June: A time for Commencement

UCI Commencement

For tens of thousands, June is the month that years of effort and perseverance will be rewarded by the conferring of a degree. I have written before about the significance of commencement and the importance of knowledge to the social health of this nation and the world. This year is no different, last week I attended commencement for the 2011 graduating class for the university where I teach. This is my sixth graduation ceremony and each year brings an increase in graduates, with women becoming the largest contingent in doctoral and masters, as well as bachelors degrees. This is borne out across the nation where women now hold more college degrees than men.  This points to something that troubled me earlier this year when I wrote about the growing number of 20-somethings who have opted to fore go higher education or even learning a trade or getting a job. The statistics in that article did not break down the gender, but a non-scientific census of family and acquaintances seems to reveal a large number of home-bound and under-employed boys, versus daughters who for the most part are off to school or working in a career field.

The debate about higher education got some attention this past week when Larry Sanger co-founder of Wikipedia wrote a series of articles that caught the eye of Galrahn at information dissemination. Sanger offers up a defense of higher education which he begins by deconstructing an essay written by a 19 year-old who decries that "College is a waste of time." Sanger's destroys each of the nine premises with devastating accuracy. Sanger's next article addresses a question he asks:

Is there a new anti-intellectualism? I mean one that is advocated by Internet geeks and some of the digerati. I think so: more and more mavens of the Internet are coming out firmly against academic knowledge in all its forms. This might sound outrageous to say, but it is sadly true.

Read more:
Is there a new geek anti-intellectualism?


Taking this all under consideration and review, one would see by the extensive responses to Sanger's latest article that it fostered a healthy debate.

Counter to the anti-intellectual arguments and 20-somethings postponing their lives; are the many students I see in class each week who are fore going their free time and personal gratification, to study and gain the knowledge that Larry Sanger so eloquently writes about. Before I close, I would like to share a brief story of a chance encounter that reinforces Sanger's essay on the worth of a higher education and serves as a tribute to all who will graduate this year.

Last month I visited my dentist for a routine filling. I was ushered into the treatment room by a young women who after getting me prepped, explained that the dentist would be delayed for a few minutes. She remained and our talk turned from joking about it being the "fateful" afternoon of May 21, "Doomsday," to history, global events, and the state of the nation. When the dentist joined us, he jumped right in the discussion, and while waiting for the Novocaine to take effect we three talked about the fate of higher education in California. I soon learned that this young women would be graduating this month from the University of California and would be entering medical school where she intended to become a  pediatrician.  She related that in addition to working as a dental assistant, she also worked in a local children's doctor's office and volunteered at a local hospital, all while maintaining the grades to qualify for medical school. In the short time I was in the dentist chair, and without getting too graphic, I observed a person who for a dental assistant, was as attentive to the patient as a practicing oral surgeon. When I asked her why she did not become a dentist, she responded that she worked in both kinds of offices to learn which path in medicine would best suit her passion. I became convinced that this person was destined to accomplish what she had set out to become.

After the dentist finished, I learned that her parents had been part of the mass immigration after the fall of Vietnam. She joins a growing list of young people whom I have encountered, who by the grace of circumstances borne out of a war long ago; have joined this band of souls we call Americans and are enriching the fabric of our nation with their grit and passion to succeed. I do not write this little vignette to cast un-do attention on her, but to acknowledge an accomplishment she shares with her fellow graduates this year. I am convinced that she is well on the way to becoming a fine doctor and will make her parents, and her community proud.

USS Iowa BB-61: Update

USS Iowa leading the fleet

USS Iowa training out her guns

USS Iowa in rough seas

Iowa coming home

Anyone who has visited or given this blog more than a casual glance will recognize I take a great interest in the United States Navy and especially their role in the Pacific during World War II. A few day ago I wrote about the possibility that Southern California will soon be the home port for the newest addition to a long list of navy museums that preserve and honor our naval heritage.

Scale model of USS Iowa at Pier 87

Model overview of pier 87

Today, I attended a special event at pier 87 in San Pedro , once home to the Battle Fleet before 1940 and major shipyards during World War II and after. The event was to gather support for a California Assembly Resolution to support awarding the battleship USS Iowa BB-61 to San Pedro, with a new mission of offering education programs in history, leadership, team-building, character development, and community service, as well as serving as a disaster control center. First and foremost, ship will assume a unique "Living Museum" role that will provide visitors with an "at sea" experience that will trace the Iowa's 50 year history.

Fire boat Warner L Lawrence

USS Iowa being moved

If all goes according to plan, the dog days of summer will see Los Angeles Fireboat Warner L Lawrence  leading a parade that welcomes the Iowa to her new home at Berth 87 . The support for this project has been astounding and includes former President George H. W. Bush , community, state, business and veterans organizations. As things move along and the final details are worked out this blog will keep you posted and give plenty of notice to invite all to come welcome this great lady to her new home.

