© 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

MUDGE’s Musings

Frank Rich of the NYTimes eviscerated John McCain over both his supposed area of expertise, military affairs, as well as Sen. McCain’s admitted area of weakness, matters economic. It wasn’t pretty.

It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid

Op-Ed Columnist | By FRANK RICH | Published: July 20, 2008

THE best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.

“In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his.

Mr. McCain still doesn’t understand that we can’t send troops to Afghanistan unless they’re shifted from Iraq. But simple math, to put it charitably, has never been his forte. When it comes to the central front of American anxiety — the economy — his learning curve has flat-lined.

Rich follows similar economic criticism of McCain from Paul Krugman 12 days previously, before Phil Gramm elevated himself from has-been to economic advisor to get thee gone in just a few hours time.

Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.

[By the way, the photo at the top of the column will hereby become Left-Handed Complement's official John McCain portrait.]

Carly Fiorina has picked up the economic cudgel from temporarily banished ex-Sen. Gramm. She comes with a wonderful track record: booted out of Hewlett-Packard after five years of big talk and miserable results.

Then Rich wanders into a long-time hobby-horse of this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©, Michael Bloomberg, positing him a potential vice president on the McCain ticket.

Mr. McCain reminds us every day how principled he is. That presumably means he’d risk a revolt by his party’s dwindling agents of intolerance and do everything in his power to persuade Mr. Bloomberg to join his ticket in the spirit of patriotic sacrifice. The politics could be advantageous too. A Bloomberg surprise could impress independents and keep the television audience tuned in to a G.O.P. convention that will unfold in the shadow of Mr. Obama’s address to 75,000 screaming fans in Denver.

Op-Ed Columnist – It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

All this vice presidential speculation this year provides the usual column-inch filler during the summertime doldrums for the political junkies out here, but it’s also particularly of interest, in a year of unusually vulnerable presidential candidates. (Hey, if Hillary can point it out, so can I. I’m going to hate myself in the morning, though.)

But, hey, Frank Rich! I want Michael Bloomberg for the good guys.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Joshua Wanyama | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’S Musings

A bit lost in the top of the week media frenzy: the failure and resulting run on IndyMac Bank; serious troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; extreme umbrage over the satirical The New Yorker cover; a certain presidential candidate delivered a compelling essay on national topic 1a, Iraq.

This pointless and criminally mismanaged war in Iraq was, for several agonizing years, national topic 1, until the not quite official recession took over honors as the new leading source of voter anxiety.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama has taken some heat from what one writer last week described as the “Republic of Portland,” the extreme left wing of his party, concerned about a candidacy that, once the primaries were completed, seemed to veer toward the center.

Time then to begin to flesh out a keystone promise, to “left” the ship, as it were: ending the U.S. war in Iraq.

My Plan for Iraq

Op-Ed Contributor | By BARACK OBAMA | Published: July 14, 2008

CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

Senator Obama is no knee-jerk peacenik, unlike many denizens of his party’s extreme left wing. He is open minded enough to recognize that this nation has military responsibilities that require a military response; unfortunately, our involvement in Iraq is impeding our ability to so respond.

So he has a plan, quite different from his opponent in this election campaign, superannuated Senator McCain.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

If you can tear yourself away from bank failures and umbrage-taking, take a look at the Senator’s specifics.

Op-Ed Contributor – Barack Obama – Op-Ed – My Plan for Iraq – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

The man makes sense. At the end of the day, that’s what this nation needs, sense, not criminality. Clear thinking and reasoned decisions, not thoughtless attachment to the policies of a defiled administration.

January 20, 2009 can’t come soon enough.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Enruta | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’S Musings

Those looking for the smoking guns on torture and the mishandled war on terrorism within the Bush administration seem to have found them.

Frank Rich has a must read column in today’s NYTimes, reviewing “The Dark Side” by Jane Mayer, to be published July 15.

Seems like the book is going to be a must read, also.

The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008

Op-Ed Columnist | By FRANK RICH | Published: July 13, 2008

WE know what a criminal White House looks like from “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic account of Richard Nixon’s unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.

“The Final Days” was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book “The Dark Side” connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution….

In the name of defending against terrorism, the Bush administration has systematically violated the law, and the evidence is finally exposed to the light of day.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. “The Dark Side” is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television’s “24,” all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

So what if they cut corners, the administration’s last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.

But are we safe? As Al Qaeda and the Taliban surge this summer, that single question is even more urgent than the moral and legal issues attending torture.

