Europe continues distancing itself from Bush's next trigger-pull

ARTICLE: Europe Resists U.S. Push to Curb Iran Ties, By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, New York Times, January 30, 2007

Fascinating. Saudi Arabia can deal with Iran in Lebanon, but we can't deal with them anywhere.

Thus Europe continues distancing itself from Bush's next trigger-pull

Stink at the postwar, get blown off by Iran

ARTICLE: With Iran Ascendant, U.S. Is Seen at Fault: Arab Allies in Region Feeling Pressure, By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, Tuesday, January 30, 2007; Page A01

Our allies back away slowly, Iran promises more pain, Bush makes more threats.

Iraq's postwar done well, none of this unfolds.

Iraq's postwar botched, all of this in inevitable.

That's why improving our postwar capabilities isn't an option, it's an imperative.

Unless you like being blown off by the Iranians.

Between Baghdad and New Orleans, our inability to do the postwar shortened Bush's effective presidency by two-and-a-half years.

Problem is, he's still in office.

If he truly understood the challenge, he wouldn't leave that lack of capacity as a legacy. He'd want the next president to do better.

And if Cheney really cared about the presidency as much as he claims, he wouldn't be wasting its political capital so. He'd leave the office better than he found it.

Thanks to Brandon Winters for sending this.

USAF's opening bid [updated with link]

DAILY BRIEFING: Air Force chief argues against diverting funds to Army, By Megan Scully, CongressDaily, January 26, 2007

Get used to hearing this story. The near-term threat MUST be countered by something else--typically long term (where China typically comes in).

Here, the USAF Chief takes a far better tack: cut us and you cut our support to ground troops.

Best counter: "Fine. You do need to protect and even expand your support craft. Now let's talk about your platforms not currently in the fight and your long-term plans for acquisitions."

And yeah, that's where the China card gets pulled.

So consider this an opening bid...

Thanks to Steffany Hedenkamp for sending this.

We need more NATOs

OP-ED: One NATO Is Not Enough, By JOSEPH NÚÑEZ, New York Times, January 27, 2007

A good example why Bush is not living up to his preferred historical comparison to Harry Truman: his Long War leaves behind no international institutions.

Thanks to Michal Shapiro for sending this.

We lost control in Iraq a long time ago

ARTICLE: Iranian Reveals Plan to Expand Role in Iraq, By JAMES GLANZ, New York Times, January 29, 2007

The dynamics here are so predictable.

Iran's been involved in supporting Shiia in Iraq for a long time. Now we're "discovering" this like crazy and revealing it to our public, but it's been well known and well documented all along.

Now that we target this, the Iranians are signaling they can go as long and as hard as need be on the subject. They're betting this is a struggle they've got legs on while clearly the Bush administration is under fire at home and therefore needs obvious wins in the short term.

I don't believe in fair fights. I also don't believe we've made this unfair enough to Iran, so I think we're picking a fight we will not win.

As sectarian violence picks up across Iraq, Iran will ramp up support to Shiia and Saudi support to the Sunnis will also ramp up. Both flows of support will enable the killing of Americans. Don't expect any crack down on Saudi support any time soon.

This is classic Rumsfeldian "enlargening the unsolvable problem in search of a larger solution." Problem is we're not offering Iran anything, so Iran's gonna simply wait us out.

The sectarian strife is the dominant dynamic now, which means we lost control of the situation in Iraq a long time ago. Now Iran's more in the driver seat, thanks to the Shiia being majority. We haven't solved Iraq, now Iran naturally thinks it's their turn.

And, quite frankly, they're right. "Victory" in civil wars--as Niall Ferguson so aptly points out--comes when winning sides are supported by outsiders. I would pick the Shiia over Sunni, and so when Iran does the same, they just access the solution set faster than we do. Our picking a fight with Iran won't change this underlying reality which our previous incompetence set in motion.

The Bush administration simply won't admit that our actions to date in the Long War have dramatically empowered Iran (my point all along), so they compound past failure with future failure. We made the choice to empower Iran, but Bush simply doesn't want to deal with that. He and Cheney are being completely unrealistic about what comes next. Their "my way or the highway" is cute when we're in the driver seat, but we're not anymore on Iraq, so pledging undying support to their continuing incompetence ain't patriotism, it's simply surrender to the current correlation of forces that they themselves have created.

