The McMaster Promotion board

Kaplan has a good article in slate about something that's real important, but usually flies well under the radar of the Media and the public. He notes how the latest Army general officer promotion board may represent a very important seismic shift in the Army's leadership: http://www.slate.com/id/2196647/

The guy at the top always matters, for good or ill. In the case of the ill, for example, we can't really expect a major across-the-board improvement in the U.S. strategic situation so long as Bush is president.
But, to the extent that lower-ranking officials have quality they can make improvements within their sphere. There may be no clearer example of this than the Department of Defense. The shortcomings of Rumfeld are made starkly evident by the dramatic improvements under Gates, who may be one of the most important and effective SecDefs ever.

Gates has brought back to the Pentagon something that has been sorely lacking otherwise in the Bush administration -- accountability. Gates has been willing to fire failures. And now we are also seeing that he's interested in rewarding successes.

Unhappy with the kinds of decisions being made by the all-important Army one-star general promotion boards he brought back Gen. Petraeus from the war zone to oversea a promotion board. This alone can't help but send a powerful message how important Gates considered this board.

One of the biggest scandals of the last few years was the failure of two successive promotion boards to promote COL H.R. McMaster. There's hardly a more famous -- and justly so -- O-6 in the Army and it's failure to give him a star was nothing short of scandalous. Anyone who has been following McMaster's career has little doubt that he is one of the most outstanding officers of his generation -- bearing comparison with luminaries such as George C. Marshall and Creighton Abrams.

So Gates filled the board with the kind of outstanding successful combat officers the Army needs. Officers who had managed to rise to the top despite the system, but who could now reform that system to promote like-minded juniors in sufficient numbers to make a difference, as Kaplan points out.

I sure as hell hope the Navy names an aircraft carrier after this guy someday.

The summer of our discontent

It's hard to believe, given the disastrous nature of the Bush era, that the Republicans are still competitive in this race. If there was any justice in the world, they would be sent, as a body, packing into the wilderness for 40 years to repent.

But, of course, justice in this world is in short supply, which explains our hope there is more justice in the world to come.

I think there are many reasons why the race is still close, and to the extent that some of those reasons persist in the fall, there's a chance McCain will pull it off.

In no particular order:

1. Democrats, as a rule, a pathetic losers. They are to party discipline what cats are to herding. They're so afraid of being portrayed as "weak" on various issues that they cave in to the most unreasonable GOP demands. Evidently they are completely clueless that this confirms for all to see that they are, indeed, weak.

2. People aren't paying attention yet. It's only August.

3. Iraq isn't as big a disaster as it was last year. This allows McCain to make short-term claims that he was "right about the surge" but the long-term story is still disadvantageous to the GOP. The bottom line is that the public has made up its mind on Iraq and there's little that can happen there that will make a difference.

4. People like and respect McCain. Or at least the ones that aren't paying attention (See No. 2, above) People who are paying attention are having some second thoughts because of No. 5, below.

5. Negative campaigning still works. Or, at least, it works to make voters see your opponent more negatively. McCain is gambling that he can pull Obama down enough to catch him without losing much ground himself. This is a gamble, however, because it assumes Obama will refrain from going negative himself. McCain provides plenty of ready ammo for negative campaigning, though, and he may regret opening that Pandora's box. McCain is banking on Obama not being ruthless enough to go tit-for-tat with negative ads. While I don't doubt that Obama would prefer not to go there, I think he's provided ample evidence he will do what he must to win. McCain may be misunderestimating his opponent.

6. McCain is popular with the press -- for a Republican. The press hasn't made up its mind on Obama. In part, it wants to like Obama, but because it knows it wants to like Obama it thinks it shouldn't like Obama. If that makes sense to you, you're a journalist. If it doesn't make sense to you then you're a normal person.

7. There's a portion of the electorate (of undetermined size) that isn't ready to vote for a black man under any circumstances. On the other hand, most of those people probably wouldn't vote for any Democrat and have already been factored into the likely vote. The only way this would make a difference is if there's a significant number of people who would otherwise have voted Democrat that won't because of Obama's race. Maybe there is. If the race is close, they may make a difference. My sense is, however, that the anti-GOP sentiment is probably strong enough that other factors will overcome this effect.

Once the convention's shake out things will become more clear

One person can make a difference

Solzhenitsyn dies.

Like most Russian writers, in general his works are too wordy for my taste, but his novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," is a powerful, classic and short work.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080803/ap_on_re_eu/obit_solzhenitsyn;_ylt=AugX46qUJDqsFVOekI1GvTCs0NUE

So at what point do citizens say enough?

Is it when cops taser a man with a broken back 19 times because he can't get up? http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/07/cant-think-of-a.html

Or is it when a police SWAT team shoots to death the two dogs of a town's mayor during a no-knock raid? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/30/AR2008073003299_2.html

Or maybe it's when witnesses who don't parrot the police side of the story are detained, interrogated and intimidated: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126284.html

Here is a list of drug war victims: http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html

You have to hand it to the Bushies ...

... no matter how many times you think that "they can't top this!" -- they do:

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0807/final.pdf

The link is to the official DOJ report about how the Bush administration broke the law by using nakedly partisan considerations to fill career lawyer positions in DOJ. In one case a top anti-terror prosecutor didn't get hired because his wife was a Democrat.

Oh yeah, and Goodling asked some candidates "what is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" (Page 18) Gee, I thought career DOJ lawyers were serving the people of the United States.

Eerily similar to the hapless GOP flunky some months back who told Sen. Leahy about her oath to the president, provoking an impromptu civics lesson from the senator to the clueless lackey that her oath was to the Constitution!

National Geographic on Iran

This month's National Geographic has an informative piece on Iran, including an handy detailed map of the country that will undoubtedly prove useful if there's a war.

While studiously non-political, the article does manage to bring up some interesting points. One thing that I think that most of those that are pushing for war and demonizing the Iranians ignore is the bad feeling that Iranians still feel over the coup that brought the Shah to power. Certainly this kind of thing ought to be thought about before glibly advocating a strike. Now what kind of self-respecting country is not going to be enraged by such an act? Remember Pearl Harbor?

The Iranians are proud heirs to an ancient civilization, so we know they are self-respecting. It's really insane to even think about starting a war that we know we can't finish.

McCain vs. Obama contrasting images of July 24, 2008

So, while Barack Obama is talking to hundreds of thousands in Berlin ...

John McCain is on the TV talking to a reporter in front of some German restaurant in Ohio ?(nearly being drwoned out by windchimes)

Really odd juxtaposition.