Been on Vacation

El Jefe has been in the provinces, specifically Seaside, Florida, far away from computers, and seldom bothering with newspapers. Have been eating and drinking too much, getting sunburned and doing some reading (Telford Taylor's Munich: The Price of Peace) and several crime novels.

Back in the World today, and the papers have all kinds of news, most of it bad. I should have stayed in Florida! I will be back to speed commenting, soon enough.

This morning, listening to Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D-Major, feeing virtuous but hungry for passing on the doughnut at Starbucks, and trying to find the top of my desk. It's here someplace, I'm certain.

America's Broke, So How About Some Cars and Gov't. Health Care?

US revenues are down $138 billion (about 34 percent) from April a year ago, reports USA Today.

The UK Daily Telegraph reports that China has expressed concern about recent purchases by the Treasury of US bonds. The story, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, reports that the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, Mr. Richard Fisher, was questioned repeatedly by Chinese officials about the US government's intentions to "'. . .monetise the actions of our legislature'" -- essentially, whether it was going to just print money.

Mr. Fisher is, according to Mr. Evans-Pritchard's article, "running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the 'very big hole' in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities" to the tune of $99 trillion.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers are going to take over GM (about 69 percent of it, anyway) which is very nearly bankrupt.

When do we get Obama care for everybody? You know that's coming, right? If China doesn't pay for that, you will. . . What utter good sense. The treasury's broke, the lenders are balking, and Obama wants health care "reform" and he's putting the government deeper into the auto business.

Freedom Then, and Now

Here's something to think on:

Until August 1914, a sensible law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. . .

* * *

Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale. . .or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. . .Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.

(A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, (Ed. Sir. George Clark, Oxford Univ. Press, paperback, 1992) at 1.

Now, just who lives, or lived, in what the Founders of our republic might have called a free country? Pre-1914 Britons in a limited monarchy where relatively few people could vote; or modern Americans in our 2009 land of universal suffrage, civil rights for every hyphen-group imagined or imaginable, global warming legislation, border controls, passports, v-chips, the internet, drinking age regulations, prolix statutes and regulations on jaywalking, the layout of parking lots, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the FBI, CIA and the IRS?

Food for thought.

Memorial Day, 2009

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.

Inscription, British War Memorial, Kohima, India. (attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds, Times Literary Supplement [London], 4 July 1918).

For a moment, pause in your enjoyment of a day off of work, spent with your families, and remember our soldiers, sailors and aviators, serving, struggle and carrying the flag for us, in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the world. Particularly keep their families in your thoughts and prayers. Remember the wounded who are reminded of their service to us daily. Never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice; who gave all their tomorrows, for all our todays.

God be with them, with you, and with our country, today and every day.

Watch Obama TV, Keep Your Head Down. . .

As if the regular TV media were not enough, Obama's now got his own Ministry of Propaganda -- Obama TV, complete with its own logo.

Meanwhile, more and more people are afraid to speak up when they disagree with this administration. Peter Robinson writes in Forbes about Clifford Asness, who runs "an approximately $20 billion dollar money management firm" who is fearful of criticizing President Obama's economic policies in writing: "It's really a bad idea to speak out" Mr. Asness wrote. "Angering the president is a mistake."

Robinson's piece goes on to supply several other all tending to show that opposing the administration is bad for business, and that there's real fear of reprisal in the future:

. . .Lately, a professor explained, students and faculty had begun quietly approaching him. "Everything's on the hush-hush," said the professor, a senior member of the faculty. "But they're looking for support. . ."

What did those who had approached him fear?

"They're afraid for their careers," the professor said, now serious. "These are young people I'm talking about. they don't want to become known as opponents of this administration. They [sic] way things are going, they figure, this new pattern we're seeing, with the government ordering businesspeople around, could become a permanent way of life."

So far, so fast. Not even five months into this administration. Obama the dictator is no longer such a joke.

Obama's Outrageous Speech

I hope to have a fuller, more reasoned reaction, soon, to President Obama's absolutely outrageous speech yesterday, at the National Archives Museum. For the moment, I want to think more on what he said, on what Vice-President Cheney said; and on what I'm going to say, and read everything again. But the explosion will come in due course.

Obama's Auto Fiat

The subhead of a Wall Street Journal piece on President Obama's auto-fuel efficiency increase decree yesterday neatly sums up the whole thing, and further comment by El Jefe is mostly superfluous:

Bankrupt companies making 39 mpg autos. Are we nuts?

No, but courtesy of the voters, the nuts are in charge for the moment. Elections have consequences, and two of them are a Speaker of the House with a CIA persecution complex who is upset she can't have President Bush's head on a platter; and beyond-insane fiats from the O-God on auto fuel efficiency (mostly to appease the global warming cult) while the whole domestic automobile industry is dying.

