Irq: Endgame

The question is: What is the endgame in Iraq? The way I see it there are only two possible endgames in Iraq – the administrations and total withdrawal.

The Administration’s Endgame

Unfortunately I do not know what this really entails. The administration has given us surprisingly little guidance on this issue. (Or, maybe not surprisingly). We hear from George W. that we must “stay the course” or “When the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” But, the administration has not laid out a clear course to an endgame, or even what goals we are trying to truly achieve in Iraq. So, let’s look to both the rhetoric and the actions to try to piece together the possible endgame.
I guess we must start with why we went to war in the first place. I know you may not remember this since nobody has mentioned it in several years, but we did get in there for a reason – Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The intelligence community told us they had 100 to 500 tons of chemical and biological weapons and were trying to get nuclear weapons (you know yellow cake from Niger).
As a corollary to the main reason for war the administration mentioned regime change and the removal of Saddam Hussein. He was a brutal dictator and threatened the entire region. He used chemical weapons against both the Kurds and the Iranians. He had attacked both Iran and Kuwait at various times in the 1980s and 1990s. Therefore, we needed to get rid of him and his WMD.
These were the reasons to go to war. Therefore, according to cause and effect once the US military achieved those two goals they could go home. The military did a fantastic job removing Saddam Hussein from office: We can check that one off the list. And, apparently Bill Clinton’s bombing of 1998, the Iraqi military and IEAE and UN weapons inspectors had long since achieved the first goal. On May 1, 2003, George Bush stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of a sign that said “Mission Accomplished” and declared major combat offensive over. Therefore, the military’s job is done – time to go home.
So, were WMD ever involved? Now, I only question the validity of the original argument. Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair that WMD was chosen because it was the only thing that everyone involved could agree on as a good reason to go to war.
The only reason every one could agree on? Now, the idea behind war – at least in the modern liberal democratic age – is that you have a clear and present danger and must kill people into guaranteeing the survival of your nation-state and its people. World War II had Pearl Harbor, Viet Nam had the Gulf of Tonkin (which at least according to Adm. Stockdale never happened). If you have to have discussions regarding a valid reason to go to war – that’s called an excuse.
So the excuse to go to war was made. The US military achieved its goals quickly and decisively. If it weren’t more than an excuse, we would theoretically be home now.
Now we get to phase two. Phase two is what the administration has told us since we’ve been there. From this perhaps we can glean the possible endgame. As I see it there have now been three major reasons to stay that the administration has used since “Mission Accomplished” and the reasons for going to war were removed.
First, we have been told that we are now fighting al-Qaeda there. This is a completely valid reason to stay as it was al-Qaeda who were behind the 9/11 attacks. But, if this is the case should we not also send troops into Pakistan’s North-West Frontier? I mean we know that that is where the leadership of al-Qaeda is. The bulk of its operatives are there and in Afghanistan, yet, the vast majority of our forward deployed troops are in Iraq.
Isn’t this putting most of our troops in Kenya during the Cold War? I mean there were many Soviets in Ethiopia. We could have easy crushed the Soviet clients there. But, no, we aimed the missiles and put troops in Europe and Korea – near from where the main threat came. But apparently in the War on Terror we will not do that, let them live peacefully in Pakistan, supporting the president of the country that lets them stay there. (I’m sorry is he with us or against us?) And, instead, we will mass our forward troops in a place where a comparatively small number of the enemy is.
Second, we have been told that Iraq needs a stable government that is democratically elected before we leave. This is because the Administration holds democracy in such high esteem. Our major allies in the region include: Saudi Arabia, an autocratic kingdom; Kuwait, a emirate with democratically elected legislature (only 15% of all males can vote); Pakistan, a military dictatorship; Egypt, a single party state with small bits of democracy; and, Israel, a reasonably democratic nation if you are not Muslim. That cannot be it, because why do we not talk to these allies about democratizing. If the Administration wants to see democracy in Arab Muslim countries, why did they not deal with Hamas – the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority?
The third reason we cannot just leave is that the Iraqi government must pass the oil revenue sharing plan. This on the surface seems like an excellent idea. The nation gets to stay together and regardless of whether your region has oil or not, you get a share of the oil revenues.
Yet, this is the administration that has tried to get Serbia to privatize its industry, privatize Social Security, nip every socialized medicine plan in the head by calling it “Communist,” and rejected the Common Agricultural Policy of Europe since it is nothing more than socialist subsidies. Shared oil revenue is socialism. I would mean that the government would be in charge of large amounts of money and provincial governments would determine how and where money should be placed.
That’s not “ownership” that’s socialist welfare. The oil revenue plan however also requires that private industry drill for oil. Private industry would pay “user fees” (i.e. a tax that does not increase when profits go up) to the Iraqi government. Wow that’s great all those private Iraqi oil companies will be able to profit from this. Wait a minute! There are no private Iraqi Oil companies!
So, the fact of the matter is we do not know the Administration’s end game because there is not one. They plan to get access to the oil for their cronies – then find a new reason to stay. There was no exit strategy because they never planned to exit. The bases will be like the Philippines, Japan or Germany – American oases to maintain geo-political standing.

Total Withdrawal

The fact of the matter is that anything the administration does to attempt to achieve its dubious ill-defined goals will not work. If the privates and sergeants on the ground do not know their goals they will probably not achieve them. If the Iraqi people feel that they are occupied – they won’t like it.
Bob Woodward alluded to the image of the fall of Saigon. The Seventh Fleet’s helicopters and brave Marine pilots flew sortie after sortie getting hundreds of Marines, embassy workers and citizens of Saigon – whom we had guaranteed peace and freedom to years earlier – out of the city before the NVA conquered the city.
The fact is we will withdraw en masse from Iraq in retreat. And, many members of the Marine Corps will be proud to be involved in such a retreat to save their compatriots from a Baghdad Embassy. But, we do not have to do that. Instead we can withdraw today, like the French out of Algiers. Or we can kill more and more Americans and Iraqis and have the last minute airlifts out five years from now.
Which Endgame would you prefer?

The War in Iraq: Who is really to Blame?

This week’s McLaughlin Group reported a new poll showing that 62 percent of Americans think the War in Iraq was a mistake. That’s right – 62 percent! This week’s poll is a complete turn from the October 2002 Pew Research Center report. In that report 62 percent of Americans supported going to war. Apparently, as the war drags on, more people are paying attention to the errors and lies of both the administration and the press.
Now let’s do some quick math. I will first make an assumption: “Nobody who did not support the war in 2002, suddenly does now.” While, I guess it is possible that my assumption is wrong, I guarantee that if I am the numbers will not change outside of the margin of error, and therefore, is still statistically – if not universally – correct. Thus if 62% supported the war in 2002, 38% did not. Now 38% support the war and 62% do not. That means 24% of Americans have changed their mind. It is to you 24% that I speak.
While normally I am glad that people have turned around to my way of thinking. Today I am angry. Why did it take the 3700 American deaths and 73,000 Iraqi deaths for 24% of Americans to do their job as members of a democracy? That is 72,000,000 of you who completely disregarded rational thought or any semblance of duty to your country and the world.
The decision to go to war was made in the court of public opinion. The administration was the prosecutors. The witnesses were drawn from the intelligence community and the media. I and my ilk (you know “surrender monkeys,” “Saddam lovers” and “People who forgot about September 11”) were the defense counsel. And, the American public was the jury. And, it was you 24% of Americans who pushed the vote over to conviction.
For purposes of this piece I will ignore evidence that has come out since the war started. I will not discuss yellow cake and Valerie Plame, or the fact that not one ounce of the supposed 100-500 TONS of WMD has been recovered. Nor shall I discuss the findings that the aluminum tube controversy was a farce. Instead, I shall look to the evidence and counter eveidence that was readily available in March 2003. There are four key factors that you ignored when convicting.
The first is the definitiveness of WMD. In October 2002, the CIA released a declassified report to make the case for the War in Iraq. In the report there were so many “probablys” and “likelys” that made it seem that we did not know enough. Since then George Tenet has said intelligence is not meant to stand up in a court of law. Well, fine but if you are going to use it as a causi bellum and send in 150,000 American troops to kill 70,000 Iraqis it had better!
So, did you even bother to look at this report? A friend of mine said that not everybody is as politically interested as me and wouldn’t read the CIA report. Instead you took a politicians word for it? Oh yeah, that’s a famously trustworthy source of information. You sat there and told me that Saddam Hussein was the biggest threat to the United States. You also told me that we should blindly support the president in times of war. Isn’t that how the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” happened?
The second one is that 66 percent of Americans in 2002 believed that Saddam had some involved with September 11th. On December 9, 2001 Vice President Cheney declared that an al-Qaeda operative and a member of the Iraqi intelligence in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Now, let us ignore the fact that Czechoslovakia had not existed for almost 9 years. I want to know if you even attempted to think for yourself here.
