Gasbags

 So I'm kind of intrigued by this whole "eeeeeevil tricksy Chinese spy balloon" thing.

Apparently the Chinese are having a hoot with it, too:

I mean...I guess it seems deeply weird. The oldest "reconnaissance overflight" thing in the world seems to be "when you see the enemy hide under a bush".

How hard would it be to hide from this party favor?

The PRC obviously knows that the U.S., a hugely militarized nation bristling with surveillance gadgets would track this. Was it some sort of way of drawing aerial surveillance fire? Getting the U.S. to give away it's ability to track, umm...a big fat slow moving object?

And the PRC obviously has reconnaissance satellites, too - possibly not as sexy as the USAF/Spaceies have - and those are perfectly capable of looking down at the continental U.S.

Like I say...the whole thing just seems truly, deeply weird. I'd love to know what the fuck this goofy thing is and what it's supposed to do. Is it just stupid? Or, as my old drill sergeant used to say, if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid.

And speaking of deeply weird and stupid, this is the Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance...

...apparently guarding his woodpile from a Chinese balloon that is floating at something like 9 or 10 kilometers of altitude with an AR-15 knockoff that has a maximum effective (horizontal!) range of about 400 meters.

Don't look at me. I sure as hell didn't vote for this nimrod.

Update 2/4/22: Andy (in the comments) suggests this gasbag was basically a SIGINT thing...which sounds as reasonable as anything else. Kinda hard to go completely radio silence for the whole time this birthday party favor floats by, but who knows? 

Apparently this is a sort of thing; several more of these rascals over flew over the Trumpies' heads, too, but (I suspect) the biznay was kept on the downlow so Donnie didn't look like he was being cucked by his pal Xi.

Anyway...just kind of funny and kinda cool that here we are - flying faster and higher than anyone in the 18th Century could have imagined - but the Montgolfier Bros tech still works.

Update 2/16: Wins the Internet for today:

Ni hao, me hearties!

If this drawing is correct...

...this seems very much like a...not-good thing.

First things first: the "vessel" in question wasn't a "vessel" but an submarine drone. This isn't the Mayaguez here. And we can't be sure that this drone hadn't been reconning one of these many islets that the Chinese have been fortifying or otherwise doing some sort of snooping that the PLAN got shirty about. There are no captive sailors, no hostages or capital ships held without cause.

But, still...it's one thing for the PRC to be muscling into sea rocks in the middle of the South China Sea. But this? Hell, it's damn near riht smack insides the old drydock at Subic. If this is now the extent of what mainland China considers its "territorial waters"..?

Is this a one-time "signal" to young Mister Trump for questioning the sacrosanct "One China" policy? Just some PLAN captain feeling frisky? Some other, more opaque sort of skulduggery? Or...is this possibly something that signals a genuine foreign policy shift for the PRC.

Let's just say that I can't think of a better way to pick a fight between the PLAN and a whole bunch o' folks, including our own USN, than staking the far end of China's maritime frontier at the eastern edge of the South China Sea.

President Putin's Letter to the American People Regarding the Syrian Crisis

On September 11th, President Vladimir Putin of Russia published an opinion piece in The New York Times. My goal with this post is to provide first an outline of Putin's argument followed with a short analysis from a Clausewitzian strategic theory perspective.

Let's start out with my assumptions here. Given the political context I assume that President Putin is honestly attempting to communicate with not only the American people but also with our reigning political elite. Second, this is all about international relations which goes far beyond simply Syria and what happens to Assad, so in that sense he is correct when he says Russia is "not protecting the Syrian government, but international law". Essentially the stakes go far beyond Syria and this is clearly recognized by Russia. Finally, there is a lot of room for honest negotiation regarding the Syrian crisis and success here would "open the door to cooperation on other critical issues".

Vladimir Putin makes a very clear and compelling argument in this article. He starts in the first paragraph of the piece stating what his intention is as well as mentioning "insufficient communication". This is interesting from a strategic theory perspective, since as the great Russian Clausewitzian theorist Alexander Svechin notes that while tactics can be examined outside of communications, it is precisely communications which makes strategy possible. So Putin's intent is clearly stated as communicating to the American people regarding the Syrian crisis.

A short history of the UN follows, which as Putin points out was a product of US and Soviet Russian determination not to allow countries to simply go to war based on their own political choices, it "should happen only by consensus" which in turn has "underpinned the stability of international relations for decades". While this has withstood crises in the past, the current US move against Syria threatens to "throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance". Putin devotes an entire additional paragraph to expanding this argument, boldly stating that Russia is "not protecting the Syrian government, but international law" and "the law is the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not."

Along with Putin's UN/international law argument he weaves the current situation in Syria and the greater Middle East. The conclusion a reader draws from this description is that overt US military involvement not only faces strong international opposition, but is difficult to see as being in the US national interest or even strategically coherent in terms of the forces our military actions would support. The implication is that this aggressive Syrian policy operates counter to the strategic narrative of the Global War on Terror which has dominated US foreign policy for over a decade.

Putin is quick to follow up by questioning the US government's version of the August 21st attacks. This in line with what Russia had communicated to the UN and foreign governments not only prior to, but subsequent to those attacks. His view is simply that there exists a substantial amount of contradictory information to the US official version and that this information "cannot be ignored".

This specific crisis is then placed within the larger context of the US foreign policy emphasis on the use of force which has proved "ineffective and pointless". Not only that, this proclivity has had the opposite effect on nuclear proliferation, since "if you have the bomb, no one will touch you". So with this context in mind, Putin is inviting the US to "return to the past of civilized diplomatic and political settlement", a past which the US was fundamental in building and maintaining.

The Russian president concludes with the hope that the Syrian dialogue that has started will continue and that President Obama is someone with whom he can deal. The final related point which has drawn a good bit of attention addresses US notions of exceptionalism directly:

It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

This of course is a repeat of the "law is the law" point, applicable to all recognized states, not the US on the one hand and everyone else on the other. Notions of exceptionalism can actually lead to disaster, as a former KGB officer would certainly know given the history of the former USSR. Foreign aggression itself stems often from a notion of exceptionalism, the exact phenomenon the UN was established to thwart.

So now we come to the strategic theory analysis. The obvious question is what would make this specifically a Clausewitzian strategic theory analysis? Here I consider some specific Clausewitzian concepts which are part of Clausewitz's general theory of war and what I have identified as his theory of politics. First, Clausewitz speaks about a balance of power that exists among states. An aggressor who upsets this balance will likely have to deal with resistance from other interested states that see this aggression as being against their interests. The tendency is for the status quo to be maintained, although there are situations where a political balance is so unstable that maintaining it could require force. Second Clausewitz assumes that the political relations of a given country including their levels of moral and material cohesion are going to influence how they conduct wars. Third, we have the distinction between objective politics (especially domestic political considerations) and subjective policy (which is the political purpose of the war in question). Thus "politics" can play an irrational role in strategy and war making. Fourth, the character of the political leadership has a fundamental influence on not only strategy but in how the war is fought/presented/seen. Fifth, and finally, Clausewitz is along with Max Weber, what we could describe as a "mentalist" in that it is ideas, social action and meaning that defines how we see the world. This is the basis of the Weberian concept of legitimacy which fits well with the general theory. I have been considering this for several days now and have decided on four interrelated points I wish to make.

First, this is an appeal from Russia to the US to start acting once again as a great power. What we see today in US Syrian policy is a policy of strategic incoherence, of a power acting not in it's own interests but in those of other powers which attempt to utilize US military force for their own ends. We have degenerated in terms of strategic effect to the point where the US acts as a "tool" of other powers. In the case of a US attack on Syria, the interested powers include Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. It is thus not at all surprising that certain Arab countries have offered to pay the cost of US military action regarding an attack on Syria. Nor is it surprising that AIPAC is lobbying Congress hard to support war.