Thus the illustration at the top of this post. In fact, some top administration officials, past or present, have been warned publicly not to travel outside the U.S., due to international war crimes court exposure!

Top Bush hands are starting to get sweaty about where they left their fingerprints. Scapegoating the rotten apples at the bottom of the military’s barrel may not be a slam-dunk escape route from accountability anymore.

No wonder the former Rumsfeld capo, Douglas Feith, is trying to discredit a damaging interview he gave to the British lawyer Philippe Sands for another recent and essential book on what happened, “Torture Team.” After Mr. Sands previewed his findings in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Feith protested he had been misquoted — apparently forgetting that Mr. Sands had taped the interview. Mr. Feith and Mr. Sands are scheduled to square off in a House hearing this Tuesday.

And, as Rich points out, while apparently highly competent in the arts of torture, the Bush-Cheney cabal has shown very little competency actually controlling America’s terrorist threat, beginning in the early days, well before 9/11.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008 – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

Folks, it’s not just unreconstructed peace-niks who recognize that the Iraq war has been not only incompetently prosecuted, but was sold to this nation as a result of incompetently vetted, even criminally biased, intelligence reports.

And, terrorism, the supposed target of that Iraq folly, as well as a mission rapidly becoming unaccomplished in Afghanistan?

Flourishing, and very possibly more dangerous than ever.

So there are two pressing priorities, and they needn’t nor shouldn’t wait for January 20, 2009:

1. Start paying attention to what’s been happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and start committing political and military assets toward putting an end to the threats.
2. Let’s start prosecuting the criminals infesting the Bush administration. Impeachment of our corrupt vice president would be an excellent beginning.

Wake up, people!

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the links to Amazon.com used above are for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor, and in any event it’s against WordPress.com’s rules. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

This is a multiple event weekend. In addition to observing the Independence Day holiday just past, July 5 marks Mr. & Mrs. MUDGE‘s wedding anniversary.

As well it should, this milestone will by necessity minimize disposable time devoted to the art of blogging, so in place of a totally new post, we’ll leave you with one of our favorite efforts. It’s actually quite a shame that it’s all too timeless.

There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

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

From last summer, originally posted September 29, 2007, and originally titled “mm156: There’s a war on, folks, and this must be a military weekend.”

MUDGE’S Musings

So, yesterday’s post on Predator (not the Governator’s flick, the UCAV, silly!) was not impelled by news, but rather by the (semi-) creative gestation process.

Then, today, while strolling through Digg (which this MUDGE must admit has somehow elevated itself over what was happening a few weeks ago — could it be that school is back in session and people are a bit more serious-minded?) found a couple of Navy related stories.

Now, MUDGE and the U.S. Navy go way back. No, never served. Yes, as one interested in the history of technology, and therefore military history, and technology in general, and the Navy has long embodied applied technology at its most dramatic.

This interest apparently was infectious, and this draft evader (in thought if not in deed) was bemused to have spawned MUDGElet No. 2, mentioned before in this space, a proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and distinguished former lieutenant in the Navy’s surface warfare community.

Parents: be careful what you read, and what books and magazines you leave around for your kids to find!

Just kidding. I couldn’t be prouder of our children, and their spouses, and No. 2′s spouse happens to be proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (tough as it is for men, extraordinarily so for women), and distinguished former lieutenant in the Navy’s surface warfare community.

So, two stories. One odd in and of itself; one an intriguing window into the state of the generation of young women and men just a year or so younger than MUDGElet No. 3.

Odd:

CORONADO, Calif. – The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.

The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on such services as Windows Live and Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.

Typical government decision-making: no one can see our error, so let’s ignore it.

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

Navy to alter swastika-shaped barracks – Peculiar Postings – MSNBC.com

Don’t get MUDGE started about swastikas. I don’t hold Indians responsible for an ancient religious symbol.

As a boomer, born three years after the full panoply of horror was daylighted in a way that the world could not longer ignore, I manifestly do hold Nazi Germany responsible for every murderous, dreadful and inhuman act performed under that forever tainted symbol, and the successor generations of Germans get less benefit of the doubt from this curmudgeon than from many.

Not the Navy’s best building. If there wasn’t a war on, I’d vote for demolishing the place, just because.

Intriguing:

Military recruiting in this age of volunteer soldiering, rather than my generation’s drafted, has not previously been a problem for the Pentagon. Oh, they keep needing to seed the ground, with education benefits, and with retention bonuses (MUDGElet No. 2 reported that he passed on a $50,000 re-up bribe to resign to go onto grad school).

