Saturday, February 12, 2011
2
http://m.gizmodo.com/5747634/make-your-iphone-an-ioswp7-love-child-with-this-incredible-theme
ios7
http://gizmodo.com/#!5747634/make-your-iphone-an-ioswp7-love-child-with-this-incredible-theme
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Twightlight of Nuclear Bombs
"Bomb Ban
The evening began with a short version of Isao Ishimoto's animation of all the world's atomic explosions in the period 1945 to 1998. The total is shocking to most people---2,053. Rhodes commented that seeing the bomb tests on a world map over time shows how much they were a strange form of communication between nations. He also noted how the number of tests dropped from decades of intensity to near zero after 1993. In this century only North Korea has tested bombs, and those could be the last explosions.
Most Americans, he's found, think that we don't have nuclear weapons any more, and that may reflect a realistic perception that we no longer need them. But our government keeps looking for reasons to keep them, and maintaining the current much reduced arsenal still costs $50 billion a year.
How much did the Cold War cost everyone from 1948 to 1991, and how much of that was for nuclear weapons? The total cost has been estimated at $18.5 trillion, with $7.8 trillion for nuclear. At the peak the Soviet Union had 95,000 weapons and the US had 20 to 40,000. America's current seriously degraded infrastructure would cost about $2.2 trillion to fix---all the gas lines and water lines and schools and bridges. We spent that money on bombs we never intended to use---all of the Cold War players, major and minor, told Rhodes that everyone knew that the bombs must not and could not be used. Much of the nuclear expansion was for domestic consumption: one must appear "ahead," even though numbers past a couple dozen warheads were functionally meaningless.
Rhodes noted that people fear the blast and radiation effects of atomic bombs, but it's really the fires that are most destructive. The fireball ignites everything far beyond the blast effects. As a result, nuclear winter remains a threat. Former researchers of nuclear winter used sophisticated new climate models to assess what would happen if, say, there was an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs (1.5 kilotons) between India and Pakistan. The smoke clouds would disrupt the weather long enough to collapse some agriculture, leading to starvation of as many as a billion people.
Serious efforts are underway to get the world's nuclear weapons down toward zero. All weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) is being tallied and secured. Sophisticated, unrestrained inspection systems are gaining ever more access. In some cases, arsenals are being "virtualized"---nuclear capability substitutes for weapons stockpiles. India and Pakistan, for instance, have disassembled their nuclear weapons into widely separated parts that would take considerable time and deliberation to reassemble.
In the course of his research, Rhodes shifted from opposition to nuclear power for electricity to becoming a strong proponent. Among its benefits is offering a way for the thousands of warheads to be converted into something useful when diluted into large quantities of reactor fuel. Also the international fuel banking proposed for bringing proliferation-free nuclear power to developing nations can help enable more thorough inspections of all fissile material.
At dinner Rhodes reflected that nuclear weapons may come to be seen as a strange fetishistic behavior by nations at a certain period in history. They were insanely expensive and thoroughly useless. Their only function was to keep a bizarre form of score."
--http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/sep/21/twilight-bombs/
The evening began with a short version of Isao Ishimoto's animation of all the world's atomic explosions in the period 1945 to 1998. The total is shocking to most people---2,053. Rhodes commented that seeing the bomb tests on a world map over time shows how much they were a strange form of communication between nations. He also noted how the number of tests dropped from decades of intensity to near zero after 1993. In this century only North Korea has tested bombs, and those could be the last explosions.
Most Americans, he's found, think that we don't have nuclear weapons any more, and that may reflect a realistic perception that we no longer need them. But our government keeps looking for reasons to keep them, and maintaining the current much reduced arsenal still costs $50 billion a year.
How much did the Cold War cost everyone from 1948 to 1991, and how much of that was for nuclear weapons? The total cost has been estimated at $18.5 trillion, with $7.8 trillion for nuclear. At the peak the Soviet Union had 95,000 weapons and the US had 20 to 40,000. America's current seriously degraded infrastructure would cost about $2.2 trillion to fix---all the gas lines and water lines and schools and bridges. We spent that money on bombs we never intended to use---all of the Cold War players, major and minor, told Rhodes that everyone knew that the bombs must not and could not be used. Much of the nuclear expansion was for domestic consumption: one must appear "ahead," even though numbers past a couple dozen warheads were functionally meaningless.
Rhodes noted that people fear the blast and radiation effects of atomic bombs, but it's really the fires that are most destructive. The fireball ignites everything far beyond the blast effects. As a result, nuclear winter remains a threat. Former researchers of nuclear winter used sophisticated new climate models to assess what would happen if, say, there was an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs (1.5 kilotons) between India and Pakistan. The smoke clouds would disrupt the weather long enough to collapse some agriculture, leading to starvation of as many as a billion people.
Serious efforts are underway to get the world's nuclear weapons down toward zero. All weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) is being tallied and secured. Sophisticated, unrestrained inspection systems are gaining ever more access. In some cases, arsenals are being "virtualized"---nuclear capability substitutes for weapons stockpiles. India and Pakistan, for instance, have disassembled their nuclear weapons into widely separated parts that would take considerable time and deliberation to reassemble.
In the course of his research, Rhodes shifted from opposition to nuclear power for electricity to becoming a strong proponent. Among its benefits is offering a way for the thousands of warheads to be converted into something useful when diluted into large quantities of reactor fuel. Also the international fuel banking proposed for bringing proliferation-free nuclear power to developing nations can help enable more thorough inspections of all fissile material.
At dinner Rhodes reflected that nuclear weapons may come to be seen as a strange fetishistic behavior by nations at a certain period in history. They were insanely expensive and thoroughly useless. Their only function was to keep a bizarre form of score."
--http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/sep/21/twilight-bombs/
Sunday, September 26, 2010
The G.O.P.'s pledge
Extravagant promises and bluster are the stuff of campaign rhetoric, but the House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” goes far beyond the norm.
Its breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence — the “governed do not consent,” it declares, while vowing to rein in “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” — would be ludicrous, if these were not destructively polarized times.
While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, it is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.
The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.
Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times.
Still, the pledge was worth a careful reading. It is a reminder that there is a choice to be made this fall.
THE BUDGET DEFICIT The Republicans’ central claim is that they will be able to reduce the budget deficit, while cutting taxes deeply and making marginal cuts in spending. That pledge is impossible to keep. There is no chance of reducing the deficit without tax increases. The budget has been chronically short of revenue since the start of the Bush-era tax cuts, and more indiscriminate cutting will only dig the hole deeper.
Cutting the deficit will also require curbs on the government’s biggest and most popular entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, collectively 40 percent of the budget. Ditto military spending, another 20 percent. Yet Republicans pledge to shield seniors, veterans and the troops from spending cuts.
It is difficult to put an exact number on the size of the deficits and debt implied by the pledge, because the details are sketchy. What is known is that if current tax and spending policies continue, the deficit (currently estimated at $1.3 trillion) will double in size as a share of the economy in the decades to come.
TAXES AND TAX CUTS The Republicans’ pledge also fails to mention that President Obama has already called for extending the tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers (couples making up to $250,000 and individuals making up to $200,000).
So what the pledge is really advocating is a permanent extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent. In all, the pledge’s tax proposal would add $3.7 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, nearly $700 billion more than the administration’s proposal.
The drive for permanent high-end tax cuts is profligate; there is no other word for it. The nation cannot afford it. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and only now winding down the war in Iraq. The baby boom generation is about to retire. To keep competing, the country needs enormous investment in infrastructure, energy alternatives, education and basic research.
The pledge asserts that letting the high-end tax cuts expire would kill job creation. With the economy weak, letting all the tax cuts expire would be a big hit to consumer spending and, by extension, job growth. But richer Americans tend to save, not spend, their tax cuts. Of 11 ways to boost the economy analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, preserving the high-end tax cuts ranked last.
Republicans also assert that letting the high-end cuts expire would devastate small businesses. But less than 3 percent of taxpayers with business income would be affected. Republicans claim that 50 percent of small-business income would be hit. The only way to get that number is by including “small businesses” like some major law firms, investment funds, actors and athletes — hardly Main Street.
In any case, business owners do not typically base their hiring decisions on their income tax rate. If the top tax rates reverted to the pre-Bush levels, wealthy owners would keep less of the additional profit. But if a hire is profitable before tax, it will be profitable after tax. Undeterred by facts, the pledge would let small-business owners deduct 20 percent of their business income. Given the Republicans’ broad definition, that implies another big tax cut — an estimated $25 billion over two years — flowing to many high earners.
SPENDING The Republicans’ document promises the American people a “fact based” discussion of the scale of the nation’s budget problems. Then it offers a laundry list of spending-cut proposals, none of which are up to the scale of the problem, and many that cannot be taken seriously.
Calling the $862 billion stimulus wasteful and unnecessary, it says Congress should immediately cancel any unspent funds. Never mind that the stimulus, while too small given the depth of the crisis, still prevented a bad recession from being much worse.
There is also not much to cancel. Of roughly $260 billion left, contracts have already been signed for $150 billion. Another $45 billion is tax cuts that will soon be claimed, and $33 billion is for safety-net spending, like food stamps. That leaves $31 billion in investment projects — like roads and rail systems — still up for grabs. At a time when the private sector is not creating enough jobs, canceling them would be a mistake.
The House Republicans also promise to roll back spending, saving $100 billion in the first year alone. There are no details, but the proposal appears to reflect an earlier Republican proposal to cut programs like education, food safety and environmental protection.
Even in the best of times, it would be disastrous to slash such vital programs. Right now, it would also remove purchasing power, cost jobs and heighten the risk of a prolonged downturn.
The Republicans also say they will save taxpayers $30 billion by ending the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A serious debate on the future of the huge mortgage companies needs to take place. Currently, however, they own or back most new mortgages. Cutting them loose too soon would risk further damage to the wounded housing market.
Then there is the bank bailout, or TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. which the pledge vows to end “once and for all,” for a savings of $16 billion. What it does not say is that new TARP spending was basically outlawed in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed in July.
HEALTH CARE REFORM The Republican plan to “repeal and replace” the new reform law is set forth in a skimpy chapter that fails to offer any real alternative to cover uninsured Americans or reduce medical inflation.
The pledge contains a few golden G.O.P. oldies: medical liability reform that will probably not save serious money; allowing Americans to purchase insurance issued in other states, which could bring down premiums for the healthy while driving them up for the chronically ill; and expanding so-called health savings accounts that are useful for some Americans but not all.
At the same time as they revile reform, the authors embrace, or at least pretend to, some of the most popular, consumer-friendly features of the law, like eliminating spending caps and prohibitions against dropping your coverage just because you get sick. The Republicans say they would provide incentives to states to develop innovative reforms; that, too, is already in the law.
The pledge document does not mention the Republicans’ plan — should repeal fail — to block the annual appropriations needed to carry out reform. That just-say-no approach is flat-out irresponsible. The health care reforms are so intertwined that it is hard to eliminate one provision without undermining others.
Americans are right to be worried and even angry about the bad economy. And they are right to demand that Washington do a lot more to revive employment now and start to reduce the deficit soon. But these are hard problems built up over eight years of mainly Republican leadership. The pledge takes the country backward — a place no one should want to go.
-----credits to NY Times-----
Its breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence — the “governed do not consent,” it declares, while vowing to rein in “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” — would be ludicrous, if these were not destructively polarized times.
While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, it is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.
The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.
Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times.
Still, the pledge was worth a careful reading. It is a reminder that there is a choice to be made this fall.
THE BUDGET DEFICIT The Republicans’ central claim is that they will be able to reduce the budget deficit, while cutting taxes deeply and making marginal cuts in spending. That pledge is impossible to keep. There is no chance of reducing the deficit without tax increases. The budget has been chronically short of revenue since the start of the Bush-era tax cuts, and more indiscriminate cutting will only dig the hole deeper.
Cutting the deficit will also require curbs on the government’s biggest and most popular entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, collectively 40 percent of the budget. Ditto military spending, another 20 percent. Yet Republicans pledge to shield seniors, veterans and the troops from spending cuts.
