The UK Prime Minister is not rumored to have an especially deep appreciation of foreign policy, which in part explains why he gave that dreadful speech in Ankara.
David Frum, on the other hand, posits a deeper game.
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The Marine Corps’ STOVL variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is once again proving that complexity is, well: Complex.
Lockheed Martin said Tuesday that several parts on the most complex version of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter were failing more often than expected, a problem that is slowing flight testing on a model tailored for the Marines.
The company’s chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, told analysts that the problems had occurred on the version that can take off in short distances and land vertically like a helicopter.
Mr. Stevens said the defects had reduced the flight tests on that model to 74 so far this year, 21 fewer than planned. He said the company was working with suppliers to fix the problems and thought it could catch up by extending some of the flights.
The real struggle with the F-35B is behind the scenes of the Blue/Green team, where the rumor tells me that senior Navy flag and Marine general officers only speak to each other in order to shout. Navy has been counting on Marine fighter squadrons to deploy aboard aircraft carriers in order to ameliorate the fighter gap, but no one is able to suitably explain how the STOVL variant will operate of conventional carriers in cyclic operations. Not to mention heat dissipation.
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Speaking of shouting, Sal has one of his Diversity Thursday posts up that has set blood a’boiling throughout the Navy, a confidant reports. Seems that Navy is keeping a list. A very important, very private list. Eyes on the future, and that.
The Navy is ordered on businesslike lines these days, and things must have metrics. Metrics give you leverage to control processes and institute change. I get it.
But it seems to me that “accountability” had a different flavor, back in the day.
Probably I was just naive.
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Pundita has some pictures up of Afghanistan, then and now. If you don’t like to see pictures of young Afghan girls with their noses cut off, you should probably forgo the link.
Also skip it if you don’t like pictures of young Afghan girls sitting in biology classes back in the 60s. With their hair uncovered!
You should also give it a pass if you don’t like being reminded of the consequences of Realpolitik during the Cold War:
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?
Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [fundamentalism], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Closer to home, Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has his own little war going on:
In laying out 13 charges of ethical violations committed by Representative Charles B. Rangel, the House ethics committee set the stage for a rare public trial of the Democratic Congressman this fall, a potential embarrassment for the Democratic leadership during the election season.
The unveiling of the charges Thursday came even as Mr. Rangel’s lawyers suggested they were trying to reach a settlement to avoid such a fate for Mr. Rangel, 80, a Harlem Democrat.
Ethics committee members appeared somber on Thursday, expressing fondness for Mr. Rangel even as they issued the stinging report, which states that Mr. Rangel’s “actions reflected poorly on the institution of the House and, thereby, brought discredit to the House.”
Two brief points: 1) Congressional approval ratings have sunk to 11%, a number chiefly made encompassing actual congressmen, staffers that depend upon them for employment and their extended families. Take away Mr. Rangel’s purported ethical lapses and that number jumps to 12%, maybe. Discredit?
You already had that.
2) Louisiana’s Edwin Wilson Edwards once boasted that the only way he could fail to win re-election was if he was found in bed with a dead woman or a live boy. One gets the sense that even these would be insufficient to stir Rangel’s constituents, who have sent the man to Washington 20 times.
Summary: Politics are local, and GOP hopefuls eying a take-over of the House of Representatives need to remember that we tend to be overly fond of our own rascals, preferring to throw other people’s bums out.
Used to be this sort of thing was considered Shredding teh Constitution:
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual’s Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the “content” of e-mail or other Internet communication.
Honest Citizens should have Nothing to Hide.
Hope and chains!
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” — Thomas Jefferson
Former CIA DDO Jack Devine offers an alternative strategy for preventing the re-emergence of al Qaeda in Afghanistan:
Most Afghans, even those willing to deal with us, would rather we get our military out of their country. A covert action program would address this concern. It would also cost less than a military effort in treasure and lives, and allow the U.S. to continue to protect its interests and the interests of the Afghans who desire nothing more than to see their country enter a period of calm.
A smart covert action program should rest on worst-case scenarios. Afghanistan will likely enter a period of heightened instability leading up to and following our planned 2012 departure, so we should figure out now which tribal leaders—and, under specially negotiated arrangements, which Taliban factions—we could establish productive relationships with. We must also consider the possibility that our departure could precipitate the eventual collapse of the Karzai government. Thus we should cultivate relationships with leaders inside and outside the current regime who are most likely to fill the power vacuum.
The “great game,” redux.
Something tells me that, if Mr. Devine gets his way, we won’t be the only players.
Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi preaches on the Islamic doctrine of taysir, which translates to “ease” or moderation of the strictest interpretation of Koranic injunctions – especially for Muslims residing in Evropa or North America. In this he is joined by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Tariq Ramadan:
(He) recommends that a “moratorium” — a temporary ban — be placed on the Muslim practice of stoning adulterers to death; yet he refuses to say that stoning is intrinsically un-Islamic. This, of course, is taysir in practice: because stoning people in the West is liable to get the stoner incarcerated or worse, upholding the Sharia mandate to stone adulterers is “hard” on Muslims living in the West, so best to put it on hold — that is, till circumstances are more opportune.
Moderation – he keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he thinks it means.
This is frustrating. I spent a career waiting to give a retirement speech and lie about what a great soldier I was. Then people show up who were actually there. It proves what Doug Brown taught me long ago; nothing ruins a good war story like an eyewitness.
To show you how bad it is, I can’t even tell you I was the best player in my little league because the kid who was the best player is here tonight. In case you’re looking around, he’s not a kid anymore.
But to those here tonight who feel the need to contradict my memories with the truth, remember I was there too. I have stories on all of you, photos on many, and I know a Rolling Stone reporter. (Laughter.) (Applause.)
To paraphrase the Bard, nothing in his service became him as his leaving it.
One of the ostensible reasons that Wikileaks Julian Assange has put forth for the revelations within his “Afghan War Diaries” is that potential war crimes are detailed therein. This from the team that put together the “Collateral Murder” video whose biases were quickly exposed.
Whether the Afghan War Diaries will reveal war crimes – they have not to date – they have placed Afghans who put their trust in the NATO coalition in grave danger:
Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks’ publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.
The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.
There can be little doubt of the fate awaiting revealed collaborators once they fall under the tender mercies of the Afghan Taliban. The third order effect, of course, is that Afghans hopeful for a more peaceful and enlightened future have even less faith in the coalition’s ability to deliver.
Afghanistan has seen an awful lot of warfare over the last several decades. Survivors have learned to calculate the stronger side with precision. Mr. Assange has just made it rather more likely that more will align themselves with the Taliban, or at least stay out of their way. This increases the odds that a brutal tyranny will once again be imposed, but not before the forces of freedom and moderation are further bloodied.
There are war crimes to be found in the Afghan War Diaries. Just not the ones Mr. Assange was referring to.
Theodore Roosevelt talked of “speaking softly, while carrying a big stick,” favoring peaceful negotiations supported by military sufficiency. The idea, he said, was “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis.”
For her discussions last week about a rising China’s bullying of smaller neighbors in bilateral relationships, Hillary Clinton is receiving plaudits from the Wall Street Journal, of all places:
Hillary Clinton provoked an uproar last week when she said that a peaceful resolution to the South China Sea territorial dispute is in America’s “national interest.” China’s foreign ministry denounced those remarks as unwarranted American meddling and an attempt to “internationalize” a strictly regional problem. Notwithstanding Beijing’s protests, Mrs. Clinton’s diplomacy marks another step in a positive evolution of the Obama administration’s approach to Asia.
At issue is Beijing’s claim that the bulk of the South China Sea constitutes its territorial waters. China is acting just as one would expect from a rising great power: As it grows more powerful, it desires to change international rules written when it is was weak.
Yet foreign policy experts have spent much time assuring Asians and Americans that China’s rise would be an exception—less disruptive than, say, the rise of the United States, Germany or Japan. That view animated President Obama’s disastrous “strategic reassurance” policy of his first year, in which Washington reassured Beijing that America would not contest its rise to great-power status. China smelled weakness and upped the ante, declaring the South China Sea a “core interest” and defining it as China’s territorial waters.
Well and good, but the “alternative” Quadrennial Defense Review sees some limitations to SecState’s ability to support US allies as they grapple with China’s status as a rising regional hegemon:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has charged each military service with freeing up between $10 billion and $15 billion annually over the next few years, ordering them to roll the “savings” into hardware modernization efforts, the independent QDR panel doubts that will generate enough new monies to build the kind of force America will need for decades to come.
“We cannot reverse the decline of shipbuilding, buy enough naval aircraft, recapitalize Army equipment, buy the F-35 requirement, purchase a new aerial tanker, increase deep strike capability, and recapitalize the bomber fleet just by saving $10-15 billion dollars that the Department of Defense hopes to save through acquisition reform,” states the summary of the alternative QDR…
“The force structure in the Asia-Pacific area needs to be increased,” states the summary. “A robust U.S. force structure, largely rooted in maritime strategy but including other necessary capabilities, will be essential.
(More) voters view the Democratic Party as very liberal than see the Republican Party as very conservative (26% vs. 18%). As a result, the average rating for the Democratic Party’s ideology among all voters is somewhat farther to the left than the Republican Party’s is to the right. The Republican Party’s rating also is closer to voters’ average ratings of their own ideology, which is slightly to the right of center.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
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