There are two reasons I would refute this idea. First, Al-Qaeda is an Islamist terrorist organization seeking to bring back the Caliph; Iraq is a secular Arab socialist country that does not want to be controlled by the religious right of Islam. If you think about it for one second: IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE THAT THEY WOULD WORK TOGETHER.
So, that may be just the political savvy in me that makes that leap. But the second reason is more obvious. How many times have you taken one meeting with somebody and realized it wouldn’t work. Have you have had a job interview and then said “Well, that’s just not enough money?” Or, have you met up for coffee for a first date and then said to your friends, “He/she is fucking crazy?” One occurrence of a meeting does more to prove no connection – because they decided not to have a second!
The third piece of information: George Bush and Dick Cheney are oilmen. And, what they wanted to do was invade an oil rich country. That, in and of itself, should have set off alarm bells! I mean, do you trust the crack-dealer who wants to give you a free vacation to Colombia?
Lastly is Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s speech before the UN. Within two days it was shown that a lot of the “facts” in it were based upon plagiarized information from a six-year-old grad school paper. So a major piece of intelligence to sell you on the war is from six years ago and available to any Tom Dick or Harry getting his Master’s in Political Science? But, no, that seemed quite logical to you (and the press and administration had been hiding it all this time?)
George Bush may be a warmonger. The media and Senators may not have done their job in questioning the intelligence leading up to the war. But, in the court of public opinion, 62% of Americans refused to do their duty to make sure that politicians weren’t lying to them. Instead of finding irrefutable evidence of guilt, you ignored your duty as a citizen in a democracy. Would you have convicted your son or daughter on such evidence? Because, you not only convicted but you sentenced 3628 American sons and daughters and 73,611 Iraqi sons and daughters to death! THEIR BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!

Europe Elections and America

There are two major political situations that could possibly change how the US will respond to the world! Surprise, neither of them is the standoff between Bush and Congress over the Iraq War. Instead, they are both taking place in Europe. The two countries are Turkey and France.

Turkey is on the verge of its fifth military intervention since 1960. While, this is may surprise the casual observer, I have seen it as a real possibility since 2002. The issues are quite complex and involve not only the military’s position in society, but also the Turkish National Myth.

Turkey is a nation-state, in the fact that the Turkish defines it people who live in it. This obviously is to the detriment of the Kurdish and Armenian minorities who live in Turkey. But, it is also traced back to Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk was an army officer in the Ottoman Empire who after World War I helped redefine what Turkey was. And, like George Washington, he is revered as the founder of our country.

The military, especially, takes his legacy and his political theory seriously. His political theory, Kemalism, is written into the Turkish constitution and is the founding principles of the center-left, Republican People’s Party (RPP). The six principles of Kemalism are: Republicanism, Populism, Secularism, Revolutionalism, Nationalism and Statism. The military is willing to intervene when civilian authorities challenge these ideas.

It is the third one, Secularism, which is being challenged by the civilian authorities today. The strongest parliamentary party is the AKP party. The AKP is an Islamist right wing political party. The AKP is seeking to hold new elections in June and try to get its candidate into the presidency. For an openly Islamist party to do this is a major threat to Kemalism; therefore, the military is seeking to intervene with one of its bloodless coups where it will make some constitutional changes and hand power back to civilians – with a former general as president.

