If You Don't Know Where You're Going, You Might Not Get There

A week or so back a story came out in the WSJ reporting the president had just finished reading Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.

The book's narrative arc concerns a White House "being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead," urged on by a hyperbolic Pentagon that saw commies under coffee tables while committing unbelievably basic mistakes on the ground. As the story goes, Tom Donilon (a long-time Biden ally), the deputy national security advisor, gave Rahm Emanuel a copy of 'Lessons,' then Rahm went to pass it on the prez but learned he was already reading it, so he loaned it to David Axelrod. Obama passed his own copy on to Biden, whereupon it became required reading for all of Washington and sold out of bookstores. It still must be back-ordered on Amazon.

The Pentagon, now hyperventilating about islamo-fascists under coffee tables, prefers a different narrative arc, one conveyed in A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam. This work has the US military finally figuring out how to apply COIN principles and win, which it was manifestly starting to do by 1971-72, only to have its plug pulled after 8 previous years of patient learning and sacrifice, all wasted by a White House too focused on political gain. Various generals have been pressing the book on their subordinate chains of command since 2005, the WSJ article relates, and it is currently sold out at Amazon.

The broad lines of debate are exposed. Regular readers (Jon in particular) might expect me to dump on the military's choice of exemplar, but not in this case. Creighton Abrams took over Vietnam's command from William Westmoreland in 1968 and promptly switched the strategic focus to protecting villages from incursion and training a truly effective indigenous army (ARVN). Abrams was one of the best military minds in the 20th century in both combat and command, and given a couple more years' head start and 500,000 men, he probably would have succeeded in at least partitioning Vietnam's narrow isthmus. The book is an excellent choice on which to base an argument of COIN and see-it-through.

The White House's book is similarly well-chosen, in that its focus is on McGeorge Bundy, one of the so-called "best and brightest" or "wise men" in the Kennedy Administration, in which he served as National Security Advisor. Having been born to one of Boston's elite families and pledging as member #322 of the Skull and Bones society while at Yale, he was tapped at age 30 to serve on the Council of Foreign Relations while the Marshall Plan was being implemented in Europe as an anti-communist firewall. From there he went to serve as Harvard's youngest ever Dean of Faculty. In the Kennedy Administration, he was an outspoken hawk for escalation, but was first of the early hawks to change his mind and advocate cutting the losses. Like the current think-tankers paid to wind up generals, airwaves and representatives, Bundy knew nothing about war's conduct. He had never studied it.

The arcs don't apply particularly well because Afghanistan is far larger, less stable, more permeable, hostile, and diverse than Vietnam. Afghanistan is a failed state starting from a point of near-zero cohesion, whereas Vietnam had two systems of governance, each entertaining useful thralls of competing ideologies, each on the cusp of establishing a post-Colonial national identity. In Kabul, no one collects the garbage, the Karzai government huddles behind sandbags collecting drug money while it piles higher, and every time the author of a strategic plan relieves themselves on a toilet in the US embassy and flushes, they literally shit on the city's residents. The city's sewage system is its streets.

The Obama Administration's only strategic goal in Afghanistan is to simply contain al-Qaeda, which has already been accomplished. They're re-fighting Vietnam while al-Qaeda openly blossoms orange and red in Pakistan, and it seems that Vietnam is aiming too high.

The New Narrative: Ready to Lie

Few things change an election narrative like a banking system failure. Sure, wars are great for a good crisis, too, but you can only start so many of them before, ah, before your banking system fails.

Last week, when Palin went up in the polls, lots of people (such as me) were having Gore-Kerry flashbacks, and Lord Wife noted that Obama explicitly kept hammering home two election points: economy and inequity. With the failures of AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman brothers coming over the weekend, she speculates he was "banking" on some upcoming news. Whether or no, both Lord Wife and Obama are looking pretty damned smart this week.

