Sharpening my knife
Can a society be funded? I mean, can it have enough in the bank that no one has to work for a salary and everyone’s income is generated via investment returns?
If it is possible, wouldn’t and shouldn’t it be a goal to have policies that would get us closer to being a funded society?
If not, what does it mean, in terms of the limits of economic growth or the possibility of the equitable distribution of wealth?
Sherry from Alabama, “she was a crossing-guard, you know”
October 16, 2003
TO: Gen. Dick Myers
Paul Wolfowitz
Gen. Pete Pace
Doug Feith
FROM: Donald Rumsfeld
SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism
The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?
DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere — one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.
With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be:
We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them — nonetheless, a great many remain at large.
USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis.
USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban — Omar, Hekmatyar, etc.
With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started.
Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the US?
Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror?
Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental? My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?
Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions.
Do we need a new organization?
How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools?
Is our current situation such that “the harder we work, the behinder we get”?
It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.
Does CIA need a new finding?
Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course?
What else should we be considering?
Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday.
Thanks.
Heh. I added a ‘favicon’ to the blog:
It’s a rocking A… my family brand. There’s a bunch of cattle running around the hills of humboldt county with this brand.
Does anyone else think the eyeball icon on the itunes store screen is creepy…
She had an uncanny sense of the 70’s and 80’s music scene.
In response to a comment about a post on the common wealth club web site, I wrote:
Jason was defining a soldier not a terrorist. Jason proposes two reasonable qualifications for being a soldier:
a) A member of an Army that was formed by a democratically elected leader
b) A member of an Army that was formed by an internationally recognized leader
Assuming he would define a terrorist as “not a soldier” (Jason don’t let me put words in your mouth), terrorists would be the fighting class of a country that are not members of the official army (i.e. Hamas in Palestine).
Was there a legitimate French Army during Vichy France? If not, can it be said that any fighting force (i.e. the resistance) was illegitimate or terrorists? In other words, given Jason’s definition of a soldier (and his implicit definition of a terrorist), do the freedom fighters of WWII France qualify as terrorists?
NOTE: I’m not a WWII history expert! 
Henri-Philippe Petain was not an elected leader. He was ambassador to Spain before being recalled to France in hopes of increasing morale in the country (HPP was a WWI hero). After Paul Reynaud, the French Prime Minister, resigned, he was appointed to Reynaud’s post and quickly gave himself dictatorial powers. Roosevelt recognized his government for a while during the war, but Churchill was quick to back De Gaulle’s opposition government. I wouldn’t say the Vichy government was internationally recognized.
So neither of the two possible conditions apply to Vichy France and its hard to see why, under Jason’s definition of a soldier, la Resistance freedom fighters would be called terrorists.
Ask the Palestinian’s, who is your leader; I think they’ll answer Arafat. Ask the world, who is the legitimate leader of Palestine and the Palestinian people; it’ll answer Arafat. Ask Arafat if Hamas, or others of their ilk, are his or Palestine’s Army, I think he’ll answer no. Now, why aren’t Hamas/etc terrorists?
Would it be unkind of me to mention that the three “virtuous” conservatives mentioned in the article (Limbaugh, Schlessinger, and Bennett) were not, in fact, appointed to any post by now president Bush. These are conservative pundits that happen to be hypocrites… Perhaps, in Britain, were the Guardian finds its home, the government appoints mouth pieces and the entire social discourse is controlled from the top, but here in America that doesn’t happen. There is no connection between the actions of these people and the present administration.
What exactly was the point of this “special report”? If its to point out that the human race contains hypocrites and liars, then I have its support. If it attempts to show a special relationship between Republicans and hypocrisy by mentioning Bush’s name in the same article as the accused three, then I can only point out that human nature is not partisan.
No matter how much Liberals want to think otherwise, Republicans are humans. Humans lie.
I’m sure I’m going to get this wrong, but here’s what I want to do: I want to see what my percentile would be if I was comparing myself to the GRE taking folks (so I can compare my math test with my score in the GRE practice test last weekend). I’m going to assume that my math class’ normal distribution is shifted by 20 percentage points to the left in relation to the distribution for the math section of the GRE. This would because my class is not representative of folks headed to grad school. You’d expect that the population at large (i.e. those not headed to grad school) would, on average, score worse than folks headed to grad school. Also, I’ll just assume that the distribution curves look similar (equal stdev).
Anyway, the average on my recent test (see previous post) was 45% and the standard deviation was 20%. Given the above, I’ll assume that students headed to grad school would have averaged 65% and because I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ll assume that the standard deviation is exactly the same. NOTE: it may not be fair to assume that the deviation would be similar in the two samples as my class may consist of some students that are going to grad school (high scorers as a group) and the rest aren’t (low scorers as a group). Intuitively, I feel like this would increase the spread in the scores. But anyway…
I scored 2.6 standard deviations above average which is the 99th percentile. Where would this put me on the ‘headed to grad school’ distribution curve? About the 95th percentile…
Look, I have to make myself feel better. I’m taking another practice GRE this weekend. We’ll see how I do.
I scored 97% on my first Calculus test. It was on plain old integration of single variable functions… itegration by substitution and by parts, etc. I scored the highest in the class and the second highest was 76%.
