Exploiting the National Security Fixation for Good

Blogger Jeb Koogler, pivoting off a Foreign Policy article and a John Kerry speech here argues that efforts to direct aid to flooding victims in Pakistan is too focused on security issues:

Our aid policy in the wake of this crisis should largely be constructed and justified based on a notion of shared humanity -- not merely on a narrow assessment of American interests. That Pakistanis are suffering and desiring of international aid should be enough to warrant our attention, our dollars, and our support.

This is simple enough. Of course he's right. But Americans just don't care that much about foreign aid, particularly in a tough economy. However, there is no amount of funding that appears to raise any questions in support of national security. So anyone with half a clue who wants to support a foreign aid effort is wise to cast it in national security terms. And it's not as if this is dishonest. I tend to think that on a dollar-for-dollar cost efficiency basis, foreign aid will in many cases do more for national security than investing in the military and national security industrial complex. And if that angle works, why not exploit it?

Brad DeLong Takes a Stand

Brad DeLong, econ professor at Berkley (and respected blogger) has written a letter to the school's administration requesting that it terminate the employment of law professor John Yoo. I thank him for it, and hope others will join him. I've found it quite disturbing for several years now that Yoo has been treated as a respectable and important member of the legal academia. The man should count himself lucky that he is not in prison for war crimes and have the good sense to otherwise remain out of sight. DeLong's letter is well worth reading. The actions Yoo took for the Bush administration were blatantly unethical, and a lot of people suffered and died behind the bogus legal cover he provided the administration. He is an embarrassment to the school and the profession. And that's to say nothing of Jay Bybee sitting on the 9th Circuit.

Islam Isn't the Problem

Well, I haven't been posting as much as I'd like lately. I just haven't crossed that much that sparked my interest lately. But I think this is important (and it ties in to my previous post as well). This global Gallup poll of Muslims is significant, as its title says, in framing the war on terror. Gallup found that Muslims in the Middle East actually have a lower tolerance for attacks on civilian targets than do average (non-Muslim) Americans. The poll found only a weak link between religiosity and political extremism among Muslims. Gallup notes that while those who found the 9/11 attacks to be wrong often seated those beliefs in religious sentiment, those who thought the attacks justified relied on political rather than religious justifications. The summary of poll concludes that "the difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety."

These are important findings, not only in countering the rhetoric of the more jingoistic right wingers, but also in countering certain middle ground positions (i.e. Andrew Sullivan) that reject the more extreme policies that arise from such rhetoric while still embracing the framing of Islam as the root source of our problems. This conflict is and always has been about political differences. The pollsters find that the Muslims who sympathize with extremism tend to be those who believe that the West does not reciprocate their concerns and is unlikely to ever act on them, creating a siege mentality. This is not a new idea, at least on this blog, but solid data is always a welcome addition to the argument. We cannot hope to end this conflict without at the least understanding the motivations of our adversaries.

Understanding Al Qaeda

One of the key battlegrounds in developing a strategy against Al Qaeda and its affiliates is the matter of defining who Al Qaeda is and what Al Qaeda seeks to achieve. From the early days after 9/11 the Bush administration sought to cast Al Qaeda as part of a epic struggle between cultures. And in order to build a properly ominous threat to justify military adventures and belligerent policies and cultural attitudes the administration's allies have sought to play up Al Qaeda's aspirations of conquest and the creation of a new Caliphate.

The reality, however, is that Al Qaeda has no such aspirations, and the only way Al Qaeda can be a player in an epic clash of civilizations is when we make them one through our own actions and rhetoric. This was one of the key points made by Larry Wright (author of the seminal work on Al Qaeda, The Looming Tower) when he spoke at the Miller Center last year. According to Wright, Al Qaeda has virtually no policy platform or objectives. What drives young men to Al Qaeda is not a desire to accomplish any particular end, but a deeply seated sense of cultural humiliation by the West. This is the same factor that creates rioting and violence in response to perceived Western insults against Islam like the Mohammed comic, or the Koran in the toilet story. Al Qaeda holds out no promises of accomplishment or conquest, it promises recruits one thing: the opportunity to die as martyrs fighting the West.

A review on Slate last week of Raymond Ibrahim's Al Qaeda Reader confirms Wright's account. The reviewer, Reza Aslan writes:

While these writings provide readers with page after page of, for example, arcane legal debates over the moral permissibility of suicide bombing, they do not really get to the heart of what it is that al-Qaida wants, if it wants anything at all. Al-Qaida's nominal aspirations—the creation of a worldwide caliphate, the destruction of Israel, the banishing of foreigners from Islamic lands—are hardly mentioned in the book. It seems the president of the United States talks more about al-Qaida's goals than al-Qaida itself does. Rarely, if ever, do Bin Laden and Zawahiri discuss any specific social or political policy.

What al-Qaida does lay out, however, are grievances—many, many grievances. There is the usual litany of complaints about the suffering of Palestinians, the tyranny of Arab regimes, and the American occupation of Iraq. But again, legitimate as these complaints may be, there is in these writings an almost total lack of interest in providing any specific solution or policy to address them. Indeed, al-Qaida's many grievances against the West are so heterogeneous, so mind-bogglingly unfocused, that they must be recognized less as grievances per se, than as popular causes to rally around. There are protests about the United Nations' rejection of Zimbabwe's elections, the Bush administration's unwillingness to sign up to the International Criminal Court, and America's role in global warming. (To quote Bin Laden: "You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases, more than any other country. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.") Zawahiri's many complaints include the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, which he calls "a historical embarrassment to America and its values," as well as the United Kingdom's anti-terrorism laws, which "contradict the most basic principles of fair trial." There is even a screed against America's campaign-finance laws, which, according to Bin Laden, currently favor "the rich and wealthy, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts."

Most Americans would agree with many of these complaints. And that's precisely the point. These are not real grievances for al-Qaida (it does not bear mentioning that Bin Laden is probably not very concerned with campaign finance reform). They are a means of weaving local and global resentments into a single anti-American narrative, the overarching aim of which is to form a collective identity across borders and nationalities, and to convince the world that it is locked in a cosmic contest between the forces of Truth and Falsehood, Belief and Unbelief, Good and Evil, Us and Them.

In this regard, al-Qaida has been spectacularly successful, thanks in no small part to the assistance of the divisive "Clash of Civilizations" mentality of our own politicians. In fact, far from debunking al-Qaida's twisted vision of a world divided in two, the Bush administration has legitimized it through its own morally reductive "us vs. them" rhetoric.

Ultimately Aslan came to the same conclusion Wright did:

Because, if we are truly locked in an ideological war, as the president keeps reminding us, then our greatest weapons are our words. And thus far, instead of fighting this war on our terms, we have been fighting it on al-Qaida's.

Keep this in mind next time some talking head tries to sell you on Al Qaeda's quest for a new Caliphate. Far from thwarting Al Qaeda, these pundits, through their rhetoric, are giving Al Qaeda exactly what it wants.

I'm Back (with some Comm'r Copps Content)

Sorry for the lengthy absence. Certain other events were occupying my time... Posts here will probably continue to be infrequent for the foreseeable future, but there shouldn't be any more month-long gaps.

Anyway, having helped build his broadband policy arsenal last year, I'm always happy to point out when FCC Commissioner Michael Copps goes on the broadband policy warpath as he did this past week at the YearlyKos convention. Slashdot coverage here. Matthew Yglesias discusses it here (and the happy former Copps intern in the comments section isn't me). I have to disagree with Yglesias's comment that Copps is not a good speaker. He may not be the most captivating speaker, but he writes some very good speeches and delivers them effectively. I won't argue the point about his jokes, however. It is nice to see that media and telecom issues have a big following at YearlyKos. It's important stuff, although, as Yglesias notes, somewhat obscure. Let's hope that after the 2008 election Copps will have the power to do more than climb up on a soapbox about these issues.

As a random aside, I also wanted to link to an interesting column on Slate, co-written by UVA professor Jim Ryan, on Clarence Thomas's sincerity as an originalist. Both Scalia and Thomas have struck me as less principled and more political of late...

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Wannabe Terrorists and the Bush Administration

Security guru Bruce Schneier has an exceedingly well-sourced blog post (also a Wired article) on how the Bush administration has trumped up various post-9/11 terrorist plots in service of security programs that had nothing to do with the apprehension of the plotters. He argues, in effect, that the aspiring terrorists and the administration have a shared interest in terrifying Americans. In reality these terrorist threats were not so terribly terrifying, and all were thwarted through old-fashioned police work, the sort that the Bush administration has worked tirelessly to convince us is no longer adequate in the post-9/11 era. Schneier's no nonsense approach to security, as evidenced in this post, illustrates just how vulnerable Republicans should be on security in 2008, if the Democrats have the good sense to call them on it. Anyone who wants to formulate a sensible, reality-based security policy should spend some time on his site. It's full of gems like this one.

Public Relations as Diplomacy

Here's another data point to add to my alternate reality post from the weekend. Price Floyd, a long-time State Department employee has written a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about why he recently resigned from his position as the State Department's director of media affairs. He argues that his job was made impossible by the insistence of the Bush administration that they could do whatever they wanted in international affairs as long as they got the PR right. The State Department's job was no longer to conduct diplomacy, but rather to sell the message. Reality didn't matter, symbolism was the only focus. The only result, Floyd says, was that people now view America's messages as meaningless propaganda. Slate's Fred Kaplan comments here. It reminds me, once again, how completely on the money the Defense Science Board's terrorism report was back in 2004 (blogged on BWJ here) when they wrote:

Policies, diplomacy, military operations, and strategic communication should not be managed separately. Good strategic communication cannot build support for policies viewed unfavorably by large populations. Nor can the most carefully crafted messages, themes, and words persuade when the messenger lacks credibility and underlying message authority.
...

Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.

Too bad no one listened to them...

Our First Line of Defense Against Terrorism

An update to my post about James Fallows's Atlantic article, Declaring Victory, from late last summer. There Fallows argued, convincingly, that the primary threat of terrorism today is not international terrorist networks, but disaffected local Muslims like those that bombed London and rioted across Europe last year. Muslims in the US, as opposed to those in Europe, Fallows claimed, were highly assimilated and as such provided the US with a significant security buffer. Today the Christian Science Monitor editorialized on a Pew study of American Muslims that echoed Fallows's point, finding US Muslims to be "highly assimilated". CSM argued that the US must be careful to cultivate this identification of its Muslim population with the US and take care not to allow our public rhetoric to alienate young Muslims. I concur fully and hope that our politicians take note of this warning as the 2008 elections heat up. As it stands our Muslim residents are our greatest asset in the war on terrorism and a resource we cannot afford to squander.

Update: Speak of the devil, Fallows himself blogged a few comments on the Pew study today. And what's that at the bottom?? :)

Total War on Iraq

I was rather shocked today to find a column on CSM from a former managing editor arguing that the reason the US is struggling in Iraq (and didn't win in Korea and Vietnam) is our unwillingness to engage in total war. And what, exactly, does John Dillin mean by total war? The complete destruction of an enemy nation, including massive civilian casualties. As examples he cites the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Sherman ravaging the American South. There's certainly a compelling argument that such tactics should never be acceptable (particularly compelling with respect to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for which there is compelling evidence to suggest the bombings were completely unnecessary to prompt Japanese surrender and had far more to do with the Cold War than WWII). But even accepting the premise that such attacks can sometimes be permissible, there's a pretty major difference between those situations and Iraq: in each of those conflicts the US faced an active state opponent, with troops in the field and territory under its control.

The idea of waging such a war in Iraq is not only absurd, but morally reprehensible in the extreme. We don't face state opposition. The Iraq government is our putative ally. We control the entirety of Iraq. For us to target Iraqi population centers for indiscriminate bombing wouldn't be waging war, but rather an exercise in genocide. At least in WWII there was always a means for our opponents to end the slaughter: unconditional surrender. What would signal a stopping point in Iraq? The Iraqi state has already conceded. It would simply be a gratuitous massacre lasting until our bloodlust had been sated.

But would it work? Perhaps if we slaughtered millions of Iraqis the insurgents would throw in the towel (although a couple million dead Vietnamese argue to the contrary). But even if they did, and even if we weren't troubled by the morality of it, where would this leave us internationally? Could anyone ever again regard us as a force for good in the world? Would our standing in the conflict with Al Qaeda and political extremism be improved? It would be an umitigated disaster.

Dillin's argument strikes me as another reflection of the general frustration that our military opponents have evolved and adapted in the days since WWII. The tactics we used there cannot work anymore, and that's no accident. It is precisely because the US military is amazingly proficient at total war that no enemy will ever allow us to bring that proficiency to bear. They know that for all our might in defeating armies and conquering territory, when it comes to holding territory over the long term, we are merely human. They can concede the field then engage us in a knife fight. And in doing so they gain the added benefit of transforming a military conflict into a political one, happily revealing our serious deficiencies in that arena. Our enemies have learned from the wars of the last century and moved on. Maybe it's time we did the same.

It's Not the Culture, Stupid

The Foreign Policy Magazine blog (a good blog to keep tabs on, by the way) noted a theme in their recent coverage invoking Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations idea. Part of it, an essay by David Frum, is subscriber only (and I've never found Frum to be much worth reading anyway), but this column about Iraq by W. Patrick Lang is interesting. The conflict in Iraq is likely to drag out in some form or another for a very long time, but in a general sense the post-mortem is already well underway. No doubt we will see a great deal of debate over the narrative to take away from Iraq and what it means for our future.

Lang's take is that we underestimated the cultural differences between Americans and Iraqis. He and Frum (as excerpted in the blog post) believe that the neocons were fundamentally wrong in thinking that most people are basically like us. Lang points to the failure of democracy in Iraq, where voters cast their ballots based on tribe or sect rather than political policies. He notes that Nuri al-Maliki is not interested in serving the nation's best interests, but in promoting the interests of Shiite Arabs.

Lang's criticisms of the naiveté of neocon policymakers is on target, but I think his underlying analysis is off. Moreover, I think the idea that there are deep and permanent (or semi-permanent) cultural rifts between Western culture and the rest of the world is a dangerous one.

