# Posted 1:23 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC... (PART II): The cover of the current issue of the New Republic blares, The Battle for Tora Bora: The Untold Story. It's a good article, but it's actually an old story. Some of the details are new, but I think it's been at least five years since we've known that Bin Laden was cornered in the caves of Tora Bora in December of 2001, but the chain of command rejected a request to send in US ground forces. Instead we sent in some Afghan militia and Bin Laden got away.

The individual clearly responsible for this bad decision was Gen. Tommy Franks, the US commander of all forces in the region. Yet Peter Bergen, the story's author, seems less concerned with explaining Franks' flawed decision than with tantalizing hints that perhaps Bush and Rumsfeld's early interest in Iraq somehow led Franks' astray.

The twist, however, is that exposing GOP hawks' incompetence in the past serves the purpose of scoring points against liberal doves in the present. Bergen writes,

Bin Laden was clearly at Tora Bora, and sending so few troops was indeed a major failure. It’s a lesson that bears remembering today as the United States continues to pursue Islamist militants in both Afghanistan and Pakistan: In the hunt for members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, there is simply no substitute for boots on the ground. Afghan proxies, Pakistani soldiers, drones--these are not unimportant tools in the war on terrorism. But they are not effective substitutes for U.S. troops. If we want to kill bin Laden and Zawahiri--and other top Al Qaeda leaders--we are probably going to have to do it ourselves.

So, next time a lefty protests' Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan, I will say, "Even the liberal New Republic..."

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# Posted 1:19 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC...publishes enough cliche polemics to justify the adjective "liberal". Now, it is certainly true that TNR generates enough heresy to justify its reputation as much more than a liberal meat grinder. That's why I have a subscription. But TNR also provides enough simplistic GOP-bashing to fortify the perpetually indignant, self-satisfied liberal intellectualism to which so many of its readers subscribe.

Case in point: The Rise of Republican Nihilism by Jonathan Chait. Here's a sample paragraph:

One observer dismissed DeMint’s [stimulus] plan thusly: “It is not innovative or particularly clever. In fact, it’s only eleven pages.” Oddly enough, this observer was DeMint himself, talking up his proposal in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. On the contemporary right, it is a mark of intellectual integrity that even a massive economic cataclysm would not prompt any revising of one’s economic prescription.

Clearly, DeMint was trying to score points by comparing his 11-page plan to the dictionary-length democratic alternative. Yet for Chait, DeMint's self-denigration suddenly becomes evidence of catastrophic intellectual rigidity.

Here's another example:

The quintessential moment in the health care debate came when Senator Lamar Alexander objected to Democratic attempts to weed out Medicare waste: “If you’re going to find some savings in waste, fraud, and abuse in Grandma’s Medicare,” he proclaimed, “spend it on Grandma.” Consider this as an ethical proposition: Alexander is saying that every dollar of Medicare is sacrosanct, that even those dollars he concedes provide zero public benefit must stay in the program. We live in a country where the occasional appearance of a roving charitable medical clinic will prompt thousands of desperate people to line up in parking lots for hours on end, to help mitigate their suffering. And yet, Republicans will not countenance the shift of even indisputably wasted resources to help them.

Impressively, Chait elevates Sen. Alexander's anodyne talking point into conclusive evidence of the GOP's cold-hearted intellectual rigor mortis. This kind of logic is one of the perils of being so smart. Sometimes, you fall into the trap of believing that being smarter means being right.

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# Posted 6:17 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

POLANSKI'S ART: Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I finally had the chance to watch Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. It isn't the story of Polanski's own survival, although it seems natural to conclude that Polanski was able to evoke the Holocaust so effectively because he lived through it himself. He lost his mother to Auschwitz and survived in hiding with a Polish family.

Before Polanski's arrest, I didn't know much about his conviction for sex with a minor. For some reason, I thought he was tried for a consensual statutory violation. Nor did I realize he was convicted.

Knowing this much about the director forcibly changed my perception of the film. The suffering is so intense that you get lost in the film, only to wake up suddenly and wonder how a man who knows suffering so intimately could perpetrate such cruelty on a 13-year-old girl.

The answer to that question is found partly in the film. Victims of the Holocaust are often portrayed as noble and stoic. Yet Polanski also shows how the Nazis' brutality dehumanized and debased their victims, so that many of them committed acts as disgusting as those of their oppressors.

Yet Polanski understood that, too.

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# Posted 6:15 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DEATH THREATS FOR OBAMA: Four times as many as death threats for Bush? More? For his most passionate supporters, it is only natural to think of this young, charismatic and inspirational leader as another potential JFK, RFK or MLK Jr. (Although I doubt we'll ever call him BHO.)

Yet it was Kevin Drum of all people who noted that according to Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan that the number of threats against the president is "at the same level" as it was during the previous two administrations. The day after Kevin's post, the NY Times published a long story about threats against the president, which according to unnamed sources, includes a "big increase in threats against Mr. Obama took place in the first four months of his presidency," but have leveled off since.

Some pundits are still playing catch-up, though. On Sunday morning, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, asserted that "I think we have to be worried about egregious security lapses. This president, I believe, has received a record number of death threats."

Let's hope the threats stay down or go even lower.

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# Posted 6:13 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHERE WAS BARACK OBAMA ON SUNDAY MORNING? The White House sent Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton out on Sunday morning to do a set of joint interviews on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week. (Fox had to settle for Gen. Petraeus. CNN got Jim Jones.)

After his address to the nation on healthcare reform, Obama himself made the rounds on Sunday morning. I'm inclined to think that the President didn't want to face the music this time, since there are so many contradictions in his policy and public statements for the interviewers to exploit. Better to let cabinet officials take the heat. On NBC, David Gregory reminded both Gates and Clinton about their own opposition to a date certain for withdrawal from Iraq, because it would only encourage the insurgents. So what's different about Afghanistan? Clinton responded:

Because we're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop-dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011 we can begin a transition

So July 2011 is a date certain for an assessment of a potential transition?

You have to give Clinton and Gates credit for trying. They were the human shields protecting Obama's policy from journalists' arrow-like questions. Perhaps it's time for POTUS to step out front?

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# Posted 6:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHAT WAS OBAMA DOING FOR THREE MONTHS? If you don't read Shadow Government, you should. It's a blog written by a lot of very smart people who held significant positions in the Bush administration. (No, that isn't a contradiction, wiseguy.) Shadow Gov's recent posts focus (naturally) on Afghanistan. One very interesting question comes from Peter Feaver -- Did Obama's speech give us any sense of why it took him three months to come up with any Afghanistan policy that was barely different from the one he announced back in March ? What Obama really announced was a very simple compromise: Hawks get 30,000 more troops, doves get a (very flexible) deadline for withdrawal. Peter notes:

It did not take [Obama] 3 months of painstaking review to find that compromise. It was available to him all along.

The speed of deployment was accelerated a bit, but it's hard to imagine the White House was debating for three months about deployment schedules.

Peter's somewhat cynical answer to his own question is that Obama wanted time to pass healthcare reform before he antagonized his base by escalating the war. I can see that as one factor, but my instincts are telling me something else (which is also somewhat cynical):

Obama was hunting for a reason not to send the troops. Part of that hunt was political. He didn't want to antagonize his base. He didn't want to break the momentum of his reform agenda. But Obama needed a very strong argument to make if he was going to turn around 180 degrees and ignore two years of his own rhetoric about the "necessary war" in Afghanistan.

For moral and intellectual reasons, Obama also wanted a reason not to send more troops. Things are looking grim in Afghanistan. Why go deeper into the quicksand? Why sacrifice anymore lives? Wasn't Iraq enough? Those questions seem to reflect Obama's instincts. They were suppressed when politics made it necessary and convenient to attack Bush as weak on Afghanistan. But that was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Anyhow, there's plenty more worth reading at Shadow Gov, including posts by Dan Twining, Kori Schake, and Will Inboden.

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# Posted 6:08 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

AFGHANISTAN: A GOP TWOFER? David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has introduced a war tax bill.

“As presidential historian Robert Dallek reminds us, ‘war kills off great reform movements’,” Obey said, noting that World War I ended the Progressive Era, Korea ended Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Now, I know that's supposed to be an argument against sending more troops to Afghanistan, but if you're a Republican, isn't it a pretty good argument for supporting the surge?

Surely some nefarious Republican operatives thought of this while the party was planning its response to Obama's speech at West Point. The GOP's reputation as the party of ideas isn't all that bright at the moment, but any good Democrat can tell you that the GOP is still the master of skullduggery.

Actually, I haven't any Republicans make the Obey argument. Of course, I may not be plugged-in to the nefarious side of the party. All I hear is security this and terrorism that.

On a related note, Obey's comment about war being the enemy of reform tells you something about his war tax. His primary concern isn't paying for the war. It's stopping the war so that his domestic agenda can move forward.

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# Posted 8:47 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

OBAMA SPEECH WRAP-UP: The President was crystal clear about why we are sending more troops to Afghanistan. We were attacked on 9/11. If the Taliban take back Afghanistan, Al Qaeda will come back with them. America's security is directly at stake. Right now, we only have enough troops for a stalemate, not for success.

How will our military strategy change in Afghanistan? What will the mission be of our 30,000 additional troops? The President offered a couple of nods to "securing the population", the core concept of counterinsurgency theory. He also mentioned training Afghan forces. But this issue deserves much more detailed discussion, because the deployment of additional troops is the key commitment we are now making.

Finally, the exit strategy. There was a clear date for when it will begin. Must certain conditions be achieved before the exit begins? What will be the indications of success we should monitor? What if the Afghan government does not improve its performance? What if the new Afghan forces take longer to train? Are we committed to success, because our "vital national interests" are at stake? Or will those interests be reconsidered if they aren't met by July 2011? That is the great unknown. Or more precisely, the great unsaid.

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# Posted 5:47 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHY BOTHER LISTENING TO OBAMA'S SPEECH? The front page of the Washington Post has already announced that 34,000 new troops will deploy to Afghanistan. The front page of the NY Times says "about 30,000".

So tonight's speech isn't about the decision Obama has made. It's about how he will justify it to his own party and to the American people. Here are five things to listen for:

1. "A war of necessity" Obama made those words famous. Will we hear them again tonight? If it is a war of necessity, failure is not an option.

2. "Counterinsurgency": Will Obama give his strategy its proper name? Or will he present his approach as a compromise that reflects the input of skeptics?

3. "Victory": Will Obama say that he wants to achieve "victory" or even "success"? What is our mission? What must we achieve before we even think about an exit strategy? If winning isn't essential, why should we sacrifice American lives?

4. "Exit strategy": Obama has the thankless task of explaining how escalation actually means he wants to end the war sooner. Which phrase will Obama use? Will there be any specifics? Will Obama tell us how, 6 or 12 or 18 months from now, we will be able to distinguish success from failure?

5. "9/11": Will Obama justify this escalation as the continuation of what started on 9/11? That may infuriate the skeptics in his own party. But if he doesn't invoke 9/11, how will he explain why success is worth the loss of more American lives?

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# Posted 10:54 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THREE CHEERS FOR MICHAEL MOORE! Moore has penned an open letter to President Obama, begging him not to send more troops to Afghanistan. And just in time -- with all the talk about Lou Dobbs and the rest, the heartland was beginning to forget that the left bows to no one in its willingness to anoint an ignorant loudmouth as its beloved champion. Here's some of my favorite passages from Moore's letter:

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can't take it anymore. We can't take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of "landslide victory" don't you understand?...

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that's what they'd do.

Cue the violins. And if you think that Michael should be argued with instead of teased, read Jazz's post.

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# Posted 10:14 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

HOPE FOR AFGHANISTAN? Kagan & Kristol:

Some conservatives are arguing that President Obama's weakness and indecision forecast American failure--and that, if we're going to fail, we should just get out now...

Some Republicans are understandably dismayed at the prospect of supporting a war they worry this president is incapable of prosecuting with sufficient vigor or conviction. They argue that keeping faith with the troops requires rejecting any halfhearted approach. They are right that Americans who wish to support our troops in the field should not accept policies that deprive them of the means to win. But a turn by Republicans to rhetorical opposition to the war would only absolve the Obama administration of its Afghan duty. The better course is to push the administration to take responsibility for the outcome in Afghanistan by continuing to support a fully resourced war effort, while criticizing and opposing any decisions that undermine the troops' chance of success...

A model for Republicans is the behavior of Senator John McCain from 2003 to 2007. McCain consistently questioned, challenged, and criticized President Bush's strategy and tactics in Iraq, but he never wavered in his determination to do everything possible to succeed there.

No need for me to repeat how much I admire McCain. But if things get worse in Afghanistan as election day gets closer, will the GOP be tempted to take advantage?

Not impossible, but I think most Republicans feel that they were ultimately vindicated on Iraq, so backstopping the "war of necessity" is a much easier call.

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# Posted 10:09 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MAYOR OF WASILLA: I told you I was Going Rogue and going to write about it.

The story of Sarah Palin's political life begins in Wasilla. Last fall, adversaries mocked her as a one-year governor and two-term mayor of a small town in Alaska. But what did being mayor of Wasilla mean to Palin? How it did shape her politics? Reading a political memoir, you don't expect to get much more than one side of any given story. But I want to know how Gov. Palin understands Wasilla.

For Palin, her time as mayor is a demonstration of her leadership abilities and the value of conservative principles. She writes on page 78,

As a result of our common sense conservative efforts, Wasilla became a booming, bustling town--the fastest growing area in the state, and an independent financial auditor (Mikunda, Cottrell & Co.) reported that Wasilla was "the envy of Alaskan cities."

I'd be curious to know more. The book's focus is on author, so it's hard to get a sense of how Wasilla really changed in those years.

Now, which efforts represent Palin's ideas about common sense conservatism? Above all, cutting taxes. She writes on page 78,

I cut taxes -- lots of them. I eliminated small business inventory taxes, I got rid of personal property taxes, I gave the boot to burdensome things like business license renewal fees, and I cut the real property tax mil levy every year I was in office.

Palin is very clear that what she did for the economy is get the government out of its way. That meant fewer taxes and an effort to cut the budget.

But there is one active component to Palin's philosophy of local government: infrastructure. Commenting on her race to unseat incumbent Mayor John Stein, Palin says,

I wanted government to appropriately provide the private sector with infrastructure tools to increase opportunities. Stein supported expanding land-use restrictions and building codes. (Page 70)

Wasilla is also where Palin began to think of herself as a principled reformer determined to take on special interests. Of her time on the city council before running for mayor, Palin writes "I voted according to my principles and let the chips fall where they may." (Page 66) That remark reflected her vote against using city authority to favor the garbage trucking firm owned by the council's "de facto leader", Nick Carney.

Wasilla is also the place where Palin first realized that being a reformer means being the target and victim of nefarious forces. In 2008, Palin was accused of spearheading an effort to ban books at the Wasilla library. She says that's a false accusation -- apparently ginned up by Nick Carney and his wife -- because they resented Palin's victory at the polls. Palin also says that opponents spread rumors that her daughter smoked marijuana. Her oldest daughter at the time was in kindergarten.

In short, Palin's Wasilla is the story of how selfish men wanted to grow the government, mostly to serve their private interests, but Palin but a put a stop to that. Am I convinced? I don't know the first thing about Wasilla aside from what's in this book so it's hard for me to say. If you like Sarah Palin, you'll probably trust her account. If you don't like her, you won't.

I sort of like Palin precisely because of the extreme condescension and vindictiveness of the attacks she faced first as a candidate, now as an author. But when Palin says something, is my instinct to give her the benefit of the doubt? Not yet. Her account of Wasilla is suspiciously black and white, with its heroic young mayor taking on the town's underhanded cabal of special interests.

On a related note, this means Palin never describes herself as facing hard decisions, where there were strong arguments on both sides, the stakes were high, and good people disagreed. Instead, it was always about right vs. wrong. It takes some courage to do what's right, but the temptations to do wrong seemed pretty minimal.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (24) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EVEN THE NY TIMES IS BEATING UP ON OBAMA: In case you missed this editorial on the Arab-Israeli peace process, condescending titled "Diplomacy 101":

The president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled...

The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything.

Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in Israel is 4 percent) that serious negotiations may be farther off than ever. Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and [special envoy George] Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board.

Those who want to defend Obama would probably have to pivot away from the facts on the ground and find a way to blame Bush. Hey, it's still his first year in office, people! Still, it's looking like amateur hour.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (24) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:02 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ABU MUQAWAMA QUITS DAILY BLOGGING: Andrew Exum, aka Abu Muqawama, has announced that he will be dramatically scaling back his blogging. Exum is a very serious analyst of military issues and his daily presence will be missed. From the comments on his post, you can get a sense of how much he is respected.

So why is Exum quitting? He writes:

Blogging forces me into more or less split-second reactions to complicated policy events before I have had the opportunity to research and weigh opposing views. In addition, the AD/HD nature of this medium -- as well as its format -- has harmed both my research abilities as well as my ability to write in the long form. Blogging, like any medium, is one you get better at with practice. As I have become a better blogger, my long-form writing skills have atrophied.

A valid position, although I feel very differently myself. I don't see a trade off. I see a chance to develop my abilities to express myself through different media.

To be fair, I have a fraction of Exum's audience and post less often, so he faces a different set of challenges. However, my audience and my output both peaked while I was writing my dissertation a few years ago, and I saw no trade-off then, either. In fact, I really appreciated the chance to comment on the news of the week since my academic research focused on events from a generation ago.

Also, I'm curious about Exum's comment that blogging forces him to provide instant reactions. I think it's quite valuable to test your rapid judgment ability and see how it lines up with your conclusions later on. What's the worst that can happen? People know you've changed your mind?

Bottom line, I only care about these secondary points because I have so much respect for Exum's work and hope he continues contributing to the public debate.

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# Posted 3:08 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SMEAR MAYONNAISE ON CONSERVATIVES! Matt Labash of the Weekly Standard writes about his effort to have a zero-carbon footprint.

It literally involved smearing mayonnaise on his face. Go read!

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# Posted 3:07 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

OBAMA ON BREAST CANCER: David Gregory pointed to this Presidential declaration from July:

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: We are--we've been under the illusion that the more health care we get, the healthier we become. And it turns out that every study shows that the question is are you getting the right care, are you getting the best care, the high quality care; rather than are you having a whole bunch of tests ordered that are unnecessary, getting a bunch of treatments that are unnecessary, staying in hospitals longer than maybe necessary? All of which drives up your costs, but doesn't make you better.

Yet all of the liberals Gregory spoke to last Sunday were at extreme pains to insist that the new research will not involve any reduction in the number of mammograms. Suddenly, science and evidence didn't seem very attractive. What gives? I thought conservatives were the ones who put ideology ahead of science.

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# Posted 3:03 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

I'M GOING ROGUE! (AND MAKE WAR ON FISH): I'd like to think I am one of very, very few customers who bought both Going Rogue and Eating Animals as part of the same order from Amazon.

What could be more inconsistent than buying an anti-factory farming polemic and the autobiography of a woman who asserts that every animal has place -- right next to your mashed potatoes? What will Amazon now recommend for me? Books on cognitive dissonance?

Anyhow, some initial thoughts on both books:

I don't expect politicians to write fair and balanced books. But there is a difference between an interesting book and a set self-congratulatory of talking points, like Hillary's auto-bio. I don't mind a partisan book, as long as it makes a good argument.

So what have I found in the first sixty pages of Palin's memoir? So far, it's mostly about the peculiarities of Alaska from the perspective of the Lower 48. That's reasonably interesting. In terms of arguments, there isn't much yet. But there is plenty of self-congratulation. That's annoying.

When it comes to Eating Animals, I have to begin with a disclosure: I was good friends with the author in high school and college, although I've barely seen him since. Early on, Foer admits that he knew what he expected to find when he started researching the meat industry. It would be ugly. So let me respond with my own confession: I know what I expected to think of an entire book that dwells on the moral implications of eating animals. It will be fatuous. It will lecture the reader on animal suffering while downplaying human tragedy.

So far, I feel sort of vindicated. On page 33, Foer tells us,

As I came to see, war is precisely the right word to describe our relationship to fish--it captures the technologies and techniques brought to bear against them, and the spirit of domination.

Foer has an extraordinary sense of humor, but I don't sense any of it here. Best I can tell, he's dead serious. I hope that later in the book he asks whether a morally serious person can talk about a war on fish without trivializing actual wars, like the ones in Darfur, Afghanistan and Iraq.

I confess, I'm not too optimistic. On page 35, we learn that "Technologies of war have literally and systematically been applied to fishing." So? A Pentagon research agency basically invented the internet. Will high-minded liberals now boycott the blogosphere?

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# Posted 3:01 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

BLOGGER RESIGNS FROM PENTAGON DETAINEE POST: I first got to know Phil Carter as a blogger, rather than an attorney, a Iraq war veteran or the director of the Obama campaign's outreach to veterans. Until this week, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy. Or as the NY Times put it: Official charged with closing Guantanamo quits.

The Times hints that Carter's departure had to do with the failure meet the Gitmo closure deadline:

Mr. Carter’s departure comes as the administration has acknowledged that it will not be able to close the prison by Jan. 22, the self-imposed deadline Mr. Obama announced immediately after taking office.

Glenn Greenwald argues that Carter may have resigned because Carter is a civil libertarian and Obama has gone back on most of promises regarding detainees. And why would I ever disagree with Glenn Greenwald?

Kevin Drum says he's also disappointed with Obama on civil liberties, but he wouldn't know whether that affected Carter's decision. I haven't spoken to Phil since he started working at the Pentagon, but he's a talented guy and he'll land on his feet.

I should add that Phil himself said he's resigning for personal reasons, and even though that's a cliche, it's true for him.

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# Posted 2:58 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

BOB REICH AGREES WITH LIZ CHENEY ON NATIONAL SECURITY? I certainly didn't expect to hear this from the liberal super-pundit and former Secretary of Labor. This is from ABC:

REICH: I agree with Liz. I think that -- that in preparation for this trip [to China], as in many others, even the trip to Europe to try to sell Chicago as the Olympics, there needs to be more thought about the appearance of weakness or strength that may come out of the trip.

But I want to go back to, George, your point, because I think the big issue over the next 10 years and the big contest is going to be between authoritarian capitalism, a la China, and democratic capitalism,

a la the United States. And it's not clear to me that authoritarian capitalism is not going to win, that is, it -- there is so much efficiency. The Chinese say, "We're going to build 10 new universities. We're going to build this. We're going to build this." And, boom, it happens.

