Greg Sanders

The attempt to end military tribunals hits a roadblock

In defiance of President Obama’s executive order, Abd el Rahim al Nashiri is still being tried under a military tribunal.  Key quote from Carol Rosenberg’s article:

In his ruling, the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said a delay in Nashiri's arraignment would deny the public's interest in a speedy trial. He also said nothing that took place at the arraignment would prevent the Obama administration from deciding to deal with Nashiri in a forum other than the military commission now set to hear his case.

I suspect the judge’s decision is wrong on the law.  That said, I’m sure the President can find a way to legally contest this decision so I’m not especially bothered by the judge’s action.  More obnoxious are comments by the former commander of the Cole.  Matt Yglesias retorts retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold’s idea that we should ignore human rights and legal advocacy groups:

I am one who believes that international relations should be largely understood through the lens of interests. But there’s still such a thing as right and wrong. And we should, in fact, make adequate respect for the law and for human rights an important priority when making our policy decisions. Over the long run, Americans will much prefer to live in a world governed by law and human rights than one of chaos and brutality. And other countries will be better-disposed to our national power and leading global role insofar as they see us upholding humane values and basic decency.

It’s also worth noting that the USS Cole was a military ship, and thus a legitimate target.  It was a suicide bombing, via boat, but the problem with such bombings isn’t the suicide.  The problem with most suicide bombings is that they hit civilian targets.  Yes, Kamikaze tactics are disturbing.  But to throw out a cultural example I don’t recall too many people complaining about the end of Independence Day for that reason.

That said killing 17 sailors is still an act of war and can be fairly treated as such.  Replying with military means is certainly legit.  Alternately, since it was done by a non-state actor, you could treat it as a criminal act.  Either way it’s just bizarre that the one guy still facing military tribunals designed (badly) for terrorists isn’t even accused of targeting civilians.

Martin Luther King Day, 2009

Tomorrow, we’ll celebrate moving the Dream a bit closer to reality.  Today though, I’m looking to Gaza.  There’s finally a cease fire.  Hamas still stands, as expected.  Their capacity to launch rockets in the short term is doubtless diminished and some of their leaders are dead.  The butcher’s bill:

Overall, 1,314 Palestinians were killed during the war, including 412 children and 110 women, the United Nations reported Monday, attributing the information to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Thirteen Israelis died after the war began Dec. 27, including three civilians struck by Hamas rocket fire.

Not sure how many dead Israeli soldiers but it sounds like better leadership, plus better known territory and an opponent that lacked Hezbollah’s armament kept the count a good deal lower than the recent Lebanon war.

So what strategic ends were achieved?  Hamas is hurt but is attracting much more popular support than it did prior to the war.  Collective punishment, that is to say causing civilian suffering so they pressure militants, is again being tried to keep the piece.  In solid terms, the main impact is that the current government of Israel, as of the last articles I read about a week ago, has regain much of the popularity it lost through the foolhardy Lebanon war.  So maybe Netanyahu, the leader of Israeli’s hardline party, may not win in the coming elections or he may win by a smaller margin.

None of the goals that were predictably achievable or actually achieved justify more than a thousand dead,  As for me, I want no more to do with Israel’s current leadership than with any Democrats still standing by the Iraq war.  If the only way to win an election is to kill 400+ enemy children, then it’s time to lose the election.  King’s opposition to the war in Vietnam, one waged by his political allies in the Democratic party, is sometimes downplayed but is key to his legacy.  To call for non-violence only when it comes to the actions of the stateless, to the action of others, shows no particular moral insight.

Hundreds dead and for what?

With Israel’s attack now in its third day, I thought I had to address it.  Ezra Klein does an excellent job of summarizing the narratives about who started it. Hamas did end the temporary ceasefire and launched ineffective rocket attacks.  At the same time, due to Israeli blockade, the situation in the Gaza strip were worse in June than at any time since the 1967 occupation and have subsequently degraded (hat tip Yglesias).  Blockades are also acts of war under international law.

Hamas isn’t nearly as well armed as Hezbollah, but I’m going to predict that a ground occupation will prove to be an expensive and ultimately low return strategy.  At best it will involve losing solders, meeting a few superficial objectives, and then withdrawing to the status quo.  At worst it will involve a reoccupation of Gaza and in turn a dramatic aggravation of Israel’s demographics problem.  There are about 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza versus the 2.4 million in the West Bank.  The total population of Israel is 7.1 million but only about 5.4 million of that population are ethnically Jewish. 

So, if you’re worried about maintaining a Jewish state without Gaza you’ve got 5.4 million Jews and about 4.1 million of everyone else.  With Gaza you’ve still got 5.4 million Jews, but almost 5.5 million of everyone else.  Now Palestinians don’t get a vote in Israel’s elections and neither ‘Jews’ nor ‘everyone else’ are a unified block.  But as is practically always the case, the economically developed Israeli population is growing slower than that of the destitute Palestinians.  Without Gaza Israel has a trend problem, with Gaza the problem is has already arrived.

More after the cut.

Should we assassinate Robert Mugabe?

Richard Cohen argued we should a couple weeks ago, perhaps by use of a Predator drone.  He’s a bit more oblique, hoping to merely inspire his flight by circling his house, but the basic idea is the same.  I may have been fairly sympathetic to this position back in college where I was actively interested in the connections between technology and interventions.

A comment from Stephanie Zacharek’s review of Valkyrie shows my worries now.  Valkyrie is a film about a plot to assassinate Hitler (I have no compunctions on that front):

The operatives knew that it wouldn't be enough just to assassinate Hitler, or Hitler and SS leader Heinrich Himmler. They would need to take control of the government as well, and their chief tool for doing so would be Operation Valkyrie, a contingency plan that, as the movie explains it, had been conceived by the German military as a way to contain civil unrest in the event of Hitler's death, or if his power were somehow compromised.

It’s been a while, so I’m having some trouble with finding the primary sources, but back in March Mugabe lost an election, he made some relatively conciliatory statements but met with his senior advisors and shortly there after took a harder line.  As I understand it, those senior advisors control the military are Mugabe’s power base along with the gangs of armed youth that are the his Zanu-PF party’s militia.

Mugabe’s death has a good chance of leading to a civil war, many of his people are in it for self-interest and violence is their way of life.  This isn’t to say that they couldn’t be cowed or defeated by an organized opposition with support from neighbors, but that if not handled properly, removing them from the scene will be even bloodier than their current abuses.  The legacy of easy former Soviet State revolutions can prove a mirage for outsiders.  In those cases fragile regime collapsed once it became clear through public displays that the state could not or would not effectively crack down.  Showing that an outside power can kill the President does not reveal the same information about the state of the country.  Remember, there is no charismatic leader in Burma, but the regime persists nonetheless.

That said, revolutionary leaders are a special case, one happily departing this mortal coil.  Thus, while I don’t think that Mugabe’s could hold power for long, his successors could certainly make their departure bloody.  Is that blood worth it?  Not our choice to make, I leave that to the people of Zimbabwe.  At present the opposition has committed to non-violence and I respect that.

Photo of police brutality during a 2007 protest from Sokwanele – Zimbabwe used under a Creative Commons license

The Trouble With Matt Yglesias on Kosovo

I tend to agree with Yglesias often enough that I worry whether I’m actually adding an value.  Heck, I’ve got a copy of his book Heads in the Sand and gave it a rather positive review.  That said, the one area I tend to disagree with him his humanitarian intervention, specifically on Kosovo.  Quoting myself from the review:

[T]he book elides some potential faults within the liberal internationalist camp. The disagreements go back to Kosovo which in other venues Yglesias has treated it as legitimate but considers it a bad model for the future. Kevin Drum, operating from within the liberal internationalist tradition, demurs and offers support for Kosovo that I personally find compelling.

When I asked him about Kosovo in a session on his book at the New America Foundation, he basically said that there’s no real point arguing about a special case when we’ve got bigger issues to focus on.  Fair enough, but in a post on The Trouble With Genocide Prevention Yglesias never mentions Kosovo but sets up a dichotomy that calls it unilateral:

But then whenever anyone suggests that the U.S. commit itself to following international law and not using non-defensive military force absent a UN Security Council authorization, people show up insisting that we need to maintain the right to unilateral non-defensive war in order to stop genocide. Then whenever humanitarian emergencies break out, we do nothing to stop them.

Not surprisingly Jon Chait over at TNR vehemently disagrees with Yglesias arguing the Kosovo case and that no U.S. government has ever committed itself to giving the UN a veto.  I think the later point is weak, the US has historically reserved the right to do a lot of stupid thing.  Happily, there is a middle ground commonly discussed in international relations circles: requiring the support of the UN or a regional organization.  Rather than treating Kosovo as a special case, this is a rather straightforward standard that gets both Kosovo and Iraq right.  No major regional org supported the war in Iraq, NATO didn’t even come close.

More after the cut.

The difference between national interest and national security

So, does the U.S. still care if Osama bin Laden is alive or dead?  Robert Baer argues no in Time and Hanna Ludqvist over at Democracy arsenal disagrees with him and argues yes.

The most interesting part of Baer's piece comes at the end, however, when he asks:

But what if bin Laden really is dead, buried under a hundred tons of rock at Tora Bora or so weakened that he might as well be dead? Indefinitely crashing around Afghanistan and Pakistan's wild, mountainous tribal region on a ghost hunt cannot serve our interests. The longer we leave troops in Afghanistan the worse the civil war there will become. One day Obama will need to give up the hunt — declare bin Laden either dead or irrelevant. He has more important enemies to deal with, from Iran to Russia.

Baer seems to be saying here that terrorism, specifically from al Qaeda and the Af-Pak region, is no longer the greatest threat to the United States. Wow, that's bold. Also wrong, according to CIA director Hayden, who also said last week that "If there is a major strike on [the United States], it will bear the fingerprints of al Qaeda" and that al Qaeda "remains a determined, adaptive enemy unlike any our nation has ever faced... The war is far from over." While the United States has not been attacked since 9/11, Europe has and numerous al Qaeda plots have been uncovered. Those al Qaeda actions came from safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Part of this is a discussion of the importance of Bin Laden.  I don’t buy that he’s irrelevant, though he may well be dead and we should continue to raise that issue regularly.  Either he’ll release another video at some point or we can work on making him much more irrelevant by encouraging speculation as to his survival.

That said, regardless of the best tactics in handling that particular villain, it is rather odd to think of a group like Al Qaeda, ruthless though they may be, as the greatest threat to the U.S.  In determining a threat, you’ve got to balance odds of a problem with magnitude.  Russia’s nuclear arsenal means it’s still the greatest magnitude threat, but even with Putin’s nostalgic turn full fledged conflict is fairly unlikely.  Same with China.  The magnitude of a potential Al Qaeda attack is definitely much smaller, but unlike any nation at the moment they’re actually likely to throw all they can at us.

That said, even after 9/11 it seems fairly odd to think that a bunch of guys primarily living in the mountains of Afghanistan are really the main thing the U.S. needs to be worried about.  Between fixing the economy and defeating Al Qaeda, I think it’s safe to say that the economy is the higher priority.  The trouble is that national security often acts as a trump card in debates.  We don’t have an industrial policy, because that would be an affront to capitalism, except when it comes to defense. 

Often people try to challenge this view by describing environmentalism or economic prosperity as a security issue.  However, that still leads to a warped definition of our national interests.  We’re a superpower that spends as much on our military as the rest of the world does and the number block is the EU, not China or Russia.  A monomaniacal focus on security is more likely to cause problems like Iraq than to make our lives even marginally safer.  I think liberals and progressives ultimately have to be willing to talk about America’s national interests and that security issues will generally make the top 10 but not necessarily the top three.

A Revolution in Criminal Affairs

There’s a great quote in the new CDI book, America’s Defense Meltdown, from the second chapter by Col. Chet Richards.

Much of what is hypthesized as “Fourth Generation Warfare”  -- state versus nonstate groups or “transnational insurgencies" – fall into [the law enforcement] category and so does not represent a new form of warfare so much as an evolution of crime.  Our opponents in these conflicts are not organized military forces or even insurgent units fighting to overthrow a government, but have more the form of transnational criminal cartels, albeit sometimes with an ideological or religious veneer. [Emphasis mine]

On that topic, Douglas Burgess argues in a NY Times Op-ed (Hat tip, my friend David) that piracy is terrorism.  I think the ‘enemies of the human race’ talk is a bit much, pirates often have the courtesy of at least ransoming rather than slaughtering their victims, but being able to prosecute them under universal jurisdiction makes a lot of practical sense.

For another relevant discussion, opium production in Afghanistan is one of the key revenue sources for the Taliban.  Happily cultivation is down 19% according to the latest UN report.  Patrick Barry over at Democracy Arsenal takes it upon himself to read beyond the executive summary and finds a key reason in addition to suppression efforts and weather:

Second, and most importantly, the dynamics of farm prices. As (Afghan) supply has once again exceeded (world) demand, prices for opium (both fresh and old) are down 20% in nominal terms (and much more at constant prices).

I’d heard at least a year ago that production was exceeding world demand but that prices weren’t falling yet.  That seemed rather odd to me, I’m guessing that prices are stickier in illegal markets.

However, I think that the Taliban doesn’t fall under the straight criminal framework.  They do want to govern Afghanistan and it guides their actions.  Noah Shachtman over at the Wired danger room notes that the Taliban is dropping some of the crazy puritanical stuff and is focusing on anti-occupation efforts.  Al Qaeda in Iraq hasn’t does this, and that’s part of what caused the Sunni Awakening and why everyone hates them.  This is via Ackerman who notes that the Taliban is probably trying to avoid their mistakes and that this will make it harder to split them a la the Awakening.

And the breakup is official

The Status of Forces Agreement passed Iraq’s presidency council (which basically gives the Shia, the Sunnis, and the Kurds each a theoretical veto).  For more on the SOFA, here’s my earlier post.

Iraq: The democracy kicked in!

Electoral democracy has taken its lumps in post-conflict situations.  The lead-up to elections is statistically correlated with a rise in violence while the post-election period doesn’t lead to a substantial drop-off.  Participatory direct democracy is a popular tool at the low levels, but the two don’t have to be linked.  Protection of minority rights can even be at odds with majoritarian democracy.  For a round up of some of these critiques you can see Fareed Zakaria’s The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.  And obviously not even those wacky neo-cons thinks it actually works in the way shown below.

Family Guy~Democracy comes to Iraq | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Nonetheless, the strength of democracy is not picking good leaders but in kicking out bad ones. Similarly while democracy can lead to problems with minority rights, it’s also rather good at bringing in excluded factions.  In the Iraqi case, this process was slower because of electoral boycotts (have those ever worked?) but now the Sunni Awakening groups and Sadr’s people, if not Sadr himself, are likely to participate in the upcoming provincial elections.

Those thinking we may be staying in Iraq for another ten years, and that think this is a good thing, tend to say that Prime Minister Maliki is just responding to domestic political pressure.  His chief Shiite rival, Sadr, seems to have lost some support as a result of the tougher line. They may be right in the source, but as the SOFA negotiations shows, they are very wrong in the implications.  The U.S. occupation is massively unpopular, the surge and associated efforts strengthened Maliki’s hand, but that just makes him less dependent on the U.S. and thus better able to negotiate a tough deals.  The Sunni’s also managed to win a concession and adopt my favorite suggestion [update: notably proposed by the PCR team over at CSIS] on handling Iraq, a referendum on the agreement and thus the occupation.  If we can’t win that referendum in July we’ll need to be out in 18 months and not 3 years.

Of course, at the same time, democracy has been working in America.  Kicking out our old leadership led to the Iraqis trusting that withdrawal might actually get implemented and progress on the SOFA.  As Matt Yglesias notes, Obama did not ‘get lucky’ that the Iraqis supported his withdrawal plan.  Instead, he was aware of the unpopularity of the occupation and incorporated that into his plan.  Good policy can make for politics.

Also, some commenters seem to think this is a win for the admin.  Chill people.  We need to be out of Iraqi cities by the end of 2009, that substantially limits what we can actually do on the ground, and there’s a deadline for total withdrawal, absent circumstances short of negotiating a new agreement, by 2011.  Our contractors no longer have legal protections. In short, we are staying on an uncomfortable SOFA, it does not fold out to make a bed, unlike Japan, Germany, or Korea, this is not a long term arrangement.

