The world is a dangerous place, and today that danger went up a notch.  Our erstwhile allies, the Russians, have decided to lease a powerful Akula / Project 971 nuclear powered attack submarine to India for an extended period of time.

India has been working steadily towards a home grown (and at some point for sale on the export market) nuclear submarine.  A significant part of establishing the INS as a credible submarine force is developing the operational doctrine that goes with a nuclear boat.

The Russians have agreed to lease for 10 years attack submarine K-152 known as the Nerpa.  When re-crewed for the INS, it will be know as the INS Chakra.  This 10 year lease indicates that India is not just going to train and experiment with this powerful platform, but will likely deploy it on operational patrols.  The lessons learned operating this sophisticated machine will rapidly boost the INS’s proficiency for the day when their own subs come on line.

Akula submarines are armed with four torpedo tubes that can fire Russian type 53 torpedoes or SS-N-15 Starfish missile, with an additional 4 tubes that can launch Russian type 65 torpedoes or SS-N-16 Stallion missiles.  The Nerpa likely has an additional 6 “static” tubes attached to the hull, but it is unclear if these will be removed prior to it’s delivery to India.

Akula submarines are among the more quiet of the Russian navy, and could possibly evade some less sophisticated detection systems.  We assume the US Navy is more than up to the task of finding Akula’s anywhere they sail, but for India’s prime enemy, Pakistan, an Akula is possibly too stealthy for them to detect.

While the chances of India threatening the US are remote, this is a clear sign of an escalating arms race in south Asia, which is being driven by the Iranian weapons programs.  The lease and likely operational deployment of the Nerpa / Chakra is a clear threat to Pakistan, and will likely prompt further anti-submarine technology purchases by Islamabad.

…but I’m only two steps removed from accused Russian spy Anna Chapman on LinkedIn. Maybe I should see what my connectivity to Kevin Bacon is.  ..bruce w..

This is a perfect example of how then nanny state that is America sees itself and its people.

Firstly, anyone who is waiting for the federal or state government to save them in this situation would be well served to just go dig their grave. The government may get around to helping you eventually. But the first line of defense would always be you, your family, your friends and your neighbors.

If you think help will arrive in 72 hours, guess again. Using Katrina and the Haitian earthquake as examples, don’t expect much to happen until at least one week or more after the attack.

The second part of this is even more insane. Your town just got nuked, but you and your family are not severely impacted. Are you going to hang out there, where you know there is radiation or are you going to load everyone and the dog into the SUV and head for some place less deadly?

I strongly encourage the DHS to come up with a more realistic plan, and the American public to consider self-reliance.

One of my favorite Billy Joel songs for years has been “Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway)” because of its science-fictiony flavor. I’ve wondered at times if it was part of John Carpenter’s inspiration for “Escape from New York“, particularly since he says he wrote the first draft of the screenplay in the same year (1976) that “Miami 2017″ was released.

Anyway, the song came up on rotation on my iPhone while I was reviewing documents this morning, so I popped over to YouTube to see if there was a music video for it (original or fan-made). What I found was footage from a concert that Billy Joel gave (out in Brooklyn, I assume) post-9/11, intermixed with 9/11 footage. It hit me pretty hard, both because of the re-interpretation of the song and the footage itself. Sandra and I lived in DC from 1999 to 2005; on 9/11/01, we had just moved into a house about 5 miles due north of the Pentagon. We dealt not just with one (and almost a second) terrorist attack on DC, we dealt with the aftermath within DC for months and years. I have a son who has served in Iraq and a nephew who has served in Afghanistan. I understand the reasons why they were there, and why one or both may end up going back. I’m afraid a lot of folks don’t or have forgotten.  ..bruce w..

Tonight in an address to the nation from the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, the President finally disclosed his long suffering decision on General McChrystal’s troop surge for Afghanistan. The theatrics surrounding this decision have at times bordered on comical, and at long last the president has committed to supplying most of the forces for the “Medium Risk” approach requested by the commanders in the field.

The plan is to bring 30,000 or so additional forces into Afghanistan in the next 5 months. This is 75% of the amount requested by the generals. In an October 13th article in the Washington Post; the Pentagon with the Obama administration’s blessings, is reported to have staged over 13,000 non front-line forces to Afghanistan beginning this past summer, essentially hiding the size of the surge. Largely this has been done to pacify his loony left supporters.

The core of the surge will likely be 2 battalions of combat forces, one battalion each of Marines and Army. Expect the Marines to be given the dirty work in around around the southern city of Kandahar and Helmand provence, and the Army to take the long hard grind of securing the eastern frontier and stemming the flow of men and weapons in from Pakistan’s western tribal areas.

While the public decision and announcement has been carefully orchestrated to help channel the public reaction (especially on the left), the preparations for the surge have been underway since April of 2009. The above cited 13,000 troops perform support, administration and maintenance tasks for combat forces. This includes combat and civil engineering units, medical and hospital personnel, intelligence specialists and military police and security units. In other words, the support infrastructure has been slowly put in place during 2009, with the final announcement of 30,000 or so combat forces being the finishing touch.

Reports in the press dutifully remark at the “dramatic pace” of the deployment. This is pure political drama, as the preparations have been in place for some time. In fact, most of the units being deployed have known for several months that they were headed for Afghanistan, and have been undergoing intensive training at locations such as Fort Irwin and Camp Pendleton in California. Coupled with this surge of US combat forces, there will be increased commitments from NATO, and not just from the non-fighting countries, but from the hard warriors of the UK, Canada and Poland.

In reality the timing of the surge is as much about the calendar as it is about politics. Since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2001, the Taliban tend to wind down operations during the fall and winter months. It is simply too cold and hostile and environment to conduct other than background insurgent operations at a low level, such as IEDs and vehicle bombing of civilian areas. This seasonal slowdown provides a natural and handy window to transport and acclimate units into the harsh, high altitude conditions of the country. look for the surge combat forces to be in Afghanistan not later than late March, in time to train in-country in the cold, thin air. Once acclimatized, they will be forward based to the Afghan eastern and southern frontier for combat operations starting in the spring.

Even with the increased force levels, the President is in a very difficult situation. The Taliban and their imported Arab jihad goons know that in a square fight with US units, they are instant martyrs. Rather than facing them openly in the field of battle, the Taliban will continue to fight an insurgent strategy. Their plan is to wear down the Americans through attrition both kinetic and political. By drawing them into protracted battles in village areas (where they are more likely to find friendly locals) they increase the chances of causing the US to use their superior firepower in a situation where there are mass civilian casualties. Make no mistake, the Taliban’s desired end game looks like a replay of the fall of Saigon.

Without a change in the rules of engagement, and a willingness to hunt and kill the Taliban, house to house if needed, the US is in a precarious position. With Pakistan unable to stop the flow of arms and men into the eastern Afghan provinces, the Taliban are willing to fight down to the last Saudi martyr.

Last but certainly not least is the thorny issue of the declared summer of 2011 withdrawal date. As with the delay on announcing the surge (which was just window dressing), this was largely to provide political cover for the president. In conversations with military leaders, that date will arrive and victory will be declared, even if they are still busy stomping the daylights out of the Taliban. As one clever military officer relayed “There was no promise on the rate of the draw down, just the start date”.

To avoid the trap and seize the initiate, this rookie President, whose political base won’t let him embrace the enemy must allow his generals to surprise the enemy starting in the next few months. They must take the fight to them with overwhelming numbers and “over the top” violence, in spite of the uproar it will cause among the so called “Arab street” and the democratic fringe. Superior strength and the demonstrated ability to use it will be respected., weak dithering and worrying over collateral damage will quickly invite defeat.

By stepping up and committing to the surge, President Obama has taken ownership of this war. Win or lose, he has reluctantly, at long last, acted as commander and chief.

I haven’t written much about ‘Climategate’ because so many others are doing such a great job (for example, see here, here, and here). But this video (hat tip to Ace of Spades) pretty much sums things up (and with a catchy tune, too!).  ..bruce w..

Matt Welch over at Reason reminds us of a critical historical event that, curiously, we don’t celebrate:

November 1989 was the most liberating month of arguably the most liberating year in human history, yet two decades later the country that led the Cold War coalition against communism seems less interested than ever in commemorating, let alone processing the lessons from, the collapse of its longtime foe. At a time that fairly cries out for historical perspective about the follies of central planning, Americans are ignoring the fundamental conflict of the postwar world, and instead leapfrogging back to what Steve Forbes describes in this issue as the “Jurassic Park statism” of the 1930s (see “?‘The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs,’?” page 42). There have been more Hollywood hagiographies of the revolutionary communist Che Guevara in the last five years than there have been studio pictures in the last two decades about the revolutionary anti-communists who dramatically toppled totalitarians from Tallin to Prague (see Tim Cavanaugh’s “Hollywood Comrades,” page 62). And what little general-nonfiction interest there is in the superpower struggle, as Michael C. Moynihan details on page 48 (“The Cold War Never Ended”), remains stuck in the same Reagan vs. Gorby frame that made the 1980s so intellectually shallow the first time around.

Please read the whole thing.  ..bruce w..

Springtime in New Zealand

ITEM: I reported earlier one possible end-run by the Senate to pass the increasingly unpopular “public option” in healthcare reform.  Here’s another one:

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is weighing a plan to bring the final health care bill to the floor without a public option — making it much easier to get the 60 votes needed to prevent a Republican filibuster — and then adding the provision later as an amendment.

The public option amendment would be there waiting, but the 60-vote test would technically be on a bill without the government plan. Then moderate Democrats could drop out for the vote on the public option, which requires just 51 votes for passage.

“It’s brilliant,” said a top Senate Republican aide. “It gets you your votes on cloture for a package that does not include a public option.”

Yeah, brilliant. I think the Democrats are seriously underestimating the growing public backlash over healthcare reform; a trick such as this will just make things worse.

ITEM: Speaking of backlash, the Anchoress has a thoughtful and spot-on analysis of the arrogance that seems to be driving the Obama Administration (and, I might add, the Democratic leadership in Congress):

The American mind is a duality of sorts. A country founded by displaced nobles and built by the strongest and most resourceful commoners from around the globe, America’s can-do attitude is one that doesn’t mind looking out for the little guy, as long as his own share is a fair one, and his options are open. The American mind is constantly dreaming; even her most newly-arrived immigrants dream, because until very recently all dreams were pronounced “welcome,” and the greatest restrictions were the ones you put upon yourself, or allowed others to put upon you. The dreaming made us exceptional; the dreams made us indispensable.

But does Obama understand those dreams? If he does not, then in truth he does not understand the people he undertook to govern. He appears to have decided that “governing” could be accomplished with an endless campaign, meant to entertain a nation enthralled with hucksterism and side-shows; that notion betrays, in meaningful measure, a disdain for the people who placed their trust in him, with their vote.

You really need to read the whole thing.

ITEM: Meanwhile, the Onion assures us that under Obamacare, seniors would have a right to choose how they are killed:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama held a nationally televised address Tuesday to “clarify any misunderstandings” about his health care proposal, assuring Americans that under the new bill senior citizens—and not the federal government—will have the right to choose how they are executed.

“Let me dispel these ridiculous rumors once and for all and set the record straight: Under my plan, seniors are going to be killed the way they want to be killed, end of story,” said the president, who acknowledged that “wiping out” the nation’s elderly population has always been his No. 1 priority. “If your grandmother would rather be euthanized in the privacy of her own home than be gutted and hanged on a high school soccer field, she is entitled to that right.”

“Once again, let me be perfectly clear,” Obama continued. “Seniors, rest easy knowing that I will never, under any circumstance, sign a bill that doesn’t give you the option of being murdered by my administration in a manner of your choosing. I promise you that.”

ITEM: Because of Obama’s refusal to see the Dalai Lama, human rights groups are now questioning his commitment to, well, human rights:

Human rights groups are beginning to question President Obama’s commitment to their issue as the administration engages authoritarian regimes, retains the option of sending terrorist suspects abroad to places where they might be tortured and puts off a presidential meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Mr. Obama’s decision to wait until after he visits China in November to meet with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists – who was on Capitol Hill Tuesday receiving an award – comes after a series of decisions that have underlined a classic tension in U.S. foreign policy between the head and the heart.

I would think that Obama’s warming up to Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, and other countries would have given them a clue. Nothing to see here. Move along.

ITEM: Remember back in 2006 how Nancy Pelosi said that the House would work five days a week now that the Democrats were back in control?

After taking control of the House in 2006 — and again when President Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) boasted that lawmakers would work four or five days a week to bring change to America.

But midway through Obama’s first year in office, Hoyer’s House has settled into a more leisurely routine. Members usually arrive for the first vote of the week as the sun sets on Tuesdays, and they’re usually headed back home before it goes down again on Thursdays.

Since the House returned for its fall session on Sept. 8, it has stuck around to vote on a Friday just once: to approve a 5.8 percent increase in Congress’s own budget.

A Democratic leadership aide vehemently defended the schedule, saying members shouldn’t be kept in Washington for four or five days when work can be completed in fewer.

On the other hand, given the track record of the House to date, I’m happy to have them gone as much as possible. Primum non nocere and all that.  ..bruce w..

Nothing to see here. Move along.

. . . and things are already getting interesting.

ITEM: Obama throws the Dalai Lama and the entire country of Tibet under the bus (emphasis mine):

In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama’s summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been “drop-in” visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’s highest civilian award.

There were rumblings about this some weeks back, but I couldn’t track down a firm source and so didn’t post about it. I swear, Jimmy Carter — at least, the 1970s version — is looking better by the minute.

ITEM: You know how Obama is going to pay for Obamacare by combating waste and fraud in the Medicare program? It looks as though he may be throwing Granny under the bus after all:

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The nation’s nursing homes are perilously close to laying off workers, cutting services — possibly even closing — because of a perfect storm wallop from the recession and deep federal and state government spending cuts, industry experts say.

A Medicare rate adjustment that cuts an estimated $16 billion in nursing home funding over the next 10 years was enacted at week’s end by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — on top of state-level cuts or flat-funding that already had the industry reeling.

And Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part of health care reform.

Add it all up, and the nursing home industry is headed for a crisis, industry officials say.

Move along folks, no rationing or cutting of services here.

ITEM: Meanwhile, if Obama is serious about cutting waste and fraud, maybe he should start with the Pentagon:

The agency, which last year was responsible for ensuring that taxpayers got good value for more than a half-trillion dollars in defense contracts, revised audits to curry favor with contractors, promoted a supervisor responsible for such revisions to a top position and rushed through other audits out of fear that the work would be outsourced if employees took too much time, the GAO said.

“Unbelievable problems at Def Contrctng Agncy [sic],” Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, wrote on her Twitter account just before a recent hearing on the report. “Top of my head is about to pop off.”

“I read a summary of the GAO report last night and quite frankly got sick,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, adding that he would not use all his allotted time for questions because he was “a little bit too upset to go where I really want to go.”

Oh, wait — this is the organization that was supposed to be preventing waste and fraud.  At least this seems to be something that both parties can agree upon.

ITEM: The TARP Inspector General, Neil Barofski, issued a report saying that US TreasSec Henry Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke were less than forthcoming during the bailout last year:

BFederal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. misled the public about the financial weakness of Bank of America and other early recipients of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout, creating “unrealistic expectations” about the companies and damaging the program’s credibility, according to a report by the program’s independent watchdog.

Not exactly earth-shaking news, but something to keep in mind as the Obama Administration tries to assure us that their economic strategy is sound and working well. To quote from Raiders of the Lost Ark: “We have top men working on it. Top men.”

ITEM: On the other hand, misleading the public about the soundness of these institutions may have been just the right thing to do, if I read the always-excellent Robert Samuelson correctly:

Something analogous happened over the past year. Scholars will debate which interventions — the Federal Reserve propping up a failing credit system, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, Obama’s “stimulus” plan and bank “stress test” — counted most. Regardless, they all aimed to reassure people that the free fall would stop and thereby curb the fear perpetuating the free fall. Confidence had to be restored so the economy’s normal recovery mechanisms could operate. This seems to have happened. By last month, the consumer confidence index had rebounded to 53.1. Housing prices had stopped falling. By the Case-Shiller index, they’ve increased for three months.

Read the whole thing — it’s not an apology for the Administration but rather an analysis of just how close we may have come to a full-blown economic depression.

ITEM: Still, there are plenty of jobs available — they just require skills different from those held by the folks who have been laid off:

It’s become especially hard to find accountants, health care workers, software sales representatives, actuaries, data analysts, physical therapists and electrical engineers, labor analysts say. And employers that demand highly specialized training — like biotech firms that need plant scientists or energy companies that need geotechnical engineers to build offshore platforms — struggle even more to fill jobs.

The trend has been intensified by the speed of the job market decline, Koropeckyj said. The nation has lost a net 7.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Yet it can take a year or more for a laid-off worker to gain the training and education to switch industries. That means health care jobs are going unfilled even as laid-off workers in the auto, construction or financial services industries seek work.

“So we have this army of the unemployed” without the necessary skills, Koropeckyj said.

This is a constant issue in the modern economy, as some sectors dwindle and others continue to expand. But it’s a lot harder to deal with as unemployment approaches 10%.  Happy days are here again!  ..bruce w..

I keep coming back to this poster.

From Gaius over at Blue Crab Boulevard:

When George Bush was in office, Gadhafi surrendered his weapons programs. When Obama comes to power, he feels free to come to New York and lecture. That should tell you a lot about what the world thinks of Barack Obama.

In my opinion, Pres. Obama is making the world a far more dangerous place, not a safer one.  ..bruce w..