Far East Cynic

Stupid commercials like this.

Waiting for Donald Rumsfeld to apologize.

The parallels between Rumsfeld and McNamara are strong — up to a point. Both men took charge of the Pentagon bent on exercising greater civilian control over the military. Both were determined to transform the military bureaucracy into a more efficient, more adaptable organization. And both were perceived as arrogant, abrasive and impatient.

But where the two differed profoundly was in how they regarded their tenures in the end. While McNamara, even before he left office, started to doubt the purpose of the Vietnam War and the prospect of victory, Rumsfeld has never appeared to waver in the conviction that invading Iraq was the right thing to do and that the U.S. war plan was sound. When I pressed him, during a final interview for my recently published biography, on whether he had any regrets about his conduct of the war, he dismissed the question as a favorite press query unworthy of reply.

Rumsfeld remains filled with a bitter sense that perceptions of the war and of his role in it have been badly distorted by one-sided media coverage, much of it based, in his view, on self-serving accounts by State Department and National Security Council officials.

4,322 instruments of American foreign policy could not be reached for comment.

Update: Speaking of dancing snowflakes ( Rumsfelds famed memo’s), Stephen Walt takes issue with the popular dogma on the surge. Fox Fallon won’t be getting any apologies anytime soon either.

 Since I just got the lovely fucking news a few hours ago that I have to work on a Sunday. To say I’m not pleased is an understatement……………

The S.O. is not pleased either………..

One of the biggest changes at the place I work is that  they have become rather disrespectful of people’s time-for projects that really don’t need the kinds of deadlines they are working on. The reasons are complicated-and stupid. However since I am on site-and otherwise someone would have to hop a plane down from Virginia to be here for the madness-it only makes sense I fall on this grenade. Besides I get to head out west next week any way.

So watch this girl in the bikini (s).  She’s got my attention:

What’s the Japanese word for "Nice Rack"?

*Subarashi Oppai!

 Joe Galloway on Robert McNamara.

Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.

McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.

Ouch!

His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers. The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara. Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the Infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late."

Of course, it could be argued that McNamara was simple thirty years too early. Back in the 1960′s people actually believed that war was an abomination, a state to avoided, a theft of what is good and decent about society. Now if a blogger called the deaths of soldiers overseas for a foreign population a waste-he’d get blasted about being unpatriotic.

Avoiding that debacle, shaped foreign policy and military thinking for a good 25 years. It led to the Powell doctrine that said-if you do go to war, you go full bore, and before you go, you better know damned well what the means of getting out was.

Ah, but then came the 21′st century and McNamara’s prodigy, Donald Rumsfeld, gave us back counterinsurgency warfare as a be all end all. Which also gave us a war without end, amen.

I’d be bitter too.

Home again. Long day spent in pursuit of airplanes-walking between gates, waiting to get delayed. There seems to be an un-written rule for me in the Charlotte Airport. My gates will always be as far apart  physically as they can be. The distance between the gates is inversely proportional to the time I have to make the connection.

Doing laundry and hoping to squeeze in a nap. Have to turn around on Monday and head out west. Although I like traveling, I think I liked the international travel better. At least then you could build in time to be gone and people did not expect you back at work the same day you travelled. Not so here-thanks to the project I have inherited.

Went up into Georgetown last night. Stopped at Nathan’s which has been one of my  DC "checks in the block" for over twenty years. Seems they are closing up shop on Sunday. That’s a shame. Nathan’s was a great place for people watching-just as it was last night. Sidle up to the bar, order a beer and watch two folks in suits and a couple of women in dresses (one was a blond with legs that went all the way up.    The other had an ample bosom-despite being built for power, not for speed ). Talking about politics and it was clear one of the guys was responding with a different agenda in mind.  They left before he had a chance to propose the deal-much less close it. They were discussing Obama and whether he was really in trouble with Congress.

As I have gotten older I appreciate a place like that bar more-its not full of college kids. Nathan’s on the other hand always had a fairly diverse crowd. Sitting in the back corner was an older couple, making love to their tonics and gin. At the other end of the room were a couple of young guys pumping back drinks-and then the rest were middle aged, slightly overweight hacks like me. They will probably turn the place into an Applebees or something.

Mine and DC’s loss.

They will go even more high order!

Seems that delving into the facts about Saint Sarah is not allowed. It gets in the way of the narrative:

One of the chief reasons Sarah Palin has given for resigning as Governor of Alaska is that her state’s taxpayers are being forced to spend money defending her government against ethics complaints that would otherwise fund teachers, cops, and road repair.

But in response to our questions, a spokesperson for the Alaska governor’s office just gave us new information that casts serious doubt on this assertion. The revelation makes the resignation episode even stranger, and raises fresh questions about the real reasons for her abrupt departure.

During her resignation speech last week, Palin presented herself as a heroic defender of the taxpayer. She said that money being spent on government lawyers to defend against these “frivolous ethics violations” could be “going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research.” Palin repeated exactly the same point this week.

But David Murrow, a spokesperson for the Governor, said in an interview that much of this money was budgeted to the lawyers in advance and would have gone to them anyway, even if state lawyers hadn’t been defending against these ethics complaints.

Basically, the state had already planned for a certain level of legal effort-and while one could make the argument that they might have used their time elsewhere-it still would not have saved the state any money.

How do you know Sarah Palin is lying? Her lips are moving.

Three cities, three days. Evenings spent traversing between them.

On the way to one of them today, went past the spot where John Wilkes Booth died. The Garrett farm house is now gone-and its location in the middle of a median. There was room enough to stop though-so I did and walked the trail back to the spot. Where I found a small stone marker, that said:

Share you peace with the soul of John Wilkes Booth. The twenty first confederate legion.

And who are they exactly?

BTW, the History Channel has an excellent documentary about the assasination of Lincoln and Booths two weeks on the run in Northern Virgina. If you get to see it-its worth the time.

Wish I had remembered to bring my camera.

Spike tells us Compuserve is dead. I was a Compuserve customer-a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

Fucked Gaijin points out:

Every national culture has its weird obsessions, and it seems as if Japan’s oddball closet is more crowded than most ? Pokémon, Elvis Presley and Hello Kitty are just a few of the country’s most famous fixations. But perhaps most peculiar of all is the Japanese passion for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, especially the “Ode to Joy” passage of the fourth and final movement. An amateur pastime in Japan for more than 50 years,

Which then led me to this cute little video about the stations on the Yamanote Line. Its been a year since I rode it-and I sometimes, in my somber moods-despair of getting back. Till then-sing along!

Died today. Leaving Donald Rumsfeld now in the unenviable position of longest living , really bad, Secretary of Defense. ( Quote shamelessy stolen from my Canadian counterpart).

Most of the coverage has centered on Vietnam-for which he does deserve a healthy share of criticism. However Vietnam was many years in the making before he arrived and LBJ or a the right words from the right guys could have stopped him.

McNamara’s real legacy lived on long after Vietnam. The Pentagon stopped being able to buy anything well. There were exceptions of course-but the painful process known as PPBS is still with us.

The ghost of McNamara will haunt every discussion where the word-"metrics" are thrown out.

That is how he really harmed the country.

He did do one thing right-McNamara directed the Air Force to adopt the Navy’s F-4 Phantom and A-7 combat aircraft, a consolidation that was quite successful. Imagine if the Air Force had been forced to buy the F-18 E and F, how much better off they would be today. And how much money they could have saved on F-22′s-which could have been used to buy new B-1 bombers.

Update: Detailed NYT Obit here.

And this is now.

Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now.

Seems the shoe is on the other foot now.

This commercial is making the rounds in Japan. Sure beats talking about politics!

Recruit publishes Job Guides in Japan. Their magazines with job listings always have off beat names.

We went to the fireworks last night at one of the literally dozens of shopping malls here in this hillbilly hell litle burgh. Fortunately the Barnes and Noble was open-the better to capitalize on hundreds of people converging on said shopping mall. Since they had a Starbucks and we had time to kill-we joined the throng. $52 poorer we went out to see the fireworks. ( Which seemed shorter than last year-but then again no American fireworks display holds a candle to the Hanami which will go on in Japan from now through the end of August.)

Two gardening books for the S.O. Big mistake-last thing she needs is to get more dug in.

And two books for me:

Seemed like an interesting book that refutes most of the popular myths that have taken hold in the public consiousness. We’ll see as I read it on the plane up north next week.

And the other:

Slate columnist Kaplan takes a contrarian view to the common wisdom that the ’60s were the source of the cultural shift from pre-WWII traditions to the individualistic, question-authority world of today. In Kaplan’s view, the watershed year in this transformation is 1959. He delves into that year’s cultural and political scene, citing Miles Davis and his revolutionary album Kind of Blue; William Burroughs and his equally revolutionary novel, Naked Lunch; and the opening of Frank Lloyd Wright’s radically designed Guggenheim Museum in New York City as examples of fundamental breaks with past conventions.

I’m hoping to get this one done a little later in the month. I had read about the book and since I was born during that particular era -and I had heard a lot about this particular book-I thought, "Why not?" I suspect Kapaln may be right.
 

I also finished a couple of books recently. George Friedman’s book was interesting but I think he started from a conclusion and worked backwards from it-namely that American dominance as the single superpower is pre-ordained. Nonetheless, his look at some of the trends and the flows of international politics is worth a look. And he does point out that the competitors are nipping at the heels of the US.

I liked Fareed Zakaria’s book better. Most neo-cons and supporters of the neo-con interventionist philosophy probably hate it. Basically, Zakaria takes a look at the data and says that there is no way the US will remain the only power to contend with in the world. Rather than bemoan that fact however-he points out that its actually something the US can embrace-and emerge better from-if it would only try. I agree with him on that. A recognition that the US does not have to be every where, for everyone is a good thing. If, in that retrenchment, the country turned inward to strengthen itself economically-it will be in a stronger competitive position. Zakaria is not advocating isolationism-just a recognitions of the limits of what US power can achieve.

Probably the one down side to the book is that Zakaria is way too complimentary to India. ( He’s Indian-so go figure). I don’t share is admiration for a complex set of reasons, some which have to do with the fact that I still think they ought to be governed by a Viceroy answerable to the British government.  That’s a pipe dream of course-but it still does not mean I have to like them any more.  I think India still has a long way to go-and it needs to make a greater commitment to all of its people-not just the 1/3 or so that it props up at the expense of grinding poverty for the rest.

Nonetheless, its worth a read-and I recommend it.

Happy Fourth of July!

Here at Far East Cynic HQ, its not so happy a fourth of July. Two reasons for that. First, we said goodbye to my friend and teacher of the ways of corporate America, Al. His funeral was yesterday.

It was sad and it was joyous at one and the same time. Al was, I believe, a uniquely lucky man. Not so many people get to be as lucky as Al was. He had a wife that genuinely adored him-rather than simply try to control him, he had the respect of a large group of his fellows-and has had for a long, long time, and he had a beautiful family without all of the "issues" that seem to bedevil the rest of us. His wife told a great story of how their first date was to see the movie Patton. If you knew Al, you would appreciate that statement.

" I don’t know all that many happy people. What, exactly,  do they look like?"

They look like Al-but they don’t come around all that often due to the vagaries of the world we live in. Thanks be to God that some people get to be that lucky.

The second reason is that the other shoe dropped on Thursday. Since Al was working a project for our company, that is on a deadline, of next week-I, as the other company man on the floor, inherited it. Unable to legally access his computer ( nor would I have had the gall to ask) I have had to reconstruct his work from scratch. I’ve got to get it into review by Monday-as this project only has about 60 days or so get done and it has to be done right. Jobs are on the line here.

I do not mind doing this one bit-althought the S.O. is less than pleased. Its cramped our holiday weekend and left me locked in my cave for protracted periods of time. ( I have to work on it at home-I can’t do it at the office for professional and ethical reasons). I’d do a lot more for Al and his family-all they have to do is ask. ( And I suspect I will over the next couple of weeks).

I miss my pal. Work is going to be even more mind numbing than before-without the voice of common sense around.

As for the Fourth? Well, we will go see fireworks today. I’ve been listening to the history channel off and on while I’ve been typing. If you get a chance you should watch their shows on the revolution. I believe that most Americans do not realize what a close run thing American Independence was-or how close the British came to crushing this rebellion.

I also do not believe Americans really appreciate the benefits they do have-while they sink ever deeper with each passing day into the mire of uneducated and really petty politics-fed by the buffoons who purport to impart political truth. I believe the founding fathers would shake their head in disgust at what we have become-on both sides of the aisle.

So have a happy holiday. Remember those who are not really able to celebrate-as they are out on patrol around the world doing the nations business. Whether they should be where they are-is another issue. Nonetheless they are there-so remember them.

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.-Thomas Jefferson.

As practiced in Singapore: