The life of quiet solitude ...

Dateline: Hotel, Yardley PA, 31 January 2006

Back on the road. Sad to say that I miss my family when I travel, but not the maddening confines of that apartment.

No escape to Nona Vonne's this weekend. I dream of her pool. I can't wait for spring.

Then again, we get into the new house in spring, so imagining spring is imaging life as we knew it--only bigger and better.

Today full of all sorts of chores one does when one leaves at night for the rest of the week.

Example: running over some examples of maps and their depictions of oceans to our faux painter. I'm having my office done up like how world maps diplays oceans. Should be cool.

Gave another interview today to a guy writing for Competitive Intelligence magazine. He wanted to talk solely about the parts in PNM that described my career trajectory. Interesting questions. I'll get the transcript from him because I think he forced me to articulate a lot of stuff I would seek to use in Vol. III, a book I think will be more fun to write than I or II--at least that's what Warren keeps telling me.

Then a long discussion with a fact checker from Popular Mechanics on that QDR piece, for which I gave a long interview to Noah Shachtman (not sure I remember how to spell his name). Looking forward to that one. Never expected to be quoted in that mag.

Rest of day spent ferrying kids to this or that appointment, lesson, playground, which reminds me to push my builder to order the delivery of the playset equipment for our yard. My dream is a simple one: never to have to visit a park playground ever again. That is what a big yard is for.

At end of day, break off from family and head to airport for commuter jet flight to Philly. On plane I finish up some work for Oak Ridge National Lab, completing my first full month of billing, which feels good for the Senior Managing Director. I always prided myself at the Naval War College for my ability to attract money for work and travel, so it feels good to be billing again. Carry your own weight and all that.

Looking forward to spending the day with Enterra tomorrow. Only time I was here before was when we sold the consulting LLC to Enterra. That time I came with two partners, now both gone. It almost feels like a job again, except for the other seven jobs I seem to have kept or picked up along the way (Baker Center at U Tenn, Oak Ridge gig, books, blog, trial columnist, Leigh Bureau speaking and Esquire). In many ways, it's amazing I don't travel more.

But Steve is the perfect boss for me right now: he knows when and how to use what I've created.

The rest, as they say, is synergy

Good boy tonight. Rode ex bike in hotel at 11pm. Planning on early morning repeat. No sense going through the road solitude if I'm not going to get the exercise.

Next hotel has fine pool, I am told. Can't wait.

The quietly raging debate on Army “end strength”

ARTICLE: “Turnaround in Recruiting Puts Guard on Path for Expansion,” by Associated Press, New York Times, 31 January 2006, p. A17.

Apparently the Guard’s enlistment is up so much this last year that it’s poised to actually plus up its overall “end strength,” meaning it’s total number of personnel.

This is the result of a determined effort by the Guard to bolster such recruiting, but it creates some weird moments for a Pentagon that’s determined to sell to Congress the notion that the Reserve Component can be marginally reduced in coming years as a result of the Army’s modularization effort by which divisions are reformatted into self-contained brigade combat teams. This rationalization of Cold War force structure is declared by Pentagon seniors as allowing the Guard to actually shrink somewhat in the next few years, despite the apparent strain on end strength.

This is a very touchy subject inside the Pentagon. The administration seeks to sell Congress on its budget plan and Quadrennial Defense Review that seems to keep all the big-ticket platforms on line for near full funding despite the Army and Marines and Reserve Component (Reserves and Guard) seemingly running themselves ragged on this non-stop rotation process into and out of southwest Asia.

The dream of the modular Army says they’ll need three active duty brigade combat teams for everyone they keep overseas (one breaking down back at home, having just come off the line, and another one gearing up to replace the one currently overseas), and six reserve teams for everyone currently abroad (the Reserve Component necessarily has a slower cycle), but doubts are being raised as to whether those rotation numbers will hold up in reality. Maybe the active duty number will be more like 4 to 1, and the RC ratio more like 8 to 1. If that’s the case, then the end strength requirements of the Army go up big time, and such an Army should be happier than hell for the Guard to be expanding its overall numbers.

All of this is caught up in the Congressional decision to give Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, an extra 30k in its ceiling during the modularization process that will drag on for several years. The extension or ending of that temporary ceiling boost is a political hot potato, especially for any politician unhappy with the Pentagons’ seemingly iron-will desire to keep funding big platforms poorly suited for a Global War on Terror and obviously far more in line with the dream of future war with China. If you’re unhappy with the Pentagon’s inability to let go of its Big War past and believe the ground forces are being shortchanged by those budget priorities, then you use the end strength debate to score your points.

Rest assured that plenty in the Department of the Army are of two minds on this subject: trying to cater to the official line while wanting to submit to the clear logic of growing the ground forces’ end strength for this Long War.

So keep an eye on how the Hill argues this issue. It will say a lot about what I feel is the inevitable rise of the SysAdmin function within the Army.

Sudan’s Big Man gets a big boat

ARTICLE: “Sudan Leader Waits, and Waits, for His Ship to Come In,” by Marc Lacey, New York Times, 31 January 2006, p. A4.

A heart-warming tale of the president of Sudan, recently denied chairmanship of the African Union (how to put him at the head of a peacekeeping organization when his own government promotes genocide within its borders?). Seems he’s had to endure a tremendously long wait for his $4-million-plus ab fab yacht to show up.

It’ll probably take a good chunk of the nation’s GDP to transport it to its final destination in this war-torn, incredibly impoverished land. But hey, a Big Man’s gotta do what a Big Man’s gotta do. Africa’s postcolonial history is littered by all manner of Big Men who lived luxuriously while wars raged and citizenry (always predominately women and kids) died in droves.

Would you like a system for getting rid of guys like this? Do you think it would take massive invading forces or do you think that if we showed enough determination, we could get someone like this Big Man to abandon ship with his women, money, loot and—in this instance—the ship as well?

Of course, if we couldn’t do anything after scaring off today’s Big Man, then nothing would change: more civil strife, more death and suffering, another Big Man to take his place a few months later. So drive-by regime change is no answer without the second-half effort by the SysAdmin force and related connectivity forces.

What would it take to make Sudan acceptable to global business? It probably wouldn’t look like any traditional aid package. No, it would be something different, something that fostered connectivity with great rapidly, and it would likely smack of multinationals performing something akin to a UN trusteeship. Of course, you’d probably end up with some Core contact group, plus the UN, plus the African Union, plus some Core constellation of a SysAdmin force (probably working to train up a longer-term AU peacekeeping force) overseeing the whole process. Sudan’s “sovereignty,” such as it was, would be trashed for some undetermined period of time. Cheap labor would be exploited, as would the oil reserves.

None of this would be pretty, but all of it would beat the hell out of the genocide we’ve all been witnessing from the sidelines for several years now.

In the end, wouldn’t you like to find out exactly how hard such a task would be? Don’t you think the world would be a better place for trying, instead of sitting on the sidelines watching the bodies pile up?

Tom's on Amazon Connect

Amazon Connect is a new service that gives authors a higher profile presence on Amazon. There's even a vestigial weblogging function. It wasn't supposed to come out until tomorrow, but I cross-posted Tom's last post here over there (got that?), and it's already up. Check it out by going to the Blueprint for Action page or Tom's profile.

Sequencing is everything: reporting Iran to the UNSC

ARTICLE: "Iran to Be Reported To Security Council: U.S. Wins Backing Of Russia, China," by Kevin Sullivan and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, 31 January 2006, p. A1.

It seems that Russia and China wanted Iran basically signed up to Moscow's proposal to enrich uranium for Tehran before they agreed to report Iran to the UN Security Council--and then pushing that referral back to March.

What I see Beijing and Moscow saying by this: this is our best deal, take it or we'll go along with the Americans and elevate this to the UN, and you know where that ends up going, so let's end it here and keep this package largely managed by the Russians instead of the West.

Pretty slick by the Russians and Chinese, and very reminiscent of how the Chinese team played the "New Map" wargame back in June of 2005: when presented with a problem, they kept it from being their problem alone and they prevented it from being America's problem alone, and so by keeping it sort of everybody's problem, the end result was that China seemed to get its way over time. Here, my definition of that would be: no isolation of Iran, Iran gets to pursue nuclear energy and Russia's mostly in charge of that, and China's energy ties to Iran are preserved.

From our perspective, what Russia and China are doing is just fine, because it keeps the situation from being ours to own at a time when the military option is truly unrealistic. That will change in 2-3 years.

Then again, so will a lot of things.

Full article found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/30/AR2006013000295.html

Back to the future at the hospital

Dateline: in the Shire, Indy, 30 January 2006

Long morning at the hospital, wading through a pulmonary function, cat scan and an echocardiogram. None of it required for the surgery we contemplate to correct a structural birth defect in one of our kids. All done just to make the insurance companies happy. If the numbers don't come up right, I will probably pay for the event myself out of pocket. The insurance company would rather wait until the issue gets so obvious that it's symptomatic in terms of organ function, but by then we're out of the less invasive answer and into the more complex one. Plus, we lose the best window in terms of body growth. So, despite the money crunch of this year, I will simply plan on making this happen sometime next summer.

Being back in a children's hospital, doing such diagnostics, brings back a lot of memories for me. But it's so much different with an older kid. Emily was just two when we ran her through so much of the nasty stuff back in Georgetown.

Still, you meet a lot of kids facing some very difficult stuff when you visit a children's hospital. It's like wandering into an alternative universe within which we were once so desperately trapped.

I occupied myself by wriiting my first column for the Knoxville News Sentinel. I decided to start with a comfortable chestnut (the Department of Everything Else), because I want to step into this process slowly, writing from a position of confidence. I realized, as I planned the first few pieces, that I haven't really explored any of my stuff in op-ed form, save for the one piece I did for the Providence Journal way back when and the one piece I wrote for the Washington Post when PNM came out (a notion that extended beyond PNM and eventually made it into BFA).

So rather than going full bore into new material, I want to sort of introduce myself in bits and pieces, establishing my "case law," as it were, before pushing the envelope. Once established, I would want to step out of the narrow confines of national security and use this platform to explore new subject matter. But I figure I dance with them that brought me to start out.

Afternoon lost to a variety of Enterra stuff, to include some research on a quiet project I'm doing for Oak Ridge. I also did a phonecon with some Raytheon execs for a speaking gig later next month. You often get this on the big corporate ones: the seniors running the show want a conversation by phone to make sure everyone's on the same page. Bit of a hassle to schedule, but always worthwhile.

Got some nice gigs being scheduled, making me realize how crucial it was for my ability to leave the Naval War College that I had signed up with Leigh Bureau back in the fall of 2004. That was the big liberation that made the whole move to Indy possible. This is why I treat every possible gig as my last, or as my most important audition. Can't get talks unless you give talks, and when you give good talks, you get a lot of talks. So every performance is your best performance.

I have never missed a performance, but eventually a failure will occur for some reason. Still, I am proud of my record. You sign me up, you get a performace worth the expenditure. No ifs, ands or buts.

I could say it's what I do for a living, but then again, I do a lot of things for a living nowadays.

India, the un-China!

ARTICLE: “India Touts Its Democracy in Bid To Lure Investors Away From China,” by Marcus Walker, Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2006, p. A2.

ARTICLE: “China’s Draft Antitrust Law Sows Worries in West,” by Adam Cohen, Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2006, p. A12.

There has long been this school of thought (okay, maybe going a couple of years back) that says India overtakes China as investment target of the Old Core when the political going gets tough in China, because India’s done the hard stuff of democracy. It’s an interesting argument, one that the Indians themselves are selling hard right now this week in Davos at the World Economic Forum (which, BTW, is sounding more weirdly glitzy each year).

So India sells itself like a Hollywood comedy that’s done well in its first week of BO: “India: the world’s fastest growing democracy!” (like “Wedding Crashers: America’s #1 comedy!”). Doesn’t exactly turn India into “Titanic” overnight, but you get the picture. ‘

It’s a slick trick, and India should pursue it for all its worth. To me, that’s the real and natural sort of “containment” or balancing we should encourage India to pursue: just sheer competitiveness that pushes China harder on making its own lack of democracy up on top seem more palatable over time. China will eventually go democratic, but it will go that much faster with India egging it on—but not with the U.S. hectoring it from afar.

Count on the Chinese to be Chinese, I say, and count on them to be as greedy and concerned with maintaining power as anybody else. So expect them to move toward freer markets and freer politics only when they are forced to do so defensively—in an economic sense. Trying to force China to feel defensive on a political-military level is both dangerous (could lead to war) and counterproductive (we won’t get the reform we seek). But making them feel vulnerable on an economic basis is a win-win-win for us, China, and whomever’s giving them a run for their money.

With China coming out with a draft antitrust law that has some over here worried about its potential uses by Beijing to protect state industries there, India’s timing at Davos couldn’t be better. Turnabout is fair play.

Big Bang getting lost in the shuffle?

ARTICLE: “Mideast Crises Reset Agenda for World Leaders: Iran, Palestinian Politics Take Center Stage at Talks On Afghanistan Planning,” by Neil King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2006, p. A4.

Iran and Palestine have so overshadowed the current London’s donors conference on Afghanistan that our man Neil King forgot to even mention it, quite frankly, in this story, which I guess proves his point!

But it also proves my point on Iran: this is one country who can veto our peace efforts throughout the region. It sits next to Afghanistan. It sits next to Shiite-heavy Iraq. It has strong ties to Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.

Iran decides it wants to stir things up and pretty soon that’s all we’re talking about at a donors’ conference in London on Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan, don’t you?

Must have been awfully frustrating to the USG people who set up this conference, some of whom Enterra Solutions has been working with on the subject of how to best template the experience of moving a country from postwar basket case to globalization emerging market.

Of course, Palestine has everyone talking about it, but I keep saying to myself: don’t be unhappy getting what you wish for (real democracy where an Arab government gives up power after an election that is free). Having the “revolutionaries” and terrorists in power may be just the push the languishing Big Bang process needs. I mean, trying to make the two-state solution work with that tired old mess called Fatah was no picnic, so maybe having some firebrands will push things to their logical conclusions faster, like Israel abandoning the West Bank and securing themselves behind that Berlin Wall for the 21st century, as I like to call the security fence they’re building.

Robert Wright’s number one rule for running the world is, Don’t fight the inevitable.

My addendum to his rule would be: Hell, speed it up as fast as you can!

Russia’s feedback on “energy weapon” is actually pretty fast

ARTICLE: “Russia’s Gas Diplomacy Fuels Realignment of Former Soviet Bloc,” by Marc Champion and Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal, 30 January 2006, p. A1.

Putin and company are probably getting a faster response time to their recent energy shenanigans than they expected. This article’s lead sentence lays it out nicely:

Russia’s natural-gas diplomacy is driving some of its former satellites to look elsewhere for energy supplies but is drawing others closer to Moscow’s orbit, reshaping economic dependencies and stirring deep unease in the region.

Who’s running away? Georgia, for one. Chechnya sits between Georgia and the Russian energy, and that’s gotta feel pretty scary as a long-term prospect.

Ukraine is also moving farther away, although there’s so much bad old and new blood in that relationship, we’re probably talking a drop in a very large bucket.

Moldova is another country that was recently pressured into accepting significantly higher prices from Gazprom, but it knuckled under.

Moscow says that all it’s doing is ending a lot of old, undervalued supplies relationships with neighbors and simply asking them to pay reasonable market prices, which if you know anything about the old Soviet Union’s subsidizing of Eastern Europe through cheap energy, certainly sounds plausible enough.

It’s just that this shift to market prices was both abrupt and delivered in the usual, high-handed Russian way, and this has got a lot of former satellites thinking hard about alternatives, like Poland and Romania agitating hard for the speeding up of the construction of a pipeline from Turkey to Austria to balance their existing energy ties to Russia.

So yeah, Russia’s getting Belarus, Moldova and energy-rich Uzbekistan in this pushme-pullyou process, but it’s losing some real talent in terms of economic connectivity with the West, with Poland and Ukraine being the two great historical conduits from the West to Russia.

Me, I see Russia picking up classic Gap states and burning bridges with New Core ones, and that ain’t smart.

But again, everyone goes through a learning curve on such things. I’m just surprised at how quickly this one is unfolding for Putin and his silovki.

The ideologues are not rational, and thus definitely should be sent packing once the serious SysAdmin work begins

ARTICLE: "Political thought not rational: Scans find subject fires brain's emotional centers in both liberals and conservatives," by Benedict Carey, New York Times, 29 January 2006, pulled from web.

ARTICLE: "Hurrican Investigators See 'Fog of War' at White House," by Eric Lipton, New York Times, 28 January 2006, pulled from web.

When politics enters the brain, the freaky-deaky portions are excited and the logic portions are left wanting. That lack of "cold reasoning" explains the Right's bizarro hatred of Clinton and the Left's bizarro hatred of Bush.

But it also explains, I would argue, what happens when you let the ideologues of any administration, like Doug Feith in DoD or Karl Rove in the White House hold too much power during important security transitions like the postwar occupation of Iraq or the postdisaster non-occupation of New Orleans. Let the ideologues hold sway, and the sheer logic of what should be done is often superceded but the emotional logic of what seems best or most safe for the administration. Naturally, the long-term harm that's done by such political short-term logic typically outweighs the temporary gain of such steps as declaring "mission accomplished" and taking the requisite photo ops.

And the danger is different at home versus overseas: abroad the politicos typically want too much control of what should be left to the military, while at home the politicos are typically too fearful of being bold with the military at exactly those moments when a pro-active approach yields the best outcome.

Fog of war ain't that hard. Fog of postwar and postdisaster? That's really hard.

But unless you authorize, there ain't no authority. Northcom is a command, not a political entity. And DHS is a political entity, not a commander of anything.

No, the military-market nexus needs its own bureaucratic center of gravity, and that's why I call for a Department of Everything Else.

SysAdmin, the function that DoD just can't let go of...

ARTICLE: "Pentagon now can help foreign militaries: Up to $200 million in spending not limited by foreign-aid rules raises worries," by Bradley Graham, Washington Post, 29 January 2006, pulled from web.

State is supposed to determine foreign aid, but Don Rumsfeld snuck in a tiny bit of transformative change in this year's defense budget just signed: operational response funds not previously tied to any one intervention--in effect, a contingency fund of the sort that Congress simply does not grant DoD and even rarely grants State's U.S. Agency for International Development (whose own budget is weighed down with earmark after earmark).

This is pure SysAdmin money, used to build capacity as required by interventions as they occur, and Rumsfeld got Rice to agree with that.

Call this a major lesson learned from Iraq, where the Coalition Provisional Authority's civilians initially ran the retraining of Iraqi security forces--right into the ground until the military took over in the spring of 2004 and newly minted Lt. Gen. David Petraeus stepped to the fore.

DoD and Rummy asked for $750 million, and Congress shortchanged them down to $200 million, giving the concept a two-year lease on life, just so all the Hill members who don't even own a passport can second-guess the military's combatant commanders 24 months down the road of this Global War on Terrorism.

Score one for Rummy, though. When the Pentagon starts openly looting the foreign aid budget, then the SysAdmin's clearly on the rise...

Halliburton begins to share the joy that is KBR

ARTICLE: "Halliburton to sell minority stake in KBR in IPO," by AP, Indianapolis Star, 29 January 2006, p. C2.

In Blueprint for Action, I use the example of Halliburton's long and ongoing debate on what to do with profitable but problematic Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a unit of the company that specializes in a lot of postwar operations contracts--sort of the preeminent private sector SysAdmin firm. Halliburton has been talking about selling off the unit or spinning it off. The profitability is undeniable, it's just that the political hassles of being involved in such work eventually begins to wear on the parent company, which began and still largely thinks of itself as an oil-field services firm.

Seems like Halliburton can't completely decide what to do. If it sold KBR off, it would draw a great price, probably from a big defense contractor like Lockheed Martin, which would see the long-term market-making opportunity.

And maybe that's why it's hard for Halliburton to let go...

I think this is exactly how it will be for the Defense Department and the SysAdmin function/force: hard to keep but still harder to get rid off, because there's no denying the long-term market for the services provided.

A long-running drama worth keeping an eye on.

Follow the money for all sorts of danger

BOX: "The Most Likely Fake Bills Are C-Notes," by Ted Evanoff, Indianapolis Star, 29 January 2006, p. C1.

ARTICLE: "Flu's spread foretold, by George: Web site that tracks money may help scientists forecast how disease will spread," by Alicia Chang, Associated Press, Indianapolis Star, 29 January 2007, p. A22.

I tell the story of traveling through China on our adoption trip, with $10,000 stuffed into a special belt-like groin pack, all of it in $100 bills and all uncirculated, because nothing less than clean bills are acceptable in many Chinese venues--especially official ones. The reason why? Up to one-third of the paper money circulating in China, both foreign and domestic, is fake. And the number one provider of such fake bills (especially in neighboring China) is Kim Jong Il's criminal regime in North Korea.

The North Koreans, this article reports, "acquired a $10 million press in 1989 and most llkely paid it off years ago." It is estimated that the exporting of counterfeit currency nets the Pyongyang regime a solid $15-20 million a year.

Follow the bad money back to the Gap's worst actors.

Follow the money in general, and you find business travelers, and that helps you find where pandemics spread, most rapidly by international air travel (interesting how jetliners figure so prominently in so many System Pertrubations, or shocks to the global system, yes?).

Old advice, but good advice, because money is the most fluidly connective tissue in the global economy.

Tom at CSIS in DC this Friday

Here's a chance for DC-area people to see and hear Tom in action. From the invitation:

Center for Strategic and International Studies

POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT

Cordially invites you to

BLUEPRINT FOR ACTION : A FUTURE WORTH CREATING

Friday, February 3, 2006

10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

B1 A-B Conference Room

1800 K Street NW

Washington, DC 20006

A book launch featuring

THOMAS P.M. BARNETT

Author, and Managing Director of Enterra Solutions

You are invited:

RSVP with your acceptance to Anita Keshavan at akeshavan@csis.org or (202) 775-0200 ext. 3723.
Please be advised that seating is limited, and we can only admit those with confirmed RSVPs.

Wish I could be there, but y'all will have to hold it down without me.

Blueprint for Action as "The Globalist's" book of the week

The spotlight is--quite naturally--my writing on Iran.

Stephan Richter, a pretty sharp guy, arranged for and made the excerpt happen. Here is how it's presented at "The Globalist": http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5076.

Ralph Peters' latest

One of the people around here who advises Tom sent in this new article by Peters from the Weekly Standard, The Counterrevolution in Military Affairs, under the email title 'Good Ralph Peters'. Tom didn't think so:

And it still makes me want to puke. All are out to get us, or are too weak to help fight. All intellectuals are fools. It's all blood and guts from here out. Warriors are supreme, the rest are nothing. We are losing and can't even realize it. The future will be full of blood and gore and war.

What is there to do with this stuff but be afraid? Being secular or quietly religious isn't evil. It does not make you weak. It is the strength of our civilization. Extending that is all, not climbing into the gutter. That job we leave to professionals, and none of them do it so their world back home can come to approximate Peters' advice.

But our fearless co-reader was not to be dissuaded, and came back with this worthy reply:

I guess it is what you focus on.

What I hear him saying is that a lot of expensive weapons are not the answer to our problems. True.

He specifically says that the fanatics are a minority within Islam, so it is not "everybody is against us". But he goes on to say that we do ourselves no favors by failing to understand them as they understand themselves. This is also true.

As to China, he makes a case parallel to yours -- a war with them would be insanity, and our people are not taking seriously what it would mean or how it would go. This is true.

I think he overstates the case as to "intellectuals", but Peters is Peters and you expect him to be over the top. I think the monopoly of the group he discusses is disintegrating due to the Internet. But I think there is an element of truth to what he says.

Tom closed with:

Yes. But he does so in such a depressing, with-fear-for-all kind of way.

For the average reader, they do indeed focus on the fear. What Peters does is the equivalent of what Frey did: he always jacks it up to the point of scaring people from useful action by making the struggle seem far worse than it really needs to be--or is.

And there is real harm in a call to arms than dissuades and depresses more than it persuades and inspires.

I truly believe that, FWIW.

What do you think?

Site maintenance complete

Got the site backed up, checked under the hood on the templates, fixed the JavaScript, which fixed the TypeKey recognition, and tweaked the commenting templates some more. I'm not aware of any major outages involved (though you might have seen some funky formatting for a little while). I'm pleased with the progress, but there's plenty more to do.

If you plan on commenting with any regularity, I would appreciate it if you take the less-than-a-minute it takes to register with TypeKey. The immediate posting of your comments, not having to wait on my moderation, will be an improvement. Not that's it's been a big deal to approve comments so far. Thanks.

Getting what we want out of Hamas’ victory means no rush to judgment

ARTICLE: “Hamas Routs Ruling Faction, Casting Pall on Peace Process: Palestinian Vote; Israel Won’t Negotiate With Radical Group in Government,” by Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A1.

EDITORIAL: “In the Mideast, a Giant Step Back,” New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A22.

ARTICLE: “Hamas Victory Roils Middle East Peace Process: U.S., Israel, Europe Insist Palestinian Group Renounce Violence After Election Win,” by Karby Leggett and Neil King Jr., Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2006, p. A1.

EDITORIAL: “Hamas Rules: A chance to show it has an agenda beyond terror,” Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “Joyful Arabs Voice Concern at How Hamas Will Swim in the Mainstream,” by Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A9.

OP-ED: “Hamas at the Helm: The U.S. can’t ignore Palestinian voters,” by Fotini Christia and Sreemati Mitter, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A23.

ARTICLE: “Vote seen as rejecting corruption: Palestinians see hope for better governance,” by Matthew Gutman, USA Today, 27 January 2006, p. 6A.

ARTICLE: “Bush Defends His Goal of Spreading Democracy to the Mideast,” by Steven R. Weisman, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A9.

ARTICLE: “Israel’s Likely Course: Unilateral Action, Separation and No Talks With Hamas,” by Grey Myre, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “A Shift of Biblical Proportions? Israels’ Demolition of West Bank Homes May Signal Wider Pullout,” by Karby Leggett, Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2006, p. A7.

The Times drools and the Journal rules. The NYT is all frantic doom and gloom, whereas the WSJ takes a wait and see attitude.

It’s foolish not to expect a lot of idiotic crowing from Hamas right now. Any party that finds itself so unexpectedly in power as this crew did just now has to be forgiven a lot of foolish talk. Hamas may be full of seasoned terrorists, but it doesn’t have a single statesman.

We can do our best to help grow one from our side, and I believe the Bush Administration and the EU and Israel itself are all taking the right initial stance: put up or expect to be put out on the ash heap of history. Hamas can either prove itself a decent alternative to Fatah, which never accomplished anything whatsoever through either its terror or its corrupt politics except make Yassir one rich bastard, or it can serve merely as a lesson to Fatah that its swings at the bat are not unlimited and that Palestine can suffer the consequences (and the historical delay) imposed upon it by electing a leadership that has no capacity whatsoever to move this godawful pile toward peace.

It’s clear why the people chose Hamas, and the choice for less corruption is the same one that brought Ahmadinejad to power in Iran. So let’s get real (as Hamas itself will need to if it hopes to keep the goodwill of the people it now owes far more than just mindless martyrs) and not give into the silly temptation to somehow blame this outcome on Bush’s push for democracy.

Democracy is not about only getting the party you want in power. That’s called authoritarianism, or the sort of single-party rule we see so much of in this world. Democracy is about the ability to change parties when the current one sucks enough to motivate the public toward the alternative, however risky that might seem.

We need to view Hamas as a possibility that works one way or the other: either it changes its stripes and “Nixon goes to Tel Aviv” or we get something better on the backside once this experiment fails. Either way, we need to be thinking about how we exploit this situation, not merely stonewall it.

Hezbollah in Lebanon hasn’t been the disaster that some portended. No picnic, but Lebanon not on top of the shit list right now.

Still, with Hamas’ links to patrons Syria and Iran, and Hezbollah’s links to patrons Syria and Iran, and Syria’s links to Iran, you have to wonder if isolating Iran is the best strategic play we can manage right now in this fluid environment.

Because if we don’t move or work to keep this region moving somehow, the Israelis will solidify their hard-line, hard-border answer to the question of the two-state solution, and we’ll get that Berlin Wall for the 21st century that I’ve been talking about going back to PNM. Not the worse outcome by any stretch, but a calcifying one to be sure.

If we do the slow strangle on Iran and let Israel put up that wall, the only good strategic reason for sitting on the Middle East’s sidelines through the rest of this term (an outcome that looks more and more likely with this administration) would be to lock in China at today’s prices.

But given the QDR’s unimaginative outcome, and the continuing strength of the China hawks in the national security community, that path seems equally unlikely, which leaves me retreating to my depressing notion that the Bush post-presidency has already begun.

Home again

Dateline: In the Shire, Indy, 27 January 2006

Back home again after my nearly full-week jaunt.

Yesterday was sort of a quick morning at Oak Ridge before I left for the flight to RI. Got a brief on genetically-engineered threats that was very interesting (I see a column ahead) and another on working the IED threat (still another good column foreseen). Then I sat in on the beginning stages of the monthly national security department “huddle,” before racing out to my car and driving back to Knoxville.

Had to fly Continental through Detroit to get to Providence, and I must say that the new Northwest terminal there is stunning, like something outta DisneyWorld with that monorail that runs the length of the extremely long terminal, along the roofs of the shops no less!

Got picked up by a Coastie non-com who drove me to the Marriott at Mystic CT. Very spectacular pool, which I immediately did my fourth-in-a-row stint and some bike time in the gym.

Later picked up by my Lt. Cdr. Host and taken to the academy, where I addressed an audience of about 100 or so cadets, staff, etc. Was a bit beat, so my delivery a bit sloppy on pronunciation (swallowing the ends of words), so I found I really had to concentrate. I could tell I was tired because I offered up too many “vulgar” terms (as my Mom likes to say), and that sort of salty language happens when I’m fatigued—for some reason.

Remind me never to let C-SPAN tape me at night!

Bradd Hayes, who lives about 40 minutes away in RI, was able to attend, which was great, because this was the first time he could see me perform the brief he did the original slides for (since altered by me extensively but still, by and large, his PPT material, so credit where credit is due). It was really nice to give him credit for the slides at the end of my talk. It felt like the actor on stage saluting the orchestra director. But that’s how symbiotic it is for Bradd and me.

Got up this morning at 7am and got my last swim in for the week. Feeling pretty sore on that one, but enjoyed it immensely nonetheless.

Then caught a drive with my Coastie to Bradd’s house, where I spent the morning and over lunch brainstorming a development-in-a-box brief for Steve DeAngelis and I to use in the future. I really want to build that “peace is the ultimate aftermarket” concept.

Then two SWA flights home, going through BWI. Checked out the new house on the way to picking up son at Sylvan. The wood flooring has begun upstairs, starting in my office. Looks very nice. Bookcases going up all over, etc. Stairs down to basement completely done, with great railing, all oak like the steps.

Back home tonight and things are a bit tense. Some trouble at school while I was gone, which cast a bit of a pall on my absence. It was quite the trick to pick a school for all three of the older kids from afar last spring. With our move to the house late this spring, our commuting options change somewhat, and with one heading to high school, it has us thinking we ended up at too big of a grade school for the boys over the long haul.

But these are thoughts for another day.

Oprah seals the deal, and the damage (media suck-up at 11!)

ARTICLE: “Winfrey grills ‘Pieces’ author, apologizes for backing book,” by Carol Memmott, USA Today, 27 January 2006, p. 1E.

ARTICLE: “Life on ‘Oprah,’ a Memoirist Is Kicked Out of the Book Club,” by Edward Wyatt, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A1.

EDITORIAL: “On Oprah’s Couch,” Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2006, p. A8.

ARTICLE: “Ms. Winfrey Takes a Guest To the Televised Woodshed: A hard-edged tale of expiation and absolution unfolds for a national audience,” by Virginia Heffernan, New York Times, 27 January 2006, p. A13.

Oprah nails it, which is why she continues to wield the power she does. She initially zigged when she should have zagged, but then she thought better and ended this charade before it went on too long, costing only her and making her misery James Frey’s increasingly obscene gain.

So Oprah takes that lying weasel out to the woodshed, dragging his illustrious publisher out with him.

Great TV. Good politics on Oprah’s part (striking more fear in the hearts of Republicans everywhere who fear she might someday run).

OMYGOD! What if Oprah ran as Hillary’s VP? Scary. Just plain scary. But eventually I really believe some bold scenario like that will unfold with Winfrey. I mean, how will she keep her interest up doing the same old, same old for another 20 to 30 years?

I’m not kidding. When the WSJ editorial board says Oprah “did what we have so often waited for public figures to do,” that’s a powerful precedent for someone of her immense stature.

Me, I would be afraid have a book picked by Oprah. To me, it’s like winning the lottery—just too much. You’d never know how much you really deserved it and how much of it was just her quirky tastes. Let poor Mr. Frey’s fate be a lesson, I say: be careful what you wish for and earn it on your own.