Film #6 "Breaker Morant" (1980). We viewed it Tuesday.
Readings for Thursday: Krauthammer, Charles, “The Unipolar Moment Revisited,” The National Interest, Winter 2002/2003, pp. 5-17.
Fukuyama, Francis, “The Neoconservative Moment,” The National Interest, Summer 2004, pp. 57-68.
If you haven't seen "Breaker Morant," I highly recommend it. It is a great film about the dirty underbelly of the so-called "Boer War" (1899-1902). Its themes resonate today as much as they did when the film was made, not long after the Vietnam war ended. I assigned the film and readings as part of the section on "liberal internationalism."
The film is set during an imperial British war, but it is really a courtroom drama. Three defendants, including the title character, are accused by the crown of violating the laws of war. They killed Boers who had surrendered, but claimed this "take no prisoners" approach was common practice in their unconventional unit (the Bushveldt Carbineers) constructed to defeat a slippery opponent (of "bitter enders") that used nontraditional methods. The soldiers claim the practice implemented orders from their military superiors.
There is no question but that the British used brutal methods in the Boer war. They employed a "scorched earth" policy to starve out their opponents. Many thousands of POWs were transported out of the country so that they would not have to be fed locally, and tens of thousands of women and children were rounded up and put in camps. Substantial numbers died in these camps of starvation, disease and exposure.
It is natural to compare the British Boer war to the American experiences in Vietnam and Iraq. The trial, especially, brings to mind Abu Ghraib and the British strategy reminds one of the American military's strategy in Fallujah.
The readings reflect a contemporary neoconservative debate about the prospects for the Bush administration's vision of liberal internationalism. Krauthammer is a well-known booster, based in large part on his long conviction that superior American military power, combined with widely supported goals, grant the US the right to root out whatever threats it identifies and to promote democratic government around the world.
Fukuyama has become a neocon skeptic and thinks that military power is an ineffective weapon for pursuing these goals. He's not a fan of nation-building, which he views as global social engineering, and thus thinks that US efforts are likely doomed to fail. Indeed, Fukuyama points to the many failings in Iraq and wonders how Krauthammer can write about the meaning of America's supremacy given events on the ground.
Obviously, these readings are not directly on-point to the film, but they do get at the tension some would say is endemic in trying to promote democracy at gunpoint.
Filed as: IR films
Friday, September 29, 2006
Film class -- week 6
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Sorrow
All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. -Matthew 7:12
What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary. - Talmud, Shabbat 3id
I have little to add to the cogent analysis of those who still believe in the bedrock principles of the United States.
The bill that passed the Senate, by definition, establishes tyranny.
Not the kind of tyranny that settles like a haze over our daily lives or leaves us, like subjects in a totalitarian state, afraid to speak our minds.
This is the kind of tyranny the vast majority of us can safely ignore, knowing full well that we will never be declared "enemy combatants" and, in an instant, stripped of all our rights and protections.
But if that sense of security leads us to do nothing -- or worse, to declare this abomination "just" and "good" because it might make us every so slightly safer -- then we must confront the fact that we are complicit; that we are morally culpable.
We have sold the soul of our once-great nation (let it be great again) at the altars of greed, power, and fear.
(image source: http://www.kent.edu/photoessays/Sep2002/images/Photo2.jpg)
Filed as: tyranny
New Department at Reed
This looks like an amazing major. Check out the Department and the course offerings.
Note the disclaimer. And take a look at the markup.
Thanks to Alex M. for bringing this to our attention.
Filed as: miscellany
Beware of the Military-Industrial Complex
There are about 5 things I want to write about, maybe I'll have the time to get to some of them this weekend-- Iraq, the NIE (though Dan has a nice post on it), what in the world was Musharaf doing on the Daily Show....
But, I can't resist yet another Defense Spending post....
This one from the F-22 files (and yes, its also an excuse to post a cool picture).
Congress just voted to buy way more planes than the Administration wants, adding Billions of dollars of defense expenditures to the budget when the Military already has heavy demands on its budget for weapons, personnel, and ongoing operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and such. From the NYT:
Since coming into office, Mr. Rumsfeld and the administration have tried to rein in the costs of the $65 billion fighter jet program, which has been two decades in the making and has suffered one cost overrun after another.
But their efforts were rebuffed this week by the powerful F-22 lobby, a combination of the Air Force, Lockheed Martin, which makes the fighter jet, and their allies in Congress.
The Senate is scheduled to vote this week on the $447 billion Pentagon budget for 2007, which contains a measure promoted by backers of the F-22 that could extend the jet's production run beyond its 2011 termination date and reduce Congressional oversight of the program.
