Gaza needs a Wal-Mart

The latest aggression by Israel toward Gaza is simply deplorable. The more I read about Israel and write about it, the more I dislike the countries policies. It makes me further question the need to support them, because clearly they are pretty good at keeping people down without our vast knowledge on the topic.

As long as people in Gaza are desperate they will look to people (like Hamas) for swift action. Any road map to peace needs to give Palestinians a reason to have hope. Simply put: they need a Wal-Mart, and no I’m not joking.

One of the best ways to improve the situation is to give the people steady regular access to supplies, as recent events prove. Further an injection of jobs certainly wouldn’t hurt either. This can’t happen at the local level because at one point or another Israel will close the boarders preventing supplies coming though killing any business upstarts. But, if a western company (like Wal-Mart) came in with its corporate lobbying power I’m sure some deal could be worked out.

If people had jobs, necessary supplies, and some consumer goods confidence would go up which would hurt support for extremists. Bottom line: if you cage people like dogs without food and other supplies, they will act just like a hungry cornered dog. You get more with a bag of groceries, then you do a tighter cage.

John Granville

So I have been sitting on this for a bit hoping to see some more coverage that will give me more sources and more information, clearly that is not going to happen. The death of John Granville a U.S. Diplomat in Sudan and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama saddened me as it shows how unstable Sudan really is.

The Sudanese foreign Ministry said that the attack was an isolated incident and was not political in nature. Clearly if your read even the limited amount of press that has been released you can see that it was a coordinated attack, that had to have been planned.

The sad part is that this is getting almost no play in the major news outlets because of the primaries. This happened on the 1st of this month and i have only found three articles in this time that werent just repeats of the same wire report.

On the 4th th AP announced plans for a 4 man FBI probe into the incident was going to start that day. The article also says that the Sudanese government will fully cooperate with the probe.

There have also been unauthenticated reports that a group called Partisans of Monotheism (English translation,AKA Ansar Al-Tawhid) is taking responsibility for the attack. Apparently this is a group no one has herd of. I was only able to find one article on this groups possible involvement and its over at CNN.

What i find bad is that i can find no updates since the announcement of the probe and most of the major networks are not covering it. Whats worse is that when and if they do they simply read the wire report. To that end I would like to applaud the AP, Al Jazeera, and the L.A. Times for being the only news outlets to really look into this.

Thoughts on Israel

Israel is one of those foreign debacles that makes me just ask “why?”. I have no clue why the U.S. cares so much about a country smaller than most of our States that is totally capable of taking care of it’s self. Indeed I often thought that U.S. involvement in this region causes more problems than anything else. I mean we turn our backs on most of Africa, the Balkans, South America, and so forth…but even suggesting the U.S. let the Israelis solve their own problems will get you ostracized.

Why is that? Is the Israeli lobby in this country really that good? They must employ the same group that lobby for the Cubans in Florida or something. How did it come to pass that we treat this foreign nation like it were a part of our country?

We armed and continue to arm them, train with them, do joint intelligence with them, run interference with their neighbors so they don’t really have to talk to them, vote their way in every international conference including the UN…it’s really very insane when you consider our relations with other allies. Do we go to bat like this for England?..Australia?..Canada?..Japan?..I think you get the point.

Most people respond with the ethnic side of the equation when confronted with these very legitimate questions. It certainly can’t be ignored, but at the same time how far should we allow it to carry water here in the U.S.? I get it that a lot of pro-Israel Jews here in this country donate lots of money to politicians to insure that Israel remains at the top of the agenda, but is that really ethnicity talking or just money? If ethnicity was that central to our reasoning why didn’t we work with Serbia sooner to stop the blight there, and what about Darfur? These are ethnic cleansing happening now, not 60+ years ago.

What about Darfur and other humanitarian crisis’s? Some countries want to get involved and some don’t. In many cases the U.S. has little to no interest in these issues and like most countries thats their right be it ethically sound or not. But Israel…I would expect them to be all over the fight for injustice when race, or religion is involved since that kind of persecution is so close to home and often comes up in conversations surrounding Israel.

I was rather shocked to learn that Israel had less involvement in the Serbian crisis than us. I was even more shocked to learn how they are treating refugees from Darfur a people that have under gone a similar journey that the founding families of Israel underwent all those centuries ago and certainly know what its like to be brutalized by an evil regime.

I am mad at my own country for having no compassion and not putting enough political pressure on real problems in the world…how can I not be mad at Israel for failing to learn from its own past?…and why should I want my country to support them so much? They certainly have the right to protect themselves, and I do think we should be allies. That said I really don’t see the point of our special relationship.

Why America is in Decay, A Call for Leadership

I know, its a terrible thing to say but in many ways it’s true. That said I’m not all doom and gloom, I do believe the trend is reversible. Three thing always mark the beginning of the end for a society: 1) Lack of investment in the core infrastructure 2) Stagnation of ideas resulting is a lack of social evolution, and 3) Expanding territorial influence beyond that which the state can logically control. Folks, the good ole U.S of A has all three. Lets go item by item shall we?.

1) Lack of investment in the core infrastructure:

This is an easy one: look at Katrina, the water shortage in the South East, Road quality in the North East, the energy crisis in the West, and lets not forget the debacle that is our boarders. Oh ya and of course the big one: 9/11. 9/11 illustrated perfectly our total incompetence and highlighted a total lack of infrastructural steam lining at every level; even the private sector. There is hope as we have had a Top Down Review and the 9/11 Commission Report as a road map….but with our ridiculous national debt we are going to be very limited with our response for years to come. It’s not impossible, but its also not a good outlook. Thats just the major stuff, there is plenty more where that came from.

2) Stagnation of ideas resulting is a lack of social evolution.

Every wonder why people look back to the 50’s and 60’s so much? Could it be that nothing even remotely as original has happened since? I think a really good argument could be made of that, indeed many of our “movements” today are simply hang-overs from that time period. Do to this lacking in the social department its no wonder support for the arts is at an all time low, and has been since the 70’s. In order to have a healthy society you need a powerful and progressive culture, something I haven’t seen in my life time. Sad but true.

Another element is our complete inability to make decisive, moderate, mature, and well balanced decisions on pretty much any issue of importance resulting in major problems continuing and getting worse over time while we sit on our hands. As a country we are of two minds on everything, most of our major democratic decisions come down to a percent or two. This happened once before in the history of our country and we survived; but it came with a terrible price tag…it was called the Civil War. Really at the rate we are going only three outcomes are possible 1) One group is able to subvert the other without physical conflict, 2) One group subverts the other WITH physical conflict, or 3) As a nation we wake up and realize our “two sides” are both wrong, counter productive, and that we need to really look at what is plaguing our society and come up with real solutions. It really is true that the only good decision is the one no one totally likes. Society is about consensus not winning a see saw match.

3) Expanding territorial influence beyond that which the state can logically control.

Well lets see…Germany, Japan, South Korea, Poland, The Caribbean, Several Pacific Islands, Nigeria, Cuba, Jordan, Kuwait, and of course Iraq and Afghanistan. The Best part? Those are just the places I can think of off the top of my head, and doesnt include any of Rumsfeld’s “lily pad” bases.

Now some of these places are modern commitments and may also pose a legitimate security risk to us, but certainly not all of them. We are like the seal balancing 8 balls on its nose at once: If we don’t put some of the balls down intentionally they will all fall and it wont be pretty.

I wrote this to lead into my next post entitled “Third Party Rant” (Which is on the way), which is my response to a comment I received on my “Why Do People Think I Care About the Primaries?” post.

The Wars

Normally I try to avoid writing about the various conflicts the U.S. (my wonderful country) is involved with because it seems like everything that could be covered about them pretty much has. Indeed, I’ve become numb to the war coverage. That said its not because wars don’t matter to me it has more to do with the fact that the press just seems to rehash the same five stories over and over.

Since the beginning I have not necessarily been against the war, but rather I’ve been critical of the tactics. Anyone that honestly thinks the world isn’t better off without Saddam and the Taliban really has rocks for brains. That said our government seems totally inept in managing a successful war.

I keep seeing the price tag going up an up with little to no results. Our solders can’t do it alone, we learned that in Somalia. There needs to be a political solution, mediation, and UN involvement. We can’t deliver chaos to stability without a stable government in Iraq and a strong Afghani military so they can fend for themselves.

So much focus has been put on the price tag and the loss of life, this is to be expected after all these are wars. Wars are never cheap, just be glad we are not rationing needed supplies like fuel and rubber. As for the loss of life unfortunately solders die and put their lives on the line all the time. This is why we have holidays like Veterans Day and build monuments to them, and they deserve it and more for having the courage to fight for all of us.

This aside I consider myself a tactician and from that viewpoint things look bad. We have an all volunteer military that hasn’t achieved recruiting goals in I don’t know how long despite a lowering of standards on the ASVAB (thats the military entrance test). Furthermore with the 9/11 commissions findings being instated as well as new boarder security measures it is clear the National Guard is needed at home to fight the onslaught of illegal immigration, never mind the wider “War on Terror” like trying to shut down Osama Bin Laden. Tactically speaking fighting a war on multiple fronts is just plain stupid. With this half hazard management it is no wonder Army desertion is up 42% in the past year. Without strong leaders for our people and troops to follow things seem more hopeless then they really are. We are not quite to Vietnam levels yet…yet, but we are getting there quick.

In a prefect world we would have followed the Constitution when we decided to invade two sovereign nations. We would have declared war and with it all the check and balances of waging war would have come with it. Things like a Secretary of War and a War Cabinet, special tactical analysis’s which would have included stated goals, measures of success, and an exit strategy. Of course most of all a declaration of war would have given much needed oversight and many rights and benefits to the solders that they haven’t seen since WWII. But we didn’t do that because we have a megalomaniac for a President and a bunch of yellow cowards in Congress. The question now is “what do we do now?”.

We’ve been dealt a pretty bad hand and I am very concerned that the people in charge in both the White House and Congress are more concerned with an election a year away then our problems today, but Ill keep hanging on to hope.

The bottom line is we need to prioritize our goals, its triage time. There needs to be multilateral talks mediated by the UN on Iraq, and we need to come up with realistic and attainable goals for that conflict. Pulling out would be irresponsible but we do need say a two year time line. Afghanistan needs to commit to defending it’s self and we need to commit to keeping them well supplied, further we need to double our covert efforts in the mountainous region that the Taliban and others are hiding in.

It is clear we need troops, and we need to do it without a draft. The logical course is to pull out of Japan and other European locations dating back to WWII, also we need to be more conservative about where we send peace keeping troops. Once Japan has taken the reigns for its military they should take a partnership role with South Korea and we should pull out of the 38th parallel. That would probably free up another 50-70 thousand troops. Recruitment wise we need better incentives for joining the full-time military not the Guard, things like debt forgiveness or grants for purchasing houses (both have been done in the past). Another good recruiting tactic that this country has used in pretty much every previous was is to offer non-violent criminals a option of military service instead of jail time. Since we are so tough on drugs i bet there are a bunch of people caught with an ounce or two that are doing 7 to 10 that would rather do 5 in the military. Besides it would be a good way for some individuals to turn their lives around.

War involves tough choices, and to remain realistic. Our government hasn’t been good at either lately. Whats more concerning is that many people both in the government and on the civilian side are pushing for a strait up pull out, but they forget the reason things are so bad now is because we made promises and pulled out once before. Pulling out now would make Iran the regional leader which is certainly not preferable. I agree with Ron Paul that we need a noninterventionalist foreign policy but only in the future. We’ve made commitments and promises and we need to honor them and be smarter about what we commit to in the future.

We Need More Than a Fence

The Mises Blog Had a nice article on the shit show that our southern boarder has become. I think the story of the possible break up of the town of Granjeno perfectly illustrates how completely inept our federal government really is. Inevitably when the federal government takes control of something local concerns fall to the wayside. This is why socialized medicine scares the crap out of me.

But I digress, clearly the boarder is a problem that needs a solution..fast…like yesterday. That said a fence is not going to do it. Within a short amount of time people migrating north will go over, under, or around it. Expanding the boarder patrol wont work either because it would be like fighting a forest fire with a thimble. Simply put with the amount of over spending happening in Washington committing to a massive expansion of the boarder patrol would only make a dire economic situation much worse.

Every time a see politicians up in arms about what to do regarding boarder penetration the same angery thought enters my mind: “Isnt this what the National Guard/Coast Guard is for?!”.

I mean honestly, the fastest most efficient and cost effective way to keep people from illegally entering this country is to militarize the boarder. Let Mexico protest its not like theyre a state, and clearly they aren’t doing anything about the problem.

It seems logical to redeploy National Guard’s training exercises, and Basic Training to boarder states. This way check points, inspections, searches, and interacting with people that have ulterior motives as well as language barriers with the solders becomes part of the regular training of our fighting force. Better for them to learn it here with people that just want to get a job then with terrorists in Iraq that have IED’s tied to their wheel wells.