rlfj: Blog

I have gotten several good ideas from readers (of which at least half I already was working on when I wrote this story, but that just means we are all on the same path.) Some of the ideas I got were good, but impossible. Solve global warming – Carl is a billionaire, not a trillionaire, and billions of people won’t go along with this anyway. He can raise awareness, but he can’t fix it in two years. Nor can he go back to the Moon and Mars, or cure cancer and AIDS.

Other issues can’t be fixed without enough time passing. In the mid-2000s gay marriage was still very unpopular and there was no consensus to decriminalize pot. He can’t do these things on his own. To put it bluntly, a lot of old people will have to die off before we get some of these problems fixed.

Only Congress is allowed to tax, specifically the House of Representatives. Just because Carl thinks a tax is a good idea or a bad idea, he can’t unilaterally change the tax code! The same goes for various government agencies. Many readers have written that Carl needs to abolish the Department of Education, or Energy, or Whatever, depending on the reader’s leanings. That can’t be done without Congressional approval. It is one thing to not create an agency (Homeland Security, TSA) but it is quite another to kill an existing one off. Each agency has massive numbers of constituents, each of which want it to get bigger, not smaller, and each of which will fund lobbyists to fight any change. As for doing some of these things by Executive Order, it’s much easier to create something that way than it is to un-create it. That’s how GWB originally created Homeland Security.

A few questions on why Carl was shot. Why wasn’t he wearing his Presidential bulletproof underwear, issued to all Presidents after the Reagan shooting? Well, that’s a bit tougher to investigate, since the Secret Service really isn’t talking about this. A big chunk of the debate is because Obama reportedly wore a suit or overcoat at his inauguration from a famous producer of bulletproof clothing from Medellin, Columbia. They don’t really make the clothing from Kevlar but generally create a liner to the clothing. Kevlar as an undershirt would be very uncomfortable. Even if he had on a Kevlar liner to his tuxedo jacket, if he wears the jacket open, or the shot comes in at the right angle, it can easily slip past the Kevlar on a shot from the front.

Another question is why Carl uses the cane on the same side his leg is bad. You are supposed to use it on the opposite side. Well, not everybody is alike. When I’ve had to use a cane (trick knee - sometimes I need a knee brace, and I’ve used a cane on occasion) I’ve been more comfortable using it on the same side. This reminds me of the movie El Dorado, where both John Wayne & Robert Mitchum get shot in the leg, and end up using a single crutch each. Both actors spend the entire movie using it one side or the other, even joking about it in the last scene.

I know I am going to get some questions about Kurdish Dragon. Is the operational concept realistic? Could an American armored brigade and a light armor brigade actually attack an Iraqi division and destroy it as I describe? Could the casualty levels be that low? The answer is, yes. During the Gulf War once the ground forces were turned loose, American forces rampaged through Iraqi units. The most famous battle was at 73 Easting, but there were other battles as well. Company-sized American units destroyed battalion-size Republican Guard units, battalion-size units destroyed whole brigades, and battle casualties were almost non-existent, at least by historical records. In the fifteen years hypothetically intervening, American forces have gotten stronger and much more advanced. Most of the technical and military people all agreed the scenario could have unfolded the way I laid it out.

One of the problems with writing this chapter was that while the military advertises how fast they can mobilize a division and get it somewhere in the world, the figures they give are as fictional as this story. They might say that an armored division could be on board a ship in a few days, and at sea for 7-10, and then unload and immediately go into battle, but that’s not true. The only way it happens that fast is if everybody is on the base, the flatbeds and trains are lined up and ready to go, the ships are at the docks, the weather is perfect, etc. Real life is never like that. Add in the fact that moving this stuff is enormously expensive and time-consuming and is never actually practiced. To actually move a division from the U.S. to Turkey could easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take a month or more of time. Each way! Another issue is that the railroad network from Western Europe to Eastern Turkey is problematic at best. One of the reasons that American troops have been brought back from Europe to the U.S. is that following Gulf Storm they discovered that shipping troops from Germany to Iraq didn’t actually save all that much time compared to shipping them from America. Interesting.

I did receive several emails from various military and ex-military types, explaining about how it could have happened, pointing out this tank or that airplane or this intelligence should have been highlighted. These things were all true, but one thing I wanted to avoid was an overly technical ‘Tom Clancy’ or ‘Dale Brown’ style war. Carl is writing the story first person, and he would only see the operational and strategic levels. He just wouldn’t be getting into the nitty-gritty like some other writers would.

I had several comments on the validity of the Iraq/Kurdistan/Turkey scenario. Here’s a few of my responses:

1 – Turkey is trying to make nice with the Kurds. The PKK has had a low-level guerilla war with Turkey for decades, but in 2012, Erdogan began legitimate negotiations with the Kurds, and the response was quite positive. A de facto cease fire was in effect for most of 2013. The Kurds have a lot of oil and Turkey wants it.

2 – Iraq didn’t have chemical weapons when we invaded in 2003, so how come they have them in 2006? Speaking as a former chemist, mustard gas is one of the easier poison gases to make. They could easily make some mustard gas in three years. Note that in earlier Iraqi attacks on the Kurds, they freely used mustard gas, even though they also used nerve gas.

3 – The figures for the Iraqi army are legit. In 2003, on the eve of the American invasion, the Iraqi Republican Guard consisted of half a dozen mechanized and armored divisions, plus roughly another division of the Special Republican Guard. They were the cream of the crop, and the only troops that Hussein really trusted. They formed the backbone of his assault into Kuwait in 1991 and were the core of his strength afterwards. They totaled about 75,000 troops, about 850 T-72 tanks, and lots of other armored vehicles. Continued slow growth from 2003 to 2006 would legitimately allow a force size as I mention in the story. In the event of any hypothetical attack into Kurdistan, they would have been the assault force.

4 – Carl can’t send diplomats anywhere in Air Force One, since the plane only gets that name when he is onboard. Technically quite true, but to the average person and broadcaster, meaningless. To the average person Air Force One is the big white whale of a 747. While there are other planes available both to the White House and the State Department, sending diplomats on the 747 gives them an immediate boost in prestige. This has been done more than a few times, and is what coined the phrase ‘shuttle diplomacy’ when Kissinger did it.

I generally got positive reviews on how Carl handled Katrina. A number of the locals agreed with my characterization of Blanco as a lightweight. A couple referred to her as everybody’s favorite grandmother and out of her depth. Most people who knew Nagin agreed with the characterization of him as well. In short order he would end up in jail on graft charges.

One reader complained that Carl fired the Engineer General because the storm went to Category 5, and he only promised the levees would hold until Category 3. I did not fully explain that by the time the storm hit land, it had dropped back down to a 3 level. In addition, his comment that any breaches would be “isolated” and that problems had been “taken into consideration” were obviously wrong.

I got a huge amount of info and stories about what people saw or lived through in the South during Katrina and Rita. I could have written a book on the storms and their aftermaths, but I just can’t afford the chapters. I tried to add some of this information in 160, but that is basically where it is ending. Thank you to everybody who sent me info. It was appreciated.

I had some religious types complain about Carl’s take on creationism, and some others complain about Carl’s take on global warming. The same goes for the latest I wrote on taxes, the deficit, and several other paragraphs that touched on social stuff. For those who think I am a closet Commie, trust me, I get just as much crap from the Democrats as I get from the right wingers. Hey guys, get over it! I am leaving the story as is.

Some interesting comments and questions about Carl, Jeana, & Michael. Nature vs. nurture? Why didn’t Jean come forward? How could Carl be so stupid to have unprotected sex? I think I finally wrapped them up at the start of 158.

I get recurring questions about what will Carl do about various problems facing the country, or facing the world, or destroying either of the above. Why hasn’t Carl solved global warming? What will Carl do about the transfer of jobs overseas? Why hasn’t Carl fixed the American political system? Why doesn’t Carl end the hopeless drug war? Why is Carl only doing the easy stuff, like balancing the budget and not going to war?

The fact is that Carl is simply one guy, and he has a maximum of 7 years to accomplish anything. One thing I have learned in writing this story is the utter impossibility of one man changing everything. Many of the problems facing the U.S. have been building for 30 or 40 years and won’t change overnight. We spent decades working our way into this mess, and it might take just as long to work our way out.

For instance, when I was blocking out chapters for this I thought, why can’t Carl end the isolation of Cuba and renew diplomatic relations with them? By any stretch of the imagination, the current policy has been a total failure, with no effect on the Cuban political system and terrible effects on the Cuban people. If Nixon could go to China, why couldn’t Carl go to Havana? The thing is, when Nixon went to China, millions of Chinese Americans weren’t going to scream. Any American President who tries to make nice with Cuba while either of the Castros is still alive will permanently lose Florida to the other party for the next 20 years. If Carl had done it in his first term, he would have lost the election in 2004. If he does it in his second term, McCain never wins election. The same could be said if a Democrat was the President. There won’t be a good answer to this until Castro and that generation die off.

So Carl does what he can and tries to limit the worst abuses of the system and prevent things from getting worse. I leave it to the reader to decide if that puts him in the above average category or not.