© Kandasamy M | Dreamstime.com

Events, continue to conspire, making it unacceptably late to start a fresh project, but hey, recycling is IN, right? We’re all about doing the right thing here at Left-Handed Complement, and in that spirit we’re recycling some of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s favorite electrons.

I hereby stop apologizing for observing the prime directive of blogging: Thou Shalt Blog Daily!

And, I’m guessing that most of you weren’t here nine months ago. As one of my favorite paper publications used to say as they flogged unsold back issues: “If you haven’t read it yet, it’s new for you!”

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and, unfortunately, still all too timely, originally posted November 6, 2007, and titled “mm186: War with Iran: Inevitable?”

MUDGE’S Musings

The potential catastrophe of Iran just keeps scaling up. William Arkin, the Washington Post‘s excellent commentator on military affairs updated us Nov. 2 in his Early Warning blog:

The presidential campaigns can’t get enough of talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Bush administration’s eagerness to go to war. Thirty U.S. senators, including Hillary Clinton, sent a letter to President Bush yesterday, reminding him that “no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action in Iran.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama submitted a Senate resolution, also emphasizing that congress must explicitly authorize military action, and that, in regards to Iran, it hasn’t done that so far.

Let me say now, based on my discussions with Pentagon insiders and observers and more than 30 years following the military: We are not going to war with Iran. At least we are not going to start a war now or any time soon. At least not intentionally [emphasis MUDGE].

Can’t help but land hard on that sentence. How much tragedy has the present administration caused, both intentionally and not, over the past nearly seven years?

Way too much, and one can’t help believing that for all of the hidden agendas, the sweetheart procurement deals on a $trillion scale, and the subversion of the workings of government to religious extremism (we’re still talking the U.S. here, folks, we haven’t started in on Iran!), much of the ongoing catastrophe has been the result of inattention and a view of the geopolitical world seemingly so narrow as to be detectable only with an electron microscope.

So, Iran. Maker’s of world class mischief in Syria and Lebanon, interfering almost overtly in Iraq, chief exporter of Islamofascism and terrorism to the western world, and working hard to launch a nuke into Tel Aviv.

It’s symmetry: Now we’re talking about subversion of the Iranian government to religious extremism, a process that the U.S. made inevitable during nearly 30 years of lavish support of the corrupt Shah they illegally put in place. The U.S. has many decades of petrodiplomacy to answer for.

Arkin’s take on the election rhetoric is that the candidates’ words and deeds on the subject of Iran are only making Iran more nervous about U.S. intentions, and that can’t help anything.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Keep It Down – Early Warning

Mr. Arkin, everyone is supposed to quiet down so that we don’t provoke Iran into doing sooner what they seem to have every intention of doing eventually?

Everyone is supposed to quiet down so that the cooler military heads (compared to the raving maniacs of the administration) can remain coolly overwhelmed by the two official wars that the administration has tasked them with?

It’s a great idea but I just don’t see the candidates of either party letting such a juicy rhetorical target go by, with 440 days of 24-hour campaigning still to be filled.

It’s a great idea, but I just don’t know that Iran will wait for a new, somewhat more diplomatic and worldly U.S. administration.

And I have to reluctantly venture the fear that I don’t know whether Israel can afford to wait.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Oleksii Sergieiev | Dreamstime.com

This one got me.

But, in recognition of Republican week, I don’t have a problem with having the infamous George III smirk atop this post.

I might have a problem with the thesis, but it’s worth exposing, since it represents a point of view that had never occurred to yr (justifiably) humble svt.

A Truman for our times

The received wisdom is that President Bush has been a foreign policy disaster, and that America is threatened by the rise of Asia. Both claims are wrong—Bush has successfully rolled back jihadism, and the US will benefit from Asian growth

August 2008 | 149 » Cover story » A Truman for our times | Edward Luttwak

That George W Bush’s foreign policy has been a total failure is now taken for granted by so many people that one usually hears it stated as a simple truth that need not be argued at all.

It has happened before. When President Harry S Truman said in March 1952 that he would not seek re-election, most Americans could agree on one thing: that his foreign policy had been a catastrophic failure. In Korea his indecision had invited aggression, and then his incompetence had cost the lives of some 54,000 Americans and millions of Korean civilians in just two years of fighting—on both counts more than ten times the number of casualties in Iraq. Right-wingers reviled Truman for having lost China to communism and for his dismissal of the great General Douglas MacArthur, who had wanted to win it back, with nukes if necessary. Liberals despised Truman because he was the failed shopkeeper who had usurped the patrician Franklin Roosevelt’s White House—liberals always were the snobs of US politics.

