Old Home Week

I had a pensive session with Old Jim on Tuesday; the news from the Navy Yard had made me lachrymose. We established a theme for our meeting on Wednesday, which was supposed to be about the current fiscal reality and concepts on how we can cobble together some sort of reliable income stream.

Jim figures a thousand more a month would put him in comfortable retirement and keep him in long-necked Bud. Instead, it was Old Home Week, but I was determined to try to wrest order out of chaos before I knew what it really was going to be.

“I have to get my fiscal house in order,” I said. “I gave myself a year to get that sorted out, and I guess the clock is running.”

“That might start with Willow. It is a sobering realization,” said Jim. “Much as I enjoy Willow’s ability to make me the opposite.”

I am going to take a pass on the big issues of the day this evening,” I said. “I am in crisis overload. Debt limit, government shut down, Syria, Sequestration. I think we know where this is all going.”

“Yeah, Mr. Bernanke’s determined to keep printing money, and the violence that took a dozen innocent lives on the ground of our own Navy Yard on Monday is going to happen again.”

“Enough, you know?” I turned to Old Jim and said “Mental health is the base issue in all of these things.”

He nodded and took a pull on his Bud Long Neck. “So you are saying we need more mental health surveillance to prevent these horrors.”

“Yeah. The shooter should have been identified to the authorities, and he never should have been able to get that shotgun, and have access to a government office complex.”

“I completely agree,” growled Jim. “But you see the problem. Then who gets to report whom, and who sets the standards for what is normal and what isn’t?”

“Cass Sunstein,” growled Jim. “He is the guy who wants to Nudge us into good behavior orchestrated by the government. He is married to the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Stephanie Powers. Very progressive thinker with a lot of bad ideas.”

“You mean Samantha Powers. The other one is better looking. Think what those assholes are going to know about us,” I muttered darkly. “All our credit card transactions monitored by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and all our credit card information, the Affordable Care Database of all our health records, the NSA portfolio of who we talk to, and all of it administered by the IRS.”

“Crap. We are hosed,” sighed Jim.

“Duh,” said Big Jim.

“Did you see who is down the bar?”

“The lady with the blunt haircut and the nice figure?”

“The very one. She used to bartend here.”

“I remember her. What was her name? I can always remember a face, but the names? Not so much, anymore.”

Big Jim was back in battery behind the bar, since Tex is on some motorcycle trip. “Easy Rider meets Brokeback Mountain,” he said.

“Yike,” I said, looking apprehensively at the level of Happy Hour White in the tulip glass in front of me.

Old Jim leaned it and asked “What is that gal’s name?”

“Nina,” said Big Jim, polishing a highball glass. Old Jim picked up on it immediately, and called out to her. That is when the trouble began.

“Yo! Nina! Remember us?”

“You remembered my name,” she said brightly. “You were some of my best customers.”

“Of course I remembered,” said Jim modestly. “You are unforgettable.”

Nina introduced her companion, a nice young man with a shaven head named James. “We are down at A-Town now.”

“Where the hell is that?”

“A block from the Ballston Metro stop. Actually next to the International House of Pancakes.”

I pondered that for a minute, not placing it. “You mean where that Cuban restaurant was?”

“Bingo,” said James. “You wouldn’t like it. It is all 20-something kids and we are deaf from the noise by the time our shifts are done.”

“That seems like every place on Fairfax Drive these days.”

“It is hell getting old,” said Jim.

“Yeah, but consider the alternative.”

Brenna came by to top up my glass, Jim got another Bud and we started to talk about food, life and all that other stuff.

Robert the Sous Chef sent out a couple halibut sliders for Jim, with a side of the bacon-wrapped crackers. Jim has been complaining about the absence of the delicious fish treat since the menu changed, but Nina and James were taking a busman’s holiday and going the whole hog on tapas.

Big Jim explained it all as Old Jim tucked into his sliders and bacon crackers.

Nina concentrated on her mignon cabob, Willow Fritters and Executive Tater Tots. James smeared the bacon spread on some of Kate Jansen’s home-made sourdough bread.

I looked on in awe. I have resolved to not spend money on restaurant food for the duration of my current fiscal emergency, not having Mr. Bernanke’s ability to simply print more.

“What are you drinking?” bellowed Old Jim down the bar.

