My boss is retiring

Interesting Wall Street Journal article about my boss who's retiring on Thursday 12/31. Coincidentally, his last day with the office will be my last day with the office.

Eric

Fun with autotune

The Gregory Brothers have a series of these on youtube. Funny stuff.



Add: 14AUG11 New York Times Sunday magazine article on the Gregory Brothers.



Eric

Blackwater contractors helped fight terrorists in Iraq

EXCERPT: "One former Blackwater guard recalled a meeting in Baghdad in 2004 in which Erik Prince addressed a group of Blackwater guards working with the C.I.A. At the meeting in an air hangar used by Blackwater, the guard said, Mr. Prince encouraged the Blackwater personnel “to do whatever it takes” to help the C.I.A. with the intensifying insurgency, the former guard recalled."

Blackwater contractors helped fight terrorists in Iraq. Good thing, right? To my dismay, this story is being reported as a scandal.

The situation in 2004-2006 Iraq was critical and worsening. The terrorists were escalating their campaign and trying their hardest to collapse the fragile, post-Saddam Iraq with massive death and destruction. Iraqi society was tearing apart and people were dying in the streets by the hundreds. With the insurgency in Iraq reaching its height, the highest imperative for our side was to do everything we could do in order to protect Iraq and the Iraqi people from the terrorists. The Blackwater contractors, already hired and on the ground, were at least as well prepared as their overwhelmed counterparts in the CIA and US military. As the NY Times article describes the Blackwater contractors, "many of them [were] former members of units of the Navy Seals or Army Delta Force".

Despite the exigent circumstances of 2004-2006 Iraq, Representative Rush D. Holt believes the use of Blackwater contractors was "a scandal" and "very troubling to a lot of people.”

I disagree with Representative Holt. Not using the best people who were available on the ground at that time under those circumstances in Iraq would have qualified as 'very troubling' and a 'scandal'. Those Blackwater contractors should be commended, instead of treated as criminals. They weren't hired to fight terrorists in Iraq, but in an emergency situation, the Blackwater contractors understood the importance of the mission and the dangers faced by their short-handed government comrades. They responded like soldiers and placed their lives in more danger by volunteering their abilities to help their comrades and serve the greater good for their nation and Iraq.

Blackwater helping to fight terrorists in 2004-2006 Iraq: right. Rep Holt: wrong.

Eric (400th post!)

Closer reading of Nobel speech: Obama redefined "just war" and justified Iraq intervention

Many columns and blog posts about President Obama's Nobel speech have mistaken this statement as his operating definition of "just war":

The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional; and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.

In fact, the president considers that definition obsolete and used it as a reference point to redefine "just war" for the 9/11 generation to include American-led liberal military interventions:

And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace. . . . So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.

Some pundits have also tried to find a criticism of the Iraq intervention in the speech. However, in defining “just war” for the 9/11 generation, Obama actually raised all the justifications for the Iraq intervention, though conspicuously without citing Operation Iraqi Freedom. The president’s message was plain: when non-military means fail to achieve the “imperatives of peace” - which is what happened for Saddam’s Iraq - then the “instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace”. Compare the following criteria for military intervention from President Obama's Nobel speech to the justifications for taking military action against Saddam's Iraq in President Clinton's 1998 speech and President Bush's 2002 speech:

To begin with, I believe that all nations -- strong and weak alike -- must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.

Likewise, the world recognized the need to confront Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait -- a consensus that sent a clear message to all about the cost of aggression.

And this becomes particularly important when the purpose of military action extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor. More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region.

I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That's why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.

America's commitment to global security will never waver.

First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to actually change behavior -- for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure -- and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

One urgent example is the effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons

But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. Those who claim to respect international law cannot avert their eyes when those laws are flouted. Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.

The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma -- there must be consequences. Yes, there will be engagement; yes, there will be diplomacy -- but there must be consequences when those things fail. And the closer we stand together, the less likely we will be faced with the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.

For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict.

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine and shelter they need to survive. It does not exist where children can't aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

Add: "stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region" and the above paragraph about development and security match our post-war efforts, most notably the COIN "Surge", to build the peace in Iraq after regime change. I posted comments about Obama's speech and OIF on The Strategist blog, which belongs to a poli sci guy.

Eric

Jeremy Lin

Harvard senior Jeremy Lin is the starting point guard for the Harvard Crimson and featured in this ESPN article. I've read about him before, so I'm surprised I haven't already written a post about him. His parents are Taiwanese immigrants and he was born and raised in California. The Harvard background isn't what makes him special. Many Taiwanese American kids make it to Harvard and the Ivy League at large. (Heck, even I'm an Ivy League grad.) Jeremy stands out for his athletic achievement as a basketball player at a position at a level where a Taiwanese American of his background is entirely unexpected. Before his MVP level play at Harvard, he was the California high school basketball player of the year among a host of other awards and achievements. There's even talk he might make it onto an NBA squad.

According to the ESPN article, he just wants to be known as a basketball player. Well, like it or not, he's a role model, he's representing us, and we're all rooting for him. On Jan 29, Harvard will be playing at Columbia at 7:00 PM. Gotta be there.

31JAN10 update: I watched him play in person at Columbia on Friday. I paid $10 for a standing room only seat ticket, but was able to get a decent seat in the bleachers. Tepid game from Lin. He only had one memorable assist, one memorable drive and one memorable 3-pointer, and Harvard still won by 30. Many Asian Harvard alumni and family came to watch.

Eric

President Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today: golden opportunity to advance Pax Americana

Today, President Obama will accept his Nobel Peace Prize. When the award was announced, I was suspicious of the Nobel committee's intentions for awarding President Obama the prize over several liberal reformers, similar to 2003 Iranian recipient Shirin Ebadi, from illiberal parts of the world.

The timing, however, has turned out to be fortuitous. Coming so soon after his West Point speech, President Obama has a golden opportunity today in Oslo to uphold our definitively progressive liberal strategy in the War on Terror, define the enemy, and explain why and how we are building peace through war, such as the spectrum of peace operations of COIN. He should give credit to American and allied soldiers as champions in the cause of peace who are confronting intolerable brutal forces. My Feb 2007 Spec article When Anti-War is Anti-Peace is dated, but it's roughly the direction I'd like the president to take. He should also stand up for the liberal reformers from illiberal places who were passed over in order to give him the prize and speak out specifically on Shirin Ebadi and the state of Iran.

Given that President Obama has embraced President Bush's liberal foreign policy, it would be decent of him to share credit with President Bush today, but I doubt that will happen. Nonetheless, I hope President Obama rises to the opportunity on a unique world stage to advance the War on Terror and reinvigorate the global liberalizing influence of Pax Americana.

Update: Speech transcript here.

Grade: B-, or President Obama addressed most of the above key points with his typical rhetorical aplomb, but he spoke broadly about Pax Americana and other liberal ideas in lieu of specifics. For the speech, the president used a pedantic political science tact to lecture about progressive liberalism and Pax Americana as the contextual basis of our foreign policy. He made the point that the conception of war as furthering violence and pacifism as furthering peace is practically unrealistic, although I think he could have made the point more clear. My main disappointment is the speech did not forcefully uphold our liberal strategy in the War on Terror, nor explain COIN and the peace-building role of American and allied militaries in depth. Instead, Obama only generally touched on the peace-keeping role of our soldiers, the need to effectively confront rogue nations and "evil" actors, and the requirement of security for peace.

The speech took many directions and the latter half of the speech especially seemed to lose focus in places. I mean, "law of love"? Maybe political science classes were different when Obama attended Columbia, but I don't recall learning that particular concept as a Columbia poli sci major. By including so many subjects in his speech with so few specifics, I'm not confident he made a lasting impression with the global audience.

President Obama showed again how much he and President Bush are like-minded liberals, although he won't admit it and maybe that's for the best. If liberals around the world are incapable of taking responsibility for their betrayal of liberalism during the Bush administration, then perhaps they can at least rationalize supporting the same liberal policies by attributing them to Obama. Interestingly, President Obama raised every justification for our Iraq intervention without defending Operation Iraqi Freedom by name, perhaps a calculation meant to protect the bases of OIF for his own use while still preserving the global good will for him that's defined by the vilification of Bush.

