News Brief, Little Trouble in Big China Edition
Joshua Foust on Aug 25 2007 at 12:31 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Military Matters, Notes on the war, Society, Technology
Throwing rocks at HAMAS over at The Conjecturer.
Defense & The War
- More on what The Surge is accomplishing: “Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived.” Naturally, we still refuse to resettle or admit the millions of fearful refugees we’ve unleashed on the region.
- Meanwhile, outgoing Chairman Pace and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are continuing to be feckless defeatocrats, noting the current deployment is unsustainable and recommending a pullout.
- I don’t know what version of the NIE Bill Gertz was reading, but he’s pretty much the only one who read it and saw improvement and stability, rather than worries about the new bottom-up strategy (after the top-down one crashed) and Iraq’s political unraveling. Contrast with Greg Miller’s analysis, (or hell, even McQ’s and Lance’s, though I think their optimism is misplaced, it is nevertheless sober and justifiable). Go Moonies, I guess.
- Interesting, too, to compare Senator Warner and Representative Baird, who essentially have opposite ideas of where the war is headed. I must admit to being confused: aside from anecdotal evidence (that, in the case of Michael O’Hanlon, doesn’t even match his own reports), every measure we have of Iraq is that it is worse off under the surge than before: more violence, more refugees and IDPs, deadlier bombings, and a political meltdown in process. Where does all the optimism come from? Or are anecdotes and the assurances of soldiers that we’re getting it right this time (assurances that have filled the blogosphere since 2003) more meaningful?
- MRAPs don’t protect from EFPs, but we already knew that. Of course, the best answer the DoD can come up with is yet another acquisition race to the top-dollar: an even bigger MRAP (cleverly called the MRAP II) with thicker armor. This is while the original MRAP is still being purchased and deployed in small numbers. This is illustrating a tactical point that can, I think, be reasonably expanded to a materiel one—a huge, slow-moving industrial machine will never keep pace with a small, highly adaptable insurgent force. At least not anymore, not in the current environment. You defeat IEDs and EFPs with superior strategy, not bigger and bigger trucks.
- Russia (MiG) is supposedly about to debut a new low-observable UCAV, the Skat. That’s “skate” to you weirdos who don’t do transliterated Russian. This mean anything? Not really—a working, operational, deployable version is many years away… and it has a weird shape, both longer and with a shorter wingspan than the highly successful MQ-1 Predator drone we’ve used for years.
Around the World
- Still excited about the 2014 winter olympics in Sochi? Just after a rebel leader was killed in Chechnya, other rebels ambushed and killed several Russian troops in both Dagestan and Ingushetia… all three of which are less than a day’s drive from Sochi. Nothing says “spirit of the olympiad” like a good old fashioned separatist movement. More on the horrible tendency of the IOC to award games to human rights abusers here.
- Again, with The Economist: this time, they’re claiming Vladimir Putin has modeled his presidency after Yuri Andropov, of all people, because they both happened to come from the KGB (and Putin once said something nice about him). Of course, the real implications of this—Andropov was a vicious and brutal man known more for his reckless brinksmanship and the brutality of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 than his reforms—escape The Economist, which sees Andropov merely as a a KGB head. They also miss the crucial element of Yeltsin’s regime: it was unfathomably corrupt, and the reduction of this corruption (at least in its more flagrant forms) is a big reason why Putin has won such popularity. But who needs context, anyway?
- Questions for the famine study.
- Oh look, Vietnamese people didn’t like Bush’s comparison of their country to Iraq. They saw their struggle as one of liberation from colonial occupation (ironic, given this context), and many hated the U.S. for prolonging a war that could have otherwise ended a decade earlier—at a human cost we’re unwilling to ponder. See, mass death is just fine when it’s for democracy; when it is for communism, pious conservatives shake their fists in anger. Hypocrites.
- Next door, news that Cambodia once held the world’s largest pre-industrial city—Angor was almost as large as present-day Manhattan—gave me a quite welcome sense of wonder.
- I’ll just quote the lede: “A New Zealand-based pizza chain is under fire for a recent advertising campaign that showed Adolf Hitler making a salute with a slice of the cheese pie. After locals protested, the company has replaced Hitler — with Pope Benedict XVI.”
Back at Home
- McConnell slips, assists numerous plaintiffs suing the government for illegal wiretapping. Jacob Sullum has more on just how despicable this entire episode is, and how poorly it speaks to President Bush’s much-vaunted love of this country whose laws he ignores when he deems fit. As a commenter said, “Remember, “give me liberty or give me death” is liberal sedition.” Sometimes it feels that way.
- You know, James Madison said something I consider very apropos: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
- Michael Schuer is mad he wasn’t praised in the CIA’s report on how it failed to counter 9/11. Considering he was a reason it failed, I don’t see what his problem is, aside from an inflated sense of who he is and what he accomplished. His brags of the CIA’s awesomeness in tracking down Bin Laden ring more than hollow, and I’ll try to unravel them this weekend (on a macro level: if the Agency was so super awesome at finding and almost killing Bin Laden so many times, how did he magically slip through their fingers in 2002? There is surely more to that story than Schuer allows).
- While the rest of the article is interesting for describing how my favorite web comic came into being, I was most fascinated with a song, “My Belruel,” which Jerry Holkins, the writer-genius behind Penny Arcade, composed and recorded on his Nintendo DS. The quality is sick (that is to say: really good) and it’s actually hilarious. We live in surreal times, indeed.
- AT&T, the bane of my existence where the Toll Road meets The Beltway, has finally dropped its clearly false “fewest dropped calls” campaign.
- Duh: “The Bush administration is now arguing that the White House Office of Administration, which provides the administrative services to the White House including IT services, is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act… Gee, what changed? Oh, that’s right - now there’s an FOIA request for information that could hurt the President politically. Therefore, the Office of Administration is magically no longer subject to the FOIA.”
- Ending on a happy note: this is a truly touching story about combat vets finding a measure of peace by completing an Outward Bound course in Colorado. Having done a small amount of mountaineering when I lived in Boulder, I can testify to the cleansing power of physical exertion at altitude—for whatever reason, it makes all other stresses in life feel okay. And you feel okay, too, letting go. It’s hard to explain, and I couldn’t possibly hope to compare with these guys… but it does make me resent to a certain degree how much my life has changed since then—stuck inside climate controlled boxes in a nature-hating suburban wasteland. I do miss those mountains.
One Response to “News Brief, Little Trouble in Big China Edition”
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I don’t know that my post showed optimism at all. It simply accurately characterized the reports conclusions. You confuse your firm conclusions with some baseline whereupon any acknowledgment of potential or progress is optimism. An assessment looks at opportunities, progress, challenges and setbacks. It doesn’t pretend that only some of those matter. If you can find a post of mine which is an assessment that doesn’t do that please point it out. As for the NIE it stands in stark contrast to your assessment here:
The more violence aspect depends on what you mean by that, so I’ll call it meaningless without some kind of explanation.
Political meltdown depends on what you are talking about as well. Maliki may go, but the government will most likely still exist. His departure may be a good or bad thing. We will have to see. I see it as a continuation of the difficulty they have had from the beginning. Progress there will mean change, and possibly many changes and attempts at finding something workable. My metric is are they still working on it? Yes they are. Hopefully they will come up with something which reduces conflict, but we may see several iterations if we want it done somewhat democratically. So I don’t see it as a meltdown. It was never together enough to meltdown. It shows the latest government hasn’t progressed on that front.
The political situation at the local level has seen tremendous progress, but as the report says it will eventually need some support from the central government. To just act as if that progress hasn’t been achieved, despite its potential pitfalls and potential to unravel is to not be assessing, but proselytizing.
Deadlier bombings? Talk about out of context. Yes, the bombs are bigger and deadlier, they are also becoming more and more difficult to carry out (which is probably why they are concentrating on making them bigger or moving to less strategically important places. If you can’t carry out as many or where you would like to strike you need maximum impact from those which are successful.) No observer that I have read does not see less day to day violence in the areas where we have claimed to have seen progress.
The refugees issue is the most in context piece of evidence you put out there. However, it has little bearing on challenging the effectiveness of the surge as reported. Outside of a far more dramatic level of success than has been claimed one would expect that to be true. Even as some areas see it decline, as the offensive moves forward many people are going to flee and the enemy will move to new areas as well. Throw in that once people begin fleeing only massive turnarounds are going to stop many people from fleeing. An analogy would be a forest fire. Firefighters could have made huge progress in containing it and might even feel they have it licked, but it is still burning and animals are going to continue to flee and unlikely to move back to areas which are better but still hardly worth living in. Plus the fire will still be advancing on many fronts. Does that mean the efforts haven’t helped or are not making progress? No. Once again, it is a bad situation, but that does not mean the progress made should be ignored.
The situation is still grim, it was grim before the surge, which is why we decided to have it. What the NIE argues quite clearly is that we have seen progress across a broad spectrum; that if we continue we should see more, if at a pace that is slow and at times halting; and that the surge is not only responsible for that progress but if it is halted and scaled back the gains will be lost.
I went and read the piece and frankly I found it quite balanced and accurate in its characterization. The report does show improvement, to claim it doesn’t is, well, I can’t say what it is. I have no idea how you can read its conclusions without saying it shows improvement. It also predicts that that progress will continue. That is in the plain language of the report. It does say the situation is bad, bit it plainly recognizes improvement. As for stability, nowhere in the piece does it even use the word. Then I noticed the headline, which does not say stable or that we have achieved overall stability. It says “Stability Growing.” That is an accurate characterization. We do see increased stability. Whatever the headline, Gertz most definitely characterized it correctly and if you disagree then reread the report.
As for worries about the bottom up, you are not characterizing the conclusion accurately there either. They do have worries, as is proper, about potential pitfalls. It does however say that is the most productive path to take. That parallels my reading from other sources. Every action has pitfalls, the report stating them does not change its approval of that path nor change the benefits it has shown.
Finally the report was based on intelligence collected as of the end of June, when the surge had only been in place for less than thirty days. An assessment as of today would undoubtedly be more positive, though its main conclusions would likely be little different. The report is quite honest about that. The report clearly states that the pace of change has accelerated with the surge and that its conclusions have to be taken with that in mind. That doesn’t mean the changes upon reflection in their judgment would be more positive, but given the flood of reports out of Iraq now on rapid improvement in many areas it is hard to see how that wouldn’t be true.
The report itself shows that many of its judgments about Anbar and the potential impact of the surge in previous assessments were too negative. Whatever one thinks about this report, too positive or too negative, it shows the tentative nature of assessing anything. Nothing has gone worse than the previous assessment expected, several things have gone better. Hopefully that will be true about this one as well, but if it develops as the report concludes is most likely we will still have a difficult situation on our hands, but one that will be better than now. A better Army, better police, a more cooperative population and local government as well as continued reductions in violent attacks against the civilian population in the most important areas strategically. The level of violence will still be high but better. IDP and refugee levels will still be high as well. It is up to Petraeus, Crocker and the various other actors to make that improved but still difficult path seem overly pessimistic. I wish them well.