Abroad, Truman was widely hated too. The communist accusation that he had waged “bacteriological warfare” to kill Korean children and destroy Chinese crops was believed by many, and was fully endorsed by a 669-page report issued by a commission chaired by the eminent British biochemist Joseph Needham. Even more people believed that Truman was guilty of having started the cold war by trying to intimidate our brave Soviet ally, or at least that he and Stalin were equally to blame.

How did this same Harry Truman come to be universally viewed as a great president, especially for his foreign policy? It is all a question of time perspectives: the Korean war is half forgotten, while everyone now knows that Truman’s strategy of containment was successful and finally ended with the almost peaceful disintegration of the Soviet empire.

For Bush to be recognised as a great president in the Truman mould, the Iraq war too must become half forgotten. The swift removal of the murderous Saddam Hussein was followed by years of expensive violence instead of the instant democracy that had been promised. To confuse the imam-ridden Iraqis with Danes or Norwegians under German occupation, ready to return to democracy as soon as they were liberated, was not a forgivable error: before invading a country, a US president is supposed to know if it is in the middle east or Scandinavia.

Yet the costly Iraq war must also be recognised as a sideshow in the Bush global counteroffensive against Islamist militancy, just as the far more costly Korean war was a sideshow to global cold war containment. For the Bush response to 9/11 was precisely that—a global attack against the ideology of Islamic militancy. While anti-terrorist operations have been successful here and there in a patchy way, and the fate of Afghanistan remains in doubt, the far more important ideological war has ended with a spectacular global victory for President Bush.

First thing you have to do when confronting an essay such as this is to consider the source.

Edward Luttwak is one controversial bloke. Even Luttwak’s biography in Wikipedia is controversial.

I’ve an interest in military history, and I have read more than one of his really fascinating analyses of military strategy throughout history. Luttwak tends toward fresh, offbeat, but well reasoned, looks at well-trod ground. He seems to be taken seriously by professional soldiers.

And yeah, he’s the guy whom, in an opinion piece in the NYTimes this spring, claimed, to much dismay, that Barack Obama, born a Muslim, is still considered one in the Islamic world. This inflammatory opinion has since been debunked by Islamic scholars, but damage was done to Obama’s momentum.

So that brings us to this off the wall piece.

After 9/11, Bush talked tough, and Luttwak says that political leaders in most Muslim countries chose to believe him, and make their streets unsafe for jihadists.

Any towers blow up lately?

Cover story: ‘A Truman for our times’ by Edward Luttwak | Prospect Magazine August 2008 issue 149

Luttwak also gives Bush credit for “denuclearization,” although the returns certainly aren’t all in on that one, as rumors continue to bubble regarding preemptive attacks on Iran emanating from either Israel or U.S. forces, or both.

The, Luttwak really gets my attention.

The denigration of George III’s foreign policy (as opposed to his domestic economic policy — even Luttwak can’t paper over that!), apparently accompanies the conventional wisdom that has America in a state of permanent decline — our century was the last one, and this one is China’s.

Luttwak believes, however, that C.W. has it wrong — Bush’s supposed foreign policy failures are not so, and China is a problem for the U.S., and is also not one. As they hold so much of our paper, one would like to be optimistic about this one.

Anyway, a totally fascinating read.

And, as one of Wikipedia’s “policemen” commented, in regards to what was deemed an overly positive Luttwak bio there, “I read both liberal and conservative journalism, as I don’t wish to live in an echo chamber.”

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

It’s baaaaaack! Mid-summer lethargy. Another in a string of Midwestern 90/90 days.

So begging your indulgence yet again, we bring back another gem from the dim, cool and crisp past, last October.

Blast from the Past!

A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…

From last fall, and always in season, originally posted October 8, 2007, and originally titled “mm164: A Nation of Christians is Not a Christian Nation,”

MUDGE’S Musings

The creation of the United States of America was the result of two parallel streams: the twin manifest desires for freedom of economic opportunity and freedom of religion.

The Bush theocracy would like us to forget the latter. So thanks are due to Jon Meacham in today’s NYTimes, for a useful reminder.

By JON MEACHAM

JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”

The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.

The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.

The founders of this nation were not irreligious men, although a religion that allowed many of those residing in the southern states to reconcile faith with the holding of slaves has to be judged harshly (perhaps a topic for another day).

But they understood, apparently better than many of their modern-day successors, that the freedom to practice one’s religion is a cornerstone of this nation.

After all, flight from religious persecution was and has been a consistent motivation for waves of immigration, both before, and for nearly every year since the signing of the Constitution.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation – New York Times

Messers Falwell, Robertson and McCain: Leave the rest of us alone to practice, or not, the religion of our choice, free from coercion and the pernicious attempts to undermine education in this country with “creation science” and the like.

