OxBlog

2009-12-31T13:23:00.001-05:00

EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC... (PART II): The cover of the current issue of the New Republic blares, The Battle for Tora Bora: The Untold Story. It's a good article, but it's actually an old story. Some of the details are new, but I think it's been at least five years since we've known that Bin Laden was cornered in the caves of Tora Bora in December of 2001, but the chain of command rejected a request to send in US ground forces. Instead we sent in some Afghan militia and Bin Laden got away.

The individual clearly responsible for this bad decision was Gen. Tommy Franks, the US commander of all forces in the region. Yet Peter Bergen, the story's author, seems less concerned with explaining Franks' flawed decision than with tantalizing hints that perhaps Bush and Rumsfeld's early interest in Iraq somehow led Franks' astray.

The twist, however, is that exposing GOP hawks' incompetence in the past serves the purpose of scoring points against liberal doves in the present. Bergen writes,

Bin Laden was clearly at Tora Bora, and sending so few troops was indeed a major failure. It’s a lesson that bears remembering today as the United States continues to pursue Islamist militants in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: In the hunt for members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, there is simply no substitute for boots on the ground. Afghan proxies, Pakistani soldiers, drones--these are not unimportant tools in the war on terrorism. But they are not effective substitutes for U.S. troops. If we want to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri--and other top Al Qaeda leaders--we are probably going to have to do it ourselves.

So, next time a lefty protests' Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan, I will say, "Even the liberal New Republic..."

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-31T13:19:00.001-05:00

EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC...publishes enough cliche polemics to justify the adjective "liberal". Now, it is certainly true that TNR generates enough heresy to justify its reputation as much more than a liberal meat grinder. That's why I have a subscription. But TNR also provides enough simplistic GOP-bashing to fortify the perpetually indignant, self-satisfied liberal intellectualism to which so many of its readers subscribe.

Case in point: The Rise of Republican Nihilism by Jonathan Chait. Here's a sample paragraph:

One observer dismissed DeMint’s [stimulus] plan thusly: “It is not innovative or particularly clever. In fact, it’s only eleven pages.” Oddly enough, this observer was DeMint himself, talking up his proposal in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. On the contemporary right, it is a mark of intellectual integrity that even a massive economic cataclysm would not prompt any revising of one’s economic prescription.

Clearly, DeMint was trying to score points by comparing his 11-page plan to the dictionary-length democratic alternative. Yet for Chait, DeMint's self-denigration suddenly becomes evidence of catastrophic intellectual rigidity.

Here's another example:

The quintessential moment in the health care debate came when Senator Lamar Alexander objected to Democratic attempts to weed out Medicare waste: “If you’re going to find some savings in waste, fraud, and abuse in Grandma’s Medicare,” he proclaimed, “spend it on Grandma.” Consider this as an ethical proposition: Alexander is saying that every dollar of Medicare is sacrosanct, that even those dollars he concedes provide zero public benefit must stay in the program. We live in a country where the occasional appearance of a roving charitable medical clinic will prompt thousands of desperate people to line up in parking lots for hours on end, to help mitigate their suffering. And yet, Republicans will not countenance the shift of even indisputably wasted resources to help them.

Impressively, Chait elevates Sen. Alexander's anodyne talking point into conclusive evidence of the GOP's cold-hearted intellectual rigor mortis. This kind of logic is one of the perils of being so smart. Sometimes, you fall into the trap of believing that being smarter means being right.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-09T18:17:00.000-05:00

POLANSKI'S ART: Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I finally had the chance to watch Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. It isn't the story of Polanski's own survival, although it seems natural to conclude that Polanski was able to evoke the Holocaust so effectively because he lived through it himself. He lost his mother to Auschwitz and survived in hiding with a Polish family.

Before Polanski's arrest, I didn't know much about his conviction for sex with a minor. For some reason, I thought he was tried for a consensual statutory violation. Nor did I realize he was convicted.

Knowing this much about the director forcibly changed my perception of the film. The suffering is so intense that you get lost in the film, only to wake up suddenly and wonder how a man who knows suffering so intimately could perpetrate such cruelty on a 13-year-old girl.

The answer to that question is found partly in the film. Victims of the Holocaust are often portrayed as noble and stoic. Yet Polanski also shows how the Nazis' brutality dehumanized and debased their victims, so that many of them committed acts as disgusting as those of their oppressors.

Yet Polanski understood that, too.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-09T18:15:00.000-05:00

DEATH THREATS FOR OBAMA: Four times as many as death threats for Bush? More? For his most passionate supporters, it is only natural to think of this young, charismatic and inspirational leader as another potential JFK, RFK or MLK Jr. (Although I doubt we'll ever call him BHO.)

Yet it was Kevin Drum of all people who noted that according to Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan that the number of threats against the president is "at the same level" as it was during the previous two administrations. The day after Kevin's post, the NY Times published a long story about threats against the president, which according to unnamed sources, includes a "big increase in threats against Mr. Obama took place in the first four months of his presidency," but have leveled off since.

Some pundits are still playing catch-up, though. On Sunday morning, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, asserted that "I think we have to be worried about egregious security lapses. This president, I believe, has received a record number of death threats."

Let's hope the threats stay down or go even lower.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-09T18:13:00.001-05:00

WHERE WAS BARACK OBAMA ON SUNDAY MORNING? The White House sent Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton out on Sunday morning to do a set of joint interviews on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week. (Fox had to settle for Gen. Petraeus. CNN got Jim Jones.)

After his address to the nation on healthcare reform, Obama himself made the rounds on Sunday morning. I'm inclined to think that the President didn't want to face the music this time, since there are so many contradictions in his policy and public statements for the interviewers to exploit. Better to let cabinet officials take the heat. On NBC, David Gregory reminded both Gates and Clinton about their own opposition to a date certain for withdrawal from Iraq, because it would only encourage the insurgents. So what's different about Afghanistan? Clinton responded:

Because we're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop-dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011 we can begin a transition

So July 2011 is a date certain for an assessment of a potential transition?

You have to give Clinton and Gates credit for trying. They were the human shields protecting Obama's policy from journalists' arrow-like questions. Perhaps it's time for POTUS to step out front?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-09T18:11:00.001-05:00

WHAT WAS OBAMA DOING FOR THREE MONTHS? If you don't read Shadow Government, you should. It's a blog written by a lot of very smart people who held significant positions in the Bush administration. (No, that isn't a contradiction, wiseguy.) Shadow Gov's recent posts focus (naturally) on Afghanistan. One very interesting question comes from Peter Feaver -- Did Obama's speech give us any sense of why it took him three months to come up with any Afghanistan policy that was barely different from the one he announced back in March ? What Obama really announced was a very simple compromise: Hawks get 30,000 more troops, doves get a (very flexible) deadline for withdrawal. Peter notes:

It did not take [Obama] 3 months of painstaking review to find that compromise. It was available to him all along.

The speed of deployment was accelerated a bit, but it's hard to imagine the White House was debating for three months about deployment schedules.

Peter's somewhat cynical answer to his own question is that Obama wanted time to pass healthcare reform before he antagonized his base by escalating the war. I can see that as one factor, but my instincts are telling me something else (which is also somewhat cynical):

Obama was hunting for a reason not to send the troops. Part of that hunt was political. He didn't want to antagonize his base. He didn't want to break the momentum of his reform agenda. But Obama needed a very strong argument to make if he was going to turn around 180 degrees and ignore two years of his own rhetoric about the "necessary war" in Afghanistan.

For moral and intellectual reasons, Obama also wanted a reason not to send more troops. Things are looking grim in Afghanistan. Why go deeper into the quicksand? Why sacrifice anymore lives? Wasn't Iraq enough? Those questions seem to reflect Obama's instincts. They were suppressed when politics made it necessary and convenient to attack Bush as weak on Afghanistan. But that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Anyhow, there's plenty more worth reading at Shadow Gov, including posts by Dan Twining, Kori Schake, and Will Inboden.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-09T18:08:00.001-05:00

AFGHANISTAN: A GOP TWOFER? David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has introduced a war tax bill.

“As presidential historian Robert Dallek reminds us, ‘war kills off great reform movements’,” Obey said, noting that World War I ended the Progressive Era, Korea ended Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Now, I know that's supposed to be an argument against sending more troops to Afghanistan, but if you're a Republican, isn't it a pretty good argument for supporting the surge?

Surely some nefarious Republican operatives thought of this while the party was planning its response to Obama's speech at West Point. The GOP's reputation as the party of ideas isn't all that bright at the moment, but any good Democrat can tell you that the GOP is still the master of skullduggery.

Actually, I haven't any Republicans make the Obey argument. Of course, I may not be plugged-in to the nefarious side of the party. All I hear is security this and terrorism that.

On a related note, Obey's comment about war being the enemy of reform tells you something about his war tax. His primary concern isn't paying for the war. It's stopping the war so that his domestic agenda can move forward.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-01T20:47:00.002-05:00

OBAMA SPEECH WRAP-UP: The President was crystal clear about why we are sending more troops to Afghanistan. We were attacked on 9/11. If the Taliban take back Afghanistan, Al Qaeda will come back with them. America's security is directly at stake. Right now, we only have enough troops for a stalemate, not for success.

How will our military strategy change in Afghanistan? What will the mission be of our 30,000 additional troops? The President offered a couple of nods to "securing the population", the core concept of counterinsurgency theory. He also mentioned training Afghan forces. But this issue deserves much more detailed discussion, because the deployment of additional troops is the key commitment we are now making.

Finally, the exit strategy. There was a clear date for when it will begin. Must certain conditions be achieved before the exit begins? What will be the indications of success we should monitor? What if the Afghan government does not improve its performance? What if the new Afghan forces take longer to train? Are we committed to success, because our "vital national interests" are at stake? Or will those interests be reconsidered if they aren't met by July 2011? That is the great unknown. Or more precisely, the great unsaid.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-12-01T17:47:00.001-05:00

WHY BOTHER LISTENING TO OBAMA'S SPEECH? The front page of the Washington Post has already announced that 34,000 new troops will deploy to Afghanistan. The front page of the NY Times says "about 30,000".

So tonight's speech isn't about the decision Obama has made. It's about how he will justify it to his own party and to the American people. Here are five things to listen for:

1. "A war of necessity" Obama made those words famous. Will we hear them again tonight? If it is a war of necessity, failure is not an option.

2. "Counterinsurgency": Will Obama give his strategy its proper name? Or will he present his approach as a compromise that reflects the input of skeptics?

3. "Victory": Will Obama say that he wants to achieve "victory" or even "success"? What is our mission? What must we achieve before we even think about an exit strategy? If winning isn't essential, why should we sacrifice American lives?

4. "Exit strategy": Obama has the thankless task of explaining how escalation actually means he wants to end the war sooner. Which phrase will Obama use? Will there be any specifics? Will Obama tell us how, 6 or 12 or 18 months from now, we will be able to distinguish success from failure?

5. "9/11": Will Obama justify this escalation as the continuation of what started on 9/11? That may infuriate the skeptics in his own party. But if he doesn't invoke 9/11, how will he explain why success is worth the loss of more American lives?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-30T22:54:00.001-05:00

THREE CHEERS FOR MICHAEL MOORE! Moore has penned an open letter to President Obama, begging him not to send more troops to Afghanistan. And just in time -- with all the talk about Lou Dobbs and the rest, the heartland was beginning to forget that the left bows to no one in its willingness to anoint an ignorant loudmouth as its beloved champion. Here's some of my favorite passages from Moore's letter:

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?...

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do.

Cue the violins. And if you think that Michael should be argued with instead of teased, read Jazz's post.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-30T22:14:00.001-05:00

HOPE FOR AFGHANISTAN? Kagan & Kristol:

Some conservatives are arguing that President Obama's weakness and indecision forecast American failure--and that, if we're going to fail, we should just get out now...

Some Republicans are understandably dismayed at the prospect of supporting a war they worry this president is incapable of prosecuting with sufficient vigor or conviction. They argue that keeping faith with the troops requires rejecting any halfhearted approach. They are right that Americans who wish to support our troops in the field should not accept policies that deprive them of the means to win. But a turn by Republicans to rhetorical opposition to the war would only absolve the Obama administration of its Afghan duty. The better course is to push the administration to take responsibility for the outcome in Afghanistan by continuing to support a fully resourced war effort, while criticizing and opposing any decisions that undermine the troops' chance of success...

A model for Republicans is the behavior of Senator John McCain from 2003 to 2007. McCain consistently questioned, challenged, and criticized President Bush's strategy and tactics in Iraq, but he never wavered in his determination to do everything possible to succeed there.

No need for me to repeat how much I admire McCain. But if things get worse in Afghanistan as election day gets closer, will the GOP be tempted to take advantage?

Not impossible, but I think most Republicans feel that they were ultimately vindicated on Iraq, so backstopping the "war of necessity" is a much easier call.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-30T22:09:00.002-05:00

THE MAYOR OF WASILLA: I told you I was Going Rogue and going to write about it.

The story of Sarah Palin's political life begins in Wasilla. Last fall, adversaries mocked her as a one-year governor and two-term mayor of a small town in Alaska. But what did being mayor of Wasilla mean to Palin? How it did shape her politics? Reading a political memoir, you don't expect to get much more than one side of any given story. But I want to know how Gov. Palin understands Wasilla.

For Palin, her time as mayor is a demonstration of her leadership abilities and the value of conservative principles. She writes on page 78,

As a result of our common sense conservative efforts, Wasilla became a booming, bustling town--the fastest growing area in the state, and an independent financial auditor (Mikunda, Cottrell & Co.) reported that Wasilla was "the envy of Alaskan cities."

I'd be curious to know more. The book's focus is on author, so it's hard to get a sense of how Wasilla really changed in those years.

Now, which efforts represent Palin's ideas about common sense conservatism? Above all, cutting taxes. She writes on page 78,

I cut taxes -- lots of them. I eliminated small business inventory taxes, I got rid of personal property taxes, I gave the boot to burdensome things like business license renewal fees, and I cut the real property tax mil levy every year I was in office.

Palin is very clear that what she did for the economy is get the government out of its way. That meant fewer taxes and an effort to cut the budget.

But there is one active component to Palin's philosophy of local government: infrastructure. Commenting on her race to unseat incumbent Mayor John Stein, Palin says,

I wanted government to appropriately provide the private sector with infrastructure tools to increase opportunities. Stein supported expanding land-use restrictions and building codes. (Page 70)

Wasilla is also where Palin began to think of herself as a principled reformer determined to take on special interests. Of her time on the city council before running for mayor, Palin writes "I voted according to my principles and let the chips fall where they may." (Page 66) That remark reflected her vote against using city authority to favor the garbage trucking firm owned by the council's "de facto leader", Nick Carney.

Wasilla is also the place where Palin first realized that being a reformer means being the target and victim of nefarious forces. In 2008, Palin was accused of spearheading an effort to ban books at the Wasilla library. She says that's a false accusation -- apparently ginned up by Nick Carney and his wife -- because they resented Palin's victory at the polls. Palin also says that opponents spread rumors that her daughter smoked marijuana. Her oldest daughter at the time was in kindergarten.

In short, Palin's Wasilla is the story of how selfish men wanted to grow the government, mostly to serve their private interests, but Palin but a put a stop to that. Am I convinced? I don't know the first thing about Wasilla aside from what's in this book so it's hard for me to say. If you like Sarah Palin, you'll probably trust her account. If you don't like her, you won't.

I sort of like Palin precisely because of the extreme condescension and vindictiveness of the attacks she faced first as a candidate, now as an author. But when Palin says something, is my instinct to give her the benefit of the doubt? Not yet. Her account of Wasilla is suspiciously black and white, with its heroic young mayor taking on the town's underhanded cabal of special interests.

On a related note, this means Palin never describes herself as facing hard decisions, where there were strong arguments on both sides, the stakes were high, and good people disagreed. Instead, it was always about right vs. wrong. It takes some courage to do what's right, but the temptations to do wrong seemed pretty minimal.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-30T22:06:00.001-05:00

EVEN THE NY TIMES IS BEATING UP ON OBAMA: In case you missed this editorial on the Arab-Israeli peace process, condescending titled "Diplomacy 101":

The president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled...

