the battle of wanat, part IV

Tom Ricks has published the fourth part of his analysis of what went wrong at Wanat.

blackwater banned in iraq

Via CNN:

brits and aussies wrestle with coin doctrine

These are two must-reads on the upcoming choices faced by Britain and Australia as dictated by the deterioration of Afghanistan:

On the state of Britain's armed forces, via the Economist:

David Kilcullen, until recently a counter-insurgency adviser to the American government, says both America and Britain misunderstood Iraq: America thought it was dealing with a terrorist problem rather than an insurgency; Britain thought its job was peacekeeping rather than imposing control. The subsequent bloodbath pushed the allies in opposite directions. Britain gave up the fight, cut a deal with militias terrorising Basra and got out of the city centre where soldiers were dying almost daily. As the junior allies, British officers felt they could do nothing in Basra to change the course of a war being lost, they thought, by American troops in Baghdad.

...

Britain badly needs a wholesale review of its defence policy. Two questions must be answered. Should the British continue to aspire to a global military role? And what sort of wars is the future likely to bring? If it is long messy ones like the fight in Afghanistan, the structure and equipment of the armed forces must change. One general complains: “We are acting as if Afghanistan is just an aberration. We are in huge danger of preparing for the wrong war.”

On Australia's Afghanistan dilemma, via the Sydney Morning Herald:

After seven years of neglect by the Bush administration, the war in Afghanistan is taking a new direction - that of a carefully planned counter-insurgency campaign - and Australia must decide whether to join such a fight. Should Australia decide to do so it will mean accepting a much greater risk of military casualties than it has previously done in Iraq or Afghanistan.

...

"People need to understand what is counter-insurgency, and in that to recognise that the narrative that we've had for a number of years in Afghanistan is potentially not the correct narrative for what is achievable - not taking in the history, traditions and tribal structures of the country."

the battle of wanat, part III

Tom Ricks has published the third part of his analysis of what went wrong at Wanat.

on erdogan's davos walkout

Turkish PM Erdogan walked out of a panel at Davos after he was cutoff from responding to Shimon Peres:



Siun at FDL tears into David Ignatius for provoking the walkout with his crap moderating:

Way to go, Ignatius. . . we can’t have a world leader reminding us that the Israeli actions in Gaza were “barbaric,” and that the Bible says “Thou shalt not kill.” After all, we wouldn’t want the elite at Davos to be late for dinner, now would we?

Tony Blair weighs in on Al Jazeera from the rose-colored glasses gallery:



For a more reality based set of analyses on Gaza, read this set of opinions published at the National Journal.

abdul qadeer khan is tripping

Via Wired, a critique of notorious proliferator A.Q. Khan's personal website:

It is rare that a person in single life time accomplishes so much. This is done only by men who are endowed with special abilities by God and who prepare themselves through hard work and devotion to fulfill the mission of serving mankind.

It loses something in the translation, I'm sure, from the original LSD.

Trippy.

notes on iran

Via Siun at FDL, a quick writeup of the interception by the U.S.S. San Antonio of a Cypriot-flagged Iranian vessel carrying arms, originally thought to be headed to Gaza. The interdiction was scuttled when the arms turned out to be artillery shells apparently bound for a much more conventional military than Hamas'.

The Cypriot flagged Iranian ship later docked in Egypt where it was being searched but no sources detail what was found. US Combined Task Force 151 is the navy force assigned to preventing Somali piracy.

Meanwhile, Springbored at USNI theorizes that the U.S. Commerce Department's efforts to prevent Iran from buying (U.S. made) speedboats from South Africa may just be a ploy to shut down a possible Uranium smuggling vector:

Just seems odd that Iran is reaching so far afield, when there are plenty of go-fasts within easy reach. But then, if we note that South Africa holds 7 percent of the worlds economically recoverable uranium reserves and is the eleventh biggest producer of uranium, alarm bells start ringing. Maybe there’s something else afoot? Perhaps.

What do so about all this speculation and uncertainty? How about a review of what our intelligence agencies know or don't know about Iran?

Pat Lang describes the way for such a review:

What should it be called? Ah. Perhaps "National Intelligence Estimate - Iran" would be a good title.

Should get interesting.

the battle of wanat, part II

As per the previous feature on this, you can check out part II here.

the macintosh dating game

...ridiculous. Via TUAW:

hey dick armey: put this in your pipe and smoke it

Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act today. Via Gail Collins at the NYT:

Obama told her story over and over when he campaigned for president: How Ledbetter, now 70, spent years working as a plant supervisor at a tire factory in Alabama. How, when she neared retirement, someone slipped her a pay schedule that showed her male colleagues were making much more money than she was. A jury found her employer, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, to be really, really guilty of pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision led by the Bush appointees, threw out Ledbetter’s case, ruling that she should have filed her suit within 180 days of the first time Goodyear paid her less than her peers.

(Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers’ salaries within the first six months on the job.)

Until the Supreme Court stepped in, courts generally presumed that the 180-day time limit began the last time an employee got a discriminatory pay check, not the first. In an attempt at bipartisan comity, the Senate decided to simply restore the status quo, rejecting House efforts to make the law tougher. Even then, only five Republican senators voted for it — four women and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is currently the most threatened of the deeply endangered species known as moderate Republicans.

That's the best answer to paleolithic Dick that I could think of.

republican death spiral

Via Nate Silver at 538:

Boenher and Eric Cantor have obviously done an impressive job of rallying their troops -- and Cantor, in particular, seems proud of his efforts. But what grander purpose does this strategy serve? The House Republicans are opposing popular legislation from a very popular President, and doing so in ways that stick a needle in the eye of the popular (if quixotic) concept of bipartisanship. They would seem to have little chance of actually blocking this legislation, since they are far short of a majority, and since the Senate Republicans, who can filibuster, have thus far shown little inclination to go along with them -- with moderates like Susan Collins of Maine and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire voting routinely with the Administration.

...

Thus the Republicans, arguably, are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative, partisan, and strident their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base -- but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.

The other possibility, of course, is that John Boehner and Eric Cantor are not so much concerned about the future of the Republican party, but about the future of John Boehner and Eric Cantor. Cantor, in particular, is a media-savvy figure and someone with plausible presidential ambitions: one can easily imagine him trying to position himself as the new Gingrich. But the political climate is much different now than it was in 1993; he can't erase either the damage wrought upon the Republican brand by the Bush administration, nor -- at least in the near-term -- Obama's sky-high approval ratings. Perhaps the House Republicans voted against delaying the digital TV changeover because they don't want Americans to see the carnage.

the evolving coin consensus on afghanistan

Some good advice from a guest blog feature titled "How not to Lose Afghanistan" at the New York Times:

John Nagl:

“However, insurgencies are not defeated by foreign forces. They are defeated by the security services of the afflicted nation. Thus the long-term answer to the Taliban’s insurgency has to be a much expanded Afghan National Army. Currently 70,000 and projected to grow to 135,000, the Afghan army is the most respected institution in that troubled country. It may need to reach 250,000, and be supported by a similarly sized police force, to provide the security that will cause the Taliban to wither. Building such an Afghan Army will be a long-term effort that will require American equipment and advisers for many years, but since the Afghans can field about 70 troops for the cost of one deployed American soldier, there is no faster, cheaper or better way to win.”

Parag Khanna:

“Even if an additional 30,000 American and NATO troops were deployed in southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban problem would not be reduced. It would merely be pushed back over the Pakistan border, destabilizing Pakistan’s already volatile North-West Frontier Province, which itself is more populous than Iraq. This amounts to squeezing a balloon on one end to inflate it on the other.”

Also, the following from Norman Seip, via SWJ:

“In the future, Soft Power will be applied across the spectrum of military operations, combining kinetic effects (Hard Power) with economic, political, cultural and military Soft Power campaigns — a concept termed “Smart Power” by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her confirmation hearings. For military members, Soft Power employment must become part of the services’ core competencies, second nature to the warfighter and planner.

In doing so, militaries will have to involve other vital contributors — an evolution as dramatic for the services as the “joint” movement of the 1980s — such as Department of State, government agencies, law enforcement, non-governmental organizations and private enterprise.”

Finally, "Aligning a Counterinsurgency Strategy for Afghanistan," from Lt. Col. Raymond Millen at SWJ, deserves a full reading:

As this article reveals, the principle of Subsidiarity forms the underlying approach to a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan. In essence, Subsidiarity embraces decentralization of governance to the lowest level. Because this form of federalism has a long-standing tradition in Afghanistan (as well as the West), the populace readily accepts the concept. This concept permits the central government to focus on national issues. However, it does not signify neglect. Rather, it permits federal, international, and coalition agencies to empower local communities in a decentralized manner without deleterious intrusion from above. In short, it shifts the counterinsurgency effort to the local communities.

a must read: pakistan in peril

On the heels of my purely tactical analysis of why Pakistan is likely to have given tacit approval for CIA airstrikes inside its territory, comes this truly eye opening book review of "Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia," by Ahmed Rashid. From William Dalrymple of The New York Review of Books:

Few had very high expectations of Zardari, the notoriously corrupt playboy widower of Benazir Bhutto. Nevertheless, the speed of the collapse that has taken place under his watch has amazed almost all observers.

...

Meanwhile tens of thousands of ordinary people from the surrounding hills of the semiautonomous tribal belt—the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) that run along the Afghan border—have fled from the conflict zones blasted by missiles from unmanned American Predator drones and strafed by Pakistani helicopter gunships to the tent camps now ringing Peshawar.



The tribal areas have never been fully under the control of any Pakistani government, and have always been unruly, but they have now been radicalized as never before. The rain of armaments from US drones and Pakistani ground forces, which have caused extensive civilian casualties, daily add a steady stream of angry footsoldiers to the insurgency. Elsewhere in Pakistan, anti-Western religious and political extremism continues to flourish.

...

Other civilian convoys have been allowed to continue, but only after paying a toll to the Taliban, who now, in effect, control the Khyber Pass, the key land route between Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the moment more than 70 percent of supplies for the US troops in Afghanistan travel through the NWFP to Peshawar and hence up the Khyber Pass. The US is now trying to work out alternative supply routes for its troops in Afghanistan via several Central Asian republics—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, which has the important Manas Air Base—all of which have themselves been markedly radicalized since 2001.

...

Eight years of neocon foreign policies have been a spectacular disaster for American interests in the Islamic world, leading to the rise of Iran as a major regional power, the advance of Hamas and Hezbollah, the wreckage of Iraq, with over two million external refugees and the ethnic cleansing of its Christian population, and now the implosion of Afghanistan and Pakistan, probably the most dangerous development of all.

This is the most damning statement I came across:

By building up public hysteria and presenting a vision of an Islamic world eaten up with irrational hatred of America, an unspoken feeling was generated among Americans that, as Rashid puts it,

if they hated us, then Americans should hate Muslims back and retaliate not just against the terrorists but against Islam in general. By generating such fears it was virtually impossible to gain American public attention and support for long-term nation building.

The following speaks effectively to the Jihadi-as-strategic-weapon issue that I briefly touched on in the tacit approval post:

Since the days of the anti-Soviet Mujahideen, the Pakistani army saw the jihadis as an ingenious and cost-effective means of both dominating Afghanistan—something they finally achieved with the retreat of the Soviets in 1987—and bogging down the Indian army in Kashmir—something they succeeded in achieving from 1990 onward.

...

About a dozen Indian divisions had been tied up in Kashmir during the late 1990s to suppress a few thousand well-trained, paradise-seeking guerrillas. What more could Pakistan ask?

It is for this reason that many in the army still believe that the jihadis make up a more practical defense against Indian dominance than even nuclear weapons. For them, supporting a range of jihadi groups in Afghanistan and Kashmir is not an ideological or religious whim so much as a practical and patriotic imperative—a vital survival strategy for a Pakistani state that they perceive to be threatened by India's ever-growing power and its alliance with the hostile Karzai regime in Kabul.

...

So it was, only months after September 11, that the ISI was giving refuge to the entire Taliban leadership after it fled from Afghanistan. Mullah Omar was kept in an ISI safehouse in the town of Quetta, just south of the tribal areas in Baluchistan, near the Afghan border, while his militia was lodged in Pashtunabad, a sprawling Quetta suburb. Gulbuddin Hikmetyar, the leader of the radical Mujahideen militia Hizb-e- Islami, was lured back from exile in Iran and allowed to operate freely outside Peshawar, while Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most violent Taliban commanders, was given sanctuary by the ISI in north Waziristan, a part of FATA.

Bin Laden, I'm sure, is not far from them.

obama's bipartisanship: a complete waste of time

Via Ian Welsh at FDL:

Well, it passed [244-188]. After taking out family planning money and ditching bankruptcy reform, plus including significant tax cuts, not a single Republican voted for it. It's like Democrats are negotiating with themselves. They give things up and get no votes in exchange.

Obama talked a lot of game about hope and change and bipartisanship. But you can't negotiate with someone who doesn't do so in good faith. In the Senate the Republicans will not be able to stay so disciplined, but the point stands. Obama is popular. The stimulus bill is popular. The republicans are as unpopular as Bush, who is about as popular as stepping in dogshit. The Democrats are in the majority. So why is Obama making concessions to "win Republican support"?

Does he just want to be part of the club that badly? I'd prefer it if he stayed lonely instead, and just got shit done without watering down badly needed infrastructure spending with ineffectual tax cuts.

Update: Rachel Maddow says it better than I could:

an old school republican in action

...old school like cave paintings are old school:



Yeeeeesh.

somalia, from the sea

A discussion of Somali piracy, via Galrahn at USNI:

The US Navy is about to engage, with CTF-151 leading the way, in what those who study COIN instantly recognize as complex environments (CE), and as one might expect when discussing naval forces, the complex maritime environment is found in the populated, ungoverned littorals. Does the Navy even have a definition of a complex maritime environment that accounts for government forces, irregular forces, civilians, NGOs, tribes, clans, syndicates, multinational influence, international legal influence, etc.? What does the Navy FM 3-24 look like and does it even begin to cover this scenario?

...

Maybe my concerns are overblown, and I pray they are, but I keep thinking I have read this book before and it was called Iraq and Afghanistan before the ideas that became FM 3-24 were developed. I firmly believe the US Navy is going to find a lot success early on in efforts to take on the pirate problem, but after the first few tactical evolutions by the other guy, I think the Navy may quickly find itself in some bigger trouble than they are ready to deal with.

adios, mexico city policy

The next time you hear about how much Bush did for the AIDS issue in Africa, keep in mind that there were deeply destructive ideological strings attached to all of those dollars. Charities that supported abortion services or even contraception were explicitly excluded, effectively funneling the money to "faith-based" evangelical Christian charities. Think third world evangelism is just something that Spanish monks tortured Native Americans with in the 16th century?

Via Tom Ricks:

There was one particular problem that brought it home for me. In 2006, a Nigerian lawmaker announced that 55,000 women die in the country each year from unsafe illegal abortions. The evidence was everywhere -- from women that my colleagues and I met to Nigerian films on exactly that topic.

What was the best way to get that statistic down? Some will say abstinence. But sex is not always a choice. It's in those situations where women seek -- or are forced by their partners to seek -- unsafe abortions. Some counseling and a sterile doctor's office would go a long way.

FDL has more:

Acknowledging that women are increasingly at the center of the pandemic, Dybul [Bush's Africa AIDS czar] claimed that the Administration's ideologically driven program that focuses on promoting abstinence until marriage and faithfulness in marriage "might be the best way to encourage men to treat women better."

Ah yes, the famed shut up, put out and make me a sandwich method of "faithfulness". There was a special de-emphases on the use of condoms.

Good riddance, you fundamentalist clowns. Try to thump your Bibles in a way that doesn't destroy lives. That could be asking too much, I know.

the battle of wanat

Tom Ricks has begun a series of articles on a skirmish that was fought in Wanat, Afghanistan, on July 13th, 2008. It's an important issue not necessarily because it was a rare tactical bloodying, but because it was glossed over operationally rather than accounting for what could have been learned.

CIA station chief in algeria investigated for rape

Apparently he was slipping roofies to women in the Embassy bar. Classy. Let the fatwas commence.

Updated with video:



Updated again as Larry Johnson weighs in:

The “good” news, if there can be such a thing, is that the alleged rapist is a muslim convert. Whew!! If he was a Christian or a Jew that would fully play into a muslim propaganda coup. I suppose posting a muslim CIA officer, accused of rape, to Saudi Arabia is too much of a fantasy to entertain? If guilty they would behead the guy and save us the mess.

...

Let’s hope this is just a tough disinformation campaign designed to discredit an effective officer. If not, it is very damaging to the CIA’s image both here and abroad and will confront President Obama with an uncomfortable choice. If the crime took place outside of the U.S. Embassy on Algerian soil we can expect the Algerians to press for extradition. If you have never seen Midnight Express allow me to let you in on a tip–YOU NEVER, EVER WANT TO BE ARRESTED AND TRIED IN A MUSLIM COUNTRY FOR A SEX CRIME.

hardball sideshow

Is it just me, or does the carnival music just make Matthews seem like more of an ass? I can't help but imagining the otherwise competent MSNBC graphics department rolling their collective eyes as Matthews froths "let's go with THAT one! BWAAAAH!"

Rush: "MeeeeEEEeeeeEEeeeeee"



Bush only met with congressional Dems.. twice?

bush senior and bill clinton joke around

Yukkin' it up.

russian honeymoon

Medvedev, claiming to be sufficiently flattered by Obama's reconsideration of the rollout of BMD in Poland, reconsiders deployment of Iskander cruise missiles next door.

the tacit approval scenario

Cross-border airstrikes into Pakistan have been riding high in the news cycle again lately, if for no other reason than that Obama did not call a stop to them (as he swiftly did re: Guantanamo, rendition, and torture). The stories follow a familiar arc. The strikes are carried out by CIA unmanned drones launched from Afghanistan. The casualties are either civilians or militants (in reality it is, of course, both), depending on whether you believe the "local officials" or the Americans. The Americans will drop dark hints of "High Value Targets," The Pakistani government will offer a public rebuke, and the Pakistani public will produce a cry of protest.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Critics are quick to point out the obvious geopolitical risks:

And that leads to the broader point. The Obama administration hopes strikes like these send the message to Islamabad that more of this is on the way if the Pakistanis don't get their shit together and hunt down al-Qaeda itself. If you were President Zardari, how would you react to that message? Would you believe that the U.S. really understood, or cared, about the pressures you face; and was actually willing to assist you in dealing with them? Or would you think you were getting an insulting series of ultimatums, purchased in people's lives?

Such criticism is predicated on the idea that the Pakistani government is truly as opposed to the airstrikes as they say they are in public. However, news stories like the most recent WashPo article linked to above hint at a "tacit agreement" scenario:

The Pakistani government, which has loudly protested some earlier strikes, was quiet yesterday. In September, U.S. and Pakistani officials reached a tacit agreement to allow such attacks to continue without Pakistani involvement, according to senior officials in both countries.

To understand how this might be the case, it is useful to look at the airstrikes in an operational context.

Pakistan is fighting a long, grinding, internal counterinsurgency for the same swath of territory that the CIA is hitting. To get a clear picture of what these battles look like, I strongly recommend this series by Al Jazeera: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4.

Also, be sure to watch this amazing video, taken straight from the heart of the area that the Pakistani government seeks to assert control over:


VICE Travel: Darra, Pakistan

While Pakistan is engaged in what amounts to a fierce civil war for control of the tribal territories, they also feel existentially threatened by their southern neighbors. The Mumbai attacks very nearly escalated into all out war. Given Pakistan's limited resources, they have, quite rationally, focused their military power primarily on deterring and potentially defending against a conventional Indian attack.

This means that Pakistan's F-16s are "pointed" at India. They have to patrol the borders, they have to remain on alert for Indian fighters; in short, they have to maintain a posture relevant to defending against the existential threat of India, not launching strikes deep into internal tribal territory.

I mention Pakistan's F-16s only because they are the closest analogue to the "Reaper" UAVs that the CIA is flying over the Afghan border: they are both strike aircraft. However, they are radically different in terms of capability. Fighter jets like the F-16 are fast, fly high, and carry lots of weapons. However their logistical burden is daunting. They can only carry enough fuel to stay in the air for a few hours. Even with unlimited aerial refueling available, their endurance is limited by that of their human pilots.

