Someone in the PR department at the NRDC or a sister organization is earning their keep…

From the NY Times, July 3:

Ten years have gone by since a modest but important moment in American environmental history: the dismantling of the 917-foot-wide Edwards Dam on Maine’s Kennebec River.

The Edwards Dam was the first privately owned hydroelectric dam torn down for environmental reasons (and against the owner’s wishes) by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary at the time, showed up at the demolition ceremony to promote what had become a personal crusade against obsolete dams. The publicity generated a national discussion about dams and the potential environmental benefits – to water quality and fish species – of removing them.

It certainly helped the Kennebec and its fish, and dams have been falling ever since. According to American Rivers, an advocacy group and a major player in the Edwards Dam campaign, about 430 outdated dams (some of them small hydropower dams like Edwards) have been removed with both public and private funding. In one case, the removal of a small, 50-foot dam on Oregon’s Sandy River was paid for entirely by the electric utility that owned it in order to improve salmon runs.

More lies ahead. Three dams that have severely damaged salmon runs in Washington State are scheduled to come down in 2011. A tentative agreement has been reached among farmers, native tribes and a power company to remove dams on California’s Klamath River, the site of a huge fish kill several years ago attributed mainly to low water flows caused by dams.

From the LA Times, July 6:

Politicians and stakeholders have steadfastly resisted the painful solution of dam removal while hoping for a miracle. That hope turned out to be a one-way road on a dead-end street, and in many respects they’re now blaming the court for their current predicament. With few exceptions, the region’s politicians, past and current, have been challenging the recommendations of scientists (including dam removal and increasing the spills over the dams) for more than a decade. Former Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) famously vowed to chain himself to a dam rather than surrender, a prospect relished by many conservation groups.

Throughout this stalemate, fish counts have continued to fall, and the underlying science is clear: In river after river where dams have been removed, native fish populations have rebounded and thrived. As the government’s former chief aquatic biologist, Don Chapman, concluded, dam removal is the most effective strategy for saving endangered native fish stocks from extinction.

This was the conclusion reached by the Idaho Statesman newspaper back in 1997 after it conducted a yearlong study of the Snake River dams. The paper reported that the economic benefits of a healthy fishery — and the resultant tens of thousands of jobs — would swamp the benefits of leaving the dams in place.

Dozens of reports by natural resources economists have agreed. Among other things, they describe the dams as economic sinkholes, which produce less than 3% of the region’s power, do nothing for flood control, irrigate only a handful of big farms and subsidize transportation costs (at the expense of taxpayers and salmon) for wheat farmers in Idaho and eastern Washington.

Now preserving fish populations is damn important (sorry) and a good thing to be sure. And I have no doubt that the Army Corps of Engineers never met a river it didn;t want to damn. But hydropower is 3.4% of national energy production (Excel), and 63% of our renewable energy production. I’d love to know what percent of the national hydropower budget we’re talking about taking offline here…
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Because I am more attentive to things I’m paying attention to, this op-ed by Andrew Bacevich (of the “no peace dividend’ camp) caught my eye.

Titled ‘Obama’s strategic blind spot,’ he starts by suggesting that in focusing too much on the ‘how we win’ we’ve lost track of the ‘why we fight’…

A comparable failure of imagination besets present-day Washington. The Long War launched by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11 has not gone well. Everyone understands that. Yet in the face of disappointment, what passes for advanced thinking recalls the Churchill who devised Gallipoli and godfathered the tank: In Washington and in the field, a preoccupation with tactics and operations have induced strategic blindness.

As President Obama shifts the main U.S. military effort from Iraq to Afghanistan, and as his commanders embrace counterinsurgency as the new American way of war, the big questions go not only unanswered but unasked. Does perpetuating the Long War make political or strategic sense? As we prepare to enter that war’s ninth year, are there no alternatives?

Pragmatists shy away from first-order questions — recall President George H. W. Bush’s aversion to what he called “the vision thing.” Obama is a pragmatist. Unlike his immediate predecessor, he inhabits a world where facts matter.

Yet pragmatism devoid of principle will perpetuate the strategic void that Obama inherited. The urgent need is for the administration to articulate a concrete set of organizing precepts — not simply cliches — to frame basic U.S. policy going forward.

He then goes on to suggest a set of strategic principles:

What should those principles be?

First, the Long War may be long, but it should not get any bigger. The regime-change approach — invade and occupy to transform — hasn’t worked; simply trying harder in some other venue (Somalia? Sudan?) won’t produce different results. In short, no more Iraqs.

Second, forget the Bush Doctrine of preventive war: no more wars of choice; henceforth only wars of necessity. The United States will use force only as a last resort and even then only when genuinely vital interests are at stake.

Third, no more crusades unless the American people buy in; expecting a relative handful of soldiers to carry the load while the rest of the country binges on consumption is unconscionable. At a minimum, the generation that opts for war should pay for it through higher taxes rather than foisting a burden of debt onto their grandchildren.

Fourth, the key to keeping America safe is to defend it, not to project American muscle to obscure places around the world. It may or may not be true that a “mighty fortress is our God”; had the United States been a mighty fortress on 9/11, however, the 19 hijackers would have gotten nowhere.

Fifth, by all means let the United States promote the spread of freedom and democracy. Yet we’re more likely to enjoy success by modeling freedom rather than trying to impose it. To provide a suitable model, we’ve considerable work to do here at home. Meanwhile, let’s not deny others the prerogative of defining for themselves exactly what it means to be free.

Boy, I disagree strongly with much of this. My disagreements are really focused on two areas of it –

The secret to keeping America safe can’t be to ‘defend it’ when the enemies aren’t fleets of warships and armies of tanks. What it takes to lock down and secure an open society like ours means, simply, the end of social freedom as we know it. It’s a massive surveillance state, with all the abuse that implies. Bacevich has been critical at length of the weakness of homeland defense that “let 9/11 happen” – well, what – exactly – kind of “mighty fortress” would have prevented it? Do we simply stop allowing foreign nationals into the country, or assign them government ‘minders?’ Nice rhetoric, show me a policy.

When he says we will use force only as a last resort, does he suggest that we simply take a hands-off position to the balance of the world? Let Israel and the Arabs nuke it out? Let the violent extremists kill enough people to take over societies, and keep their grip on the societies they already control?

Now if he believes that if we stop meddling, they will stop being angry, that’s amusing and wrong.

Way back in 2004, blogger Jim Henley posted a similar ‘Grand Plan‘ that paralleled Bacevich’s (with some additional detail that may or may not reflect Bacevich’s thinking). My overall take on Henley’s post was:

…when I was pointed to Jim Henley’s Grand Plan, I just lost the capacity for reasonable thought; it was so dumb, such a dorm-room, bong-hit driven idea of how the world ought to be that I almost left it alone. Then I got a link to it from a non-blog person, and realized that I had to Go Back In There and wrestle with it.

And as a side note, my feelings about Bacevich’s grand strategy aren’t all that different. Look, let’s go to one specific criticism of Henley:

“A Grand Strategy for the Rest – The Unqualified Offerings Plan, not just for Iraq but for terrorism generally:

1) Stop borrowing trouble

OK, that makes sense. The problem of course is that – as in the oldest known form of drama, tragedy – the trouble we’re paying for was borrowed generations ago. There’s no ‘ollie ollie oxen free’; no Original Position. So as a game-theory concept, it makes lots of sense. As a basis for real-world policy, it makes very little.

2) “Wait” for the people behind the trouble we’ve already borrowed to get old and tired or die off outright.

Right. First Rawls, then Kuhn; a full plate of philosophy’s Greatest Hits. Sadly, the dynamics are little more complex than that. Yes, the changes are large largely generational, but – a big but – the dynamics making the new generation take positions can’t be reset to zero, there are consequences for disengagement, and so there’s little but hope that would lead one to believe that – absent some positive act – the next generations will be happier to coexist than the last.

Still true – what exactly has changed in the Palestinian culture to make them more willing to live alongside Israel since 1948? And – as a sidenote – I’ll suggest that pure containment is Bacevich’s preferred foreign policy; except that – based on his unwillingness to meddle in foreign affairs, it’s containment that starts at the US border.

Look, go read my criticism of Henley’s ideas. Slightly warmed over, they serve perfectly well as criticisms of Bacevich’s as well. Three key points:

The first [problem with Henley’s arguments] is, yes, they do – they do, because they are a part of an expansionist (as are all evangelical) religion that sees a unified worldwide church as is goal, and more important, because one of the strongest strains in that church was raised from stock created here in the West, and defines itself, not only internally through the Quran, but externally, against the West (see Qutb).

The second problem is that even if we tried, we couldn’t cut the ties that are at the boundaries between our cultures. Trade, migration, media…the big three drivers that force their culture into contact with ours – even without the mechanisms of imperialism (stipulating for the moment that imperialism is as powerful as he suggests) force us to deal with each other. Does he somehow think that the Playboy Channel and MTV will somehow stop being watched in Riyadh? And that this itself won’t be a threat to the established order?

and

What [fresh] humiliations, exactly, did he have in mind? Because I think he’s forgetting that OBL is talking about ancient colonial history, and battles in Andalusia and at the gates of Vienna. These folks have a much better sense of history than we do.

and finally,

But the interests here are (a) inseparable – we can’t economically (or culturally) ‘disengage’ from the Islamic world; and (b) central to our well-being – it’s not only the oil and the economy, but the fact that while the Vietnamese Communist Party signed up for the internationalization of Communism, we didn’t need to worry about them, it was the USSR and China carrying that ball; Hanoi was happy to just bring Saigon into the fold. It was a nationalist manifestation of an international movement. Islamism isn’t nationalist. It hasn’t, doesn’t, and won’t stop at national borders.

There’s a great paraphrase of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics that goes

You can’t win.
You can’t break even.
You’ve got to play.

That’s thermodynamic reality. Political reality in a wicked-problems world, like it or not, follows similar rules.

You don’t know if you’re winning or losing.
You don’t know when you’re done.
You have to play.

I get the impulse to just close our collective eyes hold our breath and hope things will get better. In this country, we’re about 500 years too late for that.
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…so I’m reading all the books that TG bought me from my Amazon Wish List, and this morning I picked up Andrew Bacevich’s ‘The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.’ I just finished Niebuhr’s ‘The Irony of American History‘ which Bacevich wrote the preface to, and had finished that book mulling over the notion that Bacevich had flatly misread Niebuhr, and that Niebuhr’s book was more in the spirit of Ellul than of Chomsky.

So, anyway, I pick up Bacevich’s own book, and the opening words are:

Introduction:
War Without Exits
For the United States, the passing of the Cold War yielded neither a “peace dividend,” nor anything remotely resembling peace.

And it was like getting slapped. WHAT THE F***?? How can someone make the claim that there was no peace dividend – we’ll talk later about whether there was peace – in the aftermath of the collapse of Communism as a strategic enemy? Did he ever look at the Clinton budgets?

Here’s a handy graph, based on data from Truth and Politics.org (I have superficially checked their numbers and they seem right).

Note that it shows that the percentage of US Gross Domestic Product spent on defense declined from 6.1% in 1983 to 3.0% in 1999-2001. That’s 3.1% of GDP that was freed up from the Reagan peak; from the fall of the wall in 1989, the decline is only 2.6%. To put that in perspective, the entire health sector today comprises about 17% of GDP – so we’re talking about a savings in defense spending of almost 20% of the entire healthcare budget.

Now I know it’s strong to accuse someone of lying. But I don’t know how else to interpret such a willful misstating of elementary fact in support of one’s argument. And while I’ll go on and finish the book, I have to say that I don’t understand how every critic in America didn’t confront Bacevich with the same question.
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From Editor & Publisher:

John Arthur has been forced out as Los Angeles Times executive editor.

Editor Russ Stanton explained in a posting at the paper’s Web site, “John and I did not agree on the need for the just-announced masthead changes, and we differ on the best approach to reaching our goals.”

Sports editor Randy Harvey becomes associate editor, and obituaries editor Jon Thurber will become managing editor, print.
[emphasis added]

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.

It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.

It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.

– John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
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Instapundit leads me to a post on “The Top 10 Manly Movie Deaths of All Time,” a great idea which pretty much sucks in execution because the person who wrote the post must be about 22 (#9 is the cartoon Optimus in the 1986 ‘Transformers’ movie!!)

10 – Leon in The Professional (1994)
9 – Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie (1986)
8 – Tony Montana in Scarface (1983)
7 – The Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
6 – Bill in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
5 – Goose in Top Gun (1986)
4 – Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977)
3 – Nick in The Deer Hunter (1978)
2 – William Wallace in Braveheart (1995)
1 – Apollo Creed in Rocky IV (1985)

Here’s my list, which shares one with theirs:

10 – Val Kilmer in Tombstone
9 – Nick Nolte in Who’ll Stop The Rain
8 – Clint Eastwood in Grand Torino
7 – Toshiro Mifune in Throne of Blood
6 – Burt Lancaster in The Killers
5 – David Carradine in Kill Bill
4 – Robert DiNiro in Heat
3 – Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner
2 – Jimmy Cagney in White Heat
1 – John Wayne in The Shootist

It’s amusing to mine our memories of films to talk about lists like this, but lists like this matter, because in part they embody our models for behavior – good and bad – into iconic moments that we all carry around as a part of our culture.

That’s why images like this are so powerful:

Because they embody idealized behavior.

In the list I posted, all of the characters embody an idealized masculine attitude toward death – for better or worse.
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Update: It’s interesting how – in retrospect – my list is all about violent death; some senseless, some deeply meaningful. Because I certainly don;t envision my life ending in a hail of bullets (or arrows); I was planning something like a peaceful death surrounded by a large and loving family for whom I have provided and cared much of my adult life. Hmmm.
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Me, June 21:

So I’m glad that the NY Times and journalists could sit on an exciting story to help save one of their own. In the future, will they do this to save some random civilian, or some US soldier?

NYT, today, July 2:

KABUL (AP) — An American soldier, who disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts, is believed captured, officials said Thursday.

Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier disappeared Tuesday.

Now it’s not clear that the military even asked the press for silence. But the contrast is worth noting, dontcha think?
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I started blogging in the aftermath of 9/11 and leadup to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I viewed Iraq as a front in a much larger conflict, and today we pulled out troops back from cities in Iraq and left the defense of the Iraqi people to Iraqi forces.

U.S. combat troops, under agreement with the Iraqi government, abandoned the country’s cities today amid public celebrations and private concerns over Iraq’s future security.

The government declared today a national holiday and official cars were decorated with streamers and flowers. Revellers took to the streets to toot on trumpets and beat drums while martial music and history documentaries filled television screens. U.S. military officers visited Iraqi bases in several regions to wish their counterparts well.

“We are behind you,” Col. Ryan Gonsalves, commander of U.S. troops near the northern city of Kirkuk, assured officers of the Iraqi 12th Army Division. A luncheon and dancing marked the occasion. “It’s their day, their sovereignty,” he said later in an interview.

In a televised ceremony in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki guaranteed the government could keep its citizens safe. “Those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are making a big mistake.” The country has been hit by a series of car and suicide bombs that killed about 250 people in the past two weeks.

I’m worried but hopeful; worried because the impetus for this was political – both in the US and Iraq – more than based on military conditions. I’m hopeful because conflicts end when the political becomes more important than the military.

The next few months will tell; going back will be harder, militarily and politically, than staying – which is why I worry. But you know, having made these decisions, now is the time to hope.

So that’s what I’ll be doing.
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I’ve almost completely ignored the Troopathon. Timing was bad (we did a huge demo with four other organizations in from of state officials yesterday) but so what; timing is never good, and this week neither was I.

It’s almost over, and I’m asking – begging – that you consider renting a movie tonight instead of seeing Transformers and buy a care package for the troops.

If you don’t like the politics of the people organizing this, remember that they don’t get the money or goods – the troops do. And if you can’t get past that, please go sign up for Soldier’s Angels. Through them, I send magazines, beef jerky, and M & M’s to a soldier doing police training in Baghdad – it’s almost free, gets rid of the old magazines I’d just recycle, and reminds him that at least one household Stateside remembers what he’s doing and gives a damn.

Because really, what you’re doing with your $30 is just that. Giving an American soldier half of hour of ‘Recherche de Temps Perdu’ reminders of what it smells and tastes like to be home, and reminding them that while they are sleeping under foreign stars, someone at home is proud of them, wishes them well, and – to be blunt – gives some small kind of a damn.
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…and S.C. Governor Mark Sanford is providing it.

Here’s Jeffrey Goldberg at 11:39 am Eastern:

Does Gov. Sanford Suffer from Dissociative Fugue?
Gov. Sanford’s strange vanishing act — he was thought to be hiking the Appalachian Trail alone, until he washed up in Argentina — prompts me to wonder if he suffers from a condition known as dissociative fugue disorder.

…then at 2:36 pm:

Well, Gov. Sanford Isn’t Suffering from Dissociative Fugue
He’s suffering from something else entirely: Argentine Nookie Syndrome.

I don’t think his career is going to be recovering from this level of ridicule any time soon.
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