Far East Cynic

Women’s history month.

Not a chance. Here is a review session for those who love the month of March as much as I do.

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Dick Cheney that is. Current CENTCOM gives him and ADTAKE*:

*Advise action Taken. A message from higher authority asking you (sometimes not very politely) WTFO. Getting one was not a good thing.

Wind shear is a powerful thing.

On March 23, aircraft started landing at Narita at 6 a.m. Winds up to 72 kph were blowing mainly from the northwest. Before the accident, 12 aircraft had landed safely under these conditions, including a Japan Airlines jumbo jet and a Nippon Cargo Airlines jumbo jet (which landed 10 minutes and four minutes, respectively, before the accident). Crews aboard 10 of the 12 aircraft reported to the control tower that there was wind shear — sudden changes in wind speed and direction — along the descent route. The pilot of the JAL jumbo jet reported wind shear at or below an altitude of 600 meters.

Read the rest here.

I finished Tom Ricks book The Gamble a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been going back and re-reading certain sections to make sure I understand exactly what he was trying to say. Here is my take on the book.

1) At first I was truly worried that Ricks had drunk the Petreaus kool-aid and allowed himself to be swallowed up by the myth that Petreaus can do no wrong-that he single handedy saved the nation of Iraq. It seemed that way to me at first-until I realized that he was pointing out that the decision to surge had many fathers.

2) I think he missed the boat on the disagreements about the surge between the other military leaders and the guys like Petreaus who, in my opinion, went native-worrying not about the cost to the US, but how to make Iraq work. The book makes the rest of the military leadership-particularly Fox Fallon out to be simple minded. I think that misses the point. The question that Fallon was trying to get across before he was squelched-and that Gen Casey and others were voicing in their opposition to he surge-was, “ at what cost does this come?”. Ricks never did an objective analysis of the opportunity cost the US paid in terms of: a) damage to overall military capability, b) decreased freedom of action in other, more important areas and c) whether it was really in our interests to be tied down for a people that still have not demonstrated an ability to take care of themselves.

3)  His conclusions about the end arounds required to convince the government to move ahead with the surge are disturbing. If Jack Keane was so hell bent to drive American policy in a particular direction-than he should have taken the Army Chief of Staff’s position when it was offered. Submarining his peers in retirement is unseemly at best, a terrible precedent at worst. Try to imagine this nightmare in a Taiwan scenario: Sestak and Obama-going around Naval Leadership. Its a bad road to go down and we will regret it someday.

I’m also kind of dissapointed that Ricks did not give much play to two other factors that played in the “success” of the surge: the ethnic cleasing of Baghdad was completed-and the Iraqi sheiks themselves had started turning long before troop levels went up. Ricks also says nothing about the fact that Pertreaus was a part of the problem before he became the solution-including passing out Kalsihnikovs like they were candy and paying lots and lots of bribe money for deals that are now starting to come apart.

All in all it is a great book and in his commentaries since, Ricks has pointed out again:  just because we try to rectify a mistake after it has been made-does not mean we were somehow right to have made that mistake in the first place. Ricks states emphatically that Iraq will rank as the greatest foreign policy mistake the US has made in 50 years.

Probably the saddest thing is that Ricks is right in his ultimate conclusion-that by executing the surge, without having the Iraqis accomplish the political change necessary, and was the ultimate rationale for the surge- we may have condemned ourselves to never being able to leave.

Which gets back to the question he never really answered-at what cost does that conclusion become too much pay?

Is a failure to communicate.

China Southern Airways has a lousy safety record. Maybe one reason for that is that they do not speak the language of aviation:

A Japanese air safety board investigating a 2007 incident in which a China Southern Airlines plane that entered a runway without permission has determined that the poor English ability of the Chinese pilot and copilot were the cause of the mistake:

In its report, the Japan Transport Safety Board of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said of the incident at Chubu Centrair International Airport in Aichi Prefecture that the pilot and the copilot had either misunderstood or failed to catch the instructions.

However, China Southern officials rejected the assertion, according to the report.

Hmmmmmmmmm. I’ll stick to airlines I know something about.

Or a GPS. Foreign Policy provides one for Pakistan.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Pakistan.

In like a lion-out like a lion?

Cold today-just as it was a couple of weeks ago when we took these pictures:

This is Poogan’s Porch-which is the place you want to go for an artery hardening brunch on a cold Sunday morning. The restaurant is named for the dog that stayed when the owners renovated the house into a restaurant. He stayed and so the porch became his home.

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Our wackos are better than your wackos:

The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief. The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.

This is not to say that the more destructive forms of populism and outright paranoia can’t appear on the left. They have, they do, and they will, especially in times of extreme distress like these. It’s only to say that the infection has been more organic to the modern right.

What they have to look forward to at Camp Smith, HI soon:

Like a bad dream……….that never…….goes away.

Back when we where in Charleston a couple of weeks ago, I gave the S.O. a complete tour of the Citadel campus. One of the places I dragged her into took her to, was the Daniel Library. It is worth the look-see, if only for the reason that the front great hall has some very large murals on display:

See all the portraits on the wall on your right? Those are pictures of the past presidents of The Citadel. I had assumed that it was a comprehensive list of paintings and pictures, but as I looked closer, it appeared to me that one of the persons whose picture should be up on the wall, was missing.  Knowing the history of the man’s troubled tenure as Citadel president, I wonder if it might have been more than just an oversight. The cynic in me suspected that portrait’s omission might have been by design.

That man is Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale. He was the speaker at my commencement ceremonies which occurred right after he had been announced to succeed Gen Seignious as the college’s 15th president. He served one year as president from 1979-1980. While it is contentious to some, it is also nonetheless a statement fact that few alumni or cadets at the time-were sad to see him leave. I remember well hearing of the news of his moving on to Stanford, just as I had heard of the events that transpired during his tenure. Count me in the group of alumni who felt he was bad for the college, and eagerly welcomed his departure.

Stockdale’s  account of the period can be found in the closing chapter of his autobiography In Love and War. He writes unsparingly about the college and many of the people who worked in senior positions within its board and the administration of the time. Since I knew most of the people he attacks in the book either by name or reputation from my time as a cadet-I think he did those people a great disservice. Two people in particular, I hope he subsequently apologized to. His statements about the Commandant at the time, an active duty US Army Colonel and the president’s executive assistant-are particularly regrettable and grossly incorrect IMHO.

It’s always  a bit difficult to write  about this particular time, as Stockdale was a true hero and a man of incredible courage. He gave this country a lot more than he ever got from it. Nonetheless, an examination of his tenure at the College clearly shows what happens when a governing body makes a decision in haste-hoping to cash in on a name, and that Stockdale was the wrong man for The Citadel. To my knowledge, for the rest of his life, he never mellowed in his opinion that all of the problems that occurred during that stormy year were all the college’s fault.  Makes a great story, and a great rationalization-but it was not true. It diminishes none of his greatness to analyze why he was such a bad fit for a great institution.

Simply put,  James Stockdale misunderstood the institution and the fact that despite his earnest desire to make it like the Naval Academy, that was not and should not be it’s place in the educational universe. ( The Citadel and VMI are better than that-and do not need to be dragged into the same morass as that federally funded institutions). Furthermore he failed dismally to understand that an institution as the Citadel rises and falls on the money flowing from its alumni and when you needlessly antagonize them, it does not matter how right you think you are.

Plus in 1980-plenty of folks within the college’s administration, the Corps of Cadets, and the Board of Visitors had seen the hypocrisy the Naval Academy was putting up with and wanted no part of it.  Despite USNA’s best efforts to hide the facts-the truth was getting out, from the Midshipmen themselves.  Definitely the wrong time to be pulling the “new sheriff in town” act.

Stockdale proposed fundamental ( and destructive) changes to the college’s military system, and its clear from his writings that he came into the President’s position with a flawed and pre-conceived notion of what he thought the place was supposed to be like. That he was mistaken in his ideas and his approach was more than adequately proven by the successful tenure and  improvements to the college that were made by his successor-while still preserving the essentials of the military system that makes the college the unique and great institution that it was all the way up to 1996.  Gen Grimsley saved the college. (Its still a great college today-but thanks to the Supreme Court-it has morphed into something entirely different).  Contrary to Stockdale’s assertion that the college was in an academic slump, he never points out that even before he arrived, the college was well ranked among colleges of its size and my class for example, had the largest freshman enrollment in the colleges history.  ( We started with 790 of us and finished with 410).

That the college’s board and its alumni had had enough is reflected in the following Alumni Association resolution posted about Admiral Stockdale’s successor:

WHEREAS, The Board of Visitors wisely selected Major General James A.  Grimsley,
Jr., U.S. Army, Retired, Class of 1942, to succeed to the presidency of The
Citadel upon the resignation of Vice Admiral  James B. Stockdale, U.S. Navy,
Retired; and
WHEREAS,thé cóllege,’environment which had for some time been in a state of uncertainty; and
WHEREAS, the college is now functioning efficiently in all areas as a result, of General Grimsley’s inspired leadership,
BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED THAT the Association of Citadel Men hereby commends
the Board of Visitors for its wisdom in making this selection and commends
General Grimsley for his exemplary performance to date, and that the officers
and directors of the Association unanimously wish General Grimsley well and
pledge their complete support of his administration, and we further pledge
our support to the Board of Visitors as the constituted governing body of
the College.

Academic speak for, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

There are no buildings on campus named for him. There are however, buildings honoring both his predecessor and his successor though. Read into that-what you will.

The Hong Kong Sevens are underway.

And I’m not there. One of these days……….

Sigh.

Obviously, the Sermon on the Mount is not one of the main topics of discussion in certain church in Wasilla:

“So I’m looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra,” said Palin. “And the McCain campaign, love ‘em, you know, they’re a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray.”

Suffice it to say more than a few McCain staffers are just a tad bit upset.

“It’s about us people who were on the plane, who showed extreme loyalty to Palin, continually getting thrown under the bus or slapped in the face by her comments, whether she means it or not,” the staffer said, adding that this is the kind of thing that would “cause you to question not only your loyalty but her judgment as a leader.”

A gaffe you say? Not on your life-little Miss Maligned knew exactly what she was doing. She was not speaking to your average Joe or Jane-you know the kind of people who actually recognize that a team is team, and you may not like all your teammates-but they are still your teammates. And sharing a prayer together might be a good way to get everybody focused on one goal.

Sarah obviously never heard about that little piece of wisdom.

Her remarks were not targeted at reasonable people-the folks who live in the real world of compromises and gray areas. Oh no-she’s working on the audience that lives within the bubble.

Let me translate it into Sarahspeak for you:

” Life was so tough for me out on the campaign trail working with those godless, Washington trained flunkies trusted by that pseudo Christian and Republican John McCain. If only they had all listened to me-and let Sarah be Sarah-a Real Republican would be living at the Naval Observatory right now. “

The bible has a word for you Sarah……………..

Look up Pharisee, sometime. This is the kind of thinking you get when people only get their news here.

Watch the whole whinefest here.

Or don’t watch-just hear about how folksy she is on Fox tomorrow.

A formula speech is there every was one-she makes sure to touch all the right buttons. Especially try not to laugh when she said “she doesn’t care about politics and power and is an ordinary person.”

Yea.. Riiiiiiightttttttttt.

The tight economy even hits the world’s oldest entrepreneurs:

Tomorrow, Friday, around 6 AM, when the bartender announces last call at Fenwick, it really will be last call, as the bar will close for good, unless they win an appeal with the liquor licensing authority, which refused to renew their license due to “ongoing incidents.” This means they get shut down right at the beginning of the biggest bar weekend of the year.

Just last fall it looked like they would close down when the new landlord refused to renew their lease. But in a slumping market, they were able to change his mind on that. The liquor licensing authority doesn’t care about the local economy, nor do they care that Fenwick was playing a vital role in supporting the economies of Thailand, the Philippines, China, Russia and various countries in South America and Africa. “Antics at the disco have frequently been mentioned on Hong Kong-specific blogs and were often the basis of in-jokes among the expatriate community,” or so we are informed by Barclay Crawford of the SCMP. Antics. Right.

This is happening the same weekend as the Hong Kong Sevens-so its a double whammy, since Expats from all over Asia converge on Hong Kong and many of those Rugby fans have “needs” that must be attended to.

I was never much of a Fenwicks fan, truth be told. It was too crowded and it was too depressing. There where better places to go-Dusk till Dawn always had better bands IMHO. And, unlike Fenwicks, you don’t have to cut the desperation with a knife as you walk in.

It would be interesting to see how this changes the complexion of the other bars in Wanchai. Hmmmm…might be an idea for a trip back to Hong Kong in their somewhere…………

I was sick as a dog yesterday. Woke up about 3:30 am and began a rotating cycle between my bed and a room with porcelain fixtures in it. By the time the alarm went off I knew going to work was out of the question-unless I could drag the porcelain to my desk- it was useless. Called in sick and rolled over and hunkered down in my bed in the fetal position.

As I laid there in bed, during my brief conscious intervals during the day, I watched-or more correctly listened to-the hearings involving the Fed Chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury. A couple of things jumped out at me:

1) Geithner was better when he was answering direct questions than he is at giving speeches.

2) Both men feel they have a plan.

3) Congress is going to go out of its way to fuck it up.

One of the most amazing things to me, is how quickly the shoe has shifted to the other foot. 8 years of profligate spending-without paying for it-is somehow conveniently forgotten. Now, and only now, are some in Congress worried about the effects of deficit spending.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m worried about the size of Obama’s budget too. I believe the economy works best when the federal budget is balanced. I also, categorically reject the Republican staple arguments that: 1) We had to spend the monies on the war (s) so we could not spend it at home and 2) tax cuts will solve everything.

Regarding the war(s), aside from the fact that I agree with Thomas Rick’s conclusion that the invasion of Iraq was the single biggest foreign policy mistake by the United States in 50 years-I’ve never understood why we could not conduct them on a pay as you go basis. The war in Iraq has cost just under 700 Billion dollars to date. That’s not including the “other” costs that are hidden in the military’s yearly appropriation ( operating costs that are ostensibly “non-war” operating costs-but are really costs for logistics support and training for units in theater or deploying to the theater). Add those in the cost is closer to 1.2 Trillion over 6 years. (This does not include any of the Afghanistan costs either.)

Yet, despite an unforeseen event, there was not one single surcharge or additional means to generate revenue proposed by the Bush administration. At a minimum, 9-11 should have killed the Bush tax cut. Or prompted a 75 cent a gallon surcharge on gasoline. Just to start.

Those numbers also do not represent the opportunity costs for things that could have been done-but were not-because we were tied up in costs for a war that still is not going to end anytime soon, even after six years.

To put it another way, I’m tired of the same people who are all gung-ho to spend money on Iraqis, but can’t be bothered to spend it on Americans.

What military commitment have dropped in the past 50 years? I can only think of two and they were both forced on us-bases in the Philippines and Vietnam. We’ve simply added more. Like Octomom’s babies we’ve added a lot of extra mouths to feed.

And if we do not address health care now-then when? That’s another basic assumption I do not accept, that decent medical care is not a basic fundamental right of citizenship. Guess in the new buzzword bingo that makes me a socialist. I’m not and I don’t care if people think I am.

It is also accepted by reasonable economists that without a stimulus this recession will last a lot longer than it needs to. Tell me again how it benefits us not to confront that fact, instead of sticking our head in the sand?

In a world where companies can pay a guy a heck of a lot less competent than I am 6.4 million dollars in a bonus there is room to find money to help the rest of us. ( And as far as the “bonus baby” goes-I could have screwed up AIG for a lot less money).

Until someone actually offers a plan that makes sense-and spends money on Americans first, rather than Arabs first-I’ll cautiously support the President.

However,  I can get excited about the World Baseball Classic.

For two reasons actually. One, the International Baseball Federation is headed by a Citadel grad:

Dr. Harvey Schiller is trying to turn one of the greatest double plays in baseball history.  As president of the International Baseball Federation, the Citadel graduate essentially is presiding over a World Baseball Classic he hopes you embrace as much better than the inaugural WBC of 2006.  Schiller also wants to parlay the progress into getting baseball back into the Olympics for the 2016 games, ideally in Chicago or Tokyo.

And two, they have some damn good baseball games.

Don’t say that to Tommy Lasorda though:

“Can you believe this? Look at the score. I feel so bad about this,” Tom Lasorda, Hall of Fame manager and WBC global ambassador, said from his seat behind home plate.

“I’m very, very disappointed. We had high hopes. This is the second time we were supposed to win. We taught these people the game.”Instead, Japan gave the lessons on American soil.Matsuzaka sent his country into Monday night’s title game against South Korea, a 10-2 winner over Venezuela in Saturday’s semifinal. Japan won the inaugural tournament in 2006, defeating Cuba in the final.

As of this writing Japan was ahead 2-1.

Gambare Nihon!

UPDATE!: Nihon wins! Nihon wins! HOLY COW NIHON WINS!

Details here.