Evening in America

The Continued Impact of 9/11 and al Qaeda’s Silent Attack on the U.S. Economy

by Michael J. Burwick

I remember right after September 11, 2001 seeing the “missing” leaflets posted all over New York City, covering block after block near the Armory. I remember the smoke hanging over New York each day that autumn into the approaching winter. It was our mini Auschwitz, the end of an era, the demarcation line between what we thought not possible and the knowledge that, on any given day, anything is possible.

Roughly a decade prior to that day, the U.S. won the cold war. We did so under the leadership of people like Ronald Reagan by bankrupting the Soviet Union and watching it collapse under its own weight. However, by September 11, 2001, we were vulnerable, not just to terrorism, but economically as well. The Internet Revolution was over and the Dot Com Bubble had burst.  The upside was that we elected a Republican President in 2000 amidst a relatively pro-business economic environment that favored low taxes, free market innovation, and private sector solutions to our economic troubles.

But September 11th did a number of things. In the short term, it plunged us into a recession. People stopped flying. Vacations were cancelled. Business didn’t get done. We went into a knee-jerk, bunker mentality, wondering what was coming next. It also led us to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and produced the Department of Homeland Security. A great deal of money was allocated to the CIA, the NSA, and to an alphabet soup of other agencies and departments under the banners of “never again” and “not on my watch.” Was this spending to protect the homeland a good thing? I think most Americans would agree that it was a necessary thing. It had the effect, however, of taking us from a surplus to a deficit, fueled in part by the collapsing technology sector.

On Capitol Hill, the years following the September 11th attacks were a time of horse trading. The Bush Administration needed every vote it could get for an array of agenda items that President Bush could not have foreseen when he was campaigning for the Presidency. As such, on top of all of the money spent on homeland security, national defense, and prosecuting the war on terror, earmarks ruled the day. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, eager to grab what they could for their districts, took whatever they could get in exchange for their votes. The deficit and the national debt ticked upward.

The economic vulnerability that existed before President Bush was sworn into his first term in office as a result of a changing economy was exploited by al Qaeda. The Islamists knew exactly what they were doing. After September 11th, out of self-preservation, we were forced to spend more money than we took in. Then self-interest on both sides of the aisle ratcheted the problem of deficit spending up even further.

And as a countermeasure to the post-9/11 economic downturn, the Bush Administration began to talk in earnest about an “ownership society.” The vision of Barney Frank, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others on the left who had long believed that minorities and the poor, in general, had been unfairly prevented from purchasing homes, dovetailed with the desire of those on the right to prop up a sagging economy by encouraging home ownership. Home prices soared as lenders cooked up novel ways to get families into homes they could ill afford. Franklin Raines, Angelo Mozilo, and others made fortunes concocting newfangled subprime mortgage instruments, and those on Wall Street securitized these mortgages and made their fortunes buying and selling collateralized mortgage-backed securities. The resulting CMBS market was a powerful force in pumping up our economy over the course of the 2000‘s.

Ultimately, however, nonconforming mortgages began to reset. Homeowners couldn’t meet their obligations to lenders and the banking crisis came to a head beneath reams of bad paper. The stock market lost nearly half its value. Unemployment increased. Scoundrels like Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford emerged amid plummeting capital markets, further eroding investor confidence. Ultimately this economic upheaval meshed with the tremendous anger that had been building against the Bush Administration, propelling the most liberal Senator in the United States Senate, a freshman to boot, into the White House.

Once inaugurated, President Obama and his liberal cohorts on Capitol Hill, believing they had a mandate, uncorked bottle after bottle of expensive big government programs, new taxes and other wealth redistribution schemes, bottles which had been collecting dust in the Progressive Caucus Wine Cellar for decades. Government had become the savior, private industry the enemy.

We won the cold war not with guns and bullets, but by building up our nuclear arsenals and adopting no-nonsense policies to Soviet aggression, forcing the Russians to spend so much money that they could no longer maintain their status as a superpower. Al Qaeda changed our way of life by sucker punching us in a way that caused us to stop thinking rationally about our economy. The Islamists were also successful in dividing us. Our President, whom we all rallied around as he stood atop the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, became the face of evil for approximately half our nation.

Much damage has been done and we are now in significant danger. Our economy has been irreparably harmed. The indices on Wall Street do not accurately reflect the pain being felt on Main Street. We are less safe from terrorism than at any time since the 9/11 attacks. The Attorney General is incompetent, and the Secretary of Homeland Security is inept. The U.S., under the Obama Administration and the misguided, corrupt and impotent U.N. have sat idly by while Iran has developed increasing nuclear capability. A conflagration with Israel is only a matter of time.

We are in debt up to our eyeballs.  Our currency is in danger, as is our credit rating. As a result of the chain of events that began for us on September 11, 2001, it now feels much like it must have felt in the Soviet Union before its fall.

Sometimes in my mind, I still smell the smoke of the World Trade Center and the people who died there. I wonder if America is, in a very real way, still burning.

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Michael J. Burwick is a former congressional lawyer and radio talk show host. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and is currently the Chairman of Boston Advisory Group.

First time filmmaker Kevin Gonzalez set out to shed light on the kind of story that is not told often enough, which is that about a war hero. Gonzalez wrote, Produced, and directed this film. He served a four-year enlistment in the U. S. Marine Corps, and then graduated from the University of Southern California.

Pappy Boyington Field focuses on the effort to rename the airfield in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho after the highly decorated World War II fighter pilot Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. Born in Coeur d’Alene, Pappy joined the ROTC at the University of Washington in 1930 and eventually graduated with a B.S. in aeronautical engineering. During World War II, he was shot down and spent twenty months in a Japanese prison camp (i.e. he was a “guest of the emperor”). He was awarded both the Medal of Honor as well as the Navy Cross.

The film chronicles the process of naming the airfield after Pappy and also gives us a lot of biographical information via stories of people who knew him. There are also appearances from former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman, host of War Stories Oliver North, Pappy’s son Greg Boyington Jr., as well as Robert Conrad who played Pappy in the television series Baa, Baa Black Sheep.

We learn a lot about Pappy, the picture painted shows us both the good and not so good things about the man. The film reminds us that even larger than life war heroes are not without flaws. We are all human, but those like Pappy went above and beyond to fight for our freedom. The least we could do is memorialize them in some way.

Local politicians in Coeur d’Alene opposed the efforts to name the airfield after Pappy. Their reasons were absurd with excuses such as the fear of a “safety threat” following the renaming. Some people did not think that Pappy was a good role model and highlighted his history as a drinker and womanizer. No one denies his flaws, but that cannot take away the sacrifices he has made to our country in time of need. Renaming the airport only focuses on his tours of duty, not his personal life.

Eventually naming Pappy Boyington Field became a reality, and a ceremony was held in Pappy’s honor. Kevin Gonzalez’s film is a grassroots project to get the word out about Pappy’s story as well as the fight to get Pappy’s home town airfield named after him. It is a tribute to those who really care about supporting our troops and their legacy after they are gone.

While the story remains inspirational, we should also not forget the effort from those independent filmmakers outside of Hollywood who have the courage to take on such projects. Film’s like this set a good example that hopefully grows into a larger trend in filmmaking in the future.

For more information, please visit pappyboyingtonfield.com

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Author’s note: Director Kevin Gonzalez will be hosting a special screening event at 7:00pm on Thursday, March 25th, at The Flicks Theater in downtown Boise, Idaho.

Cindy Sheehan Protests in front of Dick Cheney’s house. Seems like old times.

With Cindy Sheehan’s personification of Satan, Hitler, (insert your tyrant du jour’s name here), out of office; perhaps we thought she’d just go away.

Not only is she back, but she’s loonier than ever. Sheehan led another war protest today to avenge her son’s death. This time in front of Dick Cheney’s home in Northern Virginia.

This would seem odd, because although she holds Bush and Cheney responsible for the war, “Bush lied, her son died,” after all, and she already protested at Bush’s house; doesn’t she know that a new guy is in charge?

The AP says, “They were protesting the use of unmanned drone aircraft to attack al-Qaeda and Taliban targets.”

OK, not only is she aiming her ire at the wrong person, this should be something she finds more agreeable. The jets are unmanned, after all.

But she says using drones is “cowardly” and “immoral.”

You can’t win with this woman.

She led a group of 70 people to protest near the CIA compound Saturday. Half of them marched to Cheney’s nearby street and stayed for 20 minutes. Police kept them from going down his street.

The Fallujah Massacre

This from Fox News:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

So American Navy SEALs are facing a court martial for giving this murderous bastard bloody lip? This is justice? This is the war on terror?

Realizing that any criminal proceedings to move forward would take place on the same 13 by 2 mile island where the single biggest act of war against our nation was ever committed, New Yorkers feel strongly that such enemy combatants, taken directly off the battlefields, should never be afforded Miranda and other rights associated with being citizens of the United States.

READ THE REST OF IT HERE!

Not only today, but everyday, thank everyone who has served when you see them. Below are some youtube commercials from corporations and individuals that say thanks.

Click here to find a full Veterans Day headquarters from military.com. From everything to hiring a veteran to reading the history of Veterans Day, military.com has it covered.

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Obama’s quandary is that he is a liberal Democrat who opposes most military engagements. Obama opposed the Iraq War from the beginning, and ran for President as the Democrats’ antiwar candidate, pledging to take U.S. soldiers out of Iraq soon. Making things more difficult, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month to Obama in a transparent effort to put pressure on him to avoid military action in situations like this. Obama did suggest when running for President that he would transfer US troops from Iraq to Pakistan to hunt down al Qaeda, but no one took him seriously.

The war appears to be winnable. This is different than engaging militarily with North Korea or Iran which have nuclear programs. The Taliban is already outnumbered 12-1 by international troops and Afghan security forces. There are currently over 100,000 international troops stationed there, of which 68,000 are Americans and 200,000 Afghan soldiers. McChrystal’s plan is to have the additional forces focus on protecting civilians and depriving the Taliban of popular support. Soldiers will work on befriending tribal leaders in each village, and then communicate through them to their friends and relatives in other villages and across enemy lines. Fighting the Taliban is different than fighting a traditional enemy because it is not easily identifiable; its allies may at any given time include tribes it was formerly fighting against, as loyalties ebb and flow and new alliances are made. It is not uncommon for brothers to be on opposing sides, but if a network is set up to take advantage of these kinds of family connections, agreements can be worked out among local tribes to stop Taliban forces from attacking them. American forces are already working with Afghan forces to bring insurgents over to their side with offers of amnesty, cash and jobs. Over 8,000 insurgents so far have taken advantage of it.

Some experts believe even more troops are necessary. Retired Army Col. Peter Mansoor, who helped oversee the “surge” of troops into Iraq in 2007-2008, thinks a total of 600,000 security personnel is necessary in Afghanistan in order to provide a ratio of one for every 50 people. Based on hindsight in Vietnam and Iraq, it might be safer to go with the higher number of soldiers.

It is true that the U.S. has a checkered history of supporting various sides in Afghanistan, but this time is different, with more compelling circumstances due to the additional heightened threat al Qaeda poses. In the late 1970’s, the U.S. supported various Afghan armed opposition groups known as the Mujahideen against the communist-controlled government. The Mujahideen subscribed to radical Islamic ideologies, and recruited Muslims from other countries to assist them, including al Qaeda members. When the Soviet Union eventually pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, the Mujahideen took power.

The Mujahideen were unable to consolidate power, and by the mid 1990’s, Afghanistan was back in chaos, with corrupt, lawless warring tribes running rampant across the country. The U.S. supported the Taliban in a takeover in 1996, hoping that a top-down militaristic government would provide some order. The Taliban is composed primarily of radical Sunni Muslims from the Pashtun tribe. By 1997 it was clear the Taliban was no better than the warlords; adopting many of their tactics, instituting Sharia law, and targeting other ethnic groups. Afghanistan remains under Taliban leadership today, through elections fraught with corruption. The Taliban’s failure to control the warring tribes is providing a haven for al Qaeda to operate and expand its operations.

The left is trying to make comparisons to Vietnam, in order to demoralize the American public and turn public support against a military presence in Afghanistan. This kind of comparison belittles the thousands of American soldiers who lost their lives in Vietnam. 831 deaths is not anywhere near the same league as 58,000 deaths. Criticism of the financial cost is valid, but financial cost has never been a major concern to those on the left.

It is peculiar why Obama, rated the most liberal Senator in the entire U.S. Senate in 2007 by National Journal, is hesitating on deciding whether to send over additional U.S. soldiers. Ramping up our military presence there goes against his core liberal philosophy and the wishes of his supporters in the Democrat Party. Isn’t Obama a principled liberal? Perhaps Obama is hesitating because he realizes that contrary to what his left wing philosophy teaches, Afghanistan is winnable, without losing massive American lives, and he would rather be remembered as the president who won in Afghanistan rather than the president who gave up and deserted it. Especially if leaving Afghanistan results in another horrendous American tragedy from an empowered al Qaeda.

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One of these rare figures is the late Col. John Boyd.

Described in Publisher’s Weekly review of his biography, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram,

John Boyd (1927-1997) was a brilliant and blazingly eccentric person. He was a crackerjack jet fighter pilot, a visionary scholar and an innovative military strategist. Among other things, Boyd wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat, was primarily responsible for designing the F-15 and the F-16 jet fighters, was a leading voice in the post-Vietnam War military reform movement and shaped the smashingly successful U.S. military strategy in the Persian Gulf War. His writings and theories on military strategy remain influential today, particularly his concept of the “OODA (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) Loop,” which all the military services — and many business strategists — use to this day. Boyd also was a brash, combative, iconoclastic man, not above insulting his superiors at the Pentagon (both military and civilian); he made enemies (and fiercely loyal acolytes) everywhere he went.

Coram’s publisher describes as follows:

John Boyd was the greatest fighter pilot in American history. From the proving ground of the Korean War, he went on to win renown as the instructor who defeated — in less than forty seconds — every pilot who took him on. But what made Boyd a man for the ages was what happened after he left the cockpit. Boyd made a career of challenging the intractable Pentagon bureaucracy, making enemies and a few devoted disciples who would become known as “The Acolytes.” Boyd transformed the way military aircraft-in particular the F-15 and F-16-were designed with his revolutionary “Energy-Maneuverability Theory,” fighting the Air Force’s entrenched ideas every step of the way. He then dedicated lonely years to a radical theory of conflict that at the time was mostly ignored, but now is acclaimed as the most influential thinking about conflict since Sun Tzu.

A man of daring, ferocious passion, and remarkable stubbornness, John Boyd was that most American of heroes—a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune, but for his country. And in BOYD, Robert Coram finally tells his incredible story. Until now, John Boyd has been the great secret hero of the American military. No longer.

Well, sure, F-16’s are one thing.  But what the heck’s an OODA loop?

From the Wikipedia:

The OODA loop (for observe, orient, decide, and act) is a concept originally applied to the combat operations process.

Diagram of a decision cycle known as the Boyd cycle, or the OODA loop.

It has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity … that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

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Boyd’s diagram shows that all decisions are based on observations of the evolving situation tempered with implicit filtering of the problem being addressed. These observations are the raw information on which decisions and actions are based. The observed information must be processed to orient it for further making a decision. In notes from his talk “Organic Design for Command and Control”, Boyd said,

“The second O, orientation – as the repository of our genetic heritage, cultural tradition, and previous experiences – is the most important part of the O-O-D-A loop since it shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act.”

As stated by Boyd and shown in the “Orient” box, there is much filtering of the information through our culture, genetics, ability to analyze and synthesize, and previous experience. ***

In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries–or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary’s Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. … Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries–since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.

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It was distilled, said Col. Boyd, from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics…

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The approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor.

Although the Air Force’s FX proponents remained hostile to the concept because they perceived it as a threat to the F-15 program, the ADF concept … gained civilian political support under the reform-minded Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard.  ***

In the late 1960s Boyd gathered around him a group of like-minded innovators that became known as the “Lightweight Fighter Mafia.” ***

Over 4,400 F-16s have been sold to 25 foreign air forces.

EACH F-16 Fighting Falcon costs less than $20 million (in 1998 dollars).

And the F-16’s successor, the magnificent F-22A Raptor?

$250 million.  Each (including development costs).

Yes, that’s right.  Ten Raptors cost about as much as the entire Project Mercury manned space program.

Col. Boyd is long gone to the great Dogfight in the Sky (where he very likely is shooting down Lucifer’s Aces — presumably in 40 seconds or less).

$250 million!  Could, just a remote possibility, the Pentagon be back to its old tricks?

John, come back.  Secretary Gates needs you!

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But at least we have his legacy and not only with the F-16.

Boyd was called back to help develop the strategy for Desert Storm and is credited with influencing its powerful “Left Hook.”

And today: his ideas about of maneuverability, rather than musclebound power, and his OODA Loop, especially the importance of Orientation, that of our adversaries, and that of ourselves are developing widening circles of influence.

And Parcbench’s readers — while enjoying its savvy effort to get inside the HuffPo’s OODA Loop — can enjoy the treat of reading Boyd’s writings on such fundamental issues as winning and losing, destruction and creation, and other elemental aspects of life, here.

And even of watching a few tapes of Col. Boyd presenting, here.

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Helloooo MoveOn!

We are inside your OODA Loop, pwning your Orientation.

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Ralph Benko, who takes his OODA Loops for breakfast with a splash of almond milk, is a principal of Capital City Partners, of Washington DC. He is the author of The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World (The Websters’ Press, 2008), which shows how policy and advocacy groups — and bloodless-coup- minded citizens! — can use the Web powerfully.  It is available as a free eBook from www.thewebstersdictionary.com and perfect bound on actual paper from Amazon.com and finer bookstores everywhere.

Here is some of the newer news I thought I would share with you from Afghanistan.  While it may be a little off from what you would be expecting in military news from Afghanistan, it is part of the daily grind they face in order to keep the fight over there.  For you 0311 and 11b types out there, this article is about POGs.

Carry on