What has been totally lacking is any coherent argument as to what US interests are in Syria, let alone how military action or even overthrowing Assad's government is in US interests. Instead Americans have been bombarded with the worst sort of jingoism and chestthumping that saturated US airwaves in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. We should be profoundly embarrassed by this, especially given our experiences post 2003.

For the US to start operating once again as a great power would not only be in Russia's interest, but in providing balance to international relations in general, a plus all around.

Second, the US is operating with an incoherent strategic narrative regarding the Global War on Terror. That narrative is a threadbare collection of myth, half-truths, double-think and memory loss that is truly astonishing. Let's start with "Terror". Terror is a method of political conflict, it is not a target or something that can be effectively dealt with by means of force. Political groups use terror (violence used to communicate a message) as a method for a variety of reasons and most instances of terror have historically been conducted by states. So a war against "terror" makes about as much sense as a war against "submarines" or "Psyops". Now "Al Qaida" . . . given what we know about this entity, it should be obvious that it operates with state support, would not be able to effectively survive without state support. Ossama bin Laden was living for years in a compound in a Pakistani city which is also home to their military academy. He could not have survived without state support and would be probably still alive today had the US not raided his compound and killed him. The Al Qaida affiliates in Syria enjoy the support of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states and would not exist to any significant extent without the support of these states as well as Turkey. Al Qaida is thus a tool of foreign state interests to which we are now expected to offer military support, essentially acting as some have claimed as "Al Qaida's air force". Thus the narrative on which our foreign policy has been based is incoherent and pointing this out gets mostly hysterical responses from "true believers" who in many cases have made a career of selling this ludicrous war on terror. In many ways the US finds itself today in the horrible situation of a mentally ill person who after years of treatment must face the choice of accepting the reality of their mental condition, along with all the lost time, resources, opportunities and self-defeating behavior, or fall back into the psychosis and avoid having to deal with that reality.

Third, and related to the second, much of what passes for "debate" in the US today is more the nature of domestic information operations (IO). A policy move is made, a set of associated propaganda themes are decided upon and then ceaselessly projected in the media, which acts essentially as a "ministry of truth". Information which goes against the imposed narrative is dismissed or simply ignored. Anything ignored is labelled as "unsubstantiated" or from "unreliable sources" upon questioning, but any information supporting the propaganda themes is passed on without hesitation regardless of the accuracy or source. Watching US TV regarding Syria it has been difficult recently to get much of any argument against military action at all. This extensive us of IO has also perverted the way our intelligence services are expected to operate, becoming instead sources of propaganda to support political decisions which have already been made. The use of domestic IO regarding the Iraq war has been thoroughly documented.

Fourth and finally, these all fit together to indicate the international political situation of the US today. What is important to remember though is that this process has been going on for some time with the result that the US today has little or no credibility with foreign audiences. This reflects a more general trend in Western liberal states of decreasing credibility but is particularly acute in the US due to our bellicose foreign policy which is seen as self-defeating in terms of US interests. This political situation of not being master of our own house reflects accurately our current political relations where the US government is seen as a "milk cow" for various domestic and foreign interests. Our inability to formulate coherent strategy is due to the dysfunctions of our political relations. The same interests clamoring for war have little sense of the danger of escalation that direct US involvement in Syria could usher forth. Some would see this possible escalation involving Iran as desirable, but how could that even remotely be in US interests?

Thus President Putin's appeal is not only in Russia's interests but in the interests of the American people, as opposed to the current US political elite who seemingly find nothing amiss, as well as in the interest of the international community. A long and at times painful dialogue with Russia is an offer that the American people should respond to approvingly with the intention of cleaning the Augean stables of what has become of US political relations . . .

Hmmm. This could end badly

This may possibly be the stupidest piece of foreign policy business I've heard of since Dubya the Conqueror decided to go all macedonian in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.I'm the last person to say that the United States needs to load up to cockpunch yet ANOTHER Middle Eastern country. But...if a military arm of a foreign country caught actually planning to assassinate allied diplomats and attack allied embassies on your soil isn't a casus belli...what the hell is?

"The men accused of plotting the attacks were Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, both originally from Iran, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan. Mr. Holder said the men were connected to the secretive Quds Force, a division of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has carried out operations in other countries. He said that money in support of the plot was transferred through a bank in New York, but that the men had not yet obtained explosives."

It's a sad commentary on the degree to which I believe my own government has utterly fucked up its conflict with Islamic groups including the government of Iran along with its credibility with regards to "terrorist plots" that I am inclined to be skeptical that these mooks were really under orders from Tehran.And the downsides of an open war with Iran make it nearly impossible to believe that the bombs are about to start falling.But...assuming that the DoJ is correct and someone in Tehran sent these guys out to commit mayhem in Washington, D.C., I'd say that this says something pretty disturbing about the levels of either stupidity, or aggression, or both, in the IRGC, the Quds Force, or some other faction in the Iranian government.We know the levels of stupidity and aggression on our own side.The last thing we need is to find ourselves playing chicken with another outfit with a chicken-like brain for international relations.End badly? Y'think?

Sheesh.

Decimation

I thought after last year that our long national indulgence in the compounded delusions of self-pity and self-righteous anger were starting to fade.But for the tenth anniversary of the events of 11 SEP 2001 has brought out all the usual idiots parroting all the usual tropes; It's was all about US! OMFG it was Pure Evil! It was Such a Shock 'Cause We were just Minding Our Own Business when We were viciously mugged!Well, okay, so we've had ten years and we're STILL thinking about this.

(Anybody want to make a bet as to whether Pearl Harbor was still front page news on 7 DEC 1951? No? Didn't think so. It was a very different war in a very different time, and in many ways were were a cruder, harder, simpler...but more sensible people fifty years ago.)

So let's get a couple of things out of the way first.

That an Islamic attack of some sort was successfully completed on U.S. soil was an entirely rational and expected result of the Middle East policies we had been pursuing for decades; since 1948, at the very least. This doesn't make OBL or AQ any more loveable or "justified". But you bankroll, arm, and act as consigliere for one of the local mobs in a bad part of town, don't be surprised to wake up with a horse's head in your bed some morning. It ain't an "if", it's a when, goombah, capisce?That it succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its Saudi maker is unquestionable. If 9/11 was a battle and you looked at it trying to define "Who won 9/11?" the world's tallest dead Saudi would have to be the winner, hands down. For the cost of a relatively small number of expendable fanatics (and the bombing and occupation of a stone-age tribal wasteland back into the stone age) he sent his target rampaging through the Middle East, bombing, shooting, and - worst of all - acting like the least competent imperial power in history. Too meek to conquer, too clueless and viciously self-protective to woo, too stupid to realize the difference...Osama must look back at the past ten years and the present position of his target, exchange incredulous looks at the demons tormenting him, and all three of them must collapse in helpless laughter. Satan in all his genius couldn't conceive of a richer foul joke.That the most significant, durable, and successful effect it has had has been the erection of a monstrous internal and external surveillance and propaganda contraption that extends across multiple agencies and continents, absorbs billions of dollars and tens of thousands of careers and lives...and all in pursuit of this chimera. Al posted the link to a Naval War College journal article in the preceding post. In it the author bemoans the costly, inept behemoth we know as the Department of Homeland Security.Because it is a massive boondoggle ginned up by the world's last superpower to oppose the efforts of a handful of raggedy-assed clerics and Muslim fabulists dreaming of Caliphate in dumpy rooms in Third World shitholes that, even if successful, would be unlikely to do better than 9/11 - that is, kill a relative handful of Americans compared to the number who drive into utility poles while texting every year?

No.

