You may recall the nuclear deal that the Bush administration negotiated with India recently.  That deal was in considerable jeopardy because of opposition within India.  The Indian government is run by a coalition of parties, and a bloc within the ruling coalition (the leftists) were strongly opposed to the deal.  They pulled out of the coalition on the same day that the Indian PM decided to go ahead with plans to "operationalize" the deal.

As a consequence, the Indian government was reduced to a minority, and the India President asked the PM to prove his majority in the relevant Parliamentary house on July 22.  The government managed to scrape through (275 for, 256 against).. so the nuclear deal survives for another day.

During the debate, there was one speech that impressed me.  It was by Omar Abdullah, who is a Member of Parliament from Srinagar.. the capital of Kashmir.

He began by proudly declaring: I am a Muslim and I am an Indian... and I see no distinction between the two.  

These are the types of words that can lift a people up.  These are the types of words that can win the war on terror.

I have excerpted parts of his speech (along with some commentary) below the fold.

As you may have heard, the NY Times recently published an OPed by Sen. Obama detailing his plans for Iraq.  It then declined to publish an OPEd by Sen. McCain, citing his refusal to define a victory in concrete terms, and to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory with timetables.  .

Sen. McCain's text was published by CNN (I have included copies of both OPeds below).

A summary of the two OpEds:

(a) Sen. Obama faults Sen. McCain for supporting the invasion in 2002.  
(b) Sen. McCain faults Sen. Obama for opposing the surge last year.
(c) Sen. Obama does not lay out any plan for a victory in Iraq.  He does not define victory in Iraq.
(d) Sen. McCain does not lay out any plan for a victory in Iraq.  He does not define victory in Iraq.
(e) Sen. Obama pledges to pull out in 18 months, while taking the realities on the ground into account.
(f) Sen. McCain pledges to pull out before the end of his first time, while taking the realities on the ground into account.
(g) Sen. Obama faults Sen. McCain for not wanting to "end the war".  Sen. McCain rips Sen. Obama for pretending that Sen. McCain does not want to end the war.
(h) Sen. McCain faults Sen. Obama for wanting to surrender.  Sen. Obama rips Sen. McCain for pretending that Sen. Obama wants to surrender.
 

As you may have heard, Al Gore is calling for a transition to a renewable energy source within 10 years.  

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other climate-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

He then goes on to praise both candidates...

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are "way ahead" of most politicians in the fight against global warming.

Al Gore is being overly generous in his praise... perhaps on purpose.  We need to do all we can to move both candidates further on this issue.  Both candidates, in my opinion, are woefully inadequate in their stated intentions.

It was not a surprise to me that the Iraqi occupation was botched (at least up until General Petraeus took over).  The reasons for that are very straightforward:

You cannot successfully undertake a large mission unless the mission is understood and accepted by all the stakeholders

The stakeholders includes the US military, the public, the administration, and members of the coalition.

It was never clear what the US was trying to achieve, and how it was going to go about achieving it.  Along those lines, I was very heartened to read a report by Dr. Nora Bensahel of the Rand Corp on this topic.  I have copied the executive summary after the fold, but the entire report is worth a read and can be found in pdf form here .

The one thing you can take away from it is that a successful war planning would have required a clear statement of strategic objectives, and whereby individual pieces (war games, civilian reconstruction, etc.) are pieced together backwards from that point (I think I heard Dr. Bensahel say something to that effect on NPR about 2 weeks back).  

If you work for NASA, or any organization that undertakes a large effort of any kind (such as Apple, while designing an IPhone), you will recognize this as being a system engineering approach.

Duh!

It is such a simple formula that we forget it all the time: Step 1: Clearly state your strategic objectives (along with a quantifiable set of metrics that will define the achievement of those objectives).  Step 2: Work backwards from that point, and piece together all the things (the component technologies, if you are working for Apple; the reconstruction elements etc., if you are planning for Iraq) necessary to achieve those objectives.

Duh!

But wait... we are about to repeat those mistakes!

What is our strategic objectives in Iraq ?  What will our strategic objective be, if Sen. Obama is elected President ?  What will our objective be, if Sen. McCain is elected ?

In Sen. McCain's case, the answer is a hazy form of victory ~ it is hazy because he does not offer any quantifiable metrics that defines victory.  Therefore, the strategic objective (victory) remains poorly defined, and will (as a consequence of being poorly defined) not be accepted by the stakeholders.  Therefore, it will fail!

And in Sen. Obama's case, the answer is a pullout in 16 months.  But a pullout in 16 months CANNOT be a strategic objective... it can be a tactic to that objective, but what is the objective ? He has not defined his strategic objective for Iraq.  Therefore, his objective cannot be accepted by the stakeholders, and will fail !

Alas!!

In the eyes of most Americans, and in the eyes of most Democrats and most progressives (such as readers of this blog), the India-US nuclear deal gave away too much for too little.  

I happen to believe otherwise ~ for 2 reasons.  I have diaried on the first one previously.  This diary is about the 2nd reason!

In my opinion, this deal is the smartest thing done by President Bush, and that history will remember him kindly for it (if the deal survives).  

The background to this is that signatories to the NPT (Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty) are granted access to nuclear technology and fuel from each other (via a Nuclear Suppliers Group), while non-signatories to the NPT (India, Pakistan, and Israel) are precluded from access to nuclear technology and fuel.

India does not need nuclear technology, but it does need fuel... at least in the short run.  It has plenty of thorium (about 13% of the world's known reserves), but the "Thorium cycle" is very difficult to master (noone has mastered it yet), and they (the Indian Scientists) will not be ready for another 30 years or so.  In the meantime, India is using Uranium, but it has very little of uranium (less than 1% of the known reserves).  As a consequence, India produces very little nuclear energy (only 4000 MW).

It is also a growing country, with plenty of coal (about 17% of the world's known reserves) that can be easily burnt to fuel it's energy needs.

And therein lies a small problem that can destroy the whole world.

Sen. Obama, in his speech on national security, outlines 5 strategic goals for his administration

I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

These are admirable goals, and ones that I support (for the most part).  But I have some questions.

How does one go about achieving those goals ?  And what does it mean to "end the war in Iraq responsibly" ?

Sen. Obama does not directly outline his thoughts on the questions I have (and the paragraphs subsequent to the goals meanders into a discussion of the past), and so I had to comb through his speech to pick out the pieces.

In his OPED piece on Iraq titled My Plan for Iraq   Sen Obama outlines his positions, and ends with a simple sentence that simply states his desired outcome

It's time to end this war.

Well said.  

But what does it mean ?

We can unilaterally choose the manner in which we begin wars, but not the manner in which we end wars.  Ending a war requires the cooperation of a 2nd party.

There are 2 ways to end wars: with a decisive victory for one side, or with a stalemate.

In a stalemate, both warring sides decide that the cost of continued fighting is not proportional to the potential rewards of a desirable outcome, and decide to shelve the fighting with some sort of cease-fire or peace arrangement.  Generally, this happens after years of fighting...

In a decisive victory, one side has clearly won, and that victory is accepted by the other.  Generally, this occurs when the victor grants some concessions to the loser, so as to reduce their motivation for continued fighting for a lost cause.

There is, of course, the 3rd option: ending a war with a surrender (and of course, this method of ending the war is unilateral ~ it does not require cooperation from the other side).

In light of former Senator Gramm's remarks on the current state of affairs, we should revisit a very famous speech made by a Democratic President as another crisis was unfolding.

The year was 1979 ~ and energy prices were skyrocketing.  Interest rates were skyhigh, and the Soviet Union was sitting happily in Afghanistan (within striking distance of their cherished blue water port).

President Carter called it a "crisis of confidence", and delivered a speech on it on Jly 15, 1979.  Almost 29 years ago.  He was uniformly lambasted by the Republicans for it.  He happened to be right then.  He happens to be right now.
He said

It is a crisis of confidence.

It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.

The confidence that we have always had as a people is not simply some romantic dream or a proverb in a dusty book that we read just on the Fourth of July. It is the idea which founded our nation and has guided our development as a people. Confidence in the future has supported everything else -- public institutions and private enterprise, our own families, and the very Constitution of the United States. Confidence has defined our course and has served as a link between generations. We've always believed in something called progress. We've always had a faith that the days of our children would be better than our own.

Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy. As a people we know our past and we are proud of it. Our progress has been part of the living history of America, even the world. We always believed that we were part of a great movement of humanity itself called democracy, involved in the search for freedom; and that belief has always strengthened us in our purpose. But just as we are losing our confidence in the future, we are also beginning to close the door on our past.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

As you know, there is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media, and other institutions. This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.