But the nuts won, so they get to do damage for awhile. The only real issue before the house is how much of the country can they wreck till the adults are in charge again.

Ghost Fleet, Storm Warning. . .

The first page of yesterday’s New York Times business section has a story by Keith Bradsher on a vast ghost fleet of cargo vessels, which are now congregating in the Straits of Malacca, by Singapore and Malaysia, across from Indonesia.

The Times article, citing a research department of Lloyds, reports some 735 vessels now sitting idle there. Truly an immense fleet: some of these vessels displace almost 300,000 tons. For comparison purposes, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier displaces approximately 100,000 tons at full load. “To go out in a small boat along Singapore’s coast now is to feel like a mouse tiptoeing through an endless heard of slumbering elephants,” Mr. Bradsher writes. No doubt the Ghost Fleet is truly awesome to look at, but it is also terrifying, as it is a visible symptom of the utter collapse of world trade.

The normal business of this cargo fleet is the carriage of raw materials from all over the world to the factories of Asia (particularly China). The ships then turn right round, and then move the produce of all these factories to the markets of Europe and North America.

But the ships – each with crews, maintenance expenses, berthing contracts, fueling and victualling contracts, insurance policies and miles of ledgers and lists of other associated expenses – are all just sitting. America and Europe are not buying right now. There is no need for raw materials at the factories, no cargo moving to the docks. Chinese exports, reports the Times, fell 22.8 percent in April from the same period in 2008. Philippine exports fell 30.9 percent in March from the same period a year ago.

Think on those idle ships, their crews, the factories and business they serve, and all affected by the collapse of that trade. Contracts are going unfulfilled, wages are being stretched and unpaid, millions of people have lost, or are losing, their livelihoods – maybe (eventually) including us both, dear reader. That’s not the worst of it, either: the ramifications of those idle ships and shops haven’t even begun to work through the world nervous system.

The Malacca Ghost Fleet is more than economic disaster for millions of people – it’s going to be a political nightmare of the first order, as the destituted demand that their leaders produce quick solutions and easy answers – neither of which will be forthcoming. The tide of fear and populist rage that’s building is going to be terrible, likely sweeping away governments and bringing chaos all over the globe. The Ghost Fleet is warning us that a tsunami is coming.

McKiernan Replaced in Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has, according to the Associated Press, decided to replace General David McKiernan, who is double-hatted as both the US commander in Afghanistan, and the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there. General McKiernan's replacement is to be Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, presently in the Pentagon as Director of the Joint Staff.

The Associated Press story states that Secretary Gates asked General McKiernan to resign his post and that this "probably" ends his career.

I am sorry to read this, I happen to think that General McKiernan (commander of the US 3rd Army, which was US Central Command's main ground component during the Second Gulf War [ARCENT] march to Baghdad) -- never got the promotion, recognition and preferment that should have been his due.

During the planning phase of the war in Iraq, General McKiernan consistently (and correctly) demanded more troops than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and his boss (General Tommy Franks) wanted to allocate; and he was the first senior commander to recognize that the Fedayeen Saddam (and not the Republican Guard) were the real locus of military opposition. Despite the lack of cooperation or even understanding from seniors higher up on the command chain, General McKiernan worked with what he had, solved his problems and still got the Army to Baghdad faster than the Iraqis thought remotely possible.

When the war yielded to pacification operations, McKiernan was (in my opinion) wrongfully passed over as Franks' successor to the command in Iraq in favor of the much more junior and recently promoted Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.

It will be interesting to see what prompted Secretary Gates to relieve General McKiernan so publicly. My bet would be that McKiernan's side of the story will be both hard to come by, and very well-reasoned. The US effort in Afghanistan is at best stalled, at worst in serious trouble, but this is hardly General McKiernan's fault: the General has, to the best of his considerable ability, been running a poorly-funded war in a land-locked country with few roads; populated by people who hate foreigners and foreign soldiers; with hostiles on virtually every border. The reinforcements McKiernan and others have been crying for are now in the pipeline. Whether more troops will actually make a difference, and whether this war is at all winnable, I beg leave to doubt.

In any case, General McKiernan's relief really smells, and for the second time in his long and decorated service to the United States, it appears that General McKiernan has been ill-used. General McKiernan has no reason to envy the incoming General McChrystal custody of the Afghanistan tar-baby, but this is a sad end to the career of a man who, based on the quality of his service, probably should have been Chief of Staff of the Army.

Fifth of May

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, first American in Space, in his capsule "Freedom 7 " during a test shortly prior to his flight on Mercury-Redstone 3, 5 May 1961 (NASA[KSC] Image No. 61-10515).