I'm hope Reich remains an advocate if strength when it comes to other subjects. But I part ways when it comes to his pessimism about free-market capitalism and veneration of the Chinese. It reminds me of all those who praised Japan's unstoppable engine of government-led capitalism. It's hard not to conclude that Reich and those of his ilk simply can't resist the hope that more government control will prove to be the best thing for all of us.

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# Posted 5:40 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHEN BUSH DITHERED ON IRAQ: Jackson Diehl:

[After months of deliberation in 2006], no one accused George W. Bush of dithering. So why does Barack Obama keep hearing the taunt as he deliberates about Afghanistan -- and why do even some who sympathize with his dilemma find it hard to shake the feeling that this commander in chief lacks resolve?

One part of the answer is easy: Bush was renowned for summoning plenty of resolve, and not enough critical thinking. No one questioned that Bush's heart was in his bid for "victory" in Iraq. Not a few wondered whether he had weighed carefully enough whether dispatching 20,000 more American troops in early 2007 was a reasoned strategy or a reckless gamble...

Obama's prolonged deliberation would be understandable if he were choosing between escalating or ending the war, as Bush was. Yet he narrowed his options many weeks ago -- and still has been unable to come to closure...

In the end, it's not enough for a president to be seen as having thought through a decision to send more troops to war. Enemies, allies and the country also need to be convinced that he believes in it.

Read the whole thing.

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# Posted 5:31 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SHERLOCK HOLMES IS ON THE CASE: Andrew Sullivan informs his readers that he is taking a brief pause to pore over Sarah Palin's new book:

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it's vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else...

There is a possibility here of such a huge scandal that we would be crazy not to take our time either to debunk it or move it forward for further examination.

We have only one commitment: to get this right. Please bear with us as we do the best we can.

Perhaps Sullivan & Co. will finally solve the mystery of who Trig's parents really are. My hunch: Ann Coulter and a polar bear.

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# Posted 5:29 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE NETROOTS EAT THEIR OWN: On Monday, Think Progress trashed liberal pundit Mark Shields for allegedly saying, with regard to Obama's patience on Afghanistan,

[It] makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.

Kevin Drum read TP's post and seconded the motion, albeit with more circumspection and less vitriol. But to his credit, Kevin read the comments on his post and apologized.

Why? The quote was accurate. But if you watch the one-minute clip embedded in TP's post, it is more than obvious that Shields is being sarcastic and mocking conservatives who criticize Obama. Extra credit to Kevin for admitting that he put up his post without even watching the clip.

Now, if you really want to see the netroots at their worst, read the comment thread at the end of the original post on TP. Both the ignorance and the viciousness are disturbing. According to Comment #14:

What we really need is gutless fat *ssed scum like [Shields] getting the beatdown of your life from the families of those who have paid the ultimate price in wars cheered on by your spineless, unaccountable pontificating.

Shields is nothing but another worthless piece of sh*t in a long line of tough guy chickenhawks.

Incidentally, Shields is a Marine Corps veteran. And that comment is just par for the course, not just one ugly comment I picked out to pass judgment on the netroots. To their credit, a handful of commenters insist that Shields was being sarcastic. Others know so little about Shields they call him conservative.

Full disclosure: There's plenty of insanity in the far-right blogosphere as well. But the attack on Shields is so bizarre I thought it deserved a post.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (14) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:25 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

KRISTOL ADMONISHES CONSERVATIVES: From the Weekly Standard:

Republicans need to point out that Obama's economic policies aren't working. But they need to resist appearing to relish bad news for the country on Obama's watch. When rising unemployment numbers come out, there is occasionally an unseemly sense of celebration in the emails that come from various GOP offices. More in sorrow than in joy, more in confirmation than in vindication--that should be the Republican mood as the news of Obama's failures, failures which damage the well-being of Americans and of America, rolls in.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (29) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:19 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

YES, DOGS REALLY DO BITE MAILMEN:

A "dog warning card" arrived with my mail today. Thanks to a New Jersey branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, you can see the form online. The form provides invaluable advice, such as "Do not deliver mail if you feel endangered by an animal."

For a better understanding of the threats faced by America's letter carriers, I recommend the following passage from The Postal Employee's Guide to Safety (August 2006 edition), Section IX D:

Animals and Insects
1. General Rules
You are not required to deliver mail when an animal threatens you. Use extra care in making deliveries when dogs or other animals are loose on your route...

Neither antagonize nor attempt to pet dogs. If a dog rushes toward you or takes you by surprise, do not run. Retreat very slowly, facing the dog. Keep your mail satchel between you and the dog as a first line of defense. Be careful not to stumble over objects as
you retreat.

Use dog repellent spray only if you are attacked. Spray it directly at the dog’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Do not use dog repellent indiscriminately or when there is danger of spraying children or adults.

When delivering mail through a door slot, keep your fingers out of the slot; an animal may be on the other side.

Yikes.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (11) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:05 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

CLINTON: "NO LONG-TERM STAKE IN AFGHANISTAN". NY Times, Page 1:

Every time Mr. Obama declares that the United States will not have an “open-ended” military commitment in Afghanistan, he fuels a second concern of the powerful Pakistani military and intelligence establishment, which believes the United States commitment is fleeting.

It is a concern that some of them say justifies Pakistan’s continuing ties to the militants who fight American troops in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to fuel this concern on Sunday in her comments on the ABC program “This Week,” saying: “We’re not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear.”

I was listening to the program and I was pretty surprised when Hillary said that. It sounded more like an improvisation than a well-prepped talking point. But it illustrates the confusion at the heart of Obama's policy. The White House wants to demonstrate resolve while being sure it has an "off-ramp" for its commitment. When delivering that kind of confused message, even the best talkers will slip up.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (163) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:02 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

A HAM SANDWICH ON YOM KIPPUR:

“Having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,” Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue, said recently.

I feel like this may be a license for mis-behavior. (If you're interested in the context of Rabbi Schochet's remark, click here.)

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (8) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:51 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

OBAMA WILL CRUISE TO 2012 RE-ELECTION: No, that's not a serious prediction. My real point is about Republicans getting too excited about thrashing the Democrats in 2010. Sure, that's what I'd like to see. But remember what happened during Reagan's first term? That precedent has been on my mind, so I was glad to see that Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts were thinking along the same lines. Here's their exchange from Sunday morning:

SAM DONALDSON: ...[Reagan's] popularity went down to 37 percent, at one point. But guess what, we came out of that recession. Thanks to Paul Volcker, wringing out inflation the old-fashioned way, by jacking up interest race at the Fed. And it was morning in America again. So, I say to people, anyone who thinks that Barack Obama isn't kind of odds on, for re-election, must not think we're going to come out of this recession. Because of assuming we do, and I think, we are going to by 2012, it will be morning in America again.

COKIE ROBERTS, ABC NEWS: I think that's right... I mean, when you look at the -- since you did that nice Reagan analogy, 1982 was a terrible year for Republicans. They lost 26 seats in the House, and 4 in the Senate. Everybody was saying, ah, see, the Reagan landslide really wasn't what it looked like, and all of that. 1984, a very different story. And what we really had in 1980, with that Reagan election, was a realignment that lasted for a generation. And I basically think that despite what happened on Tuesday, and what I think is likely to happen in 2010, I think we probably did see a realignment in 2008.

I don't really buy into the idea of a realignment in either 1980 or 2008. But that's another story. Just remember how bad things looked for Republicans after the 1982 elections. Remember that after the Democrats take a beating in 2012, and remember how fast things change.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (5) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:49 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DONNA BRAZILE PRAISES GOP IDEOLOGY: If you wait 15 years, people will say anything. Sunday morning on ABC, Donna Brazile explained why 2010 won't be another 1994:

Well, first of all, I don't think it's '94, because in '94, we also had some potential disastrous that happened that caused Democrats to lose so many seats. First of all, we had a great deal of retirements in the Congress, we had the bank scandal, the post office scandal... We also had a Republican Party that had ideas. We had a Republican Party that was a lot more viable and had plans to help solve some problems. We don't have that Republican Party today.

I wasn't all that politically active back in 1994 (although I was a big Clinton fan), yet somehow I don't recall any Democrats praising the GOP for the depth of its ideas or for its pragmatic willingness to solve problems. I guess that some Lexis-Nexis work might turn up the odd bit of praise, but what I mostly remember from the late 90s is a kind of vindictiveness that makes today's bickering seem pretty dull and substantive.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (14) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:47 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DO CARROTS FEEL PAIN? Natalie Portman is giving up eggs and milk. She writes on HuffPo:

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").

With that kind of radical anti-pain attitude, the next thing Portman will oppose is probably abortion. Seriously. I'm still figuring out my own position on pro-life issues, but it sure is strange when Hollywood stars tell you that the one issue they get evangelical about is the mistreatment of animals.

Coincidentally, I was friends with Foer back in high school and college. (Yes, I am name-dropping.) I am a huge fan of his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. In case you were curious, he is just as funny and clever in person as he is in writing.

You can get the flavor of his latest book from his recent essay in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting we may as well eat our dogs.

It's hard not to be ashamed by the casual, pointless cruelty often inflicted on various animals on the way to our tables. But if you fundamentally believe that we have a right to kill and eat lesser creatures, even by the million, then it's hard to treat their suffering as a priority. I get more worked up about human rights and healthcare reform.

But I haven't read the book yet. So I'll order a copy and see if an old friend can change my mind.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (61) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:44 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

MOTHER JONES AGREES WITH THE NATIONAL REVIEW! Kevin Drum praises Jonah Goldberg for resisting the impulse to call Nidal Malik Hasan a terrorist. A traitor? A murderer? Sure. But not a terrorist.

The strange thing is that liberals assume they should be against labeling Hasan a terrorist and conservatives assume they should be for it. That makes a certain amount of sense. Liberals fear exaggerated threats. Conservatives fear threats that are ignored.

But wouldn't the Afghanistan doves want Hasan to be a terrorist? Then they can say the real threat is at home, not in Afghanistan. Actyally, nix that. Too complicated. Anyhow, Kevin writes:

Unlike, say, a suicide bomber in Jerusalem, there's hardly even a hint that he was trying to make any kind of political statement. There was no note, no videotape left behind, no explanation while he was shooting, no nothing. What kind of terrorist does that?

Incompetent ones, I guess. If initial reports of Hasan's radicalism turn out to be correct, Kevin may have to revise his opinion.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (241) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:29 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART III: I'm not an aggressive consumer of financial journalism, so it has to be something of a coincidence that I've come across three separate items that chronicle the dark predictions of three separate men who warned of an impending financial crisis.

The first two are discussed below. The third is Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Black Swan was published in 2007 and written in the preceding years. Here are a few quotes that jumped out at me:

Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan [extreme event] that will appear to be the most fit for survival. (pp.209)

Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks (often Gaussianized in their risk measurement) -- when one falls, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial criseis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought. (pp.225-226)

While apparently talented in terms of financial analysis, Mr. Taleb is awful when it comes to web page design. His home page is confusing and cluttered. He provides a list of prophetic quotes from The Black Swan, but no page numbers -- which I added myself. I also had to correct the typos in his quotations from his own book.

Anyhow, enough aesthetic complaints. The substance is interesting. Will the Cassandras I've blogged about become financial celebrities now that they've been vindicated? Were they vindicated because they were lucky or because they were smart? I have no idea, but given that the value of my pension and my home may depend on this sort of thing, it may be a good idea to figure it all out. Then again, we got to where we are today because all sorts of brilliant people who study this stuff for a living still couldn't figure it out. So what good can I do by dabbling in financial analysis?

(PS I definitely recommend Taleb's book. Neither a mathematician nor an economist, I can't vouch for its contents. But Taleb is both very entertaining and very erudite. On the downside, he is impossibly self-satisfied, profoundly enjoys settling scores with his rivals, and you have to read forty pages before getting to the good stuff.)

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (5) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:21 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART II: In the mid-1990's, Yale economist Robert Shiller predicted the dot-com bubble would burst. In 2005, Shiller predicted the housing bubble would burst. Why?

In the wake of the dot-com crash, which helped make Shiller a public figure, Americans turned their financial attention from stocks to real estate. House prices were rising rapidly, and people had begun to see real estate as a can't-miss investment. Shiller wanted to know what history might say about that, but he realized that data for house prices didn't exist going back more than a few decades. "Clearly," he has written, "no one was carefully evaluating the real estate market and its potential for speculative excess."...

Over the long term, house prices tend to rise at the same rate as household income. If prices increase more slowly than income for a few years, they soon catch up. If they rise more rapidly than income, they eventually come back to earth. In early 2005, Shiller published a second edition of Irrational Exuberance, which added a chart on house prices.

That summer -- which turned out to be the very peak of the housing bubble -- Shiller and [the author] had lunch in New York. He told me that day that over the coming generation, he expected inflation-adjusted house prices to decline by 40 percent. In all likelihood, he said, the bursting of the housing bubble would at some point cause a recession.

The article doesn't mention if Shiller, like John Paulson, put his money where his mouth was, betting heavily on a housing crash. Then again, Shiller is an academic, so betting his reputation is certainly worth something.

As I said below, I'm not an economist and I have no idea whether the Cassandras of the housing bubble were ignored for the wrong reasons or the right ones. But it is striking that those who warned of terrible things to come seem to have thought out their position quite systematically, and were not just venting their personal pessimism.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:10 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THE MAN WHO PREDICTED THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, PART I: The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal profiled John Paulson, whose firm made $15 billion by systematically betting against the value of American homes. Paulson himself took home $4 billion.

How'd he do it? Research.

Grasping for new ideas, [Paulson researcher Paolo] Pellegrini added a "trend line" that clearly illustrated how much prices had surged lately. He then performed a "regression analysis" to smooth the ups and downs.

The answer was in front of him: Housing prices had climbed a puny 1.4% annually between 1975 and 2000, after inflation. But they had soared over 7% in the following five years, until 2005. The upshot: U.S. home prices would have to drop by almost 40% to return to their historic trend line. Not only had prices climbed like never before, but Mr. Pellegrini's figures showed that each time housing had dropped in the past, it fell through the trend line, suggesting that an eventual drop likely would be brutal.

"This is unbelievable!" Mr. Paulson said the next morning. The chart was Mr. Paulson's Rosetta Stone enabling him to make sense of the housing market. They had to figure out how to profit from it.

By the spring, Mr. Paulson was convinced he had discovered the perfect trade. Insurance on risky home mortgages was trading at dirt-cheap prices. He would buy boatloads of credit-default swaps—or investments that served as insurance on risky mortgage debt. When housing hit the skids and homeowners defaulted on their mortgages, this insurance would rise in value—and Mr. Paulson would make a killing.

And so he did. In hindsight, we logically conclude that Paulson is brilliant. But who was saying that three years ago?

