The American Inquisition

Andrew Sullivan

"Coercive Interrogation"

30 Mar 2007 09:03 am

Much ink has been split over what torture means. It isn't the first time. The original White House memo outlining the boundaries drew the line at death or failure of a major bodily organ. Hey: it's compassionate conservatism. But the exquisite ways in which human beings have found to describe torture that isn't torture or to call it something else or to place limits on it go back a very long way:

I don't know how much of your latin remains from your schooldays, but I just reread Ad Extirpanda (To Be Exterminated), the papal bull in which Innocent IV, feeling the Inquisition was not efficient enough in digging out heresy, introduced the occasional use of torture in extreme circumstances. At first, it was truly used this way. Within a few decades however, it had become the norm as legal strategy gave way to blunt force in the name of moral authority.

I found the terms used to explain what kind of torture was to be permitted to bee strangely familiar (translation mine):

"Extraordinary use of the question shall be limited to that which does not involve the effusion of blood or permanent mutilation."

John Yoo, meet your mentor.

Krugman: Monetary Policy Primer

Economist's View

Paul Krugman from 1999. I like this one - it uses a simple, entertaining fable to illuminate important issues in international finance such as whether developing countries should stabilize their exchange rates:

A Monetary Fable, by Paul Krugman: Once upon a time, the world had a single currency, the globo. It was generally well managed: the Global Reserve Bank (popularly known as the Glob), under its chairman Alan Globespan, did a pretty good job of increasing the global money supply when the world threatened to slide into recession, trimming it when there were indications of inflation. Indeed, in later years some would remember the reign of the globo as a golden age. Businessmen in particular liked the system, because they could buy and sell anywhere with a minimum of hassle.

But there was trouble in Paradise. You see, although careful management of the globo could prevent a boom-bust cycle for the world as a whole, it could not do so for each piece of that whole. Indeed, it turned out that there were often conflicts of interest about monetary policy. Sometimes the Glob would be following an easy-money policy because Europe and Asia were on the edge of recession; but that easy money would fuel a wild speculative boom in North America. Other times the Glob would feel obliged to tighten money to head off inflation in North America, intensifying a developing recession in Latin America. And there was nothing regions could do about it.

Over time frustration over this impotence built up; and when the Glob failed, through policy misjudgements, to prevent a serious global recession the system broke up. Each region introduced its own currency: Europe adopted the euro, Latin America the latino, North America the gringo, and so on. But how should these local currencies be managed?

At first officials were afraid to let the new currencies be traded freely: you were only allowed to exchange latinos for euros or gringos if the government granted you a license, and licenses were given only for "legitimate" imports. But over time it became clear that this system both discouraged beneficial trade and offered many opportunities for corruption. One by one, the world's regions moved back to free convertibility of currencies. But they were still afraid of instability, so governments tried to stabilize the rates at which these currencies exchanged by buying and selling on the foreign exchange markets.

Alas, this system too turned out to have serious problems. After all, the whole point of going from a world currency to multiple local currencies was to give governments the ability to have independent monetary policies, so they could fight recessions when necessary. But a country could not simultaneously print money to fight a recession and maintain the value of its currency on the foreign exchange market. It could improve its competitive position by devaluing - say by raising the price of a gringo from 1.2 latinos to 1.5. But once latinos were freely convertible into other currencies, the mere hint that a devaluation might be in the offing would cause massive speculation against the vulnerable currency.

So what was the answer?

One answer was simply to give up the attempt to stabilize exchange rates, and just let the market do the job. The trouble was that experience showed that the market did the job badly. You might have thought that the exchange rate between, say, the euro and the gringo would be determined by the needs of trade: by North Americans trading gringos for euros in order to buy European goods, and conversely. It soon became clear, however, that mainly the market was dominated by investors - people buying and selling currencies in order to purchase stocks and bonds. And since these investment demands were highly variable, including a large component of speculation, currency values also proved unstable. Worse yet, people began to speculate on the values of the currencies themselves. The result was that exchange rates bounced around, creating uncertainty for businesses who could never be sure what their overseas assets and liabilities were really worth.

Some governments decided that this was unfortunate, but a price worth paying; for example, North America was unwilling to sacrifice domestic goals to achieve exchange rate stability, and so it practiced benign neglect toward the gringo's value. This was, of course, easier for big, relatively self-sufficient economies than for smaller currency zones. Nonetheless, some of these also seemed to thrive under freely floating exchange rates. The kangaroo tended to hop around, but Australia's economy did very well. And for a while most economists believed that floating exchange rates, while admittedly imperfect, were a workable system for just about everyone.

But when the world's poorer regions tried to behave like the First World, responding to speculative attacks on their currencies by simply letting them float, disaster struck. When the kilogram was allowed to float against the euro, nothing terrible happened: the currency fell by 15 percent, then stabilized; in effect, investors seem to have thought "Good, that's over" and been willing to start putting money back into the country. Indeed, the central bank found itself able to cut interest rates, and engineer an economic recovery. But when the latino was allowed to float against the gringo, investors panicked: it went into free fall, losing half its value in a matter of weeks. Since many companies had debts denominated in gringos, this was a financial catastrophe. So the government tried to stabilize the latino by raising interest rates to 75 percent, hoping that this would induce investors to keep their money in the country; the effect, however, was a disastrous recession, which in a way ratified the investors' panic.

And the same story played itself out repeatedly, in one country after another. Indeed, after a while the whole thing started to feel like a recurrent nightmare, with the same horrifying events replayed each time. First a country which had seemed to be doing well would find itself the sudden object of speculative attack, sometimes because of some real but probably manageable economic difficulties, sometimes because of psychological "contagion" from an economic crisis halfway around the world, and even on occasion because of a short-selling conspiracy by hedge funds. Then a team from the Global Monetary Fund would arrive, promising to save the country by lending it money, but only if it did things that were guaranteed to produce a severe slump: raising taxes, cutting spending, and increasing interest rates to punitive levels. These measures were supposed to restore market confidence, stabilizing the situation; but by depressing the economy, and often destabilizing its internal politics, they would usually precipitate a new crisis after a few months. Some countries eventually recovered from these crises, and these cases were celebrated as demonstrations of the success of the GMF's recommendations; but after four years of rolling crisis, which had devastated the economies of eight nations and counting, the world economy was starting to look like a very dangerous place.

What could the poor Latins (and Asians, and ...) do?

Some economists argued that many developing countries could still move to floating rates - that the currency collapses were actually the consequence of misguided GMF policy, and could have been avoided. And in some cases they may have had a point. On a Friday in January 1999, for example, Amazonia let its currency float, and the initial results were far better than expected: the currency fell only modestly, and the stock market soared. Nonetheless, over the weekend GMF officials demanded that the country raise its interest rates. (Were they, perhaps unconsciously, unwilling to see a non-GMF-style policy succeed, and thus call into question their previous actions?) When the rate increase was announced on Monday, panic set in, and the fragile sense of optimism was shattered.

But most economists were more pessimistic. It seemed to them that in general developing countries were, for whatever reason, held by financial markets to a different standard than First World nations; and for them floating rates did not work. So something else had to be done.

One possible answer was to achieve credibility by tying oneself to the mast: to adopt a currency board - that is, back every latino with a gringo of reserves, and pledge never ever to change the parity - or, if even this wasn't enough, to give up on having your own currency at all, and "gringoize" (or euroize) the economy. In effect, this would mean going back to a sort of inferior version of the globo standard - inferior because it would have all the weaknesses of that system, plus new problems. You see, while Alan Globespan managed the globo on behalf of the world as a whole, his successors - Mr. Gringspan, who controls the gringo supply, and Mr. Euroberg, who controls the euro supply - have more parochial concerns. (And because those concerns differ, the euro-gringo rate is highly unstable, making it problematic for small countries that trade extensively with both regions to peg to either one). And nationalism is not dead: could independent countries really be expected to swallow their pride and accept monetary subservience on a permanent basis?

Another possible answer was to reimpose exchange controls, so as to limit the vulnerability of economies to speculative attack. The reasons for avoiding such controls were as strong as ever; but countries that had maintained controls on capital movement had been noticeably less savaged by crisis than those that had not. Perhaps, in an imperfect world, the costs of controls were a price worth paying.

The worst thing to do, of course, was to put off making a choice: to try to defend a currency of suspect credibility with high interest rates, producing a recession and budget crisis that inevitably led investors to worry - despite all denials by the government - that capital controls might be the next step. And yet of course, politics and human nature being what they are, that is what most countries did when the crises came. (Less forgivably, it is also what the GMF, time and again, advised them to do).

And so the world lurched from crisis to crisis; and they all lived unhappily ever after.

Nothing Rallies the People Around an Unpopular President...

Well worth remembering:

Barry Ritholz at The Big Picture

We even noted on Monday that Oil and Gas had ticked up in price, with premium (high test) selling for more than $3 and Oil tickiling $64. That obviously didn't concern Mr. Market last week, nor did the Fed's evident concern with the decaying economy and creeping Real Estate problems.

Now, it appears that glimmers of recognition of all that risk is returning, courtesy of Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines. Last night, Oil spiked $5, "rumors that Iran fired on U.S. Navy warships." Other rumors of an immiment Iran attack by the Brits aided by the U.S. were reported.

With a little luck, this situation gets resolved with no shots fired, but I suspect that may not suit the unpopular President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- nothing rallies the populace around an unpopular president like an attack on the nation from abroad.

Q for W: What's God Telling You About Iraq Now?

Who's the idiot here?

Bill Cusak at Huffington Post

Before deciding to invade
Iraq, Bush, apparently, or so he says, talked it over with God, and God, says Bush, told him to invade, or at least made it abundantly clear that he supported an invasion of Iraq very, very, very strongly, presumably because God hates Middle Eastern dictators with lots of oil as opposed to lots of other dictators without lots of oil. God knew there were no WMD's because God is all powerful and can see all or he ain't God. Apparently God didn't tell Bush he would create terrorists and unleash ethnic hatred which would drag us into a death spiral quagmire, either. So the bottom line is God told Bush to invade Iraq, which is the most tragic blunder in U.S. history since the decision to legalize slavery- a blunder that has humiliated this country and will imperil the security and economic interests of America for the rest of this century. Is God an idiot? ...

Sullivan on Bush & Torture

Andrew Sullivan

"Bush took the blame for Abu Ghraib, but who believes that he desired torture and obscene handling of the enemy?" - Bill Buckley.

Where to start? First, I don't recall Bush personally taking the blame for Abu Ghraib at all. He even refused to let his defense secretary take the blame and resign. I remember him insisting that "this is not America" and denying that he had any role in it, despite signing a memo that allowed all such abuse if "military necessity" demanded it.

Bush's signature is on the memo. Period. He is in charge of his mental faculties and he is commander-in-chief. Period. His own defense secretary sent Geoffrey Miller to Abu Ghraib to replicate the torture Bush had already ordered at Gitmo. Torture continued long after Abu Ghraib was exposed under Bush as commander-in-chief. Given a chance to ban it entirely last year, Bush did all he could to keep torture alive as a program, succeeded, and then planned on running a campaign boasting of his aggressive treatment of military detainees. He has done everything to push the actual blame for torture on military grunts, rather than on the civilians who authorized and directed them. In fact, he got the GOP to pass a law retroactively immunizing him from legal culpability for torture in the last days of the last Congress. If he is prepared to do all this, then, sorry, Mr. Buckley, but you need to wake up.

If Bush is willing to take responsibility for toppling Saddam - and to dress up in military uniform and land on an aircraft carrier for good measure - then he must take full responsibility for torture and for the appalling treatment of injured vets at home. He cannot have it both ways. Either he is commander-in-chief or he isn't. You don't get to be commander-in-chief for all the good times; and have someone else take the responsibility for the bad ones. Your daddy isn't going to let you off the hook, any more Dubya. Get that?

But Buckley asks a deeper, more interesting question. Bush authorized and endorsed torture. That much is indisputable. But did he actually fully realize what he was doing? He is certainly shallow enough to authorize torture and not fully grapple with what that means. The man is a master in denial. And he is deeply, deeply morally lazy. This is a guy who could laugh and mock a woman he was about to execute. Remember that? He makes his cut-throat mother look compassionate.

Did he wrestle long and hard with the question and decide that allowing torture was a terrible thing but he had no choice to protect American lives? Or did he just say "fine," do what you have to do, and move on? I suspect the latter. Occasionally his glib callowness still has the capacity to shock, even after all these years. His dry-drunk capacity for utter denial of reality - especially about his own moral complicity in torture and the deaths of thousands of innocents in Iraq - renders him immune from taking moral responsibility. For anything.

That's what fundamentalism can do to a person: it can so convince you that you are on the side of absolute good that you do not even stop to imagine that you are also capable of absolute evil. But Bush has been capable of absolute evil. His glib, lazy hands are covered in the blood of others, and he has tainted the honor of his office and the military more deeply than any president in modern times. But he is saved, isn't he? And the saved cannot do evil, can they?

Macaulay on James II

From The Reality-Based Community

Macaulay on James II:

The obstinate and imperious nature of the King gave great advantages to those who advised him to be firm, to yield nothing, and to make himself feared. One state maxim had taken possession of his small understanding, and was not to be dislodged by reason.

To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections.

History of England, Vol. I, Chap. 6, "The King's Temper and Opinions," p. 569 of the Edinburgh Edition.

Wanted: Reason to Attack Iran

Aigh! Aigh! Aigh! Iran's arming Iraqi insurgents! Invade! Attack!

Well, guess that sort of fell to the wayside (TPM). Oops.

Guess it's not as easy to stir up panic as it was 2-3 years ago.

Just what does it take to incite a panicked attack of a random nation these days?

Military and Iraq: Criminals OK, Gays, Not So Much

Crooks and Liars

Relgion Conflicts with Reason, not Science

My letter to Andrew Sullivan regarding his "Blogologue" with Sam Harris about Religion vs. Science.

Arrggghhh!!

What is your goal in your debate with Sam Harris?

Is your goal to "win"? I can't help you there.



Is your goal to better understand what we are and why? I have a suggestion: stop it with the Faith vs. Science bit.



This debate about religion has never been about "science"; it's about reason, it's about rationality.

Religion is entirely subjective. Full Stop.

Anything that can be "anything I want based on my desires at a given time" conflicts with reason.


Science is but a small subset of reason. If religion were to (again) subjugate science, religion would still have reason to deal with.


Can Religion be objective? Good question. Bit the lack of objectivity is the core of religion's problems and society's problems with religion...not science.

Religion: Cargo Cults

Damned Interesting

John Frum and the Cargo Cults
Posted by Gerry Matlack on February 19th, 2007 at 9:07 am

John Frum Day paradeJohn Frum Day paradeEvery year on February 15th, natives of Tanna Island in the Republic of Vanuatu hold a grand celebration in honor of an imaginary man named John Frum. Villagers clothe themselves in homemade US Army britches, paint "USA" on their bare chests and backs, and run a replica of Old Glory up the flagpole alongside the Marine Corps Emblem and the state flag of Georgia. Barefoot soldiers then march in perfect step in the shadow of Yasur, the island's active volcano, with red-tipped bamboo "rifles" slung over their shoulders. February 15th is known as John Frum day on Tanna Island, and these activities are the islanders' holiest religious service.

The Vanuatu island group lies northeast of Australia and southeast of Malaysia and the Philippines. Prior to contact with Europeans, the people who lived there were primitive tribal societies. Many of history's stereotypes and legends regarding island cannibals originated from these societies; slain enemies and the occasional missionary were eaten, sometimes in the hopes of gaining magical powers, and other times due to food shortages.

Eventually the New Hebrides islands (as they were then called) were colonized and placed under joint British and French rule. Christian missionaries formed a makeshift government and court system which punished islanders for following many of their long-held customs, such as dancing, swearing, adultery, and polygamy. The colonizers also forbade working and amusement on Sundays. The islanders lived under this oppression for thirty years before a fellow native rallied the people and promised an age of abundance to any who would reject the European ways. He went by the alias "John Frum," a name possibly derived from the phrase "John from Jesus Christ"– namely John the Baptist. Many islanders joined him, and the cult moved inland to escape the missionaries and return to their old traditions.

One day in the early 1940s, the relatively isolated group of islands was descended upon by hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who arrived by sea and by air. The world was at war, and America had plans to build bases on the Pacific islands. The newcomers recruited the locals' assistance in constructing hospitals, airstrips, jetties, roads, bridges, and corrugated-steel Quonset huts, all of which were strange and wondrous to the natives. But it was the prodigious amounts of war materiel that were airdropped for the US bases that drastically changed the lifestyle of the islanders. They observed as aircraft descended from the sky and delivered crates full of clothing, tents, weapons, tools, canned foods, and other goods to the island's new residents, a diversity of riches the likes of which the islanders had never seen. The natives learned that this bounty from the sky was known to the American servicemen as "cargo."

