Election 2006 Post-Mortem

Consequences.

Finally, the consequences of the Bush Administration's mishandling of the war have come home to roost. But color me apprehensive, because I'm still not totally convinced that the Democratic leadership isn't totally eaten up with the galloping stupids. A few quick, day-after observations follow:

Numero Uno: Christian conservatives, realizing that Rove has been selling them a bill of goods, took their ball and bat and went home. I've been expecting this for a couple of years now. What finally tore it, I think, was the Miers nomination. Once it finally became crystal-clear that no one in Bush-land was really, truly serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, well, what else was there? They've had a year and change to chew on that, and we've seen part of the pay-out.

Numero Two-O: Middle America is still in the War on Terror, but they'd really prefer it was waged more competently. This was an obvious, stinging rebuke to the Bush Administration's handling of the war. SecDef Rumsfeld is resigning today in response. While that is a good start, the changes need to go farther. I'm not entirely sure how much farther, or what the changes should be. James Baker and company ought to serve up their report pretty soon now. Hopefully they'll make some helpful suggestions. More on that later.

Numero Three-O: Divided government is a good thing. We always seem to do best when the branches of government aren't all in one party's hands. So, I'm guardedly optimistic: we won the Cold War with a Republican President and Democrat Congress, after all.

Numero Four-O: But is Pelosi eaten up with the galloping stupids? I'm not sure yet. We'll see, come January, if she starts baying for investigation after investigation, and stumping up the fires for impeachment. If that happens, we're screwed. America has no interest in that sort of spectacle. Yes, there ought to be some investigation into how we got into this mess. But that's the work of a long afternoon. There was some misleading going on, but the deceived was Bush, and the deceiver is set to dance his last waltz at the end of a rope. Chewed bone, guys. Let's spend our energy figuring out how to go forward from here. But is Pelosi smart enough to know that? We'll see.

Numero Five-O: That the Republicans have lost Congress doesn't mean that we've lost the War on Terror. It means that we're liable to have to do some re-focusing. This may be a good thing.

You see, the fundamental truth is now just as it was when Lincoln first said it: there is not a Power on Earth that can so much as take a sip of the Ohio River without our leave. There's no way they can get here in Army-level strength unless we provide them with visas and transportation. They can harass, but they cannot conquer. Not without our help and consent, anyway.

And we've done some good work. Hussein's regime is toast. We booted the Taliban out of Afghanistan -- but we might have to put another push together to make sure that sticks. And, perhaps most importantly, we've put paid to one of the myths Al-Qaeda goes to sleep by: the myth that we'll run screaming from our first blood. Their playbook was based on our behavior after Vietnam, and especially Somalia. We've shown them now that, if the stakes are high enough for us, we'll come and fight them on their own turf. And beat them.

So ... one probable result of all this is that we're going to do some sort of re-structuring of forces, reducing the number of troops in Iraq. That's fine, it's the Iraqis' fight anyway at this point. We can't win it for them, they'll have to win it themselves. We might want to send some of those guys over to Afghanistan, to put the beat-down on the Taliban. Again.

But the main thing is that we've come to the point where we simply have to admit that some mistakes have been made, and that we need to have a frank and open discussion about what needs to be done next. That was never going to happen until the Republicans were dealt some kind of beating at the ballot box. Now, nursing a few lumps on their heads, they have to ask themselves how they came to this.

And now, we all need to be alert, and participate in the discussions to come. There are three main questions. I don't think they've been seriously discussed yet.

One: Who are we? What is America in this new world we find ourselves in? For fifty years, we were the chief opponent of international Communism, the arsenal of Democracy. What's our role now? And knowing that role, how best do we fulfil it?

Two: How do we deal with the threat posed by Islamic extremism? How do we continue to wage war against Al-Qaeda and its adjuncts?

Three: How do we help our friends and allies abroad to deal with that self-same threat? They're more aware of it than they were five years ago, that's for sure. And this threat's big enough that we all need to pitch in together, or we'll be torn up piecemeal.

But those conversations can, at least, take place now.

Despair is a sin. Remember, this enemy can only win if we lose our nerve.

Remember, Remember...

It's Guy Fawkes Day. Call me a sucker for any holiday that involves bonfires and explosions.

Remember, remember, the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot.
We know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

In other news, the verdict is in for Saddam Hussein in the Dujail massacre case, and it's no surprise: he's been sentenced to dance the hempen necktie jig. Appeals to follow, of course, but I'll raise a glass come the day. He was a thoroughly bad man, and won't be missed.

I would be less than astonished to find that the Fifth of November becomes a celebrated anniversary in Iraq, as well...

Denial

I realized not too long ago that I've been in denial for several years. The thing that finally led me to that realization was stumbling across the World's Smallest Political Quiz.

I had always thought of myself as a centrist, more or less. And as a sanity check on the test itself, I asked a few friends to take it and let me know what it said. No surprises there. One came up Liberal (which he's always claimed), one came up dead-center Centrist, another scored Centrist leaning towards Libertarian.

Me? My scores came out 80/70, clearly Libertarian.

Which explains why I'm not entirely comfortable with the direction that either major national party has taken. Those of you who've followed along since the beginning know that I've identified myself as a Democrat. Despite that, I haven't been happy with a lot of the things happening in the party at the national level. There doesn't seem to be any movement in a positive direction, except that, just maybe, they're getting over their anti-military bias. (Kerry excluded, natch. Why on Earth did we have to run Herman Munster in 2004?)

And I'd still like to see them shed some of their baggage, so that they might actually become a viable opposition party to the Republicans again.

But, they're liable to have to do that without me. I'm done voting against people. I'm done with choosing the lesser evil. From now on, I'm only voting for candidates that I can actually agree with on matters of substance. And if that candidate isn't Democrat or Republican, so be it.

So, going forward, this white boy's voting Libertarian, unless someone gives him a real convincing reason not to.

And if the main thing you want from your Government is for them to leave you the Hell alone, you ought to come on over, too.

UPDATE: Orson Scott Card weighs in, over at Ornery American. Money quote:

"To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide."

Which, really, just about captures my feelings on the matter. The party that I once respected is dead and gone, replaced by a bizarre freakshow. The freakshow must end, if the American people are ever to trust that lot again with the Sword of the State. I'm not holding my breath.

Mind you, I'm not quite on board with OSC in re: voting Republican in this election cycle. I'm just a bit torqued off about the egregious incompetence with which the Republicans have run this war. We deserve better. And maybe, if they get a sharp rap on the nose, they'll deliver.

Election 2006: Governor? Texas has a Governor?

One of the most entertaining contests in all of politics is entering its last few days. The race for Governor of Texas is usually a pretty fun contest to watch for several reasons, not the least of which is because at least one of the poor saps inolved is under the delusion that he's running for a serious office.

You have to understand: the Governor of Texas has just about enough authority to choose his own toilet paper, provided that he can get the Lieutenant Governor to counter-sign for it. The way the Texas government runs day-to-day, the Lieutenant Governor actually swings more pipe. If you need something ram-rodded through the Legislature, the LG's your man. The Guv, he's just a moving target, drawing fire from the LG while he gets the work done. The awful truth is that you could shave an ape, sew him into a Brooks Brothers suit, and it might be months before anyone noticed the difference.

This tends to confuse most immigrants from states that have real Governors. Our constitution, you see, was written with the primary goal of infuriating Yankees. Hardly anything actually works the way you'd expect it to. And that's just how we like it. Some of us are of the opinion that inefficiency in government is a feature, not a bug.

Anyhow, here's the official TTS analysis of the candidates for Governor of Texas, in descending order of preference:

Kinky Friedman has, by far, provided the most entertainment. Not only that, his immigration proposal ("Five Mexican Generals") smacks of pure genius. Not for its details (which might have, um, most untidy side effects), but for the general idea that as long as illegal immigration isn't a problem for Mexico, they'll do nothing to curb it. Make it at least partly their problem, and they might pitch in to do something about it. As his official campaign slogan says, "Why the hell not?" I'm voting for Kinky.

Carole Keeton Strayhorn has a campaign slogan that says that she wants to "shake Austin up." That ain't what she's about. Not really. For some reason that escapes me, she absolutely hates Rick Perry. No, Strayhorn's real goal in running for Governor is to poke a sharp stick in Rick Perry's eye. And you know what? I can respect that. If Friedman weren't running, I might vote for Strayhorn.

Rick Perry does nothing for me. He's the kind of blandly handsome politician that's all too common these days, dull as dust. And what's with those commercials? Earth to Perry: you're running for Governor of Texas, not autitioning for a Land's End catalog photo shoot. But hey, if I ever need a model for outdoor wear, I know who to call. The sad and pitiful thing is, this dope's liable to win. But that's not the saddest thing.

Chris Bell is. The guys who actually looked at this chump and thought, "Hey, we've got a Governor here" should never be allowed within shouting distance of the political process ever again as long as they live. Not that anybody actually knows who Chris Bell is. You remember those old American Express commercials? The ones where some schlub that nobody ever heard of asks you if you know who he is? But that it's somehow all right now, because he's got this square of green platic with his name on it, embossed with silver letters and everything? They should have run that guy, but they didn't. Don't leave home without it, Chris.

And that's about it for Election 2006 here in Texas. Vote early, and vote often!

Nukes for Beginners

What with all the news about North Korea and Iran, I figured it might be worthwhile to go over some of the basics of how these things work. There's a lot of misinformation out there. And while there's a lot to be worried about, there's a lot going on that you really don't have to be so upset about.

Now, we all know about radioactivity, and how uranium and plutonium can be used in nuclear reactors to generate electrical power. Just about anything that can give off heat slowly can be goaded into doing it faster. But the devil's in the details.

To make uranium or plutonium go boom, you have to achieve critical mass. There are two ways of doing this.

The easy way is just to get enough highly purified metal in the same place at the same time. Collect enough highly enriched uranium in one lump, and it will explode all by itself, without any outside encouragement. That's how the Little Boy bomb worked. They had two parts of a sphere of uranium, and at the appropriate time, all they had to do was slam them together. The reason this approach isn't taken anymore is that it's all to easy for such a bomb to go off before you really want it to. It doesn't matter if the parts all come together on purpose or by accident, when they're united, it's flame on.

The hard way is to compress the metal so that, locally, it's dense enough to constitute a critical mass. This is somewhat tricky. It requires the use of specially-shaped explosives to squeeze down a sphere of already fairly dense metal in exactly the right way to produce the desired result. Do it wrong, and all you have is a very expensive mess.

What got me thinking about all this, is that NK claims to have designed and built a four-kiloton warhead.

It's freaking hard to build a small-yield weapon. Hard enough that, today, the US doesn't think it's even worthwhile. We've had a few, but only a few. Some, like the AIR-2 Genie nuclear air-to-air missile (Mk. 25 Mod. 1), were made obsolete by guided missiles. Others, like the Davy Crockett nuclear bazooka, were just plain stupid ideas to begin with. (What kind of idiot designs a bazooka with a blast radius that exceeds the range?) But by the late '60s, we'd given the whole lot up as a bad idea. The results don't justify the expense.

But ... if your missiles aren't all that big, you need a small payload if you're going to air-mail it to anybody. We had a similar problem in the late '50s, but we also had Edward Teller.

