September 2, 2008
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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
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.
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"War on Terrorism", 9/11, Afghanistan, Geopolitics, Iraq occupation, Military affairs, Obama, Terrorism, War | Tagged: 9/11, Afghanistan, China, denuclearization, Edward Luttwak, George W. Bush, Harry S Truman, Iran, Iraq, Israel, jihadism, Obama, Politics, Terrorism, War, Wikipedia | 
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Posted by mudge
August 25, 2008
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MUDGE’s Musings
Confession: Yr (justifiably) humble svt has been watching these past couple of months of virulent right wing zingers aimed at Barack Obama, that are apparently drawing blood among responders to polls, with more than a little tinge of déjà vu.
The rabid Rovian mudflood machine buried John Kerry last time around, using his war record, and his wealthy wife, as its prime weapons. Now, enough true believers are buying Jerome Corsi’s latest fantasy smearfest to make it a best seller. Uh oh.
However, Obama is facing a war hero with a wife so wealthy that he can’t keep track of how many homes they own. Do the Democrats have the bare knuckled instincts to strike back against McCain’s rabid Rovians? Frank Rich of NYTimes is urging that the time for polite cheek turning is long past.
Last Call for Change We Can Believe In
Op-Ed Columnist | By FRANK RICH | Published: August 23, 2008
AS the real campaign at last begins in Denver this week, this much is certain: It’s time for Barack Obama to dispatch “Change We Can Believe In” to a dignified death.
This isn’t because — OMG! — Obama’s narrow three- to four-percentage-point lead of recent weeks dropped to a statistically indistinguishable one- to three-point margin during his week of vacation. It’s because zero hour is here. As the presidential race finally gains the country’s full attention, the strategy that vanquished Hillary Clinton must be rebooted to take out John McCain.
“Change We Can Believe In” was brilliantly calculated for a Democratic familial brawl where every candidate was promising nearly identical change from George Bush. It branded Obama as the sole contender with the un-Beltway biography, credibility and political talent to link the promise of change to the nation’s onrushing generational turnover in all its cultural (and, yes, racial) manifestations. McCain should be a far easier mark than Clinton if Obama retools his act.
Obama’s message of change needs an update, Rich says, and he makes a strong case.
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2 Comments | China, Economy, Iraq occupation, McCain, Obama, Politics, Presidential election | Tagged: China, Corsi, Economy, Frank Rich, John Kerry, McCain, Obama, Politics | Permalink
Posted by mudge
August 16, 2008
MUDGE’S Musings
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So, back into the archives once again during an exceptionally action-packed weekend, 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!”
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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 28, 2007, and titled “mm178: More Conventional Wis-dumb.”
MUDGE’S Musings
It has long been an article of faith in the press that U.S. education is failing to deliver adequate numbers of competent engineers and scientists.
We’ve all seen the reports that show U.S. students in all grade levels far behind many other countries in test results.
So, imagine the surprise that MUDGE felt when encountering this column in Business Week, one of his regular reads (for over 30 years!).
Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support
by Vivek Wadhwa
Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.
Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled workers and immigration (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). The argument by Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), and others is that there are not enough tech workers in the U.S.
What we believe is not, as it happens, supported by the facts.
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Leave a Comment » | China, Education, India | Tagged: big lie, China, conventional wis-dumb, conventional wisdom, Education, engineering, India, Mainstream media, The 'Sphere, U.S. education failure, Vivek Wadhwa | Permalink
Posted by mudge
August 14, 2008
© Catia Amadio | Dreamstime.com
MUDGE’s Musings
In case current events in the nation of Georgia haven’t made the fact crystal clear, yr (justifiably) humble svt is unhappy to inform you that the U.S. military hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the past nearly 20 years since the end of the Cold War.
And the diplomatic corps has similarly shown itself to be overstressed and undermanned.
Nicholas Kristof made the point this past weekend: the U.S. has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats!
And what Kristof’s story omits, due to rapidly breaking events, is the failure of both U.S. diplomacy and U.S. military strength during the Russian invasion of Georgia this past week.
Military strength? Well, we can’t simultaneously put sufficient boots on the ground to meet our objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less come to the aid of a strategically critical ally, Georgia.
Diplomacy? A strong diplomatic corps might have foreseen (yes, hindsight is always 20:20) that Georgia was simultaneously taking U.S. and NATO support as more than words, while underestimating Vladimir Putin’s urge for regained empire, and warned Mikheil Saakashvili away from his adventuristic invasion of South Ossettia.