All kinds of interesting historical events, today.On this day in 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space when Mercury-Redstone 3 blasted-off from Cape Canaveral's Pad 5 and took Astronaut Shepard and his capsule Freedom 7 into space. Freedom 7 did not orbit, only going up, and then right back down (a "suborbital" flight), and he was only up for 16 minutes.

After moon landings and space shuttles, it doesn't sound like much now, but if you have ever seen a real Mercury capsule (eleven and a half feet wide, just over six feet in diameter), you would understand how absolutely brave a stunt it really was to climb into this thing (actually, you pretty much wore it, you didn't get in it) and sit quietly on the pad while the smart boys fired up a rocket as likely to crash or explode as to fly.

Rear-Admiral Shepard, who later played golf on the Moon commanding Apollo 14, died in 1998. I will never forget, when I was about 16, having the honor to shake the man's hand and talk with him briefly.

On this day in 1883, the first Earl Wavell, or to give him his full titles, Archibald Percival Wavell, Field Marshal, Earl Wavell, Viscount Wavell, Viscount Keren of Eritrea and Winchester, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, PC -- was born in Colchester, England. Colchester, the oldest Roman town in Britain, seems an appropriate place of nativity for such a distinguished soldier, of a family of soldiers. The future Lord Wavell was not long in Britain, however: he spent most of his youth in India. Wavell's father, like his son and grandson, was a career soldier in the British Army, the father retiring with the rank of Major General.

After a glittering British Army career in the First World War and between the wars, Wavell was given command of all British forces in the Middle East early in World War II. Wavell was given an almost impossibly huge task (containing the Vichy French, beating the Italians and later Rommel, and keeping the Arabs quiet) -- with far too few forces.

Wavell's problems were compounded by excessive political interference, particularly by Winston Churchill. In early 1941 Wavell's forces were winning in Libya and mopping-up the Italian East Africa colony. However, in February 1941, Wavell was ordered by London (that is, Churchill) to halt his advance from Egypt into Italian Libya (Wavell was beating the Italians), and send his best forces off to Greece to fight Germans and Italians. Wavell protested, and the British intervention in Greece proved, as Wavell had predicted, a complete disaster.

The intervention in Greece, with the diversion of effort it occasioned, and the loss of much of the intervention force and its heavy equipment in Greece and Crete, gave the Italians and Germans a breathing space in Libya, and an German general named Rommel his opening. Wavell's efforts to stop Rommel were unsuccessful, although he was able to keep Iraq in the British orbit by successfully suppressing pro-German nationalist rebels (the Anglo-Iraq War), as well as ending Vichy French control of Syria (Operation Exporter).

Wavell was eventually shunted off to Asia, being made the British commander-in-chief there, just in time for Japanese entry into World War II. Again, Wavell was asked to do much too much with far too little, and he made as good a job of it as could be expected, finishing his career as a Field Marshal, and Viceroy of India, and the king creating him Earl Wavell in 1947. Upon Wavell's death on 24 May 1950, all his titles passed, of course, to his only son, another Archibald, another soldier. Major Lord Wavell was killed in action in 1953 in Kenya (fighting the Mau-Mau), and with the son's death, the titles became extinct.

Today is also the anniversary of the death in 1821 of French Emperor Napoléon I, while in British captivity on St. Helena in the South Atlantic. "To live defeated is to die every day" the Emperor said, during this bitter period of his life, and, passing his days at rat-infested Longwood house, Napoléon had ample time to ponder the subject. But Napoléon never gave up or accepted defeat lying down: as a captive exile he fought and won his last (political) battle for control of the popular imagination. Aided by the petty humiliations of his stupid and unimaginative British jailer, the Emperor constructed a political and historical narrative of his life (which was even a little bit true) describing a great man brought low by pygmies. The "Napoleonic legend" helped his nephew become Emperor Napoléon III.

Speaking of Emperor Napoléon III, on this day in 1862, his forces in Mexico (there to collect debts and carve out a Mexican Empire) suffered a check at the Battle of Puebla, on the road to Mexico city, in 1862. General-de-Division Charles Ferdinand Latrille, Comte de Lorencez, with his tough little army of line infantry; Chasseurs a Pied; Zouaves; mounted Chasseurs d'Afrique; sailors with rifles; and the Troupes de Marine -- the French Marines -- tried to overrun General Ignacio Zaragoza's dug-in Mexican Army regulars and local militia straight off the march, but soon learned that fighting even raw or half-trained troops in buildings and behind the walls and trenches of both regular and extemporized fortifications was quite different from catching them in the open, where French fire discipline and training would have told to best advantage.