Yes, its a way cool plane, flying faster, higher, stealthier, and with better avionics and arms than anything out there. But,
Critics say the F-22 represents technological overkill at a time when United States air superiority is unquestioned and the nature of warfare has changed. It was originally designed for aerial combat against the Soviets. Today, one of its biggest critics is the Government Accountability Office, which in July issued a report saying, “The F-22 acquisition history is a case study in increased cost and schedule inefficiencies.”
How useful has the F-22 (or the plane it replaces, the outstanding F-15) been in fighting terrorism, capturing Osama Bin Ladin, or bringing stability to Iraq? (yes, that's a rhetorical question)-- Not useful at all. Sure, it does some ground-pounding with smart bombs, but do we really need an F-22 for that? Its not like the Iraqi insurgents have radar to avoid, an AC-130 or A-10 can do close air support just as well (if not better).
But, what really gets me:
Another measure sought by F-22 supporters, the lifting of a ban on sales to foreign countries, easily passed the House in July on a voice vote but failed to make it out of a House-Senate conference committee. Backers of the measure said that overseas sales would help reduce the overall costs of the F-22 program.
Opponents fear that it would permit other nations to gain access to the PentagonÂ’s most advanced weaponry and technologies.
So, we build the plane to maintain air superiority, and then promptly sell it, and with it, sell our monopoly on stealthy air-dominance. Sure, we'll sell to the UK, they're our "special" friends, but just look at who has F-16 now-- Pakistan, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia... Are you 100% certain that those planes won't ever be used against US interests ever?
Yeah, watch out for that military industrial complex.
Filed as: F-22
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Intelligence failures and the NIE
Steven Taylor approving quotes James Joyner's dismissal of the ruckus over the NIE:
One would be remiss for failing to note that these are the same intelligence agencies who failed to predict the Iranian Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the war in the Balkans, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, the 9/11 attacks, London bombings, Madrid bombings, and other major events. Or that they opposed the Iraq War to begin with and that this finding vindicates their position.But did the intelligence agencies fail to predict everything on this list?
1. Pakistan's nuclear weapons program was an open secret for quite some time. Hence the 1985 Pressler Amendment that restricted American assistance to Pakistan. I really don't know if the fact that the administration certified Pakistan's compliance with non-proliferation objectives because of an "intelligence failure" or because of other, more pressing, political concerns (e.g., the conflict in Afghanistan and other elements of US South Asian policy). Anyone know?
2. It is true that the CIA concluded in 1985 that there was "no basis" for believing that North Korea was seeking nuclear weapons, but it did not rule out the possibility. But concerns among intelligence and State Department officials about North Korean proliferation increased over the next few years. Even in 1984-1985, however, US officials do appear to have been worried about long-term North Korean intentions. Hence the international effort to force North Korea to join the NPT.
3. The Iranian Revolution was clearly an intelligence failure for the US, although some argue that the problem stemmed more from American political processes than the intelligence community itself. Social scientists who study revolutions note, however, that revolutions are, by their very nature, difficult to predict.
The NIE estimates tend to focus on "on-the-path" evaluations of current trends. Brett Marston articulates this point well in his comment on Steven's post.
With regards to James’s point, there is a difference between predicting specific events and giving your best guess as to current trends. I hope that it’s not the case that the administration is hoping that unforseen events will prove the intelligence agencies wrong; that’s not good planning, it’s wishful thinking.The fact that intelligence agencies couldn't predict the activities of un-monitored terrorist cells has almost no bearing on the issue of the NIE; if anything, many intelligence analysts did expect some sort of Al-Qaeda attack on the US homeland, which is about as good as we can hope for given well-known organizational and intelligence problems associated with the attacks.
These problems, moreover, do not necessarily travel to general estimates of what will happen in, for example, Iraq if current trends continue. So I think Joyner doth protest too much. If we dismiss evaluations of current trends, then we cannot engage in any sort of policy making.
We should also, of course, do more "off-the-path" scenario planning, i.e., develop scenarios and possibilities that seem unlikely given current trajectories. One could argue, however, that this kind of contingency planning remains almost totally absent from Bush's Iraq policy; in other words, I'm not sure how this would cut in favor of the Bush administration.
Filed as: NIE
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
"Outrages upon human dignity"
President Bush, September 15, 2006:
THE PRESIDENT: This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"? That's a statement that is wide open to interpretation.U.S. National Security Strategy, March 2006, Section II A:
The United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. These nonnegotiable demands of human dignity are protected most securely in democracies. The United States Government will work to advance human dignity in word and deed, speaking out for freedom and against violations of human rights and allocating appropriate resources to advance these ideals.Could anyone make this up?
Bush also used the phrase "human dignity" quite a bit in his UN Speech, September 21, 2004:
Our great purpose is to build a better world beyond the war on terror.Hat tip to "The Daily Show," September 26 and these commenters.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have established a global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. In three years the contributing countries have funded projects in more than 90 countries, and pledged a total of $5.6 billion to these efforts. America has undertaken a $15 billion effort to provide prevention and treatment and humane care in nations afflicted by AIDS, placing a special focus on 15 countries where the need is most urgent. AIDS is the greatest health crisis of our time, and our unprecedented commitment will bring new hope to those who have walked too long in the shadow of death.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have joined together to confront the evil of trafficking in human beings. We're supporting organizations that rescue the victims, passing stronger anti-trafficking laws, and warning travelers that they will be held to account for supporting this modern form of slavery. Women and children should never be exploited for pleasure or greed, anywhere on Earth.
Because we believe in human dignity, we should take seriously the protection of life from exploitation under any pretext. In this session, the U.N. will consider a resolution sponsored by Costa Rica calling for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. I support that resolution and urge all governments to affirm a basic ethical principle: No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have changed the way we fight poverty, curb corruption, and provide aid. In 2002 we created the Monterrey Consensus, a bold approach that links new aid from developed nations to real reform in developing ones. And through the Millennium Challenge Account, my nation is increasing our aid to developing nations that expand economic freedom and invest in the education and health of their own people.
Because we believe in human dignity, America and many nations have acted to lift the crushing burden of debt that limits the growth of developing economies, and holds millions of people in poverty. Since these efforts began in 1996, poor countries with the heaviest debt burdens have received more than $30 billion of relief. And to prevent the build-up of future debt, my country and other nations have agreed that international financial institutions should increasingly provide new aid in the form of grants, rather than loans.
Because we believe in human dignity, the world must have more effective means to stabilize regions in turmoil, and to halt religious violence and ethnic cleansing. We must create permanent capabilities to respond to future crises. The United States and Italy have proposed a Global Peace Operations Initiative. G-8 countries will train 75,000 peacekeepers, initially from Africa, so they can conduct operations on that continent and elsewhere. The countries of the G-8 will help this peacekeeping force with deployment and logistical needs.
Filed as: Bush hypocrisy
Monday, September 25, 2006
Counter-hegemonic strategies
I would be remiss if I failed to link to Rob Farley's interesting post on Chinese military procurement strategy. The Chinese, according to Defense News, have been testing a ground-based laser designed to temporary "bind" US satellites. Rob argues that this fits the Chinese strategy of developing capabilities designed to fight an asymmetric war against the United States.
China's defense procurement, by and large, does not seem driven by this logic. Instead, China seems to be actively thinking about and planning for a war with the United States over Taiwan, a project which, among other things, must be regarded as quite sensible from the Chinese point of view. Instead of trying to equal US naval capabilities, the PLAN is working hard to develop the means to kill US carriers, thus largely nullifying the US naval advantage. In response to "network-centric" warfare that relies heavily on satellite communications, the Chinese are thinking about how to break the US system, rather than how to replicate it.
I find this deeply fascinating. Chinese procurement seems driven, more than anything else, by the need to create the operational capacity to seize Taiwan and fend off US intervention. This hardly seems a devastating insight, but it's interesting given how little a US-PRC war over Taiwan, or even a PRC seizure of Taiwan, seems to make sense. There are a dozen reasons why fighting over Taiwan would be a terrible idea from the Chinese point of view, but the PRC nevertheless is procuring weapons and developing capabilities oriented around just such a war.I'm not sure exactly why Rob doesn't think this policy makes "sense." Or it would be more accurate to say that "I understand why he thinks that, but he's wrong." The Chinese leadership believes -- or at least finds it politically useful to act as if it believes -- that Taiwan belong to them and would be theirs but for the "century of humiliations" visited upon China by the West (and Japan) and its occupation by the KMT. Taiwan represents, moreover, the only medium-term flashpoint likely to involve a conflict with the United States. I suppose this is another way of saying that Rob's conclusion is right:
This is why, although I concur that there are many reasons we shouldn't expect a war over Taiwan, I can't be as sanguine as some about its probability.Filed as: China, hegemony and The Rise of China
Turning lead into gold
Shorter Victor Davis Hanson: "Iraq and Afghanistan are both in terrible shape. This clearly vindicates the Republican position on unilateralism and, in consequence, undermines Democratic complaints about Bush foreign policy."
As we reflect on this particular rhetorical gem, let me stress that I don't think there is anything wrong with criticizing the lack of clear Democratic policies on Iraq and Afghanistan. But our current administration just isn't serious about finding solutions to the mess they've made. "Stay the course" means punting the hard choices to the next President.
Filed as: Bush, Iraq, Afghanistan, and hackery
Should progressives be happy about Iraq's successes?
In comments to my last post on "Iraq and 9/11," someone named "a" was critical of my apparently flippant "Yadda Yadda Yadda" in response to the fact that Saddam is gone and millions of brave people voted in Iraqi elections:
But "Yadda x 3" about the removal of Saddam and Iraqis' voting???Given that the administration said repeatedly that it was going to war to increase US security by decreasing traditional threats, "a" acknowledges that it is entirely reasonable to point out the failure of that part of the enterprise. Most of my post focused on those issues.
Given the sort of regime Saddam's was, I just don't see what's progressive about an attitude like that. Progressives _aren't_ supposed to be concerned only (and perhaps not even primarily) with security or stability. Why not leave the Yaddaing to the Kissinger and Scowcroft types?
The invasion and occupation of Iraq was never fought as a "progressive war" and there is little reason for progressives to cheer. While great, perhaps even unprecedented, efforts were originally taken by US forces to minimize civilian casualties, we must remember that the US defended the oil ministry and virtually ignored the looting and anarchy that followed the toppling of Saddam. For example, virtually all the hospitals in Baghdad were closed immediately after the city fell to the US.
However, despite these facts, I was "yaddaing" the empty repetition of the claimed successes in response now to every criticism of the obvious insecurity created by the Iraq war.
Of course, these claims are just about all that war supporters have left to say.
And I think they reflect entirely empty rhetoric. The oft-repeated "successes" are dubious.
The UN just said that torture levels in Iraq are now worse than they were under Saddam.
Shall we simply count the bodies? The chance of violent death in Iraq has skyrocketed since March 2003.
And I think Iraq looks an awful lot like a dangerous "illiberal democracy." As Fareed Zakaria wrote in 1997,
"Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not simply inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic divisions, and even war."People vote in elections all over the world; unfortunately, that fact alone does not assure that they live in functioning democracies. Iraq is yet more proof of that truism.
So, again, why should progressives be pleased?
I struggle to find even one decision about Iraq that the administration has made since August 2002 that progressives should support without hesitation -- or caveat.
And I have no difficulty doubting their dubious claims about the outcome.
Note: I had to post this because Haloscan said I had too many links for comments.
Filed as: Iraq
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Who are the British?
"Basques," according to Stephen Oppenheimer in the October issue of Prospect.Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words "Celtic" or "Anglo-Saxon." What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.
He also weighs in on the question of the Celts: no vast Celtic empire with a heartland in Germany, but plenty of Celtic language and culture:
The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.
Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.
His punch line:
Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.
Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of "iron-age Celtic invasions" from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago. So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar's time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."
In lights of all this, I have two questions:
The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.
Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.
A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.
So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.
1) How reliable are the inferences we can draw from the kind of genetic testing Oppenheimer relies upon? This is a question I can't really answer.
2) His theory is obviously interesting and, to the extent that it adds to our stock of knowledge of human prehistory, significant. Yet how much does it really matter, i.e., what's more important: the underlying genetic makeup of people living in Britain or their sense of cultural identity? If a small elite transformed the language, habits, and collective sense of self of the people they conquered, then surely the genetic "truth" of their ancestry matters very little.[*]
Via David Fahey on H-Albion.
*Except insofar as we can refute certain racial and ethno-nationalist myths about the genetic origins of the English, Scots, Welsh, and so on.
Filed as: nationalism, ethnicity, genetics, Stephen Oppenheimer, and Myths of British Ancestry
Endorsement inflation
I know book endorsements, even from respected figures, have become the equivalent of "chilling... exciting... suspenseful", but there's got to be a limit.
Paul Kennedy on Max Boot's new book:
“While much has been in written in recent years about the so-called ‘Revolution in Military Affairs,’ Max Boot is the first scholar to place it within the broad sweep of history, and in the context of the rise of the West in world affairs since 1500. In so doing, he not only tells a remarkable tale, but he compels us all, even those obsessed solely with contemporary military affairs, to ask the right questions and to distinguish what is truly new and revolutionary from what is merely ephemeral. He has rendered a valuable service, and given us a fascinating read at the same time, so we are doubly in his debt.”The first scholar to place the so-called "revolution in military affairs" within the "broad sweep of history, and in the context of the rise of the West..."? Really? The first? I suppose this might be technically true -- at least in the sense of "no one has written Max Boot's precise book before."
Should I read the book and pass independent judgment on its merits? Might be interesting. The blurb, however, doesn't fill me with confidence:
A sweeping, epic history that ranges from the defeat of the Spanish Armada to the War on Terrorism, War Made New is a provocative new vision of the rise of the modern world through the lens of warfare. Acclaimed author Max Boot explores how innovations in weaponry and tactics have not only transformed how wars are fought and won but also have guided the course of human events, from the formation of the first modern states, to the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the coming of al-Qaeda.*There is, of course, a tremendous debate about whether or not there was an RMA in early modern Europe. But regardless of whether or not there was, Michael Robert's identification of Gustavus Adolphus as a central figure in it just doesn't hold up very well.
Boot argues that the past five centuries of history have been marked not by gradual change in how we fight but instead by four revolutions in military technology—and that the nations who have successfully mastered these revolutions have gained the power to redraw the map of the world. Boot brings these moments of transformation to vivid life through gripping combat scenes. For the Gunpowder Age, he argues that firearm technology brought from China shattered the ritualized combat of the Middle Ages as innovators such as Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus[*] and the Duke of Wellington incorporated artillery and cavalry in new ways, leading to the rise of the Western powers.
Filed as: miscellany and did I just destroy my chances for a term appointment at the CFR?
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Iraq and 9/11
Yes, the war in Iraq is tied to the problem of transnational terrorism that America experienced on 9/11.
The Iraq war has increased the threat of transnational terror -- and this is the "consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services" in the US. From the NY Times, to be published September 24:
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.This conclusion is consistent with an early 2005 National Intelligence Council study finding that Iraq had emerged as the top training ground for new jihadists.
The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document....
The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.
Yes, Saddam is gone and brave Iraqis voted to select their new leaders.
Yadda yadda yadda.
Is the Bush administration serious about American national security -- or not?
It pulled assets out of Afghanistan and let Osama bin Laden escape at Tora Bora -- in preparation for a dumb WMD snipe hunt in Iraq.
It also should have known that Saddam and OBL were enemies, failed to plan for the post-war in Iraq, and completely botched decision-after-decision once they declared "mission impossible."
Now, of course, the administration wants Americans to elect a Congress that won't investigate this comedy of errors -- and might look favorably on a new Iran adventure.
Note: This is the weekend short version of my outraged rant.
...oh, and I accidentally called this "Iran and 9/11" for a few hours.
Filed as: Iraq
Friday, September 22, 2006
Film class -- week 5
Film #5 "Black Hawk Down" (2001). We viewed in Tuesday.
Readings for Thursday: Stephen J.Solarz and Michael O'Hanlon, "Humanitarian Intervention: When is Force Justified?" 20 Washington Quarterly, 1997, pp. 3-14.
Stephen John Stedman, "The New Interventionists," 72 Foreign Affairs, 1993, pp. 1-16.
Almost everyone has seen this blockbuster film, which addresses UN/American humanitarian intervention in Somalia, 1993. It is set on October 3 of that year, after thousands of lives have been saved in the mission to deliver food to the hungry. On that day, a group of Army Rangers and Delta Force were sent into the city to capture a couple of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's top clansmen.
In broader terms, the new mission is to find warlord Aidid and perhaps create a stable order that would allow for broader nation-building.
Stedman, like realists, challenges these kinds of broad humanitarian missions, arguing that the US should only use military force when there is a clear American national interest. Idealists like Solarz and O'Hanlon counter by arguing that the US should intervene when the circumstances warrant -- if the dying is on a horrific scale and if other great powers are unlikely to cause trouble.
Technically, the October 3 mission featured in "Black Hawk Down" was a success. The US forces penetrated their target building, captured the men they were seeking and got them back to base.
The bulk of the film, however, is about the violent and disastrous consequences of the mission. Local forces in the city downed a black hawk helicopter -- and then another. Nearly 20 American soldiers are killed in the crashes and battles to retrieve the crews of these aircraft, though the film-maker notes that 1000 (!) Somalis lost their lives in the fighting.
There is plenty of food for thought about Iraq in this film. Early on, various individual soldiers decide not to take water, night vision devices and body armor. Essentially, they were confident that their mission would be accomplished quickly and there wouldn't be any need for these supplies.
Sound familiar?
The soldiers expect to fight members of Aidid's clan in the raid, but end up fighting what seems like the whole city of Mogadishu. It seems like the attacking locals are quite angry at the very presence of the Americans in their city. Though some locals support the US forces and cheer when they pass by, there's plenty of evidence of inadequate planning.
Some critics of this movie claim that it glorifies the military and war, which is kind of odd since the overall mission -- and takehome lesson -- was that Somalia was a disaster. President Clinton removed American troops not long after this battle. The non-intervention into Rwanda may have been based on the experience in Mogadishu.
Aidid's son, by the way, is the current Interior Minister of Somalia.
Filed as: IR films
Thursday, September 21, 2006
More from the Cognitive Dissonance Files
This week: Michelle Malkin and her distaste for those who violate the due process rights of accused terrorists. No, I'm not kidding.
It is remarkable that some simply can't see the parallel between the case that has Malkin up in arms and the debate over detainees in Cuba. For Malkin, the former is an example of a principled human rights case while the latter an example of anti-American-liberals who want to free terrorists. Guess the identity of the accused is the elephant in the room.
Via Crooks and Liars.
Filed as: Due Process
All Iraq, All the Time
Question of the day: are we winning?
Answer:
Asked point-blank whether the United States is winning in Iraq, Abizaid replied: "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."
In other words--no. We don't have unlimited time, and its rather clear that the Administration hasn't offered unlimited resources to its Commanders in Iraq. We've never been close to 200,000 troops in-country. Though....
The general's comments effectively ended hopes for a big troop withdrawal from Iraq this year, which had long been the military's target for reducing forces. As violence has intensified over the spring and summer, military leaders and the Pentagon's official assessment of the war have delivered increasingly tough characterizations of conditions in Iraq.
Now, six weeks before the U.S. midterm elections for which Iraq is a galvanizing issue, Abizaid is delivering the message that there will be no hasty exit from the costly conflict...
While dampening hopes of troop cuts this year, Abizaid left open the possibility that the U.S. troop level could be increased. "We'll bring in more forces if we have to," he said.
The military would draw, if necessary, on reserve forces already in Kuwait and elsewhere in the region before asking the Pentagon to send more U.S. troops, Abizaid said. He added that there is currently no plan to further extend the tour in Iraq of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade. That unit had been scheduled to return home over the summer but was abruptly diverted to Baghdad in July when sectarian killings spiraled there.
Happy times, especially with the election just around the corner.
Kerry (finally--maybe 2 years too late) asked:
“What’s the endgame? We need a deadline to force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and get our combat troops home,” said Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.The Bush end-game is (or was) we'll stand down our forces as the Iraqis stand up thier forces. That's not going so well either:
Senior Iraqi and American officials are beginning to question whether Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has the political muscle and decisiveness to hold Iraq together as it hovers on the edge of a full civil war.You can ask how on earth we got in this mess. You can read all about it in Sunday's WaPo which has quite good book-excerpt article on life in the CPA-Green Zone. Dan Drezner now has a heated debate on whether it was the idea or the implementation of the idea that failed in Iraq (and if anyone from that class is reading, its a nice preview of what we'll discuss that day).
Four months into his tenure, Mr. Maliki has failed to take aggressive steps to end the country’s sectarian strife because they would alienate fundamentalist Shiite leaders inside his fractious government who have large followings and private armies, senior Iraqi politicians and Western officials say. He is also constrained by the need to woo militant Sunni Arabs connected to the insurgency.
But, of course the more pertinent question is in fact Kerry's--where do we go from here? What's the end game?
I have a really long answer to that, but perhaps I'll let you all comment on it for a while and save that rambling rant for a subsequent post.
Filed as: Iraq
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
9/20/01: The day that changed everything
William Dobson has a piece in the current issue of Foreign Policy (subscription required, but I'll bet if you google around you can find a copy of the text someplace) provocatively titled "The Day Nothing Much Changed." In brief, Dobson argues that the terrorist attacks didn't change much about world politics, and that the really important change happened fifteen years earlier when the Soviet Union broke up -- the system went from bipolar to unipolar, with all of the attendant instability of a unipolar world simply waiting for an opportune moment to manifest itself. It just so happened that 11 September 2001 was a good day for such a manifestation to break forth.
I think Dobson's both right and wrong. He's right that nothing that happened on 11 September 2001 changed much, but he's wrong about why -- and he's wrong about nothing fundamental having changed in world politics since the Soviet Union broke up. Indeed, today is the fifth anniversary of the really important change: it's the fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the American Imperium. Five years ago today, Bush addressed a joint session of Congress and proclaimed:
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes . . . we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.Goodbye sovereignty, hello empire.
Lest you think that I'm exaggerating here, consider for a moment what the ideal-typical principle of state sovereignty means. Ever since it was first articulated, state sovereignty has involved two important components: the mutual recognition of sovereign states by one another, and the associated norm of non-intervention that permitted each sovereign state to regulate its own affairs within its own territorial borders. Together, these principles constituted the basis for "the international system," that conceptual object to which scores of Introduction to International Relations courses sought to introduce generations of students -- the conceptual scaffolding that made sense of such practices as diplomatic immunity, formal declarations of war, diplomatic protocol, and so on.
Granted, the principle of sovereignty is ideal-typical, not descriptive; actual world politics has always been characterized by violations of the principle. But nevertheless, state sovereignty provided the implicit or explicit organizing principle for inter-state relations, and the context within which countless state actions made sense. Indeed, the fact that interventions had to be justified -- and justified carefully at that -- stands as testimony to the importance of the principle.
The reason that 20 September 2001 is so important is that on that day Bush did something that I'd been joking with my IR classes about for years. "What would it take for the US to stop being a sovereign state?" I'd ask them, and eventually we'd arrive at the answer: if the US declared that it wasn't going to play by the rules of sovereignty any more, if it was going to stop recognizing other states and declare that it would violate territorial integrity whenever it felt like it, it wouldn't be a sovereign state any longer, it would be an empire. Why an empire? Because empires have frontiers, not borders, and they don't recognize any regime other than their own as really legitimate.
Scroll up and look at that excerpt from Bush's speech again. Look hard. What's he saying? It's not far from "we reserve the right to intervene wherever we want to, whenever we want to, and to hell with your protestations about the integrity of your precious 'sovereign territorial state.' You're either with us -- or you're on the list of places that we might intervene next, because after all, nothing's stopping us from doing so except that maybe we haven't gotten around to intervening in your neighborhood yet." That sounds to me suspiciously like what an empire might say -- and it sounds quite far from what a sovereign state might say.
The other reason why this, and not the anniversary that the country celebrated last week, is the really important date to mark is that it is also the five year anniversary of the transformation of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 into '9/11', a political and rhetorical commonplace that both highlights certain aspects of the events of nine days earlier and links that account of events to a very definite course of action. The events of 11 September 2001 were puzzling, confusing, and ambiguous; no one really knew what we should do about them, and there were a lot of options floating around in the week or so afterwards. But '9/11' isn't ambiguous; '9/11' is a rather simple story (they attacked us, and did so because "they hate our freedoms" -- another phrase making its prime-time debut in that evening's speech -- and we need to go out and kick their asses, and we need to do so exclusively on our own terms) that is extremely difficult to oppose politically without being labeled a "terrorist sympathizer" or something worse.
Between 11 September 2001 and 20 September 2001, many courses of action were open: strengthen the UN; treat the prosecution of terrorists as a judicial affair rather than a military one; engage in massive development projects in an effort to root out the economic inequalities that are probably a contributing cause of terrorist activity; work multilaterally and cooperatively to address a common global threat. After 20 September 2001, much of that disappeared, to be replaced by "coalitions of the willing," exclusively military solutions, the jettisoning of international organizations left and right, and the present effort to reinterpret the Geneva conventions so as to permit interrogators to do God-only-knows-what to suspected (but not charged) terrorists.
Everything did change five years ago. But it didn't change on 11 September; it changed on Empire Day, 20 September 2001. Welcome to the new world.
Filed as: sovereignty and empire
Supporting the Troops...
...or the lenders that prey on them?
Conservative Congressman Blocking Crackdown on Predatory Lenders Targeting U.S. TroopsGlad he has a link on his website so that vistors can send a message of support to our troops. Guess that makes the mugging he is facilitating behind their backs okie dokie.
Filed as: Geoff Davis
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Misdirected offense
The recent flap about Pope Benedict XVI's remarks in a lecture at the University of Regensburg has been fascinating (in a somewhat macabre way) to watch. As Abu Aardvark has noted, the popular reaction to the remarks looks like a speeded-up film of the reaction to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet last year: various populist Islamist groups have seized parts of the lecture, pulled them out of context, and slotted them into a general narrative of Islamic persecution by 'the West.' Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has even explicitly declared that the Pope's remarks are part of a new "crusade" against the Islamic world. Cue reprisal bombings, boycotts, demands for apologies, and the rest of the well-known script.
In all of this smoke and light, ironically, the really offensive dimension of the Pope's lecture has been obscured in favor of a couple of taken-out-of-context comments about Islam being spread by the sword instead of by rational means of persuasion -- comments that are actually performing a somewhat different function in the text than the current popular controversy seems to have taken them to be performing. Indeed, the Pope wasn't so much saying "Islam bad" as he was saying "Hellenized Christianity good and right and true"; Islam (as Benedict represents it) just happens to get in the way of his argumentative train.
What is really going on here is that the Pope is using 'Islam' as a convenient rhetorical shorthand for currents of Christianity that he disapproves of. This is an old Christian tactic -- it's been going on for millennia. (R. W. Southern has a short and brilliant little book on this, if anyone wants to know the gory details.) It's a classic "use of the Other" -- but in this case, the Other is not taking too kindly to the way that they are being used.
Let me clarify a bit. Benedict's lecture wasn't about Islam, and it wasn't about the question of whether one should spread religion through conquest and violence. Instead, Benedict's lecture was about the relationship between faith and reason in the Christian tradition. Indeed, his basic question -- according to the "provisional" version of the text released by the Vatican -- is whether "the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true." At issue here is the somewhat abstruse theological question of whether the Hellenistic notion that God is the logos is correct, or whether the "voluntarist" position associated with skeptics from Duns Scotus to David Hume (and arguably with Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Wittgenstein too, but that's material for a much longer post -- and probably for a different kind of blog) is correct. The former -- God as the logos -- position suggests that reason partakes of the divine and that therefore God cannot act unreasonably; the latter -- voluntarist -- position suggests that God is above reason, and is not bound by our conception of what is reasonable, and by implication also suggests that reason itself is more of a tool that we use to make sense of our world than it is a divinely-inspired way of seeing things aright.
So one might ask: What are out-of-context quotations from fourteenth-century Byzantine emperors, and especially quotations dealing with Islam and Mohammed, doing in such a meditation? After all, even Benedict admits that the lines in question are "rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole" from which they are drawn. And they are only rather tangentially related to the argument that Benedict himself goes on to make; he only uses the quotation from the emperor Manuel II Paleologus as an example of a Christian condemnation of the association of God and violence -- and in fact the part of the quotation that really seems of interest to him is the clause "not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature." That's what he then goes on to defend in the rest of the lecture, and he never comes back to the parts of the quotation that seem to be the centerpiece of the popular outcry: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." Indeed, that bit (still quoting Manuel II Paleologus) is introduced without comment, and it doesn't really have much relationship with the rest of the argument.
Or does it? Think for a moment about what Benedict accomplishes, rhetorically, by leading off with this quotation. He divides Christianity -- God as the logos, reason and the divine as intrinsically linked together -- from not-Christianity (in this case, Islam), and sets up an association of the Christian opponents of his position with those non-Christians being criticized by the long-dead emperor. It's a classic strategy of rhetorical coercion by dichotomizing, as Benedict is in effect narrowing the choices for his audience to two: Christianity, or not-Christianity. Reject the "hellenization" of Christianity and the equation of God and reason, Benedict is implicitly saying, and you're not a Christian, you're a Muslim. He more or less explicitly says this a bit later by declaring that "for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."
Since Benedict takes it for granted that none of his audience will want to self-identify with Islam, he's effectively backed his potential opponents into a corner -- a corner from which he can set about the other part of his self-appointed task, which is to critique the positivistic exclusion of reason from the realm of faith in Christian Europe and call for the return of a broader notion of reason. Lest we miss the target of his remarks, Benedict explicitly declares:This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history - it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.
Europe is the target, Europe is the audience, and Europe is what he is concerned with. Not Islam. 'Islam' only functions as part of a rhetorical tactic in the lecture, and it's a tactic that only makes sense if one can presume that one's audience is a) not Muslim and b) not particularly comfortable with being associated with Islam. Otherwise, the reference to Islam would be entirely superfluous.
Let me be clear here: even though I don't think that it's correct to accuse Benedict of making "crusade"-like statements about Islam (and believe me, the Popes know how to preach a crusade; if Benedict had wanted to do that, he could have gone into the Vatican library to peruse copies of Urban II's speeches to get some pointers), I do think it's entirely correct to take Benedict to task for making some irresponsible remarks. But the irresponsibility concerns not the question of whether or not he has accurately characterized Islamic notions of God and the proper way to spread the faith, but instead the repetition (whether deliberate or unselfconscious I have no idea, and I will not presume to judge) of the classic Western-European-Christian way of dealing with cultures and religions other than their own: refusing to engage them directly on their own terms, and instead deploying them opportunistically in the course of debates internal to Europe/Christianity/the West. It is almost as if Benedict was sitting down to have a discussion with a group of European Christians, blithely proceeding as though he were having the kind of private conversation that one can only have when one considers oneself to be the only civilized/cultured/worthwhile people around: ain't nobody here but just us chickens Christians, and the rest of the world? Well, yes, there are savages and barbarians out there, but they don't really matter. It's only the debates among ourselves that are the important ones -- and you'd better agree with me, unless you really want to be like those wretches outside of our sphere of civilization.
Hence the irony: Benedict wasn't attacking Islam; he was ignoring it, and in particular ignoring its claim to be a rival monotheistic religion that deserves to be set on equal footing with Christianity when trying to wrestle with thorny issues like the relationship between faith and reason. Classic medieval scholastic response (or lack of response -- take your pick). The difference this time is that opportunistic Islamist groups are taking advantage of the Pope's irresponsibility, even though they missing the issue about as much as Benedict himself did. The problem is not that Benedict insulted Islam; the problem is that Benedict didn't try to engage Islam, and in response, the Islamists are trying not to engage the Pope (and Europe, and Christianity), preferring to burn him in effigy. And so it goes.
Filed as: Benedict and Islam
18 Long Years...
...since the Mets last won a division title. Hopefully they are not done. Gonna be an exciting October.
Filed as: Mets