Simmons is a legendary oil service man. One of the planet’s genii in this sphere.
Both men offer practical containment ideas that should be used and don’t understand the government’s inaction.
And both assert at length that the little geyser we’ve been watching on TV is not the prime leak.
Friend and poet Michael Gushue reports this alleged lost scene from the Citizen Kane script:
Kane stands with his butler/factotum, Raymond in the family tomb. His only son, Charles Foster Kane II, is dead at the age of 31. The year is 1938, and workmen are setting a slab on the grave.
After they leave, Kane looks at the simple inscriptions on the crypts of his father, mother and son.
Above the blank space reserved for him, is an inscription on an ornate, ancient wall imported from Persia.
Kane translates for Raymond (bored and couldn’t care less):
The drunkenness of youth
Has passed like a fever
And yet I saw many things
Seeing my glory in the days of my gloryI thought my power eternal
And the days of my life
Fixed surely in the years
But a whisper came to me
From Him who dies notI called my tributary kings together
And those who were proud rulers under me
I opened the boxes of my treasure to them, saying
“Take hills of gold, mountains of silver
And give me one more day upon the earth”But they stood silent
Looking upon the ground
So that I died
And Death came to sit upon my throneO sons of men
You see a stranger upon the road
You call to him and he does not stop
He is your life
Walking towards time
Hurrying to meet the kings of India and ChinaO sons of men
You are caught in the web of the world
And the spider
Nothing waits behind itWhere are the men with towering hopes?
They have changed places with owls
Owls who lived in tombs
And now inhabit a palaceWe live in affluence
And are blind to where we areOur concerns and feuds
Fill our time every dayYou must ask yourself
What is the worth?
It has begun.
What the Dice Man has joined may none put asunder.
If your brakes don’t work, smile as you go under.
What’s he building in there?
This is actually a conversion of a screenplay, the antepenultimate, my fifth, from 2005, into a novel. Thought about doing it before. Now it seems to have gone and …
Oh brother.
The opening paragraph seems to be:
In June 2004, after five Medecins Sans Frontieres were found murdered in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan, Aaron called, for the first time since coming to New York with Maya. Long out of touch had been the pattern of a friendship born and first aborted in Texas, then again at Duke, before settling down to disjointed maturity during years of criss-crossing work overseas. Since the rebirth of History the routine had been that to meet for coffee one went to Baghdad or Bosnia or Berlin.
That, or perhaps:
He would miss his turn.
And so on to the end.
If we shall suppose that writing lengthy bits that no one shall ever read is one of those offenses which, in the providence of Dog, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both Yea and Ney this terrible task as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living Dog always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of lore may speedily pass away.
Yet, if Dog wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the pen man’s sore head and hands and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the quill shall be paid by another drawn by the horde, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as Dog gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Major piece in February’s Harper’s. Hats off to them.
The center does not hold.
Obama has done nothing but talk on this.
Wow. Sounds like a little boy.
His bland loyalty to Daddy perhaps explains North Korea.
M
1. Noam Chomsky talks about Gaza a year after the Israeli attack.
2. Meanwhile Israel complains because George Mitchell has threatened to cut off the cash trying to pressure Netanyahu — a precise echo of the Bush-Baker years.
3. And the Israeli general who once headed their nuclear weapons program says that Iranian nukes are seven years distant.
Team Obama this year has enacted a betrayal of the Cairo speech.
M
Another in Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frog interviews on the National Security Apparat.
Very worthwhile — as they’ve all been. This is number 18. She’s leading one of the most important discussions around.
Ellsberg is measured in assessing Obama, and even so the judgments are bleak. Syncs well with my own black-biled broodings.
Touches on the political consequences of allowing high hopes to fail for lack of leadership. Ellsberg doesn’t mention the Carter-Reaganism dynamic, but what he says brings it to mind.
And he puts the puzzle of the escalation decision in clear terms, observing that neither the top Pentagon brass, nor NS Advisor Jms Jones (retired four-star general), nor Rahm Emanuel — with the fine DC instincts and his eye on the 2010 elections — were pusihng the escalation. (Nor Biden.) And some were on record against it.
Is Obama more of a militarist than Petraeus, whose recent interview in Newsweek shows a mind less than persuaded of any successful outcome over there? Where did the decision come from?
Westmoreland and LBJ
M
Recall Col. Flectcher Prouty’s history of the Pentagon’s war in Vietnam (which, note, began in 1965) — and which Prouty thinks began almost accidentally, with a big push by Textron and its lobbyists to get the Gov to start buying Bell “Huey” helicopters en masse.
