Phoenix of Athena

My life for another lovely year

2009-08-04T16:54:00.009-04:00

As i try to figure out MS thesis topics....

h/t Ducks of Minerva

Iraqi Soccer

2009-08-04T15:30:00.002-04:00

James Denselow at HuffPo has a piece on the Iraqi national soccer team, noting that the multi-sectarian/ethnic team has been widely popular, and this month have begun playing home games again for the first time since 2002.

The team includes Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, and winning the Asian cup in 2007 brought thousands on to the streets to celebrate across the country. However, this almost universal reaction to football success was brought to a bloody end by a series of Baghdad bombings that killed 50.

My own memories of the team are very much tied to watching the 2007 Asia cup final between the Ira and Saudi teams in a restraunt in Amman, Jordan. Most of the time, Iraqis in the city tried to keep thier nationality under the radar and out of the conversation, but after the team won, the were cars with Iraqi flags and lots of honking. returning to the area I was living, which was home to many more Saudis in town for the summer, the mood was decidedly less celebatory.

A modest proposal to fix Afghanistan

2009-08-04T00:41:00.002-04:00

Ok so this is a case of me cooking up a crazy theory too late at night. I dont particularly buy it, but I think its worth poking at, so I'm opening it up for public mockery.

So one of the things that keeps coming up as people try to transfer what has worked in Iraq to Afghanistan in some version of the "Awakening", Sons of Iraq, tribal militia scheme. Nathan at Registan points out the holes in another new set of suggestions for this type of program.

This stuff is hard, and there’s enormous tension between creating and strengthening local institutions and trying to strengthen a central government with a powerful executive. It’s clear that Green gets that, and bully on him for giving the creation of a tribal engagement and militia creation strategy a whirl. What everyone involved in this effort really needs to do, however, is ask whether or not we make things harder by talking about Afghanistan’s people and society the way we do. When we talk about tribes, we imply institutions or leaders with authority over those in the same kin group. Are we really seeing much of that in Afghanistan above the level of one to a few villages?

This got me thinking about the possible ways we think about ethnic identity. If Afghanistan does have a less centralized political elemant as this passage seems to suggest, prehaps there is a better way to mobilize it than one shaped around political leaders.

There's plenty of lit. in the ethnic conflict field (particularly D. Posner's work on Africa) that suggests that ethnic divisions become politically salient only if there are institutions that incentivises one particular identity over another. So make it that when you join one of the national security services, you can identify as a particular identity. Your presence in the security force, and the success of the missions you undertake is then combined in some type of "tribal team score" that is publicly available, and translates into some type of monetary perk (he with the highest per capita recruitment gets roads first kind of deal).

Do i think this is going to make for a very good free and open society? absolutely not. It entrenches tribalism within the security forces, creates incentives that force people into the security forces against their will, is vulnerable to central government corruption to name only a few, but it seems better than the current system...

Temporary Randomness

2009-08-03T23:34:00.002-04:00

For any of you who read though the link roll on the left side bar, you'll notice that I often drift into pointing out art, and art related posts. Normally, I feel that these are more personally interesting then reliant to the blog, but I did what to highlight Ta-Nehisi great series of pieces about art. Today's is another barn burner.

I'm always skeptical of nostalgia--even if I fall victim to it myself, at times. I think we spend too much time hand-wringing about the present, as opposed to adjusting to it. I come to what is classic from all the art of the now--Chris Claremont, Raekwon, Randall Cunningham and Double Dragon. They've helped shape my sense of what is beautiful--but they don't limit it.

I'm genuinely not sure how to feel about this. I've actually taken quiet a bit of both practical art and art history back in high school and college. A part of me has always found that nostalgic part of art very appealing, but I also can recognize that it was what made me such a lousy painter. Something to think about.

Vote or die- it CAN work both ways

2009-08-01T17:50:00.002-04:00

Reuters reports that Izzat al-Douri, fugitive head of Saddam’s Baath party has called for Sunni insurgents to form "national, political or supreme leadership council to include all armed and unarmed resistance powers". The article claims that the move “suggesting a possible shift away from armed struggle”. Would that that were true.

One facet of Middle Eastern politics that has frequently puzzled western commentators is the lack of division between political oppositions groups and militias. Groups like Hezbollah and Hamas has been able to participate in elections while continuing to employ political violence. Even if the wide variety of Sunni groups still resisting the central government were to follow Douri’s suggestion, and band together to form a political committee, violence would not come to an end.

That’s not to say that political participation cannot serve to moderate such organizations. For instance the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in the elections within professional syndicates that serve as unions in Egypt has undeniably softened the group’s position. Even as an opposition bloc in parliament, the ability to gain at least some of the key demands of the insurgents may well serve to lower levels of violence. Furthermore, if this announcement is followed through on, this move may well help to bring Sunni votes to the polls in January, creating a government that has a stronger perception of legitimacy. But lessening violence doesn’t mean that the militia will disband, or that violence will cease, and by creating such unrealistic expectations, we risk missing very real, if smaller, signs of stabilization.

Crossposted at http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/08/01/you-cant-start-it-like-a-car-you-cant-stop-it-with-a-gun/

Let go of your heart, let go of your head

2009-08-01T12:36:00.003-04:00

About a month, UNESCO smacked the US and Poland for the damage that has occurred over the last six years due to a military base being located in the ancient city of Babylon. Given the totally cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in capital and lives, it may seem that throwing a hissy fit over a bunch of rocks, particularly ones that had already been tampered with by Saddam to create an archeological Disneyland, is a waste of everyone's time and energy. However, even if I can't sell you on the idea that the monuments and art of a country should be protected for their beauty and for the knowledge we gain from studying, there are political reasons that protecting this monument is good for us.

The reason why has to do with the difference between how we as Americans view such cites, and how the citizens of a country do. Blue at Afghan Quest (formally Bill and Bob's) captures this difference perfectly in a recent piece

As I roamed the shell of the palace, wandering through what was once a grand hall on the third floor, my eyes were drawn to an Afghan civilian who stood deeply considering the graffiti on the wall. I assumed that he was feeling the great sorrow of such a place, representative of the hope that Afghanistan had once held and the destruction of that same...
[I] asked him how Darulaman made him feel.
He thought for a moment, fingers on his chin. "Proud."
"Proud?" I asked, incredulous.
"Now, I am proud; and I'm thinking, ‘Do something in your life unique like this,'" he told me, "I pray to God to give me energy like this, to kick all of these insurgents out of here and I will tell them, ‘Hey, 80 or 100 years ago, they made this place. Why you made this place like this?'"
"It doesn't make you sad?" I quizzed him further, intrigued at his outlook.
"No. I feel this sorrow, but I cannot change these things that happened. But, this man, Amanullah, did a unique thing. I can do a unique thing too, inshallah."

For outsiders, antiquities are all about the past, particularly when talking about studying areas of the world that have been traditionally viewed through an Orientalist aesthetic. But for the descendents of the society that produced them, these places and items form key parts of personal identity narratives that link the individual to a historical sense of the nation. In fact, these places and things are so important to political narratives that in countries with strong ethnic and tribal divisions, like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel, claims about where the people you are descended from lived and what the achieved can play very specifically into division of modern political spoils.

The preservation of the past can also be way of linking to a sense of the nation that existed before the Taliban, before Saddam. A good example of this is the exhibit of pieces saved from the National Museum in Kabul by the staff before the Taliban took over. Americans didn't build the palace, and Americans didn't save this priceless collection. Afghans did. At a time when there are major concerns about the US's ability to recruit Iraqis and Afghans to take on critical security and development projects in order to ‘hold' the territory we take, we should be doing everything possible to promote Iraqi and Afghan nationalism, and that includes not destroying tangible symbols of patriotism.

Crossposted at http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/08/01/let-go-of-you-heart-let-go-of-you-head/

What's happening to the monarch of the Sea?

2009-07-31T14:57:00.002-04:00

Yesterday the British government launched Iraq Inquiry committee, just as the last troops were pulled back to Kuwait by today in compliance with the British-Iraqi SOFA, charged with”

…considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country…
The Inquiry is not a court of law and nobody is on trial. But I want to make something absolutely clear. This Committee will not shy away from making criticism. If we find that mistakes were made, that there were issues which could have been dealt with better, we will say so frankly.

The Washington Post is reporting that those called will be former Prime minister Tony Blair, and in contrast to what had previously been discussed sessions with be public whenever possible. The article also stated:

John Chilcot… said that "the Anglo-American relationship is one of the most central parts of this inquiry" and that the panel hoped to have "discussions" with Americans involved in the war.

I was reminded forcibly of Patrick Porter’s piece on Kings of War from earlier this week, discussing the role that the “special relationship” has played in continued British involvement in both wars:

For the UK, the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, is part of a grand strategic goal – to sustain a relationship with the United States.
In the debate over invading Iraq, Tony Blair was explicit on this point. The UK was not only supporting the US because it agreed with its case for removing Saddam. Britain was participating also to shape, lead and advise the American superpower – to promote British influence, to integrate America’s war effort within a multilateral (if not formally sanctioned and legal) coalition, to guard against a reversion back to American isolationism, and to align America’s war against terrorism within an internationalist and liberal framework…
At the level of defence policy and military capability, senior officers articulate a parallel desire to make Britain’s military power deliver the UK a seat at the top table, to help Britain ‘punch above its weight’...
For the Anglo-American relationship, there is a paradox in the war on terror. Though Britain participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan partly to keep its credibility and pay a ‘blood price’ to sustain the relationship, the strain and difficulty of those wars effectively endangers that credibility. Britain’s political will, the muscle and effectiveness of its armed forces, and its capacity to translate highly-regarded military force into strategic success, all of this is placed on the line, and repeatedly. Undertaken to fortify the Atlantic alliance and Britain’s status as a heavyweight junior partner, the war instead jeopardises it, and the Brits feel forced to rescue it.

I think the specific note this early in the proceeding of the inquiry board that the “special relationship” is within the bounds of the investigation speaks, a least to some degree, to a more serious desire to question whether the relationship should remain as prominent in calculations of British Strategic interests in the future. Given the way the political climate is leaning in Britain, I think that decision is going to rest with David Cameron and the Tories, rather than the beleaguered Brown administration. If Obama wants to keep our strongest ally, this might be a good time to make nice.

Crossposted to http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/07/31/old-friends-sat-on-a-park-bench-like-book-ends/

Afghanistan review: the comparison edition (corrected)

2009-07-31T13:55:00.003-04:00

As Spencer has already reported, the past week has been filled with chatter from the think tank advisors returning from Gen. McChrystal’s Afghanistan review. Quite a lot of blog-o-sphere rage has focused on Andrew Exum’s remarks , noting striking differences in policy recommendations and observations he is articulating in this newest round of interviews and those he espoused before leaving. Josh Foust in particular has a nice side-by-side piece showing key changes in Ex’s recommendations (as well as some serious internal inconsistencies in his articulation of them).

Jari over at The Stupidest Man on Earth also points out that these statements are very different in tone from those made by Tony Cordesman over the last few days. One possibility here is certainly that Ex has drunk the Kool-Aid. But as Josh points out in his post, spending time on the ground can create very real changes in attitude, so I thought it was worth doing some comparison work between Ex, Cordesman, and Biddle’s before and after statements, to see where the changes are, particularly given the boss-man’s reporting that those in the review was far from united in their perspectives.

While Cordesman has reams of publication devoted to Afghanistan, the most substantial analysis and policy recommendation paper from the last few months in my mind is Winning Afghanistan*. While the total report is nearly 200 pages long, key recommendations and observations include the integration of “the civil and military dimensions of the war into sustainable efforts that take account of the real world conditions in both [Afghanistan and Pakistan]” (pg vi); more, and more honest, governance from all levels of the Afghan government; more development aid; and “far more coherence in international effort to make this possible” (p vi). While speaking to the need for a radical expansion of both the ANA and ANP, the report is particularly concerned with the need to provide training to police units with both the specific paramilitary skills and the loyalty to the duties and responsibilities of their position and national government that they need to do their jobs. There is also a substantial discussion of the failure to define what the ‘hold’ and ‘build’ phases will look like, and how to prepare the Afghan Security Forces to take them over in a reasonable amount of time. Finally, he notes that there is a decisive need to change if we want to be on track for even a ‘slow win,’ and that the necessary resources and direction for that change must come from the US rather than relying on coalition partners.

So what did we hear at yesterday’s press conference ? (Note: There isn’t a transcript available yet, so I’ve transcribed a good-sized chunk here sorry for any errors):

The fact is, we have to go far beyond the normal limits of counterinsurgency, we’re involved in an exercise in armed nation building, and we’re doing it at a time when we have to see Afghanistan find ways to… create an effective government, create effective forces, and simultaneously meet challenges like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and pressures from outside powers.
Above all, this is a war shaped not by strategy, but by systematic neglect and years of under-resourcing… Seven years after we entered the war what is most striking about Afghanistan is how many people are still acting like this was the first year in Afghanistan. How many of the exercises are disconnected and theoretical, or are involved with experiments... And you see these problems are much more critical on the civil side then they are on the military side...
… What should be an integrated civil-military effort, and a focus on winning the war in the field, is a dysfunctional wasteful mess, focused on Kabul and crippled by bureaucratic divisions. It is further crippled by Afghan corruption, power brokering, and by the individual national caveats and tensions within and between the individual members of ISAF and NATO.
…You need to refocus the intelligence effort to focus on the nature of the insurgency, not simply finding threat forces in the field and defeating them...
We, the United States, are going to have to provide the resources if we want to win. Most of the incremental resources will have to come from us. This means very substantial budget increases, it means more bridge combat troops, and it means financing both the civilian effort need in the field, and a near doubling of Afghan National Security Forces. Those forces not only have to be doubled to provide a minimum level of coverage, we have to face the fact that we do not need civil police in a country that has no courts in something like 95% of the villages… and where the police cannot survive unless they have paramilitary capabilities and outside support…
And finally, let me just make one last point. When we talk about winning, we are not talking about transforming Afghanistan into some mirror image of the West, or accelerating it to the point where it becomes a developed country within the foreseeable future. We’re talking about basic security, basic stability basic economic opportunity for the Afghans, and creating a country which will be free of international terrorism. One of the problems we all face in Afghanistan is that we have set impossible goals, according to impossible time frames, which Afghanistan cannot possibly meet. We need to serve the real needs of the people in achievable ways. If we pursue a dream, we will lose the war.

What’s striking here is that very little has changed other than Cordesman’s level of aggravation. The key flaws that he points to are the same, but no one seems to be following through. After seven years of experimentation, we are still forced to “experiment” in Helmand to figure out necessary troop levels and strategies for the ‘hold’ and ‘build’ phases.

One small change in position that showed up in the Q & A which I think is worth highlighting is Cordesman’s point that Pakistan is not the only country that shelters terrorists, and that we ignore growing situations in countries like Yemen and Somalia for the sake of presenting a conveniently unified description of Af-Pak. Given that Cordesman was one of the first to push for the inclusion of Pakistan as a necessary second side of the coin, I think this is a point that is worth paying some serious attention to as we keep talking about our CT and COIN goals in the conflict that he sees a need to turn to a more international CT agenda rather than one that looks only at Af-Pak.

So what is so different about Exum’s after action reports? Actually, in general I think he’s often saying very similar things to Cordesman, but because there is more of a disconnect between his recommendations in Triage and the post-review interviews, he is sounding less coherent. I think the changes in his conception of what a metric of population stability should be have, in fact, changed, most likely because “the population may not be targeted kinetically in the way that it was in Iraq, but it’s certainly being targeted.” This is why we do fieldwork, kids, so we know when it’s appropriate to draw analogies to previous conflicts and when it’s not.

On the question of what the future ‘hold’ and ‘build’ stages should look like, I think again what we’re seeing is that Ex has not really changed his opinion, so much as he can’t reconcile facts on the ground to the way he thinks things should run. The plan as laid out in Triage called for an ink spot approach, which is what seems to be working in areas where we’ve had some success (see this great article from the Army Times about life on one of those remote bases), but now that we have a major kinetic operation underway in Helmand, the situation on the ground is going to require some other approach. I think that this illogical sting of assertions:

We’ve got very limited international forces in Afghanistan, and we’re actually not using them to their best effect if we’ve got them ‘holding.’ So if the Marines in Helmand are holding terrain right now, that’s a waste of resources. The ‘hold’ function should be executed by a robust Afghan national security force.

is actually the result of Ex now agreeing with Cordesman about the necessity of a massive surge of Afghan forces to a greater degree then Triage articulated, but having to deal with what is looking like a premature major operation. Frankly, I think neither man has much hope we’ll hold the ground we’re taking now, although neither says it. The only reason Cordesman doesn’t sound as discombobulated is because he is speaking about these issues from a much broader perspective than Ex, which allows him to write Helmand off as another ‘experiment’ needing ‘improvisations,’ pointing out that the operation was planned before the new team was in place. However, during the Q&A he too argues for a focus on ANA involvement in ‘hold’ ops in later operations.

Another point the men seem to now agree on that was not really discussed in Triage is the need to change how we conceive of what relevant intelligence is. Ex now claims that:

Our intelligence and the way that we gather intelligence continues to be focused on the enemy. What we need to know to be successful in Afghanistan is not just the size, disposition and composition of the Quetta Shura Taliban, or the Haqqani network, but we need to understand local dynamics.

Again I think this represents a growing realization of just how different Iraq and Afghanistan are, and how that has twisted strategy recommendations. This is a very old hobby horse of Cordesman, particularly to the extent it involves poor government reporting and assessment, so I’m not surprised he got there first.

Prior to the review, Biddle had been perhaps the most negative of the three on the future of the conflict, and his piece in The American Interest drew plenty of critiques over the last month. Asked specifically if he had revisions to make to his comments given what he had seen, he stated:

My sense of the situation is stronger now than it was certainly before leaving. My basic view remains, however, that the case for making a go at this is stronger than that for cutting our losses and withdrawing. But the argument I made in the American Interest article was that it was a fairly close call, that this wasn't a slam dunk either way… And I certainly continue to think that either course of action--staying or withdrawing--has important problems. On balance staying is the better course, but only if we're prepared to resource it correctly. The weakest argument is staying and under-resourcing it. That creates the opportunity to lose slowly, which is the worst of the three possible approaches.

Basically, I think he has changed the least, and that both Exum and Cordesman have come to agree with Biddle. His frank assessment that the necessary triage approach is going to include losing territory in order to hold what we have really isn’t all that different from what Ex’s triage report called for, but it is willing to articulate costs in much less idealized terms.

And that generally seems to be the takeaway. We have the right plan, but there is going to be a substantial (and possibly unbearable) cost to implement it, and facts on the ground are going to mean we lose some of our current half complete missions before we can start winning.

*Full discloser: my boyfriend was one of the coauthors of the report. However all analysis here is my own. [ed apologies for neglecting to have the disclosure on the original post]

Crossposted to http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/07/31/theres-something-happening-here-but-what-it-is-aint-exactly-clear/

I can haz real blog?

2009-07-31T12:53:00.003-04:00

Hey gag, sorry for the short notice but for today and tomorrow I'll be guest blogging for always awesome Spence Ackerman over at http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/. I'll cross post things here, but you should come say hello, and check out the work of my coblogger Tyson.

Catagories are important (or "In which I jump up and down on Michel Cohen")

2009-07-30T12:18:00.003-04:00

The COIN community has gotten a bit insulare for its own good, and Michel Cohen as played a useful role as a precictent naysayer (though I think these pieces by Rory Steward and Andrew Bacevich are more compelling in general). However, he frequently seems to have issues understanding current catagorizations in way that make him talk past many of the other serious people writing on the issue.

One of Cohen's recent posts points to why the question of classification is actually very very important, even when it seems like an internal, circular point of utter nonsense (which dont get me wrong, it is sometimes). Over the course of the post Cohen points to both the US involvement in the Philippines and the American Civil war as instances of successful counterinsurgencies campaigns that did not utilize modern pop-centric COIN models. Problem is, neither is.

While both conflict would probably class as Irregular Warfare under modern conventions, the Philippines were a war of colonization, and the American Civil War was... well, a civil war. in both cases America was committed to long term projects of governance, either through pseudo-colonialism (at levels that are just nowhere in the current reasonable discussion about the futures of Iraq or Afghanistan), or through the direct manipulation of the political and economic system of the South that was achieve but Reconstruction Legislation. But these aren't COIN related political strategies, any more then the fairly brutal suppression of the population through events like Sherman's March to the Sea are in line with COIN related military tactics. By miscatagorizing the conflicts, really false analogies are being drawn that just don't serve to advance a very legitimate debate about how we should proceed.

Critique of Gourley

2009-07-28T10:34:00.002-04:00

Sean Gourley’s work presented in a TED lecture looks at a wide range of conflicts and finds a surprisingly regular pattern, claiming the number of people killed in a attack is dependent on the frequency of the attack, because the tactics necessitated by insurgency nudge organizations to a ‘ideal’ organizational structure (α=2.5), which allows for optimization of capabilities.

He then shows a break-down of how this hypothetical “organizational structure” variable, which claims to represent the coherence and size of the various subgroups, has shifted in Iraq. Starting with a relatively unified opposition to the US’s invasion, his model shows that by 2002/3 the number of splinter groups within the insurgency had spiked up to what his finding show is an ideal level of ‘structure’. Following the ’06 elections, his model than shows a further splintering of groups for the next year, until the start of the surge, at which point α drops back down, only to rise back up. (Chart is at 6:48 in the video).

His theory is that when α is high or low, we are better able to best insurgencies, either by bringing unified groups to the negotiating table or crushing small groups, and that the ideal organization of insurgencies, revealed in the patterns of attacks, will be consistent in all conflicts. While intriguing, there are some quiet serious questions I have about this theory.

First of all, the idea that violence as a broad concept follows power-law distribution is not only not new (as noted by Drew Conway regarding violence more generally, and this study that looks at terrorist attacks only, both worth a glance in their own right), but also not terribly surprising. Smaller incidents generally cost less than larger ones. In a shot out, killing more people needs you need more men, in the case of an IED more casualties require a higher level of technical proficiency and more materials. Man, experience and materials are all expensive so can only be used a finite number of times.

That of course doesn’t mean that the work couldn’t still be useful to the discipline, particularly the idea of a mathematically ideal type of organizational structure; however, I think it is this ability to intuit the basic finding that there are likely to be more small attacks and fewer large attacks that Ricks is responding to in his pieces, when he asks why this research should be seen as useful. Gourley responds to these critiques by claiming:

With this new approach… We can understand the underlying structure of an insurgency i.e. how an insurgency 'decides' to distribute its forces (weapons, people, money etc). Further, we can explain why this kind of insurgent structure emerges in multiple different conflict zones around the world. We can estimate the number of autonomous insurgent groups operating within a theatre of war. We can monitor and track a conflict through time to see how either side’s strategies are affecting the state of the war. Finally we can compare the mathematical patterns of current ongoing wars with past wars to estimate how close they are to ending.

Well all this sounds great, but does it actually work?

The first problem is the source of the data. Not only does media usually not report ‘failed’ attacks, potentially lowering the reported number of incidences, they often miscode violence in confusing ways. Kalyvas (article gated but abstract here, or in book form) has done a lot of work highlighting the extent to which micro level killings are coded by elites (including the media) to read as 'insurgent' or 'ethnic' violence, instead of homicide or gang violence. Expecting that bias, the problem in the data is not just that failures are excluded, but also that successes are over reported.

The second issue is partially caused by a lack of clarity in the data presented. Because the data tables aren’t available on the lecture slides and I couldn’t find a paper citing this data, I’m actually unclear on what exactly he means by number and size of incidents. Given the difficulty he had in obtaining date from the Pentagon, he has to be looking at more than just coalition casualties*. Assuming that they include other security personnel, insurgent dead, or even civilians, how are Gourley and co. coding the number killed? This isn’t just nitpicking, the study means deferent things when placed in actual context depending on what variables he’s using.

Is the question about the number of casualties on the side of the Counter insurgents (which in and of itself is going to be a contentious definition when coding), as inflicted by the insurgents? Given that the causal story that is told about the relationship is one about the organization of the insurgency, that coding would make some sense (and seems to be the reading that Drew is taking). However, he’s applied the same model to conflicts with 2, 3, or more independent and active parties involved in the war, with no attempt to distinguish what’s going on. Given that there are often multiple factions that are just as often fighting each other as the COIN force (which isn’t necessarily unified itself) assuming a simple binary conflict is intensely problematic, particularly in cases like Iraq where there is quite a lot of insurgent on insurgent violence. To me, that either indicates that the models is being applied without really thinking about how the case fits into the parameter, or that in fact what he is interested in is the total number of deaths, on both sides and including civilians that occur during a conflict.

Leaving this problem aside for a moment, Drew Conway (who is much better at modeling then me) points out the gap between the observed distribution of attacks, and the causal mechanism that Gourley suggests:

Power-law distributions can provide a categorical approximation of a network's underlying structure because in these cases the distribution in question refers to the frequency of edge counts among nodes, a structural measurement. Even for networks, however, the actual underlying structures of networks following a power-law can vary wildly. Attack frequencies, on the other hand, have nothing to do with structure. In what way, then, is this metric valid for measuring the structure or distribution of insurgent forces?