But, now there’s a war on. And, while the Navy isn’t on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and taking the casualties that the Army and Marines (yes, a branch of the Navy) are taking, recruiting today’s 17-24 year-olds is a challenge.

This story comes, quite indirectly, courtesy of Salon.com’s excellent technology blogger known as The Machinist.

Noah Shachtman, the master of Wired’s Danger Room blog, and Entropic Memes both have cool posts about a presentation put together by some Navy experts regarding the difficulty of recruiting “millennials,” Americans aged 17 to 24, to the armed forces. In the words of the presentation, the kids are not alright: They’re “coddled,” “narcissistic praise junkies” who “demand respect” though they lack experience, and who are so comfortable with technology that talking to them is like “dealing with a somewhat alien life force.”

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

Machinist: Tech Blog, Tech News, Technology Articles – Salon

Navy recruiters! Of course you’re having trouble recruiting, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the generation you are focusing on doesn’t speak your language.

Of course “the millennials” speak your language. If all else were equal, the signing bonuses, and education rewards should work for that generation as well as it has for its predecessor’s.

The problem is, Navy, that there’s a war on. Soldiers are dying, or are taking combat injuries that the hospitals aren’t dealing with effectively.

Is there any wonder that the volunteers aren’t breaking down the doors of the Navy recruiters’ offices?

Even “millennials” watch the news.

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

There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.

Blast from the Past!

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

From last summer, originally posted September 15, 2007, and originally titled “U.S. Pilot helped clear the fog of war”.

MUDGE’S Musings

Got to tell you, like most of us, I have long since developed war fatigue. And I’m nowhere near the front. All I seem to be able to do is wring my hands and whimper, “Get our soldiers out of this!”

But, I have a soft spot for technology, and this is a technology story, about Iraq. But of course, wars are fought by women and men. And this is even more a story about a creative and determined man who took on as his mission to sell a particular technology to the command structure.

So we’ll take a look.

Greg Harbin saw a way to streamline airstrikes. The solution — and his cause — was the Rover, a device that would one day save his life.

By Julian E. Barnes
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 13, 2007

In the summer of 2003, an Air Force pilot named Greg Harbin was doing desk duty at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.

Day in and day out, Harbin sat in front of five computer screens, scanning photographs and video sent by unmanned planes flying 1,200 miles away, over Iraq and Afghanistan.

His job was to take that information, along with reports from ground troops, and identify fresh targets — Taliban fighters or Iraqi insurgents.

But one thing puzzled him.

When regular units called for an attack by a Predator drone, the request went to Harbin, and then, if approved by a general, to “pilots” in Nevada, who fired the missile by remote control. The process often took as long as 45 minutes.

By contrast, special operations forces could call in attacks by unmanned Predator aircraft in less than a minute.

The difference, Harbin learned, was that a handful of special ops units were equipped with a device called the Rover, which gave them the same view as the pilots in Nevada. This greatly simplified communications.

Why don’t all American fighting units have the Rover? he asked himself. Then he put the question to his boss, Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan, commander of the Air Force in the Middle East. Buchanan’s reply: Why indeed.

There’s a lot that’s intriguing about this story. The Predator UCAV, symbolic of technology (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle) that will one day make human aircraft pilots sitting inside their aircraft an obsolete and quaint artifact of the first century of aviation.

Then there’s the Rover technology.

The Rover, or the Remote Operations Video Enhanced Receiver, was born in 2002, shortly after the Afghanistan war began.

Christopher Manuel, an Army Special Forces chief warrant officer, had long wanted ground units to see, in real time, the video footage shot by Predators. After serving in Afghanistan, he traveled to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to make his case. Engineers quickly developed a prototype of the Rover system.

Over the next year, it was used exclusively by special operations forces. Harbin’s mission to widen access to the technology began with the 82nd Airborne, the first conventional forces to use the system. His next stop was Mosul, Iraq, and the 101st Airborne Division, which happened to be his brother Eric’s unit.

And then there’s Greg Harbin’s unique story. Take a look at the complete article, along with its embedded video.

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

Los Angeles Times: U.S. pilot helped clear the fog of war

There’s so much to like here. The Katrina angle.

The life-saving angle (his own!)

The technological evangelist angle (your humble correspondent likes to believe he maintains that role for the technology he represents in his place of employment).

“I am not the guy who invented it. I am not the guy who built it. I am not the only one who believes in it,” Harbin said. “My role was to get it out there.”

But, mainly, it’s about how one person, among millions, has used his creativity, initiative and will to make a difference. It’s Archimedes’ lever.

In the light of Harbin’s example, how much more tragic is it that, as of this writing, 3,781 soldiers have died in Iraq.

