Define A Winnable War, Mr. President

What is the definition of a winnable war?

We use instant-response forces for continuous duty tasks. That kind of usage can destroy those forces. That's not win-ability. We have tanks that can go like heck for 35 miles - before breaking down.

Durability competes with effectiveness in war. Durable equipment is heavy and moves slowly. Speed wins battles. Instant response machinery wears out and need to be replaced again and again. Instant response people wear out, too.

War against a people in their own land inevitably becomes a long and slow war of attrition against the invader. Any invader win is temporary. Continued hostility is inevitably waged by a conquered people. It can be efficient over time.

America fought the Koreans to a draw on their own land. We fought the Vietnamese to less than a draw on their own land. Americans have not particularly "won" Iraq or Afghanistan. On their own land.

Durability and effectiveness are at odds. Conquered people endure until the invader becomes ineffective. A conquered people becomes more durable than a war machine.

But since we have a military, we must go to war and we must stay at war. Replaceable technology demands it. It's an economic imperative.

Can we discover a solution for war that is both durable and effective? One, perhaps, where our effectiveness depends on the endurability of the people we hope to help?

Define a winnable war, Mr. President.

Can There Be A Transparency Czar?

One of President Obama's major campaign promises was for transparency in government. Today a host of 9-12'ers are assembling in Washington, misinformed, full of conspiracy theories, unable to distinguish news from reality. To them, government is opaque.

Suppose they could simply ask the government any question they wanted? And get a response?

Can a government office explain our government to ordinary people?

Can we have a transparency czar?

Would a transparency czar undo the conspiracy propagandists?

Could the government open a "gov.gov" website? That an easy name to remember. It could answer popular questions.

Brains... They Need Brains...

Back in the time of Bush, a flow of White House talking points provided spoutable phrases and useful mottoes for conservative pundits and politicians. They must now begin to think. Lately, they have sounded like the lonely teen at a high school dance who doesn't know the right words to say, full of angst, but lacking in verbal acuity.

And maybe a little drunk.

So it was that brute emotional force led a possibly inebriated South Carolina Congressman to shout "you lie!" to the President during his speech to Congress last night. He was instantly told to apologize by his peers and did immediately apologize to the President for his lack of decorum. But he didn't apologize for being wrong.

He said that the new health care bill would give illegal immigrants free health care. Not true, said the President. (Google 'title 3200, section 246' and see for yourself.)

Being wrong is not a problem for Republicans today. They espouse the silliest notions, provably in error, but exciting none the less. Death panels. Kenyan birth certificates (two now, both faked). Medicare = socialism = fascism. They entice followers by describing their imaginings. This can only work for so long. But what else have they?

No script. No currency. They are not where it's happening. No power. Although they still reap a harvest of corporate donations, it will come in useful for lawyer fees very soon. While Obama and Eric Holder temporize and run out the clock on investigating the Bush staffers who led us into torture, the Hague sits and waits. The Hague appears to impose no statute of limitations on torturers.

And the Republican party continues to shed its moderates. It will be, tomorrow, 9/12/09, embracing its many chaotic radical wings: the secessionists, the racists, the conspiracy theorists, the Murdock press and their followers. And the Limbaugh ditto-heads. As they march on Washington. In buses provided by the health-care industry. These people have words to say. Not very sensible ones, but ones full of the kind of emotion that can make a congressman call his President a liar without first checking the facts.

Of course, the Republicans are dreading the death of their party. It will come with all the slowness in the world. Conservatives still hold the Supreme Court, and any indictment can be appealed to the Court, which may decide that the President does, in fact, have unlimited power. So yes, Obama and Holder are temporizing. Let the Hague deal with it.

The Republicans who remain are like the investors who failed to get out of GM before their stock became totally dead. They trade a penny stock and hope for rain.

A renaissance may come when Republicans embrace entrepreneurialism as an alternative to the ideals of capitalism and global corporatism. There are lots of entrepreneurs these days. Thousands more every week.

Until then, they are zombies. They need brains.

Fight Ideas, Not People

Reading this morning of war and the victims of war, I wonder if perhaps we are fighting ideas by killing people, and perhaps this is all wrong.

We fight with the army we have. Rumsfeld's problem. We have an army that sets things straight by killing people.

We kill people who have gotten the idea that we're up to no good over there and that we should be made to leave. We kill people who, in a vacuum of power, take it for themselves and use it in ungodly ways. We kill people who are fed by militias. We kill people who syphon gas from tankers captured by militias. Steal our tankers? Hell, we'll blow up the tankers in their faces!

The Blackwater contractors are themselves on a Christian jihad and clear traffic from the road ahead with machine gun bullets, killing people. The Wackenhut guards at our Afghanistan embassy drink alcohol out of each other's butts, making our very presence there obscene.

Who are we trying to impress? And with what? The bright and shining new president we gave them now stuffs ballot boxes.

Our ability to destroy someone else's world and to deface their culture means that we should be tolerated?

Ideas contend.

The Patriotists

Those who espouse patriotism.

Some of us feel patriotism a little, now and then, like when our country does something we're especially proud about.

But some marry patriotism. They need the rush continuously.

Are they addicts?

Must, for them, the national 'self' always be at war with some 'other'? It certainly keeps life thrilling for a person to imagine all that might happen. The possibilities are endless.

Just how likely some things are to happen, though - that's another story entirely.

Schools Make Obama's Speech Contraband

President Obama will be giving a speech soon to the nation's schoolchildren. He is expected to speak about the importance of working hard and staying in school.

However, a number of public schools around the nation, fearing "socialist" mind-warping, have made his speech contraband. They will not let the kids see the speech. Elsewhere, individual parents will also be making the speech contraband, keeping their kids home that day.

Frightened parents apparently assume that none of their children will then hear this speech.

Except... the speech will almost certainly be available on YouTube and on WhiteHouse.gov. It will be viewable to anyone with an internet connection. Downloaded podcasts of it will be everywhere. The printed text will be in newspapers.

Will kids who were protected from this "socialist" speech carefully scan the text, trying to figure out the naughty parts? What were their parents trying to hide?

Don't parents know anything?

Or wait! Could this be, in fact, a scurrilous secret plan to get kids to want to work hard and to stay in school?

If this speech is forbidden, then more kids will listen carefully. It will reach all ears. If students discover that hard work is a no-no, many more may choose to do just that.

Clever, Tom Sawyer.

Speak Simply, Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

Can you say "Public Choice" instead of "Public Option"?

Can you say "Medicare For All" instead of "Single Payer System"?

Can you sell?

We are poor, dumb, beaten and drained. Can you use words we know? Can you speak of real things and of relations between real things, instead of spouting fancy abstract ideas? Can you say in simplest terms just what you want for us?

We the simplest may then perhaps begin to trust you.

With best regards,

Daniel

P.S. Making fun of the poor demented lady who didn't want government programs telling her what to do but who wanted her Medicare kept intact - that was awfully witty. It bought a laugh from the crowd you were speaking to. But see what the poor idiots of the land heard. They heard you making fun of a grandma's contradictions. From a wise and witty place. Speaking to her like a bible salesman or a college professor. Got any better voices?

Lord knows, we've all got enough of our own contradictions. We could make fun of you, too, President O'Maybe.

Please give us nouns. Not adjectives. Nouns. We want nouns.

P.P.S. Short sentences say the most. We know you have an attention span. Trust us. We know.