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

If you want a Christian nation, I’ve got one for you: France! Should you want a pure theocracy, try Iran! Go hence and prosper, if you can.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Ketian Chen | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’s Musings

We begin this Independence Day celebration in the U.S. with a rather gloomy attitude.

We’re still losing good men and women to the misguided and mishandled Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Fuel and food prices seem to be climbing as we watch. Once my monthly bills from ExxonMobil, my gasoline purveyor of choice (the reason why this is so is worthy of a post of its own — soon!) were under $100. Now, maintaining the same or less driving, as I try to mitigate the costs of commuting with more days working from home, I’m relieved if that bill is under $200.

What we hear of the economy (job losses, inflation rate) and its thermometer (the Dow Jones Industrial Average) is disturbing. Aren’t we officially in recession?

Every one of us knows someone, or more than one, job-seeking.

And the news from the world outside our parochial boundaries is not much better. War news from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan remains grim. The president of Zimbabwe, certain that he’d lose in a fair election, murdered thousands of opposition supporters, and sent his opponent fleeing to the Netherlands embassy for shelter. Israel seems to be seriously considering a preemptory attack on Iran’s nuclear bomb facilities. Gazprom, the Russian petroleum/natural gas giant, has its sights set on becoming the largest corporation in the world before long. How can any of that be good by any measure?

Well, a couple of chieftains at the Federal Reserve Bank have decided to show us a glass half full version of the part of the story they influence, the economy. And, it makes for some attention-grabbing reading.

How Are We Doing?

By W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm From the July/August 2008 Issue

The American economy is in a rough patch. But the long-term trends are good—and there is a price to economic pessimism.

When a presidential election year collides with iffy economic times, the public’s view of the U.S. economy turns gloomy. Perspective shrinks in favor of short-term assessments that focus on such unpleasant realities as falling job counts, sluggish GDP growth, uncertain incomes, rising oil and food prices, subprime mortgage woes, and wobbly financial markets.

Taken together, it’s enough to shake our faith in American progress. The best path to reviving that faith lies in gaining some perspective— getting out of the short-term rut, casting off the blinders that focus us on what will turn out to be mere footnotes in a longer-term march of progress. Once we do that, we see the U.S. economy, a $14 trillion behemoth, is doing quite well, thank you very much.

Cox and Alm go ahead and illustrate their thesis quite compellingly.

As Americans know, today’s rising food and energy prices are crimping household budgets. But there are other ways to understand the relative size of the rise of food and energy costs. For example, in terms of time worked at the average pay rate, the real cost of a 12-item basket of basic foods has hardly budged. And while the work-time price of gasoline doubled in recent years, a gallon of gasoline still goes for less than 11 minutes of work (Fig. 3). At 20 miles per gallon, an hour of work will get you 110 miles down the road; at 30 mpg, you can go 165 miles.

And, if you make the comparisons broad enough, we’ve come a long way in 58 years.

The lament-filled anecdotes about long hours and low pay just don’t stand up to the test of hard data. Real total compensation—wages plus fringe benefits, both adjusted for inflation—has been rising steadily for several generations (Fig. 4). Over time, the fringes have become a larger share of the rewards for work, dampening the statistics on wage increases. At the same time, we’re spending less time at work. An average workweek has fallen from 39.8 hours in 1950 to 36.9 hours in 1973 to 33.8 hours today.

The tables and graphs that accompany the story are worthy of study in their own right. The one showing EBay activity peaking during U.S. working hours is quite telling. Apparently, more than a little of our leisure time is spent while on the job.

The standard of living goes up, and so does safety, both on the job, and off. One number that pops out, though not a subject of the essay, is the comparison of deaths per billion miles between automobiles and airplanes. You are 100 times safer flying than driving. Too bad they never got around to inventing those flying cars the futurists have been promising for 100 years! And then there’s health care, the bugaboo of politicians everywhere.

Medical advances have brought down death rates for many diseases (Fig. 10). Gains have been made against heart disease and cancer in recent decades. Death rates from disease aren’t the only sign that Americans have benefited from rising healthcare spending. Since 1960, life expectancy has risen by seven years for men and six years for women. At a time when so many Americans are vexed by the high cost of healthcare, these gains suggest the country may be getting something for its money (Fig. 11).

The conclusion drawn by these fine gents from the Federal Reserve is that, despite the short term clouds, it’s been mostly sunny for a long time, and there’s no reason why this long-term trend shouldn’t continue.

So many data points add up to steady, continuing progress for average Americans—and there’s no reason not to expect the future will bring further progress. Bad news will pop up from time to time, just as it has in every decade of American history.