In the coming years, as the memory of World War II and the Cold War fade with the passing of the greying veterans amongst us, this ship will live on; to offer a hallowed space for future generations to contemplate what it was like when men steeled their hearts, to sail such ships into teeth of fascism and totalitarianism.

A New Friend Sets an Example

The Kitchen Dispatch Blog

Restrepo

Some have said that life in the first decade of the 21st century can take the quote from the classic Charles Dickens book, A Tale of Two Cities; "We live in the best of times and in the worst of times," and make it the mantra that describes our world today. In reflecting on world history, I would contend that it is true of the first part of that quote, "We live in the best of times." The positive changes for most of humanity since the end of the Cold War can be measured with the number of people worldwide who have moved from desperate poverty to gain a foothold on becoming middle-class in their own environs.

Technology designed for conflict has lent itself to connecting people as never before, and led to social and political transparency that makes it possible to be friends and have conversations between the most far-flung locations. This long introduction sets the stage to introduce a blog that I recently added to my favorite list. It is written by a women who after getting to know her appears to be a one person dynamo, who has taken on the challenge of raising a family, after her husband a successful surgeon for twenty odd years, joined the Army Medical Corp and after a tour of duty in Afghanistan, is taking care of soldiers at an army post stateside. In addition my new friend, took on the job of helping publicize the recent acclaimed documentary Restrepo. She also writes an excellent blog The Kitchen Dispatch where she hold forth wise commentary about moving from a surgeon's wife to an Army surgeon's wife and how it has transformed her writer's life. Kanani Fong is not only walking the walk, when she writes about getting involved. She recently stepped up to lead a writers workshop at a local Boys and Girls Teen Center in her community, where she is introducing young people to the joys of writing. She wrote this about her first day back on what she termed "terra firma."

4:00 came around, I braved the outdoor area where the teens were having a snack. I felt awkward and conspicuous.

Approaching a group of 14-17 year olds is always a dicey affair. One doesn't want to appear eager, look matronly , or even more disturbing --come across like an aging hipster. Teens can sniff out a phony in a second. After inquiring whether they were going to join me, several already knew today was the day. A migration started from the picnic tables to the classroom.

Kanani goes on to encourage the students and then explains her approach.

The purpose of the workshop is to introduce them to writing for the fun of it. I think school has a tendency to drill into people what is wrong and what is right. After enough red marks, the students start to give up. The problem is that while teachers are willing to put down a host of rules, they're usually unwilling to admit that every writer has broken them. And so the whole experience for the student becomes whether or not they will pass or fail. Writing becomes just another damned thing they have to do, and usually, they end up hating it. While I will agree that there are ways to communicate more effectively, if someone isn't enjoying the experience, they will never gain the confidence to do it well.

Take the time to visit Kanani's kitchen and not only enjoy reading about how she got these young people to feel the rythem or writing, then bookmark her link and visit her kitchen often.
The Gratitude Post: Feeling like a Teen in the Creative Landscape. Back on Terra Firma

This leads me to reflect on what Kanani wrote about how schools teach and how it might contribute to students giving up. I came across a book review at Economist.com which reviews Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It's Good for Everyone by  Richard Settersten and Barbara Ray.

The gist of the review is that.

Most twenty-somethings, however, are “treaders”, who simply replicate the lessons of their poorer, less stable, non-voting and hands-off parents, but to worse effect. The authors argue that when young adults invest in themselves and their careers before taking on the baggage of marriage, children and a job to pay the bills, they are equipped to make better choices down the road, for themselves and as citizens. Having a child too early can be one of the costliest barriers to advancement, whereas postponing nuptials until careers are in place leads to lower divorce rates.

“Not Quite Adults” offers a valuable portrait of the diverging destinies of young people today. In a country that prizes self- reliance and private solutions for social problems, more young adults are doomed to sink. Regardless of where one assigns blame, when nearly two-thirds of the next generation is struggling to find “a secure foothold in the middle class”, everyone ends up paying the price.

Even more troubling is what brought us to the point that such a large number of Americans are not equipped to assume their place in making a productive society. Regardless what the authors see that this is a good thing, I question the long term effects of having such a large precentage of the population treading water, with no plans in effect to learn how to swim. I can't comment on the thesis of the book, but am only reacting to the thread of thought expoused by the review.

Read more:
Left Out in the Rain

The last Week of January: Ends on a Trio of Positive Notes

The past two weeks I have been reading grand thinker and visionary, Howard Bloom's latest offering, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism. Bloom lays out his thesis in 70 short concise chapters that land on target like precision cruise missiles. His message is that humans need booms and busts to trigger the evolutionary source code of repurposing to adapt to the future and survive. Here is a brief example of how he explains repurposing.

