the defeatists!

Guessing their attitude won't bother Bob too much but,

It says something sad about the company I keep. 

 

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

 

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m in love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed --Bob Dylan

(FYI, links are mainly to music!)

On Saturday night, my wife announced that she needed more Alfredo sauce for dinner and I was to go get it. Fine, into the car I went and wandered into the local grocery store. Found the stuff she wanted, a few other things except things I wanted, of course and went to pay. The guy at the checkout who's about my age --60s -- asked me what I thought about the Super Bowl. I immediately announced that I was some kinda communist by saying, "Don't know, don't really care, not that interested." I wasn't; I respect Peyton Manning's skill, of course and I thought the safety for the Seahawks got a raw deal on the kefluffle about that final play in the San Jose 49s game, but in general since my last tour in Germany, I just don't have that much interest in it as a sport or spectacle. I'm very interested in Rugby because I've played it and the game is far better regulated than American Football. A flagrant foul that puts an opposing player at risk is often rewarded as in Soccer with a red card and a couple of weeks or more off. The players are less armoured than they are in baseball, and the sport is faster and far more demanding. For the record, Bath beat Leciester this weekend in the Anglo-Welsh LV tournament while France beat England, Italy almost upset Wales and Ireland handled Scotland in a really great game. Brian O'Driscoll, at 35, had several assists as well as making 13 tackles. He's retiring after this year which given the nature of the game makes sense, but the fact is the Irish Outside Center is looking and playing like he did five or six years ago. 

OK, who cares. Well, that's why I didn't catch any of the Super Bowl except the Budweiser stolen dog retrieved by Clydesdales commercial and the loan Denver touchdown. The Denver team handled the loss like pros, and the various scripts and memes have played out. OK, who cares....I didn't. However, I immediately began hearing about the Obama-O'Reilly nonsense and then that Bob Dylan had come out in favor of roasting Asian babies as a way of supplementing the world's protein supply. Curious...this got even more interesting as my Malcontent and Defeatist coven kicked in with complaints that Dylan was irrelevant, had been arrogant, and was a jerk because he said "Germany can make our beer." ( In fairness to the beer thing, the guy upset is both a beer connoisseur and a wannabe micro brewer.) Since I'm the sole Dylan worshipper at that stable, I had to react. So, I pointed out that it was a fucking commercial, not a new version of Luther's 95 Theses or a repudiation of the First Amendment. If you haven't seen a Chrysler commercial for the last couple of years, you've missed people like John Varvatos -- fashion guru to the rock world and hip -- and Iggy Pop --grey eminence of the Punk Rock movement which is odd  since he long predates punk! -- as well as Snoop Dog back when Iaccoca was involved just prior to the sale to Mercedes in about 2000 all making Chrysler commercials. Eminem made a damned Chrysler commercial for the 2012 Super Bowl. All of them have been about how wonderful the Chrysler brand is, calling up memories of Ricardo Montalban babbling about rich Corinthian leather in the Chrysler New Yorker. Dylan's commercial was different. 

Dylan's approach was different -- this was a traditional, lunch bucket, pro-union commercial. Dylan was not on the screen when they showed the Chrysler trademark and the shot of their Chrysler 200; in fact, the only functioning vehicle I recall was James Dean screaming down the road on what I believe was a Triumph motorcycle. While he did a voice over, the screen showed shots of Hemi-engines and his hands fiddling around with his guitar, what looked like a Gibson Jumbo acoustic. When he moved through the scene, he was kind of channeling an old David Leary commercial for Nike and kind of channeling the Boondock Saints and kind of channeling Johnny Cash and kind of channeling himself in myth and in "Duquesne Whistle." Most people who work with their hands for a living -- like my GM autoworker brother-in-law, Murph Cowmeadow -- loved it and are having trouble figuring what the problem was. Well, there really wasn't one...

Well, I enjoy Alex Wagner's show, but she went on a humorless politically correct rant that we could have skipped. Basically, Dylan's paean to the ingenuity, history and spirit of the American worker in general and autoworkers in Detroit in particular  was "jingoistic:" his argument simplistic because "Asia is not a country," and so on. She made the comment in the beginning that Dylan was "once legendary..." Yeah, she needs to slap her producers, because this piece just made her look like the progressive version of people like Anne Coulter or Michelle Bachman. She talked about how Germany was an economic powerhouse and how Switzerland is an economic powerhouse so it was absurd to reduce them to brew masters and watchmakers. And then there was Asia...

Hilarious. The script said, "So, let Germany make our beer, let Switzerland make our watches, let Asia assemble our phones but we'll make our cars." When he said that, he was in the union hall, playing pool and standing with the folks who were playing, and probably were Chrysler autoworkers.So much much the "Progressive" take on the commercial, along with claims that Dylan is a sell-out. Well, that's funny; when you think you've figured out what Dylan is doing and going to do next, forget it, he's faked you out again. However, the fact that Chrysler did such a positive commercial and showcased an authentic American voice and American workers made his song which provided the musical theme really fit --" Things have changed..." Watch and learn.

The other commercial which does not have people upset had a beer terrorizing a store in search for Chobani Greek Yogurt, with the Dylan song from 1966's Blonde on Blonde, "I Want You" playing in the background. Of course, yogurt is more favorably seen on the left than cars except hybrids, and Greek style yogurt is definitely not jingoistic. Plus, the Bear not only gets his yogurt but he befuddles the people who've ruined his habitat and makes a fool out of the law. So, I guess they'll give him a pass on this one. although I did see at least one guy complain that he sold out one of his best songs for yogurt. For the record, I've never heard anyone describe "I Want You" as one of his best songs, even on the Blonde on Blonde Album. But...

Well, they called Dylan a traitor for plugging in his guitar in England, which resulted ultimately in the basic statement of rebellious rock and roll ("Play Fucking Loud!") and the classic bit "An anarchist -- I want a cigarette; give the anarchist a cigarette. They had to think about it to come up with that name." Think you've pegged the guy, and he does something else entirely. That's kind of what makes a legend -- people want to put you in a box, and you avoid it...almost without trying.

But Alex...the legend is still legendary and will be for as long as there are pissed young men with a sense of ironic humor and Gibson guitars.

Quaint and Curious Costumes that We're Called Upon to Wear

 

Yeah buddy...

The Army Times has an interesting article in today's Daily Brief that brought me back to a better time -- well, for me. I was younger, healthier and far more optimistic about the future of the nation and my Army. Now I'm older, broken and beaten down physically, and a bit less optimistic about the whole thing. I was always cynical, but as you age as a cynic, you realize that you can err in lots of ways...people do amazing things, good and bad, important and meaningless. Entropy increases, but no where does it say we have to go along gratefully with that process.

If you think you're going in the right direction, turn around...

Anyway, the services added reflective belts to PT uniforms a few years ago, and for a variety of reasons, the regulations for the wear of these things have become -- shall we say -- somewhat excessive. If you're running at night or at dawn or at sunset, the reflective belt may let some motorist realize that he's going entirely too fast. If you're in the gym, it's just another thing to get in the way or get in trouble for not having when the gym Nazis decide to exert their authority. The current generation of Army uniforms are supposed to have some reflective qualities by design, but like the old IR defeating capability of the BDUs the Army prefers not to test them in practice. So, on the roads good idea; in periods of bad visibility, good idea; in sunlight, inside or in a freaking swimming pool or something, really stupid idea.

Now, the Air Force has figured this out, and has dropped the requirement to wear the silly things. Fine. But, the Army seems to want to make it even more complicated; the Uniform Regulation, AR670-1 is due for a revision, but that's running late...which makes me think that berets and blues may be on the way out if they can figure out a justification besides "these were a really bad idea..."Anyway, the regulation makes the wear of the things one of those elements that the installation commander has control of..which in reality probably means the CSM -- all of whom by definition are rational, balanced and totally non-egocentric megalomaniacs, it says so in the regulation! -- or maybe the General's wife. Anyway, no problems here. ( I remember bobbing and treading water at the position of "Present Arms" in one of the Fort Clayton swimming pools during Reveille, so of course this is a given...)

That’s right — the fly boys, on Friday, 86’d their reflective belts, at least when it comes to physical training. Service leaders, apparently riding a radical streak, also said airmen can wear black socks and any color of athletic shoe with the PT uniform. While this does not exactly push the boundaries of good order and discipline, soldiers would see such a move as an unauthorized use of common sense. The issue is a running joke among troops who are required to wear this dastardly device whenever in PT gear. Even in broad daylight. Or indoors. Or on a parade field. Or in a swimming pool, one might assume.

Just do a search for “Army reflective belt” and you will be treated to an endless library of memes and satire. Here’s the irony: Army Regulation 670-1 isn’t as rigid on reflective belts as one might think. Its guidance is that commanders determine whether the belt is required. But that policy doesn’t seem to translate very well.Leaders of the 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea in August said unit leaders would decide whether soldiers needed to wear the belt during physical training. One day later, 8th Army Command Sgt. Maj. Ray Devens shot down the new-found freedom. Changes to AR 670-1 are in the works. In fact, they were expected one year ago. But nowhere has there been any indication that reflective belt rules would lessen...

I don't know CSM Devens but I suspect no one bothered to staff this thing with him, and as soon as the division decided to do one thing, he got calls from so many people either wanting the same thing or wondering if this might be a North Korean plot that he decided to simplify things. This is not a big deal, until someone makes it a big deal, and I suspect the CSM was just trying to keep it simple; on the other hand, he is the MACOM Command Sergeant Major so... It is Korea, and I can see some protocol weenie getting uptight because "what will the Koreans think?" if the soldiers aren't uniform in PT gear or some nonsense; maybe the J3 Safety Guy was concerned that without the reflective vests, the Koreans will figure it's ok to run into formations on the roads in villes because...they can't see them?

I checked out the idea of memes and found more than a few. I don't think that this is an example of why the Army doesn't win wars, because in general we do; however this issue is probably an example of how we can make it unnecessarily complex. It also is an example of why so many pretty good soldiers decide to do something else, and why so many ignorant idiots in all services stay as long as they possible can and climb over the smarter, less compliant and more mission focused types using ropes and ladders made of silly rules, useless requirements and shit that's broken by design. The author of this piece had ridden his bike for 18 miles around the greater Fort Drum area on his day off and was pedaling back to the gate,  ID card at the ready when the gate guard got upset that he wasn't wearing his reflective belt with his riding stuff...most of which, as I recall, is reflective. Soldier was told that the next time, NEXT TIME, he wouldn't be allowed to enter the post... Soldier was polite and cooperative (been there in the face of ignorance and I suspect most of us have) and then heading home, he thought about what had just happened...

 Here I was a guy who joined the Army out of a sense of duty, a married adult, with kids, a former cop who arrested people for real crimes–never because American citizens weren’t wearing reflective material–being told by some retired military fellow longing for his glory days that I couldn’t get back to the place where I lay my head because I didn’t have a green belt on.  Yeah, I know.  He was just doing his job.  Which is why I nodded my head and rode off without arguing with him.  Then it occurred to me that a general officer probably made the dumb reflective belt rule.  Someone responsible for an entire division in the most deployed unit in US military history actually made a rule this inane.  All the same time, General McChrystal was issuing rules of engagement in Afghanistan that said we couldn’t fire illumination rounds during firefights at night if we thought there was the smallest chance an empty illumination canister could fall on a farmer’s hut.  Never mind that we can’t see the enemy that’s shooting at us.

And so as I see it, this is a symptom of why America can’t finish off its modern day wars.  Its military is incredibly small minded.  We have the brightest, shiniest toys any Soldier could hope for.  We just have no idea what we’re doing strategically.  As I once said to an analyst buddy of mine in Afghanistan: “Stupid people place equal importance on all things.” (My emphasis)

IF IT MAKES SENSE, DON"T DO IT!

A long time ago, I was the G3 Training Division Sergeant Major in I Corps at Fort Lewis. Our G3 SGM was James Voyles, known to a lot of soldiers as Ranger Voyles or Pappy. Contrary to rumor, Pappy had notbeen a Ranger since Rogers formed the original regiment -- his Dad had been a Ranger climbing the cliffs at Normandy, and he'd eventually been CSM of 2/75th. Health and politics conspired to get him into G3s in the 80s and he had been the G3 SGM in the 4th Infantry and then in I Corps. He was notorious for telling people in pretty straight forward language what he thought while doing everything he could to take care of any soldier around him who needed anything. I think the soldiers who came up under Pappy Voyles -- officer and enlisted -- got a great education in what wearing the uniform meant. A great soldier and a fine man.

Pappy was a stone cold killer, all 5'5" of him. When I knew him he looked sort of like St Nick without the beard. If you walked in his office, it was "What you want, Ranger Farrell? Sit down, have some of this cake my wife baked for me..."and then he'd teach, coach, train and mentor. Exactly what Senior NCOs were supposed to do. (For the record, I was not a Ranger but if you worked for Voyles, you got called that...regardless of rank. Unless he was trying to pump you up to a superior or about to kill you.)

 

Now, we went through a run of musical chairs for CGs at Fort Lewis during this time, until they settled on one. This particular General was a Citadel guy which made our HHC Commander who had been a Captain in G3 training before being promoted and who was a great guy and an excellent officer nervous because "he might be one of those Citadel guys" -- which, since Al was a Citadel grad himself was intriguing. When I asked for some more information, he told me that a lot of the older generation of Citadel grads had strange obsessions about things like uniforms.

 

Anyway, the CG seemed pretty normal. His previous assignments had included a Light Infantry Division Command and Command of the Infantry School so he was very fitness oriented. Healthy stuff appeared in the Corps snack bar, for example. But then, he decided to have HHC I Corps PT which was interesting...we'd done it before, of course, with what amounted to a battalion plus of old farts running around but he wanted us to do this once a month. Fine.

 

Well, it was Fort Lewis in March; not exactly cold but humid as all hell and the old Champion PT uniforms were soaking up moisture since it was Fort Lewis in March and raining at or near dawn when we fell in. Formed up and took off around the installation -- CG set a good but reasonable pace, and except for the heat it wasn't a bad run. Of course, the uniform had raglan sleeves so you could push them up and a zippered front so you could ventilate it. You could take off the watch cap and carry the gloves using reverse tricks to reduce the heat. And we did...got back to the start and the steam steadily rising from us all made the parade ground even foggier.

This place sucks...let's live here!

We were going through the ritual for ending one of these -- stretching and then falling out -- when the General's driver snuck up to the company commander to tell him that the general wanted to address the troops. Company commander had the First Sergeant form up the company ( Poor Guy --A job I was considered for and dodged gratefully, by the way -- had a couple of brigade HHCs along the way and that was enough of that nonsense!) and the CG took over. Hilarity ensued...

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am appalled. Look around (we were at attention, but what the hell, eh?) what do you see that's wrong? " Well, it was dark and raining with some glimmers in the east so we could kind of see between the fog and steam from our bodies..."None of you are in uniform! When you come out for PT, you will finish in the same uniform you started with, with the zipper of the jacket no lower than 3/4s and the sleeves down' if you start with cap and gloves, you end with cap and gloves! This will be the rule installation wide! When you do PT, you will do it looking like me! Exactly like me! Got it?"

 

Of course, Pappy was in the Platoon Sergeant's position and I was in the center of the first rank, so he could hear me. "Pappy.." "Shut the &^&*( up Ranger Farell!" "Pappy, when do we get pretty little lime green belts like the General is wearing..." " Shut the (*&*&^( up before you start me laughing, damnit Farrell!" After we were dismissed by the general (Yeah, "Dismissed" not returned to the First Sergeant or the Platoon Sergeants, but what the hell...we understood.), Pappy told me that "As soon as he started talking, I knew I was in trouble and that one of you wise asses was going to jump in with something that would make me laugh. Figured it'd be you..."

 

Make More Beautimous! 

Well, it took a while for them to issue belts to everybody, and it didn't happen while I was still being all I could be. But, I'm glad to see that nothing changes really...and I'm sure that there are First Sergeants and Sergeant Majors and W4s and W5s all over the Army chortling about this too... And it was interesting to note that the General in Question and Pappy were inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame in the class of 2010.

Neither Civil nor quiet and seldom productive

Earlier in the week many tribesmen fought against the government, following the arrest of the Sunni lawmaker and the dismantling of the protest tents, but when Al Qaeda returned many quickly switched sides. “We don’t want to be like Syria,” said Sheikh Omar al-Asabi, who led a group of fighting men in an area east of Falluja. For many men of Anbar over the last several years, fighting has been a constant, even as the enemy has shifted. “We fought the Americans, and we fought the Maliki army, and now we are fighting Qaeda,” said Firas Mohammed, 28, who is an engineer when he is not at war. “We will not allow any outsider to come here and impose his will on us.”  -- NY Times, January 3, 2013 

Falluja and Ramadi are the Iraq wars' on-going versions of Stalingrad, Hue and the Battle of Hurtgen Forest. These were brutal battles, and while individuals and units of the Marines and the Army covered themselves with glory, they did so at a tremendous cost in blood, treasure, truama and moral authority. There is nothing measured or glorious inherent in battle - but urban conflict and clearing cities of insurgents, aggrieved locals and perceived threats are inevitably brutal, costly and vicious. Anbar province was not so much an al Qaeda issue as a Sunni issue. As the times points out, a third of US casualties in the Iraq war occurred here.  Suspicions of US use of tactical nukes, white phosphorous rounds as anti-personnel weapons, and other complaints justified or not indicated that this was a problem area. Then, of course, Anbar province became the home of the Sunni Awakening, the proof that Petraeus was the greatest military genius since Giap and that COIN was the greatest thing since C-rations. Yeah -- it proved that if you gave the Sunnis in Iraq a certain level of autonomy, armed them, bribed their leaders and then let them go about their business, outsiders would have very little sway. Outsiders being broadly defined as Shiites, Qaeda, and anyone else except those bearing gifts of money, weapons and stuff...

One thing we should have learned and that should be mandatory headings on briefing papers and slide shows throughout the high end of the military industrial complex anytime someone decides to do something in the Middle East and Central Asia is a quote from an anonymous British officer briefing a bunch of American officers on the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the resulting unpleasantness during the 90s --" You need to remember that they are all guilty bastards!" That can be the top heading; at the bottom, the legend should quote Egyptian diplomat Tasheen Bashir's quip on the Arab World that  " When the chips are down, there is only one real place in the entire area – Egypt. All the rest – forgive me – are tribes with flags. " with a parenthetical sub-text that reads "Who Really Hate Each Other!"

Of course, what's happening in Egypt now should probably make us stop for a second and evaluate the mess more stringently -- frankly, Egypt is pretty much shattering. The less homogeneous Arab states are in absolute turmoil -- Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine. In a March 2013 in Foreign Policy titled Tribes With Flags: How the Arab Spring Has Exposed the Myth of Arab Statehood AaronDavid Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Institute makes some very interesting arguments that should have been made and listened to ten years ago: 

...it may be time to ponder another proposition: In the wake of the Arab Spring, we're witnessing the beginning of the end of another Arab illusion -- the functional and coherent Arab state. 

Forget democracies. What's at stake here is basic coherence and governance (My emphasis)

....understand that however empathetic we may want to be, it shouldn't willfully blind us to certain realities either. And perhaps one of the most disturbing is the accelerating trend -- long present in the Arab world -- toward decentralization and weak state control. The political turbulence of the past few years has only deepened this lack of coherence. And it raises serious questions about whether even basic governance is possible...

To move beyond the challenges they now face, Arab states need three things they seem unable to produce.First, they will need leaders willing and able to think and act in truly national terms, transcending their narrow sectarian, corporatist, family, and religious affiliations. Name one leader in any Arab country that fits that description.Second, Arab states need inclusive and legitimate institutions that aren't hostage to political intrigue or playthings of the elites that compete for power. Their primary objective should be representing the nation's citizens -- not the perpetuation of their own perquisites and those of the ruling elite.And third, the Arab world needs a mechanism for negotiating differences and accommodating polarization without it spilling into the streets. As the recent riots in Egypt and the killing of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid show, the alternative to this is violence and murder.

Since March, of course, things have continued to go down hill. The Times article cites the presence of a Hezbollah Office in Anbar, which makes as much since and is about as sensitive to local realities as putting a US Marine Corps recruiting office there. Egypt has been doing its continuous remake of the Battle of Algiers, Syria is looking less like a revolution than a Capone reply from the Chicago of the 20s, and on and on and on. Miller points out that the monarchies seem to be holding their own but the other Arab nations are pretty much bordering between anarchy and...well, different anarchy. He also reminds us that the potent political states in the region are non-Arab: Israel, Turkey and Iran. It's probably worth pointing out that all three have strong, somewhat dictatorial governments; in Israel's case, the more conservative religious parties have the ascendancy; Turkey is starting to struggle with the conflict between a modernist but Islamic government in a secular state; Iran is dealing with issues related in some ways to the tension between the Persian culture and fundamentalist Shiite approaches to governance and law. ( I'm tempted to go all neo-Marxist on describing the problems the three nations face, but that's for another time. Still, the conflict between secular and religious pressures sure looks like an iteration of thesis/antithesis to me). However, compared to who's running the neighborhood, who's the boss of me sort of issues facing Eygpt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon et al, these are sophisticated problems concerning application of law and governance. The chaotic nations of the Arab world are faced with trying to put out the fires and get the blood off the floor while burying the dead -- when everything is going to hell in a hand basket, is really sucks to run out of baskets.

So, it's reasonable to say that the prognosis is not great for the outbreak of region wide Jeffersonian Democracy. Anbar Province  is a particularly nasty reminder of a totally bankrupt -- morally, philosophically and practically -- approach to working our will or the will of any outside agency in the region but it's not unique. It's just louder -- civil wars tend to be noisy. They are also best handled internally. So, before someone decides to head back in to help -- and I'm sure the words Al Qaeda in Iraq will incite all sorts of Republican orgasms of anger and demand for blood and treasure to pour all over Iraq again -- we need to look long, hard and if it seems at all like a good idea, look hard again.

And now for some post Paisley-ite tolerance...

 

Merry Christmas, honored dead!

One thought might be a full-employment for Congress act, requiring that while in Washington no time be spent on fund-raising and that no pay be allocated for Congress when not in session. There's more than enough work to be done. Why aren't they doing it? Well, doing the things that need to be done would require some sacrifice of comfort, security and wealth on their part. The Financial-Military-Industrial Complex gets snippy when its interests are at stake.

Yeah. Tell that the men and women beneath the tombstones and snow at Arlington. I'm sure they'll understand.

Breaking faith with those who served

Over the last 10 years the sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders. The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts. The American civil war's General Sherman once said that "war is hell", but unfortunately today's politicians in Britain use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity or to compel us to surrender our rights as citizens, in the name of the public good...Still, this year I shall wear the poppy as I have done for many years. I wear it because I am from that last generation who remember a war that encompassed the entire world... But most importantly, I wear the poppy to commemorate those of my childhood friends and comrades who did not survive the second world war and those who came home physically and emotionally wounded from horrific battles that no poet or journalist could describe...However, I am afraid it will be the last time that I will bear witness to those soldiers, airmen and sailors who are no more, at my local cenotaph. From now on, I will lament their passing in private because my despair is for those who live in this present world. I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy. Harry Leslie Smith, The Guardian, 8-11-2013 

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. -- John McCrae, Colonel, Royal Canadian Army

 

My Orange County Systems Administrator friend Conrad is currently sitting in a waiting room with his laptop, waiting for his Vietnam Vet friend Bob to leave the MRI and was wondering what happens when you do a MRI on someone whose body is full of shrapnel. The responses on Facebook including my own were basically "nothing good" and best wishes to Bob. Conrad also sent a link to this piece with the comment that "This has heart." It does, heart and mind and guts and sinew...

The British experience in the last 13 years is almost as miserable as our own, and in some ways, more so. My intellectual hero Jerry Harvey wrote an article "Organizations as Phrog Farms" once pointing out that it's better to be raped than seduced because if seduced, you are equally at fault, you conspired against yourself. If raped, you're innocent. Well that is probably insensitive, but there's a lot of truth to the observation as part of organizational dynamics if nothing else. And, in a case that models Plato's Republic to a certain extent, by looking at the organization, we look at ourselves as well as the larger world. The whole Iraq-Afghanistan-BombIran meme of the past 13 years has been a case of governments seducing nation states into being Phrog Farms. The first step in shedding the frog skin is to say loudly that THIS IS WRONG AND I AM NOT GOING TO BE PART OF IT ANYMORE.

 

In his article, Harvey points out that we have a choice, we can become Phrogs or refuse to go along. Most of us, at one time or another, are Phrogs. (It's called Phrog as opposed to Frog because Phrogs don't want to know that they are frogs. Read the article. You may laugh a lot, and you might cry when you contemplate your fate.) Harvey points out through a number of hypotheses that all organizations exist to do two things -- make stuff and turn people into Phfrogs. As you become more the company man, the organization man, the party man, the "my country is never wrong so my country right or wrong" patriot, the unthinking apparatchik of left or right, you become more of a Phrog. Ultimately, at your apotheosis of Phrogdom, you vocabulary shrinks to one word -- Ribbit. Doesn't mean anything so communication is a problem but it makes acquiescence universal. (Hooah, Hoorah and Hurrah can all be misused this way, but tone helps interpreting these.)

Harry Leslie Smith is 91 years old. He lived through his teens during the Great Depression which in working class England was worse than here, served with the the RAF in WWII and has worked for causes of economic, social and political justice since. He's still going at it, in the way that certain breeds of intellectual activists and autodidacts have demonstrated over the centuries. Eric Hoffer, Daniel Berrigan and Lord Russell all come to mind here as do Socrates and Thomas More. Anyway, he left Britain, moved to Canada, had a very successful business career and then returned to Britain to write, think, reflect and probably be a total pain in the ass to the comfortable and unafflicted. More power to him, and to the people who are like him...and, those of us struggling to escape the Phrog farms. Or, learn to speak Phrog, follow Fox News and the View and the TV Guide.

I disagree with a lot of my colleagues here about a lot of things, but we all tend to be actively working at not being Phrogs.  Harry Lewis Smith is frankly my newest hero...no Phrog he, but a guy who understands.

Don't sell out those left behind, don't sell out those fighting against organizational, political or national stupidity. When confronted with stupidity, and the last 13 years of it have been rife with it, don't fail to call the question. Or, let me hear you say RIBBIT.

 

As Harry says so well and thus gets the last word:

For many of you 1914 probably seems like a long time ago but I'll be 91 next year, so it feels recent. Today, we have allowed monolithic corporate institutions to set our national agenda. We have allowed vitriol to replace earnest debate and we have somehow deluded ourselves into thinking that wealth is wisdom. But by far the worst error we have made as a people is to think ourselves as taxpayers first and citizens second. Next year, I won't wear the poppy but I will until my last breath remember the past and the struggles my generation made to build this country into a civilised state for the working and middle classes. If we are to survive as a progressive nation we have to start tending to our living because the wounded: our poor, our underemployed youth, our hard-pressed middle class and our struggling seniors shouldn't be left to die on the battleground of modern life.

 

 

When Ayn Rand and Friedman bit you in the butt

I knew this was going to happen, as did a lot of us. Theoretically, it was the stuff of public health discussions and philosophy of science and ethics for a long time. First clue that the end was coming was probably when MRSA became a big issue. But, a friend of mine with too much time on his hands Facebook-ed this  earlier today with the note that it was time to start singing the doom song.  Since he's a system administrator for start-ups by profession, he's used to everyone running around saying the world will end tomorrow...in this case, it might.

Another reality is there’s not much money to be made in making new antibiotics, so we saw a lot of drug companies who left the field of antibiotic development because of this combination of factors, that it was getting really hard to discover, to develop new antibiotics, and you don’t make a lot of money in selling these drugs, so the market really wasn’t there. …I can’t tell a patient who has a resistant infection, “If we can get you through this next six months or this next year, there’s going to be a great drug that’s coming.” Or I can’t tell oncologists, for example, “Well, six months from now we’re going to have therapies to offer you; we’re going to have something to combat these infections.”

The drugs aren’t there. And we know it takes a long time to get drugs from the development stage through testing and into the market. Right now, I can’t tell you when you’re going to have a new antibiotic to treat these highly resistant Gram negatives. The best I can say is it’s probably going to be several years, but I can’t point to one that’s in development and say, “We’re going to have that one in three years.”

There is a temptation to be snarky here. "We don't have effective antibiotics? No problem--get some turtle dung, eye of newt and blood of frog and go to town. Maybe some fire...yeah, lots of fire." Unfortunately, this is actually kind of real and is another reason why we should be spending a lot of taxpayer money on developing new therapies. Instead, the Rs are worrying about a bad software site. Bengazi. The fucking national debt that they exploded, TARP that they demanded. Here's the thing -- if we have a succession of plagues caused by diseases we could have treated but now can't, everyone is vulnerable. EVERYONE. The weaker and less healthy will get sick first, but everybody will be at serious risk. This demands a systemic response to which the Ryan-Boehner-Barton-McKeon response will be something along the lines of denial, blaming Obama, scheduling days of prayer and perhaps having Teddy Cruz's dad, the faith-healing Cuban minister (Santeria, anyone?) do some TV faith-healing. After all, it's OK in their minds to swear in to the Congress by TV?

Of course, the Randian-Markets are Magic crowd can indicate the cited interview. After all, this was on PBS, on Frontline. Commie bastards! And the guy in question is a government scientist. Pointy-headed, drone! A damn take wants us to worry...ok, how about the head of R&D from Pfizer, Dr. Charles Knirsch?  The drugs aren't there. They're not even working on them...

Q. But did that mean that you had to close down the antibiotic thing to focus on vaccines? Why couldn’t you do both?

A. Oh, good question. And it’s not a matter of closing down antibiotics. We were having limited success. We had had antibiotics that we would get pretty far along, and a toxicity would emerge either before we even went into human testing or actually in human testing that would lead to discontinuation of those programs. Again, the science was difficult, and we have these other platforms, these vaccine platforms that are state of the art that we think that the prudent allocation of capital addressing very, very important medical need, we would devote the resources to those programs.

Q.  So you decided essentially to shift the capital away from antibiotics and toward vaccine platforms.

A. Yes.

Q. And there were, according to people we’ve talked to, promising compounds at that time. You certainly had what some people described to us as the best and the brightest in the world working on some of these things at Pfizer. But you just said to me that there were problems with them and that there were difficulties, so I just wonder, was this program not the best and the brightest and one of the best in the world?

A. I don’t know which programs you’re referring to. Could you be more specific? Some of these programs right now haven’t even been moved into animal testing.

Now, I want any reader to understand this -- Pfizer is doing this not because they're greedy bastards, or at least, not solely because they are greedy bastards. They're doing because they see antibiotics as a dead end and they need to do something else which is going to require some hard and expensive research, development and clinical trials taking years. They didn't see the "return on innovation," and saw too much risk due to the difficulties of the science involved and the "uncertain regulatory pathways." In other words, things cost too much to do, too much risk of failure and then it just takes time to get a drug through testing, even if it's fast tracked. Should the new antibiotic cause serious side effects that outweigh the benefits, the legal liabilities are incredible. "So, get the divining rod out, Myrtle, we need to find a new well and different magic beans."

I'm honestly not knocking big Pharma so much as capitalism -- the unchecked Capitalism and greed advocated by the Republican Party of the "de-regulate, we're sorry BP, Enron didn't do anything wrong" era. Dr. Krnirsch speaks about public-private partnerships involving government research, universities and what really amounts to cross-fertilization between the various big and small pharmaceutical firms as scientists move between academe, government and business. Frankly, this is one place where the revolving door is not only not a problem for the nation, but where it works to our advantage. But, the fact is that scientific research is part of that "discretionary" funding thing shut down as non-essential during the latest Tea Party led unpleasantness. We're spending a lot less on pure science than we used to, and people like Palin, Cruz, Lee, Bachmann, Demint, Anne Coulter, Hannity and O'Reilly and so on delight in laughing at research studies and the boundary-less nature of what government has funded in the past.

Basic research costs more and more because it's less and less basic, and science is pretty much boundary-less by it's nature. If you are a PhD in biology specializing in primates, you have a deep understanding of math, statistics, chemistry, and some familiarity with physics, earth science and other more esoteric things besides how monkeys work. Basic science and hard science is not something best left to the private sector because the private sector, even the hugely financially successful Pharmaceutical industry, is not designed to take on high risk, low return efforts.

The ideal drug for Pfizer is Viagra, which was initially developed as a tool for hypertension. The physiological effect of lowering blood pressure in the male reproductive organs those allowing better circulation was a side effect that became the reason for the drug's existence. As it came closer and closer to going off patent, Pfizer began to look at it as a mechanism for combating teenage hypertension. In fact, lower doses of the drug are marketed for some types of hypertension but are off patent; the primary money-making purpose for the drug is ED and those patents do not expire until 2019. However, there's nothing to prevent a physician from subscribing the lower dose and less expensive and possibly generic version for ED. They'd just have to prescribe multiple pills...When Canada allowed manufacture of generic Viagra, Pfizer countered by lowering the prices for the real stuff and then appealed saying that the Canadian legal system had erred. As a result, Canada invalidated all the patents on Viagra in Canada.

Scientific and medical research is not about making money; pharmaceutical firms are about making money. As we shift funding for research more to the private sector and less to the public sector, there will be less of the hard science and more of what might be considered technology, which can be described reasonably as the effort to take some scientifically known elements and apply them to resolve engineering problems of one type or another. Writing computer code is an example of a technological use of known scientific processes (coding, math logic, binary math, etc. etc. etc.) some of which is invisible to the writer and can be. But, re-designing the structure of micro-processors to depend on some as yet unknown principle of quantum mechanics or organic as opposed to inorganic chemical compound is science; the basic science lies in discovering that as yet unknown principle or compound.

Business excels at technology because the risk is an engineering solution; not so much at the other aspects of the continuum. The firm answers to the shareholders who may not be willing to absorb the losses of failed experiments trying to turn peanut butter into jet fuel. (That image is homage to Jerry Harvey and the Abilene Paradox, a great explanation for what's going on in Congress and the Republican party. Thank you Dr Harvey for again helping us all understand.) S

o, how do we get the hard science done? Lots of it is done in the great research universities around the world, funded by foundations, Pharma and government. In this country, the only organization that can absorb the cost and the risk of this sort of research -- consider it to be a form of scientific infrastructure -- is the Federal Government. Not funding that risks not having the next great innovation; more to the point, in this incredibly complex organism that is the human community, it risks not being able to respond to the next crisis because no one has even thought of the problem.

The return on investment for a firm in basic science is really limited; the return for the nation on all infrastructure -- intellectual, technological, industrial, transportation, communication -- is incredible largely because the nation is the only one who can afford to do it. To those who worry about burdening future generations with debt, I suggest they consider if the future generations would like to have a future based on eye of newt and fire in hovels and caves connected by goat carts where strep throat and pneumonia kill 50% of the population before age 12, or something marvelous. If it all falls apart, the debt is going to be not an issue; survival will be questionable. We are a community, all in this together; failing to act that way as our right wing compatriots recommend is infuriating, and amusing, and really just an awful idea. The good news is when the universal pandemic  comes, like the black death, plutocrats and senators and their families and supporters will suffer as much if not more than the poor, hungry, weak and those who serve them. However, it's cold comfort -- doing something now seems a far better approach than this when it's too late.  

"Say huzzah and release the weasels of war..." John Boehner

Never a big fan of Robert Heinlein, but the idea in Starship Trooper that voting should be limited to those who served in the military may have some merit. Amazing that at 90 this old sailor has to answer the call again on something simple...the duty of the House is to legislate. So, work at it.

 

I find the shutdown absurd, the inability of the House to follow regular order absurd, the failure to pass a CR after 9 months of refusing conference on the budget absurd and the threatening of the good faith and credit of the United States for no reason at all absurd. And, a lot of this is treacherous absurdity. Most of soldiers I know are pretty good at negotiating, although we'd never call it that. Most of us would not think of damaging the United States for our own political benefit or financial benefit or anything else. Congresscritters, as Molly Ivins used to call them at times, are obviously more malleable than that.

There's a moment in Bolt's A Man for All Seasons that kind of sums it up. Thomas More's protege Richard Rich has just testified, falsely, as to a conversation they had had that would lead to conviction and condemnation of More for treason. More is stunned -- didn't see it coming, this betrayal--and then when he gets a chance to question the witness, he asks " I see you are wearing a chain of office that I do not recognize. Would you enlighten me as to what honor that represents?" Rich, both pompously and a bit sheepishly says something to the effect that it represents his appointment as Chancellor of Wales. More smiles, chuckles and says, " Richard, it says in the bible what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? But, Richard, Wales?"

You know, John Boehner was a PO2 in the Navy and went to college on the GI Bill. Sad commentary...I think he's probably feeling a lot like Rich, realizing that his office as Speaker is really like being the Chancellor of Wales...not anywhere near what it cost him...

Kierkegaard, Field Marshal Haig and Othello all walk into a bar...

Years ago, a gentleman training me in Mediation, Bruce Berquist was so unhappy with the world that he decided to stop paying attention to the news. He just took a sabbatical – figured that if anything really important was happening, one of his colleagues or his wife would tell him. This was during the Lewinski-Impeachment-Semen Stained Dress period of American history. Anyway, of late I’ve been thinking about it, and I decided to take a similar sabbatical.  Syria Today as Envisioned in HR Wells, Things to Come 1936

Among the things I’ve been trying to do is catch up on films. I finally watched the longest current surviving print of Metropolis, and was underwhelmed. However, I recently saw Things to Come, and while a less visually interesting film – Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon all over the silly thing – it got me thinking and helped me clarify some concerns.  The Syria debacle really has bothered me; when you have no good choices, don’t freaking choose. Seems simple as a dictum, but for some reason we have stumbled into a time warp where we can’t do that.  Syria is an absolute snake pit already without our holding our nose and jumping in; chemical weapons are a reasonably vile upping of the ante, but we’re already talking about two million refugees, four million internal displacements, 100000 casualties and who knows what other insanity. There are no players in the entire debacle that are particularly appealing and a number who are as appalling if not more so than Assad. What the hell? At times like this, I really wish Colin Powell had become President. If the US had followed the Powell Doctrine consistently since 1995, we’d be a happier, stronger and far more united nation and more perfect union. As you may recall, the Powell doctrine was fairly simple – Prior to committing US Forces to action, we need to have satisfactorily answered the following questions: 

Is a vital national security interest threatened?

Do we have a clear attainable objective?

Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

Is the action supported by the American people?

Do we have genuine broad international support?^[1] 

The Wiki piece on this tends to say there are a lot of exceptions including such things as humanitarian support wars. I don’t necessarily see that as a good idea. While it might prohibit some action in cases like Syria because of the question of vital national interests, one may reasonably argue that incidents like Libya and Syria are definitely in our geopolitical interests. However, it becomes reasonably obvious that none of our recent conflicts actually fit this model. Iraq was totally off the scale on the side of not fulfilling these criteria. We now know with a solid base of assurance that there were no vital interests of the United States involved in Iraq; on the contrary, it was counterproductive. When Powell refers to objective, he wasn’t referring to the political objective so much as the strategic military objective combined with the tactical objectives supporting it. If you can’t develop a reasonable objective, don’t commit. Risks and costs were completely disregarded; there was no pressing need to attack when we did. There was no reasonable Exit Strategy, and let me add a corollary—an exit strategy that ends up requiring 10 or 20 or 30 years continued stay is not a particularly meaningful strategy. The consequences predicted for the Iraq war were silly at best; the ultimate result was a nightmare. The American People supported the war initially but that was based on the same lies that got Secretary Powell on board. There was no real International Support for this war. It was a nightmare from start to

finish; a wholly preventable nightmare. Colin Powell[/caption] Syria is so similar as to be dumbfounding. We do have a vital national interest in not letting the region descend further into hell. However, the Arab League, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel have much more vital interests. If the Alawites become marginalized by Sunnis, Iran has a more pressing problem than Assad presents opportunities. The Gulf States have concerns about Iran and about the basic dominance in the region by l Qaeda and al Qaeda clones. Finally, as the guardian of nonproliferation and the enforcement of international norms, the UN has a vested interest here that far exceeds that of the individual members.

Chemical weapons are bad. We agree on that. However, the ability of the Syrian military to disperse delivery systems, stockpiles and command and control centers make limited strikes really ineffective. If we want to take out the power grid in a nation, that’s easy. Individual missiles, launchers and so on, not so much. 

What the threat of military action has done is energize the world in seeking some diplomatic solution. In terms of exit strategy and solutions, the use of cruise missiles and air strikes provides neither. Unless someone is going to put boots on the ground to enforce UN mandates – which isn’t going to happen with the makeup of the Security Council – we are not looking at appropriate force and an exit strategy so much as at the technological equivalent of magic beans as a key to Never Land.  Air strikes and cruise missile strikes don’t change the battlefield in and of themselves.

I sum up the Powell doctrine relatively simply: Clear, workable and defined Objective; Commitment of verwhelming, appropriate and effective force; and, Defined, workable exit strategy and time horizon. The Syria plan fails. Drop it.

Putin undoubtedly felt his cred as hemispheric godfather threatened and is reacting to prove he’s the Alpha dog. Let him. No American blood and treasure for Syria; logistics support for the UN or regional coalitions, perhaps. But as it stands, we have no dog in this fight.  

Clarity in all it's glory...

  Now, certainly there will be peace in our time in the Middle East[/caption] A reader of the Financial Times which I will occasionally read whenever I get a chance particularly if Martin Wolfe is writing that day, provided the world today with the perfect explanation of the Middle East.

A Short Guide to the Middle East

Sir,

Iran is backing Assad.

Gulf states are against Assad!

  Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood.

Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi.

But Gulf states are pro Sisi!

Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood!

Iran is pro Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood!

Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US!

Gulf states are pro US.

But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad; yet Turkey is pro Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi.

And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states!

Welcome to the Middle East and have a nice day.

Mr KN Al-Sabah, of London, SW1

There, that's all perfectly clear. What could possibly be the problem...

 

 

Sometimes the only question is, did anybody do anything right?

Failure of Leadership with Lots of Unexpected Consequences

I have been relatively quiet on Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden because I am very conflicted about what to think. Like a lot of folks who are reading this, I’ve had the clearance and the access and I remember the oaths I swore and the penalties. A lot of stuff then was pretty silly, but the primary reason for the BURN BEFORE READING stamps was fairly simple – releasing the information would reveal the source. Since I had a kind of obscure specialty for a while, I can recall being dragged out of the Fort Clayton Golf Course Bar by a CW4 who had been one of my students to read traffic that came in as HOTHOTHOT and reading, shaking my head and pointing out the problem. It was pretty funny, the chief went back and bought me another beer and we howled. But, I still can’t talk about more than 20 years later.

Nor would I. Someone got some information they probably should not have had and passed that along to someone else who somehow got it to someone else. The fact that in that chain of someone’s was probably a source just like Bradley Manning or Mr. Snowden is irrelevant. I don’t need to get cheap laughs. However, if you have a SCIF handy, read me back on and I’ll tell you the story.

So, you don’t talk about what you know. I taught at the INTEL School and that’s where I learned my SKIF etiquette but that training started a lot earlier. A boss of mine was reading one of Kissinger’s books where it referenced the clearance that he had, and the boss went ballistic – some things are incredibly sensitive even if you don’t care why. Henry the K didn’t care about a couple of 10000 grunts and a couple of 100000 Vietnamese and Cambodians or so; why would he care about something silly like the name of an access? The boss’ boss came in to talk to us about it, and said that “We are held to a higher standard.” You put on the uniform and you are held to a higher standard.

On the other hand, the stuff that Manning leaked through International Man of Mystery Julian Assange was primarily battle journals. In other words, the old DA 1594s or whatever they are calling them now, some SITREPs, some raw SPOT Reports and so on. He was a computer geek and a very junior Intel Analyst. He plotted stuff on maps. If he had access to a lot of highly classified stuff, that was really stupid.

But, the material is pretty damning. We were in a war that we should not have started, fighting a professionals’ war against the people – with the exception of the Kurds, at one time or another we were fighting everybody while they consistently were and are fighting and killing each other. We don’t get the culture, the religion, the climate the history. We still don’t, but that last time worked out so well that there’s really no reason not to do it again. I just don’t see a statue of Tommy Franks in the future of West Point.

Manning was getting a view of how silly that was, how insane, how brutal and how fruitless. I don’t know what motivated the guy. But, I do know that most of what he revealed was probably vastly over classified. And then we get to another problem, one that I realized last night at dinner with my wife who in her Army incarnation was a Documents Custodian in a Brigade S2 in Europe.  The coin dropped; she worked as a civilian for DOD and DOT and I had been a contractor. Guess what – no way if any current security procedures were being adhered to could Manning have gotten the stuff he had to Wikileaks. We’re not discussing a highly trained intelligence operative here, we’re talking about a pretty flakey private in a combat zone., who appears to have been violating every principle of handling sensitive and classified material in the book; according to Wikipedia he told one of his biographers that he smuggled the stuff out on his data card.

When the coin dropped, I dropped my sandwich. My wife at best tolerates my jousting with windmills, but this one bugged her as much as it bothers me. This should not have happened. And it did – and it was not Manning who was the weak spot, but the supervision and leadership that let him do whatever misguided and deranged crap he did.

Manning was on a secure DOD/ Army system, in a sensitive compartmentalized intelligence facility (SCIF) of some sort and he was able to download highly classified materials to either thumb drives, data cards or CDs. The military banned all that stuff on its computers prior to the kid's enlistment. While it might be possible to cheat if you were on night shift in a CP someplace with just a normal Army computer and nobody checking on you, in a SCIF there are a lot of people checking on you usually. When you enter the SCIF, you are subject to search; brief cases, backpacks and similar things are checked as a matter of course. HOW THE HELL DID HE BREACH THE BASIC IT SECURITY AND THE PHYSICAL SECURITY PROTECTING THIS STUFF? This is a serious concern. Certainly, the officers and NCOs running the place should be investigated for either complicity or negligence or both. If they say him with a CD, they needed to act immediately; if they saw him with a data stick, ditto. Slipping a micro into a slot would be really disturbing. Either they didn’t care, they allowed it to happen or they just didn’t bother to watch this obvious candidate for Soldier of the Millenniums. Somewhere, SGT Morales is crying.

The fact that somehow this kid had access to TS and higher should bother a lot of us. Did DOD not investigate the guy prior to the granting of the clearance? Was there no interview? How did he keep the clearance after reprimands? WHO GETS REPRIMANDED FOR ASSAULTING AN OFFICER? Maybe some hard corps grunt dealing with the problems of cooling down after a fraught mission and being asked some silly crap; but, this guy was a REMF. There's a lot to be concerned about here, but Manning's actual leaks are the least of it. He was a computer GEEK and gee, the Army needs those for places like Fort Meade and various Field Stations. Was he in a Field Station? No, he was in the SCIF in a Forward Operating Base in Iraq. The Army knew he needed help; they were going to discharge him during Basic for unsuitability. Instead of washing him out, they sent him on to AIT and he got a TS/SCI clearance. The unit wanted to leave him behind instead of taking him to Iraq but they were short analysts so...  Where the hell were the Counter-Intelligence people who were supposed to be there? He was acting out all over the place in all sorts of ways…and nobody noticed until a hacker reported him? Seriously.  In a combat zone, prior to the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the guy was openly gay, disrespectful and out of line.

Now, many years ago there was an Army Security Agency analyst we’ll call Randy. Randy was at Field Station Augsburg and was very, very gay. Openly gay. Blatantly gay. He cross-dressed and hung around the Bahnhof according one guy who knew him. Nobody cared, he was really good at his job. The MI community was always very tolerant of a lot of deviance, up to a point. One story had the Politzei catching him at the Bahnhof along with the MP liaisons and there he went. How do I know the story is true? One of my officer students at the INTEL school told me about him; then others told me about him; and then, when I was facilitating course with the Warrants and the subject of stress and reactions to it was on the table, one of the Warrants started saying that none of that was problem in the old ASA, none of their soldiers had issues and this was a waste of everyone’s time to consider. “Chief,” I asked, “Were you ever in Augsburg?” “Yeah, Sarge, I spent most of my enlisted in Augsburg.” “Chief, did you ever know a guy named Randy?” Silence…followed by laughter. “Oh hell, Sarge, Randy was my squad leader…” “Were the stories true?” “Oh Shit! You had to be there…”

So, yeah, Manning is guilty of a lot of stuff. However, given the obvious questions and the way the guy was treated while awaiting trial -- Marine Stockade as opposed to Army Stockade? Solitary confinement because he was suicidal? Naked? -- make me think that justice could be best served in his case by sentencing him to reduction to E-1, a Less than Honorable Discharge, and a couple of years in Leavenworth. I'd actually prefer the reduction, a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions and time served. 

And then, the Army needs to start asking some hard questions about what the hell happened to common sense and adherence to basic procedures safeguarding materials. Manning's Chain of Command needs desperately to have a bunch of their careers ended so they can move on to their true calling of asking if you want paper or plastic. If they'd been doing their jobs, this wouldn't have happened. Everything about Iraq that went bad, down to the way we found out a lot about it was due to a failure of leadership at a really existential level.

I’d also like to turn to the helicopter footage that has gotten so much attention. Why would that have been TOP SECRET? I wonder why it would have been more than CONFIDENTIAL – where was the serious harm to the nation in that footage? It was sad, tragic, reflected poorly on the rules of engagement and all the nonsense we’ve been told about how carefully precise everything is on the digital battlefield. It’s not, and we know. Reuters knew the stuff existed and asked for the material. They submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and were rebuffed. The FOIA request should have been granted, with some redaction, and then de-classified.

Soldiers in combat cause collateral damage. Soldiers in combat do a lot of things to block the horror. We know that. But, the American people need to know that. They need to have their noses rubbed in it so every time some yahoo decides to start demanding we go off to some war some goddamned place, there are no surprises. Bradley Manning broke the law, broke his oath as a soldier and did it irresponsibly and almost blithely. No Luther-Ellsberg existential “Here I am, I can do no other…”anguish there. But, he needed help, guidance and the attention that soldiers, especially weak soldiers need and deserve all the time, not just in combat.

I had soldiers like Manning. Any NCO or Officer who led troops had to deal with people like Manning. Too smart for their MOS, too smart for their duties, not fitting in, not a lean mean fighting machine – just a kid who needed his ass kicked and his shoulder patted. Instead, he was ignored, not mentored, not helped and this is what happened. I had 200 soldiers in my last company, and I knew all the flakes and made a point of watching them. I didn’t bully them, I didn’t berate them, and I sought ways to help them grow and adapt. I know my last company was at Fort Lewis and this was in Combat. I don’t care; the way you operate in garrison is the same way you need to operate in the field. If you take care of you soldiers, they’ll amaze you when the chips are down. If you don’t, well, this is what happens.

Manning appears to have had other problems. He lived an openly gay life prior to enlisting in the Army. While If you can salvage a marginal soldier, you might create a superstar. But if you can’t, and it appears his chain of command had figured out he wasn’t going to hack it, you don’t take them Iraq, you don’t cut them slack for acting crazy, you don’t look the other way. You get them out of combat, away from the unit and let the psychiatrists and JAG determine what needs to happen next. YOU DON”T SHOVE THEM IN A POORLY SUPERVISED SKIF for fifteen hours a day. But, “ Farrell, we were short analysts in the worst way”. To which I can only respond, “Yeah, and look what that kind of short term thinking got you.”