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Posts Tagged ‘India’

Afghanistan Questions

December 17th, 2010 by John Feehery

Here are some questions that I have for the smart people who think about this stuff when it comes to our continued presence in Afghanistan:

1) What would happen if we pick up and leave tomorrow? How many people would die in a civil war? Would Afghanistan revert back to warlordism? And how would that impact American national security?

2) What are the costs to our military and especially our military families as we stay and continue to fight there? What are we learning about the successes and failures of the COIN strategy? What else could we be spending our precious defense dollars on, but aren’t because of this war?

3) Can Afghanistan ever become another Vietnam, but in the good sense? Vietnam is now one of our biggest trading partners. If we leave or decide to stay in Afghanistan, will it ever become a trading partner for us? Do they have any natural resources, other than opium, that we can use on our market? At least, the Iraqis had plenty of oil. Do the Afghan have enough rare earth minerals to make it worth our while. Read more...

Tags: afghanistan, India, Pakistan, troops, war
Posted in war | No Comments »

Power Play

July 20th, 2010 by John Feehery

Renminbi banknote / Photo credit: Polylepsis

In the middle of a very hot summer, I have hockey on my mind. It’s on my mind, not only because the team of my boyhood dreams – The Chicago Blackhawks – finally won the Stanley Cup after an almost 50 year drought.

It’s on my mind because hockey in many ways is like the world economy.

For much of a hockey game, the two teams play at even strength. Teams of five skate back and forth against each other trying to score goals against the other team’s goal tender. But every once in a while, one player is removed from the ice because he commits a penalty, and he goes to the penalty box for anywhere from one minute to five minutes.

When a player is forced to leave the ice, a new dynamic is created called the power play. A power play gives an advantage to the team that didn’t create the penalty. And that is when the majority of goals are scored. When a team is able to score when they are short-handed — when they are at a disadvantage because of the penalty — that can be a turning point in the game. Read more...

Tags: American trade laws, Bangladesh, Brazil, china, India, renminbi, workforce
Posted in Foreign Relations | No Comments »

America is Doomed?

May 27th, 2010 by John Feehery

Planet getting eaten (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)

I was watching television this morning and CNN was alternating between video of the great Gulf leak and a video from the Hubble telescope of a planet getting eaten by a bigger star.

So, the message is if we don’t all kill ourselves, well, then a big star is going to eat us all any way.

On that cheery note, let me add another.

America is doomed. At least, that is the message that we get all too often from both the left and the right.

We are going broke. Our workforce isn’t competitive. People in the rest of the world hate us. We can’t plug the damn hole. We have too many immigrants coming into this country. Crime is too high. Our military is stretched too far. We are too fat. We are too old. We are too young.

And of course, we better all start speaking Chinese soon, because the Chinese are so rich, they work so hard, they are so smart, and there are so many of them, that we really can’t compete. America is doomed.

Really? Put me down as an America-is-doomed skeptic. Read more...

Tags: Al Gore, Barack Obama, Brazil, china, Chinese, Christian right, Conservatives, Economy, Europe, India, Politics, poor, Tea Party, Tom Friedman, USA, WASP-12b
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, Politics, Theory | 2 Comments »

John Feehery is President of Communications and Director of Government Affairs for Quinn Gillespie and Associates, Washington, D.C.'s top public affairs firm.