The problem for the generals is that the AKP is not Islamist like you and I would initially think Islamist. Its ideological compatriots are not al-Qaida or the Islamic Revolutionary Party in Iran. Instead the AKP has found a balance between its religious foundation and the secular views of the Turkey. It is more comparable to the Christian Democrats in Germany or the Republican Party in the United States. While I am not a fan of wither of these parties, neither is looking to put a Caliph type leader as king of Germany or the United States (W’s rhetoric not withstanding).

A military intervention while to the letter of Kemalism would not be to the spirit. Kemalism was developed at a time when they were rejecting the old Ottoman State. Today, Turkey is a strong nation-state, while it may still have to deal with its past in the Armenian Genocide and its present in the standing of Kurdish minorities. The AKP is standing for the Turkish definition of the secular state with a foundation in religious ethics. However, I suggest all Turks to vote RPP, the future within a common market in the EU will require the secular welfare institutions that they represent.

Now let us turn to Sunday’s run-off election in France. The run off between Ms. Royal and Mr. Sarkozy is the classic Right versus Left. It is the classic election that we see in the United States. The two biggest parties are trying to find a way to get the median voter, filling in the center undecideds.

On the surface it seems that the White House should support the centre-right of Mr. Sarkozy’s Gaullist party (UMP). Unfortunately for Washington its not that simple. The UMP is also traditionally nationalist. Like Ataturk Charles de Gaulle defined the party’s approach to politics. He pulled out of the NATO command, while remaining linked to NATO ideals. The UMP is traditionally anti-internationalist and seeks to find ways to give France a commanding role in certain issues in world and EU politics.

Ms. Royal’s left wing party (more center-left than their name would imply) is the Socialists. The Socialists are more internationalist than the UMP. However, Ms. Royal has made many anti-Bush comments during the campaign. Of course, this may be kind of like a new member of the Red Sox saying, “I’m here to beat the Yankees” – just easy political points.

Therefore, it would seem that the White House would like its ideological compatriots the UMP to win. However, the problem is the UMP is too much like the White House: seeking French exceptionalism and leadership, to be of much use.

For my two cents, the Socialists have declared that they will use state intervention to protect labor rights, while Mr. Sarkozy has implied he will protect shareholder rights. Well, most shareholders are already rich and with the protection of public property can defend themselves. Vote Royal!

If the UMP continues to hold office it ill continue to block most Anglo-Saxon led ideas (for good and bad), while if the military intervenes in Turkey the strength of true democracy will be questioned in Turkey. The US most be prepared for the interdependent world to change over the next few weeks.

George W. Bush announces: read my lips, I am going to betray the troops

For the upteenth time George W. Bush has announced his traitorous message to the American people. While talking on the White House South Lawn today (April 24, 2007) George Bush says he will veto funding for the troops in Iraq!

As the Pentagon does not work potential war-making into its annual budget, Congress is forced to pass emergency spending bills during times of crisis. But, the President of the United States of America, the Commander-and-Chief, states that he will veto such funding.

Congress is poised to pass a bill that will give every penny of the funding that initially the President said he wanted. Now, however, it’s not good enough. George Bush (43) has determined he will take a political stand on the issue. Therefore, he has decided to leave the American troops stationed in Iraq hung out to dry.

As true patriots Congress has determined it will give the troops the money. Yet, the conservatives now want to politicize the funding. They have done so in order to try to break the back of the democratically-elected Congress. The next step is to cow the Congress into be no more than a rubber stamp for the President. (why do we have elections at all?)

It is not enough that he has put them in harms way for Weapons of Mass Destruction that turned out not only to be incorrect but lies! And, when somebody called them out on it they committed treason by outing a CIA agent to keep the lies from coming out! Then those who were wounded in their defense of their bad policy were sent back to slums for rehab! (Proving troops to be nothing but pawns protecting the king) Never mind the thousands they allowed to die in New Orleans while they argued over "chain of command!" They were not even pawns they just don't "care about black people." (Mike Meyers cringes.) To make everybody feel better, the Administration has declared “when the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down!” Yet, they determined to slip into the news that they have stopped training the Iraqi Army (during the national mourning of the Virginia Tech tragedy.) Just 32 more pawns in their political game!

