It's really about stopping the opium drug gangs that provide the financing which allows the Pashtuns to punch well above their weight. An interesting analysis.
Perhaps it also means figuring out who our real enemies are there. That's the hard-core Taliban, not the tribal elders in a valley who will shoot at any furriners ...
#1
I have never understood why we allowed the opium to be grown and cultivated. Yeah it's hard to kill the stuff and you don't want to alienate the population but a series of sweeps, boots on the ground, to destroy the crops and or kill the farmers as enemies would have gone a long way to shutting down the war. It takes money to fight and bribe your way through a war after all.
#3
rjschwarz, if I recall correctly, the British were in charge of Helmand province until recently, and they hadn't the manpower or the political will to face the opium situation directly.
#4
Fighting a drug war in the fields or labs is only a notional effort. The solution to the problem is found in the streets and at the consumer level. Thanks to a very aggressive advertising campaign by Hollywood, we've never quite been able as a society, to come to grips with that fact.
#5
COIN/Small wars are hard, frustrating business. Perseverence and finding the enemies true CV is the key. Bottomline is that you need a good amount of the populace on your side and the gov't has to be seen as legit by most locals for the foreign Coiner's to be able to be successful. Maybe we need to flip some of these drug dealers. Karzai is a pain in the ass. Where there's a will...but I'm pretty sure our C-n-C doesn't have it or a clue. Again, I have not seen a commander's intent statement by Obama and doubt I will.
#2
I'm not sure why the CIA would be involved, Paul2. I believe a lot of the drugs organizations were originally started to fund communist takeover attempts, so one would think the CIA would have been on the other side... and I do know we've been aiding various Central and South American governments in terms of spraying the fields and otherwise fighting those groups since at least the 1980s. I think you may be reading lefty attempts at confusing the ignorant... or projection. Hope that helps, my dear.
It was the worst day for American forces in Afghanistan in four years yesterday, with 14 lives lost, all in helicopter crashes.
Speaking during a visit to Naval Air Station Jacksonville on the same day, the president said: While I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan: I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harms way. I wont risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary.
His audience approved and for entirely understandable reasons. They are in uniform and may have to deal with the practical consequences when armchair generals and civilian hawks sitting at home demand they be sent into action. But while it sounds considered and eminently reasonable, Im not sure that the no rush approach on the next stage of this campaign does anyone - the U.S. military, Americas allies such as Britain or the Afghan people - much good.
I do not mean to suggest that Mondays tragic deaths would have been avoided if there were more forces on the ground. However, there is a sense that we - the West - are in limbo in the war against the Taliban. Great sacrifices are being made by our forces while our leaders cannot work out whether or not to commit fully to backing them in getting the job done.
The president appears to be hedging. He has recommendations on his desk from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his senior Afghan commander, that there should be a surge of 40,000 troops. But the suggestion is that he may listen instead to Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, who says McChrystal wants to go too far, too fast. In this way, the president may opt for half-measures, or a semisurge, so fearful is he of being sucked into a Vietnam scenario in the manner of LBJ.
This vacillation is in contrast to the decision taken by George W. Bush late in his presidency. It is unfashionable to give him credit for anything, but Bush did agree to the surge in Iraq and it had an extraordinarily positive impact.
The problem is that speed, which Obama expressly says he wants to avoid, should be of the essence in Afghanistan. The West has been there for eight years, two years longer already than the entire second world war. The cost in men and material has been immense while the resulting disruption caused to the Islamo-fascists considerable.
But we cannot go on like this indefinitely - making some progress but never winning, especially when money is so tight. We need to either commit more troops and firepower, get a move on, surge troop numbers, take the fight anew to the Taliban and aim for victory. Or if we dont fancy that, we can slim down our presence dramatically, fund the anti-Taliban forces and back them up with special forces support and airpower.
The worst option appears to be staying in limboland and sacrificing lives for years with no prospect of eventual victory. The choice is for President Obama. Contrary to there being no need to rush, its decision time.
#2
This is a time for some profound rethinking of how the US relates to failed states and to transnational enemies; time to decide how to formulate policies (that can be reasonably continuous through different administrations) for dealing with organizations that are merely tribes and not classically defined nations. Who is responsible when someone from the tribe attacks us, and who should be rewarded when they benefit us? When there's no "nation" the question gets much harder. Armies are SOP against nations, assassins might be better against tribes.
We need to have procedures and plans to be able to deal with individual leaders instead of ambassadors, accepting the risk of discontinuity when the leader dies.
We need to be able to play The Great Game.
But this is amateur hour at the White House, so we're just dithering.
Posted by: James ||
10/28/2009 21:23 Comments ||
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Private insurance premiums could triple under ObamaCare.
Washington is captivated by the Senate melodrama over the so-called public option, salivating at the ring of Harry Reid's political bell (see below). But the most important health-care questions continue to be about the policy substance--particularly those that Democrats don't want asked.
Foremost among them is: How will ObamaCare affect insurance premiums in the private health-care markets? Despite indignant Democratic denials, the near-certainty is that their plan will cause costs to rise across the board. The latest data on this score come from a series of state-level studies from the insurance company WellPoint Inc.
