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Archives for March 2011

Listening To Admiral Mullen Tonight It’s Worse Than Thought

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Admiral Mullen is a supple intellect and adroit interpersonal politician in marked contrast to his two hapless, unlamented predecessors. He effortlessly maintains zero daylight between him and the Commander in Chief while still sending oblique messaging. We saw more nuance in him being up close than guessed before reluctantly accepting tonight’s invitation.

The Whisper Of Spread Spectrum

As Mullen recited the Administration line several points seeped through in interstitial spread spectrum whisper. First, it’s clear (to the Stiftung, at least) Mullen remains unenthused about the State/White House slap-dash ‘winging it’ decision-making. He is aligned with his boss, although Gates did the patented Washington-two-step earlier on the Hill, assuring that ‘all alternatives were *exhaustively* examined’. (Clever phrasing).

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Borders Closes: The Loss Of An American Landfill As Bookmart

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Per recent comments here, we’ve been dwelling on Borders neutron-bombing many local stores. Not that we miss them particularly. They, like Barnes & Noble, were both seemingly everywhere and indistinguishable once inside. That made middling venues like Politics & Prose seem precious, like a soy milk Espresso Con Panna Grande.

Across the D.C. metroplex bookmarts in a medium or higher lease obligation zone got the axe. Tysons Corner? 18th & K? Friendship Heights, White Flint, etc.? Chop. Nearby B&N stores stand albeit with thinning product.

We won’t go into Borders’ defective business model. Suffice to say, a major competitive edge – a deep back catalog – vanished with the web and became a liability. The remaining few good used bookstores around town face that same remorseless process. B&N feels it too but controlled fixed costs and jumped early on the gizmo, Nook.

At a remaining Borders today we spoke with a familiar staffer. Over the years she’s helped with special orders. She advised remaining stores had to pass a bright line low(er) overhead test. Survival is also relative. This once robust bookmart features only about 60% of earlier inventory.

Walking around felt a bit like being in the Soviet Union in the mid-Gorbachev years. Everyone pretending to believe they will make it. Like listening to Sovs then vaguely promoting incentives to the command economy, here one must ask, ‘What exactly are the surviving remaining stores?’ They’re not bookmarts. They’re not niche plays.

Demoralized staffers shuffle books across new open spaces, dodging hastily placed empty ‘book club’ tables and ever more greeting cards. Even the coffee store furniture has been downgraded.

We continue to be astounded that the capital of an alleged superpower doesn’t have at least one world class book store. When we think of those who have gone before and now passed we can’t dismiss the thought, unbidden, that it’s a mercy they never saw America today.

Remaining product on the shelves is wide and thin. Notable exceptions? Military (Nazi) porn appears intact, for example. That’s to be expected. Outside it’s America and D.C. More curious are the still overpriced DVDs and CDs. It’s improbable at their price points they generate much revenue. Wouldn’t it be interesting to go through a monthly report and crunch the number to see if these truncated, former bookmarts can survive?

Sometimes it’s a mercy to shoot the wounded.

Obama’s Soggy, Expedient Mush

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We didn’t expect much. Obama spoke on Libya. He lived up to expectations.

Fugal Fatigue

Pre-empting ‘Jeopardy’ tonight, Obama served up the same vague, content-less platitudes that intoxicated his fans in 2008. He spoke almost Bach-like, leaving the audience to deliver the counter-fugue.

“We are not a nation that stands by when tragedy happens.” Except when we do.

Clinging to the humanitarian theme, Obama underscored regime change is *not* an American objective. Yet it is; he’s demanded Khaddafi go several times already, etc.

Obama tried to justify his unilaterally declared war on Libya. (Even Dick Cheney for God’s sake went through the motions to observe form. Bush secured two Authorizations to Use Military Force (2001 and 2002)). Remember Obama fans 2006-08 declaring his stint as a brief contract lecturer made him ‘a constitutional scholar’? (We know personally something about who is entitled to that honorific). Today, it doesn’t matter. After all, his intentions are pure and prudent.



Tonight’s flawed fugal themes of intentions and prudence attempted to mask Obama’s strategic vacuity. He failed to offer any harmonic themes defining success, concrete objectives or why he believes he can choose sides in a civil war without cost. His chordal progressions avoided any program or agenda. Just pure, prudent intentions. That he ordered a war without constitutional authority is a mere coda.

Thus, we, his critics must be mute; his intentions, after all, are noble.

The Clouseau School Of Pretending You Intended To Do That

Obama claimed his one-man war on Libya is born of unique circumstances:

(a) the UN agrees (meaning China and Russia abstained);
(b) the Arab League gave a fig leaf;
(c) Sarkozy is about to be crushed in French elections – he’s desperate;
(d) Cameron in London is inexperienced;
(e) other than Germany and Turkey walking away, NATO was signed, sealed, delivered;
(f) Americans watching Japan’s nuclear crisis are already on foreign crisis overload; and
(g) best of all, no one really knows what the hell is going on over there. Americans generally will be down with bombing brown people provided some smile on CNN. Americans love people who thank the U.S. for dropping bombs on their country.

The above is, of course, ex-post facto rationalization. The truth is far uglier. You, Dear Reader, know that Obama simply pulled . . . an Obama. Pro-interventionists and those opposed left him in the Goldilocks middle.

It’s all of a piece. Libya is no different. There can be no Obama Doctrine because internal advocacy triage means expediency is one word.

Pure intentions are always used to cajole Americans. War to end all wars. War to make Democracy safe. No more Munichs in the Mekong. Stop mushroom clouds. Works every time initially. Sentiment, however, blinds all to the opportunity costs. People have only so much bandwidth. A burn and churn maw in Libya will divert focus from matters of genuine strategic import. There’s a reason Beijing abstained. For the record history will note Libya worse than a crime, a mistake.

When a man stands for nothing he can always cobble together a narrative to justify where the wind blew him. But like tonight’s speech that narrative can’t tell us where he wants to go and how he intends to get there.

More than that, it’s obvious to anyone Obama isn’t a fighter. He’s never drawn a line personally, taken bloody, pulverizing punches. He’s never been rocked back, fallen down, stood up and retaken ground. (2008 isn’t a valid comparison. His first major challenge was the self-destructing HRC campaign. His second was riding Bush, global economic catastrophe and John McCain to the finish line). Every capital in the world has this PDF file by now.

U.S. Wages A Clueless War Over Libya

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[After finally unlocking WH:] “Mission creep? No one *ever* utters those words. Tell Carney to use ‘saving more lives’ if he wants to keep the job.”

Even as other nations begin taking a larger role in the international air assault mission in Libya, the Pentagon is considering adding Air Force gunships and other attack aircraft that are better suited for tangling with Libyan ground forces in contested urban areas like Misrata, a senior Pentagon official said Friday.

Gortney [JCS staff director], however, said there has been no reduction in the number of American planes participating. In fact, he said the Pentagon was considering bringing in side-firing AC-130 gunships, helicopters and armed drone aircraft that could challenge Libyan ground forces that threaten civilians in cities like Misrata. The U.S. has avoided attacking in cities thus far out of fear that civilians could be killed or injured. AC-130 gunships, which operate at night at low altitude, can attack with unusual precision.>

Meanwhile, this is what we fight for:

As the transition to NATO command and control of the military operation proceeds, the administration has still not made a decision about recognizing the Benghazi-based Libyan opposition council as the legitimate government of the country. The U.S. closed its embassy in Tripoli in February but has not broken diplomatic relations with the Gadhafi regime.

Gene Cretz, the U.S. ambassador to Libya who has been reaching out to opposition figures, said the administration was still not entirely certain about the identities and intentions of the transitional council, although he said they had made positive statements about their goals and plans to respect human rights.

“I think they’re off to a good start,” he told reporters at the State Department. “That’s not to say that we know everything about them; we don’t. We have to be very careful about who might be included in the future and how they go about forming a government, if in fact they have that opportunity.”