A Second Hand Conjecture

Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• What do you do when you’re losing a war? Revise victory, redefine success. Even the guys on the ground, who can usually be relied upon to offer “oo-rah” statements about the war, seem to be losing faith. David Axe, on the other hand, is more optimistic, though John Robb adeptly quarrels with him.
• Meanwhile, the Marines are starting to complain about the extreme lag in equipment request fulfillment. Less than 10% of all requests were fulfilled last year, and they complain they are being starved out by a horribly inefficient bureaucracy.
• The Pentagon’s latest annual report (PDF) on China’s military power seems to have forgotten several SSBN’s (nuclear powered submarines that can launch ballistic missiles). Arms Control Wonk has more on the DF-31, one of the new ballistic missiles we’re concerned with. Rumor has it China tells its war game planners to model as best they can war with the U.S. in 10-15 years. I’m not sure that’s much different than our own nearly two decade long quest to oppose China as the next superpower (or if it’s just spin, or even a reaction to our years of war gaming China). But it is worrying. A Sino-American war would be insanely ruinous for both sides, and also Korea, Japan, and probably Russia.
• An interesting take on the very limited threat caused by CBRN, or Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear weapons—based on recent experience with Iraq’s chlorine bombs, natch.
• Blackwater employees got into an armed standoff with Iraqi Interior Ministry forces—a situation that, in Dr. Hillhouse’s words, “underscores why private military teams use such aggressive tactics and just how blurred the lines between defensive security and combat have become in this outsourced war.” It’s almost a no-win for Blackwater, balancing the security demands of their contracts with the need to avoid the political morass.
• AFRICOM: military command, propaganda outlet? This is precisely the kind of mission creep (I won’t yet call it the opening salvo in yet another full-blown turf war) that I worry will ultimately degrade the DoD’s warfighting capability. They fight wars. The State Department handles propaganda, image, PR, and foreign relations. Turning the regional CINCs into proconsuls does not combat the growing image of the U.S. as an imperial power.

Around the World

• Der Spiegel asks a good question: where were all the pro-capitalism protesters at Heiligendamm? I would answer that if you’re already in a capitalist society, and you support capitalism, there is very little reason to gather en masse to support it. I would also guess that most people consider the annual G8 protest/party a marginal event, one unlikely to have any sort of impact aside from assuaging the egos and holy outrage of the paper mache artists.
• An investigation into China’s drug agency has led to a death sentence for its former administrator. I wonder what will happen to the guy who let poison dog food ship off to America?
• A string of violence in Northern Afghanistan, including the killing of a dozen pro-Dostum protesters. Afghanistanica sees it as the result of a century of internal colonization, along with some ham-handed appointments by Karzai. Meanwhile, I take yet another look at the messy problem of narcotics spraying.
• Marth Brill Olcott on the continuing saga of the political sort-of reforms in Turkmenistan.
• The strange case of Nursultan Nazarbayev issuing an arrest warrant for his own son-in-law, in part for his involvement in the surreal abduction of Nurbank employees. The incomparable Bonnie Boyd has more on the family, criminal, and political dynamics at play. I chimed in, too, with what I hope is an interesting hypothetical.
• Is it possible for the Iraqi Kurds to collaborate with Ankara? Color me skeptical, at least until Turkey decriminalizes the Kurdish language and stops torturing people for speaking it. Oh, and maybe if they stop openly contemplating invading Iraqi Kurdistan.
• I know this is like totally wrong, but I laughed upon hearing that Right Said Fred got caught up in the Moscow gay rights fracas.

Back at Home

• If the U.S. government were forced to keep its financial records in the same way it forces our corporations to keep records, it would have lost $1.3 trillion last year, a little over five times the reported $248 billion deficit. Put differently, we as a country are currently responsible for $59 trillion in debt, or $516,348 per household. Thanks, Congress!
• Thank you, Virginia, West Virginia and Colorado, for trying to force a horrendous, dirty, environmentally ruinous fuel down our throats. The NYT unintentionally provides the best LOL: “Industry executives contend that the [liquid coal] fuels can compete against gasoline if oil prices are about $50 a barrel or higher.” So why bother subsidizing it?
• “Dick Cheney’s unmarried lesbian daughter gave birth to a baby boy (father unknown, of course). It’s like when Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown for being a single career woman who had a baby boy, only this time instead of the vice president criticizing the amoral-yet-fictional TV character, the vice president is actually the father of the amoral-yet-real woman, and she’s a lesbian. We sent our good wishes.” I should note that I am glad Mary Cheney is now a mommy, and I wish her and her partner the best. I just thought Wonkette’s take on the Second Family having a lesbo branch was amusing.
• Meanwhile, on the off chance that you didn’t think we are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband usage: our average broadband speed is behind all of western Europe, Korea, and Japan, even Poland. And we are falling further and further behind.

Trackback URI | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed