Chilly India.
The Obama administration's recent swing through Asia, featuring Shanghai and Beijing, left behind a bad opinion of POTUS as weak or indifferent or unconfident. What was left out of the trip was India, and now there is the State Dinner at the White House for dry, no-nonsense, low-key India PM Manmohan Singh (above). Again, POTUS makes ceremonial pledges of cooperation and partnership and a new beginning. This is all hokum, and the Indians ignore it. The relationship between Delhi and Washington is touchy. The chief offense is that Richard Holbrooke approached his job as if Kashmir was part of his mission -- bring the Indians and Pakistanis to the table, find a solution. Naive hokum. Tunku Varadarajan, DailyBeast.com, told me Sunday 22 that the Indian government enjoyed such warm relations with the Bush administration that the relatively aloof tone of the new team combined with the Hokbrooke pushiness has resulted in a chill. PM Singh is not expected to make mention of the issue. It is just another of those question marks re the Obama administration's so-called reset.
India in Afghanistan.
What is especially puzzling about the chill between Washington and Delhi is that India is accustomed to working with Afghanistan, contra the rogue Pakistan, and is in a place to be most helpful to the struggle in Kabul for development and stability. India is the regional super power in development (not Iran). This is the other famous sovereign state of the BRICs. While the India discomfort with Washington knuckleheadedness continues, POTUS has started the long-form leaking of his Afghanistan decision. At this point there are no secrets, no surprises. The single metric worth watching is how may watch the spech on Monday night. It will be the headline on Tuesday. The White House has put out the tough-guy phrase, "finish the job" to explain POTUS aims. This is advert blither. The facts about the POTUS decision on Afghanistan are not glamorous. There is a limit to the combat brigades available over the next year. The Army wants to give combat teams 24 months out of theater before it rotates them back in. Right now, the Army is 12 months in theater and 12 months in the USA. It is wrecking families and lives. The 80k number was fantasy and misdirection. The airborne unit I spoke to on Saturday 21, in Zabul Province (hour helicopter ride north of Kandahar), has a mission to train an Afghan National Army unit way, way outside the wire. They are camped in a mud-built fort left by the British when they were lords. Sending in training units will free the airborne for operations.
Kandahar, Khe Sanh
Early spin says that the Army and Marines will draw a cordon around Kandahar. Don't make anymore of it than an incomplete gossip. The speech next week will be a balm to the anti-war left that wants to rationalize POTUS as a peace president who must clean-up the mess of a war president. There is no exit from Afghanistan until and if the Taliban is defeated. The Taiban is camped at Quetta in Pakistan. The Taliban is linked to the ISI at Rawalpindi. The whole Pakistan government is soaked with money from the House of Saud. The short version is that the solution to the Taliban is not at Kandahar. Now we will pretend that the cordon around the city is the first step to retake the country. As if this is Dien Bien Phu, as if this is Khe Sanh. Also, India is part of the solution. India knows how to train the Afghan National Army. Ask Din, Din, Din for help, for leadership, for weight. I am told the work in Afghanistan is a long, troubling road that would require the kind of patience that ISAF and the US do not possess. India is an empire that knows how to wear down and beat the savages. Instead we have POTUS making another sonorous, sober, moving and futile speech about war, pivoting to his left as he shields his eyes from the right. As he is deaf to the tempo of the frontier:
| Din! Din! Din! | 80 |
| You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! | |
| Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you, | |
| By the livin' Gawd that made you, | |
| You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din! |
WABC Expands Batchelor To Weeknights
November 24, 2009 at 2:29 PM (PT)
CITADEL Talk WABC-A/NEW YORK is expanding weekend host JOHN BATCHELOR to weeknights 9p-1a ET starting MONDAY (11/30). The move into the slot presently occupied by CITADEL MEDIA's CURTIS SLIWA follows the recent launch of BATCHELOR's weekend show into syndication by WABC.
GM STEVE BORNEMAN said, "BATCHELOR's SATURDAY and SUNDAY ratings have been so explosive, it's a logical move to expand the program to weeknights."
PD LAURIE CANTILLO added, "BATCHELOR offers a road map for understanding our fast-changing world at a time when listeners are hungrier for information than ever before."
