Thursday, October 09, 2003
Productive National Security
(or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Powerball)
Hidden amongst all the drifts of hyperbole and spin is a very important fact: the current administration is one of the most productive national security organizations ever. With a minimal force, the United States has invaded and pacified two nations. This was done with minimal casualties amongst civilians and our military. This was done in nations where other invaders have broken their teeth and their hearts in recent history. Two years after the balloon went up; two of the most destabilizing governments in the world are reduced to the status of annoyance.
The endless reports of every mishap in the area could easily lead you to a different conclusion. This is an illusion. Soldiers and civilians are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan that is not illusory. The level of casualties relative to the level of reporting is much more important to consider. That bastion of marketing self-importance CNN is reporting every civilian death in those two countries caused by the actions of their former regimes, now. Two years ago that same CNN refused to air any reports of those same regimes slaughtering their people. The difference is that now the deaths are news, matters of isolated distinction instead of the daily grind of the totalitarian meat processor. Does CNN ever mention how much less deadly it is to be a civilian in these nations? Well, that would imply integrity. Orders of magnitude fewer people are being killed by the vicious bastards of the Taliban and Baath Party; that benefit is the direct result of productivity of our national security organization.
Although the victories of the last two years have been presented as effortless despite our own leadership failures, nothing could be further from the reality. Our troops fight diligently, intelligently, and with remarkable restraint. They face dangerous opponents who have no concern for the customs of war or the cost to their own people who have crushed and humiliated opponents in living memory. However, it must be noted that our enemies are disorganized and that is a result of decisions made by our leadership. Every one of our enemies' leadership we could reach that could be bought has been bought. (Powerball technology applied to military ends. Oh the humanity…)
This is a brilliant strategy with far reaching consequences. Once a leader has been bought and abandoned his troops, it becomes intensely difficult for him to raise troops against us again. We can discredit him at any time; although it is much more likely that he will spend the rest of his days in comfortable obscurity. If you put the value of a permanently wounded US troop at one million dollars, it quickly becomes much cheaper to purchase victories with dollars instead of casualties. (As a reference, my father was retired for injuries sustained in the Korean War. He died in June after drawing disability pension and benefits for more than fifty years.) The Powerball bomb is arguably the most cost effective weapon ever used by American troops.
This is certainly not the only arrow in our quiver and not the only one to hit the mark. There are interesting rumors coming out of Africa of US personnel out and about doing things and stuff. It is hard to find much about this in most media because, like CNN, they are engaged full time presenting a fantasia of humiliation and defeat where we are formally engaged. What is most important is that there was no major terrorist attack on US soil in the last two years. That could change before I post this, but it seems unlikely.
For all the sturm and drang about supposed lapses, failures, and leaks in the current administration, there seems little real substance to these charges when weighed against the results. No administration has ever done so much with so few in so little time. The accusations that they aren't doing more are as substantive as complaints that they are not doing all this while wearing ballet slippers. Accusations that they are somehow responsible for the attacks that caused this activity are simply despicable calls for attention from pathetic fools who've discovered that their life's work has been blindly backing the wrong horse. The George W. Bush administration has lapses, failures, and leaks, but their problems have interfered less with the task of protecting this nation and its interests less than any in living memory. There is still much to be desired from them, but there is little to actually complain about regarding security.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
The Arnold Post (Cobbled together from comments on Roger L. Simon's Blog)
McClintock's decision to stick in the race and split the conservative Christian (i.e. nutbar) wing of the Republican Party means that Arnold owes them nothing. Splitting the nutbars who do not care if they elect anything away from the Republican Party is a huge shift. It redefines party affiliations and changes everything.
I've met the nutbar wing of the Republican Party up here in Oregon and they scare me. These people never check their facts, only act from emotion, and are incapable of making the kinds of compromises that are needed to make good government. Pushing them out of politics is striking a blow for liberty and rational liberalism everywhere. I disagree with the people stating that McClintock won this because he convinced the conservative Christians to an eternity of dying on the cross. We've checked the records and that only worked for one guy.