It is difficult to put an exact number on the size of the deficits and debt implied by the pledge, because the details are sketchy. What is known is that if current tax and spending policies continue, the deficit (currently estimated at $1.3 trillion) will double in size as a share of the economy in the decades to come.
TAXES AND TAX CUTS The Republicans’ pledge also fails to mention that President Obama has already called for extending the tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers (couples making up to $250,000 and individuals making up to $200,000).
So what the pledge is really advocating is a permanent extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent. In all, the pledge’s tax proposal would add $3.7 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, nearly $700 billion more than the administration’s proposal.
The drive for permanent high-end tax cuts is profligate; there is no other word for it. The nation cannot afford it. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and only now winding down the war in Iraq. The baby boom generation is about to retire. To keep competing, the country needs enormous investment in infrastructure, energy alternatives, education and basic research.
The pledge asserts that letting the high-end tax cuts expire would kill job creation. With the economy weak, letting all the tax cuts expire would be a big hit to consumer spending and, by extension, job growth. But richer Americans tend to save, not spend, their tax cuts. Of 11 ways to boost the economy analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, preserving the high-end tax cuts ranked last.
Republicans also assert that letting the high-end cuts expire would devastate small businesses. But less than 3 percent of taxpayers with business income would be affected. Republicans claim that 50 percent of small-business income would be hit. The only way to get that number is by including “small businesses” like some major law firms, investment funds, actors and athletes — hardly Main Street.
In any case, business owners do not typically base their hiring decisions on their income tax rate. If the top tax rates reverted to the pre-Bush levels, wealthy owners would keep less of the additional profit. But if a hire is profitable before tax, it will be profitable after tax. Undeterred by facts, the pledge would let small-business owners deduct 20 percent of their business income. Given the Republicans’ broad definition, that implies another big tax cut — an estimated $25 billion over two years — flowing to many high earners.
SPENDING The Republicans’ document promises the American people a “fact based” discussion of the scale of the nation’s budget problems. Then it offers a laundry list of spending-cut proposals, none of which are up to the scale of the problem, and many that cannot be taken seriously.
Calling the $862 billion stimulus wasteful and unnecessary, it says Congress should immediately cancel any unspent funds. Never mind that the stimulus, while too small given the depth of the crisis, still prevented a bad recession from being much worse.
There is also not much to cancel. Of roughly $260 billion left, contracts have already been signed for $150 billion. Another $45 billion is tax cuts that will soon be claimed, and $33 billion is for safety-net spending, like food stamps. That leaves $31 billion in investment projects — like roads and rail systems — still up for grabs. At a time when the private sector is not creating enough jobs, canceling them would be a mistake.
The House Republicans also promise to roll back spending, saving $100 billion in the first year alone. There are no details, but the proposal appears to reflect an earlier Republican proposal to cut programs like education, food safety and environmental protection.
Even in the best of times, it would be disastrous to slash such vital programs. Right now, it would also remove purchasing power, cost jobs and heighten the risk of a prolonged downturn.
The Republicans also say they will save taxpayers $30 billion by ending the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. A serious debate on the future of the huge mortgage companies needs to take place. Currently, however, they own or back most new mortgages. Cutting them loose too soon would risk further damage to the wounded housing market.
Then there is the bank bailout, or TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. which the pledge vows to end “once and for all,” for a savings of $16 billion. What it does not say is that new TARP spending was basically outlawed in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill passed in July.
HEALTH CARE REFORM The Republican plan to “repeal and replace” the new reform law is set forth in a skimpy chapter that fails to offer any real alternative to cover uninsured Americans or reduce medical inflation.
The pledge contains a few golden G.O.P. oldies: medical liability reform that will probably not save serious money; allowing Americans to purchase insurance issued in other states, which could bring down premiums for the healthy while driving them up for the chronically ill; and expanding so-called health savings accounts that are useful for some Americans but not all.
At the same time as they revile reform, the authors embrace, or at least pretend to, some of the most popular, consumer-friendly features of the law, like eliminating spending caps and prohibitions against dropping your coverage just because you get sick. The Republicans say they would provide incentives to states to develop innovative reforms; that, too, is already in the law.
The pledge document does not mention the Republicans’ plan — should repeal fail — to block the annual appropriations needed to carry out reform. That just-say-no approach is flat-out irresponsible. The health care reforms are so intertwined that it is hard to eliminate one provision without undermining others.
Americans are right to be worried and even angry about the bad economy. And they are right to demand that Washington do a lot more to revive employment now and start to reduce the deficit soon. But these are hard problems built up over eight years of mainly Republican leadership. The pledge takes the country backward — a place no one should want to go.
-----credits to NY Times-----
Friday, September 17, 2010
Circle of Death...
"...first described in army ants by Schneirla (1944). A circle of army ants, each one following the ant in front, becomes locked into a circular mill. They will continue to circle each other until they all die. How crazy is that? Sometimes they escape, though. Beebe (1921) described a circular mill he witnessed in Guyana. It measured 1200 feet in circumference and had a 2.5 hour circuit time per ant. The mill persisted for two days, "with ever increasing numbers of dead bodies littering the route as exhaustion took its toll, but eventually a few workers straggled from the trail thus breaking the cycle, and the raid marched off into the forest."
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Knobe Effect
In a study published in 2003, [Joshua] Knobe presented passers-by in a Manhattan park with the following scenario:
The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about harming the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is harmed.
Did the CEO intentionally harm the environment? The vast majority of people Knobe quizzed – 82 per cent – said he did.
But what if the scenario is changed such that the word ‘harm’ is replaced with ‘help’? -
The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also help the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about helping the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is helped.
Now faced with the question ‘Did the CEO intentionally help the environment?’, just 23 per cent of Knobe’s participants said ‘yes’.
This asymmetry in responses between the ‘harm’ and ‘help’ scenarios, now known as the Knobe effect, provides a direct challenge to the idea of a one-way flow of judgments from the factual or non-moral domain to the moral sphere. ‘These data show that the process is actually much more complex,’ argues Knobe. Instead, the moral character of an action’s consequences also seems to influence how non-moral aspects of the action – in this case, whether someone did something intentionally or not – are judged.
The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about harming the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is harmed.
Did the CEO intentionally harm the environment? The vast majority of people Knobe quizzed – 82 per cent – said he did.
But what if the scenario is changed such that the word ‘harm’ is replaced with ‘help’? -
The CEO of a company is sitting in his office when his Vice President of R&D comes in and says, ‘We are thinking of starting a new programme. It will help us increase profits, but it will also help the environment.’ The CEO responds that he doesn’t care about helping the environment and just wants to make as much profit as possible. The programme is carried out, profits are made and the environment is helped.
Now faced with the question ‘Did the CEO intentionally help the environment?’, just 23 per cent of Knobe’s participants said ‘yes’.
This asymmetry in responses between the ‘harm’ and ‘help’ scenarios, now known as the Knobe effect, provides a direct challenge to the idea of a one-way flow of judgments from the factual or non-moral domain to the moral sphere. ‘These data show that the process is actually much more complex,’ argues Knobe. Instead, the moral character of an action’s consequences also seems to influence how non-moral aspects of the action – in this case, whether someone did something intentionally or not – are judged.
Monday, April 26, 2010
id, ego, or superego? superego.
Hey bradford, this is some of the stuff I doodle.
sometimes i want to be n artist. right now, i think i will be. most likely what will happen is that i will day dream about being a creator, and will follow that pursuit, then realize that i need to serve italian food to stay alive, and i will forget about art for awhile.
anyhow, these are the only ones i can find on my new laptop. i'll post more stuff later when i can get ahold of them.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Afghanistan: The Choice
So now we have the leaked classified assessment from General Stanley McChrystal that was completed regarding Afghanistan...
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf
I think after reading it the sentiment that went through my mind was 'gloom and doom'...graveyard of empires also resounds clearly in this report.
