Avuncular American

Capitalism's Not Just For Cronies, Crooks & CPAs

With 2008/2009 looking ominously like 1929's Crash and the ensuing Great Depression, it's not surprising that journalists will zero in on tragic stories like the recent suicide of German billionaire Adolf Merckle, who threw himself under a train as his firm faced insurmountable debts.  Merckle's family, I'm sure, is in a state of shock, a state the train driver likely shares.  But how about his conglomerate's 100,000 employees?  Imagine how they feel.

In France over the holidays, we commiserated with my wife's sister, whose employer has announced a restructuring plan that will seriously affect the lives of his employees.  Though not directly linked to "la crise" - as the current economic climate is called - the move has already meant job loss, dislocation, and high anxiety.  Close to retirement, sister-in-law is likely to be spared personal hardship, but she is genuinely upset - to the point of tears - about the effect on her co-workers.  She has worked in the factory her entire adult life.

Elsewhere in France, it's a cousin who had to say a long, excruciatingly long, goodbye to his employer, a major electronics manufacturer, which once employed thousands of people in his provincial city.  Cousin's last couple of years were spent retraining fellow employees, for jobs they knew were not going to materialize.  "It was the financiers," he told us.  They knew nothing - and cared less - about the core business.  You can imagine the rest of the story - manufacturing is now done in China.

Both stories, very close to home, tell me that we're missing something big in the "whither capitalism?" debate.  It's true, capitalism has earned itself a pretty rotten reputation of late, what with Bernard "Ponzi" Madoff, trillion dollar losses of intangible (and incomprehensible) assets, and numb skulled management by the behemoths of the US car industry.

What's missing is the human element.  Apart from the unfortunate Herr Merckle, we haven't yet reached the brokers-out-windows depths of the Depression (though I recall that one of Madoff's victims ended his life).  But regular people - whether evicted from their homes, bereft of their retirement savings, or given the pink slip - are already suffering in their millions.

Michael Moore, who keeps track of things in his native Michigan, wrote of the pre-Christmas atmosphere while Congress fiddled with the Big Auto bailout:

We have a little more than a month to go of this madness. As I sit here in Michigan today, tens of thousands of hard working, honest, decent Americans do not believe they can make it to January 20th. The malaise here is astounding. Why must they suffer because of the mistakes of every CEO from Roger Smith to Rick Wagoner?

Last summer, the excellent Franco-German TV channel ARTE ran an in-depth documentary on the disconnect between management and those being managed.  Beyond the widening gap in remuneration, it was more a matter of the "I will it, therefore it will happen" school of management.

Daniel Goeudevert, former Ford and VW manager, described the attitude: "Our company expects X percent growth this year.  But it's up to you - the line managers, engineers, technicians - to decide how to get there."  Goeudevert said that "impossible" is not an acceptable answer, and that the result is that many highly qualified employees are driven to the psychiatrist - or worse.

Brothers Kenneth and William Hopper have written a book, The Puritan Gift, which, despite its possibly off-putting title, is increasingly becoming required reading as capitalists the world over ask themselves "how did we get here?"  The Hoppers suggest that as business school MBAs, accountants, and financiers came to run companies, the link with the "main knowledge" - the core business that the Puritans strove to perfect - became increasingly tenuous.  And get this: they point out that the "engine companies" that drove the mighty American economy were, not all that long ago, free of debt.  Listen to a great BBC "Global Business" interview with the authors here.

CPAs should be confined to balancing (but not cooking) the books, crooks are best behind bars, and crony should just be a synonym for old friend, not an adjective for a deviant form of capitalism.  None of them should be running the major business, financial, or political institutions that - properly led - might make Western economies the success they once were.

That's what the workers of the world would appreciate - decent leadership, in all senses of the term.  In exchange, they'll perform wonders, and will be capitalism's best friends.

A Cold Winter, From Bulgaria to Boston

Citgo, Venezuela's Texas-based oil subsidiary, has suspended its scheme to provide cheap heating oil to thousands of low-income families in the US.  The programme is being halted because of falling world oil prices.

BBC January 6, 2009

Several European countries say their supplies of Russian gas have been cut sharply amid an energy price dispute between Moscow and Ukraine.  The EU depends on Russia for about a quarter of its total gas supplies, some 80% of which is pumped through Ukraine.

BBC January 6, 2009

Since the heat and hot water in our building in Brussels is heated by (probably Russian) gas, I have a personal interest in these stories.  My only connection with the Venezuelan story is that I used to have a Citgo credit card.

Hugo Chavez's generosity is bumping up against real world limits, which is the latest example of how philanthropy bites the dust when the going gets tough.  All around the world, as formerly wealthy donors check their net worth, charity starts to look like it needs to stay home.

Chavez of course originally had political motives to dispense his oil largess in the United States, a nice way of thumbing his nose at the Yanqui Bush, whose oil friends had no such programs of their own.  Even after the Citgo suspension, Joseph Kennedy of Citizens' Energy had a hard time finding fault with the Venezuelans: "I don't get one barrel from one US company. Not one."

As uncomfortable as it is for the 200,000 American families who have benefited from the Citgo program, it's nothing compared to the pain that millions of European homes and industries could face if Russian gas is turned off mid-winter (Western Europe is currently shivering under a sub-zero cold spell, blowing down, appropriately enough, from Siberia).

Last August, during the Russian-Georgian war over South Ossetia, Europeans were reminded of their dependence on Russian energy supplies.  What better time than in the depths of winter to show its customers that Russia knows how to play Energy Monopoly?

The Venezuelan and Russian hands on the oil and gas valves should serve to remind us - as we were warned a generation ago by President Jimmy Carter - that dependence on strongmen for oil is a fool's game.  Chavez, Putin/Medvedev, Ahmadinejad - the West needs to bail itself out from this crowd.

When it gets cold in Bulgaria, Brussels, and Boston, the strategic sense of energy diversification becomes more and more evident.  Instead of using the world financial (now economic) crisis to find excuses to renege on energy/climate goals, now is the time to spur efforts to play Energy Autarky.

Financial-Judicial-Governmental Crisis: Belgium's Vacuum

Last summer I wrote of "Belgium's Lost Year," marking twelve months of political confusion after inconclusive national elections in June 2007.  Now that the very tenuous government formed by Yves Leterme has submitted its resignation (its fourth), the country will apparently spend Christmas and New Year's consumed with the never-ending political drama.  Or perhaps not.  Crisis or not, there are feasts to be consumed and parties to be thrown.  And politics really is the last thing that Belgium needs more of.

The proximate cause of Leterme's fall is government interference in the judicial process over the resolution of the Fortis Bank crisis, violating the separation of power.  But Leterme's fall could also be seen as the first governmental casualty in the worldwide financial crisis.  It is his government's eagerness to get its way in the bailout of Fortis that led to tinkering with the judicial process.

Belgium's Leterme and his coalition government may be the first direct political casualties of the financial crisis, but indirectly, we know that John McCain paid the price for being in the same party as George W. Bush.  The financial crisis, metastasizing into an economic crisis, may claim other governments before it is over.

At the very time that the private sector is increasingly dependent on bailouts from governments, public coffers are denied tax income from a constricting private sector.  Where is the bailout money going to come from when governments like those in Belgium and the U.S. run out of money?  The printing press?  China?  But then who gets to bail out China when its industry feels the pinch from shrunken Western demand?

Belgium usually muddles through, and the King will have his work cut out for him to deal with this latest resignation.  He refused to accept Leterme's previous ones, though, as wags have noted, the PM's political lives are dwindling.  Even cats have only nine lives.

With this, I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, and survival in 2009.  It will be a good New Year, because it won't be 2008 any longer.  I'll be in places with intermittent internet connections over the next ten days or so, so please stand by for full Avuncular production in 2009.

Reg. Peking Dept. Agr.

BEIJING - CHINA, which has weathered a series of scandals over food safety, has put 12 US food products on a 90-day import alert after they were found to contain a banned dye or excessive additives or preservatives.

The import alert comes as the US maintains a ban on imports of food from China, unless they can show they are free of dairy or free of melamine.

The compound, used in making plastic, was added to Chinese baby formula, killing at least six Chinese infants and making hundreds of thousands sick.

Earlier in the week, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) impounded and destroyed Italian brandy, Spanish dairy products, Belgian chocolate and seasoning from Britain. -- REUTERS

Oh Lord.  It's the bit about Belgian chocolate that got me going.  Actually, I don't like the idea of destroying "Italian brandy" either - would that be grappa?  Seriously, this is one of China's sillier efforts in its tit-for-tat approach to international trade.  Anyone who knows Belgian chocolate (thanks to Chocolate.com for the above display) knows that it's among the world's purest - and tastiest.

In the United States, even before the Federal Food and Drug Administration was thought of, there was the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture:

Over the years, many consumers across the U.S. have come to recognize the small print on many food product labels "Reg. Penna. Dept. Agr." (Registered Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture). Historically, Pennsylvania has been known to have some of the more exacting food manufacturing regulations in the U.S. If food manufacturers registered their products in Pennsylvania, this was indication they met requirements in other states.

That was before China's exacting standards became the norm.  Who knows, we may all have to add melamine to food to receive the "Reg. Peking Dept. Agr." seal of approval.  Maybe the Irish got their chemical substances confused when they added dioxin, and not melamine, to their animal feed.

As long as the Belgians don't cravenly cave to the Chinese, their chocolate should be just fine.

African Reputations: Ghana & Zimbabwe

There was never a better time to prove the point - Governor Palin, are you paying attention? - that Africa is a continent and not a country.  The news coming from two widely separated corners shows the contrast:

Ghana: the country's fifth democratic, contested presidential elections are taking place today, and the country is debating how best to manage an oil bonanza due to start in the next two years

Zimbabwe: starvation has exacerbated the cholera epidemic, which is added to the endemic hyper-inflation and political violence.  Now even some African leaders are calling for armed international intervention to save the country from Robert Mugabe's calamitous rule.

If you are looking for the latest information on Ghana's elections, check this wonderful page from the BBC World Service, which provides audio and text background and results starting 1830 GMT on Sunday.  For local flavor and minute-by-minute updates, read "Think Ghana" and its Decision '08 blog, by three enterprising young Ghanaians.

Personally, I want Ghana's winning streak to continue, for it is a very impressive country.  Airports tell you something about a country, and Accra's international airport is clean and calm - extremely reassuring in a region where air travel is sporadically deadly.  Ghana - even before the discovery of oil - was fast on its way to becoming a regional center; French is increasingly overheard, thanks to francophone businessmen seeking a safe place to do business near sometimes war torn Ivory Coast.

But it was not always so.  I returned from a series of trips to Ghana a couple of years ago, and was enthusing about the country's progress with a friend who had served in the Peace Corps in the French-speaking Sahel in the Eighties.  She was surprised at the change from her time in the region, as Ghana's reputation then was one of military coups, corruption, instability, and firing squads.  Today, an interested visitor might see the seaside firing ranges that the very professional Ghanaian Army now only uses for target practice.  In 1979, that's where they carried out the execution of the losers in a military coup.

This oscillation in the reputation of African countries is nowhere more evident than in Zimbabwe, which was known as the "jewel of Africa" in better days.  Before its 231 million percent annual inflation rate and $200 million Zimbabwe Dollar note (AFP photo at left from yesterday is already outdated).  For an idea of the extent of the paradise that was lost, read "How To Kill a Country" in the December 2003 Atlantic by (current Obama State Department Transition Team adviser) Samantha Power:

The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women. How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe... who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction.

Dr. Power likely thought that five years ago Zimbabwe had reached its nadir; today it's impossible to say just how much lower the country can go.  And unless Mugabe himself contracts the rampant cholera, it's hard to imagine what - short of his army turning on him - can put an end to the misery.

"Nation branding," or the cultivation of a country's reputation, requires more than a marketing effort for African countries.  No PR campaign on CNN International or BBC World can erase the total failure of governance and the evident misery of Zimbabwe's population.  But Ghana, which returned from the precipice of failed statehood, offers hope to a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.  The question is: what will be left to govern?

Mandarins & Vassals: China Deals With the West

This week:

• French President (and current EU Council President) Nicolas Sarkozy meets with the Dalai Lama today in Poland
• Because of the above meeting, the Monday 1 December EU-China Summit was postponed (by the Chinese)
• Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson attended his last US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue

The latter cannot have been easy for Paulson, who used to lecture the Chinese thusly: "healthy capital markets are absolutely critical to any nation's long-term economic success" (on the eve of his September 2006 inaugural meeting).

(Chinese character "west" from About.com)

Now, of course, China's continued investments in the very unhealthy US capital markets are key to US economic survival.  How far things have come.  But Paulson learned this week that the Chinese appetite for its piece of the US pie is not insatiable.  This, from the Wall Street Journal:

The head of China's sovereign wealth fund says he's lost the confidence to invest in U.S. banks, while China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan didn't even stay in town. Instead, he flew to an international meeting chaired by Mr. Paulson's intended successor, Timothy Geithner.

Paulson shouldn't feel so bad: it's the same attitude that has people tuning out when his boss steps to the podium to "announce" that the US economy is in recession.  Thanks for telling us, now that it's up to your replacement to deal with it.

Back to the Chinese.  This was their week to show who is calling the shots.  Jean-Vincent Brisset, director of research at the Paris think tank IRIS (Institut de relations internationales et stratégiques) shared with Le Monde his thoughts on why China consistently overreacts to French initiatives (my translation)

The Dalai Lama issue is just a pretext.  China is punishing France, but in reality what it doesn't like is European unity. You hit the weakest link... just like in my Army company, when they used to say "you always pick on the same one, so that only one person complains."

China has had a bone to pick with France since 1989, Brisset explains, when France convinced the EU to impose an arms embargo after the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Brisset concludes that China sees French attempts at reconciliation as a sign of weakness, the way a "vassal" state would act under the old Chinese empire.

Whether France is a Chinese vassal state may be debatable, but there is no question that China has its acolytes in the West, including a number in Washington.  The always reliable Ken Silverstein, writing in the August Harper's Magazine ("The Mandarins: American foreign policy, brought to you by China"), catalogues the bipartisan China "expert" lobby's ways of hiding its business connections to the PRC.

Stonebridge [International, an advisory firm] might best be seen as a sort of one-stop shop for international fixers - a collection of former government officials who replicate, in privatized and miniaturized form, the official foreign-policy apparatus. Both the clients and the former officials benefit immensely from the exchange: for the latter, Stonebridge serves as a holding pen in which to draw a prodigious salary while awaiting a return to the State Department, say, or the Commerce Department, or the National Security Council. Stonebridge's cofounder is Sandy Berger, who before joining the Clinton Administration (in which he became the top national-security adviser) coordinated business lobbying for China at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. He was perhaps the foremost architect of the administration's dramatic shift in China policy; which moved in short order from solidarity with the spirit of Tiananmen Square to the promotion of trade above all else.

Silverstein shows how China's "visa blacklist" shuts out the rare critical academic or consultant: the price of access to China is acquiescence to its mixed record on everything from human rights to environmental standards.  In the revolving door between government service and the private sector, individuals knowledgeable on China know which red lines not to cross.

A close friend with years of experience negotiating with Chinese once told me that an old trick was to get the visiting foreigner drunk, the better to embarrass themselves in front of their Chinese hosts.  It tends to put them at a disadvantage in the next day's bargaining.

(Chinese character "foreigner," About.com)

Right now the West - be it Henry Paulson looking for more Chinese investment, or Nicolas Sarkozy finally acceding to meeting with the Dalai Lama, well after the Beijing Olympics - is that drunken, stumbling foreigner, searching for the proper posture of submission before the potentates of Peking (sorry, but I am tempted by alliteration). 

Helena Cobban, in Just World News, captures the historic nature of the turnaround in her post "Paulson fails to melt Chinese hearts: "This is a huge, truly world-defining story."  But why is the West in this perilous position?  Here, you just need to remember what Charles Dickens' Mr. Micawber said in David Copperfield:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Until and unless the US (especially) and the rest of the West get off their China habit of cheap goods and bountiful (but with a price) sovereign capital funding, we will be at their mercy when we come hat in hand.  And as Paulson just saw this week, they might just start acting like Mr. Scrooge.

Security Blanket: Obama Cabinet

In French, they refer to the head coach as the sélectionneur - much more than a talent scout, it's the person who selects team members.  If you're looking for hints on how President-Elect Obama will conduct his Presidency, look no further than yesterday's announcement of his selections for key members of the national security team (photo source: Change.gov).  He gets the top talent.

We knew already that Obama ran a world-class election campaign.  Now, we have a series of moves during the transition designed to instill confidence in a badly shaken country.  The champagne glasses from the post-election parties had barely been put away when he held a series of press conferences to unveil his economic team and outline elements of his stimulus plan.

Fixing the economy still has to be Priority Number One for the incoming administration.  So it's all the more reassuring that the people he has put in place in the foreign affairs, defense, and domestic security positions are powerful, intelligent players.  While this will not absolve him of international duties, it will give him a freer hand in focusing first and foremost on shoring up the domestic economic and societal pillars of US national security.

Much of the focus has been on Senator Hillary Clinton's nomination as Secretary of State.  It should be clear that she will be the central player in US foreign policy - itself a clear break from the Bush years, where Cheney and Rumsfeld succeeded in militarizing US engagement with the world.

Nor is there any doubt that Hillary Clinton will bring, as her biographer Carl Bernstein puts it, "star power" to Foggy Bottom.  While that is fine in terms of visibility in the world arena, how much of an institution-builder will Hillary Clinton be as Secretary of State?  Only two "SecStates" in recent decades were recognized within the building as institution-builders: George Schultz and Colin Powell.

The moment is ripe: both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser-Designate James Jones are favorable to a realignment of power, away from reliance on military force and for reinforcing America's powers of persuasion - diplomacy in all its forms.  Clinton has allies in key places.

I know next to nothing about Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, slated to head the huge Department of Homeland Security, but this Time Magazine profile is illuminating.  This is what she said of proposals to build a wall across her state and the rest of the US-Mexican border: "If you build a 50-foot-high wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder."  It's refreshing to hear that kind of candor.

The Attorney General-designate, Eric Holder, will head the Department of Justice, which includes a key national security agency, the FBI.  But many of us will be looking to Holder to put "Justice" back in the DOJ, after the Bush years of trampling on the Constitution.  Quite apart from the important role of tracking and prosecuting the bad guys will be a return to the special independent status of the Attorney General, discussed here by attorney/blogger Glen Greenwald in Salon.com.

It does look like Barack Obama has - fulfilling a campaign promise - chosen a bipartisan "best and brightest" national security team for his administration.  It's good to have the security blanket that they can provide.

But as if to steal the limelight from the foreign affairs fest - or to underline that it's still the economy, stupid - the day ended on two real economic downers: (1) the US economy has been in recession for the past year, officially and (2) California, the country's largest and wealthiest state and sometimes called the "world's fifth largest economy," declared a financial emergency and is essentially bankrupt.

I'm glad Obama can call on all the talent in the above picture for the national security crises, of which there will be no shortage.  But we really need the next President to fix the dire economic situation in the "homeland."  No security without economic health and vigor on Main Street.

The Georgian MAP to NATO: Sidetrack or Fast Track?

Georgia has a pretty flag.  Whether it should fly any time soon in front of NATO headquarters in Brussels will again be the hot topic during next week's meeting of the Alliance's foreign ministers.

Several European NATO members think that Georgia is not quite ready for prime time.  The Bush Administration has been eager to push Georgian membership, but European resistance - already made clear at NATO's Bucharest summit last April - has only intensified after the August 2008 war in South Ossetia.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Daniel Fried both spoke recently of a new US (or is it British?) initiative to deal with the Georgian membership question.  Their pre-Thanksgiving publicity blitz was in answer to news circulating in Europe that the US was pressuring its European allies to fast track Georgian (and Ukrainian) membership, both very sensitive issues with neighboring Russia.  Here's the New York Times on November 25:

“This is a real turnaround of the U.S. position,” said a senior NATO diplomat who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “We reached a compromise in Bucharest after much haggling. Now, we are being asked to cancel it and effectively discard the MAP program. This is putting the unity and credibility of the alliance at stake.”

The anonymous diplomat was reflecting European concerns that NATO's Article V mutual defense pact means what it says: in the event of membership, NATO (that means also the United States, and primarily the US) would have to defend Georgia in the event of future hostilities with Russia.

So the US effort to sidetrack NATO's MAP (Membership Action Plan) in favor of "bilateral" Georgia-NATO and Ukraine-NATO Commissions has huge ramifications.  Unless it's just a smokescreen for inaction.

Which is how Russian President Dimitry Medvedev has chosen to greet it: “I don’t know what their position is based on, but I’m satisfied that reason has triumphed -- unfortunately, at the end of the current administration’s term." (Bloomberg, November 28).

Medvedev, presumably, interpreted Condoleezza Rice's explanation of the shift as a pull back.  Here's what she said:

Georgia and Ukraine are not ready for membership. That is very clear. The point of view of the United States was stated at Bucharest that we think – thought that MAP is a way to prepare countries for membership. But there are other ways to prepare countries for membership.

So, are the Russians right to take comfort in the new US approach, or are the European members of NATO correct in seeing this as another Bush Administration about-face to the rest of the alliance?  We'll know more next week.

Georgia has a pretty flag.  But it does not fly above significant portions of its own territory: breakaway South Ossetia, but also Abkhazia.  Another restive region, Ajaria, has hovered between insurrection and semi-autonomy.  Not very reassuring when the member states of NATO must decide whether to offer membership in an alliance that exists to guarantee stability, not provide life-support to unstable territories.

To paraphrase President-Elect Obama ("words mean something"), Article V means something.  Thankfully, he will have a Defense Secretary - Robert Gates - who shares those same European concerns about loose application of defense guarantees.  On a continent where blind adherence to mutual defense pacts turned a spark in Sarajevo into World War I, it's best to be prudent when widening the security safety net.

Thankful and Hopeful

Just a short word to wish Americans and those who celebrate with them a happy Thanksgiving Day.

Thanks to the sacrifice (literal) of millions of turkeys, Americans will be reminded of the early days when their cold, hungry and needy forebears were introduced to the delicacy by the First Americans.  Well, maybe not the cold part: we now know that the first "Thanksgiving" by Europeans in America was French, and was celebrated in Florida.

President-Elect Obama brought his family yesterday to a Chicago food distribution center, where he noted that the number of people showing up for food has increased 33% this year.  The slide show and video in this Huffington Post article are worth watching - check the look of pure joy on the faces of the little kids lining up to touch Obama, and the handwritten sign in the school window "We love our Prez."

It's good that Obama took his daughters there "to learn the importance of how fortunate they are, and to make sure they're giving back."  Good that he's putting the accent on the original sharing part of Thanksgiving, in these times when millions of Americans are spending first Thanksgiving in homeless shelters, or camping out with the in laws ... or God knows where after losing their homes.

Next year, he will have to perform the usual Presidential charade of pardoning a turkey.  It's almost certain that he will visit the remaining troops in Iraq, or perhaps the reinforced contingent in Afghanistan.  Hopefully, this time next year, things will be looking better for Americans - and all the others touched by the economic crisis Made-in-USA - after 11 months of an Obama Administration.

And thankfully, we have that to look forward to.

(photo source: Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.)

"The Victory So Far" In Iraq Is Reversible

We believe that the conditions are such now that we are able to celebrate the victory that we've had so far

Dana Perino, White House Press Secretary, November 19, 2008

The progress does remain fragile and does remain reversible

General David Petraeus, October 7, 2008

"Victory" is a dangerous word to deploy, especially when your generals on the ground avoid using it, and especially not loosely.  Ever since "Mission Accomplished," the Bush Administration has been searching for formulas to describe kicking the Iraq can down the road to January 20, finally seizing on the amorphous "upon success."  Where "success" can be defined whichever way they choose.  The benchmark is now the Thanksgiving Day passage by the Iraqi Parliament of the Strategic Framework for Iraqi-US Relations, plus the Status of Forces Agreement.  At least the Iraqis get to have their say: no such vote is scheduled for the US Congress.

But Ms. Perino's odd formulation - "the victory that we've had so far" - is so weaselly.  "So far," meaning until January 20, 2009?  No guarantees for what happens after that.  And what if Iraqi passage is just the prelude to disagreements over the interpretation of the texts?  After all, the Arabic version of the documents calls them the "withdrawal accords."

Here's an important McClatchy piece on the curious silence coming out of Washington on what the agreements mean, depending on where you're sitting:

The Bush administration has adopted a much looser interpretation than the Iraqi government of several key provisions of the pending U.S.-Iraq security agreement, U.S. officials said Tuesday — just hours before the Iraqi parliament was to hold its historic vote.

These include a provision that bans the launch of attacks on other countries from Iraq, a requirement to notify the Iraqis in advance of U.S. military operations and the question of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over American troops and military contractors.

Officials in Washington said the administration has withheld the official English translation of the agreement in an effort to suppress a public dispute with the Iraqis until after the Iraqi parliament votes.

Those differences in interpretation could be exactly the kind of poisonous legacy that the Obama Administration will have to contend with when it first meets with the Iraqi Government.  And these are not over minor technicalities: launching attacks from Iraq (on Iran? Syria?); notification of US military operations on (presumably sovereign) Iraqi soil; legal jurisdiction over US troops and contractors (see Abu Ghraib, Blackwater shootings).

"The victory we've had so far," when 146,000 US troops maintain a tenuous status quo amidst Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish populations that have been driven apart by Bush's 2003 invasion, is indeed "fragile and reversible."

Enter President-Elect Barack Obama, who will want to carry through responsibly with his commitment to withdraw US troops from Iraq.  In less than two months, he'll be Commander in Chief.  Which means he'll have to contend with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose Chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen, has been calling attention of late to the massive logistical tail in Iraq, and the time-consuming difficulties of removing it as troops draw down.

Now, I appreciate the need to "power-wash" thousands of military vehicles before they're shipped back to the US, and to shrink-wrap helicopters to protect them from the salt air en route to their home bases (see this excellent article on the logistical logjam of pulling out from Iraq in Tom Dispatch).

But the logistical tail cannot wag the political dog.  Pulling out might be hard, it might be dangerous, but the Withdrawal party just won big on November 4 over the War party.  It's as simple as that.  And remember, when the Iraqi Parliament ratifies the SOFA and the Strategic Framework, their copy of the agreement will read "The Withdrawal Accords."