So, where does that leave SLIWA? Will he be taking another bite of the APPLE shortly elsewhere on the NEW YORK dial?
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http://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/67488/wabc-expands-batchelor-to-weeknights
WABC should drop the Joe Scarbourgh show. It is awful and needs to go. Drop Curtis back into that spot and be done with it.
India ~ Allowing that country to lead or at least co-lead in the region is a
no-brainer/homerun. However, if you are utterly convinced of your own flawless intellectual prowess, and live within a matrix that can not see beyond the walls of your own ideology, it's easy to miss the no-brainer/homerun.
JB ~ Congrats to you on the shows expansion into weeknights. Much deserved, well overdo. For us it means what it walways has... a daily voice of reason, a wonderful intellect which is one of the best @ connecting the dots, and a well rounded, very enlightening show to look forward to each eve.
I was one of those JB-nerds that protested, calling/e-mailing WABC when they interrupted our conversation a while back. Really glad they came to their senses.
as far as the weekly show, I am surprised it took this long. As far as India goes, they should be our best friend west of the tigris and if not we should make it so.
I meant east of the tigris
Scrap that and Imus. Imus sucks. Curtis and Kuby were much better. Even Lionel was better, but I am going into ancient history.
India, a leader in the region, also has enemies. The flashpoints are disputed territory with China to the east, and disputed territory with Pakistan in the (north-)west. Pakistan is a client state (if you can still call it a ‘state’) of China. This is not to say that, if India were to give up all disputed territories unilaterally, there would be peace. Much deeper problems - mostly unspoken - exist between China and India. These are primarily ideological.
China's leadership (as JB has often said) is an unelected tyranny. India is much closer to being a democracy. Looking even casually around the political world shows that these two systems of governance do not easily coexist. Even within our own country there has developed a split, an irreconcilable divide along similar lines.
China continually agitates India. It funds Maoist rebels to create havoc along border areas. It encourages Pakistan to keep up pressure on Kashmir. It releases policy statements saying that India is not a country and should be broken up into parts. And it has clearly used its influence to dissuade the U.S. from favoring India in any matter involving these two nations.
Obama clearly has shown to have greater affinity for tyrants than for the freely-elected leaders of a people. Notwithstanding the huge sums we owe China, our president personally finds far greater kinship with the Communist regime. That much has become obvious from the policy decisions Obama has made since assuming office. And this has not gone unnoticed in the region. It seems to have confounded and perplexed many Indians, though; especially since the roundly despised Bush administration – the demonization of which Indian media has gleefully participated in, not to mention the over-the-top deification of Barrack Hussein Obama – appears to have held India in far higher esteem.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Congradulation JB ... a job well done.
Congrats on the overnight gig! Or should I offer Condolences? I recently found all your podcasts on I tunes. Hopefully you will keep that up.
Back to India, Yes China is a superpower and Japan is our best ally in the region, but so is India. The liberals in MSM did not want to give Bush 43 credit for the treaties he signed with India, which brought India into the Anglosphere/Nato/civilized world.
State dinner 24 hours before Mumbai anniversary, what mental midget at State did that? very tacky. PM of India probabaly had to jump immediately on a plane to fly home.
I swear to all that is holy Obama wants to do the exact opposite of everything Bush 43 did, India included.
I'm assuming your weekend show is kaput, All the best!
Sapientia
I can't say how thrilled I am about the news of the expanded hours !
Curtis has been bounced around all over WABC and survives . Ken is right . Scarbourgh is on air now as I write this and it is mostly backround noise.
I think the problem is that Sliwa is also syndicatated during the times that JB will now occupy.Sorry Curtis ....he knows that JB provides more compelling radio. That is why Curtis frequently called on JB for analysis of the news of the day.
Best News Flash- Batchelor Show Stalwarts Rewarded!!!
As the discourse in current affairs becomes more asinine and provocative, there is a seemingly singular group who has remained devoted to the elevated and sometimes quirky analysis of a unique voice in our time. With the precision of a Hellfire missile launched from a Predator, John Batchelor and his guests hone in on the events that shape the days news and project those influences into future relevance.
Now, listeners of the show have realized the return of the week night program offerings and I, Spencer, join with all the other devotees to the show in congratulating Mr Batchelor and in wishing him well.
At the same time, might we offer hope for others less fortunate than ourselves to find blessing in this season of Thanksgiving. And might we, as Americans, come to stand united as we struggle to form a more perfect Union.
Happy to see Batchelor’s schedule expanded to weekdays. I was one of those who grieved when John was unceremoniously kicked off the air without advance notice in 2006. No information was available for quite some time. My own suspicion was that the whole affair had a political – possibly relating to his strong stance regarding Israel – component. I was overjoyed to find Batchelor on the radio occasionally sitting in for Drudge. It was a relief to know that he had not abandoned his unique cerebral format.
While in India, I would listen to segments of Batchelor’s weekend broadcasts throughout the week. His website makes it easy to download the programs even half-way around the world.
It was good to hear that he’ll now be on weekdays as well. Surely, the weekend schedule can now be dropped. A man can only work so much. Still, it shows that John’s ratings must be good. No doubt, John did himself a favor by holding back in his criticism of Obama and the Left (much to the consternation of some of the more radical elements in his audience). We wish him all the best. ‘The John Batchelor Show’ well deserves to have a prominent place in the American conversation.
Congratulations, John. Finally the triumphal return after several years in the wilderness. This is real good news.
However, it seems a harbinger of nasty things to come. If I recall WABC brought you on september 12, 2001 to cover the aftermath. Are they this time starting before the conflagration?
Great news about the expanded hours. Does this mean 7 days a week on the air, 4 hours per day? Or will there be days off?
conflagration- a huge, destructive fire
Are you wishing or expecting? A harbinger of nasty things to come?? Come now, Jim, you don't believe the one you repeatedly call Messiah is really out to get us all, do you?
Let's see... who all has been insinuating that Mr B has lost touch, drifted away (so to speak), fallen from grace and fading away? Hmm, let's see... who's been saying these things?
Oh well, not for me to name names, but, I bet I can point to a place where some might feel more at home. Where the PotUS is always a hot topic and the discussion always, yes, always get's around to being borderline despicable and inciteful (not insightful).
Whose blog spotted and soiled the carpet? PUuuu!
Addendum Answeritum- the same old hacks that say everyone is dumb except for whosoever believeth as they...
Well, the "nice Spencer" lasted for all of 45 minutes that time.
A couple things.
It is too many nights of John. I can hardly keep up as it is and now 16 segments a night. John, how do you do it. There isn't enough time to listen to it all. Don't bring Loftus back.
Also John was on WABC before 9/11. I remember listening to John and his side kick on a Sunday afternoon just after the Chinese downing of the US plane in Hainan and talking about the Battle of Pork Chop Hill and what it was all about. It was a battle of wills and John said the Chinese were testing Bush's will with the downing of the plane so early in his presidency. How soon we forget.
So I don't know when John started on WABC but it was definitely before 9/11.
Congrats John. I too was one of those that longed for your return when ABC cancelled. Love the show and look forward to five nights per week!
Pre 9/11 the show was called "conspiracy radio" it was the first time I ever heard of Osama Bin Laden. When the 2nd plane hit the WTC, OBL was the first words out of my mouth.
Congrats John!!! The cream rises to the top. I hope the fools who canned you in'06 are now on a country station doing traffic reports. I assume we can still pod you and listen live to the WABC stream. Keep us informed.
I was not making much of a point, just an irony. The timing is coincidental I'm sure but who knows how prescient WABC is?
YOu wrote: "Come now, Jim, you don't believe the one you repeatedly call Messiah is really out to get us all, do you? "
I am sure I have never called BO the messiah (unless as sarcasm--don't recall) and I don't think he will do it on purpose. But I do think the world, regardless of BO is in a very dangerous condition. His ineptitude only makes that a worse stimulation.
Your post is too subtle by half. Somewhere in there is an innuendo or accusation of something. If the insinuation is I've been "insinuating that Mr B has lost touch, drifted away (so to speak), fallen from grace and fading away? Hmm, let's see... who's been saying these things?", you are not reading very carefully. I do think JB has a point of view on some issues that are not optimal, not mine anyway.
Frankly my first thought was that you were confusing me with someone else. The carpet spotting and soiling part I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.
Great news for a well paced show. The guests are always at the top of their game.I look foward to weeknights again!