An unmanned drone like the Reaper can also fly high, although it can only carry a handful of weapons and move about as fast a Cessna. But the key is persistence. Pilots, working in shifts, control the aircraft remotely from the United States. Their lives are not on the line if their aircraft is targeted. The Reaper can stay in the air for up to a whole day, and its prop driven propeller is orders of magnitude more fuel efficient than a jet engine. In short, the Reaper can do the kind of reconnaissance and surveillance that makes the missile strikes it launches possible in the first place: it represents a tactical capability that the Pakistanis simply don't possess.

Beyond the added tactical capability, the CIA strikes allow the Pakistani government plausible deniability. A tacit approval scenario does not hinge on whether or not anyone within the Pakistani government, intelligence, or military is supplying the Americans with targets. That said, some of the people allegedly targeted in these airstrikes almost certainly enjoyed some kind of relationship with the Pakistani ISI in the past.

It was only recently that the Pakistani government was pressured by the US into asserting sovereign control over its tribal areas. The Taliban, the ISI's proxy in Afghanistan, were founded here. Those ties run deep, and third party interference from the CIA in those relationships cannot be entirely unwelcome to a new civilian government in Islamabad, particularly one that wishes to exercise control over its own intelligence services. Mumbai, for example, was the result of an ISI proxy in Kashmir run amok. When your intelligence assets have become a liability, better to have someone else clean up the mess.

Whether or not the CIA is (wittingly or not) cleaning the ISI's dirty laundry, it is likely that first and foremost they are developing their own targets. A suitcase full of dollars, a set of plane tickets for the family, and a cell phone can go a long way.

The next time there is an American air strike in Pakistan in the news, keep all of this in mind. As the US prepares to double its troop presence in Afghanistan in the coming months, such strikes will only increase.

president obama's television interview debut

Not on PBS or MSNBC, but on Al-Arabiya:



Marc Lynch weighs in over at FP:

It's impossible to exaggerate the symbolic importance of Barack Obama choosing an Arabic satellite television station for his first formal interview as President -- and of taking that opportunity to talk frankly about a new relationship with the Muslim world based on mutual respect and emphasizing listening rather than dictating.

...

His remarks hit the sweet spot again and again. He repeatedly emphasized his intention of moving past the iron walls of the 'war on terror' and 'clash of civilizations' which so dominated the Bush era.

quid pro quo?

Via the FT:

Russia will build a new base for its Black Sea fleet at the port of Ochamchire in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, Itar Tass, the Russian news agency, reported an unnamed Russian navy official as saying yesterday.

Work would begin on the project this year, the official added. The announcement is likely to raise hackles in Georgia, which lost control of Abkhazia after a short war with Russia last August.

Russia currently bases its Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol, which is leased from Kiev. But Ukraine threatened last August not to renew the lease on its expiry in 2017.

Russia seeks to weaken Ukraine at the yearly gas negotiating table, and solidify the cleave between Georgia and Abkhazia. We will look the other way.

jimmy carter on the daily show

Part 1:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jimmy Carter Pt. 1

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Part 2:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jimmy Carter Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

republican war on science

Colbert "interviews" Chris Mooney:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Obama's New Science Policy - Chris Mooney

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

the real rush with the stimulus?

This.

While this continues:



Hope? Change? Subpoenas. There's no other way to really, truly, legitimize the required reassertion of American leadership in the world. Virtue can/should be the next American Grand Strategy.

Do it deliberately, but do it.

anyone else remember this one?

bison grass, what

tpm: 1/26/09 in 100 seconds

Fox and Friends and Blago, the gifts that keep on giving.

grab a stiff drink for this one

From the latest issue of Vanity Fair, out on newsstands now. It reads like a collection of very short stories.

A few highlights:

Dan Bartlett, White House communications director and later counselor to the president: “At the end of the day I think the divisiveness of this presidency will fundamentally come down to one issue: Iraq. And Iraq only because, in my opinion, there weren’t weapons of mass destruction. I think the public’s tolerance for the difficulties we face would’ve been far different had it felt like the original threat had been proved true. That’s the fulcrum. Fundamentally, when the president gets to an approval rating of 27 percent, it’s this issue.”

...

Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: “I was astonished that the Americans used Curveball, really astonished. This was our stuff. But they presented it not in the way we knew it. They presented it as a fact, and not as the way an intelligence assessment is—could be, but could also be a big lie. We don’t know.”

Makes you wonder how that legacy project is going.

And my personal favorite:

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: “I’m not sure even to this day that he’s [Powell's] willing to admit to himself that he was rolled to the extent that he was. And he’s got plenty of defense to marshal because, as I told [former defense secretary] Bill Perry one time when Bill asked me to defend my boss—I said, Well, let me tell you, you wouldn’t have wanted to have seen the first Bush administration without Colin Powell. I wrote Powell a memo about six months before we were leaving, and I said, This is your legacy, Mr. Secretary: damage control. He didn’t like it much. In fact, he kind of handed it back to me and told me I could put it in the burn basket.

But I knew he understood what I was saying. You saved the China relationship. You saved the transatlantic relationship and each component thereof—France, Germany. I mean, he held Joschka Fischer’s hand under the table on occasions when Joschka would say something like, You know, your president called my boss a fucking asshole. His task became essentially cleaning the dogshit off the carpet in the Oval Office. And he did that rather well. But it became all-consuming.

I think the clearest indication I got that Rich [Armitage] and he both had finally awakened to the dimensions of the problem was when Rich began—I mean, I’ll be very candid—began to use language to describe the vice president’s office with me as the Gestapo, as the Nazis, and would sometimes late in the evening, when we were having a drink—would sometimes go off rather aggressively on particular characters in the vice president’s office.”

good advice for obama

Tom Ricks interviews a leading proponent of counterinsurgency doctrine to discover if the right incentives are in place to attract our "best and brightest" to where they're needed most:

We are still not selecting all of our advisors for their expertise, tracking those who have this experience, or properly rewarding them for their service in both the most demanding and most important counterinsurgency mission we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is still no advisor incentive pay or distinctive 'Combat Advisor' badge or insignia; we provide both to Airborne-qualified personnel, although it's hard to argue that that skill is more important today than the ability to teach our friends and allies to fight insurgents so we don't have to (and I say this as someone who wore my Airborne wings with pride for more than twenty years).

So.. no.

fox frightens PA rednecks with images of scary musselmen

Via ThinkProgress:



Stay classy, Fox. Kudos to Murtha, representing the state where United 93 was brought down, for making light of the republican claim that our domestic prisons simply can't hold the tear-wrists:

Saw through the bars with a sharpened spoon? Team up with Jimmy Cagney on some dig out through a tunnel plan?

Remember how if we leave, they'll follow us home? People are a) stupid and b) cowardly enough to believe this crap. Never forget it. Fox sure hasn't.

Update: Larry Johnson explains it more forcefully than I could:

Now we confront a relatively small number of radical religious nuts. They are great at using their religious beliefs to threaten us. They talk a lot of shit and post it on the internet. Yet, despite their sincere desire to harm us they cannot and have not attacked us at will where ever and when ever they want. Our countermeasures have been pretty good and the Bin Laden crowd has not received much love in the muslim world. Yet in the face of these threats to harm us we want to fold our judicial system, surrender our Constitution, crawl into a fetal position and start sucking our thumbs? De we seriously believe that we as a people are incapable of dealing with this horrific, terrible threat within our territory just because the terrorists don’t fight fair and use nasty methods? Makes you ashamed to call yourself an American.

olbermann/maddow tag team the NSA

Olbermann and Maddow of MSNB continue to beat the warrantless wiretapping drum:

Olbermann, with Rep. Cohen (TN-D):



Maddow, with surprisingly milquetoast-ish Carl Bernstein (it's almost as if he's miffed that this makes Watergate look like a littering misdemeanor by comparison):

"to live like a republican, vote democratic"

Via John Perr at Perrspectives, this chart from the NYTimes, with the following reminder from Harry Truman:

"If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic."

hillary lovefest continues at usaid

A clear vision, concrete goals, strong expectations: this is where Hillary really belongs. Pragmatist that she is, I personally think she's thrilled to be out of the Senate. Let's hope that she develops a warm relationship with Secdef Gates, whose covering fire she will continue to need in the years ahead.

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

zero sum game: prosperity for al capones, or for all?

Via TPB, a clear set of data points that bear thinking about.



This guy has his thinking cap on as well:



Unfortunately, this is second term fodder at best.

hillary heads to state

This is how an institution reacts when it reaches an oasis of competence after stumbling through an ideological desert for years behind a clueless jackass.

There are great hopes for Hillary at State. I met last week with a number of career State Department employees and was surprised when one said she was looking forward to the “Glinda Party” next week. I asked her: if Hillary was Glinda, the Good Witch of the South from the Wizard of Oz, did that make Condoleezza Rice the Wicked Witch of the West?

“You’re on to it,” she said. Another person pointed out to me that after Rice’s arrival in 2005 the tone of official State Department publications changed; they began to praise and glorify Rice. “No prior secretary,” said the twenty-year veteran, “did anything like this.”

Good riddance.

shorter-term, concrete goals in afghanistan

DefenseLink News Article: Military to Focus on Shorter-term Goals in Afghanistan, Gates Says:

“President Barack Obama met with Gates and other National Security Council members at the White House on Jan. 21.

The United States needs to set “more concrete goals” for Afghanistan that “can be achieved realistically within three to five years,” Gates said. For example, he said, efforts should be made to re-establish Afghan government control in the country’s southern and eastern regions, as well boost security and improve the delivery of services to the population.”

Doubling the number of combat troops is only certain to do one thing: accelerate the tempo. Tactically, it will mean that operations in SE Afghanistan will become more kinetic: more people will die, quicker, because more troops doesn't mean less indirect fire. It will raise the tempo for the military as well.

Operationally, it will mean a greater logistical appetite and require a bit more attention to detail in the Caucasus.

Strategically? Let's hear those "concrete goals."

why I read SWJ

Navy Staff Director VADM Harvey drops in at USNI to big up SWJ:

“My best example of a truly worthwhile blog, worthy of our time and intellectual engagement, is the Small Wars Journal. The tone is always professional, the subject matter is compelling and the benefit from participating is significant.”

Three things that simply have nothing to do with traditional media anymore, if they ever did... especially that last one.

sour grapes

Apparently not everybody on Bush's last flight out of Andrews AFB was stuck between lollipops and rainbows. From the NYTimes:

“There were a few sharp elbows that really rankled and I felt were not as magnanimous as the occasion called for,” Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidante, said in an interview. “He really missed an opportunity to be as big as the occasion was and, frankly, as gracious as President Bush was as he left office.”

Dan Bartlett, another top adviser, used similar language. “It was a missed opportunity to bring some of the president’s loyal supporters into the fold,” he said. Marc A. Thiessen, the chief White House speechwriter until this week, added: “It was an ungracious inaugural. It was pretty clear he was taking shots.”

What color is the sky in Bushworld?

systemic media failures

Don't miss this withering analysis of The Media's Role In The Financial Crisis, from Dan Gillmor at TPM:

“It's not as if this is the first time a big issue has had too little discussion while there was still time to fix the problem. Journalism has repeatedly failed to warn the public about huge, visible risks. The media's complicity in the Iraq War-mongering and 1990s stock bubble were the most infamous recent examples until the financial bust came along, but the willful blindness to reality was uncannily similar.

...

But to say that the press was all over the housing/credit mess before it blew up, as the American Journalism Review argued recently, defies reality. The good journalism was overwhelmed by the happy-face, herd coverage, usually laced with quotes from people who stood to benefit from the bubble's continued inflation.”

The banal truth underlying advertising-funded journalism:

“It's probably no coincidence that most newspapers have weekly real estate pages or sections, the main purpose of which is to collect advertising for property sales.

...

The media's collective irresponsibility has ill-served its audience. If journalists want to keep the audience they have, never mind build credibility for the future, they need to become the right kind of activists. More than ever, we need what they do, when they do it well.”

I would only add that they need it even more than we need them. TPM is staffed by people just old enough to actually give a rat's ass (out of nostalgia, I guess) about traditional media outlets. Gillmor nibbles at the edges of the real solution for them with a call for journalistic activism. Of course, they can't budge from their pretext of objectivity as long as they are bought and paid for by corporate PR outfits. But until they do budge, Americans will continue to be spoon-fed "balance" over "accuracy.