Austin Bay Blog

So the ‘Boys beat the Pack 37-27.

From what I saw of the game –stuttering, flickering, stalling on Richard’s super Mac computer– it looked like a pretty fair contest. Two 10-1 teams colliding late in the season (the 3/4 mark, actually). That’s a tv producer’s dream — or should I amend that and say video producer’s dream. This is the era of convergence media.

Now, my friend Richard has a wall-sized high definition screen down in his basement. His basement is the multi-couch lair where once a week we get together and drink scotch or pinot noir —and watch football. Thirty years ago both of us drank a lot of brew but we’re no longer a beer crowd. Trust me– good scotch goes well with good football games. (Actually, it goes well with bad football games. And mediocre games.)

Richard’s high definition screen is a real spoiler. At times it’s a press box view — and often even better.

But, alas, wait a sec– our local cable company didn’t carry the Cowboy-Packers game nor was it carried on a broadcast channel. The NFL Channel had the game and Richard didn’t have the NFL Channel (nor did Austin). So bye-bye hi-def.

Thursday around noon: Richard proposed we meet at a sports bar — Third Base, on Sixth Street near MoPac. Sounded fine to me, I’d never been there but I told him the place’ll be packed. We need an infiltration plan with a seize and hold objective. Richard said he’d get there at 6:30 pm. I said I could get there about 7:15 because I had to meet my wife downtown at a Rice University graduate get-together in our favorite Austin, Texas coffee shop, Halcyon. Cool deal.

Except Richard called me on my cell at 6:20 and said the line at Third Base already extended into the parking lot. Nix on Third Base (…a vague suggestion of Abbott and Costello…). My wife suggested I walk around the corner from Halcyon to a bar on Lavaca Street and see if that establishment had the NFL Channel. Indeed the bar did have the channel, but it also had a not-quite elbow to elbow crowd and no open seats or tables to seize and hold.

I phoned Richard and laid out a Yeats’ allusion: “This is no place for old men…who can’t stand up for three hours.”

Richard said to come by his house and we’d watch the game on his super Mac. I trundled in about 7:45 PM and we sat down to watch the game on the computer.

Internet stutter galore, occasionally interrupted by total freeze. Richard decided that NFL.com’s server was overloaded. We followed the game for a quarter-plus via the “game tracker” screen. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small football field where the line of scrimmage moves across the screen as the game progresses. You also get written commentary on the plays.

Well, you get what you pay for, or in this case don’t pay for.

The Cowboys versus the Packers was entertainment. The bigger contest — pitting the NFL against cable systems like Time-Warner– that’s business, and tough business at that.

For the past week the local talk radio and sports radio stations have been battlegrounds between Time-Warner (”we want to carry the game on our terms”) and the NFL’s unsympathetic pitchman, Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones (”we want to sell the game on our terms”).

Behind their collision is an even bigger issue: control of content. As Richard said last night, content is king, which is why two men in the last half of their fifth decades twist schedules so they can watch highly-paid super athletes play a brutal, exciting, and sometimes elegant (eg., New England) game. The NFL owns this content.

It is also a content that cannot survive without a popular base — which ironically requires the billionaires who own the teams to engage in what amounts to populist politics. Oh, they want money, and they want the bigshots in skyboxes. but to pay for the enterprise they have to sell cars and sell beer and sell lots and lots of both. They need ticket sales but in this day and age they need viewers.

But how to reach those viewers? And who controls the distribution of content?

That was the big game this past Thursday night.

And Richard’s Mac? The digital monitor is the point of convergence.

I wrote what is for StrategyPage quite a long update on Zimbabwe’s terrible situation. As you’ll see hard economic and demographic data are tough to pin down– but the smart guys will say so what. This place –which should thrive, be an economic jewel of Africa– is wasted.

Here’s an extended excerpt, but only about forty percent or so. I’m putting this excerpt up on my blog because I am interested in getting feedback or better data on unemployment and migrant/refugees.

From StrategyPage:

November 30, 2007: The government’s own inflation data put the inflation rate at 7,600 percent a year. Economic analysts outside of Zimbabwe think it may be even higher, 8,500 percent to perhaps as high as 15,000 percent. An IMF “forecast” says the real rate could reach 100,000 percent. Boggling? It’s beyond boggling. All of these figures are so large that in terms of policy –and poverty– the statistical differences are meaningless. Recently a Zimbabwean government official admitted that the real inflation rate is “incalculable” because there are so few goods available in the country. Staples like meat, bread and cooking oil are not available in retail grocery stores. Gasoline (except for government officials and friends of the ruling ZANU-PF party) disappeared many months ago.

A statistic that really does matter is unemployment. No one really knows what the unemployment rate is in Zimbabwe. Visit the Web and you will find estimates from fifty to eighty percent. As always, you have to ask not only who did the survey but what constitutes employment. Zimbabwe’s once flourishing tourist industry has all but disappeared. In 1999, 1.4 million tourists visited Zimbabwe. Now there are no tourists. An estimated 200,000 Zimbabweans once worked in a tourism-related job (hotels, restaurants, etc.). Almost everyone agrees, however, that commercial agriculture jobs are (or were) a key component in Zimbabwe’s economy. Since 2000, Zimbabwe has lost between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs in its once productive agricultural sector. In 2003 the UN reported approximately 100,000 farm workers were still employed on commercial farms. That was a decrease of 250,000 from an estimated 350,000 workers employed by commercial farms in 2000 prior to president Mugabe’s first “land redistribution” program, his “agrarian revolution” called the “Third Chimurenga,” or “liberation struggle.” The vast majority of those farms were owned by whites. The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union reported that there were approximately 4,500 white-owned commercial farms in Zimbabwe in 2000. The higher agricultural worker job loss figure is based a recent estimate, which means it is a very iffy statistic, like Zimbabwe’s actual inflation rate. In 2000 the UN estimated that the 350,000 farm workers supported roughly two million people. Using the same ratio (5.7 per worker) that means 2.28 million people who once had well-paying jobs (by Zimbabwean standards) now have little or no income. That is out of a 2005 population of around 13 million people….

Hugh Hewitt asked me Tuesday evening about my recent trip to the Middle East and Central Asia, and also about TheArenaUSA. I did not know when TheArenaUSA would “go live” on its new site. (TheArenaUSA picked up my expenses on the trip, for which I am grateful.) I still don’t know when their site will be up but I suspect it will be in mid-December. I hope some of the video I shot in Afghanistan and at “an undisclosed location” will be available on the site. The Afghan video includes a long interview with a PAVEHAWK search and rescue helicopter crew. I can say the second interview took place at a US air base in the Persian Gulf region but I can’t say where. I know that’s odd (you could probably go to the Web and figure it out) but that’s the current rule. The interview features USAF Major General Dutch Holland discussing the Global Hawk recon unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). I also have a shot of a Global Hawk in its hangar and a Global Hawk landing at the end of a long-range mission. I also got a shot of a U-2 Dragonlady recon plane taking off (yes, the old Cold War U-2, but with lots of new avionics and spy gear). The Global Hawk landing and U-2 take-off provided fodder for a Creators Syndicate column.

Here’s the lede:

THE MIDDLE EAST — At a sprawling desert airbase in the Middle East — one not far from Iran and the geo-strategically critical Strait of Hormuz — I saw the past and future in aerial reconnaissance cross-paths.

This instructive moment, however, was symbolically inverted. In the Hollywood version, the future takes off and the past lands, rolling off into the sunset. Just the opposite occurred. The past, a black U-2 spy plane, took off and shot skyward with a characteristic steep climb, an altitude grabber. The future, a U.S. Air Force Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, landed and glided to a stop.

Jim Dunnigan and I are working on a fourth edition of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War. Today I re-worked the “Iran” chapter from the 1996 edition. In many ways I am surprised at how little has changed. Oh, there are big changes. US forces are now on the mullahs’ eastern and western borders (Afghanistan and Iraq). Yes, Iraq remains a threat to the mullahs, but not in the form of Saddam. It’s a threat because it is an emerging Arab democracy next door to the mullahs’ failing Iranian (Aryan) despotism.

For over a year I’ve been intending to write a column on “cyber war.” I sketched one out after Estonia suffered a series of attacks in late April of this year. That’s when the world got a look at the economic and psychological effects of a “massed” cyber attack – a sophisticated, sustained and coordinated “hack” of an entire country.

Estonia was the victim. Estonia is a “wired society.” The country has made Internet access an economic and political priority. Over a period of weeks (April through mid-May) Estonia suffered from what The Washington Post described as “massive and coordinated cyber attacks on Web sites of the government, banks, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and news organizations…”

Bank accounts were “probed,” email services shutdown.

In that same WaPo article Estonia’s Minister of Defense called the attacks “organized attacks on basic modern infrastructures.” According to press reports, Estonia claimed that the attacks originated at the Internet addresses of “state agencies in Russia.” Russia denied the charge, attributing the attacks to criminals and vandals.

There is no doubt that the internet is rife with criminal activity. On September 5, 2007, StrategyPage.com called China “Computer Crime Central.” The StrategyPage report focused on “poisoned websites” that try to steal financial data (like bank account login information). StrategyPage argued that some internet criminal activity appeared to link to “attacks on Western military and government networks.”

Those attacks certainly occur. On September 3, the Financial Times reported that China’s military had hacked “a Pentagon computer network” in June 2007. That followed reports that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel had complained about Chinese hacking of German computer systems to China’s premier.

Today Reuters has a short item discussing McAfee Avert Labs’ annual report which says we are in the midst of a “cyber Cold War.” I actually think it’s pretty hot.

In the computer age the difference between an act of war and crime is often a matter of interpretation as well as degree.
Attack a nation’s highways and railroads and you’ve attacked transportation infrastructure. You’ve also committed an obvious, recognized act of war.
An electronic attack doesn’t leave craters or bleeding human casualties, at least not in the same overt sense of an assault with artillery and bombs. However, the economic costs can be much larger than a classic barrage or bombing campaign.
Cyberspace has become a much busier and more dangerous place in the last fifteen years. Today entire nations rely on computer networks for communications, economic transfers, and information storage. Computers and computer networks are lucrative targets for criminals. This increased economic and information reliance means that in the 21st century targeting a nation’s electronic infrastructure is an act of war.

Bankers know this. So do intelligence agencies. Diplomats and political leaders must also come to grips with that reality.

Everyone with a personal computer understands the basic concepts of cyber warfare. Link your laptop to the Internet and you link to the great collective of the Information Age. You also connect to a digital disease pool populated by viruses that instantly erase electronic brains. That means data is destroyed, perhaps less messily but as thoroughly as an attack with a high-explosive bomb. You also enter a world where even trusted websites may leave a “tracking cookie” on your own computer so they can know something about your Internet shopping preferences. There are, however, even more aggressive programs which allow “inquisitive geeks” to follow everything you read and write. These cyber “spy ware” programs are a form of cyber spy war. Add more sophisticated digital trickery and additional levels of penetration wizardry, and programs like these could steal secrets from embassies and defense facilities.

Spies and soldiers know cyber attacks aren’t new and that institutional computer systems, even large, ostensibly well-protected one like those used by banks, big businesses, and government agencies, are also vulnerable.

This morning my cell phone buzzed at 1:45 AM local and one of thearenausa.com ’s Hollywood video directors said: “Hey, Austin, you’re on Hugh Hewitt’s show in fifteen minutes.” Okay. I jotted down the radio show’s phone number and at 0-dark-two in Central Europe called “drive time” Los Angeles. Hugh’s producer, Duane Patterson, answered and immediately started telling me that the US House of Representatives was going to vote to cut defense funds for Iraq. Representatives, huh? Reprehensible. Okay, the politicos’ Beltway game is to fund but fund with “withdrawal conditions” or some similar rhetorical shuck and jive. Hugh and I talked briefly about this congressional foolishness. I hope history judges these conniving political hacks with appropriate harshness. They built their election plan around defeat and by damn they will have defeat. The Beltway show echoes 1864 and the Copperheads. No, it isn’t the same political and military situation (unless Islamofacist terrorists get a nuke Lincoln’s was more dire) but the hate rhetoric and vicious hack tactics are similar.

Hugh asked me a question very similar to one Ed Driscoll asked me for an upcoming PajamasMedia/XM satellite radio podcast. Hugh asked it from the perspective of the effects of a victory in Iraq, Ed from the perspective of what I’ve seen in the Persian Gulf region/Middle East that I would advise a presidential candidate (or newly elected president in 2009) as being important in terms of policy.

That’s a tough question, but influencing the positive trends, the “positive modernization.” Take Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They are petro-emirates extraordinaire, and have cash to invest. They are doing that. Dubai is an instant, desert-tinged Hong Kong, a trading entrepot wisely leveraging its strategic position (check the map). There’s a huge new seaport and airport complex between Dubai and Abu Dhabi (I think it’s name is Jebel Ali) that is a one-stop-trade-shop. Bring in goods from the ship and transfer them to air freighters and send the goods to Sydney or Paris.

As State Department officials have noted, there are “a lot of Ataturks” in the region — a reference to Turkey’s 20th century revolutionary leader who founded the Turkish Republic on the dregs of the Ottoman Empire. I should emphasize secular Turkish Republic.

The Gulf region’s Ataturks are economic Ataturks — leading with cash instead of a general’s baton. The economic integration has social, political, and cultural implications. This should b e the new era of US civilian agencies work closely with the DOD. I told Ed Driscoll that we needed a revived State Department (a State Department without Jack Croddy’s — and I don’t have time to link to my post about that FSO guttersnipe — but check it out from last week).

I would tell a candidate to look for ways to integrate all elements of US power to influence the positive trends — and much of the positive is the result of American security efforts throughout the region (Iraq being primary).

I’ll write more about this once I return to the States. At the moment I am in Ramstein, Germany, getting ready to visit the hospital at Landstuhl. That USAF hospital is a key node in the medevac chain moving US and allied wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq back to the States.

Meanshilw, check out thearenausa.com ’s website. I want to thank ArenaUSA for picking up my expenses on this trip (wait ’til they see the bill for a couple of nights in Abu Dhabi). ArenaUSA is a classy example of emerging “convergence media.” I shot a lot of video of the trip, including a long shot of a Global Hawk landing at a US airbase and a U-2 taking off for a strategic recon mission. In Afghanistan I had a lot talk on camera with the crew of a Pavehawk UH-60 search and rescue helicopter (the guys who pick up downed pilots or injured troops). I was working as a one-man band and had to borrow cameramen (from folks on the trip). There may be a lot of shake to the video, but thearenausa has some very sophisticated video engineers. Like I told Hugh, I’m not sure when their site leaves the beta stage. Several of ArenaUSA’s senior people have educational software backgrounds which appeals to the professor in me. The outfit has an interest in providing “deep background” on issues. Their software also has a “community aspect” to make the discussion interactive. I’ll be interested in seeing that capability when it’s up and running.

More later.

I’m in Abu Dhabi getting ready to head back to the States and twenty five minutes ago turned on Al Jazeera’s English channel. Then I moved to BBC World — and there’s Gordon Brown giving what the BBC describes as his first major foreign policy speech.

And a fine speech it was — a British PM arguing for “hard-headed internationalism” because he is aware of weaknesses in the “international system.” (John Bolton!!!) The House of Commons main man wants a “new network of changemakers” — but also has “no truck with anti-Americanism” because the UK-US relationship is Britain’s “most important bilateral-relationship”. Hey, it gets even more anti-multicultural: “Europe and America are the best chance” for the world.

DailyKos take note — you’ve another armed liberal on your hands. Why, the Scotsman says there should be no “safe havens” for terrorists.

The tone of this speech is important: tough, energetic, visionary yet practical. And did I say tough.

“The certainties of the Cold War” have disappeared but the world needs “security and justice for all” (apologies to the US pledge of allegiance).

The speech also acknowledges that information technology and weapons of mass destruction are key strategic “drivers”. “The new frontier is that there is no frontier.” Yes. In Ned Lamont’s defeat the people were heard. More Gordon Brown, the Great Britain (GBGB): “The defining image of the 21st century is a web.” Instapundit understands that. I like this point: “At one time power affected people but could not be affected by them…” [But now]…powerless people have the power to be heard.” YHe’s also heavy on environmental focus — heck, the lefties have to have some sop.

Wait –the BBC received pronunciation verbalists are saying the speech lacks details — sheesh, it’s a strategic overview but if the BBC doesn’t sneer and flutter it ain’t the Beeb.

Hey, Gordon gave us a pretty fair specific. He has re-emphasized the importance of the US-British relationship, the primacy of it. Pretty specific unless you have a penchant for missing the obvious (a talent many Beeb commentators share, actually). And this: Iran has a choice– stop it or suffer. “Iran should be in no doubt about the seriousness of our purpose.” I hope he Prime Minister means it.

DATELINE: Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan November 9, 2007

Yesterday in Afghanistan an Air Force lieutenant colonel and I started one of those “well I don’t know anybody and I’ve got to waste some time” chats. We were in the midst of a large crowd –a whole lot of chatting going on about life back in Kansas and how great it is in California. I could tell the man was tired. We talked for a bit, about Texas, about the Air Force. Then the momentum shifted, you know, when eyes connect and a bit of soul is exchanged. He started telling. He told me what he was seeing in combat — lots of action in the Himalayas, in the passes, airstrikes everyday on active Taliban. He’d put bombs on target –danger close missions with US infantry in contact– and he’d used his gun in strafing attacks, a Strike Eagle airman’s means of direct action. But it was getting to him, be said, the relentlessness. He’d fly a mission, get hits, lots of hits, successful strikes in the jargon, but the next day there’d be another mission and more of these thugs on the ground. What more can I do? When and how’s it going to end? The American people, how long can they keep it up, sustain this war?

“You’re tired,” I said.

He nodded, a brief nod.

Then I told him there was no choice. There are those bearing the burden — for example, him– and those who don’t. Unfortunately, with a few stellar, brave exceptions, only the US military has shown up for this war, and you’re one of those who’ve shown up and shown up again. But show me the alternative? You show me the alternative, given our circumstances, and we will do it. But consider our circumstances, our planetary circumstances. Afghanistan is a desperate, dusty hellhole with altitude, poverty, and little else. An Afghani expatriate –an LA millionaire in the engineering business who went back as a translator in 2005– told me that his “old country had been poor but beautiful until 1973. ‘73– that’s when the civil war started. Thirty years of war — the worst courtesy of the Russians and the Taliban– had savaged the place. You know, ash and dust. Now, once upon a time we could ignore those suffering in the planet’s hard corners. Oh, we could send them a few bucks and the Lefties could bitch about colonialism and capitalism but the hard corners were isolated. A threat to security? Only nuns and missionaries and you are your brothers keeper types thought so. Well guess what — the nuns were right. 9/11 changed that deceptive calculus. Distance? Colonel, there isn’t any distance. We learned that the destruction of New York and Washington started in the backwaters, of Afghanistan, of Somalia. Technology has done it. We can’t escape one another, for good and for bad. Jet transports, like the ones out on the runway at Bagram, put you on the other side of the globe in 14 hours. The internet doesn’t require description. East Asia shares diseases with Africa within days, if not hours. And special weapons? Nukes and nerve gas make every tribal war an international crisis. Goodbye Tokyo, Moscow, or Miami– because a sophisticated tribesman at war with his eternally despised neighbor decides that demolishing the global economy would make everyone pay attention to his neglected, forgotten grievance. Tyrannies keep breeding this insanity. The only solution is consensus, wealth-producing societies, where everyone gets a say and everyone has a buy-in. If it sounds like democracy then call it that. It’s sustainable stability, ever evolving sustainable stability when people police terrorists and don’t promote them. That’s a long struggle, and struggle may be a more apt word than war. But achieving it is so difficult. It takes more than military power, we know that. he politics and economics will be decisive, but as long as the thugs are willing to kill we must fight. Is there a substitute for courage? If there is, show it to me.

He looked at me, the dreadful nearness of it.

It’s on us, man, I continued. And I don’t like it. I didn’t like it during the Cold War. Remember 1983? The same creeps who’ve quit now, quit then. Reagan was a warmonger, going to start a nuclear war in Europe my responding to the Soviets deployment of theater nuclear missiles. The defeatists said the Cold War was our fault, we were the threat. Then the Berlin Wall cracked and that jackass calumny disappeared as Marxism’s Eastern European wreckage emerged in drab, polluted, horrifying, undeniable color.

This war follows the same arc, with the same defeatists adding new nouns to old verbs and adjectives. But it’s a war of liberty versus tyranny and they’re shilling for the tyrants.

It doesn’t matter if you and I don’t like it. We know the stakes. Here’s one of the ultimate “it doesn’t matter if you don’t like it” stories. I was in graduate school at Columbia in the early 80s. I took several German lit classes taught by the former department chairman, Mrs. Halpert. In several of the classes we had an auditor. He was an American millionaire who went by Fred and sometimes Fritz. In September 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland he was 19 and in the Polish Army. Poland was defeated, beat to hell. Fritz (”I sometimes go by Fred”) slipped out of Poland via Hungary and made it to Great Britain. In Britain he joined the revived Polish army — the free Polish Army. In 1944 he returned to Europe in the Polish armored division armed by the British, serving in the division’s armored recon battalion. After the war ended he returned to Poland, but in 1948 left after the Communists took over. The man lost his country, twice, once to Hitler and the second time to Stalin. He took up permanent residence in the US and ended up making a lot of money– but he was still waiting, persevering in his own quiet, able way. He took German lit classes as a lark. Dr. Halpert let me and did so gladly. See, Dr. Halpert and her mother were German Jews — Berlin Jews– who escaped in 1940 on the last boat out. She also lost her country to Hitler, albeit in a different way. Fritz the Pole was a hero she understood — a man of her own generation who could audit her class anytime. I was 28 and in grad school after a four and a half year gig in the Army. Over a cup of tea in the West End Cafe, Fritz told me that I was the only student in the class who understood them both. he others? “Maybe some day they will understand,” Fritz said with a wink.

Now that’s a burden nobody wants but Fritz got, I told the fighter-pilot. I think about him and Dr Halpert every time I think we’ve got it tough. Beating Hitler took six years (39 to 45) and beating the Communists took another 34 (45 to 89). Was it worth it?

I don’t draw a direct comparison between the War on Terror and the Cold War, but they are both nasty, heavy, unwanted burdens. If anything, the War on Terror is more intricate. Right here at Bagram — dozens of fighters, lots of transports. transports– this is a war of economic development, of economic connectivity. What a complicated task. But given the technological compression of the planet, can we quit?

The fighter pilot crooked his finger and said to me “Come here.”

We left the big metal building and the crowd and walked across the street toward the control tower. On the way to the tower he said “You went on active duty in Iraq a couple of years ago didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied.

We went into the control tower, a squat Soviet artifact slapped with thick white paint bristling with au courant American electronics. We went up to the second floor. In the staircase the fighter pilot said “We’ve a sign in the squadron that says “The mission, fuckhead, is supporting the 18 year old with the rifle.” We know that we’re here to put bombs on bad guys so they don’t kill American soldiers.”

That sign wasn’t on the door but then we were entering a staff office, not the squadron headquarters.

On the desk was a picture of a young US Army second lieutenant. The pilot picked it up. “That’s my son. He just finished armor officers basic.”

I recognized the patch on the young man’s shoulder. Thirty years ago I served in the same division.

“Some day I may be flying strikes to support my son,” the pilot said, his voice soft steel.

I choked up. So did he.

“Thank you for what you do,” I said. “And for producing a son like that.”

We tracked back down the stair case and into the dust caked street.

“You ever fly in an F-15?” the pilot asked.

“No, but I’d like to.”

“Next year, back in North Carolina. You get to North Carolina and we’ll see if we can get you on a plane. I just want you to tell my squadron what you just told me.”

“The Columbia German class story?”

“The whole thing,” he said. “The whole thing.”

“You got a deal,” I replied.

DATELINE: From Somewhere In Southwest Asia

Today I put a note on a bomb, a 500 pound JDAM, Joint Direct Attack Munition.

Perhaps putting a note on a bomb strikes some as either romantic, foolish, or vicious– or perhaps a combination of the three. The act certainly has shades and colors of all three characteristics, and perhaps a dash of steelly sentimentalism. In my case it also contains a kilogram of deserved anger.

I was on a concrete work stand with USAF ordnance personnel who prepare and fuze the bombs. Day in, day out, at the end of a long runway in the desert they tighten the screws and add the gizmos that turn a hunk of iron and high explosive into a weapon with a very big bang. One of the airmen passed me a black marks-alot and asked me “Would you like to send a message?” I suppose the weapon will eventually be tucked beneath the wing of a fighter plane headed for Iraq or Afghanistan. Those are the logical destinations. But I sent my message to Pakistan’s most famous resident, Osama bin Laden.

Recall Osama said that people will follow the “strong horse.” In his mind the United States was “the weak horse”, a nation of couch potatoes, spoiled brats, and libertine wastrels –cowards all.

But Osama has had a tough six years. Consider the consequences of 9/11. His Afghan bastion fell quickly. Yes, the Taliban still murder villagers and send suicide bombers toward Kabul, but the Taliban of today is a fanatic fragment of the organization which once ruled 90 percent of Afghanistan by terror. Osama also sought to transform an intra-Muslim war. 9/11 was his violent magic trick, the sensational abracadabra that would cover the Muslim world’s fissures and fractures with the facade of a pan-Islamic jihad. Osama, of course, would serve as the new caliph, thank you.

That bid’s gone belly-up, and Iraq is the battlefield that killed it. In Iraq the US brought the “exported war” back to the heart of the Arab Muslim Middle East. Who have suffered the most from homicidal Islamist extremists? Other Muslims. Perhaps the Washington Post doesn’t know it, but in Iraq Al Qaeda has lost the information war. The struggle for the terms of modernity continues, and will continue for decades, but Al Qaeda’s socio-paths have been exposed.

So what did I scrawl on the bomb?

“Greet the strong horse.”

I hope it gives a terrorist a fatal ride.

I’m getting ready to depart for the Middle East — the AOR in Air Force parlance (Area of Responsibility). Andrews Air Force Base is really an extraordinary facility. I got here at 6 AM and waited as a large press trip gathered for a flight to Guantanamo Bay. They are covering an upcoming military commission hearing.

I left the terminal for our pre-trip briefings and came back after lunch. “Business as usual” at Andrews is business-unusual for most of us. A few moments ago Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, arrived at the terminal with appropriate pomp and circumstance. I shot a few seconds of film using my daughter’s fine Canon HD camera. I’ll be interested in viewing the results. Shooting through a glass window is tricky.

I think Sarkozy is trying to re-invigorate Franco-American relations. Jacques Chirac exploited anti-Americanism — it was useful poison for a crook dodging and weaving as France decayed economically and socially. Sarkozy has dispensed with that dirty, myopic trick.

Internet access may be sporadic but I will report as often as I can. I want to thankTheArenaUSA and its president, David Robison for making this trip possible. I’ll have more to say later about TheArena.

Jack Croddy ought to be the poster-clown for State Department reform.

Calling him a poster-child is simply an insult to children.

And perhaps I am insulting clowns. CLowns in Ringling Brothers’ circus have a lot of discipline and professional dedication.

Croddy is the State Department senior Foreign Service Officer who turned in a decidedly shoddy performance last Wednesday (October 31) at a State Department’s “town hall meeting” where the subject was “directed assignments.” Directed assignments is diplomatese for telling a State Department officer to a fill an empty job slot whether or not the officer wants the position.

Croddy is apparently one of those callow types who practices “selective job dedication” –he’ll go where he wants to go, not where his department sends him. At beest his is a tourist’s approach to diplomacy. At worst — well, it doesn’t get much worse, at least in terms of shameful behavior by a supposedly responsible government official.

From the linked AP article:

…”Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone,” said Jack Croddy, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces.”…”It’s one thing if someone believes in what’s going on over there and volunteers, but it’s another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment,” Croddy said. “I’m sorry, but basically that’s a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?”

His remarks were met with loud and sustained applause from the approximately 300 diplomats at the meeting.

Pathetic.

My column this past week (”A Diplomacy of Neighborhoods”) addressed the necessity of changing the State Department’s “culture”. I wrote it on Monday evening and sent to my editor on Tuesday (Octoebr 30), well before Mr. Croddy’s display. SO this post is a post-Croddy expansion on the subject.

Here’s the VOA report from Thursday, which reported Croddy’s statement and added part of the State Department’s official response to Croddy and other critics:

State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said that since the U.S. embassy in Baghdad opened in 2004, more than 1,500 staffers have served in Iraq voluntarily, and that 94 per cent of the department’s Iraq jobs are currently filled, a higher proportion than many other overseas posts:

“In some of the reporting, just some of the reporting, I’ve seen the sense that somehow the foreign service is not stepping up to the plate, and that somehow people in the foreign service are turning away or trying to avoid service in Baghdad,” said McCormack. “Now every individual is going to make their own decisions about where they want to serve. But both the numbers, and some of these anecdotes, illustrate for you the readiness and the willingness of people in the State Department and the foreign service to step up to this duty.”

McCormack said that since the announcement of potential forced assignments, an additional 15 officers had volunteered for Iraq duty but said it is unclear whether they have the required skills and background.

Most of the nearly 50 vacancies are in provincial reconstruction teams, PRT’s, in which U.S. diplomats and civilian specialists work with local Iraqi officials on small-scale war rebuilding and development projects.

I respect American diplomats. They have a tough and often dangerous job– a very necessary job. In the 21st century that job has become even more difficult. Embassy cocktail party and headquarters assignments matter, but presence in the field — the land of work gloves and dirty boots– is the decisive mission.

Here’s how I expressed it in my column:

Twenty-first century diplomacy isn’t an office job. It is a demanding and, at times, a dangerous trade, one that requires accepting deprivation, running physical risks and hanging out in bad neighborhoods. If this echoes a field soldier’s job description, it’s not a coincidence.

I wouldn’t want a man like Croddy in my Area of Operations, no matter how intelligent or experienced he is. For that matter, I don’t want him in our State Department– he is a terrible example. Character and courage matter in diplomacy. Mr. Croddy exhibits neither. Rather, he is a profile in whining.

On Wednesday a State Department officer wrote me an email about “A Diplomacy of Neighborhoods” (he read it on line). Though he said he didn’t disagree with many of the points the column made, he argued “…It’s not mainly about changing the organizational culture. The crux of the problem is a mismatch between mission and resources at State…”

He has a very good point, a point John Naland, the president of the American Foreign Service Association, addressed in congressional testimony this past August.

Naland called for a

…re-balancing in the current 12:1 ratio of military spending to spending on diplomacy and foreign assistance. However, as things stand now, that imbalance is set to worsen. Consider the unmet need for 900 additional Foreign Service training positions. The U.S. Marine Corps alone – the smallest of the uniformed services – is slated to expand its active-duty ranks by 30 times as much (27,000) by 2011. The Army is slated to add 65,000 more soldiers to its permanent rolls. Thus, 900 new Foreign Service positions would total less than one percent of the planned military expansion – barely a rounding error when compared to additional resources being dedicated to the uniformed military. Please note that I am not saying that our military does not need to be larger. Rather I am saying that increasing Foreign Service staffing by the equivalent of the rounding error of the planned military expansion would pay dramatic dividends in terms of the ability of our diplomats to advance vital U.S. interests around the globe…

The column really didn’t ignore these valid points– to whit:

Changing organizational culture is, but that’s a job that takes time, training and sustained emphasis by senior leaders. It also takes increased pay to attract and keep talent.

They do deserve expansion, and I recommend reading Naland’s testimony in toto.

Some of the reporting last week (after the State Department announced it might order diplomats to serve in Iraq) was shallow. (Okay, what else is new.) State’s “directed assignments” are no draft. They aren’t a call-up, either.

The State Department certainly isn’t conducting a draft. Its diplomats and departmental specialists all accepted government jobs without coercion. “Call-up,” however, doesn’t really describe the situation, not with adequate precision. “Call-up” implies the use of reserves, of part-timers. Our diplomats aren’t reserve “weekend warriors” leaving jobs and businesses to pick up rifles. They are full-time professionals who know –when they sign on—that they have duty stations world-wide.

What is it? A deployment. I don’t see this as quibbling over words. Professional diplomats deploy. They aren’t draftees and they aren’t reservists.

Actually, the blog vacation was a nice break.

Here’s what I’ve been up to: I have been working with a new media project out of Los Angeles, TheArenaUSA. Last spring I wrote the script for a demo DVD. We shot it in June. Subsequently, I have been working with TheArena on program development. That’s taken a lot of time– a lot of time.

Also –late last summer Jim Dunnigan and I signed a contract to produce an updated edition of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War. This will be the fourth edition (the last one came out in 1996). Paladin Press will publish it as a trade paperback. I suspect it will be sold on-line. We’ve got that project moving. (More on it later.)

And– I’ve spent a lot of library time doing research for another prospective book proposal, the “Eli’s War” Civil War project Glenn and Helen Reynolds interviewed me about when I came through Knoxville last summer. (NOTE to 26th Illinois Volunteer Infantry cognoscenti — I’ll be getting back in touch in a couple of months.)

Next week I will be joining three other writers on a US Air Force-organized trip to Qatar, Afghanistan, and other points of interest. I may showup on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show during the trip. Ed Driscoll of PajamasMedia intends to interview me for a podcast. I’ll also send audio and perhaps to TheArenaUSA– some of it may show up in a future mini-documentary.

I’ll also blog the trip.

In India’s rough and tumble domestic political world — and in the Indian press– mere mention of the US and alliance in the same breath is cause for alarm and public tantrums.

In this IANS report from September 21, 2007, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia James Clad tried to address some of those domestic political concerns.

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to participate in the blogger phone interview with Clad. Clad knows the region, its risks, its remarkable potential, and its plethora of hot button issues. He also has a very interesting background — a superb one for appreciating the region’s economic and social issues as well as the military and political dimensions. From 1983 to 1991 he worked for The Far Eastern Economic Review as a staff correspondent and as a stringer for The Economist Intelligence Report and International Herald Tribune. From 1995 to 2002 he was Professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

India’s strong left-wing parties, particularly its Communist Party, score easy propaganda headlines when “the alliance question” appears. The Communists (of all folks, such internationalists) portray themselves as protectors of Indian sovereignty. The accusation of alliance also rankles Indian ultra-nationalists.

That’s why the Indian and American governments avoid the word.

But I had to ask Secretary Clad the “alliance question.”

Here’s his answer:

“The short answer here is we want to work with people. We’re not looking for an alliance with anyone,” Clad replied. “It (the word “alliance”) sends a wrong signal,” for alliances “figure a real or potential opponent.”

Fair enough, given the political situation and the stakes.
The US government is adamant that its goal in Asia is a strategic “equilibrium.” Equilibrium is 21st century diplomatic language for “balance of power.” Clad added that the US would like to see an Asia where “no country is particularly dominant.” Presumably that includes the United States. But hold that thought for a moment.

The old Cold War distance and distrust between India and the US has certainly disappeared, and a range of common strategic interests have emerged – common economic, political, social and security concerns.

Let’s start with a small-scale example. Call a toll free number to complain about glitch-ridden software and good odds your software technician offices in one of India’s technology parks. A few months ago I called for advice regarding a new program. I asked the tech where he was located he said “south India.” He confided that he wasn’t supposed to give callers his location but he thought I could guess and occasionally he enjoyed “chatting a bit” with clients.

This business transaction was facilitated by a common language and –to a degree– common social interests. Labor unions complain about off-shore outsourcing, and that’s a legitimate concern, but I admit I thought it was cool to shoot the breeze with a nice guy in Bangalore.

Moral of my story: The US and India are an interesting case of developed giant and developing giant sharing where linguistic and cultural connections accelerate economic cooperation. We can blame the common language and social interests on the British Empire – or quit the blame game and thank the Brits for it.

Now let’s jump to a macro-strategic scale. Deputy Assistant Secretary Clad wants to avoid naming opponents, but Asia has another developing super-giant: China.

For the record I’m very much an optimist about China– I promote Sino-American amity, not enmity. But in the big room called Asia, China is the biggest elephant. (And Beijing isn’t going to disagree with that assessment.)

Remember, India and China have collided before, fighting a little Himalayan war in 1962. That Sino-Indian War is something of a “frozen” conflict (in more ways than one, given the altitude), with the border issues not quite resolved. (The Chinese military’s offensive plan was quite thorough. The PLA acclimated its troops to very high altitudes, which gave them an advantage over the Indians.)

But here’s the point: if you seek equilibrium, a militarily capable India provides Asian equilibrium to a militarily capable China.

A militarily capable India with a record for defense cooperation with the US would give an aggressive, hegemonic China –should that rogue elephant ever emerge—great pause.

Okay, don’t call it an alliance. Call it two former British colonies, one global and the other going global, that interested in maintaining peaceful, prosperous “equilibrium” conditions.

By the way, the blog hiatus is over. I’ll have another post today with some background on the hiatus and my upcoming trip to the Middle East and Afghanistan.

This is old news, of course — what, three or four years old?

Here’s the key quote from the Associated Press business report:

Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press, called on news executives Thursday to “stop pining” for the past and adapt to the new ways that news is being distributed and consumed.

Curley said in a speech that news organizations should quit thinking like gatekeepers of information and reach out to people who are accustomed to receiving news in real time online and customizing the ways they see and read it.

“Editors need to stop pining for the old world and intensify the leading to the new one,” Curley told a fundraising dinner for the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, a program at Columbia University for business journalists.

The story also says Curley defended Rupert Murdoch against critics of Murdoch’s acquisition of The Wall Street Journal. Good for him. Murdoch told the news industry years ago that the “convergence media” was the future. Read the entire report.

Via StrategyPage.