In many ways this in not only a modeling problem, it goes back to my point about insurgencies not being as simple a structure as this model assumes. Gourley’s understanding of insurgent structure is far too simplistic; when the reality is that the social networks that support these groups vary widely in sophistication and resources without necessarily varying in size. Because there is no effort to compare α to any other indicators of insurgent structure one could look at (ex. Number of groups claiming credit for attacks, existence of sections of the organization devoted to nonviolent efforts like social services, or qualitative accounts from intelligence about the nature of the structure) there is little effort made to see if the narrative α presents holds up. To take the example of Iraq, the fragmentation of the insurgency following the 06 elections that is seen in Gourley’s findings doesn’t match up terribly well to the narrative that has been told by observers. Without some qualitative work to back up the narrative, its hard to take such sweeping findings too seriously.

*At least I assume such based on colleagues’ attempts to gather data of a similar nature

New fighting force agains al-Qaeda?

2009-07-22T00:15:00.002-04:00

BBC reports that a major Tuareg faction in Mali is cooperating with government forces in order to take out al-Qaeda, who uses the deserts that the Tuareg traditionally travel to hid bases

The BBC's Martin Vogl in Mali's capital Bamako says the Malian and Algerian governments will both be pleased to have Tuareg forces as part of their offensive against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The Tuareg know how to operate in the desert perhaps better than anyone else and could be the government's best hope of beating al-Qaeda in the region, he says...
Under the deal, special units of fighters from the Alliance for Democracy and Change (ADC) are to be sent to the desert to tackle al-Qaeda.
Although the ADC signed a deal to end its rebellion three years ago, one of its factions is still active.
The Tuareg, a historically nomadic people living in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa, have had militant groups in Mali and Niger engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades.
They have argued that their region has been ignored by the government in the south of the countries.
But there has been a history of animosity between the Tuareg groups and al-Qaeda.

I haven't seen this covered much in the usual insurgency/terrorism roundups, but this is both a really good example of how different insurgent groups can be turned against one another. Hopefully, we can keep going with this type of tactic in or CT efforts against al-Qaeda.

While it may be naive on my part (for starters, i dont know a whole lot about Tuareg insurgencies), this also seems to be a case where CT collaboration may help ease other cleavages in the society that lead to insurgency. Given that participation in military efforts are going to require that money and equipment from the government make it out to the desert, these operations may be able to ease the resource gap that is perpetuating the conflict. or it may be another Sons of Iraq program, in which little real integration or resource distribution is achieved.

What maybe Friedman should have writen

2009-07-21T22:35:00.002-04:00

Spencer did a nice job pointing out the stupidity of Friedman's column on Mon to prevent what would have been the blog equivilant of watching my head explode, but just to make it even more apparent how idiotic the colum was I thought the contrast between what old TF chose to turn out, and what DangerRoom produced from the same press trip was worth a look.

TF's big takeaway from a trip to see a girls school opened?:

Indeed, Mortenson’s efforts remind us what the essence of the “war on terrorism” is about. It’s about the war of ideas within Islam — a war between religious zealots who glorify martyrdom and want to keep Islam untouched by modernity and isolated from other faiths, with its women disempowered, and those who want to embrace modernity, open Islam to new ideas and empower Muslim women as much as men. America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were, in part, an effort to create the space for the Muslim progressives to fight and win so that the real engine of change, something that takes nine months and 21 years to produce — a new generation — can be educated and raised differently.

Nathan Hodge uses the same event to discuss:

The relatively secure environment of the Panjshir means that the PRT can undertake and oversee more reconstruction projects than any other team. Burns said his team had done 80 site visits in three months; sometimes they can visit a dozen project sites in one day. In Kabul, by contrast, he was lucky if he got out once a week...
Not everyone is fan of the military’s embrace of the humanitarian mission. Since their inception in late 2002 as “Joint Regional Teams,” many in the aid and development community have worried that the PRTs were encroaching on a traditional humanitarian space, blurring the line between civilian aid work and military operations...

In the Panjshir, however, the aim seems to be keeping this mission as low-key as possible. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t risks. In late May, a convoy carrying members of the Panjshir PRT was hit by a suicide car bomber while it crossed through neighboring Kapisa province; four members of the team were killed, including the commander, Lt. Col. Mark Stratton.

Hmmm... you mean you can report on things that the public may not know about? particularly when you write for one of the most widely read periodicals in the world? Interesting...

Oversight in the wake of the F-22

2009-07-21T20:30:00.003-04:00

With all the noise today over the Obama-Gates victory in quashing Congressional plans to expand the F-22 program, I hope that this isn't going to be the end of serious discussion about defense appropriations, and what the role of both civilian leadership of the defense department, and congress should be.

There has been relatively little done to improve the oversight of the War in Afghanistan, even as the resources devoted to the conflict have dramatically increased this year. While there has been limited lip service to the need to expand the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR), this Mother Jones piece is the first I've seen in a while to highlight how short that effort has fallen:

In March, when President Obama unveiled his new Afghanistan strategy, he promised "robust funding" for Fields' anti-corruption efforts. But Fields says his FY2010 budget of $23 million is still about $8 million short of what he needs. Instead of the 90 employees Fields asked for, SIGAR has 44. It has produced just one audit. By way of contrast, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released more than a dozen audits in its first year.

maybe some of that 2 billion that was just cut out could be redirected here, huh?

It also may be worth thinking about how the Brits are handling some of the same problems, in light of a former Defense Secretary telling politicians to get out of the ring and not to 'second guess' the military or behave like armchair generals'". You think the debate is nasty over here.

New ideal vacation plans are made

2009-07-15T23:54:00.001-04:00

umbrella hockey is a particular favorite

h/t to miss toddles

the title of the song

2009-07-15T18:06:00.002-04:00

So I’ve enjoyed Waltz’s series of posts talking about how to apply IR theory to personal relationships. While these are all fine and good, they don’t really approach the level of awesome of the raging CNAS and friends debate over autotune and Jay-Z vs. the Game that has immerged in the last few weeks (original Jay-Z vs. the Game post from Marc Lynch here and a summary of responses here. I think I’ve spent the better part of the yesterday having arguments about this.

And don’t get me wrong, I think this is a really entertaining way of modeling unequal power.

Want to talk about the persistent power of insurgents? Well then you can talk about how personal experience can cause you to side with the oppiset side that your sectarian identification would indicate

Want to talk about identity signaling? Well then you can debate how the intentional use of auto-tune in the future could act as a signifier of pro or anti Jay-Z sympathy, in contrast to a firmer signal of alliance like direct lyrical attacks on him and his.

Want to talk about alliance formation in unstable states? Well then you can debate about whether the leagues of the anti-Jay-Z will form a coalition to rival the existing hegemony (think of a hip hop EU), or merely a sea of rogue states with which the dominate power must play wack-a-mole, and what the potential costs of each scenario are.

However, I think one thing that’s getting lost in the entertainment value of this series, is that at the end of the day this is a model, in the same tradition of grand strategy IR modeling Lynch could have said big country X and small country Y and we could all be having exactly the same argument (lord knows I know nothing about hip hop, and that didn’t stop me). This one is cute and entertaining, so it gets written about, but at the end of the day Jay-Z and the game have the same problem that most models do. They are, by definition simplifications of the actual complexities of the International system.

For those readers in charge of training debate, MUN or polsci undergrads, may I suggest this as the new test grounds for establishing baseline knowledge and intelligence of recruits about alliance dynamics, signaling and basic IR models? But for those who are crafting current policy, I hope there is more depth of knowledge expected about how we tailor models to the particular arena before it is turned into policy.

al-Qeada in countries without US troops

2009-07-10T12:52:00.002-04:00

Today's times has an interesting piece on the North African branch of al-Qeada, with the most important line a few paragraphs in:

American and European security and counterterrorism officials say the attacks may signal the return of foreign fighters from the Iraq war, where they honed their bomb-making skills.

In some ways this is actually good news about how things are going in Iraq. If the Times analysis is right, this means that Iraq has shifted from being the center of a a global jihad, to being a local insurgency, not only in the view of the mainstream, but also for the jihadis themselves.

Islamist and social aid in Pakistan

2009-07-09T22:11:00.002-04:00

Peter Marton at State Failure and the NYTimes are both busy pointing out that one of the key thinks that we should be watching for is the way in with Islamist groups, particularly the Taliban are publicizing the distribution of aid in Pakistan.

… ideas of winning back popularity with a big show of airlifts of American assistance on the scale of American earthquake relief to Kashmir in 2005 were rebuffed, and not only by the Pakistanis.

American nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan discouraged high-profile deliveries of United States government aid because anti-American sentiment was too widespread and the security risk to Americans in the camps was too high... There were many Taliban in the displaced camps, and they believed the Pakistani military was fighting against them in Swat on orders from Washington, the official said.

While a fair point in being made that the restrictions on Americans (and our western Allies) publicizing the work we are doing in the region, he also doesn’t do enough to recognize the long history of social welfare projects in gathering support for the Islamist groups. This goes well beyond the immediate concerns of workers proselytizing at aid stations, and is worth thinking about how these efforts are going to play into our strategy in Pakistan.

Provision of social services, including charitable aid, education and health services is a staple project of Islamist groups, both historically and in other areas of the Islamic world (for instance in the Palestinian refugee camps). Beyond creating immediate recruitment opportunities but forming a patronage network (particularly among the families of individual members), these service also highlight the government’s failure to provide for the poor. This is particularly critical in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan were suspicion of corruption has played a big part in the high level of distrust for the central regime.

Aid provision by extremists can also undermine the regime, because they are often forced to recognize extremist groups in order to co-opt at least some portion of the credit for social programs. A good example of this can be seen in the Jordanian states acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950’s and 60’s in part because they needed to fold Brotherhood schools into the state system to prevent the formation of a better endowed rival to the state system*

Two things currently hinder the US taking advantage of the same benefits of social service provision. First are the gag orders that prevent us from getting the recognition for emergency aid that we should be. This is basically a straightforward diplomatic problem

The more complicated bit to fix is learning to mimic the way in which social services run by extremists for strong networks then can be utilized later for recruitment and sympathy. Clinics, schools and social organizations form connection not only between the recipients of aid (who are often lower class), but also between the middle class individuals who work there, or relied on the service as children. American needs to learn how to set up our efforts so that ties between American workers and middle class locals can develop.

*Full discloser- I wrote my BA thesis on Muslim Brotherhood services in Egypt and Jordan. You’re going to get this type of example a lot.

Israel's ambassador to the US

2009-07-09T18:18:00.002-04:00

Michel Oren was one of the speakers at this years Aspen Ideas Festival. The interview is a really striking demonstration of just why this man is so good for the job. This is a really articulate explanation of why Israel should matter to American's, not just out of guilt, but because of very specific American values such as responsibility that are embodied in the Oren's conception of the Israeli state. It certainly a more compelling vision then that then is being put forward by Bibi at the moment.

Contractors at home

2009-07-09T11:39:00.002-04:00

One of the bizarre side issues I've picked up over the years is in how private contractor work in peace and stability operations. In this context there has been plenty of talk over the years about the ways in which improper oversight is seriously endangering US military and civilian personal and strategy. What hasnt been mentioned in the same context is that many of this issues also come into play when looking at homeland security operations.

The Post has a piece today about a GAO investigation (original report here) of the effectiveness of contracted security on government building state side that highlights some petty shocking flaws in the system. While I think security related contractors are a fact of life that are here to stay (and have lots of friends in the business who I greatly respect) we clearly need to get a better hand on how we organize oversight.

CNAS is cooler then youll ever be

2009-07-08T12:57:00.005-04:00

New today, Marc Lynch of abu aardvark is now joining CNAS.

also in CNAS (well former CNAS) being awesome, this piece on Michele Flounoy is an interesting look at her life and work. Sure, its shallowly feminest for me to be interested in her especially because shes a woman in a field that has been dominated by men, but one of the things that has interested me about the rise of COIN is how many women are influentual in the top minds of the field, and how many women are at the front of the armed services attemptes to put the ideas into practice.

Police Training in Palestine

2009-07-02T02:36:00.002-04:00

One of the big discussion in both Iraq and Afghanistan has been how the US can go about training an army and police force that is both effective in assisting with (and eventually running) COIN operations, and able to resist corruption. However there's a profitable model in Palestine Security Forces, which hasn't gotten much attention (likely because of COIN scholars general leariness of all things Israel/Palestine as a case*).

Two recent pieces highlight some of the possible problem we will encounter in current efforts (and there are some great blogs that trace on the ground efforts), even if we can manage to come up with a training regime that works.

Marc Lynch reviews Khaled Meshaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, speech from last week. Most other commenters have focused on his offer to negotiate with Obama, but Lynch also notes

Meshaal called General Dayton's security forces the greatest obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation and called for his removal. Many in the U.S. will take this as a sign that Dayton's mission is succeeding, and that Hamas is growing worried about the increasing competence and strength of the Palestinian Authority's security forces...

But serious questions about the role and future of these security forces need to be asked -- not just because Meshaal raises them, but because his concerns reflect widespread Palestinian sentiments. It is now common to refer to... the Palestinian security forces as "the Dayton forces." This is not meant as a compliment...

There are major questions about the mission of these new Palestinian security forces... Is it something akin to the logic of COIN, establishing security and population security in order to provide the breathing space for political reconciliation? Is it to target Hamas and its infrastructure, as the Israelis demand and as seems to have been happening of late...

There are also real concerns about the implications of a rapidly improving security sector combined with hapless, inefficient and dilapidated civilian ministries.

At the same time, the Post is running pieces that focus on the new Counter-terrorism efforts that these forces are undertaking, as well as some details about the efforts that Lynch mentions. Given the problems with this (relitively successful) expantion of the security forces, it seems like more thought needs to be given to what we hope to form in Iraq and Afghanistan.

*dont get me run I fully understand the intense emotional baggage that comes with the topic... but its still cutting off our nose in en effort not to break out.

Follow-up on Honduras

2009-07-01T12:54:00.002-04:00

Mark Goldberg points out that despite striking similarities in event in Honduras and Niger, the governments reactions to the coup are starkly different and, Niger isn't really being reported on

But there are some striking similarities between the unfolding situations in Honduras and Niger. To wit:

Country A) Elected President wants to serve beyond the limits of his constitutionally mandated term. Country B) Elected President wants to serve beyond the limits of his constitutionally mandated term.

Country A) Elected President wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution Country B) Elected President wants to hold a referendum to change the constitution

Country A) Supreme Court decides this is not legal. Country B) Supreme Court decides this is not legal.

Here, however, is where the similarities seem to end.

Country A) The military, backed by opposition leaders, ousts the president.

Country B) The president declares a state of emergency, dissolves the supreme court and arrests the main opposition leader.

A, is of course, Honduras. B is Niger, where aformentioned opposition leader accused President Mamadou Tandja of carrying out the equivalent of a coup. And, it would appear, President Tandja is coming under fire from both the European Union and Economic Community of West African States, both of which have cautioned Tandja over his proposed term-extension. The African Union may also pile on when it meets in Libya for a summit today.
In Niger, the military has so far stayed neutral. But is this the sort of case where the military can act as an check on the power of the president and as a guarantor of the constitution?

In a lot of ways this is getting at the same point I was making earlier about the events in Honduras having precedent in Turkey.

CANADIA DAY

2009-07-01T12:12:00.002-04:00

basically my favorite holiday ever, if only cause of certain member of this blogs readership, who firmly recommends this Op-ed.

In the mean time....
Some Canadian culture

On the trials and tribulation of dual-citizenship:

and last but not least, a stirring rendition of "O Canada":

More serious blogging later.

Media Coverage in Afghanistan

2009-06-30T18:18:00.002-04:00

Christian over at Ghosts of Alexander has the interesting idea of tracking this story about the killing of the Kandahar Police Chief to see how information comes out of Afghanistan. While his analysis of the project will be out later this week, Registan also has an overview of reporting on the event. He repeats that analysis of a reporter friend in Kandahar “there is a feeling of ‘the final straw’ in people’s reactions to the news.".

...the initial reports were wrong, but that seems to drive opinion in many parts of Afghanistan—whatever you heard first, so it is. Some unreported context to the incident...who knows how that might have affected things as well.

Did the U.S. or Coalition have a hand—even a very indirect one—in today’s killing? We won’t know for a bit... If—and this is a big “if,” as we just don’t know yet—this turns out to have connections to SF-types, the General McChrystal’s much ballyhooed push for a lighter special operations footprint is certainly off to a great start.

This is not only an important story its an important reminder of the role that western media plays in establishing local opinion about events.

Ikhwan

2009-06-30T01:44:00.002-04:00

Three high ranking members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt were arrested over the weekend, including Dr. Abdel-Moneim Abu el-Fotouh, Member of the Executive Bureau of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Secretary-General of the Arab Doctors’ Federation, a notable reformer and strong voice of moderation within the party. The Arabist notes:

Aboul Fotouh in particular is one of the MB’s most popular figures, respected well beyond their ranks for his intellectual calibre and moderation. Considering all [three] of these people were involved in the fundraising drive and aid effort to Gaza, and the Egyptian government has just reopened the border, one wonders whether there’s any connection... I should add that several companies close to those arrested and other prominents MBs have been shut down, dealing a further financial blow to the group.

However, 13 members were released yesterday after a court declared them innocent of money laundering. Official statements by the Ikhwan characterizedthe new arrests not only as a continuation of the regimes oppression of the group's at "reform, coordinating with all the political and national powers in Egypt, and forming a coalition with the Egyptian masses."

Additionally "Detentions emphasize the failure of the existing regime in various fields, whereas its inability to bring security to the nation as these deeds are directly in the service of our US-Zionist enemies tarnishing Egypt's reputation internally and abroad." Given the language of the statment and the arrested man's connection to Gaza relief efforts that is mentioned in several of the statements, its seems fairly clear that the Brotherhood is inclided to agree with teh Arabist about the reasons for the arrests.

Events both in Gaza and in Egypt have positioned the Brotherhood to wield more electoral cout then they have in quiet some time, and in many cases they are calling for democratization. I wonder if events in Iran, where many in the west have strongly supported a coalition of protesters that includes moderat Islamist parties, might shape events in Egypt, eccelerating the formation of a coalition to demand Mubark steps down in the coming years.

Coitus Interruptus in Iraq

2009-06-29T23:56:00.003-04:00

Well its pull out day in Iraq. In accordance with the SoFA, US forces had until today to withdrawal from urban areas (in fact it was announced that Iraqi and US forces were prepared for the change over early). The recent upsurge in violence has many concerned about what the ramification of the agreement, negotiated last year, will be. There have also been some last minute adjustments, including allowing the US forces to continued to utilize MRAPs while on daylight patrol, instead of limiting forces to the use of more lightly armored Humvees as had been agree to originally.

Below is a list of predictions, and explanations of why this is a important (or unimportant) milestone from a range of sources, offering various levels of reassurance that though the sky may be falling, it isnt going to today:

Tom Ricks may be the most depressing of the lot, arguing:

Yes, Iraqi units are better trained and equipped than in the past. But that was never the problem. Rather, the point of failure was political. Sunni death squads and Shiite militias knew what they were fighting for, while an Iraqi soldier didn't necessarily. My worry is that I don't see the political situation as being much different than it has in the past.

While hes right to point out the current political weakness, as well as the possibility for increased corruption with the withdrawal of the Americans from the cities, its just not clear what he thinks would have been a viable alternative, given the fact we couldnt negotiate a slower time table into the SoFA, either last fall when it was written or in the previous alterations.

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government has more specific concerns in the same vein, particularly that the SoFA is overly ambitious, and that the upsurge in violence could be the trigger for a wave of violence that "at least in 2006, the terrorists were able to use... to seize the initiative".

He is particularly concerned by many of the points raised by Stephen Biddle in this piece, who strongly advocates a slower withdrawal than that provided for in the SoFA timetable, but in the end is cautiously reassured by Odierno's faith in the timetable, given his previous skepticism (this piece is a few days old so it isnt clear whether the complement of the withdrawal ahead of deadline would have further cemented this view).

A fairly similar view has also been expressed by Anthony Cordesman, and the gang at CNAS, both of whom still thinks we'll need a long term presence in the region. However both these pieces as well as the Biddle piece are taking a much longer view then Feaver is giving them credit for when he claims that pulling out from the cities may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

There also a good critic of their long term assessment over at Musings on Iraq, though I think he simplifies their position in unfair ways. but thats for another post.

Ibn Muqawama (subing in for Exum) at Abu Muqawama responds to concerns over the uptick by noting that there has not (as yet) been any sign that the attacks are triggering the type of sectarian reprisals that were so problematic 3 years ago.

Instead, he says we should focus on helping efforts to better integrate the sects into the government, particularly the Kurds which he thinks is the more likely fault line for the next round of violence. I've been holding for the last 5 years that the "next" round of conflict was going to involve the Kurds, and, with a few exceptions, I've been wrong over and over again, so Im withholding judgment on this one. At any rate, this issues arent ones that US military strength can do much to solve so he doesnt see a need to slow the withdrawal plan.

Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark seems to think that this is actually a false marker, seeing as how we've been drawing down our troops for months now. While he applauds the effort Obama and the commanders in the field have made to honor the deadline, its for symbolic rather than practical reasons.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence of mounting popular anxiety, but very little evidence of those kinds of conflict dynamics kicking in. For what it's worth, both Iraqi and American officials seem confident... I'm not particularly an optimist on these matters, any more than I was in the past -- but I also see a rapidly declining ability or need for the U.S. to manage these issues.

Instead, he points to a multitude of problems with the intigration of Sunnis, particularly former members of the SoI and Kurds, who have never felt as strong a sense of connection to the central government. He also points out the there has been little done to improve the situation facing Iraqi refugees/IDPs. Like Ibn M, his conclusion is that "slowing down the American drawdown would not materially improve any of these issues."

Chris Dierkes at the Atlantic Council basically agrees with Lynch, but adds that much of the negative analysis is not willing enough to ascribe agency to Iraqis (on the academic end of things, this echos compelling arguments that Libby Wood has made). He instead argues:

In the absence of the US filling the void left in the wake of the destruction of the Baath dictatorship, civil war raged. That civil war was a political war... But nature abhors a vacuum. That vacuum was filled by the ensuing conflagration, which was purely predictable given sufficient knowledge of how these things play out–the Iraqi local circumstances filled in the details of that otherwise recognizable general pattern.

And that Civil War was won by the Shia. Definitively.

and then moves on to discuss the realities of dealing with this newly reveled Shia victory in similar terms to Ibn M and Lynch.

However, even this view fail to really capture the weight of the "symbolic" deadline for many Iraqis. Attackerman quotes sources describing the scene as:

It's a "carnival" in Baghdad, according to the Post's Ernesto Londono, filled with Iraqi troops grinning as they take their lives into their own hands and graffitti writers further south demanding, "Pull your troops from our Basra, we are its sons and want its sovereignty." Don't tell them tomorrow is just another day.

At the end of the day though, the biggest difference seems to be not in the analysis of what Iraqs future problems will be, but rather weather a continued American military presence could reasonably be expected to do anything to help prevent another wave of conflict. I generally tend to side with the school of thought that military forces arent going to do much to help with the next generation of problems, however (and this is a substantial caveat) I have a distinct feeling that the Iraqi Army and Police have underestimated the level of training they require, and our "training and advisory" mission is going to need to be scaled up from the current timetable at later stages of the withdrawal plan.

Honduras is America's Turkey?

2009-06-29T22:17:00.002-04:00

Today's news that the army overthrow the president of Honduras after he threatened to overrule the term limit law that would have forced him out of office, in favor of the president of Congress. With both the legislative and judicial branches backing the army's actions, it seems a little odd to me that the leadership of the Americas including Obama has been so quick to denounce the move (ok this reference to moving against the USA shaky record in the region makes a fair point).

While Latin America is not a region I know much about, it seems to me that what has happen here is not so much equivalent of, say, the 2002 coup in Venezuela, but rather to the habit the Turkish army had for much of the 20th century of overthrowing rulers who began to demonstrate authoritarian tendencies. While a regular role for the military enforcing democratic norms may seem counter-intuitive to American norms, the Turkish military is quiet proud of what it sees as its role in defending the legal order, and has produced one of the more recognizably democratic countries in the old school third world. This same thing could be whats going on in Central America now.

Afghan exhibit at Met in NYC till Sept 20th

2009-06-29T16:59:00.004-04:00

I saw this exhibit of art from the Kabul national Museum, curated by Nation al Geographic last summer at the National Gallery in DC... its now at the Met in NYC. I really recommend seeing it if you can, both because of the gorgeous work in the collection, and the incredible story it represents.

This exhibition highlights the amazing rediscovery of the Silk Road treasures from Central Asia, thought to have been lost during decades of warfare and turmoil in Afghanistan. These masterpieces of the Kabul Museum collection remained hidden for twenty-five years, thanks to the heroism of the Kabul Museam's staff, who had secretly crated them and placed them in the vaults of the Central bank in the presidential palace. It was only in 2004 that the crates were opened to reveal that these wrks had survived intact.

A couple of my favorite images, reproduced on the Met's website are below:

Indian influenced scuplture from the 1st or 2nd century CE

Goldwork clasp showing the greek god Eros with local Afghan fish motif, 1st-2nd cent CE

Plaster cast of a Hellonistic style medalion of a youth 1st-2nd century CE

These three items demonstrate the range of styles and influences that is common in the art of the exhibit, and goes a long way to demonstrating some of the unique cultural confluences that occured in Afghani history.

A new gold standard?

2009-06-27T16:39:00.002-04:00

Joseph Stiglitz has a good piece in Vanity Fair about the possible repressions of the American financial meltdown on both the global economy and Americas philosophical place in the world. Its worth reading in its entirity, but a little thing in it caught my attention [emphasis is mine]:

The dollar has long been the reserve currency—countries held the dollar in order to back up confidence in their own currencies and governments. But it has gradually dawned on central banks around the world that the dollar may not be a good store of value. Its value has been volatile, and declining. The massive increase in America’s indebtedness during the current crisis, combined with the Federal Reserve Board’s massive lending, has heightened anxieties about the future of the dollar. The Chinese have openly floated the idea of inventing some new reserve currency to replace it.

My understanding was that the use of the dollar by foreign banks was intended to replace a global gold or silver standard. how does one creat a currency that is able to act as a solid reserve currency out of whole cloth, unless you go back to some level of direct conversion between resources and monetary units. Is this basically what China wants to do (and if so how) or has my lack of Economic knowledge struck again?

Common econ kids I'm looking to you to explain this one...

Hippies and Mullahs

2009-06-27T01:10:00.002-04:00

So my mother, while not actually a hippie, always liked folk music, so I was raised hearing many of the standbys. maybe that's why this version of "We Shall Overcome" with a verse in farsi, sung by Joan Baez strikes me as being so lovely.

Appeal to the Bazaaris?

2009-06-26T22:19:00.002-04:00

Juan Cole is reporting that plans are underway for a new round of protests tomorrow morning.

This is a way for them to achieve a shop strike indirectly, hurting the economy and putting pressure on the regime.

While the economic effects of this are certainly useful, and as Cole notes there are distinct strategic advantages to the close quarters of the market places, it seems to me that there could also be some inportant signaling going on here.

A major element of the coalition that eventually overthrow the Shah was the traditional merchant class, or Bazaaris (this paper is an interesting look at the economic motivations for the alliance). I cant help but think that a motive for the location of this new round of protests it to force the Bazaari to chose a side here, because if the security forces start taking down the markets, thier interest will be seriously threatened.

Hey! how about the rest of the that there Dar al-Islam

2009-06-26T21:40:00.002-04:00

Wanted to quickly highlight a couple of interesting pieces that are not about Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Fistful of Euros generally covers Europe, but today there's an interesting analysis of Senegal as a outlying Islamic democracy in Africa.

So why doesn’t Senegal get any respect?
Really. Whenever you see pundits talking about democracy and Islam, it’s all “well, Turkey, and perhaps Indonesia, ummm, maybe Malaysia? Wait, does Albania count?”

It’s hard to avoid thinking that Senegal gets overlooked because it’s, you know. Down there.
But Senegal’s not even alone. Two other Francophone West African countries — Mali and Niger — are far down the road to democracy.

Its a good point, particularly given the medias tendency to only be able to follow one story at a time.

and for your COIN decorating needs

2009-06-26T20:46:00.002-04:00

I knew that there were rugs like this produced during the Soviet occupation, but this is the first I've seen that has the updated weapons of the GWOT. I'm going to wait to purchase until they come in predator drone.

h/t Strange Mats via Noah

Early signs on the results of the US withdraw

2009-06-26T13:15:00.002-04:00

Reuters is reporting demonstration at the site of one of yesterdays bomb blasts in Baghdad. I'll be very interested to see whether these continue if the violence does, as to my knowledge this type of explicit call for Iraqi responsibility for population protection is new, and a very positive sign of US success in the SOFA mandated handoffs.

New ROE in A-stan

2009-06-26T00:35:00.003-04:00

I've been working on a few bigger pieces, hence the delay in posting, but I wanted to highlight the shift in the Rules of Engagement for Afghanistan that was announced yesterday. I wish the piece had included the specific language but if this reading:

U.S. officials said the rules were designed to reduce the use of bombs, missiles and other heavy weaponry in populated areas. They will require U.S. forces that come under fire from militants operating out of houses and other buildings that may contain civilians to end the engagement and leave the area, officials said.

The restrictions could force commanders to be more cautious in the mission-planning stage and eschew operations likely to require operations in populated areas, according to an officer serving in Afghanistan.
The rules make clear exceptions for situations where the lives of U.S., North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Afghan personnel are in danger, U.S. officials said.

is correct, then this is really going to limit individual commanders options when planning operations. While I approve of the "population-centric" mindset that this change privileges, I'm a bit concerned that this is part of a general trend that allows high level commanders a much greater ability to micro-manage engagements, if the new RoEs are written in a way that requires troops on the ground to check in and justify the use of CAS.

h/t to Spencer Ackerman

UPDATE: more details and some good commentary here

Oy vay...

2009-06-10T16:22:00.002-04:00

Israelis are up in arms over a photo of Obama on the phone to Netanyahu with his shoes propped on the desk so the soles face the viewer.

It is considered an insult in the Arab world to show the sole of your shoe to someone. It is not a Jewish custom necessarily, but Israel feels enough a part of the Middle East after 60 years to be insulted too.

Does this strike anyone else as deeply ironic?

How to fix the academics of COIN

2009-06-09T22:29:00.004-04:00

David Betz just finished writing a history of the academic study of insurgency, and has posted the "post card" version over at King of War. In the piece he identifies several lingering holes in the literature, and talks a bit about where to go from here. Before I put in my two sense, I should probably note that much more of my experience is in studying issues that are linked to insurgencies (ethnic violence, extremist opposition political and social movements and terrorism) then insurgency proper, which I'm sure biases my view.

Betz points to a few major flaws in the current literature

that academic studies focus on when insurgencies succeeded and ignore the failure, biasing the sample set
the continued lack of clarity about what makes an insurgency different from a conventional fight
the assumption that a counter insurgency is less able to utilize propaganda, because they are held to a higher level of truth

While i admit the third point is completely valid, it also just isnt my baby in the same why that it is for Betz.. Like wise, I find the current work being done on the 'virtual dimension' interesting and relevant, but not as thrilling as he does. However, the first two holes, and the second area of advancement he mentions, Social Network Theory, are all big things for me.

His first point, that academics bias their sample to successful insurgencies, isnt a new problem. The studies of revolutions that were so popular 30 years ago had a similar issue. In fact, i think insurgencies studies is actually doing a better job here then scholars of the 1980's did, because for every person studying insurgents, theres someone studying counterinsurgency as an issue, so both sides are getting a fairer shake.

That being said, its still a gap in the literature, and I suspect that it's going to remain one. First of all, theres usually much more data to work from in cases where an insurgency is successful (or at least high profile and long-running). Theres more news stories written, more members to talk to, and more battles to analysis in these cases. There's also just an undeniable bias in the public's (even the academic public) interest, creating publishing incentives to work on cases that are recognizable, rather then more obscure failed cases.

One way to get around this problem to at least some degree that Betz doesnt mention is for scholars to pull from a wider range on political science writing. The literature on ethnic violence and social movements often looks at cases that dont fall into the traditional COIN cannon, but are good examples of resistance movements that fail to form successful insurgencies (for example S. Wilkinson has written extensively on ethnic riots in India, where violence was common, but never at the level that would trigger the interest of most insurgency scholars). Expanding our understanding of what the relivant literature is may help correct such bias.

In my opinion, the one way that we can distinguish between 'conventional wars' and 'insurgencies' is actually suggesting in the new literature on social movement theory that Betz points to as the next step forward. Scholars like Wiktorowicz (who he mentions) as well as Janine Clark, Diane Singerman, and Carrie Wickham all look at ways that opposition groups in the Middle East utilize non-traditional means of networking supporters. Examples include the use of mosque sermons, work in social service institutions, neighborhood groups, and kin units. To me, it is the ways in which insurgencies are reliant on such mechanisms to rally support and form operational units that makes them distinct from more conventional wars, and our growing understanding of how such interpersonal networks operate is critical to expanding our understanding how to fight them. Furthermore, this literature tends to place a much greater stress on local factors that allow particular networks to be more or less powerful (see Roger Petersen for a good example of how this stuff applies to insurgent recruitment and mobilization), which seems like a good reminder for everyone, given the difficulties in transforming our Iraq policy to fit Afghan society.

h/t to abu m

Not all "Nos" are created equal

2009-06-07T22:35:00.005-04:00

The vast majority of the western articles documenting the Arab response to Obama's Cairo Speech have trumpeted it's success with Arab moderates, while lumping the majority of Islamist reactions as a rejection of the Presidents remarks. Typical of the responses was Radio Free Europe: "Initial reactions... were generally but not universally positive, ranging from a broad welcome by government officials and moderate clerics to outright rejection by some Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt."

What puzzles me about the about the above reactions is the the assumption that all groups objecting to the speech did so for the same reasons. I think the range of objections raised by Islamist show some pretty powerful distinctions that point to the USA's ability to work with these groups in the future.

First of all, I think its important to note that the most stark denunciation came before Obama had even spoken. Osama bin Ladin's tape has received the most press, but theres also this round up of the comments on some of the prominent jihadi forums. While these opinions represent an important voice, general denouncements of the new president without even listening to the speech also indicate that these groups aren't all that interested in hearing whats being said. This is a pretty good sign (if we needed more of them) that these groups arent going to be particularly open to dialogue and public diplomacy. However, these also werent the people the president was speaking to.

Instead I think the more important groups are the extremist opposition groups that are active int he politics of the countries they are active in, that is groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Sadrist. These are the groups that the US is going to have to negotiate with in the next four years, and they hold a much greater sway in Arab public opinion. These groups were neither as monolithic, or as negative, in their response then articles like the one above would indicate.

Below are statements from party officials that give a sense of the range of early reactions available in translation:

Coverage from Muslim Brotherhood's English Language site quoted a statement released by the party on Saturday:

The general principles of human rights, justice, the necessity of dialogue based on mutual respect and trust, and others which President Obama mentioned in his speech are unarguable,” the statement said affirming that the emotional phrases and eloquent language Obama used in his speech through which he tried to win the hearts of Muslims neither establish any justice nor restore any right to Muslims whether in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or any other country in the Islamic world where Muslim bloodshed is found day and night under the planning and cunningness of the successive American administrations.

The statement also explained that Obama’s declaration of America’s continuing support for Israel to attain their security and failure to recognize the right of Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation confirms that Obama is following the path of his predecessors in their double standards policy.

The statement also denounced the short and superficial reference to democracy and criticizing of the peoples calling for it in the Arab-Islamic world while ignoring the existing dictatorships and unjust and corrupt regimes which suppress their peoples and marginalize their roles.

The Brotherhood statement makes the unique and interesting move of complaining that the USA isnt doing enough to promote democracy. This makes a lot of sense internally (US backing would be a huge help if they want to be included fully in future Egyptian elections, particularly if Mubarak does step down), but it also has real implications in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.

Hamas seemed to offer a less unified front, with multiple Gaza spokesmen offering contradicting analysis of the speech. Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha stated:

Speaking about a policy of pursuing a war against extremism and working towards two states for peoples on Palestinian lands is no different from the policy of his predecessor, George W Bush.

However, another spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum remarked:

So all we can say is that there is a difference in the statements, and the statements of today did not include a mechanism that can translate his wishes and views into actions

and then went even further, claiming:

We think we can build on this speech... We can take positive things from the speech to open communications with Obama and the U.S. administration.

In the case of Hizbollah, who seems to have lost major ground in today's election, official party statements seem to be far more radical than those of individual politicians. An official statement on Saturday included:

"any change felt by the region's Muslim and Arab people in the speech is not related to a change in U.S, strategy, but rather to repeated [U.S.] failures in conquering Arab and Muslim states as well as the failure of policies."
The party said that this is mainly due to the [continued] "resistance by forces of resistance, liberation and independence. "

Hizbullah described president Obama's speech as a form of "smart talk that aims to polish Washington's deformed image. This does not rise up to the standard of a new strategy, or [political] objective by the new American administration."

AFP quotes Lebanonese MP, Hassan Fadlallah:

We do not sense any real change regardless of the language of the speech because violence in the region is practiced first and foremost by Israel and by the US armies of occupation, and not by the people who resist... The Islamic and Arab world does not need lectures, but real acts starting with a radical change toward the Palestinian cause.

Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of a prominent oppositional Shia faction in Iraq, as well as the now disarmed Jaish al-Mahdi also commented:

The honeyed and flowery speeches express only one thing - that America wants to adopt a different attitude in subduing the world and putting it under its control and globalization.

Sure, its possible that the statements being made available to English speaking audiences are intentionally moderated. Its also possible that in the next week we'll see much more radical language coming out of these groups. However, this small set of statements seems to have some interesting implications if they turn out to be representative.

A recognition of the presidents skills as an orator, while attempting to make the case that actions will have to speak louder then words. While this isnt a new strategy, letters like the one from Hamas leaked by CODE PINK show that these groups are also willing to name terms they would see as bridging that gap that are well within Obama's power, rather than insisting on action from Israel.
The further out of political and military power the group is, the harsher their reaction to the speech. al-Sadr, who probably had the harshest of the reactions, is not nearly the power in Iraqi politics that he was in 2005, whereas the Brotherhood is looking at a higher level of legitimacy then they have had in quiet some time, and is the author of the most moderate of the statements. Again, Obama may have more to work with in creating alliances here than it first appears.

The NYTimes does have an interesting piece the weekend on why the the speech was so powerful in undermining jihadist claims. Also, if you only read Obama's speech, I think you missed some of the impact. Luckily the new White House likes the intertubes, so the whole speech is up on youtube.

Back from a break, and a new home

2009-06-07T18:27:00.002-04:00

Dear all:

I've been on a relatively long break from writing because of the demands of passing courses and such. Hopefully there will be a noticeable pick up in my posts. I'm also switching homes, and while I've moved some of my older stuff over here for context, I also will be writing on a much narrower range of topics on Phoenix of Athena then previously.

My goal here is to cover both current events and academic work on irregular warfare and opposition politics in the Middle East and South Asia. Obviously, these are two very broad topics that receive quite a bit of coverage, and my own writing will be limited by my experience.

You should feel free to email any questions or comments to me at phoenixofathena at gmail dot com

Responce to the Paul Kane Op-ed

2009-04-21T05:10:00.008-04:00

This NYTimes op-ed originally engendered the response "how to fix the military 1) cut the air force 2) alter up and out 3) mandatory national service. hahahaha... oh. your serious about 1 and 3? ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." as a quick quip on the delicious roll comments. One of my old blog-mates (I'm reproducing his argument here with his promision) attempted to defend the elimination of the airforce by arguing: "If we need air superiority, it would be done presumably to allow for Land or Navel Power to be implemented without restrictions. My understanding that the problem here is not there there is a good reason to keep it separate, just that it is too well entrenched to be removed... Ralph Peters is wrong about many things, but I always did enjoy his argument that the modern day Air Force needed its own department as much as the Field Artillery branch did." He also defended the call for manadtory national service.

On the Air Force

I feel that this postion is both naive, and misses a good portion of the controbutions that the unified comand of the airforce brings to the table. The air force is tied to the other services too strongly to deserve its own branch has a couple major flaws. one is a strategic issue, on tactical, the other organizational.

Strategy: did you just not listen in Robert Pape's class? i know we aren't fighting the Cold War anymore, but deterrence capability still has real signaling value both at home and abroad. Part of both the navy and the air force's job is to be in charge of 'covering our flanks' as R. Gates has put it.

The idea that ANY of the services would be able to fight a unilateral war in this day and age is mockable. Unless we're invading Mexico or Canada, troops are going to have to get to the field of battle and be resupplied somehow. I dont think the US navy has ever fought a war by itself (even back when the Marines were still a part of it), and i dont thing it ever will, for the relitively simple reason that generally when we fight wars we have objective, you know, on land. The marines may think they can kick anyone's ass, but in this day and age they like being able to call in CAS same as everyone else, and while they can fligh thier own, for many of the reasons I'll get into below that doesnt make a whole lot of sense.

Service interdependence is a fact of life, and while instances like the 2006 Lebanon war does show that sometimes capasity is mistaken for strategy, its not clear to me why this is any more a problem for the AF then anyone else.

Tactics: actually the air force flies several types of missions, some that are operationally tied to the other forces, but some that arent. While CAS and CSA flights could be reassigned to army and navy operations, other things would be more difficult (though i admit not impossible) to reassign. One of the most critical of these (particularly in terms of Afghanistan operations) are strategic airlifts, responsible for supplying overseas operations. While these could be taken over by contractors or divided between the services, it is incredible useful for command to have a unified, dedicated force to preform these missions. Even more problematic is satellite and missile ops, which are generally not connected to any one service.

The current system of redundency developed because of technology and operations advantages to the services having specialized units, such as carriers requiring dedicated naval aviation, but generally i think the fewer people doing the same type of missions the better. Generally I think the solution should be to try to merge as many of these under the Air Force's umbrella as possible, rather then further dividing up the air capablities of the military.

Operations and Procurement: another defense junkie friend of mine once said that "procurement is all about the services getting to upgrade their steeds"; that is the Army wants new tanks (see the much scrapped FCS), and the navy wants new boats, and part of the USAF's job is to want new planes. Sure we could divvy out bits of the Air Force and they could research and procure them in a decentralized manner, but you run the risk of expensive redundancy. Have a Air Force may not centralize all of this (I'm looking at you navy), but it helps concentrat the money for things that fly into on place.

This point also shows the weakness of the field artillery argument. Field artillery is a necessary part of the mission of ONE branch of the service. The navy and coast guard need ship to shore, and marine operations are generally focused on the ability to move quickly... none of which you want to be dragging heavy land based artillery systems. Naval, USMC and Army ops all need air support and logistics at some point or other, so rather then having one sub-section in on branch, you're looking at at least three.

To arguments claiming that having a seporate branch for planes increases thier ability to fund pet progects... well given the number of choppers the navy requests and the predator drones the army is trying te get, they aint the only ones. I agree that the number of F-22s we order is just silly, but that doesnt mean the cargo planes, choppers, and predator drone that are all currently also operated by the USAF arent mission essential. I also isnt clear to me that F-22s are any more useless then resent proposals to upgrade the nuclear sub fleet, or build robocop style armor.

While argument that the traditional leadership of the Air Force is too focused on old tactics is certainly a fair critique, I also think that its something thats being fixed under the current administration. I particularly think that the old fighter pilot mentality in the high command is antiquated, which is why i thought one of the smartest changes Gates has made was to install Gen. Norton A. Schwartz as AF Chief of Staff. A career cargo flier, his previous job was coordinating the USAF transportation mission. You know, one of those things I identiied earlier as mission essential.

On National Service

Much as I may like the idea of a national service law it is simply so practically and financially impossible to draft 4 million people that I'm not sure what the point of discussing it. the government is in I dont know how many trillion in debate so adding that many salaries is going to be just a bit tricky. While some have referred to this as a 'drop' in the federal government, running the basic math reveals just how ludicrous this is.

lets say the effected population would current 18 year olds. At the time of the last census, they would have been 10. For the sake of simplicity lets assume that that population is the same size now as then, you end up with about 4.3 million new draftees. Assuming a two year stint, next year would add about that again, so lets say a total of 8.5 million people in the program.

So the starting salary of a private in the army works out to be about 15,000 a year on basic pay (which excludes benefits, the cost of training and equipping everyone, and any type of pay differential based on what it is you're doing, which actually makes the cost to the governement much much much higher). Let's use that as a model of what everyone in the program would be paid, regardless of occupation:

8,500,000 X 15,000= 1.275 trillion dollars a year

I'm pretty sure adding a (very conservatively estimated) third of the budget back on top is gonna make the Paultards a bit cranky.

Another argument used to defend the argument was that the training individuals received would aid the economy of the US. While the Keynesian multiplier effect certainly can have a real effect, it assumes that whatever the government trains you in is in any way related to what you end up doing after service. that seems like a pretty big assumption, given that people are being assigned to jobs based on some yet to be determined metric (hopefully not the one the armed forces used to use back when there was a draft).

Also one of the standing objections to drafts is that draftees generally receive a much lower quality of training then regular forces. So now lets make that a bigger section of the population, including the people who point at what we should be blowing up next. The CIA has problems enough without having analysis on the job on 2 month training.

****
h/t to the commentor on Abu M, who laid out some of my arguments before i got to the fight,and who i have shamelessly cribbed off of, as well as Noha for letting me use him as a strawman

study break

2009-04-15T22:25:00.001-04:00

Add the hypertext suggesting UN capture the flag as the best case, and you have the BEST IDEA EVAH. This may replace post-BA Risk fest as the goal.

you know who is awsome people?

2009-04-04T01:59:00.001-04:00

Rachel Maddow. and Andrew Exum. (hes on around 3:30)

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sadly i was not able to play the COINdinista (trans: people who like COIN) drinking game cause i would have been lots of fun by the end.

She still has a few missing but Maddow has been doing a good job on the CNAS 'collect them all' game, and frankly, shes been getting smarter in her questioning. Shes particularly good on pressing Exum on the question of resistance to the American footprint. Exum is careful (rightfully so) to differentiate between the tactics that will work in Astan and those in Pstan. I think this is a point thats increasingly worth making: while seeing the situation in Pstan as an intergul part of our efforts in Astan (people far smarter then I have been calling the current war the Afghanistan-Pakistan War for awhile), but its important that while we see it as a united effort, we dont see it as tactically the same.

Also great is right at the end when he talks about metrics for measuring success (this post is a great example of why i read the blog... both the quality of the thought in the comments, and the image of these guys in a car arguing about William of Ockham. yes im a dork). As someone swearing at bad stats (Middle Eastern census data=badbad), I can tell you that coming up with metrics for measuring control and stability are not fun, but also that just GETTING the data can be next to imposible. I dont know what the Obama team is going to come up with, but the fact that the President has asked this question is increadably reasuring to me.

*******

Back on the subject of Maddow, I'm becoming worried that 75% of the content between the del. roll and her show are the same... or maybe I'm just bragging

This is just wrong.

2009-04-03T15:07:00.001-04:00

This is were my tolerance with relativist argument about interfering in other peoples countries just comes to an end.

Anyone what to take a guess at her crime? a neighbor suspected that this woman might have been having an affair, and was outside her house without a male relative.

Oh and one of those men holding her down is her brother.

So beyond basic compassion, why does this get to me. Look at the by line. This happened in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, recently handed over to the Taliban with almost no fight from Islamabad. You know, Pakistan. That country the US is handing money to like its falling off trees. And believe you me, I think we should be. Safe havens in Pakistan are making the war in Afghanistan unwinnable. But I also think that it should come with a promise that this sort of behavior stops. now.

A song of great political and social import

2009-04-01T14:12:00.001-04:00

Hey, guess what Kristol does now that the NYTimes has a new favorite Republican

2009-03-30T19:59:00.001-04:00

He works here. A Neo-con foreign/defense policy think tank. Read it and weep.

however new challenge- first reader to get an internship interview who can make Kristol cry gets a cake.

Rachel Maddox, secret CNAS fellow?

2009-03-18T23:02:00.001-04:00

Hey guess what I'm going to talk about? thats right counter insurgencies! More particularly Rachel Maddow being awsome about them.

So first off, Nagl the president of CNAS was on, talking primarily about the future of Afghanistan

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Abu M (who now works with both Nagl and Kilcullen) points out what is so great about this clip:

And out of no where, Rachel Maddow -- Rachel bleeping Maddow! -- calls my boss to task and asks him if being a strategic thinker means more than tweaking our operational design. Damn! When pressed, to be fair, John gives his fellow Rhodes Scholar a pretty good answer about the costs of failure in Afghanistan. But who would have thought that lefty smart-ass on MSNBC would be the one asking the key questions? (Rumor has it that Afghanistan is actually one of Maddow's pet subjects. Good on her, I say.)

This is the type of reporting that TNC points out (in a different context) is missing in so much of the current reporting, which often lacks both intelligence and creativity. What Maddow is doing here isn foaming at the mouth or arguing about the facts on the ground. Instead she has perfect respect for Nagl's knowledge on the topic, but she still pushes him on what the role of experts should be. I've seen a lot of interviews with Nagl and others like him, and very few reporters have asked this, seemingly obvious, question.

then David Kilcullen is on tonight about halfway through this clip, basically talking about his new book... which one of the first things on my reading list, post-BA.

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Also check out this piece in the Post that outlines his views on A-stan. Given what I know about the book, I think that it is actually of much broader relevance than this article seems to imply.

And her she is making cocktails.... while threatening to make move people talk about COIN (sadly she doesnt follow through on that one)

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Why am I Watching the Watchman?

2009-03-09T03:07:00.001-04:00

Yeah I wasn't a fan, for reasons ranging from a bad mood that in retrospect was the first sign of my body turning into a post-apocalyptic wasteland to alarm at some of the people I go to school with. Below, I rant about some of my more substantive complaints, cause my brain is too fired to actually work on my BA.

WARNING
*SPOILERS BELOW*
for both the comic book and the movie. You've been warned.

Problem number 1. the sound track. Aside from the opening credits (which deserve every bit of praise they've gotten) the music is frankly bizarre. Despite using tons of songs I love to death (including the singles cut of simon and garfunkles sound of silence that is SO much better then the more common album version) the timing of alot of it made no sense, and really detracted from the mood. Often, song that I think of as being INCREDIBLY tied to a particular period (Purple Haze anyone?) were used as the backdrop to scenes set in totally different time periods. Fine in a different film maybe, but for one that is working so hard to take place as historical time passes, and to work with the events of the specific times, I found the anachronistic music really distracting. Also, often either the lyrics, or the emotion of the song seemed out of place. We can argue back and forth about "Hallelujah" (which I hated), but Hendrix's "All allong the watchtower" isnt a go out and fight for humanity song (particularly not after you've heard a version that is exactly that).

Also, i'm a girl who likes ass-kicking in my action movies, and soundtracks are often what gets your gut into it. Its not a good sign when the far less violent previews for terminator and startrek seemed harder core then what was on the surface a very violent movie, cause my adrenaline just wasn't in play the way it should have been.

Problem number 2: Laurie Juniper. Right, so first of all, just weak casting to have to hold her own against Billy Crudup and the amazing blue penis (i read an entire review of the penis, which I wanted to include for EconMAN's benifit, and now cant for the life of me remember were it was, but now have a really awkward set of search strings in google's memory...). but my bigger problem?

She didnt smoke. (H/T Helen)

This isn't even a reflection of my own issues with my own vices. honestly, she could have been doing something other than smoking and I would have been fine. Chewing her nails, pulling her hair, eating, twitching, whatever. But part of Lauries deal is that she is a mess when shes not in costume (just as much as Dan and his Hallelujah issues), and her chain smoking is a huge part of how that is convaid to the reader. Without it, there little sense as to why she needs the mask, the way there is for the men, making whats already not the most funcional character even lamer.

Also it totally took the legs out from under my favorite joke with the lighter/flamethrower. Thanks, I could have used that laugh Zach.

Problem number 3: Adrian. The Intrepid Spenser has an interesting read of what the problems here were.

"He's icy and menacing throughout the whole film, rather than detached and outwardly gentle, which diminishes the impact of the big reveal... Making him and not Captain Metropolis the leader of the Crimebusters/Watchmen team in the 60s makes him appear to be ruthless. It's not obvious that Adrian really does want to save the world -- and perhaps Zach Snyder decided he doesn't; he wants to rule it... That would make for a more coherent portrayal of Adrian. But also a far less interesting one."

I agree that this was a problem (though frankly the symbolism has always bothered me, but the explanation for that would involve me geeking about ancient history too much to happen today), but I think the bigger problem in the film was the weird gay vibe he had going. Dont get me wrong its there a bit in the novel (all those purple turtle necks), but making him physically less impressive, putting him in front of Studio 54 and making the bit with the cat creeper than necessary definitely pushed Adrian from 'possible' to 'firmly implied in the world of Hollywood cliches'.

That bothers me because it comes hand in hand with Adrian becoming more simply evil. And its a bit troubling that those two trends seem somehow ties together, particularly because of the extent to which Watchman is a commentary on superheros as a cultural form.

Also, what happened to him being the smartest man alive? If i have just seen the movie, I would have thought he was cool cause he was fast, not cause he could out think everyone. Again this plays into Spences point about losing the detached, absents minded professor thing, which I've always liked (shhh peanut gallery).

Problem 4: deterrence dont work like that. but thats true in the novel too, so ill swallow it.

Problem 5: Perhaps my most bizarre complaint? seeing the movie made me realize I had misread a critical part of the book.

I admit to being a total Johnny-come-lately, and didnt read it until January, very late at night, while not feeling well. Apparently there was a very good reason I wasnt trying to do homework at that moment, because when I hit the final pages of the book, I somehow brain seized when I read the panel in which Sally Juniper kisses the old photo, and thought that instead being a confirmation of Laurie's father being the Comedian (one of the big ethical reveals of both the novel and movie), that there was a second switch, and she actually indicated Hollis (ie Nite Owl I) to be her long lost love. After a protracted whiny argument with the people I was with I got home, to discover to my chagrin that I was totally wrong, that I was blind, and it totally was the Comedian.

I was not amused.

Beyond being disgruntled at being wrong (oh horrors!), I was also pretty irate, because I realized that I liked my version of the story better than what Moore actually wrote. In my version the final moral is not that people make inexplicable choices about who they love with some thoughts about what part violence play in our relationships thrown in for good measure (which, frankly, I dont find terribly interesting or novel in a world of BSG and Tarrentino), but rather about the way in which humans perception is limited.

If Laurie and Jon are wrong in how they stitch together Laurie's half remembered hints from childhood, Sally's crime is not loving her rapist, but only an affair with a man who has been portrayed through the book as a decent guy. Hardly a sin at all in comparison to everyone else's moral elasticity. In fact, it ends up saying almost nothing interesting about any of the old Watchman. What it does do is radically challenge Dr. Manhattan's omnipotence, and how that impacts his view of humanity.

In this reading, Dr. Manhattan, despite being about to literally see everything, is still capable of putting the pieces together wrong. I think this is interesting both because it de-elevates him from his godlike position, and because it specifically shows that he shares in the very human trait of expecting the worst out of people. We like scandal, we like twisted sex, and we are perfectly happy to put the jigsaw puzzle of facts together wrong if it supports out ability to find that part of human nature. In a novel that deconstructs the tropes of cultural icons in order to create just such moral darkness, I like the implication that this process is more complex then we may think.

I also like the idea of Dr. Manhattan being in some way a reader of fractured events that his mistake suggests, because it creates a common bond not only with the detached scholar Adrian, but with the reader that I find really intriguing.

A friend pointed out halfway through my ranting explanation of this that I was actually confirming one of his favorite aspects of Scifi and its derivatives, which is that you can walk down the roads not taken by both reality and the author in philosophically interesting way in playing with the ends of these novels.

He's right.

But i still like my story better.

A common Ground for Poli Sci

2009-02-23T03:07:00.001-05:00

Greg Mankiw spends so time talking about core beliefs shared by most if not all economists. his point has everything to do with restoring faith in academic economics after watching the interdepartmental fights of the last six months, but a friend of mine raised an interesting issue.

Could a Professor of Political Science make such a claim? could and Anthropologist? could a Historian?

I think the answer is a pretty resounding no, though it could be interesting to try to come up with one. But my instinct is at the end of the day, your ideological bend, or the 'school of thought' to which you belong within these disciplines is just to critical to your understanding of the world to be able to find much in the way of common ground.

Part of me feels that this may begin to touch on what the true split between social science and science lies. Scientist not only agree on the way in which inquiry is pursued (lots of historians share notions about what constitutes valid historical proof as well), but also a key notions about how the universe operates. Regardless of whether you think AIDS research breakthroughs will come from one line of drugs or the other, there is a shared understanding about how the disease functions, what its effects on the host are, and what the end goal of stopping the disease looks like.

Equivalent problems in other fields, like 'the rise of democracy in previously autocratic nation' have to grapple with issues like what democratic process is, how a society becomes democratic, and what a democracy in its final form should look like. While social science may try to incorporate the methods of science, it lacks the level of definitional and mechanical clarity that true science posses.

And that's what makes it fasinating.

Happy Valentines Day

2009-02-14T03:17:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the drop in posts/ the role... conference takes it out of a girl.

so to make up for it im posting this gem by Mr. Walt of Canbridge, Mass (H/T to my father... who might know me too well)

At any rate I'm happy to say (respectfully) that, seeing as Realist are all a load of crap, I follow very few of the following dictates:

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.
Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.

IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.
Even the best relationships have their bumpy moments, of course, because even human beings who love each other deeply can have trouble figuring out what the other person wants and why they are acting as they are. IR theorists have written lots of smart things about misperception, and it's good to keep some of them in mind. We tend to see our own behavior as constrained by our circumstances, for example, while attributing the behavior of others to their own attributes and wants. "I'm doing this because I have to, but he's acting this way because that’s just who he is!" This sort of perceptual bias is potent recipe for conflict spirals, something IR theorists have long warned about. A small disagreement occurs, and each person's attempt to defend their own position starts to look like an aggressive and unjustified attack. And so we discover another core IR concept: escalation.

I'm hoping a few readers are nodding their heads in agreement at this point.

Which brings me to an especially helpful IR concept: appeasement. The term has been unfairly denigrated since Munich, but it is a critical strategy for preserving any romantic relationship. And if you don't believe me, ask my wife, who made me put this paragraph in.
So maybe learning some IR theory can actually help your love life. If it does, and you're lucky enough to find the right person, and then you might decide you want to institutionalize the relationship by getting married. (This assumes that you're straight, of course, or fortunate enough to live in a part of the world that recognizes the rights of gay people to marry as well).
And then the two of you might also decide to mobilize your combined resources and grow your own alliance network -- i.e., have kids -- either via the traditional method or by adopting. If you do, you'll get to learn about a whole new set of IR concepts, like deterrence, coercion, salami tactics, and overcommitment. But that's another set of problems, and maybe I'll wait till Father's Day to blog about them.

Happy long weekend to all, and good luck to the Harvard delegation.

Hey Brooks decided to respond to my post too!

2009-01-27T11:08:00.001-05:00

What Life Asks of Us

A few years ago, a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. “The aim of a liberal education” the report declared, “is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves.”

The report implied an entire way of living. Individuals should learn to think for themselves. They should be skeptical of pre-existing arrangements. They should break free from the way they were raised, examine life from the outside and discover their own values.

This approach is deeply consistent with the individualism of modern culture, with its emphasis on personal inquiry, personal self-discovery and personal happiness. But there is another, older way of living, and it was discussed in a neglected book that came out last summer called “On Thinking Institutionally” by the political scientist Hugh Heclo.

In this way of living, to borrow an old phrase, we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life, we travel through institutions — first family and school, then the institutions of a profession or a craft.

Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what we’re supposed to do. Journalism imposes habits that help reporters keep a mental distance from those they cover. Scientists have obligations to the community of researchers. In the process of absorbing the rules of the institutions we inhabit, we become who we are.

New generations don’t invent institutional practices. These practices are passed down and evolve. So the institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of. “In taking delivery,” Heclo writes, “institutionalists see themselves as debtors who owe something, not creditors to whom something is owed.”

The rules of a profession or an institution are not like traffic regulations. They are deeply woven into the identity of the people who practice them. A teacher’s relationship to the craft of teaching, an athlete’s relationship to her sport, a farmer’s relation to her land is not an individual choice that can be easily reversed when psychic losses exceed psychic profits. Her social function defines who she is. The connection is more like a covenant. There will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out.

In 2005, Ryne Sandberg was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Heclo cites his speech as an example of how people talk when they are defined by their devotion to an institution:

“I was in awe every time I walked onto the field. That’s respect. I was taught you never, ever disrespect your opponents or your teammates or your organization or your manager and never, ever your uniform. You make a great play, act like you’ve done it before; get a big hit, look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases.”

Sandberg motioned to those inducted before him, “These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. It’s disrespectful to them, to you and to the game of baseball that we all played growing up.

“Respect. A lot of people say this honor validates my career, but I didn’t work hard for validation. I didn’t play the game right because I saw a reward at the end of the tunnel. I played it right because that’s what you’re supposed to do, play it right and with respect ... . If this validates anything, it’s that guys who taught me the game ... did what they were supposed to do, and I did what I was supposed to do.”

I thought it worth devoting a column to institutional thinking because I try to keep a list of the people in public life I admire most. Invariably, the people who make that list have subjugated themselves to their profession, social function or institution.

Second, institutional thinking is eroding. Faith in all institutions, including charities, has declined precipitously over the past generation, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Lack of institutional awareness has bred cynicism and undermined habits of behavior. Bankers, for example, used to have a code that made them a bit stodgy and which held them up for ridicule in movies like “Mary Poppins.” But the banker’s code has eroded, and the result was not liberation but self-destruction.

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity.

But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

Patriotism, First Principles, and a UChicago Education

2009-01-19T23:45:00.001-05:00

Hey duck- sorry its been so long sense I last posted. I have a long piece on Gaza, that I just never managed to get updated quickly enough. If the cease fires holds for a few days I'll try to wrap that up soon.

In the mean time, I'm carrying a conversation I've been having with many of you over the past few weeks onto the blog, that for a miracle of a change has nothing to do with irregular warfare, the Middle East, South Asia or any of my other typical soup boxes.

