Third Saturday Seminar 2008-2009
“Keeping America Safe”
Curt Gibby
1st Meeting
Saturday, 27 September 2008 (Delayed from the 20th due to IKE)
9:30am to 12:00 noon
Room A-102 (Alternate location – in student center), Lone Star College – Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive – Conroe, TX – 77384 – 936.273.7000
Remind your family, friends and your elected representatives. (Are you registered?)
The Hurricane IKE experience is mostly over for most of us. (My power finally came on yesterday (Tuesday, 23 Sep)) but Comcast is “still working on the the cable” so that is why this didn’t go out Tuesday night. My property faired pretty well but I have a new appreciation for value of electricity and a new disrespect for CenterPoint Energy.
In recent history, the United States has developed a mindset that military power is our primary foreign policy tool. We have applied this tool to defeat the Taliban which hosted the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and then we occupied Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein and deprive him of his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). We used it to chase down Osama bin Laden; most recent address believed to be somewhere in the tribal territories of Pakistan. Recently, we have given our Military direction to chase attack parties from Pakistan back across the border into Pakistan. Now, with the occupants of the White House about to change, it’s time to start thinking about what is going to be our policy in the future for keeping America Safe.
“National Security” has been the excuse of the current administration to block any openness or transparency in the work of our government. A nation does need to keep itself secure if it is to provide a safe home for it’s citizens and dissuade adventurism, military, economic or otherwise from our friends and competitors.
I will suggest that “Keeping America Safe” is far more complex than just maintaining a strong, modern military and reading everybody’s email and listening to our telephone calls. In fact, our concentration on military operations and our refusal to conduct diplomatic discourse with countries such as Iran and North Korea unless they first complied with our demands over the last 6 years has become very problematic. It has raised rather than lowered international tensions. (Our foreign policy of “bully, beg, buy them out, or beat them up” up seems to have run into a snag). When you use an army to get rid of bands of thugs, it’s like playing baseball with hockey sticks. The game has a lot of action but it’s difficult to keep score.
One of the dangers of using your military to accomplish all your policy goals is that if you don’t have enough power to immediately and decisively establish your dominance, a motivated weaker force finds it can effectively frustrate a superior force (asymmetric warfare), causing the superior force to bog down and expend far more resources than the resisting forces. Consolidation of gains is difficult because the bad guys just move away when things get too hot and come back when things cool down.
Recently, Russia, under Putin and lately Putin’s protege Medvedev, has decided that the United States superpower status may be a little shaky and it is testing the waters in Georgia and Venezuela and maybe Cuba. I am convinced that Russia has no direct military actions planned against the U.S. but they have seethed at our interference in Kosovo and our insistence on installing a “missile defense system” on Russian borders in former Soviet buffer states as well as absorbing them into NATO. Much of this is really of practical commercial interest, Russia wants to develop and control the market for their hydrocarbon resources, but they also see this as an opportunity to regain some of their former superpower status.
The concern is realistically not that we will be attacked by a superior military power. And, even a terrorist attack properly responded to, does not threaten defeat or annihilation. The greatest threat to our security is not foreign; it is ourselves. The real strength of a country is in it’s economy and in its cultural values.
Recently, if we aren’t getting enough bad news from our foreign adventures we are being besieged by the latest demand for “bailout money” from our own financial authorities who have allowed totally irresponsible mortgage lending to feed a housing boom. No one apparently had the foresight to see how this irresponsible activity could spawn a global credit crisis. That is nobody, banks included, trusts anybody else enough to loan them the money they need to cover daily operations. Now we are being threatened with “Dire Consequences” if with don’t cough up $700 billion dollars to be put into the hands of the very people who should have prevented the crisis in the first place. We’ll talk about that a little.
But mainly, we’ll watch an interview (linked below) of Andrew J. Bacevich, a retired Army Colonel, now a Professor at Boston University by Bill Moyers and I suggest we’ll learn how we may all have had something to do about the state of things and develop some useful thoughts for the future
Ike just added another real time dimension to “Keeping America Safe.”
If you are looking for something interesting to read, watch or listen to – I’ve attached the “Read Ahead List” for the session. The Moyers interview of Andrew Bacevich will be the “keynote”
For those who like to read ahead:
If you read or listen to nothing else, please check out Andrew Bacevich’s interview by Bill Moyers. It will bring you closer to where I intend to go during the seminar. In fact, to start out we will watch the video of it. Every time I watch it I get more out of it.
“In The limits of Power, Andrew Bacevich takes aim at America’s culture of exceptionalism and scores a bull-eye. He reminds us that we can destroy all we cherish by pursuing an illusion of indestructibility.” Mick Trainor.
Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/transcript1.html
Watch: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/watch.html
Profile: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/profile.html
The Next President & National Security (Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:15:53 -0400) (http://www.kera.org/audio/think.php)
[2008-09-15 12:00:00] What absolutely must be addressed in the next president’s foreign policy? An hour interview by Krys Byrd of Gordon Adams, professor of U.S. Foreign Policy at American University in Washington, D.C. He recently wrote about the subject in the on-line edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Adams also testified before Congress.
Read: Establishing the next president’s national security agenda: How to confront the defense budget morass
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/gordon-adams/establishing-the-next-presidents-national-security-agenda-how-to
Listen: http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/77/510036/94641642/KERA_94641642.mp3
Michael Klare
Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/15/russia_georgia_conflict_fueled_by_rush
Listen: http://media.switchpod.com/users/democracynow/ftp/dn2008-0815-1.mp3
Ron Suskind, The Way of the World (two days of interviews on Democracy now. When listening to the mp3 files you will probably want to fast forward to Suskind.
Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/13/the_way_of_the_world_ron
Listen: http://media.switchpod.com/users/democracynow/ftp/dn2008-0813-1.mp3
Transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_admin
Listen: http://media.switchpod.com/users/democracynow/ftp/dn2008-0814-1.mp3
Bob Woodward, The War Within
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/war-within/
To access articles on Washington Post it is usually necessary to register. This doesn’t cost anything, but there are probably a few questions (I did it long ago.) And, if you forget the password, they will send you a temporary password so you can recreate yours.
Part 1: Dissension – Doubt, Distrust, Delay
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/06/AR2008090602691.html
Part 2: Rift – Military Chiefs Outmaneuvered
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR2008090702426.html
Part 3: The Shadow General – ‘You’re Not Accountable, Jack’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090802839.html
Part 4: Inheritance – A Portrait of a Man Defined by His Wars
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903491.html
Current Events:
Where to start? Russia invades Georgia. First debate of the presidential candidates on Friday. The Treasury Dept is outdoing the Defense Department in finding ways to keep us impoverished and the world on edge. (read/listen to the Gordon Adams interview) With Mother Nature getting active again, do we really need to be picking fights with the rest of the world? Troops leaving Iraq but increasing in Afghanistan. What about our ally Pakistan? Are they with us? The big news of course is IKE, the hurricane. We avoided the Rita style evacuation nightmare but found new ones. If you had a weekend place on Galveston you may not now. A former SEAL friend of mine rode out the storm. He lives on the east end of the island on the Gulf side which is the highest ground. Water got within 2 blocks of him. The rest of the Island was not so fortunate. When I talked to him he was organizing work crews to open peoples houses to let them dry out and arguing with FEMA and the Mayor. For the rest of us on the mainland, even after we heard the speeches from all the VIPs, we all still had something to endure. (I hope the bit about adversity building character is true.) Mostly having to do with with Electrical power. Power distribution is still a monopoly, but apparently not well regulated. All of a sudden we found our lives governed not by our elected representatives but by the power transmission companies who apparently were trained in the “Dick Cheney school of transparent communications” keeping us in the dark in more ways than one. As I write this 580,000 people are still without power and they can’t find out when they will get it.
Indecision 2008
Poll Results The McCain/Palin v. Obama/Biden (the race for dictator)
Real Clear Politics http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Primary Season Election Results – Delegates to date
http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/delegates/index.html
Presidential Campaign Finance
Federal Election Commission
http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do
These are some of my perennially favorite links:
Project Vote Smart, http://www.vote-smart.org find out how your elected officials voted and how to contact them by e-mail
League of Women Voters http://www.lwv.org To find out where candidates stand on issues.
Center for Responsive Politics. http://www.opensecrets.org/ Find out who’s paying your politician.
This is the 1st meeting of the Third Saturday Seminar for the 2008-2009 season. We run from September to June.
About The Third Saturday Seminar:
Started in January 2000, We are about personal empowerment through demystification. Our subject matter is broad but it always tries to be about understanding ourselves and others better; and, having fun.
The Third Saturday Seminar is sponsored by the Academy of Lifelong Learning (ALL) Program at Lone Star Montgomery College. http://montgomery.lonestar.edu/25959/
There is no fee for ALL members to attend TSS. You can find the ALL Schedule at: http://montgomery.lonestar.edu/142962.pdf
Course Information – Meets mostly on Third Saturdays
The registration number is Lone Star College–Montgomery
82127 CCALL 3980032 M7119 Sa 9/20 – 12/13 9:30am – noon B102 There is the first class of the 2008-20089 Seminar.
For information about Lone Star College Montgomery : http://montgomery.lonestar.edu/
Maps:
http://montgomery.lonestar.edu/14972/
http://montgomery.lonestar.edu/14970/
http://map-it.woodstock.edu/map_pdf/B_floor_1.pdf
As usual, if anything in this notice doesn’t work or make sense (It is midnight somewhere), please let me know so I can warn the others. If the spelling and syntax seems more fractured than usual, chalk it up to the fact I am (still) breaking in a new laptop computer (or, perhaps it’s the other way around.) Down with Vista!! Bill Gates is a nebbish!
Hope to see you Saturday.
Best regards,
Curt Gibby
Spring, TX
281-353-4350 (cell-)
Fax: 281-288-8230
gcgconsult (at) n-star.com
http://www.northstarinst.org/TSS/ (REALLY OUT OF DATE)