And if you read to the end, you get a nice reminder that, even with the Dow stocks taking something of a beating currently, that few investments beat stock investing in the long run. (As I used to respond to the calls from new brokers who cold-called me, I invest in commodities: hamburger meat and buns, lettuce, apples, milk. There’s nothing left for stocks!).

How Are We Doing? — The American, A Magazine of Ideas

Yr (justifiably humble svt takes all of this good news with some measure of skepticism.

I just love being strategic, taking the long view and all, but it really is difficult to reconcile the writers’ long-term positives with the day-to-day reality of $4.199/gallon gasoline, and the $5.23 box of bran flakes on the grocery shelf.

But, we’re all going to parade, or watch the parades (and this election year, those parades will be longer than usual since there will be plenty of smiling and waving photo opportunities for your favorite local and national politicians). We’ll sit on our picnic blankets and listen to the bands and ooh and ah over the fireworks.

For one day, at least, we can celebrate. In that spirit, of parades, band concerts, picnics and fireworks, we should enjoy this contribution to our entertainment by our friends in the Federal Reserve.

Monday, back to the real, glass half empty, world.

Happy Independence Day!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Faithful reader (if s/he indeed is faithful) is probably disgusted with this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© lately, as we’ve been rehashing good old stuff rather than creating good new stuff here.

As I reflect on my lethargic approach to blogging this past week, my analysis finds that it’s partly due to the demands of the bill paying occupation, and partly my failure to extricate from the zillions of new pages popping up every day in said ‘Sphere a nugget of insight upon which to build.

Didn’t really want to write about the Democrats’ Clinton/Obama soap opera. Although, I commend to your attention Eric Zorn of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s hometown Chicago Tribune on why Sen. Clinton is the wrong running mate for Obama.

So that left me with — what? Reruns, and this during sweeps month, too!

Tonight though, finally, revelation. Christopher Dickey of Newsweek makes a thought connection regarding the cesspool that is our Iraq adventure that makes such great sense that one is tempted to slap oneself, saying “it’s so obvious — why didn’t I think of that?”

I didn’t. Dickey did. Read and learn.

Slaughterhouse Beirut

Lebanon’s chances for meaningful reconstruction are diminishing by the day. And despite Bush’s bravado, it’s going to be the same in Iraq.

Newsweek.com |Christopher Dickey | May 13, 2008 | Updated: May 13, 2008

If you want to know what Iraq will look like 25 years from now, look at Lebanon today. The similarities and differences—but mainly the similarities—raise a lot of painful memories and questions for
Americans.

This fact hit me once again when I was talking to Mike Sheehan, who is one of the more clear-eyed analysts of terrorism and the way we react to it. The subject came up of Beirut as it is now, a bloody mess, and as it was when Mike and I first focused on it a quarter-century ago, when it was even bloodier.

Back then President Ronald Reagan waded into the Levantine quagmire, quickly understood that he had made a big miscalculation, and withdrew. “Some counterterrorism experts argue the Reagan pullout from Lebanon was a mistake and emboldened future terrorists,” says Sheehan. “I never bought this analysis, then or now. I think it was one of the smartest things Reagan did during his tenure—to get out of the Lebanese civil war. To stay in any war to ‘make a statement’ has never made sense to me. You have to have well-defined interests and achievable goals when you put American soldiers in harm’s way; both seemed to be missing in Lebanon. Reagan recognized it and withdrew.”

Aha! Lebanon. Filled with religious factions, armed to the teeth. Filled with proxies of foreign nations with mischief on their minds eager to fill the ever present power vacuum (read: Syria and Iran). And the scene of U.S. intervention, that failed in a bloody and ultimately ignominious fashion.

A dysfunctional “state” for many, many years, and, as Dickey observes, not likely to improve.

And yet, whether the United States stays in Iraq or goes, “Lebanonization” is the most likely result: a foundering half-failed state where neighbors fight proxy battles through sectarian militias and through the many factions in a government that is unable to govern at all. There will be times of war when life seems to go on almost as normal, and times of peace when it seems not to. There will be spurts of investment, maybe even tourism. There will be festivals of democratic excitement. And then sudden storms of savage violence will sweep through the streets of the capital, only to subside, then erupt in smaller cities, and subside. And erupt again. And so it goes, to borrow the old refrain from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Slaughterhouse Five.” If the world pays any attention at all, the span will be brief. The fighting and the failures to govern will have gone on so long that nothing seems new in that news.

We failed to fix Lebanon; perhaps it is permanently unfixable. Did we learn from that experience, strategically, politically, militarily?

On the day the last Marine combat unit pulled out of Lebanon in 1984, a television interviewer asked then-Secretary of State George Shultz if that meant a victory for the bad guys. He could not but equivocate: “This is a kind of warfare, really, that is something different for us … We have to improve our intelligence capability, and we have to think through how, within the concept of the rule of law, which we hold so dear, we can take a more aggressive posture toward what is a worldwide and very undesirable trend.” That was 24 years ago, and we’re still thinking it through.

Finally! Now it’s possible to understand Iraq.

Religious factions and militias, armed to the teeth, bent on senseless slaughter. Units on the ground that are proxies for mischief making states and anti-Western cells.

And the scene of U.S. intervention that, despite egregious losses of blood and treasure, shows no signs whatsoever that what ails Iraq will ever be permanently fixable.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Dickey: Why Iraq Will End Up Like Lebanon | Newsweek International | Newsweek.com

To all those who say: “you can’t just up and leave!” I can now respond: your great hero Ronald Reagan up and left Lebanon all those years ago.

Lebanon didn’t get better when we arrived; it certainly has gotten worse since we left.

Okay: what have we learned tonight?

1. Iraq is an ugly example of a political entity, artificially created by a European power with arbitrary borders disdainful of hundreds of years of tribal and religious sectionalism, whose creation thus contained the seeds of its own destruction, now playing on a CNN broadcast near you. Doubt this? Take a close look at Lebanon. Some dysfunctional states are unfixable.
2. And, keep an eye out for what’s going on in Africa, filled with nations like Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe, artificially created by a European power with arbitrary borders disdainful of hundreds of years of tribal and religious sectionalism, whose creation thus contained the seeds of its own destruction, now playing on a CNN broadcast near you. Let’s try not to intervene militarily too enthusiastically there, please.
3. Come November, let’s send old 100-year war McCain slinking back to his comfortable Senate seat where his pointlessly dangerous testosterone can be contained.
4. Let’s get our boots out of Iraq’s pointlessly dangerous dust and safely home, soonest.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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A good one gets away, while sleazy politics and politicians linger.

Unaccustomed as I am to following the news moment by moment, I did find myself cruising CNN.com more than usual (i.e., usual = never! exception? election night) awaiting the axe to fall on Eliot Spitzer’s governorship.

Life happened while waiting for something else: Admiral William F. Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, resigned today.

It took an IM from my ex-naval officer son to open my eyes to the tragic implications. He directed me to a profile of Fallon that appeared last week in Esquire, which was hurriedly updated this afternoon.

The Man Between War and Peace

By Thomas P.M. Barnett | March 11, 2008, 3:10 PM

The Bush Administration wanted a war with Iran. The head of U.S. Central Command, Admiral William “Fox” Fallon, disagreed. And now, as of March 11, Fallon has resigned.

That’s the update: here’s the story. Read about an amazingly accomplished diplomat in uniform.

1.

If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him “Fox,” which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America’s two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it’s impossible to make this guy–as he likes to say–”nervous in the service.” Past American governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn’t mastered that kind of subtlety. When Dick Cheney has rattled his saber, it has generally meant that he intends to use it. And in spite of recent war spasms aimed at Iran from this sclerotic administration, Fallon is in no hurry to pick up any campaign medals for Iran. And therein lies the rub for the hard-liners led by Cheney. Army General David Petraeus, commanding America’s forces in Iraq, may say, “You cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq,” but Fox Fallon is Petraeus’s boss, and he is the commander of United States Central Command, and Fallon doesn’t extend Petraeus’s logic to mean war against Iran.

U. S. Central Command has never before been headed by an admiral. At an age when most officers of 4-star rank are deep into a second career, Fallon was head of Pacific Command, where he dealt constructively with China at a time when the administration was certain that China was our next military challenge.

And he’s been working similarly strategically in the Middle East as head of Central Command, attempting with grace, diplomacy, attention to detail and an iron will to say the right words, and do the right deeds to win the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the region as a whole, and oh, by the way, forestall Cheney’s war with Iran.

What America needs, Fallon says, is a “combination of strength and willingness to engage.”

Those are fighting words to your average neocon–not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to “nuclear holocaust.”

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough.

Esquire‘s story is lengthy, but rewarded yr (justifiably) humble svt with a sense of the greatness of a man who may have found his usefulness as a counter to Tricky Dick Cheney and the other chickenhawks in the administration at an end, precipitated possibly due to his “outing” by Esquire.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Admiral William Fox Fallon – US Central Command – Fallon’s Military Strategies – Esquire

As I write this, at 1800 hrs. Central Daylight Time on 11-March-2008, the pompous hypocrite is still governor of New York.

A lonely, but extremely effective force for good in our troubled petroleum-supplies-at-all-costs (even nuclear war — no cost is too great to secure the world for Cheney and Bush’s oil guys) administration has resigned, probably because Esquire paid too much attention to the man behind the curtain.

