The scene at the White House Gates #DingDongTheWitchIsDead

I was downtown last night at the White House. I was working late at the office 2 blocks away and couldn' t resist just going to see the massing crowds at 1 a.m. So what was it like?

• Boston World Series Win: 3x or more
• Yom H'atzmaut on Rabin Square: 10x
• Most any large soccer win...bigger, depending on the city.

Having said that, this was spontaneous so I give it a lot of credit. The sports analogies are perhaps the most apropos. The participants had 'won' but we weren't in any sort of immediate mortal danger, so it really felt like a big sports victory.

I heard a lot of "USA, we're number one" and then some stupider, baser comments uttered by, well, kids, so take that for what it is worth. Mostly, though, the atmosphere was relieved and chipper rather than hopped up or edgy. Remarkably low stakes if that makes sense.

I didn't jump into the fray. You look at this issue - any issue - long enough and 'winning' doesn't make sense any more. Neither does 'justice' here. There isn't really justice to the dead. We didn't take down Al Qaida, just an aging figurehead. We didn't really win - the State Department had to issue a worldwide travel warning to Americans starting immediately. We did what we set out to do, and we did it by sending an arm of the U.S. military under command of a non-military intelligence agency on foreign soil without an act of Congress. I think the Obama administration has actually earned the credibility to do that. We did what we set out to do; I am just saying it is complicated.

Kremlin Gives B--chslap

Glasnot wasn't bad, until the consultants showed up from the West and tried to wrench a country solidly stuck in 1972 into the modern era. Needless to say, there was some wasted cash, broken infrastructure, and bruised egos. Turns out, some bruises take a while to heal.

The World Economic Forum was apparently the site for slights today, as China's representative slyly decried the excesses of the You-Know-Who-S-of-A. Then this:[Fortune]

At the official opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Putin, now Russian Prime Minister, delivered a 40-minute speech touching on
everything from why the dollar should not be the sole reserve currency to how
the world needed to enter into a smart energy partnership with Russia. Then it
was time for questions. First up: Dell. He praised Russia's technical and
scientific prowess, and then asked: "How can we help" you to expand IT in
Russia.
...
Putin's withering reply to Dell: "We don't need help. We are not invalids.
We don't have limited mental capacity." The slapdown took many of the people in
the audience by surprise. Putin then went on to outline some of the steps the
Russian government has taken to wire up the country, including remote villages
in Siberia. And, in a final dig at Dell, he talked about how Russian scientists
were rightly respected not for their hardware, but for their software. The
implication: Any old fool can build a PC outfit.

Now who's the fear-mongering autocrat, huh?!

Political Tidbit - Shocker! No Palin.

Obama may not have years at the wheel of foreign policy, but he certainly seems at least as qualified as the current administration. On August 2, 2007 WaPo reported that Obama supported sending troops into Pakistan, unilaterally if necessary, to attack terrorist cells there because Pakistan knew of their existence and was doing nothing. September 3, 2008, the Bush administration did exactly that.

HT: Justin.

If You Ignore All of Recorded History, You Might Have a Point

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad* sent the following message to Russia in an emergency Security Council meeting on Sunday (Aug. 10):

Also, the days in our view, and this is what we want to make sure our Russian
colleagues understand, that the days of overthrowing leaders by military means
in Europe, those days are gone.

Really?! You'd have to ignore two big things to believe him: (1) Ossetia and Georgia are technically in Asia, no matter how pale Georgians might be, and (2) all of recorded history indicates otherwise.

The EU might arguably have changed the paradigm in Europe. While the EU has no military, its effect of intertwining economies likely prevents armed conflict by its members. Of course, the EU is only about a decade old; more importantly, Georgia isn't part of it, and the EU has neither the motive or the ability to reach out to save it. Remember NATO? That's a shell now.

Second, since when is strife in the region 'gone'? What about Bosnia? The Kurds in Turkey (which is actively applying for EU membership, thank you very much)? The Basque separatists? Chechnya? This isn't exactly the Pax Romana.

Third, the U.S. is in no position to stop the Russians. Thank you W.

Fourth, I am not sure what the U.S. stands to gain from stopping Russia. The former Bear has long shown hints of bringing the Iron Curtain out of storage, re-covering both free speech and areas of former Soviet Union. The U.S. has stayed mum on the topic for a while. The contested areas of Georgia don't seem to contain anything we want, so why make a stink?

* I guess we are making progress. When Bolton was U.S. representative in the U.N., Khalilzad was likely doing little more than going from one extra airport screening to the next.

Political Tidbit - NOT about the election

I should also add, NOT about Spitzer. Nope, this one comes from the Department of State's Blog. Yup. The ship of state is one step away from a MySpace page.

The Question:

Question of the Week: Should the U.S. Engage Hamas in the Peace Process Between the Israelis and Palestinians?Posted by DipNote Bloggers on Mar 04, 2008 - 11:58 AM

The House got wind of this, prompting this post:

U.S. Congressman Mark Kirk in Washington, DC writes:

Worrying that you guys are asking questions like this using funds approved by the appropriations committee that I am a member of.

Posted on Sun Mar 09, 2008

State called the Congressman's office to verify that the comment was, indeed, his. Having done so, it posted this response:

State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack writes:@

Congressman Kirk --
Thank you for your comment, the first on the blog from a member of Congress. The
question of the week portion of the blog is meant to allow public comment about
questions we at the State Department are asked by the media and others in public
fora. The asking of the question is not meant to indicate support for a policy
different than that of the government. The asking of the question is also not
meant to hint at a change in policy.

Sean McCormack Posted on Tue Mar 11,
2008

Thanks to Dorkowitz for both creating and then promulgating this tidbit.

We Have a New Leader in the Space Race.

The EU launched the ATF, an automated space truck that can launch, reach, and "mate" with the International Space Station, all with minimal human interaction. It represents a low cost option for shuttling supplies to (though I don't believe from) the ISS.

More important that the tug itself is what it represents: The end of U.S. space dominance. I am not saying that U.S. space dominance was good or even worth the money. Reasonable minds have long quibbled. What I am saying is that U.S. dominance in space technology has persisted since the 1960's, and has been a symbol of its superior resources and technology. We did things just because we could, and that had political significance -- just like the Great White Fleet circumnavigating the globe. [Dorkowitz points out that the GWF predated nuclear tech by 50 years. Right he is...now what was I thinking?

Today, Arianspace operating out of French Guiana has joined us there with superior tech while our Shuttle operations are sunseting with no obvious succeessor. Europe or, more likely, China, will soon have a replacement and it will be U.S. astronauts begging rides instead of the other way around.

Economic Tidbit

This is a Political Tidbit dressed in Bayesian clothing.

The Nation has noticed that the President has no clothes -- they've been vaporized by the latest toys coming out of our bloated military-industrial complex. Defense budget for 2008: $700B, the largest % of GDP since WWII.

This might not be bad if, for example, the military industrial complex was simply an excuse to keep middle-American manufacturing jobs afloat for a while longer. The flip side of that is that we should use the products, which, lucky for us, means killing people in places that offer a lower cost of production than we could. But seriously, the real problem in that argument is that the additional money is not going to greater production volume but, instead, to higher prices. Lockhead, Northrup, etc. are simply running over-budget on contracts for the same number of items. The result is the corporation makes more and the American worker sees no additional benefit.

Oh, and I have been saying this for a long time: You know where you can find the money to overhaul this country;'s education, health, and infrastructure? It's being shot out of American-made rifle barrels into the Iraqi sands. Let's bring that money, and the people who can really benefit from it, home.

Hegemon to Pokemon.

NYT has a long piece on the end of American hegemony (hegemony: for all practical purposes, sole superpower status). I have been touting this notion since the formation of the EU. Those who said that the EU's lack of a military prevented it from rivaling America's power. Those people were and are idiots. Look around. The Global 100 companies have revnues greater than most of the second world countries. Money talks and buys muscle. Ask Blackwater.

So:

1. Is this the end of American hegemony? I think so. I think it has ended and that the effect our proto-recession had on the markets is less a show of our dominance than a show of our importance in an interconnected global economy. Last time this happened, we didn't care what the effect might be overseas.
2. Was it inevitable? (read: is it W's fault?) I would love to place this squarely on 43's shoulders, but the truth is the ascent of Europe and Asia was a long time in coming.
3. Did W hasten it? Yes. Iraq showed that our military was limited. Moreover, it stretched us monetarily while the rest of the globe found ways to up their growth numbers. Move over American economy. Want to know what happened to the last great empire? Go to London. The prime real estate is no longer owned by the Brits. What is the story in NYC today? Foreign buyers. Here we go.

We Need to Pull Out of Iraq So We Can Focus On China

The conventional wisdom is that China is a non-expansionist power. They are, however, a militarized power. It is huge military with significant political power. What is more, they likely see the U.S. as an expansionist power, and not without reason.

Two more data points:
1. The Chinese have tested anti-satellite missiles. The U.S. relies on these satellites, relatively few in number, to be our eyes and ears both in peace-time reconnaissance and, more importantly, for wartime movement and coordination. We literally could not engage in a battle over mainland china if these were knocked out, regardless of how advanced our equipment. I am not saying we'd have to...but remember, they can also knock out our aging satellites over their allies, such as N. Korea and areas of a newly-bellicose Russia or the perennially-so middle east.

2. They have hacked the Pentagon. They are reaching out to disrupt our information networks -- this is extraterritorial warfare just like a mortar lobbed over the border. I am not calling this a declaration of war by any means, but it is an act of cold-war aggression and we should recognize it and respond as such.

Let's pull out of Iraq. It is very small potatoes compared to our next threat.