The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything.

Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever. Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and [special envoy George] Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board.

Those who want to defend Obama would probably have to pivot away from the facts on the ground and find a way to blame Bush. Hey, it's still his first year in office, people! Still, it's looking like amateur hour.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-30T22:02:00.002-05:00

ABU MUQAWAMA QUITS DAILY BLOGGING: Andrew Exum, aka Abu Muqawama, has announced that he will be dramatically scaling back his blogging. Exum is a very serious analyst of military issues and his daily presence will be missed. From the comments on his post, you can get a sense of how much he is respected.

So why is Exum quitting? He writes:

Blogging forces me into more or less split-second reactions to complicated policy events before I have had the opportunity to research and weigh opposing views. In addition, the AD/HD nature of this medium -- as well as its format -- has harmed both my research abilities as well as my ability to write in the long form. Blogging, like any medium, is one you get better at with practice. As I have become a better blogger, my long-form writing skills have atrophied.

A valid position, although I feel very differently myself. I don't see a trade off. I see a chance to develop my abilities to express myself through different media.

To be fair, I have a fraction of Exum's audience and post less often, so he faces a different set of challenges. However, my audience and my output both peaked while I was writing my dissertation a few years ago, and I saw no trade-off then, either. In fact, I really appreciated the chance to comment on the news of the week since my academic research focused on events from a generation ago.

Also, I'm curious about Exum's comment that blogging forces him to provide instant reactions. I think it's quite valuable to test your rapid judgment ability and see how it lines up with your conclusions later on. What's the worst that can happen? People know you've changed your mind?

Bottom line, I only care about these secondary points because I have so much respect for Exum's work and hope he continues contributing to the public debate.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-26T15:08:00.001-05:00

SMEAR MAYONNAISE ON CONSERVATIVES! Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard writes about his effort to have a zero-carbon footprint.

It literally involved smearing mayonnaise on his face. Go read!

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-26T15:07:00.001-05:00

OBAMA ON BREAST CANCER: David Gregory pointed to this Presidential declaration from July:

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: We are--we've been under the illusion that the more health care we get, the healthier we become. And it turns out that every study shows that the question is are you getting the right care, are you getting the best care, the high quality care; rather than are you having a whole bunch of tests ordered that are unnecessary, getting a bunch of treatments that are unnecessary, staying in hospitals longer than maybe necessary? All of which drives up your costs, but doesn't make you better.

Yet all of the liberals Gregory spoke to last Sunday were at extreme pains to insist that the new research will not involve any reduction in the number of mammograms. Suddenly, science and evidence didn't seem very attractive. What gives? I thought conservatives were the ones who put ideology ahead of science.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-26T15:03:00.001-05:00

I'M GOING ROGUE! (AND MAKE WAR ON FISH): I'd like to think I am one of very, very few customers who bought both Going Rogue and Eating Animals as part of the same order from Amazon.

What could be more inconsistent than buying an anti-factory farming polemic and the autobiography of a woman who asserts that every animal has place -- right next to your mashed potatoes? What will Amazon now recommend for me? Books on cognitive dissonance?

Anyhow, some initial thoughts on both books:

I don't expect politicians to write fair and balanced books. But there is a difference between an interesting book and a set self-congratulatory of talking points, like Hillary's auto-bio. I don't mind a partisan book, as long as it makes a good argument.

So what have I found in the first sixty pages of Palin's memoir? So far, it's mostly about the peculiarities of Alaska from the perspective of the Lower 48. That's reasonably interesting. In terms of arguments, there isn't much yet. But there is plenty of self-congratulation. That's annoying.

When it comes to Eating Animals, I have to begin with a disclosure: I was good friends with the author in high school and college, although I've barely seen him since. Early on, Foer admits that he knew what he expected to find when he started researching the meat industry. It would be ugly. So let me respond with my own confession: I know what I expected to think of an entire book that dwells on the moral implications of eating animals. It will be fatuous. It will lecture the reader on animal suffering while downplaying human tragedy.

So far, I feel sort of vindicated. On page 33, Foer tells us,

As I came to see, war is precisely the right word to describe our relationship to fish--it captures the technologies and techniques brought to bear against them, and the spirit of domination.

Foer has an extraordinary sense of humor, but I don't sense any of it here. Best I can tell, he's dead serious. I hope that later in the book he asks whether a morally serious person can talk about a war on fish without trivializing actual wars, like the ones in Darfur, Afghanistan and Iraq.

I confess, I'm not too optimistic. On page 35, we learn that "Technologies of war have literally and systematically been applied to fishing." So? A Pentagon research agency basically invented the internet. Will high-minded liberals now boycott the blogosphere?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-26T15:01:00.000-05:00

BLOGGER RESIGNS FROM PENTAGON DETAINEE POST: I first got to know Phil Carter as a blogger, rather than an attorney, a Iraq war veteran or the director of the Obama campaign's outreach to veterans. Until this week, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy. Or as the NY Times put it: Official charged with closing Guantanamo quits.

The Times hints that Carter's departure had to do with the failure meet the Gitmo closure deadline:

Mr. Carter’s departure comes as the administration has acknowledged that it will not be able to close the prison by Jan. 22, the self-imposed deadline Mr. Obama announced immediately after taking office.

Glenn Greenwald argues that Carter may have resigned because Carter is a civil libertarian and Obama has gone back on most of promises regarding detainees. And why would I ever disagree with Glenn Greenwald?

Kevin Drum says he's also disappointed with Obama on civil liberties, but he wouldn't know whether that affected Carter's decision. I haven't spoken to Phil since he started working at the Pentagon, but he's a talented guy and he'll land on his feet.

I should add that Phil himself said he's resigning for personal reasons, and even though that's a cliche, it's true for him.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-26T14:58:00.002-05:00

BOB REICH AGREES WITH LIZ CHENEY ON NATIONAL SECURITY? I certainly didn't expect to hear this from the liberal super-pundit and former Secretary of Labor. This is from ABC:

REICH: I agree with Liz. I think that -- that in preparation for this trip [to China], as in many others, even the trip to Europe to try to sell Chicago as the Olympics, there needs to be more thought about the appearance of weakness or strength that may come out of the trip.

But I want to go back to, George, your point, because I think the big issue over the next 10 years and the big contest is going to be between authoritarian capitalism, a la China, and democratic capitalism,

a la the United States. And it's not clear to me that authoritarian capitalism is not going to win, that is, it -- there is so much efficiency. The Chinese say, "We're going to build 10 new universities. We're going to build this. We're going to build this." And, boom, it happens.

I'm hope Reich remains an advocate if strength when it comes to other subjects. But I part ways when it comes to his pessimism about free-market capitalism and veneration of the Chinese. It reminds me of all those who praised Japan's unstoppable engine of government-led capitalism. It's hard not to conclude that Reich and those of his ilk simply can't resist the hope that more government control will prove to be the best thing for all of us.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

WHEN BUSH DITHERED ON IRAQ: Jackson Diehl:

[After months of deliberation in 2006], no one accused George W. Bush of dithering. So why does Barack Obama keep hearing the taunt as he deliberates about Afghanistan -- and why do even some who sympathize with his dilemma find it hard to shake the feeling that this commander in chief lacks resolve?

One part of the answer is easy: Bush was renowned for summoning plenty of resolve, and not enough critical thinking. No one questioned that Bush's heart was in his bid for "victory" in Iraq. Not a few wondered whether he had weighed carefully enough whether dispatching 20,000 more American troops in early 2007 was a reasoned strategy or a reckless gamble...

Obama's prolonged deliberation would be understandable if he were choosing between escalating or ending the war, as Bush was. Yet he narrowed his options many weeks ago -- and still has been unable to come to closure...

In the end, it's not enough for a president to be seen as having thought through a decision to send more troops to war. Enemies, allies and the country also need to be convinced that he believes in it.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:31:00.001-05:00

SHERLOCK HOLMES IS ON THE CASE: Andrew Sullivan informs his readers that he is taking a brief pause to pore over Sarah Palin's new book:

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it's vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else...

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

We have only one commitment: to get this right. Please bear with us as we do the best we can.

Perhaps Sullivan & Co. will finally solve the mystery of who Trig's parents really are. My hunch: Ann Coulter and a polar bear.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:29:00.000-05:00

THE NETROOTS EAT THEIR OWN: On Monday, Think Progress trashed liberal pundit Mark Shields for allegedly saying, with regard to Obama's patience on Afghanistan,

[It] makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.

Kevin Drum read TP's post and seconded the motion, albeit with more circumspection and less vitriol. But to his credit, Kevin read the comments on his post and apologized.

Why? The quote was accurate. But if you watch the one-minute clip embedded in TP's post, it is more than obvious that Shields is being sarcastic and mocking conservatives who criticize Obama. Extra credit to Kevin for admitting that he put up his post without even watching the clip.

Now, if you really want to see the netroots at their worst, read the comment thread at the end of the original post on TP. Both the ignorance and the viciousness are disturbing. According to Comment #14:

What we really need is gutless fat *ssed scum like [Shields] getting the beatdown of your life from the families of those who have paid the ultimate price in wars cheered on by your spineless, unaccountable pontificating.

Shields is nothing but another worthless piece of sh*t in a long line of tough guy chickenhawks.

Incidentally, Shields is a Marine Corps veteran. And that comment is just par for the course, not just one ugly comment I picked out to pass judgment on the netroots. To their credit, a handful of commenters insist that Shields was being sarcastic. Others know so little about Shields they call him conservative.

Full disclosure: There's plenty of insanity in the far-right blogosphere as well. But the attack on Shields is so bizarre I thought it deserved a post.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:25:00.000-05:00

KRISTOL ADMONISHES CONSERVATIVES: From the Weekly Standard:

Republicans need to point out that Obama's economic policies aren't working. But they need to resist appearing to relish bad news for the country on Obama's watch. When rising unemployment numbers come out, there is occasionally an unseemly sense of celebration in the emails that come from various GOP offices. More in sorrow than in joy, more in confirmation than in vindication--that should be the Republican mood as the news of Obama's failures, failures which damage the well-being of Americans and of America, rolls in.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:19:00.003-05:00

YES, DOGS REALLY DO BITE MAILMEN:

A "dog warning card" arrived with my mail today. Thanks to a New Jersey branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, you can see the form online. The form provides invaluable advice, such as "Do not deliver mail if you feel endangered by an animal."

For a better understanding of the threats faced by America's letter carriers, I recommend the following passage from The Postal Employee's Guide to Safety (August 2006 edition), Section IX D:

Animals and Insects
1. General Rules
You are not required to deliver mail when an animal threatens you. Use extra care in making deliveries when dogs or other animals are loose on your route...

Neither antagonize nor attempt to pet dogs. If a dog rushes toward you or takes you by surprise, do not run. Retreat very slowly, facing the dog. Keep your mail satchel between you and the dog as a first line of defense. Be careful not to stumble over objects as
you retreat.

Use dog repellent spray only if you are attacked. Spray it directly at the dog’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Do not use dog repellent indiscriminately or when there is danger of spraying children or adults.

When delivering mail through a door slot, keep your fingers out of the slot; an animal may be on the other side.

Yikes.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-18T17:05:00.001-05:00

CLINTON: "NO LONG-TERM STAKE IN AFGHANISTAN". NY Times, Page 1:

Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.

It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan’s continuing ties to the militants who fight American troops in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to fuel this concern on Sunday in her comments on the ABC program “This Week,” saying: “We’re not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear.”

I was listening to the program and I was pretty surprised when Hillary said that. It sounded more like an improvisation than a well-prepped talking point. But it illustrates the confusion at the heart of Obama's policy. The White House wants to demonstrate resolve while being sure it has an "off-ramp" for its commitment. When delivering that kind of confused message, even the best talkers will slip up.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-10T18:02:00.001-05:00

A HAM SANDWICH ON YOM KIPPUR:

“Having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

I feel like this may be a license for mis-behavior. (If you're interested in the context of Rabbi Schochet's remark, click here.)

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-10T17:51:00.001-05:00

OBAMA WILL CRUISE TO 2012 RE-ELECTION: No, that's not a serious prediction. My real point is about Republicans getting too excited about thrashing the Democrats in 2010. Sure, that's what I'd like to see. But remember what happened during Reagan's first term? That precedent has been on my mind, so I was glad to see that Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts were thinking along the same lines. Here's their exchange from Sunday morning:

SAM DONALDSON: ...[Reagan's] popularity went down to 37 percent, at one point. But guess what, we came out of that recession. Thanks to Paul Volcker, wringing out inflation the old-fashioned way, by jacking up interest race at the Fed. And it was morning in America again. So, I say to people, anyone who thinks that Barack Obama isn't kind of odds on, for re-election, must not think we're going to come out of this recession. Because of assuming we do, and I think, we are going to by 2012, it will be morning in America again.

COKIE ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: I think that's right... I mean, when you look at the -- since you did that nice Reagan analogy, 1982 was a terrible year for Republicans. They lost 26 seats in the House, and 4 in the Senate. Everybody was saying, ah, see, the Reagan landslide really wasn't what it looked like, and all of that. 1984, a very different story. And what we really had in 1980, with that Reagan election, was a realignment that lasted for a generation. And I basically think that despite what happened on Tuesday, and what I think is likely to happen in 2010, I think we probably did see a realignment in 2008.

I don't really buy into the idea of a realignment in either 1980 or 2008. But that's another story. Just remember how bad things looked for Republicans after the 1982 elections. Remember that after the Democrats take a beating in 2012, and remember how fast things change.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-10T17:49:00.001-05:00

DONNA BRAZILE PRAISES GOP IDEOLOGY: If you wait 15 years, people will say anything. Sunday morning on ABC, Donna Brazile explained why 2010 won't be another 1994:

Well, first of all, I don't think it's '94, because in '94, we also had some potential disastrous that happened that caused Democrats to lose so many seats. First of all, we had a great deal of retirements in the Congress, we had the bank scandal, the post office scandal... We also had a Republican Party that had ideas. We had a Republican Party that was a lot more viable and had plans to help solve some problems. We don't have that Republican Party today.

I wasn't all that politically active back in 1994 (although I was a big Clinton fan), yet somehow I don't recall any Democrats praising the GOP for the depth of its ideas or for its pragmatic willingness to solve problems. I guess that some Lexis-Nexis work might turn up the odd bit of praise, but what I mostly remember from the late 90s is a kind of vindictiveness that makes today's bickering seem pretty dull and substantive.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-10T17:47:00.000-05:00

DO CARROTS FEEL PAIN? Natalie Portman is giving up eggs and milk. She writes on HuffPo:

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").

With that kind of radical anti-pain attitude, the next thing Portman will oppose is probably abortion. Seriously. I'm still figuring out my own position on pro-life issues, but it sure is strange when Hollywood stars tell you that the one issue they get evangelical about is the mistreatment of animals.

Coincidentally, I was friends with Foer back in high school and college. (Yes, I am name-dropping.) I am a huge fan of his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. In case you were curious, he is just as funny and clever in person as he is in writing.

You can get the flavor of his latest book from his recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting we may as well eat our dogs.

It's hard not to be ashamed by the casual, pointless cruelty often inflicted on various animals on the way to our tables. But if you fundamentally believe that we have a right to kill and eat lesser creatures, even by the million, then it's hard to treat their suffering as a priority. I get more worked up about human rights and healthcare reform.

But I haven't read the book yet. So I'll order a copy and see if an old friend can change my mind.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-10T17:44:00.001-05:00

MOTHER JONES AGREES WITH THE NATIONAL REVIEW! Kevin Drum praises Jonah Goldberg for resisting the impulse to call Nidal Malik Hasan a terrorist. A traitor? A murderer? Sure. But not a terrorist.

The strange thing is that liberals assume they should be against labeling Hasan a terrorist and conservatives assume they should be for it. That makes a certain amount of sense. Liberals fear exaggerated threats. Conservatives fear threats that are ignored.

But wouldn't the Afghanistan doves want Hasan to be a terrorist? Then they can say the real threat is at home, not in Afghanistan. Actyally, nix that. Too complicated. Anyhow, Kevin writes:

Unlike, say, a suicide bomber in Jerusalem, there's hardly even a hint that he was trying to make any kind of political statement. There was no note, no videotape left behind, no explanation while he was shooting, no nothing. What kind of terrorist does that?