The easiest uranium bomb to build would be something along the lines of Little Boy: weighing in at something like 4 to 5 tons. The upside: you know it's gonna work, first time, every time. The down side: there's no good way to get it to anybody you think needs blowing up. Dragging a five-ton parcel across somebody's border is bound to attract all kinds of unwanted attention.

So: you have to think small. But that takes a lot of sophistication. It takes very meticulous scientific work, and extraordinarily precise machining. And you have to have done your preparation work right. If your metal isn't of the highest purity, it's all wasted effort. Reactor-grade won't cut it, not even a little bit.

Steven Den Beste had an article up a few days ago, referring to this issue. He was wondering if the North Koreans' plutonium hadn't been refined too hastily. Apparently, if you rush the job, you don't get the right mix of isotopes, and it won't catch.

And if their plutonium is, in fact, just plain bad ... well, they can test all they want. The bomb might make a big, awful mess, but it won't go "boom".

Now, setting one of these off in downtown Seoul would be horrible enough for any ordinary purpose. But it's not something that will inspire fear so much as it will inspire all-consuming homicidal rage. Somehow, I don't think that's the effect Mr. Kim was looking for.

So. Now, we wait to see if they're going to have another go at lighting it off. But can Mr. Kim afford another fizzle? Can his credibility afford it, what's left of it? Can he afford yet another spectacle that enrages what few friends he does have left in the world?

Be afraid, Mr. Kim, be very afraid: that next knock at the door won't be us, it'll be the Chinese secret service. And they won't be happy with you. No, not even a little bit.

UPDATE: Mr. Kim takes the hint, and sings a few verses of the Very Sorry Song to China. (Page down for the lyrics.)

Now, This Is Just Sad

A few days ago, we all woke up to the news that North Korea had claimed that it tested a nuclear weapon.

It would appear that the operative word here is, in fact, test.

The word from CNN (and you can believe as much of that as you want to) is that NK had told China that the yield would be about 4 kilotons. Our guys, after looking at the seismic data, say that it looks more like a half-kiloton. Maybe less.

Now, that's just sad. Our first attempt was four times their claimed yield, and our first one worked. Granted, we had the finest scientists in the world working on it, and they're making do with used chewing gum and bailing wire, but still ... These are the big leagues, dude. Four kilotons doesn't even get you in the door of the game room.

In another piece I saw earlier today, Mr. Kim was threatening his neighbors with nuclear-armed missiles.

Memo to Mr. Kim: Before your ego starts writing checks your Army can't cash, do observe that if you're going to make that kind of threat, you need three things:

1) A working atomic weapon

2) A working atomic weapon that's small enough to put on a missile

3) A working atomic weapon that's small enough to put on a missile that is capable of leaving North Korean airspace. (By the way, in colloquial English, NoDong is the perfect name for a North Korean weapon system.)

You appear to be batting zero so far, sir. But do try again. It enrages your friends and amuses your enemies. And it wastes plutonium. Feel free to waste as much as you like.

My earlier statement stands: Your first shot had damn well better be a doozy, because you won't be getting a second.

Time and Tide Wait for No Man

Last time, I made a point that I didn't have time to elaborate on, but I probably ought to. It's not necessarily obvious, and it bears some reflection.

I said: "They (meaning revolutionary movements like al-Qaeda) have about ten years before they either (a) win, or (b) metastasize into fairly conventional criminal syndicates."

It's a pattern we've seen before, in organizations as diverse as the IRA in Northern Ireland and FARC down in Colombia. Both groups started as hard-core revolutionaries, both are now pretty well consumed with self-preservation. And most of that self-preservation takes the form of criminal activites that make their daily bread. And that's not the only place this trend is evident. You can also see it in labor unions, your local PTA, or NASA.

It's called the Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

I can't take credit for it, of course. Credit for this observation belongs to Jerry Pournelle, whose site I link above. But I'll restate it here:

Any organization has two kinds of people working for it. The first kind work for the intended aims of the organization. The second kind work for the organization itself. While organizations tend to be founded by the first kind, eventually they always end up being run by the second kind.

My observation above is a logical extension of this principle.

Any organization, any at all, needs its "organization" men. They're the ones who keep your books straight while the "true believers" are hard at work doing whatever it is that they're supposed to be doing. We've been treated to some stunning pictures from Mars this last week, from a pair of rovers that have far outlived their design lifetimes. Those would never have been possible without the efforts of the men and women who do the scut work of NASA, lobbying Congress for funding, reminding our representatives why their work is important.

But it's important to remember that the scientists and engineers don't run NASA. The bureaucrats do.

No organization is immune. And this has some interesting consequences for revolutionary movements.

Revolutionaries have a sticky problem. In order to overthrow the existing regime, they need the wherewithal to do it: guns, bombs, recruits, facilities. To get those, they need to have people on staff who can get that stuff for them, and manage it. In short, they need Organization Men.

While the movement is young, the original founders are still in charge, and their hand-picked men are in all the important leadership spots. So, all's good. And if they win, they will all move on to posts in the new order, so it's all still good. But if they don't win ...

That's when things get interesting. Revolutionaries have a way of coming to bad, violent ends. So, who ends up getting promoted, when the alter Kampfern start getting fitted for English hempen neckties?

You guessed it: the Organization Men. And why not? They've proven their ability to handle affairs, haven't they?

But here's the problem: they work first for the organization, then for its goals, in that order. Once you have a critical mass of Organization Men in the upper ranks, most of the activity of the group becomes geared towards support and maintenance, with only lip service being paid to the "real" cause.

I mean, what is FARC today but a glorified cocaine cartel? And when was the last time the IRA was politically meaningful? For most of the men in those groups, it's a paycheck, not about changing the world. Not anymore.

And absent a major victory, al-Qaeda is headed down the same road. It's an inevitability. And they're farther down the track than many Americans realize. Remember, they got their start in the early '90s, right after the first Gulf War. Say, fifteen years of organizational history.

And, in the last five years, they've suffered fearful losses amongst their True Believers...

You know, when I consider the amount of paperwork it takes to do anything really worthwhile over here, I can almost feel sorry for them.

Then again, not really. They are welcome, and more than welcome, to as much self-induced agony as they can muster. I wonder if anyone's ever translated Robert's Rules of Order into Arabic? That ought to put a couple of handfuls of sand in the gears...

Five Years?

Has it really been five years?

I have to confess: I haven't been watching the news today. Partly because I've been waiting on a phone call from the air-conditioning repairman, but mostly because I didn't want to hear it. The endless on-and-on by the talking heads, mumbling sonorously and decorously about the anniversary of the tragedy.

Which shows how truly and deeply they just don't get it.

When a good friend gets cancer, that's a tragedy. Somebody flying a fully-loaded airplane into a building is an act of war.

I remember quite cleary my thoughts and feelings that day. I remember hearing about the first plane crashing, and wondering how it could have happened. Accidents do happen, after all. During WWII, in heavy fog, a B-17 ran into the Empire State Building. I was still wondering about the odds of something similar happening today when the second one hit.

I don't believe in coincidences.

More to the point, I knew who was responsible, and more or less where he was.

I knew who Bin Laden was several years before 9/11, knew that he was responsible for the '93 WTC bombing, and knew that he was enjoying the hospitality of the Taliban. Putting two and two together wasn't exactly rocket science. It took me all of about ten seconds.

The only question remaining to my mind was, how do we respond?

On the whole, I think we've responded appropriately. We've used considerable restraint. In my angrier moments, I sometimes think that turning the whole region from the Jordan River to the Hindu Kush into a solid field of Trinitite might not be such a bad idea after all. But cooler heads have prevailed.

We smashed the Taliban. There are still a few remnants around today, but they aren't running the country anymore.