Sigh.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Shooting a missile at a satellite is rocket science. And, apparently, a year late, we’ve figured it out.

Spy Satellite’s Downing Shows a New U.S. Weapon Capability

By Marc Kaufman and Josh White | Washington Post Staff Writers | Friday, February 22, 2008; Page A03

The unprecedented downing of an errant spy satellite by a Navy missile makes it clear that the Pentagon has a new weapon in its arsenal — an anti-satellite missile adapted from the nation’s missile defense program.

While the dramatic intercept took place well below the altitude where most satellites orbit, defense and space experts said Wednesday night’s first-shot success strongly suggests that the military has the technology and know-how to knock out satellites at much higher orbits.

When the plans were announced a week or so ago, we were bemused.

The physics required have got to be astounding. See, the satellite is in a deteriorating orbit, so it might not be acting totally predictably.

The missile was built, of course, by the lowest bidder.

And they launched it from a missile cruiser sailing in the Pacific, which any mariner will tell you is totally falsely named.

I’m thinking the challenge was tantamount to shooting an arrow at a duck in flight several miles away, from the back of a rodeo bull.

But, the Navy did it.

And they’ve got pictures.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Spy Satellite’s Downing Shows a New U.S. Weapon Capability – washingtonpost.com

So we’ve caught up with the Chinese (and how odd that phrase sounds in a military context). Whew, that’s a relief!

Can the Russians be far behind? Isn’t there some remnant of the Soviet’s Cold War satellite flock that requires putting out of its misery?

And Europe can’t afford to be left out of the party.

And when it comes to that, better North Korea aim at a spot in space than Tokyo or Seattle.

And frankly, if Iran has to send a missile anywhere, yr (justifiably) humble svt joins the rest of humanity in hoping that it’s toward the moon instead of Tel Aviv.

And Pakistan, and India, and Israel itself: guys, if we’ve no choice in the matter, I guess we’d prefer you to shoot up toward the cosmos, instead of at each other.

And so, ladies and gents, we have made real that which was only hinted or guessed at. We have officially militarized space.

Hitherto, the planet’s bounty from the first 50 years of the space age consisted mainly of some dusty moon rocks under glass, Tang, and the GPS system in our cell phones and automobile navigation systems that point us to the closest Thai take-out.

But now, the sky’s (no longer) the limit. Now, we can count on the increased likelihood of “collateral damage,” i.e., ex-satellite debris, plummeting through our ceilings.

Fifty years ago, at the height of the Cold War, trendy suburbanites proudly showed off their backyard and basement fallout shelters. Wonder if there are any still around.

Everything old is new again. Ugh.

And, perhaps, there are a lot too many rocket scientists out there for comfort.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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The potential catastrophe of Iran just keeps scaling up. William Arkin, the Washington Post‘s excellent commentator on military affairs updated us Nov. 2 in his Early Warning blog:

The presidential campaigns can’t get enough of talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Bush administration’s eagerness to go to war. Thirty U.S. senators, including Hillary Clinton, sent a letter to President Bush yesterday, reminding him that “no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action in Iran.” Meanwhile, Barack Obama submitted a Senate resolution, also emphasizing that congress must explicitly authorize military action, and that, in regards to Iran, it hasn’t done that so far.

Let me say now, based on my discussions with Pentagon insiders and observers and more than 30 years following the military: We are not going to war with Iran. At least we are not going to start a war now or any time soon. At least not intentionally [emphasis MUDGE].

Can’t help but land hard on that sentence. How much tragedy has the present administration caused, both intentionally and not, over the past nearly seven years?

Way too much, and one can’t help believing that for all of the hidden agendas, the sweetheart procurement deals on a $trillion scale, and the subversion of the workings of government to religious extremism (we’re still talking the U.S. here, folks, we haven’t started in on Iran!), much of the ongoing catastrophe has been the result of inattention and a view of the geopolitical world seemingly so narrow as to be detectable only with an electron microscope.

So, Iran. Maker’s of world class mischief in Syria and Lebanon, interfering almost overtly in Iraq, chief exporter of Islamofascism and terrorism to the western world, and working hard to launch a nuke into Tel Aviv.

It’s symmetry: Now we’re talking about subversion of the Iranian government to religious extremism, a process that the U.S. made inevitable during nearly 30 years of lavish support of the corrupt Shah they illegally put in place. The U.S. has many decades of petrodiplomacy to answer for.

Arkin’s take on the election rhetoric is that the candidates’ words and deeds on the subject of Iran are only making Iran more nervous about U.S. intentions, and that can’t help anything.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Keep It Down – Early Warning

Mr. Arkin, everyone is supposed to quiet down so that we don’t provoke Iran into doing sooner what they seem to have every intention of doing eventually?

