Nexilist Notebook

Some people are saying that our assination of Bin Laden was not in keeping with American principles. Technically, that is true. If we were treating him as a criminal, he should have been brought to trial before he was judged guilty and excuted. On the other hand:

1. His arrest and trial could have inflamed the Middel East and endanged American lives.

2. He was guilty of murder of Americans by his own public statements of involvement in 911.

3. Our military tribunal system now denies due process to Americans if they are arrested on terrorism charges.

4. We don’t seem to be too bothered by all the people who die from preventable causes such as smoking, drinking, car accidents, legal drug misuse, etc. Adding all those casualties up, we accept the equivalent to a 911 every day and go on about our lives.

5. In the last 100 years, the US has probably killed over a million innocent foreign nationals as “collateral damage” caused by our military actions. These people were guilty of nothing.

6. We know that many innocent people have been executed because of mistakes and deliberate action on the part of prosecutors in our justice system.

7. Corporations have killed many people with bad products and dangerous workspaces. Most of the time they are not even fined for this.

What I am trying to say is that many untimely and unnecessary deaths seem to be an accepted part of our “American system”. Why are these deaths not as important as the death of a mass murderer? I am more concerned that we prevent THESE deaths or punish those responsible than I am worried about Bin Laden not being treated correctly according to our judicial principles.

Well, the people of Eqypt have finally dislodged the US backed dictator Mubarek. What we don’t know is what will happen next. Revolutions have a way to dissolving into chaos. We were very lucky in founding this country. Look what happened in Russia and France.

If the VP Suleiman takes Mubarek’s place, it would be like Emperor Palpatine stepping down so Darth Vader could take over, or as if Bush had stepped down so Cheney could become President. Mubarek may have ordered torture but it was Suleiman who carried out those orders.

Officially, it is the Egyptian military who will take over. The military in Egypt is very popular with the people. They have largely stood back from the confusion and waited to see what would happen. They have a huge stake in the continued support of the US. The US gives them 1.3 billion a year as part of the Camp David Accords.

Israel also has a very big stake in the outcome of the Egyptian situation. Egypt is a very big and powerful ME arab country and it was the first to recognize Israel in the Camp David accords. They were able to reduce their defense expenditures by 60% when they made peace with Israel.

There has been a lot of concern about the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in the future of Egypt. They have been around for 80 years. One of their leaders wrote the book that inspired Al Queda. They may have been involved in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the Camp David Accords. One of their leaders has already said that they would cancell the peace treaty with Israel when Mubarek fell. This makes the army very nervous because they know that they would loose if they went up against the Israelies. The MB has said that they would only field 30 candidates for the parliment and would not put up a candidate for president so maybe fears of their power are overblown.

One big problem is the lack of a coherent leadership and infrastructure for the groups that brought Mubarek down. In the past, many revolutions have been hijacked by the most violent and authoritarian factions, even if they were small compared to democratic factions.

We have already waited 3 weeks for the protests to bring dowm Mubarek. We may wait months to find out how all this shakes out. Stay tuned!!

The argument that corporations are entitled to the rights of people under the consitution is a terrible principle and has done great damage to our country and our world.

The recent decision of the Supreme to allow unlimited coporate spending on issue ads prior to elections was absurd.

Who speaks when a corporation “speaks?’ Whose opinions are being expressed? It  will not be the opinion of the workers, customers, shareholders or suppliers.

Who decides when a corporation will “speak?” Obviously, it will be the management. So, will the opinion of the managers be expressed. No, it is illegal for management to use corporate resources to express personal opinions. So, when a corporation “speaks”, it will not be expressing the personal political opinion of any of the people who are involved.

What type of opinion will be expressed by the corporation? Management can be challenged in court if they make decisions that cost the coporation money. They are legally obligated to see that their decisions always attempt to increase the corporate profits. So, therefore, we can assume that the only political opinions to be expressed by a corporation will be to try to influence our political system to increase their profits.

This can only lead to disaster for the citizens of our country.

There is a big debate going on about our involvement in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues that don’t seem to be part of the conversation.

The most populace tribe in Afghanistan is the Pashtun. They comprise about 40% of the population and inhabit the Northeast part of the country. The Western part of Pakistan is also Pastun. Part of what we are dealing with is the fact that the Pastun don’t respect the border with Pakistan. It was drawn down the ridgeline by Durand in 1890 and represents the truce line in a war between the British and the Afghanis.

The Tajiks are the next most populace tribe and comprise about 25% of the population. They inhabit the Northwest part of Afghanistan and also have their own country to the north, Tajikistan.

The Pastuns have ruled the country for centuries but were ousted from power when the US drove out the Taliban in 2002. In order to accomplish this, the US aligned itself with Tajik warlords in the Northern Alliance. The rise of the Tajiks to power in the central government does not sit well with the Pastuns. They do not trust the government partly because it is dominated by Tajiks.

Then there is the matter of corruption. The Afghan government is corrupt from Karzai down to villiage policemen. The Afghani people are upset and angry about this. They don’t see the US exerting much effort to clean up the corruption.

There is a lot of talk about building up the Afghan army in order to stabalize the country and allow us to withdraw. The Afghan army is a joke. Afghanis can make more money working for the Taliban than they can in the Afghan army. Soldiers in the army regularly desert taking weapons, equipment and supplies with them. Many of them cannot read or write. Unfortunately for us, the Pastuns will reject Tajik soldiers in Pastun lands and the Pastuns will be disinclined to join the army because they see it as being aligned with the US occupiers. 

Obviously, we cannot stabalize Afghanistan unless Pakistan cooperates. We have been able to throw our weight around in Iraq and Afghanistan because of their small populations; about 25 million for Iraq and about 15 million for Afghanistan. But we still have not been able to completely dominate and stabilze either. Pakistan is another matter entirely. They have a population of about 220 million or about 2/3 the size of the US population.  If 1% of Pakistanis are violent and hostile to the US, that is 2.2 million potential enemies.

Pakistan becoming increasingly upset by what they see as the interference of the US in their affairs. The recently announced Pakistan aid package of 1.5 billion for each of the next 5 years comes with some big strings attached. One of the most problematical is our attempt to regulate how they promote officers in the army. The US army is contolled by the civilian government and not influential in civilian affairs. Unlike our army, the Pakistani army is very powerful in their civil society. The upper echelons of the army live in their own subdivisions, the army has extensive investments in business and land and the army has ruled Pakistan on and off since its founding. Any arrangements we make with Pakistan will have to have the approval of the Pakistani army.

When Pakistan was founded, the British drew a line down the middle of the Punjab tribal lands. The Muslim Punjabis moved west and the Hindu Punjabis move east when Pakistan was split off from India. The Pakistani army has used angry Muslim Punjabis for their proxies in causing border clashes with India. They have poured money and weapons into Pakistani Punjabi terrorist groups. Now some of the Punjabi terrorists are working with the Taliban.

In the south of Pakistan, the Baluchi territories are the site of more ethnic strife and suppression. The Baluchis would like to be independent. Now the Taliban are commanding their fight from the southern city of Quetta which is in Baluchistan. So there is a coalition of Pashtun Taliban, Baluchi revolutionaries and Punjabi terrorists carrying out attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the army is divided with respect to who they are willing to fight and who they support. The Pakistani people are scared of India, upset with their government, pushed around by their army, worried about terrorists and mad at the US.

We cannot win in Afghanistan because we cannot deal with the problem of Pakistan and we can’t break even. If we withdraw from Afghanistan, there will be bloodshed and suffering. If we stay, there will be bloodshed and corruption. Sort of like that old story about riding a tiger. Can’t stay on and can’t get off. We are addicted to television and movies where problems are solved in an hour or two. There is no happy ending here. We seem to be faced with trying to select the lesser of more than two evils. If we can even figure out what that is.

Did you ever wonder why it was that there was so much over confidence out there? Look at the Iraq war, the financial collapse, etc. And the incompetence of organizations as lampooned in Dilbert is not that far from the truth. We all have stories of the problems of dealing with bureaucrats.

Some time back I read that the most realistic people were the pessimists. The optimists were happier but were less realistic than their confidence in their abilities and situation would suggest. 

Then I read about some research that suggested that people will forgive a leader who is wrong some of the time if only that leader is really confident. Apparently people prefer confidence to competence.

It turns out that groups with confident leaders do better than groups whose leaders are not as confident. So even with incompetence in leadership, those groups prosper.

The Peter’s Principle states that people are promoted to their level of incompetence. Now it has been found that the more you pay someone, the less competently they perform. This would explain Ken Lay who was “unaware of what his subordinates were doing” even with the huge salary that he was drawing.

So, it would seem that though our over-confident leaders may be overpaid and incompetent,  we will still follow them.