Assault on Mumbai

The news from India is frankly frightening.  This sounds like a well coordinated attack involving a fair number of armed militants hitting many targets at once.  By the time you’re reading this, there’s fresher news, but it sounds like at least 100 dead.  Based on early reports, the main targets are the US and the UK.  The exact motivations are still obscure, there’s a range of militant groups in India, not all Islamist by any means, and the one that claimed responsibility is a relatively unknown one.

The US and UK might mean this is partially about Iraq, if it were about Afghanistan France or Germany might also be targeted.  Alternately we might just be seen as the leadership of an opposition coalition.  Yet another possibility is that the the UK was included because of its historical relationship with India.  I don’t know.  That said, this is in no way just about us, they hit relatively hardened targets including taking out the anti-terror chief.

As India figures out what to do next we should look after the safety of our people but first and foremost support that great, pluralistic, and democratic nation. The “Global War on Terror” is worse than a useless catch phrase, it encourage conflating potential adversaries and encourages a focus on primarily military measures.  Figuring out what happened here will be hard work and the next steps depend on discovering whether this was perhaps an Al Qaeda operation or something more local.  Isaac Chotiner gives a quick summary of the worsening spiral of violence between extremist Islamic and Hindu groups, a conflict that will no doubt be aggravated by this attack, which was perhaps part of the point.

Aside from any larger geopolitical implications and repercussions, then, it is worth giving some thought to what now awaits Bombay. An Indian friend of mine currently works at the Taj Mahal Hotel in the Colaba area of the city. It is one of the amazing landmarks that was attacked tonight. I have not gotten word from my friend, who was fortunate to get this good job that enables him to provide for his wife and children. And, although he does not advertise it, he happens to be a Muslim--a Muslim who has faced the same hardships faced by many Muslims in Bombay. Even if he's presently safe and uninjured, he and many residents of this remarkable city face long and possibly harrowing days ahead.

While we learn more, once the immediate crisis is dealt with, our first foreign priority should be to make it as easy as possible for India to shore up the foundations of its pluralistic society.  Part of that is helping to find and punish those responsible, but dealing with the larger problems doesn’t end and given the inherent difficulties may not even start there.

Well, okay, if you say so.

Via Ackerman, according to the the Associated Press, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told the Security Council that “the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.”

Here’s Ackerman’s analysis:

Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if Karzai is floating the timetable idea as a bankshot way of promoting his negotiations with the Taliban? In other words, is he trying to box people -- namely, Americans -- in to thinking that the only thing less desirable than negotiating with the insurgency is to set a date for leaving Afghanistan, so they better support the first option?

And another thing, in the context of those negotiations: If it's true that the Taliban feels stronger than the government right now, would it feel such an incentive to negotiate if it believed Karzai was going to kick the U.S. out no matter what?

I really don’t know how to read this.  If it is a bankshot it’s a hell of a maneuver.  I don’t think Obama would be opposed to such negotiations in the first place, so I’m not sure why they’re turning the screws on us.  First and foremost I’m guessing it’s just the more straightforward example Ackerman raises, response to domestic pressure.

I guess it’s time to put a more thought in how we can exit in a manner that best serves the Afghan people and kneecaps Al Qaeda.  Just exiting will put a damper on recruitment, but Osama was in Afghanistan well before we were.

So what can we do about Somalia?

After being reminded of a horror story about the stoning of a young rape victim in Somalia, I wanted to add to my previous post to note what we can do.  First off, the Islamic Courts Union wasn’t this bad, but now it’s fragmented and not about to come back together again.  We can work with the moderates, are generally unwilling to work with the militants, and as the story above shows some of the factions are resorting to acts so evil that in a novel they would be attributed to bad writing.

So the current ‘legitimate’ government is unpopular, the alternative is broken and in some cases completely nuts, what can we do?  Going back to Bronwyn Bruton at the Africa policy blog:

The urgent humanitarian intervention in Somalia. On the contrary, in the absence of a comprehensive strategy to stabilize and rebuild Somalia, the United States should perhaps look to humanitarian relief above all other projects. The sincere prioritization of humanitarian support may eventually mitigate the rampant anti-Americanism that has taken root in Somalia. This is a truly modest goal; but it is probably the only victory within our grasp. The U.S. should actively urge the U.N. and IGAD to refrain from political negotiation, and to focus all efforts on recapturing a posture of neutrality. A position of neutrality is an essential pre-condition for any viable interaction with Somalia, and the international community should focus on positioning itself to re-engage when the security situation eventually stabilizes.

In the longer term, and as a short-term measure to promote peace and economic development at the community level, the United States should examine several nontraditional strategies, including the previously explored “bottom-up” and/or “building block” approaches that were applied with some success in Somalia during the 1990s.

This seems sound to me.  When we don’t have good options, sometimes lowest common denominator aid is all we can do.    If we’d done a better job of taking the interests and desires of the people of Somalia in account in the first place we might have been able to do much better, instead we made the situation worse and there’s no easy do-overs.

Enlightened Self-Interest isn’t enough

I recently watched a bloggingheads TV between Robin Wright and Ross Douthat and for once I pointedly disagree with something Robin Wright said (Douthat didn’t take a stand on this either way).  Specifically around the 49 minute mark he argued for a liberal-realist fusion that there’s an argument on realist grounds and humanitarian grounds for intervening in Somalia and probably intervening as much as you can practically handle around the world.  That American self-interest can lead you to do a lot to fight disease and prevent failed states.

I think that view is a fairly traditional one in Democratic circles, but that it gets one critical thing wrong.  Namely enlightened self-interest isn’t so good at incorporating the opinions of the people you’re intervening on behalf of.  Establishing a democratic government can do a lot to help.  However, even a democratic government may not reflect popular sentiment until that government is strong enough to stand on its own and until those locals that oppose the intervention are brought into the process.  The situation can be far worse when we’re backing a transition government that we judge to be the lesser of two evils.

For an example of this sort of failure, I would point to… Somalia.  Bronwyn Bruton has a post at CSIS’s Africa Forum on the present debacle there.  Details after the cut:

Economics of Conflict

I assume my readers are sufficiently cynical to realize that conflicts are often driven by economic factors. However, that still leaves the question of how those factors work.

Here’s some interesting new data from Dani Rodrik

One of my graduate students, Oeindrila Dube, has written a fascinating paper (jointly with Juan Vargas) on the determinants of Colombia’s civil war, and how world prices for its major exports (coffee and oil) affect the intensity of the conflict.

The central question is this: do higher world prices enhance or reduce the conflict? You could make arguments in both directions. Lower prices increase reduce incomes, and may make it less difficult for individuals to be recruited into guerilla or militia forces. On the other hand, lower prices make the underlying resource base less valuable and reduce the spoils over which the two sides can fight.

He links to a Slate article that provides a layman’s summary. The short version is that higher prices on labor intensive resources, like farm goods, reduce civil conflict because the wealth is spread around. For capital intensive products, like oil, the trend goes the opposite way in what’s called the resource curse.

De-escalation

Thank goodness.

TBILISI, Georgia, Aug. 12 -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday he was halting military operations in Georgia because they had accomplished their end, although explosions continued to rattle the now largely abandoned town of Gori...

"The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored," Medvedev said, referring to Russian arguments that the incursion was needed to repel a Georgian offensive in South Ossetia. Russian officials have claimed that a Georgian push into the province last week claimed 2,000 lives, including those of more than a dozen Russian peacekeepers stationed there.

Obviously Putin still runs the show, but I don’t see President Medvedev making this kind of announcement if it wasn’t going to happen. This isn’t over by any means, the fighting is still ongoing, but it looks as if the Russians aren’t going to go for total conquest or deposing the Georgian government.

(Brought to my attention by Dylan Matthews over at Ezra Klein’s blog)

Escalation

The situation in Georgia is getting worse as Russia bombs well past the disputed region and may be seeking to overthrow the elected (albeit somewhat problematic) Georgian President. President Bush is appropriately strengthening his rhetoric, Georgia is calling for a cease fire at this point, Russia has achieved any objectives it could proportionately seek regarding the break-away province of South Ossetia.

