re: "That's An Excellent Point, LTC Peters"

TSB at The Skeptical Bureaucrat ("From deep inside the foundations of our Republic's capital city") listened, as we all should, to the inimitable LTC (Ret.) Peters, speaker of uncomfortable truths.

Money quote(s):

"While channel-surfing TV news programs this morning, I caught a few seconds of the retired Army officer and writer/columnist Ralph Peters commenting on the Afghanistan situation and how it forces us into a highly troubled relationship with Pakistan.

Quoting him from memory, he said this:

“When I went to Command and General Staff College, I would have flunked out if I proposed to put 100,000 troops at the end of a single supply line that ran through a thousand miles of hostile territory.”"

This why we keep having to put up with Pakistan.

"After ten years, we still haven't found an alternative to routing all our Afghan-bound truck convoys from the port of Karachi through the Khyber Pass, thereby putting ourselves at the mercy of Pakistan's ISI and its Taliban allies. Shouldn't the CGSC have revoked some diplomas by now?"

Not having a Leavenworth diploma to put at risk, I will venture that the decisions, and the decision-makers, that are relevant are not at the CGSC-graduate level. They are at the war and electoral college level. These are policy and grand strategy-level questions, and they are putting the operational cart in front of the logistical horse.

9/24

re: "WikiLeaks Shows the Skills of U.S. Diplomats"

Fareed Zakaria at TIME has some of the best writing I've seen in that magazine (since I stopped reading it years ago).

Money quote(s):

"A remarkably broad consensus has formed that WikiLeaks' latest data dump is a diplomatic disaster for the U.S. While there are debates over how the Obama Administration should respond, everyone agrees that the revelations have weakened America. But have they? I don't deny for a moment that many of the "wikicables" are intensely embarrassing, but the sum total of the output I have read is actually quite reassuring about the way Washington — or at least the State Department — works."

"The WikiLeaks documents.... show Washington pursuing privately pretty much the policies it has articulated publicly. Whether on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or North Korea, the cables confirm what we know to be U.S. foreign policy. And often this foreign policy is concerned with broader regional security, not narrow American interests. Ambassadors are not caught pushing other countries in order to make deals secretly to strengthen the U.S., but rather to solve festering problems.

The cables also show an American diplomatic establishment that is pretty good at analysis."

&

"When foreigners encounter U.S. diplomats and listen to their bland recitation of policy, they would do well to keep in mind that behind the facade lie some very clever minds."

Go ahead and read the whole thing: it won't hurt you.

JG - Obama's Caribbean challenge - How will new US president deal with Jamaica and the region?

Inauguration Day news:

Jamaica Gleaner

Obama's Caribbean challenge - How will new US president deal with Jamaica and the region?


Published: Sunday January 18, 2009

Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter


WITH THE clock racing towards the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States (US), Jamaicans and others around the Caribbean are still looking at the possible impact of America's first African-American leader on the region.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"And while it is widely accepted that the election of Barack Obama will not lead to an open bag of goodies across the region, the fire continues to burn that the Caribbean will make it on to the radar of the new president."

&

"It is widely accepted that US policy towards Jamaica and the wider Caribbean has fluctuated between disinterest and obsession over the years.

The policy has been based on a collection of reasons, including security (protecting its borders), ideology (keeping out communism), politics and economics.

Over the last eight years, outgoing president George W. Bush has emphasised all of the above, providing millions of dollars for drug interdiction, interfering in Haiti's domestic politics, maintaining the embargo on Cuba while paying little regard to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Now it is Obama's time to bat, but officials of the US State Department have already made it clear that there will be no major change in policy."