How Low Can They Go?

Here’s a heartwarming bit from one of the patriots at over on Fox News that I hadn’t heard about until today:

Bowe Bergdahl is a 23-year-old American soldier that has been captured by the Taliban. Fox News strategic analyst Ralph Peters doesn’t have any sympathies for the soldier because he suspects Bergdahl may have deserted his unit.

Peters escalated his rhetoric when he suggested that the Taliban should kill Bergdahl. “I want to be clear. If when the facts are in we find out it’s through some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taliban, I’m with him. But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime — I don’t care how hard it sounds — as far as I’m concerned the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills,” said Peters.

If and when the facts are in, he says. What a prudent man. In the meantime, he’ll just go on national television and suggest that the Taliban execute an American soldier. Isn’t that cute?

Personality Disorders At The Pentagon: An Overview

I was up most of the night tossing and turning, worried sick that the Senate might not approve the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. Then a soothing voice said to me in the darkness, “Shhh, it’s okay, baby. This country is thoroughly fucking insane and loves war, remember?” Then I dozed right off.

I was right to do so: The Senate passed the bill 93-1, with six abstentions.

That’s the bill that Robert Gates and his thorazine-addled sidekick, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen, pimped for the other day that will ‘temporarily’ increase the size of the Army by 30,000 troops.

Temporarily. Uh-huh. Just one more drink, then I promise I’ll stop, honest.

Now that I think about it, it really is only a temporary increase. That number of 30,000 will surely drop as a result of death, dismemberment and suicide. So you can call this a rare example of truth telling among our leaders.

And here’s the icing on the cake (or, as I see it, the crusty blood on the corpse), the bill doesn’t provide funding for the increase. That means another emergency spending bill, like the one we just passed last month.

The closer you get to the bottom of Bankrupcty Hill, the faster you slide. Wee!

My habitual loathing for the Pentagon and all of its wasteful, destructive and stupid habits is giving way to an odd sense of concern. These people are sick. They have a disease and need treatment. A healthy entity does not exhibit this kind of behavior. Is there something in the mineral water at the Pentagon? Did they use lead-based paint for the walls? They’re impulsive, reckless, and have no regard for the consequences of their actions. They also lack empathy and display a condition that is common among mentally ill people known as “flat affect.” The Joint Chiefs don’t need a another spending bill, they need shrinks, an army of them.

Don’t worry. I assure you that my concern for the mental health of the War Department is only temporary.

Thomas Friedman: Too Dumb To Quit

Thomas Friedman is in Afghanistan. If you’re like me, you’re first thought is probably, “Gee, I hope he doesn’t get his turtleneck dirty.” He’s found some small reason for optimism. It turns out that years of futile, desultory warfare have created a core of military professionals there who know the locals, the terrain, the culture. After years of successive deployments, they might not know their families anymore, but they sure know Afghanistan. And you thought the war was pointless, F-ing civilians!

Friedman is overflowing with admiration for this hard-bitten cadre of Sergeant Rocks, so much so, he’s dubbed them, “The Class Too Dumb To Quit.” But he means that with affection, of course.

I think I can feel their gratitude from here.

These guys learned their trade on the mean streets of Kabul and out in the Afghan mountains, not some classroom at West Point. They’re tough, gritty, and suffer no illusions:

They know every mistake that has been made, been told every lie, saw their own soldiers killed by stupidity, figured out solutions and built relationships with insurgents, sheikhs and imams on the ground that have given the best of them a granular understanding of the “real” Middle East that would rival any Middle East studies professor.

Or columnist for the New York Times, for that matter.

Friedman feels that this group forms a promising nucleus around which we can rebuild our efforts in Afghanistan and, after seven and a half years, finally get down to business. To hell with the pencil-pushers, the bureaucrats, and the candy-assed politicians back in Washington. The Class That’s Too Dumb To Quit is now in charge. What should they do? General Tom “Nuts” Friedman explains:

Clear areas of the Taliban, hold them in partnership with the Afghan Army, rebuild these areas by building relationships with district governors and local assemblies to help them upgrade their ability to deliver services to the Afghan people — particularly courts, schools and police — so they will support the Afghan government.

A perfect strategy for a perfect world! Why didn’t any of us think of that?

But Friedman, like the soldiers he loves, is a realist:

The bad news? This is State-Building 101, and our partners, the current Afghan police and government, are so corrupt that more than a few Afghans prefer the Taliban. With infinite time, money, soldiers and aid workers, we can probably reverse that. But we have none of these. I feel a gap building between our ends and our means and our time constraints. My heart says: Mission critical — help those Afghans who want decent government. My head says: Mission impossible.

