Far East Cynic

I’m fried.

I have some great thoughts about the good Mr Rumsfeld’s speech yesterday. Don Rumsfeld seems to think that I am facist sympathiser because I think the war in Iraq is not in the long term national interest. So when this farce of an exercise ends, I’ll pass along my thoughts. I’ll give you the bottom line up front: The Donald must not have paid much attention in history class. Because he has it all wrong.

For now though, I’ll let others do the talking.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and  shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Read the whole thing. Don’s history lesson to follow. I’ll give him a hint however, the war on terrorism began at Suez, not at Danzig. The US took the wrong turn there too…………..

I got back early this evening. So after an hour of watching TV , I said, “screw it!”
So I snuck out to my favorite little watering hole, to sit at the bar and admire the bartender and her strapless bra…..(beneath a revealing top). Now I’m back and off to bed.

But not before I send you to see this:

“TSA says don’t forget the lube!”

According to Wonkette, ” That’s right, frequent flyers: Bogus terror threats or not, Homeland Security wants you to have comfortable anal sex while flying.”

But if you want a beer…….well that’s a terrorist act!

According to the Donald:

“U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he does not see North Korea as an immediate military threat to South Korea.”

For the hours I am putting in I could be out playing golf if this is true.

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As I pointed out yesterday the Navy is making a huge push for diversity.

Friend of mine showed me a brief the guys in the surface Navy put together. Its one of those “health of the community briefs” that talks about where the community is going. By the looks of one slide, it is going straight to hell a railroad car in the middle of a forest in France. Read(the key surrender clauses are in italics):

•Baseline SWE minority/female demographics by rank, rate, rating, NEC, ship, shore establishment and training or education site

•Produce a website for all minorities to access their ethnic group to see photos and bio’s on all leaders in the SWE including Flag Officers/Senior Executive Service, Commanding Officers, Command Master/Senior Chiefs, Sailors of the Year, Flag Aides, and other leaders of our community of female or minority status.

(Skippy comment: I suppose that others just have to get along with nothing?)

•Pulse commands to determine what mentoring programs currently exist, how these mentors are trained and how their mentoring is measured at individual commands

•Measure the assignment processes for all Enterprise Flag Officers and commands to ensure a diverse pool of candidates for all nominated-type billets.

(Skippy translation: No nomination package will be submitted without at least one minority nomination)

•Submit to CNO on behalf of the SWE a request that CNO/CNP officially restore the use of minority stamps and photographs on personal records on selection boards to assist all Navy Enterprises in properly identifying our minority personnel

(Skippy comment: Ask anyone who has been at selection boards how hard people fought to get that removed from the process so that the record gets viewed objectively on its merits. Please advise the OLA to standby for more Congressional letters…………This is a huge step backwards.)

•Ensure that admin screening boards such as XO/CO precepts capture the essence of the diverse total force such that all records are afforded their best opportunity for selection

(Skippy translation: Put quotas for numbers of women selected for command.)

•Provide timely, concise, and dependable demand signals to other Enterprises that intersect with the SWE in these matters

•Study ways in which our female Sailors can serve in our Navy and have families too

Skippy comment: This is the “mommy track”. Daddies don’t get one. They just get more time deployed to compensate for the lost numbers of deployables available.

Thanks guys! Thanks for putting down in writing what many had always expected. Wonder if men can now apply for disabled status because of the extra appendage they have to carry around…………….

(You can find the whole brief on the BUPERS Web site.)

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But the buffoonery is real!

Saw that on a patch today. I just had to buy one.

Never underestimate the benefit of a good nights sleep. I slept both Friday night and last night for over 9 hours each. God, it felt good! Now today its back to the salt mines and 5 hours a night for another week. The higlight of my day is that moment I put the key in the door at my hotel at night. The low point is closing the door each morning. As for the interval in between, well, the less said the better.

All kinds of banners up yesterday proclaiming women’s equality day yesterday. Who **** came up wth that? When do we get to celebrate Men’s empowerment day? Or White Anglo Saxon Protestant Men’s Hisotry Month? Feminism at work again.

Its like everything else with this diversity kick, they can’t leave well enough alone. Recently the Chief of Naval Operations announced that the Navy needs more women. By his saying that it puts an end of the idea of “gender neutral” promotions and selections. Welcome to the brave new world of affirmative action. “Most qualified” will be replaced by “Meets quota”. It is crazy.

Also I noted that the Marines have begun involuntary recall of reservists. It’s not suprising. They are bearing a huge burden in this war, as they have in every other war. As long as Iraq drags on the problem of resourcing it is going to get worse. How many times does one have to pay at the office? You see it in the service as I’ve seen friends who are eligible to retire, be denied retirement as they play hard ball to ensure they have enough folks to feed the IA mosnter. These folks saw the writing on the wall and were voting with their feet before the monster came to eat them. I feel for them. These are good guys who if required would go to sea and do anything else nautical, but are not simply going to get jerked around just to pay someone’s twisted idea of how to do more with less.

These are the beginings of the cracks in the damn. They will get worse. Phibian has discussed who is responsible over at his blog. I don’t hold folks in DOD responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. I do think they should be called on the carpet for not banging on the desks demanding enough resources if the administration is hell bent to take on as many commitments as it has. There is no wood dented yet.

Do more with less. But make sure it is diversified. Where did Nero leave his fiddle?

Not like mine, which is the most mentally painful at the moment! For all the effort they are taking to simulate the war, makes me wonder if we should just start it and get it over with………plus I spent 3+ hours trying to get databases sorted.

One database that must be very small is that of cars in North Korea. Being here has me fasicinated how the Hermit Kingdom can still exist. I keep wondering why the Chinese just don’t cut the Jonger loose. After all look at this fine person who has the most boring job in the world:

A North Korean traffic cop!

While searching the internet I found these fascinating photos from a Russian who went there. Go here and here to see them for yourself.

It does not look like a Skippy kind of place…………….

Another long day. Who came up with this idea? Oh yea, me. Remind me to kick my self.

Its been an interesting insight into the way our military does business these days. If I were a Flag officer I would go through my command center and rip out every VTC (Video teleconference) cable for 2-5 days, just so I could allow my department heads to get something done.

I have a sick vision:

It’s 1944 and technology has evolved differently. Halsey is embarked in USS New Jersey full of steam to head north after Ozawa’s carriers. Instead of making a decision he stays steaming in circle while, He and his subordinate commanders are sitting in front of a VTC camera. Some JO in a starched khaki shirt is reading from a powerpoint slide.

” Sir in the last 24 hours TAFFY-3 got schwacked, there are indications of Jap carriers North of Luzon and our battleships in Surigao straight are still stocked at 100%. Pending your direction that concludes my brief…..”

” Admiral Halsey this Chet Nimitz, where is Task force 34? The world wonders”.

BOOM! 18 inch shells from Musashi start penetrating the Iowa’s armor…………

Technology can be a wonderful thing. It is also a curse. Seems to me that today’s flag officers spend more time parked in front of a VTC camera than making command decisions. With their staffs around them of course………..

Then again, this “all day VTC” strategy could be a way to keep the senior officers engaged and allow JO’s to get on with winning the war. Napoleon did not need a VTC to take Austerliz…………..

Don’t even get me started on Powerpoint.

Speaking of Flag Officers watched Joe Sestak on TV tonight. I found it laughable that he was railing against the war in Iraq when he was in the belly of the beast when some of the decisions were being made. I’d love to be able to ask him:

” Sir. You drove a horde of fine officers out of the Navy because you were a workaholic and a psychopath…….Why now should I elect a known back-stabber and bastard to the US Congress?”

Then again, he would probably fit right in.

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I was very busy today. In at 6 am and out at 9 pm. Too tired to post anything long.

However I did here an interesting theory during all the chaos today. “The only nation that wants a united Korea is the United States.”

The person then went on to explain that S. Korea really does not want it, because of what it would cost them to rebuild the North. China does not want it, becuase in the current circumstances N. Korea is a third nuclear arm for them. Japan does not want it for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that China would use an united Korea as a reason to lobby hard for less US troops in Japan and thus an easier time to take Taiwan if they wanted to. Plus it would give Korea refugees more reason to try to get to Japan through an opne conduit to Kyushu……….

Interesting theory. Reminds me of what Hemlock pointed out last year.

Odell asks me a simple but profound question. “Koreans… What the fuck?” I give him the country’s history in a nutshell. First, it was repeatedly invaded by the Japanese, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Mongols, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Chinese, then it was repeatedly invaded by the Manchus, then it got one big, maybe-they’ll-get-the-message-this-time invasion from the Japanese again, and in 1950 it invaded itself. This experience, I explain, has made these people the proud and noble mouth-frothing xenophobes we all know and love today, threatening to send hordes of vicious peasant warriors to Hong Kong if our Government does not honour their birthright as sons of the Hermit Kingdom, namely immunity from laws against assaulting policewomen with bamboo poles.

I’m still here and still in a funk. Its got me just fit to be tied. Had to do some work today a lot more tomorrow.

Nothing to see here my children, except for a sad man tonight. Move along to any of the links on the right side.

But not to bust to forget beer and babes.

And not forget my favorite babe, Mrs Bacon who is waiting for me to price that cheap imitation tokidoki purse. Its on tonights agenda, unless my recently discovered, favorite female bartender pours too many of these down me:

Thanks to General Bell and his predecessor, I have to live with the reactionary regime that imposes a curfew that includes contractors. What total and complete horseshit! Next time remind me to forgo SOFA status, and just be a tourist! Then I would not have to have Air Force pogues stopping me as I was walking down the sidewalk because I did not appear to be walking straight. F**K you! You guys are the ones enforcing a curfew, So if I walk home from the bar, what is the big deal? Oh excuse me, I forgot the USAF was all about enforcing morality, thus the reason for the stupid curfew in the first place. BITE ME!

Now I really Need:

Which is not coming any time soon, more so thanks to the stupid curfew………..

Busy time here in Korea. Plus I’m in a real funk. Things are not working out on the project the way they should be. And I have 3 + weeks to go. Its more than the project, its life in general. I get up in the AM and go do what I need to do.

Plus I have been reading a lot. I am amazed at the way the debate about Iraq is devolving. Its all about American partisan politics. Iraq is about sacrifice, both by Americans and Iraqis. On the one side are those who believe that any negative ideas about Iraq are somehow unpatriotic. On the other side are the those who want to throw in the towel without understanding that you can’t just walk away from an adventure that you created. The Democrats have made this about beating Bush, which is an acceptable goal, but not the reason to make a foreign policy decision.

Tom Friedman, who had clung to support for the war long after it stopped being fashionable, puts the dilemna well:

What should really worry the country is not whether the Democrats are being dragged to the left by antiwar activists who haven’t thought a whit about the larger struggle we’re in. What should worry the country is that the Bush team and the Republican Party, which control all the levers of power and claim to have thought only about this larger struggle, are in total denial about where their strategy has led.

Besides a few mavericks like Chuck Hagel and John McCain on Iraq and Dick Lugar and George Shultz on energy, how many Republicans have stood up and questioned the decision-making that has turned the Iraq war into a fiasco? Had more of them done so, instead of just mindlessly applauding the administration, the White House might have changed course when it had a chance.

Not only is there no honest self-criticism among Republicans, but – and this is truly contemptible – you have Dick Cheney & Friends focusing their public remarks on why Mr. Lamont’s defeat of Mr. Lieberman only proves that Democrats do not understand that we are in a titanic struggle with ‘Islamic fascists’ and are therefore unfit to lead.

Oh, really? Well, I just have one question for Mr. Cheney: If we’re in such a titanic struggle with radical Islam, and if getting Iraq right is at the center of that struggle, why did you ‘tough guys’
fight the Iraq war with the Rumsfeld Doctrine – just enough troops to lose – and not the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force to create the necessary foundation of any democracy-building project, which is security? How could you send so few troops to fight such an important war when it was obvious that without security Iraqis would fall back on their tribal militias?

As I pointed out a year ago the public’s patience is only so finite. They are willing to stick with it if they can see some tangible benefit. However people getting killed for something that folks do not see as defending the heartland, is going to make sure that the public gets alienated faster. We have no way forward but yet we are supposed to just stay the course.To hell with that. Either quit the field or go in and crush the little bastards. If that involves putting 500,000 troops over there and having Dresden style raids on all the major Iraqi cities, then so be it. Just bring the damn thing to some kind of conclusion.

Because right now:

Friends, we are on a losing trajectory in Iraq, and, as the latest London plot underscores, the wider war with radical Islam is only getting wider. We need to reassess everything we are doing in this ‘war on terrorism’ and figure out what is worth continuing, what needs changing and what
sacrifice we need to demand from every American to match our means with our ends. Yes, the Democrats could help by presenting a serious alternative. But unless the party in power for the next two and half years shakes free of its denial, we are in really, really big trouble.

What Mr Friedman said………….

Today is a holiday in Korea. Its Korean Independence day. And for those of you keeping score, its the 61′st anniversary of the Japanese surrender. They lost the war…..or did they? There was a period of time when Americans actually thought that. That Japan was actually fighting the US on a different front, the economic one, seeking to take over the US. Then the sleeping panda woke up in China and both the US and Japan found themselves fighting the same enemy.

Played golf in Osan today. Interesting course. Greens sucked though. It had some interesting reminders that just 100 or so miles to the north the Communist hordes are there, seething. Intersting things that reminded me of that as we made the circuit on the course. Saw Patriot missiles, machine gun boxes and 20mm gatling guns………something to think about.

Back to work tomorrow. Will be very busy so blogging will be light.

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Went up to Seoul today to pick up a colleague. The airport was a nut house!

I really need to learn to read Hangul. I feel just like I did when I first came to Japan over here.

Korean appears to grammatically like Japanese, but phonetically nothing like it. And the words Sumi da must mean the same as “desu” in Japanese.

In Japan they drive on the left side of the road. Here they drive on the right. yet Japan occupied Korea for over 50 years. I wonder if after the war, they had a big deal switching over. Or did they switch over?

The Korean women at the airport and in town sure are cute!

Saw a girl at the airport who was wearing a short skirt, hat, nice blouse, and she kept looking at me. My version is that she was digging me. Hers is probably that she could not figure out why I was staring at her with my jaw open………………..

I still don’t like Kimchi.

O.B. is pretty good beer.

Korea is not so hot as Japan was……I’d expected just the opposite.

My roomate from college was here in the 80′s and regaled me with stories of getting “complete” haircuts. If that’s still here, I sure can’t find it!

I’m tired and need to go to bed………….

Steeljaw Scribe has a nice clip that reminds me of what I dreamed air travel was, but is not. The video at the link hearkens back to the days when service was important, stewardesses were pretty, and in light of the London plot, air travel was probably safer. Check it out.