Now they have decided to cut off funding for the troops. Again and again the conservatives have told us they were patriotic and liberals were treasonous. (You know like Pinochet used to say). Now they are willing to deny troops in the field adequate funding. While it may not be treason to the letter of the law I’m sure anyone who has loved ones over there will see that the conservative movement has decided they no longer love America (if they ever did)!

At the precipice of Hubbert’s Peak

On April 16, 2007 US Energy Information announced that gasoline prices had gone up for the 11th consecutive week. The average cost for a gallon of gasoline was $2.876. This is 71 cents higher than January 29th and 9.3 cents higher than this time last year. Based on this and other indicators over the past few years the era of cheap oil is over. This lack of cheap oil is going to change the world, as you and I know it. Will it make us better or worse off? As with everything else – a little from column A and a little from column B.

In 1956, Marion King Hubbert predicted that the United States’ oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. It peaked in 1970. This means that since 1970 the United States has produced less and less oil every year. It has led to more and more importation of oil every year, as well. Today the United States is a net importer of oil; over two-thirds of the oil used in the United States is from abroad. Hubbert further estimated that world production would peak in half a century. That would place it in 2006!

The fact of the matter is that it is time to change the way we think about energy, productivity and lifestyle. Hubbert’s peak may not have been reached in 2006, but it is coming and in human terms soon! Once we have reached that point the price of energy can only go up. The short-term effects are outstanding, since the demand for gasoline is, in the near term, inelastic – meaning that people will buy as much or nearly as much gas regardless of cost. We, therefore, must start planning now. This planning is a two-step process. On a micro level, get yourself a more fuel-efficient car or a bicycle or move closer to the subway. On a macro level, we must invest in alternative forms of energy – wind, solar and nuclear. If these steps are not taken it will be dangerous for the United States, civilization and ourselves, individually.

According to Hubbert, the discovery and production of oil move basically along a bell curve. Therefore there are two mirror bell curves – one for discovery and one for production. As the discovered reserves are exploited, the world’s production moves up the second bell curve. The amount of anything is finite. Therefore, at some point the world will reach the halfway point and produce less and less oil.

Now several things have happened since 1956 that would put such an assumption in doubt. The discovery of oil in Alaska and the North Sea were larger than the rate of Hubbert’s increase in discovery. Also, there were the oil shocks of the 1970s which increased price to a point where the laws of supply and demand slowed both demand and thus production. Therefore, the “sky is falling” folks who predicted Hubbert’s peak in 1989 or 1995 or 2000 have been proven wrong. (I know not who predicted it in 1989 but they were well off the mark.)

The recent spike in oil prices can therefore be attributed to not only the war in Iraq and the ensuing instability. But, it can be seen, as Kenneth Deffeyes argues, that there is a lack of excess capacity. This lack could be a symbol that the end is near. He placed the date of Hubbert’s peak at Thanksgiving Day 2005. Joining the courus, Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere argued in 1998 that convention oil could reach its peak within ten years. Recent events in Iraq have shown that perhaps we can push back the oil peak even further. The consulting group HIS has said that there could be 100 Gigabarrels more in Iraq than initially thought. With no statitistical experience or real hard data in front of me I am going to place Hubbert’s worldwide peak as December 21, 2012.

Hubbert’s peak is not a theory. There is only so much oil. Geological processes will not allow ancient biomass to be converted at the current speed of demand and production. Those who deny Hubbert’s peak are usually those who deny Global Warming. (If you deny global warming, you probably don’t agree with a single thing I say anyways so you can probably stop reading this – but don’t complain to me when you’re paying $15/gallon to gas up your Ford Explorer.) So the really question is neither whether nor when but rather what are we going to do about it?

First I’ll handle personally. This is just easier. The transaction costs of you and I changing the way we do things are considerably less than changing society. I find there are some simple things to do to lessen our needs for energy.

1. Bike and Walk! The anti-personal responsibility people see the world as binary, either you drive a car or you do not. Anybody who rides a bike or walks to save fuel is a hypocrite because sometimes you ride in cars or drive a car. Fuck them! Obviously if you live in the outer suburbs or if it is the middle of winter (or middle of summer) it is not really reasonable to ride your bike to work. But what about when you are going to the corner store to get a quart of milk? Is it not reasonable to ride or walk then?