I do not see myself becoming a nutbar Christian in the next ten years. My education is much better than that because I studied religion as part of my liberal arts degree. I had as many theology and philosophy hours as I did history hours. I view detailed research and intellectual discussion as an essential to establishing a worldview. In other words, to the nutbar Republicans, I am viewed as the anti-Christ.
Providing rational centrists with the key to unlock the shackles the nutbars have put on them is valuable. People like to feel at least a little bit safe, and the "stolen election" screaming moved a lot of people away from the left just before 9/11. People like to feel decent, and Pat Robertson's denouncing of America as deserving to be attacked moved a lot of people away from the right just after 9/11. Arnold was the first person to make a plausible case for centrist rationality and internal compromise.
I am sick and tired of being cast as the polar opposite of anyone I disagree with. I am furious over being caricatured because my position is different. I have been a centrist for decades now, disgusted with the hyperbole of the left and the right. I want to be evaluated for what I say in context to what I am talking about and be confronted with my adherence to logic and facts instead of dogma and hysteria. I want to thank Governor Schwarzenegger and Roger L. Simon for letting me be myself, again.
Object of Beauty
I have an object of beauty on my desk. I think it is beautiful, some might argue that it has an insufficient dynamism. It is in fact more skillfully rendered than almost any artist would take the time to create these days, if they had the skill. It is balanced on all axes, it is light enough to lift with your littlest finger, and it is strong enough to lift my house. It is a rail adapter for an AGM-84 Harpoon missile that was discarded for a slight damage sometime in the early nineties, literally thrown on the scrap heap, and collected by me shortly before I left the Navy. It is an inert chunk of metal and a reminder of the definition of power.
The object of beauty is worthy of consideration. From this small piece of metal, no longer than your forearm, the entire weight of the missile was hung. During launch, this piece of metal, no thicker than my index finger in any dimension, would hold the missile in place until the rocket booster had come to full power. Then it would travel down the launching rails, holding the missile in place, until it exited traveling a substantial fraction of the speed of sound, all in the length of a small dining room.
It is marvelously well machined and fabulously well preserved. Although it's time on the scrap heap left it with many marks and scrapes, it has no signs of corrosion after nearly a decade of sitting in a box unattended. What the blemishes do not conceal, however near perfection of machining and design that went into its creation. Every facet of the object, and there are hundreds, has been perfectly machined to a fine tolerance. This could probably be attached to any Harpoon missile in the fleet tomorrow and fit flawlessly.
In all likelihood, it was designed and built by some of the people who put men on the moon. Those long retired steely eyed missile men of the cold war crafted this wonderment on a drafting board, checking their figures with slide rules. Every facet is machined, each to tolerances finer than most motors. For that matter, this one piece of metal probably cost more than most engine blocks. When this was designed, it probably took months of planning, weeks of refining, days of machining, and years of testing. Today, with the latest computer aided design, manufacturing, and preliminary testing, the whole project could be ready for test in a few weeks, less time than that if put on crash priority. For all the yammering about $400 hammers, the United States has a design and production capacity that is tremendous and efficient. The price of our weapons systems is dropping while their quality and capability is increasing dramatically.
If designed today to deliver the same capabilities and tolerances without concern for the bureaucratic maze, this same object could be built smoother, with less material waste, fewer machining steps, less weight, even closer tolerances, higher strength, less airfoil disruption, and for less money. Even so, this is an object of beauty to me. Saddam Hussein, al Queda, and the Taliban could not make anything so fine, and I think that is beautiful. The organization, understanding, teamwork, science, capitol, and industrial capacity necessary to create this kind of weapon are not available to intolerant racists. We should all take more time to appreciate beauty and what makes it possible.
Monday, October 06, 2003
The Economics of Terror
Israel attacked Syria. That Syria was hosting a terrorist base camp actively engaged in attacking people in Israel is entirely beside the point to many people. While stupid young men are strapping bombs to their bodies and detonating themselves in public streets, it is much more important to discuss the diplomatic considerations of the attacked nation's decision to defend itself using military means. Some would have you believe that all military actions are bad and so the United States should cut its ties with Israel. As the rabbi said, fat chance.
I suspect that the US might give up on Israel when Jewish peoples stop contributing to the GNP of the nation more than any other group. Please note that I am not talking about holding wealth or manipulating wealth, I am speaking about creating wealth for everyone around them. Excising that thread from the fabric of our nation could be done. Doing so would start a process of impoverishment and leave our children bickering in the squalid ruins of a once great nation.
There is a critical difference between treasure and wealth. Treasure provides tangible rewards, wealth provides investment. One of the chief failures of many Arab peoples is the inability to make this distinction. Michael Totten also makes this mistake on occasion, so it could be said that this is not a massive intellectual failure, even if it is a critical one. It is possible to convert treasure into wealth, but it does take time and, more importantly, sustained intelligent effort.
The people of Israel provide the world and the United States with wealth. The Arab members of OPEC provide the world with treasure. Wealth flourishes in freedom and treasure works in oppression. It is vitally important to remember that Islamist fundamentalists view any economy other than a treasure economy as a direct violation of the teachings of the Koran. We are working to create a wealth economy in Iraq and al Queda is trying as hard as they can to kill us for it.
This is a conflict between nomad and agrarian economies. The Islamic fundamentalists attempting to kill you believe that economic strength not measured in sheep and gold is blasphemous. To them, any successful economy not based on nomadic herding and hording treasure is the work of Satan. Look carefully at where the Bedu peoples were eighty-five years ago when Lawrence organized their revolt against the Turks who ran the cities. Also remember that forty years ago the dollar was tied directly to silver in this country. Stepping away from the atavistic joys of a treasure economy is something we have only done in the last generation, and many people will still tell you it was a mistake.
People are trying to make you believe that this is a war for oil; that is not really true. Iraq can produce roughly $20 billion a year in petroleum. The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is $10.4 TRILLION (A number so large that it cannot be meaningfully expressed in sheep and treasure hordes; therefore it is a blasphemy.) People asking you to believe that as a nation we have gone to this great effort to snag a quick 0.19% growth in our GDP are probably not doing the math. (That is to say less than one fifth of a percent or eight percent of our growth on a recession year.)
To the limited extent that this is an economic war at all, this is a war for wealth, and we want to create it. That this wealth is something that will destroy the way of life for tens of thousands of violent, abusive, genocidal, racists who have killed people in the United States is not so much of an accident as some would have you believe. Think of this as an inverse of Carthage. Instead of salting the earth, we are making it bloom again. Instead of scattering the survivors, we are gathering them. We are making an ancient civilization young again. None of this is covered in the parts of the Koran the Islamists fixate on though, so we all must die. That "all blasphemers must die" policy has some flaws, though.
The chief problem with any operation is personnel. Top-grade fundamentalists capable of surviving an operation against blasphemers are actually quite hard to find. The advantages of using suicide bombers are that you don't have to provide them with a getaway car, you don't have to find them a secure place to stay until the heat blows over, you do not have to train them for their second mission, and they don't talk afterwards. (You thought your VP of HR was evil, ha!)
It is fairly hard to maintain the conditions that generate a suicide bomber. There is no indication that diplomatic efforts have ever discouraged or diminished these conditions, though. Rockets exploding in the middle of the training hall have had measurable effect on breaking up operant conditioning. The sense of invulnerable purpose is hard to maintain when a precision guided munition is headed to your position; perhaps they are too impersonal.
Until we can break down the homicidal and suicidal adherence to treasure economy, we will probably continue to support our co-economists in Israel. When they use rockets and laser-guided bombs to discourage the suicidal, we will be at worst vaguely admonishing to them. If this upsets some people who feel we should sever all diplomatic ties with people who use military violence to defend themselves or are otherwise controversial, so what. The money that treasure provides talks in the halls of the United Nations, but wealth built the halls and keeps them lit.
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