Vic Socotra

Let’s take a break from the current banking crisis, shall we? The markets are exuberant overseas, and now that I have lost the 401K at precisely the worst time, of course Wall Street will rally.

We have all thought this through and either panicked or become phlegmatic about it. Short-selling has been shut down in Britain and by the20SEC here. Maybe things are going to level out for a while.

If you joined me in participating in the real estate bubble, we have some issues in paying down the debt incurred in our irrational exuberance. It will be painful, but with a little thrift and dedication, it is not an insurmountable task.

Irritating, of course, just as the realization of what is actually happening is. The Federal Government is going to wind up owning many things that we have commonly expected to be in private hands, and the long-running consequences are going to be as profound as they are unknowable.

There is certainly going to be more intimacy between the bureaucrats and private citizens. One thing is sure, Uncle Sam will be much more entwined in our lives and in ways that we have never expected. That is the trade we are making in desperation, and the election will only determine the degree of that enforced intimacy, lesser or greater.

Like the paper that underwrites the places in which we live, the basic decision has already been made, and we ought to get on with dealing with the wreckage. Perhaps this sad interlude will pass with the same plodding pace as the dissolution of the seized assets of the failed Savings and Loans not so long ago.

The Republic stood, though the seeds of this disaster were sown in the process. We should be watching what is planted in the aftermath of this colossal blunder.

Life in Washington goes on, separate and apart. Some of my neighbors in Big Pink who deal with the policy nuances of the crisis, just as there are National Guard officials from the Readiness Center across Route 50. Their jobs are about planning for things to come, not for today.

After all, there are still wars in progress, and forces in the field. I talked to some kids that are just back from the fight last night, home only a few months. We don’t hear a great deal about Iraq these days. Certainly there is enough else to worry about, what with all the dire economic news. The success may be fragile, but it is interesting to note that it is all still going on, transitioning to something else.

There is a gulf between the generations, and I could hear it in the private remarks of the young veterans last night at the Capital City Brewery, talking about those who are older and stouter.

“It’s funny to hear the old stories,” said one towering young man with a crisp hair cut and confident manner. He had spent eight months in the Green Zone when the car bombs were a daily event outside the barriers, and sometimes within. “It is like a different world from ours.”

The young man with him nodded. One of my pals had something significant to do with all that, and hearing the comment, winked at me over a Pale Rider lager. He retired from uniformed service at the height of fighting and went into the bomb business.

Not the building or delivering of them, of course, which is what we all did for many years. Rather, at the height of the carnage, he took a position in the rapidly expanding scientific and engineering community that sought desperately to stem the bloody disaster.

The Bad Guys used all the uncollected ordnance of the Saddam era to construct infernal devices called Improvised Explosive Devic es, or IEDs. They buried them in roads, placed them in curbs, wore them on belts and mounted them in cars and trucks.

For more almost three years the conflict hung in the balance The asymmetric nature of the indiscriminate bomber of civilian targets made the insurgency seem powerful far beyond their numbers.

My friend and his engineering buddies succeeded better than most of us know. When you hear about suicide bombings now, the deadly detonations seem to happen short of the intended targets.

Some do not, of course, but the success against the people that do these sorts of monstrous things has been real. Part of it is technical, and part is a new sophistication in analyzing the networks of the bombers themselves. Once identified, they are then taken them apart, link-by-link. Often with what we used to call “extreme prejudice.”

You and I contributed billions to the effort. The amount of money allocated to the task of defeating IEDs was quite breathtaking, and it is still coursing through the system, since the threat was palpable, real and seemed unstoppable. Most of the maimed warriors who have come home bear the blunt testimony to how awful it was, and how deadly.

Now that there has been success, and something20approaching victory, they are shutting down the effort to counter IEDs. They are making plans close the shops, shred the files, and move on to something else. They are dispersing the people they hired, and the institutional memory that they held. My friend is concerned about what is going to be lost in the big shut-down.

I have been down that road myself. After the inconclusive conclusion of the first Gulf War, I saved what I could about what we did. Unfortunately, most of the good stuff was classified. When I finally left the Pentagon I could find no one to whom I could give it. All the notes and briefing materials and pictures went into the bulk shredder.

It is the way of things. It probably would have burned in the attack anyway. My friend is concerned about what is being shr edded now as the offices empty out and the invisible world is being dismantled.

“This style of terror is not going away,” said my friend. “It is too cheap and too easy. But I am concerned about the October surprise.”

“You mean what we are doing in the Tribal Area of Pakistan?” I said. “Sure it is risky, but they would like to bring Osama’s head home before the election.”

No,” said my friend gravely. “What I think they are getting ready to do to us.”

I listened to what he said as I finished my beer and got ready to drive back to Big Pink. I had to put the top down on the Hubrismobile in the cool autumnal evening to clear my head, since what he said was pretty creepy. It was right in line with what Mr. bin Laden always said he was going to do. He is a man of his word, after all.