Fun new multilateralism…now including al Qaida!

In a previous post, I questioned the wisdom of involving ourselves in Libya’s internal civil war.

Now that we’ve let dozens of expensive missiles off the chain and lost one of my favorite airplanes (and shot some friendly villagers in the rescue of the pilot), I still think it’s a really bad idea.

In fact, a couple days ago, I coined the “Pulsipher Doctrine” to reduce the decision making process for involvement in military campaigns to simple mathematics. In this case, binary mathematics…

“If France and Italy are strongly in favor of the operation, don’t do it.”

       Pulsipher Doctrine, version 1

As Jay Leno said last night, “Do you notice how shiny all the French planes are? It’s like they’ve never been used before!”

However, after reading press reports today of al Qaida support for the Libyan rebels, I have revised my doctrine:

“If France and Italy, or a worldwide terror network whom you are already fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and many other global garden spots, are strongly in favor of the operation, don’t do it.”

      Pulsipher Doctrine, version 2

That’s right folks…this fun new multilateralism is SO expansive and open minded that we’ve found ourselves indirectly allied with our mortal enemy. That can’t be a very good sign.

Kidding aside, let me list a few of the obvious problems with our involvement in Libya:

• NATO is not the right organization for this. NATO’s charter is to defend member states (Libya isn’t one) against aggression – this is Article 5 of the NATO charter. Article 5 is why NATO was involved in Afghanistan after 9/11 – which is the first time Article 5 was ever invoked.
• A “No Fly Zone” doesn’t normally involve interdiction of ground operations – a.k.a. blowing up tanks.
• We don’t know who we are supporting. The same is true in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, etc. Not every conflict involves good guys and bad guys. Sometimes two bad guys fight. Is that the case here? We don’t seem interested in finding out. The British sent a team in to make contact with the rebels in early March, and the rebels captured them and sent them packing in disgrace.
• Finally, no one in the administration, from the president on down, seems to be able to elaborate on any plan or goals. They can tell us “no ground troops – ever” and “we’re going to quit soon”, but aside from informing Gadhafi of our limits, the rationale is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. If it is about saving oppressed people, there are plenty of those around who are daily being shot at and threatened and we don’t seem as eager to engage in those places.

So after complaining about two wars in Muslim countries – including one “war of choice”, President Obama has now chosen to start a third. What’s more, the “coalition” that Obama has joined (when he wasn’t busy with his NCAA brackets) is half the size of the Bush’s “unilateral” attack on Iraq. As reported, Bush’s coalition consisted of:

Coalition Countries - Iraq - 2003

Afghanistan	Albania
Australia	Azerbaijan
Bulgaria	Colombia
Czech Republic	Denmark
El Salvador	Eritrea
Estonia	Ethiopia
Georgia	Hungary
Italy	Japan
South Korea	Latvia
Lithuania	Macedonia
Netherlands	Nicaragua
Philippines	Poland
Romania	Slovakia
Spain	Turkey
United Kingdom	Uzbekistan

Coalition Countries – Libya – 2011

Belgium	Canada
Denmark	France
Germany	Greece
Italy	Jordan
Morocco	Norway
Poland	Qatar
Spain	United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom	al Qaida*

*Italy and Germany were on the list, but have sort of bailed out at this point. Luckily al Qaida has been added to the Libyan coalition based on the new information reported above. And with so few members in the coalition, another participant does help pad the list.

As a side note, just let me say about the Iraq coalition, anytime you can get Ethiopia and Eritrea on the same side of anything, that’s pretty good diplomacy.

Air travel

What the heck is up with air travel these days?
Every plane is full - often with fat smelly men in sweat pants, like they came to the airport straight from the marathon. And yet NONE of these planes seem to get anywhere on time.
I don't know what the problem is, but I'm sure Obama will fix it.

We dropped off our oldest to go back to school today. My wife went in to help get them to the security line which turned out to be a good thing because their checked bag was 54 pounds - having picked up a few Christmas gifts since arriving. Turns out that checking a bag over 50 pounds - even 4 pounds over - costs $125!!!!! So they dug out some heavy stuff which we now need to mail. Since a second bag was only $25 more, we should have put all that stuff - along with the presents we need to mail anyway - into a second bag and checked it. Live and learn.

So that's the least of it. On the way home from school, the poor child was delayed on one flight and finally ended up spending the night at the San Francisco airport. OK. These things happen.
Then on the way back to school, they are delayed again. And looking at the airline website, they've changed the ticket to a different flight (an earlier flight which still hadn't left the ground) and also confirmed a reservation on an additional flight for the connecting leg in case the delay caused them to miss the original flight - so you had one person booked on four flights at all kinds of overlapping times.

Turns out, it all worked out and they got home relatively on time and without any grief.

But it got me thinking of a couple things:
I noticed that United has a new color scheme for their jets. Given the cost of repainting a jet and the economic conditions of United, what are they thinking? If my budget was tight, I'd decide to wait a while before I take the family car to Maaco. I couldn't find any definitive sources, but the ranges for paint jobs on airliners seems to be about $50,000 to $60,000 - that's EACH. Maybe they should use this coupon. While musing on this, I found this interesting writeup on the tradeoffs in polished versus painted aircraft finishes. Did you know the paint on a 737 weighs about 180 lbs? That's 126 lbs more than my child's suitcase. That means we could have just scraped off about a square foot of paint to compensate for the extra 4 pounds.

Has anyone noticed that the post 9/11 security changes all seem to be things that the airlines wanted anyway? Not the part about making the Burger King rejects into unionized federal employees, but the parts about not being able to go to the gate to wait for someone or to drop someone off, effectively limiting checked baggage in ways the airlines couldn't bring themselves to do on their own, etc. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they suddenly determine that food of any kind on the plane is a hazard. And now, viola, United will offer you their special fast security lane - where they try to drop your laptop less often - for only $25 more.

Finally, hey, I paid like $600 for this ticket - how about a WHOLE can of soda?!?!