Incompetent ones, I guess. If initial reports of Hasan's radicalism turn out to be correct, Kevin may have to revise his opinion.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-04T09:29:00.001-05:00

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART III: I'm not an aggressive consumer of financial journalism, so it has to be something of a coincidence that I've come across three separate items that chronicle the dark predictions of three separate men who warned of an impending financial crisis.

The first two are discussed below. The third is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Black Swan was published in 2007 and written in the preceding years. Here are a few quotes that jumped out at me:

Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan [extreme event] that will appear to be the most ﬁt for survival. (pp.209)

Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks (often Gaussianized in their risk measurement) -- when one falls, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial criseis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought. (pp.225-226)

While apparently talented in terms of financial analysis, Mr. Taleb is awful when it comes to web page design. His home page is confusing and cluttered. He provides a list of prophetic quotes from The Black Swan, but no page numbers -- which I added myself. I also had to correct the typos in his quotations from his own book.

Anyhow, enough aesthetic complaints. The substance is interesting. Will the Cassandras I've blogged about become financial celebrities now that they've been vindicated? Were they vindicated because they were lucky or because they were smart? I have no idea, but given that the value of my pension and my home may depend on this sort of thing, it may be a good idea to figure it all out. Then again, we got to where we are today because all sorts of brilliant people who study this stuff for a living still couldn't figure it out. So what good can I do by dabbling in financial analysis?

(PS I definitely recommend Taleb's book. Neither a mathematician nor an economist, I can't vouch for its contents. But Taleb is both very entertaining and very erudite. On the downside, he is impossibly self-satisfied, profoundly enjoys settling scores with his rivals, and you have to read forty pages before getting to the good stuff.)

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-04T09:21:00.001-05:00

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART II: In the mid-1990's, Yale economist Robert Shiller predicted the dot-com bubble would burst. In 2005, Shiller predicted the housing bubble would burst. Why?

In the wake of the dot-com crash, which helped make Shiller a public figure, Americans turned their financial attention from stocks to real estate. House prices were rising rapidly, and people had begun to see real estate as a can't-miss investment. Shiller wanted to know what history might say about that, but he realized that data for house prices didn't exist going back more than a few decades. "Clearly," he has written, "no one was carefully evaluating the real estate market and its potential for speculative excess."...

Over the long term, house prices tend to rise at the same rate as household income. If prices increase more slowly than income for a few years, they soon catch up. If they rise more rapidly than income, they eventually come back to earth. In early 2005, Shiller published a second edition of Irrational Exuberance, which added a chart on house prices.

That summer -- which turned out to be the very peak of the housing bubble -- Shiller and [the author] had lunch in New York. He told me that day that over the coming generation, he expected inflation-adjusted house prices to decline by 40 percent. In all likelihood, he said, the bursting of the housing bubble would at some point cause a recession.

The article doesn't mention if Shiller, like John Paulson, put his money where his mouth was, betting heavily on a housing crash. Then again, Shiller is an academic, so betting his reputation is certainly worth something.

As I said below, I'm not an economist and I have no idea whether the Cassandras of the housing bubble were ignored for the wrong reasons or the right ones. But it is striking that those who warned of terrible things to come seem to have thought out their position quite systematically, and were not just venting their personal pessimism.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-04T09:10:00.005-05:00

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART I: The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal profiled John Paulson, whose firm made $15 billion by systematically betting against the value of American homes. Paulson himself took home $4 billion.

How'd he do it? Research.

Grasping for new ideas, [Paulson researcher Paolo] Pellegrini added a "trend line" that clearly illustrated how much prices had surged lately. He then performed a "regression analysis" to smooth the ups and downs.

The answer was in front of him: Housing prices had climbed a puny 1.4% annually between 1975 and 2000, after inflation. But they had soared over 7% in the following five years, until 2005. The upshot: U.S. home prices would have to drop by almost 40% to return to their historic trend line. Not only had prices climbed like never before, but Mr. Pellegrini's figures showed that each time housing had dropped in the past, it fell through the trend line, suggesting that an eventual drop likely would be brutal.

"This is unbelievable!" Mr. Paulson said the next morning. The chart was Mr. Paulson's Rosetta Stone enabling him to make sense of the housing market. They had to figure out how to profit from it.

By the spring, Mr. Paulson was convinced he had discovered the perfect trade. Insurance on risky home mortgages was trading at dirt-cheap prices. He would buy boatloads of credit-default swaps—or investments that served as insurance on risky mortgage debt. When housing hit the skids and homeowners defaulted on their mortgages, this insurance would rise in value—and Mr. Paulson would make a killing.

And so he did. In hindsight, we logically conclude that Paulson is brilliant. But who was saying that three years ago?

I'm a defense analyst, so I really have no idea if money men should've been paying more attention to Paulson. But regardless of the discipline, a major crisis seems to clear away the underbrush and reveal a proud few who saw what was coming. And regardless of the discipline, it remains extremely hard to tell if those few were lucky or smart.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-11-04T09:10:00.001-05:00

A LIBERAL DOLLOP OF IRONY: From the lead column in last week's New Yorker:

The market for news is narrowing down to people who need an ideological fix.

Of course, that comment was directed at Fox and MSNBC, not at those alleged highbrow publications which strike a pose of informed sophistication while delivering the same narrow fix.

2009-10-29T10:06:00.000-04:00

TOM FRIEDMAN'S AMNESIA: Tom Friedman says don't send more troops to Afghanistan, because there are no positive trends to build on, like the Anbar Awakening before the surge in Iraq. Yet back in 2007, Friedman condemned the surge precisely because there was no progress to build on:

January 3, 2007

Now President Bush wants a “surge” of more U.S. troops to Baghdad, in one last attempt to bring order. Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, “Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.” It never works...

Adding more troops makes sense only if it’s to buy more time for positive trends that have already begun to appear on the horizon. I don’t see them.

January 12, 2007:

More troops alone will not suffice. The only tiny hope left of transforming Iraq is if its leaders have to pay the full retail price of their passions and we have to pay the full retail price of our oil.

February 7, 2007:

Right now everyone in Iraq is having their cake and eating it — at our expense. We have to change that.

The Sunnis, who started this whole murderous cycle, participate in the government, negotiate with us and also indulge the suicide bombers and the insurgents. The Shiites collaborate with us, run their own retaliatory death squads and dabble with Iran. The Saudis tell us we can’t leave, but their mosques and charities funnel Sunni suicide bombers to Iraq and dollars to insurgents. Iran pushes its Iraqi Shiite allies to grab more power, while helping others kill U.S. troops. Ditto Syria.

March 2, 2007:

No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a “moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

March 21, 2007:

We need to root for General Petraeus to succeed...But how will General Petraeus or Congress judge if the surge is working? It may be obvious, but it may not be...Remember, enough U.S. troops can quiet any neighborhood for a while. The real test is whether a self-sustaining Iraqi army and political consensus are being put in place that can hold after we leave.

For those who'd like to check my work (or check on Friedman themselves), his old columns are available on his NYT homepage, going back to 1995. They are text searchable.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-29T09:10:00.003-04:00

TOM FRIEDMAN'S LOGIC: The vote is in. Tom Friedman says no more troops for Afghanistan. Why?

When I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it.

America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start with us. We can fan the flames, but the parties themselves have to light the fires of moderation. And whenever we try to do it for them, whenever we want it more than they do, we fail and they languish.

Examples?

The Camp David peace treaty was not initiated by Jimmy Carter.

OK, but the process would've gone nowhere without Carter's assertive leadership. (OMG, did I just praise Jimmy Carter? Yes, credit where credit is due.) Next example:

The Oslo peace accords started in Oslo — in secret 1992-93 talks between the P.L.O. representative, Ahmed Qurei, and the Israeli professor Yair Hirschfeld.

Not exactly a happy ending, there. But progress. However, is this a discussion about Israelis or Afghanistan? Final example:

The U.S. surge in Iraq was militarily successful because it was preceded by an Iraqi uprising sparked by a Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who, using his own forces, set out to evict the pro-Al Qaeda thugs who had taken over Sunni towns and were imposing a fundamentalist lifestyle. The U.S. surge gave that movement vital assistance to grow. But the spark was lit by the Iraqis.

20/20 hindsight. Democrats lined up in lockstep against the surge. How many of them said, "Wait, there are people like Sheik Sattar who deserve our help fighting Al Qaeda!" (How about Friedman himself? Did he notice Sattar? I'll be looking that up.)

Right now in Afghanistan, there are Afghans ready to fight with us against the Taliban. What we saw in Iraq was, that across the country, people like Sattar came out of the woodwork when they began to believe America would back them up. The evidence they demand is boots on the ground.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum says Friedman is a barometer of shifting conventional wisdom.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-29T09:07:00.002-04:00

FEINGOLD'S FANTASY: On CBS, the senator from Wisconsin said the following:

And the idea that the Taliban is the same as al Qaeda, and they're going to welcome al Qaeda back with open arms into Afghanistan is questionable. I understand they let them come there earlier. The-- the al Qaeda came with lots of money, Saudi money, and it looked like a pretty good deal for them. But, you know, they've seen that movie before.

I didn't know the Taliban watched movies. Anyhow, here's what some experts have to say about the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. According to Bruce Riedel, who directed the Obama administration's first review of Afghan policy,

I think the relationship between these two continues to be one of a strong bond, particularly among the top leaders, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden continues to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar on a periodic basis. If you look at these two, what's remarkable about their relationship is not friction, but that, for 13 years, they have hung together. Now they think they are on the verge of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They're not going to break apart now.

And here is Peter Bergen, also a longtime Bin Laden watcher,

Today, at the leadership level, the Taliban and Al Qaeda function more or less as a single entity...One of the key leaders of the Afghan Taliban as it surged in strength in 2006 was Mullah Dadullah, a thuggish but effective commander who was quite upfront about his close links to Al Qaeda. "Osama bin Laden, thank God, is alive and in good health," he told CBS in December 2006. "We are in contact with his top aides and sharing plans and operations with each other."

Feingold may not carry a lot of weight in foreign policy circles, but I think his comments say a lot about the opposition of the liberal base to the war in Afghanistan.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-29T09:04:00.001-04:00

EVIDENCE THAT WE DON'T NEED MORE TROOPS: David Adams commanded a US advisory team in the Afghan province of Khost. Ann Marlowe reported from Afghanistan. They write,

From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division's strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan's lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas—was working within the Afghan system. By partnering with closely supervised Afghan National Security Forces and a competent governor and subgovernors, U.S. forces were able to win the support of Khost's 13 tribes.

Today, 2,400 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Khost. But the province is more dangerous.

A lot more dangerous, actually. Is our initial success in Khost an indication that a small number of troops doing the right things is all we really need? I don't know enough about the province to have an opinion one way or the other.

Now that the province is in trouble, can it be brought back under control with only a small contingent of troops? I don't know.

Was our initial success in Khost something of an illusion, similar to the relative peace throughout Afghanistan during the first years after 9/11? Again, I don't know.

Although skeptical, I'm more open to arguments like Adams and Marlowe's because it's based on evidence from the battlefield, not spurious analogies between the Taliban and our Founding Fathers.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-29T09:01:00.001-04:00

A SUPERB ARTICLE ABOUT AFGHANISTAN: There's plenty of material out there, but Steve Biddle's article in TNR [subscription only] stands head and shouders above the rest. Even if you're against more troops, you should test your logic against Biddle.

For example, NYT columnist Nick Kristof wrote:

The United States was born of our ancestors’ nationalistic resentment of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors. The British never fathomed our basic grievance — this was our land, not theirs! — so the more they cracked down, the more they empowered the American insurgency.

Given that history, you’d think we might be more sensitive to nationalism abroad. Yet the most systematic foreign-policy mistake we Americans have made in the post-World War II period has been to underestimate its potency, from Vietnam to Latin America.

We have been similarly oblivious to the strength of nationalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly among the 40 million Pashtuns who live on both sides of the border there. That’s one reason the additional 21,000 troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year haven’t helped achieve stability, and it’s difficult to see why 40,000 more would help either.

The American revolution a nationalist insurgency? Did the British allow us to hold national elections and set our own tax policy? Yeah, that analogy has some soft spots. But the real issue is Afghanistan. Biddle writes:

Afghans surely resent foreign occupation, as would anyone. But it is far from clear that this is the primary problem, or that a drawdown to a "light footprint" could defeat the Taliban. After all, we've tried it, and it hasn't worked.

In 2004, there were only 15,200 American troops and under 9,000 NATO-led troops in Afghanistan; as recently as March of 2006, there were only 20,000 American soldiers on the ground and about 12,000 NATO-led troops in a country of about 30 million people. The thinness of these deployments was defended by then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld precisely in terms of a perceived need to avoid nationalist resistance to a foreign occupation. If a light footprint could avert insurgency, then there should be no war in Afghanistan today. To put it mildly, it has not worked out that way: The Rumsfeld light-footprint policy gave us the mess we have now. It yielded too little security to protect the population from the Taliban, too few trainers and advisers to create an indigenous military, but enough of a foreign presence to alienate the public all the same.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-27T18:03:00.001-04:00

FASHIONABLE RACISM? Yesterday, I was flipping through the Brooks Brothers fall catalogue. The catalog tells a story, in which all the models are part of one multi-generational (super-rich, super-WASPy) family.

Except for the two black models. These two -- one man and woman -- seem to be married to each another (see page 112, for example). Perhaps they fell in love because of their shared passion for dressing up like WASPs (which I completely approve of, as a Brooks-loving semite myself.)

But seriously, why are interracial relationships taboo in clothing catalogs? And by interracial, I mean a relationship involving one white person and one black person. (White and Asian is old news. White and Hispanic? No way to tell who's Hispanic.)

I haven't done a scientific survey, but in a lifetime of flipping through LL Bean, Land's End and other catalogs, I feel like interracial couples are invisible. The same applies to television commercials, as well as mainstream television shows and films.

Everyone is against racism, but we've all got a long way to go in being honest about interracial relationships.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-27T17:37:00.001-04:00

MICHAEL GOLDFARB'S WAR ON J STREET: Michael Goldfarb is not interested in constructive criticism of J Street. What Mike wants is to expose J Street as a fringe, left-wing activist group that only pretends to be pro-Israel to advance it's relativist agenda.

So call Mike partisan, but don't forget that partisan critics often make substantive points, regardless of their intentions. And Mike is both very sharp and very entertaining, so it's worth reading his posts, including his three on-site reports from J Street's annual conference.

Although neither Mike nor I are objective observers when it comes to J Street, the group seems fairly determined to provide an abundance of evidence that confirms our worst suspicions about its motives. As Mike notes, J Street's student wing, J Street U, has dropped the words "pro-Israel" from its official motto, because they're afraid it will drive people away.

J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami described himself as "concerned but realistic" about the decision by J Street U.

Given what Sonny posted below about some of the non-student members of J Street, you have to wonder which parts of the organization are actually interested in identifying themselves as pro-Israel.

If you're interested in reading more about the J Street conference, I recommend a visit to the October 2009 page on the Weekly Standard's blog, where Mike has chronicled his efforts to deter as many congressmen and senators as possible from attending the J Street conference. His efforts were surprisingly successful, although I'm guessing Mike had his feelings hurt pretty badly when J Street condemned him for engaging in thuggish smear tactics.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-19T17:56:00.001-04:00

TWO CHEERS FOR JOHN KERRY! Yes, you heard me right. Here's what Kerry had to say on CBS about relying on counterterrorism instead of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan:

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: That's correct. I-- I-- I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency will work because if you don't have a presence on the ground that's effective, it-- it's almost impossible to collect the kind of intelligence that you need to be equally effective in your counterterrorism.

JOHN DICKERSON: All right, Senator.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: And, obviously, one of your components of counterterrorism is avoiding collateral damage, civilian casualties. So knowledge and-- and relationships and intelligence are really critical components of that kind of a mission. I think there's a lot I've learned about how we can recalibrate that part of it but that's not the whole mission. Counting the numbers of troops is not going to define our
success here.

