparantly our press and politicians don't do context.

IRAQ READINGS

Iraqi Forces Battle Sadr Militia in Baghdad, Basra for Second Day; 64 Dead Iraqi forces fought militants loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern city of Basra and Baghdad for a second day in an operation that has killed more than 60 people and wounded hundreds. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has been in Basra since March 24 to oversee operation Sulat al-Fursan, ``Knights' Charge'' in Arabic, today ordered the group to lay down arms within 72 hours, state television reported. There is a curfew on all routes into Basra province until March 28, and schools and universities are closed. The fighting may be a key test for Iraqi forces as the U.S. plans to withdraw some of its 158,000 service members in the country, reducing the number to about 140,000 in July. President George W. Bush will meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff today to discuss future moves in Iraq, days after the fifth anniversary of the conflict. Rival Shiite groups including al-Sadr's followers, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Fadhila party have clashed in a struggle for dominance in the southern oil hub. The U.K. military transferred responsibility for the city to Iraqi forces in December.

Who Won the Battle of Basra? ...Well, that depends on who you ask—or which pundit you believe. According to Robert Dreyfus of The Nation the big winners in the recent fighting were radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, his Mahdi Army and their allies in Tehran. But contrast Dreyfus’ account to that of Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal. Mr. Roggio, a veteran of multiple embed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, paints a starkly different picture of the fighting and its results:
Six days after the Iraqi government launched Operation Knights’ Charge in Basrah against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia terror groups, Muqtada al Sadr, the Leader of the Mahdi Army, has called for his fighters to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi security. So, which pundit got it right? We’ll go with Bill Roggio, for a couple of reasons. First of all, let’s assume that the latest Mahdi uprising was aimed at embarrassing (and weakening) the Iraqi government. If the offensive was going so well, why did Sadr—or more correctly, his patrons in Iran—decide to pull the plug? Assuming they still controlled large sections of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, the Mahdi fighters had little reason to lay down their arms. Additionally, the Mahdi Army’s latest ill-fated adventure hardly builds confidence in Iran, which has invested millions in supporting Muqtadr al-Sadr and his fighters. Mr. Dreyfus notes that Iraqi lawmakers flew to Tehran during the recent uprising, asking for Iran’s help in ending the fighting. Elements of the Iranian government (most notably the military’s Qods Force) agreed, and Sadr issued his cooperation edict within hours. According to the Nation’s analyst, Iran’s eagerness to help is another example weakness in the Maliki government. But that narrative seems to contradict the facts. If things were going swimmingly in Basra (and elsewhere), Iran had no incentive to lean on Sadr. On the other hand, if the Mahdi Army was taking unsustainable losses, Iran had ample reason to call a truce. We should also point out that the cease-fire (so far) is one-sided affair. According to Mr. Roggio, the Iraqi government has not called for an cessation of hostilities, and military operations continue.

OP Whittling Away at Sadr  After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory. He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail. This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a "success." Numbers, however, are a very limited gauge. The firefights, white flags, media debate and, for that matter, the Iraqi-led anti-militia offensive itself are the visible manifestations of a slow, opaque and occasionally violent political and psychological struggle that in the long term is likely democratic Iraq's most decisive: the control, reduction and eventual elimination of Shia gangs and terrorists strongly influenced if not directly supported by Iran. For four years, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have intermittently sparred with Sadr, sometimes in parliament, sometimes in the streets. Now the Shia-led Iraqi government focuses on its chief Shia nemesis. How the Iraqi government handles Sadr matters. In August 2004, Sadr's thugs grabbed the Grand Mosque in Najaf. Sadr was counting on Americans to bomb the mosque. The United States opted to follow the political lead of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani's aides told coalition officers: "Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr." The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections. In southern Iraq and east Baghdad, Sadr once again lost street face. Despite the predictable media umbrage, this translates into political deterioration. Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.