As many of you know I'm applying to a number of government jobs for next year. as part of the application they almost all ask some variation of "why do you want this job". And here's where I run into trouble. This SHOULD be totally straight forward, right? A second grader knows the answer here... "Because i want to serve my country though X department". And I'm a perfectly good MUNer, i should be able to write something compelling. But (much to the vexation of all you poor suffering souls who have had to listen to me work on these) that doesn't seem to be happening. Patriotism just seems to be this fundamentally problematic concept for me.

Some of this is undoubtedly from my liberal construction of patriotism:

If conservatives tend to see patriotism as an inheritance from a glorious past, liberals often see it as the promise of a future that redeems the past. Consider Obama's original answer about the flag pin: "I won't wear that pin on my chest," he said last fall. "Instead, I'm going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism." Will make this country great? It wasn't great in the past? It's not great as it is?

The liberal answer is, Not great enough. For liberals, America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the gap. Thus, patriotism isn't about honoring and replicating the past; it's about surpassing it.

Because I see a gap, rather then a concrete culture, theres more room for my native cynicism to creep into my world view. But i just dont think that is the entire sum of the problem.

But I have good news.

I've found someone to blame.

Better yet, I've found someone interesting to blame.

No, not the very evil Bush administration, that's just not sporting, and its not in the spirit of these days of change.

I blame the University of Chicago education that I've loved so much, including my time in MUN.

There are two reasons that I'm choosing to lay the blame at the foot of our gargoyle decked ivory towers. The first (and frankly rather uninteresting one) is that the U of C make us all perfectionist that think about things too hard. yaddad yadda yaddad... academics can't deal with the real world, ect ect. Believe me, I'm not dismissive of the problem that this creates (ask me about my family some time), but this is water thats been gone over many many times, so I'll save us the air space.

The second, and more pertinent, piece of the puzzle has to do very specifically with the U of C education, enshrined in the General Education Core Curriculum. While I'm not disputing that there are other acceptable Core sequences, my own selection of PIR, Philosophical Perspectives and Western Civ (ok Italian, but its the same narrative arc) can certainly be classed as a good model for the education the U of C advertises. Covering a massive chunk of the western cannon in philosophy, political science and pre-modern European history, these are the classes that are intended to form the bedrock of our education, that provide "opportunities for critical inquiry and the discovery of knowledge [by] studying original texts and of formulating original problems based on the study of those texts."

But in the University's quest to train us to evaluate a range of primary texts, there is also a silent privileging of a specific type of argumentation. We are trained to dissect the logic of philosophers, either by breaking down the argument of a specific thinker, or by putting different descriptions of the ways in which things work into dialogue with one another. And in this we receive a world class education. But where the University misses the boat is that all of this is all done at the level of second order arguments, rather than by examining the validity of First Principles.

First Principles are those awkward fundamental assumptions that underpin all this arguments, including claim about what we should be aiming for, what we should care about, and sometimes, what human nature is. Statements like "human life has value", "pain is bad", and "justice is important" are certainly things we grapple with in Core classes, but when it comes time to write a paper we argue not that "Nietzsche is wrong because he doesnt place a high enough premium on human life" but instead that "Nietzsche's arguments are fundamentally flawed, because his assumptions about humanity's capacity for empathy are contradicted by his understanding of family relations". Please note that my argument isn't that First Principle argument are in any way more important then Second Order analysis (I think both are critical). Its that there is a massive privileging of one over the other.

This same problem also exists in MUN. Never, in four years of staffing and competing have I heard anyone I respect make arguments about First Principles. In fact, I'm usually among the first to start mocking the "human rights kids" (add the derogatory drawl to that intonation please) who occasionally try. Instead, good delegates debate how to construct policy given pre-established ends, and how to spin our positions to garner support.

The problem is that all of this has not only made me somewhat clumsy at articulating these underlying principles though lack of practice, it has made me fundamentally uncomfortable using them in anything I see as being "intellectually serious" discourse. And so "America is a good thing" goes from being something that I can articulate and grapple with in a rational way, to being a scary blob of emotions, something indelicate to talk about. I have to be argued into a corner to admit it, and then feel compelled to redefine a poke at it until I'm blue in the face.

So how about it kids? Do you think that our education is slanted the way I do? Is it a problem that it is? and how about this country of our (hey it inauguration day, it seems fitting)? or is Auntie el-Belle just crazy?

UPDATE:
Or I could have just waited for today's speech, and had the answer handed to me:

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honour them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

2009-01-12T10:43:00.001-05:00

How to find your favorite think tank. Seriously, I'm still not over how FP went from being the home of uselessness to the source of all that is good in the universe.

Gaza

2008-12-31T16:01:00.002-05:00

I've been meaning to post on Gaza for awhile, and keep getting busy before i can revamp this enough to be up to date.

One quick note before I get to my main point about the role of the interwebs in observing war. The ever increasing availability of news reporting on the web has meant that both sides of the conflict have a higher volume of images coming out of the war, if and only if you go looking for it. Images from both sides media envoys create a pretty stunning side by side of a air strike, and I'm sure that if Hamas had the tech for aerial war porn like the IDF, we'd have the same contrast coming out of the towns in Southern Israel. That Isreal choice to ban most media from Gaza has made this process more interesting this time around, because reporters were either Palestinian citizens, folks like al-Jazeera, or embedded reporters with the Israeli army. View point is important folks.

OK on to my main point. The quiet story on both sides of the conflict is the political motivations for the states in the region that are motivating the actions of both sides of the conflict. Below is my analysis of both the internal Israeli politics, and the broader Arab politics that are driving the process.

Israel

For those not tracking Israeli politics, elections are scheduled to elect a new Knesset, following the disgrace of Ehud Olmert (who had been looking willing to negotiate with Hamas before hes fall from power) over the summer, and Tzipi Livni's (current Foreign minister who was elected head of the Kadima party back in Sept.) failure to form a ruling coalition.

The current leader in the polls (actually hes been ahead most of the fall) is Likud party head and former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Known for his hawlish stance on the occupied territories, he resigned from Sharon's government back in 2005 due to his objections to the plans for Gaza disengagement. His thoughts on the current fighting are here, but the short verision, (surprise surprise) is that he supports the "just, necessary actions" of the government, and in general has preserved his hawkish rhetoric. Its also pretty clear that the war has benifited his polling numbers more then any other canadate... ironic when you consiter taht he's not even a part fo the current government.

Livni has long been considered dovish, and one of the things that has been pointed to as a cause of her failure to attract the orthodox parties into coalition back in the fall was her fairly moderate stance on resuming negotiations with both the Hamas and Fatah factions of the PAs leadership, particularly over the status of Jerusalem. Given her recent defeat, she knows that she needs to make up ground in public opinion if she wants to beat Likud at the polls.

The last of the challengers? the Labour Party leader, Ehud Barak, ousted as Prime Minister back in 2001 for being to dovish in the face of the second intifaad. His current job? Yep, hes the minister of defense. I'm sure no memory of his political defeat could be driving his hard line rhetoric now.

So now the two more liberal candidates, who have historically been more willing to negotiate with groups like Hamas, are looking at losing power to a man who's strongest selling point has always been his hard line stance on Israeli control of the territories. It seems pretty inconceivable that their wish to remain politically viable isn't informing their newfound inner hawks.

It's also deeply problematic that the two most powerful ministers in the government have a strong incentive to not present a unified public face. While Livni's harsher rhetoric makes sense in her role as party leader and candidate, in her role as Foreign Minister it makes little sense for her to be making threats that the Defense Minister isn't backing up. Public Diplomacy only works when a government is able to send consistent messages to a population. Instead, listeners, including the new American special envoy and the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, are having to read the current polls to decide which minister's view is most likely to become reality.

Gaza

Of course Gaza itself is struggling to understand the political ramification of the war. Honestly, I havent been able to follow the complexities of this enough to write a lot on this but the short version is it seems like Hamas has lost a good deal of public support, but that no group has successfully managed to gain political colt from it. Fatah's inability to gain diplomatic traction has largely confirmed its lack of relevance, and thus far there hasnt been a third party thats been able to take advantage of the situation.

My best guess (here without elaboration or citation) is that Hamas is going to splinter, with one group remaining fairly hardline in its current mode of discourse, and another group will moderate into something that looks a bit like the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan or Egypt. I actually think that this would be a reasonably good outcome... but again thats just going to have to wait for another day.

Arab States

Beyond the occupied territories, there's also interesting regional interplay going on in the Arab world as a whole. Prof. Marc Lynch, a Middle Eastern media expert a GW (his blog on FP is one of the essentials if you want to follow ME politics, particularly issues of public diplomacy and media) has a great series of pieces on the Arab summits that were held in responce to the war.

One of the most interesting points that commentators like Lynch have noted is that in countries home to 'moderate' regimes, Egypt, Jordan, and the Saudis for his purposes, popular protests have focused not on protesting Israeli actions per say, but rather criticizing their own governments lack of support for Gaza (another point he makes is the relative lack of coverage in the state run media, which I can see even just checking though the English language papers). In the cause of Egypt and Jordan (I just dont follow Saudi politics well enough to speak to that) these protests have largely been organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, with help from assorted oppositions parties. The MB's support of Hamas in and of itself isnt terribly surprising (after all, Hamas is an radical offshoot of the MB), but the massive public support they are able to gather against the host government, and the lack of repression from state authorities seems important.

On Mumbai

2008-12-02T20:31:00.001-05:00

Our favorite Jons talk about Mumbai.

I would actually write a post, but honestly, they say it better then I could.

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T16:29:00.002-05:00

So I'm in the process of cooking dinner for a mass of MUNers, but in my position as the unoffical MESA/Security girl on the blog, i thought i'd put up these thoughts by an American in Afghanistan

I’m also thankful that I have the privilege of serving with these great Americans. I say privilege because that’s what it is; a privilege. These are America’s best and brightest, when they’re country called they answered. Not with "Who me"? But with; “Yes, I’ll serve”!

They symbolize what is great in the United States the idea that all people should be free to determine their own destiny without the threat of violence or coercion. These men fulfill that promise every day. They sacrifice their time, happiness and comfort to ensure that someone they have never met before nor may ever meet again; lives a life of liberty. Each one of them is intelligent, compassionate and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the United States of America. When Patrick Henry cried, “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” these were the type of men he called out to!
I’m thankful that I’ve seen the application of American combat power not as an empirical tool to gain riches, power or land; but to get a little Afghan girl her first and possibly only coloring book. The scene of an American Soldier dressed in full combat gear, burdened in cutting edge modern technology, kevlar and sweating, bending to pick her up and make sure she gets to the front of the line. The look in her eyes as she gazes in amazement at that book and crayons. Colors in that box that she never imagined existed until that moment. This will stay with me forever.

On a lighter note, I'm sad to say that my lack of TV and advance cable will prevent me from watching the Science Channals coverage of the World Championship PumkinChunkin. For any of you not so limited, its on at 9est, please let me know how it goes, as nothing makes me happier then building catapults!

Happy eating all!

serious procrastination

2008-10-29T01:49:00.001-04:00

so I know several of you have been the victim (i mean recipient) of a rant from me about the situation in Afghanistan. For those who haven't.... if you think the situation is getting better there, well... you're wrong.

how wrong?

This new Frontline doc does a nice job of summarizing the current situation. Also a good overview is this piece from Foreign Affairs (also good fun for great game participants from last year) and this report from CSIS (they're also adding a new report in the next few weeks).

Basically not only is the situations limited by being underfunded and lacking personnel, it is also just an inherently more chaotic situation then Iraq, and that's before you add in the interested parties otherwise known as Iran and Pakistan on either boarder.

perky company, aren't i?

Speaking of the good old days of hum an d soc

2008-10-22T12:42:00.001-04:00

Remember debtor/creditor relationships? Cause Margaret Atwood does!

Damn now i wish that i had liveblogged the 'maybe if someone had a bit more energy it might have qualified as a fight' discussion on the topic re. Nietzsche and Freud. Yah i have no idea why im in this class either.

On a unrelated note, for all you job hunters out there, i think we should all do this for the rest of our lives. WHO WITH ME!

In honor of general behavior in the MUNUC office post 6 pm

2008-10-21T13:12:00.001-04:00

Thanks to xkcd for this explanation of why EVERYTHING in the office is labeled....

Also, be sure to check out the New Yorker v. xkcd cartoon-off for some more procrastination.

On a polarly opposite note

2008-10-20T14:22:00.001-04:00

Colin Powell is what a public servant should be in this moment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFecZJd-Fjw&feature=related

And heres the orginal picture he's talking about.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/09/29/slideshow_080929_platon?slide=16#showHeader