Maybe Tom Friedman does, as Lang charges, take the flatness of the world too far, but I think Friedman is more right than he is wrong. I look at my experience at Motorola where on a given day I would be working (on site or remotely) with people from China, India, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Russia, and Spain. Not many Arabs there, granted, but we had a tremendous diversity of cultures and no conflicts that I was ever aware of. People interacted with one another with virtually no regard for national, cultural, religious, or ethnic backgrounds.

The difference between that situation and Iraq is not, I think that the cultures are any less different, but that these were people in stable political and economic situations. It's not the culture that we failed to understand in Iraq, but the basic situation on the ground. Lang is right to assert that cultural identity now lies at the bottom of the conflict in Iraq, but the point is not that there is something characteristic about the Shiite, Kurd or Sunni cultures that is the problem, but that people are choosing tribal and sectarian identities over national identities (or Friedman's internationalist identity). When that happens the results appear to be the same whether the particular cultural identity is Sunni or Shiite or Serbian or Croatian or Pashtun or Tajik or Hutu or Tutsi. Looking specifically at the cultures is digging one level too deep -- the question is how do we keep people from going tribal in the first place?

What we failed to recognize in Iraq (despite strong warnings from many quarters) was the basic lack of national cohesion and the incredibly polarizing effect of US occupation (particularly without a UN mandate and a truly international coalition). The only particular significance of the culture in Iraq was the highly antagonistic approach of the US towards Arab and Muslim populations since 9/11. The BBC poll cited in the FP Mag blog post shows a broad international agreement that the differences between Islam and the West are political rather than cultural (and this Zogby/Gallup poll also highlights the political factors driving ever-sinking Arab opinions of the US). I've also pointed out on several occasions analysis to the effect that the US is at considerably less risk of home-grown terrorism (as compared to European nations) because Arabs integrate far more effectively here than in Europe. This should also illustrate that there is no inherent or fundamental incompatibility between Western and Arab culture.

I agree with Lang that we would benefit from learning more about foreign cultures. Lack of cultural understanding has been a problem in Iraq, particularly with respect to the winning of hearts and minds and understanding how Iraqis view American actions and policies. But I think we stand to make far greater gains by understanding foreign political and social situations. There's no reason why we can't do both, but if the take-away from Iraq is to throw up our hands and declare Islamic culture completely incompatible with Western government, economics, and values we'll be making a very serious mistake.

Crime Not War

A follow-up to my post from December about the Brits tiring of the "war on terror" meme, CSM reports that Britain's top prosecutor, Ken Macdonald, criticized war-based rhetoric for provoking a fear-driven response and threatening traditional civil rights. Said Macdonald: "London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, soldiers." Macdonald followed-up: "On the streets of London there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs'." Ouch.

Well, I'm sure Alberto "the Constitution just doesn't say that" Gonzalez will come out with some equally thoughtful and well-considered statements any day now.

The Brits Have Had Enough

CSM reports that Britain is abandoning the phrase "war on terror", and looks into the general muck-up Bush and Blair have made of British-American relations. If there's anyone Bush has screwed over more than America, it's Britain. Somewhere deep in his heart, Tony Blair has to know what an incredible mistake he made casting his lot with Bush. So much for the "Special Relationship". It may be some time before we see that meme revived.

Also a TimesOnline column by Matthew Parris gives probably the best assessment of the Baker report I've seen so far. Parris notes that most of the recommendations in the report are bunk and have no hope of success. That, he says, was never the point. There is no success to be had anymore. But this is a plan that responds to both success and failure in exactly the same way: withdrawing the troops. Quote:

The plan itself won’t work. As the BBC’s eloquent and curiously underrated Washington correspondent, Justin Webb, put it on the radio this week, “it is the tone” not the detail of Baker’s report that is important and new.

That’s true. The tone says: “We’ve lost.” The tone says: “We should have seen this coming.” The tone says: “All we can do now is play a losing hand.” General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of the General Staff, missed the point magnificently this week when he worried aloud that the trouble with a set deadline (of 2008) was that we might have to quit without having achieved our war aims. Poor, upright, soldierly Sir Mike has not realised that that is the whole idea.

But Mr Baker has, and furious neocons realise it too. The term realpolitik has become a cliché in media treatment of the ISG report this week but the irony is this: Baker’s conclusions are anything but realistic: they represent unrealism of the most fanciful kind. His route map is to La-la Land. He knows it. His report is the sugar. The pill is Defeat.

More Fukuyama and Neocon Theory

Back in June I posted on a Francis Fukuyama appearance at the Miller Center. Greg Djerejian has a post on a London Review of Books review by Stephen Holmes of Fukuyama's After the Neocons (and he includes a fairly lengthy excerpt of the review). As I noted in my previous post, I find Fukuyama's account of what he views to the be the real neocon thesis to be fairly compelling. Quoting from Holmes:

The thesis is that democracy is the most effective antidote to the kind of Islamic radicalism that hit the US on 9/11. Its exponents begin with the premise that tyranny cannot tolerate the public expression of social resentment that its abuses naturally produce. To preserve its grip, tyranny must therefore crush even modest stirrings of opposition, repressing dissidents and critics, with unstinting ferocity if need be. In the age of globalisation, however, repressed rebellions do not simply die out. They splash uncontrollably across international borders and have violent repercussions abroad. Middle Eastern rebellions have been so savagely and effectively repressed that rebels have been driven to experiment with an indirect strategy to overthrow local tyrannies and seize power. They have travelled abroad and targeted those they see as the global sponsors of their local autocrats.

Fukuyama goes on to describe how the Bush administration's policy in Iraq and the in the Middle East generally has strayed from the neocon theory in critical ways (for example that their actual approach to promoting democracy in the Middle East was foolish and ineffective).

There is some merit to the theory as Fukuyama presents it. I think it stops at least one step too soon, however. There are geopolitical (and probably socioeconomic) considerations driving anti-Americanism that pass beyond redirected frustration with local tyrants. Palestine is an obvious example, but there are others. These issues need to be dealt with as well, and part of the value of democratization is to bring those issues to the forefront and provide a venue for them to be addressed. The Fukuyama's theory is laudable in that it perceives that the focus of this conflict should be on people, rather than states, and that non-democratic states can serve as roadblocks to us reaching the people. But I think his analysis of what is driving those people falls short. Democracy is a step in the process, not the endgame.

The conflict this summer in Lebanon provides a good example of this. When Israel mounted its offensive on Lebanon, this was an issue the US needed to address if we were serious about dealing with terrorism's root causes. But because we were insulated from popular opinion by the tyrannical governments of our Middle Eastern "allies", and because the administration does not see addressing popular political concerns as part of the neocon mission statement, we completely failed to confront the issue.

It is not good enough to push for democracy, then simply abandon the governments that result from that democratic process as we've done in Palestine and Lebanon. Grievances that arise from a legitimate democratic process should be taken seriously. And to the extent that there is actual merit behind those grievances we need to take steps to address them in order to buy the political capital we need to credibly dismiss those grievances that don't have merit. I'm not sure Fukuyama's neocon theory is any better than the Bush administration's theory on that point.

Pakistan: Democracy Strikes Again!

Here, apparently, is the answer to my Musharraf question. Pervez Musharraf, "President" of Pakistan, who took power in a coup and has never faced a real election will be up for a vote in 2007. Musharraf is broadly unpopular, and appears to be throwing in his lot with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a major Islamic party, in a bid to have a realistic shot at reelection. This is why he essentially signed a peace treaty with the Taliban (who JUI helped create). Likely it is also why he brought out the stone age story, to explain that his cooperation with the Americans was coerced. He doesn't have to worry about undercutting support for anti-Taliban action, because he has already bailed on it himself.

The truly surreal part of this story is the lack of reaction from the US. Pakistan announces a truce with the Taliban and says they won't bother Osama Bin Laden if he doesn't bother them (and according to the Telegraph one of the key negotiators for the truce was none other than the infamous Mullah Omar). What does the White House say? That Musharraf and Bush are "on the hunt together". Only slightly less surreal was having a meeting between two heads of state where one, when asked about a high profile diplomatic tiff between the two nations, responded to the questions by stating that his book deal prohibited him from answering. That has to be a first. On the topic of the truce Bush says that he looked into Musharraf's eyes (I am serious!) when Musharraf told him he didn't cave to the Taliban and was convinced. No comment on Mullah Omar or the general who said they weren't going after Bin Laden anymore.

This is all very interesting in the geopolitical sense (i.e. Musharraf has gotten away with murder these past five years, and nothing seems to touch him), but I think really comes back to another of the major contradictions of the Bush administration: they have put an immense focus on global democratization while at the same time disdaining efforts to win over foreign voters. Their approach to foreign policy is entirely limited to trying to browbeat foreign leaders (many of them unelected) into cooperation while steadfastly refusing to engage the concerns and complaints of common people throughout the Middle East and South Asia. That can work, to some extent, for a while. But if you succeed in democratization you will learn that those opinions matter a great deal. We saw Hamas elected in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Muqtada al-Sadr's party in Iraq, Amadinejad in Iran, and now we're seeing Musharraf cater to Islamists in Pakistan. If there were elections in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, I expect we'd see exactly the same results. We are pushing for democracy at the same time that we advance policies that could not be better designed to inflame opinion against us. I begin to wonder if these guys understand what democracy means...

I tend to support the idea of democratization simply because it will have the impact of forcing our hand in dealing with these issues. For now we can find pliant leaders and ignore the issues of the Islamic street. But I doubt there will be any serious progress in the war on terror until those issues are dealt with, and by having governments elected that will advance these issues more forcefully the US will have little choice but to address them. Funny, but I doubt that was what the neocons had in mind...

What Is Musharraf Up To?

So Pervez Musharraf claims that Dick Armitage told a Pakistani general that the US would bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if they didn't cooperate in the war on terror. Armitage now denies it, George Bush say if it happened it was Colin Powell's fault. My question is: why on earth is Musharraf disclosing this? As the story linked above notes, it hurts him badly on the domestic front. It is impossible for him to claim to be helping the US on a principled basis now. And while capitulating to US threats might have been a wise policy choice it is politically indefensible. The Islamic extremists in Pakistan have already tried to assassinate Musharraf (more than once). It is hard to imagine him wanting to pour more fuel on that fire.

I can only come up with two possible explanations: a) he is selling his book or b) looking for an excuse to resist cooperating with the US. Certainly he has succeeded at moving copies of his book with this claim, but I don't buy that as a real explanation. I look at this in conjunction with the news clip I posted a couple weeks ago about Pakistan bailing on the hunt for Al Qaeda as possibly representing a major repositioning for Musharraf and Pakistan. When the US comes and starts leaning on Musharraf to buck up and kill some terrorists he will now respond, "well hey guys, I'd love to cooperate, but I'm so unpopular now (and so by the way are you Americans) because of this 'stone age' thing I really can't afford to help. But have fun storming the castle!" Maybe that's not it, but there's something going on here. Musharraf is not so stupid as to not realize political price he would pay for going public on this. Somewhere there's a payoff for him...

'Decline and Fall of the American Empire' Watch

I'm sure Henry will appreciate this excerpt from a CSM story on US troop commitments in Iraq:

About 500,000 soldiers are currently in the Army. Plans call for it to increase to about 512,000 in the foreseeable future. But even reaching that level may take time. Growing beyond that, if authorized, would take even longer. And the need is pressing now, note experts.

Short of obligatory national service, moves such as opening the US military to foreigners with no US ties, but who wish to move toward US residence or citizenship, might be necessary for the Army to grow in a reasonable amount of time.

Bring on the barbarian mercenaries!

A 9/11 Post

I'm reposting this from a forum where I wrote it in response to a posting of this NPR essay by Frank Miller:

Sadly I think Miller had the right of it before the attacks. It is about the ideas. Strip the United States of the ideas of Madison, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams, and I will have no attachment to the flag. To the extent I currently have some attachment to it, it is because I believe that it still represents those ideas. I don't believe that lines on a map convey some magic value, or that there is some genetic reason why Americans are more valuable than anyone else. What binds us together and gives us value is our shared belief in concepts about justice, liberty, and equality, government and social institutions; the Enlightenment ideals of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison. When those concepts take a back seat to the flag and patriotism, we have lost something important, and become less than we were.

A nation is the wrong scope in which to view Franklin's hang together/hang separately quote. Our world has gone global. There is no country that can close off the world or effectively protect itself from what happens outside it. It was not a nation state that attacked us, nor will a lone nation state protect us. Globalized business, fueled by multinational corporations, modern transportation, and electronic communications, has limited the role of the nation state in trade and economics, and terrorism has done the same for security and violence. For there is now no border and no army that can stop violence. Violence and instability can spread by interpersonal networks, and even by the simple conveyance of ideas and ideals.

For better or worse, Mankind is in this together, and together we will succeed or together we will fail. We can choose between global brotherhood and global chaos. The more borders we erect, the more boundaries we create, the more sides we choose and groups we vilify, the more separate we see ourselves from others in our minds and in reality, the less the secure our civilization will be. Because our civilization is those ideas of Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, and we will not spread them by building walls, and they will not take hold at the point of a gun, nor can we even protect those ideals in our own nation when we put that nation before them.

Our ideals are our civilization and also its most powerful weapons. The shrinking of the world, its growing interdependence and interconnectedness grants us an overpowering advantage. When given a fair chance those ideals will triumph (and always have) because they represent the best products of Mankind's unique ability to rationally reflect upon his own place in the world. They are not the result of a particular culture or historical heritage, but of the essence of what divides Man from the beasts. And when they spread to another people or another corner of the globe, we have won the most decisive victory possible, because they are now us.

Patriotism to a nation state will not spread our ideals, but it can blind us to our kinship and our shared interests and shared fate with those outside our border. When we choose to cheer for our team rather than our ideals we not only fail to spread those ideals, but we make them unpalatable to anyone on another team. Even the most appealing ideals can be poisonous when packaged in arrogance, pride, and inequity.

There is yet a place for nations and for force of arms. There are threats to be countered, villains to be neutralized. But the state must be an instrument of our ideals, and not the reverse. The state serves our will, and, if our civilization is to endure, we must serve our shared ideals. There is indeed something precious in our civilization, and indeed something perishable. It is not vulnerable to bombs and missiles, but it is vulnerable to our own disloyalty. Terrorism is not a threat to us because it sheds our blood, but because it can cause us to forget who we are and what we hold dear.

Well No Fucking Shit

I have to admit that I thought there was good reason to believe that Iraq had WMD's in 2002 (although I was fairly certain the US had no good evidence to establish that fact). But as far as I was aware there was not a single respectable expert who believed that Saddam was in cahoots with Al Qaeda. That line of BS was constructed from whole cloth. But now we have a CIA report to tell us what we already should have known. Surprise, surprise, Saddam and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were not bosom buddies. At what point does this entire house of cards simply collapse?

And in other news, a US military officer reports that Anbar province has been lost. Col. Pete Devlin came to the unremarkable conclusion that the conflict is fundamentally political, and on the political front we have been soundly outflanked. The same story also reports that Afghanistan is spinning out of control, and that a WaPo column notes that Islamic extremists are running strategic circles around the West. At this point our failure and our futility could hardly be made more complete. I can only wonder what, if anything, the United States had learned from all of this...

Pakistan Waves the White Flag

I just wanted to put a link up here after discussing this topic with V over the weekend. Pakistan signs peace deal with pro-Taliban militants. Some choice excerpts:

In a move that some say appears 'a total capitulation' to pro-Taliban forces, Pakistan signed a peace deal with tribal leaders in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan Tuesday, and is withdrawing military forces in exchange for promises that militant tribal groups there will not engage in terrorist activities.
...

The New York Times reports that the deal "is widely viewed as a face-saving retreat for the Pakistani Army, which has taken a heavy battering at the hands of the mountain tribesmen and militants, who are allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda."
...

Although Mr. bin Laden is thought to be in the area, Pakistani officials have given mixed signals as to whether he would still be considered a target by government forces. In his blog for ABC News, Brian Ross reports that Pakistani Major General Shaukat Sultan said in an interview that bin Laden "would not be taken into custody, as long as [he] is being like a peaceful citizen."

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Security Narratives: Fallows to the Rescue

I went on vacation last week, and when I arrived at the airport I (as has become an air travel ritual for me) bought the latest issue of the Atlantic. As we here and liberals elsewhere struggle to find an answer to the neocon security narrative, it seems James Fallows has already come up with the solution. The article, Declaring Victory, is subscriber only, so I'll summarize it here (but you can read Fallows's post-London arrests addendum online). I apologize in advance for the length of this, but it is a blockbuster of an article and I want to do it justice.

Fallows argues that the war on global terror networks is over. Al Qaeda, as a functional organization, has been destroyed. The threat of terrorism has not ended (and might never end), but the threat from a cohesive international organization with operational capacity has passed. What we face now, those inspired by the movement, is a fundamentally different challenge that requires a different approach. We won. So let us celebrate our victory, publicize the thoroughness of the destruction of Al Qaeda, and open a new chapter in our approach to security.

Fallows refers several times to a quote from David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency expert first for the Australian army, then the Pentagon, and now the State Department:

Does Al Qaeda still constitute an 'existential' threat? I think it does but not for the obvious reasons. ... It is not the people Al Qaeda might kill that is the threat. Our reaction is what can cause the damage. It's Al Qaeda plus our response that creates the existential danger.

So, how did we win? After the US action in Afghanistan Al Qaeda's training camps were dismantled, and their operatives were arrested, detained, and killed by the thousands, including some of top leadership circle. Moreover effective intelligence work by the US monitoring Al Qaeda's communications, travel, and finances has largely closed down the organization's operational capacity. Fallows quotes former DHS official Seth Stodder: "Their command structure is gone, their Afghan sanctuary is gone, their ability to move around and hold meetings is gone, their financial and communications networks have been hit hard." Kilcullen concludes "The Al Qaeda that existed in 2001 simply no longer exists. In 2001 it was a relatively centralized organization, with a planning hub, a propaganda hub, a leadership team, all within a narrow geographic area. All that is gone, because we destroyed it."

With Al Qaeda gone what we have seen instead are attacks by self-starter groups, generally inspired to some degree by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But Fallows argues that lacking Al Qaeda's organizational abilities the US is unlikely to face another 9/11-scale attack. This is generally not due to DHS and our increased security focus, which Fallows criticizes (in part on the same principle I raised in this post), but rather due to the structural strengths of American society. Arab and Muslim immigrants to the US assimilate far more effectively and thoroughly than in Europe. While ghettoized European Arabs riot and protest, American Arabs have higher than average incomes, education levels, and business-ownership rates than the American population as a whole. If the primary source of terrorism in the post-Al Qaeda era is indigenous, disaffected Muslims and Arabs, the US can count itself relatively secure. And it is not our paranoia that will protect us--quite the opposite, it is our open and welcoming culture that will provide our security. This, of course, means that we must strive to preserve our openess and welcoming atmosphere, which will necessitate a 180-degree reversal of our current approach to security. We cannot afford to alienate our Arab population through policies like racial profiling. What made sense in a time of organized international terror networks does not make sense now.

Finally, Fallows argues that while the US may have inflamed Muslim opinion against itself, so has Al Qaeda turned off the Muslim public towards them. Even as anti-American sentiment has risen in the Middle East, there has been no corresponding rise in opinion towards Al Qaeda's ideal of Islam. Attacks on Arab civilians by Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jordan soured many Arabs on Al Qaeda. Fallows quotes Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland: "What we see in the polls is that many people would like Bin Laden and Zarqawi to hurt America. But they do not want Bin Laden to rule their children."

So if Al Qaeda is no longer a threat, what does that mean for our security strategy? First it means (not surprisingly) that Iraq is a complete disaster. Bin Laden no longer has the ability to do real damage to the United States, but, Fallows argues, drawing us into a war in Asia that we couldn't win was central to his strategy (although Bin Laden thought the war would be in Afghanistan rather than Iraq). Bin Laden's plan was to do to the Americans what the mujahideen did to the Soviets. In that respect, even in obscurity he continues to hurt us. We're operating according to his playbook. His plan was to engage us in a war where primitive weapons could destroy our domestic morale, economic strength, military reputation, and moral leadership, and Iraq is accomplishing all of these goals. 9/11 was, in the words of one security analyst, "superpower baiting", and we took the bait.

Fallows does not provide any easy answers on Iraq, but he does argue for a broad-reaching rethinking of security. The wartime approach must go. The state of fear created by the metaphor of global war disserves our security interests in every possible respect. As we've seen time and again, overreaction is the fuel on which terrorists feed. But a wartime approach condones and even promotes overreaction. Additionally it frames our options. In a time of war, diplomacy and soft power are always lower priorities. Wartime creates polarization, and, as we saw in Lebanon, desensitizes the policy-making apparatus to the specific relevant details of the diverse groups who oppose us.

Our mission, according to Fallows, is now comprised of three parts: domestic protection, continued pursuit of the remnants of Al Qaeda, and an "all-fronts diplomatic campaign". On the last point, Fallows quotes Dwight Eisenhower's 1958 State of the Union: "The only answer to a regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace. This means bringing to bear every asset of our personal and national lives upon the task of building the conditions in which security and peace can grow." The soft power resources at our disposal today, Fallows argues, are far greated than we possessed in 1958. We are more ethnically diverse, wealthier, endowed with stronger universities, charities, and NGO's, and our leading companies are integrated into economies around the globe.

Fallows closes with a hypothetical address to the nation:

My fellow Americans, we have achieved something almost no one thought possible five years ago. The nation did not suffer the quick follow-up attacks so many people feared and expected. Our troops found the people who were responsible for the worst attack ever on our soil. We killed many, we captured more, and we placed their leaders in a position where they could not direct the next despicable attack on our people -- and where the conscience of the world's people, of whatever faith, has turned against them for their barbarism. They have been a shame to their own great faith, and ot all other historic standards of decency.

Achieving this victory does not mean the end of threats. Life is never free of dangers. I wish I could tell you that no American will ever again be killed or wounded by a terrorist -- and that no other person on this earth will be either. But I cannot say that, and you could not believe me if I did. Life brings risk -- especially life in an open society, like the one that people of this land have sacrificed for centuries to create.

We have achieved a great victory, and for that we can give thanks -- above all to our troops. We will be at our best if we do not let fear paralyze or obsess us. We will be at our best if we instead optimistically and enthusiastically begin the next chapter in our nation's growth. We will deal with the struggles of our time. These include coping with terrorism, but also recognizing the huge shifts in power and resulting possibilities in Asia, in Latin America, in many other parts of the world. We will recognize the challenges of including the people left behind in the process of global development -- people in the Middle East, in Africa, even in developed countries like our own. The world's scientists have never before had so much to offer, so fast -- and humanity has never needed their discoveries more than we do now, to preserve the environment, ot develop new sources of energy, to improve the quality of people's lives in every corner of the globe, to contain the threats that modern weaponry can put in the hands of individuals or small groups.

The great organizing challenge of our time includes coping with the threat of bombings and with the political extremism that lies behind it. That is one part of this era's duty. But it is not the entirety. History will judge us on our ability to deal with the full range of this era's challenges -- and opportunities. With quiet pride we recognize the victory we have won. And with the determination that has marked us through our nation's history, we continue the pursuit of our American mission, undeterred by the perils that we will face.