#2
Yemen could become a failed state, threatening Saudi Arabia's soft underbelly and thus western oil and gas supplies.
The journo needs to buy a map. Somalia on one side of the Red Sea and it's approaches and Yemen on the other side will effectively close the Suez Canal.
#5
There won't be a collapse, because the present 'revolution' really wasn't a fall of the government per se, merely who was in charge. The Eyptian military hasn't decamped.
We went through this in the Cold War. The Soviets were alternately giants and midgets. Our intelligence people consistently misunderstood (and misrepresented) the Soviet threat. Then that blundering Reagan (blessings upon him) came along, disregarded all the experts, and knock down the Soviets in a decade.
I would not want us to underestimate the Chinese. But we shouldn't overestimate them either. They have their problems. If they decide to be our problem and challenger, then we should use their problems against them the same way we used the Soviets' moral rot against them.
The Chinese are not giants.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/20/2011 9:59 Comments ||
Top||
#3
The Chinese are not giants but they are putting a lot of [our] money into their military. However, 4-5+ more years of a rudderless ship here and they might loom larger. That said, we owe them a lot of money and they don't mind the more than favorable trade with the U.S. I doubt it would be in their best interests to have a kerfuffle with the U.S.
#5
Steve: Reagan didn't think the Soviet military machine was weak; he actively worked on plans to counteract where it was strong.
I suspect the Chinese are working on similar plans regarding ours. Keep in mind we've spent ten years of modernization funds on keeping troops supplied in Afghanistan and Iraq via hostile people charging us $ 200 per delivered gallon of gas.
#6
The problem for the Chinese as it was/is for the Russians is a solid NCO corps. It's also a problem for the US if it decides to downsize and politicize its military. Good NCOs won't stay to play.
After a decade, 9/11 is more controversial because of its internally changing partisans. Other processes, like the failure of the post-colonial state in the Islamic world, have supervened. Pakistain which had begun to be called a failing state in the mid-1990s is on the same page as Al Qaeda, hating America in tandem with the rest of the Islamic world and embracing a special kind of extremism by mixing its anti-Indian jihadi nationalism with its pan-Islamic hatred of Israel. At the end of the 9/11, when the late Osama bin Laden ... who can now be reached at RFD Boneyard... was killed in Pakistain, Paks are unhappy even though the man was responsible for killing more Paks than the people of any other state.
As events unfolded in Pakistan after 9/11, Al Qaeda was embraced by Pakistanis even more firmly. The stage was set in Swat where the affiliates of Al Qaeda were successful in setting up the first mini-state for Osama bin Laden
Al Qaeda has pushed America and Europe towards change too. Lack of integration of the Mohammedan expatriate was always a problem but 9/11 forced attention on him and there is political reaction that doesn't bode well for Mohammedans in the West. Fear has driven multiculturalism out and brought in a concealed Islamophobia ...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do... and a less sincere adherence to the values of Enlightenment. Defiance of assimilation and insistence on sharia that leans fundamentally on maltreatment of women as a cultural boundary are no longer met with amused tolerance. The expat Mohammedan is in for some rough handing in the West in the coming days.
First came the denial: 9/11 never happened and it was in fact an act of the Jews abetted by the Americans themselves in order to create an excuse to attack the Mohammedan world to grab its natural wealth and enhance the power of Israel. But Osama bin Laden sabotaged this elaborate scenario by boasting about his terrorist attacks in the US. When people in Pakistain still did not believe that 9/11 had happened, some honest observers had to tell the truth about the famous Jalalabad Tape.
Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang (1 November 2004) that by announcing that he had carried out the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden in his cassette on 29 October 2004 had revealed the falsehood of Mohammedan intellectuals and Learned Elders of Islam that the 9/11 acts of terrorism had been committed by the Jews. In the beginning Hamid Mir too thought that the Jews had done it but in November 2001 when he was in Jalalabad
Jalalabad, Afghanistan is the largest city in eastern Afghanistan and the capital of Nangarhar province. The estimated population is 168,600 people. It is linked by highway with Kabul to the west and Peshawar, Pakistan to the east.
he discovered that every Al Qaeda member had the photo of Muhammad Ata (the leader of the hijackers who crashed two airliners into the World Trade Centre buildings) on their lap top computers. After that he became convinced that Osama had done the deed. In fact as the latest cassette revealed Osama had thought of 9/11 in 1982 when 'the US had destroyed Leb through Israel'.
Al Qaeda may have lost the first phase of its war in America and Europe but it has won big in Pakistain. And that should worry the rest of the world
As events unfolded in Pakistain after 9/11, Al Qaeda was embraced by Paks even more firmly. The stage was set in Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... where the affiliates of Al Qaeda were successful in setting up the first mini-state for Osama bin Laden. In 2009, US special envoy late Mr Richard Holbrooke stated: the 'hard boyz involved in 9/11, the Mumbai attacks and unrest in Swat have common roots' and that 'the US was troubled and confused about the development in the Swat valley'. He was 'not sure if the Pakistain military and the ISI backed President Zardari's commitment to eradicate terrorist sanctuaries from the NWFP'.
In Pakistain, most TV channels expressed anger at the American reaction of scepticism over the accord reached between TNSM ...Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law) is a Pak jihad boy group whose objective is to enforce their definition of Sharia law in Pakistain whether anybody wants it or not. It was founded by Sufi Muhammad in 1992, and was banned by President Musharraf in January, 2002 after Sufi dispatched several thousand yokels to Afghanistan to fight the infidel and ended up with most of them killed or captured and held for ransom. In 2007 TNSM took over Swat, which shows how well the banning worked. TNSM is the Pony League of Islamic militancy.. 's Sufi Muhammad and the ANP government in NWFP, accusing the western media of interfering in Pakistain's internal affairs. Reaction to Mr Holbrooke's observations was on the same lines. The truth of the matter was that the Swat accord had not satisfied many inside Pakistain even though the ANP had been generally supported in its effort to find a solution to the Swat situation in the face of the non-success of the military operations there.
What happened later in Swat after the Taliban whipped a young woman and Sufi Muhammad announced a rejectionist-khariji Islamic view of what had transpired is now being rapidly forgotten as an embarrassing episode. The army was reluctant to actually set up Al Qaeda as its enemy even after the early Musharraf decision to catch Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistain and hand them over to America. Musharraf's wisdom was superseded by the army's resolve to take on America rather than Al Qaeda.
Zahid Hussain in his book 'The Scorpion's Tail: The Relentless Rise of Islamic Militants in Pakistain and how it Threatens America' (Free Press 2010) wrote: 'By the spring of 2002, US intelligence and the Pak ISI reported that al Qaeda had regrouped in both South and North Wazoo, and the United States pressed Musharraf to launch a major military offensive against them. But the military was opposed and Musharraf soft-peddled, attempting instead to bring the groups around by negotiating peace deals with them.
'Gen Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai, the commander of Pak forces in the area containing Waziristan, dismissed the reports of al Qaeda's resurgence. Although born in the tribal region, Orakzai had not served in the north-western region before, and he had little understanding of the developments there after September 11. The general considered the American and ISI warnings about Al Qaeda to be mere guesswork, saying that his soldiers had "found nothing." There was speculation that he deliberately ignored the large presence of foreigners because he feared that action against them would spark a tribal uprising' (p.32).
Other generals followed Orakzai's line. Was Al Qaeda, the killer of countless Paks through its affiliates, an enemy or someone who had to be assuaged and persuaded to condone Musharraf's early folly and regard Pakistain as a friend? The Pakistain Armed Forces were infiltrated by religious outfit and NGOs subscribing to the Al Qaeda worldview. The tragedy of 9/11 was reinterpreted and even rich women of Pakistain following the Al Huda movement of Farhat Hashmi heard from her that Osama was a 'soldier of Islam' and took it to heart. There was some English-Urdu divide but no one was willing to own the part Pakistain had played in providing Al Qaeda its launching pad of global terrorism in Pakistain.
Fasih Ahmed writing in Newsweek Pakistain (10 June 2011) told the story of journalist Saleem Shahzad who was killed mysteriously after reporting that Pakistain Navy had been penetrated by Al Qaeda: 'Saleem Shahzad posted a story on Asia Times Online about the deadly May 22 attack on Bloody Karachi's Mehran naval air station. Al Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on the PNS Mehran naval air station in Bloody Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the Navy and Al Qaeda over the release of naval officials tossed in the clink on suspicion of Al Qaeda links, an Asia Times Online investigation reveals'.
The Americans finally killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in May 2011. Al Qaeda lives and is embedded in Pakistain simply because Paks and Al Qaeda are on the same page on America. Islamabad is upset by delays in aid disbursement by America and the army wants the CIA to quit Pakistain. Most Paks think America is the enemy of Pakistain, Al Qaeda is not. All Paks think CIA is in Pakistain to steal Pakistain's nuclear weapons while Al Qaeda is not. America worries the Pak more than Hizbut Tahrir ...an al-Qaeda recruiting organization banned in most countries. It calls for the reestablishment of the Caliphate... penetrating the army with its khariji ideology sharing objectives with Al Qaeda.
Pakistain is belly-up economically, gradually winding down till it can no longer look after its long-suffering people regularly targeted by Al Qaeda's henchmen. Al Qaeda may have lost the first phase of its war in America and Europe but it has won big in Pakistain. And that should worry the rest of the world.
Continued on Page 49
A reader sent me a link to an article written by psychiatrist Steve Balt, How To Retire At Age 27, in which he describes a typical patient in his practice, a 27 year old named Keisha:
During the interview, she told me, "I just got my SSDI so I'm retired now." I asked her to elaborate. "I'm retired now," she said [boldface in the original]. "I get my check every month, I just have to keep seeing a doctor." When I asked why she's on disability, she replied, "I don't know, whatever they wrote, bipolar, mood swings, panic attacks, stuff like that." She had been off medications for over two months (with no apparent symptoms); she said she really "didn't notice" any effect of the drugs, except the Valium 20 mg per day, which "helped me settle down and relax."
I misspoke when I said "typical patient." She's slightly unusual for his inner city population, because she actually graduated high school and even took nursing assistant classes.
She dropped out, however, because "I got stressed out." She tried looking for other work but then found out from a family member that she could "apply for disability."
A psychiatrist and a lawyer later and she's awarded a pension of $700 a month. No retirement party, though. And she'll have to buy her own watch. The rest of his post is a thoughtful back and forth about what constitutes disability, and whether a) giving them this easy way out isn't actually doing a disservice to the human being in front of you; b) whether these false diagnoses aren't artificially inflating disease prevalence estimates; c) the extent to which it contributes to bureaucracy (and cost.)
II.
So when he emailed me the link to the article, How To Retire At Age 27," the reader asked me a tongue-in-cheek question: "Now why didn't I think of that twenty years ago?"
Thing is, he probably did think of that, or some brief fantasy of something like it, but figured he could make much more money doing something else. Therein we have the problem:
Evidently, this woman Keisha doesn't think she could make substantially more than $700/month doing something else, so regardless of whether she is truly disabled or not, her conception of her opportunities is seriously limited. That's social policy problemo numero uno. Note that she even took classes to be a certified nursing assistant, and still doesn't think it's worth it. So either CNAs don't get paid enough (over SSI) to merit giving up all your free time to work with the belligerent poop machines at the hospital, or else SSI pays too much to make that decision even worth considering. There are no other possibilities. Choosing between those without sparking riots is social policy problemo numero dos.
Then there's a subtle semiotic issue. She calls it "retired." Not disabled, but retired, which means in the language of social policy she has understood that she has somehow "worked"/contributed to society to merit some retirement benefits, and also tacitly accepts she's not unable to work, rather that she's done working. So what could she have done to merit retirement? The answer probably is nothing. Right? But no one has tried to correct her thinking about this because, well, it just isn't worth arguing with some unemployed black woman at a sychiatrist's office because you'll be branded uncaring and racist, not just by her but by some other busybody with a progressive agenda, free time, and a government/media job. You will also likely get punched. Besides, you and anyone who values work as a moral good and an end in itself don't have time to explain it to an unwilling Keisha, you actually have to get back to work. So she's left with her comforting lies that go unchallenged-- bellay that: they are encouraged. That's social policy problemo numero tres.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
After a decade, 9/11 is more controversial because of its internally changing partisans. Other processes, like the failure of the post-colonial state in the Islamic world, have supervened. Pakistain which had begun to be called a failing state in the mid-1990s is on the same page as Al Qaeda, hating America in tandem with the rest of the Islamic world and embracing a special kind of extremism by mixing its anti-Indian jihadi nationalism with its pan-Islamic hatred of Israel. At the end of the 9/11, when 
Wazoo
