The average American is now in motion. The Independent movement has reached critical mass, and the public recognition that everything the government is doing lacks a strategic analytic rationale as well as–in many cases–a moral rationale, is gathering force.
The below message captured our attention. Note the “social engineering” of the military-industrial complex that has labored for decades to connect jobs to war, patronage to war, bribes to war, high crimes and midemeanors (betrayal of the public trust) to war. The call for social engineering for peace is, in our view, a strong signal that public intelligence is now becoming more commonplace, but we make the observation that the “lag time” between Congressional and Executive high crimes and misdemeanors, and the public discovery, analytis, outrage, and action, is still too great. Public intelligence is going to have to do something secret intelligence cannot do: develop global REAL-TIME and NEAR-REAL-TIME information-sharing and sense-making, and do this across all ten high-level threats and all twelve policies that must be harmonized across all boundaries.
Phi Beta Iota: This borders on infantile idiocy. Honduras has a Supreme Court ruling against the ousted President. What we have here is the US still having a big stick but having lost its mind. The Department of State is either embarrassingly stupid, or so politicized that ideological bullies in the partisan ranks are calling the shots. Either way, we all lose.
We knew the Pentagon had hit bottom when a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (C/JCS) best left to his well-deserved obscurity said “Real men don't do Operations Other Than War (OOTW).” This is the same person that ignored General Al Gray, USMC (Ret), then Commandant of the Marine Corps, who in 1989 was calling for both “peaceful preventive measures” and what is today known as Irregular Warfare (nothing new, each generation rediscovers stuff–as Winston Churchill ikes to say, “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first”).
We were also very unhappy when flag officers who knew better allowed Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith to lie to Congress and get away with it. Integrity is about more than personal honor–it is about serving the Republic in good faith, and that includes protecting us all from enemies both domestic and foreign. Lies kill ones comrades. The current Administration is living multiple lies at multiple levels, which makes it an exact mirror of the previous Administration or, as the Libertarians are now saying: “two wings, one bird.”
Zulu
The below piece warms our heart. We celebrate this blinding flash of integrity by adding a photo and short bio of this worthy gentleman. Now if we can just get the President and his National Security Advisor to flush the partisan hacks out of the White House, create a non-partisan Cabinet and a National Strategy Center, and buy-in to the 450-ship Sustainability from the Sea Navy and the Four Forces After Next that have been kciking around since 1992 or so when the USMC first conined the term “911 from the Sea,” we might just get DoD back on track at the same time that we learn how to do peaceful commerce and moral policy.
Full Story Online
New York Times
August 28, 2009
Pg. 9
By Thom Shanker
Message To Muslim World Gets A Critique
Admiral Mike Mullen
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written a searing critique of government efforts at “strategic communication” with the Muslim world, saying that no amount of public relations will establish credibility if American behavior overseas is perceived as arrogant, uncaring or insulting.
The critique by the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, comes as the United States is widely believed to be losing ground in the war of ideas against extremist Islamist ideology. The issue is particularly relevant as the Obama administration orders fresh efforts to counter militant propaganda, part of its broader strategy to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.
Despite Surge in U.S. Deployments, More Civilians Are Posted in War Zone; Reliance Echoes the Controversy in Iraq
Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2009, Pg. 6, By August Cole
Even as U.S. troops surge to new highs in Afghanistan they are outnumbered by military contractors working alongside them, according to a Defense Departm! ent census due to be distributed to Congress — illustrating how hard it is for the U.S. to wean itself from the large numbers of war-zone contractors that proved controversial in Iraq.
The number of military contractors in Afghanistan rose to almost 74,000 by June 30, far outnumbering the roughly 58,000 U.S. soldiers on the ground at that point. As the military force in Afghanistan grows further, to a planned 68,000 by the end of the year, the Defense Department expects the ranks of contractors to increase more.
In the name of beating the Taliban, the West is sticking with allies who are anything but the good guys, reports Paul McGeough.
Buried in the wastes of south Afghanistan, Oruzgan is a lost-cause province often invoked as a decorative footnote, because it is the birthplace of Mullah Omar, the founder of the Taliban.
. . . . . . .
As home to the bulk of Australian forces in Afghanistan, Oruzgan also has become the military parking-lot in which Canberra spins its wheels, at the edge of a nation-building black hole consuming hundreds of billions of dollars coughed up by the international community.
Mark Palmer
Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment: USG, in name of USA, is still “best pals” with 42 of th 44 dictators on the planet. Click on Ambassador Mark Palmer's photograph to access his utterly honest book, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, and his presentation to OSS '04.
Ambassador Palmer has INTEGRITY. Without it, no foreign policy will succeed, and will continue to waste national blood, treasure, and spirit.
Sometimes reality and fantasy collide in extraordinary ways. Below are four headlines and teaser editorial comments, click on the headlines to read the details, but the details do not really matter, here is the lunacy all together in one pot.
Ambassador Mark Palmer is one of the most thoughtful, focused, practical, and hence impressive professional diplomats we have ever encountered. His book, Defeating the Real Axis of Evil, made a profound impression on all of us thinking about how to create a prosperous world at peace, and was the final nail in the coffin of U.S. foreign policy–no foreign policy that relies on supporting 42 of 44 dictators can possibly have morality, legitimacy, reciprocity, or transparency, all vital attributes if we are to nuture humanity toward clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability. Our review of the below book is entitled: Single Most Important Work of the Century for American Moral Diplomacy, and was posted November 30, 2003. We still believe that.