Iraq's Sadr to disband Mehdi Army if clerics order Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr offered on Monday to disband his militia if the highest Shi'ite religious authority demands it, a shock announcement at a time when the group is the focus of an upsurge in fighting. The news came after Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who launched a crackdown on Sadr's Mehdi Army late last month, ordered the cleric to disband his militia or face exclusion from the Iraqi political process. It was the first time Sadr has evoked dissolving the Mehdi Army, whose black-masked fighters have been principle actors throughout Iraq's five-year-old war and the main foes of U.S. and Iraqi forces in widespread battles over recent weeks.

IRAQ: Sending The Foreigners Home The crime rate did not go down, because Shia Arab criminals took over as Sunni Arab crooks got killed, captured or driven away. In the last year, the number of terror attacks has sharply declined, as the Shia Arab criminals and militias are not interested in slaughtering civilians. They were interested in maintaining control over neighborhoods, criminal enterprises, and augmenting political control. Many of these militias were supported by Iran, a neighbor that wanted to have more control over what went on inside Iraq. But Iran is run by the Shia clergy, and the prospect of a religious dictatorship in Iraq turned off many Iraqis. This was no secret to anyone, and the Iraqi government, run by more independent minded Shia, finally agreed that the Iran backed militias could not be tolerated. This has led to a recent campaign to take apart the more troublesome factions. The worst of the lot are in Basra, where Shia militias make a lot of money off the oil and port operations down there. 

WEAPONS: Kamikaze Compared To Suicide Bombers Al Qaeda, and their Sunni Arab allies in Iraq made a major effort using suicide bombers. Nearly 2,000 men, and a few women, volunteered (including a few who were coerced or deceived) to make attacks. About 90 percent of the attacks were against Iraqi civilians or security personnel. The attacks against Americans killed 216 U.S. military personnel. There were three times as many attacks against Iraqi troops and police, and many more casualties (over 2,500 dead). Most of the suicide bomber attacks were against civilians, and over 10,000 were killed. This effort has become the second largest suicide attack campaign in the last century. The largest was the Japanese use of suicide pilots, in air attacks on the U.S. Navy (and some allied ships) during the later stages of World War II. Some 2,800 suicide pilots died. They managed to sink 34 ships and damage 368 others. About 4,900 sailors died. Only about 14 percent of the Kamikaze pilots survived U.S. fighters and anti-aircraft fire, to actually hit a ship. The Kamikaze always attacked military targets, while the suicide bombers tended to avoid anyone who could shoot back. With both the Kamikazes and Islamic suicide bombers, the idea was to demoralize the opponent, and force an end to the conflict, or at least reduce the extent of the attackers defeat. The tactic failed in both cases, although both Kamikazes and Islamic "martyrs"  are admired for their courage. In the case of the Islamic suicide bombers, the tactics backfired in that the civilian population, which was getting hurt the most, turned on the terrorists. The many attacks on Iraqi security forces were supposed to demoralize them, but that, by-and-large, did not work.

Analysis: Oil groups circle the prize of Iraq’s vast reserves Shell is one of several inter­national oil companies – including BP and the US groups ExxonMobil and Chevron – that have been tapping into Iraq’s oil industry by remote control. But now, five years after the invasion, the oil groups are hoping to take their involvement in the country to a new level. Baghdad, desperate to increase oil production yet starved of investment, is starting to dangle what the companies have been after all along: a chance to develop and later explore what may be the world’s most promising untapped oil reserves. According to the oil ministry, only 27 out of 80 discovered fields are producing in Iraq, the result of decades of under-investment. A report by Wood Mackenzie, the consultancy, meanwhile says the scale of Iraq’s remaining oil resources surpasses all other countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, and its high-quality reservoirs ensure that production costs would be very low. But Iraq is also a dangerous frontier. Companies invited to invest in its oil industry – and satisfy Baghdad’s plans at least to double oil production from the current 2.5m barrels a day – will be walking into a political, security and legislative minefield. Their involvement threatens to exacerbate the sectarian tensions that have torn the country apart since the US-led invasion. International oil companies acknowledge that security, although better over the past year, will still need to improve significantly before workers are dispatched to Iraq. The weakness of the central government and its patchy control over the southern part of the country, home to 80 per cent of proved oil reserves, will also be taken into account. Perhaps most important, however, is that they could be entering a country with deep political fissures and lingering anger at foreign intervention, without clear legislation allowing for foreign participation.

Posted by dblwyo at 08:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With all that's going on the two biggest pieces of international news were the Iraqi government's attack on the Shia militias in Basra, which we'll pick up in the future. And the sudden outburst of protests in Tibet which the Chinese gov't is handling so badly. The real question is why and that probably deserves it's own seperate post and discussion but here are several reasons that occur to us and they'r wrapped up in Chinese history and cultural attitudes.

1. The Chinese feel that Tibet is part of the ancient China and conquered it in the '50s to restore the territorial integrity of "China". That may or not be entirely true - certainly for much of its' history Tibet was not part of China though beholden. And it's certainly not in the same league as Hong Kong or even Taiwan (which also btw wasn't really part of the central Chinese legacy for centuries).

2. Having conquered Tibet however it has become a matter of Face - which is much, much more serious than we usually give it credit for in the West. In fact from some recent writings by a Chinese native WSJ columnist it's struck me we don't grasp it at all. But in a society which places such a premium on social cohesion and allegiance to the group one's reputation, i.e. Face, is incredibly important.

3. On a larger scale Face becomes legitimacy for the ruling power and without legitimacy no state is stable. Tibet's protests, which have spilled over into some of the neighboring provinces which are equivalent to our Wild West, threaten that legitimacy. That is they threaten the basic underpinnings of the Chinese state, at least in the minds of the central power. Worse China has experienced rising protests (now in the neighborhood of 100K+/year) which would be encouraged by a failure to restore stability in Tibet.

4. On the international stage the Olympics was China's coming out party - its' return to the world stage from whence it was ousted by outside interference in the early 19thC. We should remember that these events are clearer and closer in Chinese memory than our own Revolution is to us. The British Opium Wars were minor matters to the West but forced open the borders of China to British opium traders. And led to the Taiping Rebellion which cost 40 million lives, under-mined what was left of Quing stability and legitimacy and led to the collapse of the last dynasty. The Chinese see all this together.

5. In actual point of fact an act of reasonable statesmanship would resolve this conflict by providing a win-win for everyone. That act would be to establish limited local hegemony for the Tibetans which would make them more agreeable while leaving them tied into China's long-term development. This is in fact what China purported to do for Hong Kong but has struggled with, what it should offer Taiwan and what the Dalai Lama has been urging for decades. The really interesting thing for a supposedly patient society and culture is that they're displaying impatience, anger, lack of subtlety and a lack of imagination that's at odds with the way they've modernized the country over the last three decades. Or with millenia of writings on Chinese statesmanship and diplomacy for that matter.

6. The Chinese effectively replace the imperial dynasties with the "Communist" party and have achieved that most difficult of stability challenges - a peaceful transition of rulers several times now. Yet the central authority is not elected which gives it legitimacy nor is it a single powerful player. Rather it's a coalition of interest groups where no one player can appear to violate the basic group think. In other words in addition to a lack of imagination the Chinese appear to be locked into a political dynamic which drives them to the lowest common denominator.

Which is really too bad indeed because this is a great opportunity to establish a major new precedent. On the other hand it's also an opportunity to create a major new disaster - a precedent of another sort. As the world economy slows China's under increasing pressure. And as domestic inflation and inequalties grow those pressures will be exacerbated. The recent winter storms exposed some major fault lines in China's political stability which are very fragile. This could turn out badly indeed. Let's hope not because if it does it'll turn out badly for a whole bunch of us considering China's role in the world even now.