Continued on Page 49
When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other peoples money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services.
But the government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation. Oops.
Government job creation is an oxymoron, said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.
Thats why jobs created or saved is such pure fiction. It ignores whats unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.
Econometric models synthesize all sorts of variables and spit out a GDP forecast. From there they derive the change in employment using something called Okuns Law, named after the late economist Arthur Okun, which describes the relationship between the two.
Fiction Lags Reality
Actual hiring seems to be lagging behind the models land of make-believe. For small businesses, which are the source of most job creation in the U.S., the governments increased and changing role in the economy isnt a confidence builder. Businessmen have no idea what health-care reform will mean for their cost structure or what whimsical tax policies the government might impose when it realizes those short-term deficits are running into long-term unfunded liabilities.
No wonder capital spending plans were at an all-time low in the third quarter, according to the NFIB monthly survey.
Only 30,383 jobs were created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to Recovery.gov, the governments once-transparent Web site that has become a complex blur of numbers, graphs and pie charts. These are only the jobs reported by federal contract recipients. The Obama administration will report the larger universe of ARRA-related jobs on Oct. 30.
An extrapolation of what would have happened without the fiscal stimulus isnt much consolation to the 9.8 percent of the workforce that is unemployed. Nor is Romers prescription for the economy and labor market very comforting in light of the trillions of future tax dollars that have been spent, lent or promised by the federal government.
If you take your foot off the gas, the car goes from 60 back down to a slow crawl, Romer said in clarifying blog post.
#3
As soon as the words "jobs created or saved" left the mouth of Barry, red flags should have been raised with every American. The fact that this did NOT happen raises the possibility that we as a society, may now have what we deserve.
#4
The worst part is that governments invariably remove jobs from high tech, high productivity, sunrise industries and 'create' them in low tech, low productivity, sunset industries like cars.
Why do people keep insisting that understanding Darwinian evolution is necessary to becoming Modern? Understanding the difference between science and magic, and that magic doesn't actually work, is necessary. Accepting that we humans have discovered a great deal more about the world around us than God (whatever one's group might call him/her/it) revealed in the Holy Book, that is necessary. Accepting also that not every word in that Holy Book means what one was told as a child, and in fact that some of those words have been mis-copied... or even were mis-transcribed or are the result of incomplete understanding by the original recorder, these things are necessary. But one can make use of electric lights without understanding electro-physics, the engineering of power plants and the wiring of communities for power, although it is useful, Darwinially speaking, to realize that it's a good idea to call in a professional electrician to fix a non-functioning light switch if one doesn't have a grasp of the key concepts. The Muslim world would do better to understand how application of Darwin's concepts of "survival of the fittest" and "competition for a particular niche in the environment" result in the dynamic economies and non-tyrannical politics that the Muslim world so often lacks. In other words, Darwin should be studied to understand why the Ummah has been falling ever further behind the West since 1492. They can figure out how Ardi fits into things later.
#1
My opinion is that an understanding of >>>Biological<<< Evolution brings utterly ZIP to any discussion. The vast majority of Bioengineering benefits are strictly a case of reverse-engineering upon which Darwinists take free rides. And there is utterly no need for Darwinian evolution when it comes to, say, wiring the countryside. And the concepts of "survival of the fittest" and "competition" are not exclusively biological in nature, being shared by capitalism at base.
Personally, I am still abivalent as to the Long-age/short-age debate: there is good evidence on both sides. What I AM convinced is that if God did nothing, nothing would happen.
But I simply MUST agree with Trailing Wife about the inability of the Ancients to be able to adequately communicate what they were shown. They were limited by both their vocabulary and the concepts they held to grasp what they were seeing. it takes a considerable amount of second-guessing and some close reading and comparing of passages, along with a good imagination, to even come close to what they MIGHT have been seeing. I don't bother, mainly because I can't subject any speculations to confirmative testing (the same objection I have to many Darwinist explanations). I have turned my attention to spiritual matters that would do me more personal good and which are potentially reproducible, and am quite excited by what I have found and demonstrated so far.
...Frankly, the idea of an image of a pissed-on Obama “weeping,” and some of his fans falling to their knees over it would have a lot of satirical value; it would offer commentary both on the excesses of religious and political worship, and offend fewer people than David’s cowardly joke.
It takes no courage for an rich, unbelieving “artist” to piss on Christ. After all, that’s been done before. And Jesus voluntarily submitted himself to much worse, which means nothing an “artist” does to any image of Christ can do anything but reflect on the spiritual poverty of the “artist,” himself. For an “artist” to use Jesus for a cheap joke is about as “courageous” and “bold” as making a joke about George W. Bush before an audience of like-thinkers; it takes no courage at all.
But for an “artist” to make an identical satirical “joke” on Obama and his adorers? That would take great courage. That would be bold, and daring. And it would speak reassuring volumes about free speech in America.
I would not want to see it. I would not want to see the image of any American President so ill-used; he’s my president, too.
But if Larry David could see the humor in pissing on Christ and the excesses of Catholic piety, surely he must see the humor in pissing on Obama, and the excesses of Obama worship?