Or a diplomatic arm with some heft might have been able to forestall, or at least mitigate, Russia’s response. Putin may now be emboldened to exercise his brand of “diplomacy” over other, West-leaning, former states of the old Soviet empire, and the U.S. will be hard pressed to protect them, diplomatically or militarily, if it even figures out that this would be a useful strategy.
But George III is a happy warrior, as befits a civilian who took giant steps to avoid substantive military service, and diplomacy apparently doesn’t mean much to him, or it appears, to Congress.
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1 Comment | Afghanistan, Geopolitics, Iraq occupation, McCain, Obama, Politics, Presidential election, War | Tagged: Barack Obama, Bush, China, diplomacy, diplomatic corps, Foreign Service, George III, Georgia, John McCain, military strength, Nicholas Kristof, Saakashvili, South Ossettia, Vladimir Putin | Permalink
Posted by mudge
August 8, 2008
© Claudio Negri | Dreamstime.com
MUDGE’s Musings
Long ago, yr (justifiably) humble svt was quite the sports fan. Some of this was genetic; my long-deceased father was a baseball fan, first and foremost; during his prime he was pleased to have season’s tickets for both Chicago ball clubs.
His oldest son is more of a fair weather fan. And the weather thus far this season has been quite fair, thank you very much, on both the North and South sides of town, although all such observations are via television or Internet; stadium tickets, parking, refreshments are luxury goods.
Professional and college football I find more compelling; even though I never have been at all athletic, the large size of football players fits my self image better, I think. Those seasons are just about to begin; it’s been a long several months football-free drought. But, interest is vicarious; the past two seasons, courtesy of my Naval Academy children, I have actually attended a couple of live college games, but it’s been 30 years or more since I’ve attended a professional contest.
For many years, I was a happy subscriber to Sports Illustrated, and a voracious consumer of televised sports of all kinds, although until the past few years penury deprived me of many years of ESPN.
And, every four years, and lately, since the Winter and Summer games have been split, every two years, I was a consumer of televised Olympics.
A fellow denizen of BlogExplosion.com, michiganrafter, much more into things athletic (and commercial) than am I, had a listing the other day of the Top Ten Olympic Moments, and I could recall and concur with all of his choices.
That was then. It’s no accident, I think, that most of his top 10 occurred at least 20, and some more than 30, years ago.
Sport has changed.
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6 Comments | Business, China, Democracy, Geopolitics, Global trade, Politics, Sports | Tagged: baseball, China, ESPN, football, Great Firewall of China, Meltwater.Torrents.Meanderings.Delta, michiganrafter.blogspot.com, NFL, Olympic Games, Olympics, Sports, Sports Illustrated, Tibet repression | Permalink
Posted by mudge
June 7, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
We embark this weekend on a business trip to a conference in Boston. As conferences usually take up a great deal of uptime, without the downtime associated with a normal schedule, we will probably cover many of our daily blogging deadlines with Blasts from the Past!
The conference itself, designed to illuminate the social networking phenomena in the context of business and corporate conduct, may provide the opportunity to blog, as blogging in the corporate environment is one of its key topics. So we may be able to mix business interests and responsibilities with our avocation in this space. Should be interesting!
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 10, 2007 and originally titled “China – Two interesting aspects”.
MUDGE’S Musings
China is always in the news. Two stories from the past few days illuminate why in some interesting ways.
First, from the LA Times, a look at how we have become victim’s of our unlimited appetite for everyday low prices.
Analysts expect prices in the U.S. to creep up as safety standards are reevaluated. Buyers and retailers may share the impact.
By Don Lee and Abigail Goldman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 9, 2007
SHANGHAI — Get ready for a new Chinese export: higher prices.
For years, American consumers have enjoyed falling prices for goods made in China thanks to relentless cost cutting by retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target.
But the spate of product recalls in recent months — Mattel announced another last week — has exposed deep fault lines in Chinese manufacturing. Manufacturers and analysts say some of the quality breakdowns are a result of financially strapped factories substituting materials or taking other shortcuts to cover higher operating costs.
Now, retailers that had largely dismissed Chinese suppliers’ complaints about the soaring cost of wages, energy and raw materials are preparing to pay manufacturers more to ensure better quality. By doing so, they hope to prevent recalls that hurt their bottom lines and reputations. But those added costs — on a host of items that include toys and frozen fish — mean either lower profits for retailers or higher prices for consumers.
“For American consumers, this big China sale over the last 20 years is over,” said Andy Xie, former Asia economist for Morgan Stanley, who works independently in Shanghai. “China’s cost is going up. They need to get used to it.”
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Leave a Comment » | Business, China, Economy, Geopolitics, Global trade, History | Tagged: Business, China, Costco, Economy, exports, Global trade, global warming, History, Japan, junk, landfills, lead paint, low prices, Pearl Harbor, safety inspections, scrap iron, scrap paper, scrap steel, Target, toys, Toys R Us, trade deficit, trash, tree huggers, Vietnam, wage increases, Wal-Mart | Permalink
Posted by mudge
May 30, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Oil prices. A very hot, very sticky, very crude topic. We’ll look at four versions of reality.
MUDGE‘s reality: $4.259/gallon at his neighborhood Shell.
From the mosaic, we can hope that some kind of truth emerges.
No question that we are living in interesting times.
Oil spill no. 1. How high is up?
$200 a barrel petroleum. If you think your world is changing around you, buckle up.
![theamerican[4]](https://mudge.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/theamerican4.jpg?w=396&h=92)
Will Oil Really Hit $200 a Barrel?
Rudi Dornbusch, the renowned economist, once said that he did not understand how Mexico’s central bank board members could make the same mistakes time after time. Looking at the ongoing frenzy in the global oil market, one appreciates what Dornbusch meant. Once again, many market participants appear to believe that oil prices can only go up. It seems that the painful lessons of the 2001 dot-com bust have been forgotten, as have the lessons of the much more recent U.S. housing crash.
In their state of forgetfulness, many pension funds and insurance companies have built up very large open positions in the oil futures market. These positions are now estimated to total over $200 billion, roughly the equivalent of a full year of Chinese oil demand. They have contributed to the recent spectacular run-up in oil prices.
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Leave a Comment » | China, Economic depression, Economy, India, Politics, Presidential election | Tagged: "May you live in interesting times", $200/barrel, Casablanca, China, criminomics, economics, high prices, India, Obama, oil, Pacer, petroleum, Prius, Recession, Tata Motors, Thomas Friedman, Vietnam | Permalink
Posted by mudge
May 19, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Here in the replete West, such as at the home of yr (justifiably) humble svt, rice is an occasional side dish, a refreshing change from a potato, or pasta, usually accompanying a steaming chunk of animal protein.
In the hungry not-West, rice is entirely it.
Rice has been distressingly newsworthy lately, as prices have been climbing.
Even before this month’s very bad news (the story below, as well as the Burma cyclone of a couple of weeks ago that hit Southeast Asia’s rice bowl (Burma’s Irrawaddy delta) the hardest), there were shortages and unrest, sometimes violent, due to skyrocketing rice prices.
But the NYTimes makes clear, the latest threat to rice, and thus to the staple food of billions, is the lack of momentum in agricultural research.
Today’s villain is called the brown plant hopper. And it could have been stopped in its tracks, had the research establishment kept its eye on the ball.
The Food Chain
World’s Poor Pay Price as Crop Research Is Cut
LOS BAÑOS, Philippines — The brown plant hopper, an insect no bigger than a gnat, is multiplying by the billions and chewing through rice paddies in East Asia, threatening the diets of many poor people.
Researchers at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, the world’s main repository of information about rice, are trying to deal with problems like the rice hopper, which destroys plants, by developing stronger varieties of rice.
The damage to rice crops, occurring at a time of scarcity and high prices, could have been prevented. Researchers at the International Rice Research Institute here say that they know how to create rice varieties resistant to the insects but that budget cuts have prevented them from doing so.
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1 Comment | Agribusiness, Biotechnology, Business, Global trade, History of Technology, Science, Technology | Tagged: agriculture, AIDS, brown plant hopper, Burma, China, Green Revolution, Irrawaddy delta, Philippines, polio, research, rice, rice high price, rice shortage, tuberculosis, underfunded research, World Bank | Permalink
Posted by mudge
March 11, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
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.
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1 Comment | "War on Terrorism", Afghanistan, Geopolitics, Iraq occupation, Navy, Politics | Tagged: "War on Terrorism", Afghanistan, China, Esquire, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Navy, William Fox Fallon | Permalink
Posted by mudge
February 22, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
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.
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3 Comments | China, Geopolitics, India, Navy, Politics, Science, Technology | Tagged: China, fallout shelters, GPS, India, Iran, Israel, militarization of space, missile, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, shot down satellite, Tang, U.S. Navy | Permalink
Posted by mudge
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Left-handed Complement 