Map of VanuatuThese new occupiers proved to be far better guests than the British missionaries had been. The islanders were further astonished at the sight of black GIs among the ranks, enjoying all the benefits of cargo that the white soldiers enjoyed– something that the black islanders had been denied with rare exception. The islanders believed that their own dead ancestors continued to influence the communities of the living, and that their ancestors would one day come back to life and distribute to them unimaginable wealth. Therefore they reasoned that the white people must have had connections to their own ancestors, who would logically be the only ones powerful enough to rain down such wondrous riches.

It was during the war that the John Frum legend changed, recasting the religious icon as a black American infantryman. The black GIs were believed to have been John Frum's own detachment of the US Army, or perhaps the grown children of islanders believed to have been kidnapped by plantation owners long ago. It was said that John Frum lived inside the island's volcano, called "Yasur"– the native word for "God."

When the war ended several years later, the Americans departed as suddenly as they had arrived. Military bases were abandoned, and the steady flow of cargo which had altered the islanders' lives completely dried up. The men and women of Tanna Island had grown to enjoy the radios, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola, canned meat, and candy, so they set into motion a plan to bring back the cargo. They had surreptitiously learned the secrets of summoning the cargo by observing the practices of the American airmen, sailors and soldiers.

The islanders set to work clearing their own kind of landing strips, and they erected their own control towers strung with rope and bamboo aerials. They carved wooden radio headsets with bamboo antennae, and even the occasional wooden air-traffic controller. Day after day, men from the village sat in their towers wearing their replica headsets as others stood on the runways and waved the landing signals to attract cargo-bringing airplanes from the empty sky. More towers were constructed, these with tin cans strung on wires to imitate radio stations so John Frum could communicate with his people. Piers were also erected in an effort to attract ships laden with cargo, and the Red Cross emblem seen on wartime ambulances was taken as the symbol of the resurging religion. Today villages surrounding Yasur Volcano are dotted with little red crosses surrounded by picket fences, silently testifying to the islander’s faith.

The priests and prophets of the John Frum cult, called "messengers," foretold the return of planes and ships bearing cargo for the people of Tanna escorted by John Frum himself. The movement declared that in addition to returning to their "kastom" [custom] ways, money was to be thrown away, gardens be left untended, and pigs killed since all material wealth will be provided in the end by John Frum. Their god has yet to emerge from his home inside the volcano to bring the promised riches, and at least one visitor’s guide offers this advice: "If you question a local about their beliefs, they will most likely reply that you have been waiting for your messiah to return for over 2000 years – while they have been waiting for only 70."

Yasur the volcanoYasur the volcanoDespite gaining their independence and becoming familiar with the workings of the world around them, new beliefs arise on the island regularly. A visit to the village of Yaohnanen in 1974 by Prince Phillip resulted in the formation of a Prince Phillip cult. Its followers believe that Phillip originally came from Tanna, albeit in a different form, and that he will eventually return to rule over them. A recent development is the appearance of the Prophet Fred, an actual person who claims to have raised his wife from the dead in early 2006. He preaches a turn to more mainstream Christianity, and his followers have had violent clashes with those of John Frum.

Vanuatu is not the earliest and far from the only place in Melanesia where cargo cults have existed. The origin of the earliest cargo cults in general can be traced back to 1871, when the Russian explorer Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay landed in Papua New Guinea bearing gifts of goods such as steel axe heads and bolts of cloth. Inevitably, missionaries soon arrived and began distributing goods. Initially all efforts to convert the natives proved useless, but one day the natives suddenly started converting in droves. The men and women of the island had theorized that learning the rituals of the Europeans would allow them to gain the secrets of cargo.

The religions introduced by missionaries were completely inconsistent with islanders' long-held beliefs, yet the natives could not deny the call of the cargo. The people therefore attempted to reconcile their existing beliefs with the missionaries' teachings, a practice which led to some strange interpretations. In New Guinea, one resulting version of Christianity described a god named Anus who delivered cargo of canned meat, steel tools, rice, and matches to Adam and Eve. When they discovered sex, Anus ejected them from Eden and struck them with a flood.

On the Island of New Hanover in the Bismark Archipelago, another cargo cult arose in 1968 claiming that the true secret of cargo was known to only one man: President Lyndon Johnson. The natives of this island revolted against their Australian rulers, saved up $75,000, and sent a letter to Johnson offering to buy him and make him King of New Hanover. Strangely enough, he didn't accept.

Renowned physicist Richard Feynman coined the phrase "cargo cult science" based on such cults. The term draws a metaphor for research which is polluted by the mind's tendency to cherry-pick evidence that supports the desired outcome. Though it is tempting to look down on these islanders for their misguided assumptions, they are simply an extreme example of this very human bias. For them it was easier to believe that the control towers, headsets, and runways were the cause of the cargo-carrying airplanes rather than an effect, so they closed their minds to alternative explanations.

Some of these cargo cults continue to operate today, such as the parade-marching pseudo-marines of Vanuatu. So far no black US infantryman have crawled from the volcano to deliver the islanders' salvation, but every year they confidently hoist their flags and don their uniforms, so they'll be ready when that glorious day finally arrives. Perhaps one day it will.

Repulicans Supporting Our Troops

Brilliant at Breakfast

Washington Post

Iraq War: Lowed Expectations

The Big Picture gives an interesting summary of lowered expections and partisan whining.

Unfortunately, the discourse over the war has been reduced to swapping emotional images and lamenting the PR battle. It saddens me, because it shows how far we have fallen from grace.

To answer the emailer's question, it is not all over the newspapers because its not news. The good guys are supposed to do things like this.

...

We saved the world from anarchy in the early parts of the last century, from Fascism in the middle of the century, from Communism later in the Century.

...