As a campaigner, Obama was mindful of speaking to different audiences and he's continued that trait into his presidency. That was effective when Candidate Obama wanted members of diverse audiences to believe he said what they preferred to hear, which worked very well for him in winning the presidency. At his speech-making best as president, however, he shows thoughtfulness and an understanding of different, even contradictory, sides of an issue from which he forms a rational conclusion. I fear his Nobel Peace Prize speech was delivered more like a campaign speech than a presidential speech and the mash of ideas will fail to convey the clear impressions or take-away points needed to effectively advance American foreign policies with the global audience.

My highest hope for President Obama is as a superior spokesman than uncharismatic President Bush for our nation and the War on Terror, so I hope our president got his point across. But whether he did or not, the president lost a golden opportunity to explain COIN and our progressive liberal strategy in the War on Terror to the world.

Add: Political scientist Walter Russell Meade's reaction. The magazine he refers to, American Interest, may also be worth checking out. I'm not the only person to notice Obama's speech was pedantic - Daniel Drezner points out the IR theories in Obama's speech.

Eric

Raining today

I hope the weather today isn't a sign of doom or death, like it is in the movies. My mom is meeting her team of doctors today. The bad news got worse, but not as bad as it could be. Today will be a definitive step.

Meanwhile, I need to study. It's for me, but in some part, I owe this degree to her, too. Not in the same way as my college degree, though, which I entirely owed to her.

Eric

President Obama announces his decision on Afghanistan

. . . at 8 pm at West Point. I wish I could watch and listen to his speech live, but I'll be in class.

I support whatever the president needs to do to 'stage' his presentation given that lack of public relations ability - poor salesmanship - was a major weakness of his predecessor. I once advanced the notion that President Bush ought to enlist President Clinton to be his spokesman for OIF because of Bush's shortcomings as a salesman. My hope for Obama is that he campaigns for the liberal foreign policy outlook he shares with Bush to a level, at home and abroad, that Bush failed to reach.

Add: transcript of President Obama's speech here. Immediate short reaction: I can live with that. Informative Congressional report about troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some insight into Obama's review. Along with Bush holdovers Mullen, Petraeus and Gates, don't forget "war czar" Doug Lute. Plans for Afghanistan 'surge' underway at the end of the Bush admin. Thomas Friedman does not support a COIN 'surge' in Afghanistan, which he contrasts with his support for nation-building in Iraq. Friedman's column reminds me of an earlier comment I made on Prof Nacos' blog:

Comparing the presidential decisions faced by the two presidents, Bush's choice to double-down in Iraq was easier than Obama's choice today: Iraq has much higher immediate, long-term, and regional strategic value (the reason why the terrorists also diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq until defeated there) and Iraq is a much better candidate for nation-building than Afghanistan, whereas we can lose a lot in Afghanistan without gaining much benefit even from a nation-building success.

It must be awfully tempting to the current Commander in Chief to give in to the military leaders who opposed COIN under Bush and continue to oppose COIN today, abandon nation-building in Afghanistan, and limit OEF to a kinetic warfare battle-zone.

For a longer piggyback reaction, I responded with comments to Prof Nacos' post about the speech here:

Professor Nacos,

To be fair, the early 20K troop increase was authorized under President Bush, although President Obama certainly could have stopped it if he disagreed with it.

The Republicans did criticize the 18 month limit, but it was a mild criticism, certainly compared to what the Democrats did to Bush, and they mixed their criticism with praise for the greater decision. Realistically, there is no more an absolute deadline for Obama's OEF 'surge' than there was an unlimited escalation in Bush's OIF "Surge". COIN is meant to effect conditions such that local actors, such as in the Anbar Awakening, will make independent rational choices that serve our interests. So, just because 18 months happened to turn out to be a working timeframe in Iraq doesn't mean it will be the magic figure for an Afghanistan turnaround. In many wars, variants of "home by Christmas" have routinely been predicted and rarely with accuracy; as in Iraq, conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and our own limits will dictate what we actually do when the time comes to do it.

The main difference I see between Bush and Obama as War on Terror presidents, which the Republican critics did not say, is that Bush's commitment to the mission allowed for a change to Plan B when Plan A failed, or even change to Plan D after Plans A to C failed. Without that kind of apolitical leadership from President Bush, for which the Republicans paid a high political price, there would have been no (very controversial at the time) COIN "Surge" in Iraq. However, President Obama, while embracing the COIN strategy he inherited from President Bush, gives less indication he shares Bush's willingness to sacrifice his political cache by responding to a future failure with a change in strategy as opposed to a Nixonian surrender.

"Why not telling the American people that he was wrong in predicting that the Iraq surge would not work?"

I agree. I commented on your blog in
http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2009/09/what-endgame-in-afghanistan.html?cid=6a00d8341ca8e553ef0120a630affd970c#comment-6a00d8341ca8e553ef0120a630affd970c :

"What's called neo-conservatism is just the progressive (interventionalist) liberalism of Wilson, FDR, and Truman, renamed. The bashing of neo-conservatism by self-described Western liberals, therefore, has led to the frustrating, self-defeating spectacle of influential people speaking liberal platitudes but quixotically opposing our definitively liberal strategy in the War on Terror. The effect of these liberals' tragic hypocrisy has been the degradation of the Western liberalizing influence on the illiberal regions of the world."

By the same token, an equally damaging effect of the attacks by self-described liberals on our liberal strategy has been the degradation within Western societies of the domestic understanding and support we need to adequately sustain the war/peace-building strategy endorsed by Presidents Bush and Obama. Therefore, a critical task of President Obama is to fix the deep damage done to his and Bush's foreign policy goals by Senator/Candidate Obama and other Bush critics.

For example, watching the CNN reaction segment after Obama's USMA speech I noted that CNN used zero COIN experts - although to be fair, they had some reporters (eg, Michael Ware) and commentators (eg, Fareed Zakaria) who at least had some relevant subject matter knowledge. But the segment was dominated by partisan political pundits who were remarkably ignorant about COIN and area 'country study' knowledge. Worse, they didn't seem to care about the Afghanistan mission beyond its effect on the GOP and Dem partisan contest at home.

Obama needs to convey both his unity with President Bush (as Bush did with Clinton re Iraq) and that the War on Terror is no more his and the Democrats' war than it was Bush and the Republicans' war. Rather, he needs to show us that the War on Terror is America's war and greater, it is the Western liberal world order's war. I suggest that the president ought to dedicate himself to changing the entire frame of the dialogue in the way FDR unified America for our WWII intervention despite, at the time, strong domestic anti-Wilsonian sentiment not to intervene again in a European war.

One concrete step I advise President Obama take is persistent education in the media about the War on Terror, like FDR's radio chats, in a manner that treats Americans as intelligent people who will support the mission when we learn what he and President Bush know.

To augment his personal efforts, the president ought to enlist COIN and country experts to educate the American public and by expansion, the Western public, about the mission.

More locally, you, as a concerned citizen, media expert, and political science professor at a globally important university that just happens to have the highest population of student-veterans in the Ivy League, can bring COIN experts into academia and the media as well. (With all due to respect to Professor Betts and the Saltzman Institute, I didn't get the impression as a Columbia poli sci major that we were on the leading academic edge of the COIN phenomenon.)

Posted by: Eric December 05, 2009 at 05:36 PM

Eric:

Just a quick response to your once again appreciated comment: Yes, it took Pres. Obama to make sure that more troops were deployed in Afghanistan soon after he took office.
More importantly, Defense Secretary Gates and his colleagues were quite clear in their testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the withdrawal deadline was not written in stone but subject to the conditions on the ground.
As for the going public imperative of presidents, both Bush and Obama tried pretty hard in this respect. But as research has shown and the recent practice once again affirmed, there are limits to enlisting public support for military engagements abroad--especially in the face of real problems at home.
As for Columbia and the large number of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I have several outstanding, young veterans in my current class and assure you that they greatly enrich our class discussions and are appreciated by their peers and, most of all, by their instructor.

Posted by: Brigitte December 05, 2009 at 09:19 PM

Professor Nacos,

I disagree. The early 20K troop increase was based on changes to the Afghanistan mission developed at the end of the Bush administration. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112103504.html , just one of many news stories that discussed this at the time. Excerpt: "Empowering Afghans to secure and govern their own country is expected to be a main theme of a Bush administration review of Afghanistan strategy that is expected to be released soon."

I don't have Bob Woodward access to know for sure, but I think it's clear on the available evidence that there has been substantial continuity between Presidents Bush and Obama on Afghanistan.

First, the media indicates that the Afghanistan strategy change and troop deployments were being developed at the end of the Bush admin. Second, more telling as a practical matter, a large-scale troop deployment to a war zone unavoidably requires months to plan and prepare; President Obama even referred to the lead-time issue in his West Point speech, eg, the 2010 deployment reality. Therefore, given their deployment date, it simply is impossible for the 20K troop deployment to have started after President Obama took office. However, you are correct that as the president at actual time of deployment, it still required Obama's permission. Third, COIN was and still is opposed in many influential circles, which means the switch to COIN in Afghanistan could only have followed upon COIN definitively proven in Iraq, and COIN only became a settled issue by the end of the Bush admin. At that time, per accounts, the Bush admin conducted its final Afghanistan policy review, incorporating COIN (note: GEN Petraeus assumed command of CentCom on 31Oct08), which became the basis for Obama's Afghanistan policy. More evidence: Obama's war team is Bush's war team - GEN Petraeus, SecDef Gates, JCS ADM Mullen - nearly intact, which points to one feature - continuity. Even more stark, President Obama is following the advice of the Bush holdovers on his war team over the advice of his own additions, NSA Jones and Ambassador Eikenberry, who both opposed an Afghanistan 'surge'.

Finally, many have wondered and you have discussed, why would President Obama need to do an extensive policy review and make his decision about Afghanistan now - after his March statement, 20+K troop deployments, and switching OEF commanders? Odd sequence, because Obama's early actions clearly indicated a settled policy on Afghanistan. The reasonable explanation for this seemingly backwards decision-making sequence is that Obama's early actions re Afghanistan, including the troop deployments, were based on plans already in motion. So, Obama didn't need to form the actions; he only had to cancel or approve them, and he approved them. Then, only after the Bush-inherited actions were completed did Obama conduct his own comprehensive review and take complete ownership of OEF with his West Point speech. (Note: while a comprehensive review normally is expected to be an early act in a change of command, in Obama's defense, I've heard his transition team was invited by Bush officials to work on Bush's final Afghanistan review, so Obama likely had input in Bush's final Afghanistan to-do list.)

"But as research has shown and the recent practice once again affirmed, there are limits to enlisting public support for military engagements abroad--especially in the face of real problems at home."

True, like his inauguration speech, President Obama's West Point speech in many respects was indistinguishable from President Bush's speeches, although I thought Obama did a better job of acknowledging concerns and opposing talking points.

Unlike what Bush faced, though, the Republicans - who will oppose him on many other issues - will not undermine him publicly when it comes to vigorously prosecuting the war, whereas the Democrats consistently undermined President Bush as commander in chief to the public. We can hope that the Democrats' public undermining of Bush was purely partisan, and with political control of Congress and the White House their reward, they will rally behind their man doing the same job.

The greater expectation rests on the man himself. President Obama is supposed to be a great, even global, 21st century media communicator and consensus builder, not to mention a bare-knuckles 'Chicago Way' politician. He even has a Nobel Peace prize based largely on those perceptions. In short, Obama is supposed to be the exception to the research. President Bush was a poor communicator in the media and often drowned out by his critics. With many of those critics neutralized, Obama is in a better position to sell his foreign policy against a domestic opposition that's been reduced mainly to 'paleo-con' realists, racists, isolationists, and leftists. But even in his superior position to Bush, Obama will still have to work very hard to fix the damage caused by himself and other Bush critics to the popular narrative. As I've said before on your blog, by opposing Bush, they have done great harm to liberalism. Hopefully, the liberal pundits who were unwilling to help President Bush uphold the liberal war effort to the public will now choose to help President Obama in the same cause ... he'll need the help, because Afghanistan is a lot harder than Iraq.

The effect of the economy on the war? A very good question for the political economists in SIPA, I think. I agree that President Bush had the luxury of a bullish economy (for which he famously told us to maintain our credit-fueled consumer habits after 9/11) with which to fund the mission, whereas President Obama must balance war costs with the recession and the outsized costs of his domestic initiatives.

Interesting question: given that Obama is willing to be a profligate spender with his non-war initiatives, eg bail-outs and stimulus, heath care, and possibly global warming, how does that support or hurt his war spending?

Posted by: Eric December 06, 2009 at 05:35 PM

PS:

"More importantly, Defense Secretary Gates and his colleagues were quite clear in their testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the withdrawal deadline was not written in stone but subject to the conditions on the ground."

Me, I shrugged when Republicans criticized the supposed time limit. It didn't bother me since an absolute time limit is unrealistic. However, on balance, it would have been better for President Obama to follow President Bush's lead and emphasize the 'conditions on the ground' aspect for public consumption. (Though, if Obama needed to state a time limit for a practical reason, such as to secure funding, then that changes the calculation.) While I believe serious educated observers such as enemy leaders, Afghan government officials, and political scientists will know the difference, we also need to win over casual observers and the confidence of cost/benefit-analysing American soldiers and Afghanis deciding whether to risk their lives - or not - based on their trust of the American president.

For example, I work with a 'salt dog' Marine reservist who's served twice in Iraq. The 2nd time, he volunteered for the "Surge" and now he's considering volunteering for Afghanistan. He's the kind of serious, experienced, smart Marine the OEF 'surge' needs. However, he understands that 18 months is insufficient to do this job and the president's speech discouraged him. It's one thing for him and me to speculate in the office what's realistic and what's not, but he needs to hear the commitment from the President before deciding the mission is worth risking his life - again. It's only one example, but does my co-worker's reaction represent the reaction of other US servicemen and women to Obama's speech? What about the Afghanis being asked to make a life-or-death decision in picking sides?

In short, you, I and President Obama may recognize that there is no absolute time limit to the mission, but the ultimate result of the mission does not

Posted by: Eric December 06, 2009 at 07:24 PM

Oops, the last paragraph is supposed to read: In short, you, I and President Obama may recognize that there is no absolute time limit to the mission, but the ultimate result of the mission does not depend on you, me and the president.

PPS: I'm always glad to hear about my fellow Columbia milvets making a difference on campus, but it doesn't change that Columbia in my experience is behind the curve on COIN. Should SIPA choose to take on COIN, your exceptional ready access to Ivy League pedigreed war veterans, enlisted and commissioned, on campus would be an asset.

Posted by: Eric December 06, 2009 at 07:32 PM

PPPS:

Withdrawn - 2nd point of evidence: "Therefore, given their deployment date, it simply is impossible for the 20K troop deployment to have started after President Obama took office."

The memory plays tricks. Upon review, I realized I made an error by confusing times of requests (Feb/March) for the 20+K increase with the times of deployments. Otherwise, I believe the evidence upholds that President Obama initially continued the COIN-based plans, already in motion, President Bush handed off to him. (Before leaving office, Bush put in for a 9K deployment based on the new COIN-based OEF strategy.) Then, when Obama later conducted his own belated change-of-command strategic review of OEF, he found "no silver bullets", circled the block and reached a conclusion substantively the same as the revised Afghanistan strategy he inherited from President Bush.

Also, I omitted OEF/OIF "war czar" LTG Doug Lute as another key member of Bush's war team whom Obama retained on his war team for continuity. Lute, notably, was in charge of conducting Bush's final Afghanistan review.

Posted by: Eric December 09, 2009 at 08:33 AM

Eric

Senator Kerry report: TORA BORA REVISITED: HOW WE FAILED TO GET BIN LADEN AND WHY IT MATTERS TODAY

You can read Senator Kerry's report here. Release date is tomorrow, 30NOV09, and anticipates President Obama's speech on Afghanistan scheduled for 01DEC09.

For an in-depth response to Senator Kerry's report, I refer to Mudville Gazette's reaction here (part one) and here (part two).

There's nothing really new in the report. My reaction is that the Afghanistan invasion plan had, as any plan must have, strengths and weaknesses. In my opinion, the plan made sense. Speed was necessary. As it was, for diplomatic as well as practical reasons, Operation Enduring Freedom didn't begin until 07OCT01. Using airpower and Spec Ops organizing local 'Northern Alliance' forces as the stand-in for conventional forces allowed for the rapid deployment and invasion and surprisingly fast defeat of Taliban and al Qaeda forces. However, Tora Bora was and is notoriously difficult operational territory, worst case scenario stuff, which is why Osama bin Laden and his allies used it as a fall-back position. Moreso given the timeframe, Afghan forces presumably were immediately better prepared to operate as light infantry in the Afghan mountains compared to our conventional forces. Even our SF guys had trouble operating there, as evidenced by the battle of Takur Ghur in March 2002, which Oscar fought in as an Army Ranger.

The fact that Senator Kerry can be reasonably certain our SF guys had Osama bin Laden cornered in Dec 01 is a testament to the success of the SF and speed-based invasion plan. However, if Osama bin Laden was truly obtainable at that moment, what happened at that point may also be a testament to a weakness of the plan, ie, the shortage of Western military conventional mass and the reliability of our Afghan allies in hunting down al Qaeda, when presumably our allies were more concerned about wresting control of the country from the Taliban. Another possibility is that the necessary Western military elements were available, ie, an SF team fixing bin Laden's position while airpower and reinforcements (eg, QRF) were on stand-by, but a commander on the ground simply made the wrong cautious judgement. Or it may be the actions that reasonably could have been taken were taken and Senator Kerry is using his office to play partisan political blame-games. If I recall correctly, "Dalton Fury" in his 60 Minutes interview said airstrikes were called in on the position where bin Laden was believed to be. He believes we hit the right spot and that local Afghans got bin Laden out. I've also read that escaping al Qaeda and Taliban in Tora Bora used bluff surrender ploys to stall our forces while they escaped, which may have worked regardless of the size of the forces we had in the area.

We defeated the Taliban and al Qaeda in terms of controlling Afghanistan, but it can be more straightforward to achieve traditional military victory by occupying a country than it can for a nation to hunt down a single man or group of men. Senator Kerry's speculation about Osama bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora reminds me of the WWII stories about Nazi leaders escaping from Germany despite their defeated nation being thoroughly occupied and surrounded by millions of Soviet, American, and other nations' soldiers.

Be that as it may, if a different invasion plan was followed that emphasized Western conventional forces, would we have reached the same moment where bin Laden was cornered? Assuming we reached that moment, would it have been practical to have had an additional brigade-plus of conventional American infantry in the area on a moment's notice? And assuming they could have been there as a "blocking force" at that moment, would the additional troops have made a difference in stopping bin Laden's escape through the notorious Tora Bora? And, finally, even if bin Laden was killed or captured in Dec 01, would the post-war peace-building mission in Afghanistan be substantially changed today?

06DEC09 update: Doug Stanton takes the opposite tack and says we should have been more SF and less conventional in Afghanistan.

Eric

Understanding the Surge

Check out this educational website, Understanding the Surge, that discusses the counterinsurgency-based strategy shift in Iraq. It's important to understand what we did in Iraq after 2006 because our strategy adjustments in Afghanistan are based on what we changed in Iraq. Really, the only hope that justifies present-day optimism about the Afghanistan mission is that COIN worked in Iraq so it might work in Afghanistan.

Eric

In the wake of Nidal Hasan: The Power of Diversity

I wrote this article for my school paper, the Columbia Spectator, less than 2 months after the attacks of 9/11. I first posted it on my blog in December 2004. In the wake of the Nidal Hasan terrorist attack at Fort Hood, I'm bumping it up.

The Power of Diversity, published Friday 9 November 2001:

In our war against terrorism, diversity should be the greatest strength of the American people. Our country is not defined by any ethnicity or religion. We share a concept of country that embraces every person, no matter where he traces his family’s roots. Every language, every culture, every religion, every ethnicity, and every race of the world can be found in our American mosaic. To fight this war, our country should be able to draw upon an abundance of diverse human resources.

We have been raised, however, to think of our differences as a source of conflict. Politically correct culture has tried to downplay our differences when we should cherish our diversity and recognize that it makes us stronger people. Now that peacetime discourse has been replaced by wartime necessity, we have the opportunity to transform American diversity from a source of domestic conflict into a powerful weapon. The nation demands the unity of the American people in confronting our common enemy, but the diversity of the American people is the key to American victory.

Osama bin Laden, on his side, views our diversity as a weakness. Where President Bush has continually affirmed that the war on terrorism is not against Muslims, Osama bin Laden has defined the war along unmistakable ethnic and religious lines. His voice is louder than America’s voice in the Muslim world, and he has succeeded in winning the sympathy of many Muslims.

The United States has taken the lead in the war against Osama bin Laden’s terrorism, and we have the capability to defeat him. When isolated, the terrorists amount to no more than a radical fringe of particularly sophisticated bandits. But we cannot defeat terrorism if Osama bin Laden succeeds in polarizing Muslims against America. The war against terrorism is, in large part, a psychological war; therefore, winning the hearts and minds of the world’s Muslims is essential to the American war effort. Fortunately, within our diversity, we find a powerful weapon in the psychological fight: millions of Americans who are gifted with the right language, culture, and religion to appeal to the world’s Muslims on America’s behalf.

In building his terrorist organization, Osama bin Laden has proven to be an astute student of history and a master of propaganda. He appreciates the power of hate and has chosen the United States to be the scapegoat of his hate-driven campaign, much like the way Adolph Hitler once chose Europe’s Jews to focus his efforts. Terrorism represents a virulent form of destructive hate that is every bit as effective as Nazism in 1930s Germany. Like Hitler, Osama bin Laden has presented himself as an avenger of past wrongs, thus masking his murderous actions with pretences of a false victimization. Even as he defiles Islam, kills thousands of innocents, and foments a war that causes massive destruction among those he claims to represent, Osama bin Laden, by manipulating legitimate grievances, has successfully won the sympathy of many Muslims who would otherwise be in the best position to stop him. The unfortunate people who have chosen to support Osama bin Laden, such as the Taliban, are also victims of terrorism. In the unavoidable human cost of America’s battle against terrorism, the supporters of Osama bin Laden will pay the same penalty as the Nazi supporters in World War II.

Muslim Americans are in a unique position to aid the American war effort, both at home and abroad, while diminishing the overall casualties of the war. At home, many non-Muslim Americans lack an understanding of Islam and Islamic culture, which has allowed the fear generated by the terrorist attacks to have a deep impact on our country, particularly Muslim Americans. By engaging in the American war effort and educating non-Muslim Americans about their religion and culture, Muslim Americans can unify and strengthen the American people, while also negating the caustic fear that serves the terrorist enemy. As the face and voice of America abroad, Muslim Americans can effectively combat Osama bin Laden’s propaganda campaign in the Muslim world. By convincing the world’s Muslims to support America and not the terrorists, Muslim Americans can save many lives: those who do not support Osama bin Laden, after all, will not die on his behalf.

In our American diversity, we find our greatest advantage over the terrorists and our nation’s key to winning this war. All Americans share the same duty of service to our country. Muslim Americans, however, have a special opportunity to serve their country with a unique set of skills and abilities. With this war, Muslim Americans hold the power to change the course of American history, and in doing so, to join the annals of the greatest American heroes. Muslim Americans, in essence, have been given a rare chance to create a permanent niche in the hearts and minds of America.

Eric

Obama circling the block on Afghanistan

After some reflection, I agree with Fred Kaplan, Andrew Exum, and my supervisor (a USMCR Gunnery Sergeant recently returned from Iraq and contemplating a deployment to Afghanistan) that it's fair for President Obama to do his own review of the Afghanistan mission, even if he ultimately arrives at a very similar conclusion to that of President Bush.

Perception-wise, the main problem is that President Obama seemed certain about Afghanistan when he was Candidate Obama and earlier in his presidency, and that doesn't fit with his present uncertainty about Afghanistan.

It's important to note that it's not that we're doing nothing in Afghanistan right now. At minimum, Obama is continuing the status quo mission and COIN adjustments he inherited from Bush. As much as I wish Candidate Obama actually understood the Afghanistan situation as well as he claimed, so that he felt comfortable making these decisions earlier in his presidency, I think it's fair for President Obama to work through the problem for himself rather than simply accept the answers that have been presented to him. It'd be silly to believe the hype that President Bush didn't think thoroughly about the Afghanistan problem, but even so, it's understandable for Obama to hope to find something that Bush missed. That's a natural expectation for any change of command.

There just aren't any easy answers or good choices for the Afghanistan mission. The only reasonable reason for optimism for the mission is that COIN made a difference in Iraq and it might make a difference in Afghanistan. Ultimately, I suspect President Obama will circle the block and arrive at the same or similar conclusions as President Bush did.

Add: I also use 'circle the block' in this comment on Professor Nacos' blog describing another decision by President Obama.

Eric

RIP, Colonel Lew Millett

COL Lew Millett passed away on 14NOV09.

I spent several days with COL Millett, and his son Lee, in 2000 when I was tasked to serve as his driver for the 50th Anniversary of the Korean War commemoration in Korea.

COL Millett impressed me as a man with a deep love and belief in soldiers. Not healthy even then and seemingly tired much of the time, he came alive when around soldiers. One time, we made an impromptu stop on post as we were driving past soldiers who were conducting some kind of training setting up field operations. Their commanding officer, who was obviously in awe, gathered his troops and COL Millett gave them an unprepared heartfelt, motivational speech that made me tremendously proud to be an American soldier.

Two memories: COL Millett allowing me to hold and examine his Medal of Honor and the afternoon in the Yongsan Heritage Center he 'hung out' with MoH recipient Ola Mize. As a junior enlisted soldier, I was awed to be in the casual presence of two genuine, great American heroes.

Interesting fact: COL Millett inherited company command of E Co, 27 Inf Regt, 25ID from Medal of Honor (posthumous) recipient CPT Reginald Desiderio. They earned their Medals of Honor 3 months apart.

Well done, Sir. Be thou at peace.

Eric

Baking soda as dandruff treatment

It's working ... so far.

In the Army, I was diagnosed with seborrheic dermatitis. To fight it, I used dandruff shampoos with active ingredients zinc pyrithione or selenium sulfide. I haven't tried dandruff shampoos with salicylic acid, ketoconazole, tar, or sulfur.

Zinc pyrithione didn't work, but the selenium sulfide was effective for years. Supposedly, though, it's normal for dandruff shampoos to stop working when the scalp or perhaps the dandruff-causing fungus develops "resistance" to the active ingredient. That's what happened. Suddenly, one night my old, regular dandruff shampoo stopped working. After I showered, my entire scalp experienced a sudden all-over dry tightening sensation, itched, and that was that - my dandruff shampoo was ineffective. I tried zinc pyrithione again and it didn't work. I switched brands to another brand of dandruff shampoo that used selenium sulfide and it didn't work, either.

I continued using the selenium sulfide shampoo, even though it was no longer effective as an anti-dandruff agent, simply because it seemed wasteful not to use it up. I also was reluctant to try the expensive, seemingly harsher salicylic acid, ketoconazole, tar, or sulfur based shampoos. So, I resigned myself to the situation.

About 2 weeks ago, I googled the problem and found websites discussing natural remedies for dandruff, including baking soda or sodium bicarbonate. (Another popular natural remedy is apple cider vinegar.) Baking soda works against dandruff supposedly due to its mildly abrasive ex-foliating and fungicidal properties. It appealed to me because it's natural, I have a box of it at home I wasn't using, and the method is uncomplicated. So, for the last 2 weeks, I've used baking soda to wash my hair. The 1st week, I applied a rough palmful of baking soda per daily wash and emptied half the 1 lb box in the process. The 2nd week, I've tried much less baking soda per daily hair wash, about 1 teaspoonful mixed with water, and it's been as effective.

So far so good. The baking soda has substantially reduced the dandruff since the 1st time I used it. After 2 weeks, I'm pleased with the result and plan to continue washing my hair with baking soda. My scalp itches far less, though it still itches somewhat; I don't know whether the residual itch is due to the dandruff condition or the baking soda treatment. I purposely skipped washing my hair one day to see whether the dandruff would recur. It didn't, although I decided not to push my luck by skipping a 2nd day. I just hope the baking soda doesn't stop working at some point like the dandruff shampoo did.

Baking soda has many other suggested household cleaning and hygiene uses and is touted as a cheaper, natural alternative to commercial cleaning products. With my success so far with baking soda as a dandruff treatment, I'm tempted to experiment with baking soda for other suggested uses such as teeth whitener and a booster for laundry detergent and bleach.

Eric

Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood murders

The murders by Nidal Hasan on Fort Hood on Thursday are bad enough in and of themselves. But making his act worse is that Hasan was a field-grade Army officer with the sacred duty to lead and care for soldiers, moreso as a psychiatrist and, therefore, medical doctor. (He's still alive, but while Hasan still holds his commission and license, I am loath to consider him a doctor and officer any longer.) As such, Hasan's crime is a gross betrayal of everything that was honorable and beneficial about who he was.

Hasan acted out as a radical Islamic terrorist (yes, he's a terrorist - it's an obsolete notion that Islamic terrorists are limited to card-carrying, dues-paying members of recognized Islamic terrorist organizations), but he reminds me more of recent high-profile murderers George Sodini, Seung-Hui Cho, and Charles Carl Roberts. They were mentally diseased men. Hasan's acts likely will cause honorable Muslim American soldiers to be scrutinized and perhaps alienated in a profession in which shared trust is essential, and I would not be surprised if Hasan intended for that to happen. Rather than turn on our own, though, I hope and trust the military community will instead reaffirm the fraternal bonds among soldiers.

Here's the statement from APAAM on the Fort Hood shootings:

STATEMENT ON FORT HOOD SHOOTINGS FROM ASSOCIATION OF PATRIOTIC ARAB AMERICANS IN THE MILITARY

At a time of deep sorrow in the midst of this horrific tragedy, our thoughts are first and foremost with the Fort Hood shooting victims and their families. One can only imagine the unspeakable pain and loss they are and will be dealing with in the weeks, months and years to come.

It is unfortunate that whatever demons possessed Nidal Hasan, that he chose to deal with his problems in this way.

In the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, it is more important than ever that we not make the same scapegoating and broad stroke mistakes that were evident in the aftermath of previous tragedies. The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military urges the media, government officials and all of our fellow Americans to recognize that the actions of Hasan are those of a deranged gunman, and are in no way representative of the wider Arab American or American Muslim community.

In fact, thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard. Additionally, many of us have willingly stepped forward to fulfill our duty with our fellow soldiers in both Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations around the globe, including most of the member of APAAM. Indeed, many of us are today currently deployed in both countries, honorably serving each and every day.

There have been three Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to three of our nation's heroes. One of those heroes is Arab American Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, US Navy.

About APAAM
The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military (APAAM) was created shortly after September 11th, 2001, in an effort to organize current and former Arab- Americans in the military. There are approximately 3,500 Arab- Americans serving in our Armed Forces. Based on the fact that there are no other formal organizations representing Arab- Americans in the military, APAAM has the distinction of being the first official organization for Arab- Americans in the Military.

Media Contact:
Ray Hanania
APAAM Media Coordinator, Vietnam Era Veteran
rayhanania@comcast.net

Eric

Winners always want the ball when the game's on the line.

Here's another resonant quote from one of my favorite movies, the under-appreciated The Replacements:

Shane Falco: I read Blitz!
Coach McGinty: [confronts Falco] Winners always want the ball when the game's on the line.

I've failed to live up to this principle and my failure must stop. I would add to the Coach McGinty quote that winners want the ball when the game's on the line - even when they fail, which happens.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

My mom gave me hard news, but it's not devastating yet, at least until the test results come back. It's incentive to clarify, focus, and accelerate what I'm doing with my life.

After winning 8-5 in Philadelphia last night, the Yankees are up 2-1 on the Phillies in the World Series. I'd like to see the Phillies win. I thought about rooting for the Yankees because they're a NYC team, I'm not an anti-Yankees Mets fan, and I usually root for the team that defeated my team to be eliminated as soon as possible. I can't hate on the Phillies like that, though, because the last 3 years, ever since Carlos Beltran struck out looking with the bases loaded, making the last out against the Cardinals in Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS, the Mets have defeated themselves. They've choked, whereas the Phillies have developed into a high character team that combines their talent with hard-nosed, resilient tenacity. They're a tougher team than the Mets and I respect them as champions.

I'd like to get Bobby Valentine back as Mets manager.

Knicks and Nets both look like bottom-dwellers this season. Knicks are holding out for Lebron James and/or Dwyane Wade and the Nets are holding out for a move to Brooklyn. It's doubtful either will happen.

Eric

Thoughts of the day

Shoe recommendation: I've been using Florsheim Jamie shoes (size 12 3E) for work for about a year. I've probably exceeded the recommended lifetime of the shoe, because the inside liner is shredded and the fancy Comfortech insole pads have holes worn into them. I've even paid to change the heels and back inside liner to extend the shoes' life. The shoes have served me well. The shoes are exceptionally light, they're comfortable - more than running shoes even, and I like their traditional look. Downside is that the soles are on the thin side and prone to wear out.

Interesting blog: Half Sigma, a pseudonymous blogger who's a Stuy grad and NYC lawyer. He often discusses human biodiversity and links to other thought-provoking, non politically correct blogs. One of the blogs he regularly references, Roissy in DC, reminds me again how wrong I've been about women. I still find 'game' repellent and resist it, but it's hard to deny the obvious. His observation fits my experience. On a recent night out with co-workers, a female co-worker spoke derisively of an ex-boyfriend's pained reaction to her initial rejection; while my romantic idealist reaction was that he displayed deep romantic feeling, she responded women want men who are "strong". From Roissy's perspective, my attempted "court" in Korea, which I've viewed as the best I could give Traci, would be the opposite of what I should have done. In the lingo, my actions were classic "beta", and I can't deny that everything I tried to bring us closer not only failed, but actually made her colder towards me. Moreover, the pattern has been that as I've tried harder to earn their love, my room for error and their tolerance for me have shrunk. Add: Indicative of things I know but have refused to accept, two of my years-old Spec columns back up Roissy's message: Undercover Brother and A Love Story. From Undercover Brother (Iceberg Slim): "some quantum of pimp in every man would perhaps enhance his approach to women". From A Love Story (SPC Sanders): "it is far better to be with the woman who loves you than to be with the woman you love". Add: Words to live by: "For the man who truly wants the life that most men dream about, a multi-front attack improving his finances, physical well-being, and game, with one eye on the ticking clock, is the only way to go."

Barefoot running makes sense to me - I'm going to look into it. When I was in Basic Training, a drill sergeant (who had a busted foot!) made fun of me for running on the balls of my feet. At West Point, an upperclassman criticized me for walking on the balls of my feet. Others in my life have pointed out, less meanly, that I tend to walk on the balls of my feet. My intuitive logic was that landing on the balls of my feet and easing onto my heels provides more spring and less jolt on the landing, whereas a heel strike transfers energy directly through the heel up through my joints. Indeed, although I'm not an athlete and suffered from occasional bouts of knee pain as a teenager, I seemed to experience fewer foot and leg problems than most of my fellow soldiers. Eventually, I was shamed into walking with a heel-toe step and I wonder if that contributed to my foot problems earlier this year.

Stuy bowling - my high school obsession and my biggest regret. I just happened to be walking by Stuy on Thursday night and just happened to pick up a dirty copy of the Stuy Spectator off the steps by the turn-off to BMCC. In it is an article about the boys varsity bowling team, now called the Hookers. EXCERPT: “Last year, the school had very little money to practice, maybe two practices each season for the past couple of years,” coach Timothy Pon said. “This year, we have a bit more money for practices.” According to Pon, each player on the team gets to bowl one game at practice, making the total cost of each practice $69.70. The extra money allows the team to schedule more practices in order to improve their game. My first impulse was to get on the phone Friday and ask Mr. Pon or AP Larry Barth how to donate 100 dollars to pay for an additional practice. Reviewing the team's performance this season, though, I doubt it'll make a difference for the play-offs. The team's best bowlers are 150 average level, no Noel Vega's or Jeff Piroozshad's among them. I'll probably try to donate money for an extra team practice, anyway, because that's what nostalgic, loyal, aging alumni do. 09DEC09 Update: Stuy deposited my $100 check. Not surprisingly, the money didn't help their play-off performance, which was okay, because my donation was mostly for my cherished memory.

I’m thinking about the Second Amendment. On the ground level, it seems downright dangerous to allow the “right to bear arms” when crime and anti-social behaviors are facts of life, moreso in the cities where millions of strangers co-exist uncomfortably in close proximity. In other Western liberal societies, gun control is a non-issue: private ownership of firearms is not allowed. But our American founding fathers codified the right to bear arms as a means for the American people to resist external threats and the individual citizen to protect against a potentially tyrannical government. A presupposition of the 2nd Amendment was the universal participation of a universally armed citizenry in militias ready to respond at any time to a call to arms. Within those classic opposing arguments, I tend to fall on the side of gun control, i.e., there’s more to fear from uncontrolled guns on the streets than from government oppression or an invading foreign army. Recently, though, I’ve been thinking that the Second Amendment serves an important cultural function in American society: a placeholder for the preservation of violence as an essential component of what our men need to be. We men are the natural providers, competitors, enforcers, and defenders of home, family, and community. Within the context of our social duties, we should each value and understand how and why to use violence. My model for this aspect of manhood is soldiers. Soldiers are one of the principal manifestations of manly social responsibility and they are taught simultaneously to master violence and control it. I fear abolishing the Second Amendment would have the destructive effect of removing violence from the culture of American men. I want to think more about this.

Closing thoughts: Gotta do my laundry; I'd like to catch some of the Yankees and Giants games.

Eric

Skelton and Lieberman on Afghanistan

The latest example of why I 'voted' for Senator Lieberman in 2006:

Washington Post: Don't Settle for Stalemate in Afghanistan
By Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman
Sunday, October 18, 2009

EXCERPT: "Six months ago the Obama administration concluded that the only way to stop Afghanistan's slide into insecurity and prevent the reemergence of a terrorist haven was to put in place an integrated counterinsurgency strategy focused on protecting the Afghan population, building up the Afghan national security forces and improving Afghan governance. . . . We strongly supported the president's decision and continue to believe that he was right."

Read the whole thing.

Eric

Watch Frontline's Obama's War

Watch this Frontline special to better understand the debate over President Obama's decision for Afghanistan. Andrew Exum recommends it and that's good enough for me.

I gotta get into this fight.

Eric

President Obama reaffirms pledge to end DADT law

WSJ: Obama to End 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Military Policy

Mr. President, just DO IT already, so can we end a stupid policy and eliminate the current most obvious obstacle to restoring ROTC at Columbia.

On its own merits, ending DADT is the right thing to do. The secondary effects of DADT - discouragement to serve, stigmatization, and notion that sexual orientation is a determinative factor for soldiering ability - should end. Military service should be inclusive of all Americans who are able and willing to do the job and their citizen's duty, and being gay has no effect on being a good (or poor) soldier. Many gay soldiers have served with honor while bearing the burden of DADT and many soldiers - gay and straight - support ending DADT.

More, via the Gay Patriot blog: Joint Forces Quarterly essay The Efficacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, Knights Out - an advocacy group of LGBT West Pointers I joined as an ally, and this exchange between Elaine Donnelly and Knights Out founder LT Dan Choi.

Eric

President Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize

On Friday, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This NY Times columnist says a common reaction was "shock followed by laughter", the news becoming a comic convergence of truth and caricature. I was bemused when a co-worker told me the news - the president hasn't accomplished anything to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. On its face, the award seems like a repudiation of President Bush's muscular liberalism, an award to the new American president for his rhetoric about global consensus and cooperation, and an endorsement for an America that continues to express liberal ideals but without the attendant dynamic exercises of power and leadership demands of others to actually advance them.

An interesting aspect is the reflection upon the Norwegian Nobel Committee's intent from the nominees who were passed over. I couldn't find a listing of the nominees on-line, but this article points to some of their backgrounds: "Speculation had focused on Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman's rights activist."

In terms of a political statement, choosing Tsvangirai, a Chinese dissident, or an Afghan woman's rights activist for the Nobel Peace Prize might have conveyed a call to action that the liberal West ought to better actively support the heroic liberal reformers fighting for change in illiberal non-Western parts of the world. Unfortunately, the current vogue of "peace" in the West (or at least Norway) is to be conciliatory and accomodating of illiberal regimes rather than bear the costs of challenging them, even if that means abandoning any realistic pressure to reform and, more poignantly, the local liberal reformers who rely upon Western support.

My hope is his Nobel Peace Prize will help President Obama rally the West in the War on Terror and advance the liberal strategy he inherited from President Bush, but I suspect the Nobel Committee does not mean to help us advance our version of peace, and instead, means to devalue American exceptionalism.

Eric

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

The compelling feature of the hierarchy, both for social political and personal implications, is that development must follow the order of actualization from the bottom up in order to be healthy and stable. In political philosophy, Maslow's hierarchy is Hobbesian, ie, the duty of the sovereign is safety first, but also "contentments" up the pyramid.

More here.

Eric

Seneca Wallace is starting!

News: Seattle starting QB Matt Hasselback has a broken rib, so Seneca Wallace will start this week, Chicago at Seattle 4:05 PM on FOX. I hope I get to watch it.

UPDATE: I didn't get to watch the game and the Seahawks lost. Wallace only rushed once with no gain. I hope next week - if Wallace is still starting - the Seahawks' offense package better blends his scrambling skills with his passing skills.

Eric

About Afghanistan

With the War on Terror debate concentrating on OEF and Afghanistan, here is a comment I just made in response to Columbia Professor Brigitte Nacos' recent post about Afghanistan:

Professor Nacos,

This link is to a comment I made on your blog last July for a similar post: http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2008/07/bushs-final-pus.html

Regarding Afghanistan:

The problem is ... Afghanistan and Pakistan taken together, that border which blocks us but not the enemy, and an enemy who is not and never was bound to Afghanistan and is at least multi-regionally mobile.

With US and allied forces constrained by that border, President Bush initially pressured, funded, and relied upon Pakistan, under President Musharraf, to police its own country across that uncrossable border. The dubious result led us to the cross-border drone-missile and SF strategy currently employed. However, due to al Qaeda's increasing attacks against Pakistan, post-Musharraf Pakistan has seemed more willing to directly confront al Qaeda. Will the result be better? We can hope.

NATO's performance in Afghanistan has disappointed. While the US has been accused of allocating resources to Iraq that could have been used in Afghanistan (setting aside whether the cost/benefit of Iraq outweighed the cost/benefit of Afghanistan), NATO cannot be so blamed. While NATO's performance in Afghanistan has been wanting, I understand the historical notion of Afghanistan as mission impossible is more deeply rooted in our allies' collective European memory than ours.

Through lessons learned by the Brits and the Soviets, Afghanistan has long been viewed as the mission impossible for the West. President Clinton understood the difficulty of Afghanistan; therefore, Clinton limited our nation's response to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite its highly visible basing there, even while attacks on US and other Western targets escalated throughout the 1990s.

Upon 9/11, our nation, led by President Bush, was compelled to invade Afghanistan and dislodge al Qaeda and, when they affirmed their allegiance to al Qaeda, the Taliban government. Indeed, our invasion of Afghanistan accomplished its (immediate) main objective.

However, President Bush - while committed by events to an Afghanistan occupation - like his predecessor, understood both the strategic limits and myriad difficulties of an Afghanistan occupation. Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, President Obama, by his reluctance thus far to deviate from his predecessor's strategy (including the drone strikes and SF missions in Pakistan) and commitment of resources for OEF, appears to share his predecessor's view of the difficulty of Afghanistan.

Said more plainly, from the beginning, we could not win the War on Terror within the borders of Afghanistan, despite its obvious relevance to al Qaeda's campaign against the West. This is why Operation Iraqi Freedom was the right choice and the counter-insurgency "Surge" in Iraq so critical: from the beginning, an Iraq intervention, unlike an Afghanistan intervention, could provide the potential cornerstone for long-term victory in the War on Terror. Moreover, the basis for our Iraq intervention was already in place, developed under President Clinton.

Where does this leave us today in Afghanistan? Two men trying to do the same hard job under the same constraints - there's a reason President Obama's decisions as Commander in Chief have tracked so closely with President Bush's. Today, however, President Obama can make a choice in Afghanistan that President Bush could not make in Afghanistan due to the gift Bush gave to his successor, developed in Iraq at the end of the Bush administration: COIN.

Can an OEF version of the "Surge" work in Afghanistan? Even assuming it can work, can our NATO allies execute COIN or will American soldiers, again, be forced to act as a hybrid soft/hard power force? With so many military leaders opposed to the use of our military as anything other than a war-fighting force, will our military agree to act again as a COIN force for Obama in Afghanistan as they reluctantly did for Bush in Iraq?

Tough decisions: while deserving of his share of criticism, a young President Bush admirably made tough decisions as Commander in Chief in the War on Terror. As Secretary of State Clinton questioned during the campaign, we'll find out whether a young President Obama will make his tough "3 am" decisions, too.

In my comment is a link to my comment responding to a similar post by Prof Nacos last July.

Add: My response to critics who say the Bush administration should have used the resources utilized in Iraq since 2003 for Afghanistan instead is that the problem has been method (or quality), less quantity. On 60 Minutes tonight, OEF commander GEN Stanley McChrystal blamed the "bad habits" or method of our mission there since we ousted the Taliban government. So, question: if our problem in Afghanistan chiefly has been method, then assuming we invested all the manpower and resources into Afghanistan since 2003 that was used on Iraq, would doing so have solved or exacerbated our problems in Afghanistan? If the problem and solution rests in method, then our current (relatively) best hope for Afghanistan - COIN - didn't exist for Afghanistan until the COIN method and proponents were validated in Iraq. As such, simply adding more manpower and resources in Afghanistan pre-COIN would not have helped and may have harmed. The fair counter is to speculate whether COIN could have been developed in Afghanistan instead of Iraq, but I would respond that the conditions for success were better in Iraq and the strategic value of Iraq was and is higher, i.e., Iraq was the better theater to first implement COIN. Not to be minimized, the enemy also valued Iraq higher and it would not have made sense to concede Iraq to the enemy for the sake of Afghanistan. Until last year, OEF amounted to a holding action, and as the enemy has retreated from Iraq and refocused on Afghanistan/Pakistan, our focus there necessarily must increase, too. It's a competition.

UPDATE - my response to Prof Nacos' response:

Professor Nacos,

Thank you. I did major in political science at Columbia; I like to believe my professors taught me something worthy of the pedigree. ;)

I respectfully disagree with your analysis of the War on Terror.

First, two related observations:

a. What's called neo-conservatism is just the progressive (interventionalist) liberalism of Wilson, FDR, and Truman, renamed. The bashing of neo-conservatism by self-described Western liberals, therefore, has led to the frustrating, self-defeating spectacle of influential people speaking liberal platitudes but quixotically opposing our definitively liberal strategy in the War on Terror. The effect of these liberals' tragic hypocrisy has been the degradation of the Western liberalizing influence on the illiberal regions of the world.

b. President Bush demanded more from the Western liberal world to confront the aggressive challengers to our liberal world order. Many did respond to America's call to action, but a disappointing number refused and chose instead to vilify the so-called 'leader of the free world'. Will the more charismatic President Obama, who speaks the same liberal language as Bush, succeed in rallying the Western world for the same liberal cause in the same places where Bush was rejected? My hope is Obama succeeds. But the citation accompanying Obama's Nobel Peace Prize is an indication that at least Western European liberals believe America under Obama will ask less of them than Bush, not more, and that's a bad sign.

Second, a poli sci question:

Would a greater influx of American funds, resources, and manpower (added to the billions spent and many thousands of peace-builders deployed by us and other Western GOs, IGOs and GOs) in Afghanistan over the last 8 years have actually made a difference in terms of nation-building that country?

Maybe. I mean, how do we prove a counter-factual, right? Putting aside the distinct possibility that Afghanistan is mission impossible as a nation-building project, I can still say that, with the intrinsic challenges of Afghanistan + that border, the answer is likely not as simple as more US money/resources + more US soldiers = nation-building success. The missing critical third leg of the equation is method. By method, I do not mean piece-meal efforts like the admirable PRTs, military Civil Affairs and Engineering units, Army Human Terrain project, USAID, UN et al orgs, deployed in Afghanistan since the war. I mean a comprehensive, integrated theater-wide post-war strategy.

In fact, in a recent 60 Minutes interview, GEN McChrystal blamed our mistakes in Afghanistan to date on a failure of "method" in order to explain the radical ROE et al changes he's implemented since taking over as OEF commander.

Consider: your premise is that the current poor state of OEF is due to US resources diverted from post-war Afghanistan to post-war Iraq. Well then, consider post-war Iraq. Despite the tremendous (really, mind-boggling) amount that was invested in post-war Iraq and despite that Iraq offered much superior conditions for nation-building than Afghanistan (which is as much a statement on how bad off Afghanistan is), our Iraq intervention still nearly came to disaster. Only when the COIN method with attendant troop "Surge" was employed in Iraq, against tremendous US domestic opposition, did our Iraq intervention turn around. In fact, OIF was turned around despite that the "Surge", even at its height, did not come close to employing the number of US troops in-country as recommended by GEN Shinseki et al. Under the right conditions, the right method can make a really big difference. Given the surprising speed with which OIF turned around with the "Surge", it's plausible that the initial overly optimistic projections for post-war Iraq would have proven more realistic had we employed the COIN method in Iraq from the immediate post-war transition.

To answer my own question, would OEF be a success today if we didn't divert resources to OIF? It's tempting to think so, but I doubt it, because we entered the War on Terror lacking the right post-war nation-building method for either Afghanistan or Iraq. (That systemic deficiency wasn't Bush's fault; it was the institutional fault of a US military traumatized by the Vietnam War defeat into believing that if it did not develop nation-building capability then it would not be called upon again by a US president to nation-build. Naturally, an intelligent observant enemy exploited the obvious gap in our military capabilities by attacking us vigorously in the SASO/post-war phase.) Therefore, because we lacked the right method for post-war Afghanistan, I am not convinced more US money/resources + more US soldiers would have ='d more nation-building success in Afghanistan.

Today, due to the tenacity of visionaries like GEN Petraeus and Bush's "3 am" presidential decision to employ the COIN "Surge" in OIF, we at least have a working method to plausibly attempt nation-building in Afghanistan. That said, even though Obama has in hand the COIN choice that neither Bush nor Clinton had, it is apparent that the challenge of post-war Afghanistan is as intimidating for Obama as it was for Clinton and Bush (and Reagan and Bush Sr for that matter). Comparing the presidential decisions faced by the two presidents, Bush's choice to double-down in Iraq was easier than Obama's choice today: Iraq has much higher immediate, long-term, and regional strategic value (the reason why the terrorists also diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq until defeated there) and Iraq is a much better candidate for nation-building than Afghanistan, whereas we can lose a lot in Afghanistan without gaining much benefit even from a nation-building success.

It must be awfully tempting to the current Commander in Chief to give in to the military leaders who opposed COIN under Bush and continue to oppose COIN today, abandon nation-building in Afghanistan, and limit OEF to a kinetic warfare battle-zone.

Third, about those "made up" justifications for OIF:

The Bush admin case for war against Saddam's Iraq was hardly original. Their case against Saddam's Iraq was essentially the Clinton admin case against Saddam's Iraq. The WMD - and more broadly, the Iraqi violations of UN resolutions - rationale was the same rationale Clinton used to bomb Iraq when it had, as President Clinton declared, "failed its last chance" ... except Clinton the lawyer understood well enough not to seek UN approval for military force, unlike Bush, who's his father's son. Possible ties and verified contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda was Clinton-era intelligence. It's a partisan myth, or possibly just lazy media shorthand, that the Bush admin cited Iraq as an actor of the 9/11 attacks. OIF was never characterized as retaliation for 9/11, hence, the characterizations of a preventive or preemptive war. In addition to the Clinton admin case, however, the Bush admin did suggest that with al Qaeda's successful example as guide, Saddam's Iraq - due to our poisonous relationship, the global WMD 'black market', and Saddam's track record - was a good candidate to be an actor in future terror attacks, possibly using WMD, via its own capability or in alliance with al Qaeda.

My personal case for supporting OIF is pessimistic in that I believe we had to change course in Iraq, with or without the 9/11 attacks, and in fact, the 9/11 attacks were a result of our 1990s mission there. 1991-2003 Iraq for us was a failed mission that had morphed quickly after the Gulf War from finite disarmament, meant to leave known-quantity Saddam Hussein in charge but de-fanged, into an indefinite, highly provocative, widely harmful, and collapsing containment that was discrediting us and the UN. When I served as a MI soldier before college, part of our job was to track world events that affected the US military. As we watched the mission in Iraq fall apart, it was consensus our return to Iraq would be 'when', not 'if'. Saddam's Iraq was not a direct actor in the 9/11 attacks, but the 9/11 attacks provided the impetus to make a change in Iraq we needed to make eventually. Without the 9/11 attacks, who knows how many US presidents would have punted on the Saddam's Iraq problem - at least until our containment mission collapsed completely.

For an optimistic case supporting OIF, I defer to Thomas Barnett:
http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/esquire2004.htm

Eric

Irving Kristol

Irving Kristol, the father of neoconservativism, died on Friday September 18th. Read some selected quotes in the Wall Street Journal, for which Kristol was often a columnist.

Eric

9/11/2009

The eighth anniversary of the al Qaeda terrorist strikes on our homeland, including my hometown, reminds me that I have not done my part.

Thanks to Tigerhawk, a 2005 anniversary round-up of links about 9/11.

It was drizzling and dreary today. From my window at work this morning, I heard some bagpipes and saw a little bit of the police procession.

Eric

Random thoughts

Teenage Dakota Fanning is starting to look like Mama Mia's Amanda Seyfried. It's going to be interesting to discover what kind of person and actress Fanning turns into as an adult. She has the potential to be a heart-breaker, or not.

Free Seneca Wallace! I hope Seattle Seahawks' QB Seneca Wallace gets a chance to lead a team. In the limited times I've watched him play, he's been exciting and electric - a fast and quick runner with a lightning release and laser throws on the run. The fact that he's short for his position (but not as short as Doug Flutie) just means he has to play out of the pocket more, which makes him more fun to watch. At 29 years old, Wallace is in his prime and the clock is ticking.

David Wright did look pretty funny wearing his special concussion-proof batting helmet. The Great Gazoo and big-boy helmet came to mind. Hopefully, he ditched it for performance reasons and not because he was sensitive to the ribbing.

Sasha Grey is interesting. I'm rooting for her.

Obama's State Department substantively backs former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya while his Justice Department mounts a public campaign against CIA operatives. Meanwhile, there are growing calls to disengage from OEF in Afghanistan without a determined push-back in support of the mission from the White House. Not good.

On a related tangent, I don't get the controversy over President Obama speaking to the nation's schoolchildren. He is, after all, the president of the United States. Obama isn't the first and won't be the last president. It's not their most important job, but as the nation's leading civic leader, isn't engaging American kids part of what a president can and even should do? Since when has it been controversial when the president of the United States addresses American schoolchildren? Our internal politics is weird and destructive these days. I wonder whether it's time for a viable 3rd party to re-emerge.

Lawfare. Note to self: study this.

Eric

Newest Washington Post story about Human Terrain in Afghanistan

With thanks to the always-excellent Small Wars Journal, read Rough Terrain by Vanessa M. Gezari about the Army's Humain Terrain program.

Lede: "Under an experimental program in Afghanistan, teams of anthropologists and social scientists are working alongside soldiers to help win the war by winning over the Afghan people. It may seem like a brilliant idea. But in this battle, nothing is as it seems."

Key quote: "[Human Terrain social scientist Karl Slaikeu] eventually decided to join but still harbored misgivings. As he went through the four-month training at Fort Leavenworth, he reevaluated the project, he said. He was still doing that in Maywand, watching for anything that might jeopardize ethical standards by endangering local people.

"It just hasn't come," he said, "and I've been looking for it.""

This stuff excites me. I've asked before, and I'll ask again: how do I get into this line of work? Given my latest career choice, how do I get into this line of work as a lawyer? Should I join a CA unit as a JAG? Should I dual-degree - would that be my best 'in'?

Eric

Conflicted about Eric Holder

On one hand, I want to support AG Eric Holder as a fellow Stuyvesant and Columbia alumnus (though we diverge at our respective law schools), and I believe African-American success has historically paved the way for other-minority success (though, in this case, hispanic AG Alberto Gonzales recently held the same job). On the other hand, his very public prosecution initiative against CIA operatives and Bush admin officials over the War on Terror is troubling; more so given that these issues were already handled with discretion by the CIA and DOJ in 2004.

Read Obama-fan Tom Barnett on this issue. Bonus article, also in Esquire, about John Yoo.

Eric

Posts with "Traci"

I'm curious how many blog posts there are in which I've mentioned her name. So, I decided to count. Criterium is "Traci" in the post, which leaves out a few posts which I had her in mind while writing but didn't use her name. On the other hand, some of the posts that mention her name aren't about her. The answer is 32, including this post, as of 14FEB13.

Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
The Phantom of the Opera teaches red pill
Thoughts of the day
Hurricane Irene Thoughts
Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Posts with Traci
Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Thoughts of the day
Lesson of my stars
Topol in Fiddler on the Roof and Lisey's Story
Thoughts of the day
Shortcomings and "Don't do this to me"
The Traci log
The dulling of age
Stand down
Note to self: avoid touching romance stories
Korean rom-com: My Sassy Girl (2001)
Bye Traci
Movie Recommendation: Knocked Up
Bachelorhood
Observation of the day: in-person beauty not always photogenic
Stream of consciousness musings
Blog - Almost 40-Year-Old Virgin - got me to thinking . . .
I haven't posted in a while . . .
Every night I ask the stars up above, why must I be a teenager in love?
Oppa
John Gray's Mars and Venus on a Date
Thoughts of the moment
Memorable quotes from Shane Falco

Eric

Interesting rules for radicals

From a Tigerhawk post, a short NY Times article about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Interesting.

Also, unrelated, watched Quentin Tarantino's new movie Inglorious Basterds today. Typically entertaining and confident Tarantino flick.

Eric