The Geek Goes Off Message--Sort Of

Today the Geek read a post by a blogger for SFGate. (Sorry, the Geek lost the link, but as a button-pusher he is a fine tuba player.) The post well and truly rankled the usually easy going Geek.

In the estimate of the SFGate dude, the US and the world stand on the cusp of a genuinely world-historical moment. By this the writer meant the forthcoming election. Suffice it to aver that whatever the reasons may be, they have little if anything in common with Dr Martin Luther King's demand that Americans judge a man not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

It is true that the election of a man with a half African genome may serve to convince many Americans that the days of racism and exclusion are behind us. It is even more true that such is not the case. The celebration of the forthcoming world-historical moment is based on myth, not reality. Worse, it is a pernicious form of racism--giving a man a free pass on his character, ability, policies and proposed programs because of the color of his skin (and perhaps the charm of his smile)

The Geek will leave aside any commentary on the probable course of domestic policies under an Obama administration, particularly one backed by a solidly Democratic Congress much as he may fear the looming tidal wave of Progressive interventionism and the concomitant establishment of a run-by-the-experts "Nanny State." After all, the Geek's real area of interest and experience is foreign and national security affairs.

The bloviating Joe Biden, whose career as a "foreign policy expert" in the senate the Geek has watched with much mirth, was right when he opined that a President Obama would be tested in the first months or year in office. While contemporary public opinion polls may show that Obama is much loved outside the US and that many around the world expect that there will be vast changes in the relation between the US and other countries, there are more than a few sharp, able and sinister men waiting with long knives in hand to "test" the newby at the White House.

Even experienced and very able presidents have been tested, not by sinister design but by the normal course of world affairs. FDR was tested by the rise of expansive and aggressive Nazism. He knew he was being tested. He knew perfectly well that the Nazis represented a threat to core American strategic interests. Still, there was nothing he could do to ward the growth of the threat or even its breaking over the map of Europe with seismic force.

Harry Truman, another vastly experienced man, infinitely more experienced and able than either Senator Obama or Senator Biden, was caught flatfooted by the North Korean invasion of the south in June 1950. However, Truman's strength of character, well of experience and coterie of very able advisers allowed for the quick, effective and, in the short-term, very unpopular decision to go to war under the auspices of the United Nations.

Mr Truman's "police action" was widely condemned by the Republicans of the day. The war was unpopular--more unpopular than the Vietnam War during the worst days following Tet. It was decried as a "no-win" war, an endless war without point and without favorable result.

The long term view shows Truman was right. The war was "no-win" but, more importantly, it was the war that we did not lose. The outcome of the war established a paradigm useful today: the accomplishment of the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing."

When General Eisenhower defeated the loved one of American academics and liberals, Governor Stevenson of Illinois, those on the Left predicted horrors beyond count. The reality was different. Ike's military experience gave him both the moral authority at home and the stature overseas to take advantage of the death of Stalin and (with the accidental assistance of the South Korean government) end the Korean War.

Beyond that Ike's knowledge and ability allowed his administration to forge the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which made the Cold War years stable (most of the time). Ike was tested in Southeast Asia and the Mideast and passed the tests not with an "A" perhaps but with at least a C+.

JFK, who in comparison with Obama was quite experienced, was tested multiple times. He failed the following: The Vienna Summit, The Bay of Pigs, the war in Laos, the war in Vietnam, the Hawk missile sale to Israel. If the Soviets had not proven more responsible than the jocks of the Kennedy administration, the world would still be recovering from the very narrowly averted nuclear exchange.

Flashing forward a few years, the Geek asks, "Do you remember the vastly inexperienced one time nuclear engineer turned Georgia governor and then president?"

You got it! Jimmy Carter. He was tested. As by the coming of the Iranian Revolution. He failed. Failed badly. Sure, the Shah was a less than lovable guy. His regime did violate human rights. But, is the aftermath, the mullahocracy an improvement?

Then there was the policy wonk from Little Rock (or Hope, if you prefer his boyhood home.) He was tested too. He failed. But, foreign policy was not his thing. You might recall that he was bigger on such matters as after dark basketball, school uniforms and Monica Lewinsky. Enough said.

The blogger in SFGate wrote one thing with which the Geek agrees completely. He characterised the past eight years of Bush/Cheney/neocon ninny regime as a "fetid swamp." It has been just that--at best. The current administration was tested and failed.

It failed because of ideology and willful ignorance. The failure of the current administration has been severely negative on the US and the world.

Senator Obama has no experience. He has little noticeable positive character. He does have much ambition. He possesses much capacity at building and playing to the myth of American racism and its bright shadow, inclusiveness.

Also the Senator embodies a great body of ideology. The Geek is impressed by the degree to which Obama is a True Believer in the Western European Left Democratic Socialist world view and political agenda.

The deadly combination of a miserable deficiency in character and experience and a hyper-abundance of ideology assures that when the long knives of test are drawn and sharpened, they will plunge deeply into the senator turned president--and the United States.

That may constitute world-historical moment. But, it won't be one to celebrate.

To Tell The Truth Means To Be Attacked

Otero county is a sparsely populated area in south-central New Mexico best known as the home of the White Sands and (for those who are fans of nuclear history) Trinity Site. Other than that it is a place of nothing but miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Actually a goodly portion of the county reminds the Geek of the Arabian Peninsula and the vast emptiness of western Iraq.

Otero county is the sort of place where nothing much happens. Its major town, Alamagordo, is not noted as a culture medium for controversy.

Because of these factors the Geek was shocked when Otero county became the dateline for a series of stories relating to the presidential campaign.

It seems that Marcia Stirman, the head of the county Republican Women's Federation wrote a letter to the Alamagordo newspaper laying out nearly twenty reasons why she is a Republican. Most of them were standard conservative boilerplate regarding guns, lower taxes and personal responsibility. Totally unexceptional ya-dah, ya-dah.

She did make two statements which some have found both exceptional and objectionable. One of these was, "I believe Muslims are our enemies." The other denied that Senator Obama is "a messiah or a democrat."

Ms Stirman concluded by averring that in her view the junior Senator from Illinois is "a Muslim and a socialist."

The Geek takes the Senator at his word and accepts that he is not and never has been (at least in post-pubescence) a Muslim. The statement that the Senator is a socialist is accurate and should not disturb anyone, particularly the supporters of Mr Obama.

The Geek is unconcerned over the concluding statement in Ms Stirman's profession of faith. His interest is in her animadversion, "I believe Muslims are our enemies."

Ms Stirman's view brought a heated response from Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-islamic Relations (CAIR). He characterised the Stirman statement of opinon as "hate-filled remarks," and demanded that state and national Republican party officials "repudiate her divisive and intolerant views."

Stirman did not hang her head in shame and scuff the dust of the Otero county corral with the toe of her boot in proper aw-shucks, I've been a bad, bad girl manner. Not on your bippy. The interior decorator told the Las Cruces Sun, "...if the Islamic group doesn't like it, well, I don't like what's going on in their camp either."

OpEd News and the Huffington Post have ridden into the New Mexico desert on a search and distroy mission aimed at Ms Stirman. The posse would be joined by other stalwarts of the Left if there was time enough before the election.

Why all this concern over one woman's opinion? Why all the burrs under all sorts of saddles considering the words were in a letter to the editor in a very minor newspaper in the wide marches of a very large state?

The Geek cannot help but see this dust-up as one more sign of a very alarming and very large exercise in intellectual bankruptcy which has affected not only the US but Western Europe and other countries as well. Individually and collectively we have been and continue to be unwilling or unable to recognise that Ms Stirman's characterization of Islam is correct.

Notice. The Geek made one small but critical change in Ms Stirman's indictment. He wrote "Islam" in place of her word, "Muslims." Muslims, like members of other religions come in assorted sizes.

Some are nominal, cultural, occasional. They like their religion lite.

Other take their religion full strength. Full bore. Pedal to the metal.

The core of Islam, the Quran, the Hidith, the Sira demand that the the Message of the Prophet be taken without any dilution. The core of the belief system demands full and complete acceptance of and submission to the word of Allah as transmitted to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel. Anything less than that, anything less than the whole-hearted attempt to emulate the life of the "perfect man," Mohammad, is apostasy.

Islam admits of no compromise. It allows no adulteration. Islam is not open to attenuating interpretation. It is as harsh, stark and forbidding as the land of the desert that gave it birth.

Islam demands unending struggle against the infidels living in what the religion terms the "House of War." It demands as well an unending struggle against the apostates living in the House of Islam.

