ANALYSIS: “Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States,” by Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker, Washington Post 10 October 2006, p. A12.

ARTICLE: “Sectarian Havoc Freezes the Lives of Young Iraqis,” by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, 8 October 2006, p. A1.

Long day building this week's column (Epidemiology meets Dr. No) and tending to personnel issues with Enterra (oh, the joy of learning to manage, says 8-of-9).

Good opening paras tell the essential story of the first piece:

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Each problem appears to feed on the others, making the stakes higher and requiring Bush and his advisers to make difficult calculations, analysts and U.S. officials said. The deteriorating situation in Iraq has undermined U.S. diplomatic credibility and limited the administration's military options, making rogue countries increasingly confident that they can act without serious consequences. Iran, meanwhile, will be watching closely the diplomatic fallout from North Korea's apparent test as a clue to how far it might go with its own nuclear program.

The key phrase there: “Each problem appears to feed on the others.”

Ask yourself what nail cost us the horse cost us the rider cost us … the strategy?

To me, it’s rather simple: lacking the SysAdmin force/function in Iraq is what got us into this trouble. Once we screw the postwar in Iraq, we embolden Iran. Once Iran gets its steam up, North Korea sees its window.

None of our allies particularly want to rescue this administration, and yet none want to see it fail to the point where these two are nuclear powers but remain outside any community of states that may temper their behavior. The connected nuclear state is not a problem, but the disconnected, isolated, sanctioned state is a problem.

Own a coherent SysAdmin capability, then you attract allies, all of whom want to get in on the market-making opportunity on the far side of the traditional military intervention.

If Iraq is stable today, then our pressure and threats vis-à-vis Iran occur in a completely different environment. Plus, imagine how differently South Korea and China and Japan would view the possibility of a U.S.-led intervention in North Korea, seeing how well we performed in postwar Iraq.

Then you change the equation from “who gets stuck with this tar baby?” to “who gets to clean up most on the virgin market?”

Having an overfed Leviathan and a starved SysAdmin just won’t cut it in this world anymore. The Leviathan is mostly about deterrent value nowadays--the ultimate barrier to the market called great power war. Its use inside the Gap is being progressively marginalized by the realization on the part of potential targets that defeating the Americans is quite possible: you just sit out the war with the Leviathan and wait for the postwar against the underfunded, underprioritized, underequipped, undermanned, undertrained shell of a SysAdmin force.

Then the Americans will get tired, give up, and go home.

Rinse-and-repeat enough times and it’s soon America that can’t get out of bed (What’s the point?) and not only are our allies not showing up, they’re plaintively encouraging us not to even show up.

Why? We’ve shown them what we can do with our Leviathan-heavy/SysAdmin-lite combo: basically leave the situation more screwed up and disconnected than we found it.

You can’t read a more depressing story than Tavernise’s on what it means to be an adolescent trying to grow up in Baghdad today:

Three and a half years after the American invasion, the relentless violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five Baghdad neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to make plans.

“I can’t go outside, I can’t go to college,” said Noor, sitting in the kitchen area waiting for tea to boil. “If I’m killed, it doesn’t matter because I’m dead right now.”

That, my friends, is disconnectedness at its worst: being cut off from your own sense of the future. People can survive all sorts of deprivation and challenge and danger, but that kills the spirit. And if accomplished at just the right age--namely childhood and adolescence--it can be killed for good. Do that in your average very young Gap society, and you come as close as you can to leaving the place more disconnected than you found it.

We’ve become the NY Yankees of global security: we’ll crush you with our firepower and wealth during the regular season (war), but then we fold in the playoffs (postwar), losing to teams that spend less but play harder and with more fundamentals.

What I’m talking about winning in the postwar is not impossible. Hamas manages it. Hezbollah manages it. The Muslim Brotherhood manages a version in “emergency rule” Egypt. It can be done.

What I’m talking about achieving with Development-in-a-Box is not impossible. China manages it in all sorts of Gap locations.

Our enemies in this Long War basically constitute a cult--a millenarian band of religious fundamentalists that swoop in on both individuals and societies at their weakest points, when they’re feeling most disoriented and disconnected. That’s how they win--converts, failed states, battles.

By eschewing the complex tasks of counterinsurgency and postconflict reconstruction and stabilization operations for an entire generation following Vietnam, we set ourselves up for this failure. We enshrined this strategy of limited regret in the Weinberger Doctrine, which actually made some sense so long as the Cold War continued, and then we elevated it further in the Powell Doctrine, which yielded glorious military victories followed by absolutely self-negating periods of postwar neglect and abandonment--in turn yielding both 9/11 and the Long War we have today. We pretended to ourselves that following through on these postwar/strife/disaster situations was somebody else’s business, but not ours, knowing full well that when America doesn’t show up, nobody shows up.

So we’re getting what we deserve, thanks to our own unwillingness to stand up and accept the challenges the post-Cold War security environment has thrown at us for over a decade and a half now.

Bush’s post-presidency is just killing us around the world right now. The disrespect that started with Katrina is sky-rocketing right now, and Rice seems as overmatched by the job as Powell was, basically leaving no one of consequence with serious vision running the ship.

How irreversible is this?

The global economy is humming like never before, and we face a long-term stimulus of the likes the world has never seen.

No one challenges our power, just its misapplication.

The dislike of America is amazingly focused on Bush and his team and the way they conduct business. Clinton used the military like crazy during his terms, but didn’t manage to piss off even a fraction of the people that these guys have. Then again, he used the military just to ameliorate, not to fix.

Bottom line being, the world will want America back as soon as this administration ends. No, that does not mean the anti-Americanism that’s really anti-globalization in disguise will disappear quickly. That will only grow with this long-term expansion of the global economy. But this relationship (America’s with the world) can be fixed a lot more easily than people imagine.

Don’t believe me? Wait until Chirac is gone and we either get Royal or Sarkozy.