I'm a defense analyst, so I really have no idea if money men should've been paying more attention to Paulson. But regardless of the discipline, a major crisis seems to clear away the underbrush and reveal a proud few who saw what was coming. And regardless of the discipline, it remains extremely hard to tell if those few were lucky or smart.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (5) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:10 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

A LIBERAL DOLLOP OF IRONY: From the lead column in last week's New Yorker:

The market for news is narrowing down to people who need an ideological fix.

Of course, that comment was directed at Fox and MSNBC, not at those alleged highbrow publications which strike a pose of informed sophistication while delivering the same narrow fix. (4) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

TOM FRIEDMAN'S AMNESIA: Tom Friedman says don't send more troops to Afghanistan, because there are no positive trends to build on, like the Anbar Awakening before the surge in Iraq. Yet back in 2007, Friedman condemned the surge precisely because there was no progress to build on:

January 3, 2007

Now President Bush wants a “surge” of more U.S. troops to Baghdad, in one last attempt to bring order. Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, “Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.” It never works...

Adding more troops makes sense only if it’s to buy more time for positive trends that have already begun to appear on the horizon. I don’t see them.

January 12, 2007:

More troops alone will not suffice. The only tiny hope left of transforming Iraq is if its leaders have to pay the full retail price of their passions and we have to pay the full retail price of our oil.

February 7, 2007:

Right now everyone in Iraq is having their cake and eating it — at our expense. We have to change that.

The Sunnis, who started this whole murderous cycle, participate in the government, negotiate with us and also indulge the suicide bombers and the insurgents. The Shiites collaborate with us, run their own retaliatory death squads and dabble with Iran. The Saudis tell us we can’t leave, but their mosques and charities funnel Sunni suicide bombers to Iraq and dollars to insurgents. Iran pushes its Iraqi Shiite allies to grab more power, while helping others kill U.S. troops. Ditto Syria.

March 2, 2007:

No surge can work in Iraq unless we have a “moral surge,” a counternihilism strategy that delegitimizes suicide bombers. The most important restraints are cultural, societal and religious. It takes a village — but the Arab-Muslim village today is largely silent. The best are indifferent or intimidated; the worst quietly applaud the Sunnis who kill Shiites.

March 21, 2007:

We need to root for General Petraeus to succeed...But how will General Petraeus or Congress judge if the surge is working? It may be obvious, but it may not be...Remember, enough U.S. troops can quiet any neighborhood for a while. The real test is whether a self-sustaining Iraqi army and political consensus are being put in place that can hold after we leave.

For those who'd like to check my work (or check on Friedman themselves), his old columns are available on his NYT homepage, going back to 1995. They are text searchable.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:10 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

TOM FRIEDMAN'S LOGIC: The vote is in. Tom Friedman says no more troops for Afghanistan. Why?

When I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it.

America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start with us. We can fan the flames, but the parties themselves have to light the fires of moderation. And whenever we try to do it for them, whenever we want it more than they do, we fail and they languish.

Examples?

The Camp David peace treaty was not initiated by Jimmy Carter.

OK, but the process would've gone nowhere without Carter's assertive leadership. (OMG, did I just praise Jimmy Carter? Yes, credit where credit is due.) Next example:

The Oslo peace accords started in Oslo — in secret 1992-93 talks between the P.L.O. representative, Ahmed Qurei, and the Israeli professor Yair Hirschfeld.

Not exactly a happy ending, there. But progress. However, is this a discussion about Israelis or Afghanistan? Final example:

The U.S. surge in Iraq was militarily successful because it was preceded by an Iraqi uprising sparked by a Sunni tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who, using his own forces, set out to evict the pro-Al Qaeda thugs who had taken over Sunni towns and were imposing a fundamentalist lifestyle. The U.S. surge gave that movement vital assistance to grow. But the spark was lit by the Iraqis.

20/20 hindsight. Democrats lined up in lockstep against the surge. How many of them said, "Wait, there are people like Sheik Sattar who deserve our help fighting Al Qaeda!" (How about Friedman himself? Did he notice Sattar? I'll be looking that up.)

Right now in Afghanistan, there are Afghans ready to fight with us against the Taliban. What we saw in Iraq was, that across the country, people like Sattar came out of the woodwork when they began to believe America would back them up. The evidence they demand is boots on the ground.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum says Friedman is a barometer of shifting conventional wisdom.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:07 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FEINGOLD'S FANTASY: On CBS, the senator from Wisconsin said the following:

And the idea that the Taliban is the same as al Qaeda, and they're going to welcome al Qaeda back with open arms into Afghanistan is questionable. I understand they let them come there earlier. The-- the al Qaeda came with lots of money, Saudi money, and it looked like a pretty good deal for them. But, you know, they've seen that movie before.

I didn't know the Taliban watched movies. Anyhow, here's what some experts have to say about the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Taliban. According to Bruce Riedel, who directed the Obama administration's first review of Afghan policy,

I think the relationship between these two continues to be one of a strong bond, particularly among the top leaders, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden continues to swear allegiance to Mullah Omar on a periodic basis. If you look at these two, what's remarkable about their relationship is not friction, but that, for 13 years, they have hung together. Now they think they are on the verge of victory in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They're not going to break apart now.

And here is Peter Bergen, also a longtime Bin Laden watcher,

Today, at the leadership level, the Taliban and Al Qaeda function more or less as a single entity...One of the key leaders of the Afghan Taliban as it surged in strength in 2006 was Mullah Dadullah, a thuggish but effective commander who was quite upfront about his close links to Al Qaeda. "Osama bin Laden, thank God, is alive and in good health," he told CBS in December 2006. "We are in contact with his top aides and sharing plans and operations with each other."

Feingold may not carry a lot of weight in foreign policy circles, but I think his comments say a lot about the opposition of the liberal base to the war in Afghanistan.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:04 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EVIDENCE THAT WE DON'T NEED MORE TROOPS: David Adams commanded a US advisory team in the Afghan province of Khost. Ann Marlowe reported from Afghanistan. They write,

From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division's strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan's lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas—was working within the Afghan system. By partnering with closely supervised Afghan National Security Forces and a competent governor and subgovernors, U.S. forces were able to win the support of Khost's 13 tribes.

Today, 2,400 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Khost. But the province is more dangerous.

A lot more dangerous, actually. Is our initial success in Khost an indication that a small number of troops doing the right things is all we really need? I don't know enough about the province to have an opinion one way or the other.

Now that the province is in trouble, can it be brought back under control with only a small contingent of troops? I don't know.

Was our initial success in Khost something of an illusion, similar to the relative peace throughout Afghanistan during the first years after 9/11? Again, I don't know.

Although skeptical, I'm more open to arguments like Adams and Marlowe's because it's based on evidence from the battlefield, not spurious analogies between the Taliban and our Founding Fathers.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

A SUPERB ARTICLE ABOUT AFGHANISTAN: There's plenty of material out there, but Steve Biddle's article in TNR [subscription only] stands head and shouders above the rest. Even if you're against more troops, you should test your logic against Biddle.

For example, NYT columnist Nick Kristof wrote:

The United States was born of our ancestors’ nationalistic resentment of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors. The British never fathomed our basic grievance — this was our land, not theirs! — so the more they cracked down, the more they empowered the American insurgency.

Given that history, you’d think we might be more sensitive to nationalism abroad. Yet the most systematic foreign-policy mistake we Americans have made in the post-World War II period has been to underestimate its potency, from Vietnam to Latin America.

We have been similarly oblivious to the strength of nationalism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly among the 40 million Pashtuns who live on both sides of the border there. That’s one reason the additional 21,000 troops that President Obama ordered to Afghanistan earlier this year haven’t helped achieve stability, and it’s difficult to see why 40,000 more would help either.

The American revolution a nationalist insurgency? Did the British allow us to hold national elections and set our own tax policy? Yeah, that analogy has some soft spots. But the real issue is Afghanistan. Biddle writes:

Afghans surely resent foreign occupation, as would anyone. But it is far from clear that this is the primary problem, or that a drawdown to a "light footprint" could defeat the Taliban. After all, we've tried it, and it hasn't worked.

In 2004, there were only 15,200 American troops and under 9,000 NATO-led troops in Afghanistan; as recently as March of 2006, there were only 20,000 American soldiers on the ground and about 12,000 NATO-led troops in a country of about 30 million people. The thinness of these deployments was defended by then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld precisely in terms of a perceived need to avoid nationalist resistance to a foreign occupation. If a light footprint could avert insurgency, then there should be no war in Afghanistan today. To put it mildly, it has not worked out that way: The Rumsfeld light-footprint policy gave us the mess we have now. It yielded too little security to protect the population from the Taliban, too few trainers and advisers to create an indigenous military, but enough of a foreign presence to alienate the public all the same.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:03 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FASHIONABLE RACISM? Yesterday, I was flipping through the Brooks Brothers fall catalogue. The catalog tells a story, in which all the models are part of one multi-generational (super-rich, super-WASPy) family.

Except for the two black models. These two -- one man and woman -- seem to be married to each another (see page 112, for example). Perhaps they fell in love because of their shared passion for dressing up like WASPs (which I completely approve of, as a Brooks-loving semite myself.)

But seriously, why are interracial relationships taboo in clothing catalogs? And by interracial, I mean a relationship involving one white person and one black person. (White and Asian is old news. White and Hispanic? No way to tell who's Hispanic.)

I haven't done a scientific survey, but in a lifetime of flipping through LL Bean, Land's End and other catalogs, I feel like interracial couples are invisible. The same applies to television commercials, as well as mainstream television shows and films.

Everyone is against racism, but we've all got a long way to go in being honest about interracial relationships.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:37 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

MICHAEL GOLDFARB'S WAR ON J STREET: Michael Goldfarb is not interested in constructive criticism of J Street. What Mike wants is to expose J Street as a fringe, left-wing activist group that only pretends to be pro-Israel to advance it's relativist agenda.

So call Mike partisan, but don't forget that partisan critics often make substantive points, regardless of their intentions. And Mike is both very sharp and very entertaining, so it's worth reading his posts, including his three on-site reports from J Street's annual conference.

Although neither Mike nor I are objective observers when it comes to J Street, the group seems fairly determined to provide an abundance of evidence that confirms our worst suspicions about its motives. As Mike notes, J Street's student wing, J Street U, has dropped the words "pro-Israel" from its official motto, because they're afraid it will drive people away.

J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami described himself as "concerned but realistic" about the decision by J Street U.

Given what Sonny posted below about some of the non-student members of J Street, you have to wonder which parts of the organization are actually interested in identifying themselves as pro-Israel.

If you're interested in reading more about the J Street conference, I recommend a visit to the October 2009 page on the Weekly Standard's blog, where Mike has chronicled his efforts to deter as many congressmen and senators as possible from attending the J Street conference. His efforts were surprisingly successful, although I'm guessing Mike had his feelings hurt pretty badly when J Street condemned him for engaging in thuggish smear tactics.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:56 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

TWO CHEERS FOR JOHN KERRY! Yes, you heard me right. Here's what Kerry had to say on CBS about relying on counterterrorism instead of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan:

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: That's correct. I-- I-- I do not believe that a counterterrorism strategy all by itself without a sufficient level of counterinsurgency will work because if you don't have a presence on the ground that's effective, it-- it's almost impossible to collect the kind of intelligence that you need to be equally effective in your counterterrorism.

JOHN DICKERSON: All right, Senator.

SENATOR JOHN KERRY: And, obviously, one of your components of counterterrorism is avoiding collateral damage, civilian casualties. So knowledge and-- and relationships and intelligence are really critical components of that kind of a mission. I think there's a lot I've learned about how we can recalibrate that part of it but that's not the whole mission. Counting the numbers of troops is not going to define our
success here.

Great, great stuff except for that last sentence. If you've read either the Petraeus counterinsurgency manual or Gen. McChrystal's assessment, you know that counterinsurgency is a very labor-intensive process. Kerry is way out on a Biden-esque limb if he thinks troop numbers don't matter.

But that's not why I down-graded Sen. Kerry from three cheers to two. Jamie Fly saw the same interview with Sen. Kerry and entitled his post about it Sen. Kerry's Colossal Error of Judgment. Actually, I agree pretty much with everything Jamie says, although I really wanted to praise Kerry for keeping one foot firmly planted in reality. Frankly, it's amazing to compare the indecisive and hesitant Kerry of today with the fabulously hawkish John Kerry who said this about Afghanistan just three years ago:

The Administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run. Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land. Cut and run even as we learn from Pakistani intelligence that the mastermind of the most recent attempt to blow up American airliners was an al Qaeda leader operating from Afghanistan. That’s right – the same killers who attacked us on 9/11 are still plotting attacks against America and they’re still holed up in Afghanistan.

We need a new policy – the one the president promised when we went into Afghanistan in the first place. Where NATO allies have pledged troops and assistance to Afghanistan, they must follow through. But the United States must lead by example by sending in at least five thousand additional American troops. More elite Special Forces troops, the best counter-insurgency units in the world; more civil affairs forces; and more experienced intelligence units. More predator drones to find the enemy, more helicopters to allow rapid deployments to confront them, and more heavy combat equipment to make sure we can crush the terrorists.

I hesitate to recycle talking points from 2004, but dare I say that Kerry has flip-flopped?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (4) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:12 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

RUSH IS STILL A RACIST:Steve Benen has a very different opinion from my own. So what if some racist statements were falsely attributed to Rush? He's said plenty of real racist things, too. Steve provides this list, via TAPPED,

Limbaugh's record of racist commentary...includes not only a habit of comparing black athletes to gang members but a general hostility toward black people. Limbaugh only recently suggested that having a black president encouraged black children to beat up white children -- he's also compared President Obama's agenda to 'slavery reparations,' used epithets to reference his biracial background, and compared Democrats responding to the concerns of black voters to rape."

I recommend clicking through to all the links, since they provide the full flavor of Limbaugh's remarks.

My conclusion? Limbaugh clearly enjoys his own over-the-top, politically incorrect humor. Not "edgy", "politically incorrect" humor like what you see on the Daily Show or Colbert Report, but things that are actually incorrect, because they will actually offend a lot of people.

Yet nothing on the TAPPED list comes close to the vicious remarks falsely attributed to Limbaugh by CNN, ThinkProgress and the Huff Po. Unless you're a white supremacist, you won't say that James Earl Ray deserves a Medal of Honor for killing Martin Luther King.

It seems there's plenty to criticize about Rush, so critics won't be giving much up if they stop calling him a racist.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:44 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

YOU KNOW WHO IS A BIG FAT IDIOT: As I've said before, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh or any other conservative talk-show hosts. Nothing I know about Rush & Co. has inspired any particular respect or fondness on my part. Yet I remain deeply suspicious of those who rely on criticism of Rush & Co. to advertise their own alleged commitment to civility, facts and the reality-based community.

This brings us, of course, to the recent admissions by CNN, the HuffPo and ThinkProgress that all of them falsely attributed to Rush some vicious racist remarks, namely, that slavery was good, that the Medal of Honor should be awarded to the man who killed Martin Luther King and that “all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson."

I'm inclined to agree with John McCormack this kind of false attribution is exactly what is meant by a "smear". Usually, CNN, ThinkProgress, and the Huff Po demand severe atonement from smear artists, not just limp apologies of questionable sincerity.

Could it be that such an intense concern with Rush Limbaugh's many shortcomings has led certain critics to develop the same nasty habits they condemn on Rush's part?

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 4:04 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

HOPE IS A FRAUD: As Joe noted this morning, Shepherd Fairey, the artist responsible for the "HOPE" portrait of President Obama, has admitted to tampering with and manufacturing evidence in a lawsuit related to the portrait. The Associated Press claims that Mr. Fairey owes them compensation, since the portrait was based on an AP photo of Obama.

I'm curious to know whether Obama will get a question about the portrait at his next press conference. He bears no responsibility for what happened, of course. Yet on a symbolic level, Fairey's behavior represents an ironic indictment of the borderline personality cult embraced by so many of the President's admirers.

We were told that Obama's election would mark the beginning of a new era of (post)-politics, in which we would leave behind the selfishness, the pettiness and the deceptions of the past. As it turns out, the iconic image at the heart of this personality cult embodies everything we were supposed to transcend.

Which brings us to the Nobel Prize. Once again, Obama bears no responsibility for the strange decision to award him the Prize. To his credit, he stated that very clearly. Yet the premature Prize, like the HOPE portrait, is both a manifestation of the Obama personality cult and a demonstration of its emptiness.

But perhaps all of my carping is irrelevant. The burdens of office have already brought the President's reputation down from the clouds. Yet as someone who spent seven months working full-time on the 2008 campaign (on the other side, of course), I have a hard time letting go of the contrast between the unbridled expectations of Obama's fans and the reality that us critics warned them of.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 3:24 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

AUTHENTICITY IS FAKE: My old friend Dara Horn has a great column in the WSJ. She writes,

Americans crave authenticity, culinary and otherwise. But most of what we consider authentic is just an earlier generation's novelty. The Jewish delicatessen is a case in point. While cured meats are a European specialty, Mr. Sax points out that most Jews in Eastern Europe were too poor to afford red meat; pastrami got its start as a way of curing fatty poultry. Sandwiches on rye, equally alien, were an accommodation for the quick meals required for the New World's factory work.

This only makes me love pastrami even more. I love what tastes good. It's so pretentious to worry all the time about what's authentic.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:52 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SINCE WHEN IS PETRAEUS A REPUBLICAN?

Andrew Sullivan:

How do we know that Petraeus is, or will be, a Republican? Does anyone actually have evidence of this? Or is all this speculation based on the stereotype that military = Republican?

Jason Zengerle:

As best I can tell, the assumption that Petraeus is a Republican stems from the fact that he is. From Steve Coll's New Yorker profile of Petraeus:

Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire—he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller—but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting.

Personally, I think there's no chance Petraeus will run in 2012.

Cross-posted at Conventionally Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:34 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DEAD AL QAEDA LEADER GIVES INTERVIEW: Eli Lake reports. Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri was killed by a Predator strike last month. This week, he granted an interview to the Asia Times. Comment:

Cases like this highlight why drone strikes have to be part of a larger strategy," said Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger officer and part of an assessment team that advised Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

"Drone strikes like this can't stand alone because ... they are heavily dependent on real-time intelligence," said Mr. Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. "If we can't measure the success that we are supposedly having with drone strikes, it calls into question strategies that rely almost exclusively on drone strikes in our war against terrorism."

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:22 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WEEKLY STANDARD=PRAVDA? TNR's Jon Chait is furious about Republican demagoguery:

There's not much fun in conceding that your side is winning over public opinion by exploiting ignorance and fear. It's far more pleasant to imagine that the people have risen up in principled revulsion against statism.

The vanguard of this fantasy movement rests at The Weekly Standard. One issue from a few weeks ago featured a cover image glorifying the town-hall protestors. Modeled after Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom of Speech painting, it depicted a heroic conservative with a copy of the Standard in his pocket. Unlike Rockwell's image, which portrayed the onlookers as fellow citizens holding their tongues in respectful disagreement, the Standard cover depicted them as hideous goons armed with brass knuckles. The corresponding editorial, unironically entitled "People Power," explained that the public had righteously stood up against elites in the name of "freedom and responsibility." The editors of Pravda would have called this package over-the-top.

If you like Chait, you might describe his Pravda analogy as a charming exaggeration. If you don't, you might compare his writing style to, I don't know, maybe, uh, Pravda?

More importantly, while dismissing the Standard's cover package, he makes no reference to the actual cover story, an excellent analysis by Mary Katherine Ham of how Democrats have demagogued the town halls in order to spin public anger about health care as a violent, right-wing fringe movement.

Chait does raise an interesting conceptual point, however. Can Republicans oppose Obamacare as a government takeover of healthcare while simultaneously warning about dangerous cuts to Medicare?

In terms of pure free-market ideology, it doesn't make sense. If you don't like government healthcare, consistency demands that you oppose Medicare. But if you blend conservatism with free-market politics, the answer changes a bit. The fact is, Medicare exists and is the only choice for a lot of seniors. You can oppose Medicare cuts on pragmatic grounds while opposing the extension of government healthcare to new markets.

Does this mean GOP opposition is purely principled and has nothing to do with politics? Of course not. Politics is what political parties do. Even Democrats!

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (2) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 1:17 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

NO GLOBAL WARMING SINCE 1998? The Weekly Standard blog links to a BBC article which reports,

For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

Naturally, the Standard reminds us that the BBC is not exactly a "bastion of right-wing extremism." Fair enough.

But the facts are a little more complicated. As I noted back in July, 1998 was an unusually hot year, whereas 1999 was relatively cool. Use 1998 as your benchmark, and it looks like temperatures have remained the same. Use 1999, it looks like they've gone up a bit.

But the real issue is how much we can tell from only ten years of temperature data. If you look at the graph below, you'll notice that you can have thirty years of cooling in a century of rising temperatures:

But this is a political debate, so neither side is going to wait for decades. Skeptics will say there's been no warming for a decade. Activists will say that most of the hottest years in history all occurred in the last decade.

I guess if we're really lucky, we can find some policies that make long-term sense regardless of how they're justified.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:11 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AFGHANISTAN HAWK: I'm glad to see a staunch liberal staying strong on this issue. Hypothetical question: What if Feinstein were up for re-election in 2010 instead of 2012? I don't know, but here's what she said Sunday on ABC:

The mission is in serious jeopardy. I think General McChrystal, who is one of our very best, if not the best at this, has said a counterterrorism strategy will not work. The president said to us very clearly, just as you said, George, we will not pull out.

Now, if you're going to stay, you have to have a way of winning. The question is, what is that way? And I think the counterinsurgency strategy, which means protecting the people, not shooting from afar, but securing, taking, holding, and providing security for a period of time is really critical...

You leave this country, and the Taliban are increasing all of the time. They're taking over more. It will have a dramatic impact on Pakistan one day. I really believe that.

Now, should we stay there for 10, 12 years? General, I don't think so. I don't think the American people are up for that or want that. But I think -- I don't know how you put somebody in who was as crackerjack as General McChrystal, who gives the president very solid recommendations, and not take those recommendations if you're not going to pull out.

If you don't want to take the recommendations, then you -- you -- you put your people in such jeopardy, just like the base in Nuristan. We lost eight of our men. We didn't have the ability to defend them, and now the base is closing, and effectively we're -- we're retreating away from it. And so I think the decision has to be made sooner, rather than later.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly (1) opinions -- Add your opinion