Your heart and mine will each beat roughly three billion times in the voyage from the womb to the grave. During that time we will be put together, taken apart, and put back together again without noticing it. We will dance to the beat of the pendulum of repurposing. Remember we were first constructed as embryos. Then we were reconstructed as infants, repurposed as children, radically remade as teenagers, dramatically reshaped as young adults, re-created as middle-agesters, reshuffled as oldsters, rejiggered as doddering post-seniors, and discarded as corpses, and finally we will be taken apart again and repurposed as bacterial cells, cells that are eaten by worms that are eaten by birds. The birds will relieve themselves as they fly over farmlands. Their waste will help make the grain that feeds our children and their children beyond them. Repurposing.

This gives us a responsibility. We are parts of an evolutionary search engine, components in a secular genesis machine. We are among nature's tools for reconstructing herself in flamboyant new ways. Economies are also among nature's tools of creation. But when nature creates, she destroys to make new things. She creates by driving us with strange forces-discontents, desires, and dreams. We do nature's work when we turn those restless dreams into realities, realities that amplify the powers or elevate the lives of our fellow human beings.

Bloom's approach is secular, but calls on a cast of historical figures both secular and religious, ranging from Moses and Isaiah, to Croesus and Marco Polo, to explain how humans have adopted to the fissions and fusions that define booms and busts. The story weaves a tapestry of life that shows that we humans don't accomplish anything alone. Regardless of your persuasion of faith or lack thereof, there is a message of hope and understanding of our human condition woven within the chapters of this book.

How does this book square with today's world? We are fed a constant stream of visual and audio information that in some ways amplifies fears that fade to minuteness when compared to what even our recent ancestors faced. We are led to believe that the economy will only recover by turning to the same system of government controls that failed miserably in the Depression and again when tried by nation states on a vast scale. War is portrayed as more pervasive and deadly and our stewardship of the environment is leading to the imminent demise of life on Earth. What Bloom does best is remind us that this is not humanities, "First Rodeo," to borrow a phrase from a long past cowboy I once knew.

One recent article in World Politics Review, by blog friend and grand strategist Thomas Barnett addresses the issue of false assumptions that we are living in a world filled with increasing danger due to instability and war. Barnett begins.

It's taken as gospel by most pundits today that we live in an increasingly dangerous, deadly and unstable world -- with Haiti's horrific earthquake serving as the latest, irrefutable data point. We are told that ours is a planet at perpetual war with itself, locked in a global conflict that is not only cast in civilizational terms, but superimposed over a landscape chock-full of never-ending combat and ever-rising death tolls. The end of the Cold War superpower rivalry, rather than pacifying the world, actually unlocked a Pandora's box of tribal hatreds. In retrospect, the Cold War has even taken on a nostalgic hue, reminding us of simpler, more manageable times.

This creed is a complete lie, unforgivably peddled by fear-mongering "experts" as a way to justify their mindless schemes -- typically, uncontrolled defense spending from the right, unmitigated trade protectionism from the left, and unthinkable isolationism from both. Worse, both extremes deny the essential gift imparted by America to the world these past seven decades: a globe-spanning networking phenomenon variously described as the postwar global architecture, the international liberal trade order, the "free world," the West, the global economy, and -- last but not least -- globalization.

Barnett's article contains a link to a data rich report produced by Simon Fraser University of Canada, that pretty much dampens, like the familiar downpours of British Columbia, the flames of a 21st Century consumed by war. I have linked that report, The Shrinking Cost of War  in my blog favorites as well as their original report The Mini Atlas of Human Security.

Read Tom Barnett's article.
The New Rules: The Fallacy of an Increasingly Dangerous World

Lastly, this past week I learned something that reaffirmed my commitment to reach out to encourage the next generation. Any frequent reader of this blog will notice that I have a blog link section entitled, Honoring our Commitments. I posted the links in that section after I wrote a post a year ago about the trafficking of women, specifically in South East Asia. The links not only address the worldwide problem of trafficking, but also has links to sites that reach out to Cambodia, a country largely forgotten after we left Vietnam. When I wrote that post, I used a few photos for an introduction. That post and and a later post, Cambodia Revisited are two of the most visited posts on this site. Many visitors are looking for the obvious and move on; but a growing number stay and read the articles and visit the links, proving that the power of the word can make changes in attitudes and hopefully ensure a better life for someone.

One of the little rewards in my life was to know a person whose parents escaped the Killing Fields of Cambodia and made their way to America.For a brief time we worked together and I would share articles about cognition, global affairs and history, which she devoured, then always had a question or comment that revealed she totally understood the concept. Time moved on and we lost touch, but I learned this week, that she remains even more committed and focused to make a difference in this world. I am confident that her commitment, sensitivity and courage to learn about her fellow humans will pay dividends not only to America, but to the world at large.

How America Can Grow 20 Million New Jobs in A Decade

Bell Labs

Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions can always be counted on to produce some of the most thought provoking and timely blog posts of anyone in the game. These next two posts address a favorite subject of mine, innovation and how in relates to education.