Everyone is supposed to quiet down so that the cooler military heads (compared to the raving maniacs of the administration) can remain coolly overwhelmed by the two official wars that the administration has tasked them with?

It’s a great idea but I just don’t see the candidates of either party letting such a juicy rhetorical target go by, with 440 days of 24-hour campaigning still to be filled.

It’s a great idea, but I just don’t know that Iran will wait for a new, somewhat more diplomatic and worldly U.S. administration.

And I have to reluctantly venture the fear that I don’t know whether Israel can afford to wait.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

The creation of the United States of America was the result of two parallel streams: the twin manifest desires for freedom of economic opportunity and freedom of religion.

The Bush theocracy would like us to forget the latter. So thanks are due to Jon Meacham in today’s NYTimes, for a useful reminder.

By JON MEACHAM

JOHN McCAIN was not on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last year for very long — the senator, who once referred to Mr. Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance,” was there to receive an honorary degree — but he seems to have picked up some theology along with his academic hood. In an interview with Beliefnet.com last weekend, Mr. McCain repeated what is an article of faith among many American evangelicals: “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.”

According to Scripture, however, believers are to be wary of all mortal powers. Their home is the kingdom of God, which transcends all earthly things, not any particular nation-state. The Psalmist advises believers to “put not your trust in princes.” The author of Job says that the Lord “shows no partiality to princes nor regards the rich above the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.” Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And if, as Paul writes in Galatians, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” then it is difficult to see how there could be a distinction in God’s eyes between, say, an American and an Australian. In fact, there is no distinction if you believe Peter’s words in the Acts of the Apostles: “I most certainly believe now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears him and does what is right is welcome to him.”

The kingdom Jesus preached was radical. Not only are nations irrelevant, but families are, too: he instructs those who would be his disciples to give up all they have and all those they know to follow him.

The only acknowledgment of God in the original Constitution is a utilitarian one: the document is dated “in the year of our Lord 1787.” Even the religion clause of the First Amendment is framed dryly and without reference to any particular faith. The Connecticut ratifying convention debated rewriting the preamble to take note of God’s authority, but the effort failed.

The founders of this nation were not irreligious men, although a religion that allowed many of those residing in the southern states to reconcile faith with the holding of slaves has to be judged harshly (perhaps a topic for another day).

But they understood, apparently better than many of their modern-day successors, that the freedom to practice one’s religion is a cornerstone of this nation.

After all, flight from religious persecution was and has been a consistent motivation for waves of immigration, both before, and for nearly every year since the signing of the Constitution.

[Please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

A Nation of Christians Is Not a Christian Nation – New York Times

Messers Falwell, Robertson and McCain: Leave the rest of us alone to practice, or not, the religion of our choice, free from coercion and the pernicious attempts to undermine education in this country with “creation science” and the like.

The founders were not anti-religion. Many of them were faithful in their personal lives, and in their public language they evoked God. They grounded the founding principle of the nation — that all men are created equal — in the divine. But they wanted faith to be one thread in the country’s tapestry, not the whole tapestry.

If you want a Christian nation, I’ve got one for you: France! Should you want a pure theocracy, try Iran! Go hence and prosper, if you can.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Today was collection day here at L-HC. Accumulated enough story ideas for a week at least; of course, if they’re news based, the fish get stale quickly.

Found this courtesy of reddit.com, out-digging Digg once again, and it caused me to toss the fish back, perhaps to catch another day.

This one is too important not to share.

Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday August 28, 2007

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

The paper, “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East” – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

Well, okay, we know that military strategists are always war-gaming, right?

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

Sounds a bit more further advanced than a theoretical game, huh?

It’s lengthy, but now take a look at the original story.

[Per L-HC's reformed process, please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

The Raw Story | Study: US preparing ‘massive’ military attack against Iran

Anyone the least bit concerned about this?

Even-handedly, near the end, the report includes some push-back:

“The report seems to accept without question that US air force and navy bombers could effectively destroy Iran and they seem to ignore the fact that US use of air power in Iraq has failed to destroy all major military, political, economic and transport capabilities,” said Johnson late Monday after the embargo on the study had been lifted.

“But at least in their conclusions they still acknowledge that Iran, if attacked, would be able to retaliate. Yet they are vague in terms of detailing the extent of the damage that the Iran is capable of inflicting on the US and fairly assessing what those risks are.”

Back to the paper:

We should not underestimate the Bush administration’s ability to convince itself that an “Iran of the regions” will emerge from a post-rubble Iran. So, do not be in the least surprised if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least ones that are convincing in Washington.

Constant reader may already know this about MUDGE: I am not a knee-jerk pacifist peace-nik make love not war child of the sixties.

