However, culinary issues aside, as I was driving into the burg because Mrs. AXE wanted more cat food -- the monsters turned up their noses at the leftovers, showing cats are smarter than people -- and a brownie pan, when the phone went off. (I have a lengthy bitch about the inability of my phone to permanently link with the damn on-board blue tooth, but we'll let that pass.) My buddy the GINORMOUS quality guy wanted to let me know that one of my old team's six month old grand daughter had died in her sleep. My partner knew that would bother me a lot -- the gal had doted on the grand daughter, and when the husband and wife were having strife, actually offered to take the child and raise her; she had moved into the spare bedroom and was working full-time and being a live-in baby sitter. The child was happy, healthy and well loved. I now have someone who used to work for me, and is now in a lot of pain. And me, I'm eating sushi and complaining about it. Somehow, perspective approaches us and then walks away...
Which leads me to the trip that Secretary of Defense Gates just finished up to Iraq and Afghanistan. HuffPO has a piece on it as well as Dulcinea Dowd's coverage. Gates is really looking like possibly Twitsheet de la Dweeb's sole intelligent move as President. Unfortunately, he and the president he now serves seem to have been dealt a really horrid hand. And, in this game of poker, the option of folding is just not there. Yet, the Iraqis and the Afghanis seem to be making that option more attractive daily. As she puts it, "Puppets just aren’t what they used to be. Or maybe a trillion dollars doesn’t buy the same felicitous level of obsequiousness it once did."
First of all, Karzai undercut Obama's surge than leave strategy with this...Afghanistan is like the Hotel California, boys...you can check out, but never leave. As Dowd explains, "Needling his American sugar daddy, the Afghan peacock observed: “For another 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources.” Well, the Iraqis at least have oil to fight over. Afghan's have one realistic cash crop -- opium poppies -- and no alternatives. Left to their own devices, they'd have gone back to butt fucking each other, playing a version of rugby on horseback with a dead sheep, and stealing from each other. But, the Russians, the CIA and the Taliban screwed up that paradigm. There is no other -- as the Romans learned with their tame barbarians in the late empire, once they get used to being paid off and defended, they expect it to continue. Ms. Dowd describes it this way..."Gates and his generals in Afghanistan talked a lot last week about “partnering” with and “mentoring” the Afghan Army and police. But given the Flintstones nature of the country, it’s more basic. Americans have to teach the vast majority of Afghan recruits to read and write before they can get to security training. It’s hard to arrest people if you can’t read them their rights and take names..." We need to remember we're talking about central Asia here. Baksheesh is as much a part of the culture as thuggery, buggery and illiteracy. Dowd notes that Gates discovered on this trip that the Afghan army is the low bidder on salaries with the Taliban. Since I suspect that to Omar the tribesman trying to figure out how to feed his family and sheep, the Afghan government and the Taliban don't seem that much different, and in fact, he probably feels more comfortable with the Taliban given their attitude toward women, and praying five times a day, and so on. It's really pretty simple...
Then Mullah Malaki skipped a meeting with Gates. Seems he's having a security crisis. The AXE has noted the various bombings and revenge killings going on in Iraq, and has failed to comment on it because " WHAT THE HELL DID WE EXPECT TO FUCKING HAPPEN?" Dulcinea points out that the Iraqi Prez did agree to a 0730 meeting on Friday, which was spun like a bunch of reused cotton batting used to make your next shirt from India to seem like a victory. Malaki likes to sleep late. Stress. And hookers, I expect.
Mainly hookers.
