Buying wings but operating rotors

If I told you that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were the leading cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq, you'd expect the Pentagon would have mounted a major R&D effort to defeat this threat. And you'd be right.

If I told you that helicopter crashes and shoot-downs were the leading cause of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, you'd expect the Pentagon would have mounted a major R&D to defeat that threat as well. But you'd be wrong.

Read on at KnoxNews.

Can't find it at Scripps Howard, but here's a version picked up by the Abilene Reporter-News. I liked my title better ;-)

After 3 days with Enterra staff at retreat, I head to Dulles and check in for my 1645 United flight to Indy.

I check in, entering my FF#, whose absence I found strange.

The machine asks me if I checked luggage from my "incoming flight"--also puzzling. I said no.

Then I ask for receipt and it listed me flying in from Vienna. It also said my flight cost 2100 Euros.

I question the United checker. She can't figure it out. I call Jenn, and she said UA kept telling her I was already scheduled on the flight. But United charged us $550 on my AMEX, and the receipt I held listed a VISA.

Hmmm.

Lady then checks to make sure there's not 2 Thomas Barnetts. No, she says, you're the only one.

So I check the bag, go through Clear Traveler (very nice at Dulles because you go through a separate crew security gate), and then head to Terminal A.

I resist the Five Guys temptation (burgers) and start blogging. Flight is called and I step up. Ticket taker gets weird alert, but checks again and it's okay, so I head to plane.

Then we're turned back and told mechanical delay, so back into terminal.

Then we're called again and I show stub and board.

Get to 13F and see middle-aged (roughly same age) white guy who's maybe 5'11" (I'm 6'2"), slightly balding, neatly dressed business casual in my seat. So I figure he can have window and I'll take aisle.

Then burly guy shows up with crewcut and says politely that I must be in his seat. I tell guy in my seat and he shows us his 13F. Burly guy seems to know him, even defer, and so I point out that I have 13F too.

Then I notice "Thomas Barnett," plus "premier executive," plus my FF#.

Burly guy, apparently junior to my namesake, volunteers to go up and report problem. I watch and see that steward seats him up front.

All these voices start commenting from behind in a manner I instantly recognize as military, and I realize this guy is the crew's senior officer.

Steward comes back, collects tickets, demands ID, and then just laughs, saying this is first time in his many years that two people with the same names are boarded to occupy the same seat.

They let us both stay on, to my amazement, because the flight seemed full.

Thomas Barnett turns out to be an Army National Guard officer coming back from a year in Kosovo with his comrades, heading home ultimately to Kansas. He had been under the overall command of Admiral Harry Ulrich until Harry retired at the end of 2007 and joined Enterra.

Weird, huh?

And some top-notch security all around, I'd have to say.

ARTICLE: "Global Ties Under Stress As Nations Grab Power: Trade, Environment Face New Threats; Balkanized Internet," by Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2008, p. A1.

Forget the goofy title and subtitle. "Global ties" are not "under stress," and nations aren't "grabbing power" ("Look, there's some! Let's go grab it!"). Talk of "new threats" is bullshit, and the "Balkanized" Internet is just one that isn't an American garden.

The Murdoch influence, apparently.

The actual article is very sensible and well written. All it really says is that states that are embracing globalization are stepping up their controls over content and connectivity, that they're just not lying back and saying, "Do what you must with me, globalization, for you are the master and I am the slave."

So yeah, not as simple as the "flat" metaphor, but hardly overturning its utility as a descriptor. Just a bit of yang to go with the yin. The stepping up by states is a sign of how much globalization remakes them, not a sign of how much they remake globalization. Confusing friction with force is a constant mistake in this business.

Yergin puts it well, "The era of easy globalization is over." Now that we have so much more connectivity, now comes the effort to tame it and manage it better. This is much like America after its radical expansion following the Civil War. We already had the land in hand, but the settlement is what exploded after the war. At first, all that connectivity begat a nasty, predatory capitalism that ruined the environment, polluted the society and corrupted politics. So clean-up was the next phase: the Progressive Era.

You need a strong state to regulate and tame a raw capitalism of the sort that's spread so rapidly around the planet in recent years. That's all we're talking about here.

Once control is reasonably established, further openness comes in response to the desire for improved competitiveness, so we shift from extensive connectivity to intensive connectivity, and—again—you need strong and efficient and "good" governments to manage that transition.

So spare me the "grab the power" hyperbole. Expect to spot many "Theodore the Sudden" types in rising New Core powers. It's a natural development, so don't freak out.

OP-ED: "The Real Cost of Tackling Climate Change," by Steven F. Hayward, Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2008, p. A19.

Reality of some of these emission cut targets is that they ask America to go back to early 20th-century levels of emissions with a population that, in 2050, will be roughly four times what we had in T.R.'s time.

None of this is to say we don't try, but reality will be that we seek efficiencies largely for economic competitive reasons than for pollution control.

As always, trust greed and not altruism, even that directed toward future generations.

Everyone in company together in northern VA for ground truth/common operational picture/intellectual group grope for three days.

Need?

We're exploding in growth and need to make sure we're all on the same page as we traject forward (is that a word?).

I sit through brief on ontologies and I come up with this on my own:

1) Religion is mankind's first attempt at an ontology (hierarchical taxonomy like Wikipedia) of a "complex" world.

2) As complexity increases, the need for better ontologies increase.

3) Thus, as globalization spreads and deepens, the need for religion increases.

Take that Hitchens!

WORLD NEWS: "Conservatives Dominate Vote; President's Opponents Gain," wire reports, Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2008, p. A10.

The "hard-line leader is growing increasingly vulnerable ahead of a bid for re-election next year."

Conservatives dominate the parliament, but there are the technocratic/normalizers (those who want more normal relations with the world) and the ideological agitators of Ahmadinejad's stripe. The president's supports control 117 of the 290 seats, with the rest spread among the technocratic conservatives, moderates and reformists.

ARTICLE: Iranian outmaneuvers U.S. in Iraq, By Hannah Allam, Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers, April 28, 2008

Cheap, persistent and clever.

A manned drone.

(Thanks: Nancy Stefanik)

OP-ED: McCain's Radical Foreign Policy, PostGlobal, April 28, 2008

Very good piece by Zakaria, whose book I just finished.

You see all the us-v-them thinking in Kagan's: all he sees in the 21st century is the return of the 19th. My God, the neocons' complete lack of understanding of globalization and economics is just stunning.

That's what makes them so dangerous. McCain has no soul WRT economics: no business or real-world understanding whatsoever. So the neocons like Kagan fill that empty vessel.

Zakaria's calm reasonableness on globalization is completely missing on the GOP side right now. It is a sad state of affairs to see the party so dominated by economic Know-Nothings.

Worse, the GOP has virtually no young talent in the wings. Sad indeed.

We get McCain and we get far worse than Bush III. Bush was sensible if unambitious on globalization. McCain's worldview could easily destroy globalization unless he becomes more realistic and informed on global economics.

Otherwise it'll be just a bevy of advisers who see the world strictly in pol-mil terms blundering about far worse than Bush, who clearly knew his ass from his elbow on Russia and China.

(Thanks: Terence Dodge)

ARTICLE: In Afghanistan, insurgents attacking cellphone network, By Laura King, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2008

About as emblematic as you can get in this war of Connectors v. Disconnectors.

(Thank: Jeff Jennings)