A guest editorial

The following is an editorial written by a colleague of mine. Give it a read, give it a thought, and whatever conclusions you reach, please vote. This is your chance to be part of the process...and a lot of people in this nation's history have given greatly so that you and I can have that right today. Use it.

**************

I believe that the President has been horribly wrong in both his planning and execution of the mission in Iraq, the war on terror, and the mission here at home. For the past five years I worked in Washington DC for a wide range of federal, DOD, intelligence, and commercial clients - trying to help them understand, plan, and respond to the complex strategic challenges they faced. My team worked on everything from wargaming homeland security threats, to developing real rapid response plans for drug delivery in the face of a pneumonic plague attack, to integrating operations planning for National Missile Defense. We also helped the Army game out what threats might exist in 2020 and authored the final report issued by the Hart-Rudman commission on national security. In short, I worked closely with the people whose expertise EVERY administration needs to keep America secure.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has deliberately marginalized the very people who know the most about counter-terrorism, global diplomacy, and military planning. These folks (within DOD, the intelligence agencies, and the State Department) are not all a bunch of bleeding heart liberals - many of them are dyed in the wool conservative republicans who were overjoyed when Bush won the election. Unsurprisingly, most if not all of my former clients are quietly revolting against their political masters. The reason is simple. These hard working civil servants within the military, intelligence, and federal agencies are worried that the President has opened a Pandora's box with his ill conceived policies of pre-emption and unilateral action. These policies are giant shifts away from how the US has led the world for the past sixty years, and they have decreased our global prestige, influence, and security. In fact a coalition of senior policymakers and military leaders from across the political spectrum has come together to articulate their opposition to the foreign policy of this administration, and to explain how the current administration has put all American?s at greater risk.

One example of the administration?s short term thinking is reflected in Afghanistan. If something does not change (meaning security and real economic aid) - Afghanistan will again be a failed state in 18 months. The optimism expressed by this administration in Afghanistan is simply not justified by the facts. The drug lords are back, security for aid groups and citizens remains sketchy outside of major cities, and the central government has little real power. Afghanistan is case study in failure, not hope. The planners for Afghanistan were not allowed to present the real costs of stabilizing the country along with a timetable to secure the peace because Iraq was on deck. Those individuals that spoke out were told to shut up and sit down because Pakistan and the Northern Alliance would make our jobs easier. Once any and all criticism was silenced, the required planning for securing the country, disarming the population, and moving towards reconstruction and maintenance operations was shelved. No one within the planning community is surprised by the ongoing violence, resurgence of the Taliban, and record opium crop. These are simply the results of not being permitted to plan for the peace, because there was a rush to shift resources and capital to Iraq.

Unfortunately, this recipe of political expediency trumping the need for critical analysis and planning was repeated for Iraq. The only difference was that a number of senior officers raised their voices in an effort to ensure that the US did not win a battle, but lose the war. Individuals like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki were actively punished for providing honest assessments about what was needed to wage war and achieve peace in Iraq. General Shinseki?s estimate that we needed between 200,000 and 300,000 troops has been validated by war planners and experts across the services. More importantly, the estimates he provided were the result of years of study. The military plans for every contingency, and there was a real plan on file for invading, stabilizing, and rebuilding Iraq if the US was ever threatened. That plan had been tested over a number of years with the participation of the military services and the intelligence community. The current administration ignored those experts in an effort to sell the war to the public, arguing that large numbers of troops and extensive preparations were unnecessary because the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. When individuals like Gen. Shinseki did their duty in speaking truth to power, they were castigated as unpatriotic and uninformed.