U.S. interests and values do not demand action on behalf of South Ossetia against the Russians. It’s an ugly situation to be sure, but also a complex one. However, the situation is rather different for Georgia proper. We need to figure out what tools at our disposal we’d be potentially willing to use, more bluffing won’t do, and at the same time determine what we’re willing to trade. Calling for international peacekeepers on the South Ossetian border is all well and good, but I don’t see it happening unless we’ve got more international support or are willing to put a lot on the line. That said, it’s a fine opening position. Realistically, we should probably be willing to trade influence over the breakaway province for protection for Georgia proper.

This situation has arisen in large part because the U.S. has written checks that we can’t cash. Matt Yglesias ably summarizes a good Fred Kaplan piece on why Georgian President Shakashvili foolish sent the troops into South Ossetia. In short he thought, thanks to all sorts of support and signals from the U.S., that we’d be willing to bail him out. Here’s the wrap from Yglesias:

This highlights, I think, some of the limits of the kind of bluff-and-bluster approach to foreign policy that seems popular among conservatives these days. Or, rather, it highlights the fact that popular as bluster-based policymaking is on the American right it can have some extremely high costs and that, tragically, a large proportion of those costs can wind up being borne by the people who were nominally supposed to be the beneficiaries.

Other classic cases include the Shi’a uprising after the first Gulf War and Hungary’s uprising back in 1956 against the Soviet Union. For an instance under a Democratic President, you could probably include Saddam’s attacks into Kurdish areas under Clinton. That said, Shakashvili greatly overreached even what we had said, Georgia did not get fast tracked into Nato and we’re tied down in two wars. Even with what support he was given, the attack into South Ossetia was highly ill advised. However, it shouldn’t cost him his Presidency until elections or constitutional removal procedures come into play.

Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through

I think Gregory Djerejian has had the best post I’ve read on the matter. Key points:

First, let us disabuse ourselves from the notion that Mr. Saakashvili (head of the government in Georgia) is some glorious democrat (the election he barely won in January included irregularities, and there continues to be endemic corruption
in Tblisi). Second, let us recall that many south Ossetians and
Abkhazians are not particularly keen to live under Tbilisi’s yoke,
indeed some prefer Russian influence to predominate there for the time being. Third, if there is any truth to Russian allegations that there are some 1,500 fatalities in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali--and they were caused by a major initial over-reach by the Georgian military (we will need to wait for more details to emerge)--expect many more brutish bombardments like the Russians apparently have conducted in the Georgian town of Gori, alas. Fourth, some context: ever since the overly hasty recognition of Kosovo went live, Putin has been very keen to intimate what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, having personally threatened Saakashvili that Russia would formally recognize as independent states Ossetia and Abkhazia.

His final point is that Saakashvili really screwed up here by launching an offensive to resecure Ossetia. I do think it’s important that we keep Russia from taking over neighbors, but there’s a difference between Georgia proper and breakaway republics that have function autonomy. First priority here should be de-escalation and stopping the killing.

The War Powers act that doesn't do anything

So there’s a new proposal on how to revamp the War Powers act, which gives Congress a mechanism to force withdrawals under certain condition but that is a mechanism that Congress has never used. In any event a proposal to fix it seems fairly worthless as enforcing the act would require overcoming a veto. If you can overcome a veto you already can basically do what you want, why do you need a war powers act?

Timothy Noah also picked up on this and provides some explanation as to why this whole area is so messed up: Congress doesn’t want that responsibility. He cites a historical example.

What amazed and shocked me, and moved me to write up the debate for the New Republic, was the unembarrassed manner in which members of Congress declared as their paramount interest the absence of any legislative fingerprints on whatever might result from allowing (or not allowing) the Navy convoys to enter an area of violent conflict. In fact, it was pretty much taken as a given that the War Powers Resolution would not be invoked, not because the president was not complying with it (no president ever has) but because doing so would require Congress to either approve or revoke Reagan’s decision.

If he’s right, we’ve got a structural flaw in the Constitution. We need a Congress willing to actually exercise or deny the ability to declare war. Absent that, we need an alternate check to ensure accountability for one of the executive branches most dangerous powers. The only alternative I’m coming up with is a no confidence vote as an alternate means to impeachment of removing a president.

Horror in Zimbabwe

The latest new, from the LA Times via Yglesias, show the situation further degrading. I’ve got a Washington Post article to read for some more background on Mugabe’s base of support.

It seems the ZANU-PF have set up a series of camps around Zimbabwe that "provide a base from which to burn houses, displace people and beat, maim or kill opposition activists" on which, in addition, large numbers of women are being held captive as slaves and frequently raped.

The hopeful side of the LA Times’s very bleak account is the suggestion that the government may actually be running out of the necessary cash to keep all its goon squads in operation. Still, even if something happens to force Mugabe from power, one has to think that a lot of these folks in his militias aren’t necessarily going to give up their own appetite for robbery, rape, mayhem, etc. no matter what happens at the top.

I think there’s going to need to be an African Union force to help return Zimbabwe to normalcy after Mugabe is gone. The International Criminal Court should probably launch investigations, particularly ones that target key military and militia leaders, the type politicians may be more willing to throw to the wolves. Indicting Mugabe makes sense as well, but probably any deal to get him out of power will mean he gets sanctuary somewhere.

Anyways, the situation is developing, and unfortunately it seems to be developing much faster than the African Union’s response.

Quote of the Day

John McCain on the greatest threat to the economy:

"Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."

Ezra Klein on John McCain:

This is more like Marvel’s "What If?" series. What is the Supervolcano explodes? What if we have an "I Am Legend" style pandemic? Or a "28 Days Later" zombie virus? What if "radical Islamic extremism" prevails and terrorists establish a global caliphate?..

Bin Laden lives on a rock in a cave near some mountains... That makes it impossible that he’ll prevail and threaten our existence, so he’s not an acceptable answer under the first premise.

Quite so. Terrorism is not an existential threat to the U.S. This does not mean it cannot hurt us or that it isn’t important, but it simply is not on the same scale as the USSR.

The future of the Air Force

Not that long ago, Secretary of Defense Gates fired the military and civilian heads of the Air Force. This decision has been pretty popular on the blogs I read and among the people I talk to. Kevin Drum has a quick rundown of the reasons they were asked to resign.

Publicly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that his recent firings of the Air Force’s top civilian and military leaders was due to a couple of incidents of mishandling of nuclear components. But Noah Shachtman says Gates’s feud with the Air Force has roots that go back to his decision to prevent them from taking over almost all of the military’s big unmanned aircraft:

Things only got more tense when Gates said that the future of conflict is in small, "asymmetric" wars - wars in which the Air Force takes a back seat to ground forces. Then Gates noted that the Air Force’s most treasured piece of gear, the F-22 stealth fighter, basically has no role in the war on terror. And when a top Air Force general said the service was planning on buying twice as many of the jets - despite orders from Gates and the rest of the civilian leadership - he was rebuked for "borderline insubordination."

The next Air Force general, for the first time in 25 years, is not going to be a fighter pilot. Ben Friedman praises this idea hoping it will reduce the "threat inflation" of China and end the push for more F-22s. Yglesias also thinks this is a good idea, but notes that it doesn’t get to the core problem: we don’t need a separate Air Force.

My thoughts after the cut.

Event Write Up: Nationbuilding after Iraq

Amb. James Dobbins who is presently working for Rand gave a pretty good presentation at CSIS on the state of nation building (the Project on Middle East Democracy also has notes). I went to this one because Rand has done some good work on the topic, and is the source of the estimate that we’d need 400k U.S. troops to really pull off Iraq right.

Iraq was 7th time the U.S. tried nation building in little more than a decade with the prior cases being Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bonsia, Kosovo, Afghanistan. Six of those seven where Muslim nations. Thus our screw ups were not a matter of inexperience but not taking it seriously as core mission. More specifically, we fail to transfer skills from administration to administration and he offered multiple proposals on how to fix that.