Let me give you some numbers: What is the fuel efficiency of your car? The amount of energy required to bike is 653 mpg (0.36L/100km). Walking is equal to 235 (1L/100km). Meanwhile a bus gets 231 mpg per passenger. So if your car were filled with people would it match anything like this? And are you telling me you couldn’t use more exercise?

2. Computers! – This is another easy one. How often do you walk away from your computer and not return to it for hours if not all day. Set those energy settings to turn off the monitor in fifteen minutes.

3. Share – older eras of human development never broke itself down into the nuclear family. They did things on in larger groups. But think about it, do your neighbors watch some of the same TV shows you do? Do you have a coworker who you have to drive by his/her neighborhood to get to work anyways? Why don’t you do these things together? Surely, only one of you driving or only one TV on at a time saves energy.

Perhaps if we all did these three simple things we could save some energy and delay Hubbert’s Peak – plus be more prepared when it came. And, each one of us would save money: Today! To paraphrase Sally Struthers “do you want to have more money? Sure, we all do!”

The macro side is obviously more complicated. Getting the government and society at large to change is hard. We obviously must work on it or the environment and market forces will do it for us.

1. Alternative Energy – Alternative energy will soon not be the alternative. Do we want it to be on our terms or someone else’s? Nuclear and wind power can be built and exploited today! We can continue if not expand hydrogen cell and solar research over the next decades. If we were to remove the ethanol subsidies and tariffs we could get less expensive fuel from Brazil today which could only lead to expanding the sugar ethanol production – less oil.

2. CAFÉ standards! – While the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute may not like this, make cars be more fuel-efficient. I mean that seems pretty obvious!

3. Build more trains – Americans hate trains. And, trains hate Americans, because outside of the Bos-Wash corridor I do not think I would take a train for transportation. A quick look into the French TGV shows three reasons I it would be good for mass intercity travel.

a. This thing can move – 357 mph (575km/h)
b. Fuel efficiency – 80% full train gets 506 mpg (0.45L/100km) per passenger
c. Train stations are usually downtown – when you get there you do not have to rent a car.


Hubbert’s Peak is coming. The only question is do we want to go down the mountain fast or slow? And, do we want to have a hard or soft landing when we get there?

The Confederate Flag: AFootball Coach and The Tragedy of America

Steve Spurrier, former Heisman Trophy winner and coach of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, has come out against the Confederate Flag. The Confederate Battle Flag flies on the grounds of the South Carolina state Capitol building in Columbia. Spurrier said that the use of the flag is an embarrassment to the state and his football team. Spurrier is quoted on espn.com as saying, “My opinion is we don't need the Confederate flag at our Capitol."

I give kudos to Steve Spurrier for taking a stand on the issue. It not is something Bear Bryant nor Vince Dooley nor Adolph Rupp ever did. The football or basketball coach at the state’s largest public school has an amazing amount of power and clout in states that have few professional teams. The 2000 House of Representatives race for the 3rd district in Nebraska is case in point. Tom Osborne, the former football coach at the University of Nebraska won the race with 82% of the vote – 82!

Perhaps Spurrier’s announcement will make southern whites think about the use of the flag. To Blacks and non-Southerners the Confederate Battle Flag stands for three things:

1. Slavery – There are compelling arguments for the Civil War to be fought for may things other than slavery. But, the fact of the matter is simple. Slaveholders throughout the 1840s and 1850s resisted technological change in the plantation economy and sought to get slavery expanded to the Northern free states. Victories in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the compromise of 1850 and the Dred Scott Case all led to slavery becoming protected even in states where it was illegal. When the Republican Party, which was staunchly anti-slavery, took control at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, White Southerners rebelled against the United States.

2. Rebellion – The truth of the matter is that the flag was used in rebellion. The same Southern Whites who tell me I’m unpatriotic because I do not blindly support the imperialist war in Iraq wave their confederate flags in support of the day when instead of accepting the democratically elected government in Washington the South rebelled from the United States. My Southern compatriots you cannot have it both ways.