Now, Dulcinea appears to like Gates, and frankly, so do I. Compared to Rumsfeld, Homey the Clown would be an improvement by several orders of magnitude, but sheeeeeiiiiitttt, this guy knows what he is talking about. Although, anyone who would leave a gig like running Texas A&M to pick up the pieces has the sense of duty and responsibility that I can only admire. I've commented before that I like Obama because he's undoubtedly brilliant and has a sense of irony that he can't help but show. Gates appears to be somewhat similar..."His form of ego is not to show ego. When a much-anticipated trip to see an Army Stryker brigade in Kandahar was canceled because of fog, he dryly told us: “As Clint Eastwood said, ‘A man’s got to know his limitations." He says that what he thinks he brings to the table is common sense, according to Ms Dowd; he isn't trying to prove anything. More to the point, he says something that strikes me as very true, and thus likely to be ignored: “Anybody who reads history has to approach these things with some humility because you can’t know,” he said. “Nobody knows what the last chapter ever looks like.”
Personally, I think I know how it all ends for us, the Afghans, the Pakistanis and the Iraqis...poorly. The details remain to be fleshed out, and people like Obama and Gates will try to minimize the damage, but ultimately this just sucks. And, as I put the macro into perspective and the micro into perspective, my dislike of sushi is so trivial that for penance I should force myself to eat more of it. But, I won't. My friend's loss will trouble me and I will continue to reflect on just how lousy things are, but I will not do penance for not eating sushi. Again.
By the way, on Saturday Gail Collins addressed the contracting mess, that really irks me. First of all, my work for GINORMOUS was as a member of a well-honed contracting project, and we generally did what the government wanted us to do very well. However, there is a problem with the changing model that probably had something to do with my leaving and undoubtedly will have a lot to do with re-structuring that paradigm. Contractors don't really make sense. She explains why, very graphically indeed.
Do you remember the scandal about the U.S. Embassy guards in Kabul, Afghanistan, who got naked and held wild hazing rituals? ...I am bringing this up because I want to talk about government contracting. When you venture into topics like that, it’s always a good idea to try to begin with an orgy.
She and the Times have uncovered a real boondoggle here that won't get a lot of attention but is very close to reality, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. As clusterfucks go, this one is amazing, and not just the nonsense with the guards. Turns out there were a number of professional soldiers in addition to the clowns who went through the drunken games of ass-licking and body shots...Gurkhas. Well, I got to meet a few Gurkha officers and I'd trust them over any of our home grown mercenaries. However, only the officers generally speak English. The average Nepalese tribesman doesn't learn English unless he gets shipped off to one of the Royal Regiments. So, this allows a small additional income stream for Nepal, but they don't freaking speak English. The Americans appear to be a bunch of incredible rejects. The company has been threatened with the loss of the contract, and a new contract will be bid and let in 2010. June, 2010. The Gurkhas still don't speak English, and there's no reason to assume the guards have gotten any better. They're just quieter...
Ms. Collins sums up the entire "war by private contractor" better than just about anything I've read; the only thing that does it better in my mind is the John Cusack/Maria Tome tour de force called War Inc. ( I seldom buy movies, and as I get older I have fewer I want to see again. However, that one is well worth it. Grosse Point Blank grown up...and taken to a whole 'nother level.)
When did we decide this was a good plan?...Let’s pretend for a minute that it is not stupendously irresponsible to let private contractors stand in for our military in wildly sensitive and dangerous situations abroad. Even if it was a terrific idea, we would still have to ask whether huge government agencies, which frequently have a difficult time finding cost-effective ways to order a hammer, know how to purchase services that actually work...These days, there’s virtually nothing the government doesn’t contract out. At the height of the war in Iraq, there were 190,000 contracted personnel taking part in the effort — 23 times the number of allied troops who were lending a hand..."This is the real surge, with a dwindling number of overseers riding herd." There’s no reason to believe the government has the capacity to determine how well all these private contractors are doing their jobs. And it’s doubtful that if the government did know, it could do much about it.
Yeah, the lack of a plan B should really bother people. Oh, the DOD has no plan B. Or if they do, they sure aren't telling the contractors. Which is fine, I guess...maybe they think the contractors will figure it out and do what's necessary to keep their work. However, my experience makes me think probably not. As the poet says, "Some of them were dreamers, and some of them were fools/making plans and talking about the future..." with a heat seeking missile headed up our butts.
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