READINGS

Tibet Protests Spread to Neighboring Provinces as China Defends Crackdown Tibet's biggest protests in almost 20 years spread to neighboring Chinese provinces as the government of the Himalayan region defended its security clampdown and condemned the riots as a conspiracy by followers of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, yesterday accused China of committing ``cultural genocide'' in the territory and condemned its ``rule of terror.'' Protests began March 10 when hundreds of Buddhist monks marched in Lhasa calling for an end to religious restrictions and the release of imprisoned colleagues. The date marked the anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, after which the Dalai Lama fled to India. China Lashes Out Against Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama Threatens to Step Down, Tibet and China: A History of Conflict

• Tibetan Youth Challenge Beijing, Dalai Lama Young Tibetan activists are courting confrontation. Their more-aggressive stance risks enraging Beijing and triggering a harsher clampdown. The movement clashes with the nonviolent beliefs of the Dalai Lama as leaders seek to shift the views of Tibetans to their more-forceful tactics.

·         Engaging India: The Dalai Lama’s Embrace The world is on tenterhooks as it watches the events in Tibet that are the most dramatic blight on China since 1989 when Chinese military shot pro-democracy student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. After door-to-door searches, China imposed a deadline this Monday demanding that organisers of the protests in Tibet give themselves up to authorities. Chinese authorities say more than 100 people have done so. The protests in Tibet sparked an allegedly brutal crackdown by Chinese military forces. China says 13 people have been killed while the Tibetan government-in-exile estimates the death toll is closer to 100. Foreign media have been barred from entering Tibet so information about deaths is gleaned from mobile phone calls and horrific images of corpses purportedly emailed from Tibet. In the Dalai Lama’s long press conference this week in Dharamsala, the northern Indian town that is home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, the spiritual leader denounced violent demonstrations in Tibet and threatened to resign if bloodshed spirals out of control. Yet he also lamented China’s ”rule of terror” in Tibet and denied accusations from Chinese authorities that he masterminded the recent protests. Independent agencies should investigate recent events in Tibet and the international community must press for Chinese restraint toward demonstrators, the Dalai Lama urged. As events continue to unfold in Tibet, pro-Tibet demonstrations are gathering momentum around the world. In Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama since he fled Tibet in 1959, hundreds of crimson-robed monks and ordinary Tibetan citizens have been marching daily through the town’s hilly streets shouting slogans. Hundreds more are staging a hunger strike.

·         Olympics Boycott Chatter Grows as Tibet Unravels: William Pesek

·         Pelosi Says World United With Tibet After Talks With Dalai Lama in India

·         Tibetan Exiles Split on Dalai Lama's Approach to China, Youth Leader Says

Taiwan Heads for Thaw With China Taiwan will elect one of two candidates for president who have promised rapprochement with Beijing, which could ultimately calm one of the last tensions of the Cold War. While Tibet erupts in violence, China's other big territorial flash point appears headed for an unprecedented era of calm. On Saturday, the island of Taiwan will elect as president one of two candidates who both have promised a historic rapprochement with Beijing. If they follow through, the change could produce an enormous economic boon and security shift for East Asia. For more than half a century, governments here have treated the Communist Party that rules China as their implacable foe and Beijing has refused to rule out force to assert what it claims is sovereignty over Taiwan. Now, not only are Taiwan's two major parties both seeking closer economic ties with the mainland, but Beijing has offered an olive branch of its own after years of threatening force and shunning the current president: It says it will work with anyone who isn't actively pushing independence for Taiwan, and is offering trade incentives. So far, Taiwan's consensus for warmer ties with China is holding, despite this week's deadly and well-publicized clashes between protesters and government authorities in Tibet. In Tibet, a Himalayan region of China, many people long have sought greater autonomy or even independence from Beijing. Taiwan's presidential candidates have been consumed in recent days with debating exactly how much to trust China without coming under its thumb. But neither candidate has backed off his plans to strengthen ties. The new dynamics illustrate how China's growing economic might is strengthening its gravitational pull overseas. Many Taiwanese remain leery of close ties with China, and few support political union with the mainland. A more violent crackdown in Tibet could still change the posture of voters, or candidates, before the election. But Taiwanese increasingly see China as the only solution for their biggest worry: their slowing economy.