Count de Lorencez possibly deserves a marginally better press than he gets. True, he rushed into a fight after only slapdash reconnaissance and after ignoring advice from friendly Mexicans. But he had reasons for haste: he was trying to collapse resistance to the French and the Mexican faction they supported with a quick blow to the Mexican forces around Puebla. Most importantly, Count de Lorencez knew he had with him some really splendid troops, which had routed a similar Mexican force with ease on 28 April at Aculzingo. However, the quality of his own force led him to discount that of his Mexican opponents: many of whom (even the militia) were veterans of Mexico's most recent civil conflict and were fighting on their home ground.

In any case, the Mexicans repulsed the French attack, and de Lorencez fell back out of range. The French waited in their own positions for two days, hoping to draw a Mexican attack on their own positions: and when it did not come, they fell back on Orizaba to await reinforcements, allowing the Mexicans to claim the victory.

Count de Lorencez would not be the first general confronted, without realizing it, with a politico-military situation that was quite beyond him. Possibly my Francophile side is showing. In any case, the anniversary of the Puebla engagement is celebrated in parts of Mexico, and among Mexicans in the United States as Cinco de Mayo.

Specter of Defection

The Republican political firmament, already roiled enough by November’s election, has gone into further convulsions after Pennsylvania’s Senator Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party this morning.

Republicans and conservatives will likely want to argue that Specter's jump is inconsequential – that Specter was so Lefty he was mostly a Democrat anyway, and that Senator Specter’s desertion just ratifies what everybody already knew. Don’t believe the happy talk this is staggering news.

First, the obvious: Assuming, as I think likely, that Al Franken finally prevails in Minnesota, the Democrats now have their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. In actuality, they will usually have a few more than 60 seats because Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both Maine Republicans, at least for now), vote with Democrats on many issues.

Specter can be expected to be more liberal now that he has not got to worry about facing Republican primary challengers and keeping the Republican caucus quiet. In fact, even more than wanting to align ideology and party, Specter’s defection seems to have been occasioned by his possible loss in the Republican primary next year to Pat Toomey.

The national Republican party would have tried to help Specter retain his seat, as much as it could, but a strong primary challenge would have cost Specter a bundle, even assuming he prevailed. Now, Specter can run for re-election in a state trending strongly Democratic (the reason the national Republicans supported him) -- with the strong backing of the locally popular President of the United States.

Moreover, as a member of the majority party, and a convert whom the Democrats will want to bend over backwards to welcome, Specter will actually have legislative relevance. As a raw political calculation, Specter’s defection is quite rational, and for the moment has little downside, either to him, or to Democrats.

However, the complete Democratic dominance of the Senate carries considerable long term risk. The congressional Democrats, more than ever, have complete ownership of the consequences of Obama’s – and their own – decision making. They now have a big enough majority to have legislation pretty much their own way, and their backers will demand that they make use of this power: on spending, on foreign policy, and on, say, the question of CIA policies towards prisoners under Bush.

The Democrats will not be able to rely on Republican votes for cover, because they now have the naked power to steamroll, and all the players know it. If the Republicans pick up their toys and leave, and Obama’s plans do not work out. . .the blame will be all on Democrats, who have a long way to fall.

If the election of 2008 were not evidence enough, the loss of Specter is further proof of the utter disappearance of Republican support in the northeast. The national Republican Party (that is, the Beltway party, exemplified by new RNC Chairman Michael Steele (from Maryland) – sees this as catastrophic. Viewed another way, the Republican Party is now largely confined to the South and to the flyover plains West. The coasts and northeast are secure Democratic territory. The Beltway Republicans fear that the party will never be competitive again nationally if it cannot attract northeastern voters.

Perhaps so, but Republicans in the southern and western heartlands of the Party (who embraced Sarah Palin over the doubts of the Party establishment) just might not care. The cleavages between the parties and the regions have not developed by accident, or for trivial reasons. The two parties – and the regions of this country -- have genuine differences of opinion on almost every subject of interest, across the board.

The voters have been offered clearly different approaches to the questions facing the country, and have regionally made diametrically opposite choices. The euphoria of the mostly coastal opinion makers over Obama obscures a regional divide in this country as stark as anything seen since the Civil War. The cooler heads among Republicans may want to tack a little to the Left, and try to recover some urban and northeastern voters. The chiefs might well want to lead in this direction -- but I question whether their Indians are going to be willing to follow.

No matter where one sits politically, the ride ahead looks to be bumpy. The staggering debts our children are facing are quite sufficient reason to view the future with a good deal of apprehension. What will happen when the bills come due? I think we are all going to shortly find out whether the coasts and the rest have anything constructive left to say to each other.

Obama's Popular -- Explain It To Me

This is a request for assistance.