As conglomerate Textron — then as now a major war supplier — was preparing a corporate takeover of Bell Helicopters, a guy from Yale working on Wall Street kept showing up at Prouty’s office atop the Air Force staff in the Pentagon — trying to sell the notion that tactical helicopters would revolutionize counterinsurgency ops …
The Air Force kept saying no. Finally somebody got to somebody on the Nat’l Security Council staff in the White House, and the order came across the river: Let’s buy some more helicopters — and let’s base them across the border from Laos, rather than where all the shootin’s going on. Yeah, let’s put them in Vietnam.
The Huey program was greenlighted — but under CIA auspices. Which perhaps rounds around to explain why a banker out of Yale was lead salesman.
The CIA had opened its first official spy store in Saigon in 1954 (post French defeat at Dien Bien Phu) but our involvement there reached back into the war, when the OSS helped to arm Ho’s nationalists against the Japanese. Some say that the same guys, now wearing CIA badges, including Ed Lansdale, were covertly on the ground again well before ’54, working again with locals but this time to oust the French.
However that may be, Prouty writes that each early CIA Huey base in Vietnam needed some 500 (if memory serves) pairs of Pentagon boots to provide pilots, maintenance, security and support.
And when the bases started drawing fire from local insurgents even more Advisors were needed to Keep the Peace.
Wasn’t long before 16,000 soldiers were in country, under CIA command, shooting at insurgents from behind barricades as the choppers bounced and bombed around the South as Lansdale & company tried to figure out how to win their hearts and minds.
Then, in late ’63, a new President took office persuaded that it was time to let the Pentagon clean house.
Obama and Stanley
M
The obvious parallel is the CIA’s drone campaign, based in Afghanistan, attacking Pakistan, which began under lame duck Bush-Cheney, August 2008, rather late — perhaps to be sure it was online fait accompli before the new prez came in.
The latter again brings to mind the Bay of Pigs — in particular the panicked revisions to the plan that went on between November 1960, when Kennedy shocked the planners by defeating Nixon, and January when he took office.
Steps were taken to downsize the scheme (quite consciously beyond hope of success) and to persuade the new White House team that the raid had been approved by Eisenhower (not so — rather, by VP Nixon, who headed the CIA oversight committee in Ike’s White House).
The raid came 70 days into Kennedy’s presidency. He wasn’t quick enough to choke it off, but deserves great credit for frustrating the prime motive by refusing its gambit — ie, refusing to send in the Marines to rescue the raid (and execute regime change).
And, of course, he never escalated with the Pentagon in Vietnam. That came after Johnson won his ’64 election.
Obama within weeks of taking office enlarged the CIA drone program.
And now, against the advice and/or instincts of Jones, Mullen, Eikenberry, even it seems Petraeus (four four-star generals) as well as VP Biden and CoS Rahm, he’s escalating the war.
Ellsberg pointedly compares Obama’s decision to that of Johnson (under whom and closely with he worked) in 1965 — and sadly laughs at the notion of turning on a dime and getting out in July 2011. The commitment, he insists, cannot but be anything but indefinite re both time and manpower.
More than puzzling. Why did subordinate Stanley McChrystal win this policy debate? Why was he even involved in it?
And what is the War Aim over there? I STILL don’t see one, and neither it seems does the senior brass.
Let’s see, who makes the Predator drone? Expensive little bombs ….. Who’s their anchor banker …?
In the Land of the Blind …
For files.
QUOTE
It’s just astonishing that given the track record of Blackwater, which is a repeat offender endangering our mission repeatedly, endangering the lives of our military and costing the lives of innocent civilians, that there would be any relationship,” Schakowsky said.
“That we would continue to contract with them or any of Blackwater’s subsidiaries is completely unacceptable.”
Big brain out of the Nat’l Security Apparat adds value re the difficulty of bombing underground:
“It complicates your targeting,” said Richard L. Russell, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst now at the National Defense University. “We’re used to facilities being above ground. Underground, it becomes literally a black hole. You can’t be sure what’s taking place.”
Need a second opinion?
“Deeply buried targets have been a problem forever,” said Greg Duckworth, a civilian scientist who recently led a Pentagon research effort to pinpoint enemy tunnels. “And it’s getting worse.”
Laugh or cry or …?
NY Times review of The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand.
The USA: No longer a country for man, woman or beast.
But still have to be approved in Tehran.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear22-2009oct22,0,2676789.story
A fortiori, I don’t think the Four Days in September were without significance:
A feature piece in the Times this morning airs the growling of anonymous generals about the President “pulling out the rug” from beneath them in Afghanistan, and moving to cut their budget. The nerve …
“The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.”
The horrendous suicide bomb attack today on Iranian soil and top military leaders, apparently by native unhappy Baluchi campers, is very dangerous for Team Obama and the world.
Tehran has immediately accused Washington and the Brits of being behind the attack.
A bit odd, to do so so quickly, and given that the nuke talks are about to get underway.
Might the Iranians have clear intelligence about US/Brit support of the Jundallah group that’s claiming responsibility?
In any case, if Tehran’s claims are serious, then the worries I had a year ago here — of Obama getting led by the nose into something he doesn’t see and can’t control — on the model of JFK at the Bay of Pigs …
Those worries become relevant — even if, as one hopes, the western so-called intelligence apparats, including Israel’s, had nothing to do with today’s attack.
The Pakis, of course, invaded South Waziristan in force last week, in reaction to the bombing of the Paki Army HQ outside Islamabad the week before.
South Waziristan is just north of Baluchistan, all within Pakistan’s borders. And it’s apparently Baluchi separatists in Iran behind today’s attack.
So — just a thought — PERHAPS the Paki invasion of Waziristan has led unhappy campers there or just south to undertake this attack in Iran as a way to invite Iran into the mess and thus make things more difficult for Islamabad?
Just a thought, based on nothing yet n the news. There was something suspicious in Islamabad’s reaction to the bomb of its army HQ last week, as noted here: the immediate statement by Islamabad that an invasion of Waziristan was now called for. We may be looking at a chain of events much more tightly knit, re causality, than the news we read is able to convey.
ED NOTE: See comments below to continue following this disaster into 2010, where, in June, McChrystal shoots off his mouth and loses his head.
Well, it seems Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup was on target:
John Kerry — who has been Obama’s stalking canary (?) for weeks, loudly making the argument for no more troops — today told the Sunday talk shows that another 40,000 is maybe okay if yadda yadda yadda …
There is nothing to win over there. The LBJ precedent looms.
MUST WATCH, unfortunately …
M
M
9/11, the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex, and what 50 years of same has done to American society.
Here’s Part One at youtube.
The other nine are there too. About 100 minutes total.
Can buy a copy here.
The producers include Wim Wenders — a fave.
Most of what the film has to say is familiar. But the last two parts (on youtube) have revived basic despair about not only our owner-operator class but the young soldiers, who seem as alien and rabid as the teen zealots of 1917 did to so many Russians.
It’s only a few baby steps from shooting civilians for fun in Iraq to the same in American cities. I guess we will see this sooner than later, perhaps even before election day 2016 if Romney beats Obama in 2012.
And of course I don’t mean to imply that it’s okay in Iraq. It’s so NOT okay that … words elude.
And thoughts of leaving the country intrude.
I mean only to gauge the degradation of our people — our enemy met that is us — raised on video games and patriotic television. We mirror the owner-operators with gruesome fidelity.
And have deprived ourselves of sound basis for complaint should one day a city of our own go up in smoke.
Paul Street complained in well informed style about the Peace Prize and Obama’s war-making trail so far.
I REPLIED:
Nevertheless, he did say Woah on a Sunday talk show a few weeks ago, triggering the current Pakghanistan policy debate — and outing McChrystal.
My blog the past 11 months is full of disapppointed rants re the people Obama kept on or hired atop the Nat’l Security Apparat, including a post headlined (like yours) with Orwell’s name after the surreal scene in Strasbourg.
But to think Obama had much of a choice about, e.g., Stanley Mac’s appointment is perhaps to overestimate a callow president’s power to reject the truths and advice of the Briefers of the Apparat.
His chief failing, it seems to me, is that of an ingenue, not a Kissinger; and those of us who elected the ingenue bear some responsibility.
During the campaign I thought Hillary was the better choice to feed into this sausage grinder. She was ready for battle and knows how to take a bullet. Obama seemed better suited as her successor.
But one goes to peace with the President one has. The policy at this moment is in the air, and for the first time since Gates-Mullen picked up the pieces post Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz. If Obama fails to make this opportunity a turning point, I’ll jump on the bandwagon damning him simply.
But I’m hoping he manages to execute a change in rough accord with the Cairo speech that will mark the end of the beginning of his foreign policy odyssey.
Must read, unfortunately.
Frank Schaeffer was the son of a famous right-wing Christian preacher-activivist. Became one himself. But then saw the light and went Left.
His simple scorn for the movement is bracing.
But his certainty as to its essential violence — that violence itself, born of long resentment within a civilization that passed it by, is its aim — is ominous.
There has been good solid journalism about this threat throughout the decade, of course. This is a quick, sharp reminder.
And when one considers the black boy who was beaten to death in Chicago weeks ago — that horror that seems to have largely escaped notice …
One realizes how difficult the tightrope this President must walk shall be.
Today’s pictures say alot about the success of the Shanghai Coooperation Organization in policing its bounds and pushing back expansionist American policy since 2000.
M
China and Russia ink trade agreements and agree re natural gas.
M
Russia resists Hillary push for new sanctions against Iran — the latter which sends a ton of oil to China.
M
An ugly bloody week over there — now capped by an assault on a Paki Army headquarters.
From the London Daily Telly:
The daring assault, a few miles from the capital, was the third significant terrorist attack in Pakistan this a week. A suicide bomb attack on a UN headquarters killed five, and more than fifty people died when a huge car bomb exploded in a bazaar in the city of Peshawar.
Saturday’s attack seemed intended to show that the Taliban can still strike at the very heart of Pakistan’s security apparatus despite recent military operations against their forces and the killing of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a drone attack in August.
The attackers may have been trying to kill army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was inside the complex on Saturday, although it was not clear whether he was there during the attack. Military statements said he attended meetings there and at the president’s office in nearby Islamabad during the day.
It’s as if the so-called Pakistan Taliban, campers unhappy with the feebly pro-Western central government, don’t want the Yankees to go home after all.
For it’s the best guess, stateside, that this week’s attacks will support Pentagon and CIA warmakers in their recently convened public debate with the White House — especially if the Paki Army now throws up its hands and shouts to Stanley McChrystal across the border, Heck, come on down and we’ll kick some rebel ass!
From an Associated Press story:
The government said the assault on the headquarters …had strengthened its resolve to push into South Wazristan — a mountainous region where security forces have been beaten back by insurgents before.
The spasm of violence was confirmation that the militants had regrouped despite recent military operations against their forces and the killing of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA drone attack in August. His replacement vowed just last week to step up attacks around the country and repel any push into Waziristan.
Sounds like something that could snowball into the party war I’d imagined was in the works last December when erstwhile CIA Director General Michael Hayden declared war on/in Pakistan.
Perhaps this week’s attacks are expressions of native alienation from Islamabad pure and simple, and nothing more.
Or perhaps there’s bona fide provocation at work, maybe by American warmakers looking to win the debate and close the deal, or merely by Moscow, smiling on the sidelines like a Cheshire cat as it arms the resistance, turnabout being fair play and revenge a dish best served cold.
It may be worth recalling: Bush-Cheney called Mullah Omar and his merry band on the carpet in January and (if memory serves) May of 2001 — trying to get them to work with Houston’s Unocal on the Caspian basin pipeline, rather than Argentina’s Bridas.
But Omar grew sullen. And in midsummer (as voices from Tony Blair’s gov’t have reported) Bush-Cheney told the NATO folk to saddle up for the ride into Kabul.
It seems fair, then, to say that we did not go to Afghanistan to Get Osama. Our reasons for remaining there remain obscure. No good reasons are evident.
If this week’s attacks are native affairs, let the Paki apparatus, half of which hates Uncle Sam’s guts, handle them.
And if the attacks are more than meets the eye? Then all the better for the American President to resist the mousetrap cheese.
Neither the various forces labelled Taliban nor the meeting of minds referred to as al Qaeda are things a Pentagon can dismantle. Wars on terror are won or lost largely between the ears.
Obama knows this. Evidence: The Cairo and recent UN speeches. That he initiated the current public debate — saying Woah on a Sunday talk show — remains hopeful.
But whether he has the power and the nerve to turn off the Aimless war he cheerleaded and then inherited is far from clear.
He strode during the campaign last year, smiling and waving, into a near perfect trap, like Jesus entering Jerusalem on his ass. There are certainly elements of tragedy in this, but also of Obama’s particular great-souled naivete.
Hillary (whom I also admire) was the one to feed to this sausage grinder. She was ready for battle and knows how to take a bullet. Romney seems a good bet to be president four years hence: a time and place I don’t want to be.