Can you imagine partisans whining that US Servicemen had freed the camp victims at Auschwitz -- but there wasn't enough coverage, it wasn't front page news? That rebuilding of Germany and Japan after WWII wasn't getting enough airplay? The foodlifts to Africa, the inventions of life saving medicines, the racing to comfort earthquake victims, tsunami survivors, disasters anywhere on the planet neneded to be exploited further? Back then did anyone cry "Hey, where's our credit?!"

...

That was a different era. We had leaders of great intellect, courage, and judgement. They surrounded themselves with the best and the brightest. They purposefully kept aides around them who challenged their views, thought strategically, mapped out all possible consequences, believed in Science. They were pragmatic, not idealogues; they were experienced experts, not partisans.

Too many people have lowered their standards to a point that is absurd. Hey, everyone, we repainted a school in Baghdad!

Predicting the Future: The New Dollar Coin Fails (Again)

I've not even seen or felt the new dollar coin and I can already tell you it's gonna fail.

How do I know this? Because I know a "secret" that apparently every coin minter in the US either doesn't know or ignores: It's too close to the size and feel of a quarter.

The Mint is making sure the coins, which are golden in color and slightly larger and thicker than a quarter, will be widely available.
Yahoo

Why did the Susan B. Anthony and the Sacagawea dollar coins fail? Well, according to mint experts, it was because it didn't have an interesting picture.

Do we really need to be wasting our time and expertise on minting coins with pretty pictures? Shouldn't we be requiring that coin collectors pony up for the expense of generating new coins if its really that important to them?

Look, if you insist on making a new dollar coin, you're gonna have to make it a truly unique size. You damn-well DO NOT make it almost indistinguishable from a lower-denomination coin. If there ain't any more "good" coin sizes avaible, then DON'T MAKE IT.

If you're gonna make new coins, you might as well explore how to make them as light as possible. Again, no one wants to be carrying around a pocket full of dollar coins. Anyone who uses the stamp machines at the USPS can attest to this.

It should also tell you something when the only people that use dollar coins are the USPS vending machines... and only for dispensing change at that.

Bye, bye dollar coin... again.

Kudos to Bush Admin

Kudo to the Bush administration for standing up for a government official from the opposition:

Tony Snow:

"As speaker of the House, she is entitled to military transport and ... the proper arrangements are being made between the Sergeant of Arms Office in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Department of Defense," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

"We think it's appropriate," he added. "And so, again, I think this is much ado about not a whole lot. It is important for the speaker to have this kind of protection and travel."

CNN

TCR: How's the Hunt Going?

TCR

My comments on the matter:

If you kill the Bogeyman, who are people to fear?

If there is no fear, what are you to threaten them with?

If you cannot threaten people, how else do you coerce them?

If you cannot coerce people, how can you make them vote for you?

Watch actions... not words.
If you cannot make them vote for you, how do you get elected?

If you cannot get elected, then how do you...

Hmmm...A question there, eh?

What exactly *are* the administrations goals? 'w' certainly does seem stupid, but as inept as this administration seems, it *has* accomplished a few goals.

Look at what this administration *has* accomplished. That will reveal their true intentions.

Hint: GWoT, Bin Laden, et. al are a means, not an end.

Watch actions, not words.

Why Leak Plame?

Sullivan has some interesting questions about the matter and the Libby trial to date.

Ownership Society

Michael Krasney was interviewing P.J. O'Rourke was on KQED this morning as O'Rourke made the lecture circuit shilling his latest book.

The conversation enevitably turned to the Iraq War.

(I'm paraphrasing this conversation)

Q: For or against?
A: Well, I originally supported it - I have no problem admitting that...

Then O'Rourke takes the next five minutes to hem and haw, almost admitting that its a failure but never quite saying that we should do anything other than what the admistration wants to do with it.

A few minutes later a caller rang in to begin berating George w. for starting the war, screwing it up and adding gasoline to the already burning fire.

O'Rourke counters (again I'm paraphrasing) that we can't hold w responsible for the war.

O'Really?

This type of deflection, subject changing and pointing at the moon is now rife in Republican circles. To me, this begs the question: Who is responsible for the war, if not w?

Perhaps its the usual Republican scapegoats.

- Was it "entitlement programs"?

- Are Social Security recipients to blame?

- Did masses of peaceniks gather on the front lawn of the White House demanding that we invade a random country? Did these throngs of people demand that we divert attention from OBL to attack Iraq instead?

- Perhaps it was all that "intelligence" that no one can seem to find anymore.

- Did Congress stand up and demand that w stop ignoring Iraq and do something about it?

I recall watching the build-up to the Iraq War very closely. I distinctly remember the administration selling this war with all the scare tactics that even life insurance salesmen are now loathe to use.

Must have been Nancy Pelosi.

Another favorite diversion is to ask, "Well, if not The Surge, then what?"

I've got an idea: let's do the surge, but instead of the current plan, let's send all the supporters of the war over to clean it up. They've been so full of good ideas for risking other people's blood and treasure, let's give them the opportunity to use some of the those good ideas with their own skins.

Too old, feeble, flat-footed for combat? No problem. We'll set up a "Personal Account" for each war supporter and split the cost of the war amongst them ($400 billion, anyone?) Then we'll raise their taxes by the amount necessary to pay off the current war debt and the amounts going forward to pay for war injuries to American GIs. Think of your country.

Honestly, given the manifest benefits this war has brought us, it's only logical that war supporters should help shoulder some of the glory.

Personal Responsibility. You knocked her up, war supporters.. now you make the child-support payments for the "birth of a new democracy".

Ownership Society indeed.

Update: Doonesbury finds the person responsible.

Iraqi's Figured Out Geurilla War Fast

Sadr tricks the US into training and supplying his men. Who needs Iran?

McClatchy

Summary at TPM

Der Kommissar's in town, uh-oh

Don't turn around, uh-oh
Der Kommissar's in town, uh-oh
"Der Kommissar" - AFTER THE FIRE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

New York Times 30 Jan 07

Has it come to this? Every government agency to have a political commissar to enforce W's will? Didn't he already fire everyone who disagreed with him?

Stalin was gripped by paranoia, and he was merciless to his enemies real and imagined.
...
In 1937, Stalin’s attention turned to the Red Army. Within a few months, most of the Officers from major on up were executed or sent to Siberia. Stalin had cut off the head of his own dragon just as he needed it most. Some 20,000 officers were killed, and fear gripped the survivors. A third of the Red Army command was dead by the own country’s hand. The consequence was that no officer moved was made without explicit instructions. Stalin even moved to remove rank and insignia. Every unit had a political officer who would monitor the soldiers for loyalty to Stalin.
...
Paralyzed by fear and conflicting political directives, they would simply sit and wait for direction.

World War II Database

Lt. Gen. William E. Odom to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Huh. Guess no one could have predicted this one either.

via AntiWar

Strategic Errors of Monumental Proportions
What Can Be Done in Iraq?
by Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.)

Text of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 18 January 2007

Good afternoon, Senator Biden, and members of the committee. It is a grave responsibility to testify before you today because the issue, the war in Iraq, is of such monumental importance.

You have asked me to address primarily the military aspects of the war. Although I shall comply, I must emphasize that it makes no sense to separate them from the political aspects. Military actions are merely the most extreme form of politics. If politics is the business of deciding "who gets what, when, how," as Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall in New York City once said, then the military aspects of war are the most extreme form of politics. The war in Iraq will answer that question there.

Strategic Overview

The role that US military forces can play in that conflict is seriously limited by all the political decisions the US government has already taken. The most fundamental decision was setting as its larger strategic purpose the stabilization of the region by building a democracy in Iraq and encouraging its spread. This, of course, was to risk destabilizing the region by starting a war.

Military operations must be judged by whether and how they contribute to accomplishing war aims. No clear view is possible of where we are today and where we are headed without constant focus on war aims and how they affect US interests. The interaction of interests, war aims, and military operations defines the strategic context in which we find ourselves. We cannot have the slightest understanding of the likely consequences of proposed changes in our war policy without relating them to the strategic context. Here are the four major realities that define that context:

1. Confusion about war aims and US interests. The president stated three war aims clearly and repeatedly:

* the destruction of Iraqi WMD;
* the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and
* the creation of a liberal democratic Iraq.

The first war aim is moot because Iraq had no WMD. The second was achieved by late Spring 2003. Today, people are waking up to what was obvious before the war -- the third aim has no real prospects of being achieved even in ten or twenty years, much less in the short time anticipated by the war planners. Implicit in that aim was the belief that a pro-American, post-Saddam regime could be established. This too, it should now be clear, is most unlikely. Finally, is it in the US interest to have launched a war in pursuit of any of these aims? And is it in the US interest to continue pursuing the third? Or is it time to redefine our aims? And, concomitantly, to redefine what constitutes victory?

2. The war has served primarily the interests of Iran and al-Qaeda, not American interests.

We cannot reverse this outcome by more use of military force in Iraq. To try to do so would require siding with Sunni leaders and the Ba'athist insurgents against pro-Iranian Shi'ite groups. The Ba'athist insurgents constitute the forces most strongly opposed to Iraqi cooperation with Iran. At the same time, our democratization policy has installed Shi'ite majorities and pro-Iranian groups in power in Baghdad, especially in the ministries of interior and defense. Moreover, our counterinsurgency operations are, as unintended (but easily foreseeable) consequences, first, greater Shi'ite openness to Iranian influence and second, al-Qaeda's entry into Iraq and rooting itself in some elements of Iraqi society.

3. On the international level, the war has effectively paralyzed the United States militarily and strategically, denying it any prospect of revising its strategy toward an attainable goal.

As long as US forces remained engaged in Iraq, not only will the military costs go up, but also the incentives will decline for other states to cooperate with Washington to find a constructive outcome. This includes not only countries contiguous to Iraq but also Russia and key American allies in Europe. In their view, we deserve the pain we are suffering for our arrogance and unilateralism.

4. Overthrowing the Iraqi regime in 2003 insured that the country would fragment into at least three groups; Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Kurds. In other words, the invasion made it inevitable that a civil war would be required to create a new central government able to control all of Iraq. Yet a civil war does not insure it. No faction may win the struggle. A lengthy stalemate, or a permanent breakup of the country is possible. The invasion also insured that outside countries and groups would become involved. Al-Qaeda and Iran are the most conspicuous participants so far, Turkey and Syria less so. If some of the wealthy oil-producing countries on the Arabian Peninsula are not already involved, they are most likely to support with resources any force in Iraq that opposes Iranian influence.

Many critics argue that, had the invasion been done "right," such as sending in much larger forces for reestablishing security and government services, the war would have been a success. This argument is not convincing. Such actions might have delayed a civil war but could not have prevented it. Therefore, any military programs or operations having the aim of trying to reverse this reality, insisting that we can now "do it right," need to be treated with the deepest of suspicion. That includes the proposal to sponsor the breakup by creating three successor states. To do so would be to preside over the massive ethnic cleansing operations required for the successor states to be reasonably stable. Ethnic cleansing is happening in spite of the US military in Iraq, but I see no political or moral advantage for the United States to become its advocate. We are already being blamed as its facilitator.

Let me now turn to key aspects of the president's revised approach to the war, as well as several other proposals.

In addition to the president, a number of people and groups have supported increased US force levels. As General Colin Powell has said, before we consider sending additional US troops, we must examine what missions they will have. I would add that we ask precisely what those troops must do to reverse any of these four present realities created by the invasion. I cannot conceive of any achievable missions they could be given to cause a reversal.

Just for purposes of analysis, let us suppose we had unlimited numbers of US troops to deploy in Iraq. Would that change my assessment? In principle, if two or three million troops were deployed there with the latitude to annihilate all resistance without much attention to collateral civilian casualties and human rights, order might well be temporarily reestablished under a reign of US terror. The problem we would then face is that we would be opposed not only by 26 million Iraqis but also by millions of Arabs and Iranians surrounding Iraq, peoples angered by our treatment of Muslims and Arabs. These outsiders are already involved to some degree in the internal war in Iraq, and any increase of US forces is likely to be exceeded by additional outside support for insurgents.

I never cease to be amazed at our military commanders' apparent belief that the "order of battle" of the opposition forces they face are limited to Iraq. I say "apparent" because those commanders may be constrained by the administration's policies from correcting this mistaken view. Once the invasion began, Muslims in general and Arabs in particular could be expected to take sides against the United States. In other words, we went to war not just against the Iraqi forces and insurgent groups but also against a large part of the Arab world, scores and scores of millions. Most Arab governments, of course, are neutral or somewhat supportive, but their publics in growing numbers are against us.

It is a strategic error of monumental proportions to view the war as confined to Iraq. Yet this is the implicit assumption on which the president's new strategy is based. We have turned it into two wars that vastly exceed the borders of Iraq. First, there is the war against the US occupation that draws both sympathy and material support from other Arab countries. Second, there is the Shi'ite-Sunni war, a sectarian conflict heretofore sublimated within the Arab world but that now has opened the door to Iranian influence in Iraq. In turn, it foreordains an expanding Iranian-Arab regional conflict.

Any military proposals today that do not account for both larger wars, as well as the Iranian threat to the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, must be judged wholly inadequate if not counterproductive. Let me now turn to some specific proposals, those advocated by independent voices and the Iraq Study Group as well as the administration.

Specific Proposals

Standing up Iraqi security forces to replace US forces. Training the Iraqi military and police force has been proposed repeatedly as a way to bring stability to Iraq and allow US forces to withdraw. Recently, new variants, such as embedding US troops within Iraqi units, have been offered. The Iraq Study Group made much of this technique.

I know of no historical precedent to suggest that any of them will succeed. The problem is not the competency of Iraqi forces. It is political consolidation and gaining the troops' loyalties to the government and their commanders as opposed to their loyalties to sectarian leaders, clans, families, and relatives. For what political authority are Iraqi soldiers and police willing to risk their lives? To the American command? What if American forces depart? Won't they be called traitors for supporting the invaders and occupiers? Will they trust in a Shi'ite-dominated government and ministry of interior, which is engaged in assassinations of Sunnis? Sunni Arabs and Kurds would be foolish to do so, although financial desperation has driven many to risk it. What about to the leaders of independent militias? Here soldiers can find strong reasons for loyal service: to defend their fellow sectarians, families, and relatives. And that is why the government cannot disband them. It has insufficient loyal troops to do so.

As a military planner working on the pacification programs in 1970-71 in Vietnam, I had the chance to judge the results of training both regular South Vietnamese forces and so-called "regional" and "popular" forces. Some were technically proficient, but that did not ensure that they would always fight for the government in Saigon. Nor were they always loyal to their commanders. And they occasionally fought each other when bribed by Viet Cong agents to do so. The "popular forces" at the village level often failed to protect their villages. The reasons varied, but in several cases it was the result of how their salaries were funded. Local tax money was not the source of their pay; rather it was US-supplied funds. Thus these troops, as well as "regional forces," had little sense of obligation to protect villagers in their areas of responsibility. For anyone who doubts that the Vietnam case is instructive for understanding the Iraqi case, I recommend Ahmed S. Hashim's recent book, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq. A fluent Arab linguist and a reserve US Army colonel, who has served a year in Iraq and visited it several other times, Hashim offers a textured study that struck me again and again as a rerun of an old movie, especially where it concerned US training of Iraqi forces.

US military assistance training in El Salvador is often cited as a successful case. In fact, this effort amounted to letting the old elites, who used death squads to impose order, come back to power in different guises. And death squads are again active there. The real cause of the defeat of the Salvadoran insurgency was Gorbachev's decision to cut off supplies to it, as he promised President George H. Bush at the Malta summit meeting. Thus denied their resource base, and having failed to create a self-supporting tax regime in the countryside as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, they could not survive for long. Does the administration's new plan for Iraq promise to eliminate all outside support to the warring factions? Is it even remotely possible? Hardly.

The oft-cited British success in Malaysia is only superficially relevant to the Iraq case. British officials actually ruled the country. Thus they had decades of firsthand knowledge of the local politics. They made such a mess of it, however, that an insurgency emerged in opposition. A new military commander and a cleanup of the colonial administration provided political consolidation and the isolation of the communist insurgents, mostly members of an ethnic minority group. This pattern would be impossible to duplicate in Iraq.

An infusion of new funds for reconstruction. A shortage of funds has not been the cause of failed reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Administrative capacity to use funds effectively was and remains the primary obstacle. Even support programs carried out by American contractors for US forces have yielded mixed results. Insurgent attacks on the projects have provoked transfers of construction funds to security measures, which have also failed.

A weak or nonexistent government administrative capacity allows most of the money to be squandered. Putting another billion or so dollars into public works in Iraq today – before a government is in place with an effective administrative capacity to penetrate to the neighborhood and village level – is like trying to build a roof on a house before its walls have been erected. Moreover, a large part of that money will find its way into the hands of insurgents and sectarian militias. That is exactly what happened in Vietnam, and it has been happening in Iraq.

New and innovative counterinsurgency tactics. The cottage industry of counterinsurgency tactics is old and deceptive. When the US military has been periodically tasked to reinvent them – the last great surge in that industry was at the JFK School in Fort Bragg in the 1960's – it has no choice but to pretend that counterinsurgency tactics can succeed where no political consolidation in the government has yet been achieved. New counterinsurgency tactics cannot save Iraq today because they are designed without account for the essence of any "internal war," whether an insurgency or a civil war.

Such wars are about "who will rule," and who will rule depends on "who can tax" and build an effective state apparatus down to the village level.

The taxation issue is not even on the agenda of US programs for Iraq. Nor was it a central focus in Vietnam, El Salvador, the Philippines, and most other cases of US-backed governments embroiled in internal wars. Where US funding has been amply provided to those governments, the recipient regime has treated those monies as its tax base while failing to create an indigenous tax base. In my own study of three counterinsurgency cases, and from my experience in Vietnam, I discovered that the regimes that received the least US direct fiscal support had the most success against the insurgents. Providing funding and forces to give an embattled regime more "time" to gain adequate strength is like asking a drunk to drink more whiskey in order to sober up.

Saddam's regime lived mostly on revenues from oil exports. Thus it never had to create an effective apparatus to collect direct taxes. Were US forces and counterinsurgency efforts to succeed in imposing order for a time, the issue of who will control the oil in Iraq would become the focus of conflict for competing factions. The time would not be spent creating the administrative capacity to keep order and to collect sufficient taxes to administer the country. At best, the war over who will eventually rule country would only be postponed.

This is the crux of the dilemma facing all such internal wars. I make this assertion not only based on my own study, but also in light of considerable literature that demonstrates that the single best index of the strength of any state is its ability to collect direct taxes, not export-import tax or indirect taxes. The latter two are relatively easy to collect by comparison, requiring much weaker state institutions.

The Iraq Study Group. The report of this group should not be taken as offering a new or promising strategy for dealing with Iraq. Its virtue lies in its candid assessment of the realities in Iraq. Its great service has been to undercut the misleading assessments, claims, and judgment by the administration. It allows the several skeptical Republican members of the Congress to speak out more candidly on the war, and it makes it less easy for those Democrats who were heretofore supporters of the administration's war to refuse to reconsider.

If one reads the ISG report in light of the four points in the strategic overview above, one sees the key weakness of its proposals. It does not concede that the war, as it was conceived and continues to be fought, is not "winnable." It rejects the rapid withdrawal of US forces as unacceptable. No doubt a withdrawal will leave a terrible aftermath in Iraq, but we cannot avoid that. We can only make it worse by waiting until we are forced to withdraw. In the meantime, we prevent ourselves from escaping the paralysis imposed on us by the war, unable to redefine our war aims, which have served Iranian and al-Qaeda interests instead of our own.

I do not criticize the report for this failure. As constructed, the group could not advance a fundamental revision of our strategy. Its Republican and Democrat members could not be said to represent all members of their own parties. Thus the most it could do was to make it politically easier for the administration to begin a fundamental revision of its strategy instead of offering a list of tactical changes for the same old war aim of creating a liberal democracy with a pro-American orientation in Iraq.

What Would a Revised Strategy Look Like?

How can the United States recover from this strategic blunder?

It cannot as long as fails to revise its war aims. Wise leaders in war have many times admitted that their war aims are misguided and then revised them to deal with realities beyond their control. Such leaders make tactical withdrawals, regroup, and revise their aims, and design new strategies to pursue them. Those who cannot make such adjustments eventually face defeat.

What war aim today is genuinely in the US interest and offers realistic prospects of success? And not just in Iraq but in the larger region?

Since the 1950's, the US aim in this region has been "regional stability" above all others. The strategy for achieving this aim of every administration until the present one has been maintaining a regional balance of power among three regional forces – Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians. The Arab-Persian conflict is older than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States kept a diplomatic foothold in all three camps until the fall of the shah's regime in Iran. Losing its footing in Tehran, it began under President Carter's leadership to compensate by building what he called the Persian Gulf Security Framework. The US Central Command with enhanced military power was born as one of the main means for this purpose, but the long-term goal was a rapprochement. Until that time, the military costs for maintaining the regional power balance would be much higher.

The Reagan Administration, although it condemned Carter's Persian Gulf Security Framework, the so-called "Carter Doctrine," continued Carter's policies, even to the point of supporting Iraq when Iran was close to overrunning it. Some of its efforts to improve relations with Iran were feckless and counterproductive, but it maintained the proper strategic aim – regional stability.

The Bush Administration has broken with this strategy by invading Iraq and also by threatening the existence of the regime in Iran. It presumed that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq would lead to regional stability. In fact, the policy of spreading democracy by force of arms has become the main source of regional instability.

This not only postponed any near-term chance of better relations with Iran, but also has moved the United States closer to losing its footing in the Arab camp as well. That, of course, increases greatly the threats to Israel's security, the very thing it was supposed to improve, not to mention that it makes the military costs rise dramatically, exceeding what we can prudently bear, especially without the support of our European allies and others.

Several critics of the administration show an appreciation of the requirement to regain our allies and others' support, but they do not recognize that withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is the sine qua non for achieving their cooperation. It will be forthcoming once that withdrawal begins and looks irreversible. They will then realize that they can no longer sit on the sidelines. The aftermath will be worse for them than for the United States, and they know that without US participation and leadership, they alone cannot restore regional stability. Until we understand this critical point, we cannot design a strategy that can achieve what we can legitimately call a victory.

Any new strategy that does realistically promise to achieve regional stability at a cost we can prudently bear, and does not regain the confidence and support of our allies, is doomed to failure. To date, I have seen no awareness that any political leader in this country has gone beyond tactical proposals to offer a different strategic approach to limiting the damage in a war that is turning out to be the greatest strategic disaster in our history.

Is this what they mean by "Damning with faint praise"?
No, guess not.