Because "...we need a longer term strategy for dealing with terrorism overall. Perhaps the most disappointing non-event of the past ten years has been the complete failure of America's intellectual infrastructure, including its colleges and universities, to create a reserve of expertise similar to that funded by the U.S. government in the wake of the Soviet challenge in the 1950s."

Got it?

The threat from a tiny band of poorly-funded, tactically-incompetent, Islamic boneheadsis and should be considered the modern equivalent of the challenge posed by the world's only other global superpowermassively armed with blue-water fleets, intercontinental bombers, an trained army of spies and assassins, and, oh, yeah, fucking nuclear ICBMs.

So one would think that this tenth anniversary of the moment we started the geopolitical equivalent of slamming eleven vodka and Red Bull shooters, stripping down to our skivvies, and leaping into the beer tub down at the local lesbian softball victory party swinging a length of tire chain and shouting "I can whip any bitch in the park!" we'd be looking around sheepishly at all the angry bull daggers, picking our saggy wet Jockeys out of the crack of our stinging ass and wondering what the fuck we had been thinking.

(Stops. Sighs. Shakes his head.)

Instead of indulging in an orgy of self-pity, maudlin sentimentality, and self-righteous victimhood.

But we won't.

235

Funny sort of a feeling today.I enjoyed a VERY lazy day - my bride gathered in the small ones and let me enjoy an entire afternoon out back in the hammock enjoying the lovely, sunny quiet, alternately dozing and re-reading Carroll's "Son of the Morning Star".

In the evening, our friends Christine and her two sons came by and we had a very pyrotechnical time blowing shit up, and then walked down to Astor playground to watch the entire neighborhood display.Projectile and explosive fireworks are illegal in Oregon. But not in Washington, so with that deep and abiding respect for the law in all its majesty that forbids rich and poor alike to steal bread and fire off a "Dragon Fountain" in the public street every Oregonian who can drives across the river and loads up the truck with a couple of hundred dollars of overpriced Chinese pyro. The entire city of Portland does it, so there's little chance of being cited unless you REALLY push your luck. But I like to think that up here in North Portland we light up the night sky with a certain villainous panache beyond what the rest of the city achieves.When I was thinking about the coming barrage this afternoon, though, all I could think of was how much like the rest of American life this evening suggested. I don't know of anyone who goes outside after dark in any particular patriotic fervor, or with the intent of honoring the ideals of the nation, whatever they have become. It is, rather, an expression of pure entertainment, a mild diversion, and that facilitated with cheap products imported from sweatshop-labor manufactories overseas.

My children delighted in the display, and I found a certain cynical amusement in my little daughter's rapture in the lovely night-lights constructed for pennies probably within a handful of miles of her birthplace and imported, as was she, all the way to the confluence of the Willamette and the Columbia to entertain a people whose primary accomplishment now seems to be the invention of new ways to package financial folderol and make money out of legitimized confidence games.But they did enjoy it, and at this point, perhaps that's enough.

I wish I could append some inspiring quote from our nation's founders, some precious reference to the hazard to which they put their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. But I'm afraid I can't. The contrast between the men and women who took that risk, and the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots of our times shrinking in fear and fortifying our nation, already bristling with arms, against the terror of a handful of ragged fanatics in the global hustings while casually eliding the poverty and joblessness of their fellow citizens here in our own republic would be too bitter for me to taste.Let me merely hope that you and yours had a happy and peaceful day, and extend my wishes for a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Border Ruffians

Over at GFT;The Columbus Raid, 9 MAR 1916, March's battle-of-the-month."We left the border for Parral
In search of Villa and Lopez, his old pal.
Our horses, they were hungry,
And we ate parched corn.
It was damn hard living
In the state of Chihuahua
Where Pancho Villa was born."

Great Leap Sideways

Interesting article here about the otherwise difficult-to-understand swivet that certain elements of the U.S. political establishment (hint; mostly the same folks who were all het up to invade the not-quite-yet-failed-state-that-rhymes-with-"buttcrack") seem to have about China.Don't agree with all Barnett's points, but certainly worth wondering; what ELSE is there to gain by ginning up a pan-Pacific superpower competition with a polity that has historically proven to have confined its ambitions to continental Asia and its near abroad?

(The image, BTW, is from the world's wierdest cartoon baby, Pobaby. He's...well, he's Chinese, and that's all I can figure out. Though you might watch the "Zorro" cartoon for what may possibly be the fucking oddest interpretation of that meme ever.

Channelling Charles

Andy his accused me of an unseemly vindictiveness regarding the former ISAF commander. And that took me aback, because I like to think of myself as a thoughtful kind of guy, not the sort of streetcorner shouter who hectors passersby about conspiracy theories and the Club of Rome. And, frankly, I know nothing about the officer relieved except what I have read, and the Ghost of Judith Miller should have if nothing else cured me of believing what I read in the papers...am I losing my perspective? Am I ready for my tinfoil hat?

So I took lunch break, went outside in the sunshine, and thought about it for a while.

And I realized that, goddamn it, I AM becoming vindictive, cynical and sour.

I'm feeling vindictive that my country continues to spend bagfuls of money on Great Power games in the global hustings while its economy falters at home.

I'm feeling vindictive that the people who got us in to many of these quixotic (at best) or criminal (at worst) misadventures, who blew smoke up our collective ass, who were proved wrong again and again, are still there, still at it, still trying to convince us that dark is light and down is up.

I'm feeling vindictive that judges are sending poor people to prison for debt while showering the gentle rain from heaven on the oil majors "right" to drill in offshore deepwater despite the ongoing proof that they have neither the experience nor the capability to deal with the inevitable well problems that will result.

I'm feeling vindictive that money and influence make it harder for you to get out from under a $10,000 debt but easier for a Goldman Sachs bankster to slip out from under a cool couple of billion he lost on a bad margin call.

I'm feeling vindictive that my newspaper and television news are virtually content free, that I try and contact my "elected representative" and I get at best a form letter, that my countrymen seem determined to remain clueless and uninvolved while my Army is sent to fight badly thought out and problematic wars.

I'm feeling pretty vindictive towards all those people who seemed determined to keep things that way: from media conglomerates to editors to reporters to op-ed writers. From city councilmen to mayors to governors to congresscritters to lobbyists to Presidents. From admirals to generals to national security advisers to cabinet secretaries.

I'm not one to pretend that my country has EVER been perfect, or that even its recent past was "better" or "brighter" than the present. But it's frustrating and meddening to write and phone and pester my supposed-representative, the one that we theoretically elected after kicking the crony-capitalists and the foreign-adventurers out of office after eight years...and watch the same damn things happening, the same people spouting the same rubbish about the same damn garbage.

Back in the old Intel Dump days I used to get a little patronizing to Charles Gittings because he would lose it with people like MSR or Dionysus. I'm sorry, Charles, I admit it. I would think to myself, damn, Charles, chill, man. We're all here for the discussion.

But I'm starting to find myself coming to agree with Mister Gittings more and more; I think he'd just been staring into the same political and intellectual test-pattern for longer than I had and got angrier sooner.

I thought I was resigned; We Are So Fucked, right? But I find myself becoming, instead of more philosophical, less tolerant and more angry with the powerful fools and the fools in power. Like Charles, I'm having a harder and harder time pretending that everything's going nice and sleek and happy.

Hispanics in your back yard at 3 am

Let's get this straight up front: George Will is a curmudgeonly old stick who has managed to lose whatever common sense and humanity he ever had toadying to the power brokers in today's GOP. He's become Rush Limbaugh in a tweed jacket.

Still, the man is what passes for an "intellectual" of the Right. I can only assume that this is the only reason that today's Oregonian ("We're the Worst Newspaper In the World But We're The Only Newspaper In Portland!") was willing to front up his appalling screed on the Arizona "Papieren, bitte!" immigration law.