“Something cute,” said Nina, and then modeled it for us.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

A Walk in the Fresh Air

So, the JG’s Explorer has a problem. He tried to have it in apple-pie order in order to put it to bed for the years he will be gone, but some things could not be fixed. Some bandit charged the air conditioner with new coolant, but it fizzed out. Before I take the vehicle down to the farm to rest, I want to have it fixed.

So, off early for the only mechanics I trust in this town. They are out in Falls Church, and there is a way to drop the car off and hike to the Metro station and take the train two stops back to the Ballston-Marymount University stop and hike home from there.

It is a beautiful early Fall day, and I decided to try to walk it rather than take a cab. Every penny counts these days.

The added benefit was that I could get some exercise out of the way for the day. Fabio the Pool Guy was here the day of the shootings, buttoning things up and putting the big green tarp over the pale blue water. The Big Pink porters took away all the pool furniture in the afternoon, and that is that.

It is still a shock to the system, and I would be lying if I told you, walking to the train, that I did not think of Madrid and London as I went. Walking back up the hill from the garage, I heard sirens. Given the events of the week, I stepped out a little faster, then slowed as the leg began to seize up. I began to panic, then stopped and let blood circulate.

I still have problems walking down slopes- no reason why that I can see, except maybe that things are just not connected properly any more. It was bittersweet. Nice to be able to walk again. Not so nice to have to do it this way.

I listened to the news on the waterproof iPod’s radio. Strange doings in the wake of the shootings. The guy should never have been permitted to buy a gun, and yet he passed an instant background check. He reportedly spent hours playing violent video games, and he had originally been given a “general” discharge from the Navy, but was able to get it upgraded to “honorable” after separating.

A “general discharge” can cover a whole bunch of stuff that could include violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that the Navy decided not to waste time on. I think that means we have got more problems beyond the simple requirement of checking the record- and it is about public mental health.

I mean, he had two previous run-ins with the cops for discharging a weapon, and had been admitted to the VA for acute paranoia or something. What is wrong with our mental health system that these things are not reported? Is it the ACLU and the privacy lobby?

Mr. knew he had a problem, but the voices convinced him he had to do something, I guess.

I don’t think I am crazy, and I don’t even want to get into the 2nd Amendment thing. This is binary, in my view, you either leave the Second Amendment alone, or you try to take on confiscating all the guns. Good luck with that.

But clearly something is badly broken, and a dozen more people are dead.

Before we pass any new laws, why don’t we ask some hard questions about why the background check did not turn anything up? And why the VA, who knew the man was delusional, did not tell his employer or the Navy? And about all those video games- Grand Theft Auto 5 just debuted this week.

I don’t think I am going to run out and buy a copy.

If I could run, that is. I am happy just to be limping along.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Bad Day at the Office

There was a Commander in khaki uniform down the bar when I walked in. We occasionally have uniforms in the place, but I don’t abuse my former status and intrude on their privacy- Willow is not the VFW, after all.

I said “Hi” to Old Jim and John-with-an-H leaned over and told me the CDR had been in Building 197 at the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters that day.

I nodded and walked down to thank him for his service, and introduced myself as a Navy retiree. He was animated, and I thought he might still be in shock. “I was there in the building,” he said in wonder. “It was not a good day at the office.”

“I heard,” I said. Then I thanked him again and walked back to sit between Jim and John-With. Brenna was working the bar. She had a sort of glitter eyeliner on, which made her sparkle a bit.

“So what have you heard?” I asked. “If you are out of hearing of a radio for more than a few minutes there is something new.”

“Aaron Alexis had been working as an IT geek for computer giant Hewlett Packard,” said John-with.

“HP management was quick to point out that the shooter was actually employed by a subcontractor,” I said, that having been one of the key elements of information after they identified the shooter.

We went on to discuss that, and some other matters, but it was clear the events of the day had everyone down. I drank a little faster than usual, and the little group broke up quietly.

This morning has more information, but no synthesis. We have the latest angry male mass killer, and I will just leave all that alone for now.

The public response is what I can take measure of, and the coverage thus far seems to be fading as there is no apparent connection to The Long War- or at least, not one that we can comprehend.

There have been stories that Mr. Alexis had mental problems- duh- but these were apparently sufficient to have required treatment by the VA since at least August.

So this may be another public health issue, just as the Sandy Hook slaughter was.

That impact may not be limited to these shooters.

We are not immune to a mild sort of Post Traumatic Event about these things. From a personal perspective in the Washington DC area, I was closer than I would like to the seminal 9/11 attack at the Pentagon. I was there that morning, a few hours before Flight 77 plowed into the building, had dozens of colleagues and friends in the flight path, and was at a very surreal meeting there the next day, while parts of the building were still burning.

Then there was the Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammed sniper spree, and now this.

(The last group of victims in the DC area. Photos of the Navy Yard victims have not yet been released.)

There is a possible link between the snipers and the Pentagon attack- Islamic extremism- but no such connection to Aaron Alexis, who is said to have been dabbling in Buddhism and studying the Thai language.

They are clearly linked in my mind to the public response to mass violence. You have to experience it to realize how corrosive it is.

Of the three events, the snipers may have been the most insidious, since the attacks were spread across three weeks, and all across the metro region, so that any time you were filling up the gas tank at the Navy Exchange or visiting the Home Depot you might find yourself in the cross hairs.

But the adrenaline is familiar enough, the reports on the radio, the mounting mass of bad news and the realization that any of us could have had business at the Yard, and I have done business with Building 197 before.

Troubling morning. I think it is getting near time to get the hell out of Washington. There is nothing good happening here.

Nothing whatsoever, though I must say that yesterday featured a worse day at the office than anyone should ever have to bear.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Last Plunge

Well, that is it. Done, fini, over.

Mary Margaret took the opportunity to throw a party on Joe’s patio, starting whenever, and events swept us away with a rush as powerful as the jet of the filler nozzle at the deep end of the pool.

I was ambivalent. I got back up north with the beach umbrella from the farm and a DVD player to get the entertainment center fully operational. The day was lovely, scattered clouds but bright and luminous. Milos told me the water temperature was unchanged from Saturday: 73. I shivered when he told me, and I set about cleaning up and trying to deflect the realization of just how cold I was going to be after a half hour in the water.

There is a heater for the pool- but it is busted, and there is nothing in the Big Pink budget to fix it, considering that some major structural work needs to be done, and there is no point in fixing something that will be torn out next year.

Amy and a few diehards were camped out on the blue and white recliners, soaking up the last of the thin sunshine. There was nothing for it but to do it. I fixed the waterproof case for the iPod on my right arm, kicked off my flip-flops and jumped in.

It was not the Pacific Ocean in San Diego; it was not Narragansett Bay; it was, however, goddamn cold. My brain did the bright-light of shock as I entered and it stayed piercingly chill until I clocked 45 minutes, listening to NPR’s “On the Media,” which confirmed everything I thought about the state of journalism, and quite a bit about the post-9/11 expansion of the National Security State.

I don’t know which was worse- the chill of the water or the chill of what has evolved over the last dozen years. I marveled that my stay in this building- and this pool- almost matches the Global War on Whatever to the day.

I clambered back out of the pool and began shaking. It took twenty minutes under a scalding hot shower to get the quivering to stop, and then dressed for winter.

Joe and Mary Margaret were sitting out on Joe’s patio, and they asked me over and that is when things careened over the top of the hill and began the long plunge into darkness.

The crowd grew as the sun went down; food appeared, and bottles of liquor and wine. New residents were intimidated into joining the party, and laughter rose, tinged with the “can’t believe it is almost all over.” At one point there were at least five dogs weaving through people’s legs, and I realized it was nearly time to prepare.

I snuck off and donned my still-wet trunks and flip flops. The trunks were dank and clammy, but of course by that time Jiggs and Joe and Mardy 2 were stripping down and preparing for The Last Plunge.

The party migrated onto the pool deck, and flashes of light from cell phones and cameras lit the night. The four of us jumped in. Still freaking cold, but there was enough antifreeze in all of us to make it merry.

We did some publicity shots for the crowd and splashed around until the minute hand on the clock clicked over 8:00pm. Then we were cold enough to call it a season. I watched carefully to ensure that everyone was out before I climbed up the ladder.

We gave Mylos a nice card that we all signed and then wandered back to Joe’s patio to let him lock the gate for the last time. “Ziabichya!” I shouted to him.

It was the only Polish I learned this season, and the sentiment certainly fit the bill.

They were still on a roll when I slipped away to get out of the wet trunks, and once I was toweled down, and into some flannel jammies, decided the bed looked pretty good.

So, I was up at three-thirty to start the rest of the year.

Ziabichya.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Seasoning

Damn, halfway through the month and I cannot even believe it is started. I checked the weather, of course: more rain falling on my drenched pals in Colorado and more flooding, and a typhoon headed for the JG in Japan. So many things to keep straight these days.

I wanted to pull together some seasonal recipes for you this morning- I will be cooking inside shortly, and want to get some savory seasonings ready.

Coming in, I had to feel sorry for the Mouse in the Mailbox. He was not in when I crunched up to the gravel driveway with the driver’s side window down to pull out the advertising and two weeks of circulars.

The sedimentary layers had three attempts at nests pretty well along before the next load dropped in on him, and the box was nearly full. I imagine there was still enough room for him to insert himself in the mass of paper. Still, it must be discouraging for the little fellow to have to commence gnawing through the pages of the Clarion-Bugle to make his bed all snug.

He had nearly got through the article on what to do to get ready for hunting season. I suspect he did not want me to see it, but I noted that disabled veterans are permitted to hunt vermin on their own property regardless of seasonal pouch limits, so I consider him warned. And no offense to our elected vermin, mind you.

Later, I was sitting on the front porch with the Russians, returning a tote bag that had last been filled with the bounty of the truck patch in the back pasture. We talked about East Africa, where one of us is going next week, and about relationships that may be developing or not.

The fact that three of the four of us have full time jobs, and how much longer that is likely to continue. You know, contemplative.

It was a lovely day, one suitable for having the windows open and the air fresh and country soft.

This was a short visit for me. I was in the pool yesterday and froze my ass off. The water was just about the temperature of the air: 74 degrees, according to Mylos the Polish Lifeguard. I managed almost forty minutes before I started to shiver in the water and gave it up. I was cold all the way down to the farm and almost had the heater on in the Panzer, long jeans and a sweater helping to mitigate the chill.

As we sipped our drinks a great V of geese flew over, honking melodically, low over the old farmhouse. They know it is time to be heading south, but they do it slower than we do, so I think there is time yet to savor the fall in this red county.

I did a few chores at my house when I eventually got there. I noticed a stand of grass had risen at the end of the rain gutter above the front porch. I found one of the long old-lady calipers that were so useful to retrieve things from the floor when I was crippled last year.

I used it to grip the hardy stalks from below and tugged the grass and root ball out in a lazy dripping mass to plop on the grass, and was rewarded with the sound of pent-up rainwater coursing to the downspout.

Then I loaded the big porch umbrella and its heavy metal base in the Panzer so I can erect it in the middle of the new patio table for the Last Plunge Party this evening. Too late for the season, but the summer got away and there is no getting it back.

Mylos will lock the gate tonight for the last time of the season. He will head for Las Vegas with his buddies, first stop on a swing that will go on to San Diego, and then up the Pacific Coast Highway to LA and then on to San Francisco before returning to Middle Europe for the long cold dark winter.

I know it is coming, but there are going to be some excellent weeks coming up as the year dwindles away. Not yet.

I was gong to talk to you this morning about the latest idiocy from Senator Charles “Chuckie” Schumer, who believes he can refine the First Amendment in a manner more to his choosing, but frankly, I am tired of getting up every morning to be appalled at the antics of our elected officials. None of us and none of our freedoms are safe when the Congress is in session.

We can get alarmed about that tomorrow, I think, when Chuckie and his ilk get to the office.

In the meantime, there is a drive north, and football and swimming and drinks on the patio back up north, if I ever get there.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

New Kid on the Block

“I understand there has been a lot of anxiety. People aren’t sure what to make of it. They’re worried about a new agency and how it will exercise its authority. But we’ve been reasonable, open-minded, accessible and genuinely focused on trying to get this right.”

– Richard Cordray, five time winner of the television game show Jeopardy and current Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

I dunno. There is a lot to talk about this morning. Tex hired a new bartender, a lovely young woman named Brenna, and you can imagine the usual suspects were all agog at the Willow Bar last evening. Tex did the honors, waving down the suspects at the Amen Corner: “Look out for these characters, Jerry-the-Barrister, Old Jim, Jon-without, John-With, the Lovely Bea and the infamous Vic,”

After the pleasantries of the introduction, I asked the pointed question: “OK,” I said, taking a sip of happy Hour white. “What is your life narrative?” Jerry tried to assign her a call-sign; he came up with “Bruno,” which I do not think is going to fly. Brenna is a beaming blonde kid with a winning smile, and she was up to the task.

“I graduated High School, got a job to make some money, saved some, and took off to visit South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and India for five months.”

“Alone?” I asked.

“Yep. I had to come back for a wedding or I would still be out there.” She tossed her medium-length hair in a winsome gesture.

“What was your favorite?” I asked. “This sounds a lot like what I did back in the day.”

“Climbing the Great Pyramid at Giza while the protests were going on in Tahrir Square. But I loved India. I am going to save up some cash and go back out.”
Brenna is a keeper. The response from the panel of experts on the discussion side of the bar was uniformly positive, and we decided to tip generously. Jim used only cash. I have not had any for a few days- my walking around stash in the wallet had dwindled while the JG was getting ready to go, and I had not got around to replenishing it.

I fished the Chase Visa card out of the wallet and noted it was not seriously melted from overuse.

“You have to watch that,” growled Jim.

“What do you mean,” asked Jon-without, who was putting a Mastercard in the black leatherette folder with his tab in it.

“You thought the NSA mess was a big deal? You ought to see what those morons at the Consumer Protection Agency are up too. I saw it on C-Span this afternoon.”

“Wait a minute. What the hell are you talking about? I thought they set that new bureaucracy to look at payday loans and debt collectors?”

Jerry the Barrister took a bite of salmon Kabob and put on his law face. “No, this is a much more comprehensive approach to managing the economy. They are responsible for writing rules on mortgages, debit cards, student and auto loans and much more. They will be looking at everything to ensure there is no institutional racism and stuff like that.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, looking at the card in my hand. “Wasn’t that how we got into that whole liar’s loan mess in the housing bubble?”

“That is where it came from,” growled Jim, slamming his empty Bud long-neck on the bar, and waggled a finger in Brenna’s direction for another. “the paper this morning said that Dick Cordray is looking to monitor 80% of all credit cards transactions in the country. That is something like 42 billion transactions.”

“Wait a minute. I buy everything with my credit card,” I said, thinking just how much of me is now sitting in some government data base. Ammo, sex toys, food…places, things and activities….”Holy freaking crap!”
“Yeah. We keep having these national ‘conversations,’ race, gun control, NSA surveillance, secret courts and stuff, and then one of the parties gets up and goes to the kitchen for a beer and we never hear anything more about it.”

“I am not so worried about the NSA. I know the rules and I think they generally obey them. It is the IRS and those guys that scare me. And who are these guys and why are they collecting all that crap? And why haven’t we heard about it? This is a de facto gun registration list, among other things, not to mention a record of everything we like, including how often we are here,” I said, waving my hand generally around the bar.

“Ah, Vic, you are overreacting,” said Jerry the Barrister. He was paying with a credit card. What would you have to fear from your own Government?”

“They are going to monitor all the mortgages, too. In fact, Dick Cordray defended the data-mining at Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Discover and American Express.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, beginning to panic. “Theoretically, couldn’t they access my credit card records and see how often I dine out, and then deny me health care for not following Federal guidelines on the food pyramid. Or that I buy alcohol and cigarettes at the Commissary?”

Jerry the Barrister made a steeple of his fingers and assumed a professorial manner. “Dodd-Frank, which established the CFPB, prohibits the bureau from collecting ‘personally identifiable financial information’ on consumers and prohibits it from regulating practicing attorneys. It looks like they have already violated attorney-client privilege by accessing document archives of thousands of bankruptcy cases.”

“Crap,” I said. “I didn’t vote for Brave New World. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”

“Probably a case for the mass violation of the Fourth Amendment, too, the right of the people to be safe in their papers and possessions and particularly the counsel of their lawyers.”

“You would take that position, Counselor,” said John-with, adjusting his bow tie.

Jim grimaced and did that thing with his eyebrows. “Cordray told the congressman that he needed to do it, and it was something he thought he ought to do. He got some push-back. The Members claimed his agency was operating beyond its legal authority, rife with conflicts of interest, and filled with mismanagement.”

I started to laugh as Brenna brought my card back, and I tipped 50%, just to set the terms of our arrangement- I tip and she gives me the extra bit on the pour. It is a sort of personal arrangement that only she, me and Richard Cordray know about.

“How on earth this this any different than anything else in this town? But I think I need to stop at the ATM.”

Jim scowled. “They are copying that, too. In fact, that was first.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Responsibility

I got a note from Japan this morning. The JG has landed, and his time in the Fleet has commenced. I am relieved that his travel by air on 9/11 and landing on Friday the Thirteenth passed uneventfully. I am now able to go back to worrying about other things.

The radio is briefing me on a clandestine CIA program to provide arms to the rebels. Small arms, they are careful to point out. They did not mention if these are the ones from the other clandestine CIA operation in Libya; you have to forgive me if I am a little uncomfortable with the cavalier way all this information is treated.

Since the Age of Snowden, it is not unusual to see things with advanced classification markers on the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast. It is quite disconcerting, but then there is a lot to be disconcerted about these days.

A pal out on the Front Range is watching the sheets of rain pour down, scouring the burn areas and flooding the plains below. He mentioned that his reading of the august Financial Times (no classified information there) suggested President Obama needed this to be his best week, if he were to ameliorate the damage of last week, which the worst of his term in office.

I would not say that the big speech on Tuesday convinced anyone about anything in particular, but in keeping with the way things work, he has at least succeeded in moving Syria policy disaster onto a slow track, and back into the capable hands of Secretary of State Kerry.

Considering that we have essentially out-sourced the foreign policy of the United States to a former KGB Colonel, I guess it is safe to change the subject to something else. I mean, we did Syria for almost two whole weeks, and it is about time to get back to dithering about the economy.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the President wants to push forward with economic policies that the White House believes will grow the middle class.

I am dubious about that. There is plenty of money in the system; Mr. Bernanke has been printing it up like crazy. The problem is that no one seems to want to do anything with it. Waiting out the Administration is going to make for some very slow news days over the next three years, but there are plenty of things to pivot about.

Although the White House would prefer to us to pivot back home with the President (why do I think of an exercise session with Richard Simmons? Sorry!) I wanted to share a little bit about the whole Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thing, just in case we have to pivot back in some other totally unexpected direction.

It is another of those really nice ideas that came up at the 2005 World Summit to address mass atrocities. It had been simmering through the international consciousness since the mass killings in Rwanda and the brutal ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

The United Nations mandate identifies to whom the R2P protocol applies, which is to say, nations first and regional and international communities second. On that principal, each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from the Four Big Ones: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means to help protect populations.

The R2P protocol specifies that “collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, be conducted through the Security Council on a case-by-case basis” and “in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The protocol was reaffirmed in 2006, and codified in a 2009 report issued by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Critics pointed out that the protocol was subjective, and undermined national sovereignty. The Secretary General embarked on some magical thinking, and explained that since it was the responsibility of the nation state to remedy the problems first, it actually strengthened the state’s sovereignty.

I dunno. Seems like circular thinking on his part, but that brings us around to Mr. Obama’s decision to intervene, and then not intervene in Syria. I thought this was really important a couple days ago, and I guess it is. The President’s justification is clear enough, but doesn’t appear to meet the requirements of the international agreement about mucking around in the affairs of other nations, and does not specifically address Weapons of Mass Destruction at all. A war crime is a war crime, after all, and there are plenty of them to go around, Syrian Government and Rebels alike.

Nor is there any provision for America to be the cop on the world beat, but as with everything this Administration does, we are off on another rabbit chase before anyone can really figure out what happened, or if what was asserted is really from the teleprompter or just off the cuff.

Two weeks was long enough for that, I guess, and now we are pivoting back to the economy or something. Or the Debt Ceiling. I thought we already did that, didn’t we?

I swear, trying to follow what these people are up to is positively dizzying. Could it be intentional, or are they really just this disorganized?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

R2P

Busy morning. I am texting back and forth with the JG who is at the Air Mobility counter at SEATAC, checked in, but still more than three hours from boarding the flight to Yokota, surrounded by enlisted Marines. He was briefly alarmed that there might be no beverage service on the charter flight. I told him it would be ok, and the way I normally got across the Pacific was vodka and a solid dose of melatonin.

“Bladder management,” I wrote. “And oblivion.”

Yesterday was highly emotional. His flight out of here was scheduled for 1845, so we spent the day looking at the clock. We went to the Club for lunch, but neither of us had much of an appetite. At around 1600 he said: “I think I am going to puke.”

I responded that I thought I was going to throw up as well.

Driving back from the airport, watching him stagger into the terminal with his four sea-bags, I listened to one of those 9/11 tear-jerker stories, and it had the intended effect. What a day.

To get my mind off things, I checked out what happened with the Million Muslim March, or the Million March for Freedom, or whatever it was. The turnout was famed intellectual Cornell West and 23 others, mostly 9/11 truthers, who also believe that space aliens were responsible for the 1st (but not second) Bush Administration.

Marchers were outnumbered by the media and the bikers, who apparently could not find the crowd, which was smaller than most family reunions at Haynes Point.

(The entire crowd at the Million March for Whatever. Photo AP)

I think most American Muslims were appalled at the timing, and I don’t blame them. I am a fierce defender of the First Amendment, though, and since it does not exclude making a complete fool of yourself in its exercise, I find it a marvelous thing.

I was considering a tale this morning about Right to Protect (R2P), another of those magical thinking concepts that has not been discussed here before. It is timely, since it is being pushed into the public consciousness in the context of the increasingly bizarre Syria intervention, or non-intervention, or Putin-for-Nobel-Peace-Prize initiative or whatever it is.

R2P fits in as a means to justify intervention just about anywhere, on just about any grounds.

I had not thought about it before- the first time I heard about it, I thought was one of the Droids from one of the Star Wars Prequels I have not seen.

It actually is an exciting new doctrine that apparently fell out of the United nations a little after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is in such trouble these days, what with the C02 increasing but the temperatures not cooperating.

The United Nations is the home for great ides, though, and R2P is another one. If you take this and add it to magical thinking, you get the notion that when a government of a society chooses not to protect its people – and starts to kill some of them to suppress a revolt – that the United Nations- or somebody- must act.

That is what the President was getting at about the Assad Regime’s use of chemical weapons on the children. It was not so much that the United States had the “option” of acting, but rather it has the “responsibility” to intervene and protect Syria’s people.

Conceptually, of course, I completely agree. But I missed the part where the world’s non-policeman (us) became the “international community.”

That is how I understood R2P, anyway, once I had it sorted out that it was not a Robot from Lucasfilms.

Actually, it has a lot in common with that, but let me get to that tomorrow, since today has quite got away from me.

I have to get going. Mr. Putin called, and he would like us to pick up his dry-cleaning.

More on all of that tomorrow.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Nine Eleven

(The way things used to be. Photo Wikipedia)

The usual suspects are pretty wound up this morning. We have been back and forth about the President’s Speech last night, the media coverage of it, the Million Muslim March that is supposed to happen later this afternoon on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the successful recall of the two Senators in Colorado who supported some relatively modest gun control measures.

I could give you the coverage of each one- I have point-by-point analysis on the three issues- but I won’t.

Suffice it to say, the Syrian Strike appears to have evaporated into a miasma of UN and Russian-controlled machinations. The President is out of the corner in which he had painted himself, and to that end, everything is fine.

The recall of the legislators in Colorado is surprising, and largely financed by about equal levels of out-of-town cash- a third of a million each from the NRA and Mayor Bloomberg. The margins of the elections were narrow, but seem to reflect dissatisfaction with the agreed “common sense” narrative. But of course we have talked about the real meaning of those words before.

The March scheduled for later this afternoon is expected not to number in the hundreds of thousands. Closer to a couple hundred people are supposed to participate, according to Metro Police estimates. The number of marchers is expected to be dwarfed by nearly 3,000 motorcycles, who intend to shadow the procession, revving their engines.

Let’s get this all out of the way. I support the First Amendment, and however bone-headed and disrespectful the timing of the demonstration may be, it is their right to peacefully express their views. Just as it is the right of the bikers to rev their engines.

But just thinking about the significance of this day is enough to make me sink into a reverie. My son is off for Asia, haze gray and underway at the same time the marchers will be protesting what they claim is the unconstitutional profiling of Muslim Americans.

A dozen years ago I was still uniform, and having a staff meeting on the sixth floor of the original headquarters building at Langley. We had been concerned all summer with the prospect of something bad happening. The long litany of outrages was still fresh then: Khobar Towers, USS Cole, the embassies in East Africa, Pan Am 103, all the way back to disco bombings in Germany and the mass murder of US Marines in Beirut.

I was talking to Marty and Rock in their little office when someone walked by in the passageway from Joan’s office and said that an airplane had hit the Word Trade Center.

So, there it was, the start of one of the worst days in our collective lives.

I had driven to Langley from the District early that morning. It was breathtakingly beautiful in the pre-dawn: the stars were bright, and the moon smiled down as I swung off the ramp from the 14th Street Bridge to cut across Pentagon North Parking.

I had the top down. It was a glorious morning to be alive, and there was nothing in the gentle wind to suggest that 2,977 fellow citizens and hopeful immigrants would not live to see lunchtime.

I have talked before about what happened as the vast bureaucracy became aware that we were under attack. I am not sure the whole story has been told yet, and my small part in it meant disappearing into a very deep hole until we were relatively confident, several weeks later, that the new normal had been established.

I don’t like it much. The bastards that did this took a lot away from us, and I am not certain we will ever get it back.

As the memorial ceremonies are held today in lower Manhattan, and at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA, I fall into a reverie.

I have been to all three sites now, each one replete with its poignant story.

Shanksville may be the one that chilled, inspired and saddened me the most, though it was the smallest in terms of the number of martyrs. I do not know why it affected me that way; maybe it is because the Trade Center was so thoroughly expunged by the time I got there, scoured down to the native bedrock, and the Pentagon was so resolutely and defiantly restored so effectively that you could not believe that it had happened at all.

The vast field, the tree line, and the wildflowers of that Pennsylvania field got me, but good.

I do not think I uttered a word on the drive from Shanksville to Arlington, nor for a long time afterwards. It was a day just as lovely as this one.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

(President and Mrs. Obama at Shanksville. Photo Politco.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Ad Hoc

It has been a wild week here in Washington as our elected fools return to determine the Fate of the West, or at least the fate of the Administration. It has been high drama throughout the legislative break as we have lurched from coalition to unilateral action by the Commander-in-Chief, to a sudden reversal to seek consultation with Congress on what may- or may not- be an act of war against Syria.

Surprises, it is said, are best reserved for birthday parties, not global diplomacy, but this has been an exercise in the ad hoc process as the new National Security Team settles into the traces. Susan Rice as National Security Advisor; Samantha Powers as UN Ambassador, and the redoubtable Secretary Kerry as SECSTATE.

I heard two bits of ad-hocery yesterday that were quite striking. There were actually three such moments through the day, but I missed the opening salvo from Secretary Kerry; his overarching and serene confidence in his mastery of policy, coupled with his delight at hearing whatever issues from his mouth led him to outline an impossible contingency in which the impending military action against Syria might be averted.

At Foggy Bottom, his career and political minders had to leap on that rhetorical grenade, saying it was just the specious spewing of impossibilities for which the former Senator was famous throughout his time in that august deliberative chamber. In sum, the impossibility was the demand that Mr. Assad turn over all his chemical weapons to international within the week.

Taken with the Secretary’s comment of the scope of the strike, to wit: “unbelievably small” (.e., “If you do not do what we say we will do something inconsequential!”) one would be hard pressed to take the Secretary seriously. Mr. Kerry obviously somewhat unfamiliar with actually being responsible for anything.

Of all things, the crafty Russians immediately stepped up to call his bluff.

“Why not?” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “Perhaps we can make that happen.”

Then the light-bulb began to come on. Maybe the rhetorical grenade had possibilities? I was driving over to the grocery store when I heard Hillary make a statement about the ultimatum that now appeared to provide a fire-exit from the policy disaster. She sounded assertive, confident, and authoritative. In fact, downright Presidential, though I am uncertain what formal role private citizen Clinton has in this matter of diplomacy.

She did not at all resemble the indecisive bureaucrat of the Benghazi debacle a year ago, but that, along with the other phony scandals has been driven off the public stage, along with the other major national issue, which was the Miley Cyrus twerking incident.

Listening to NPR through the afternoon, I felt the initiative to strip Mr. Assad of his chemical weapons gaining traction. Perhaps this was a way to avoid a disastrous defeat in the House, a means of kicking the can down the road, and an ad hoc exit from the perilous brinksmanship that could have cascaded war across the region.

I liked it. As you know, I have been supporting the President on this one, though not with much enthusiasm. I began turning the matter over in my mind as I walked to the Panzer. I had the satellite radio tuned to Fox, which I enjoy listening to while in motion. I was surprised to hear that Chris Wallace, renegade neo-con was permitted access to the President himself.

Then Chris Wallace grilled Mr. Obama, but I swear you could hear the relief in the President’s voice as he swatted away the barbs and implied that he and Mr. Putin had actually been working the matter at the G20 meeting in St. Petersburg.

True or not, I could tell that the President now has a fire exit from improvisation. Finally, a way out of this mess, a way to kick the can down the road, pretend the bellicose posturing had driven the Russians and Syrians into accepting something that costs the Kremlin nothing, and keeps Assad firmly in power.

Since I do not like either side in the conflict, and view the WMD as a continuing problem regardless of who has them, I will be interested in seeing if anyone actually gives anything up- but I wonder what Mr. Putin will ask for his payment in providing the exit?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303