Great, great stuff except for that last sentence. If you've read either the Petraeus counterinsurgency manual or Gen. McChrystal's assessment, you know that counterinsurgency is a very labor-intensive process. Kerry is way out on a Biden-esque limb if he thinks troop numbers don't matter.

But that's not why I down-graded Sen. Kerry from three cheers to two. Jamie Fly saw the same interview with Sen. Kerry and entitled his post about it Sen. Kerry's Colossal Error of Judgment. Actually, I agree pretty much with everything Jamie says, although I really wanted to praise Kerry for keeping one foot firmly planted in reality. Frankly, it's amazing to compare the indecisive and hesitant Kerry of today with the fabulously hawkish John Kerry who said this about Afghanistan just three years ago:

The Administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run. Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.

We need a new policy – the one the president promised when we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Where NATO allies have pledged troops and assistance to Afghanistan, they must follow through. But the United States must lead by example by sending in at least five thousand additional American troops. More elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists.

I hesitate to recycle talking points from 2004, but dare I say that Kerry has flip-flopped?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-17T17:12:00.001-04:00

RUSH IS STILL A RACIST:Steve Benen has a very different opinion from my own. So what if some racist statements were falsely attributed to Rush? He's said plenty of real racist things, too. Steve provides this list, via TAPPED,

Limbaugh's record of racist commentary...includes not only a habit of comparing black athletes to gang members but a general hostility toward black people. Limbaugh only recently suggested that having a black president encouraged black children to beat up white children -- he's also compared President Obama's agenda to 'slavery reparations,' used epithets to reference his biracial background, and compared Democrats responding to the concerns of black voters to rape."

I recommend clicking through to all the links, since they provide the full flavor of Limbaugh's remarks.

My conclusion? Limbaugh clearly enjoys his own over-the-top, politically incorrect humor. Not "edgy", "politically incorrect" humor like what you see on the Daily Show or Colbert Report, but things that are actually incorrect, because they will actually offend a lot of people.

Yet nothing on the TAPPED list comes close to the vicious remarks falsely attributed to Limbaugh by CNN, ThinkProgress and the Huff Po. Unless you're a white supremacist, you won't say that James Earl Ray deserves a Medal of Honor for killing Martin Luther King.

It seems there's plenty to criticize about Rush, so critics won't be giving much up if they stop calling him a racist.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-17T16:44:00.002-04:00

YOU KNOW WHO IS A BIG FAT IDIOT: As I've said before, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh or any other conservative talk-show hosts. Nothing I know about Rush & Co. has inspired any particular respect or fondness on my part. Yet I remain deeply suspicious of those who rely on criticism of Rush & Co. to advertise their own alleged commitment to civility, facts and the reality-based community.

This brings us, of course, to the recent admissions by CNN, the HuffPo and ThinkProgress that all of them falsely attributed to Rush some vicious racist remarks, namely, that slavery was good, that the Medal of Honor should be awarded to the man who killed Martin Luther King and that “all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson."

I'm inclined to agree with John McCormack this kind of false attribution is exactly what is meant by a "smear". Usually, CNN, ThinkProgress, and the Huff Po demand severe atonement from smear artists, not just limp apologies of questionable sincerity.

Could it be that such an intense concern with Rush Limbaugh's many shortcomings has led certain critics to develop the same nasty habits they condemn on Rush's part?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-17T16:04:00.002-04:00

HOPE IS A FRAUD: As Joe noted this morning, Shepherd Fairey, the artist responsible for the "HOPE" portrait of President Obama, has admitted to tampering with and manufacturing evidence in a lawsuit related to the portrait. The Associated Press claims that Mr. Fairey owes them compensation, since the portrait was based on an AP photo of Obama.

I'm curious to know whether Obama will get a question about the portrait at his next press conference. He bears no responsibility for what happened, of course. Yet on a symbolic level, Fairey's behavior represents an ironic indictment of the borderline personality cult embraced by so many of the President's admirers.

We were told that Obama's election would mark the beginning of a new era of (post)-politics, in which we would leave behind the selfishness, the pettiness and the deceptions of the past. As it turns out, the iconic image at the heart of this personality cult embodies everything we were supposed to transcend.

Which brings us to the Nobel Prize. Once again, Obama bears no responsibility for the strange decision to award him the Prize. To his credit, he stated that very clearly. Yet the premature Prize, like the HOPE portrait, is both a manifestation of the Obama personality cult and a demonstration of its emptiness.

But perhaps all of my carping is irrelevant. The burdens of office have already brought the President's reputation down from the clouds. Yet as someone who spent seven months working full-time on the 2008 campaign (on the other side, of course), I have a hard time letting go of the contrast between the unbridled expectations of Obama's fans and the reality that us critics warned them of.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-17T15:24:00.001-04:00

AUTHENTICITY IS FAKE: My old friend Dara Horn has a great column in the WSJ. She writes,

Americans crave authenticity, culinary and otherwise. But most of what we consider authentic is just an earlier generation's novelty. The Jewish delicatessen is a case in point. While cured meats are a European specialty, Mr. Sax points out that most Jews in Eastern Europe were too poor to afford red meat; pastrami got its start as a way of curing fatty poultry. Sandwiches on rye, equally alien, were an accommodation for the quick meals required for the New World's factory work.

This only makes me love pastrami even more. I love what tastes good. It's so pretentious to worry all the time about what's authentic.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-15T09:52:00.002-04:00

SINCE WHEN IS PETRAEUS A REPUBLICAN?

Andrew Sullivan:

How do we know that Petraeus is, or will be, a Republican? Does anyone actually have evidence of this? Or is all this speculation based on the stereotype that military = Republican?

Jason Zengerle:

As best I can tell, the assumption that Petraeus is a Republican stems from the fact that he is. From Steve Coll's New Yorker profile of Petraeus:
Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire—he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller—but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting.

Personally, I think there's no chance Petraeus will run in 2012.

Cross-posted at Conventionally Folly

2009-10-15T09:34:00.001-04:00

DEAD AL QAEDA LEADER GIVES INTERVIEW: Eli Lake reports. Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri was killed by a Predator strike last month. This week, he granted an interview to the Asia Times. Comment:

Cases like this highlight why drone strikes have to be part of a larger strategy," said Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger officer and part of an assessment team that advised Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

"Drone strikes like this can't stand alone because ... they are heavily dependent on real-time intelligence," said Mr. Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. "If we can't measure the success that we are supposedly having with drone strikes, it calls into question strategies that rely almost exclusively on drone strikes in our war against terrorism."

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-15T09:22:00.002-04:00

WEEKLY STANDARD=PRAVDA? TNR's Jon Chait is furious about Republican demagoguery:

There's not much fun in conceding that your side is winning over public opinion by exploiting ignorance and fear. It's far more pleasant to imagine that the people have risen up in principled revulsion against statism.

The vanguard of this fantasy movement rests at The Weekly Standard. One issue from a few weeks ago featured a cover image glorifying the town-hall protestors. Modeled after Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom of Speech painting, it depicted a heroic conservative with a copy of the Standard in his pocket. Unlike Rockwell's image, which portrayed the onlookers as fellow citizens holding their tongues in respectful disagreement, the Standard cover depicted them as hideous goons armed with brass knuckles. The corresponding editorial, unironically entitled "People Power," explained that the public had righteously stood up against elites in the name of "freedom and responsibility." The editors of Pravda would have called this package over-the-top.

If you like Chait, you might describe his Pravda analogy as a charming exaggeration. If you don't, you might compare his writing style to, I don't know, maybe, uh, Pravda?

More importantly, while dismissing the Standard's cover package, he makes no reference to the actual cover story, an excellent analysis by Mary Katherine Ham of how Democrats have demagogued the town halls in order to spin public anger about health care as a violent, right-wing fringe movement.

Chait does raise an interesting conceptual point, however. Can Republicans oppose Obamacare as a government takeover of healthcare while simultaneously warning about dangerous cuts to Medicare?

In terms of pure free-market ideology, it doesn't make sense. If you don't like government healthcare, consistency demands that you oppose Medicare. But if you blend conservatism with free-market politics, the answer changes a bit. The fact is, Medicare exists and is the only choice for a lot of seniors. You can oppose Medicare cuts on pragmatic grounds while opposing the extension of government healthcare to new markets.

Does this mean GOP opposition is purely principled and has nothing to do with politics? Of course not. Politics is what political parties do. Even Democrats!

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-13T13:17:00.001-04:00

NO GLOBAL WARMING SINCE 1998? The Weekly Standard blog links to a BBC article which reports,

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

Naturally, the Standard reminds us that the BBC is not exactly a "bastion of right-wing extremism." Fair enough.

But the facts are a little more complicated. As I noted back in July, 1998 was an unusually hot year, whereas 1999 was relatively cool. Use 1998 as your benchmark, and it looks like temperatures have remained the same. Use 1999, it looks like they've gone up a bit.

But the real issue is how much we can tell from only ten years of temperature data. If you look at the graph below, you'll notice that you can have thirty years of cooling in a century of rising temperatures:

But this is a political debate, so neither side is going to wait for decades. Skeptics will say there's been no warming for a decade. Activists will say that most of the hottest years in history all occurred in the last decade.

I guess if we're really lucky, we can find some policies that make long-term sense regardless of how they're justified.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-13T09:11:00.002-04:00

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AFGHANISTAN HAWK: I'm glad to see a staunch liberal staying strong on this issue. Hypothetical question: What if Feinstein were up for re-election in 2010 instead of 2012? I don't know, but here's what she said Sunday on ABC:

The mission is in serious jeopardy. I think General McChrystal, who is one of our very best, if not the best at this, has said a counterterrorism strategy will not work. The president said to us very clearly, just as you said, George, we will not pull out.

Now, if you're going to stay, you have to have a way of winning. The question is, what is that way? And I think the counterinsurgency strategy, which means protecting the people, not shooting from afar, but securing, taking, holding, and providing security for a period of time is really critical...

You leave this country, and the Taliban are increasing all of the time. They're taking over more. It will have a dramatic impact on Pakistan one day. I really believe that.

Now, should we stay there for 10, 12 years? General, I don't think so. I don't think the American people are up for that or want that. But I think -- I don't know how you put somebody in who was as crackerjack as General McChrystal, who gives the president very solid recommendations, and not take those recommendations if you're not going to pull out.

If you don't want to take the recommendations, then you -- you -- you put your people in such jeopardy, just like the base in Nuristan. We lost eight of our men. We didn't have the ability to defend them, and now the base is closing, and effectively we're -- we're retreating away from it. And so I think the decision has to be made sooner, rather than later.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-13T08:53:00.002-04:00

WHO WOULD OBAMA GIVE THE PRIZE TO? I'm guessing he wouldn't answer that question, but I hope his answer would be Morgan Tsavngirai, leader of a peaceful effort to bring democracy and human rights to Zimbabwe, which has been terrorized and impoverished by the Mugabe regime.

Obama met with Prime Minister Tsvangirai at the White House in June. During the 2008 campaign, Obama contacted Tsvangirai:

"to share my deep concern for the way his supporters are being targeted by the regime, and to express my admiration for his efforts to ensure that the will of the Zimbabwean people is finally respected"...

"The United States and the international community must be united, clear and unequivocal: the government of Zimbabwe is illegitimate and lacks any credibility," Senator Obama said.

Although Tsvangirai is now Prime Minister, Mugabe is still President. A Nobel for Tsvangirai could help ensure the success of Zimbabwe's nascent transition.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-11T21:36:00.001-04:00

WHAT THE NORWEGIANS WERE THINKING: The President's reaction to winning the Nobel Prize was to say he will "not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments." Presidents rarely refuse to take credit for any sort of achievement, so I won't give Obama a hard time.

What's more interesting is how the Prize committee framed its decision:

Agot Valle, a Norwegian politician and member of the committee, said in a phone interview that the choice of Mr. Obama was primarily related to his stance on nuclear disarmament. Ms. Valle said the committee last met on Oct. 5, and that the decision to choose him was unanimous. She said his recent work at the United Nations in late September to pass a resolution calling for a strengthened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty helped his candidacy.

"There is a criticism about the war in Afghanistan, and I understand that," said Ms. Valle. "But this was primarily an award on his work on, and commitment to, nuclear disarmament -- and his dialogue. Of course there will be criticism, because he hasn't achieved his goals yet. It will take time, but this is a support."

Obama gave a major address on nuclear disarmament on April 5 in Prague. Is there something distinctive about his stance on nuclear disarmament that won over the Prize committee?

One way to think about Obama's address is to ask whether he said anything that George Bush would not have said. There were some. First:

To achieve a global ban on nuclear testing, my administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Bush was clearly on the other side of the issue. Yet it would be hard to say that the Obama White House has pursued ratification either immediately or aggressively.

The second point of departure, both more important and less exact, was Obama's pledge to "seek engagement with Iran based on mutual interests and mutual respect." George Bush could have (and probably did) say something very similar. After all, the US supported an extended negotiation process led by the Europeans. The real difference, one might say, is that the Norwegians actually believe that Obama is serious about reaching a deal with Tehran.

But there was plenty of language in Obama's address that sounded exactly like the words of George Bush:

We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That's a path that the Islamic Republic can take. Or the government can choose increased isolation, international pressure, and a potential nuclear arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all.

We will support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy with rigorous inspections. That's a path that the Islamic Republic can take. Or the government can choose increased isolation, international pressure, and a potential nuclear arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all.

So let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies. The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defense against these missiles...

We go forward with no illusions. Some countries will break the rules. That's why we need a structure in place that ensures when any nation does, they will face consequences...

Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something.

In the final analysis, Obama's speech in Prague does not explain much about why the Norwegians consider his activism on disarmament to be his premier qualification for the prize. In the end, perhaps it's best to say that Obama won the prize simply for being Obama.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-08T20:00:00.001-04:00

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE NON-PARTISAN? I just sent off a post to a listserv discussion about J Street and AIPAC. After one AIPAC member described the organization as non-partisan, a critic shot back that AIPAC is no more non-partisan than Queer Nation or the KKK, because all the members basically have the same opinion about their #1 issue. Here's my response to that:

Non-partisanship and diversity of opinion are two different things.

The narrow definition of non-partisanship -- that it brings together both Democrats and Republicans -- is actually a very good one. For example, think about the various organizations that are calling for an end to genocide in Darfur. They involve substantial numbers of both Democrats and Republicans. As far as I can tell, they do not include anyone who agrees with how the Sudanese government treats the people of Darfur.

So how about Queer Nation and the KKK? I don't have personal knowledge of either one, but I'd guess that gay and lesbian Republicans are not likely to join Queer Nation. What makes it partisan isn't that all the members are pro-gay, but that it only represents liberals who are pro-gay.

As for the KKK, one won't make any friends at an AIPAC convention by comparing the two organizations. Anyhow, the KKK represents something that both parties consider repulsive, so you certainly can't call it bi-partisan. To the extent that "non-partisan" literally means unaffiliated with any party, you could call the KKK non-partisan, but I'm inclined to say that they're just extremists.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-08T19:57:00.002-04:00

J STREET CRITIC TO KEYNOTE J STREET CONFERENCE: I was pleasanly surprised to see that Rabbi Eric Yoffie will be one of the keynote speakers at the J Street convention later this month.

Rabbi Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, describes himself as a dove who welcomed the founding of J Street as an alternative to AIPAC. Yet when J Street equated the actions of Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Yoffie lashed out, writing,

[J Street's] words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.

It's saying a lot when a prominent dove echoes the standard conservative criticism of J Street.

So what will Rabbi Yoffie say at the J Street convention? Has there been a reconciliation? Have J Street's actions since January persuaded Yoffie that he judged the organization too soon? Or did J Street actually invite an unrepentant critic to address its conference? I'm genuinely curious.