As usual, Will takes his little conservative sawed-off shotgun of Deep Conservative Thinking, aims it at the Godless Lib'ruls, and blows off his own foot. And, no, I'm not going to link to the sunovabitch. Google "George Will" and "Arizona immigration" and you'll find his worthless ass.

Specifically what he does is he manages to completely miss the whole point of those of us who find the new law so frigging stupid.

It doesn't have anything to do with racism. Or fascism. Or anti-Mexican prejudice. Or the damn Tea Party idiots and what they do or don't believe is true.

Nope. It's in the process that's stated in S.B. 1070 in these words: "For any lawful contact made by a low enforcement official or agency...where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a resonable attempt shall be made, when practical, to determine the immigration status of that individual."

"Where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States..."

Do you see the problem here?

Let's say that I am Canadian. I slipped across the border into Oregon, applied for a state ID (which in my state does not require proof of citizenship). I have a job, a house, am in all ways indistinguishable from someone born in Portland or Gresham except that I'm not a legal U.S. citizen.

How is a Maricopa sheriff's deputy going to know that?

Should I wear a Canucks jersey? Go around saying "eh?" a lot? Wear snowshoes in Tempe and run gallumphing away when the county cruiser drives by?

Let's cut through the bullshit being spouted about this and man up to the fact that there are only two ways to enforce this law:

1. Target groups or individuals who are "likely" to be in the U.S. illegally.

This is clearly what the law intends. It is designed to smoke out Latinos; Mexicans, Salvadorians, Hondurans, Guatemalans, who are in the country without their papers. Will's column admits as much. He describes it as a "cry for help" because the feds have failed to control passage through our southern border. In the process he also makes the fairly specious claim that Democrats and liberals who are objecting to this are doing so only to win Hispanic votes, but, nevermind, it's George Will. Will makes the assertion that this is merely federalism at work, and that we who know Hispanics only as people with leafblowers in our front yards at noon - rather than in our backyards at 3 a.m. - need to get over it and let Arizona get on with the job.

(Let me also observe the nasty implicit racisim in the notion that because the Arizonans who like this law are more "familiar" with brown people they have more reason to suspect that many of them are criminals. But, nevermind, it's George Will.)

If this is the intent - which it is - the law is clearly both wrong in intent and illegal in practice. If it becomes obvious that Arizona lawmen are stopping hispanic-looking people and asking for their papers the disparity and prejudicial intent of the law will be legally unavoidable. When the first Hispanic U.S. citizen unable to produce the appropriate papers is arrested (and at least one will be - the Border Patrol and the USCIS, charged with enforcing immigration law, do this all the time) the violent and debilitating payout of taxpayer funds in lawsuits will begin. How many deputies and librarians will Arizona counties have to lay off before realizing that this is a mug's game?

2. Begin asking random individuals for their proof of citizenship.

Game over. The "Papers, please!" chestnut is the oldest shorthand for dictatorship we know. When and if this happens, Arizona will have officially become the rubber bobo head for all the dumb nativist beliefs spouted everywhere in the U.S. And yes, I'm looking mostly at you, conservatives. You've embraced this tarbaby all on your ownselves.

More to the point, none of this really has anything to do with dealing with the problem of controlling our southern border and why it is so difficult.

I have no doubt that this law has something to do with hating on some Mexicans and something to with the a certain type of person's approach to a problem being to find the biggest stick possible and beat on it. But that's not the problem.

One problem is that this law is an unenforcibly bad law; it requires Arizona cops to choose between racism and authoritarianism. It's said that hard cases make bad law. Well, bad law makes for hard cases, and this one is going to be as bad as can be. But that's not the problem, either.

The problem is that this law is a symptom. The problem is that this is a symptom of the kind of bad, stupid, things that people do when they have no patience and no intelligence to come up with a complex solution to a complex problem. The problem is that this law isn't all that much different than doing bad, stupid things like launching land wars and occupying lands in central Asia in retaliation for an act of civilian criminality by a handful of raggedy-ass guerillas. It's not all that much different from doing bad, stupid things like passing legislation that let slicky-boys run financial Ponzi schemes and then refusing to change anything when their greed and dumb stupidity impoverish others.