Obama's been President for about 100 days now, and he seems to be getting generally high marks. Real Clear Politics today talks about an interesting Gallup/USA Today poll. According to Real Clear Politics:

56% of Americans saying Obama is doing an "excellent" or "good job" as President while 20% say he is doing a "terrible" or "poor" job and 23% say the new President is doing "just OK."

From what I've seen elsewhere, this might put Obama's approval on the low side.

Explain, expound, please. As somebody who did not vote for Obama, wouldn't have even thought of voting for Obama, and who cannot at all fathom why he's popular, explain for me why he is. Mind you, i'm not trying to be mean, or snide, I sincerely don't comprehend his appeal, and will readily admit to being quite out of touch on this subject.

Bill Maher writes in the LA Times that "[t]he Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife." Marc Ambinder writes in the Atlantic's blog that Obama is "almost single-handedly pulling the nation's confidence up by its tattered bootstraps." According to Mr. Ambinder "Independents remain firmly rooted in the Democratic garden. They're skittish about deficits, but they love Obama. They trust him, alone, of all the institutions of and figures in -- government."

Is this true? Are we talking about the same country?

I'm not kidding. I'd like to understand why. I'd like to hear what you think. I'm particuarly interested in hearing from independents, or people who were unsure of how to vote last time, but who are have been happy with the man so far.

Think of me as an alien arriving on planet Earth on a spaceship. Set me straight on why Obama's popular.

Earth Day, 2009

Earth Day celebrations are in full swing all over Cuidad El Jefe. Incense has been burned in front of the shrines to Holy Obama and Robot ALGORE, and a noxious methane-producing cow has been sacrificed, in support of fervent prayers for total industrial collapse.

The nuclear waste dump is glowing brightly, all the city lights are blazing, whale steak's on the grill, and I'm burning lots of coal trying to think of other ways to celebrate. Going on a special Earth Day shopping spree for regular light bulbs, fluorocarbons and air conditioner freon. Gonna go smoke some cigarettes and cigars in a densely packed public place while I think on whether I've left out anything.

San Jacinto and the Morning After

Yesterday was the 173rd anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, the great Texas victory near what is now Houston that was the pivotal battle of the Texas Revolution. General Sam Houston’s 900 or so Texans surprised and routed Mexican President-General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s 1,350 Mexicans in just 18 minutes.

Despite the vanishingly small numbers engaged, San Jacinto turned out to be decisive, chiefly because, on the morning following the battle (173 years ago today) Texan scouts captured Santa Anna himself, and Texas was able to subsequently extort enough of a settlement from the captive Mexican leader to make independence stick. For Mexico, San Jacinto turned out to be the first major blow in a process that lost that country not only Texas, but its entire north – today the American west.

As a military campaign, the Mexican side of the Texas Revolution has always been of great interest to me. The 1,350 Mexican soldiers the Texans defeated at San Jacinto were only a portion of the Mexican forces available in Texas. The Mexican Navy had total control of the Gulf of Mexico and free movement up and down the Texas coast all during this period, and Santa Anna’s “Army of Operations” had almost 6,500 troops in Texas. The Texans had lost nearly 1,000 men at Goliad, in addition to the 183 killed at the Alamo (which also held most of the available Texan artillery). Houston’s 900-odd half-trained recruits with two guns were the sum total of rebel forces available. How, then, did Mexico lose this war?

Remembering the Alamo and Goliad sometimes obscures the fact that up through the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna ran a pretty good campaign. Just getting an army from central Mexico to Texas was a massive military accomplishment before railroads and the internal combustion engine. The Mexicans had to bring their army across the northern Mexican desert and keep it in food and water, and haul along a big enough margin of supplies for operations such as the Alamo siege. (Food and fodder would normally be bought or “requisitioned” locally, but armies needed extra supplies for periods when they were largely stationary, such as a siege, when local food supplies would quickly be exhausted).

The massacre of the Alamo defenders, as well as Texan prisoners at Goliad and other places in early March probably appeared to Santa Anna to have cleared the boards as far as his campaign was concerned. The rage and fear his actions generated among Texans for a time seemed to work in his favor, as colonists packed up their possessions and fled east, in headlong flight for the US/Texas border. Clearing the majority of the Anglo colonists out of Texas (and probably replacing them with settlers from his armies) was no small part of Santa Anna’s plans to secure Texas for Mexico – which probably explains his ruthless policy towards Texan prisoners.

In retrospect, the Battle of San Jacinto was lost for Mexico before its first shot was fired, sometime between the fall of the Alamo on 6 March 1836, and San Jacinto, on 21 April, that is, during the period of the so-called “Runaway Scrape.” After the Alamo and Goliad, the last major Texan military force was Houston’s army, which hovered near Gonzales all during the Alamo siege. Upon hearing of the fall of the Alamo, Houston realized that he could not hope to meet Santa Anna’s concentrated forces in the field, and he moved his army east, towards the US border. Settlers fled too, and they were encouraged to destroy their property (particularly food) before leaving.

The US border. . .Santa Anna no doubt desired to close out his war quickly, primarily to forestall US intervention, and he moved out rapidly in pursuit of Houston. Santa Anna, in his capacity as President of Mexico, had already addressed letters to US President Jackson, warning Jackson against interference in Texas, and stating that Americans captured in arms in Texas would be treated as pirates. Santa Anna was probably aware of the personal and political connections between Jackson and Sam Houston, and he would have wanted to finish the war quickly, before the US could decide to intervene.

The Mexican military and political situation the morning after the Alamo fell was not unlike the US/UN situation in Korea in 1950, after MacArthur’s lighting reconquest of South Korea from the invading North Koreans. Much like Santa Anna in Texas, MacArthur was in a hurry to end the war with the complete conquest of North Korea before China could interfere. Consequently, MacArthur (as his armies moved into North Korea) threw prudent military planning out the window in the name of haste. Just as Santa Anna probably considered the Texans, MacArthur thought the North Koreans beaten, and his primary concern was getting his forces to the Chinese border at the Yalu to block Chinese intervention, not caring if in the process his troops got scattered all over the map. . .

For somewhat similar reasons, Santa Anna made haste for the US border, following Houston, wearing his jaded troops out with forced marches trying to bring him to battle and get on to the border. Wikipedia’s article on the Texas Revolution speculates that Sam Houston might have intended to retreat clear across the US border and possibly trigger American intervention (a US army was assembling on the border). We cannot know if Houston actually had this possibility in mind, but Santa Anna had to take it seriously, and try to catch Houston before he got there.

Whenever I drive to San Antonio, I imagine the barefoot Mexican conscripts, cheap shoes long disintegrated, marching day after day in either hot sun or torrential rains, fording swollen rivers, mainly concerned with foraging for food. The siege of the Alamo had probably consumed much of Santa Anna’s initial stockpile of supplies. The forced marches, the scorched-earth Runaway Scrape of the settlers (burning food needed by the Mexican Army), and Santa Anna’s own uncertainty as to Houston’s precise whereabouts and intentions led Santa Anna to allow his army (fairly concentrated after the Alamo) to become increasingly dispersed as the pursuit wore on. As Santa Anna closed in on the US border, near what would be the battlefield of San Jacinto, only 850 or so men were with him. The rest of his army was scattered.

Santa Anna is said to have called himself the “Napoleon of the West.” I wonder if Santa Anna knew anything about Napoleon’s Battle of Marengo in 1800? Napoleon, trying to pin down an Austrian army in northern Italy, was concerned the Austrians would slip by him, and avoid battle. Napoleon was uncertain of the Austrians’ location, and dispersed his troops to block possible routes of escape. . .but on the morning of 14 June 1800, near the village of Marengo …he stumbled into the whole “missing” Austrian army, with a only a fraction of his own forces present, and was nearly destroyed. In the event, reinforcements arrived, and Napoleon prevailed.

On his own day of surprises, Santa Anna was not as lucky as Napoleon, nor as bright. 500 last minute reinforcements, led by Santa Anna’s brother in law, General Cos, gave Santa Anna a bit of a numerical advantage, but Santa Anna squandered it by failing to post sufficient pickets. On the morning of 21 April 1836, the Texans attacked Santa Anna, surprising his force in camp, with the bulk of his army scattered behind him all over the Texas coastal plain like MacArthur’s on the Yalu when China came into the war, or Napoleon’s on the morning of Marengo.

In just eighteen minutes Houston and his Texans swept all Santa Anna’s campaign plans and greater geopolitical concerns about American intervention, Anglo colonization of Texas and a Mexican empire in the west right into the dust bin. The next morning, 22 April 1836, Texan scouts found Santa Anna near a burned bridge, hiding in tall grass, having doffed his splendid uniform for that of an infantry private. Mexico would now have its cup of bitterness filled to the dregs, and the captive President-General would soon put his name to the Treaties of Velasco, which gave Texas a viable legal claim to independence.

More battles, a cold war and a much bigger hot war with the US in 1846 would follow, but for Mexico, San Jacinto, was the real disaster that lost an empire.

Waterboarded 183 Times? That's Not Enough

Reuters reports today that CIA interrogators used "waterboarding" 183 times during interrogations of Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, "admitted planner of the September 11 attacks."

As a point of information for the unconscious, the "September 11 attacks" refer to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States that killed 2,998 people (mostly civilians) (not including 19 scumbags), and wounded over 6,000 others.

I wonder how many of Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed's victims (or their families) would have given all that they possessed to have been waterboarded 183 times, if it meant that they (or their loved-one) could go on living?

I find it insane and morally reprehensible that Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his friends are allowed to go on living for even one more hour, being coddled at Guantanamo or whatever caves they're being kept in.

I find it obscene that the interrogators have not daily and hourly been squeezing Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed like a fruit, till beyond juiced, giving him a lot worse than waterboarding.

I find it incomprehensible that Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed might even be afforded the dignity of a trial, rather than just giving him a drumhead court-martial and a shot in the back of the head in a ditch someplace; with his sorry carcass being tossed on the nearest rubbish-heap, and whoever whelped this beyond depraved pirate being billed for the bullet.

I sure haven't forgotten 9/11. How about you?

Texas and Secession: Brief Introduction to Legal Issues

There has been a lot of talk these past several days about Texas secession in the news, and since this topic is interesting to me, here is a brief introduction to some of the legal and historical issues surrounding the question of Texas secession, with some links to pertinent documents. The opinions herein, are of course my own.

Rasmussen has a poll out which might be some comfort to those thinking that they’re cooler heads and that secession is a lame-brained idea. According to Rasmussen:

Thirty-one percent (31%) of Texas voters say that their state has the right to secede from the United States and form an independent country.

However, the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in the state finds that if the matter was put to a vote, it wouldn’t even be close. Three-fourths (75%) of Lone Star State voters would opt to remain in the United States. Only 18% would vote to secede, and seven percent (7%) are not sure what they'd choose.

That would seem to settle the issue pretty definitively, unless one considers the context. We’re being told that 31 percent of the Texas population thinks that Texas has the right to leave if it wants, and 18 percent would actually do it in circumstances where there has been no organized agitation for secession, and no political party or faction pushing for it. How would these numbers look if there was a serious independence movement here, and not a few cranks?

Other commentators opine that the Civil War settled the issue, and the crushing of the Confederacy establishes that Texas, or other states, have no right to secede. Poppycock. The war had nothing to do with settling the existence or non-existence of a legal or moral right for a state to leave the US. For that matter, neither did Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), the Supreme Court case (the majority opinion written by Lincoln's former Treasury Secretary, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase) that purported to settle it later.

The right to secede is a political question, inherent in the concept of government by consent of those governed, and the right of people to determine their own governing institutions. The states pre-dated the Federal government, their citizens delegated power to it, and can resume it. Texans have as much of a moral and legal right to secede from the US as the colonies did to leave Great Britain.

The only real questions are whether they want to do so badly enough, and then have the power to make it good. If, say, Vermont (which actually has some kind of secessionist movement, unlike Texas) someday votes to pull itself out of the Union, I cannot imagine that Americans would actually, in the modern world, tell Vermonters they had to stay in a union they didn't want to remain a part of, much less use force to make them do so.

On the other side of the coin, there has been some loose talk about an urban legend that claims that the US Congress’s Joint Resolution, and the Texas Convention's Ordinance of Annexation, bringing Texas into the United States in 1845 reserved Texas the right to secede later. This is completely mistaken.

Texas rejected a treaty of annexation. Bringing Texas into the United States was accomplished by a Joint Resolution of the US Congress, and an Ordinance of a special convention in Texas. Neither the US Joint Resolution, nor the Texas Ordinance, address the issue of secession at all. Texas did reserve the apparent right to divide itself into other states, which has been proposed at various times, and which would today probably produce a bunch more Republican Senators, and possibly a couple of Democrats.

Provision for division was made, but inclusion of specific language on secession in either the US or Texas documents would have surely killed US support for annexation. Southerners and others supporting the admission of Texas to the US would never have called into question for their own states a right they maintained was already inherent in statehood by giving it specifically to Texas. When Texas left the United States in early 1861, it did so by means of another State convention and another Ordinance (later approved by the voters) that simply repealed the Texas Ordinance of Annexation of 1845.

Further, I'm not sure the mechanisms allowing Texas to divide itself into more states are worth the paper they’re written on – considered as either statutory law or as some sort of treaty, the analysis is the same. In the United States, both treaties and statutes can be changed and modified by subsequent Congressional legislation. This is true of treaties even if the change amounts to a “violation” of the treaty. Even assuming Texas had some kind of "treaty" allowing it to divide itself, the international position of the US on such a treaty is a political matter, to be resolved between sovereign governments. Texas, unless it secedes and makes it stick, is not sovereign. As far as American law is concerned, the last action in time controls. Congress could quite legally pass a statute and tell Texas it could NEVER split – at least if it split within the union.

Reconstruction muddied all these murky waters still further. Under the Union theory of the law (Lincoln's specifically) Texas and the other Confederate States never left the Union, they simply got themselves out of proper relations with it. Therefore, the provisions allowing Texas to divide might still be operative, if no subsequent statute changed them.

This would be the case even under Congressional reconstruction, which, unintentionally, implicitly acknowledged the validity of secession by treating the former Confederate States as "conquered provinces” and later making them go through a process of re-admission to the Union. However, Congress insisted on one further wrinkle – before Texas could re-enter the Union -- it was forced to produce yet another Ordinance, by yet another convention (15 March 1866), declaring secession in 1861 null and void, and renouncing the right in future.

The 1866 Ordinance is really no impediment to secession either, since a further convention could simply repeal this Ordinance also -- just as the 1861 convention repealed the Ordinance of Annexation. Probably none of this will ever happen, but the right of the people of a state to resort to secession is implicit in the entire concept of republican institutions, ordered liberty, and self-government. Whether secession can be successful is more a question of popular will and raw power than it is of law.

Which End is Up Now?

Yet another among the many reasons for El Jefe's relative silence of late is the rapid and increasingly disorienting change in the political and economic landscape. The ground is shifting in strange, unprecedented ways almost hourly.

Yesterday the Governor of Texas said that Texas could secede if it wanted -- and my sense is that a not insignificant percentage of Texans think they would be happy to see this happen. This came only a day after Governor Perry endorsed a State Sovereignty resolution pending in the Texas House of Representatives that proclaims that the 10th Amendment:

. . .assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp. . .

The draft resolution, (citing the 10th Amendment) goes on to demand that:

. . .the federal government, as our agent. . .cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers. . .

Read the whole thing. The draft resolution appears toothless, but the fact that it is being considered at all tells us that we are now in a different world than only a year ago. How much stranger will things get, as the implications of US national bankruptcy begin to be understood? (I think yesterday's Tea Parties were less about our already high taxes than about the well-founded fear of our spending ourselves and our children into bankruptcy). Will we come together as in the 1930's? Or will the crowd head for any exit it can find, like a theater audience leaving a bad show?

"May you live in interesting times," the Chinese curse goes. Ours would certainly seem to fill that bill. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Kathy Ireland

Kathy Ireland, former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, has a weight problem?

The purveyors of such vicious and noxious propaganda should be locked up, in the deepest dungeons of the Kingdom, at once!

El Jefe still thinks Kathy Ireland is one of the most beautiful women God ever unbagged.

Obama Discovers a New Language

The President, during a NATO press-conference yesterday, referred to the language of Austria as "Austrian," a malapropism that would have left 19th and 20th Century European statesmen and historians absolutely speechless. (video here)

We skeptics are endless assured that our Columbia University and Harvard Law School educated President knows better about everything. No doubt he does, but possibly Obama was too busy studying community organizing to pay much attention to central European history, and all that boring Großdeutschland/Kleindeutschland, Otto von Bismarck, Anschluss Österreichs, World War I, World War II stuff. Possibly I'm nitpicking just a bit (Hell, I admit it), but the man who discovered the "Austrian" language is clearly just the fellow to get us on better terms with Europe, eh?

Maybe I should give the fellow a break. Certainly, the press is -- James Fallows writes in his blog at The Atlantic:

He [Obama] also appeared to refer to the language of Austria as "Austrian," thus: "I don't know how you say it in Austrian, but we call it wheeling-dealing." If this had been GW Bush, it would have been taken as an obvious gaffe, as in his calling the residents of Greece "Grecians." Here you can't be sure whether it's a plain error or a knowing casualism, as in saying that Australians speak "Australian" -- eg, in the ad that says, "Foster's: Australian for 'beer.' "

Now folks, that's true journalistic skill. Admit a double standard, and make it positively sound rational, and do it in a tres gentil way. Yes, you silly unwashed rubes, the Great One may have slipped, but he's the Man of Hope. Now if Bush had talked about some Austrian language, you can bet your last Euro that Fallows is right and the journos would have jumped all over Bush like the Gestapo did to Austrians who didn't vote Ja on the Anschluss. But times have changed, and the Eurolefties that run things across the pond, Obama's spiritual brothers, are likely to declare Austrian a language if it would make the Sainted One look good.

Still Here. . .

As is painfully obvious, El Jefe just hasn't felt much like posting lately, and is still sort of sulking on his estates., I rather think I'm still in mourning over the election.

I can barely stand to turn on the television or the radio, and when the Chosen One comes on, I usually opt to save my blood pressure and immediately turn the channel. I've been reading a lot, mostly history, hanging out in the country as often as I can get there, and working. Facebook's interesting too -- have recently gotten onto that and reconnected with lots of folks.

Anyway, I miss blogging, and hope to feel up to the work, soon.