We smashed Al-Qaeda's training and supply infrastructure. Now that the training camps are gone, every casualty they suffer is expenditure from capital, not income. They haven't been totally destroyed. It's damn hard to totally destroy a cell-based organization. I'm reasonably sure it's a practical impossibility. But things like this have a relatively short shelf life as revolutionary movements. They have about ten years before they either (a) win, or (b) metastasize into fairly conventional criminal syndicates. They've shot their wad, and have nothing at all to show for it. Five years ago, they were the supermen of the Arab street. Now? They're rather less popular, especially since someone did the math and realized that most of Al-Qaeda's victims were other Muslims. Own goals never win friends or influence people.

We smashed Saddam Hussein. He had precisely bugger-all to do with 9/11, but Iraq's bizarre neither-fish-nor-fowl status simply had to be resolved sooner or later. Removal of his regime allowed Iraq's re-entry into the realm of nations. What becomes of it in the long run is, of course, up to the Iraqis. They can still make a total hash of it. But, they've got something like a fighting chance now, which is more than they had before.

Five years on, we haven't done as well as we might have, but we have done better than some have feared. In this "the glass might be half full but the damn thing leaks" world, that's about as good as anyone can hope for.

A few thoughts for the day:

StrategyPage has some thoughts on how far we've come since the attacks five years ago.

OpFor fires up the way-back machine, recalling September 11th, 1565, and the Battle of Malta.

And a neighbor here on Blogspot recalls yet another September 11th, the Battle of Brandywine, from the Revolutionary War.

Stout hearts, citizens. They cannot win unless we lose our nerve.

It's Official

The votes are in, and it's a sad day indeed for Pluto.

At a stroke, poor Pluto goes from being the smallest planet to not even being the biggest dwarf planet.

But on balance, this new classification is a good thing. And even though astronomers have said that this definition only applies to our own solar system, I think it might be useful for classifying extrasolar planets as well. That is, once our technology is good enough to resolve such distant objects with sufficient accuracy.

The new definition categorizes a planet not just by size and shape, although it has to be big enough to pull itself into a spherical shape. It also has to be big enough to clearly dominate its region of space. This, in the end, is what kicked Pluto out.

Pluto does not dominate its region of space. Pluto is locked in orbital resonance with Neptune, which is clearly the dominant partner in that area of the Solar System. Several other objects in the Kuiper Belt are also in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune. Be that as it may, it clearly establishes Pluto as ruled rather than as ruler.

So, now we know. The arguments are over. But, I've got a sneaking suspicion that even now, after the votes have been counted, that the status of Pluto will still be good for an instant riot at any astronomers' gathering. Pluto's supporters will have to lick their wounds for a while, but they'll be back, and spoiling for a fight. Just you wait and see.

Downsizing? Supersizing? Ah, the heck with it...

Apparently, the draft resolution I mentioned the other day has been received with all they joy and good cheer that Osama bin Laden might expect if he were to drop in on the White House for a social call.

You may remember that in my first post on the subject, I said:

If it were up to me, I'd re-classify Pluto as a Kuiper Belt object. It has a lot more in common in terms of both composition and orbital elements with that group than it does with any planet. To be a planet, an object really has to have formed within the star's major accretion disk, and I'm not sure that applies to the KBOs.

Apparently, a Uruguayan astronomer by the name of Julio Angel Fernandez used logic like this to send the new proposal off with a shot of grape. Rather more than a shot of grape, actually; after a rebellion within the orbital mechanics community, the new proposal bore a striking resemblance to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after the Feds ran out of ammo.

Didn't I say that this question was good for an instant riot? Just add astronomers and stir...

The thing that kind of stinks about this is that we have a brand-new space probe sailing on its way to something that might not be a planet anymore by the time it gets there ... which is just as well. Somebody needed to get close-up observations of Pluto before its atmosphere froze, anyway.

It's still worth doing, even if Pluto gets demoted. Besides, the bloody thing's already on the way. It's not like we can haul it back in.