My opinion of J Street hasn't changed. As far as I can tell from a recent NYT Magazine profile of the group, the same team is still in charge of the organziation. Since then, J Street has been rewarded with an invitation to the Obama White House. Not exactly an incentive to change.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-06T18:55:00.002-04:00

SHADY CAR SALESMAN AND A PUNDIT? He is the demented comedian who gave us Uncle Sugar. He also analyzes public policy in his role as associate director of the Regulatory Studies Program at George Mason University. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Rob Raffety:

Incidentally, the editors of the Wall Street Journal acidly note that car sales began to plunge as soon as Cash For Clunkers expired.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-06T18:23:00.000-04:00

READING BOB GATES' MIND: Everyone wants to know what he's thinking. If Gates says no more troops for Afghanistan, Obama can say "Why send more troops if George Bush's secretary of defense says they're not necessary?"

If Gates says send the troops, it will be extremely hard for Obama to reject the advice of a secretary so highly-regarded that he was the only Bush cabinet member reappointed by Obama.

So what is Gates thinking? Yesterday, he did a rare joint interview with Hillary Clinton, filmed by CNN:

FRANK SESNO, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me ask you about our objectives, because back in March, President Obama said several things. He said our clear and focused goal -- that was his term -- was to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda. He said, for the American people, the Afghanistan/Pakistan border was the most dangerous place in the world, that Afghanistan was an international security issue of the highest order, and that, if the Afghan government were to fall to the Taliban, the country will -- and I'm quoting him here -- "be again a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."

Has any of that changed from then until now in this review?

CLINTON: No.

GATES: I don't think so.

CLINTON: No.

SESNO: So, staying the course and having this government survive and not fall to the Taliban and disrupting and dismantling al Qaeda is the objective, is the goal of this review that you're going through?

CLINTON: Well, Frank, the goal remains, as the president said last spring.

Generally, those who think the Taliban will open the door to Al Qaeda favor more troops. But Gates (and Clinton) know that. So were they hinting at their own positions, or were they just pretending to hint?

What a game.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-06T17:56:00.002-04:00

IS McCHRYSTAL OUT OF LINE? Mike O'Hanlon says no. Eugene Robinson says,

The men with the stars on their shoulders -- and I say this with enormous respect for their patriotism and service -- need to shut up and salute.

Robinson adds that he applies the same standard to military officers whose opinions he agrees with. Clearly, Robinson shares the suspicion of many, including myself, that opinions about civil-military relations constantly flip as a result of partisan realignments. When George Bush went against his generals' advice and ordered the surge, weren't Republicans celebrating civilian supremacy while Democrats insisted we must listen to the generals?

Before that, it was Bush who insisted on the importance of listening to the generals. And before that, it was Democrats who celebrated generals like Eric Shinseki, who earned his place in Obama's cabinet by saying things that displeased the Bush administration.

What I don't know is whether specific individuals, whether in government or media, have reversed their positions on civil-military relations in order to advance a partisan interest. Those Republicans who favor listening to the generals may simply be silent now, while those Democrats who favor civilian supremacy were equally silent when Bush ordered the surge. Strange as it may seem, a party can contradict itself without having any of its members compromise their personal reputations (although some of them presumably have.)

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-04T13:51:00.000-04:00

OBAMA'S MISLEADING SCARE TACTICS: Last month, I gave the President a hard time for denouncing GOP scare tactics, while relying on his scary stories to build support for his healthcare plan. On Monday, ABC's Jake Tapper pointed out that the President's scary stories were "not quite accurate" or, in plain English, completely misleading.

First up, there's the man who died when his insurance company cut off his chemotherapy because he allegedly failed to report he once had gallstones. Actually, the man got his coverage back, got his chemotherapy, and lived for three and a half more years.

Next up, there's the woman with cancer whose coverage was cancelled because she forgot to report a case of acne. Turns our the acne had nothing do with her cancellation (although to Obama's credit, it does seem the woman actually had some pimples.)

As Tapper notes, the whole truth still makes the insurance companies look pretty heartless. But if the President wants to denounce the liars and cynics who oppose his plan, he should work a little harder to be part of the reality-based community.

Incidentally, this was how I closed out my original post about Obama's scary stories:

So I guess if I provide a few examples of terrible things that happen in Canada, I would’ve responsibly documented the perils of government-run healthcare?

Per the Wall Street Journal:

When the pain in Christina Woodkey's legs became so severe that she could no longer hike or cross-country ski, she went to her local health clinic. The Calgary, Canada, resident was told she'd need to see a hip specialist. Because the problem was not life-threatening, however, she'd have to wait about a year.

So wait she did.

In January, the hip doctor told her that a narrowing of the spine was compressing her nerves and causing the pain. She needed a back specialist. The appointment was set for Sept. 30. 'When I was given that date, I asked when could I expect to have surgery,' said Woodkey, 72. 'They said it would be a year and a half after I had seen this doctor.'

So this month, she drove across the border into Montana and got the $50,000 surgery done in two days. 'I don't have insurance. We're not allowed to have private health insurance in Canada,' Woodkey said. 'It's not going to be easy to come up with the money. But I'm happy to say the pain is almost all gone.'

As I said before, anecdotes can't prove a broader point. But they should at least be true.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-02T16:28:00.001-04:00

CARL LEVIN'S AFGHAN FLIP-FLOP: Goldfarb has the goods. Four-and-a-half months ago, Chairman Carl Levin and eight other Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee signed a letter to President Obama that began

We agree that the United States has a vital national interest in ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven from which al Qaeda can plot attacks against our homeland, and that achieving this objective requires that we put in place a well-resourced, comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy.

Of course, Levin is now one of the premier opponents of giving Gen. McChrystal the resources he's asked for.

The letter was also signed by John McCain and seven Committee Republicans.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-02T16:02:00.000-04:00

BROOKS DECLARES WAR ON TALK RADIO: David Brooks' column this morning is a guns-blazing assault on Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest of the conservative talk radio-sphere.

As Pete noted earlier, Brooks also has harsh words for those Republicans who ignorantly overestimate the influence of Limbaugh & Co. Let the record also show that Brooks is no more fond of "cynical Democrats, who love to claim that Rush Limbaugh controls the G.O.P." Those cynics include White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who presumably takes his orders from Barack Obama.

Now let me be clear about where I stand. I don't listen to talk radio. I generally trust David Brooks' instincts, but I won't pretend I know enough to agree or disagree this time around. Limbaugh & Co. only make it onto my radar screen when the mainstream media cover them, which happens either when one of them says something outrageous or when the White House decides to crown them as the leaders of the GOP.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-10-02T16:00:00.001-04:00

SAY IT THREE TIMES, "THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME": I've been off the network for almost two weeks now, while my wife and I were in the process of moving into our new home in Northwest DC.

This move will mark the end of an era. I've packed up and moved almost every 12 months since graduating from college ten years ago. Now, I've found a place where I hope to live for ten or twenty years or longer.

For the moment, it still feels like we're just playing house and pretending to be grown-ups. Maybe if a couple of kids show up and keep us up all night with their crying, it'll seem more real. For now, it's just fun.

Once again, a big shout out to Uncle Sam for his pro-homeowner tax policies, which have made it remarkably affordable to upgrade to from an apartment to a house. It's still hard to believe, but we are now paying less per month for a mortgage than we were to rent a nice two-bedroom.

Now back to serious blogging.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-13T11:54:00.001-04:00

KEVIN DRUM ON WILSON-MANIA: Kevin asks:

Did the Washington Post fulfill its duty to inform the public last night by running a mere eight separate pieces about Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's healthcare speech on Wednesday? Or is anything less than a dozen a sign that they aren't really trying anymore? After all, Politico had at least 15 Wilson-related pieces, including a big front pager by Andie Coller headlined "A Party of Cranks?"

I suppose I shouldn't complain, but unlike a lot of my fellow lefties, I'm not convinced that obsessing over Joe Wilson actually does our cause any good. It's time to send him back under the rock he crawled out from.

But if we stop talking about Wilson, we might start asking questions like how we're going to pay for healthcare reform...

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-13T11:51:00.001-04:00

SERENA WILLIAMS, THE JOE WILSON OF TENNIS? I didn't see the outburst that cost Serena her semi-final match, but I saw (as in, television saw) her smash her racket after losing the first set. Even that was pretty jarring.

Strange. A sport where the crowd watches in respectful silence, while a champion smashes expensive equipment that most fans would be grateful to own.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

WILL PELOSI FLIP ON AFGHANISTAN? The editors of the Wall Street Journal remind Madame Speaker that she was a singing a different tune on Afghanistan not long ago:

It is well known that Mr. Obama has called Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Less publicized is that in 2007 Speaker Pelosi was also saying that our real interests were in Afghanistan. "The war on terror is in Afghanistan," Ms. Pelosi said just two years ago. "The fact that we weakened our commitment to Afghanistan in order to concentrate in Iraq has taken a toll."

We should find out soon enough whether the Speaker was serious about her commitment to Afghanistan, or just paying lip service to a popular cause. If she was serious, she'll have to stand up to her closest friends in order to prove it:

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D., Calif.), co-chair of the 82-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, said her group is unified in wanting to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

"The Progressive Caucus is pretty much together on what is going on in Afghanistan, in being against escalating and in favor of bringing the troops home," Ms. Woolsey said in a recent interview. "We will have to stand up to our own president."

Once the dust settles after the healthcare fight, Afghanistan will have its moment.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-10T23:22:00.001-04:00

OBAMA VS. JOE WILSON ON THE TRUTH-O-METER: Joe G. noted earlier that Joe Wilson scored very poorly on Politifact's Truth-o-meter. Since that post, there have been five more targeting Rep. Wilson, including Kathy's moderately titled, Is there a politician lower than Joe Wilson?

I'm guessing Kathy has heard of Charlie Rangel.

Anyhow, I'm not here to defend Joe Wilson, who most people never heard of until yesterday. I'm here to look at how President Obama scores on the Truth-o-Meter. After last night's speech, Politifact awarded President Obama a Barely True for pretending that Democratic reform bills actually incorporated Republican ideas. In fact, Democrats accepted some technical amendments from the GOP.

Politifact also awarded the President a flat-out False for saying that preventive care "saves money".

In a very generous ruling, Politifact awarded Obama a True for saying

Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.

But that's just some tricky wordplay, since the real issue is whether government incentives will lead your employer to take away your coverage. That's why, less than a month ago, Politifact awarded the President a Half-true for insisting for the umpteenth time that "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."

America is deciding right now whether reform its entire healthcare system, which accounts for roughly one-eighth of the entire economy. So what's more important? Whether an obscure congressman bends the truth, or whether the President of the United States bends it again and again?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-10T22:58:00.001-04:00

OBAMA: IGNORE (OTHER PEOPLE'S) SCARE TACTICS. Those talk show hosts are awful. They say the most awful things. But it's the President who runs the country, so I'm much more concerned with his disingenuity. From last night:

Instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics.

Also last night:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result.

That's not a scare tactic, of course. It's an analysis of policy options. And the following are thoughtful illustrations, not scary stories:

One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way in the United States of America.

So I guess if I provide a few examples of terrible things that happen in Canada, I would've responsibly documented the perils of government-run healthcare?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

DEM CORRUPTION: The editors of the New Republic have some harsh words[subscription only] for House Democrats, who toppled a GOP majority in 2006 by promising to clean up Washington. Charlie Rangel and John Murtha, two of the most senior and powerful Democrats in the House, are an embarrassment.

Late August brought the stunning revelation that Rangel failed to note two bank accounts, each containing somewhere in the range of $250,000 and $500,000, on past financial disclosure forms. Add to this the unreported $75,000 in income from a beachfront villa, illegal rent-stabilized apartments, and other problems and you begin to understand why it is taking the ethics committee so long to sift through all of the complaints. If that weren't bad enough, there's the brazen condescension with which Rangel brushes off the allegations. "I recognize that all of you have an obligation to ask questions," Rangel recently told reporters, "knowing that there's none of you smart enough to frame it in such a way that I'm going to respond."

If Rangel thinks reporters are dumb, imagine what he thinks of his constitutents. All I know is that, somewhere, Tom Daschle is fuming about double standards.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-05T00:45:00.002-04:00

I FEEL AN ADDICTION COMING ON: Just watched the first episode of (the new) Battlestar Galactica. I wanted to try it, but assumed it would keep my interest for only a few episodes. My wife only agreed to watch because she is a gracious and generous woman. For the first thirty minutes, she made snide remarks. At the sixty minute mark she asked me if an hour had really gone by. At the eighty minute mark, I told her we had to go to sleep because we're going to California tomorrow. She begged for just ten more minutes. How could I say 'no'?

Please no spoilers in the comments!

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-05T00:38:00.000-04:00

PROF. MARION BARRY, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY: Sonny already plugged Matt Labash's great article about America's most notorious mayor. I second that. The strangest thing I learned about Barry was that he came within one year of finishing a PhD in chemistry.

He was an Eagle Scout. He recited poems in church. He went to college, and stopped one year short of getting his doctorate in chemistry, quitting to join the civil rights movement. "In chemistry, there's order," he says wistfully. "In politics, there's disorder. The rules change just about every other day."

If only he had become a chemist instead.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-04T21:33:00.001-04:00

FELLOW REPUBLICANS, SUPPORT OBAMA NOW! The situation in Afghanistan is bad and getting worse. Young Americans are losing their lives in a war that may soon lose the support of the American people.

Fellow Americans, will we give in to despair, or will we find a new HOPE? Will we accept a painful defeat, or will we have the AUDACITY to seek a brighter future? Will we surrender to the partisanship of the old way of politics, or seek innovative BIPARTISAN solutions?

You get my drift. Several months ago, it didn't seem very interesting when leading Republicans said they would support Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan, rather than criticize it because Obama is Democrat. After all, it's easy to announce one's support for a policy that is already popular on both sides of the aisle.

Now the situation is different. But the message from Republicans (except George Will) is the same. Accustomed to accusations of hyper-partisanship, Republicans seem to be thoroughly enjoying the chance to support Obama when he's supporting a war that Democrats have increasingly turned against. Even before l'affare Will, Bill Kristol wrote,

as a decision looms for Obama on a new strategy requiring increased numbers of troops in Afghanistan, a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week discovered that "majorities of liberals and Democrats alike now, for the first time, solidly oppose the war and are calling for a reduction of troop levels." Conservatives and Republicans are far more supportive of the war--they "remain the war's strongest backers"--and a majority of conservatives don't merely support the war but say they approve of President Obama's handling of it.

So much for charges of knee-jerk or unprincipled partisanship. Conservatives support a president they generally distrust because they think it important the country win the war in Afghanistan. And despite temptations to make political hay out of a war that's getting more unpopular, and despite doubts about Obama as commander in chief, Republican political leaders remain supportive of the war effort. They are urging Obama to commit himself unambiguously to win the war and to approve General Stanley McChrystal's coming request for more troops. And in urging the administration to follow this course, they are willing to see the president get credit for doing the right thing.

Sure, we're giving ourselves a big pat on the pack. But we deserve it. Dan Senor and Peter Wehner struck a similar note in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. They write,

The president's actions have clearly unsettled some members of his own party, who hoped he would begin to unwind America's commitment in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama not only ignored their counsel; he doubled down his commitment. There should therefore be no stronger advocates for Mr. Obama's Afghanistan strategy than the GOP.

Senor and Wehner make the important observation that America has a "long history of political parties out of power advancing a neo-isolationist outlook." The GOP often gave into that temptation in the Clinton era.

Although supporting a Democratic president is certainly bipartisan, it's important not to forget the political benefits of facilitating a bitter divide between a Democratic president and his own party. For those who want a reason to describe GOP support for Obama as selfish, there it is. But usually, when someone gets ahead by doing what's right and good, progressives call it enlightened self-interest.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-04T21:29:00.000-04:00

AFGHANISTAN -- THE WSJ OFFENSIVE: George Will called for an end to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, provoking a flood of responses from conservatives. The Wall Street Journal has given their opinions top billing.

Fred Kagan writes that the future of Pakistan depends on Afghanistan. Max Boot reminds us that we already tried to win on the cheap -- that's why it's such a mess today. Dan Senor and Peter Wehner call on Republicans to support Obama even when the going gets tough. Finally, Michael O'Hanlon and Bruce Riedel talk about what's going right in Afghanistan. Yes, I know they're Democrats. But plenty of liberals started denouncing O'Hanlon as a neo-con stooge when he dared suggest (long before it became obvious) that the surge was working in Iraq. And Riedel? Well, he led the review that led Obama to send more troops. If things keep going the way they are, the Democratic left will start talking about him they way they once did about Bob McNamara and Dean Rusk.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-02T19:08:00.000-04:00

NOT-A-REPUBLICAN LOOK AT AFGHANISTAN: In so many words, Andrew Exum (aka Abu Muqawama) describes himself as a hesitant, hedging, uncertain and humble supporter of the war in Afghanistan. What mystifies him is why Washington is turning so rapidly against the war and why the Obama White House is so afraid of criticism from the left regarding Afghanistan.

Andrew also prescribes a measure of humility and uncertaintly for arch-liberal opponents of the war, who have forgotten all too soon how they denounced the surge as a failure and denounced other Democrats for suggesting it might be a success.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-02T18:51:00.001-04:00

GEORGE WILL, ANTI-WAR ACTIVIST: I felt some serious deja vu while reading Robert's post about the hopelessness of our "endless bloody occupation" of Afghanistan. Just two years ago, the conventional wisdom was that there was nothing we could do to salvage our bloody and endless occupation of Iraq. Harry Reid told us "the war is lost" and Barack Obama insisted that sending more troops would accomplish nothing.

In his post, Robert links to George Will's recent column, in which he calls for a major withdrawal from Afghansitan. The notion that a Republican would oppose the war in Afghanistan may seem interesting, but Will was always pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the insurgency Iraq. Nonetheless, Will's stature has compelled many other Republicans to respond.

First up, Fred Kagan challenges Will's assertion that "Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable." Kagan applies US military doctrine to the situation and suggests that we can grow Afghan security forces up to 240,000 over the next couple of years, meanwhile supporting them with an increased Coaltion force. (Kagan, who used to teach at West Point, played an important role in designing the surge in Iraq, so he knows a thing or two about force levels.)

John Noonan challenges Will's proposal for a strategy focused on air-strikes, missile attacks and special forces. He writes,

The [counterinsurgency] efforts that have failed in the past 40 years (and there are plenty), were -- interestingly enough -- the fights that were prosecuted according to George Will's concept of operations, specifically "forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan." Obsession over kill counts and kinetic-ops is the quickest way to turn the local population against you and to ultimately lose the war, as exemplified by Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the Rhodesians during their Bush War.

Meanwhile, Rich Lowry explores the implications of Will's approach for Pakistan:

Will says "Pakistan actually matters." That's a very important reason to care about Afghanistan too. For the first time, Pakistan has been undertaking serious counter-insurgency operations in the border areas. And we have been supporting them with counter-insurgency operations in adjacent areas in Afghanistan. Just as Pakistan begins to get serious are we going to pull the rug out from under them?... If you want to control the border, you have to control the population near it, which means you can't just rely on special-operations forces and have to undertake counter-insurgency operations that require boots on the ground and, ultimately, a functioning indigenous army and government.

Finally, Peter Wehner takes the fight directly to George Will. As Wehner points out, Will glibly supported the invasion of Iraq, inched away from his position during the occupation, insisted the surge was a failure in late 2007, then stopped writing about Iraq once his credibility was shot. Like most people, Will fully supported the invasion of Afghanistan and praised the 2004 elections before his latest change of heart. Wehner writes,

If General David Petraeus thinks the task is hopeless, then I will take a hard second look at the war. But if George Will declares it hopeless, I will simply take a hard second look at his record.

Mr. Will has earned the reputation as one of the finest columnists alive, and one of the better ones our country has ever produced. I have admired him in the past, and I learn from him still. But on Iraq and Afghanistan, he has been wrong, unreliable, and unsteady.

Amen.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-02T17:49:00.000-04:00

SEN. BARRASSO'S TRIBUTE TO SEN. KENNEDY: Why did so many Republican senators have such strong feelings for Ted Kennedy? John Barrasso of Wyoming describes the personal touch that Kennedy had:

The day I got sworn into the Senate, June 25, 2007, to my knowledge he [Kennedy] was the only Democrat -- well, somebody would have been in the chair presiding -- who was there in the chamber for my swearing-in...

Later they had a little reception for me and he came to that, and he was the only Democrat there. And he spent a long time with my son Peter and my daughter Emma, who were both in college. He said, "So you're the brother, you're the sister -- you know I had some brothers." He was talking about John and Robert and Joe. He said it is good to work closely with your family. He said, "Why don't you come to my office and I'll show you some pictures of my brothers and my family?"

Then we went to his office in the Russell Building and he must have spent half an hour with Peter and Emma and me going over the pictures, with Papa Joe and Rose and the Kennedy kids and different letters that were written. I think he enjoyed it as much as we did, but for us it was an incredible lesson in history and an incredible welcome to the Senate. I think Ted Kennedy may still be my daughter's favorite senator -- more than me!

Civility can make a remarkable difference.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-02T17:46:00.001-04:00

DAVID GREGORY USES THE 'C' WORD: No, not that 'C' word. I'm talking about Chappaquiddick.

This weekend, Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week all devoted their full broadcasts to fond remembrances of Sen. Kennedy. I was curious whether they would mention the most controversial episode in his long career. On the one hand, a special measure of deference is appropriate for the recently departed. On the other, how can a serious news organization devote an entire broadcast to one man and ignore his flaws?

ABC struck the more deferential pose with no mention of what transpired on the night of July 19, 1969. In contrast, David Gregory mentioned it twice on Meet the Press. However, he provided no details about what Kennedy did or why it mattered. Perhaps one can safely assume that the audience already knows that. Yet professional news organziations rarely mention events from forty years ago without providing some measure of background.

To my surprise, Gregory directly asked Kennedy's niece, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, about Chappaquiddick:

[MR. GREGORY:] Kathleen, the imperfect part of his being was something that was very public, from Chappaquiddick to the incident in Florida in 1991 to other struggles.

MS. TOWNSEND: Right.

MR. GREGORY: How did he make--take stock of that in the end?

MS. TOWNSEND: Well, that's what--I mean, I have to say, I think that's one of the great, important parts of the Catholic faith. We used to joke we were the church of sinners rather than the church of saints, and therefore you--we're all sinners. And you can pray to God and say, "I--are you going to believe that I can make, make something better of my life?"

Half way between ABC and NBC is CBS, where Bob Schieffer made a coded reference to the incident. He said,

Ted Kennedy crashed and crashed again during the early turns of his life but somehow he kept on going through the sorrows and tragedies over which he had no control and the self-destructiveness over which he did and in the final laps he won. His children loved him.

"Crashed and crashed again"? That's eerie. On a more substantive note, Schieffer was the only Sunday morning host who challenged his guests to defend Kennedy's condemnation of Robert Bork in 1987. Schieffer said to Dianne Feinstein,

BOB SCHIEFFER: You were not there during the Bork hearings when Senator Kennedy said some very tough things. I mean, the -- the thing we always remember is the quote he gave, where he said, "Robert Bork's America
is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight race -- raids children could not be taught about evolution.” Many people said that after Senator Kennedy said that, that the whole confirmation process about Supreme Court candidates changed after that. Do you think that was a good part or a bad part of his legacy?

Well when you put the question that way...

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-09-02T17:43:00.001-04:00

KENNEDY NEPHEW: SENATE CONTENDER AND PROUD CHAVISTA. Not only does Jamie Kirchick have a new essay up on Doublethink Online; he also has a new article up at TNR about the warm feelings of Joe Kennedy II for Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

With his uncle's passing, Joe II is now a leading contender for the open Senate perch in Massachusetts. Here's the kind of wisdom Joe II might bring to US foreign policy:

Kennedy has gone out of his way to defend and even praise Chavez, telling The Wall Street Journal in 2006 that the caudillo has done “so much more” for his country’s poor than any prior leader...As for concerns about Chavez’s assault on democracy, Kennedy drew a moral equivalence between the manifold abuses of the Chavista regime and our own government, saying that there’s “ample room for improvement in the ways that people get elected in Venezuela as well as in Florida.”

Well, if Hillary can compare Nigeria's outrageous elections to the one in Florida...

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-31T11:03:00.000-04:00

WHY ARE JEWS LIBERALS? That is the title of Norman Podhoretz's new book. It won't be out until September 8th, but the current issue of Commentary presents a symposium on the book, with contributions from prominent Jewish authors, mostly conservatives.

Best I can tell from the symposium, the main thrust of Podhoretz's argument is that American Jews have confused the Torah of Judaism with "the Torah of liberalism". Authentic Jewish values have been displaced by liberal ideology, masquerading as a viable substitute for religion. If that is Podhoretz's argument, then I completely disagree. Either way, I'd like to offer some of my own thoughts on why American Jews are so liberal, based on my twenty-plus years as a liberal American Jew and my shorter years as a part of the Republican Jewish minority.

If you knit together the arguments made by the participants in Commentary's symposium, you get a very robust picture of why American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. Rabbi David Wolpe observes that Jews

Have felt like outsiders for three millenia...somewhere in the Jewish soul, there lurks a scintilla of suspicion as to our Americanness.

Or to put it slighly differently, there lurks considerable suspicion as to whether "real" Americans sincere truly accept American Jews as part of America, or merely tolerate them because America demands a certain tolerance.

I grew up Jewish in New York. My family belonged to a liberal Conservative congregation, while my brothers and I attended a much more conservative Orthodox day school. On both sides of the divide, there was always considerable doubt as to what the goyim truly believed. We insisted that we were 100% American, but we insisted so forcefully because we were never sure.

Liberalism is the discourse of the outsider, of the victim and of diversity. Is it any surprise that a people of outsiders, with a long history of victimization, now subscribe to a political philosophy that demands respect for all forms of diversity?

To appreciate more fully the way in which American Jews think of themselves as outsiders, it is essential to consider their relationship with Christianity. As Michael Medved points out, there is no question which party identifies itself more closely with Christian values and which with secular ones. I think Medved pushes his argument way too far when he writes that in America today, "the sole basis of Jewish identity involves rejection of Christianity."

But American Jews' deep and abiding fear of Christianity -- especially evangelicals -- should not be underestimated. Growing up in Jewish New York, I shared the conviction that somewhere out in Middle America, there were tens of millions of Christian conservatives who wanted to write the Bible into law. Their Bible, the one that had served so often as a pretext for pervasive anti-Semitism. The only way to protect our Bible and ourselves was to fight aggressively for a secular America with an iron wall separating church and state.

Medved notes that the only Jews who reliably vote Republican are the Orthodox, who have considerable reservations about a full-on commitment to secular values. I think that's right. In my experience, Orthodox Jews share a deep fear of Christianity, but also sense that liberalism does not respect their way of life. They are outsiders among the outsiders. With no outlet for their values, they are more inclined to vote their interests, which are better represented by Republicans.

Jonathan Sarna, the Brandeis historian, adds another critical piece to the puzzle of Jewish politics. In order to understand why American Jews are so liberal, one cannot remain narrowly focused on politics in America. In Britain, Canada and Australia, Jews are evenly divided between center-right and center-left. The critical difference between those countries and our own is that only the United States has a left-of-center party that is so vocally pro-Israel. The hard left may not have much nice to say about Israel, but Democratic politicians are almost as enthusiastic as their Republican counterparts.

All I would add to Sarna's observation is that the relentless efforts of American Jews are one of the principal reasons that the Democratic Party is so pro-Israel. Thus, American Jews have reinforced their own commitment to liberal politics by ensuring that liberal politics reflected their commitment to Israel.

The liberalism of American Jews should not be a mystery. The essential concerns of the American Jewish community are also essential concerns of the Democratic Party: respect for diversity, the firm separation of religion and politics, and an enduring commitment to Israel.

Republicans will never be able to talk about diversity in the same way Democrats -- nor should they. Barack Obama may be antagonizing many supporters of Israel at the moment, but I suspect he will not change the nature of his party.

Only when it comes to church and state is there potential for a change of heart among American Jews. I believe that Jewish fears of evangelical Christianity are so powerful because American Jews don't know much about evangelicals and don't have much occasion to interact. There is no reason to expect that will change any time soon, even if change would be for the good.

Until then, Jewish Republicans will have to enjoy being outsiders.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-31T11:00:00.000-04:00

HAS DARTH CHENEY INFILTRATED THE WASHINGTON POST? I just want to provide a few more quotations from the same article about Khalid Sheik Mohammed that Sonny quoted earlier. I really never thought I'd read anything like it in the Post or any other leading American paper. Here goes:

These [accounts] provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.

"KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete," according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA's then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate.

I am anti-torture and, like John McCain, I think the Bush administration made a lot of bad calls on the subjects of interrogation and detention. But many other critics have assumed there is no real debate to be had because the alleged benefits of harsh interrogation are just a delusion conjured up by Cheney & Co. to defend the indefensible.

That is why this article in the Post is so unusual. It tells us that the tradeoffs between liberty and security are real. Of course, that point is hardly original. Yet few mainstream publications have granted that the actions taken by the Bush administration reflected a serious, evidence-based evaluation of how best to satisfy our needs for both liberty and security.

There is still plenty of room to argue that those actions were wrong. But it is no longer sufficient to dismiss them with contempt and assume that the debate ends there.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-27T11:55:00.000-04:00

HEALTHCARE: OBAMA VS. SCHUMER: Give Chuck Schumer credit. He was trying really, really -- yes, really -- hard to pretend that the President hasn't waffled on the public option, backing away from his commitment to liberal reform. Here's Schumer and David Gregory on Meet the Press:

MR. GREGORY: You're not backing away from [the public option], but there is concern within the Democratic Party that President Obama is backing away. Here was the headline in the New York Post this week that spoke for a lot of liberals, actually, both publicly and privately: "Sellout! Liberals howl as Bam `caves' on the health plan." This is what the reference was to, the president's weekly radio address back in July during which he said this.

(Videotape, July 18, 2009)

PRES. OBAMA: That's why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs and track records of a variety of plans--including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest--and choose what's best for your family.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: That was July. But just a week ago the president said this.

(Videotape, August 15, 2009)

PRES. OBAMA: All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: You say it's essential, Senator Schumer; the president saying now it's just a sliver. He's backed away, hasn't he?

SEN. SCHUMER: I don't think he's backed away at all.

Can Schumer persuade you that there's no contradiction? Here's the rest of his answer:

I've talked to the president personally about this in the last few weeks. He believes strongly in the public option. Obviously he is working hard to get a bipartisan bill, because that would be a better bill. But I believe that at the end of the day we will have a public option. And frankly, I believe we could get a public option that could be passed with the 60 Democratic votes we had. A level playing field public option, where the public option competes on a level playing field with the insurance companies, was backed in the House by both Blue Dog Democrats and more liberal Democrats. And I think that's the direction we're going to end up in.

Is this a word game, or is Schumer wearing rose-colored glasses? Democratic negotiator, Sen. Kent Conrad said again on Sunday that there simply are not the votes to pass the public option. If the Senate supports a co-op based reform plan, will Schumer tells us that counts as a "level playing field public option"? The only thing I'm counting on is a surprise.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-27T11:53:00.002-04:00

AFGHANSITAN: NO, WE ARE...SORT OF...NATION BUILDING? I've been looking for some clarity on our strategy in Afghanistan. The President seems to have one foot on each side of the fence. Now it seems the military brass is a bit confused. Here's Adm. Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Meet the Press:

MR. GREGORY: We're rebuilding this nation?

ADM. MULLEN: To a certain degree there is, there is some of that going on.

MR. GREGORY: Is that what the American people signed up for?

ADM. MULLEN: No, I'm--right now the American people signed up, I think, for support of getting at those who threaten us. And, and to the degree that, that the Afghan people's security and the ability to ensure that a safe haven doesn't recur in Afghanistan, there's focus on some degree of making sure security's OK, making sure governance moves in the right direction and developing an, an economy which will underpin their future.

Those last couple sentences are actually pretty coherent, although less than eloquent. If we don't want the Taliban and Al Qaeda to have safe havens in Afghanistan, then our strategy has to extend to political and economic development as well as military action. But clearly, Adm. Mullen knows that he isn't supposed to call that nation-building.

The President pays constant lip service to how difficult the road ahead will be in Afghanistan. He insists "The road ahead will be long. There will be difficult days."
Am I for nation-building? Yes, but. Securing the people is the number one objective of counterinsurgency. Politics is integral to counterinsurgency operations and economics are important as well, although our economic objectives have more to do with restoring normalcy than fighting poverty.

'Nation-building' is an unfair terms since its connotations are so ambitious. Almost by definition, nation-building is the unrealistic pursuit of Jeffersonian democracy and 21st century capitalism in the backwaters of the developing world. Yet at the same time, he refuses to level about the costs of the war by saying that our purpose is no broader than "to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

Public support for the war is evaporating, mainly on Obama's side of the aisle. The chances of rebuilding it are low if there's no straight talk coming from the White House.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-27T11:51:00.000-04:00

THE MYSTERY OF A "LIBERAL CONSERVATIVE" FOREIGN POLICY: Will Inboden ably explores the mystery of what British foreign policy will look like once the Tories take charge (since everyone in London knows the will). Will explains why, from a British perspective, it actually makes a certain amount of sense for the Tories to talk about having a "liberal Conservative" foreign policy." Still, its contents are more than somewhat vague. Will writes,

For all of David Cameron and the Conservatives' political success in becoming poised to win nationwide elections, their policy priorities remain elusively vague. This is certainly true on domestic policy, but even more so on foreign policy, which remains an enigma to many British observers. The politics of this are understandable. Why spell out specific policies which might elicit criticism and turn off some voters, especially when Gordon Brown's manifest governing failures make almost any opposition party look good in comparison?

An opposition party coming to power without making clear what it actually stands for? Just by attacking the unpopular incumbent? In a country that is one of the world's great democracies? Perish the thought!

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-25T09:11:00.000-04:00

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY, KEVIN! It's been seven years now that Kevin Drum's been blogging. His story says something great about the blogosphere.

Some of the early bloggers were grad students in their pajamas. (Why is everyone looking at me?!?!?) In contrast, Kevin had a successful career in business, then decided to try his hand at blogging in his free time. His good nature, command of details and overall intelligence rapidly brought in a growing audience. Eventually, Kevin accepted an offer from the Washington Monthly and has been blogging professionally ever since.

This is exactly what the blogosphere was supposed to do. It was supposed to open political debate to intelligent people who deserved a say but never made commentary a vocation.

I got an e-mail from Kevin shortly after he started blogging. He said he read my blog and maybe I'd be interested in his. I most definitely was. On occasional visits to California, I got to meet Kevin in person. He even had a bloggers' dinner at his home.

I'm curious if new bloggers still make connections that way. It was all very casual back then. We were like model train enthusiasts, or hobbyists of some other sort that people don't exactly understand. We felt like we had something in common, even though we'd never met.

With blogging so widespread, I'm guessing that people don't feel a connection to each other just because they blog about politics. On the other hand, it's getting more and more normal to become real friends with people you know online.

In the old days -- way back, almost seven years ago, when I was young -- I think bloggers were a lot more optimistic about the potential for raising the level of debate across party lines. I get the sense that Kevin isn't all that upbeat anymore.

Some people think bloggers are the problem, not the cure. I think Kevin might suggest that the problem is partisanship, primarily on one side of the aisle. Personally, I think it's just the way democracy is. Technology won't change it.

But even if the new era of civility hasn't begun, I think blogging has done opened some very important doors. Seven years from now, I hope I'm still reading Kevin Drum.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-25T09:08:00.000-04:00

ARE WE NOW THE SOVIETS IN AFGHANISTAN? Matt Yglesias asks:

If you read accounts of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, people generally always seem to think that American and Saudi and Pakistani support for the Mujahedeen was an important factor. I don’t see anyone saying “it was all a big waste of time and the same stuff would have happened anyway.”

Ask and ye shall receive! Two days after Matt put up his question, Fred Kagan posted a detailed look at the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan. So how important was US support for the Mujahideen in the 1980s?

Urban legend has it that the introduction of American Stinger MANPADs led to Soviet defeat. In fact, Stingers did not show up until 1986, and the Soviets had already lost the war by then and, indeed, taken the decision to leave. The advent of Stingers did not defeat a Soviet strategy that was working; it accelerated the collapse of a strategy that was failing.

Matt also asks,

The Taliban has, as best as anyone knows, nothing remotely resembling [the Mujahideen's] level of external support. So why isn’t that making more of a difference? Is our side actually much less effective than the Soviets were when you control for the change in external support?

While providing an excellent history and analysis of the Soviet intervention, Fred's article doesn't compare the relative effectiveness of US and Soviet efforts. Here's my quick take: The Soviets invaded Afghanistan with roughly 125,000-150,000 troops. They kept them there for almost a decade.

If you consult Brookings' Afghanistan Index, (p.11) you'll see that by the end of 2006, there were still only 35,000 US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The number today is only 64,500.

Just over two years ago, Barack Obama gave a speech entitled The War We Need to Win. In it, he insisted that Afghanistan was coming apart because the US never provided the resources, military or otherwise, required for victory. Comparing our troop levels to the Soviets' only reinforces that point.

Obama promised that the United States would not turn its back on Afghanistan a second time. Yet Democratic support for the war is collapsing, even though it is supposed to be the "good" war and Iraq the "bad" one.

If Republicans have to give Obama the support he needs to win, so be it. But we'd appreciate some bipartisanship on this one.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-25T09:06:00.001-04:00

SO CAN ANYONE ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING? The new issue of Foreign Affairs is hot off the presses. Its cover package includes three articles about global warming that are well worth reading. The focus here is entirely on how to solve the problem. This is a discussion of the politics, not the scientific debate behind it.

First up is Michael Levi, who provides a very sobering look at how hard it will be for this year's Copenhagen conference (the successor to Kyoto) to produce meaningful results.

Hopes are higher than ever for a breakthrough climate deal. For the past eight years, many argued that developing nations reluctant to commit to a new global climate-change deal -- particularly China and India -- were simply hiding behind the United States, whose enthusiastic engagement was all that was needed for a breakthrough. Now the long-awaited shift in U.S. policy has arrived.

But George Bush's America wasn't the only problem:

The odds of signing a comprehensive treaty in December are vanishingly small. And even reaching such a deal the following year would be an extraordinary challenge...

Many U.S. lawmakers want absolute near-term emissions caps from China and India, but those countries will not sign up for anything of the sort for at least another decade. And before they consider a deal of any kind, Chinese and Indian negotiators are demanding that developed countries commit to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by over 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, but none of the world's wealthiest countries will even come close to meeting this goal.

And what if, miraculously, Copenhagen does result in a breakthrough treaty?

Even a blockbuster deal in which every country signed up to binding emissions caps would come nowhere close to guaranteeing success, since the world has few useful options for enforcing commitments to slash emissions short of punitive trade sanctions or similarly unpalatable penalties.

Levi returns often to the challenge of negotiating a deal that can satisfy both the West as well as India and China.

Americans accustomed to thinking about climate diplomacy within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol may assume that the obvious next step is to translate reduction goals into emissions caps, put them in a treaty, and establish a system for global carbon trading. But this would be problematic for three reasons.

First, negotiators from developing countries would insist on much less stringent caps than whatever they thought they could meet...

Second, even if a developing country met its agreed emissions cap, other nations would, in the near term, have little way of verifying this, since most developing countries, including China and India, lack the capacity to robustly monitor their entire economies' emissions...

And finally, even if the problems of excessively high caps and poor verification could be solved, simple caps would have little value on their own. Canada is a case in point. Ottawa will soon exceed its Kyoto limit by about 30 percent, yet it will face no penalty for doing so because the Kyoto parties never agreed on any meaningful punishments. The United States and others have essentially no way to hold countries such as China and India to emissions caps short of using punitive trade sanctions or other blunt instruments that would make a mess of broader U.S. foreign policy. Obsessing narrowly in Copenhagen over legally binding near-term caps for developing countries is therefore a waste of time.

Seriously? The Canadians? Are there no good countries left in global politics?

Anyhow, Levi argues that the best hope for Copenhagen is a partnership that helps China and other developing countries clean up their act at home:

Shifting China onto a cleaner path will require Beijing to identify specific ways in which it can make deep emissions-intensity cuts. That could include better enforcement of building codes, mandating the use of efficient technology in factories, new subsidies for renewable energy, or a provisional commitment to use carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology on new coal plants by 2020. The United States and other wealthy countries should then offer to help China in whatever ways they usefully can. When it comes to building codes, Washington could help develop Beijing's monitoring and enforcement capacity...wind power could be expanded by encouraging China to improve its protection of intellectual property, which would attract investment from international firms; and to help slash emissions from coal, the U.S. and Chinese governments could fund private demonstrations of CCS technology and share the resulting intellectual property.

Those are certainly interesting ideas, but one has to wonder about the political plausibility of an approach that rests on China welcoming foreign involvement in its domestic affairs and becoming a leader in the defense of intellectual property rights.

It will certainly be interesting to see whether the US government approaches Copenhagen in the same modest spirit as Mr. Levi.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-20T20:29:00.001-04:00

GET PAID TO VOTE AGAINST OBAMACARE: If it doesn't include a public option. Kevin points out that Blue America has raised almost $200,000 to distribute to Dems who pledge to vote against any reform bill without a public option. Since Kevin's post this morning, the total has risen to $277,000. Kevin observes,

The Blue America money helps make the promise to vote against any bill without a public option more credible. Right now, no one believes it. Everybody thinks that, in the end, liberals will cave and vote for it regardless. But with this money in place, which is going to people on condition that they vote against any bill without a public option, it makes it genuinely hard for them to turn around and vote Yes after all. It helps turn a meaningless threat into a credible one.

We can only hope. Also, Kevin explains the politics of the Democratic proposal to split the healthcare reform package into two bills.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-20T20:03:00.002-04:00

NEW IDEAS ABOUT HEALTHCARE REFORM: Well, they're not exactly new ideas. They're new to me. More importantly, they're ideas that didn't seem to make the cut for either Democratic or Republican talking points. Which doesn't mean they're good ideas, but at least they're thought provoking. (Hat tip: david1clark)

In June, New Yorker correspondent and practicing physician Atul Gawande profiled the town of McAllen, Texas, which has the honor of having the highest Medicare cost per patient in the nation. Healthcare costs are so high in McAllen because doctors there prescribe so many more tests and procedures (although there is no evidence this translates into additional health for their patients).

That's interesting, because neither party seems to be saying that the problem in America is that we get too much healthcare. The President says he will save hundreds of billions by eliminating waste and fraud, not by limiting treatement.

Why are doctors so interventionist in McAllen? In one word, the answer is capitalism. Doctors in McAllen have quite an entrepreneurial streak and seem to be interested in making as much money as possible. In other words, Gawande thinks President Obama may have been onto something when he suggested that doctors remove kids' tonsils just to make money.

Going further, Gawande argues that paying doctors by the procedure is why costs are out of control throughout the country, not just in McAllen. At the world-famous Mayo Clinic, which pays its doctors a salary, costs remain low even though the care is the best in the world.

Would it be so easy to duplicate that achievement on a national level? I don't know. Is it possible that doctors everywhere are too interested in money? I'm skeptical. None of my friends who've gone to medical are in it for the money. But misaligned incentives can lead good people to make bad decisions. Color me curious.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-20T19:27:00.000-04:00

OBAMA FIGHTS THE GOP'S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN: Jazz linked earlier to the new ABC-WaPo poll results on Afghanistan. I'd like to take a closer look at the data.

The Post's headline reports, Public Opinion in US Turns Against Afghan War.

Among all adults, 51 percent now say the war is not worth fighting, up six percentage points since last month and 10 since March. Less than half, 47 percent, say the war is worth its costs. Those strongly opposed (41 percent) outweigh strong proponents (31 percent).

Yet strangely, 60 percent approve of Obama's handling of the war and

Broad majorities across party lines say they are confident that the United States will defeat the Taliban and succeed in spurring economic development.

I think public opinion is far more nuanced than the WaPo headline suggests. The situation is very complicated because we have a Democratic president, deeply admired by his own party, now sending additional troops to fight a war that his fans oppose and his critics support. The Post observes,

Overall, seven in 10 Democrats say the war has not been worth its costs, and fewer than one in five support an increase in troop levels.

Republicans (70 percent say it is worth fighting) and conservatives (58 percent) remain the war's strongest backers, and the issue provides a rare point of GOP support for Obama's policies.

Unfortunately, the WaPo data sheet doesn't provide a breakdown by part of who approves of the President's handling of the war. The WaPo article mentions that 43% of Republicans approve, which implies that Democrats and independents approve to a much greater extent, if Obama's overall ratings is 60.

In other words, Democrats (and possibly independents) approve of Obama's performance, are confident that he can bring the war to a successful conclusion, but don't think the war is worth fighting. That's not a contradiction. I am sure we could win a war against Canada, but it still wouldn't be worth it (although possibly enjoyable).

The harder thing to know about Democrats (and liberals, whose opposition is even greater) is whether they oppose the war in such great numbers because it has been especially bloody the past few months, or whether they really don't believe that this is a war of necessity, no matter how often Obama says so.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-20T18:50:00.001-04:00

AFGHANISTAN: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF COUNTERINSURGENCY. This is a response to Jazz's post from earlier today. Like Jazz, I am disheartened by the carnage in Afghanistan and the lack of progress we've made over the past eight years. But I think Jazz's call to end the war now is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what US and NATO troops are actually doing in Afghanistan and why. Speaking on Tuesday to the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), the President explained clearly and concisely why we must defeat the Taliban:

This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.

Jazz writes,

We may not have found Osama bin Laden, (and who knows if he’s really even still alive?) but we broke the back of their organization, sending them fleeing into mountain caves and disrupting their abilities to plan and conduct terrorist activities. We’ve lost track of how many of them we’ve killed. It may be fair, at this time, to say that we’ve made our point.

But this war is not about making a point. It is not about the number of terrorists we kill. It is about the strategic objective of denying Al Qaeda a safe haven. If we retreat, Al Qaeda will return. Jazz writes,

The problem is that we were never, ever going to catch or kill all of them, and they remain able to recruit replacements all over the world. It was never the sort of battlefield where we could find an enemy army to defeat in one decisive battle. You don’t defeat an enemy in what is essentially a pre-industrial age country by sending in thousands of missiles to bomb their piles of rubble into smaller piles of rubble.

Our strategy has nothing to do with bombing piles of rubble. Nor is about seeking a decisive battle or killing every terrorist.

Our strategy is guided by the counterinsurgency manual developed by Gen. Petraeus and other top officers. The manual identifies the essential counterinsurgency mission as providing security to the population. The application of that approach helped turn around the war in Iraq. There are many differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, but the fundamental principle remains the same. You win by protecting the people (and teaching them to protect themselves), not by hunting down every last terrorist. Jazz writes,

I would still support a large surge of troops into the arena if our leaders could assure us that they had some definitive targets which could be taken out with one last, big push. But that doesn’t seem to be forthcoming.

The painful lesson learned in Iraq (and a generation ago in Vietnam) is that we cannot think in terms of targets. It is about securing the population. As Jazz noted earlier in his post, "we were never, ever going to catch or kill all of them." That is precisely why we cannot think in terms of targets.

The good news is that this war is not, as Jazz fears, being driven by

the mistaken belief that we can drag Afghanistan kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The people of Afghanistan are not expecting us to turn them into the next Silicon Valley. They want security. If we commit to staying until they can protect themselves, they will support us. They know the Taliban up close and tend to resent them deeply -- and fear them. If the people sense we are preparing to leave, they will not risk offending the Taliban by supporting us.

This war cannot be won quickly, but it can be won.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-19T15:10:00.000-04:00

CAN REFORM CURE KRUGMAN-ITIS? Krugman-itis is terrible. I should know. I used to suffer from it myself. When I was younger, I used to believe that Democrats were always at a disadvantage because they were too honest for their own good.

This state of affairs was depressing, but also intoxicating. I believed with all my heart that my party was more honest, more intelligent and more enlightened. So now I empathize with those, like Paul Krugman, who still suffer from the same afflication. In his latest column, Krugman writes,

At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.

The right-wing propaganda machine is a very unpredictable thing. It failed tragically to persuade gullible voters to vote against Barack Obama last November. It also fell short in the congressional elections of 2006. Fortunately, it has now recovered its magical powers and has been able to swing the electorate away from their natural support for universal healthcare.

I think you see what I'm getting at. The right-wing propaganda machine -- or if you prefer, "the vast right-wing conspiracy" -- is a convenient foe that can be blamed for any setback. Or conveniently ignored when he doesn't do his job.

Now, for a minute there, I began to wonder if I was a victim of the right-wing propaganda machine. Now, I don't believe in death panels and I don't believe that anyone is going to pull the plug on grandma, but maybe all that time I spent reading the Weekly Standard had subtly begun to warp my mind.

Thankfully, Krugman's colleague David Brooks was there to shake me to my senses. As he told Jim Lehrer on Friday,

[Obama] just tells a lot of whoppers now. Now, believe me, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are saying some things that are extremely off the charts untrue about the plan, but I just wrote down some of the things Obama said today which are whoppers.

He said everyone can keep their health care plan. Well, the CBO doesn't say that. Six million people are going to lose their plan. Preventive care saves money. That's not true. It's going to cost $90 billion a year. That's not true. It's probably going to cost twice as much when it's fully implemented. Government will be out of health care decisions.

He tells one thing after another, making it seem so easy. Well, believe me: This is not easy. It's going to take some sacrifices and some really painful cuts for people to get this system under control.

One of the unfortunate symptoms of Krugman-itis is that it may blind you to the dishonesty of your political allies. As long as folks on the other side (especially Rush Limbaugh) are saying things that are completely off the wall, you have license to ignore the disingenuity on your own side of the aisle. In fact, you may even believe that the policies you favor are right simply because such awful people oppose them.

In addition to missing the dishonesty on your side of the aisle, Krugman-itis may also blind you to those things that make your policies unpalatable to real, live voters. As Ross Douthat, another one of Krugman's colleagues, points out,

For liberals trying to find the money to make health insurance universal, [Medicare's] inefficiencies make Medicare an obvious place to wring out savings. But you can’t blame the elderly if “savings” sound a lot like “cuts.” When the president talks about shearing waste from Medicare, and empowering an independent panel to reduce the program’s long-term costs — well, he isn’t envisioning a world where seniors get worse care, but he’s certainly envisioning a world in which they receive less of it.

But the biggest problem with Obama's plan may be that there is no plan at all. Robert Reich may be on Paul Krugman's side, but he knows that the President himself bears just as much responsibility for the current situation as the lying liars on the right. Reich asks,

Why are these [townhall] meetings brimming with so much anger? Because Republican Astroturfers have joined the same old right-wing broadcast demagogues that have been spewing hate and fear for years, to create a tempest.

But why are they getting away with it? Why aren't progressives -- indeed, why aren't ordinary citizens -- taking the meetings back?

Mainly because there's still no healthcare plan. All we have are some initial markups from several congressional committees, which differ from one another in significant ways. The White House is waiting to see what emerges from the House and Senate before insisting on what it wants, maybe in conference committee.

But that's the problem: It's always easier to stir up fear and anger against something that's amorphous than to stir up enthusiasm for it.

On the other hand, if Obama's plan weren't so amorphous, people might object to its actual contents. Or they might demand an explanation of how he'll pay for it. If Obama's plan were the one Reich wanted, the public might even be angrier. (And Reich might come down with a serious case of Krugman-itis, since he would be incapable of understanding how anything other than "fear and hate" could prevent the American public from supporting an idea he knows is so good.)

The funny thing is, I'm not intrinsically hostile to many of the reforms Democrats have proposed. I may be a Republican, but I agree that healthcare costs are out of control and we need some major reforms. I'm willing to consider any idea on the merits, even it involves more government involvement in healthcare.

But when push comes to shove, I'm much more concered with the truth-value of what the President says than I am with the integrity of Limbaugh & Co. I don't like it when the President publishes an op-ed (in Mr. Krugman's NY Times) in which he avoids taking a position on any of the specifics, but still promises that "reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control." And as David Brooks pointed out, Obama isn't letting himself be bound just by the facts.

I wish I could take six months off from my job just to study health care, so I could really understand what's going on instead of having to trust what other people say about the subject. But since that's not going to happen, I'm not going to support the reforms unless I really have confidence that the President is telling it like it is.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-18T18:10:00.001-04:00

DR. OBAMA IN 800 WORDS: I was actually glad to see that Barack Obama had written an op-ed about healthcare reform for the Sunday Times. I haven't paid serious attention to all the talk about death panels and astroturf. I'm a foreign policy guy and I'm not all that interested in the tactical politics of healthcare reform.

Sure, I am a Republican and I am skeptical of all things Obama. But I haven't written him off in the healthcare debate. I figure the White House will soon wake up and accept that its strategy of waiting for Congress to produce a plan has become a dead end. And then the President will finally tell us what kind of reform he actually wants.

Just not yet. Yesterday's op-ed was a wish list, not a plan. Yes, we all want affordable insurance that will move with us from job to job. We all want doctors and patients to make the important decisions. We all want rapid care that prevents problems before they happen.

But what will it cost? How will we pay for it? Do we need a public option? Don't ask me. And don't ask Barack Obama.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-18T18:09:00.000-04:00

FEAR AND ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN: Dexter Filkins of the NY Times reports from the village of Tarakai in Helmand province, one of the most violent in Afghanistan. The residents of Tarakai explain very clearly why the war is not going well:

“When you [i.e. American forces] leave here, the Taliban will come at night and ask us why we were talking to you,” a villager named Abdul Razzaq said. “If we cooperate, they would kill us.”

The Taliban have threatened to cut off the fingers of those who vote.

“We can’t vote. Everybody knows it,” said Hakmatullah, a farmer who, like many Afghans, has only one name. “We are farmers, and we cannot do a thing against the Taliban.”

If this were only a war for hearts and minds, the Taliban would not be doing well. The same was true of Al Qaida in Iraq. The question is whether we are committed enough to provide lasting security.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-18T18:07:00.001-04:00

THREE CHEERS FOR THE MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION! That may sound hopelessly wonky, but what it means is thousands of dollars off my tax bill, each and every year. I'm not kidding. My wife and I will be saving more than $10,000 a year as a result of buying a home instead of renting.

Why? Because of instead of paying rent to a landlord (which isn't deductible), we'll be making monthly payments to the bank that provided our mortage (which is 100% deductible).

As a first time home buyer, it's hard to believe the kind of incentives the government provides. It's especially hard to believe in the aftermath of a financial crisis driven by reckless lending to home buyers.

Putting this all in perspective is Prof. Thomas Sugrue of the University of Pennsylvania, author of a forthcoming history of real estate in modern America. It turns out that the interest on mortgage loans has been deductible since 1913. But the New Deal is what really started the housing boom:

Easy credit, underwritten by federal housing programs, boosted the rates of home ownership quickly. By 1950, 55% of Americans had a place they could call their own. By 1970, the figure had risen to 63%. It was now cheaper to buy than to rent. Federal intervention also unleashed vast amounts of capital that turned home construction and real estate into critical economic sectors.

So is big government actually responsible for much of the boom we attribute to free markets? Or did this kind of stimulus only work because it was based on incentives, instead of direct government administration of the housing sector? With better planning, could we have avoided the bust that followed decades of boom?

I don't know. I'm just a first-time home buyer.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-18T18:06:00.001-04:00

TWITTER WILL VANQUISH EVERY TYRANT: Jon Last sharply questions the Twitter-euphoria generated by recent events in Tehran. In spite of rose-tinted predictions that historians would celebrate Twitter's liberation of Iran and the beginning of a new era of global politics, the streets are now quiet in Tehran, the result of traditional head-bashing.

Jon argues that this overestimation of Twitter's political influence is very much a product of the Web 2.0/social netorking mindset, which encourages users to see themselves as the center of the universe.

I think there's a broader trend here, as well. Americans have an old habit of celebrating technology as the hand-maiden of freedom. Ten years ago, internet enthusiasts celebrated Web 1.0 in the same way that they exult about 2.0 today. Remember when everybody was saying that the internet would bring democracy to China?

Even if the June uprising sounded the death knell for the current dictatorship in Tehran, we should resist the temptation to give all the credit to Twitter. In almost every great uprising, the newest technologies play surprising roles. Twenty years ago, we were surprised by the role that fax machines played in raising awareness of events in Tiannanmen Square.

But what really drives these revolutions is a traditional and persistent desire for freedom.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-18T18:03:00.001-04:00

THE INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF DONALD RUMSFELD: Last week, Christopher Caldwell reviewed Bradley Graham's new book about Donald Rumsfeld. As soon as I have time to digest 800 pages of Graham's prose, I'll let you know what I think of the book. For now, I'll just say that Caldwell picks up on one of the central challenges of studying Rumsfeld. Washington now dismisses Rumsfeld as a tragically stubborn ideologue. Yet when Rumsfeld took charge of the Pentagon in 2001, at the age of 68, he had an extraordinary career of successful leadership behind him. There was every reason to believe that he could master the facts of exceptionally complicated situations and transform failure into success. Caldwell writes,

Elected to Congress in 1962 at age 30, Rumsfeld, Graham writes, was a reformer who “never met an organization he didn’t want to change.” He co-sponsored what became the Freedom of Information Act, and reliably fought for civil rights legislation. He was a darling of this newspaper [the NY Times] and so skeptical about the Vietnam War that when Henry Kissinger saw Rumsfeld and his wife, he would sardonically flash the peace sign. Rumsfeld also had what Graham calls “a deep moral streak.” While running the Pentagon, he refused on ethical grounds to meet with defense-industry executives...

Such talents served [Rumsfeld] well as chief executive of the pharmaceuticals company G. D. Searle, where he turned a $28 million loss into a $72 million profit and brought aspartame to market; he got similar results in the early 1990s as C.E.O. of the General Instrument Corporation, a pioneer in high-definition television that needed a favorable hearing from the Federal Communications Commission.

Rumsfeld’s ability to work Congress and the regulatory bodies helped him in business. By the end of the 1990s he was worth between $50 million and $210 million. But he was more than a glorified lobbyist. He amassed information patiently and thoroughly, and would not be bullied into acting before he had mastered it. And he has never lost his ruthlessness in questioning structures kept in place by mere inertia.

It's not hard to understand why Bush chose Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. If Rumsfeld hadn't been the one to bring such misery to the Pentagon by the end of his tenure in 2006, the most logical candidate to save the Pentagon wouldn't have been Bob Gates. It would've been Rumsfeld.

So what happened between 2003 and 2006? I guess I'll have to read the book.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-13T11:30:00.000-04:00

HOWARD DEAN'S WARNING FOR OBAMA: Howard Dean on ABC This Week:

If you're not going to have a public option, don't pretend you're doing health care reform.

Should Obama take this seriously, or will the Democratic left accept whatever Obama prescribes? In the roundtable discussion after the interview, Peggy Noonan observed,

Maybe it would be good for the president if the left got absolutely furious about something.

It would be good from the perspective of building Obama's image as a centrist, but will it cost too many votes in the House?

I guess it depends on whether one thinks that Dean has much influence on the Hill. Some people might dismiss Dean's opposition as sour grapes. As Dean told the HuffPo, he wanted to be Obama's Secretary for Health and Human Services, but Obama "decided to go in a different direction." Call me a cynic, but I have a sense that if Dean were the head of HHS, he would be defending Obama's ambivalence about a public option.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-13T11:28:00.000-04:00

JIM JONES' WHISKEY-TANGO-FOXTROT MOMENT: In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Jim Jones confirmed Bob Woodward's account of the message that Gen. Jones brought to our commanders in Afghanistan:

[CHRIS] WALLACE: The new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, reportedly wants more U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan.

But according to the Washington Post, you told our top brass in late June that the president was done sending additional troops. And I want to get to the quote. "If there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment."

Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to "WTF," which in the military and elsewhere means "what the expletive."

JONES: Right.

WALLACE: General, did you say that?

JONES: I did say that, but in the context of the overall strategy.

As indicated by Jones answer of "Yes, but...", he was ready to walk back his no-more-troops message, once Wallace put on some pressure:

WALLACE: But are you ruling out more troops for Afghanistan?

JONES: As you know, as you mentioned, General McChrystal is doing a comprehensive assessment, which is what any military commander does when they take over a significant job.

And the secretary of defense has heard his preliminary report, has asked some questions. It will come up through the chain of command, and then we'll see what...

WALLACE: But if he asks for more troops, you're not ruling it out?

JONES: Not ruling it out at all.

This really just raises more questions then it answers. What does Jones really think about sending more troops? What does Obama really think about sending more troops? Does Jones really know what Obama is thinking? And does the White House have a clear strategy for Afghanistan?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-13T11:25:00.001-04:00

ANOTHER NON-CONTROVERSIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM WINNER: The week before last, I pointed out the WaPo's assessment that Barack Obama "hasn’t included any particularly controversial choices in his first picks" for the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In light of medals being given to Ted Kennedy and Desmond Tutu, I wasn't sure if that was the most accurate description.

As it turns out, the Medal winner provoking the most controversy is Mary Robinson, former Irish president and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In response to Robinson's selection, 45 GOP congressmen, including Eric Cantor and Mike Pence, have written a letter to the President asking that he reconsider his choice. (Hat tip: JM)

Why? Robinson has a long record of hostility toward Israel, best represented by her presiding over the 2001 "anti-racism" conference in Durban, South Africa. According to the GOP letter,

"Under [Robinson's] leadership, radical regimes hijacked Durban I and turned it into an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-American hatefest."

Sounds to me like nothing out of the ordinary for a UN high official. Anyhow, the GOP letter goes on to mention that Obama himself repudiated Durban by refusing to send US representatives to a follow-on conference held this year. If so, why exactly does Obama want to give Ms. Robinson our nation's highest civilian honor?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-11T19:39:00.000-04:00

A SMALL ISLAND OFF THE COAST OF EUROPE: I just got back from a very short trip to the UK to attend the wedding of an old classmate. One thing that struck me while I was there was the complete unpopularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The polls show Labour trailing the opposition Conservatives by as much as 15 points, with less than ten months to go until the next election.

In the old British colony now known as the United States, we seem to take it for granted that it was the mistakes of our politicians and bankers that provoked the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Democrats blame the crisis on Republicans and vice versa.

Heading over to the UK, I expected everyone, both strangers and friends, to demand that I explain how the American government managed to ruin everything. When I lived in the UK, no one hesitated to demand justification on my part for all sorts of things that happened in Washington (especially the decision to invade Iraq).

But this time, all the fingers were pointing at Gordon Brown. Brown served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to our Secretary of the Treasury) for ten years before being promoted to Prime Minister. There's really no one else in the UK to shoulder the blame. But why not point a finger or two across the Atlantic?

I'm not sure. The absence of finger-pointing didn't really strike me until I got on the plane back home. Part of the answer may have to do with a general sense of goodwill toward Barack Obama, but I don't see why that should get in the way of blaming Bush, if one were so inclined.

Interestingly, both Americans and Britons have a reputation for being somewhat self-absorbed and parochial. In our rush to point-fingers, have both of us simply assumed that the culprit lurks nearby? Or does democratic politics simply demand that Americans and Britons (and presumably Frenchmen and Germans) all blame their political opponents at home for the crisis, rather than looking abroad?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

2009-08-11T18:49:00.001-04:00

FLYING RABBIS BATTLE SWINE FLU: A cost effective approach to health care:

Dozens of rabbis and Kabbalah mystics armed with ceremonial trumpets took to the skies over Israel on Monday to battle the swine flu virus, according to local media reports.

About 50 Jewish holy men chanted prayers and blew shofars (ritual rams' horns) in an aircraft circling over the country in the hope of stopping the spread of the virus, some of those involved in Monday's venture were quoted as saying.

"The aim of the flight was to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it," Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us," added Batzri.

Tuesday's newspaper report carried a photo showing bearded and black-clad
Orthodox Jewish men standing on the steps of an aircraft of short-haul airline Arkia.

The Health Ministry has confirmed more than 2,000 cases of swine flu, with five fatalities.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly