PRESIDENT OBAMA: TWO EXAMPLES OF THE UNWISE USE OF LETHAL FORCE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

I. Killing School Kids in Kunar

The headline in the LA Times on December 31, 2009 was arresting: US special forces kill eight school children aged 12-17 and one adult in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-afghanistan-civilians31-2009dec31,0,3311323.story

I read the original report in Le Monde, which described the event as a “slaughter” of ten civilians…all of the same family. See here: http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2009/12/30/afghanistan-kaboul-confirme-la-mort-de-dix-civils-dans-une-operation-de-la-coalition_1286103_3216.html#xtor=RSS-3208

“Une unité des forces internationales basée à Kunar est descendue d'un avion dans le district de Narang de cette province, a fait sortir dix personnes de
trois maisons – dont huit écoliers de 13 à 17 ans et le reste de la même famille
– et les a abattues", indique le chef des enquêteurs afghans, Asadullah Wafa,
cité par le communiqué de la présidence afghane.”

[My translation: “A unit of the international forces based in Kunar Province, descended from a plane in the district of Narang in this province, and forced ten persons to exit three houses—of these(the ten)eight were schoolchildren of 13- 17 years old, and rest members of the same family—then slaughtered them”, indicated the head of Afghan inquiry, Asadullah Wafa, and cited by a communiqué of the Afghan president.”]

Apparently, US special-forces operating in Kunar district, landed from a helicopter and forced all the male members of the compound from their homes. Reports indicate the victims were killed in cold blood. Whatever happened, this was not an accidental “strike” by an unmanned drone, as some papers (as the Los Angeles Time) continued to suggest.

What is happening in Afghanistan? Why kill school kids? Was it revenge? A mistake? The probable answer: Our military has a not-so-secret policy of fighting terror with terror. This is well known fact, but little reported: that our special forces function as an "antidote" to the teror tactics of the Taliban. Their goal (USA Special Forces) is to keep the civilian population more fearful of the US, than of the Taliban. It has always been this way. Wring your hands in anguish, but that is just what we bought into when we supported an unjustified war of imperial aggression.

Write the President, your congressman and senator to urge them to stop the senseless killing and bring all our troops home. With our forces back in the US, we will have far fewer “terror” incidents such as the deaths of school kids in Kunar. Our actions in Yemen and Afghanistan only create the circumstances for more terror.

2. Another Case of Misuse of Military Might-The Christmas Bomber From Yemen

On or before December 17, 2009, freshman President Barak Obama met with his military advisors. The staff was eager and flush with “hot” new information about a little-known al Qaida operative, one Qasim al-Raymi, who it was just learned was to hold a rally that day in far-off Yemen. Here was a chance to “liquidate” a political adversary who had the potential to make trouble for a close ally, in neighboring Saudi Arabia. The view of the military in the room was that the elimination of this individual was necessary to "send a message" and be “quick and clean”. The general sitting accross from Obama, jerked his jaw upward, as he spoke, to stretch his neck skin away from his too-tight shirt collar.

“A cruise missile from our fleet in the Gulf of Aden, a short flight, and “poof!—problem solved,” smiled, the general whose stiffly-starched olive-drab shirt was studded with ribbons and polished brass insignias.

The young president looked around the table at the rugged, cleanly-shaved faces. He tapped his long thin finger on the circular gold escutchen of his Presidential Blackberry. It was set on the desk in fornt of him, its customary five-centimeters away from his leather-bound daily intelligence log book. He stared at the round Presidential seal for a few seconds. Then looked up:

“Do it!”, he said, firmly.

The men around the table turned to look at each other and each smiled knowingly.

The President arose, picked up his Blackbery and log book and turned to depart. As he moved from the table the men at the table stood up, the sounds of scraping boots and sliding chairs filled the still room. They remained at respectful attention as the President passed through the door.

"We got 'im!", whispered the general with the tight collar, to a man next to him.

A few hours later, in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Yemen, a destroyer slowly steamed a five mile-wide circular course as it waited for orders. The big gray ship slowed turned into the faint south-west wind as a long tubular missile rose out of the hold. With little action of the small knot of sailors on the forward deck, the missile blasted off the ship’s gently swaying deck. The shiped rocked slighlty as it rose off the deck leaving a billow of trailing white smoke. The long gray tube flew straight up into the blue sky to its cruising altitude, then it leveled off, as its internal gyroscopes hummed and its tail fins and stabilizers smoothly moved to correct its course toward Sanaa in Yemen.

On the foredeck, a lone junior officer stood away from a group of sailors . He craned his neck to watch the white contrail of the missile slowly twisting as it was distorted by the upper winds. The condensate dissolved in the dry air leaving behind a thin line of cirrus clouds in the deep blue sky. The sailor took a deep breath, his heart full of pride, as he thought of how he would describe this event to his buddies back home. He'd tell how he was on the board the very ship that sent a “strong message” to the Yemeni terrorists.

Minutes later, the blunt nose of the cruise missile, following its pre-programmed GPS signal turned earthward. It nose-dived toward a small cluster of homes and buildings in a narrow treeless valley. Eighty-two (82) civilians, mostly women and children were blown to bits as the nearly two-tons of high explosives detonated. Two hundred and thirteen (213) other individuals were injured, among them a few al Qaida sympathizers. The US and western press virtually ignored this mass killing of innocents in distant Yemen.

But later that day, a local paper, the Yemen Times ran a story on the “US aerial attack on a suspected al-Qaida training camp in southern Yemen”. The reporter quoted a local source who indicated that indeed 82 civilians had died and 213 were injured by the massive bomb. The source noted that most of them were women and children from a nomad community residing in the district…and that most of the casualties were located between one and two kilometers away from the jihadist’s camp.

Four days later—on Monday—two unmasked al-Qaida militants (showing their faces to prove that the US strike did not kill them) appeared at a rally at the very bomb site where so many were killed. They need not have collected fragments of the crusise missile with "made in USA" on it to show the locals. They knew where the massive bomb had come from. But the militants blamed the attack on the Americans anyway. The men vowed revenge for the killing of innocents by the "Crusaders".

Five days later, Time Magazine in a piece by Abagail Houslohner in a December 22, 2009 issue, wrote a prophetic commentary which essentialy stated that the action in Yemen was counterproductive. Indeed for President Obama the action would be highly counterproductive. The report stated that the American attack had weakened the official Yemen government and strenthened the insurgency-- and stirred up more anti-American hatred. See: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1949324,00.html

”At least 34 people died last week, when Yemeni forces hit suspected al-Qaeda targets in the southern governorate of Abyan and in Ahrab, a district northeast of the Yemeni capital Sana'a. Western and Yemeni media outlets reported that the United States provided Yemen with key intelligence and firepower to carry out the strikes, but to what extent is unclear. Yemeni state media reported that President Obama phoned Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to congratulate him on a job well done, and ABC News said that U.S. cruise missiles had been used.

But regardless of who did what, a primary target in the attacks — Qasim al-Raymi, the al-Qaeda leader who is believed to be behind a 2007 bombing in central Yemen that killed seven Spanish tourists and two Yemenis — is still at large. And reports of a U.S. role, and mass civilian casualties at the sites of the attacks, have sparked a public outcry and added to anti-American sentiments across the country. "They missed that individual," says Johnsen of the targeted al-Qaeda chief. "And at the same time, they ended up killing a number of women and children in the strike on Abyan. So now you have something where there are all these pictures of dead infants and mangled children that are underlined with the caption 'Made in the USA' on all the jihadi forums. Something like this does much more to extend al-Qaeda."

Indeed through the backlash that followed, the attacks have started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen's al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime. Iran — which Yemen accuses of backing the Shi'ite Houthi rebellion in the north — headlined the attacks on its state-sponsored Press TV with: "Obama ordered deadly blitz on Yemen."
"The al-Qaeda threat in Yemen is real, but now after this operation, it will be greater," says Mohammed Quhtan, a member of Yemen's opposition Islamist al-Islah party. "Al-Qaeda will be able to recruit a lot more young people, at least from the tribes that were hit. And it will have reasonable grounds to attract more people from Abyan governorate, and from the Yemeni population in general."

That's a frightening prospect for a country on the brink of collapse. Yemen's economy is in tatters; its population complains of neglect and development woes; and Yemeni children suffer from a 50% malnutrition rate. Observers warn that poverty and unemployment are prime recruitment factors for al-Qaeda, something they say the U.S. government and other foreign powers should have done more to address. "If you're going to carry out [an attack] like this, you have to have done a great deal of field work, where you've sort of undermined al-Qaeda through development and aid so that when something like this happens, al-Qaeda can't easily replace the individuals that it has lost," says Johnsen. "But if you don't take those steps then the pool of recruits just starts to multiply exponentially."

More troubling still is that last week's assault doesn't necessarily indicate a renewed Yemeni commitment to fighting al-Qaeda. Analysts say Yemen has been slow to confront the al-Qaeda threat with the gusto that the U.S. has been pushing for, in large part because going after the Islamist group hasn't always been in the government's best interests. "If the government wants to fight [al-Qaeda] seriously, they can do it," says Ali Saif Hassan, the director of Yemen's Political Development Forum. But, he adds: "It's a matter of political decision — how much they will win, and how much they will lose." Sana'a has recently focused more of its attention on the rebel separatist movement in the south and on the recent Houthi uprising in the north than it has on al-Qaeda".

In a review of the Time Magazine article (December 22, 2009) Henry Adams of "United for Peace in Pierce County" an e-jounal at:
http://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/9253-commentary-us-strike-in-yemen-will-ultimately-prove-counterproductive.html summarized the story and added the following:

"Commentary: US strike in Yemen 'will ultimately prove counterproductive'

"C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute," as Napoléon Bonaparte is supposed to have said of the assassination of the duc d'Enghien. -- On Tuesday Time magazine took a critical position vis-à-vis the U.S.'s failed attempt on Dec. 17, 2009, to kill with cruise missiles Qasim al-Raymi, an al-Qaeda leader in Yemen. -- The attack "appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties," Abigail Hauslohner said.[1] -- (That's putting it mildly.) -- As a result, it has "started to look like more of a boon than a bust for Yemen's al-Qaeda revival, as well as for other opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's regime," she said. -- Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen is predicting that the attacks will ultimately prove counterproductive. -- "Immediately after 9/11, a combined U.S.-Yemeni effort to decapitate the Islamist group's leadership in the country and dismantle its infrastructure met with considerable success, Johnsen says. But since 2006, al-Qaeda has managed to regroup and grow stronger as Yemen's government struggles to hold on to its territory amid multiple rebellions and rising poverty. Now, Johnsen adds: 'You can't just kill a few individuals and the al-Qaeda problem will go away.'"

Princeton expert, Mr. Gregory Johnsen's prediction was proved to be correct--only a short week after its publicaiton.

The Yemeni al-Qaida leader, Qasim al Raymi had no cruise missiles to respond to the US attack, but he did have a number of angry and well-motivated suicide bombers.

Thus, a week to the day after the cruise missile attack in Yemen, which killed 82 people, a young Nigerian man who had been in Yemen, prepared for jihad by sewing a condom filled with a white crystalline solid explosive known as PETN, (a highly explosive ingredient found in explosives such as Semtex or “Plastique”) into his underwear, and purchasing a flight on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and headed for Detroit Michigan on Christmas Day. Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to ignite the charge as the plane approached Detroit. But there were three hundred people on that flight…one could only imagine the tragic results had he been "successful".

So understand this--in near-contemporaneity Mr Obama sent a half-a-million dollar, 20-foot long, US cruise missile with a ton and a half of high explosives into Yemen to kill and maim. In response, Qasim al Raymi sent a 23 year-old Nigerian out of Yemen with a few ounces of explosives sewn into his underdrawers to kill and maim. We killed and maimed nearly three-hundred innocents, he burned a hole in his underpants. The scenario is fitting for a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon. That is how silly this so called "war on terror" is. One could almost laugh at it if one blocks out the horrible level of death and destruction.

Though Abdulmutallab failed, and no one save the bomber himself was injured, the political fall-out for Mr. Obama's was heavy. The irony is that Mr Obama's wish for keeping his aggressive persona under wraps regarding the December 17th Yemen attack was one of the factors that hurt him in the eyes of some of his fiercest detractors on the right. Obama's fall into Bush-style cowboy shoot-em-up behavior acted to motivate and galvanize a prompt revenge attack by the Yemeni militants. But the public was unaware of Mr. Obama's war-like actions preceeding the Christmas bomb attempt on a plane full of holiday travelers. But those of Abdulmuttalab were everywhere very big news.

The Obama Administration continues to be strongly criticized over its failure to intercept the young Nigerian. Other factors that helped stir criticism of Mr Obama are the fact that the young man’s worried father had alerted the American CIA in Nigeria about his son’s disappearance and “radicalization”, and as well, the fact that young Abdulmutallab had been placed on a “watch list”, all added to Mr. Obama’s embarrassment.

Our young President got burned. But has he learned anything from his too-close and cosy association with his “generals”. I think not. Obama appears to want to continue as a "good soldier" to his military subordinates. The facts: two days after his failed attempt to kill al-Raymi, he agreed to a second launch of cruise missiles (or a drone attack) on December 24th to asassinate a Moslem cleric (and native-born US citizen) known as Anwar al-Aulaqi. It is this cleric who had reputed e-mail contact with Major Nidal Hassan, the US army psychiatrist who killed thirteen soldiers at Fort Hood .
(See Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/24/AR2009122400536.html?hpid=topnews)

The attack on Aulaqi--who has no record as an active terrorist--was an act of national revenge for Alaqi's undefined and unproved involvement in the Fort Hood massacre. I can understand the military command at Fort Hood wishing for revenge, but that the President agreed to what is in effect an extrajurical execution--no facts, no jury, no judge is what we have here. Another question that should be raised here is was the extra-juridcal execution-attempt on al-Aulaqi legal in the US, or internationally? I think not. Would the killing of al Aulaqi be a US or international crime? The strike in Yemen on al-Aulaqi's house killed thirty people--of course, they were all described as “militants”. Noteworthy, is a more recent report which indicates that al Aulaqi was not home at the time and has survived. So all these deaths were for naught. See: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/12/31/152724/55.

So what about Mr. Obama, whose unwise and counterproductive use of lethal force, has cut a bloody swath of death and destruction across the Middle East in only a week? Eight kids in Afghanistan, eighty civilians in one strike in Yemen and another thirty in a house-attack to asassinate (a not-at-home US citizen, Moslem cleric who might have had contact with a home-grown terrorist) in another part of Yemen. Yet he has not been successful, has not made us safer (no more likely the opposite result) and has aroused a great cloud of damaging politcal opposition on his right. Plainly he has lost respect and hurt himself politically.

As they say Florida, "If'n you catch a ‘gator by the tail, you better be certain-sure he don’t turn around and bite you in the ass.”

To my sights, it looks like Obama got "bit in the ass" by acquiescing to the demands of his military advisors...It's time for him to throw his hands like President Kennedy, and take a long lonely look at his foreign policy and military options. Change is needed.

Get the picture?

rjk

FRANK RICH'S "PERSON OF THE YEAR" AND THE DECADE OF DECEPTION

In his regular NY Times, Sunday column, Frank Rich, (December 20, 2009) says fair well to a dreadful year and a horrible decade (a questionable election, 9-11, two unnecessary wars, and a great depression) by discrediting Time Magazine’s choice of Ben Bernanke as “Person of the Year”. According to Rich, the journal's choice of Bernanke was dishonest, and all too typical of the “flight from truth” syndrome which has infected our nation over the last decade. To underscore this national “bend the truth” tendency of the first decade of this century, Frank Rich enrolled his own candidate: four-time US Master's champion-golfer, Tiger Woods as his “Person of the Year”. Who could better represent the decade of deception? Tiger, whose golf and endorsement success was based on his superb mastery of the long drive, followed by a short-iron recovery shot close to the pin from the even the deepest rough, has seen his popularity plummet recently from 85% to 35% due to the explosive press coverage exposing a "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" personality. So who could better typify the “decade of deception” than Woods, the first “billion dollar” athlete, who so successfully manipulated his public image- one of a steel-willed, well-disciplined happily-married, privacy-loving "every-man"athlete, as he lived out his secret “wild-life” behind his fortified façade.

According to Frank Rich, awarding, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as Time’s ‘Person of the Year, 2009’ was only another example of gross media deception. Awarded since 1927 (Charles Lindbergh was their first) the famous national journal has honored some of the world's true greats--but according to Rich, this year's award went to a “schnook” who foolishly kept the economic mixer whipping at high speed as the economy went into a froth---then did nothing, as economy collapsed like a hot soufflé in a cold breeze. (See http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html). Since Bernanke’s primary function as Chairman of the Fed was to prevent economic "over exuberance" and financial bubbles, he is a most undeserving honoree, who failed at his primary function. Would they have put Lindberg on the cover if he had ditched in the Atlanic? No! Rather than acting as the nation’s financial guardian, Bernanke took on the role of facilitator of Wall Street’s excesses. (See: “You Ben are the Moral Hazard” by Senator Jim Bunning).

Mr. Rich’s insightful argument is that Time’s hypocritical choice was just another example among many during this last decade of how the media, the government and even private citizens misrepresent facts, bent the truth and lied to the public. One wonders, did Rich have President Obama's Nobel Prize committee in his sights too?

If Time was ready to "bamboozle” the public with the hypocrisy of installing Bernanke as a "Person of the Year". Frank Rich was ready to install Tiger Woods--a man whose personal life and public persona are so obviously, nay bizarrely incongruent, as to underscore the blatant hypocrisy in public discourse over this last decade. Rich’s well-written piece tabulates for us the many ways we have been deceived by our government, the electronic and other media.

"If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)." .......As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth".Frank Rich, NY Times, December 20, 2009.

That "flight from truth" over the last decade included the lies about Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction, as well as the non-existent ties to Al Qaidia, lies about non-existing Niger derived yellow-cake, as well as lies about those who attempted to expose lies like Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife.

Rich reminds of us of all those who bamboozled us over the decade from Barry Bonds who did not use steroids (yeah sure!) and the slippery John Edwards who did not father a baby, to the epitome of deception Bernie Madoff, as well as mere "associates in deception" Karl Rove, Elliott Spitzer, and “family-man” Larry Craig (of the wandering foot in public bathrooms), and don't forget financial huckster Ken Lay (of Enron fame), and many others.

Rich concludes that one of President Obama's problems is that..."... after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out."

Mr Rich puts the question out there so elegantly and I admire him for his insight. But it makes me wonder. How can these hucksters be so successful? And why are Americans so subject to hucksterism? Why are we so gullible is the underlying question? I believe most of our local charlatans, flim-flamers, bamboozlers, and Wizards of Oz, hidden behind their screens would be exposed elsewhere in the world. Are we so badly educated, so simple, so believing we can not tell a snake-oil salesman from a sincere Senator?

One reason may be that there are too few Mr. Frank Richs (Krugmans, Dowds, and a few others) and too many Judith Millers in our press corps. The press simply is too well “imbedded” in our military , government and business to any longer truly serve its true function as guardian of truth. Then too, there are too few independent sources of information.

A passing survey of the news organs of record indicate how little difference exists among them. The same story makes the rounds, but they repeat the same facts and come to the same conclusions. Rather than raising ones questioning antennae some readers may find that similarity very reassuring. Here in America, there is simply a lack of alternate information. Yes, the Internet is available and may well address that shortcoming, but with far too few exceptions Americans do not get their news there, read foreign languages, and so foreign press is not a useful source, and if they did, they probably would not believe them.

Media consolidation which reached a crescendo in the late 1990s eliminated many independent news outlets. Today, most newspapers are owned by a few large companies. These large institutions have a stake in the status quo. In regard to the electronic media, valuable broadcast licenses and broadcast wavelengths are doled out by the government...which can withhold or terminate a licensee. That potential threat may limit what stories editors and station managers may permit to be aired. Then all too often--as we saw so clearly during the run up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the established media (such as Frank Rich's employer-- the NY Times) become the propaganda arm of the government. Recall NY Times reporter Judith Miller and her pro-war reports sourced from (and prepared for her by) insiders in the Bush-Cheney White House. One would think that she should have been ostracized, yet she is back on the airwaves...on Fox News.

Modern education is partly to blame for our inability to spot a liar. It tends toward rote-learning, technological subjects, superficial summaries and subjectivism, rather than emphasis on developing analytical skills and critical thinking. But what can you expect from a nation which as recently as 2004 (by a Gallup Poll) revealed that 45% of the population held the mid-Nineteenth century ideas that the earth and man were created a mere 10,000 years ago in a form that is just as they appear today.

Then too the pernicious belief in an American exceptionalism, tends to increase our susceptibility to a flimflam. Though this may be more a the result of the preceding list rather than a itself a cause, the pervasive and pernicious idea that America is somehow "different" (and superior) than other nations is all too prevalent in our thinking. America sees itself as the only virtuous nation in a frightening world of tyrants and evil doers beyond the seas...oh with perhaps a very few exceptions...such as Israel and Great Britain. Thus, the general perception is that we are good, and they out there are bad. As a result, what our "good" government tells us is more likely to be valid, true and believable (and is more comforting and reassuring as well) while the pronouncements of foreigners---were we to understand their unintelligible languages anyway--is suspect. Our weakness is that too many Americans see themselves as living within an "island nation" surrounded by treacherous and alien cultures.

Finally, our susceptibility to deception may stem from simple mentally sloth. It takes effort to dig for facts, do research, question our leaders statements, and study. Most Americans are simply too busy, too well-fed, well-entertained and coddled to care. Here within the "island nation" we have few real threats, whatever former VP Cheney and Rush Limbaugh say. Were we really concerned, and were the outside world truly threatening, we would be forced into learning more about world geography, more foreign languages, and more about other cultures. Furthermore, the absence of these interests and concerns in our population belies the threatening nature of the world beyond our shores. If it were really threatened we would be more interested out of necessity.

On a visit to Salamanca, Spain, many years ago, to visit my daughter who was there as a Spanish language student, I met her roommate, a young Lebanese woman. This young woman's native language was Arabic, and as with almost everyone in Lebanon, she was also fluent in French and English. I also learned that she spoke both Turkish and Hebrew, and like my daughter, was at that time learning Spanish. When I asked her how she came to be such a linguist, she explained that she was no different than many in her country, where multilingualism was common. She had traveled around Europe a good deal as a student and she had learned English that way. French was really the second language of her homeland. "But what about Hebrew...are you Jewish?" I asked. "No, no, I am an Armenian Catholic", she said, with a flashing smile, then added with a sly wink, "But you know, as a minority, you must always know the language of your enemies and also of your friends. It is only for your own survival."

So this last decade of deception and disaster, these years of the "flight from truth" must end, for our nation to pull out of the political, financial and military difficulties we find ourselves in. But we would be wrong to place too much blame on the deceptive mass media, the perfidious George Bush and his ilk, the cardboard-imaged Tiger Woods, or the evil Bernie Madoffs, and duplicitous Ben Bernankes. These sorts will always be with us. We are the ones who have been hoodwinked, flimflammed, bamboozled and deceived and we must change to find our way successfully out of that fairway sand trap. We certainly can not afford another decade like the last. We must do better, think better, educate better, question more, learn more-- and trust less. We as a nation are better than being the butt, the target, and the mark of grasping charlatans.


Get the picture?


rjk

A PRIMER ON GLOBAL WARMING

As the World Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (Thursday and Friday) approaches interest in this global problem has increased as well as the political and economic consequences of actually addressing it. Accordingly, this last weekend I found myself responding to a question from a friend: "Do you believe this stuff on global warming?"

I answered in the affirmative. "The science of it is compelling."

"Science? Aint this jest politics?"

I quickly added, "No! It is very simple. It all has to do with carbon dioxide!"

"Yeah, I knew thaaaaat," yelped my friend.

I continued quickly without a pause, I knew I had only a minute or two of this person's attention span before me. "In the beginning...volcanoes on the primitive earth belched forth huge amounts of carbon dioxide and water. Over millions of years --nearly 500 million--that early atmosphere, rich in carbon dioxide and water, was slowly altered when primitive plants and other living things evolved. Since plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into organic solids and over long periods of time geological processes sequestered these carbon-bearing substances underground. Slowly, carbon dioxide became a very rare gas--less than 0.02% by volume of the total. With a lower concentration of this heat-trapping gas, the earth cooled. In the last million years or so, modern man evolved and has learned how to mine the carbon based buried substances, bring them to the surface,burn them in the atmosphere and add carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere--and reconstitute the ancient hot climate of millions of years ago." I said, setting down the beer mug exactly back into its circular water stain from which I had lifted it.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

That was as far as we proceeded with that conversation. Later on I though about what I should have said, so I add it here.

So you want to know what the basic science of global warming is, huh?

One must start with the idea that the earth interacts with sun's radiation just like any solid body. It absorbs solar radiation then as a warm body it re-radiates that energy back into space as heat. Eventually, it reaches some average temperature which is a balance between the radiation absorbed and the heat radiated away. As long as those conditions remain unchanged, planet earth, will reach some stable average temperature and remain there. (Though of course surface temperatures over the body may fluctuate wildly from a high-when its surface is exposed to the sun--during the day--to a low--when it surface is shielded from the sun--at night)

The earth follows basic principles of physics, its acts as a "black body" absorbing and re-radiating the sun's energy. However, one critical difference is that the earth has an atmosphere, a thick transparent film of gases which clings to its surface and subtly, but significantly alters the way the absorbed heat leaves the surface.

Think of yourself sitting in front of a large window on a sunny, cold, winter day. The sun streams through the glass and warms your face and body, yet if you place your hand on the glass of the window--the pane remains cold to the touch. The sun's radiation passes through the glass without heating it. But it is absorbed by your body--it heats you. You can readily feel the heat. That is a good analogy of what happens to the sun's rays as they pass through the atmosphere. They are nearly unchanged by the mostly transparent atmosphere, and are absorbed at the earth's surface. The earth's atmosphere is heated from the bottom up.

When solar rays strike the earth's surface they are absorbed and heat that surface. Of course, some surfaces absorb more radiation than others and get warmer than others. Snow or ice fields for example absorbs very little solar radiation, while darker surfaces such as deserts absorb more sunlight and heat up to higher temperatures. Once heated however, the earth's surface re-radiates its heat. However, this "earth radiation" or heat radiation is different than the light and other rays of solar radiation. As the radiant heat passes upward through the blanket of atmospheric gases the earth radiation interacts with certain molecules in the atmosphere to transfer the radiant energy to them. They heat up and transfer that heat to the atmosphere in general. Its temperature rises. Without this effect the earth would be very much colder than it is.

The atmosphere is composed of a mixture of gases--mostly nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%) with small amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and many other gases in trace amounts--and variable amounts of water vapor. Water vapor is very common in the atmosphere. Because of its molecular shape water molecules readily interact with earth radiation. It is a good absorber of earth radiation and readily heats up. Humid places on earth, such as tropical forests for example, are for this reason warmer than they would be based on the amount of radiation they receive, while deserts--where water vapor is scarce--even in equatorial regions-- can be loose the heat they absorbed during the day very quickly and get very cold at night, since there is little water vapor to trap heat.

Though water vapor is very effective in its absorption of earth radiation, it is a conservative gas...the atmosphere can hold only a certain amount. When its concentration increases, the air may reach saturation. No more water vapor enters the air and any additional water vapor forms swarms of tiny liquid droplets we know as clouds, or fog--or ice crystals--as well and other forms of condensation. Thus, the amount of heat-trapping water vapor in the air is naturally limited...it varies from place to place and time to time, but overall it remains a constant--since when it is too much it is naturally voided from the air as clouds, fogs or as ice crystals and ultimately may fall from the sky in the form of precipitation.

But other gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are not conservative. They have molecular shapes which can interact with earth radiation and absorb earth radiation, and their concentration can change over time. Carbon dioxide is the most important. It is a most effective absorber of earth heat. Do to its presence (and other gases) the earth would be 60 degrees F cooler than it is at present. In the modern atmosphere CO2 presently accounts for less than 0.04% (by volume--see below). Yet it is an effective and important heat- trapping gas. One had only to look toward the planet Venus to understand how effective this gas is as a heat trapping agent (though other effects also play a part) Venus is near to the earth, and of nearly the same size, but unlike the earth, it has an atmosphere that is nearly 97% carbon dioxide--and a surface temperature that is about 900 degrees F.

Note that I discuss here only carbon dioxide, but two other gases-- methane and nitrous oxide-- are also heat trapping gases though not as effective as the former. Perhaps I will discuss their impact in a future blog.

On earth carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an integral part of the great carbon cycle. As a gas it is absorbed by plants through their leaves to form sugars in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight to form sugars by photosynthesis. In that process CO2 combines with water (H2O) to produce simple carbohydrates which plants use as building blocks to produce complex sugars, cellulose and starch. In the process, plants--which get the energy for this reaction from sun light and the photolysis (breaking apart) of water molecules--release oxygen as a waste product. Animals use oxygen to oxidize plant-derived sugars and generate energy for their life-processes, and in the process release CO2. There is a lovely balance here, a great cycle-- and in primordial nature..a balance existed between plants and animals. As a result of this balance, the level of CO2 remained remarkably static for hundreds of thousands of years--as did the earth's temperature.

As long as the actions of early human beings remained within the confines of this natural system, there were few changes in the carbon dioxide concentration or the temperature of the atmosphere. When humans mastered fire, the burned wood for fuel, but they added no additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere..since the carbon of wood was removed by plants--and in the burning of the wood the carbon of the wood is oxidized and reenters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide--and this maintains a steady state for carbon. [As noted above, in the distant past, volcanic activity added large amounts of carbon dioxide to the air. Ancient atmospheres of hundreds of millions of years ago had much higher concentrations of this gas when volcanic activity was more common. However that ancient carbon was taken up by plants and sequestered underground by biochemical and geological processes. At present, volcanism generates less than 1% of the carbon dioxide humans produce.]

Early humans evolved with weak jaws and teeth and relatively small bodies, but they had a large brain--and two hands to manipulate their immediate environment. They soon learned how to make tools, chop down forests (which effectively remove carbon dioxide),dig up long-buried sources of carbon in the form of peat, coal, oil and gas and use these as fuels, raise farm animals which release methane gas, and burn limestone to produce lime-mortar and concrete which release CO2 as well. Recall that the "fossil fuels" humans turned to for fuel were formed millions of years ago by the storage of carbon compounds by ancient plants and animals, and had remained buried by geological processes.

By unearthing of these long-sequestered carbon sources and burning them in the atmosphere (i.e. combining the ancient carbon with the oxygen of the air as in your furnace, automobile, or gas fired fire-place) more recent humans have altered the existing carbon cycle. Human actions have caused an increase in the concentration of CO2 which had been steady at about 200-280 ppmv for millennia. Since the advent of mining fossil fuels and their use as fuel in the early 1800s the end-product of that process--carbon dioxide gas has been rising steadily in concentration.

Based on analysis of air bubbles in glacial ice, the pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations in
the atmosphere ranged between 200 and 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). For example, an ice core measurement for the year 1832 indicated a carbon dioxide concentration of 284 ppmv, or about 100 ppmv lower than it is now. (See: Wikipedia.org)

The "new" carbon derived from fossil fuels is without question "anthropomorphic" i.e. generated by human activity. Burning petroleum,coal and natural gas are (in that order) the most important sources of anthropomorphic carbon dioxide additions to the atmosphere. In addition, more carbon dioxide is produced in the manufacture of cement ( which is an important contributor, but less than the others. Portland cement--so widely used in the modern world--is produced by burning limestone to drive off CO2 to produce what is known as "slaked lime" or CaO. When mixed with sand and water and exposed to the air the slaked lime reabsorbs CO2 from the atmosphere to form CaCO3 crystals (similar to those in the limestone that was its source). All that heating of limestone to by burning fossil fuels to form the slaked lime generates a great deal of waste CO2--thus its listing here.

There is an interesting natural variation in carbon dioxide concentration in that atmosphere which fluctuates from 3-9 ppmv seasonally and follows the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere. (Since that hemisphere has the most land area and biomass.) As plants grow they take up carbon dioxide and that lowers in the atmospheric carbon, and conversely as they stop growing and decay the concentration rises. The peak CO2 level occurs in May as the growing season just begins and the minimum is in October at the end of the growing season. See Wikipedia]

Recall from above that the present 2008 concentration of carbon dioxide is nearly 0.04%, or more precisely it is: 0.0385% by volume. Stated in parts per million by volume that is more frequently referred to as "385 ppmv" (parts per million by volume).

As noted earlier, this value has been consistently rising and in a predictable way. Beginning in 1965 direct measurements of this gas over Hawaii, in the near-center of the Pacific Ocean, recorded a value of 320 ppmv, by 1989 the value had increased to 350 ppmv, and by 1995 is was 360 ppmv, in 2000, 370 ppmv of carbon dioxide was recorded. Today in 2009 the value is somewhere above 385 ppmv.

Why does the level of the gas rise so predictably?

One has only to measure how much coal, oil or gas a nation burns to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide is being generated by those actions. (Wikipedia informs me that the US burns 1.1 trillion tons of coal each year (one ton of coal produces nearly two tons of CO2), and almost 8 billion barrels of oil per year where one barrel produces nearly one half ton (US) of CO2.) It is a simple chemical equation. Enormous amounts of coal, oil, gas, gasoline and other fossil fuels are burned each year. Measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide added annually to the atmosphere is easily calculated based on how much fossil fuel we consume. For example each gallon of gas burned generates about 8.8 kg of CO2, or about 19.4 pounds of CO2 gas which is released into the atmosphere. So one can simply multiply the number of gallons burned each year to calculate the gasoline-derived component. Then add to that the amount from coal, petroleum and other sources. Credible estimates of the total world production of carbon dioxide indicate an annual additon to the atmospher of about twenty-eight billion metric tons. Twenty-eight billion metric tons of CO2 each year has its effects on the graph of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Each year there are more of us and we all use more and more fossil fuels.

Most knowledgeable observers and many scientists consider the 1989 level of 350 ppmv as a "safe" level for the world and a target level for world leaders to aim for as they consider abatement of addition of CO2 gas to the atmospher. Remember the case of Venus and its surface temperature of 900 degrees F.

It seems clear that the reason the year 2008 was the hottest on record (at least since records have been taken) has much to do with the fact that the level of carbon dioxide was more than one third higher than it was in the pre-industrial years of the early 19th Century.

What nations are mostly responsible for this burden of carbon dioxide?

Well those nations which are presently highly industrialized are mostly responsible. It is an interesting fact that nearly one third of the more than six billion people on the earth or about two billion people still heat their houses and cook their food with wood. They remain free from fossil fuels and barring the aerosol soot produced by their home fires they have little culpability in the global warming problem. However carbon dioxide releases are easily calculated for each nation.

The two nations which contribute more that 40% of the world total of released caron dioxide gas--one is of a modest-sized population (about 308 million), but has an enormous and profligate fossil energy habit, while the other has about average fossil use habits, but has a very large (1.3 billion) population. Those two nations are the USA and China.

China and the US each pump about 20% of the world's total waste CO2 into the world's air. The USA with only 4.5% of the world's population (in 2009 = 6.8 billion) dumps about 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide gas each year as does China with 1.3 billion people. The two nation's total,of about 12 billion metric tons, is about 40% of the world's total 28 billion metric tons. Other large scale carbon dumpers are: the EU (population = 499 million and 7% of world population), which contributes about 4 billion metric tons or about 14% of the total. Thus, the total carbon pollution of these three political entities: China, USA and the EU represents more than half (54%) of the world's total.

For a credible response to this world ecological crisis those three political entities must agree to certain restrictions on CO2 dumping.

In terms of per capita pollution, the figures are equally interesting and informative. The world average amount of carbon dioxide dumped per person is about 4 metric tons. Citizens of some nations exceed that amount by a wide margin, while others produce much less. Each US resident is responsible for nearly 19 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, or nearly five times the world average. On the other hand, Chinese citizens dump only about five tons each, or one-fifth of the amount a US citizen contributes. EU individuals contribute about 8 tons each, less than half of the US citizen, while Russian and Japanese individuals contribute about 10 tons each (about one-half of a US citizen), and the Indian citizen releases the least--less than 2 tons each, or about one-tenth of a US citizen.

It is apparent that climate is one of the many factors in these measurements. India's low consumption level is in part related to its ecomomy, and its generally temperate climate. Citizens in colder climates require more heat energy to meet their energy needs and do so by increased fossil fuel consumption. Another example is Mexico which has an average level of carbon dioxide production per person of about 4 metric tons per year, while neighboring Canada releases19 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person.

Get the (preliminary) picture?

rjk

SIGNS OF RECOVERY?

I see in the economic journals that November retail sales reports are not what were expected. Though analysts are putting the best spin on on the figures they can. Last year, buyers went into a “defensive crouch” resulting in a whopping 8% drop in sales. This year (according to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34254816/ns/business-retail/) economists expected growth in retail sales of about 3-4% based on projections from September and October, but early analysis of available data from stores reporting monthly sales, December registered a decline of 0.3%! The biggest declines were in the more upscale stores, such as Macy’s and Sacs, bargain basement while others did a little better. This cast a pall over the hopes of retailers who turn much of their profit during the Christmas season. Since retail spending accounts for 70% of all US economic activity, this measure is like the wrist-pulse of the physician for the economist. Some analysts attribute the poor figures to the usually warm weather—which was more spring-like than Christmas-like.

However, today (December 11), the more inclusive Commerce Department (CD) figures were published and they suggest a slightly better picture--a paltry 1.3% increase in November, less than the 1.4% increase in October, but no matter, it was good enough for economists desperate to find some signs of silver in the grey clouds overhead. These CD figures include the sale of gasoline, which experienced a sharp rise in prices last month, and consequently skewed the values up a bit. Without gasoline prices the retail sales growth is about 0.8 % for November. (See: http://money.aol.com/article/stock-futures-hold-gains-after-retail/811170?v=aolrss) A less rosy look at these numbers reveals a sharp decline from October’s values (1.4%) in the run up to the Christmas buying season. The same report (op cit) touts the fact that Chinese exports only 1.2% last month, “the smallest drop this year. They posted a decline of more than ten times that amount in October (which was nearly 14% down). Though again, that value may be more the result of the optimism of a few buyers for large concerns who made their plans months ago and has little to say about how much American families will spend for the critical Christmas season. So for this observer the over-all economic picture does not portend well for retail sales this Christmas season.

How can it be otherwise with ten percent of the labor force idle?

But let’s look more closely at those employment figures.
Of the 304 million US population, 155 million are categorized as the “US labor force” (See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm). In November 2009, some 15.4 million of in that group were listed as formally “unemployed”. That is how the 10% unemployed figure is calculated. But also listed are 9.2 million employed only part-time (these are the involuntary part-time workers who can not find a full time job), there are also some 2 million discouraged workers who have sought employment in the past 12 months. They are remain in the unemployed category but are not counted in the formal figures. The actual rate of idle workers may be calculated thus: 15.4+ 9.2+2= 26.6 million idle out of 155 million workforce, or about 17 %. Thus nearly a fifth of the workforce is idle. That is a large percentage of workers who will not be able to walk into a retail store and purchase freely—as our retailers would like.

In the past many of these idled workers, part-time employed, and discouraged workers might have made purchases with “plastic”. But that has changed too. In an MSNBC piece entitled “Credit card debt, terms limit holiday sales”, Allison Linn (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34347297/ns/business-consumer_news/?ns=business-consumer_news&from=ET) lists how and why that avenue of more robust Christmas sales has been shut down this season.

Linn notes several startling facts in her story. She reports that “revolving debt” which is another name for credit card debt in now nearly one trillion dollars! Astounding! That figure has been falling steadily for the last 13 months ---perhaps out of necessity. Banks simply don’t have the money to lend and are more leery of problem lenders. But outstanding credit card debt in the US, after falling a paltry 1% since September last year, still stands at nearly $900 billion dollars! (according to Linn these are recently released Federal Reserve figures which I could not easily verify). That amount, $900 billion dollars, (if accurate) represents an equivalent of nearly $3000 dollars in credit card debt for every man, woman and child in the US. But since the unemployed have likely suspended their use of “plastic” the modest change in that figure may be more a function of unemployment and unavailability of credit than a wised-up and less profligate population.

Another jaw-dropping fact Linn includes is that nearly 14 million US citizens are still paying for credit advanced to them for items purchased last Christmas season!! Many have likely reached their debt limit or had that limit reduced by their credit card company and thus are struck with only cash-on-hand for spending this year. Linn notes that nearly 60 million people have had their credit limits reduced between April 2008 and April 2009 and these would not or could not add to that debt. But for the consumer this is not the worst that could happen.

Consider that credit card interest rates have gone up…without warning or even a polite notice to card holders-- while bank interest rates on deposits have fallen sharply. A cash deposit in your local bank will earn only a paltry 1.2%, while your credit card company is now charging nearly 14% on the amount it advanced you perhaps last Christmas. And that number is up 2% from the 12% they were charging in May 2008

So what about the rosy view of the recovery? Think again…the average consumer out there is underemployed, underpaid, overburdened with debt and not happy. There appears to be a few more shoes to drop.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE ECONOMY OF THE ISLES OF GREECE

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,---
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

Lord Byron

According to today’s Financial Times of London, the sun may have set, economically, on the isles of Greece. Its slanting may rays still gild Mount Aegaleo, but the vault of the exchequer in Athens has nothing that glitters. Authors Dave Oakley and Kerin Hope of FT.com report the sad and disturbing news that Greece, "where grew the arts of war and peace," has seen its credit rating downgraded to the lowest level in the eurozone. The result has been a heavy sell-off of Greek stocks and bonds amid fears that the country is heading toward financial disaster---all due to its dangerously high debt-levels. See: Greece downgraded over high debt, (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2763a1d6-e3fc-11de-b2a9-00144feab49a.html) dl 12-09-09.

Since joining the euro in 2001, Greece has consistently failed to carry out difficult financial “structural reforms” which would keep its deficit within the eurozone limit of 3% of gross domestic product (GDP). The present deficit, according to the FT, is between a whopping 9 and 13 percent of GDP. With a downgrade of their bonds immanent the Greek government will face serious problems in raising money through the European Central Bank where they exchange Greek bonds for European Central Bank loans.

So what has happened to Greece since I was there last in 1999?

Greece has a mixed economy, with a large public sector which accounts for half of its GDP which is the 27th largest in the world, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece). Any one who has traveled in that country knows that Greece is largely agricultural, and that is what makes it so attractive as a tourist destination. According to Greeka.com(http://www.greeka.com/greece-economy.htm--dl December 9, 2009, about 20% of the workforce is employed in agriculture such as growing wheat corn, barley, sugar beets, olives, tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes, beef, dairy products and wine. This sector accounts for about 15% of the GDP. While 21% are employed processing food and tobacco, manufacturing textiles, employed in mining, and in the chemicals and metal production industry and the petroleum industry. The remainder of the population, about 59%, is employed in the services sector. This includes the large tourism industry. Up until the recent recession beginning in 2007, tourism attracted more people than the total Greek population each year. Let us not forget the Greek shipping industry, one of the largest in the world.

In 2004 (op cit above) Greece exported a total of about $13 billion dollars of manufactured goods, fuels, food, and beverages to its main trading partners in the EU and US. However, it imports were more than two times that amount, or nearly $30 billion dollars worth of imported manufactured goods, such as food, fuel and chemicals from the EU and the US. Even with economic aid from the EU of nearly $6 billion dollars annually (2004), Greece had an imbalance of trade, of more than $18 billion per year (which has contributed to the nation’s external debt of $42 billion dollars (as of 2004---and fueled its financial problems.

By 2008 (See Wikipedia) Greece’s GDP, estimated at $343 billion, had grown to nearly 3%, its exports were $29 billion dollars, while imports had jumped to $93 billion dollars. The balance of trade deficit at $64 billion dollars, indicates that for every dollar of goods Greece exported, it spent 2.2 dollars for imported products. Figures for its estimated public debt indicate that value grew to a whopping 97% of GDP, while revenues were for that period were $126 billion, and its expenses $144 billion. For comparison, neighboring Turkey, for the same period, recorded a public debt of 40% of GDP (2008), with revenues of $160 billion and expenditures of $173 billion (See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html).

How did Greece get into this economic hole?

Back in 2001 when Hellas joined the European Monetary Union (EMU) and gave up the drachma, the nation’s leaders could have staunched the growth of debt, but instead behaved like children in candy store. At that time the liberal rules of the European Central Bank (ECB) permitted the Greek government to borrow easily, and with nearly the same interest rate as economically unchallenged Germany. They took up this challenge with gusto. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph (Nov 22, 2009) dl December 8, 2009 (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6630117/Greece-tests-the-limit-of-sovereign-debt-as-it-grinds-towards-slump.html) the center-right government dug themselves into a deep hole by low-cost loans and profligate spending, they pumped up public- sector salaries to meet perceived and unrealistic EU standards and gaily went into big debt for the Summer Olympics in 2004 (which some claim cost the nation 10 billion euros and brought only modest and short term benefits) and, most foolishly, they ran "budget deficits near 5% of GDP at the top of the boom” (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, op cit) rather than decreasing spending to close the deficit gap.

As a result, post 2001 prices have continued to rise in Greece. This had its clear effects on the important tourist trade, encouraging many holiday makers to seek other, less costly and equally sunny destinations..such as neighboring Turkey. But the rising cost of living, also had its effects on the country as a whole, straining household budgets, and risking long term economic growth. The devastating world economic slump, combined with pinched household budgets have had its pernicious impact on the perceptions and sense of well-being of its citizenry. Such feelings can lead to dangerous social instability, such as was demonstrated in the recent December 2009 violent clashes between police and striking shipyard workers in Piraeus, and the December 2008 riots in Athens (sparked by the tragic shooting-death of a 15 year old student by the police) and the reprise of these December riots on the anniversary of the sad event just this week (December 7, 2009).

Unfortunately, as an EU member, stuck within the economic rules of the EU, Greece has few ways open to help itself, warns Evans-Pritchard, who suggests one option as “EU beggary”. In past times, the Greek government would simply print new drachma, devalue the currency and hold their purses tight for purchases from abroad, but enjoy the increased sales of Greek commodities, the pleasure of full hotels and tourist buses--and improved employment figures. But those options are not open to them now. We must wait and see, if this summer the sun will again gild the hills of the lovely isles of Greece.

Get the picture?


rjk

GEORGE WILL ON THE ECONOMY, NOV 2009

A PRESCIENT VIEW---


November 12, 2009
Debt is Destroying the Dollar
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism. Still, the world's appetite for gold as an investment option is intensifying. Last month, India purchased 200 tons of gold at $1,045 an ounce, before the price topped $1,108 on Monday. China, too, may increasingly diversify from paper -- i.e., bonds -- into gold, the price of which, some experienced investors believe, could soar to $2,500 an ounce in three to five years. One reason for all this is U.S. behavior.

India's 2008 GDP was $1.2 trillion, so its $6.7 billion purchase was small beer. It may, however, be a large portent: Gold increasingly looks to investors to be a more reliable store of value than governments' bonds are, especially U.S. bonds as the U.S. government threatens to pile a mammoth health care entitlement onto the nation's Ponzi welfare state, increasing the nation's debt and borrowing.

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budget economy

The fiscal year 2009 budget deficit, triple that of 2008, was 10 percent of GDP and, Lawrence Lindsey says, probable policies will produce deficits of 7 percent of GDP for a decade. Ronald Reagan's worst deficit was 6 percent of GDP, and for only one year.

Lindsey -- former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and director of George W. Bush's National Economic Council (2001-02) -- says Americans' net worth has dropped at least $13 trillion since the recession began in December 2007. What is to be done?

Americans could suddenly begin saving substantially more, but this would deepen and prolong the recession. Alternatively, America could reflate the value of its assets by printing money. Lindsey says it is already doing that -- printing bonds promiscuously and lending money to banks at negligible rates, money banks can use to buy the bonds. This sharply increases the money supply, which sets the stage either for inflation -- too much money chasing too few goods. Or for recovery-snuffing higher interest rates to try to prevent inflation. Or for something like Japan's lost decade -- banks pouring money into government bonds rather than the real economy.

America, says Lindsey, will not become Weimar Germany, where hyperinflation caused people to rush to stores with satchels of rapidly depreciating currency. But, he adds, no country has successfully behaved the way the United States is behaving.

Suppose, he says, you owned some U.S. Treasury bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, and you were sitting in front of two buttons, one marked Buy More, the other marked Sell. Which button would you push? Obviously, Sell.

Fortunately, Lindsey says, there is so much U.S. paper circulating, every owner cannot hit Sell at the same time. But if enough people, institutions or nations sell, others will not buy unless U.S. interest rates rise substantially, which can ignite a vicious cycle -- killing economic growth, thereby depressing revenues and increasing the deficit and borrowing.

Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute notes that China, America's largest creditor, has increased its dollar holdings 20 percent this year, so China has increased its interest in not having the dollar devalued by mass selling. But, Stelzer adds, China thinks geopolitically as well as economically, and might have noneconomic reasons for encouraging a controlled flight from the dollar.

A cataclysmic event -- say, an interruption of the flow of Middle Eastern oil -- could, Stelzer says, cause the world to flee to the safety of even a depreciating dollar. But absent such an event, the world will be carefully watching a U.S. government that has a powerful incentive to try to use controlled inflation for the slow-motion repudiation of some of its mountain of new debt.

It is, however, hubris -- something abundant in Washington -- to think inflation can be precisely controlled, like an oven's temperature. It is hubris cubed to think inflation can be unleashed just short of provoking a flight from the dollar.

Perhaps Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows how to sop up the trillions of new dollars before inflation ignites. But will he? He knows about "the recession within the Depression" that occurred in 1937, perhaps as a result of premature confidence in a recovery.

Furthermore, he may feel duty-bound to try to use loose money to help reduce unemployment. But although the Fed has suddenly assumed stupendous powers, it still has one sovereign duty -- to preserve the currency as a store of value.

georgewill@washpost.com

LA STRADA--FELLINI--AND A FINE ANALYSIS OF FILM

La Strada

Fellini’s Magic-Neo-Realism

John Parris Springer
English Department, University of Central Oklahoma
jpspringer@ucok.edu

Along with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) is among the most important films of post-war Italian cinema. Rome Open City and The Bicycle Thief are the two films that introduced Italian Neo-Realism to the world and restored Italy’s place of prominence in international film culture. But it was Fellini’s La Strada, built upon a firm Neo-Realist foundation yet possessing something more—a fairy-tale-like narrative, resonant with archetypal characters whose lives illuminate the basic truths of the human condition—that revealed the full aesthetic richness of Neo-Realism just as it was being transformed by Fellini into something other than a faithful recording of mundane reality. It is this sometimes whimsical, sometimes hallucinatory visual and narrative quality in Fellini’s work that distinguished him from his fellow Neo-Realists and which, even more significantly, pointed the way to future styles and directions in world cinema. As meticulously situated as the characters and plot of La Strada are in the particularities of post-war Italian society, La Strada has always conveyed to audiences a certain universal significance which has made it one of the most revered films in world cinema; an artistic masterpiece that transcends national borders to deliver a profound commentary on the nature of the human condition and our most basic needs as sentient creatures.

La Strada possesses a fable-like simplicity that conceals the film’s seemingly unplanned, episodic structure. As a filmmaker who came of age during the flowering of Italian Neo-Realism, Fellini has an unerring instinct in La Strada for creating an often harshly realistic portrayal of post-war Italian society. Certainly the film’s attention to lower class and socially marginalized characters reflects the politics of Neo-Realism and its goal of developing the cinema as a tool for representing and analyzing the experiences of average, ordinary people, an impulse that arises from Neo-Realism’s roots in Italian Marxism. Evidence of pervasive poverty and the scarring effects of war are brilliantly incorporated into the mise-en-scene of the film through Fellini’s art direction and costume design. His use of actual locations in La Strada, rather than the more easily controlled environment of the film studio, and his use of untrained actors in several minor roles, likewise followed basic Neo-Realist aesthetic principles that aimed at presenting a more authentically realistic image of the world.

But Fellini was always something more than a realist. Every Fellini film possesses a certain ineffable poetry, a sense of magic and wonder that can range from the hilarious to the frightening to the uncanny. He is what I would call, mixing literary and cinematic modes, a "magic neo-realist." In Fellini’s films we ultimately encounter a fidelity to something larger and more complex than a strictly empirical notion of social and economic reality. We encounter a highly subjective view of the world, often grotesque and distorted, brimming with both irony and pathos and filtered through Fellini’s profoundly humanistic vision as an artist. Indeed, the unique blend of reality and surreality that Fellini’s films offer, their deft mingling of the objective and the subjective, reality and dreams, constitute the very essence of that often-used adjective in film criticism—Felliniesque. Fellini’s pursuit of his own, personal vision as an artist often made him a controversial figure within Italian film culture, where other directors and critics complained that his films failed to live up to the strict ideological requirements of Neo-Realism. Such complaints had little effect on Fellini, however, who continued to pursue his visionary approach to cinematic storytelling over the course of a nearly 40-year career.

La Strada was Fellini’s third film as a director, and it single-handedly established his international reputation as a director of art-house cinema, winning numerous honors and prizes including the Academy Award as best foreign film in 1954. La Strada must also be seen as the product of several fertile collaborative relationships between Fellini and others, most notably his wife, the actress Giuletta Masina who plays the gentle, simple-minded Gelsomina, and the composer Nino Rota, whose musical scores in numerous Fellini films make an enormous contribution to their effectiveness. This is especially the case with La Strada, for which the musical score itself was a huge international hit.

La Strada means "the road," and the film is best understood as a journey taken by the two main characters: Gelsomina (Masina), a simple-minded young woman who is sold by her family to a brutish, itinerant carnival strong man, Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Traveling the countryside in a crude hutch attached to the strong man’s motorbike, Gelsomina is abused and mistreated by Zampano until she is finally driven to madness and death. Along the road they encounter "The Fool," (Richard Basehart) a circus acrobat and clown who teaches Gelsomina that there might be more to life than her servitude to Zampano. The Fool and Zampano are depicted by Fellini as a study in contrasts: the strong man’s sullen brutishness and awkward demeanor around others stand in sharp contrast to the graceful and loquacious Fool, whose free-spirited contempt for authority leads him to taunt and ridicule Zampano. Finally the strong man confronts the Fool, and in the fight that follows he accidentally murders him. Gelsomina, already the victim of Zampano’s physical abuse, witnesses the Fool’s death, and begins a slow descent into madness. Finally, unwilling and unable to care for the increasingly deranged Gelsomina, Zampano abandons her to fate.

Each of the three main characters has certain obvious affinities to natural elements. Gelsomina is associated with water; we first encounter her on the beach at her home and throughout the film her returns to the ocean are shown as cleansing and restorative. Giuletta Masina’s performance as Gelsomina is one of the most outstanding features of La Strada and one of the great performances in film history. She displays a perfect balance of innocent vulnerability and sympathetic openness to others that is continually bruised in her dealings with Zampano. In film criticism the word most often used to invoke such a delicate interplay of comedy and pathos is Chaplinesque, and the spirit of Chaplin’s "Little Tramp" hovers over Masina’s carefully nuanced performance.

The Fool is associated with the air. As an aerialist and high-wire artist, we first see him high above a crowd of spectators eating a plate of spaghetti, and his costume consists of a pair of wings. The Fool represents a carnivelesque energy which seeks to subvert authority and puncture the masculine pretensions of Zampano. Though brash and egocentric, the Fool possesses a generosity of spirit that makes him an emblem of the artist: the creative individual who reaches out to others through artistic expression. He is a teacher and savior figure in the film, and through "the parable of the pebble" that he teaches Gelsomina, he bestows upon her an understanding and sense of purpose which can redeem even her sad existence. Zampano, in contrast, is a loner and outsider who views other people as either instruments to be bent to his will or obstacles to be overcome and vanquished through brute strength. He is associated with the earth, and with impulses that are base, often animalistic. His violent temper and aggression also make him a figure evocative of fire. Yet most often he conveys a sullen mistrust towards others that reveals his underlying fear. Zampano is like a dog that has been kicked so often he has become hostile and suspicious of everyone he meets.

Fellini’s La Strada is fundamentally about different ways of being human, three different ways of interacting with your fellow human beings, and thus about three different ways of finding meaning in human existence. For Gelsomina it is the wide-eyed openness and sensitivity to other beings and forces in the universe that makes her a magical, even holy, presence in the film. She, too, can be seen as a kind of savior through whose death Zampano is finally brought to some kind of emotional and spiritual awakening. For the Fool, the meaning of life is to be found in the play of personal expression, the performance of self for others that has made him a star attraction of the circus. This is also why the Fool is such a fascinating and attractive figure for Gelsomina, despite the fact that he ridicules her and calls her ugly. Still, through the "parable of the pebble," the Fool is able to impart to Gelsomina a sense of her own value and purpose in life that redeems her even in the midst of Zampano’s brutal treatment. However, the interpersonal and existential choices that Zampano makes determine that he will be unable to find any redemptive meaning to existence, any purpose to his endless wanderings as a circus strong man. He seems doomed to continuously perform an act that increasingly becomes a parody of masculinity and male strength and that scarcely conceals his basic loneliness and inability to sympathetically engage with other human beings.

Zampano is the real subject of Fellini’s film. Anthony Quinn’s brooding, laconic performance as Zampano has the effect of making the character seem remote and distant; he is often seen only on the edges of the frame, in the background, as in the first scene when he comes to purchase Gelsomina and Fellini places him hovering in the background while our attention is focused on the drama of Gelsomina’s separation from her family. But his centrality to the film is clearly established by the ending of La Strada. Several years have gone by and the strong man has become noticeably older when he arrives at a seaside village where he hears a young woman singing the plaintive melody that had become Gelsomina’s theme. Zampano learns of her death from the young woman. Later in the evening, after his performance, Zampano wanders down to the beach where he is overwhelmed by his thoughts. The final, redemptive moment occurs when he stares up at the stars and begins to cry, signaling the emergence of human emotions which he had long suppressed and denied. But it is too late; Gelsomina is dead, and the humanizing influence of her gentle spirit is lost in the overwhelming sense of grief and isolation experienced by Zampano.

Clearly La Strada can be seen as both a Christian religious parable and an Existentialist philosophical statement. Yet Fellini rejected such obvious interpretive frameworks, preferring instead to create a sense of openness and ambiguity in the film, another indication of Neo-Realism’s influence on the director. He specifically removed from early drafts of the script all overt Catholic symbolism and Existentialist didacticism in order to fashion a film of rare visual poetry and emotional impact. Finally, La Strada cannot be reduced to either a religious or philosophical argument. It is a film that must be experienced within the context of each viewer’s sense of the human condition and the need for gentleness and companionship that gives human existence whatever sweetness it is capable of possessing. La Strada—The Road is perhaps a too obvious metaphor for the journey we are all embarked upon; a journey in which how we treat others is inevitably the final measure of our own happiness

Reeve Speaks on Afghanistan

November 14, 2009
An Audience of One
By Richard Reeves

REad at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/14/an_audience_of_one_99153.html

LOS ANGELES -- Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.

It is very hard to get to chat with any president. But any president has to know what is in the big three of American newspapers (or their Web sites): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. And those papers right now are filled with shouting and whispering to President Obama. The latest shout, a big one, is the leaking to the Times of cables to the State Department from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who also happens to be a former military commander of American troops in the country.

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That would be ambassador and former general Karl Eikenberry, who told the president that there might be no point in sending more young men and women in uniform to win an unwinnable war in a vast country largely ungoverned or governed by unfathomable corruption. Eikenberry's "classified" words were obviously meant as a countermove designed to check the "classified" request for 40,000 more American troops by the current military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, leaked to The Washington Post last month.

That is the way the game is played and always has been in Washington. I once asked President Bill Clinton whether he got more critical information from daily Central Intelligence Agency reports and briefings or from reading the Times. "From the Times," he answered. "Although occasionally the CIA and the other intelligence agencies are ahead on timing."

For people like me, who believe we should get out of Afghanistan ASAP, the Eikenberry report surfaced in the nick of time -- just as Obama appears ready to make long-term strategy decisions about our military involvement in Afghanistan. What is going on there is a civil war, a political war, and we have learned time and again that all the firepower in the world cannot stop people who want to destroy each other on their home territory. The Afghans have been in those unforgiving mountains for thousands of years, and they will be there for thousands more after we leave. So it does not really matter when we go.

Besides, our own people at home want us to get out, even if the war is being fought by a volunteer army, and to most Americans that means it is like another National Football League game. Our soldiers are professionals putting on a television show, same as the warriors of the NFL.

"All the polling I've ever seen," said William Schneider of CNN, "tells me one thing: Americans hate political wars. They want to win or get out."

Schneider and I were together at a forum called "Obama's Afghanistan: The Media and the War," sponsored by the Center on Communication Leadership at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He went on to say: "We're talking now about persuading the population rather than destroying the enemy. That is the definition of a political war. We are taking sides in another country's civil war."

That message should have gotten through to presidents who ran the war in Vietnam, or it got through too late.

Another panelist, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, put it this way: "More troops mean more casualties, which means less public support."

Morton Abramowitz, who was director of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the 1980s when we were training and supplying the mujahedeen fighting and defeating Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan, offered more than a little insight into what is happening now in the same place and sometimes with the same people: "First, we would not be there or in Iraq if we had a draft and people were worried about their children. Second, can anyone tell me why it takes so long to train Afghan soldiers. The Taliban seems to have no trouble training them in a few weeks."

I hope the audience of one is listening to words like that and has the political courage to break his own campaign promises about saving Afghanistan. Save them from what, themselves?

TOM FRIEDMAN'S DECEPTIVE PLAN AND THE FRUSTRATING MIDDLE EAST

Tom Friedman is at his deceptive best today (Sunday November 8, 2009)writing his NY Times op-ed piece where-in he throws up his hands in seeming disgust with the lack of progress by the Arab-Israeli players in the interminable Middle East drama. Mr. Friedman, the notorious "liberal" Iraq-War supporter, and often considered "biased" as a commentator on the Middle East is good at this. His article calls for the west to "get out of the picture" and let the "players" get on with it, as he obscures underlying facts and ignores "the elephant in the room"-- our staunch support for only one of the actors in the controversy. In: "Call White House, Ask For Barak", November 7, 2009, NY Times, Friedman concludes that the "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore."(See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08friedman.html)

Friedman states that for all our efforts in that region "the respective leaders continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price. ---Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

He adds, "Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix. ----It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.---If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.” (op cit).

Is Tom kidding us? He convieniently forgets that we are the Israeli facilitator. He begs that his readership has forgotten how we continuously support Israel in the UN with our veto power in the Security Council. How supply the billions of dollars annually to Israeli coffers each year to support their massive military. That we provide secret satellite imagery on their neighbors, and look the other way when they use that information to attack potential adversaries, or step out-side of the norm of international behavior in their treatment of occupied populations. Is he calling for us to abandon our policy of ignoring their nuclear arsenal, and protecting them from often-deserved criticism, of maintaining a cruel and inhumane blockade of Gaza, and most recently of supporting their efforts to bury the Goldstone Report? No mention of these issues in Friedman's piece. Does he urge us to change our behavior toward Israel? No these would remain in force as we "turned our backs". Friedman wants only to push these unfortunate facts under the rug and abandon our rightous effort to seek justice for the oppressed in Palestine.

However, Friedman's piece does have an element of truth in it.

A little benign neglect from the US would be good for the Israelis--- were we to really engage in such behavior. For all our efforts in that part of the world, we give but, unevenly---and hand out only lip-service for the Palestinians. Were we to actually "turn our backs" on the injustice in that part of the world-- the Palestinians would not miss our efforts. But Israel would! But that is not what Mr. Friedman is proposing here. Putting the problems of the region on the "back burner" while containing to support Israel (as we do now) would just maintain the status quo. The Mr. Netanyahu would be happy with that..his nation holds all of the pieces of the pie and have no inclination to share it. And we are helping them do it.

Were the US to actually rescind the "Israel support system" that tiny but powerful nation might actually be forced to consider peace as an alternative. But don't expect anything like that soon.

Get the picture?

rjk

NEWS SNIPPETS FROM AFGHANISTAN ON THIS DAY

CiVILIANS KILLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHAN TROOPS SHELLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHANS FEARFUL OF MORE US TROOPS, OBAMA'S MAN IN AFGHANISTAN MISSING IN ACTION, TWO US TROOPS LOST SOMEWHERE, SEARCHERS KILL AND MAIM 25 AFGHANISTANIS

Snippets of News on Afghanistan:November 7, 2009

The stories emanating from Afghanistan today give one pause.

1. From the NY Times: Title: Prospect of more US troops worries Afghans.
2. From the NY Times: Title: NATO Airstrike Reported to Kill 7 Afghan Soldiers (by accident, while searching for two missing US troops…reported dead by Taliban, while 25 others were reported hurt or injured.)
3. From the LA Times: Title: Nine Civilians Killed in Helmand Province by NATO rocket attack. Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces said today they were investigating reports that nine civilians were killed in a rocket strike aimed at insurgents in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The incident came despite new efforts by international forces to avoid civilian casualties and make the Afghan population feel safe.

Dozens of angry villagers carried the bodies today through the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, before they were dispersed by police firing guns in the air, witnesses said. ( Apparently civilians harvesters working in a field were mistaken for Taliban planting a bomb by NATO troops. )
Such incidents have fueled rising anger against international forces.

"I'm sure if the situation continues like this, one day everyone will declare holy war against the infidels," said Anwar Khan, who heads the Helmand provincial council, raising the specter of Afghans turning against the U.S.-led coalition.

Same article: In the east, a U.S. service member was killed when insurgents attacked a patrol Wednesday afternoon, military officials said. They provided no further details.

Afghanistan News Center: more troops may not be the answer, says Obama adviser
More troops may not be the answer to Nato's Afghanistan problems, a key adviser to President Barack Obama has said.

By Telegraph (UK) reporter 07 Nov 2009

National security adviser James Jones warned that extra troops could just be "swallowed up" in the deserts and mountains where troops are fighting. He was speaking as the president ponders a request to send 40,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, a decision which could prove one of the most crucial of his presidency.

Holbrook Missing in Action in Afghanistan?
Richard Holbrooke’s future unclear as fallout from Karzai rift reaches Washington
See "The Times" (UK) November 7, 2009, Giles Whittell in Washington

Richard Holbrooke has been called many things in his long career: diplomat, peacemaker, bruiser and, in the court of President Hamid Karzai, “the Devil”.

In Kabul a week after it became clear that President Karzai would win a second term without a second round of voting, the most conspicuous truth about President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is his absence.

The man who forced Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table and longed to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State was instead handed the toughest regional portfolio on the planet at the start of President Obama’s term.

He has since hired dozens of advisers and set out goals on reforming everything from Afghanistan’s poppy fields to its notoriously porous prisons. But his critics say he has failed to broker a stable political settlement with President Karzai, largely because relations between the two have broken down. The result is whispering in Washington about how much longer he can retain his job.

“It is a typical Washington parlour game about who’s up, who’s down,” a disdainful State Department spokesman said last month. If the game had a name it would be “Where in the world is Holbrooke?”, and the answers are revealing.

When Senator John Kerry was immersed in ultimately successful negotiations with President Karzai in Kabul last month, Mr Holbrooke was in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke was with her. Then, instead of including Kabul in his itinerary, he flew home. Between those trips he held a rare open briefing widely regarded as intended to show that he had not been sidelined by Mr Kerry.

Asked about his personal relations with President Karzai, Mr Holbrooke called them “fine . . . correct . . . appropriate”, and said he was looking forward to seeing the Afghan leader “in a few days”. More than a few days — and a dramatic climb-down by President Karzai’s main opponent — have passed since, and Mr Holbrooke remains in Washington.

“The optics are not great surrounding him right now,” one fellow diplomat said yesterday. A close Washington confidant of Mr Holbrooke’s admitted: “It would be understandable if people thought he was somewhat missing in action.” His staff retort that during the most intense US foreign strategy review since Vietnam, he needs to be in Washington — advising his immediate boss, Mrs Clinton, but also briefing President Obama privately and without her knowledge.

Yet the case against Mr Holbrooke involves more than geography. He has “needlessly antagonised” the one man with whom he should have cultivated a rapport, aides to a former US Ambassador to Kabul say. He has also misused six months, from April to September, that should have been spent planning for the dire political contingencies that he knew were looming.

Mr Holbrooke confronted President Karzai over his failure to arrest the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum last year and encouraged opposition figures to run against him. In August he refused to join in President Karzai’s celebrations after his first-round election win, insisting that a second round would be required.

By some accounts this inadvertently sabotaged an opposition move to unite behind a single candidate, and it took Senator Kerry to make President Karzai accept the idea of a second ballot.
Team Holbrooke, meanwhile, is accused of having a confused decision-making apparatus with memos and analysis more notable for enthusiasm than acuity. Mr Holbrooke’s lack of knowledge of Afghanistan has also been noted in Kabul and Washington.

“Somehow the political element never got it together and said, ‘What is the Plan B and Plan C?’ an ally of the envoy told The Times. “‘What do we do if there’s a legitimacy crisis?’” Faced with just such a crisis, many in Washington now believe that Mr Holbrooke will have to take the blame.

Get the picture?


rjk