By January 1985, I was up to my eyeballs in the commercialization of a maintenance management-inventory control-purchasing software product at EMA, Inc., in St, Paul. – Part 5, June 28, 2008.
When I was hired in January 1985, EMA, with corporate offices in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, had two divisions – EMA Technologies, and EMA Services. Most of the company worked for the second of these, an engineering unit that designed control systems for water and waste water facilities. Of course, I worked for the other one.
EMA Technologies grew out of a contract with WLSSD – Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, in Duluth, Minnesota – to design and develop a computer-based equipment and facilities maintenance and inventory management system. This had been completed successfully enough – at least in the view of EMA executives – that it was decided to purchase the rights to the system and market it as a software product. Soon after, the sale of a corporate license to 3M convinced the company that it was on the right track. It wasn’t.
I was hired to be Technologies’ Product Manager for its key – only, actually - product. A multi-user, mini-computer-based, maintenance planning, scheduling, work order, and inventory control system written in COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) and running on Hewlett-Packard’s HP3000 line of mini computers. It seemed a natural fit. My resume included oversight of the development of just such a system at Chevron, and my education was in marketing.
Short of writing a business case study, I’ll just enumerate the problems with EMA Technologies. Most of the company, the engineers who worked for EMA Services, hated the product (actually hated the idea it was a product at all), and hated the computer it ran on (if it wasn’t a DEC VAX, it wasn’t worth spit). They wanted nothing to do with it and prevailed on the company’s CEO to bar any realistic attempt to sell it to the municipal and regional utilities with which the company routinely did business and with whom the company had a positive image. So the only market in which EMA had any contacts or credibility was off limits. The accidental sale to 3M – a scandalously cheap corporate license, little more than a give-away – convinced the geniuses running the company they could succeed in a competitive market after giving away their only substantial competitive advantage. It didn’t take long to figure out this might be pretty difficult, but heck, there were three small children at home in Apple Valley, and I was at the age at which I could do almost anything – or so I thought.
Technologies was headed by a 3M refugee named Doyle – his last name escapes me – and had a salesman named John Stack. Techies included two project managers and three programmers. And me. The Product Manager.
It had been some time since the 3M sale – since any sale – so Doyle was on the hot seat. That summer Stack, an officer in the Naval Reserve, went on temporary active duty in Hawaii (a better deal than mine in the Minnesota National Guard, a couple of weeks at mosquito-infested Camp Ripley). Anyway, Doyle fired John when he returned. I wasn’t there long enough to know whether John was a good salesman or not. Not long after, Doyle called – or was asked to call – a meeting, a strategy session at which a new direction could be found for Maintenance Manager (that was the product name) sales.
That meeting was a disaster – even before it started. Doyle had invited the CEO, Exec. VP., and other senior employees. Doyle was running around the conference room, hanging paper on the walls, paper that represented the discussion of the group. It wasn’t going anywhere, aimless chatter, when what was expected was leadership, from Doyle, who was supposed to know where we should be going. Alan – he was the CEO – finally got tired of it all, ended the meeting and left. Doyle was gone the next day. Randy, the Exec VP and CFO – the guy who had overseen the development of Maintenance Manager and created Technologies – took over. He was a pretty good manager, but this was a product not going anywhere, anyone could see that. Well, not anyone. I couldn’t. Not then, anyway.
You’ll find out why when I get around to Part 7.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
A Late Holiday Greeting
Thanks to those from whom I got cards. Once again, it’s well past the holiday, and here I am – finally – with a little Christmas missive; even now I’ve not gotten around to mailing it. Still, I hope it finds every one of you in good health and in the successful pursuit of happiness the founders intended.
Christmas Greetings,
It’s been a year of consolidation and completion. I’ve traveled less while continuing to cover North American sports car racing; for the first time since 1997, I wasn’t at Sebring for the 12 Hours. I was in Monterey in May; that race will return to the fall schedule next season. In August I again visited Kelly and Phyllis Wechsler the weekend of a race at Road America; this year we were joined by some of the guys – including son Ashley – who a few times made the annual winter trek to Daytona for the Sunbank – since renamed Rolex - 24.
In June - for the first time - I attended the annual reunion of the 1st Cavalry Division in Bloomington, Minnesota. Nearly forty-two years later I again saw a few I knew then, and many more with shared experiences. It was a treat to have daughter Heather attend the banquet with me. I'll try to get to the 2011 event at Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood).
Instead of the summer race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, I spent time with Courtney, Dave and Olivia in New York, where Courtney is Assistant Professor of History at West Point, and Dave recently moved from the Center for Enhanced Performance to the Academy’s Dean’s Office. Both Majors, this the third of a three year assignment. In the new year, Courtney will be deployed – not certain where – while for Dave a military education assignment to the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas is likely. Olivia – she was one year old in August – will be with her Dad, who will be keeping a student’s schedule.
Ashley, lately managing a downtown Chicago book store, just recently took a new job as a research editor for a magazine publishing company in Chicago. Along with his sisters, he and GF Lindsey spent Thanksgiving with Nancy in Proctor.
Heather completed her coursework at William Mitchell College of Law this December; during her matriculation, she was on Law Review, National Moot Court competition, was research assistant for a Wm. Mitchell professor, worked for a housing advocacy legal organization, and for a federal judge in an “externship.”
Heather receives here Juris Doctor cum laude in January. Then it’s the bar exam, and in April she begins work for law firm Hanft Fride in Duluth, for whom she interned this past summer.
I’ve been kept busy with writing, including two on-going projects that I’m not ready to talk about. Mom is 96; all-in-all doing well.
Christmas Greetings,
It’s been a year of consolidation and completion. I’ve traveled less while continuing to cover North American sports car racing; for the first time since 1997, I wasn’t at Sebring for the 12 Hours. I was in Monterey in May; that race will return to the fall schedule next season. In August I again visited Kelly and Phyllis Wechsler the weekend of a race at Road America; this year we were joined by some of the guys – including son Ashley – who a few times made the annual winter trek to Daytona for the Sunbank – since renamed Rolex - 24.
In June - for the first time - I attended the annual reunion of the 1st Cavalry Division in Bloomington, Minnesota. Nearly forty-two years later I again saw a few I knew then, and many more with shared experiences. It was a treat to have daughter Heather attend the banquet with me. I'll try to get to the 2011 event at Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood).
Instead of the summer race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, I spent time with Courtney, Dave and Olivia in New York, where Courtney is Assistant Professor of History at West Point, and Dave recently moved from the Center for Enhanced Performance to the Academy’s Dean’s Office. Both Majors, this the third of a three year assignment. In the new year, Courtney will be deployed – not certain where – while for Dave a military education assignment to the Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas is likely. Olivia – she was one year old in August – will be with her Dad, who will be keeping a student’s schedule.
Ashley, lately managing a downtown Chicago book store, just recently took a new job as a research editor for a magazine publishing company in Chicago. Along with his sisters, he and GF Lindsey spent Thanksgiving with Nancy in Proctor.
Heather completed her coursework at William Mitchell College of Law this December; during her matriculation, she was on Law Review, National Moot Court competition, was research assistant for a Wm. Mitchell professor, worked for a housing advocacy legal organization, and for a federal judge in an “externship.”
Heather receives here Juris Doctor cum laude in January. Then it’s the bar exam, and in April she begins work for law firm Hanft Fride in Duluth, for whom she interned this past summer.
I’ve been kept busy with writing, including two on-going projects that I’m not ready to talk about. Mom is 96; all-in-all doing well.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Inconvenient Truths of History, Part 2
Following Michael Steele’s remarks about Afghanistan, Republicans (and most Democrats) have coalesced to thump anyone questioning the prosecution of this war. Steele may have been artless - and certainly incomplete - in his criticism of our military commitment in Central Asia, but he does seem to assert that the present war is a different war than the one we launched in 2001. It's worth exploring whether that might be the case, and along the way there are other things we need to question that seem lately to have been accepted without challenge.
There seem to be four principal assumptions underlying this broad support for the policy of the United States in regard to Afghanistan.
1. The war is “winnable” if the United States provides adequate support (money, troops, political and moral will).
Here I get to define “winnable.” (No one else has.) I assume we’ve won when (a) the Taliban is permanently banished or housebroken (participates benignly in some future successful central government); and (b) Afghanistan has a central government that has enough control over its own territory to preclude that territory from serving as a base for international terrorism.
Neither of those objectives seems attainable. For the first, an armed insurgency based in part on religious belief has to be completely destroyed or reject its own core beliefs, something I can't remember having been accomplished anywhere, even with overwhelming military force. (The jury is still out on the Tamil Tigers.)
For the second, Afghanistan has to be converted from a loose confederation of tribal areas into a modern state with a strong central government. That’s not a description that has ever applied to Afghanistan, with only the possible short-lived exception of the Marxist government that the Soviet Union tried to rescue in a decade-long war that many believe contributed to the final break-up of the Soviet Empire. To my knowledge, we’ve engaged in no other mission in our history – even Vietnam – as formidable as “winning” the “war in Afghanistan.”
2. “The War in Afghanistan” is one war, continuously fought for a consistent set of objectives.
It simply is not. It’s at least two wars; I can account for four.
The first war commenced in October 2001, and ended some time in 2002. It was fought to disrupt Al-Queda by destroying their training bases and supporting infrastructure, the latter necessarily including the incumbent Taliban government.
That war was a “qualified” success; it denied al-Queda its Afghanistan base, and ended the Taliban’s loose control of Afghanistan in favor of reversion to the country’s traditional and historical loose confederation of tribal areas – “warlords” to some. The “qualifier” on that success? Both the Taliban and al-Queda set up shop in the tribal areas of nearby Pakistan.
The second war commenced immediately on the end of the second. It consisted of a kind of “benign neglect” in which an international force applied just enough force in the region to keep the Karzai government in place and the Taliban at bay (or at least in Pakistan).
The third war (some might call it Obama’s war) began more recently, when Afghanistan was defined as “the right war,” one in which “victory” would depend on “nation building,” an “on-again, off-again” and “in-favor, out-of-favor” “end state” for United States policy toward “failed states” in the twenty-first century. This war began when we stopped “drifting along,” and became committed (after a fashion) to ‘winning.” The question is whether we should have begun this third war, or accepted the ambiguous outcome of the second.
There may be a fourth war, and it may already have begun. This “Fourth War” would be fought in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan with the objective of further pursuing and weakening – if not actually destroying al-Queda and the Taliban leadership. Obama’s increase in missile strikes from remote-piloted aircraft in Pakistan certainly looks like a significant shift of focus to that theater. The pursuit-of-al-Queda rationale that no longer applies to Afghanistan would certainly apply here, with the added advantage that there could be no pretense of “nation-building” in Pakistan. This war would be fought in a lawless frontier, with no objective or pretense to leave it as anything but.
3. Leaving a “failed state” state in Afghanistan will result in a uniquely useful terrorist sanctuary, a “breeding ground” for terror, or somehow erode our ability to protest our interests elsewhere in the world.
The first of those is a “been there, done that,” sort of argument; they’ve been there, and moved on, we’ve been there and if we do the same they won’t then return; so could we, and with advantages – knowledge of the ground, local allies – we have few other places. No, our enemies will stay in the places they have gone – Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Algeria (the hapless AQLIM).
That list of countries strikes directly at the heart of the whole “failed state” theorem – the one that says we can’t “leave one.” Given there are thirty-seven (37) countries that made the Foreign Policy 2010 list of “failed states,” and Afghanistan is one of them, my question is “so what?” There are 36 others that can’t police their territory, that can’t provide security or other basic services for their citizens. Any one of them is a candidate for a sanctuary or a breeding ground. In fact many of them are. What makes Afghanistan unique? Nothing I can see.
Does abandoning Afghanistan compromise our “moral authority,” in foreign and military affairs, the degree to which others see our nation as “reliable?” Any reader able to make sense of any of this will recognize this argument as one of the underpinnings of our engagement in South Vietnam, a bedrock principle of “containment,” supported by the “domino” theory. I won’t take on here whether those assumptions were valid – or whether they were warranted in the circumstances of the day. (That's quite different than an analysis fifty years after the fact.) After the unfortunate boat people and the butchers in Cambodia, no communist horde has swept through South Asia. On the contrary, frozen swai and shirts “Made in Vietnam” are ubiquitous. Ho Chi Minh’s eternal rest must be more than a little uncomfortable; those of us who served in Vietnam could never doubt the population’s entrepreneurial spirit, with ice, (rice) French bread, and Ba Moui Ba (Biere 33) Export on country roadsides and every city street corner.
Afghanistan left to its own devices will, in two or three decades, end up in the same place it would with our “guidance” (to say nothing of our treasure).
4. Afghanistan is a state of strategic importance.
Perhaps if one is intent on holding a South Asia empire. As far as I know we are not, having watched Darius, Alexander, the Mongols, Russia, and Britain acquire – then lose – one, each in turn. (Four of those five were “local powers.” I have no idea what Britain’s excuse was…something about the sun never setting?)
In fact Afghanistan lacks the most rudimentary infrastructure, which, along with a formidable topography, makes it a lousy “base” for anything, excepting perhaps an attack on Iran. Given the difficulty of getting men and material into Afghanistan, getting them out in the direction of Iran is of limited utility. And if that’s our objective, we best get on with it, before a nuclear weapon makes the whole thing moot.
In regard to Iraq, at least George Bush’s strategic vision (practical or not - that's another discussion) of a secular democratic state in the midst of despotic theocracies in the oil-rich (and sea-lane-straddling) Middle East has a potential value that might be worth the expenditure of war. In modern times, no such vision is possible in regard to Afghanistan.
Is there another rationale for pursuing war in Afghanistan? Is there some other support for one of the above principals? I’m willing for a reader to make the case.
There seem to be four principal assumptions underlying this broad support for the policy of the United States in regard to Afghanistan.
1. The war is “winnable” if the United States provides adequate support (money, troops, political and moral will).
Here I get to define “winnable.” (No one else has.) I assume we’ve won when (a) the Taliban is permanently banished or housebroken (participates benignly in some future successful central government); and (b) Afghanistan has a central government that has enough control over its own territory to preclude that territory from serving as a base for international terrorism.
Neither of those objectives seems attainable. For the first, an armed insurgency based in part on religious belief has to be completely destroyed or reject its own core beliefs, something I can't remember having been accomplished anywhere, even with overwhelming military force. (The jury is still out on the Tamil Tigers.)
For the second, Afghanistan has to be converted from a loose confederation of tribal areas into a modern state with a strong central government. That’s not a description that has ever applied to Afghanistan, with only the possible short-lived exception of the Marxist government that the Soviet Union tried to rescue in a decade-long war that many believe contributed to the final break-up of the Soviet Empire. To my knowledge, we’ve engaged in no other mission in our history – even Vietnam – as formidable as “winning” the “war in Afghanistan.”
2. “The War in Afghanistan” is one war, continuously fought for a consistent set of objectives.
It simply is not. It’s at least two wars; I can account for four.
The first war commenced in October 2001, and ended some time in 2002. It was fought to disrupt Al-Queda by destroying their training bases and supporting infrastructure, the latter necessarily including the incumbent Taliban government.
That war was a “qualified” success; it denied al-Queda its Afghanistan base, and ended the Taliban’s loose control of Afghanistan in favor of reversion to the country’s traditional and historical loose confederation of tribal areas – “warlords” to some. The “qualifier” on that success? Both the Taliban and al-Queda set up shop in the tribal areas of nearby Pakistan.
The second war commenced immediately on the end of the second. It consisted of a kind of “benign neglect” in which an international force applied just enough force in the region to keep the Karzai government in place and the Taliban at bay (or at least in Pakistan).
The third war (some might call it Obama’s war) began more recently, when Afghanistan was defined as “the right war,” one in which “victory” would depend on “nation building,” an “on-again, off-again” and “in-favor, out-of-favor” “end state” for United States policy toward “failed states” in the twenty-first century. This war began when we stopped “drifting along,” and became committed (after a fashion) to ‘winning.” The question is whether we should have begun this third war, or accepted the ambiguous outcome of the second.
There may be a fourth war, and it may already have begun. This “Fourth War” would be fought in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan with the objective of further pursuing and weakening – if not actually destroying al-Queda and the Taliban leadership. Obama’s increase in missile strikes from remote-piloted aircraft in Pakistan certainly looks like a significant shift of focus to that theater. The pursuit-of-al-Queda rationale that no longer applies to Afghanistan would certainly apply here, with the added advantage that there could be no pretense of “nation-building” in Pakistan. This war would be fought in a lawless frontier, with no objective or pretense to leave it as anything but.
3. Leaving a “failed state” state in Afghanistan will result in a uniquely useful terrorist sanctuary, a “breeding ground” for terror, or somehow erode our ability to protest our interests elsewhere in the world.
The first of those is a “been there, done that,” sort of argument; they’ve been there, and moved on, we’ve been there and if we do the same they won’t then return; so could we, and with advantages – knowledge of the ground, local allies – we have few other places. No, our enemies will stay in the places they have gone – Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Algeria (the hapless AQLIM).
That list of countries strikes directly at the heart of the whole “failed state” theorem – the one that says we can’t “leave one.” Given there are thirty-seven (37) countries that made the Foreign Policy 2010 list of “failed states,” and Afghanistan is one of them, my question is “so what?” There are 36 others that can’t police their territory, that can’t provide security or other basic services for their citizens. Any one of them is a candidate for a sanctuary or a breeding ground. In fact many of them are. What makes Afghanistan unique? Nothing I can see.
Does abandoning Afghanistan compromise our “moral authority,” in foreign and military affairs, the degree to which others see our nation as “reliable?” Any reader able to make sense of any of this will recognize this argument as one of the underpinnings of our engagement in South Vietnam, a bedrock principle of “containment,” supported by the “domino” theory. I won’t take on here whether those assumptions were valid – or whether they were warranted in the circumstances of the day. (That's quite different than an analysis fifty years after the fact.) After the unfortunate boat people and the butchers in Cambodia, no communist horde has swept through South Asia. On the contrary, frozen swai and shirts “Made in Vietnam” are ubiquitous. Ho Chi Minh’s eternal rest must be more than a little uncomfortable; those of us who served in Vietnam could never doubt the population’s entrepreneurial spirit, with ice, (rice) French bread, and Ba Moui Ba (Biere 33) Export on country roadsides and every city street corner.
Afghanistan left to its own devices will, in two or three decades, end up in the same place it would with our “guidance” (to say nothing of our treasure).
4. Afghanistan is a state of strategic importance.
Perhaps if one is intent on holding a South Asia empire. As far as I know we are not, having watched Darius, Alexander, the Mongols, Russia, and Britain acquire – then lose – one, each in turn. (Four of those five were “local powers.” I have no idea what Britain’s excuse was…something about the sun never setting?)
In fact Afghanistan lacks the most rudimentary infrastructure, which, along with a formidable topography, makes it a lousy “base” for anything, excepting perhaps an attack on Iran. Given the difficulty of getting men and material into Afghanistan, getting them out in the direction of Iran is of limited utility. And if that’s our objective, we best get on with it, before a nuclear weapon makes the whole thing moot.
In regard to Iraq, at least George Bush’s strategic vision (practical or not - that's another discussion) of a secular democratic state in the midst of despotic theocracies in the oil-rich (and sea-lane-straddling) Middle East has a potential value that might be worth the expenditure of war. In modern times, no such vision is possible in regard to Afghanistan.
Is there another rationale for pursuing war in Afghanistan? Is there some other support for one of the above principals? I’m willing for a reader to make the case.
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