Friday, April 28, 2006
Clarification of Oil Supply SMASH has a generally irrefutable set of facts for the reality impaired. On one point he is marginally incorrect in his details. Gas prices are high because oil prices are high.
Oil prices are high because increasing global demand is outpacing supply.
There is nothing any politician can do about it. Supply is a more complex concept than described in SMASH's post. The overwhelming infrastructure investment in Oil Supply is predicated on a baseline reality that at any moment Saudi Arabia can sell oil for $15 a barrel. They can make a substantial profit at this price, and they can maintain that price for five years without a problem. Everybody in the oil industry knows this. Nobody in the oil industry has been willing to invest in solutions that generate oil that is only profitable at $20 a barrel without extensive government subsidies. This is not a massive oil company conspiracy, this is just good corporate governance. There is no justification for risking billions of dollars of other people's money when you know that at any moment the Saudi's can drop the price through the floor and bankrupt you. Any corporate officer who made such a risky expenditure would be fired or the stockholders would file suit and win. There is a lot of petroleum in various forms available around the world, and most of the research on deposits is proprietary information owned by the companies that did the exploration. Oil companies extract the cheapest and most readily available oil first because they have an obligation to the stockholders to be profitable. Oil Sands in Canada are just now being developed again because prices have been high enough, long enough to justify building the infrastructure to extract this expensive ($20 a barrel) source. Coal transference is another expensive ($30 a barrel) source that is getting developed because it is now profitable. Other, more esoteric and often less realistic sources are being developed now because it is relatively profitable to do so. Our national economy is doing well, much better than during the stagflation days of 1979 when oil traded for the equivalent of $98 a barrel in today's dollars. Although oil is trading for over $70 a barrel today, we are much better able to absorb the effects individually and nationally. We are currently rich enough to pay for high fuel prices and still develop alternative energy sources much more efficient than in the pre-microcomputer days of yore. President George W. Bush is an oil man, like his father before him. He knew all of the above when he took the oath of office to support and defend the constitution. There exists reason to believe that President Bush has chosen to execute his oath by furthering the energy independence of the United States. For instance, President Bush's repeated statements that he was going to do so are indicative. SMASH is wrong on one detail. President Bush is perfectly capable of driving events to the point where oil prices are high enough for alternative sources are profitable. There is every reason to believe that he has done so and he is a politician. It is more accurate to say that there is nothing that any other politician can do about oil prices while President Bush is maintaining his oath by keeping them high.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Captain Van Steenwyk Puts the Boot in... Arguing with Jason Van Steenwyk is worthwhile and informative, and if you've got your facts wrong it is also an education in getting your ass handed to you. It is also instructive to see how much of a minefield stroll it is to use the term "Chickenhawk" when there are veterans about.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Glass Houses and Rumsfeld Compare the results of current leadership of the Department of Defense and the Oregonian. Morale in the military is high; the Army exceeded its re-enlistment goals for deployed units by 15%. The Oregonian has not so much a matter of re-enlistment as downsizing due to subscriber loss. The Department of Defense is engaging enemies of our nation around the globe with the lowest rate of casualties in military history; nobody has ever done so much for so little cost. The Oregonian is taking its highest personnel losses ever. The Department of Defense is rewarding innovation from all corners of the globe to serve its vitally competitive mission. The Oregonian pays external sources a pittance for stories that can only be about local matters, despite trying to reach one of the most cosmopolitan and literate readerships in the country. Editors in glass houses… Patrick S Lasswell
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Live Clown in a Cave, Dead Schmuck on a T-Shirt The other day I was debating somebody in the comments section of a blog about the conduct of the war. They brought up the old chestnut of Osama Bin Laden's lack of expiration, as if failure to have his hide tacked to the wall of the West Wing was some kind of national disgrace. I don't like stale chestnuts, especially ones that are so morally vacuous and strategically bankrupt. A lot of this rolls back to the Che Guevara threat of the 1960s. After 1959, Earnesto "Che" Guevara was an embarrassment to his friends while he lived. Apart from casual apparel iconography, can you think of any significant contribution the Argentine mastermind made? What are his revolutionary successes? Was he more valuable to his friends alive than dead? There is a persistent rumor that the US Army Special Forces, having lost some of their own to Earnesto's tender mercies, decided to make him their special friend. Rather than just kill him, they kept him a live failure. Pissing off the Green Berets is actually a bad idea, they are smart and have a mean sense of humor and will milk a joke for everything they can. Allegedly, they ran all over him in the Congo, getting him to waste millions of Castro's seized dollars and hundreds of his loyal followers. In Bolivia, they could only keep the government from killing him so long and couldn't capture his arrogant ass themselves without tipping their hands. Regrettably, self-described revolutionary heroes don't survive catch and release programs with their ego intact. Fast forward thirty-five years to Afghanistan where we have another iconographic hero with a weak grasp of strategy. Regardless of his value as an adornment to the White House, Bin Laden was surely setting himself up as a martyr for quite some time. He has repeatedly indicated his readiness for martyrdom, and that is a winning end-game for him. As long as he is dead, he cannot surrender his cause or grow old and become fearful. There is little left for him to accomplish in life, and probably he doesn't really have the imagination to conceive of a greater victory than he achieved on 9/11. The rest of his life is a succession of squalid victories and repeated defeats; soaking up resources while locked into a doctrine he must defend while he still draws breath. The strategic thinkers who surround the President are probably perfectly willing to extend Osama's sorry decline as long as possible. As long as he is alive and failing, he is a strategic resource for the US. The leaders of Al Queda have to listen to him, because he can still excite their followers, but he must be supported in isolation at substantial cost. Only the most proven and loyal can guard him, draining potential leaders from the movement. All of his information is dated and all of his pronouncements are late; and there can be little of either to prevent their transmission being tracked. While he lives, Osama Bin Laden is a disaster for his movement, and they know it. None of this mattered to the person I was debating. They wanted Osama dead because they were not interested in winning a war; they wanted to pursue a vendetta. Bin Laden had scared them once and killing him would give them a sense of security or completion or the feeling of accomplishment. They didn't care about the cost, the strategic consequences, or the value of the action; what matters are their feelings. Thankfully, our government is not constitutionally required to answer every tantrum. They are required to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and emotionally underdeveloped. It is in our national interest to keep this clown alive in a cave rather than put another dead schmuck on t-shirts everywhere.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Seditious Libelers Support Group During AT (Annual Training) I had a good natured ongoing argument with a sailor from Massachusetts over the nature of matters political. It was quite civil because we were both in battle dress uniform, the same rate, the same rank, and stuck on the same island in Korea during the same gale. Our bona fides were established; a circumstance that does not occur all that often in arguments of this sort. I am more than willing to put up with a lot of crap from somebody who is out there walking the walk despite their reservations about the current political leadership. One of his talking points we didn't get around to discussing at length was his contention that accusing former Senator Max Cleland of anything was beyond the pale because he had lost three limbs in Vietnam. He stated that the loss of three limbs gave anybody a free pass for life. He contended that because some people who hold some political viewpoints I agree with accused the former Senator of communist sympathy, my arguments were void. Such was his drive for moral equivalency that he seemed to willing to restore our country to early colonial justice. Back then one offensive statement against authority would get you branded for life. "In Maryland, every county was ordered to have branding irons, with the lettering specifically prescribed: SL stood for seditious libel and could be burned on either cheek." This is clearly unacceptable in physical practice today, but the intellectual practice seems wholly embraced in common discourse. Even though I had never accused Max Cleland of communist sympathies, I was guilty by association and similarly pariah. Nobody else in the tent bought the argument, mostly because they were pointedly ignoring us and hoping we weren't going to start throwing punches they'd have to pay attention to. I did not get the chance to resolve this point out on the island, but that is what we have blogs for. Max Cleland did not get a free pass for life with his injury in Vietnam. I learned this from my father who was also blown up by a grenade, only in Korea years before Cleland took his hit. My father was an anti-war activist before Max Cleland went to Vietnam, but he never played his injury as his identity or insisted that his wounds made his behavior beyond reproach. If Max Cleland is allowing himself to be a tool for our nation's enemies, he should be called on it. If the people calling him on his failures are wrong, their facts should be assaulted, not their temerity to cast an icon in a bad light. Our freedom of speech is founded on the principle that the truth is never libel. It is also a critical feature of our democracy that nobody is above the law or their fellow citizens. Injury in national service is not a patent of nobility or canonization. If we cannot criticize our war wounded when they are wrong, we cannot be free. Put away the branding irons.
Monday, April 03, 2006
Pictures from Korea Still playing with sizes, stay tuned.  Cho Do (Do means Island) with camp on the right and nearest head on the left. Did I mention the deep sand between the two?  Dawn from Cho Do with Patrol Boats. Picture taken from my tent.  Sunset from Gaedaek Do during a storm with sustained winds of 40+ knots and gusts 65+ knots. Funny thing about islands, when there is a gale, you can't get off them. Climbing up the steep trail to this camp location, I regretted all the stuff I had brought with me. After the second night stuck there, I rejoiced in it.
Happy Thought: Peace is the opiate of the ineffectual. Patrick S Lasswell
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