3. Segregation – In both Georgia and South Carolina the Confederate Battle Flag was invoked during the Civil Rights Era. In 1956 Georgia put the Flag on its state flag; while, in South Carolina the flag was placed above the Capitol building in 1962. These were specifically done to show that the South was standing by George Wallace’s feelings: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation for ever!”

In 2000 there was a political firestorm regarding the Confederate Flag and its use on both state flags and above the South Carolina Capitol building. Politicians – who to a man claim that it was not for racist motives – defended the use of the Confederate Flag.

John McCain called the flag over the South Carolina Capitol as not racist but as a symbol of heritage. Yeah, as spelled out above, it is a symbol of heritage of Slavery, Rebellion and Segregation. President George Bush deftly avoided the issue by declaring that it was best left up to the states – like slavery, Jim Crow and segregation were. In Georgia governor Roy Barnes tried to placate the issue by making a new state flag that had the Confederate Battle Flag but wee on the bottom. It was one of those compromises that nobody liked and the flag was changed again without the battle flag but based on the National Flag of the CSA – the Stars and Bars. Finally in Mississippi it was discovered that there was not a law on the books regarding the state flag. So, instead of taking the chance to remove the racist tint from the state, an overwhelming number of voters (2:1) voted to make the flag official!

You may argue that the Confederate Flag is nothing but a symbol of being Southern. . The Sons of Confederate Veterans have tried to face down groups that try to use it for hate – such as the Ku Klux Klan. I accept the argument that you can be proud to be Southern and not racist – many Southern Blacks are proud Southerners and enjoy their regional distinctions. What I do not and cannot accept is that the Battle Flag does not conjure up emotions of White Supremacy.

Saying that the Confederate Flag should be used to celebrate Southernism without racism is preposterous. By that token could not someone fly a Nazi swastika claiming it was only a part of his or her history? Or could a white person in Zimbabwe do the same with the flag of Rhodesia from the Unilateral Declaration of Independence era? It could be merely part of Zimbabwe’s history.

The flag must come down from the state Capitol building. Find a new symbol of Southernism rather than one that celebrates anti-American values of slavery, rebellion and segregation. If you fly the Confederate Battle Flag non-Southern whites, Blacks and people from other countries assume you are racist. Of course, you probably are and maybe should rethink your patriotic pro-American stand on things because you are not part of my America.

North Korea, The US and the Banco Delta

So it looks like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is not about to shut down its nuclear facilities. Why? Because the Banco Delta Asia in Macao will not release the $25 million deposited by North Korea into its bank. The reason? The money may have been gained illicitly.

On the surface this seems fair enough. But, there are three main problems with why 23 million should hold up the security of Northern Asia. First how does illicit gain matter in this case? Second, why is a Chinese bank now concerned with illicit money? And thirdly, can’t we find $25 million somewhere else and give it to them?

The Banco Delta is worried the money might have been gained illicitly. First how exactly is money not gained illicitly? It reminds me of Judgment Night when for a reason that escapes me (like the rest of the movie) Dennis Leary is giving some kid money. The kid complains that there is blood on that money. Leary responds, “you ever see money that didn’t?” But even if you accept that there are ways to get $25 million legally and ethically, when would North Korea do it? It’s a Stalinist regime driven on the cult of personality and squeezing the surplus labor from the citizens. Of course it’s ill gotten gain!

This leads us to the second question. Why does the Banco Delta care? China is not the most transparent in banking regulation. Only recently did they agree to follow the Basle II standards – and that only by the end of 2008. And it was neither the Banco Delta nor the Chinese National Government’s decision that it was ill gotten. It was the US Treasury’s. What is the Banco Delta doing listening to them?

Finally is the amount. To you and me $25 million is a lot of money but to the US Government its spare change. Just cover the 25 million and get back from the Banco Delta when PRC pressure makes them.

The United States has really lost all its soft power (the international relations jargon for “juice”), if the Bush Administration can let a major deal with an international pariah fall by the wayside because some small bank in Macau does want to release spare change.