# Posted 3:08 PM by 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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# Posted 5:25 PM by 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.

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# Posted 5:19 PM by 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.

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# Posted 5:05 PM by 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.

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# Posted 6:02 PM by 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.)

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# Posted 5:51 PM by 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.

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# Posted 5:49 PM by 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.

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# Posted 5:47 PM by 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.

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# Posted 5:44 PM by 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.

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# Posted 9:29 AM by 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.)

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# Posted 9:21 AM by 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.

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# Posted 9:10 AM by 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.

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# Posted 9:10 AM by 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. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 10:06 AM by 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.

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# Posted 9:10 AM by 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.

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# Posted 9:07 AM by 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 (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:04 AM by 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 (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 9:01 AM by 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 (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 6:03 PM by 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 (0) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:37 PM by 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 (1) opinions -- Add your opinion

# Posted 5:56 PM by 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 (0) opinions -- Add your opinion