OK, I fibbed.

I said I wasn’t going to say anything more, but when it’s the first thing in the morning, and it’s really early in the morning, and it’s the first news you hear, what are you going to say that’s coherent?

First, to follow up on my metacomment from this morning. Yes, we have finally found a story that has broken through the media fog of war.

For weeks–indeed, now months–since the atrocities of September 11, the Fox News Channel has covered the war at their 10 PM eastern time (7 PM, in the time zone where I spend much of my time) slot. Initially, this was on Paula Zahn’s “The Edge,” but since Paula jumped ship and went over to CNN in the morning (where she promptly got trounced in the ratings by “Fox and Friends” on FNC), the folks at FNC have, each week, been alternating various personalities in that time slot with “War on Terror” coverage. I don’t know, but I would presume that they’re actually auditioning potential Paula replacements, and watching ratings each week as one means of making a decision.

This week was handled by Laurie Dhue, a blonde ingenue that FNC acquired from CNN via MSNBC about a year ago. Ms. Dhue normally handles the newsreading at the top and bottom of the hour in prime time, and of all the female news personalities on Fox (or any other news channel, for that matter, in my humble opinion) she is the easiest on the eyes, and has a sultry voice to boot. I can’t offer any similar assessment for male news personalities, not being bent that way.

(Disclaimer–I deeply love Patricia, who reads this weblog, would never ever even consider swapping her for any other, and all comments here are purely objective, and only peripherally derived from my limbic system and several million years of evolution).

She is clearly someone who FNC is grooming for bigger and better things, and putting her in the rotation for the 10 PM slot is a way of finding out if one of those things is replacing Paula Zahn permanently. My impression is that, in addition to her predictable visual and aural effects on the heterosexual male libido, she is reasonably intelligent, and hard working, but, regrettably, not particularly knowledgeable about matters military, and doesn’t always come off well in attempting to cover wars.

Tonight (I suspect at her own request) she got to do an hour on Something Completely Different. She devoted the whole hour to a celebration of the life of George Harrison. Though she was almost certainly in diapers, if she existed at all, when the Beatles were in their heyday, she was clearly enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject, and in my opinion, did a much better job of covering it than she has the war this week. She managed to get Dick Cavett and Billy Preston live in the studio together to reminisce.

So, anyway, this is just a long way of saying that the pattern has been broken–we have finally found a story that is important enough to preempt war coverage for.

The other interesting thing that I noted was that while watching it, I was still a little starved for war news (as there is now a battle on for Kandahar–the final Taliban redoubt, not counting Osama’s caves). FNC obliged me by running a crawl during the Harrison tribute. As a result, I got a chance to practice my multiplexing ability–reading the war crawl while listening to the interviews with various people remembering George. However, given my genetic heritage, I have to confess that I lost the war train of thought every time they did a full screen of Ms. Dhue–I can listen to one thing and watch another, but I can only watch one thing at time, and hormones will always out, regardless of one’s devotion to his true love…

Anyway, now, to drop from the metacomment, to an actual dissertation on George Harrison, and a disquisition on genius, life, the universe and everything.

Listening to him sing “Here Comes The Sun,” I realized that I never really appreciated the Beatles until Abbey Road. It may have been partly because that is the time that I really started to come of age, but I think that it’s also because it was the album that had more of George’s influence than any previous one, with the possible exception of Sergeant Pepper. It was the pre-breakup Beatles, the ones that were evolving just as George was blossoming as a total musician, that I enjoyed the most. During that period, in the late sixties, they were revolutionizing their own music, and more indirectly, popular music in general, and I’m quite convinced that it was because George Harrison was struggling to break free of the previous confines of their classical fifties rock’n’roll roots. This artistic tension is what ultimately, a couple of years later, broke up the group, but it also spawned some of their greatest and most interesting work.

The other thing that I was thinking as I listened, appreciating his voice, and guitar, and his beautiful melody, was “what is the chance that people of this level of talent, not just individual talent, but a talent that created something much greater than the sum of its parts, would come together in Liverpool, England?”

And I thought, both infinitesimal, and inevitable. We should be amazed that such a group could come together from anywhere in the world, but for them all to come from the same city at the same time…well, it’s just pure luck. If you think of it kind of like the Drake equation, multiplying probabilities on probabilities, it indicates that there were probably lots of people in Liverpool who could have gotten together to form world-changing bands, but they…well…just didn’t get together. And if there were people like that in Liverpool, there were also people like that in Birmingham, and Manchester, and Glasgow, and London. And New York and LA and Shanghai and even Kabul and Kandahar…

The point is, that at the risk of sounding PC, diversity (true diversity–not the monochrome kind pushed by the PC police) is the source of both sublime genius and, unfortunately, evil mayhem. But if we have a system of both freedom and responsibility that can allow the genius to bloom while containing those who would mindlessly increase entropy, then the more the merrier. Population control is evil, not just because it violates peoples’ rights, but because it violates some more basic principle of the universe–the necessity to throw the dice many times in an attempt to bring together the necessary combinations that create great works and knowledge–to ultimately help the universe to know itself.

And yes, of course earth is not enough–we will indeed eventually run out of room, and that’s why we have to expand into the other 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe. But, trite though it may sound, there is a reason to do so–to create more George Harrisons. And more Beatles, and Beethovens, and Einsteins and Hawkings. And in the meantime, we have to subdue those on this planet who would constrict and destroy, so that we can make room, both physically and spiritually, for those who do create.

I know, I know, it was a rhetorical question, but Julia Gorin has an interesting analysis of why, at least when it comes to Middle East policy, the blind support by American Jews of Democrats is truly bewildering. And she doesn’t even mention Hillary’s little smooch with Suha or her “f’ing Jew bastard” epithets. Though maybe she thought it was sufficient to simply give as a reason, “Hillary.”

There is an interview in the Arab News with a Taliban leader.

Mullah Abdullah seems almost disinterested in the strategy of war. He held a post in the Taleban Defense Ministry in Kabul ? Arabs, he said, were employed to maintain his vehicles ? but every military question receives a theological reply. “Even now the Americans have not succeeded in finding Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Quaida. They haven?t achieved this mission of theirs for us, Osama is a Muslim and a Muslim from another country is a brother. As for us, we will fight on in the mountains as guerrillas if we lose Kandahar ? and if we achieve martyrdom, this is victory.??

I was beginning to understand. Victory comes with success and victory comes with defeat. “The Afghans,?? Lt. Col. Alexander Burns pompously observed in 1841, “are not deficient in the imaginative faculties, and they may be quoted as a proof that invention precedes judgment.?? Yet for Mullah Abdullah, history and politics and defeat appeared part of a religious text.

It seems clear that with this crowd, promotions are based on neither intelligence nor clarity of thought. No wonder they’re losers.

In another gem, Mark Steyn skewers feminist hypocrisy and general cluelessness on the war.

Momentarily stunned, the feminists quickly discovered a whole new set of grievances. Oh, sure, Bush is making a big deal about women’s rights in Afghanistan now, but where was he five years ago when the Taliban first showed up? Well, five years ago, he was in Austin, Texas, and the guy with his feet under the desk in the White House never did a thing — though, if ever there was a fellow with a vested interest in ensuring that impenetrable facial hoods never caught on, it was surely Mr. Clinton.

In another gem, Mark Steyn skewers feminist hypocrisy and general cluelessness on the war.

Momentarily stunned, the feminists quickly discovered a whole new set of grievances. Oh, sure, Bush is making a big deal about women’s rights in Afghanistan now, but where was he five years ago when the Taliban first showed up? Well, five years ago, he was in Austin, Texas, and the guy with his feet under the desk in the White House never did a thing — though, if ever there was a fellow with a vested interest in ensuring that impenetrable facial hoods never caught on, it was surely Mr. Clinton.

In another gem, Mark Steyn skewers feminist hypocrisy and general cluelessness on the war.

Momentarily stunned, the feminists quickly discovered a whole new set of grievances. Oh, sure, Bush is making a big deal about women’s rights in Afghanistan now, but where was he five years ago when the Taliban first showed up? Well, five years ago, he was in Austin, Texas, and the guy with his feet under the desk in the White House never did a thing — though, if ever there was a fellow with a vested interest in ensuring that impenetrable facial hoods never caught on, it was surely Mr. Clinton.

Charles Krauthammer also tells Chris Matthews and his ilk what’s what.

The Arab street has fallen silent not because the president hosted Muslim envoys for a White House dinner or because American children persuaded their Muslim pen pals of our good will toward Islam. It has fallen silent because the United States astonished the street with one of history’s great shows of arms: destroying a regime 7,000 miles away, landlocked and isolated, solely with air power and a few soldiers on the ground — and but a single combat death (thus far).

The Taliban’s collapse shattered two myths: Islamic invincibility and American weakness — myths amplified over eight years by the Clinton administration’s empty gestures and demonstrable impotence in the face of Islamic terror.

His point is that we need to follow through with the present victory in Sudan, the Phillipines, etc. (though leave Iraq for later–I agree). After the events of the past couple of months, it probably won’t be necessary to do what we did in Afghanistan (except for in Iraq, and possibly Syria). Most places now get the message…

Apparently, Osama bin Laden urinal mats are hot sellers, even more popular than the Saddam version were during the Gulf War. The ones with Osama holding his mouth open are flying particularly off the shelves…

Is this a great country or what? When we can’t pee on Osama’s face, the terrorists win.

Richard Cohen has an excellent riposte to Chris Matthews silly whine of yesterday. Bottom line, Iraq is more like Afghanistan than unlike it, and when we go in, while it will be more difficult (they will at least have had the advantage of seeing what we did in Afghanistan) we will win there as well, and all of the fuss and fretting by the handwringers will be seen as just that.

Interesting article in Government Executive about unhappiness in the mid-ranks of the Army over the Marines being the ones to set up the base in southern Afghanistan, a job that would have been more traditionally fulfilled by the Army. This goes beyond simple interservice rivalry–it speaks to potentially serious problems, in which we have a combination of an Army that is still designed for the Cold War (over for more than a decade now) but with inadequate resources to even fulfill that miscast role.

?The Marine Corps foresight seems to have eliminated the need for the Army,? one Army captain complained in an online forum. ?Here?s the bitter pill I?ve been chewing on. My Army is operating equipment designed to fight Soviets in the Fulda Gap, and the stuff in the pipeline is just a more expensive version of the same. My Army has a personnel system that was build to defeat the Kaiser. My Army trains to fight fictional forces in make-believe lands instead of focusing on real-world missions. My Army has one-half the number of generals as we did at the height of World War II, even though the force is one-tenth the size. The resultant leadership inertia bogs decision-making down in a bureaucratic morass, as more chiefs fight to protect their hallowed turf. The end result of all this is we get to watch the Marines perform Army missions because they can do them better,? he wrote.

This provides a hint of the kinds of issues that Don Rumsfeld was dealing with, even prior to September 11, and it’s perhaps become an even more crucial one as we contemplate Iraq.

[Follow Up]

Reader Craig Biggerstaff writes:

I don’t have any history with either the Army or Marines, or any reason to favor over one another, but this article reinforced what has been obvious for a long time to a casual observer: there is major overlap of capabilities and missions. As a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay twice for the same thing unless there’s an arguable benefit to keeping the redundancy.

Well, there is an arguable benefit for redundancy–it provides backup, and more importantly, it provides competition. That some in the Army are unhappy with the current situation may spur them to improve.

What, really, is the difference between Army Rangers and Marines? Between Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs? Why do all four services have fighter aircraft?

I can’t speak with any detail to the first two questions, but the Army does not, in fact have fighter aircraft. It has the helicopters and the A-10 Warthog attack planes for close-air support, and it had to fight tooth and nail to get them, but finally did because the Air Force refused to give priority to this mission, and guys were getting killed on the ground from its lack. Navy has fighters because it doesn’t make sense to base Air Force operations on aircraft carriers (we haven’t done that, AFAIK, since the Doolittle Raid, which used US Army Air Corps personnel/aircraft). I’m not sure why the Marines have them.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable on this can comment. Assuming for the sake of argument that overlap exists, what ought to be done about it? Merge or consolidate services? Transfer duties and personnel from one to another? Or keep them separate but merge the command hierarchy (general/flag officer staff below JCS)?

One has to be very careful in reorganizing and consolidating to not overdo it, and totally eliminate competition, which is as useful in government bureaucracies as in the free market. In theory it seems more efficient to consolidate, but this is always based on the assumption that the consolidated entity will perform properly without the ongoing threat of losing its mission. This assumption is almost always invalid.

To change the subject only slightly, one of the reasons that NASA is such a disaster (and this is largely due to Dan Goldin) is that, in a bid for efficiency and to allow the budget cuts of the ’90s, he set up “Centers of Excellence” with technical specialties, and eliminated any competition to them at the other NASA centers. This, combined with little accountability, contributed greatly to the problems that we’ve seen with, among other things, ISS, various failed planetary probes, and our failure to make much progress in supersonic flight.

[Update at 12:30 PM PST]

UPI columnist Jim Bennett weighs in with the following:

See the discussion in the chapter entitled “The Material Bias: Why We Need More Fraud, Waste and Mismanagement,” in Edward N.Luttwak, The Pentagon and the Art of War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 13056.

According to Luttwak, “[The] outputs that count in war are very particular and very different from the outputs that count in peacetime, and when civilian notions of efficiency are applied, the difference is routinely overlooked.”

Saying that all combat aircraft, or even all such aircraft of a particular type, should be procured by a single service, and therefore procured by a single decision point, is Soviet-style central planning. Furthermore, it is central planning about an area in which past expertise is often misleading. Luttwak discusses the experience of the Marine air arm in Korea, where the general consensus was that the Marine pilots flew lower, stayed longer, and took more risks than their Air Force and Navy counterparts while flying close support missions. This may have been because Marine pilots had been trained with the ground troops before they became pilots, and it may have been because they were more likely to actually know the people on the ground. Also, the Marine air arm has been more innovative in procurement: in buying the Harrier, they were the first service in decades to fly a non-US fighter.

Too bad the Air Force doesn’t have tanks, as some South American forces do.

He also refers readers to this article for further background on the close-air support issue.