Nation building became much bigger after the Cold war where the goal was typically suppressing conflict rather than resolving it. The goal was to prevent high level clashes. Subsequently many more that go longer and thus add up.

Entity	Cold War frequency	Post-Cold War frequency	On-going	Now Peaceful	Now Democratic
U.S.	1 every 10 years	1 every 2 years	5 (in 2004)	4 / 8	4 / 8
U.N.	1 every 4 years	1 every six months	20	6 / 8	7 / 8

So U.N. scored higher than U.S., why? Part of it is case selection and the difficulty of the cases the U.S. chose. At the same time, the UN takes the mission more seriously, has doctrine, a cadre of experts, and while smaller than the U.S. still 100k deployed soldiers. It can work, look at stats, cold war fueled dozens of proxy wars, killed millions of people every year, number of conflicts now down by 50% 1993 to 2003; casualties dropped even more. It’s still lower now, although current conflicts have slowed the decline.

I’ll discuss some of the policy implications in a future post.

How wrong was I about the Iraq war?

How wrong was I a little over five years ago?  Embarrassingly so, considering I had a frigging BA in Political Science. I’ve grabbed these from an old personal site, so I’m not linking it. In essence I backed the Tony Blair approach on Iraq. So based on what I said back then, if I’d been in the Congress I’d probably have unwisely voted for that accursed resolution.

The question here is can Bush be trusted? I’m willing to believe him on his intentions to rebuild Iraq but I don’t believe he’s willing to take substantial political risk to guarantee that it will succeed. Fortunately I believe there are still enough leaders left in America that it will not be allowed to fail...

Ultimately, I’m gonna sleep [fine] without Saddam Hussein or even a soft-autocrat in charge of Iraq. Let alone knowing that said leader won’t have access to weapons of mass destruction. It’ll also help that most U.S. troops are out of Saudi Arabia and thus all that much farther from Mecca. But most important, a rebuilt democratic Iraq will be a proving grounds for idealism in American policy. I have enough faith in current non-Bush leadership, liberal democracy, and America to think we’ll pass the test. Although if I’m wrong,or if Bush actually is just straight out evil, the price will be terrible. Here’s hoping I’m right...

Finally, I believe we’ll suceed [sic] in rebuilding Iraq if we have the will to do it. Although, as much as I knock the admin, at least they are being aggressively rhetorically pro-democratic. I just hope the misteps [sic] in regard to preparing for the next stage were mistakes and not indications of lack of concern...

In short my judgment on the biggest foreign policy decision of the past decade was terrible. I supported sending between hundreds of thousands and millions of Iraqis and 4,000 American troops to their death based on faith and not the analysis, available at the time, of the order of magnitude of the true cost. 

So in short, I fell for the classical Green Lantern line of thought. With sufficient will we’d be fine. I’d seen a lot of humanitarian interventions that went from okay to not so impressive. These interventions were typically mediocre at best, although the incompetence of the start of the Iraq occupation was still remarkable.

However, I will not avail myself of the incompetence defense. The Iraq war was a horrific mistake, one that could have been and indeed was foreseen by many people including some friends. After having realized this mistake, I have left the ranks of liberal hawks as have many others.

I’m sorry.  My form of penance is listening more to those that were right and trying to fix the problems the invasion caused.  My read for the past few years is that the best first step is withdrawal from Iraq.  What lessons have I learned?  I think Timothy Noah is right, it's probably a better use of your time to focus on why some people got it right than what people who got it wrong think now.

And behind it all there's a price to be paid

From the Washington Post (Emphasis mine)

Iraqi forces were backed by U.S. and British reconnaissance planes as they launched their Basra offensive, an operation aimed at breaking the power of politically backed gunmen in the city.

The fiercest fighting took place in Basra neighborhoods where Iraqi forces targeted members of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, further risking the collapse of a cease-fire that Sadr declared last summer. His fighters’ stand-down has been widely credited with helping curb violence throughout the country during the U.S. troop buildup known as the surge.

From what I can glean from the Post, the real change in status quo came from the Iraqi security forces. Two days ago Sadr’s followers launched a civil strike planning mass protests and shuttering their stores.

But in recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen and conducted large raids and arrests of Sadr followers in southern Iraqi towns such as Kut and Diwaniyah. Sadrist leaders in Baghdad said that they were still obeying the cease-fire and that the demonstrations would be peaceful.

The protests came a day after at least 60 Iraqis were killed in a wave of car bombings, suicide attacks and gun violence, and the U.S. military death toll reached 4,000.

Some of the uptick in violence may be attributable to elements of Sadr’s forces that aren’t following the ceasefire, but that’s not a major change from the hardly peaceful status quo. [Update: Spencer Ackerman thinks the first blow may have come from Sadr’s people who could have just been waiting out the surge.] At this point, the cease fire may be completely falling apart. So why the change? Sadr’s Shiite rivals are the biggest faction in the government. I’m guessing we went after Sadr in exchange for the Shiites withdrawing their veto of the election law. That happened four days ago and was personally negotiated by Vice President Cheney. We badly needed that election law because the Sunni Awakening Forces are increasingly restless over lack of pay and the fact that they need those election to displace other Sunni groups that got in the provincial government because they didn’t boycott the elections.

To be clear this is just a guess. But this is the sort of unpleasant faction balancing that we’re going to be doing again and again if we stay in Iraq. We’ll soon know whether we frakked this one up and the Sadr ceasefire completely breaks down. But rather than making tough call after tough call, the better choice is to get the hell out of Iraq.

[Update: Ilan Goldberg argues that the Sadr ceasefire may have been key to driving down civilian casualties. A co-worker of mine provided an alternate theory that we could be hitting Iran’s assets intentionally either as signal or to reduce their options for counterstrikes.]

Our real moral obligation to the Iraqis...

Should be focused on those who want our help. The Post headline says it all: Stalwart Service for U.S. in Iraqi is Not Enough to Gain Green Card. Saman Kareem Ahmad was widely lauded by the U.S. military but has been turned down by the U.S. government. The reason:

Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

After doing a bit of searching I only found one reference to the KDP and terrorism. Apparently they were associated with an explosion at a NGO that killed two. They are not designated as a terrorist group by most governments and aren’t even on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, at least according to this site. That said, at least one Assyrian site does have a beef against them but doesn’t seem to back it up with independent news accounts.

Anyways, this sort of thing is why many counter-terrorism efforts worry me. Militant non-state groups are routinely conflated with those that purposefully attack civilians. Why? Because it’s in the interest of governments in general to demonize any competitors. So when there’s no real push in the administration for helping Iraqi refugees, innocent allies get hurt.

Not exactly the enduring challenge of our time

Fortunately, the overall threat from terrorism is still fairly small and in no way comparable to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. James Fallows notes a good David Ignatius and points to an old cover story covering the same material in the Atlantic. The article is on a new book called Leaderless Jihad by Marc Sageman which is based on data about 500 Islamic terrorist.

The first wave of al-Qaeda leaders, who joined Osama bin Laden in the 1980s, is down to a few dozen people on the run in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. The second wave of terrorists, who trained in al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan during the 1990s, has also been devastated, with about 100 hiding out on the Pakistani frontier. These people are genuinely dangerous, says Sageman, and they must be captured or killed. But they do not pose an existential threat to America, much less a "clash of civilizations."

It’s the third wave of terrorism that is growing, but what is it? By Sageman’s account, it’s a leaderless hodgepodge of thousands of what he calls "terrorist wannabes." Unlike the first two waves, whose members were well educated and intensely religious, the new jihadists are a weird species of the Internet culture. Outraged by video images of Americans killing Muslims in Iraq, they gather in password-protected chat rooms and dare each other to take action. Like young people across time and religious boundaries, they are bored and looking for thrills.

"It’s more about hero worship than about religion," Sageman said in a presentation of his research last week at the New America Foundation, a liberal think tank here. Many of this third wave don’t speak Arabic or read the Koran. Very few (13 percent of Sageman’s sample) have attended radical madrassas. Nearly all join the movement because they know or are related to someone who’s already in it. Those detained on terrorism charges are getting younger: In Sageman’s 2003 sample, the average age was 26; among those arrested after 2006, it was down to about 20. They are disaffected, homicidal kids -- closer to urban gang members than to motivated Muslim fanatics.

Sageman’s solution to the third wave is fairly straightforward. First, as we’re already doing, disrupt these groups when they gather to train. Second, stop glamorizing them and playing up the War on Terrorism. Third, get out of Iraq to cut off sources of radicalization.

That said, this doesn’t mean we’re immune. As Fallows article notes:

Yes, there could be another attack tomorrow, and most authorities assume that some attempts to blow up trains, bridges, buildings, or airplanes in America will eventually succeed. No modern nation is immune to politically inspired violence, and even the best-executed antiterrorism strategy will not be airtight.

Bloody hell

Benazir Bhutto, a top opposition leader in Pakistan, was killed by suicide bombing.

Ackerman adds, "The most likely culprit is the Pakistani Taliban and
al-Qaeda. But it’s not exactly an event met with tears by the Pakistani military, which thoroughly controls the government and the economy."

That said, President Musharraf will almost certainly use this as an opportunity to consolidate power.  He may well make a play to attempt to transition into a fully autocratic state with U.S. patronage, like say Egypt or Saudi Arabia.  With nukes and a real but minority Islamist terrorist opposition there’s a good chance the U.S. will let him.  If we do, there [will] certainly be more bloodshed to come.

War Peace with Iran based on faulty solid intelligence

For anyone that hasn’t heard, there’s a newly released National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. I buy James Fallows argument that this means we can substantial relax about the possibility that President Bush will start a war with them.

2) For nearly three years, "yes, they will" / "no, they wouldn’t dare" arguments about the Bush Administration’s intentions have raged within the press and among analysts. The question was whether the president and vice president might actually go ahead and order a preemptive air or land strike against Iran -- despite the absence of clear Congressional approval, despite the obvious lack of support within America’s professional military, despite the overwhelming evidence that in the crudest sense a military approach could not work. I’ve been in the "they wouldn’t dare" camp -- and have urged members of Congress to remove doubt by prohibiting use of funds toward this end. Other writers and analysts have consistently said: No, just you wait, it’s coming, these guys are determined to get the job done.

The argument is in a sense moot now. In the face of this NIE, a possibility that had once seemed remote -- that the uniformed military might resist carrying out an order for a self-destructive attack on Iran --is suddenly more plausible. On what rational grounds could a president or vice president now order a strike? The order itself might be grounds for judging a commander-in-chief unfit to hold office. But some time it will be worth going back to see how close the president or vice president ever came to preparing for attack.

The rest of the piece has some interesting points, but I figured I’d just drop a marker for when my thinking switched from "war might happen" to "now even the Bush administration would be hard pressed to start a war." Good news indeed.

Veteran of the first nationwide Cyber-Attack

This afternoon Estonian Minister of Defense Jack Aaviksoo gave a Statesman talk at CSIS on "Real Threats of the Imaginary World."  Why Estonia?   

They were taken by surprise on by a cyber-attack on April 21st, 2007.  The minister learned about it when he couldn't get online.  However, the mid-level unofficial network was already to work by then and had already called in specialists from abroad. There second move was to cut off access from some foreign servers.  No formal decision-making to react and its unclear whether the response steps were authorized by existing legislation.  After the initial onslaught the third step to get experts from abroad.  The later waves were on the 4th and 9th of May and Estonia was able to reduce the volume tenfold.

Most of the attacks were against government websites and servers, new portals, two banks then all banks (one at a time), and internet service providers.  The volume raised Estonia internet traffic more than 400 times the normal rate of traffic. This led to some street riots (up to $10M in damage), no access to banking over computers (90% of transactions in Estonia; a few million in damages), and cut off of news. Not just volume but also well coordinated, in a set time, and coordinated with real world demonstrations.  The attacks were carried out via botnet of a million zombified computers (maybe 10% from the U.S.) that were rented in advance from illegal groups.  Renting one costs ten to fifty cents a computer.  Perhaps 1% of any given audience has a zombie computer. 

This happened when Estonia displeased Russia by moving an old statue celebrating the Red Army.  However, they have no solid evidence of the organizer. All they can note is that they were well-organized and coordinated with diplomatic actions by "their big neighbor." There were minimal long term consequences, some of the attacks were neutralized thanks to friends inside and outside of Estonia.  What it did was psychological: Caused confusion, intimidation, cut off information access.  More developed are more vulnerable, but it isn't limited to developed countries.

After the cut, what to do on the defense?

Bad news from Pakistan

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto just returned and was attacked, apparently via grenade and suicide bomb. She survived but as of last count 120 at the rally were dead.

Body parts were strewn for hundreds of yards around, and men walked away from the scene covered head to toe in blood. Dozens of ambulances, sirens wailing, ferried the injured and the dead to hospitals. Survivors sat by the side of the road, weeping. The sweet smell of rose petals -- revelers had tossed them into the air to welcome Bhutto -- mingled with the heavy scent of death.

After the explosions, Bhutto’s supporters reported hearing gunshots, and there were three indentations in the glass screen of her truck that appeared to have been caused by bullets.

Raja Mubasher, a party activist, said the attack came as members of the crowd were shouting slogans of celebration. One minute, he said, "people were jubilant. They were happy. Our leader had come back after eight years." The next, he said, "their legs were broken. Their heads were broken. Their hands were broken." In an instant, he said, the ground was littered with more than 100 bodies...

Karachi’s police chief, Farooqi Ahmed, denied that his forces were anything less than vigilant and noted that among the dead were a large number of police officers. Ahmed also said Bhutto would have "definitely" been killed had it not been for extra security efforts provided by the government, including a bullet- and shock-resistant container that Bhutto was riding in, and jamming devices designed to keep blasts from detonating near her vehicle. Bhutto was evacuated quickly after the attack.

Thank God she survived, but this is worse than the already pessimistic Pakistan briefing I heard two weeks ago which didn’t even list a major Taliban/Al Qaeda attack as possible escalating scenario. I buy the idea that the government did their best to protect her. They were involved enough in her protection that if this were an inside job she’d probably either be dead or we’d have a government-loyalist fight.

There’s really not that I can see the U.S. can doing here aside from not make the situation worse. (There’s a lot we could do in Afghanistan to take some pressure off, but that’s a different post) I just hope the Pakistani government is able to unify the people enough to take on this challenge. I don’t think that’s going to be possible if they continue to exclude Nawaz Sharif. This isn’t to say I favor a unity government (although I obviously favor free and fair elections) but they should let him return and be part of a loyal opposition.

Television Criticism by Paul Krugman

Funny how art imitates life:

I’m pretty sure the original, 1970s Bionic Woman worked for a government agency. But this version works for a private contractor - she even gets assigned to protect the daughter of a tycoon who gives the company a lot of business. Yet this private company seems to be empowered to go around killing people. And nobody seems to consider this at all unusual, or legally dubious.

I guess TV writers just pick up on the Zeitgeist.

On that note, a development that seems straight out of Neil Stephenson [Probably because it turned out to be a fake]. The first non-depressing assassination to come out of Russia in some time:

Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ’Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as "killers" in Russia).

Who hated Tolstokozhev so much as to hire a hit man to assasinate him? Well, I guess you have about one billion e-mail users to suspect. Tolstokozhev was a famous spammer who sent millions of e-mail promoting viagra, cialis, penis enlargement pills and other medications. Links in these e-mails usually led to some pharmacy shop, which paid Tolstokozhev a share of its revenue. This is a well known affiliate scheme employed by spammers worldwide. Tolstokozhev is estimated to be responsible for up to 30% percent of all viagra and penis enlargement related spam...

This is a second murder of a spammer in Russia. Another russian spammer, Vardan Kushnir, was assassinated in 2005.

Via Sullivan.

[Updated: A fake apparently]

Quick update on S-Chip to avoid strawmanning

Quick update to my other S-Chip post to make clear who I’m talking about. There’s an important distinction on the S-Chip fight from the NY Times article:

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who were gearing up to use Graeme as evidence that Democrats have overexpanded the health program to include families wealthy enough to afford private insurance, have backed off.

An aide to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, expressed relief that his office had not issued a press release criticizing the Frosts.

In this case, we have Malkin and allies going nuts but politicians choosing not to follow along as the situation developed. Good for the politicians. The argument that the Frosts’ demographics don’t need public insurance isn’t supported by the facts, but would have been a valid argument if the Frosts were millionaires or something. I personally support universal health care, so I think that argument is wrong, but that doesn’t make it illegitimate. Aside from the lying, the problem here is the ad hominem attacks and invasions of privacy which are always iffy and definitely not appropriate for non-public figures let alone kids.

Rare praise for the Justice Department

Considering I’ve been trashing the Justice Department for the past few days, when I saw an article showing good performance in today’s post, I figured I’d give them a pat on the back.

They managed to resolve a tax standoff via trickery and not violence

Refusing to "surrender," in February they barricaded themselves in their estate in this New Hampshire town of 2,200, warning that any attempts to arrest them would end in bloodshed. They said they could sustain themselves "indefinitely" with solar and wind electricity generators, after federal agents cut their power and phone lines...

Late Thursday, U.S. marshals posing as supporters entered the Browns’ property and arrested them on their porch without incident. "They invited us in, and we escorted them out," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier told the Associated Press.

At a news conference, Monier said officials found booby traps in the woods on the 100-plus-acre property and weapons, ammunition and homemade bombs inside and outside the house. He said more charges are likely.

Well played. I was young at the time and perhaps insufficiently critical when Ruby Ridge and Wacohappened. I don’t buy most of the conspiracy theories about Waco, that said, the raid was still an obvious disaster. The death toll in Ruby Ridge is even less excusable as while the Weaver family were radical separatists they seemed to have been goaded by an informant in much the same way those morons in Miami got made into a terrorist group bent on attacking the Sears Tower. Regardless, this could have gotten real ugly. Props for avoiding that. It’s good to see Justice using lying as a force for good for a change.

Actual good news from Iraq

The Washington Post reports a drop in Iraqi and US casualties in Iraq.  Via Dan Drezner the Financial Times offers the same story with a bit more detail of interest to me.

The apparent decline also comes in spite of September’s partial overlap with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which usually sees an increase in attacks by Sunni Arab militants. A tally provided by Iraq’s health, interior and defence ministries quoted by news agencies noted 884 civilians killed in September, down from 1,773 in August, 1,653 in July and 1,227 in June.

The independent Iraq Body Count, which tallies press reports of civilian deaths, recorded higher numbers but showed a similar trajectory – 1,280 killed in September, 2,575 in August, 2,600 in July, and 2,092 in June.

US casualties also declined. Icasualties.org, a website which keeps a tally of US deaths, reported 63 fatalities in September, compared with 84 in August and 126 in May. September’s total is the lowest since July 2006.

Given past discrepancies, I don''t tend to trust either the U.S. or Iraq numbers on Iraqi casualties.  However, the numbers on U.S. dead are going to be reliable and press reports provide some supporting evidence.  If this bares out it is definite good news but the Post provides the still dreary context:

Numbers alone cannot describe the level of danger and the pervading sense of insecurity that still exist in much of Iraq. Some U.S. soldiers in Iraq have argued that sectarian cleansing in some Baghdad neighborhoods has progressed to the point that there are fewer opportunities for killing rivals. Many Iraqis still refuse to travel from their homes or immediate neighborhoods for fear of crossing into territory under the control of rival militias or insurgents. Thousands of residents each month are still driven from their homes and from the country, afraid for their lives.

In an interview Monday, Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's two vice presidents, said that the detention of thousands of people this year during the troop buildup has created dire long-term problems. Mass arrests and the prolonged detention of uncharged and sometimes innocent people fuel the sectarian hatred that drives much of the killing, he said...

[Rear Adm.] Fox stressed that while trends were "encouraging," violence overall still remained too high.

"There's no sense of 'We've accomplished what we want to accomplish here,' " he said.

 

The Post's new Fact Checker blinks

The Washington Post's Fact Checker column has a good column on the controversy about casualty figures.  Unfortunately, the conclusion blinked: "This issue is too complex for a snap Pinocchio rating. In this case, our goal is to shed light on a complicated statistical debate, rather than slap Pinocchio or Geppetto labels on either Petraeus or Clinton."

Oddly enough, they don't seem to have any trouble with complicated statistical debates on polling.  They recently did a post on John Edwards' claim to be most electable:

"While the Edwards campaign can certainly produce polls showing that their candidate is ahead in head-to-head matchups with individual Republicans, so can Clinton and Obama. The polling data is all over the map at this point. We award Edwards two Pinocchios for wild exaggeration.

Rewording that a bit:

"While [General Petraeus] can certainly produce [casualty figures] showing that [casualty figures support his judgment of the surge], so can Clinton and Obama. The [casualty figures are] all over the map at this point. We award [General Petraeus] two Pinocchios for wild exaggeration.

I don't think this was a partisan blinking, but for the Fact Checker column to really elevate the level of accuracy in political reporting, they're going to need to apply the same scale to highly controversial calls as you do to easier statements. 

Presenting only the data most supportive of your cause without explaining yourself or acknowledging opposing data is no different than what the Edwards campaign did.

In fairness you could also say that Hillary Clinton was cherry picking her figures.  That said, General Petreaus, much like John Edwards' pollsters, is not a disinterested third party.  He is making a case defending his own performance.  The burden of proof is on him.

Merchant of Death

Viktor Bout, inspiration for the movie Lord of War, is a gun-runner extraordinaire.  He could get an assault helicopter to Liberia's Charles Taylor in three week.  He's sold to amputating rebels in Sierre Leone, both sides in Afghanistan's civil war, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia. In West Africa his sales directly correlate with the launch of new atrocity-filled campaigns.  Moreover, his "never fly empty" philosophy means he's also transported frozen chicken, U.N. Peace Keepers, and U.S. supplies in Iraq. Amazingly, despite violating U.N. arms embargoes, almost everything he's done his legal.

I'm getting this data from a new book out by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun called Merchant of Death.  I haven't read it yet, but I attended a great event where they spilled many of the details. Farah in particular was a great speaker, as he showed in an interview on the Daily Show a few days ago.  And to answer the inevitable question, Lord of War is accurate in that the protagonist is Russian and effective at dodging laws. The film crew may also have hired a Bout plane for one scene, but they are avoiding Treasury prosecution because it was an international production.  My detailed write-up is after the cut.

Meanwhile in Somalia...

From the BBC (Emphasis on Eritrea is mine).

Somali Islamists and opposition leaders meeting in Eritrea have joined forces in a new alliance to overthrow Somalia's transitional government. More than 300 delegates, including Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, have approved a constitution and central committee. A spokesman said the new movement will be called The Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia.

Looks like the opposition forces have their act together.  Hopefully this will improve their human rights performance but I wouldn't bet on it.  Unified opposition actually may be a good step towards someone getting unity of force.  We'll see how much support Eritrea will give and whether it's enough to challenge Ethiopia's forces.  Robert Farley has a few more relevant articles including discussion considering declaring Eritrea a rogue state (which, from what I've heard, would be a terrible idea).

Via Matt Yglesias.

Anniversary

Good article in the WPost on Amr Khaled, who is described as the top ranked televangelist in the Arab world.  He recently appeared at an event in Crystal City, Virginia.

A brief sampling of his sermons:

"I feel what 9/11 has done to you. You are all crying aloud: 'This is not Islam. We reject this,' " he said at the appearance sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America. "At the same time, we don't agree with what is happening in Iraq. We feel confusion, pain. . . .

"You came to this country to provide for your families. Do we isolate ourselves from society? Or do we completely assimilate and forget our faith and our background? Do we hate the society we live in?" he asked. "No! The prophet Muhammad taught us kindness, justice, mercy, coexistence with others, that God created us different so that we can get to know one another."

Besides my immediate concerns about the casualties, the biggest fear I felt on 9/11 was not that America would collapse or the like, that was never a possibility.  The fear was more that we would be in a situation like the movie "The Siege."  The occasional massive attack plus regular ones on the scale of the bombings in Britain, Spain, or Indonesia.  For those of us lucky enough to be in the developed world and not a failed state, that hasn't happened.  There have not been more attacks on the scale of 9/11.  Attempts to achieve that scale haven't been particularly credible.  Far too many have been killed in smaller attacks, but governments seem to be increasingly effective in disrupting them.

Moreover, the American homeland haven't been hit again, although our troops certainly have.  Some of the credit goes to American intelligence, customs and immigrations officials, and law enforcement.  However, the various attacks on the homeland that have been disrupted all seem far more amateur than the equivalent attacks on Europe.

Why?

Because there is not a large population of radicalized American Muslims.  As Paul Barrett describes in his book American Islam, the community of Muslims in America is quite diverse but also far less radicalized than the Muslim communities in Europe (for a good discussion of the topic, see Slate's book club).  Amr Khaled isn't American, but his message is an example of the forces that have won the day.  This is a momentous accomplishment, as even a small minority of radicals can do terrible damage.

Regardless of what the future holds, upholding six years of relative peace has done themselves and the rest of America a great service.  For that, I'm quite grateful.

[Update: Redundant sentence trimmed.]

What Ethnic Cleansing looks like

 

This is the chart on page 34 of the Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq.  Take a close look at the upper three maps.  As time passes, most of the map moves from being tan, mixed Sunni-Shia, to either Shia green or Sunni blue.  The level of violence drops, but part of that is just a natural result of the consolidation of each faction.  (That said, intra-sect violence can be quite nasty as well, but the chart only concerns itself with sectarian killings so we nee d to go elsewhere for those numbers).

Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the last post, the Washington Post reports that nationwide civilian casualties are remaining fairly constant.  So deaths elsewhere have risen to overwhelm any improvement in Baghdad.  As Kevin Drum notes, this is true even if you don't account for seasonality.

That said, having a secure capital could still help achieve political progress in theory.  Capitals are important and all that.  However, as the GAO found, the political process has been miserable with 11 of 18 unmet and most of the rest partially met at best.

Newest Iraq report

The Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq's report is out.  The Washington Post has a summary (as well as a great article on the fuzzy sectarian death numbers that reveals that being shot in the back of the head counts but being shot in the front doesn't).  In due disclosure, I have a friend that worked on this one.

• The Ministry of Defense is fairly functional as is the Army.  However, the Army won't be able to operate independently [within the next] 12-18 months.  There's a need for leadership.
• The Ministry of Interior is a sectarian mess.  The local Iraqi Police Service are fragile and have limited capability, although this would improve if the Ministry of Interior were fixed.
• The National Police aren't viable in their present form.
• Border security is ineffective in part because management is divided between Transportation and Interior.

So far I've just skimmed the report.  I'll probably read it in depth come this weekend.

My initial reaction: Army good, police bad is basically in line with what I've been hearing for years.  I think the problem is that policing is inherently political.  I have a hypothesis that in occupied areas, the police are often more hated than the occupying armies.  This problem can be partially resolved via using local police, but that does get into the problem that you are empowering local militias at the expense of the national government.  So I severely doubt that either the national police or the Ministry of Interior are really fixable.  That said, border security is a less political issue, so security is probably more achievable.

On first skim and newspaper summary, the stand on larger security issues is to transition to more border control and critical infrastructure protection.  The 12-18 month suggests that we'll be in a better position to withdrawal once the army finishes getting its act together.  However, I can't say this chart gives me a lot of hope:

"A Level 1 Unit is capable of planning, executing, and sustaining counterinsurgency operations.
A Level 2 Unit is capable of planning, executing, and sustaining counterinsurgency operations with ISF or coalition support." 

From page 59 of the report.  Other charts on page 35, 57, 60, 68 have more information.  However, I don't think any of those provide confidence that there's improvement in the quality, rather than the numbers, of Iraqi forces.

[Update: After reading a couple other summaries, I realized I misread was of the summary points.  The army won't be ready in the next 12-18 months but won't necessarily be ready after that either.  That said, the report was definitely more optimistic about the Army than the Police.]

[Update the second: Actually, I think I may have been right the first time.  I'll save any edits for future posts.]

The Green Lantern theory of Geopolitics

Coined by Matthew Yglesias the theory provides me an easy excuse to talk about comics and politics:

The ring is a bit goofy. Basically, it lets its bearer generate streams of green energy that can take on all kinds of shapes. The important point is that, when fully charged what the ring can do is limited only by the stipulation that it create green stuff and by the user's combination of will and imagination. Consequently, the main criterion for becoming a Green Lantern is that you need to be a person capable of "overcoming fear" which allows you to unleash the ring's full capacities. It used to be the case that the rings wouldn't function against yellow objects, but this is now understood to be a consequence of the "Parallax fear anomaly" which, along with all the ring's other limits, can be overcome with sufficient willpower.

Suffice it to say that I think all this makes an okay premise for a comic book. But a lot of people seem to think that American military might is like one of these power rings. They seem to think that, roughly speaking, we can accomplish absolutely anything in the world through the application of sufficient military force. The only thing limiting us is a lack of willpower.

In fairness to the Green Lanterns, Yglesias did leave off another key criteria "being completely honest."  So most politicians, let alone neo-cons, wouldn't really qualify.

That aside, I think his description is basically sound.  You see the idea in paeans to grit, such as the one reposted recently by James Kirchik who is guest blogging while Andrew Sullivan is getting married (best wishes to him on the marriage).

Grit used to be the Anglo virtue - absolutely
grim perseverance through long, terrible
reverses - though often laughing at oneself,
mocking one's political leaders, trying to
drown one's sorrows in warm beer and Glen Miller's music
-  but just never wavering. Wavering was for the
Italians and French maybe, but not if you
were serious. The Germans didn't waver. The
Russians didn't waver. So for heaven's sake
why should we ? I mourn the loss of grit.

Hilzoy, another Sullivan guest blogger, had a great response (that's worth reading in whole).

I have never believed that the American people are unwilling to take casualties in war. I do think that they are unwilling to take casualties in a war they do not believe is justified, or that is being badly run. And who can blame them?

Hilzoy also argued that fundamental mistakes tend only to happen as a result of not caring about a problem, extremely difficult concepts, or simply spoiled entitlement.  Knowing that occupation planning was needed in Iraqi isn't extremely difficult, so [she] attributed that failure to not caring (Rumsfeld and Cheney) and spoiled childish entitlement (Bush).

Kirchik replied including one quote I found particularly silly: "fear that this sort of sentiment--that the war against Islamic militancy is not really a war at all, and not nearly as potentially lethal as we've been made to believe--is gaining currency in America and certainly already has in Britain. Downplaying the threat that the enemy poses is, yes, a loss of grit."  In other words, grit means that thinking every enemy capable of inflicting an atrocity on us is a mortal threat.  Sure...

As Yglesias originally points out, the trouble with this will power theory is that it for superpowers it isn't falsifiable.  It's possible to bleed the U.S. in an intervention, but outright military defeat isn't in the cards.  It doesn't matter that persistence isn't the same as victory, victory can always be promised in the somewhat distance future.  There's never a time to cut losses and always a time to call such loss cutting "a stab in the back" (the link goes to a good article on the use of the accusation in Harpers).

Beyond being unfalsifiable, the theory actively encourages lying and poor strategy.  If all that's necessary to win is maintaining public support, then you don't have to care about things like planning for the occupation.  Similarly, taking steps like accepting Iraqi refugees is counterproductive because it admits that there's a problem.  Moreover, it can lead even honorable people such as Sen. John McCain to take trips to Baghdad marketplaces to show how safe they are while forgetting to mention his helicopter accompaniment.

A population willing and able to withdraw support for a war is a feature, not a bug, of democratic nations.  Just because we're a superpower doesn't mean every war can be won at a remotely acceptable cost.

Bit for comic fans who want to skip the Iraq stuff: Which leaves me with this question.  Have the Green Lanterns ever dealt with a situation where they had to fall back?  I know they're certainly willing to self-sacrifice and often die, but that's not quite the same.  Also, here's a link to a response to Yglesias's theory by Dennis O'Neil of Green Lantern/Green Arrow road trip fame.

[Update: Hilzoy is female.  That's what I get for still harboring the default assumption that ambiguous handles on the internet tend to be male until I pick up contextual clues that the person in question is female.  My bad.  I"ll continue to work at expunging that assumption.]