The campaign followed the bad economic news with their own August fund-raising figures, which they'd held back on reporting:

(Reuters) Obama raises $66 million (a record) with 500,000 new donors.

Slavering media coverage of Palin/McCain as a phenom began to curdle, and what the punditry just recently described as their 'misstatements,' 'possible inaccuracies,' and 'attacks' are now being openly called 'Lies:'

Rove offers a "hook" for all the lies coverage by commenting on FoxNews?

(AFP) McCain, Palin defiant in 'lies' storm

A collection of some of the "lies" editorials.

Now conservatives are starting to pummel McPain in print:

David Brooks, conservative columnist, questions Sarah Palin's readiness.

Richard Cohen, rabid stump-chewing Zionist, calls McCain a liar.

Carly Fiorina, McCain economic advisor: "Palin couldn't run a corporation, neither could McCain."

The McCain campaign's responses are as funny as cries for help:

McCain states on CNN, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, domestic policy advisor, holds up his Blackberry to a reporter and claims, "He did this. You're looking at a miracle John McCain helped create."

Me: "By the way, you may not have heard this yet, but John was once a PRISONER OF WAR."

To put a cherry on top, what has long been begged for is now being done: they're slugging McCain in the throat. Obama is directly assaulting the Character Brand in spots called "Honor" and "Ready to Lie: An American Hero's Fall from Grace." Two months to go, but these should be effective for now.

Reasons To Feel Good About the Republican Convention

I managed to catch a few of the speeches by various luminaries before last night's "Moose Head Barbie" climax, and here are a few summaries:

Rudy 9iu11ani: "If you don't elect McCain, I'll blow up Florida."

Mike Huckabee: "For freeing Arkansas from its Russian occupation, I heart John McCain."

Some Party Woman Speaking at 5:50 PM: "I...can. Read!"

The Moose Head herself was pretty impressive. Well-written, well-delivered, telegenic, roughly 25% of Sarah Palin's content was Nobama criticism, 25% hostile fabrication, 25% standard anti-government ravings, and 25% "Proud to Be A Murkin." In other words, formulaic. But for the remarkable addition of a vagina, the speech could've been written for anyone from Barry Goldwater to Steven Colbert. Listening to the Party responsible for $20 trillion in bad bonds warn against tax increases was a trifle much, of course, with the irony lost on the angry, angry crowd. A crowd which expressed its Homo Loquens sentiments as follows: "Boo. Booo! Yay. Yaay! Boooo. USA! USA! USA!"

(Aside: If a Republican wanders in here for some reason and has stuck with it this far, congratulations, and I have a question: what do you have to be angry about? Your party has been in power, has usurped more power, has exercised more power over our liberties, our finances, our allies, and our so-called enemies for the past 8 years than any other period in US history, and you're still angry. There is good news for you, a soothing Gilead's balm guaranteed to finally make you happy. Calm down for a minute, go look in a mirror, and repeat these words: "I f**ked up." Say them often, and you will start feeling better in no time.)

Speaking of feeling better, despite Sarah Palin's well-received litany of scandals, lies and deceits, the revitalized, high-energy Pugfest masks a deep rift in Republican philosophies, one which reaches deep down between McCain and the Fundie Panderers running his own campaign. Even Palin seemed to think some of the vitriol she was about to read off the prompter was going too far, acid sure to have back-splashed once the various women's focus groups which were running collate their data. The Rovian speech could be interpreted as taking a folksy Moose Head brand and transforming it into Cutthroat Opportunist.

You might call the core rift a battle between the Roots and the Shoots, a desire to deal with a plethora of contrary, dangerous details by shoe-horning them back into a narrative past. This isn't a Republican impulse--it's ancient, it's tribal, and is still the most commonly observed behavior in organizations which are in deep trouble. When facing a confusing, hostile environment, the collective decision is usually to go back to what used to work best, and try to do it harder and better. That's why (Karl Rove protege) Steve Schmidt the campaign manager who lobbied so hard for Palin, is actually trying to hide McCain as much as possible. Consider, for but one example, that Oldfinger's convention address tonight is scheduled to exactly coincide with the Giants-Redskins game which kicks off the NFL season. Palin's speech drew an audience close to 20 million. McCain won't draw 10.

The problem with the "dance with them that brung ya" behavior is that the greater the levels of confusion and danger, the less likely it will work, and sharper wits in the Republican Party realize this. In a golden media moment of illustrating that point, the feed to a microphone was left on during Chuck Todd's MSNBC show yesterday. Mike Murphy, John McCain's closest former advisor, and conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, the right's Intellectual Ballerina, talked freely amongst themselves. Contrary to their public line-toeing, they completely trashed the strategy of picking Sarah Palin. I assume you've already heard or read Noonan's damnations of, "It's over," and "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --" The full transcript is worth reading, and it's proof of intelligent Republicans speaking honestly.

While Palin was in some ways a brilliant choice for VP, the Republican Party is playing a bad hand with yesteryear's calculator. They're scared and confused. America needs heroes, they know that, but they're offering icons treadworn and false. The other side offers Vince Lombardi, innovation, and an exercise regimen. I see the appeal in the former, I see it in the whole country "bottoming" so hard as to remove all denials, dignities, and doubts in the hard collisions that would happen under McCain/Palin. Or, as it might well turn out, under a President Palin.

President Palin. Catastroika. No decorum or restraint whatsoever would remain in what has already been the greatest corporate orgy since the Gilded Age. The tent villages of homeless in my city would swell into towns, the line outside the soup kitchen that's there every morning when I drop my son off to his $1,000 per month Day Care would stretch around the street corner, down the block, pensions and Social Security checks would be worthless, and the angry youths I see walking through our neighborhood from their alternative high school would start unleashing what they're barely managing to contain.

The other side offers coaches who know how to coax out the best competencies, even from the alien corporate-socialist substrate upon which patriots, governments and consumers must currently float like reviled stains of dirt. The coaches are the only feasible hope we've got left for climbing up into coherencies. Deep down, I think, even Sarah Palin and the Fundies might know that.

Edwards Endorses Obama; Now For Some VP Speculation

The timing of the endorsement was either fortuitous or great planning, a maul used to blunt momentum from the Clinton victory, their largest margin yet, in West Virginia last night. (Where Edwards got 7% of the vote.) Edwards supplies 18 regular delegates to the Obama numbers, which would put him over 1,900 total and within ten of a simple regular-delegate majority of 1,627. The important psychological delegate number is 2,000, not 2,026, and Obama now only has to get 30% of the remaining uncommitted pool. You always have to wonder what price was paid, and the VP slot would seem a little steep. A Cabinet position would be reasonable, and Edwards would be the most progressive Attorney General imaginable.

Now the winnowing process begins for the running mate. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia (retired Navy Commander, son served two tours in Iraq, took seat away from a Republican incumbent) offers a great suite of gap-fillers. But he's a first-termer from Congress. Ohio's governor Ted Strickland has been bandied about because he closes all the obvious gaps--he now runs a key state that has trended Republican, is moderate, well-respected, over 60, white and got an 'A' rating from the National Rifle Association. But he's a Clinton supporter, which may discount him, and also a first-termer, which doesn't help the inexperience angle.

So, looking down the list of Democratic state governors, there aren't many that fit the bill as nicely as Tennessee's Phil Bredeson. He brings everything Strickland does and a boatload more: he started Health America, which became a 6,000-employee publicly traded health care management company; he is noted for spending wisely on education programs; he's a Presbyterian from smack dab in the demographic and region Obama has struggled in; he won his last gubernatorial election 69-30; and he does not draw his gubernatorial salary. He's a small-town boy from Appalachia made good with the credibility, physics degree, contacts, and drive to take on the health care mess.