Like so many of my generation, I artfully dodged the Vietnam draft, in the interests of self-preservation rather than some lofty anti-war principles, I freely, if somewhat shamefacedly admit.

But, carefully reflected upon, carefully conducted war has its place.

My father and father-in-law, both members of the Greatest Generation and now deceased, did their duty, honorably in an honorable cause.

My son, and new daughter-in-law both served multiple tours aboard Naval vessels in the Arabian Gulf enforcing the U.N. sanctions of Iraq in the ’90′s and targeting cruise missiles against the enemy in Afghanistan.

So, it’s not knee-jerk pacifist peace-nik make love not war that is making me feel nauseous as I write this.

Forest fires, after all, are Mother Nature’s way of taking old-growth forests and starting over. Sometimes this same principle may be operative where wrong-headed nations are concerned. Turns out that Smokey the Bear and his fellow peace-loving comrades were both utterly wrong.

Unfortunately, the Muslim states have made no secret of their aim to obliterate Israel, and it’s in reaction to that virulent hatred, and that alone, that causes this observer to think: “Hmm, remove Iran’s capabilities to destroy Tel Aviv and generally make destructive mischief throughout the region? Maybe sooner than later.”

So, I’m concerned. Not because punishing Iran is a bad idea per se. To protect our interests, which include Israel’s right to exist, some punishment may be necessary.

But the gang that can’t shoot straight scares me.

If there’s a way to conduct a preemptive strike against Iran, no matter how good the reasons, we cannot trust George III and his ne’er-do-well minions to correctly consider the geopolitical ramifications, nor direct the military campaign effectively.

So I’m thinking, “Stand down, Pentagon.”

And, all you macho presidential candidates out there (and Hillary, I meant you most of all!), Iran is not the issue with which to flex your warlike muscles. The stakes are way too high for posturing, either by the Bush mis-administration, or by any of you.

This is one initiative that, unless dire reality intrudes, should get put on the shelf until, say, 21-January-2009, the earliest.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

A week has passed since I found this analysis in The Economist, the best magazine on the planet, an eternity in the ‘Sphere, but this is too important to let go by.

The morass in Iraq has distracted us from the very real danger represented by a nuclear Iran…

Jul 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Iran’s leaders think a nuclear weapon could rejuvenate their tired revolution. How can they be stopped?

“THE Iranian regime is basically a messianic apocalyptic cult.” So says Israel’s once and perhaps future prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. If he is right the world is teetering on the edge of a terrifying crisis.

While the world has been distracted by Iraq, Afghanistan and much else, Iran has been moving relentlessly closer to the point where it could build an atomic bomb. It has converted yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas. Now it is spinning the gas through thousands of centrifuges it has installed at the underground enrichment plant it built secretly in Natanz, south of Tehran. A common guess is that if it can run 3,000 centrifuges at high speed for a year, it will end up with enough fuel for its first bomb….

[Per L-HC's reformed process, please click the link below for the complete article -- but then please come on back!]

Economist.com

Shockingly, Iran has been lying to all of us. What can the civilized world do? Deal with Iran preemptively? As the Economist notes, such a preemptive strike from the US or Israel would have dire consequences:

Even if it delayed or stopped Iran’s nuclear programme, it would knock new holes in America’s relations with the Muslim world. And if only for the sake of their domestic political survival, Iran’s leaders would almost certainly hit back. Iran could fire hundreds of missiles at Israel, attack American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, organise terrorist attacks in the West or choke off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s oil windpipe. How could any Western leader in his right mind risk initiating such a sequence of events?

The succinct answer of Senator John McCain is that although attacking Iran would be bad, an Iran with nuclear weapons would be worse. He is not alone: most of America’s presidential candidates would consider military force….

The Economist’s writer believes that a diplomatic solution is still possible:

Iran is obstinate, paranoid and ambitious. But it is also vulnerable. A young population with no memory of the revolution is desperate for jobs its leaders have failed to provide. Sanctions that cut off equipment for its decrepit oilfields or struck hard at the financial interests of the regime and its protectors in the Revolutionary Guards would have an immediate impact on its own assessment of the cost of its nuclear programme. That on its own is unlikely to change the regime’s mind. If at the same time Iran was offered a dignified ladder to climb down—above all a credible promise of an historic reconciliation with the United States—the troubled leadership of a tired revolution might just grab it. But time is short.

Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

Economist.com

Sensible advice, and based on past performance, we can have no confidence whatsoever that the diplomatic all stars running our government have any clue how to resolve this issue with any positive outcome.

George, diplomacy is more than sending Condi on a flurry of pointless excursions.

But, no matter who becomes the next Cmdr-in-Chief, the Economist reminds us that this issue won’t wait until January 20, 2009.

Okay, I’m terrified.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE