The wrong lesson, the wrong teacher, the wrong replacement, the wrong job

Dateline: SWA flight 132 from KC to BWI, 21 November 2004

■"Hawk Sightings Could be Premature: It's hard to flex muscles around the world when the troops are tied up in Iraq" by David E. Sanger, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. WK1.

■"A Doctrine Left Behind" op-ed by Mark Danner, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. WK13.

■"The Power-Values Approach to Policy: Move to State Raises Rice's Profile" by Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 21 November 2004, p. A8.

■"Rumsfeld Isn't Showing Signs That He's Leaving: The defense secretary says he has not yet talked with Bush about staying on" by Richard W. Stevenson, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. A23.

The Neocons are grounded, we are told, by having to keep 130,000 troops in Iraq, rotating out the old and preparing the new 365 days a year for as far as this administration can see. Far enough point. If you don't plan for the peace, you get stuck with the occupation. And if you don't build the SysAdmin force, you'll never be able to plan realistically for the peace.

What we learned in Iraq is not the enduring wisdom of the Powell Doctrine, but the incredible costs we're now paying for slavishly following it all those years, for its distaste for all "quagmires" (read nation-building) is why we don't have a SysAdmin force after 15 years of watching our military deal with such situations all over the Gap at an exploding rate. The Powell Doctrine isn't the cure, it was the cause of our current malaise, reflecting our desire to avoid administering the system of security in the age of globalization, believing, a la Tom Friedman, that the electronic herd would ride herd over all, and that globalization needed no bodyguard.

Will Rice be the answer at State. Remember, not only is she famous for declaring that "we don't need to have the 82nd Airborne escorting kids to kindergarten" (the classic put-down of Military Operations Other Than War), but she is logically held to blame most for the massive failure of the postwar occupation of Iraq.

The job of interagency coordination falls to the National Security adviser, pure and simple. As Mark Danner remarks in his op-ed:

After Condoleezza Rice's elevation as Mr. Powell's successor, so much of the commentary seemed focused on her "closeness" to the president that it might have seemed the height of indiscretion to point out that she has been something of a disaster in her present jobóa fact widely acknowledged among foreign policy professionals.

Meanwhile, one of our greatest Secretaries of War ever (Don Rumsfeld) survives to transform the military another day. Here's hoping he knows enough to seed and invest n the SysAdmin force, because the impetus for that development is sure as hell not to be coming from the other side of the Potomac. Foggy Bottom will remain foggy in this second administration, as far as clear grand strategy is concerned.

If you're looking for the Secretary for Everything Else to emerge, watch for him in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and my fervent hope is that his name will be Admiral Ed Giambastiani (currently head of Joint Forces Command), and that his title will be Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.

We need a Secretary of Everything Else and an anti-Powell Doctrine that places overwhelming presence on the peacekeeping side of the ledger, letting the transformed Leviathan force do its thing as designed. Adm. Giambastiani is just the man to make such a revolution occur.

Here's the rest of today's catch, basically the Sunday NYT:

■On the Axis of Evil, danger and opportunity are two sides of the same coin

■"Hegemons" like China aren't made, they're cornered

■The Dis-abstraction of genocide

■Colonial "villains" ain't what they used to be

■"The Dividers: a Quinn Martin production"

■In the New Core, diversity is often a four-letter word