Haha. It’s all so funny, isn’t it? Are you laughing? Are you not entertained?
Posted by: Mike ||
10/28/2009 14:23 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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#1
Am I really the only one who doesn't find Larry David even remotely funny?
#5
I've been told over and over to give Curb Your Enthusiasm a chance since I loved Seinfeld and to be honest every time I watch it I'm bored. Having said this the pee joke doesn't surprise me as his brand of humor is to poke at sacred cows and to be fair, there are far more Christians likely to watch than Moslims or anything else. The only thing that comes close would be the Obama image as suggested, although I can see him doing that.
#6
he married and facilitated Laurie David (she of the "two sheets of TP" fame with Sheryl Crow while personal jetting to Glowball Warming shindigs), so he's already got a Crime Against Humanity strike. This is his second
Posted by: Frank G ||
10/28/2009 20:45 Comments ||
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#7
I take great satisfaction in the scripture that says that on that great day of judgement, every knee shall bow. That includes this low life "atist". I take great awe in the grace of God that if this artist asks Christ to forgive him of his sins, He will simply do so. And if he doesn't I fear the moment on that great day of kudgement when 9hrist looks upon his poor soul and says "I never knew you".
Posted by: Boss Snomotle8280 ||
10/28/2009 20:49 Comments ||
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#8
To answer the original question....no, because that would be blasphemous. And racist!
Hat tip No Pasaran
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
#1
This was absolutely fascinating ... and contra to what we were taught in school, and had incessantly drummed into our heads about race relations in the 19th century. The 'peculiar institution' had a great many curious aspects to it, and wealthy free blacks and black slave magnates were just one of them.
This is one of the big no-nos of American history, right up there with the blacks who fought for the Confederacy.
We had a similar incident here a few years back when the SC State Museum a restored slave cabin went up as an exhibit. The narration with it stated - accurately - that although the life of a slave was never easy or pleasant, most slaves were treated reasonably well, because they were an important investment on the part of the landowner. In addition, slaveholders who deliberately abused their slaves were usually looked down upon in the community; albeit for the same reasons that you would look down upon someone who abused their draft animals or livestock. Finally - and this seemed to get some folks madder than anything else - the exhibit accurately pointed out that the average slave lived in better conditions and was more likely to get three squares a day than the average white sharecropper. Needless to say, this didn't survive much past the opening of the exhibit.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
10/28/2009 9:14 Comments ||
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#3
Doesn't everybody know only whites were racist slave owners?? C'mon folks, this is obviously a white racist lie that will be exposed by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
#4
Of course the first slaves of the British in the New World were Irish
Many of them escaped from the West Indies to the southern parts of the Americas and are what are today called "rednecks" None of them, to my knowledge, ever owned slaves.
#6
Historical truth (Veritas) is no longer subscribed to in the Academy. Historical discourse reigns - and that discourse steeped in PC allows for little/no discussion of incidents mentioned in this article.
#8
I'm not quite certain what the argument here is supposed to be. That slavery in the American South wasn't a racist institution, because some blacks also held slaves?
Posted by: S. ||
10/28/2009 22:19 Comments ||
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#9
No argument - just relishing the historical observation that slavery in the US of A didn't always involve people of color being brutally exploited by persons of pallor.
19th century social history WRT our "peculiar institution" wasn't all that cut and dried. The nuances are ... well, interesting and amusing.
And S, if you can't appreciate the amusement value of finding out that there were black slaves held by pre-Civil War black residents of the Southern States, then I postulate that you suffer from an irony deficiency. There may be some vitamins you can take for that.
#10
"just relishing the historical observation that slavery in the US of A didn't always involve people of color being brutally exploited by persons of pallor"
No, not always. I'm still going to bet that 99% of black slaves were owned by white people though.
"And S, if you can't appreciate the amusement value of finding out that there were black slaves held by pre-Civil War black residents of the Southern States"
I knew that for many years, Sgt. Mom. I still don't understand what's amusing -or even remotely significant- about it. Some freed white slaves in Rome became slaveowners of other white people. I find that *sad*, but I don't see how it's amusing. Likewise it's obvious that some freed black people in America would choose to become slaveowners of other black people - historically that's what some slaves in all societies choose to do with their gained freedom.
It's a sad testament to the universality of human immorality, and to the ability of some people to accept the very system that oppressed them ("I once was poor, but I worked hard, and I starved, and now at my retirement I'm rich!" says the victim of capitalism. "I once was a slave, but I pleased my master, and got freed in his will, and now I own slaves!" says the victim of slavery.), but I don't see much worthy of relishing here. It's just sad and pitiful.
Anyway the racism in the institution of American slavery doesn't lie in the color of the slaveholders, it lies in the color of the slaves.
Posted by: S. ||
10/28/2009 23:43 Comments ||
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#11
The colour of the majority of slaves at the time of the Civil War, anyway. Actually, does anyone know if whites were sold into slavery -- bond slavery I think it was called -- after the Revolution? Was that strictly an English custom, or is that something America kept afterward?
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.
When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other peoples money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services. 