When our government searches for the "moderate" Muslim it is actually looking for the apostate. The Good, True Muslim cannot be moderate and adhere to the severe requirements of his religion.

Islam is not and cannot be as George W. Bush and other well-intentioned but totally gripless people have asserted, "the religion of peace." Peace can only come when and if the entire human race submits to the requirements of Islam. Period.

Islam, the Islam of the Quran, the Hidith, the Sira, the Islam of al-Qaeda, Taliban and the Islamists generally as well as those who quietly, tacitly offer support demands war in the name of Allah against the unbelievers, be they Christians, Jews, idolaters or whatever. Good and True Muslims accept the requirement for unending jihad against the House of War.

Islam is the unending enemy of every belief which underpins not only the West in general but the United States in particular. Islam is against all that is at the center of what makes us us. It is an enemy without rest, without mercy and without any chance of negotiated compromise.

With this as context, another question comes to mind. Why the extreme unwillingness to acknowledge the inherent hostility between Islam and us?

The short, misleading answer is political correctness. The use of this term is misleading because it ignores the historical background which resulted in the creation of the concept by those of us who came of age during the Cold War and its hot expression in Southeast Asia.

Those of us born during the Forties and Fifties spent our childhoods in the most chilling winds of the Cold War. We were indoctrinated to fear and loath the "commies." We were assured that these "commies" were the worst lying, god-hating, rape loving, freedom killing spawn of hell ever to have crept from the abysmal depths of human depravity.

It was the worst sort of rhetorical overkill. The Great Anti-Communist Crusade of the post-World War II era was overblown, overdrawn and overdone. It is small wonder that the generation which was the focus of these 'protective" actions by government, church and school reacted against the America-Is-Supremely-Good, Commies-Are-All-Evil message of our early years.

More than a few members of this generation hoped, vowed to be different from and better than their parents. This generation would not be so quick to judge. So eager to brand as evil and wrong beliefs that differed from ours. This generation would be tolerant.

No. It would be more than merely tolerant. It would be accepting. It would seek to embrace those who were different. It would welcome all views, all beliefs--even those antipodal to our own.

Can we say, "multi-culturalism?" Can we say, "cultural relativism?" Can we say, "moral relativism?"

Some of this generation, in the main those who have become members of the self-ascribed elite of politicians, journalists, academics and chattering class adherents in general went further than this. Their view became increasingly distorted as the decade of the Sixties wore on along with that long-ago, endless war in Asia and the seemingly futile struggle for economic, social, political and racial "justice" here at home.

This Amphyctony of the Disenchanted came to view America and the ideas or ideals which gave rise to the country as being inherently evil. In their eyes the US must withdraw from the world less the world suffer more from us. From their perspective the US must pay penance to the world as well as the wretched in our midst.

In sum, this Amphyctony of the Disenchanted agreed and agree with the Iranian mullahocracy: The US is the Great Satan.

This world view admits of no alternative to acceptance of the Muslim critique. It forces the conclusion that Islam is "the religion of peace," regardless of the words of the Quran, the Hidith or the life of the sociopath who elevated himself to the role of Final Prophet.

The world view of the Disenchanted provides the rich and fertile soil for the Muslim Brotherhood and its spin-offs such as CAIR to engage in the Islam-validated concept of war by "every stratagem" including lying. It demands ignoring the nature of Islam.

The Soviet Union may have lost the Cold War. The Soviet Union may exist no longer.

But, get a grip on this, the most horrible legacy of the fifty years of that "victorious" fight against the Kremlin soldiers on. The fanaticism of the counter-subversive anti-Communist Crusaders has bred another fanaticism. The convictions of the Disenchanted which open the US to a long term defeat by the Good and True Muslims marching under the sword emblazoned green banner of Islamism.

Ms Stirman's sin was recognising that--and writing it.

Poorly worded as her charge may have been, she was correct. To deny that is to claim that ignorance is bliss.

While ignorance may be blissful, it is also the door marked, "Defeat."

What Happened to the "Hidden Hand?"

Periodically, when the Geek is feeling entirely too masochistic to read the usual dull, tendentious and all-too-often agenda driven works of academic historians, he returns to his favorite piece of intellectual torture--Das Kapital. The current global exercise in the markets' version of the China Syndrome required another visit to the narrow guage view of history put forth by Karl Marx.

Showing his inherently schizoid nature, the Geek followed that excursion by reacquainting himself with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and touching base with a strong Adam Smith maven--Allan Greenspan's memoirs.

When the reading was over, the Geek was struck with a couple of salient lacks shared equally by Marx and Smith, and, of course, Greenspan--

"Wait one, Geek!" I hear you interrupting, "What do you know about micro or macro-economics, your thing is history?"

All the Geek can do is agree. The dismal science is not one with which the Geek is overly well acquainted. However, decisions about economic matters are made by human beings, by Joe the Plumber as well as the glittering elite of international finance. You have to remember that the study of history is the study of the record of human choices, good and bad. History is the sum total of all humans' hopes and fears, strengths and weaknesses, greed and altruism, all the good and evil of which people are capable.

To those exemplified by Marx, Smith and Greenspan, economic matters are strangely isolated from the realities of the human condition. Reading these men one is left with the impression that while economic imperatives operate on people, people and their choices have little to do with the processes of wealth creation, distribution and usage.

One human emotion runs through the writings of Smith and Marx as a bright thread. Greed. Both men quite explicitly acknowledge the power of greed as a motivator of economic choice. Greenspan makes the same point.

Smith and Greenspan seem to agree with the noxious character Gecko, in the movie Wallstreet, in extolling greed as a good. Marx does not share this favorable position on greed, or "self-interest," as Smith termed it.

There is a sub-text to Smith and Greenspan (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Marx.) That sub-text is that the market is inherently rational. That it is an institution of rationality based on the enlightened, knowledgeable pursuit of self-interest.

Get a grip, boys!

Humans are not primarily rational. Greed is not the primary emotion motivating decisions whether in the economic area or any of the others which comprise the human experience.

The primary emotion of humans is fear. Naked, unadulterated fear. Not anxiety. Not apprehension. Not even worry. Fear, pure and simple.

We are all born globally afraid. Life's journey consists of restraining, controlling, domesticating fear. Turning the voracious wolfpack in our guts from feral creatures eager to devour us from the inside into a useful and well tethered band of watchdogs warning us of danger.

The wolves of fear are always straining at the leashes. Always trying to break free. Always seeking a way to gnaw and yowl. We are all--each and everyone of us--fractions of a second away from being eaten alive by our fears.

Life is inherently risky. As a species we emerged to occupy a precarious ecological niche. Fear was and is necessary, utterly essential, to stay alive. Fear, like fire, is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

All human institutions have emerged to address the risks and fears of life. They all exist, all justify their existence, by how well they serve to reduce and distribute risk. By appearing to provide a reason to keep our wolf packs of fear under control.

Greed (or self-interest, if you prefer a milder term) is the flip side of fear. In a manner identical to the striving for power, status, prestige, potency, greed is a mechanism by which individual fear is addressed, the individual's risks apparently reduced.

The Democratic Socialist's call for "fairness" is an attempt to reduce risk through distribution. The more widely risks seem to be distributed among a group, the less reason exists for any individual to give free expression to fear.

The free-market capitalist's call for minimal regulation of his activities is motivated by an attempt to reduce risk through distribution. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, to reduce risk by displacement. The free-market capitalist seeks to place his individual risk onto the backs of others. To reduce his fear by transferring it to others.

The point that Smith, Greenspan and, yes, even Marx missed is simple. The capitalist is not the only or even the major risk-taker in a market oriented economy. Arguably, the worker takes a much greater risk. While the capitalist may have many places for investment (after all, distribution of money equals distribution and thus limitation of risk) the worker has only one job. Lose that and the worker loses all.

In addition to the worker, the employee of a capitalist enterprise, there are many other actors with as much at risk as the capitalist. Suppliers and customers for example. Or the town where the business is located.

Life is risky and fear is universal. It is no surprise that the capitalist, large or small, seeks to distribute risk, reduce his own vulnerabilities and keep his wolves under control. The market model might serve to be an effective way to do this, to protect and reassure not only the investor but also the worker, the buyer, the seller, and, heck, even the tax collector.

However, the market can only be both free and effective if all players, no matter what their role might be, act on the basis of equal, perfect information and with a supreme detachment from the emotions, particularly fear and its direct anodynes such as envy and greed.

Perhaps there is a world where that sort of halcyon situation exists. But, planet Earth is not to be found among their number. As a result the free-market so admired by Adam Smith and Allan Greenspan will never be a perfect or even an effective means to reduce and distribute risk--to assist us in the never ending task of keeping our wolves of fear under control.

The record of socialism whether of the European Democratic sort or Soviet style Communism is no better historically than is that of the free-market. Perfect fairness, true equality is a chimera, and a dangerous one at that.

In so far as talents, abilities and motivations of people differ, inequality and unfairness of outcome will necessarily result. In any system dedicated to the proposition that society can and should guarantee equality and fairness, some will find the loopholes.

Some will find ways and means to become somewhat more fair and equal than others. Still others will harbor bitter resentment and sour envy. We all meet our inner wolves in different ways. We all hear the warning barks of our watchdogs within differently.

History powerfully argues that the answer to economically based fears is not found in systems. Neither the hidden hand nor the government dictate can assure outcomes which are non-risky, not likely to produce fear in one form or another.

The answer, history suggests, is to be found within each and every one of us. It is to be found in how well we understand the evolutionary psychology which lies between our ears and how it expresses itself. The answer to fear is the knowledge necessary to keep a firm hand on the leash.

History teaches that when humans give in to the wolves within, they become howling beasts on two legs.

(Some) Iraqis Want US Out--

Perhaps we should oblige.

Not that long ago the current administration was talking of a prolonged American stay in Iraq. The end of US combat operations would not be synonymous with the end of US presence. John McCain and Robert Gates both made reference to the Korean analogy. Both were of the view that the situation within Iraq and adjacent states would compel the Iraqi government to acknowledge the necessity of an on-going American deployment.

The view espoused by these two men and so many others ignored the reality of history as a force in contemporary Iraqi politics. The prospect of the Iraqis accepting a prolonged US force presence with utter equanimity requires ignoring two salient features of the Iraqi experience over the past seventy-five or so years.

First, it is necessary to pretend that the British never occupied Iraq in the aftermath of World War I. Along with that it is essential to ignore the impact of the British economy-of-force approach to counterinsurgency in the Twenties.

Dubbed by the responsible officials of HMG, "The Imperial Policing Scheme," this product of cheapness and enthrallment with advanced technology employed bombers against insurgents. Well, not the trigger-pullers exactly, more like their families. Bombing villages and nomadic camps might have been a cheap way of killing Iraqis and it even might have played some role in ending the resistance to the British military occupation.

It sure as hell left a foul cloud in the memories of Iraqis generally. The foul cloud was renewed year to year in the Iraqi educational system in the long years following the withdrawal of HM Forces after World War II. No matter who wears the uniform, the Iraqi view is that foreign military forces are occupation forces. Period.

The second feature of the recent Iraqi experience focuses on the role of the minority Sunni population during both the occupation period and the years of Baathist rule. The Sunnis became the chosen "native" component of the on-the-cheap British semi-Raj. They kept this favored position during the short-lived post-war monarchy and expanded it during the Baathist decades.

Shiites have a sneaking suspicion that the Americans would compel or inveigle a recapitulation of this past Sunni supremacy if given sufficient time. Certainly the American views of secular, multi-party democracy fueled this suspicion.

The most obvious exponents of a hidden American agenda to restore the Sunnis to former power are those such as al-Sadr. But, he and his more-or-less pro-Iranian ilk are far from the only Shiites who harbor the sneaking fear that given sufficient time the Americans can and will reduce the Shite majority to their former powerlessness.

More cynically, it is payback time from a Shiite perspective. The American shadow might fall across the bright goal of Sunni squashing.

Whether one takes the cynical view or not, the end result is the same. The Shiite majority sees itself repressed and stripped of its freedom of action by any long term US presence.

Freedom of Shiite action is encoded in the constant refrain of "protect our sovereignty."

Freedom of Shiite action is behind the willingness of the Kurds to keep the Americans around. Of course the Kurds would be better off if the US left. They have the political coherence and military capacity to carve out and defend an economically viable Kurdistan. But, a rational appraisal of risks suggests to many, if not all, Kurd leaders that taking a pro-US stance at the moment is the better option.

So, where are the Sunnis in all this?

It would seem to be in the better interests of the Sunnis to keep the Americans around. They are quite aware that payback is a medivac and the inhibitory effects of the US forces would lessen the risks of a possible Shiite Night of Very Long Knives.

Many Sunni politicos and (more importantly) tribal leaders are quietly in favor of a continued US presence perhaps without time limits. But, even with self-interest involved, Sunnis remember the Imperial Policing Scheme. They were primary targets of the lumbering biplane bombers of the day. The idea of occupation rests heavily on their minds, no less than it does on the Shiites.

Perhaps the time has come to take the Iraqis at their word. Iraq is their country. The Iraqis, whether in government or not, must decide if they want a unitary state even if it is populated by three not completely compatible "nations."

The Iraqi political/religious leaders must know that they have two alternatives. One is a unitary state complete with messy compromises of power and revenue sharing. The other is fragmentation complete with proxy war as Iran sides with Shiites and Sunni Arab states move to "protect" their Sunni Arab Iraqi comrades.

The second option would not fit well with the grandiose goals of nation-building so often and loudly proclaimed by the current administration, but would it impair core US national or strategic interests?

No. Probably not. Unless one wishes to posit that the price of oil is a or the core US interest. We have accomplished the minimum necessary strategic goal. We have assured that the opposition can't declare a military victory over us. We cannot "not-lose" in Iraq.

Perhaps we should accept that standing down our military efforts on the expiration of the current UN mandate is an acceptable option. We could use the next few weeks to do two things: Wait for the Iraqis to re-evaluate their stance on our presence and start packing for an orderly exit.

An exit and redeployment to Afghanistan. Afghanistan, a place where we can still loose.

Poverty, Foreign Aid--and Slavery

Last Friday marked the UN decreed international day for the eradication of poverty. How did you commemorate the great event?

The Geek marked the moment by reading. He read on both the history of US foreign aid and the internal economic and social impact of the international slave trade on Africa.

He was struck by the similarities.

The international traffic in human beings conducted by Europeans and Americans as well as by Arabs had the effect of severely distorting the long standing organic African economic and social/political institutions. The distortions came as the direct and predictable introduction of foreign products ranging from horses to alcohol, guns to cheap textiles.

The ready market created in Africa assured a profitable "dumping" ground for goods that were unwanted in domestic markets due to their obsolescence, shoddiness or general undesirability. At the same time the ending of the slave trade required Africans to develop alternative means of purchase.

As a result indigenous agricultural practices were bent to the task of producing commodities desired by the outsiders. This, in turn, demanded an increase in domestic slavery to provide the labor necessary to meet the new requirements of export oriented production.

Agricultural products were joined by the output of extractive industries such as gold, diamonds, wild rubber and forest products. Colonial regimes encouraged and protected the already extant coercive labor practices instituted by the native elites.

The economic, political and social effects of these distortions last until the present day.

Even the most cursory appreciation of the overall effects of foreign aid as granted by the US and other countries in the post-World War II period leads to the conclusion that this well-intentioned(?) aid had the same impact on the recipients as slavery did upon Africa.

Foreign aid in a large measure ties the recipient country to the economy of the donor. The vast majority of grants require the recipient to purchase the output of the donor country. Loans require repayment. Repayment requires foreign exchange. Foreign exchange requires the production of something that is marketable.

Lets see. I give (or loan) you money. You have to spend all or most of the money on things I make. Then, to repay loans you have to produce something that I want to buy. At prices I want to pay.

That sounds good to me. Even if it doesn't to you.

Globalization has exacerbated the problem for recipient nations. The World Bank, the IMF and other multi-lateral "lenders" have demanded ever greater control over the economic and political decision making of recipient nations. Sometimes that control crosses the border into a flat-out dictatorial regime conducted by and for outsiders.

The creating of demand within a society is a deadly weapon. Market demands which do not arise organically but rather are created artificially from outside a society have the historically demonstrated capacity to transmogrify that society, its economy and its polity.

The binding of a society to the "global" economy for whatsoever reason, even the High Minded one of "eradicating poverty," is inherently dangerous.

Yes, the binding may work. It may improve the well-being of people beyond the elite of a particular nation. It may allow for more people to buy more seeming essentials, the 21st century equivalents of the cheap textiles, shoddy ironmongery and weapons of the African experience in the 16th to 19th centuries.

Whether that sort of increased purchasing power is a good thing for people is an open and arguable question. But, it does constitute the least-worst outcome of both globalization and foreign aid.

The historical record as well as contemporary developments demonstrate that the roster of outcomes can get far worse. The bondage of a society to either the interests of a generous donor country or a multi-lateral institution such as the World Bank and IMF can result in the political, cultural and environmental impoverishment of the majority of the society's members no matter how much the elite may benefit. This, in turn, has the strong, (the Geek is tempted to write "inevitable") potential of leading to armed political dissent.

Then there is the question of just what constitutes "poverty?"

The Geek is congniscent of the purchasing power parity metric which is commonly employed to define poverty. He is also well aware of standard pap of equating a daily expenditure level of so many US dollars per day and the accompanying allegation that too few bucks per day spent by the average inhabitant of Lower Slobovia or Eastern Fartistan constitutes "poverty."

The Geek has personally witnessed severe deprivation by more valid standards than those thrown about by advocates of the Millenium Development Goals beloved by the UN and its legion of High Minded supporters. He has seen misery far more basic than any which can be expressed by purchasing power parity artifacts.

He has seen some of the worst of the wretchedness and life threatening deprivation in countries spread from Africa to Latin America which have been the "beneficiaries" of foreign aid largess and globalization oriented investment programs.

The Geek has seen the effects of misplaced faith in the elevating potential of foreign aid and foreign investment. He has seen them in the disruption of communities, value and ways of living that have successfully withstood generations, centuries of the normal stresses, common uncertainties and accustomed viscisitudes of life.

The more one acquaints himself with the effects of the slave trade and its aftermath on Africa the more one sees the similarities--the identies--with the impact of foreign aid and globalization.

What this suggests is simple.

It is wrong headed to the maximum for the US or any wealthy nation to be stampeded into signing on to ambitious High Minded efforts to eradicate poverty thoughout the world. The road to hell is not so much paved by good intentions as it is mandated by the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Get a firm grip on history. What happened centuries ago in Africa; what has been happening in much of the world including Africa over the past half century shows what will happen--on steroids--in the future under the impetus of the Global Poverty Act currently pending before the US Senate and similar proposals of expanded financial redistribution.

Sometimes The British Are So Annoying

Dame Stella Remington the former head of the Security Service (MI 5 for those who like spooky numbers instead of bureaucratic names) has gone on record lambasting the US for "overreacting" to the attacks of 9/11. In her considered opinion we should have sent a bobby or two to arrest the miscreants rather than announce a "War on Terrorism."

In her interview with the Guardian she took the position that the mass killings of 11 September 01 were just one more terrorist act, not unlike the many, many to which the British public had been exposed to during the long years of tumult and violence emanating from Northern Ireland;

Our "huge overreaction" and consequent treatment of the event as an act of war rather than one more boringly familiar challenge for law enforcement "wrong footed" the entire effort to counter the acts of terror. Her stance was echoed by Sir Ken MacDonald, the country's top prosecutor.

The Geek is no fan of the current administration's Great Global War on Terror for many reasons all of which have been adduced in previous posts. He does agree with the decision by the denizens of the Oval and adjacent regions to consider the attack by manned (and involuntarily crewed) cruise missiles on targets in two American cities to have constituted an act of war committed by foreign actors with a foreign base.

When foreigners mount an armed attack resulting in thousands of American deaths, it does not matter if the attackers are called the Imperial Japanese Navy or al-Qaeda. It does not matter if their home base is the Empire of Japan or Afghanistan.

It would have been no more proper to send J. Edgar Hoover and a posse of Feebs to arrest Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese Emperor in December 1941 than to dispatch the cops to arrest Osama and Omar nearly sixty years later.

Get a grip on the real world, Dame Stella: Armed attacks by foreign actors constitute an act of war under international law as well as in the pages of history.

When terror attacks have been executed by individuals resident in or native to the US the Federal law enforcement and judicial authorities have a good record. Just in case you were preoccupied by such matters as dealing with the Provos or planning the beginnings of the most surveiled society outside of Singapore, Dame Stella, allow the Geek to remind you of the aftermath of the first attack on the World Trade Center or what happened following the truck bombing of the Federal Center in Oklahoma City.

Dame Stella, Sir Ken, please note that in those cases and many of similar nature the requirements of due process were followed closely and carefully. Police and prosecutors acted with utter professionalism and propriety. No rights were violated. No shortcuts in appeals were taken.

The Geek agrees that the current administration erred and erred badly with secret detentions, intensive interrogation authorization, the construction of the micro-Gulag at Gitmo and the repugnant Military Commission approach to dispensing justice. He is also of the view that the British surveillance society is violative of basic rights--most importantly the right to privacy, which means the right to be left alone.

