Bureacracy and Counterbureaucracy

[The Next Surge - Counterbureaucracy]

When the Taliban arrive in a village, I discovered, it takes 96 hours for an Army commander to obtain necessary approvals to act. In the first half of 2009, the Army Special Forces company I was with repeatedly tried to interdict Taliban. By our informal count, however, we (and the Afghan commandos we worked with) were stopped on 70 percent of our attempts because we could not achieve the requisite 11 approvals in time.

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President Obama does not get it. He and his key advisers are subject to heavy pressures, and so far the approach has been “Let’s compromise.” So you still have a hell of a lot of work ahead of you. You do not have any choice. Your attitude must be “Yes, we can.”

I am sorry to say that most of what politicians are doing on the climate front is greenwashing—their proposals sound good, but they are deceiving you and themselves at the same time. Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach. Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise—they are what they are.

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Connect The Dots

[via Afghanistan’s Army]

90 percent illiteracy levels for Afghan troops; desertion rates so high that thousands must be recruited each year to keep the force from shrinking; broken logistics; and, most tellingly, “a lack of competent and professional leadership at all levels.”

[…]

Afghan soldiers get about $100 a month, a third of what some local warlords pay fighters, a major reason for desertion.

[…]

Most Afghan soldiers are paid in cash, which means that they often have to return home to deliver money to their families, sometimes going AWOL. A modest investment in wire or digital money transfer systems could ease that problem, reduce the desertion rate and make it harder for corrupt commanders to steal recruits’ pay.

So, that seems like the basis of all optimistic planning in Obama’s approach?

Obama Is Making The Easy Choice

[via A Tragic Mistake by Bob Herbert]

After going through an extended period of highly ritualized consultations and deliberations, the president has arrived at a decision that never was much in doubt, and that will prove to be a tragic mistake. It was also, for the president, the easier option.

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime. It would have taken real courage for the commander in chief to stop feeding our young troops into the relentless meat grinder of Afghanistan, to face up to the terrible toll the war is taking — on the troops themselves and in very insidious ways on the nation as a whole.

What does Obama stand for? Maybe he was elected to this office too young?

Obama And The Dems Turn Their Back On Women

[via Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power by Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling]

The Democratic majority has abandoned its platform and subordinated women’s health to short-term political success. In doing so, these so-called friends of women’s rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion’s staunchest foes. That Senate Democrats are poised to allow similar anti-abortion language in their bill simply underscores the degree of the damage that has been done.

Many women — ourselves included — warned the Democratic Party in 2004 that it was a mistake to build a Congressional majority by recruiting and electing candidates opposed to the party’s commitment to legal abortion and to public financing for the procedure. Instead, the lust for power yielded to misguided, self-serving poll analysis by operatives with no experience in the fight for these principles. They mistakenly believed that giving leadership roles to a small minority of anti-abortion Democrats would solve the party’s image problems with “values voters” and answer critics who claimed Democrats were hostile to religion.

Democrats were told to stop talking about abortion as a moral and legal right and to focus instead on comforting language about reducing the number of abortions. In this regard, President Obama was right on message when he declared in his health care speech to Congress in September that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions” — as if this happened to be a good and moral thing. (The tone of his statement made the point even more sharply than his words.)

[…]

the victims of their folly will be the millions of women who once could count on the Democratic Party to protect them from those who would sacrifice their rights for political gains.

Abortion is legal in the United States. But not the way that Obama and the Blue Dog Democrats play the issue. Obama continues to demostrate that not only is he no socialist (as the right demonizes him), he is no progressive, no liberal. He’s beyond centrist. He seems to be a moderate Republican.

Time for a new Progressive party.

This Can't Be Right

[via Questions for a Trade Official New York Times]

The White House has nominated Mr. [Islam] Siddiqui for the position of chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the United States trade representative. He is presently a vice president at CropLife America, a coalition of the major industrial players in the pesticide industry, including Syngenta, Monsanto, Dow Chemical and DuPont. That job doesn’t seem to square with the Obama administration’s professed interest in more sustainable, less chemically dependent approaches to agriculture.

Nor does much of the rest of Mr. Siddiqui’s résumé. The White House has touted his role in the first phase of developing national organic standards. But those standards, as they first emerged in draft form in the Clinton years, were notoriously loose about allowing genetically engineered crops and the use of sewage-sludge fertilizers to be labeled as “organic.”

There’s no disputing Mr. Siddiqui’s experience in government — in California and at the national level. But the business of CropLife — an arm of which openly scoffed at Michelle Obama’s plans for an organic garden — is to increase exports of agricultural chemicals.