Now in case you don't want to read it what McChrystal is saying is that without an Afghanistan surge of US troops 'victory' (if there is such a thing) will not be possible. But that is not all. It gets deeper. For us to have a chance of getting a win out Afghanistan we would not only need close to a 100,000 troops on the ground there (we have a little over 50,000 now and 60,000 + contractors).
We would also need cooperation from the Afghan government which has been determined to be blatantly corrupt. In the last election reports have emerged that Karzai's allies set up fake polling stations and then just disregarded the votes it didn't like and kept those it did. This is what led to Ambassador Holbrooke having a screaming match with Karzai in Karzai's palace in Kabul.
Karzai's actions (in how he is corrupt) would lead to and require a civilian surge or workers to partner with the Afghan government to rebuild. Karzai's own brother is a well known drug lord who US troops were going to arrest at one time but were forced to let him go over government protests. What were they going to arrest him for? The US Army found 6 TONS...not pounds...TONS of opium in his basement stacked on pallets waiting to be shipped to market for sale. The street value of which if sold at street prices would have paid in full a one year commitment of our current troop levels.
McChrystal is pegging this commitment at a minimum of 10 years (30 years at the max) and probably at least a trillion dollars in investment minimum to make the country function properly.
On top of this in his report he has had extensive intelligence report back that not only are senior officials in Pakistan protecting Al Qaeda leaders but they are also giving them new safe havens and resupply for arms. Given the fact we gave the Pakistan government billions of dollars without strings attached during the Bush administration you can probably guess what cash they are using to buy their weapons with.
Pakistan through the ISI and elements of the ISI who are friendly to the Taliban have been sharing data on US troop positions and possible movements.
Like I said, gloom and doom...
So after all this the question is how many more years should we be in Afghanistan? Now we have already been there 8 years...longer then WW I and WW II combined while George Bush dithered and went charging to Iraq. I know people heading to Afghanistan now heading for their 6th deployments. That is 6 full years in the combat theater. Their kids hardly recognize them, but they do get to email their kids from time to time. How many more years should we stay in Afghanistan?
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf
I think after reading it the sentiment that went through my mind was 'gloom and doom'...graveyard of empires also resounds clearly in this report.
Now in case you don't want to read it what McChrystal is saying is that without an Afghanistan surge of US troops 'victory' (if there is such a thing) will not be possible. But that is not all. It gets deeper. For us to have a chance of getting a win out Afghanistan we would not only need close to a 100,000 troops on the ground there (we have a little over 50,000 now and 60,000 + contractors).
We would also need cooperation from the Afghan government which has been determined to be blatantly corrupt. In the last election reports have emerged that Karzai's allies set up fake polling stations and then just disregarded the votes it didn't like and kept those it did. This is what led to Ambassador Holbrooke having a screaming match with Karzai in Karzai's palace in Kabul.
Karzai's actions (in how he is corrupt) would lead to and require a civilian surge or workers to partner with the Afghan government to rebuild. Karzai's own brother is a well known drug lord who US troops were going to arrest at one time but were forced to let him go over government protests. What were they going to arrest him for? The US Army found 6 TONS...not pounds...TONS of opium in his basement stacked on pallets waiting to be shipped to market for sale. The street value of which if sold at street prices would have paid in full a one year commitment of our current troop levels.
McChrystal is pegging this commitment at a minimum of 10 years (30 years at the max) and probably at least a trillion dollars in investment minimum to make the country function properly.
On top of this in his report he has had extensive intelligence report back that not only are senior officials in Pakistan protecting Al Qaeda leaders but they are also giving them new safe havens and resupply for arms. Given the fact we gave the Pakistan government billions of dollars without strings attached during the Bush administration you can probably guess what cash they are using to buy their weapons with.
Pakistan through the ISI and elements of the ISI who are friendly to the Taliban have been sharing data on US troop positions and possible movements.
Like I said, gloom and doom...
So after all this the question is how many more years should we be in Afghanistan? Now we have already been there 8 years...longer then WW I and WW II combined while George Bush dithered and went charging to Iraq. I know people heading to Afghanistan now heading for their 6th deployments. That is 6 full years in the combat theater. Their kids hardly recognize them, but they do get to email their kids from time to time. How many more years should we stay in Afghanistan?