Steve opens with this troubling news.

"New York Times' columnist Bob Herbert claims "the biggest issue confronting ordinary Americans right now — the biggest by far — is the devastatingly weak employment environment. Politicians talk about it, but aggressive job-creation efforts are not part of the policy mix. Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, according to official statistics. The real numbers are far worse. The unemployment rate for black Americans is a back-breaking 15.1 percent. Five million people have been unemployed for more than six months, and the consensus is that even when the recession ends, the employment landscape will remain dismal. A full recovery in employment will take years. With jobless recoveries becoming the norm, there is a real question as to whether the U.S. economy is capable of providing sufficient employment for all who want and need to work. This is an overwhelming crisis that is not being met with anything like the urgency required" ["It’s Time to Get Help," 8 September 2009]. Adrian Slywotzky, writing for BusinessWeek, asserts that we are looking in the wrong direction for help. He insists we need to stop looking at politicians and business leaders for help and start looking to scientists instead ["How Science Can Create Millions of New Jobs," 7 September 2009 print issue]."

Steve's post is long and deserves a full reading as well as the articles he linked. The most troubling data comes from the second article where Slywotzky's lays out the following.

"Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem. America needs good jobs, soon. We need 6.7 million just to replace losses from the current recession, then an additional 10 million to keep up with population growth and to spark demand over the next decade."

Slywotzky points to a massive drop in R and D by almost every major industry in the country as the root cause of a decline in innovation and cutting edge inventions. The follow statistics should make every American sit up and take notice.

"The PC, Internet, and cellular industries, born in the 1980s and 1990s, more than offset the loss of high-paying jobs in consumer electronics, steel, and other sectors. But in recent years, outsourced software and manufacturing jobs have largely been replaced by millions of low-wage service jobs in fast-food, retail, and the like. Compounding the effects of outsourcing and extended recession, the ongoing destruction of old business models (think print journalism, the music business, and landline telephones) will slash a large number of high-value jobs in the coming decade. The result? A broken demand structure. Of the roughly 130 million jobs in the U.S., only 20%, or 26 million, pay more than $60,000 a year. The other 80% pay an average of $33,000. That ratio is not a good foundation for a strong middle class and a prosperous society. It's time to identify—and fix—the root of the problem."

That last statistic should run tremors up the spine of everyone on both sides of the political spectrum. How can 20% of the population continue to carry the tax burden as spending explodes in all sectors? Currently over 40% of tax filing Americans have no tax liability, leaving a smaller and smaller percentage to carry the water for everyone else. Our middle class is shrinking along with the dollars spent to develop new products. One thing not mentioned in this article is the fact that much of the money for research and development since World War II was fueled by the World War II and the Cold War. The Microwave was developed from a magnetron invented in the 40's for radar. The Internet was developed for military communication. The list goes on to include almost every major innovation in the past fifty years. The answer is not a return to that kind of military industrial complex system, but as Steve paraphrases.

"Slywotzky says today's situation is analogous to that found in America following the Second World War. America's best minds had been put to work trying to produce materials that could win the war at the expense of basic research. The country was able to turn around because it was able to redirect its efforts following the war. As a result, America became the anchor of the global economy. China, which hopes to become the anchor of the global economy, has also committed itself to research and innovation. If America hopes to keep up, it needs to follow a strategy similar to that recommended by Slywotzky."

Read the rest:Science and Jobs

Steve continues to focus on this important message in this next post where he writes.

"Luke Johnson, who runs a private equity firm called Risk Capital Partners, recently published an op-ed piece in the Financial Times in which he claims "Inventors are our greatest heroes" [2 September 2009]. He explicitly makes the claim because he believes that society under-appreciates the people who spend their time inventing the things that make our lives better."

We have lost our focus when our greatest heroes are those who entertain us with sporting exhibitions, musical notes or outrageous behavior.

Read more: Inventors as Heroes

Illustrating that this issue has finally gotten the attention of the White House is this from my blog friend, the intrepid Dan of tdaxp.com, who offers this in summation of his post on education.

"By encouraging (through various means) schools to focus on core classes, we can move away from teaching mere hobbies into creating a strong, 21st century workforce."

Read more: Better Curricula.

I have written at length about the challenges facing America. We face the kind of crossroad that Poet Robert Frost wrote about in "The Road Not Taken" (poem), when he took the road that appeared more difficult, only to find in the end it was worth the journey. A refocusing on our future and a real commitment to send more future captains of industry to the engine room, instead of sending thousands to the bridge, armed with only an MBA.

Studying History from this POV

Zenpundit's avitar

Example of the lack of historical knowledge

Mark Safranski master of Zenpundit has posted what I would deem the read of the summer. His post comes at the end of a week that gave the world the chance to reflect on two important dates that occurred back to back and marked the beginning and the end of the most horrific event of modern history, A “Teachable Moment”, 70 Years On and Thank you Greatest Generation. These two events, have slipped the pages of memory for most, and are retained amid the shrinking cadre of people who count history as an important craft to be followed or taught.