The Geek also recalls that the British security forces both civilian and military were less than jealous protectors of rights, due process and psychic equanimity when dealing with the far less lethal even if more pervasive terrorist acts in Northern Ireland. It sticks in the Geek's memory that there was little to choose between today's Gitmo and HM Maze Prison twenty-five or so years ago. He also is reminded that many of the intensive interrogation methods were employed in North Ireland by HM security and military personnel including sleep deprivation, stress positions and extreme environmental stressors.

Let's cut to the chase, Dame Stella, Sir Ken. If the US had not committed the Mother of All Blunders of invading Iraq so that the Afghanistan operation could have been conducted as a quick and relatively clean punitive expedition, you would not be casting stones today.

Casting stones while forgetting that your country's recent history demonstrates that you both live in a glass house.

Big Shock! NATO "Wavers" In Afghanistan

Gen John Craddock, the commander of US European Command and the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, laid it on the line in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK. Bluntly, accurately and quite undiplomatically, the General took the position that the political leadership of many (unnamed) NATO members lacked the political will to carry through the effort in Afghanistan.

He particularly took after those countries whose politicos will not allow their forces to serve in the southern, danger-rich portion of the country. He pointedly observed that only a few countries joined with the US in actively taking the war to Taliban and al Qaeda trigger pullers. He specifically mentioned the British, Dutch and Canadian formations.

General Craddock didn't note that Taliban was quite capable of carrying the war and its attendant risks to the troops up north in the "safe" part of Afghanistan. As news out of the Land of Rocks, Mountains and Suicide Bombers showed today, even the danger averse German contingent could be placed in mortal peril. (Two Deutscher truppen KIA.)

There is no surprise in the risk reluctance of many NATO governments. In the whoop and holler days immediately following 9/11 none of the politicians who rushed to the support of the US really expected that the war would last the best part of a decade with no end in sight. Neither did, the Geek is certain, any of the senior military commanders of any of the NATO states including the US.

On paper the operation looked to be a quick, clean, low body count punitive operation. Perhaps some politicians and even a few commanders thought about the days after the victory celebration, but the conventional Western wisdom would not have been far afield of that shown in the US by the Cheney-Bush administration.

The Afghan population liberated from the Taliban oppressors were supposed to rise up from the rubble of "shock and awe" eager to embrace secular, liberal, pluralistic democracy and its handmaiden, a regulated, honest, free market economy.

Now that the truth of the Afghan historical and cultural context as well as complications such as opium and Pakistani border sanctuaries have sunk in, whatever political will which may have existed in various European capitals and politically articulate elites has long left. Long gone with the realisation that the government of Karzai is both corrupt and inefficient, the Taliban is far more integrated with and sensitive to the population and, bluntly, the Afghan population loves democracy and secularism about as well as Dracula loves holy water.

In terms of building a modern nation replete with Western European or American style institutions Afghanistan is and always has been a lost cause. In terms of defeating Taliban and its ilk militarily, the question is still open but the answer continues to tilt in favor of the black turbans.


As has been posted repeatedly here the contest between insurgent and counterinsurgent is one finally of political will. The side that is willing to spend time and accept casualties will prevail over the side that seeks to save time and lives. In Afghanistan the insurgents have always been ahead in that critical category.

Western nations, including the US, have a rather poor record in counterinsurgency over the past century or so. True both the British and the Americans have won a few, but the other NATO members either have a losing record (think France for example) or have not played the game.

Western political elites by and large lack the stomach for counterinsurgency. They cannot accept as justifiable in either policy or moral terms the waste of time, resources and lives. They cannot accept the inevitable cost of lives in the civilian population living in the area of operations.

The military leaders of the relevant NATO nations must now follow up on the honesty of General Craddock. They must tell their political masters in no uncertain terms that more boots must be placed on the ground in harm's way and more bodies in bags must be accepted in order that the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing" might be achieved.

Why?

Simple. Any odor of military defeat to the purportedly strongest military coalition on earth would serve to embolden those hostile entities which hope to displace Europe and the US from their global leadership position. Beyond that the failure to accomplish the minimum strategic goal would undercut the credibility and thus the existence of NATO as a military and diplomatic entity.

To put it simply, a military loss in Afghanistan would serve to so completely discredit NATO as a credible instrument of power that its members would be effectively emasculated in the games of global power.