Battle for survival

Greece is bracing for more clashes between police and those pampered sectors of the population (students, government workers) upset that their benefits must be cut if the country is to dig itself out of its fiscal hole. Greece is in "a battle for survival," said Prime Minister George Papandreou, though I'm not sure this is the battle he had in mind.The hope is that the Germans will bail them out. Perhaps they will, but how would you like to be told, as say an autoworker in Stuttgart, that you are expected to help pay the pensions of Greek civil servants? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Remember the Cheonan

Forty-six South Korean sailors died when the Cheonan went down. Unlike the sinking of the USS Maine, which triggered the Spanish-American War and whose cause is still something of a mystery, it seems pretty clear that the Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo. This will, of course, inspire the Good People to campaign for greater tolerance of the Norks. Even the South Koreans will be inclined to take this path. After all, who in his right mind would go to war against someone who's truly insane, and who has nuclear weapons to boot? Remember this the next time we are tempted to cut the Iranian nutters some slack. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On setting an example

“An example had to be set,” said Mr. Gelb, whose salary is now $1.3 million. “As the head of the institution, I felt it necessary that it begin with me.”

So reports the NYT in the Gray Lady's heartbreaking story of how hard times have hit New York's culturaterai. Peter Gelb is head of the Metropolitan Opera, and he has cut his salary twice, though it still has two commas in it. He's not the only one: the Met is part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, whose director gets (I am reluctant to say earns) $1,180,000 a year. At the other Met--the one with paintings on the walls--the director took home $2,700,000 a couple years ago, though that included a one-time bonus and the value of his rent-free apartment next door to the museum. After two cuts, he apparently now gets something on the order of $1,300,000. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On stiffing one's friends

When the prime minister of Japan came to the U.S. recently, his handlers lobbied fiercely for that all-important face-to-face with the American president. As David Pilling reports in London's Financial Times:

Yukio Hatoyama had to settle for just 10 minutes, and even that during a banquet when the US president was presumably more interested in the appetisers and wine. These things matter in Japan. One senior politician called the put-down – as it was inevitably viewed in Tokyo – “humiliating”. He even noted that the Japanese prime minister was shunted to the edge of a group photo, the diplomatic equivalent of banishment to Siberia.

It would be wrong to read too much into these titbits of protocol (though it is always fun trying). But behind the snub lies something real. The US-Japan alliance, the cornerstone of security in east Asia since 1945, has not looked so rocky in years.

 I made fun of Mr. Obama's Fawltyesque bow to the emperor of Japan, early in his administration, but gosh, did he have to go so far in the other direction? Though Mr. Obama apparently still retains his glow with foreign populations, he doesn't seem to get along all that well with foreign leaders, and especially not with those who historically have been well-disposed to the United States. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

No mas!

The governor of Arizona has just signed the country's toughest law against illegal immigration, and the Good People are predictably upset. Hispanics of course are crying racism, and President Obama is following his recent and rather unpleasant habit of demonizing people he doesn't agree with:

... he called for a federal overhaul of immigration laws, which Congressional leaders signaled they were preparing to take up soon, to avoid “irresponsibility by others.”

The Arizona law, he added, threatened “to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.”

Of course Mr. Obama knows that that chances of Congress passing a meaningful overhaul are Slim to None--and Slim is about to leave on a Congressional junket, at taxpayer expense and with the customary military escort.

Two years ago I would have been on the other side of this argument. My mother and father, after all, were born in the County Cork, and I naturally view immigration as a good thing. There are two things very different about the situation in Arizona: first, that Hispanics in the Southwest don't seem very interested in assimilating to the English-speaking culture; and second, that millions of them are here illegally. Plus, it annoys the heck out of me to be told to press One if I want to continue the conversation in English. For a more intelligent discussion of this subject, see Sam Huntington's brilliant book, Who Are We? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On making stuff up

The New Yorker has a devastating account of how the late Stephen Ambrose simply made stuff up when writing his many books about Eisenhower, general and president. It seems that many of his meetings with Ike--hence many of their conversations, hence many of the quotes attributed to the president--just didn't happen. This comes as no great surprise, considering how Mr. Ambrose earlier plagiarized whole chunks of of Thomas Childers's book, The Wings of Morning, in order to juice up his own account of B-24 crews over Germany in World War II. (Childers wrote the better book and had 15,000 copies in print; Ambrose was given a first printing of half a million.)

But it remains a puzzle: how did Ambrose possibly think he could get away with these thefts and lies? Probably because he knew his colleagues would rally around if he did get caught, just as they rallied around the historian and Vietnam wannabe Joseph Ellis when it turned out he'd been lying to his students about his service in Vietnam (and a lot of other stuff, including his participation in the anti-war movement afterward).

And you know what else? I'll bet the major consequence of the TNY expose of Ambrose will be a spike in the sales of his books. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A North Korean torpedo

Agence France-Presse reports what most of us assumed from the start: that people in both Koreas are convinced that that South Korean warship was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, "in a premeditated operation approved by Kim Jong-Il," as a Nork army officer reportedly told a contact in the South. Meanwhile, Iran is holding war games in the Straits of Hormuz, and the Iranians and the Norks are exchanging high-level visits.

A year or so ago, the Good People were convinced that all Barack Obama had to do was press the Reset Button, and all would be well with the world. Hasn't worked out that way, has it? Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On cyberwarfare

I have blogged from time to time about the prospect of a cyberwar attack on the very vulnerable American communications system, which happens to include such little extras as the electric grid. So add this to the must-read list: Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. It's not just malicious hackers, either, such as destabilized Ukraine shortly before the Russians invaded. Much of our computer hardware is built in China. It would be no great feat, the authors argue, for the builders to insert a "trapdoor" enabling someone (the People's Liberation Army, for example) to take over the computer at a time of its choosing. The result could be as devastating as a nuclear bomb--and no way of knowing where the attack came from. (And given the dependence of the U.S. military on "network-centric" warfare, perhaps no way of retaliating even if we did know.) Is this absurd? Perhaps not: the authors argue, for example, that the Israelis succeeded in taking over the Syrian air-defense system in 2007, thus clearing the way for their planes to destroy the secret nuclear reactor built by the North Koreans. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

And who will protect us from our protectors?

Charles Schumer is a United States Senator from New York. He announced on Sunday that he had "personally contacted officials at American Airlines, Delta Airlines, JetBlue, United Airlines and US Airways, and secured commitments from all five companies" that they wouldn't impose fees for carry-on luggage.  Imagine that! The courage! The senator was spurred into action by an off-brand outfit, Spirit airlines, which plans to charge $45 to use the overhead bins.

"In the last week we have gained tremendous momentum in our effort to keep carry-on bags free," said Schumer. "We have begun to put the brakes on runaway and out-of-control airline fees. I am pleased some of the major carriers have responded to our efforts and have agreed not to charge for something that has always been free."

Could anyone other than a Washington politician be so stupid--so disconnected from reality--as to believe that the overhead bins are free? Next thing you know, he'll try to send a suitcase home on a flight on which he holds no ticket. "Just put it in the overhead bin, son."

Listen, Mr. Schumer, it's this simple: you pay for the little extras when you buy your ticket. When the airline has to sell tickets so cheaply that it loses money as a regular thing, then it starts charging for the extras--like lunch and checked bags. Hey, Ryan Air has a surcharge if you pay with a credit card! This is called a business model.

The senator's mindset reminds me of the news story I read the other day, in which a community was in such bad shape that it had to cut back some "free" services, explaining that they were paid for by taxes for the most part, "though some of them are funded by government grants." We live in a world where town officials think that government money doesn't come from taxes, and where U.S. senators think they can tell airlines what they can do with their overhead bins. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Before Istanbul, it was Constantinople

You can always tell when I am hugely enjoying a book, because I mine it for a new aphorism for the heading of this blog. I'm currently reading Edward Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, a masterly survey of how guile, geography, and a scrappy military enabled Constantinople to survive for eight centuries after Rome fell to the barbarians. (Indeed, the eastern empire actually reconquered for a time most of the Mediterranean lands once ruled from Rome.) We didn't learn nearly as much about Byzantium in school as we should have, or at least I didn't. Dark Ages? What Dark Ages? Constantinople kept the flame alive until well into the 13th Century. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Pressing the reset button in Colombia

It has been amusing and instructive to watch the Obama administration tack to the right after jamming through its unpopular, expensive, and most incomprehensible overhaul of the health-insurance system. The idea, presumably, is to pick up the independent voters who have themselves tacked sharply right, tea cups in hand. (The left wing, in this calculation, has nowhere else to go.)

The latest such maneuver has been to signal that the long-delayed trade pact with Colombia is getting a second look. The canary in the free trade coal mine is Defense Secretary Robert Gates (first appointed by President Bush, hence dispensable if anything goes wrong): "I discussed this earlier this week with National Security Advisor Jim Jones," he said. "And I would hope that we would be in a position to make a renewed effort to get ratification of the free trade agreement. It's a good deal for Colombia. It's also a very good deal for the United States."

It is indeed a good deal, but that cuts no ice with Mr. Obama's allies on the left, especially in the labor unions. What a long road it has been, from abrazos with Hugo Chavez to talking nice about free trade with Columbia! Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Eat your heart out, Sarah and Barack!

Thank heavens, there are a few fields where even overcompensated politicians can't compete. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Another multi-millionaire politician

Sarah Palin is working full time to pack in $12 million (see below). But Barack Obama, who has a day job paying $400,000 a year (plus an expenses of up to $169,000) just filed his Form 1040 showing $5.5 million in income for 2009. This does not include his million-dollar Nobel Peace Prize, which he donated to charity and did not report on his tax form. How does that work? He didn't claim it, but instead directed it to certain charities. Isn't that the same as claiming it?

To be sure, presidents have always received perks unavailable to the rest of us, and the Form 1040 is no exception. I recall when the IRS deemed Dwight Eisenhower's best-seller as income spread over several years because it was based on his WWII service. No other writer of the time was able to succeed in that argument. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The money-bag is THIS big!

John Fund does a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the riches taken in by Sarah Palin since she quit her $125,000-a-year job as Alaska’s governor. Her book Going Rogue has earned $7 million. Fox News is paying her up to $2 million. The Learning Channel (whatever that is!) will pay $2 million for a series about Alaska. And of course there are the speaking gigs, which Mr. Fund estimates have brought in at least $1 million for Ms. Palin’s personal account despite the fact that many of them are charitable outings or fund-raisers for organizations she believes in. That’s a grand total of $12 million, if you’re keeping track, and doesn’t include the $400,000 that her Political Action Committee has raised.

Mr. Fund argues that Ms. Palin's money machine is so attractive that she won’t be running for president in 2012, but instead will still be “securing her financial future [and] repairing cracks in her credibility from the 2008 campaign.” This is, of course, to bet that Mr. Obama will beat whichever candidate the Republicans put up against him in 2012. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty are the leading contenders, and it's true that neither seems a slam dunk against our transformational president. On the other hand, the Rasmussen poll shows Mr. Obama leading Ron Paul--Ron Paul!--by only one percentage point, 42 to 41, with 6 percent undecided and 11 percent of us holding out for a better choice. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Of drone strikes and assassinations

I have mused before about the queasy feeling I get when the United States of America tries to kill its enemies with targeted assassination, as opposed to an up-front invasion that kills a whole lot more people, both ours and theirs. Today in the NYT, Robert Wright gives the assassination question a good airing. (I didn't know who Mr. Wright was, either. Turns out he's a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. And no, I don't know what that is, either.) He writes:

"President Obama, who during his first year in office oversaw more drone strikes in Pakistan than occurred during the entire Bush presidency, last week surpassed his predecessor in a second respect: he authorized the assassination of an American — Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Imam who after 9/11 moved from Virginia to Yemen, a base from which he inspires such people as the Fort Hood shooter and the would-be underwear bomber."

It does seem that hands-off assassinations are the hallmark of Democratic administrations, while Republicans send in 3rd Infantry Division. The Bush boys, father and son, both invaded Iraq, while Bill Clinton made a regular practice of firing cruise missiles at training camps that proved empty and chemical plants that proved to be aspirin factories, or so we were told at the time. Mr. Obama seems to favor Mr. Clinton's policy, and it is certainly one that costs fewer lives. But, as Mr. Wright points out, "Students of the law might raise a couple of questions." Of course they might! That's what students of law do best. Still, they are questions that deserve an airing--and I note uneasily that among the folks who agree with the leftish Mr. Wright is the rightish Bill Lind, whom I quoted on the same subject here recently.

Mr. Wright lays out his objections, and concludes: "I’m not sure I’d want to pay these prices even for a strategy that helped us in the war against terrorism." But of course he hasn't really paid any price, including the price of standing still for the next terrorist attack. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Just two buddies, doing what they can!

President Obama is taking some well-justified heat for telling the "president" of Kazakhstan that, like the Kazahks, Americans are still trying to get our democracy right. (As if to reinforce the point, that's Mr. Nazarbayev sitting in front of the American flag, while Mr. Obama poses in front of  the Kazahk national banner.) To make matters worse, one of the president's aides assured a reporter that yes, indeed, Mr. Obama has taken some "rather historic steps to improve our own democracy since coming to office here in the United States." Perhaps he was referring to passing a health-insurance overall over the opposition of a clear majority of voters?

Max Boot, no great admirer of the Obama foreign policy, argues that we should cut the president some slack in this matter--that any president of good sense will grease the wheels with some mighty unpleasant characters. Maybe so. But it does seem that Mr. Obama is obsessed with making friends with those who stand against us, while dissing those who would stand with us. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Fighter Pilot

Here's a fine book about a fine man: Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds. It's a posthumous autobiography, put into shape by his daughter Christina and by Ed Rasimus, who wrote the magnificent Vietnam memoir When Thunder Rolled. (Note that if you buy the two books together at Amazon.com, they total $25.80, which qualifies them for free shipping in the U.S.)

And here's my review of the book in the Wall Street Journal today. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

A mission to Katyn

Shantih (peace) to the president of Poland, killed with all his companions on a flight that was to have commemorated the 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Russians so they'd pose no obstacle to the Soviet takeover of that country in 1945. First Poland was raped by the Germans, then by the Russians, and left to half a century of foreign rule (dressed up during the Soviet era as a People's Democracy). But the Katyn massacre finally emerged in all its Stalinesque brutality. Now that eastern Europe seems likely to be abandoned again by the United States, the Polish president was on his way to salute the dead, and incidentally to mend fences with the newly emergent Russian almost-empire. It seems that nothing turns out well when it involves Moscow. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

There is also the story of John Boyd

I wrote my thesis at King’s College London on the maverick Air Force officer and military strategist, John Boyd. So I was pleased to know that the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, held him up as a model of sorts to the cadets at the Air Force Academy recently:

“There is also the story of John Boyd – a brilliant, eccentric, stubborn, and frequently profane character who was the bane of the Air Force establishment for decades. As with [Billy] Mitchell, tact wasn’t Boyd’s strong suit – and he certainly shouldn’t be used as a model for military bearing or courtesy. After all, this is a guy who once lit a general on fire with his cigar.

“As a 30-year-old captain, he rewrote the manual for air-to-air combat and earned the nickname “40-second” Boyd for the time it took him to win a dogfight. Boyd and the reformers he inspired would later go on to design and advocate for the F-16 and the A-10. After retiring, he developed the principals of maneuver warfare that were credited by a former Marine Corps commandant and a secretary of defense for the lightning victory of the first Gulf War.

“It strikes me that the significance of Mitchell, [Hap] Arnold, [Bernard] Schreiver, and Boyd and their travails was not that they were always right. What strikes me is that they had the vision and insight to see that the world and technology had changed. They understood the implications of that change, and they pressed ahead in the face of incredibly fierce institutional resistance.”

Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Washington gridlock

Gotta love the headline in the WaPo: Nuclear Security Summit promises gridlock for downtown D.C. Right, and that's about all that it promises. For one thing, Israel won't be there, and of course neither will Iran or North Korea. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

The Surge worked. Get over it.

As a junior officer in the U.S. Army, Andrew Exum began blogging under the nom du web of Abu Muqawama, and he continues now that he’s an analyst at the Center for a New American Security. Mr. Exum is hardly on the same page as James Taranto, whom I also read every day—Andrew in the morning, James at happy hour—so I am always pleased when his perception matches mine. Here he is on the subject of The Surge:

"Ever since my friend and mentor Tom Ricks concluded at the end of his book The Gamble that the Surge succeeded tactically but failed strategically, it has been safe among others to say that the Surge -- for all the heroics of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps -- failed. Andrew Sullivan and Tom write this regularly on their blogs, and because they are serious people, others parrot what they say. At some point, though, evidence gets in the way of their conclusion."

Indeed it does—unless, as Andrew wryly remarks, you keep moving the goalposts. So here’s a tip of the virtual hat to the American servicemen who made it possible, and to the American president who had the wisdom to change his strategy and the courage to double down on his investment in Iraq. The Surge worked. Get over it. (Tom Ricks, by the way, is another blogger that I check more or less daily. I was impressed by his book, though skeptical of its conclusion, as I pointed out in my review for the Weekly Standard.) Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Catch and release

Congratulations to the Dutch Navy, whose sailors rappelled down from a Lynx helicopter under covering fire and retook the freighter Taipan from pirates. The pirates didn’t resist, and indeed why would they have bothered? They were taken into custody aboard the frigate Tromp, which last month released 33 pirates captured in similar circumstances. Two hundred years ago, pirates were summarily hanged by whoever took them prisoner. Now that we have the United Nations to take care of our international problems, no one is sure who has jurisdiction over pirates, so the general principle is catch-and-release. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Oh well, never mind!

So here's the headline of the day, fifteen months after Mr. Obama promised to close Gitmo and try enemy combatants in civilian courts: Guantanamo war court resumes hearings amid uncertainty. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On being Hamid Karzai

Robert Haddick of Small Wars Journal has a provocative piece online that’s summed up in this sub-head: “Note to the White House: You don't own Karzai -- he owns you.” With each escalation of American forces, Mr. Haddick argues, the Afghan president has a firmer grip on Mr. Obama’s testicles. The essay concludes: “the United States is fighting in Afghanistan not against terrorism but for its reputation, for its ability to convince the wider world that it is in control of its affairs and that its power can achieve challenging goals. But this means that the world audience, and not the U.S. president, will decide for itself whether it is convinced about the efficacy of American power.” Which was pretty much the case in Vietnam forty years ago. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

If you can't beat them ...

Say what you like about Hamid Karzai, but you can’t call him an American puppet. On Saturday, we’re told, he said to members of the Afghan parliament: “If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban.” (The quote appears in the ninth paragraph of one of those Gray Lady “analyses” that are really editorials in disguise. This one beats the old drum that if only we get rid of the incumbent, everything will be fine.... Right! We had great success with that in South Vietnam!)

No doubt Mr. Karzai is playing the Cold War game of increasing American aid by threatening to cozy up to the enemy. (Alternately, he may have noticed the weird tendency of this administration to apologize to its enemies while pulling the rug from under its friends.) But his threat ought to be taken seriously: at a certain point, joining the Taliban is exactly what the West must consider doing: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!”

As it happens, my favorite military theorist made just that argument in his Patterns of Conflict briefing of 1986. The object of a counter-insurgency campaign, he begins, is to “Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people—rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.” That is: we must prove that we represent the good guys. To which he adds a sly footnote: “If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!”

Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Thinking about the ObamaTax

The curious thing about Mr. Obama is that he is both the first American president not to consider his heritage to be that of northern Europe and the first to believe that the U.S. would be better off if it turned itself into a European society. Government ownership of the means of production, mandatory health insurance, higher taxes on "the rich," demonization of disfavored industries and activities ... and inevitably, the value-added tax. Irwin Stelzer of the conservative Hudson Institute has a piece in the WSJ this morning about the VAT, as it is nicely abbreviated. (Nice, because the acronym is as ugly as the tax.) He takes the British VAT as his model for discussion. It's hilarious, especially the bit about bras and body stockings: bras up to 34B and body stockings up to 27.5 inches crotch to shoulder are deemed children's clothing, hence free of tax; above those limits, add 17.5 percent to pay the salary of the bureaucrats to wrote the rules. Read it and weep. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On saving employers money

The Gray Lady has a curious story this morning, damning a company that contests bogus unemployment claims. "When fewer former workers get aid, a company pays lower unemployment taxes," explains the reporter somewhat disingenuously. Um, right, but doesn't the American taxpayer save money as well? So isn't this a good thing overall?

One would hope that this is just an example of overambitious muckraking on a dull morning, but it fits into a pattern of finding businesses and blaming them for all our problems. A meltdown of the financial system--blame the banks, never the Federal Reserve or Barney Frank. Exploding health-care costs--blame the drug companies and, more recently, blame the insurance companies for raising rates. And now we have this niche company named Talx (an odd name, as the reporter ominously notes in his very first sentence) being demonized in a time of unemployment. (But not for government workers, and evidently not for reporters with imagination.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On losing control of the border

There's a depressing analysis on Nightwatch about the "cartel" warfare on the American border, where the Mexican military are proving unable to defend themselves, let alone control the gangs. Mr. McCleary speculates that the cartels are hoping to establish a lawless zone like the one the Taliban enjoy on the AfPak frontier.

This resonates because last night I finished reading Sam Huntington's splendid The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. A recurring theme in that book is that the Southwestern states of the United States have become a Latin American sub-nation with the potential to turn this country into what Huntington calls a "cleft nation."

This is an astonishing book. It was published in 1996, the year Osama bin Laden issued his little-noticed "declaration of war" against the United States, but it predicts and explains the bloody battles to come between Islam and the West. Some time ago I blogged about a later book by the same author that addressed this question more directly: Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity. Now we seem to be living the history that Sam Huntington foresaw. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

We do not anticipate that Guam will tip over

I really do have projects more pressing than watching YouTube videos, but this performance by Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson ought to be seen in every civics class in the land. (Do we still have civics classes in our highschools? If not, this is the place to begin.) Blue skies! -- Dan Ford