Our sense of the here and now.
Archives for 2007
Tell Us We’re Wrong . . . (updated) (again)
Please pardon the repairs, Dear Reader. We made a video of Larry King interviewing Petraeus in the gloam last nite and posted it. Some of you may have already seen it. Upon review this grey dawn, it wasn’t/isn’t up to your standards. Most damning, it just wasn’t funny enough to deserve your attention.
We will confer with our Muse and send the matter to arbitration.
The Arbitraitor’s ruling has come down. Both the Muse and the Stiftung (collectively “The Parties”) failed to comply with their contractual obligations. The Arbitraitor found the Muse in breach for Her lazy conceptual design. Moreover, the Arbitraitor ruled that the Stiftung also was in breach for louche, faxed-in tech support. Accordingly, the final and unappealable decision is that the Parties must offer a concise summary of the last 2 weeks in American domestic and foreign policy to this site’s readers.
The Parties offer it herewith:
Freeze Frame
The Warlord offers many lessons. The most salient is how vulnerable we as a Nation are to radicalization via minority government. On the face of it, it would seem our Nativist and Schmittean friend Pat is correct. The Warlord’s minimalist withdrawal — they at least recognized April — could well game the budgets due in October and November 2007. He could wage war until Jan. 2009 and lock the U.S. in afterwards.
Live (Friday) Wisdom From Global Paradigms (Dr. Leon Hadar)
Our friend Global Paradigms has just returned from Israel with fresh insights on the geo-political situation inside the region and for the U.S. overall. In addition to having perhaps the best track record predicting Middle Eastern events that we know of dating back to at least 1991, Dr. Hadar is one of the truly most witty and funny people we have been lucky to meet in this Imperial City built upon a swamp. Not sure if it will be on CSPAN.
http://www.independent.org/events/detail.asp?eventID=127
Ivan Eland
Senior Fellow, the Independent Institute; author, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed
Leon T. Hadar
Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan).
David R. Henderson
Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Hoover Institution; author of the new Independent Policy Report, Do We Need to Go to War for Oil?; Associate Professor of Economics, Naval Postgraduate School.
“Sooner or later the United States will begin withdrawing from Iraq. Will the result be a catastrophe for U.S. interests, or are such predictions overstated? Can we expect a wider regional war, a safe haven for al Qaeda in Iraq, or a disruption to America’s oil supplies? What can the United States do to minimize the risks of withdrawal? Is diplomacy with Syria, Iran, and other nations the answer? Could Iraq benefit from political decentralization or even gerrymandering for the equitable distribution of oil resources? With the new Independent Policy Reports, A Diplomatic Road to Damascus and Do We Need to Go to War for Oil?, this timely and far-reaching Policy Forum will feature foreign policy experts Ivan Eland, Leon T. Hadar, and David R. Henderson.
Media Inquiries: please contact Ms. Wendy Honett, Publicity Manager, at (510) 632-1366 (ext. 116).
Call Me Shocked! Shocked!
Reader Sglover quite legitimately notes that the Warlord is immune to objective reality and institutional restraints. Belief is enough. Another Warlord in history sacked his better generals when confronted with reality in favor of ideologically compatible fanatics; belief in victory the only qualification.
We still believe that this all hollow show. The audiences are Congress, the American people, the Iraqis and Iranians (the latter two not the least bit falling for it). Interestingly, neither are the American people, only Congress. (Again).
The key issue is to settle the Who Lost Iraq? question here. Obviously the Warlord and Cheney want to pin it on Congress to de-legitimize it as an independent branch and smear Democrats. But DoD also wants to recover from the Feith/Rummy/Wolfie cf and achieve enough to blame State overall and the Embassy for failing to deliver the political side.
We still believe the troops come home starting Spring and in larger numbers by Fall. If the surge stays in place past the breaking date of circa April, then we have passed into the larger realm of the military too infected with Fanaticism and Will over material reality. And Sglover, we will send you a free Stiftung mug for helping us ponder different outcomes.
We have heard (second hand, but a trusted source) that some upon whose collars Heaven shines (not Pace’s 4, but . . .) that does not appear to be the case. We obviously can’t name them here. Even for some of those with operational command responsibilities in the Area of Operations and with direct familiarity with the tactical and operational situation in Iraq.
Yet Sglover’s observations about the Warlord remain true. We look to April as a sign.
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