The hubris and lack of perspective of this administration are directly responsible for many of the miscalculations not just in Iraq, but in the war on terror. One simple example is Pakistan. President Musharraf has been given complete freedom to manipulate the US. The Bush administration allowed him to outlaw and ultimately jail all opposition candidates and parties, except the Islamic extremists that have infiltrated his army and intelligence services. The result has been an inability to apply real pressure for cooperation in eastern Pakistan. President Bush and his advisers set all of this in motion when they lifted sanctions against Pakistan in exchange for vague promises of cooperation. If the President had listened to any of the experts at the Defense Intelligence Agency, State Dept., or even the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, they would have been told how such plans would alienate the Indian government (the sole democracy in the region), embolden extremists within Pakistan, worsen the risks of proliferation, and curtail our strategic options. But none of the people who have spent their lives studying this region were consulted. Such myopia is par for the course in this administration, and I believe it comes from an inability to walk in anyone else's shoes. I do not believe our country can afford such ignorance much longer.

Many people have argued that President Bush has the right argument about taking the offensive against terrorism. Such language makes a wonderful sound bite, but it conceals a failed policy that relies almost entirely on conventional military action. Our enemies are non-state actors committed to asymmetric warfare. That warfare depends on fresh recruits, a global finance system, and continued political repression in the middle east. As long as Egypt annually receives billions of dollars in US aid that is then used to help suppress the Egyptian people (often with US weapons and training); and the sole form of permissible political protest is burning the American flag, there will be more people willing to die than we can ever deter, kill, or capture. The same pattern of repression and exportation of extremism is going on in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and many of our other ?allies? in the middle east. We do need to attack the leadership nodes of terrorist organizations, but we also need to drain the camps of volunteers. Our ?allies? in the middle east are helping grow more extremists than we can ever bomb out of existence.

We need a different strategy, one that leverages alliances across the globe to enlarge the problem and engages allies in law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and when appropriate, military activities. Al Qaeda is supposedly active in over 60 countries. We cannot invade or even conduct operations in all 60, because there is no more slack left in our military network. There is an acute lack of air and sea lift, and frankly there are no more ready divisions to send. And all the predator drones in the world don't equal a platoon of marines on patrol, delivering food, guarding an ammo dump, or simply controlling an area.

Winning the war on terror isn't about pre-emptive military strikes, its about shutting down illegal global financial networks that enable terrorists, developing new sources of human intelligence, actually processing and sharing the intelligence we do have, and yes hunting down and killing the terrorists. But the majority of all this work is not glamorous, and does not require M1 tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Most of it is grinding out solutions day in and day out: sharing and analyzing intelligence among US and allied agencies, tracking and freezing terrorist funding across international boundaries, and conducting joint simultaneous counter-terrorism operations. To succeed in all of these endeavors we need allies who trust us and are willing to share the burden in this fight. Right now, its clear that the US is bearing ninety percent of the burden in both the financial and human costs of this war. This must change. No economy, no society, no matter how successful, can continue to pay such a high price in blood and treasure.

In the end, I don't think the President understands how crippling his policies have been, and as such he has no hope of changing course. And not changing course will prove much worse than 9/11 ever was. I believe that John Kerry understands all of these issues and can succeed in getting the allies we need on board. Kerry will have plenty of chips to trade with- with most of Bush's unilateral policies on the line. And let's not forget that our traditional allies want us to lead. Kerry can remind them of the successful disruption of the millennium plots, when European and US investigators shared information to thwart a number of planned attacks across the globe. Both Europe and the US need to return to a similar multi-pronged strategy, where intelligence and diplomacy help generate and support successful counter-terrorism operations. Ultimately, our allies in Europe and Asia want us to succeed in both Iraq and against Al Qaeda - we just need to give them something that makes sense and that they can explain to their people. In my mind, Kerry's capabilities in this regard make him a clear choice.

---

Updateville

Ack. After several weeks of diligent posting, I've fallen a bit off track again. It's been somewhat intentional and somewhat unintentional. The latter is a result of being a little busier with various things, and the former is a result of my horrid tendency to start narrating everything I do in my head as if I were preparing a blog post. It happens when I start posting too frequently, so I'll back off for a while until I stop.

Today marks an unfortunate event: I am breaking my commitment to make it all semester without missing a single class. I suppose it's not entirely lamentable as a) I'm rather sick and staying home seemed the only wise thing to do--at least until the fever subsides, and b) I'm doing it with gusto, since today is the only day in which all four of my classes meet and I'm missing all of them.

I hate being sick. (Wow, the Sudafed must be intensely affecting my brain, as that was the most banal statement of the obvious.) Being sick during school is much less fun than being sick during work--with the latter, it's much easier to push the work that isn't being done out of your mind and languish in the day off with little guilt. During school, though, there's the constant specter of the Work That Should Be Done hanging over your head the whole time you're attempting to nap or watch movies. I actually thought about going to most of my classes today, but the wise Captain Chaos reminded me last night that getting behind is inevitable while sick in school. As such, I have two choices: to get a day behind while I take a day and let myself get well, or to get substantially behind as I plug along at subpar performance and let the virus fun continue to linger for weeks. I chose the option that left me less behind and meant I got to sleep all day today.

Last night, the very darling new fella came over and made me matzo ball soup. I'm quite impressed with the soup's seemingly medicinal qualities, not to mention the incredible sweetness of the gesture. Hee...boys are nice.

Oh, if you have a second and a bit of extra cash, one of my favorite websites (Tomato Nation) is pooling reader resources to fund teacher initiatives through Donorschoose.org. Obviously, you can always go to the Donors Choose site and give to whatever initiative you like, but the TN readership is so huge that the collective effort has managed to plow through 4 initiatives since Sunday and is half-way through the 5th as I write this. Cool stuff--teachers in Brooklyn who request things for their classes. Anyway, go here if you have an extra $10 to help a class go visit the aquarium, buy a computer, etc.

Oh my goodness, this post is even boring me and I'm writing it. That's the news, folks. More interesting things to come at some point. I promise.

No Mention Left Unmade

You may have noticed the absence of a notes transcript from the third and final presidential debate. Sorry to disappoint, but I just couldn’t be arsed to do it. Face it, this debate was boring. My network connection was faking seizures (which, by the way, you might be surprised to hear was an incredibly common practice among patients I saw during my time as an EMT. Well, that, and me getting halfheartedly punched by patients. Good times.) so I gave up on keeping up with Kit’s comments. Looking back over them this morning (admittedly, during Property—sorry Ellen Katz, it has nothing to do with my undying affection for you) I see that she was actually pretty evenhanded, sparing no expense to lambaste Bush for his incessant and bizarre mentions of the phrase “liberal senator from Massachusetts.”

So no transcript, but a thought or two here nonetheless.

If I get really bored this weekend, I’ll spin through the whole transcript of the debate and nail down exactly how many times Bush invoked the Power of No Child Left Behind. Which…weird. My brow folds into three distinct furrows on this one.

Furrow, the first: I feel like there was one, maybe two of the dozen or so times her used this that were actually on-point. As for the rest—I don’t know. Was this the part of the talking points to which he gave the most attention in the limo on the way over? It seemed like there may have been an off-camera moment with a few staffers where one of them, riddled with fear that the previous hours of briefing may have been for naught, grabbed Bush’s sleeve and said something to the effect of “look, if you get in trouble, just go back to NCLB…it’s a homerun.” Bush, feeling suddenly at ease with the unexpected presence of a baseball analogy, spent the rest of the walk to the studio thinking about how he’d really like to take in some of the playoff games in person this year, and by god he’s the Friggin’ Commander in Chief, and as such should totally be able to order such a thing to happen.

Furrow, the second: NCLB is a bad piece of legislation. Though the general idea—that we should overhaul the education system such that it does a better job of yielding full classes of educated children—is good, the aims and intentions are far too broad to be accomplished in a single piece of legislation. Couple that with the clumsy and inappropriate ways it attempts to go about such sweeping change and, well…we’re all sitting with a watermelon on our laps and Bush just told us jumping up from the chair is a patriotic thing to do. It’s not—the watermelon will break. This initiative is under funded (more on that in Furrow, the third), requires a ridiculous amount of standardized testing, and holds schools unfairly accountable for the results of said testing.

But I’m not disappointed by NCLB, because I don’t think it was ever intended to be successful. Not really. I think it was a happy way to take one of the big issues on election-2000 voters’ minds and wrap it in a neat package, tie it with a prettily-named bow, and send it on into the world.

Furrow, the third: I have to believe that, at some point in the task of debriefing him, one of Bush’s staffers had the onerous task of suggesting he, ah, might…you know, might spend a leetle less time harping on NCLB for the rest of the campaign, given that it was wildly shortchanged on funds. I envy that staff member’s task in the same way that I envy methadone addicts. Still, it was an important job, because really. Kerry pounced all over that one, and rightly so…the funding shortfall is somewhere between $6-7B. In the Bush spectrum of Things We Like to Pay For and Things We Don’t, it seems child welfare—both basic and educational—doesn’t fare as well as, say, ethanol subsidies when it comes time to write the checks.

So…why bring up an ill-planned and under funded initiative at every turn? I suppose the reality for this administration is that domestic issues have gone to lunch at the shit-sandwich cafeteria while the war toils along, and in a format where the focus is declaredly domestic there aren’t a lot of options. He couldn’t very well have stood there and listed all the ways in which his office has let the American people down but gee, whiz, they have some ideas to do better next time—in addition to being a woefully weak speaking position, Bush has now twice reminded us (vociferously) that he hasn’t made any mistakes in all four years in office. Sigh.

Please, vote for Kerry next month. And if you’re in Michigan, vote no on Prop 2. And if you’re the guys who live across the street, stop bellowing “YEAH..”

Bring it, Kit

I started listening to the debate tonight on the radio--no TV in the apartment (no, I'm not one of those...I just feel that the act of paying for cable while in my first year of law school is an unwise turning of the knob to the door of Things That Prevent Work From Happening). About 20 minutes into the thing, I happened upon a live webcast with commentary from NYTimes political correspondent Katharine "Kit" Seelye. Her comments, as you'll see below, were consummately annoying in their unabashed Bush-loving ways. While watching/reading, I (dorkily, I know) decided to start taking notes in case I decide to write anything more formal about this one. We'll see on that, but here are my notes in the (possibly everlasting) meantime--be advised that I, unlike Kit, am not performing in any sort of allegedly balanced capacity here:

Oh no he di-unt…Just. Say. “Internets.” “I hear there’s [sic] rumors on the internets….” [emphasis added]. Way to out yourself as an idiot in the first 15.

Who the hell is doing Bush’s media training? Why hasn’t anyone told him to stop saying “’member” when he means “remember”? What’s with the cadence that, within the first 15 minutes of the debate, makes him sound exasperated and out of control? What. The. Hell. With cutting off the moderator in an apparent frenzy?

Uh…who cares if the National Journal named “Senator Kennedy” the most liberal senator? Get your shit straight, Bush.

What’s the deal with beating the tax cut drum? “Everybody got a tax cut.” Yeah, well, now everyone has a deficit. Go figure, we have to have money to pay for things. It’s so crazy that way.

Hrm. “Not going to run up taxes that will cost this country jobs.” I see how well the tax cuts worked for job creation. Let’s do more of that, hmm?

I love you, Kerry. The percentage distribution of the tax cuts is a nice way to corner Bush. Keep tossing it out there.

Hey, Kit Seelye—your commentary? Uh-sucks. Stop being such a little Bush-hugger and comment on the thing in a legitimate way. Liberal media bias my ass.

Oh, Kerry….just say it like the Mormon kid wanted you to say it. Don’t talk to the camera with anything else. He gave you a straightforward, though admittedly weird, way to just be simple. Take it. TAKE IT.

I will give Bush $18 if he knows what credible means.

Hey, George—look at the goddamn lights to know when your time is up. Riffing with Charlie is just stupid.

Ooh…way to name drop McCain, Kerry. Nice one.

Oh, for fuck’s sake—lay off the “he’s just not credible” line. It’s so dumb. There are many studies to show that the excessive repetition of a word correlates directly with the speaker’s lack of understanding of the meaning of the word.

Increase the wetlands by three million….what? We often like to clarify the numbers we toss out with units. Helps a bit.

Bush, you did not propose the hydrogen automobile. And no one, NO ONE, would say you are a good steward of the land. Not even your mom.

Ohh…snap. The EPA resignation was a cool detail here. I love you, John Kerry.

Okay, Kit, we have a date outside after this is over. What the fuck with giving a friendly chin-tickle to Bush for his retarded “he looked at me like my clock was up” jibe and panning Kerry for the Sox joke? Both were dumb, but play fair here, kiddo.

Is “I have a plan” the “I have a dream” of 2004? Starting to sound like it.

“I really don’t think your rights are being watered down.” Um…way to get friendly with the questioner. Apparently, he does--really--think that or he wouldn’t have asked it. The question was, if memory serves “why are my rights being watered down?” not “do you think my rights are being watered down?”

Kit, where are you? Stay quick here, cookie.

Oh man, as much as I totally get where Kerry’s going with the stem cell stuff, I don’t think he’s going to pull anyone along with this.

Heh, clearly the stem cell thing makes both of them damp under the collar. We just saw two sets of momentum fall flat on the carpet and roll somewhere near Charlie’s feet with this one.

Gah, this “destroy life” tack is so fucking annoying. Did no one hear Kerry point out (rightly) that the embryos used in embryonic stem cell research are obtained from fertility clinics, and that they are embryos which would otherwise remain frozen indefinitely or destroyed.

WHOA. Bush’s SCOTUS pick would be someone who strictly interprets the Constitution? Oh, most of you probably missed the part he mumbled under his breath, which was: except when it comes to my own lawsuit that will allow me to steal an election. Then I don’t so much want the Constitution stuff to play.

Bush, don’t try to quote the Constitution. I think what you were looking for here was “all men are created equal,” which is actually the Declaration of Independence. Most of us know that one. [post-debate edit—actually, fact-index.com tells me this is the single most widely-known political phrase in any of America’s political documents. Hee.]

That was a pretty skillful way, Kerry, to talk about condom distribution without actually saying “condom.”

“Maternity Group Homes”?!?! What. The. Fuck.

Kit makes a good point in her otherwise entirely useless commentary—current law prevents federal money from being spent on abortion. So really, this was a dumb question to allow on the floor. Facilities that provide abortions can receive federal funds for other services they provide—you know, like wellness exams, immunizations, things that totally and utterly are connected to abortion. Except not at all.

Bush can’t think of any mistakes he’s made. But Kerry can!

Oh Bush, I’d say calling others out on their odd word choices isn’t a stone you have to throw here. Let me direct you back to the Fool-me-once-what-the-fuck quagmire. Also the “of course we’re after Saddam Hussein—I mean bin Laden” snafu of late.

This is getting ridiculous

An open letter to the University of Texas:

I do not attend your institution. I have never enrolled in a course of study at your institution. I did not accept your offer of admission, as noted when I expressly and explicitly stated my intent to accept neither said offer nor an offer of financial aid in a letter dated April 12, 2004. It follows, then, that the barrage of student-oriented mail I continue to receive from various factions of your educational body are entirely unwanted.

Specifically, I do not want to buy season football tickets. I do not need freshman orientation materials. I do not have any interest in the variety of housing options available to UT students, nor am I interested in special Longhorn sheets to put on a Longhorn bed. Perhaps most of all, I do not appreciate the daily loan solicitation I received for the duration of the summer from Austin financial institutions who were quick to congratulate me on my matriculation at the University of Texas (see paragraph 1).

Please, stop writing.

love,
Salle

We click because we care

My new favorite flash thingamabob. I have not the words.

Also, I would like to clarify that it was not arse racing that almost made me late for Property this morning. No, it wasn't. However, I hear betting on the underdog gets you nothing, and the post-race music is trippy.

If artichokes get their own month

There are many things to get upset about in one’s day-to-day goings-on—large scale, small scale, everything in between. More often than not, I find, the source of the upset can be traced back, in some way, to someone who has chosen to be an asshole. Maybe that’s not correct—I think there are some people who can’t help it, in the same way that some people can’t help it that their toes point in (although that really freaks me out if I think about it too much). So let me revise: the source of daily upset can be traced to a causative factor, which is often a person, that includes assholery in some form.

It’s easy to get angry at them, to say “boy, I sure hate those assholes.” Even though it doesn’t change anything specific about the situation, I often feel like I make some sort of progress in a global sense by directing my vitriol in the offending asshole’s direction. I’m sure I’m not alone…in fact, I happen to know for a fact that you, no, YOU, yeah…my site meter shows me who’s reading this…I mean, noooo, no, the other you, yes, you felt the same way this morning about that one thing. We talked about it on the phone. That.

But sometimes, we may go too far. Sometimes, we may exceed the threshold for being angry at the situation the assholery has created and we put all our force into being angry at the asshole. And I’d like to advocate that we not only stop this practice, but that we commemorate this portion of society with October 4: Assholes Are People, Too, Day.

Because they are people, too. And we should celebrate them. So to you, assholes of the world, I present your very own day. I salute you.

If you park over the line just enough to make two spaces perform as one just so no one will ding your door, I salute you. If you cross through an intersection when there isn’t room for your car on the other side, thus creating a barricade of Ford across the intersection when the light changes and leaves you stranded, I salute you.

If you’re a smug, underachiever who uses details about other people’s lives as currency in casual conversation, I salute you. If you undertip waitpersons while whining about the way you totally deserve more money at your own paper-pushing job, I salute you. If you lead someone on while concealing your current long-term relationship, I salute you. If you push a relationship to move at a breakneck pace while complaining to your friends about how serious your new partner wants everything to be, I salute you.

If you knowingly walk away from a working toilet in a public restroom without flushing, I salute you. If you go commando and try on tight-fitting pants in a fitting room at a store where other people might one day shop and even buy, I salute you.

If you derive your politics solely from Fox News and delight in the way your hate-speak makes thoughtful people cringe, I salute you. If you voted for Bush in the last election and are thrilled to lather-rinse-repeat the same mistake all over again in a month, I salute you. If you think Ann Coulter is a nice gal and people should stop giving her such a hard time, I salute you.

If you use a thesis-less war to manipulate the fears of your constituents while squandering the goodwill this country has enjoyed for the past two decades and aim the rest of your efforts at effectively denying the control people have over the goings-on of their own bedrooms or uteruses, I didn’t vote for you before, I don’t plan to vote for you next month, but I’m thrilled you’re reading my site and hope you enjoy the archives.

If you sneeze vigorously in a theater without covering your mouth such that your sneeze lands on the hair and neck of the person in front of you, I salute you. If you walk with your friends three abreast such that you occupy the entire sidewalk and do so slowly, I salute you.

If you shout at the top of your lungs every afternoon while watching sports on TV in an apartment with thin walls, I salute you. If you offer unsolicited advice to people while they smoke/eat/workout, I salute you. If you steal magazines from the dentist’s office, I salute you. If you think there’s nothing wrong with a glass ceiling, or deny its existence altogether, I salute you. If you blame the poverty-stricken for their situation, I salute you.

They are assholes, but first and foremost, they’re people. It may feel like they add nothing but negativity and ire to our lives, but they add so much more. So I charge you, readers, to go forth on the fourth and hug an asshole or two. Remind them that you value them for who they are, and that you celebrate it.

And then you can kick them.