Back in June of 2007 I talked a lot about this. About how the "illegal immigration" problem isn't really an "illegal immigration" problem but a multi-car pileup of social, economic and political ills in Central America, economic imbalance across the Border, pig-stupid U.S. drug and labor laws, wishful thinking and reality-avoidance on all sides wrapped up in the bone-deep simplicity of the sort of people like Arizona's governor and her fellow thumb-hammerers in the state legislature. About how this does nothing more than punish people desperate to help themselves and their families while doing nothing, less than nothing, about the problems and structural instability that brought them there.

I have no hope that the sort of people in Arizona who thought this law would work will suddenly get smarter. In fact, I have little hope at all that my nation as a whole can avoid the long slide into magical thinking and stupid answers to difficult questions that this law represents. All I can do is repeat to Governor Brewer and the idiotic legislators of Arizona now what I said then:

"The real issue - the one Which Dare Not Speak Its Name - is that the institutional poverty, misgovernance and social maladjustment of most Latin American countries is so profound and so destructive that to address it would take every penny that the U.S. has spent on poorly planned foreign adventures and more. Much more.

So instead we get this idiotic argument that all we need to do is fence these little heatherns out and everything wil be Good. God will once again be White and in His Heaven, the food will magically get harvested, processed, cooked and served by Real Amurikans (actual Citizens) who will suddenly, magically, want to work for the pittance we want to pay for these jobs to prevent our food, clothing and service costs from reflecting what it would cost to pay humans actually living wages to do these things.

As Hadrian himself might have said: Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet.

It is your business when your neighbour's house is on fire."

Hadrian used stone to build his wall and try and keep the Pictish wetbacks out. It was a warlike act and as such it worked for a time. But eventually the pressure from without and the rot from within knocked the rocks down.

I have no idea of what it means that the only rocks involved here are inside people like Jan Brewer's and Russel Pearce's and George Will's heads.

中國

Tomorrow is the official 60th anniversary of the establishment of the "People's Republic of China", the Marxist/Maoist/socialist-communist/whatever-the-hell-it-is-now edition of the great Middle Kingdom

mighty cultural and economic power of Asia (and birthplace of my not-so-mighty little daughter, Maxine Shaomei, whose power is almost entirely composed of thermonuclear adorability - sorry, guys, had to get the plug in there somewhere...)

Having watched some of the last Summer Olympics, I'm sure the anniversary party will be quite a show...

But even in a digital age, there are times when I think that China is still perhaps the original riddle wrapped in a mystery surrounded by an enigma. Massive and complex, at times peculiarly weak, sometimes, and to some, frighteningly strong...it's worth considering the changes that the past 60 years have visited on it and its people.

While just floating around the Internets thinking about this, I came across this story over at China Bystander:

"...just after when Deng Xioaping turned his back on Mao’s revolution and launched the country on its present course of economic development. In the lobby of the Dong Fang Hotel in Guangzhou, just over the road from what we still then called the Canton Trade Fair, an elderly party cadre stood in tears. With his blue Mao suit and cap and weather beaten, careworn nut brown face he was the embodiment of the first 30 tumultuous years of the revolution. The cause of his tears, he said, was the installation of a one-armed bandit, the return of the pernicious evil of gambling, and the betrayal of all he had sacrificed his life for."

The next 60 years will have to be hard put to equal the past 60 for change. But we can be sure of this; change there will be, and throughout the change, China will be a force to be reckoned with across the world. Cliche, yes, I know. But it's hard to avoid that one. The Middle Kingdom is, well, in the midst of everything; its people in both numbers and human genius, it's political and economic power, it's position astride Asia. One can imagine many different futures for our own country, but it's hard to think of one in which China will not be a large part of it...Any thoughts?

(crossposted from Graphic Firing Table)