• China Tensions Could Sway Vote in Taiwan

Malaysian lessons for Asia’s authoritarians Malaysia’s upheaval was thankfully more sedate and its effects are likely to be more enduring. The National Front government, dominated by the United Malays National Organisation, is still reeling from the worst electoral setback of its 50-year history. There are now serious doubts about the survival of Malaysia’s racially based political system and the continuation of Umno’s quasi-authoritarian rule. Yet another south-east Asian nation may adopt the difficult but rewarding practice of genuine multiparty democracy. The results of the March 8 general election came as a surprise to almost everyone. An opposition alliance led by Anwar Ibrahim deprived the government of its two-thirds majority in parliament and secured control of an unprecedented five of Malaysia’s 13 states. But the most remarkable change is among Muslim Malays. The beneficiaries of racial preference have grown weary of the policy as well, for two reasons. First, those Malays profiting the most are not the rural poor but tycoons and hangers-on who win government contracts and share allocations in privatised companies; corruption is rife despite the promises made by Abdullah Badawi, the prime minister, to curb it. Second, successful Malays resent the assumption that they prosper as a result of favouritism rather than their own efforts. Eventually, the impact of this month’s election will reach beyond business and the narrow issue of racial preferences. The weakening of Umno and the rise of a multiethnic opposition could herald the kind of changeover from authoritarian rule to democracy that has already occurred in the Philippines and Indonesia and may yet happen in China – to the benefit of Tibetans, Han and Hui alike.

Indonesia's Commodity Boom Is a Mixed Bag Indonesia's economy is growing at its fastest pace in a decade. Yet the majority of Indonesia's people are being left behind as the export boom is leading to unintended shortages of select foodstuffs and other key commodities.

Posted by dblwyo at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having put off our regular readfests for a bit we're going to end up with a bunch of postings covering the last two weeks so they'll be combined around certain topics. Here we're going to focus on Int'l Affairs, specifically Europe. And narrowing it even further France and Russia. Both of which are very interesting.

After all his early promise of shaking things up by introducing a new agenda Sarkozy, otherwise now known as Pres. Bling-Bling to the Fr. press, seems to have turned into his own worst enemy. He can run but can he govern ? If he doesn't figure out how France will return to its' slumber.

Russia on the other hand saw its' own governmental transitions from Putin to Medvedev (to Putin ?). We'll see how that all plays out but Russia, which say a restoration of order under Putin's increasingly autocratic rule along with significant economic growth which benefited a wide swath of society, is now facing deeper challenges. They've been able to reverse their rather severe decline under Yeltsin but a large part of that has been new-found prosperities based on oil and resources prices. Now they'll need to deal with much deeper structural issues. Putin may have done an arrest and save but they're still on the mountain with a long way to go to the top. Let's hope they make it. 

Sarkozy rebuked IT MAY not have been the crushing defeat that some predicted, but it was certainly a firm rap on the knuckles. On March 16th Nicolas Sarkozy's centre-right UMP lost control of a swathe of towns and villages, mostly to the opposition Socialists. It lost nine of the 21 big cities it held, including Metz, Strasbourg and Toulouse, leaving it in charge of just 12. The left now runs three of France's biggest cities—Paris, Lyon and Lille—and 25 of the top 37. Although the elections were local, they were a big setback for Mr Sarkozy. If Mr Sarkozy is to rebuild his credibility, he needs to deal with two main causes of voters' disaffection. The first is his presidential style. Although the press nicknamed him “President Bling Bling”, this message was slow to register at the Elysée. The second cause of disillusion is a sense that Mr Sarkozy's reforms, which he promised would boost growth, jobs and pay, have not yielded results. Despite a tax-cutting package last year, which made time worked over the legal 35-hour week tax-free, voters have not felt the benefit in their household budgets. This is partly thanks to lower world economic growth and rising food and energy prices. The economy has slowed and inflation is running at some 3.2%. On top of this, many business types who supported Mr Sarkozy are disappointed over the pace of the reforms, which have ground to a virtual halt.

• Sarkozy’s slump is of his own making Too much of the French president’s political capital has been frittered away on half-baked reforms and publicity stunts. It is time to get serious.

Alexander the Great's Fans Take on NATO in a Dispute Over Macedonia's Name Natives of Macedonia, the northern Greek province that produced the ancient world's dominant military commander, are determined to prevent a neighboring country from joining today's dominant military alliance under its chosen name, the Republic of Macedonia. ``Alexander and Macedonia are part of our heritage,'' said Nikos Ousoultzoglou, 56, who runs a cotton-processing business in the Greek village of Kypseli, near the tomb of Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon. ``They're just making use of the name to claim part of history that isn't theirs.'' The dispute over an ancient name is heavy with modern-day implications: It may snarl NATO plans to expand into the Balkans. Two other countries in the region, Croatia and Albania, are all but sure to win NATO membership at a summit starting April 2. There is consensus among NATO members that the country that calls itself the Republic of Macedonia should join, too. Having the three countries in NATO help stabilize a corner of the world torn by conflict since World War I and prevent Russia from building influence there, backers said. The U.S. is leading the effort to strengthen ``the strategic stability of the region,'' Victoria Nuland, U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in an interview in Brussels.

OFF THE SHELF; Now Comes The Tough Part In Russia The growing millions of Russian homeowners, vacationers and investors may seem inclined to authoritarianism or just apolitical. But they certainly value a strong ruble, moderate inflation, affordable mortgages, access to higher education, satellite television, Internet connections, passports, foreign visas and — above all else — no economic shocks. If Mr. Medvedev, 42, a former legal counsel at a Russian pulp conglomerate, can continue all that, and occasionally make a show of standing up to the West, he’ll be a hero, too. Still, a gigantic question mark hangs over this succession — and not solely because Mr. Putin may stick around in an ambiguous capacity. Russia stands at a crossroads bigger than the one it faced in 1998, when it drastically devalued the ruble and defaulted on its debt. That searing debacle turned out to be the prelude to a spectacular resurgence, built in part on newfound fiscal restraint and the boom in the price of oil and other natural resources. But it also was built on a relentless, China-driven rise in overall global demand that, with the cheaper ruble, helped indirectly call back from the dead Russia’s vast unused capacity inherited from the Soviet era. So after nearly 10 years of robust growth, the Kremlin faces a quandary. Expectations have been raised, and now many Russians, though wary of upsetting social stability, want not just high growth, but also a new modernization driven by innovation and broader entrepreneurialism. They want their whole country to reach a Western European standard of living — a standard that, historically, very few countries outside the region have attained. But if Russia is to make the transition to a more innovative, entrepreneurial economy, as Mr. Medvedev has stated, it must make other farsighted, complex investments in Russia’s human capital: education, health care, better conditions for private enterprise. It also requires a promised $1 trillion in new infrastructure investments — something that could lead to colossal waste and that even a well-governed country would be hard-pressed to get right.What Mr. Medvedev’s Russia needs above all, but what Russia has never had, is the one thing that distinguishes all the most highly productive and innovation-driven countries: good governance.

• Message From Russia: Stay Out The Russian Duma passes a plan banning foreign investment, with Peter Navarro, University Of California; James Moore Georgetown University and CNBCs Carl Quintanilla