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Ramblings From the Ragged Crumbling Edge Of The Reality-Based Community

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Contract Mercenaries: The Gift That Keeps On Giving 

...there has been a lot of background noise about private security firms in Iraq for a couple of years now, so it's a bit surprising that things are going south on Blackwater and its contracts so all of a sudden recently. It's up in the air whether the recent unrestrained episode of firing up the surrounding Baghdad environment and killing a bunch of innocent bystanders was the first time that Blackwater had shot first and sped away from the scene to avoid asking questions later, but there are numerous examples of the tension that may exist between American troops and the much more highly paid Blackwater employees...

There are certainly those who will argue that the need for two combat operations that resulted in a number of American casualties and an unknown number of dead and injured innocent Iraqi's in Fallujah in 2004 were largely the result from either hubris, poor information, or bad map reading by Blackwater employees, but the bottom line is pretty simple: even with the hapless inability of the Bush administration to understand how to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people in order the achieve the goals Gee Dub said - after several iterations - that we were trying to achieve, the employment of companies like Blackwater has gone a long way toward locking up the guarantee that we will not see any success in our efforts to be the Sugar Daddy that every Iraqi wants to run up and get a hug from. And now there is this...

You just have to wave a big "Hello" and say a big "Thank You" to whoever actually cooked up the idea of relieving private security companies like Blackwater of the pesky need to be subject to the laws of either the newly formed Iraqi government that we are so hot about making it look like they are actually some autonomous entitiy or of the United States of America. There is a pure, almost evil genius lurking behind the idea that we should have unrestrained, unaccountable civilian contractors being the face of the occupying nation in Iraq. It's not often that we get to observe an international social experiment where a bunch of people are granted the unrestrained right to possess a host of deadly weaponry, vehicles, and aircraft and - perhaps allegedly, when the mood strikes them - to appropriate the property of a host nation for their own uses without fear of being restrained by any external governmental force whatsoever. The very fact that the Congress of The United States needs to be asking the question "so...where did those aircraft go" indicates that somebody's feet have slipped out of the stirrups and we are pretty much along for a ride that nobody ever voted for or even thought would be a good idea...

There are a whole host of reasons why we are going to have a hard time extricating ourselves from Iraq, short of just saying 'the Hell with it' and driving out of town. The employment of private security firms is only just one of those reasons, but it is truly one of the most important. Sadly, the people who have had their hands on the levers don't seem to be able to figure that out...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:16 PM 0 comments

Thursday, October 18, 2007

On Why Fred Thompson Should Retain His Day Job 

...there are times when you travel on that muddy dark terrain where policy and politics intersect when you have the opportunity to do something of which you can be proud. There are other times when you are traveling that slippery ground when you take the opportunity to do something that you hope to hell the folks back home never find out about. Fred Thompson is starting to lose his footing and slip down a slimy hillside somewhere out on that grim landscape now that he has decided - in a rather laconic fashion - to amble his drifting way toward the Repub nomination for President...

Interference by politically-connected fixers in the enforcement of administrative requirements is not a new thing, and Fred Thompson isn't the first connected mechanic to flex some muscle to make things better for somebody seeking to be free of those obnoxious regulations that exist to assure that our children won't have to look for a new planet to inhabit in order to survive. Not a lot of folks with a Rolodex full of dicey names and a documented history of dangerous intent have, however, decided that they were some specific populist Answer for which the general electoral electorate was pining. The only times that Fred Thompson wasn't to be found doing something that stood clearly against the interests of your average working stiff citizen were those times when he was crammed into some dressing room working on the theme for the next scene the director wanted to shoot (and even then, various critics may beg to differ with that particular observation)...

Aside from all the rumors about Thompson's lack of belly fire for the rigors of the campaign trail, the stark fact is that he has frequently used political influence to come down hard to the benefit of somebody who didn't have the average person's interests at heart. Fred Thompson is an opposition research minion's dream, a veritable treasure chest of bad action and dirty dealings that would challenge Uncle Jack K.'s long-held belief that you can always convince 30% of the people to buy off on the most absurd proposal imaginable. Fred would be a Godsend for whichever Democrat he might oppose in a general election for President and any of the few surviving movers and shakers in the Republic party know that better than they know their own birthdays. The beatdown, were he to be the Red candidate next fall, would be of historic proportions, making the 1964 Barry Goldwater look like a viable mainstream icon....which is why Fred should probably go back to the dressing room...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:17 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 15, 2007

Goose and Gander In A Pork Barrel World 

...everybody and his cat has a host of reasons why the Democrats stormed the ramparts in ought-six and took over nominal control of both chambers of Congress. Lots of Dirty Farkin' Hippies on the left will insist that it was all about Iraq. In many cases I would certainly agree with that assessment, but there were some other issues involved in many races, including but not limited to corruption, hubris, greed-headedness, and the simple stone-cold karma wreaked on those who talk the populist talk on the campaign trail and then become cozied-up K Street sucklings at the corporate teat in those first heady minutes after they cross that symbolic Beltway boundary into American politic's version of Neverland...

We DFH's do dearly love to hammer the wingnuts and fixers and bagmen who make up the majority of the Republican version of Honorable Members of Congress, but one of the unfortunate aspects of the insider game that goes on back east in the Big House on the Potomac is that there is a remarkably consistent opportunity to see a real live version of Animal Farm played out before our unbelieving eyes. Delivering dollars to the district or the state is as big a deal for the new folks in charge as it was for the old folks, so now we get to see the sort of thing that the Seattle Times featured in its report over the weekend. More painfully, at least as far as Oregonians are concerned, we get to see Oregon Congressman David Wu being involved in the same sort of useless nonsense that cost at least a couple of Repub Congresscritters their seats back in 2006...

Congressman Wu does a pretty fair imitation of Captain Renault by being shocked...SHOCKED... that polyester undergarments wouldn't be able to meet the requirements of the Marine Corps that such underwear not melt all over fragile human flesh when exposed to fire. It would be appropriate, I suppose, to grant Congressman Wu the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that he probably isn't a subject matter expert in this particular field, but it is hard to imagine that somebody in his office wasn't capable of sufficient critical thought skills to say "um, wait a minute....". Or maybe it's my problem, based on my 30+-year history of wildland management that included - in my younger, healthier years - working on wildland fires; the fact that for all that time and even longer it was clearly understood that you didn't wear polyester anything on the fire line may be a sort of arcane insider knowledge...

At the same time, it should have crossed somebody's mind that there is a reason that most working aircrews on federal aircraft wear fire-retardant clothing and that Marine ground troops may be required to fly at a moment's notice in the course of a day's business and may be exposed to fire. I mean, good grief, these people aren't that liberal; some of them must have seen John Wayne's "Green Beret" movie. The more grim possibility is that this thought did cross somebody's mind but was outweighed by the opportunity to help out a business in the local district. That may not be true, but the impression is there, and it is a stinking fetid thing to contemplate...

The bottom line is simple and stark: this all looks like it stinks on toast and creates opportunities for the opposition to portray Democrats as wild-spending crazy people even though there's not a single $400 million Bridge To Nowhere in the mix. It is necessary, however, to hold Democratic members of Congress to account because part of the reason they came into power was because they were going to be the actual real-live grownups, the actual party of fiscal responsibility, and they are making the same sorts of mistakes that helped chase the other guys out of power. It's all about "goose and gander" and the fact that we gave Democrats the keys to the front door doesn't mean that it's OK to start packing the good China and liquid crystal wide-screen out the door to the getaway car just because the last bunch of clowns did the same thing...
Posted by: Jack K. / 8:02 PM 0 comments

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