CLICK HERE to go directly down the page to the "Trump Tracking Sources"
Note: This blog post is one of a series; it is designed to provide links to media organizations' pages that were created post-inauguration to track the day-to-day news of President Trump's talk and actions. Those blog posts listed below, other than the first ("General Trump Resources"), are individual blog posts dealing with a range of Trump-related issues (in reverse chronological order).
General Trump Resources: "Tracking Trump" (with links to a series of 10 weekly pages of links to items regarding the period from November 9, 2016 through January 17, 2017 (the President-elect period of Donald Trump's transition to the inauguration, January 20, 2017, and the presidency)
General Trump Resources: "Resources for Trump Watchers," February 11, 2017
"What Trump Needs to Know About Libel," May 1, 2017
"Collusion, Treason, Trump and Putin," April 5, 2017
"Who Are We?" January 31, 2017
"Republicans Need To Get Their Party Back From Trump," October 20, 2016 [published as column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]
"Law, Social Norms and Trump," October 2, 2016
"Donald Trump's Barrel of Squirrels," September 25, 2016
"Trump Might Not Be Blundering in Race," September 9, 2016 [published as a column by Iowa City Press-Citizen]
"Maybe This Explains Trump," August 15, 2016
"When Words Can Kill," August 10, 2016
"Why Trump May Win," July 25, 2016
"What Putin Can Teach Rastetter," May 9, 2016 [published as a column by The Daily Iowan]
Introduction: Why Resources for Trump Tracking?
How are Donald Trump's presidential years like the Afghanistan War?
We've been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001. We're still there -- one of America's longest, continuous wars. The Afghanistan War was initially our response to the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City. Why Afghanistan? For the same reason the fellow in the story who had lost a quarter was looking for it a block from where he'd dropped it. As he explained, "The light is better here." The 9/11 attack was primarily planned, funded, and executed by Saudis. Afghanistan had better light.
News from Afghanistan continues to dribble out: an attack on an American base here, our responsibility for civilian casualties there. But 14 years of details are forgotten, if not the next day, certainly by the next month. The only way to even try to make sense out of it is to wait for a book to weave those details into a storyl; or, at a minimum, read through a month or two's worth of all known details.
So it is with our new president. There are more details regarding what he's done and failed to do than we can even recall, let alone make sense out of. Indeed, given the Administration's penchant for secrecy and lack of transparency, and the President's ability to come up with multiple tweets and headlines a day to control the evening news and next day's papers, the media have done an extraordinary job bringing the audience as many of the details as they have.
The sources linked from this blog post are for those who, for whatever reasons, want to see the whole picture. They see the times we are living through as historically unique and potentially dangerous.
(1) There are concerns about Trump's personality and style, such as his attitudes, speech, and behavior regarding women. They see his troubling narcissistic personality traits, ease of factual misrepresentations, tendency to strike out against anyone not sufficiently admiring (including our global allies).
(2) There are concerns about his substantive policies regarding such things as immigration, healthcare, and the environment.
(3) But of all these concerns, and more, those that are of greatest importance are those that go to the heart of the ability of a self-correcting democracy to function: his disregard of centuries of American constitutional principles, legislation, and norms regarding the behavior of the president -- the authoritarian's technique of diminishing the people's regard for the media and judiciary; his almost total lack of education and experience regarding the role of government at any level, from local to NATO (and apparent disinterest in learning); his unwillingness to reveal his tax returns or establish a legitimate blind trust; his appointment of cabinet officers with similar lack of understanding and experience.
For those who, for these reasons, do believe they have a responsibility to keep a continuous eye on what Trump is doing, someone needs to bring the daily facts together for us.
Following the election, from November 9, 2016 to January 20, 2017, I decided that one of those someones would be me -- at least for the days of President-elect Trump. It's called "Tracking Trump", a blog post covering weeks one and two, to which are linked four additional "pages" for weeks 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, and 9-10 -- organized under topics such as "international," "appointments," and "temperament."
This took a substantial amount of "opportunity time" away from other high-priority tasks which had to be postponed. So I decided to make President-elect Trump's weeks the finite period of time to be covered by my own efforts, and look for other sources of comparable efforts regarding President Trump's first 100 days -- or four years. With credit to Julie Johnson for her early efforts at ferreting out most of these sources, here are some you may find useful. I'd welcome your suggestions of more to add. And remember, it's never been more important to support the efforts of these media sources with our subscriptions!
Trump Tracking Sources
New York Times, Politics
New York Times, "First 100 Days Briefing." Use https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html (substituting for 2017/02/09 the date desired) or search on "First 100 Days Briefing" on the Times' opening page search field.
Washington Post, Politics
Washington Post, Politics, White House
Lawfare Blog (excellent source for associated legal issues discussion)
The Guardian: "The First 100 Days of Trump; Tracking the 45th President of the United States, One Day at a Time"
ProPublica, "The Trump Administration" (November 18, 2016-present)
New York Magazine, Daily Intelligencer: Eric Levitz, "All the Terrifying Things That Donald Trump Did Lately,"
Euronews: "This is What Trump Has Done So Far"
Politico: "Forty Five: A Daily Diary of the Trump Presidency"
Politico: "Handicapping Trump’s first 100 days; Trump’s campaign promises have run into trouble with his own party — even his own Cabinet members — before he even takes the oath of office," January 20, 2017
YAHOO! Style: Natalie Gontchrova, "Everything That's Happened Since Trump Took Office,"
Campaign Promises, Executive Orders and Tweets
Ray Giles' "Trump Campaign Promises Monitor"
USA TODAY: "On Politics: President Trump's executive actions: The complete list so far"
Los Angeles Times: "Here's everything Donald Trump has tweeted since he became president"
"Russia: Trump & His Team's Ties to Russia," Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif. 15th Dist.)
# # #
July 2, 2010, 5:55 a.m.
[For BP disaster see, "Uncanny Prediction of BP Disaster & Response," June 10, 2010; "BP's Commercial: Shame on Media," June 9; "Big Oil: Calling Shots, Corrupting Government," May 26, 2010; "Obama As Finger-Pointer-In-Chief," May 18, 2010; "Big Oil + Big Corruption = Big Mess," May 10, 2010; "P&L: Public Loss From Private Profit," May 3, 2010.]
. . . and how do we get out?
(bought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
There are some things I think you and I need to reflect upon regarding our role in Afghanistan.
It's July 1 in Iowa, and July 2 where I am, addressing policies other than war. But I've just taken a "Democracy Now!" (Amy Goodman) break, thanks to the wonders of a tiny computer, an Ethernet cable, and the global Internet.
Her July 1 show (which you can find at the link, above) is a review of Afghanistan. And bringing that show to your attention is my purpose in breaking silence on this blog. (The absence of entries -- which will continue until my return -- has been occasioned by heavier than usual obligations, and shorter deadlines on other writing projects, than usual.)
So the following paragraph, an item from her opening headlines for that show, while not the topic of this blog entry, provides an explanation for why I think her daily, hour-long program is always an important part of your news budget -- and especially this one.
Study: Media Stopped Calling Waterboarding "Torture" Following Its Disclosure as Routine U.S. PracticeA new study says the U.S. corporate media drastically altered its use of the word torture after its practice by the U.S. became widely exposed under the Bush administration. Researchers at Harvard University found newspapers almost uniformly described waterboarding as torture dating back to the 1930s. But when it was revealed as a common tactic approved under President Bush, the same newspapers stopped using the word torture almost entirely. Whereas the New York Times had previously characterized waterboarding as torture in 81.5% of articles, from 2002 to 2008 it characterized waterboarding as torture in just 1.4 percent of articles.
"Democracy Now Headlines," July 1, 2010.
Now I don't think it's a good practice for any of us, regardless of our political/ideological orientation, to limit our news and opinion sources to those most likely to re-enforce our prejudices. I wouldn't suggest anyone limit their knowledge of the world to what Amy Goodman provides. The six daily papers I examine, as well as other sources, are almost exclusively what that brief story describes as "U.S. corporate media." I look to the official line from whitehouse.gov, and BP. And I add to them dips into the unabashedly right wing sources as well.
But I also watch Amy Goodman, for news and interviews I can get almost nowhere else (including PBS/NPR). And I devote a Website to links for a random sampling of what I call "Global Media." Because, in my judgment and experience, there does seem to be disproportionate pro-government/establishment/corporate emphasis in the "U.S. corporate media."
The paragraph quoted above, regarding the media's flip-flop handling of waterboarding as torture, simply reminded me of that all over again.
Headlines of interviews from the July 1 show include:
•Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone on the Story that Brought Down Gen. McChrystal and Exposed Widening Disputes Behind the U.S. Debacle in Afghanistan
•Rep. John Conyers and Out of Afghanistan Caucus Oppose Obama Admin’s $33B Escalation of Afghan War
•Fmr. Marine, State Dept. Official Matthew Hoh is First U.S. Official to Resign Over Afghan War
All involve facts and insights at least some of which will probably be new to you.
There is also a clip from Robert McNamera, explaining what was wrong with our analysis of Vietnam as a place for "war" -- insights that are almost perfectly applicable to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I offered President Johnson a similar perspective regarding our Vietnam catastrophe -- but before rather than after that war. While the fate that my message produced was neither as severe nor public as what General McChrystal has recently experienced (nor was my confidential report as ad hominem or public as McChrystal's), I always believed it did have something to do with LBJ's deciding that his young Maritime Administrator, handling sealift to Vietnam, would make a really terrific FCC Commissioner.
President G.W. Bush received similar advice from me before the Iraq War, e.g., "Ten Questions for Bush Before War," The Daily Iowan, February 4, 2003, p. 6A; "War in Iraq: The Military Objections," International Law Talks, University of Iowa College of Law, February 27, 2003.
Similar observations were made about Afghanistan in "General Semantics, Terrorism and War," Address, Fordham University, 2006.
And for the application of the analysis to Afghanistan, and a somewhat different appraisal of General McChrystal, see especially, Nicholas Johnson, "General McChrystal: Afghan Efforts 'Not Working,'" August 31, 2009, e.g.:
The top thinkers in the military, many of whom do make their way to the top of their service, or the Joint Chiefs' staff, are well educated, bright, analytical and rational.
When left to their own independent judgment and opinions they are the ones likely to ask questions like those I outlined above.
What, exactly, is it you are trying to do in this country? How are our national interests involved? In what ways do you think a military presence could be helpful in reaching that goal (as distinguished from, e.g., Peace Corps presence and building infrastructure; cultural exchanges; or bringing their best students to our universities)? How would you describe that military mission? With what metrics would you measure our military's progress? How many troops will it take to accomplish that mission? How long will it take? What is your basis for thinking the American people, and their elected representatives, will support the cost in human life and taxes over that time? (Support for the Afghan war has now dropped below 50%.) What support is there in the international community for this action? Does that support include financial support and troops? Once in, how do we get out; that is, what is our "exit strategy"? On the assumption the military mission produces the outcome desired, why is it reasonable to assume that progress will be sustained after we leave?
Note what General McChrystal is said to be talking about. Our military efforts "have not made their lives better;" security must be provided by locals "but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police;" and a jobs program would be more effective than continuing to shoot Afghans ("60% of the problem would go away if they could be found jobs").
Having extolled the benefits of exposure to views other than your own, above, as you may have guessed by now, you will find more from the guests interviewed on Amy Goodman's July 1 program that is consistent, than that which contradicts, my own view of our Afghanistan efforts.
But, then, a little support for one's instincts from time to time isn't all bad either.
Watch, or just listen, to the July 1 "Democracy Now!" show now, while you're thinking about it. You'll thank me that you did.
Oh, and how do we get out? That's Chairman John Conyers' contribution to the program.
_______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
February 9, 2010, 9:30 p.m.
War on the Cheap Is the Most Expensive
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
It's highly unlikely I would ever "join" the Tea Party, or know how to go about doing so, or where to find "it" should I change my mind.
But I do share at least one concern with many of those who do so identify themselves, and that is our nation's mounting debt. Any regular reader of this blog already knows that.
When I was in government I recall the year President Lyndon Johnson pulled out all the stops to keep the budget from going over $100 billion dollars. He thought there was something symbolic about that number. That's right, a budget in the "billions" not "trillions." President Obama's budget is 30 to 40 times that amount. The interest alone is multiples of what it took then to run every government agency and program, fund the new "Great Society" social programs, and the Viet Nam War.
Nations are reluctant to go to war when their people see and feel the costs. That's why those who have reasons for wanting war have reasons for wanting to hide the costs.
There's nothing like a draft to bring that cost to every kitchen table in America. Among those who honestly, analytically, and thoughtfully believed the Viet Nam War was a great mistake were those of draft age. But clearly there were young men and women, and their parents, whose objections were intensified by the prospect of family members, friends and neighbors having to travel thousands of miles abroad to fight in a war from which they might never return.
As Country Joe and the Fish put it in the lyrics to "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag,"
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
I can never forget watching on a military air base as soldiers boarded one plane, headed for Viet Nam, while a couple hundred yards away coffins of the fallen were being unloaded from another plane, and taken into the same hanger from which the solders had emerged.
It's easier for a nation to support a war politically if the military only takes volunteers, and since that's nowhere nearly enough men and women, "outsources" the rest of the tasks to high-priced mercenaries.
It's easier when, instead of rationing gasoline, tires, sugar, and other essential items in the war effort, the president responds to an attack on our country by encouraging everyone to go shopping.
It's easier when, instead of foxholes, trenches, and hand-to-hand combat, wars can be fought from 30,000 feet, where pilots are at relatively less risk -- or better still, with drones over Pakistan that don't even require pilots, and can be controlled like simulated objects in a video game by CIA operatives from thousands of miles away in the U.S..
It's easy for the wealthy to support a war, or be agnostic about it, when the president is simultaneously cutting their taxes -- instead of increasing them for a pay-as-you-go war.
It's hard to pick what's worst about war. But an aspect of those we're now fighting that gets all too little attention in the midst of the media's coverage of individual battles and "collateral damage" is the costs we're putting on our nation's maxed out credit card.
What are we thinking? What are our options? One possibility is a decimated dollar and the resulting wild, raging inflation -- a cruelty that is hard to imagine, and harder still to impose on those with fixed incomes. Another is to declare the nation bankrupt, and default on all our loans. The third is to leave it to multiple future generations to devote their lives to paying off the interest and debt we have run up with our irresponsible and immoral folly and merely left, like trash after a college football game, for someone else to pick up.
Meanwhile, the only folks who benefit from this are the same bankers to whom we gave the trillion-dollar bailouts (who earn the multi-billion-dollar interest on the government's bonds and T-bills), the munitions manufacturers, and the mercenary operations owners.
I usually would not use extensive excerpts from an article, but those that follow are such a useful contribution that I'm going to do so on this occasion.
Here it is.
Eric Margolis, "Wars sending U.S. into ruin; Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford," Toronto Sun, February 5, 2010:
More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion. The latest example was the Soviet Union, which spent itself into ruin by buying tanks.
Washington's deficit (the difference between spending and income from taxes) will reach a vertiginous $1.6 trillion US this year. The huge sum will be borrowed, mostly from China and Japan, to which the U.S. already owes $1.5 trillion. Debt service will cost $250 billion.
To spend $1 trillion, one would have had to start spending $1 million daily soon after Rome was founded and continue for 2,738 years until today. [And see, Nicholas Johnson, "A $14 Trillion Opportunity Cost," January 27, 2010.]
Obama's total military budget is nearly $1 trillion. This includes Pentagon spending of $880 billion. Add secret black programs (about $70 billion); military aid to foreign nations like Egypt, Israel and Pakistan; 225,000 military "contractors" (mercenaries and workers); and veterans' costs. Add $75 billion (nearly four times Canada's total defence budget) for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.
The Afghanistan and Iraq wars ($1 trillion so far), will cost $200-250 billion more this year, including hidden and indirect expenses. Obama's Afghan "surge" of 30,000 new troops will cost an additional $33 billion - more than Germany's total defence budget.
No wonder U.S. defence stocks rose after Peace Laureate Obama's "austerity" budget.
Military and intelligence spending relentlessly increase as unemployment heads over 10% and the economy bleeds red ink. America has become the Sick Man of the Western Hemisphere, an economic cripple like the defunct Ottoman Empire.
The Pentagon now accounts for half of total world military spending. Add America's rich NATO allies and Japan, and the figure reaches 75%.
China and Russia combined spend only a paltry 10% of what the U.S. spends on defence.
There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad, 116,000 in Europe, nearly 100,000 in Japan and South Korea.
Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - funded by borrowing - cost each American family more than $25,000.
Like Bush, Obama is paying for America's wars through supplemental authorizations -- putting them on the nation's already maxed-out credit card. Future generations will be stuck with the bill.
This presidential and congressional jiggery-pokery is the height of public dishonesty.
America's wars ought to be paid for through taxes, not bookkeeping fraud.
If U.S. taxpayers actually had to pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars, these conflicts would end in short order.
America needs a fair, honest war tax.
Excerpts from: Eric Margolis, "Wars sending U.S. into ruin; Obama the peace president is fighting battles his country cannot afford," Toronto Sun, February 5, 2010.
Clearly our war policies need more than "a fair, honest war tax," but that sure would be a good start on the return road to reality.
_______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source -- even if I have to embed it myself.
-- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
November 6, 2009, 6:00 a.m.
Peace as Process
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
There will be time enough in future blog entries to reflect upon the impoverished UIHC "leaders and staff," with their need to shake down patients for "voluntary" contributions to help make up for a $17 million shortfall, now heading off to an Orlando resort to think about it [B.A. Morelli, "Politician questions UI Orlando trip; Officials say Disney Institute the best around," Iowa City Press-Citizen, November 6, 2009, p. A1], but meanwhile, this morning . . .
President Lyndon Johnson used to have a teletype in the oval office, so he could know about the latest AP news bulletins just as soon as they were "on the wire." My modern day equivalent is an iPhone with the AP "app," and a laptop, or desktop, with instant access to the New York Times and local papers' online editions.
As it happened I used the latter yesterday afternoon and saw the story that the Times said was then only one minute old: the shooting at Ft. Hood near Killeen, not that far north of my old stomping ground in Austin. This morning it's reported as Robert D. McFadden, "Army Doctor Held in Fort Hood Rampage," New York Times, November 6, 2009, p. A1. During the night the story took up nearly one-half of each of the BBC's half-hour newscasts, and I suspect was reported by most of the world's major media.
(And speaking of Orlando, 20 minutes ago the Times reported another, possibly copycat, shooting in Orlando: Sewell Chan, "Gunman Shoots 6, Kills 1 in Orlando, Fla.," New York Times, November 6, 2009.)
But yesterday afternoon also brought me some better news that I'm going to reproduce for you in a moment.
The Times story notes that these seemingly unprovoked, mass, random killings are nothing new to America -- not that any of us needed to be informed of that fact: "The rampage recalled other mass shootings in the United States, including 13 killed at a center for immigrants in upstate New York last April, the deaths of 10 during a gunman’s rampage in Alabama in March and 32 people killed at Virginia Tech in 2007, the deadliest shooting in modern American history."
In fact, it's not the first in the Killeen area: "In 1991, Killeen was the scene of one of the worst mass killings in American history. A gunman drove his pickup truck through the window of a cafeteria, fatally shot 22 people with a handgun, then killed himself."
Look, I'm no psychiatrist -- though it appears yesterday's shooter was -- but it would seem to me that what's probably going on here is that he, what's the scientific psychiatric term? -- "snapped." So it's probably not a valid stretch to draw any "American character" conclusions from this single incident.
Still . . . we do tend to value, almost worship to the point of a mantra, the idea of "competition" -- competition on the playing field and competition in business and politics.
And while there are undoubted benefits from competition, there is also a downside, as when it leads to the conflict and verbal combat between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. It seems pretty obvious that, at least for many of them, their single minded focus is, first, their own re-election, whatever it takes (including their taking of special interest money), and second, a "win" for their "team" (party) measured by which team has the majority, and therefore control, of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives. And what "single minded focus" means is that if meaningful health care for the American people has to be sacrificed in the process, well, so be it. If it's necessary to handicap the domestic and international ability of the other party's president of the United States, well, that's just part of the "game."
(There is at least some speculation that an accumulation of the form of "verbal combat" we call "hate speech" may have played a role in triggering the action taken by the shooter yesterday.)
Even when the competition is in the relatively benign context of "sport," brawls occasionally break out -- regularly in hockey, occasionally in baseball -- and often among fans in the bars following the game.
Nor is it just verbal combat. We are at "war" in Afghanistan, with a vague and shifting mission (as was the case in Iraq), in a geographical area (it can't even be called "a country" in the way in which we think of that word) with challenges for which even the generals acknowledge there is no military solution. And yet we find it necessary to study for months, and debate, whether sending in even more troops will enable us to "win" (whatever that word might mean in this context). We're more comfortable with "combat," even when it is inappropriate and counterproductive, than the exploration of alternatives.
I'm not sure the case can be made that an exultation of competition leads inevitably to conflict and then to combat and finally to the kind of catastrophe that occurred at Fort Hood yesterday. But I do think there is some relationship, and I find it troubling.
We share the grief of the families of the 12 dead and 30 injured soldiers, innocent random bystanders all. And let us not forget the family and friends of the accused killer, and the other Muslims in and out of the American military who are as innocent as those who were shot, and yet may have to deal with some negative fallout from the incident.
And yet in the midst of the darkness brought on by competition, conflict, combat and catastrophe, there are those who light candles of hope as well as mourning.
There is another way.
You may be familiar with the training exercise in negotiation involving the "ugli [sic] orange." It's an effort to dramatize the difference between one's "position" and "interest" on the road to win-win solutions to conflict. There are many incarnations of the exercise. Here is one.
I don't think I can ever bring myself to believe, with Anne Frank, that "people are really good at heart." Many certainly are, but far from all, in my experience.
But what really helped me through the day yesterday was one example of the payback from "cooperation" as an alternative to competition, conflict, combat and catastrophe. It comes from, of all places, American business -- often seen as the most ruthlessly competitive institution in our society. Indeed, there are business leaders who would probably be tongue-tied if they could not draw upon sports analogies in heralding the virtues of competition.
It is an email received by a friend of mine from a Scott Westerman, a Comcast Area Vice President otherwise unknown to me, who is about to leave the position he currently occupies in order to apply for another. Here, with his permission, is the text of that email:
I got a call from a co-worker the other day. “Full disclosure,” he said. “I wanted you to know that we’re both competing for the same promotion.”
We’re friends. He said he didn’t want me to hear about it from someone else. I thought that was a classy thing to do.
Then I got a crazy idea.
“You know, both of us have strengths that could help the other during the interview process. Why don’t we prep each other so we can both can do our best?”
That sounds nuts on the surface. Why would you want to help a competitor win the job you desire? And why would anyone else who is competing with you even consider sharing his secrets?
My friend didn’t miss a beat. “That’s a terrific idea. Lets do it!”
We spent the next hour sharing nuggets from our areas of expertise, talking about how we would approach the job, sometimes debating the validity of an idea, but all the time trying to better understand the value that each of us brought to the table.
What followed was an email chain. I sent him the spreadsheets that helped me track progress, and explained sales strategies and my favorite management techniques. He sent me a blizzard of details on a section of the business where his expertise is nationally recognized.
We agreed that our joint goal was to help the company hire the best possible person for the gig and realized that, no matter how the chips fell, we would each enjoy working for the other.
I told my team members about the encounter. Some may have thought that their boss was crazy, but there was an interesting gleam in the eyes of others.
That gleam made sense to me two weeks later, when I learned that three of them were applying to succeed me in the role I was about to relinquish.
Naturally, I helped each of them prep for their first interview encounter. I know them well and shot tough questions their way, gave them feedback on their answers and tried to share the lessons I had learned in the role. It was enthralling to watch them work things through and gratifying to see that some of the ideas I had tried to teach them over our time together had taken root.
But the real surprise came later. I saw two of them heading out together at the lunch hour this week. When I asked what they were doing they said, “We’re sharing our knowledge with one another so that we can both be our best during the interview process.”
It turned out that all three of them had spontaneously agreed to help one another prepare.
Clearly, this approach only works if you’ve built a team who trust one another and are genuinely able to put the best interests of the group first. They have worked hard over time to build a unique bond. In our staff meetings, everyone pitches in to understand and assist with an individual’s challenge, even if its technically outside of their core competency. Sometimes, the best technical solutions came from our call center guy. And our marketing lead offered to off load some of the finance person’s work so that we could hit a forecast and customer communication deadline on time.
I can’t yet tell you who will get the two jobs that my buddy and I, and my three extraordinary team members are competing for. But my sense is that the likelihood of the right person being selected has gone up substantially.
Because we’re all in it together.
He got me to thinking -- about Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,trying to fashion bi-partisan meaningful support for a climate change bill; that cluster of law students I saw who were studying together rather than competing,"Paper Chase" style; the football player I saw reach down and give an opponent a hand getting up; and those corporate executives helping each other face-to-face instead of placing knives in the backs of their "competitors."
It brings to mind Robert Kennedy's line, "Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?"
Am I making too much of a single email? Maybe. But I don't think so. Because cooperation, working together for the benefit of all, is something that's possible every day in thousands of little as well as big ways. Whether it's the mission of our foreign and military policies, Comcast, health care reform, military units at Fort Hood and Afghanistan, politicians in Washington, or law students in Iowa City, we are, as Scott Westerman says, "all in it together." And the more often we behave as if we believed it the better off we all will be.
_______________
* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
# # #
September 25, 2009, 8:00 a.m.
Trying to Make Sense of Why We're in Afghanistan
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Are we at war, once again, because of our need to control sources of oil, gas, pipeline and oil tanker routes and ports?
I don't know. How could I? I'm just a morning blogger. But as I try to think through what we're doing in Afghanistan, and why, it makes a lot more sense than anything else I can come up with.
Frankly, I think there might be more popular support for the Afghanistan war than there is now, a willingness to accept the loss of life and hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, if Presidents Bush and Obama had candidly sold the effort to the American people on that basis. But I can understand their reluctance to take the risk that explanation would be spun by their political opponents into "going to war for oil company profits."
Consider what they have been telling us.
"Mission shift and creep" is usually not the military's creation. The Powell Doctrine calls for a very precise articulation of what the problem is, why a military presence is appropriate to its solution, exactly what the military is being asked to do, what resources that requires, the metrics for knowing whether it has ever been "successful," and an exit strategy. When that process is not followed, when the explanations for a war continue to shift over time, I have to assume it's the result of something done by the civilians in the chain of command.
Wrong Country. At the outset, however irrational, Americans were told we were bombing Afghanistan because of the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11 -- something done with Saudi personnel and financial resources -- rather than going to war with Saudi Arabia. For awhile we were there to get Osama bin Laden. As the years went by less and less was said of that goal. At one time we were driving al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. If that's our purpose we can declare victory and come home, because both bin Laden and such al Qaeda as there may be in the region appear to be in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
Safe Havens. More recently we're said to be there because we want to deny al Qaeda the "safe haven" of Afghanistan. There are at least three things wrong with this rationale. (1) To the extent al Qaeda has a safe haven in the region, it's in Pakistan not Afghanistan. (2) All al Qaeda needs to plan the next terrorist attack is a rented apartment in any city in the world. (3) Aside from Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda never has been a single nation's effort; the "war on terrorism" has never been a conventional war between "nations." al Qaeda is, or can be, everywhere and anywhere at any time. To the extent it wants or needs a territory to train terrorists there are a lot of countries available besides Afghanistan. So even if we could keep every last actual and potential member of al Qaeda out of Afghanistan we would not have denied them "safe havens." See, Michael Evans, "Al-Qaeda finds three safe havens for terror training," The Times (of London), July 2, 2008 ("Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation, driven out of Afghanistan and defeated in Iraq, is re-emerging in strength in three alternative safe havens for training, operational planning and recruiting – Pakistan, Somalia and Algeria – according to Western intelligence and defence sources").
Drug War. There was a time when the military effort was said to be a part of our "war on drugs," as Afghanistan is the world's major source of the poppy that becomes heroin -- including America's supply. If that's our goal we should turn it over to the Taliban, because when they were in charge they pretty successfully dried up the drug trade; what we've doing has caused it to flourish.
Nation Building. We've sometimes said we are there to build a thriving economy and democracy for Afghanistan. But this is less a "country" than it is a collection of largely uneducated members of regional tribes and clans held together by war lords, riddled with corruption, with virtually no economy (aside from drugs), lacking basic infrastructure, and with a history of repression of women -- united in little more than their (understandable) opposition to invaders and occupying forces (formerly the Russians, and now us).
So how is that mission working for us? Not well -- as knowledgeable folks were predicting from the outset. Our most recent big effort at democracy-building, a national election, has resulted in revelations of corruption, thousands of apparently fraudulent votes, intimidation of voters, and war lords "delivering" votes based on deals -- thereby creating greater divisiveness than existed before, and greater American dissatisfaction with "our guy in Kabul," Hamid Karzai.
I could go on, but you get the point.
(Little) Benefit-(Enormous) Cost Analysis. None of the explanations for this "war effort" make much sense. And even if they did, the benefit-cost analysis fails. That is to say, given America's priorities at the moment -- or any other moment for that matter -- is whatever good we might get out of Afghanistan (and what might that be?) worth the hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of coalition and Afghan lives it has, is and will cost us over the additional decades of what is already America's longest war? I don't think so, and I can't imagine anyone else honestly thinking so. See, "Safe Havens," Yglesias Think Progress, September 23, 2009 ("what I really haven’t seen is anyone attempt to seriously lay out some kind of cost-benefit analysis of how important this whole Afghanistan situation really is relative to what I’m being told it would take to 'win.'").
Which brings me to oil and gas.
Let me acknowledge at the outset, in case you haven't noticed, that this is a blog entry not a doctoral dissertation. Some of what I've picked up and refer to below -- especially when it involves generalized assertions -- may be untrue. On the other hand, when it involves specific historical or geological facts and appears in a number of sources much of it seems credible.
Let's start with some excerpts from "Pipelineistan," written in 2005. You may want to read the whole article; the source is linked below these passages.
War against terrorism? Not really. . . .
A quick look at the map is all it takes. It's no coincidence that the map of terror in the Middle East and Central Asia is practically interchangeable with the map of oil. . . .
Pipelineistan is the golden future: a paradise of opportunity in the form of US$5 trillion of oil and gas in the Caspian basin and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. In Washington's global petrostrategy, this is supposed to be the end of America's oil dependence on [OPEC]. . . .
Afghanistan itself has some natural gas in the north of the country, near Turkmenistan. But above all it is ultra-strategic: positioned between the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, between Turkmenistan and the avid markets of the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan. Afghanistan is at the core of Pipelineistan.
The Caspian states hold at least 200 billion barrels of oil, and Central Asia has 6.6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas . . .. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are two major producers . . ..
The only export routes, for the moment, are through Russia. So most of the game consists of building alternative pipelines to Turkey and Western Europe, and to the east toward the Asian markets. India will be a key player. . . .
It's enlightening to note that all countries or regions which happen to be an impediment to Pipelineistan routes towards the West have been subjected either to a direct interference or to all-out war: Chechnya, Georgia, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia and Macedonia. To the east, the key problems are the Uighurs of China's far-western Xinjiang and, until recently, Afghanistan. . . .
In this geostrategic grand design, the Taliban were the proverbial fly in the ointment. The Afghan War was decided long before September 11. September 11 merely precipitated events. Plans to destroy the Taliban had been the subject of . . . discussions for months before September 11. There was a crucial meeting in Geneva in May 2001 . . .. The topic was raised again in full force at the Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001 when India - an observer at the summit - also contributed its own plans.
Nor concidentally, Pipelineistan was the central topic in secret negotiations in a Berlin hotel a few days after the G-8 summit, between American, Russian, German and Pakistani officials. And Pakistani high officials, on condition of anonymity, have extensively described a plan set up by the end of July 2001 by American advisers, consisting of military strikes against the Taliban from bases in Tajikistan, to be launched before mid-October.
[O]nly nine days after Hamid Karzai's interim government took power in Kabul, Bush II appointed his special envoy to Afghanistan . . . Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad - a former aide to the Californian energy giant UNOCAL. . . . The so-called brand-new American "Afghan policy" is being conducted by people intimately connected to oil industry interests in Central Asia.
In 1997, UNOCAL led an international consortium - Centgas - that reached a memorandum of understanding to build a $2 billion, 1,275-kilometer-long, 1.5-meter-wide natural-gas pipeline from Dauletabad in southern Turkmenistan to Karachi in Pakistan, via the Afghan cities of Herat and Kandahar, crossing into Pakistan near Quetta. A $600 million extension to India was also being considered. The dealings with the Taliban were facilitated by the Clinton administration and the
Pakistani Inter Services Agency (ISI). But the civil war in Afghanistan would simply not go away. UNOCAL had to pull out.
American energy conglomerates, through the American Overseas Private Investment Corp (OPIC), are now resuscitating this and other projects. Already last October, the UNOCAL-led project was discussed in Islamabad between Pakistani Petroleum Minister Usman Aminuddin and American Ambassador Wendy Chamberlain. The exuberant official statement reads: "The pipeline opens up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation, particularly in view of the recent geopolitical developments in the region." . . .
UNOCAL also has a project to build the so-called Central Asian Oil Pipeline, almost 1,700km long, linking Chardzhou in Turkmenistan to Russian's existing Siberian oil pipelines and also to the Pakistani Arabian Sea coast. This pipeline will carry 1 million barrels of oil a day from different areas of former Soviet republics, and it will run parallel to the gas pipeline route through Afghanistan.
Khalilzad . . . was always a huge Taliban supporter [and] only abandoned the Taliban after Bill Clinton fired 58 cruise missiles into Afghanistan in August 1998 . . .. [O]ne day after the attack, UNOCAL put Centgas on hold - and two months later abandoned plans for the trans-Afghan pipeline.
A little more than a year ago, Khalilzad was reincarnated in print in The Washington Quarterly, now stressing his four main reason to get rid of the Taliban regime as soon as possible: Osama bin Laden, opium trafficking, oppression of the Afghan people and, last but not least, oil. . . .
He was a strident lobbyist for more US military aid to the mujahedeen during the anti-USSR jihad - campaigning for widespread distribution of Stinger missiles. . . .
But he was not rewarded with any promotions. The required Senate confirmation would raise extremely uncomfortable questions about his role as UNOCAL adviser and staunch Taliban defender. He was assigned instead to the National Security Council - no Senate confirmation required - where he reports to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Rice herself is a former oil-company consultant. During Bush I, from 1989-92, she was on the board of directors of Chevron, and was its main expert on Kazakhstan. Chevron has invested more than $20 billion in Kazakhstan alone. . . .
All American secretaries of state since World War II have been connected with the oil industry - except two: one of them is Colin Powell, but in his case the president, vice president and national security adviser are all part of the oil industry anyway.
So everybody in the ruling plutocracy knows the rules of the ruthless game: Central Asia is crucial to Washington's worldwide petro-strategy. So is a "friendly" government in Afghanistan - now led by . . . Hamid Karzai. . . .
As for US . . . media - from TV networks to daily newspapers - they just exercise self-censorship and remain mute about all of these connections.
Pepe Escobar, "The War for Pipelineistan," Asia Times, January 26, 2005.
Here are excerpts from another account, unfortunately equally devoid of footnotes or other citations to sources:
As soon as the Soviets discovered the vast Caspian Sea oilfields in the late 1970's, they attempted to take control of Afghanistan to build a massive north-south pipeline system to allow the Soviets to send their oil directly through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean seaport. The result was the decades long Soviet-Afghan war. The . . . U.S. government saw the danger of a Russian north-south pipeline and the CIA trained and funded armed terrorist groups, including Osama bin Laden, who defeated the Soviets in the late 1980's.
The Russians then tried to control the flow of oil and gas through its monopoly on pipelines. The Southern Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union--Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan--saw through this Russian monopolistic ploy and began to consult with Western companies.
The . . . U.S. government now plans to thrust further along the 40th parallel from the Balkans through these Southern Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. The U.S. military has already set up a permanent operations base in Uzbekistan. The so-called anti-terrorist strategy is clearly designed to simultaneously consolidate control over Middle Eastern and South Asian oil, and contain and neutralize the former Soviet Union. With that strategy, Afghanistan is exactly where they need to be. . . .
Afghanistan will now become the base of operations in destabilizing, isolating, and establishing control over the South Asian Republics and the Middle-East. After the conquest of this area is complete and the permanent military posts are set up, they will begin construction of a pipeline through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to deliver petroleum to the Asian market.
UNOCAL, the spearhead for Standard Oil interests, has been trying to build the north-south pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean for several decades. . . . The pipeline was to stretch 1,271 km from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. An additional $600 million would have brought the pipeline to energy-hungry India. . . .
UNOCAL cut off its earlier agreement with the Taliban in 1998 when it became clear that the Taliban could not control all of Afghanistan and provide a stable political environment for a north-south pipeline construction project. It was likely at this juncture that a new "war against terrorism" ploy was conceived by the . . . U.S. government. The "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan has come to a hiatus, with war-lords once again ruling the country, and the Bush administration has put their own man, Karzai, in power to control Afghanistan.
Karzai was a top adviser to UNOCAL during the negotiations with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan. Karzai is the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe. A member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s, Karzai was a top contact for the CIA, maintaining close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service go-between. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the CIA sponsored the relocation of Karzai and a number of his brothers to the U.S.
The real motives for the Bush administration's war in Afghanistan are clear for all to see. The U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, met with Pakistan's oil minister, Usman Aminuddin, in January, 2002 to continue plans for the north-south pipeline, encouraging the construction of Pakistan's Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline.
President Bush says our military will continue its presence in Afghanistan, which means that while the U.N. forces serve as a paramilitary police force, U.S. soldiers will be guarding the construction of the north-south pipeline.
To assure that the pipeline project will proceed apace, the Afghani-American Zalmay Khalilzad, a previous member of the CentGas project, became President Bush's Special National Security Assistant. Khalilzad has recently been named presidential Special Envoy for Afghanistan. Khalilzad is a Pashtun and the son of a former government official under King Mohammed Zahir Shah. [H]e was a special liaison between UNOCAL and the Taliban government. Khalilzad also worked on various risk analyses for the project under the direction of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, a former member of the board of Chevron.
Norman D. Livergood, "The New U.S.-British Oil Imperialism," Part I.
And for what it's worth, here's a brief and somewhat updated entry from Wikipedia:
The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP or TAPI) is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank. The pipeline will transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. Proponents of the project see it as a modern continuation of the Silk Road. The Afghan government is expected to receive 8% of the project's revenue.
The original project started in March 1995 when an inaugural memorandum of understanding between the governments of Turkmenistan and Pakistan for a pipeline project was signed. In August 1996, the Central Asia Gas Pipeline, Ltd. (CentGas) consortium for construction of a pipeline, led by Unocal was formed. On 27 October 1997, CentGas was incorporated in formal signing ceremonies in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan by several international oil companies along with the Government of Turkmenistan. In January 1998, the Taliban, selecting CentGas over Argentinian competitor Bridas Corporation, signed an agreement that allowed the proposed project to proceed. In June 1998, Russian Gazprom relinquished its 10% stake in the project. Unocal withdrew from the consortium on 8 December 1998.
The new deal on the pipeline was signed on 27 December 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.[1] In 2005, the Asian Development Bank submitted the final version of a feasibility study designed by British company Penspen. Since the United States military overthrew the Taliban government, the project has essentially stalled; construction of the Turkmen part was supposed to start in 2006, but the overall feasibility is questionable since the southern part of the Afghan section runs through territory which continues to be under de facto Taliban control.
On 24 April 2008, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan signed a framework agreement to buy natural gas from Turkmenistan.[2]
The 1,680 kilometres (1,040 mi) pipeline will run from the Dauletabad gas field to Afghanistan. From there TAPI will be constructed alongside the highway running from Herat to Kandahar, and then via Quetta and Multan in Pakistan. The final destination of the pipeline will be the Indian town of Fazilka, near the border between Pakistan and India.[3]
"Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline," Wikipedia.
I don't know that I'm any happier about the war in Afghanistan now that I have some idea of what may be our real purpose for being there. But it's at least better than thinking we're taking all those lives, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars, for vague, shifting, unarticulated, irrational reasons designed to cover up what's really going on.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
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