Mark found the seed for his post in a post, September 1, 1939 by fellow blogger Lexington Green who invited readers to list their favorite book on World War II. Mark drew on Lex's post to pen an important piece on the state of teaching history in our public schools.

The ideological Marxoid craziness of which Lex writes does indeed exist, though it is far more common in university courses than in secondary school classrooms ( Oak Park, though, is a pretty liberal UMC burg) and more common in urban school districts on the coasts than in the Midwest or South. In particular, I have seen firsthand at national conferences, teacher-zealots from California who appear to have been kicked out of Trotskyite Collectives for excessive radicalism and who are more like the mentally unsound homeless than someone entrusted with the education of children. They are largely scary exceptions though. The main problem with the teaching of history in our public schools is that as far as subjects go, history is a tertiary concern of government officials, administrators and school boards; as a result, most of history instructors are hard working and well-meaning people who are by education, totally unqualified for the positions they hold.

Sadly, Mark's observations are on target with laser clarity. Each year the number of students failing to graduate high school continue to fall. Enrollment in colleges and universities have undergone a demographic shift that causes one to ask, Where have all the young men gone?

Can it be that young men, once allowed to read about the acomplishments of their ancestors, have been made content to learn that those forefather's surpressed every other race, creed and gender, leaving them with a inner sense of self-loathing. No wonder that when compared to many men today, the site The Art of Manliness looks foreign.

Mark continues:

Aggravating matters, even if a prospective teacher did major in history in college, fewer of their professors were full-time history instructors than ever before, meaning that even the quality of the small minority of teachers who are history majors is going into decline! NCLB scorns history as a subject, so school districts across the nation will continue to starve it. Poorer districts will fire all the social studies teachers in coming years and parcel out the history sections to unwilling English teachers in order to save the jobs that will preserve reading scores (assuming those are making AYP in the first place). After that, the science teachers will start to get the axe.

Read more:American Public Schools and History

As I finished reading this post and began to read the growing list of 41 Comments », I was struck with the impression that much of what Mark was warning about was being illustrated right before my eyes. The majority of the comments began to focus on a debate over the legitimacy of interning people of Japanese ancestry during the war. As much as the debate was lively and civil from both sides, it took away from the main point of Mark's post that history as taught in American schools is barely taught let along, focusing more on the social aspects of history instead of the consequences and effect on civilization. Americans are taught that our government failed to protect the rights of all citizens, at the same time, no mention is made of the interment and torture of foreign nationals by the Japanese government during the same time, or the the 20,000 Japanese-American citizens living in Japan being forced to renounce their citizenship at the point of a bayonet.http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewsw109.htm. and http://home.comcast.net/~winjerd/CivCamps.html.

Mark's respondents are a rather astute crowd whom do not reflect the average young American, who for the most part remains ignorant of many of the major events of history. But, many of them, became hung up on discussing a finite point, instead of addressing Mark's original thesis, that history is an almost non-existent subject, or at best used as a medium to chastise and reinforce the negative aspects of American and European history over any achievements.

What I have found in many of the classes I teach, is that the older students who are re-entering, have learned most of their history from watching the History Channel, or a series like Band of Brothers on HBO, and seem to be more receptive and interested in learning and discussing history. If I had a penny for every time one of my students said, "I saw that on the History Channel." I would have a jar of pennies. At least I get that from them, younger students, essays are filled with comments, like "corruption, lies, robbing the poor, crushing the dreams of the people, and a president worse than Hitler," when describing American government. If you try and ask the student to explain their rationale, they respond that it is the truth as they have learned from their history classes in high school and by watching John Stewart and Bill Mahr. It is revealing that during a discussion about World War II, General Patton, was only remembered for hitting a soldier, not his brilliant relief of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge.

A few months ago I was privileged to lead a reading group discussing Thomas Barnett's book Great Powers: America and the World After Bush. The touchstone chapter that set the stage to understand America's role in the future can be found in Chapter 3, where Barnett looks back at American history and in the space of seventy some pages outlines the accomplishments that are now for the most part overlooked in high school classrooms. I wrote a post that described my view on that subject, A Few Thoughts on the Importance of Teaching American History, it still has merit and deserves review.

Brain Food Tuesday

Changing the pace from the previous cordite and sulfurous fumes coming from the post on Afghanistan. I am gratifed to share this next post from Steve DeAngelis of Enterra Solutions.

Steve writes:

Nowadays an oft-heard complaint is that we are being bombarded with so much data that we are being overloaded. Humankind has always struggled with how to make sense of the world around us. We draw pictures, develop taxonomies, create graphs, generate maps, and so forth. Good visualization of data helps us draw the maximum amount of benefit in the least amount of time from a large amount of data. Often in my business meetings, I use a white board or grab a scrap piece of paper to draw out an idea I'm trying to explain. These doodles often find their way into more formal PowerPoint presentations. Using visualization to enhance understanding is a tried and true method of knowledge transfer. Hence, the old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been particularly useful for visualizing data associated with particular locations. Visualization can be so powerful that The Economist reports "interest groups around the world are using mapping tools and internet-based information sources to campaign for change" ["Mapping a better world," 6 June 2009 print issue].

Read more: Visualizing a Better World

The stand out find in Steve's post is Gapminder and their youtube video 200 years that changed the world. watch it and be amazed and informed.

This graphic illustrates how the world has changed in the past 200 years and puts a graph to the map that grand strategist Thomas Barnett created to define the gap and core states.

Two Old Farts Sound Off on Afghanistan

Pardon the rude intro, but since I fall into the same demographics as the two gentlemen I am referring too, I feel compelled to take that liberty.

Last week Small Wars Journal linked this next article and a report by Karl Saileu, a 64 year old member of the Army's Human Terrain project in Afghanistan. Reading that someone a bit older than I, was out there serving his country alongside men young enough to be his grandsons gave me a shot of pride, that an OG can still contribute to protecting the country. As I began to read the story I realized he also has come up with some sound ideas that offer a new tactical and strategic direction to our current approach of walking and driving about, waiting to get picked off, much like the British Army did as they were picked off by our own Minutemen during the Revolutionary War. Then to make matters worse, after being hit, our forces end up channeling the worst of Vietnam by blasting the enemy from above, an creating a whole new generation of haters.

The article begins:

The deployment of U.S. soldiers to Maywand was an experiment. So, too, was the Human Terrain project and the road map to progress envisioned by the bespectacled social scientist joining the patrol that day. The war had not gone well. This was not a time for old approaches but for bold new ones that might seem crazy or that just might work.

Karl Slaikeu had asked for this assignment. A 64-year-old psychologist and conflict-resolution specialist from Texas, Karl had been nursing an idea that he thought could change the course of the war. He was looking for a village that, with concerted attention, could be turned into a model of development and security. Pir Zadeh, where the patrol was bound, was a place where locals had formed a neighborhood watch and where the village elder seemed to like Americans.

........What if soldiers provided real, dependable security to even one Afghan village? If the village were actually safe, development and jobs could follow.

In counterinsurgency circles, this is called the "oil spot" strategy. The term was coined by the French soldier and administrator Louis Hubert Lyautey, who was sent to colonial Morocco and Indochina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In Hanoi, he watched as soldiers set up a network of military posts to protect villagers and keep out insurgents, and armed locals to defend themselves. With "pacification a great band of civilization advances like a spot of oil," Lyautey wrote.

In the months before Karl's deployment, his enthusiasm for this approach had grown so noticeable that Banger and others had taken to calling him Oil Spot Spock. Karl envisioned soldiers securing a single village or area -- the first spot of oil -- and using its success to spread safety and development drop by drop. Areas outside the chosen villages would be treated as battle zones, where soldiers would know unequivocally that they were at war. If the conflict were divided into hot and cool zones, Karl thought, soldiers could focus their humanitarian aid and development efforts in friendly areas and fight in unfriendly ones. They might have a better chance of avoiding an explosion such as the one in the bazaar.

Read more:

Rough Terrain - Vanessa M. Gezari, Washington Post.

To take Karl's idea to heart, one must stop and read his "Oil Spot Plus" strategy for securing the country one spreading oil spot at a time. One of his suggestions hearkens back to Vietnam and the search and destroy missions, but with a twist.

De-emphasize CF patrols outside the new oil spot villages, thereby denying the enemy IED/suicide bomber opportunities;

Replace these patrols with search and destroy missions to take the fight to the Taliban.Stop playing to Taliban strengths that are now aimed at our weakness (vulnerability of patrols on roads). Turn the tables on the Taliban by launching attacks from our own secure FOBs, at times and places of our choosing. These missions will aim to keep the enemy in a perpetual state of imbalance and continued deterioration of fighting capability.

That twist is in line with some of the tactics employed by the late, Col David Hackworth, USA, who coined the phrase “out gee-ing the G” in the book, The Vietnam Primer, and later when he wrote of putting those tactics to use in, Steel My Soldiers' Hearts: The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of the U.S. Army, 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry, Vietnam .

I recommend reading Karl's concept in full to see if it passes the makes sense test:
Winning the War in Afghanistan (Full PDF Article)

Now as I said when I titled this piece that it was about two old farts sounding off on Afghanistan. I was referring a report that conservative commentator George Will 68, was going to call for the withdrawal of all Coalition Forces from Afghanistan in his column tomorrow. If this report is true it demonstrates that he has truly slipped into the negative category of an old fart sounding off on a subject that he sees from the clouded pinnacles of the elite media crags he shares with other pundits who have sounded off without ever setting a foot on the terra firma of Afghanistan.

As Reported in POLITICO:

George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources. “[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week.

Read more:
http://topics.politico.com/index.cfm/topic/GeorgeWill

Now I like George Will, but on this subject I think he should stick to baseball. Lets face it, pontificating on Afghanistan is like trying to write about baseball without ever going to the ballpark and watching the game.

UPDATE:
True to the above report. George Will consuls that the United States should follow an "off-shore" strategy of drones, aerial surveillance and attack, with special force insertions when needed. Taking this recommendation to the max, why not just nuke the whole country, instead of turning the whole country into a human petri dish where we watch from above and kill off any human bacteria that threatens to spread from it's borders. Afghanistan is a bitch for sure, but to consign the whole country to being collateral damage is hubris beyond reason. Our options are few, but as a nation who has reaped the riches of the planet for over a half century, we can stand to try a little harder to hold the course.

For more: Is the War in Afghanistan Worth Fighting? by SWJ Editors

Random Thoughts on a Less Violent World.

World War I
World War II
Battle of Britian 1940

Draw and Quarter execution 16th century


When I ran my blog line today, one of the first things that caught my eye was a post by Thomas Barnett where he links an article by John Horgan in Slate, that makes a convincing argument that the world has become decidedly more peaceful in the 21st century than any time in known history. Barnett introduces the Horgan's article.

Nice version of an argument I've long made: as time progresses, the world gets more and more peaceful.

Or, stated as I did in the original version of the brief that became the PNM-BFA-and-now-GP standard brief: the further you got back into history, the more you find a larger and larger percentage of humans preparing for and engaging in mass violence.

Good stats to keep: first half of 20th century sees wars kills about 190m, and second half sees only 40m.

READ MORE: Yes, the world is more peaceful, and why

Anyone who has followed Barnett's writings will recognize this argument. Barnett introduced this writer to Steven Pinker's History of Violence TED Video several years ago, as well as the MINI ATLAS OF HUMAN SECURITY. My own readings ranging from Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond, where Diamond relates his experiences in New Guinea, where his native friend recounted how in their recent past, a chance meeting in the jungle would either result in finding kinship or death. And more recently, Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors which takes Diamond's observations and draws a connection via the DNA highway back in to humans earliest history. The one thing that can be taken from this limited collection is that humans are evolving into a more tolerant and if you will, tamer species.

What prompted me to write about this today, is the current level of animosity towards American involvement with the world in the history classes I teach. Students, now a product of the 24 hr news cycle and tabloid news feeds, seem to have the vision that all the United States has to do to ensure world peace and have booming prosperity is bring ALL the troops home and transfer defense funds to give Americans jobs, free health care and help to buy things like homes and cars. This view is held by the vast majority of students in every class in the past few years. Trying to introduce a balance view is a challenge, most will respond that they have been taught since grade school that America has always interfered with other countries, Vietnam War; our leaders are corrupt, Watergate and Reagan, the decade of corporate greed; and Bush, Iraq was all about helping the Bush's family oil business.

The reaction when students are introduced to some of the more positive effects of American involvement and the effect that free trade has had in lowering poverty levels world wide, is met with astonishment. There is a direct connection to the decline in large scale violence, a plague for humans since the first brother's disagreed, and the elimination of huge swaths of poverty and the introduction of three billion new capitalist world wide.

It is appropriate in the waning days of summer that we are reminded that two of the most costly wars in history began during the summer of 1914 and 1939. Many expected that the recent global financial crisis would result in a repeat of the events of the 20th centuries bloody summers. Tom Barnett uncovers this myth in an article at World Politics Review.

When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape.

READ MORE:
The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis


Here is one more thought to add a twig to the fire that violence seems to be on the wane amid societies with rulesets. The news this week that a girl, kidnapped 18 years ago was found living as a virtual concubine with convicted child molester in California Many missed chances to catch kidnapping suspect , set the news cycle spinning and water cooler talk heated and incredulous that something could occur in our midst.

Fifty years ago or more, the reaction would have been thousands of people showing up at the jail demanding instant justice. One hundred years ago, it would have happened. The perpetrator Phillip Garrido and his wife, would have been removed from the jail and hung by an outraged citizenry. 500 years ago, they would have been hanged, drawn and quartered. This is not written to condone that path, but to illustrate that society has mellowed in their thirst for violence. The Garrido's will probably never see another free day, and society will reward their victim with book deals to pay for the counseling that is inevitable.

Something to Read and Ponder on a Saturday Night

Afghan girls in school

Afghan Girl, burned by acid attack.

The Women and Children of My Lai

My Lai, Vietnam March 16, 1968

Two reads to inflate and deflate your feelings. The first, will inflate then deflate your confidence that our best intentions will ever find purchase in the last medieval place on earth.

Nicholas D. Kristof gets a sharp hat/tip for sharing this article in the New York Times Magazine by Dexter Filkins.

Filkins begins:

EVEN BEFORE THE men with acid came, the Mirwais Mena School for Girls was surrounded by enemies. It stood on the outskirts of Kandahar, barely 20 miles from the hometown of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder. Just down the road from the school, in an area known as Old Town, residents had built a shrine to Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban commander with the fiercest reputation, who made his name by massacring members of the Hazara minority. He was killed in an American-led operation in 2007. Also nearby sat the Sarposa Prison, where, in June 2008, Taliban fighters and suicide bombers attacked, freeing more than a thousand criminals and comrades. The area around the Mirwais Mena School is the Taliban heartland. Teaching girls to read was not something that would escape their notice. Across the country, the Taliban have made the destruction of schools, particularly schools for girls, a hallmark of their war.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23school-t.html?_r=1&hpw# Pay particular attention to the final page as the best hopes disolve into the quicksand of tradition and the self-interet of the patriarch, that has ruled this part of the world since before the time of Alexander.

A School Bus for Shamsia - NYTimes.com

Filkin's article is part of a special issue entitled Saving the World's Women. The lead off article in this 12 part series introduces the reader to Why Women's Rights Are the Cause of Our Time.

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html#

This next piece, gave this old Vietnam Veteran a WTF moment; it only goes to illustrate that mass murderers have gotten off before.

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai," William L. Calley told members of a local Kiwanis Club, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported Friday. "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."

William L. Calley

If you look above you will see two photos of that day, the first a group of women and children seconds before they became the objects of the final photo. As a fellow soldier and a human, I will never forgive Calley or anyone who killed women and children, regardless of "following orders." Shame on us for not hanging him and his immediate superiors.

Read more: Ex-Army soldier involved in massacre apologizes ajc.com

Then read this: My Lai Massacre

Time to Give Scotland a Little (Tea), No, a Scotch Party

Scotch Whiskey

Scotch Party?

Pan Am Flight 103

Compassion has always been a good measure of a societies advancement away from the kinds of revenge oriented reactions that led to constant blood feuds. But, everything has it's limits. Compassion was shown when Al Megrahi was not sentenced to die like his 270 victims. Instead he was given life without parole, and should have served out his sentence in solitude to consider his act. Releasing him, however compassionate, destroys the purpose of the law and for those who believe in capitol punishment ample ammunition to push for execution as no fault insurance that some future court or agency will circumvent the term, Life in Prison.

Alba an Aigh? (Updated) by Dave Dilegge at Small Wars Journal, has best captured the tenor of outrage that has roiled across the world in the wake of Scotland's release of Libyan secret agent, Al Megrahi, the man who planted the bomb on Pan-Am flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland a few days before Christmas, 1988. The pain inflicted on the survivors of his victims will remain until the last of them pass on to their reward. Al Megrahi on the other hand will live out his short time in the bosom of his loved ones amid the adulation of his countrymen.

To my friends in Scotland; the Scottish National Party, and Scottish Prime Minister, and the Foreign Secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making, despite the unacceptable and unreasonable pressures they faced. Nevertheless, they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision ... my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.

...--Muammar al-Gaddafi, Dictator of Libya

.

As I read the many editorials, articles and posts that Dave linked, I was struck with an idea of how the we, the citizens of the world who value both compassion and understand that somethings can not be forgiven can express our feelings. We Americans invented a little thing called the Tea Party in 1773 to protest against taxes imposed by the British. In that spirit I propose that the only product that lends itself to this kind of protest is Scotch Whisky. I know, just saying this for me an aficionado of a good single malt is blasphemous. But consider that if everyone who consumed scotch stopped buying the uisge beatha ("water of life") for a few months, or at least until Al Megrahi meets his maker would put a dent in the Scottish economy that could explain to the thrifty Scotch the feelings of a world that measures their compassion with those of the victims families.

For those of you who do not imbibe in spirits, consider this way to protest. British Petroleum stands to gain exclusive rights for oil exploration in the Libyan desert as a result of this decision as indicated by this article, 'Deal in the Desert'. BP owns and operates the following gas stations in the United States, http://www.bp.com/managedlistingsection.do?categoryId=9007335&contentId=7014114.

Writing this is hard for me a seven-time removed son of a highland clan and a person who has passed on the heritage of being Scottish to my son. But I think my ancestors would approve that a murderer deserves punishment, regardless the benefit his early release might bring to a struggling economy. So people, when you feel the need to replenish your stocks or order your next dram, make it an Irish, Canadian or good old American Bourbon for the next few months, as we wait with the victims survivors, while Al Megrahi is cradled in the bosom of his family and countrymen in his final days. Our only solace is that he will go to his maker, walking past the souls of those he murdered on that day. Until then, we own those the victims left behind solidarity by giving Scotland a short sentence in knowing what it is like to be left with nothing but memories.

UPDATE: Boycott Scotland