It’s astounding to me that shallow fat-heads like Thomas Friedman are continually venerated as deep thinkers. I once heard Tim Russert introduce him on Meet The Press as if he was the second coming of Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is the guy, don’t forget, who once implied that we should station US troops in Palestine. He’s one of the great champions of ‘draining the swamp’ in the Middle East and establishing democracy by force. His propaganda has contributed to this mess, and now that we’re neck deep in a smoking pit of blood, corpses and anarchy, he concludes that the whole thing just might be too complicated to succeed, unless, of course, we had “infinite time, money and soldiers.…”

Aint’t that the truth. If only I had infinite time and money, God knows what I could achieve …

Meanwhile, as Thomas Friedman’s leaden mind gradually evolves to accomodate something called ‘reality’ and ‘the human condition,’ the The Class Too Dumb To Quit, or, more accurately, The Class That’s Been Stop-Lossed To Death And Can’t Quit Save On Pain Of Imprisonment, continues to suffer in the purgatory of Afghanistan so that maybe, just maybe, people like Thomas Friedman can be proven right in the end.

Challenge And Response

Chris Hedges, writing at TruthDig, explains the challenge:

The cost of the Afghanistan war is rising. Tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded. July has been the deadliest month in the war for NATO combatants, with at least 50 troops, including 26 Americans, killed. Roadside bomb attacks on coalition forces are swelling the number of wounded and killed. In June, the tally of incidents involving roadside bombs, also called improvised explosive devices (IEDs), hit 736, a record for the fourth straight month; the number had risen from 361 in March to 407 in April and to 465 in May. The decision by President Barack Obama to send 21,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan has increased our presence to 57,000 American troops. The total is expected to rise to at least 68,000 by the end of 2009. It will only mean more death, expanded fighting and greater futility.

Robert Gates has the US response:

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Monday announced a temporary increase in the size of the Army of up to 22,000 troops to meet what he called the “persistent pace” of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The increase, to occur over the next three years, will raise the size of the Army to 569,000 active-duty soldiers. An expansion to 547,000 soldiers, announced by Mr. Gates in 2007, was completed in May.

“The Army faces a period where its ability to continue to deploy combat units at acceptable fill rates is at risk,” Mr. Gates said…

We’re bleeding ourselves dry in Afghanistan for no discernible reason, and the Secretary of Defense speaks in dull monotones about persistent paces and “acceptable fill rates.” Yet nobody questions it. There is no debate about our presence in Afghanistan at all. It just goes on and on and on. Does the cost increase? No problem, we’ll raise the military budget. Is the “fill rate” unacceptable? No problem, we’ll enlarge the Army.

Good thing for the Pentagon, unemployment here at home is rising. That means an ever expanding ‘resource pool’ they can fish from to help match the persistent pace of ongoing operations.

I can’t help picturing a group of Pentagon officials sitting around a conference table drinking lemon water and diet sodas, listening to one of their colleagues drone on from some White Paper about the military benefit of high unemployment: “Surplus population in the non-producing sectors offers enhanced opportunities for personnel augmentation in the upcoming year of operations … ”

Meanwhile, an illiterate Pashtun tribesmen is building a bomb in an Afghan mountain pass that his family’s lived at since the time of Tamerlane, and that bomb is going to kill someone you might know.

Them’s the breaks. It’s all about maintaining acceptable fill rates. He died a hero.

There’s a famous quote from the seventeenth century Swedish Count Oxenstierna, written in a letter to his son, that comes to mind whenever I think about US policy: “You do not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”

Just Another Fart In The Outhouse

I just can’t get outraged over stories like this anymore. So the Bush administration may have allowed Chinese agents to interrogate the Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, and now the Pentagon won’t publicly comment on the matter. Congress, like the little chicken hawk in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, is getting really, really mad, darn it! They’re threatening to de-fund the Pentagon office in charge of detainee policy.

I’m sure the Pentagon is terrified. If that office is de-funded, wherever will they find the money to continue? I just can’t imagine. Nevertheless, they’ve agreed to answer Congress’s questions in a “closed, classified session.”

A closed, classified session. I think gangsters call this “being sent for.” Congress will be reminded, once again, who’s really boss, and then they’ll mysteriously come around to the Pentagon’s point of view. Afterwards, a few representatives will stand outside the Capital trying their hardest to look like real human beings, and not the rickety marionettes they are, and gravely inform us that revealing any evidence from the hearings would jeopardize national security.

Ah, yes — national security, the catch-all excuse that works every time, like a shot of novocaine straight to the frontal lobe.

The heart of the issue, or I should say the plot of the farce, is that members of Congress were forbidden access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Apparently, this is a violation of federal law. (Sorry. I’ll start writing again after I stop laughing. A politician insisting on the rule of law is like a child rapist lobbying in defense of the school lunch program). To add insult to injury, even though congressmen were denied their legal right to see prisoners at Gitmo, Chinese agents were given access. This outrage, according to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, is an infringement of the “constitutional balance of power between the legislative and executive branches of government.”

Well, we all know how important that is to Congress. Just ask George W. Bush.

This whole dim spectacle is just another footnote in the sordid chapter of American history entitled, The Bush/Cheney Era. Its conclusion will be the same: All the most dangerous and radical precedents will remain quietly embedded in American policy (in this case, teaming up with Chinese interrogators, hiding it from Congress, etc.), the perpetrators will go unpunished, and the whole episode will get flushed down the memory hole. It just doesn’t shock or outrage anymore. The overall effect is one of dispirited resignation.

All You Need Is Love

Bet you can’t guess who said this: “It isn’t pleasant or convenient to have strong passions. I have the uncomfortable feeling I am carrying a volcano about with me. My salvation is in being loved … there surely never lived a man with whom love was a more critical matter than it is with me!” “I have to guard my emotions from painful overflow.” And also:

Perhaps because when I give it is with my whole heart, and I feel that so few want it all, or would return measure for measure. Am I wrong, do you think, in that feeling? And can one as deeply covetous of friendship and close affection as I am afford to act upon such a feeling?

Lord Byron? Vincent van Gogh? Kurt Cobain?

No. It was Woodrow Wilson, of course.

Cigarettes, Whisky and Wild, Wild Women

The world’s oldest man just died at 113. He was a World War I vet named Henry Allingham, and he was the last surviving participant of the Battle of Jutland. He was also one of the founding members of the RAF, and took a bullet in the arm over the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917.

Naturally, he was asked about the ‘secret’ of his longevity. What a pointless and inane thing to ask. The only accurate answer to that question is, ‘good luck’ (or bad luck, depending on your point of view, ha ha). If I met a 113 year old World War I vet, I would have a million questions for him, and not one of them would concern his diet and exercise. Despite that, Mr. Allingham gave the best answer to that question I’ve yet heard: “cigarettes, whisky, and wild, wild women.”

A true hero. RIP.

This Is The Salt Of The Earth Speaking …

There’s an unseasonable cold spell in North Dakota. Temperatures have dipped to 30 degrees some mornings. That can only mean one thing: global warming is a crock of shit. Here’s a salt of the earth, Midwestern Republican farmer commenting:

With a summer like this, you can’t tell my Dad there’s global warming.

“I think Al Gore and his group should be out here and tell us about this global warming stuff. I think he might have a change of mind. We’ve had a cool July,” says Orlan Dreyer, Willow City Farmer.

Well, listen up, Elmer. You know how people like Rush Limbaugh always say not to pay attention to dips in the stock market because, long term, it always trends upward? This is the same principle. Cold weather isn’t going away. It’s just that the average temperature of the earth is gradually rising, like Rush Limbaugh’s portfolio, okay? This overall rise in average temperatures is potentially very, very bad news for people who have to live, work, and eat on planet Earth, like wheat farmers. Got it?

Incidentally, you say you’re Norwegian. Do you have a valid birth certificate?

The Bottom Of The Pyramid

If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So if you’re going to be a pusher, you may as well do it right:

Drug Firms See Poorer Nations as Sales Cure

For the first time in a half-century, sales of prescription drugs are forecast to decline this year in the U.S., historically the industry’s biggest and most profitable market. The Obama administration and Congress’s attempt to pass legislation overhauling the health-care system, including provisions that could lower the cost of medicine, could put drug makers’ U.S. businesses under further pressure.

As a result, developing countries like Venezuela have begun to look more attractive to the industry. Sales of prescription drugs in emerging markets reached $152.7 billion in 2008, up from $67.2 billion in 2003, according to IMS Health, which tracks the industry. IMS forecasts sales will climb to $265 billion by 2013.

It seems that in the prescription drug business, emerging markets are where it’s at. Even in communist/socialist/whatever-it-is-it-doesn’t-matter-because-Hugo-Chavez-is-a-bad-guy-ist Venezuela. If you’re in the pill pushing business, go south.

Our friends at Pfizer understand this, and they’ve unveiled a dynamic new sales strategy to capture the ultimate in emerging markets. They’ve not only gone geographically south, they’re going socio-economically south as well. You could say they’ve hit bottom:

Until recently, drug companies doing business in emerging economies have catered mostly to the wealthy and middle class. Now, Pfizer is turning to what it calls, in internal marketing discussions, the “bottom of the pyramid.” Its program in Venezuela is an exercise in how to reduce prices enough to attract poorer customers while still turning a profit.