Once again, even worse than the trillions Bush has mortgaged and squandered, the human capital lost is even more irreplaceable.

Can’t get that bumper sticker out of my thoughts:

January 20, 2009

Bush’s last day

Congress, do the American people, especially its courageous women and men combatants, have to wait that long?

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

© Sandra Henderson | Dreamstime.com

The last Monday of May in the U.S. is the Memorial Day holiday. Wikipedia says,

Memorial Day is a United States Federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (in 2008 on May 26). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who perished while in military service to their country. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War, it was expanded after World War I to include casualties of any war or military action.

As U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying daily, totaling much more than 4,000 to date, this opinion piece from today’s Washington Post is worth reflection. It’s author, William Troy, is a general.

Funeral Duty

By William Troy | Monday, May 26, 2008; Page A17

Throughout this war, the Army has maintained the practice of assigning a general officer to attend the funeral of every soldier who falls in service to our country. I’ve had this duty many times. The intensity of each funeral leaves me struggling to understand the enormousness of the sacrifice to which I have been a witness.

My first funeral is as clear in my mind as scenes from a familiar movie. Pfc. Christopher Kilpatrick died on June 20, 2005. I think everyone in town knew him. The residents of Columbus, Tex., filled every chair at the Knights of Columbus hall, and well-wishers lined the walls. His two sisters made a memorial video set to music. It was a moving tribute to the baby brother they fussed over; the toddler in cowboy boots; the youngster growing up hunting and fishing; the Eagle Scout; the basketball player letting a three-point shot fly; the kid with a big smile and the obligatory pickup truck.

I had to speak after that video, and I wasn’t sure the words would come out. I blocked out the rest of the hall and tried to address his parents and sisters. I hope I did Christopher justice. We laid him to rest just outside of town. When I tried to tell my wife about it later, through my tears all I could say was, “Today was supposed to be his 19th birthday.”

Whatever one thinks of the benighted lunatic civilians whose horrific project this Iraq misadventure is, one needs to make certain that the true patriots, the women and men in uniform who are the teeth of the tiger, are properly appreciated and honored. Not the least of which honor is the current practice of assigning a general officer to each funeral.

Would that such attention to detail have evolved toward supporting our living soldiers (i.e., strategic and tactical conduct of the war, medical treatment of wounded personnel, veterans’ benefits).

But, let Gen. Troy have his day.

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

William Troy – Funeral Duty – washingtonpost.com

Please take time out today between shopping the big Memorial Day sales at the mall and the festive barbecues, to remember the veterans of military service of all of our wars who were or are in your lives, dead and living, fallen in battle or simply fallen to the ravages of time. Recovering, as best they can given the slothful government for which they sacrificed, from the wounds and stress of combat, or simply recovering from the stress of duty as that tiger’s tooth.

We comfortable civilians owe them our respect and gratitude.

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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Let’s be geopolitically strategic today.

Our writers here make the point that, while we (manifestly!) weren’t paying attention, that superpower status we earned by being the last country standing after World War II, and defended so expensively during the ensuing Cold War, has quietly left the building.

From a new addition to our blogroll, Tom Engelhardt’s  TomDispatch.com, comes this bracing wake-up call.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, America Out of Gas

TomDispatch.com | posted May 08, 2008 11:01 am

These days, the price of oil seems ever on the rise. A barrel of crude broke another barrier Wednesday — $123 — on international markets, and the talk is now of the sort of “superspike” in pricing (only yesterday unimaginable) that might break the $200 a barrel ceiling “within two years.” And that would be without a full-scale American air assault on Iran, after which all bets would be off.

Considering that, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, oil was still in the $20 a barrel price range, this is no small measure of what the Bush administration years have really accomplished. Today, it’s hard even to remember not 9/11, but 11/9 — November 9, 1989 — the day that the Berlin Wall fell, signaling that, soon enough, after its seventy-odd year life, that Reaganesque Evil Empire, the Soviet Union, was heading for the door. In 1991, it disappeared from the face of the Earth without a whimper. Until almost the last moment, top officials in Washington assumed it would go on forever; and, when it was gone, most of them couldn’t, at first, believe it. Soon enough, however, the event was hailed as the greatest of American triumphs — “victory” not just in the Cold War, but at a level never before seen. Finally, for the first time in history, there was but a single superpower on the planet….

Almost seven and a half years later, as Michael Klare so vividly indicates below, an observer might be pardoned for wondering whether there hadn’t been two super losers in the Cold War. Had the Soviet Union, the weaker of the two great powers of the second half of the last century, simply imploded first, while the U.S., enwreathed in a cloud of self-congratulation, was almost unbeknownst to itself also slowly making its way toward an exit? And, as a final irony, Klare — author of the not-to-be-missed new book Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet — points out, energy has refloated Russia, even as it’s sinking us. Tom

Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower

How Rising Oil Prices Are Obliterating America’s Superpower Status
By Michael T. Klare

Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world’s other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe.

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation’s economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

As I read this, a colorful image popped into mind. From a crime novel of John D. MacDonald’s pre-Travis McGee days, he wrote a scene of a hired killer going after a middle-aged politician, with a very thin, very sharp implement the style and shape of a knitting needle. The assassin “stumbles,” brushes against his target, deftly plunges the slender needle into the hapless victim’s heart, withdraws it and quickly melts away. Meanwhile the 55-ish politician, used to the various aches and pains that are part and parcel of encroaching age, pays limited attention to the brief twinge he feels in his chest (what’s another twinge?), and keeps walking for a short time, bleeding internally. Essentially already dead.

While the U.S. walked in the sunshine, basking in its status of the globe’s only superpower, history brushed against us. According to Michael Klare, we are about to discover that our vaunted status has disappeared.

The Klare piece is quite colorful in its descriptions of exactly what rabbit hole we’ve thrown ourselves down, including allowing Iraq to charge our military market rates for fuel (which our high-tech military is using at the rate of 27 gallons per soldier per day!) while charging its citizens one-third of that. Not exactly superpower behavior.

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

Tomgram: Michael Klare, America Out of Gas

It’s going to require some clear, out of the box reflection to confront the outcome of our new status in the world.

We no longer can depend on our usual, brute force, finesse-free approach to geopolitics to achieve our aims.

Many cogent military writers have noted that World War II, on which our superpower stature was founded, was won not through excellent strategy (the professional officer corps of the Germans was far more competent) or courageous soldiering (the Samurai spirit of the Japanese soldier was unmatched), although there were adequate amounts of both.

Rather, the overwhelming industrial might that put thousands of ships in the water (at one point, one “Liberty ship” oceangoing cargo craft was launched each day!) and aircraft in the air and tanks (not great tanks, but good enough) on the ground, and was simultaneously able to furnish petroleum and materiel to our allies Britain and the Soviet Union in war-winning quantities, was what won the war for the U.S.

That’s not military or diplomatic finesse. That’s brute force. And today’s hollowed out industrial engine couldn’t duplicate such an effort.

We’re in hock up to our eyebrows, dependent on smiling sheikhs for our ability to commute to work, possessing a bunch of fair weather friends who may disappear when the holey state of our umbrella is discerned.

Seems like some new thinking may be required of this country’s leaders.

One of the current three candidates for president seems to be capable of eschewing business as usual (Barack Obama’s refusal to jump on the let them eat cake pandering of McCain’s and Clinton’s gas tax holiday proposal is a promising signal).

Rather makes irrelevant the color of his skin, doesn’t it?

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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Well, most of our robotic forces are air forces these days, but we keep learning about “spiders” and the like that are meant to assist ground troops.

It’s not just about protecting precious lives, although heaven knows that should be a sufficient rationale for investing in this sci-fi like technology.

It’s about substituting for Army and Marine ground troops that simply aren’t available.

Fred Kaplan, who writes most cogently on military affairs for Slate.com, has an intriguing analysis.

The Army’s Math Problem

We don’t have any more soldiers to send to Afghanistan unless we take some out of Iraq.

By Fred Kaplan | Posted Monday, May 5, 2008, at 4:56 PM ET

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to send 7,000 more U.S. troops—about two brigades—to Afghanistan, according to the May 3 New York Times. But there’s a problem, which the story underplays: We don’t have any more troops to send. The Army is in a zero-sum state: No more soldiers can be sent to Afghanistan without a one-for-one reduction of soldiers in Iraq.

Let us recall that Afghanistan is the war that just might be winnable, with some luck, and lots more troops. Not guaranteed, but while Afghanistan is the typical Middle Eastern stewpot of tribal conflicts, it hasn’t nearly as much of the religio-political complexity of Iraq.

And there’s very little in the way of petroleum to fuel the flames, as it were.

And there may well be something to gain; not the least would be pacifying the provinces that are a continual menace to whatever stability might be feasible in neighboring Pakistan.

The poppy fields I care little about; they’ll stay in business forever, regardless of whatever energy we put toward that target. The drug problem of the U.S. isn’t about those poppy fields, it’s about who we let sell the manufactured drugs on the street. The idiocy of our war on drugs has been exposed here more than once [that's three different links!].

But, we won’t have the boots to place on the ground in Afghanistan unless we find them among assets we already have in the field. Take a look at Fred Kaplan’s analysis.

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

We don’t have any more soldiers to send to Afghanistan unless we take some out of Iraq. – By Fred Kaplan – Slate Magazine

So this is how yr (justifiably) humble svt ties in the robotic discussion. In the short term the troops to win Afghanistan will have to come from Iraq, and from whatever of those allies we may still possess whom we can persuade to increase, or make new, commitments.

Of course the Army’s soldiers and Marines can be spared in Iraq, as it’s difficult to believe that even a million more U.S. troops could sort out the miserable hash that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld brain trust made there.

The next administration should have the mandate and the will to figure out a way to safely extricate U.S. assets, except perhaps enough sufficient to protect Kurdistan from Turkey, Iran and what’s left of Iraq, and leave the tribes to figure out what to do with the rest of what is, after all, a wholly artificial construct the British assembled from those disparate tribes after World War I.

Kaplan says the U.S. needs a top to bottom rethink of its global mission. Left-Handed Complement agrees, but also believes that the trend toward letting technology handle the in harms way part is a good development that should be pursued vigorously once the hemorrhaging is stanched in Iraq.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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This nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© is always intrigued when one of its obsessions interests pops up as news.

Danger Room is a military affairs blog (part of Wired.com) we don’t check into sufficiently often, but today we were rewarded with a new Predator tale.

The changing face of military aviation

ninth in an occasional series

The series so far…

Gates, Air Force Battle Over Robot Planes

By Noah Shachtman | March 21, 2008 | 2:53:00 PM

There may not be an open war, quite yet, between the Secretary of Defense and the leadership of the Air Force. But there is serious, palatable tension. And a nasty game of brinksmanship over the use of drones in the Middle East has only made things worse.

Last fall, the Pentagon’s civilian chiefs shot down an Air Force move to take over almost all of the military’s big unmanned aircraft. “There has to be a better way to do this,” complained Air Force chief of staff, Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley. Things only got more tense when Gates said that the future of conflict is in small, “asymmetric” wars — wars in which the Air Force takes a back seat to ground forces….

Now comes word from L.A. Times’ ace Peter Spiegel that Gates “has ordered the Air Force to put nearly all of its unmanned Predator aircraft into the skies over the Middle East, forcing the service to take steps that officers worry could hobble already-stressed drone squadrons.”

Pressure from the Defense secretary in recent months has nearly doubled the number of Predators available to help hunt insurgents and find roadside bombs in Iraq. But it has forced air commanders into a scramble for crews that officers said could hurt morale and harm the long-term viability of the Predator program.

It’s apparent that the use of robot aircraft is increasing in the two Middle Eastern theatres. And why not? They are inexpensive (if only in the military appropriations context), small and flexible (ideal for asymmetric warfare fought in alleys and caves), and the occasional loss of one is not accompanied by a body bag landing at Dover.

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

Gates, Air Force Battle Over Robot Planes | Danger Room from Wired.com

MQ-1 Predator

Let’s step back and take a quick look at Predator. This is from the site of Barnard Microsystems, Ltd., perhaps a subcontractor for Predator.

The General Atomics ” Predator MQ-1″ UAV

The MQ-1 Predator is a system, not just an aircraft. A fully operational system consists of four aircraft (with sensors), a ground control station, a Predator Primary Satellite Link, and approximately 55 personnel for deployed 24-hour operations.

The basic crew for the Predator is one pilot and two sensor operators. They fly the aircraft from inside the ground control station via a line-of-sight data link or a satellite data link for beyond line-of-sight flight. The aircraft is equipped with a color nose camera (generally used by the pilot for flight control), a day variable-aperture TV camera, a variable-aperture infrared camera (for low light/night), and a synthetic aperture radar for looking through smoke, clouds or haze. The cameras produce full motion video while the SAR produces still frame radar images.

One starts to understand the dimensions of the Air Force personnel issue: one system, four aircraft, 55 personnel, 24-hours.

Economist

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

General Atomics Predator MQ-1 UAV

MQ-9 Reaper

General Atomics increased some of Predator’s dimensions, including its power plant, and created what was long called Predator B, later Reaper.

MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer UAV

Reaper, (also known as Predator B) an outgrowth of the combat proven Predator A UAS, became operational in 2007 and as it began flying combat missions over Afghanistan. This Medium Altitude Long Endurance UAV overcomes most of the difficulties encountered with previous UAVs that commonly must compromise between conflicting demands for payload, speed, altitude, speed and persistence. With an operational ceiling of 50,000ft, and higher cruising speed, Reaper can cover a larger area, under all weather conditions carrying payloads of more than 1.5 tons. The aircraft is powered by a single Honeywell TP331-10 engine, producing 950 shp, provides a maximum airspeed of 260 kts and a cruise speed for maximum endurance of 150-170 kts.

Just a bigger, better mousetrap…

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

MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer UAV

There’s a downside to success: increased demand. The report that the generals would have seriously considered clobbering the training program in order to get the trainers back into combat is a signal.

We’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 5½ years, and you couldn’t possibly miss this week’s tragic fifth anniversary of the George III/Tricky Dicks (Cheney, Rumsfeld) multigenerational chickenhawk misadventure we fondly call Iraq. All this has drained resources, both treasure and human, and pushed equipment and the men and women who are the teeth of the tiger well beyond the limits of prudence.

And so, even the guys and gals who sit in the comfy chairs in Nevada playing videogames with their Predators and Reapers are, not so surprisingly after so many unrelieved years of war, stressed.

But not shot at. Our kids on the ground in Baghdad and Kandahar are the ones we need to find the ways and means to support, protect and eventually bring home. The operators of Predator and Reaper are doing good work on the first two of those.

The voters for president and the national legislature between now and November will have a big say on the third element.

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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Mark Benjamin, writing in Salon.com, opened our eyes this weekend with an exclusive look inside the U.S. Air Force’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the illuminating article allows this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© to return to an abiding interest, what’s going on up there in the sky?

The changing face of military aviation

eighth in an occasional series

The series so far…

The videogame theme has struck yr (justifiably) humble svt before. Take a look.

Killing “Bubba” from the skies

Inside the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Air & Space Operations Center in the Middle East.

Inside a secret high-tech control center the U.S. Air Force targets enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But can they bomb them legally, and without killing innocents? A Salon exclusive.

By Mark Benjamin

Feb. 15, 2008 | UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, THE MIDDLE EAST — The cavernous control room used by the U.S. Air Force to manage the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looks exactly how you’d expect it to look in a Hollywood movie. The lights are low. Around 50 camouflage-clad men and women lean forward in their chairs, staring intently at rows of computer screens glowing with multicolored graphs and fluctuating displays. They sometimes glance up from the banks of computer monitors to gaze at a sweeping panel of large television screens mounted on the front wall. Two massive, side-by-side screens in the center display digital maps of Iraq and Afghanistan. Swarms of U.S. aircraft above the war zones are represented by green labels that move about each map, gravitating toward wherever U.S. troops are fighting on the ground, in case they need backup.

To the left and right of those large maps are four smaller screens. Each is about 5 feet wide, displaying remarkably clear live footage from cameras mounted on the Air Force’s un-manned Predator drones that buzz incessantly above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Predator drones, however, are not filming a raging firefight, or a bridge about to be strafed from the air.

They are stalking prey.

Always appreciate an excuse to add a Predator image to this space.

Looks can be deceiving, can’t they? With its skinny landing gear, it looks like a kid’s toy.

A kid’s toy capable of loitering over a city, focusing its cameras to isolate a single supposed enemy, and perhaps even releasing a human-scaled bomb targeted at that enemy, although the actual bombing usually is the responsibility of manned aircraft called in for the purpose.

Some toy.

The Salon story provides a unique insight into the way war is prosecuted today. Worth the effort to read.

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

Iraq, Afghanistan, U.S. Air Force bombing operations | Salon News

Not in any respect a gamer, I have no idea whether any commercial entertainment videogame out there played by zillions of young’uns include avatars of attorneys standing by to rule on the legality, according to The Law of Armed Conflict, of bombing specific individual human targets, but it’s an interesting wrinkle.

So the future of U.S. combat is here: fewer men, more robots, more separation from the bloody reality that human beings are the target. As Salon‘s writer points out, this antiseptic warfare, while it may put fewer U.S. combatants’ lives at risk, might all too easily cross the thin line of morality separating justified war from cold blooded murder.

Worth pondering next time you play World of Warcraft.

……………………………….

Update

Last post, while observing with awe China’s explosive investment in infrastructure, we took the U.S. consumer to task regarding our shopping habits: i.e., sending our treasure to China when we do business at the big box retailers we so favor.

Yesterday, my home office chair broke one of its casters off in a non-repairable manner.

Today, off to Staples to replace it. I’m sitting in it as I type this, some hours after bringing it home in its compact carton and spending about 30 minutes assembling it.

Reasonably high quality for such a modest price; very well packaged, including the card containing shrink wrapped screws (including one each extra of the three sizes furnished), washers and Allen wrench, the only assembly tool required.

Very comfortable new chair with very nice lumbar support, a trendy mesh back and a “microsuede” seat.

$80 well spent.

Made in China, of course.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

Note!: the link to Staples.com used above is for the convenience of faithful reader and represents no commercial relationship whatsoever, as a picture is today worth 3,714 of our maladroitly chosen words at the present rate of exchange. Left-Handed Complement should be so fortunate as to ever collect remuneration of any kind for this endeavor, and in any event it’s against WordPress.com’s rules. I can link, so I link. It’s technology. It’s cool. It’s an artifact of Sequitur Service©. Deal with it.

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So, yesterday’s post on Predator (not the Governator’s flick, the UCAV, silly!) was not impelled by news, but rather by the (semi-) creative gestation process.

Then, today, while strolling through Digg (which this MUDGE must admit has somehow elevated itself over what was happening a few weeks ago — could it be that school is back in session and people are a bit more serious-minded?) found a couple of Navy related stories.

Now, MUDGE and the U.S. Navy go way back. No, never served. Yes, as one interested in the history of technology, and therefore military history, and technology in general, and the Navy has long embodied applied technology at its most dramatic.

This interest apparently was infectious, and this draft evader (in thought if not in deed) was bemused to have spawned MUDGElet No. 2, mentioned before in this space, a proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and distinguished former lieutenant in the Navy’s surface warfare community.

Parents: be careful what you read, and what books and magazines you leave around for your kids to find!

Just kidding. I couldn’t be prouder of our children, and their spouses, and No. 2′s spouse happens to be proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (tough as it is for men, extraordinarily so for women), and distinguished former lieutenant in the Navy’s surface warfare community.

So, two stories. One odd in and of itself; one an intriguing window into the state of the generation of young women and men just a year or so younger than MUDGElet No. 3.

Odd:

CORONADO, Calif. – The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.

The Navy said officials noted the buildings’ shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn’t obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on such services as Windows Live and Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildings’ shape to a wide audience.

Typical government decision-making: no one can see our error, so let’s ignore it.

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

Navy to alter swastika-shaped barracks – Peculiar Postings – MSNBC.com

Don’t get MUDGE started about swastikas. I don’t hold Indians responsible for an ancient religious symbol.

As a boomer, born three years after the full panoply of horror was daylighted in a way that the world could not longer ignore, I manifestly do hold Nazi Germany responsible for every murderous, dreadful and inhuman act performed under that forever tainted symbol, and the successor generations of Germans get less benefit of the doubt from this curmudgeon than from many.

Not the Navy’s best building. If there wasn’t a war on, I’d vote for demolishing the place, just because.

Intriguing:

Military recruiting in this age of volunteer soldiering, rather than my generation’s drafted, has not previously been a problem for the Pentagon. Oh, they keep needing to seed the ground, with education benefits, and with retention bonuses (MUDGElet No. 2 reported that he passed on a $50,000 re-up bribe to resign to go onto grad school).

But, now there’s a war on. And, while the Navy isn’t on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and taking the casualties that the Army and Marines (yes, a branch of the Navy) are taking, recruiting today’s 17-24 year-olds is a challenge.

This story comes, quite indirectly, courtesy of Salon.com’s excellent technology blogger known as The Machinist.

Noah Shachtman, the master of Wired’s Danger Room blog, and Entropic Memes both have cool posts about a presentation put together by some Navy experts regarding the difficulty of recruiting “millennials,” Americans aged 17 to 24, to the armed forces. In the words of the presentation, the kids are not alright: They’re “coddled,” “narcissistic praise junkies” who “demand respect” though they lack experience, and who are so comfortable with technology that talking to them is like “dealing with a somewhat alien life force.”

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

Machinist: Tech Blog, Tech News, Technology Articles – Salon

Navy recruiters! Of course you’re having trouble recruiting, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the generation you are focusing on doesn’t speak your language.

Of course “the millennials” speak your language. If all else were equal, the signing bonuses, and education rewards should work for that generation as well as it has for its predecessor’s.

The problem is, Navy, that there’s a war on. Soldiers are dying, or are taking combat injuries that the hospitals aren’t dealing with effectively.

Is there any wonder that the volunteers aren’t breaking down the doors of the Navy recruiters’ offices?

Even “millennials” watch the news.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE