Bush Buddies vs The Rest of Us

SOB is watching an interview with Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff. Where does the Bush administration find such freaks? Of course, if Bush had gotten his original pick we would be in the middle of another juicy scandal today:

Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, is close to reaching an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to having accepted improper gifts totaling tens of thousands of dollars while he was a city official in the late 1990's, two people with information on the plea negotiations said yesterday.

Under the proposed agreement, Mr. Kerik would plead guilty to failing to report accepting roughly $200,000 in renovations to his Bronx apartment — a violation of the city's administrative code. The work, officials have said, was paid for by a New Jersey construction company that the city had long accused of having ties to organized crime.

Mr. Kerik, 50, who accepted the gift when he served as correction commissioner under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, will not face jail time, but is expected to pay a substantial fine, those with information about the case said. He is also expected to admit having failed to report receiving a loan.

A guilty plea would represent a further fall from grace for a public official whose dazzling ascent in city government took him from the rank of third-grade police detective in 1993, when he served as a volunteer campaign bodyguard and chauffeur for Mr. Giuliani in his mayoral campaign, to becoming the city's police commissioner in 2000, a post he held at the time of the Sept. 11 terror attack.

Mr. Kerik nearly rose higher still, to the rank of cabinet secretary, when President Bush nominated him to head the Department of Homeland Security in December 2004. But he was forced to withdraw a week later, citing possible tax problems involving his family's nanny.

How is it possible that the Bush administration has any credibility with even the small minority of Americans that still bow down to this charade? PEOPLE - this is very BAD theater. Stop applauding. Tinker Bell deserves to expire. Let it go.

Bush vs Nature

If you haven't seen Al Gore's new film, "An Inconvenient Truth," please do. It is surprisingly engrossing (and entertaining despite it's heavy message). Recently there have been a number of reports supporting Gore's contention that Global Warming is both a serious problem and a result of human activity. Today another report attempts to highlight the importance of human activity in creating climate problems:

Now, in the second major global warming study released today, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found:

Global warming accounted for around half of the extra hurricane-fueling warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic in 2005, while natural cycles were only a minor factor.

… The study contradicts recent claims that natural cycles are responsible for the upturn in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995. It also adds support to the premise that hurricane seasons will become more active as global temperatures rise.

Some background: Last year, sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic “were a record 1.7° F above the 1901-1970 average.”

Previous studies had suggested that the more intense hurricane activity was largely due to a 60-to-80-year natural cycle in sea-surface temperatures. But according to the study released today, less than .2° F of the rise was due to this natural cycle. Global warming, on the other hand, caused roughly half (about 0.8° F) of the rise, more than any other factor.

Lest we forget, Bush's official position is that we need to study this some more. Present understaning isn't really "sound science." of course, Dubyah wouldn't know "sound science" if it bit him in the ass - as it seems likely to do (and to all of us).

Bush In Another Bubble

Just as the previous post pointed out the obvious fact that inflicting death and destruction on the poor and weak in Iraq is no way to win hearts and minds (quite the contrary, in fact) so this post - by a serious conservative - makes it clear that we continue to make the same kind of mistake in Afghanistan:

This Sunday’s sacred ritual of Mass, bagels and tea with the Grumpy Old Men’s Club was rudely disrupted by the headline of the day’s Washington Post: “U.S. Airstrikes Rise In Afghanistan as Fighting Intensifies.” Great, I thought; it’s probably cheaper than funding a recruiting campaign for the Taliban and lots more effective at creating new guerrillas.

Getting into the story just made the picture worse:

As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command…

The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs.

One might add, “The Taliban has expressed its thanks to the U.S. Air Force for greatly increasing its popular support in the bombed areas.”

At present, the bombing is largely tied to the latest Somme-like “Big Push,” Operation Mountain Thrust, in which more than 10,000 U.S.-led troops are trying another failed approach to guerrilla war, the sweep. I have no doubt it would break the Mullah Omar Line, if it existed, which it doesn’t. Even the Brits seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid this time, with the June 19 Washington Times reporting that “British commanders declared for the first time yesterday that their troops were enjoying success in the restive south of Afghanistan after pushing faster than expected into rebel territory.” Should be in Berlin by September, old chap.

Of course, all this is accompanied by claims of many dead Taliban, who are conveniently interchangeable with dead locals who weren’t Taliban. Bombing from the air is the best way to drive up the body count, because you don’t even have to count bodies; you just make estimates based on the claimed effectiveness of your weapons, and feed them to ever-gullible reporters. By the time Operation Mountain Thrust is done thrusting into mountains, we should have killed the Taliban several times over.

Icing this particular cake is a strategic misconception of the nature of the Afghan war that only American generals could swallow. According to the same Post story,

U.S. officials say the activity is a response to an increasingly aggressive Taliban, whose leaders realize that long-term trends are against them as them as the power of the Afghan central government grows.

“I think the Taliban realize they have a window to act,” Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the 22,000 U.S. troops in the country, said in a recent interview. “The enemy is working against a window that he knows is closing.”

Except that the power of the U.S.-created Afghan government is receding, not growing, and the Taliban’s “window” only closes when Christ comes again.

Aaugh! The last time a nation’s civilian and military leadership was this incapable of learning from experience was under the Ching Dynasty.

Perhaps it’s time to offer a short refresher course in Guerrilla War 101:

Air power works against you, not for you. It kills lots of people who weren’t your enemy, recruiting their relatives, friends and fellow tribesmen to become your enemies. In this kind of war, bombers are as useful as 42 cm. siege mortars.

Big, noisy, offensives, launched with lots of warning, achieve nothing. The enemy just goes to ground while you pass on through, and he’s still there when you leave. Big Pushes are the opposite of the “ink blot” strategy, which is the only thing that works, when anything can.

Putting the Big Push together with lots of bombing in Afghanistan’s Pashtun country means we end up fighting most if not all of the Pashtun. In Afghan wars, the Pashtun always win in the end.

Quisling governments fail because they cannot achieve legitimacy.

You need closure, but your guerilla enemy doesn’t. He not only can fight until Doomsday, he intends to do just that—if not you, then someone else.

The bigger the operations you have to undertake, the more surely your enemy is winning.

The June 19 Washington Times also reported that

The ambassador from Afghanistan traveled to America’s heartland to promote his war-torn country as the “heart of Asia” and a good place to do business…

In his region, “all roads lead to Afghanistan,” he said…

Asia doesn’t have any heart, and Afghanistan doesn’t have any roads, not even one we can follow to get out.

Isn't it interesting that you can't find anyone in the mainstream media who is willing to point out these obvious facts? Real conservatives (like real liberals) are not reality-aversive, but the Bush neoconservative crowd seem to be. For them, reality is what they say it is; all PR and no policy. And the corporate press not only allows this, it encourages it.

Another Reason Bush is a Loser

There are many reasons to believe the war on Iraq is an evil that we will pay for in ways we can only dimmly perceive - it is unnecessary, unjust, illegal, unconstitutional, planned in secret, sold with lies, pursued with unforgivable brutality against those we claimed to help, and corrosive of every value and freedom that Americans have held dear. And there is a fundamental reality that trumps all of Bush's swagger, Cheney's contempt, and Rumsfeld's self satisfied incompetence - the very nature of the conflict itself will defeat us. This from John Robb at Global Guerrillas:

As news of the incident in Haditha filters out, it is becoming increasingly clear that Martin Van Creveld's paradox of modern warfare is in play:

In other words, he who fights against the weak - and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed - and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force, however rich, however powerful, however advanced, however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat...

Such a fundamental lesson that we should have easily learned long ago - if we lived in reality rather than in the Fox News fantasy of Evildoers and Freedom on the March and defending the Sanctity of Marriage against the assault of gay-immigrant-flag burning-liberal-latte-drinkers-from-Frisco. Aren't we ready to wake up from this nightmare?