“There’s an economy in the barrios,” says Rafael Mendoza, the man Pfizer has put in charge of the strategy in Venezuela, as he gestures toward the satellite dishes and air conditioners that dot Petare [a Caracas slum].

Selling drugs in American ghettos has always been profitable, so why not branch out and go global? There’s a lot of sick people at the bottom of the pyramid. If they’ve got cash to spend on satellite dishes and air conditioners, surely they can cough up some dough for Lipitor or Zoloft, or the Little Purple Pill?

But here’s the beauty of Pfizer’s strategy: even if the poor don’t have the money for their drugs, they’ll buy them anyway. In fact, they can often be conned into spending more than they can afford. How? It turns out that folks on the bottom of the pyramid are highly amenable to persuasion. Pfizer’s man in Caracas explains:

He says patients in Petare will follow orders even if it means spending more. “If their doctor tells them — their doctor from birth, the doctor they have had all their life — ‘Look, this is what is going to cure you, this is what will guarantee your health,’ that’s what the patient buys.”

They’ll buy Pfizer products if their doctors tell them to. So how does Pfizer get the doctors to do that? Easy. Pfizer buys the doctors.

Pfizer also woos doctors by giving them computers and Internet access for use at their offices. In the U.S., the practice of drug maker “giveaways,” even of items as small as pens and coffee cups with logos, has drawn fire for influencing doctors’ prescribing, and the industry has voluntarily done away with most freebies.

In Venezuela and much of the developing world where doctors don’t earn as much, the practice is more common, and it sometimes can benefit patients. At one of the clinics Mr. Rodriguez visited recently, for example, Carlos Serrano beamed about the computer and free Internet access Pfizer has given him. Dr. Serrano, who has practiced medicine in Petare for 30 years, uses the computer and a Pfizer “telemedicine” Web page to help diagnose patients online by communicating in real time with doctors in downtown Caracas.

Pfizer says the computers start out as loans and become permanent gifts once the doctors have shown that they are using them for medical purposes and have signed a waiver stating they understand they’re not intended to influence their prescribing.

If free computers and Internet access aren’t enough, Pfizer will sweeten the deal even more:

In the coming weeks, Pfizer plans to refurbish the crumbling exterior of Dr. Serrano’s office and paint it with the logo of its program in Petare, called “Healthier Community,” which combines “Pfizer blue” and Chávez red.

Viola! The world really is that simple, wherever you are on the pyramid.

What an ingenious strategy. Bribe doctors, exploit the poor, make a tidy profit and give Chavez a kick in the nuts. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Except that it does. With the profits they make in socialist Venezuela, Pfizer can mount a sophisticated propaganda campaign here in the US, warning Americans how bad socialized medicine is for business. It even has its own built-in talking point: Venezuela’s national health system can’t provide prescription drugs to the poor. The commies have to go shopping in the free market for that. Do we really want to go down that road, America?

It’s a perfect, profitable, self-perpetuating, holistic marvel of synergy. It’s brilliant. That’s why it works, and that’s why those of us at the bottom of the pyramid stay screwed.

Apt Pupils

I got a little tingle in my belly this morning when I came across this:

At Least 14 Killed as Swat Valley Confict Continues

The Pakistani military offensive into the Swat Valley continued apace today, and the military reported at least 14 more militants were killed. The government has announced that a few thousand families have finally been allowed to return to the districts along the outskirts of the valley, though so far it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of civilians displaced since the attack began in mid-April.

There’s no better way to start the day than reading about 14 fresh kills. It’s heartening that our allies in Pakistan aren’t going all wobbly on us, but are taking the fight to the enemy.

But what was even more thrilling was this kind of language coming from Pakistani officials:

The chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) Ameer Haidar Khan Hoti declared that the war is “about to end,” a sentiment which the Pakistani government has been echoing since the Defense Minister said the war would be over in “two to three days” in May.

But the war endures, and every proclamation that it is “almost over” seems to be followed by another bombing, another offensive, more delays for the civilians waiting in the squalid refugee camps. Some of the Swatis tried to return home over a month ago, the military prevented them and ordered them back to the camps.

Most of the attention both internationally and internally is on the new offensive in South Waziristan. Yet while analysts watch and wonder if the military can handle the massive struggle there, few have noticed that despite all their predictions, they have been unable to return the Swat Valley to anything close to normalcy.

“About to end,”“two to three days” and “almost over”. Did these guys intern at the State Department or the Pentagon? I kept waiting to read one of them say they’ve crossed a milestone.

I wonder how long before they start telling the locals it’s going to be a long, hard slog.

Happy National Sovereignty Day, Everyone!

(Image by Banksey .)