An amazing day

Spent it running a three-hour session with Steve that involved a host of senior execs from one of the world's biggest defense contractors.

To get the feedback I got today regarding my two books and how they've influenced the strategic choices of this company over the past two years (I spoke at a conclave of their top 500 global execs a couple years back) is really stunning. I've never felt greater satisfaction from my career, because I know this corporation's choices will influence the entire defense-industrial complex's future, fueling our evolution toward a SysAdmin function that's more civilian than uniform, more USG than DOD, more ROW than USA, and more private-sector shaped and funded than public-sector driven.

A lot of people who don't know this business want to measure the vision's effectiveness and impact based solely on the operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. What they fail to realize is that change happens only under extreme duress and typically as slowly as possible. There is the institutional force and the operating force, and if you want to enable revolutionary change, you focus on the institutional force, not the operational force. The defense industrial leaders fall into the institutional category as well, which is why I spend so much time with them (a fascinating grind).

Not trying to be coy here, I just need to be discrete given the client relationship (Steve and I aren't here for free). It was just a big lift for me when I could use one, something that will sustain me for a very long time, because I realize what an incredible privilege it is to get to interact with people on this level. I've worked very hard for about two decades to position myself for these moments, so when I get that sort of highly focused, and highly positive feedback, it's just very energizing.

I take about 300-350 flights a year. I'm dropping out of the sky seemingly every afternoon. I sleep alone in strange rooms most nights, and expect my wife to raise 4 kids. I don't do it for the money, because I could make so much more while never leaving the house, I'd just write partisan crap that energized true believers (hell, I could write it well for both sides; it's not particularly hard to do if you write cleverly).

I do this because I really believe in it. This is exactly what I dreamed of doing back when I was a kid, growing up in Boscobel, with so much time on my hands I was able to spends countless hours imagining why I was put on this earth and how I was determined not to disappoint anyone involved with that decision. This is my priesthood--a lifelong commitment to goals I consider supreme, a true expression of my faith. I ask my kids and my wife to put up with that because I consider the sum of our sacrifices to be both profound and marginal in the grand scheme of things. After all, I do come home, I do see them all, they all thrive and lead fulfilling lives, and I've had the joy of knowing them all over the years as they know me.

A lotta other people sacrifice much more in this process. People from all nations and all religions and all backgrounds and all persuasions. I lead a life I value and love, so I do not consider their sacrifices to be in vain. I just try to honor them the best way I can.

And like everyone else, I need pats on the back. The virtual ones here in the blog and in emails are neat, but tangible evidence is better.

I got some today--of the sort that's big and lasting and real. It's the kind of feedback that insulates you from the criticism of others.

And it feels very good.

Tom around the web

+ ZenPundit posted an essay (also on Chicago Boyz) on one of the points where John Robb and Tom disagree.
+ Kobayashi Maru highly recommends Hugh's interviews with Tom and disagrees with Infantile US Strategy on China.
+ The War Room said he would like more ads for Tom's work. Really ;-)
+ All Things Beautiful says 'amen' to the end of Tom's most recent appearance on Hugh's show.
+ NonParty Politics linked the transcript from that show`.
+ An Army Lawyer has started posting on BFA, with an intro and then Chapter One. Looking good so far...
+ ThinkRight Arizona has started reviewing PNM.
+ Hillbilly Sense cites Tom in an argument for sending more troops to Iraq.

Tom's column this week

When America threatens war with Iran

In international affairs, the best threats are often left unpublicized. In his State of the Union speech this week, President Bush signaled to the Iranians in no uncertain terms that America will not let it develop nuclear arms.

Behind the scenes, the White House reportedly tells Tehran's leaders that, unless they stop messing around in Iraq, we will take the fight directly to Iran.

Rumor mongering or legitimate diplomatic demarche?

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Early column sighting: The Mitford Daily News.

If he's gonna' talk like that, don't let him out in public

ARTICLE: Defending Iraq War, Defiant Cheney Cites 'Enormous Successes', By Peter Baker, Washington Post, January 25, 2007; Page A01

ARTICLE: Bush Plans New Focus On Afghan Recovery: Extra $7 Billion Would Go to Security, Roads, By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, January 25, 2007; Page A01

Cheney's disconnect comes off as scary weird. He shouldn't be allowed in public if he's going to go all brittle like that. He'll end up being a bigger danger to Petraeus than Maliki if he keeps it up.

Meanwhile, the $7B announcement on Afghanistan is encouraging.

In retrospect, history will wonder aloud why America didn't put in the huge effort on Afghanistan and temporize on Iraq (something I addressed in a column a way back). Now, we're backfilling on both Afghanistan and Iraq and contemplating war on Iran (my weekend column that Scripps will post and distro tomorrow).

In defense of Bush (very cynically): no matter how bad Iraq goes, his Big Bang is actually extended further and better by worse outcome than by opposite (Iraq as dream case), because Iraq-dream-case dismissed regionally as American pilot study and not indicative. Plus, in that case we'd probably just be pursuing the same ramp-up on Iran, with the same "brave" effort from Saudis ("you spill blood, we'll make more profit by pumping harder and doing our bit to reduce Iran's revenue"). If that was path, we'd likely have just blundered into unsustainable invasion of Iran (can't handle 20m in Iraq when things go bad, so 70m in Iran... hard to be optimistic).

Of course, with this path (Iraq sucks), we're mostly blowing smoke on Iran. But we're more likely to get--however scary--further and faster on conflating conflicts (unless pushed too much to fight Israel's desired war with Iran, because then the global blowback on us overwhelms any localized dynamics we may wish for)
in that the Saudis are forced to fish or cut bait on the Sunni Triangle.

But here's why I think the Iran-war-sales-job is so real: not just Tel Aviv but also Riyadh pushing the package (both the blood and the treasure).

Think Bush won't do it? Rewatch the Cheney interview with Wolf and remember that he's the adult in the room when that gut decision gets made.

Scary enough when the president has no cares about legacy. Now we contemplate matching that dynamic to Cheney's own disdain.

And under the right conditions?

We will see impeachment proceedings.

Don't believe? Then you need to check out Biden's long soliloquy yesterday on the Senate's options, cause those gears are turning.

Blowback on another military-only strategy

ARTICLE: Bush Defies Lawmakers To Solve Iraq: Gates Says Doubts Bolster Enemy, By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, January 27, 2007; Page A01

Bush is being disingenuous here. The biggest threat we face right now are enemies all around us in Iraq who feel completely emboldened by the Bush administration's unwillingness to engage, and general incompetence, in diplomacy across the region.

Bush's surge plus a diplomatic strategy designed to temporize opponents' efforts while drawing in outside allies would have met with Senate approval. The surge strategy with a complete blow-off of the ISG's very wise recommendations on diplomacy is not acceptable.

Trying to pin Senate opposition to the tag of "enemy support" is complete bullshit. Bush and Cheney have proven themselves incompetent diplomats throughout this process and now--go figure--no one trusts them when the re-try-a-military-only strategy that has failed before, coupled with more reconstruction money unlikely--under the conditions of foreign meddling that our incompetent diplomacy both allows and enables--to succeed in any critical-mass sense.

What's coming under fire here is not the Senate's implied "treason" but Bush's demonstrated strategic incompetency and willful disregard of popular will. He "leads" when no one feels it is wise to go. Americans have had enough of war-war-war from Bush-Cheney and want--in Churchill's vernacular--more jaw-jaw-jaw.

Bush's insistence on conducting war solely within the context of war instead of running it with an eye to the "everything else" is what's on trial here--and it's only going to get worse because Bush and Cheney seem both politically and strategically tone deaf: they add enemies at will but never bother to worry about adding friends.

And guess what? Eventually that creates a huge blowback.

If Bush and Cheney want to remain oblivious to that blowback, both at home and abroad, be my guest. They just cannot be so foolish to think their lack of strategic imagination somehow binds the rest of us to silence.

If nothing kills the myth of Karl Rove's "genius," this idiotic name-calling does all by itself.

Steve (and his missus) to the rescue!

Yesterday was a hard day. Last two weeks I've basically been gone all week, getting home sick late on Thursday nights.

No worse than your 80% biz traveler in general, and certainly no 15 months in Iraq. It's just that I've been doing this pretty much non-stop since Oct 2001, and it makes everything seem so intense all the time: all trips are packed, are audiences jacked, all schedules timed to the nth degree (Jenn's amazing role), and content that must be generated in huge chunks and shoved out the door. Add in the energizer bunny that is Steve and it gets awfully blurry at times. You come home and the place is a wreck because wife has been dealing with the pre-schooler, the grade-schooler, the mid-schooler and the high-schooler with her one pair of hands, one car, one everything. So your big non-sick day (today) disappears in one big clean-up that you try to make fun (e.g., Jerry performs Star Wars [can't tell which player] in front of me while I work out on the elliptical [can't forget that!] and listen to my Hewitt appearances on my laptop).

We'll spend all day fixing up the house and cleaning, Vonne and I will hit the Bowflex, then we're trying to talk our kids into "Star Trek IV" in the home theater with Tombstones and "free soda." Tomorrow I'll hit an early mass with the family and then bail for the next jaunt before noon. I'm looking at a serious overseas trip in Feb.

All these things are important. I get so many emails from people who say the material's getting through and changing things and making a difference and yet there are so many more to convince, and so I remain convinced that the work I do, coupled with the Enterra stuff Steve and I are creating, is having crucial impact. And you read something like Daily's piece and you say to yourself: Can I do more?

And then I realize how lucky I am to have Vonne.

And then I realize how nice it is to connect to people through the blog.

Yesterday I got this great piece of email from a Chinese Alzheimer's researcher. My guess is this person's born in China, came here for education, and stayed--for now--because of the research. Imagine devoting your life to something that important! Well, she (I'm guessing the sex here because the name was no hint!) sent me a nice letter and it really picked me up.

Everybody's holding down somebody else's fort. There's the guy who organizes all the servers at my church. Small thing, but it helps me immensely with my fort, giving my son Kevin this tremendous feeling of belonging and accomplishment and faith. No one probably ever asked him to step up. He just did. This guy won't cure anything (he's an apartment super, like I once was) and he won't catch any bad guys, and he won't foment any revolutionary change. But maybe he makes all those things possible for others, holding down one fort while so many more get built.

You sense that web, that network. You try to live up to its demands and its promise. You try sacrificing just enough while surrendering no more than is necessary, and you constantly recalibrate.

Thanks for giving me this venue in all its forms and functions. "Downhill" for me is just taking more than I give, and being such an inveterate performer (8 of 9, I always remind myself), that makes me feel sad.

But it's a good thing to network, to draw strength from others and to feel your strength drawn to them. Frankly, it's the low days that make me understand best why our victory in the Long War is both inevitable and quite right.

Connectivity is the basis and the purpose of all faith: the challenge is how you choose to use the strengths offered to attempt a widening of the circle.

In that sense, I have been offered many gifts in this life, and I intend to repay them all.

How'd Steve and his wife came to my rescue? It's called SinusRinse and it's OTC from NeilMed. Simple as the day is long. Almost too natural to call a medicinal cure. Think it's going to help me a lot. Steve, maven of mavens, connected me to his wife to clue me in, and for that I thank them both.

Honor the fallen by getting the rule set right as quickly as possible

POST: Lt. Mark Daily, RIP

A beautiful piece of writing from an amazingly self-aware young man who wanted to connect to a future worth creating, and whose sacrifice reminds us all that no such future is possible unless we learn to associate--in this connected world--U.S. national security to global stability and--ultimately--freedom.

That's what this fallen officer was talking about, and his profound awareness of where his individual sacrifice fits within our shared global future reflects how America logically serves as sourcecode for this era's globalization--the single most liberating and empowering revolution yet unleashed upon the planet. An intolerable "burden" to some, a very noble cause to others.

We honor him best by getting the rule set right--as quickly as possible.

And to that conversation, all must be welcome, or all will be lost.

Thanks to Tom Wade for sending this

Knocked out

Last week's issue (sinus) resurrected (inner ear). Too much travel.

Recovering, not hiding from all these events readers demand comments on.

Coming clean

I will admit that I am somewhat worried about the blog. Life is constant transition and change, and since I don't write corporate but personal and visionary (not an objective statement, but a claim of purpose) my blog's going to capture all that (either making it fascinatingly easy for future biographers or simply leaving clues behind for my kids to figure out exactly "when Dad snapped!").

I hinted at the problem a while back: columns intrude, stealing my best efforts. And with the Fast Company edit looming and my Esquire beast coming on its heels (the first will appear in the April issue [comes out in March] and the second will--in all likelihood--appear in the May issue [comes out in April]), I consistently find myself killing posts because I want to keep that good line or that bit or that line of reasoning.

But I fear it's more than that (and let me admit here that I am writing under the influence right now, which means last week's sinus infection doubled back into both a sinus and ear and I'm not seeing the doc until 3:30).

First, as I noted before, the sense of gearing up for the book is there, and although I don't expect Vol. III to be as current events-tied as PNM or BFA were (because I want to write a sort of primer for the next generation of grand strategists in my "wide thinker but not widely read" sort of way--meanng my book won't be a grand treatment of all other books on the subject because I got out of grad school 17 years ago), I find myself retreating intellectually: observing more, talking less.

Spending lots of time with Steve DeAngelis encourages this, because Enterra's on such a blitzkrieg track right now (smashing through lines, achieving insane breakthroughs which constantly force regroupings of resources--the usual start-up drill) that the Steve-and-Tom show is very Penn and Teller, meaning Steve does most of the talking and I do most of the facial expressions (yes, I'm too tall to play Teller, but I am pretty funny, you gotta admit). Doesn't mean I'm taking a back seat intellectually to Steve (who's very generous in that way), just that this is how the business drill is working right now: I do most of my talking behind closed doors now, most often with Steve himself. In short, I'm strategizing a lot right now, and it's like that output is reducing my intellectual drive on the blog somewhat, especially when all the other stuff (columns, articles, book) looms in addition.

Getting settled in Indy is probably contributing to this withdrawl as well. Having been on the run so long and for so hard naturally crates a regrouping phenomenon.

So I worry about the blog.

In reality, though, it's counter-intuitive. The blog should go downhill as other things go uphill. Not just the intellectual output, but the career story-telling because I'm increasingly having interactions I can't explore here, as more and more meetings start with the admonition "Don't put this in your blog!" I mean, I don't want to become the professional commentator nor the Kitty Kelly/Bob Woodward-like leak conduit. Those are great functions in their own right, and I'm sure there's a small army of smart people out there striving mightily to achieve those heights, but I'm pretty sure that's not what I want to do.

You know sometimes I feel bad about giving basically the same brief for the last decade or so, even as I swap out all the slides and sometimes, like over the last two weeks, give briefs that are fundamentally different. The process has always been the same: old stuff gets squished up front and new stuff gets added on the end, like a giant sausage factory. But underlying it all are the same questions and just better and better versions of answers over time. The kernel software has never really changed for me, just gotten more robust.

But I think that's the right way for me to go (hell, I have people say they've seen "the brief" six times and it just keeps getting better and better--and they say that with great enthusiasm). I just can't be somebody with a new grand strategic vision every other week, because then I really would be just another op-ed columnist, and I think that would be the death of me.

I think I need to be the Philip Glass type, or the Roy Lichtenstein type, or the Christopher Walken type, or the Jackson Pollack type, or the Laurie Anderson type, or the M. Night Shyamalan type. I need to keep shaping the perfect thing, getting as close to the essence as possible, wherever that takes me and accepting the Zen-like repetition of the work.

I've often thought the blog is very helpful on that score, allowing the repeated attempts at the same task, over and over and over and over again. But if you feel the bouncing rubble phenomenon, is that your fault or the medium's? Cause I feel anything but stale right now, I just find myself operating at different levels that aren't as easily translated here as they were--say--even six months ago.

So maybe the blog, as a career/intellectual function naturally drifts in and out. You know, that happens to creative people all the time: they just get tired of the format. Eno sort of said that. You just need to shift some gears, either to refresh or simply to move on.

Anyway, there it is for now.

The entirely predictable crime rise

COVER STORY: “Cities see crime surge as threat to their revival: Louisville, Trenton, N.J., and other metros whose downtowns are booming once again fear nationwide jump in violent crime may hurt prosperity,” by Haya El Nasser, USA Today, 25 January 2007, p. 1A.

Police chief of Providence came to me after PNM was published and we talked urban crime as the analogy of Gap violence.

This was his revelation: the three-strikes and other harsh-penalty laws of the previous decade had surged the prison population, but soon the number of ex-cons being released (about 600k, if I remember) would surpass the number of new cons going in (about 500k). A simple prediction: urban crime was going to go up all across America.

The bulk of these guys are functionally illiterate and go right back to the same broken communities and neighborhoods where they previously failed, except now where those areas are gentrified, we’ve got a “new” problem “out of nowhere.”

Jobs are the “exit strategy” there too, along with “broken windows” community policing.

Very similar to the Gap.

For how this phenomenon can get cast in real estate, see this post from Coming Anarchy's Chirol (always intriguing and here with perfect timing for my purposes) on gated communities.

The best foreign aid our taxes can buy

POLITICS & ECONOMICS: “Foreign-Aid Program May Be Hamstrung by Budget: Bush Program Faces Hit as Countries Near Large Deals,” by Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, 22 January 2007, p. A7.

The best innovation of the Bush administration in foreign policy has been the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a new foreign aid-granting entity outside of USAID that focuses on countries approaching the threshold of emerging market status. Instead of just propping up countries from below, the MCC was designed to lure them from above, creating a transparency with regard to standards.

The focus of the MCC has been great: very much enabling the mechanisms by which soft infrastructure and rule sets emerge. My favorite grant (very De Soto-ish) was to Madagascar to take its antiquated land titling system and bring it into the information age (I have a special spot for Madagascar, as I did a bit of work for USAID’s Africa Bureau [no travel, alas] back in the mid-1990s, about the same time my firstborn was surviving her advanced case of cancer thanks to a drug made from a plant found only on the island [my consulting involved the preservation of nature reserves, so a nice sense of symmetry arose]).

Bush wanted $5B a year (alas, Bush was a spender beyond all spenders), but Congress, as always, got stingy and has continuously trimmed it back. Our legislature should know better, but they prefer their ability to earmark the entire USAID budget to death, primarily to benefit home districts.

NC --> NRs! [updated]

OP-ED: “What Drives High Growth Rates? The short answer: demand, technology and investment,” by Michael Spence, Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2007, p. A13.

Very tightly packed but fabulous op-ed.

Internally, growth is associated with “a functioning market system, high levels of saving, public and private sector investment, resource mobility and the capacity to accommodate rapid change at the microeconomic level without leaving people excessively exposed to the risks inherent in creative destruction.”

Notice how an economist (and Nobel laureate) like Spence can lay out an argument like that and never mention democracy. Why should he? Because his favorite examples in the piece are Japan, Korea, Singapore and China. The first two became democracies in a real sense only when very much advanced in their development process, while the latter two essentially remain single party states and show few signs of shedding that characteristic any time soon.

But the real point in this op-ed is to argue how crucial globalization’s rise has been to enabling sustained high growth rates in these countries, since all achieved--and still achieve--their development through largely export-driven growth strategies. By tapping global demand, global technology and global investment, each has accomplished that which would have been impossible in isolation.

In that development, which was more easily achieved with connectivity to distant markets than to neighboring ones (except on FDI), rising Asia was able to “play up” to the West, taking advantage of its wealth to jump start its own accumulation process, which soon enough will become incredibly crucial to an aging West. In turn, however, because of demographic pressures similarly triggered, the East will need to turn South for all the same reasons why the West previously turned East.

Spence lays it out nicely in a manner I very much agree with:

The prospects for developing countries are, in fact, probably more favorable now than they have been since World War II. International trade is growing faster than global GDP. The benefits of decades of learning with respect to operating global supply chains are accessible. Information and technology continues to lower transactions costs and to be a powerful integrating force. But perhaps even more important, the key players in all this--the leaders in emerging economies who have the responsibility for building policies that support private sector entrepreneurship and that lead to sustained inclusive growth--have a wealth of experience to rely on. No one is in the dark.

A neat definition of what I mean when I say that the New Core sets the new rules, and therein lie the clues for how the Core as a whole will realistically shrink the Gap.

Update: Steve wrote about this same Op-Ed today: High Growth Rate Drivers

The slow rise of transparency in China

FINANCE AND ECONOMICS: “Cultural revolution: New accounting rules have replaced the Little Red Book as China’s guide to self-improvement. Can the state handle the truth?” Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 63.

ARTICLE: “Blackmailing by Journalists In China Seen As ‘Frequent,’” by Edward Cody, Washington Post, 25 January 2007, p. A1.

Chinese businesses have long kept multiple books: one each for the government, the record, for foreigners, and for actually keeping track of what’s really going on. Naturally, these competing truths are never allowed to bump into one another.

Now China’s leadership proposes that one standard be used, that of the International Financial Reporting Standards. Certain exceptions are allowed (big surprise), and adherence is “voluntary,” a phrase with too many meanings in Chinese to count.

Still, this is a big deal in a country where, as the article’s opening para notes, accountants were once considered so dangerous that they were all summarily rounded up and sent to re-education camps. Now, there is such a shortage of accountants in China that acquiring them has become a mania in business circles.

In the end, though, accountants are just one edge of the transparency sword. The other is a free press. You can’t send in the bean counters in many instances until the lies are revealed, and that’s the job of journalists in any reasonably free system. In China, that function remains both promising (exposure of corruption is encouraged by the Party, so long as the Party itself remains untouched, save those dicey moments when those on top want to do some house-cleaning, usually defined in generational terms) and depressing (the same corruption so widespread in the Party is none too surprising replicated throughout the press, where bribe-taking to avoid muckraking is commonplace).

Following my usual analytic practice, the question is, how far back in U.S. history do we travel to find similar dynamics? As often is the case, one’s mind turns to the period at the turn of the last century, or the age of high corruption segueing to Progressivism (basically corresponding to the adult life/career of Teddy Roosevelt).

A long slow journey, no doubt. But once begun, very hard to undo.

History will not be kind to Condi

COLUMN: “A falling star: Condoleezza Rice is not the woman she once was,” by Lexington, Economist, 20 January 2007, p. 44.

A great examination of how disappointing Rice’s tenure has been, noting that her poor turn at SECSTATE is vastly outweighed by her disastrous turn leading the NSC (“Her fingerprints are on some of the worst mistakes of the first Bush term.”). On that basis, she can be rightfully accused by history of being the Achilles heel of the entire administration, sowing the seeds in Bush I for the tragedy that has become Bush II.

As the piece points out, though, the ultimate blame lies with Bush, who picked her for jobs that demanded a heavyweight when she has turned out to be anything but.

Then Lexington nails her flaws on the head: she was a lifelong protégé who never grew up. From her childhood right through her final tutoring under Scowcroft, whose model of the perfect NSC chief (broker, not herder) sealed her fate, she--just like fellow SECSTATE disaster Colin Powell--“made her career by impressing powerful establishment figures.”

What does being a lifelong protégé get you? A mindset of serving the boss’ needs, keeping one’s place among the adults, and trying to please all while angering none.

What it does not get you is serious leadership skills, at least those at the level required for SECSTATE.

We have paid a huge price for Rice’s poor education, along with Powell’s.

But I will say this about Rice: she lacks Powell’s CYA instincts, and for that alone she deserves far more respect than he.

Still, Rice will go down in history as forging a brilliant and historic career unblemished by lasting accomplishments and visionary leadership.

Yes, it HAS been long enough

FEATURE: “Little Sensitivity Lesson on the Prairie: A Canadian sitcom pokes fun at Muslim stereotypes,” by Christopher Mason, New York Times, 16 January 2007, p. A4.

The Canadians are beating us to the self-examination punch on Islam within our ranks, as demonstrated by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s daring new sitcom, “Little Mosque on the Prairie. It is attracting an audience that’s roughly double of the usual definition of a runaway hit in Canada.

The opening episode shows a bunch of Muslims trying to set up a mosque in the parish hall of a church. When a local sees them gathered in prayer, he rushes to call the terrorist hot line, and rest is a humor right out of “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!”

The president of the Canadian Islamic Congress has a great quote on the show: “Muslims are a bit late in laughing at themselves, but we have to use humor to remedy these divisions, just like any community.”

The CBC is talking with networks and cable stations in the U.S., Israel, Dubai, U.K., Germany and France about exporting the show.

Norman Lear would be proud.