Obama Doctrine,

Sen Amy Klobuchar
Dana Milbank
Rick Outzen

"This is a story about the Three Little Pigs. A lot of dead oil workers. And British Petroleum." - Rick Outzen

"Sounds as if it may be time for a top kill at the Interior Department." - Dana Milbank

"We listened to the leaders of BP, Transocean and Halliburton explain how each of their companies may not have been at fault for the disaster. Their evasive testimony reminded me of kids who knock a baseball through the neighbor's window and won't own up to their actions." - Sen Klobuchar

While we celebrate the apparent success of the top kill method stopping the oil flowing out of a collapsed pipe by BP, President Obama gave a press conference today outlining the mess his administration has to clean up from Bush's collapsed policy failures. I knew it was bad, but recent investigations have revealed just how bad it really has become - beyond dysfunctional. What we need to do is stop and rebuild our bureaucracies from the ground up so that each department is leaner, meaner, and can respond to a crisis situation without loads of paperwork and signing off by hundreds of supervisors (this kind of bureaucracy is miring down our military responses in Afghanistan, so the Pentagon has to be included). Get rid of infighting, share relevant information, and put in some kind of ombudsman who can identify internal problems and who has the clout to fix them. The nature of bureaucracies is that they become top heavy after time, and each person will rise to their highest level of incompetence, known as the Peter Principle.

President Obama will also reveal his national security strategy, or what will become known as the Obama Doctrine: "The document, updated every four years, sets priorities for America's military, law enforcement and foreign policy agencies. It drops some of the most controversial language from the Bush administration, like the phrase "global war on terror" and references to "Islamic extremism". "The United States is waging a global campaign against al-Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates," the 52-page strategy document says. "Yet this is not a global war against a tactic - terrorism, or a religion - Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qaeda, and its terrorist affiliates." The strategy also calls for US engagement with "hostile nations," closer relations with China and India, and a focus on strengthening the US economy." Ohh yeah, there will be a lot of debate over this, especially on the Sunday morning wonk shows, can you feel the hawks ruffling their wings from here? Other than initial gestures made towards North Korea, Burma, Syria, and Iran, no constructive follow-ups have been made, leaving whatever good feelings we created to dangle on the vine and rot. Other than getting Israel and the Palestinians to agree to meet with the US proxy again, nothing else has been scheduled or accomplished... We friggin' wasted Bill Clinton, by sending him as an envoy to Haiti, where hea has done absolutely nothing constructive, when he would be better off charming the Burmese Generals or Little Kim...

John Brennan, the National Security advisor, has said that it is a departure from George Bush's doctrine of unilateral engagement against Islamic extremism, in an effort to watch John McCain's face turn purple: "Obama's strategy calls for the US to work within international institutions, like the United Nations and Nato, though it calls for significant reforms to those world bodies. "An international architecture that was largely forged in the wake of World War II is buckling under the weight of new threats," the document says.


In a speech previewing the strategy on Wednesday, John Brennan, Obama's counterterrorism adviser, said the strategy reflected a shift in al-Qaeda's tactics. He pointed to several recent failed attacks against the US - the Times Square bombing attempt, and the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing - as examples of al-Qaeda's "less sophisticated" tactics. "As our enemy adapts and evolves their tactics, so must we constantly adapt and evolve ours, not in a mad rush driven by fear, but in a thoughtful and reasoned way," Brennan said."

And yet, we still have Guantanamo and other prisons like it, we still keep people without charging them of anything, we keep using military commissions to try individuals so they have less rights, we illegally wiretap and surveil individuals, we illegally use predator drones all over the world, we have an established assassination list, and yet we give mouth to such concepts as keeping our American values and respect for the rule of law. Excuse me, my milk just came out through my nose, I was laughing so hard... As long as we keep waging brutal wars while pretending to adhere to a set of ideals, we will lose in the eyes of the world, and in the eyes of our children... Given, we are expecting the worst things to happen once we pull out of Iraq, that Iran will waltz on in, thanking us for priming their next Shiite state, and that the Taliban will take back Afghanistan and create a far stricter, worse society than if we had just left them alone, especially after General McChrystal is trying to accomplish the impossible withinn the next few months, when he needs at least two generations to accomplish his goals of building a free, secure, and stabile society that is self-governed without too much obvious corruption.  We never want to think that by sending our children into battle, with some losing their lives, some losing their limbs, and some losing their minds, that it was all done for nothing. That is our greatest fear, and our greatest sense of guilt that the Armed Forces always tries to deny...


rip iraqi airways...

At first glance, the announcement that Iraqi Airways is going bankrupt and all flights are immediately canceled, you might assume that it's because nobody wants to fly into a city where so many suicide bombings are still taking place. Wrong assumption. According to the BBC: " Iraq's transportation ministry told reporters the airline would be closed following a damaging dispute with Kuwait over war reparations. The ministry blamed "harassment" from Kuwait for the airline's failure... Kuwait Airways says the Iraqi flag carrier owes it about $1.2bn for aircraft and plane parts taken during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990." See, it's still all Saddam's fault! Sock it to me, dead-man... The two airlines rated as having the best service in the world are Qatar Airlines and Singapore Airlines. No US firm made the list...


Problems with the Internet this afternoon. I will publish what I have so far and put something else in later on tonight...