So, Obama doesn’t really want to make food better for all to eat, he’s good with global agribusiness types setting trade policy around chemical food.

"The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible. The common ground is not always the high ground. When it is without end, moreover, the search for common ground is bad for bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ is a term of approbation."

"Those Obama fans who are disappointed keep looking for explanations. Is he too impressed by the elite he met in Cambridge, too eager to split the difference between left and right, too willing to compromise? As he pursues legislation, why does he keep deferring to others — whether to his party’s Congressional leaders or the Congressional Budget Office or to this month’s acting president, Olympia Snowe? Why doesn’t he ever draw a line in the sand? “We know Obama has good values,” Jeff Madrick said to me last week, “but we don’t know if he has convictions."

"I will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ ” Mr. Obama told an audience of nearly 3,000 people at a fund-raising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay advocacy group. “That is my commitment to you."

Allied Militants Threaten Pakistan’s Populous Heart [Sabrina Tavernise]

[via NYTimes.com]

Let’s recap the step-by-step progress to this point: Afghanistan had a Taliban-led government which was supporting and concealing Al Queda. We decided it was worth billions (now hundreds of billions) to go after Al Queda, and to do so we needed to end the Taliban government of Afghanistan. We invaded, with NATO help.

The Taliban fled, growing new converts in Pakistan. Now we are bombing (via drones) Pakistani citizens, who are painted with the Taliban/Al Queda paintbrush, because after all it is illegitimate to dislike American domineering in Central Asia, and it is illegitimate to want any sort of governmental system other than those sanctioned by Washington. And now? Taliban and other anti-American groups are cropping up in the Punjab: the most populous region of Pakistan, far far away from Afghanistan.

‘Taliban insurgents are teaming up with local militant groups to make inroads in Punjab, the province that is home to more than half of Pakistanis, reinvigorating an alliance that Pakistani and American authorities say poses a serious risk to the stability of the country.

The deadly assault in March in Lahore, Punjab’s capital, against the Sri Lankan cricket team, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the national capital, were only the most spectacular examples of the joint campaign, they said.

Now police officials, local residents and analysts warn that if the government does not take decisive action, these dusty, impoverished fringes of Punjab could be the next areas facing the insurgency. American intelligence and counterterrorism officials also said they viewed the developments with alarm.’

But don’t worry folks! This is not a quagmire! We just need to surge some 20,000 more troops into Afghanistan and everything will be fine. Except we will have to increase the CIA’s drone bombings of Taliban ‘insurgents’ who are opposed to our helping the Pakistani people. Maybe we will have to start bombing in the Punjab. And if a few hundred bystanders get killed every month or week, well… you can’t save the world without busting a few heads, can you?

And don’t worry about those pesky nuclear weapons that Pakistan has. That’s fine, because they are our allies, even if we are bombing their citizens, because the ones we bomb are ‘insurgents’, not the Army that has the missiles. And the missiles are pointed at India, anyway, so who cares?

Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here.

Obama Is Breaking The Promise About Openness And Insiders

Op-Ed Columnist - The Rabbit Ragu Democrats - NYTimes.com by Frank Rich]

“Obama’s promise to make Americans trust the government again was not just another campaign bullet point; it’s the foundation of his brand of governance and essential to his success in office. At the first anniversary of the TARP bailout of the banks, we can see how far he has to go. Americans’ continued suspicion that Washington is in cahoots with powerful interests in joints like Tosca is contributing to their confusion and skepticism about what’s happening out of view in the battle over health care reform.

The public is not wrong. The administration’s legislative deals with the pharmaceutical companies were made in back rooms. Business Week reported in early August that the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business. UnitedHealth’s hired Beltway gunslingers include both Elmendorf Strategies and Daschle, a public supporter of the public option who nonetheless does some of his “wink, wink” counseling for UnitedHealth. The company’s in-house lobbyist is a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader. Gephardt consults there too.”

I have completely lost faith with this administration and Obama’s broken campaign promises.

"There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists."

The Hawks Of War Have Won?

McChrystal Rejects Scaling Down Afghan Military Aims by John Burns]

“The top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, used a speech here on Thursday to reject calls for the war effort to be scaled down from defeating the Taliban insurgency to a narrower focus on hunting down Al Qaeda, an option suggested by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as part of the current White House strategy review.

After his first 100 days in command in Kabul, General McChrystal chose an audience of military specialists at London’s Institute for Strategic Studies as a platform for a public airing of the confidential assessment of the war he delivered to the Pentagon in late August, parts of which were leaked to news organizations. General McChrystal, 55, did not mention Mr. Biden or his advocacy of a scaled-down war effort during his London speech, and referred only obliquely to the debate within the Obama administration on whether to escalate the American commitment in Afghanistan by accepting his request for up to 40,000 more American troops on top of the 68,000 already deployed there or en route.

But he used the London session for a rebuttal of the idea of a more narrowly focused war. When a questioner asked him whether he would support scaling back the American military presence over the next 18 months by relinquishing the battle with the Taliban and focusing on tracking down Al Qaeda, sparing ground troops by hunting Qaeda extremists and their leaders with missiles from remotely piloted aircraft, he replied: “The short answer is: no.”

So are the hawks prevailing within Obama’s inner circle? Is this speech a calculated move to signal Obama’s intentions?

I cannot believe that McCrystal would make a speech like this, now, without direction from Obama. So, it would seem that Obama and company are testing the waters for a protracted and larger counterinsurgency, instead of Biden’s counterterrorism.

Another eight years, Mr President?

Mounting Evidence That Obama's Administration Isn't Looking Out For Main Street

Remember the much touted Making Home Affordable plan, where the Obama team was going to pay to get banks to refi people’s mortgages? Well, big surprise, the bank’s are denying people right and left. (Remember, they have incentives to let people fall into foreclosure, and Obama and Congress did not vote to allow courts to restructure mortgages in bankruptcy.)

[via Frustrated Homeowners Turn to Media, Courts by Alexandra Andrews]

“Qualified homeowners are being routinely denied loan modifications through the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable plan [1], but they have little recourse to correct the mistaken denials, housing advocates say. In the absence of an effective appeals process, some borrowers have improvised their own solutions: They turn to journalists or congressmen [2] – or take Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to court.

According to the government’s latest public figures, less than 12 percent [3], or roughly 360,000, of the borrowers projected to pass the program’s initial eligibility test [4] had received loan modifications by the end of August, about five months in. The process of reviewing those borrowers for final qualification has been “pretty haphazard,” according to Geoff Walsh of the National Consumer Law Center.

“People are wrongly denied all the time. Every day,” said Irwin Trauss, supervising attorney at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. “The lenders are generally applying the criteria incorrectly.”

Under the program, the government pays mortgage servicers to reduce borrowers’ payments. The servicers have signed contracts agreeing to abide by the government’s eligibility parameters, but the servicers determine whether a borrower meets them.

As we reported last month, when mistakes are made, it’s difficult – often impossible – for borrowers or housing counselors to catch them because servicers typically keep their calculations in the dark.

[…]

A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department said that, as of today, mortgage servicers will be required to report the basis for denial to both the government and the borrower. Freddie Mac has also begun auditing a sample of borrowers who were rejected, although it’s not clear when those results will be made public, she said.

Thompson said that “at a bare minimum,” there should be a number at Treasury or Freddie Mac where borrowers have access to an independent review of their denial, with the servicer bound to the outcome. The Treasury spokeswoman said that servicers have been asked to develop their own processes for dealing with borrower complaints.

In lieu of a formal appeals process, some frustrated borrowers have had success going to the media. Servicers often reverse their decisions when contacted by a journalist, said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. “

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Oh great. So the Treasury did not set up an appeals process, and is not obviously monitoring the project very closely. So it’s just window dressing, because it is failing to do what it was supposed to do.

Likewise, what ever happened to all those jobs that the stimulus was supposed to create, Mt President? Now your economic advisors are saying we are in for a long jobless recovery. Is that acceptable? Paul Krugman doesn’t think so:

[via Mission Not Accomplished]

Stocks are up. Ben Bernanke says that the recession is over. And I sense a growing willingness among movers and shakers to declare “Mission Accomplished” when it comes to fighting the slump. It’s time, I keep hearing, to shift our focus from economic stimulus to the budget deficit.

No, it isn’t. And the complacency now setting in over the state of the economy is both foolish and dangerous.

Yes, the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration have pulled us “back from the brink” — the title of a new paper by Christina Romer, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers. She argues convincingly that expansionary policy saved us from a possible replay of the Great Depression.

But while not having another depression is a good thing, all indications are that unless the government does much more than is currently planned to help the economy recover, the job market — a market in which there are currently six times as many people seeking work as there are jobs on offer — will remain terrible for years to come.”

Krugman makes a forceful case that a protracted period of joblessness at this level will have large long-term consequences, specifically from raising a large number of children in poverty. But don’t forget all the young people who cannot find work, and may drift to a marginal life of crime or grey market employment.

And getting back to the premises behind the stimulus: jobs were the whole point.

Once again, it seems Obama and company are fascinated with nation building and saber rattling in central Asia, and significantly less interested in the consequences of our economic partiality. The people need a bail-out more than GM and the banks.